Vaiti of the Islands

by Beatrice Grimshaw

Vaiti shook herself impatiently in her hammock chair, and asked for ginger beer with sugar in it. She hated thinking, and felt as if she were going mad when the half-white brain in her pretty dusky head took a strange fit of sober industry. Swift, instinctive plotting and planning were one thing, deliberate reflection quite another.... Ugh! she must be sick.... And for once the temperate Vaiti said yes to the inevitable offer of "a stick in it," as her ginger beer was handed to her by an eager admirer.

The "sickness" passed away, and she began to listen and watch in her old fashion, smiling all the time to the compliments and sweet sayings that were being poured into her ears. A trader was telling her father all about the latest dynastic crisis in the monarchy, and Saxon was not even pretending to listen. The affairs of "niggers" never interested him, unless there was a question of immediate profit ahead.

"You see," said the trader, "King Napoleon Timothy Te Paea III., which is his full title, wants for to get married. He's thirty, and there's no heir. And there being just the two Lialian princesses that wasn't his sisters—Mahina and Litia—what does he do but go and propose to both of them, and, of course, gets snapped up like winkin' by the two. It's no small potatoes being Queen of Liali, mind you. Te Paea gets lots of money out of the fruit, and copra taxes, and then the Crown lands is half the island, there's presents besides. And he's a real king if he is coffee-coloured—why, the kings of Liali goes back hundreds of years before Captain Cook, and he was in Henry Eighth's time, wasn't he? And if you was to see the pink satin chairs in the throne-room, and the phonographs, and musical-boxes, and albums, and lookin'-glasses, and the lovely wax flowers in cases, and real hand-painted oil pictures—ah! it's a good job, is Te Paea's, and either Mahina or Litia's going to be a very lucky girl. What he'd like, you see, is to marry both of them, same as his old grandfather—only he married nine, he did. But the King's a Methody, good as they make them—when he don't forget, or want a spree—and of course the missionaries won't hear of his havin' two queens. And, says he, Mahina's real fat; there's nothing mean about Mahina; she fills the eye, says he, and that's what a Lialian likes, for they don't hold with any sort of stinginess, says he. But Litia, he says, has eyes like the buttons on his Auckland boots, they're so round and black and bright, says he, and she walks for all the world like a lovely young mutton-bird, says he. And what's a king to do, with both the girls' relations fighting and squabbling over him like land-crabs fighting over a bit of fish, and he himself liking them both, and the girls clean mad for him—because, you see, Te Paea he's a handsome fellow, and when he's got his military uniform on, and all his orders and medals what he drew out himself on paper, and got made in Sydney, he's a fancy man, he is. The wedding's to be in three weeks, and the invites is being printed down in Auckland all in silver, with a blank to write the bride's name in—and the House of Lords has bought the bride's dress for her, which is what the Kings says it's their right to do, according to custom,—and no one knows which he's going to marry, and no more does he. And it's my belief that there'll be war over it, before all's said and done, for Mahina's people say they'll burn down every village belonging to Litia's tribe, and Litia's folks say they'll kill Mahina's people's cattle and cut up their gardens. That's the way things are, and you may take my word it's a pretty kettle of fish."

"What are you giving for copra at present?" asked Saxon, yawning unrestrainedly. And the conversation turned at once to the inevitable trading "shop."

A few days afterwards the Sybil spread her wings and started for Waiwai, the outermost of the Liali islands. She was to make the whole round of the group afterwards, and might not be back for some weeks, so that it seemed likely that Saxon would miss the festivities of the King's wedding. This Vaiti declared was no reason why she should miss them, and she insisted on being left behind. Saxon was not too well pleased, for if he had a remnant of conscience left, it was connected with the care of his daughter, and he did not quite care about leaving her alone in a group to which they were both strangers. But Vaiti promised to behave like a saint, and furthermore said that she would stay with one of the married traders, and not in the native villages. She also added that she meant to stay anyhow, and that it was no use making a fuss.

So the Sybil sailed away out of Liali harbour, and became a little pearl-coloured pinhead on the blue horizon, and then melted quite away. And Vaiti went to the tin-roofed shanty belonging to Neumann, the fat German trader, who had married a Lialian wife, and was received with the unquestioning hospitality of the islands.

Nobody, among either whites or natives, could talk of anything but the King's matrimonial affairs. Mahina and Litia both appeared in Neumann's parlour more than once, sat on the floor, drank black tea with a handful of sugar in it, and related their several woes at length. They did not come together, except once, when Litia, walking in unexpectedly, found Mahina there, crying into her teacup, and telling Neumann's wife that the King had given Litia a beautiful chemise, all trimmed with lace, only the day before, and that in consequence she considered him a monster and a perjured villain, although she knew perfectly well that he meant nothing whatever by it. What was a chemise? He had sent her two pounds of stick tobacco the Sunday before last. She would show Litia yet that the King was her King, and nobody else's.

Litia, entering at this point, wasted no words, but simply buried her hands in Mahina's curly black masses of hair, and dragged her, shrieking, across the floor. Neumann interfered, and parted them; but Mahina flew at Litia immediately after, ripped open her dress with one clutch, and disclosed the royal gift chastely embracing Litia's lovely form. With a howl of anger, the rival seized the chemise in both hands; there was a scuffle, a scream, a rending noise, and Litia stood up in the middle of the room, a gold-bronze statue, shedding tears of rage, while Mahina, running out on to the verandah, tore the offending garment into strips and rags, and cast them upon the road. Litia, rushing out after her, stood upon the steps clad with wrath as with a garment (and with extremely little else), explaining her wrongs to an interested and sympathetic native crowd, until the Methodist missionary happened to come by, and told her that unless she went in and dressed herself at once, she might safely count upon eventually finding herself in a place where dress would be very much at a discount ... or words to that effect. So Litia went in, and Mahina went away, escorted by a strong cousinly "tail"; and afterwards Neumann, enveloped in oracular clouds of smoke, remarked sleepily that the princesses were the greatest nuisance on the island, and that he believed the King would run away from the whole set if he could, for he was "by-nearly mad-driven on account of their so-tiresome ways, and feared-himself to choose, because the one that he not married had would cause to make war by her people against the one he married should."

During the whole of the fight, Vaiti remained perfectly unmoved on a cane lounge in the corner of the room, uninterruptedly puffing rings of blue smoke at the ceiling. Not a detail had escaped her, all the same, nor did she miss a word of Neumann's remarks. And they made her think.

In the afternoon, the dull thud of galloping hoofs along the grass street made Mrs. Neumann run to the door. She called loudly to Vaiti to come.