THE STAIRCASE, VAILIMA
So we left him, “still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying,” and once more, following the footsteps of our guide, we took up that ferny moss-grown track. It was scarcely less easy to scramble down the steep descent than it had been to toil upwards. But “time and the hour run through the roughest day,” and we eventually arrived at the bottom, torn and scratched and not a little weary, but well content, only somewhat regretful that the visit to the grave was over and not still to come, comforting each other with the recollection that the house yet remained to be explored.
Vailima is not much changed since the days when Robert Louis Stevenson lived there. Where the walls had been, in the late native war, riddled with shot, they had been renewed, but so exactly on the old lines that the change was scarcely perceptible. Although the house has been added to, and in my estimation considerably improved thereby, yet the old part remains intact.
Herr Conrade, the manager for Herr Kunz, the present owner, was kind enough to show us everything, but naturally Stevenson’s suite of rooms were the only ones that possessed any special interest. First his bedroom, then his library, and lastly his Temple of Peace, the innermost shrine where he wrote, and which, opening as it did on to the upper verandah, commanded a magnificent view of sea and mountain. From the verandah could be seen the gleam of the sunlight on the breaking surf around the far distant bay. On the left, fronting seaward, were the heights where he was laid to rest.
Between two of the upper rooms (the bedroom and the library), there used to be a square hole, just large enough for a man to crawl through on hands and knees.[9] This was formerly the only entrance, but the present owner has had a door put up on which the outline of the hole is still indicated.
With the exception of these rooms, Vailima might have belonged to any other European of wealth and taste.
The question has been raised, Was Stevenson contented in Samoa? Did those three years bring him pleasure? May we not answer, Yes! and not only pleasure but profit. For the profit, note the books written during this period, The Master of Ballantrae, and the unfinished Weir of Hermiston!
VAILIMA