“I told her that, and she said it was not the foreigner’s wish to marry her. But you are the Governor. It is for you to punish evil-doers. All Vavau is ashamed because of this woman.”
“Arrest her, then, and bring her here.”
At sunset the chiefs had met at the ruinous wooden villa that is the Government House. In the central hall, once gay with paint and gilding, they sat cross-legged before the kava-bowl, young Laifone the Governor in the seat of honour. And into this august assembly Ana Finau, the abandoned contemner of public opinion and the law of the land, was led trembling, the only woman in the room. The men stopped talking and looked at her with hard unsympathetic faces. What pity should they have for a countrywoman of theirs who could stoop to one of these vile foreigners, and leave her own kind for the society of a trader—a white man?
The policeman who brought her told her roughly to sit down before the Governor, who glanced at her and bade his companion continue the story the girl’s entrance had interrupted. The chiefs who had come from a distance asked their neighbours who the girl was, and why she had been brought. She meanwhile sat on the floor, her feet doubled under her, as the manner is, her eyes cast down, but with a certain dogged air of resistance about her, as if she was prepared for the worst.
The story was finished. From Laifone’s hearty laugh it might be guessed that it was not over-refined, and the policeman called his attention to Ana Finau. It was no time for business, for the kava was nearly pounded, the two kerosene-lamps were lighted, and Laifone was bored with the cares of office. He held up his hand, and the ringing thud of the pounding kava-stones ceased.
“Ana,” he said, “they say you are living with the white man. You were punished and told to leave him, and you have gone back.”
The girl reached for a straw on the dirty floor, and began to dissect it with her fingers, examining it intently.
“Why don’t you answer?” asked the policeman, roughly. She glanced up for a moment, and resumed her dissection of the straw.
“It is true,” she said.