Bill Grimes accompanied me on that royal visit. It was he who played the banjo that called forth such praise from those long since deserted lips. As Grimes played, her eyes lit up—with what memories!—as the pink-er-te-ponk!—ponk!—tromrrrrrrrrp! er te—trrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrph! of the Western world’s festival sounds reminded her of what dim echoes coming across the years, the death-drums, beating, beating below the ranges of heathen-land! When Grimes called her “Your Majesty” (only English term of great deference that she seemed to know) her eyes revealed a glimmer of the old pride of praise that she had once revelled in. But, somehow, the first faint smile that flitted across her wrinkled, bronzed face gave her a child-like expression. One seemed to see the savage baby peeping through her brown eyes.
Her pride was intensified by my own courtly act in kissing her hand in the Sir Walter Raleigh style. I believe Grimes would have thrown his remnant of the coat he always slept in down in the dust for her to tread upon, so awestruck was he in her presence, and by the servile munificence of her decayed retinue. Poor Grimes! I felt a strange tenderness for him, so clumsily did he imitate my courtly act, as he, too, bent his knee, wiped the tobacco juice from his scrubby lips, and saluted the royal hand with a kiss.
He blushed like a kiddie when Vaekehu fastened an acacia blossom on the breast of his ragged coat, and said, in pidgin-English:
“Arise, thou art great chief, Monseigneur Grimes, as one can so easily observe.” She bowed in picturesque Marquesan style to Grimes. He tried to mimic that inimitable grace; his knees seemed to stagger and crack, and a world of woe weigh down his shoulders.
“Good-bye, Mitia! Papalagi! Anglisman! Kaoha!” she murmured.
“Alower!” said Grimes huskily, breathing forth his one Marquesan word in Cockneyesque style—“Alower!”
Not far from that residence were the ruins of the old heathen amphitheatre, the once dreadful tapu arena. It was on that spot that Vaekehu’s cast-off lovers paid their last enforced obsequies to their royal mistress, and were served up, spiced and hot-blooded, from the ovens as tempting joints for the great cannibal festival.
Many a trustful, impassioned heart that had once beat violently at her beauty and her musical Marquesan vows had steamed on the dreadful cannibal dish, a morsel for her eyes, and a tempting sight for the jealous, hungry, new paramour.
Such was her past: and there she sat, a demure, nice old lady, looking through her pince-nez, her wrinkled face a veritable manuscript, an outlined map of the purest thought, the sweetest of lives, as she licked her tattooed thumb and turned the leaves of her Bible.
Vaekehu was not the only royal relic of a glorious past. For there were many royal-blooded chiefs staying at the Government institution, called the calaboose (jail).