Vaiti of the Islands

by Beatrice Grimshaw

Saxon let him have his say, and merely laughed for answer.

"Come into the Occidental, and Vaiti and I'll tell you something worth all the trade that you'd take out of Papeëte in ten years," he said. "I'm going to own the ship again before New Year's Day, and paint this good old town scarlet as well. You'll see."

And the man of money-bags, anxious to see, went into the hotel.

Vaiti, in a fit of perversity, declined to come in. She knew only too well that, in Saxon's impecunious condition, there was no hope of getting their discovery effectively worked save at a price that would leave very little change over for the present possessors of the lagoon—even if the captain had been quite sober, which he was not. They had got the grant, and had furthermore had the satisfaction of noting that, day after day, Wellington Harbour remained empty of the hardly-used Margaret Macintyre. It was evident that her people, whoever they were, had tamely accepted defeat. There was no standing against a grant from the Government of New Zealand—no matter how acquired. But all this did not alter the fact that there was not going to be a great deal for the Sybil, and her captain, and her captain's daughter—especially the latter. It was there that the sting lay. Vaiti had had dreams—oh, but dreams! oh, such dreams! before solid common-sense had brought her down to earth, and made her realise that Saxon's unlucky state, and the eminently Scottish firm who held the destinies of the Sybil in their hands, were quite certain to stand in the way of realisation. To make a fortune, you must first have one, generally speaking. And it was the canny Glasgow men who had it.

So, because she did not want to hear with her own ears what she knew very well must take place, she refused to come into the hotel, and wandered off alone down the quays, in the warm December sun, which yet was cool compared to the burning heats of the island world. She was dressed in a long, waistless muslin gown, as usual, but her shady Niué hat and white deck shoes—not to speak of a pair of kid gloves that caused her horrible discomfort and a parasol that embarrassed her extremely—spoke of a respect for certain of the conventions that might have astonished people who knew, or thought they knew, Vaiti of the Islands. Of course, the loungers on the quays looked admiringly after her—she would have liked to see them dare to omit that tribute to her fiery charms—and some of them freely spoke to her, calling her Mary and Polly, offering her hearts and drinks and new bonnets, and asking her for kisses or jobs on the schooner, just as it occurred to them, after the simple fashion of the sea. Some of them knew her, and some of them did not. It was the latter who asked for jobs. The men who did know the Sybil and her "Kapitani" asked for kisses, which they did not expect to get. That was safer.

Vaiti, quite accustomed to this sort of demonstration, and enjoying it in a languid way as she strolled along under the annoying parasol, covered half a mile or so of the quay at her own leisurely pace, and then sat down on a coil of rope in a quiet place, to stare across the water and think.

She wanted something, and she did not see her way to get it.

To disentangle the dreams and hopes, wild fancies, and wilder aspirations of the half-caste mind when that mind, puzzling and elusive enough to the pure white in any case, is further complicated with a touch of genius, would be a task worthy of a whole academy of science. This much alone can the necessarily all-knowing biographer of Vaiti say—that she wanted to be someone, and wanted it so badly that nothing else in life seemed worth having, or even existent, She was a princess of Atiu on her mother's side, and on her father's (though Saxon's past was as much a mystery as the origin of the yacht-like Sybil herself) Vaiti felt that she had every right to claim high standing.

Doubly dowered, therefore, with the instinct of rule, the actual command of the schooner had fallen into her capable hands quite naturally. Left to herself, she would probably have made the Sybil pay in a way unknown before to the easy-going island world. But the useless, dissipated Saxon had to be counted on. She liked him in her own way, such as it was, but she despised him also. And it was an undoubted fact that he hampered everything. This bargain with M'Coy and Co., for instance—it was useless for her to attempt to put a finger on it. Saxon had got drunk the night before, as soon as the matter of the grant had been finally decided, at the end of some anxious days of waiting; and in the morning the numerous "hairs" that he had taken to restore him had left him in a condition of hopeless obstinacy and self-sufficiency. In such a state he was as certain to be over-reached as a stranded jelly-fish is certain to be licked up by the sun. And this was bitter to Vaiti.

For, sitting there motionless under the parasol (which was serving a useful purpose at last, in shading her handsome face from observation and comment by the passers-by), Vaiti had arrived at something rather like a conclusion, and a conclusion, too, that was likely to shape most of her thoughts and acts henceforward.