And so at last, when one evening Mason came with a bigger kava-root than usual, and took his bowl from Finau’s hands, and stayed after the others had gone, she, feeling bitter anger in her heart towards the man, but a greater bitterness towards the relations who drove her from their door, would resist no more. Mason wasted no time over courtship. He crawled over to where she sat, and roughly threw his arm round her in the presence of them all. She pushed him away with a gesture of disgust.
“Finau,” he said, in a voice broken with vinous emotion, “it is well that we should live together. You will come to my abi to-morrow?”
Finau sat with her face hidden in her hands, but Ana, the matchmaker, answered for her.
“Yes. I will bring her before mid-day, so that she may prepare dinner.”
* * * * * * *
The steamer is in again from New Zealand. After the miscellaneous crowd of natives from the southern islands have disembarked, and sniffed and wept over their friends of Vavau, there is a flutter of excitement among the onlookers.
“Dies kann doch nicht Franz Kraft sein, Pots Tausend! was für ein eleganter Herr!” cries Karl Müller; for lo! Franz Kraft, the dishevelled, the disreputable, shaved, transfigured, and glorified in a black coat and billycock hat, silver-mounted walking-stick in hand, is there. And more than this, Franz Kraft is leading a lady over the gangway, for all the world as if he were handing her out of a tram-car at the Thiergarten-gate His old boon companions whisper together in derisive curiosity as Franz, affecting not to see them, paces the wharf with dignity, his companion on his arm. She, poor thing, makes a curious figure against the palm-trees and white sand—for black satin, white cotton stockings, and German hats do not go well with palm-trees.
She was looking timidly and wonderingly at the mean iron-roofed houses that line the beach, for the cunning Franz had crammed her flaxen head with pictures of South Sea splendour, in which Neiafu appeared as a city, and Franz himself as a benevolent planter of great possessions. Of her future home Franz had been reticent, but she had formed a mental picture of a mansion she had seen in a printseller’s window in the Unter den Linden, all colonnades, and cool palms, and haunted by numbers of dusky servants. The city must be farther inland, she thought, as they passed up the beach. They were opposite a tumble-down wooden house, larger than the rest. It might be, she thought, a small wirthhaus, where they drank beer in the back garden. She timidly asked Franz. “It’s the king’s house,” he answered roughly. Surely he must be joking, for he had told her so much about the king’s palace, and the soldiers, and the rest of it. Yes; certainly Franz must be joking, for her great strong Franz could make jokes sometimes.
A few steps more, and Franz stopped—stopped at the meanest hovel of them all,—a rickety wooden cottage, with iron roof, perched above the sea, without even a tree to give shade or a fence to hide its ugly squalor from the road. Telling her to wait, he went to the next cottage and returned with a key. She was speechless with astonishment and a vague fear. The door swung back, and he beckoned her to follow. Within was a damp, ill-smelling, little shop, with dirty stained counter, and shelves tenanted only by a few rusty tins of meat. Beyond this a small unceiled room, furnished with a bare deal-table, and dirty like the shop; and beyond this again a room containing a canvas stretcher, overhung by a rotting mosquito-screen. That was all, and the all was pervaded by the sickening rancid smell of copra, and unspeakably dirty. The windows showed a large iron shed in which copra, the currency of the country, was stored. This was the home he had brought her to! And away there in Berlin her father, the stationer, was still boasting of the brilliant marriage she had made.
It took two days for Franz to appear in his usual oily shirt-sleeves at the counter, and he did not respond to the inquiries about his wife. Thenceforth she became a person of mystery, for she was not seen at all for two months; and when she did leave the house, there were lines about the meaningless mouth, and the blue eyes were dull and red. Franz now ventured on his first social entertainment. The guests were bidden, and Franz, in a clean shirt, received them in the sitting-room,—nine in all, including the two ladies of the place. There was an awkward pause, for Frau Kraft had not appeared. Then Franz went into the bedroom to bring their hostess. There was a whispered altercation, then silence, then a burst of sobbing—and before he returned his guests had all fled. Not even the faithful Müller stayed to break the square black bottle that was to have been the gist of the entertainment. Scandal was now satisfied, for it was evident that Franz did not get on with his wife, and was not above striking her.