Kraft had forgotten his promise until, looking up, he saw and recognised a lonely figure, with arms outstretched, upon the hill; but feeling in his pocket, he found he had only one handkerchief, and it was not worth sacrificing a good handkerchief for a silly native superstition.
Under the first sense of utter loneliness the sneers of her own people were easy enough to bear. They did not understand. And then, when she had returned to the old life at Latu’s house with her own people, living their life, sharing their interests, the sorrow faded (as sorrow always does fade, thank heaven!), and the past became a little hazy and unreal. It is good to be a child, or to have a brown skin, which is the same thing, for with them time will heal in days wounds that cripple us for years, and leave scars behind them: and so the sun shines again as brightly as before, and the growth is not stunted. Only sometimes at the gatu-board Finau’s mallet would stop beating, and her eyes would wander away there to the point in the harbour that shuts out the channel, with a wistful far-off look, until the woman next her, indignant at being left to beat for both, would cry out, “The gatu [bark-cloth] is hardening while Finau is looking for Falani;” and during the coarse laugh that followed Finau would beat the yielding bark with ringing blows, changing her mallet from hand to hand as each tired.
So six months passed away. Finau had long given up asking at the post-office for a letter when the steamer came in; and when young Beni, the post-office clerk, threw her one at the kava-drinking in Latu’s house two days after the steamer had left, she thought for a moment there had been some mistake. Beni, with the privilege appertaining to his office, had as usual opened it and circulated it among his acquaintances for the two days that had intervened since the arrival of the mail; but being in some white man’s language, his curiosity was still ungratified. Finau thrust it into the bosom of her kofu, and contained her soul in patience until the morning. She was at Müller’s door before he was up next morning. After he had promised inviolable secrecy the German letter was produced, read, and translated into dog-Tongan, while Finau sat on the floor with glistening eyes. The joke was altogether too good for Müller to keep to himself, promise or no promise, and before evening all in Vavau who cared to know, whether white or brown, were duly made aware that Franz Kraft could not live without Finau,—that though his body was in Germany his heart was in Vavau,—and that though the German ladies of high degree all made love to him, yet none was so beautiful as Finau, and he was adamant to them. The whole effusion did great credit to Kraft’s wit; and the best of the joke was that Finau swallowed it all, including the paragraph about his tearing himself away from Hamburg because he could not bear the separation any longer, only the chiefs in Hamburg would not let him go for some inscrutable reason of their own. Truly Franz Kraft was a most humorous fellow. The one sentence Müller did not translate was a heading, in execrable Tongan, that she was to get the drunken Wilhelm Kraft, Franz’s brother, to read the letter, and on no account to take it to Müller or any one else.
But what cared Finau that the contents of her letter were public? They might laugh as they would—her husband had not forgotten her: he was coming back to marry her, and she would toil for him all her days, and be happy. Next month would come another letter to say he was starting, and in three months more he would be here. Ah, those months would be so easy to live through now! She gravely dictated to the delighted Müller an answering love-letter. She never ceased to think of him; and she had had no rest since he went; and would the good God guard him, and bring him safely back to her,—a very tame composition beside Kraft’s love-letter, but as Müller never sent it, the lack of style was of no consequence.
But the letter that should have come by the next steamer must doubtless have been lost in the post; or perhaps Kraft was starting, and did not think it worth while to write. Another mail, and still no letter. Ah! it is now clear. Poor Falani must be ill. The old letter was getting quite worn out now, from being carried in the bosom and slept on at night, but the writing was still visible through the oil-stains. It certainly did look shaky,—yes, decidedly Falani must be ill.
And then the third steamer came, and Beni said there was no letter. That evening brother Wilhelm paid Latu a visit, three sheets in the wind, as was usual with him at that time of night. He wanted Finau; he was labouring with a message for Finau. She is fetched from the cook-house. The difficulty is to find words for the message to Finau, for the message requires “breaking gently,” and it is difficult to break news gently under the influence of gin.
“Finau,” hiccoughs brother Wilhelm, “Falani has written. He told me to tell you—he is married.” The instructions were to break the news gently, and having carried them out to the satisfaction of his own conscience, brother Wilhelm takes himself to where the bottles are square and black, and the night may be profitably spent.
Far from the haunts of men there is a place where none dare to come alone. The land sloping up from Neiafu is broken here in a great precipice, against whose feet the mighty ocean-rollers, unchecked by any reef, break ceaselessly with a dull roar, making the overhanging rocks tremble a thousand feet above them. Landwards Haafulu Hao, with its myriad islets, is spread out like a map; seawards is nothing but the sleepless ocean meeting the blue sky. Thither the dead are brought to sleep in their white graves, untroubled by the living; thither go the poets of the lakalaka for inspiration; thither go the girls of Halaufuli for flower-garlands, but not alone, for the spirits of the dead roam among the rocks of Liku, and must be scared away by numbers. Jutting out from the precipice is a single shaft of rock round which, even in calm weather, a furious wind eddies. With a good head one may climb out to this pinnacle, and, holding on firmly, see nothing between his feet and the foaming surf a thousand feet below.