Moonlight ferry trips, picnics, concerts and songs are as characteristic of Providence as of the South Sea islanders of Samoa and Tonga. One difference divides the Providence population from the islanders—the natives of Providence wear clothes; but the Yankee mechanics outdo the Savaii and Fiji islanders in tobacco-chewing, and can spit over their shoulders with even swifter certitude than my sailor comrades of San Francisco, whom I told you about in my first book of South Sea reminiscences. Boating is an essential feature in their amusements. Rhodes-on-the-Pawtucket is crammed with boats. On sunshiny days thousands of youths and girls paddle and sing away, and never reflect on the time when Red Indian canoes darted in the moonlight over those same waters.
My comrade was still with me, and we got several engagements to play at dances and concerts. My brother was in the ring, so to speak, and so we were received with an enthusiasm that we had greatly missed when we really wanted it. My friend eventually, however, went off to Alaska to some relations. He promised to write to me, but I never heard of him again.
My brother owned, and still owns, I hope, estates called Cranston Heights, an elevated, breezy place. On the hottest day a sleepy wind creeps about them. From that spot you can gaze down into the valleys and see a wall of cliffs about an eighth of a mile long, rising a hundred feet high. There on a large boulder, known as Middleton’s Rock, my brother and I would sit reflectively smoking long Yankee corn-cob pipes, as we reclined, shaded by umbrellas of green-leafed trees from the hot sunlight. We sat there talking and dreaming of years ago when the Indians camped on Cranston Heights. I think my brother could outrival Fenimore Cooper and Cody in his knowledge of Indian history and the legends of the original tribes that owned America. Stone arrow-heads and Indian pottery to this day are often found there, and my brother showed me several relics which were dug out of his estate.
Rhode Island was of course originally an Indian settlement. Forests grew by the rushing rivers, and on the prairie landscapes stood native villages. The dominion was under a King Philip, and the island is sometimes called, for poetical purposes, “Land of King Philip.” The forests have succumbed to the woodman’s axe, though still patches of woods and prairie-land are left, and it was in that clump that I sat and played my violin and dreamed sometimes. Still the beautiful rivers run across the landscapes like veins of silver and gold fluid, glittering under the leafy clumps of beech, maple, hickory and many varieties of trees that resemble tropical types. The waters of those old rivers, like the coming and passing of singing humanity, have long since slipped into the distant seas, but still other waters flow on and are known by the ancient Indian names. The Seekonk river winds through Providence and throws its liquid mass into Narragansett Bay. From Cranston Heights you can see the exquisite scenery that is characteristic of the neighbourhood of Providence; across the valleys the hills fade before the eyes into dreamy distances as sunset floods the horizon. If you are poetical you can see the ghostly camp fires and dead Indian riders galloping and fading into the arched sunset of blood fire. The view reminded me of a South Sea modern shore village, for here and there were dotted bungalows, fenced by trees and green shrub and flowers. Things have altered a good deal since those days, for I have recently visited Providence.
Mr J——, whose palatial bungalow was among them, is one of Rhode Island’s greatest business men, and his commercial success is deserved, through his unassuming philanthropy. He has given a great deal of land, parks and drives to Providence. I think it was in Meshanticut Park, one of his gifts to the city, that I met with an adventure. The weather was hot, and I spied a small lake by some trees. Immediately I undressed and, though my brother expostulated, I dived into the water: the park officials came and arrested me, but my brother explained and I got off with a caution. Years of wild life in the South Seas had taught me to bathe where and when I liked, and I had yet to learn that park lakes in Providence were not as lagoons on the isles of the wild South Seas, wherein the whole population bathe without even the modest fig leaf, gossip, mention the weather and go their ways.
Oaklawn is another pretty spot. I stayed there with some of my brother’s friends, at Wilbur Avenue, I think. There is a little wooden bridge thereabouts, not far from an old stone mill. Near this spot in the old days a great Indian battle was fought, and there by that little bridge my brother would sit for hours, writing his articles for the provincial and New York papers.
It was at Oaklawn Bridge that I sat and told my brother of my various boyish experiences in the South Seas, of the island chiefs, and of my reminiscences of Robert Louis Stevenson, whom I had met at Apia and on ships at sea. My brother was deeply interested in all I told him. He was a great admirer of Stevenson’s work and his perfect literary style. We talked of Stevenson’s easy and careless manner that seemed such a contrast to his perfection and polish in writing. How he did not care a tinker’s curse for the opinion of the conventional world, and loved to shock visitors to Samoa by appearing before them suddenly in old clothes, bare-headed and bootless. I saw him come aboard a ship dressed in that way; and I recalled how, on another occasion, I met him coming down the track inland from Saluafata, the native village. “Hello, youngster,” he said; and, as I was going his way, off we tramped along the track together as he hummed beside me. Then, with the sunset, out came the native children rushing from the forest. Like tiny ghosts they glided, begging, in the shadows at our legs as we strode alone; and as Robert Louis Stevenson threw brass buttons to them, they raced after them, and then, half frightened that he might want to reclaim the prizes, they suddenly disappeared, racing back into the forest. The sunset died behind our backs and the stars crept over the Vaea Mountain top and the dark-branched coco-palms each side of the track; the shadows thickened as the stars brightened. So well do I remember that night that even now I seem to see my companion striding onward beside me, his loose neck-cloth fluttering in the wind that drifts in from the sea, stirring the coco-palms and pungent-smelling forest flowers as it passes. Still I see his ghost-like shadow, the clear eyes, the thin, æsthetic face; still he is humming a folk-song, while his right hand beats the moonlit bush with a stick—and yet he has lain there many years on the top of the Vaea Mountain—his rugged island tomb railed by the dim sky-lines of surrounding tropical seas, his vaulted roof the everlasting sky, studded with the brightest stars, as he lies with his stricken aspirations like some dead Christ of the lost children of the wild, solitary South.
A critic in The Times, reviewing my first book, Sailor and Beachcomber, after writing a column of critical appreciation, finished up by saying: “Mr Safroni-Middleton prides himself on having known Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas.” My book has three hundred and four pages: on three of them I spoke of Stevenson; but I fail to see why I should pride myself on knowing him, except in this sense, that I am proud to have met him and to count him among the many men who followed after my own heart.
If he had not died before I returned, a little older, to Samoa, he would have welcomed me as I should have welcomed him; for he had several times expressed a wish that I should call on him and take my violin, but in the foolishness of a boy’s thoughtlessness I did not go. Worldly greatness did not appeal to him, nor did my letters of introduction, for I had none, and he was, I am quite sure, aware of the fact.
Well, to return to my experiences in North America. After a time I left Providence, and then went down the Hudson river bound for New York. There I stayed in a temperance hotel close to the Bowery, and I cannot forget the scene.