Years before Damien went to Molokai a handsome Hawaiian girl, who lived at Kahalo, loved a Society Island youth who had, with his parents, emigrated to the Sandwich Islands. The father of the maid disliked the youth, who was an idle, good-for-nothing fellow, and so would not encourage the lad’s attentions to his daughter. For some time the lovers met in secret, for love laughs at locksmiths in Hawaii as well as elsewhere. One night, as Damien sat by his fireside in his lonely hut having his humble meal, the love-sick maid appeared at his door. Crossing her hands on her breast, she bowed, half frightened, and after much hesitation pleaded to the Catholic Father on the youth’s behalf, begging him to help her, for she was in great distress; and knowing that Damien was a great missionary and priest of the white God, she suddenly fell on her knees and confessed all. She was in trouble through the lad, and, telling Damien this, she laid her head on his knee and cried bitterly; for the kindness of his eyes soothed her and made her feel like a little child. Gently bidding her to rise, the Father told her to cease from troubling, and said: “Go, my child, home; tell thy father all; also that thou hast told this thing to me, and I will come and see him.”
The priest did all that he promised; and the next evening the sinful youth who had brought sorrow to Ramao, for that was her name, appeared before the hut door wherein lived Father Damien and, shamefaced, hung his head for a long while. Kooma, who sat telling me all this, added: “And the great white Father put the spirit of Christ in Juno’s (the lad’s) heart; for he became good, and worked hard, and was forgiven for that which he did, and they were happy and had many children; and I learnt to love Juno in his manhood, for he was a good father and kind to the maid who was my daughter!” And, saying all this, he pushed the window higher up and pointed to a tall maid who, in her ridi robe, came singing down the track by the jungle ferns. On her bare shoulders she humped baskets of live fish which had been just caught below in the sea. “She,” Kooma said, “is my granddaughter, and was the unborn child of the fallen maid whom Father Damien was kind to”; and there she stood in the doorway and gazed on us both with laughing, sparkling eyes, bare from the waist upwards, excepting for a thread of beads hanging at her breast and a Catholic cross, with a tiny figure of the Virgin Mary, swinging below. I looked at her with deep interest, and thought of the kindness of the missionary priest, dead in his grave at Molokai.
Kooma showed me a Bible which had been given him by Father Damien. It was well thumb-marked, torn, and pencilled by the priest at those pages where he had made my friend memorise different passages. On the front leaf was Damien’s signature. On my handing the sacred gift back to the Hawaiian he carefully placed it at the bottom of his chest; and I knew that it would be no use my attempting to get it from him, however much I might want the book. Many interesting things did I learn from my stay at this native’s house, for night after night I would get him in a reminiscent mood. It appeared that as time wore on the young priest, who was a handsome, healthy-looking man, became somewhat subdued and saddened, and aged considerably in the space of three or four years. At times he was morose and unapproachable, though afterwards he would gaze with kindly eyes on those whom he might have spoken to in anger.
“Did he ever go away?” I asked Kooma, and he answered: “Sometimes he would go for one or two days, and often at night-time go off wandering alone in the forestlands about his house; and night after night at sunset he would sit with his chin on his hands and gaze toward the seaward sunset, with eyes that saw far away.” And then Kooma added: “And I would say, ‘Master, shall I get thee more firewood?’ and he would not answer, but would steadily gaze on, and I could see the tears in his eyes, and I knew that he sorrowed over that which I knew not of.” So earnest was Kooma’s manner that, as he told me these things, I saw the past, the lonely hut home and the exiled priest gazing into the sunset, sick at heart as he dreamed of his childhood’s home across the world. I wondered somewhat, and thought over the stories Raeltoa of Samoa had told me, which I have written about in my earlier book of reminiscences. For Raeltoa the Samoan had also known Father Damien, as, of course, hundreds of natives did, and had told me, unasked, of his kindness and heart-felt sorrow for those who hid from the leper captors as they searched for the stricken people.
For leprosy had wiped out thousands of the natives of the Sandwich Islands and elsewhere. When once the victims revealed the purplish-yellow patch on their bodies they were doomed, for no cure was, or is, known for the scourge of leprosy.
In Kooma’s house dwelt a chief who lived in Oahu. He had elephantiasis, which had swelled his legs to three times their normal size. He used to sit under the pandanus-trees reading his Bible as I talked with Kooma, and I was extremely pleased to hear, on inquiring, that his complaint was not contagious; for when he squatted with his knees up in front of him, so swollen were his limbs that his body and head were hidden from view.
But to go back to Kooma’s reminiscences. “What happened before Father Damien went away to the Leper Isle of Molokai?” I asked, and Kooma answered: “He became most sad, and then wished many of my people who had the leper patch good-bye, and promised to go one day and see them, and made them happier with smiles and promises; and often he would go a long way off to comfort those whose relatives had been taken to the dreaded lazaretto.”
“Did you see Father Damien after he had gone to the lazaretto?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied; “and he looked most sad and very, very much older: and I asked him of my sister, whom he had seen at Molokai, for she was stricken with the plague, and he said, ‘Kooma, your sister is happy; the spirit is well, though the flesh, which is nothing, is ill.’”
Then Kooma told me much of the doings of the Flemish priest: how he had toiled incessantly for the welfare of his native children, ministering to their souls; and how his influence had soothed their hearts, hearts that still half nursed the old traditions; for the Hawaiians were originally a wild race, and still their songs told of heathen mythology, of mighty warriors, of love and ravishment, and of cannibalistic times, so Damien’s task of reforming them was no easy one.
For many years the dreadful scourge had crept, with its fatal grip, over the whole of the Sandwich Group, and as time went on it became so prevalent that the Hawaiian Government decided that the best step to take to stay the horror of fetid rot which was annihilating the race was to isolate all those afflicted with the disease and send them to Molokai.