The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories

by Lloyd Osbourne

MANY years ago, before the steamers came to Samoa, when the whites depended on sailing-ships for their precarious supplies and their meagre news of the outside world, the Rev. Wesley Cook reached the Islands to take up the Lord’s work in that troubled field. He was a good-looking young man with a weak chin, rather regular features, and an abundance of yellow, fluffy hair, who had trod since earliest infancy the narrow path that leads to a missionary career. An assiduous church-member, a devout Sunday-school scholar, he had climbed, rung by rung, the religious ladder, and his sanguine, sensitive nature had flowered in an atmosphere which would have stifled a bolder boy. At nineteen he was fed into a sectarian college like corn into a mill, and at twenty-two the machine turned him out into the world, an undistinguishable unit of the church to which he belonged. Then, after a quiet month with his old mother, whose heart overflowed with the measure of her son’s success, the Rev. Wesley was bidden to marry and depart.

There were plenty to advise him at this juncture, and half a dozen young ladies were entered, so to speak, for the matrimonial steeplechase. But Wesley, contrary to all expectation and not a little to the chagrin of the narrow set in which he moved, showed some determination to have his own way in this important matter, and after a brief courtship he carried Miss Minnie Chandler to the altar. She was the proud and defiant beauty of the town, the self-willed, high-spirited young woman whose name was in every mouth, and whose rejected suitors numbered half the bachelors in the neighbourhood. Many wondered at her choice, until it was whispered about that she was heartsick over her affair with Harry Jardine, the manufacturer’s son, and that she preferred the missionary wilds to life in the same country with the man who had broken his troth. Be that as it may, she was joined to Wesley Cook in the bonds of holy matrimony, and after a quiet wedding, at which the breakfast was frugal and prayer abundant, the young couple bade farewell to their relations and departed for the uttermost isles of the sea.

Six months later the Morning Star hove to off the iron-bound coast of Savai’i, and her surf-boats landed the Rev. Wesley on the shores of his new home, together with a ton of provisions, some cheap furniture, a box of theological books, and a Samoan grammar. He found a concrete house already prepared for him, a church with sand-bagged windows and a plank door still studded with bullets,—an alarming reminder of the unsettled state of his district,—and an obsequious band of church elders, sticky with oil, and, to his notion of things, almost naked in their kilts of paper cloth. Bewildered and unhappy, with his wife in tears beside him, he gazed despairingly at the fast-dwindling ship, which he could not hope to see again for the space of a year.

The natives hung about like flies, buzzing through the stuffy rooms of the old mission-house so long closed to their little world, or bestirred themselves with noisy good will to the task of bringing up the freight and the pastor’s scanty boxes. He, poor fellow, with haggard face and eyes smarting with sweat, checked off the tally on an envelope, and strove to bear himself like the picture of the martyr Williams in “The Heroes of the Cross.” Numberless old men shook him by the hand, and talked to him loudly as though he were deaf, or drew him off to a distance and, leaning on long sticks, barked orations at his head. Bands of youths staggered in, singing, with loads of squealing pigs, and unsavoury victuals in baskets, while shaven-headed children tied chickens to the verandah-posts, and women and girls unfolded offerings of prawns and snaky eels. There was a live turtle in the sitting-room, a bull-calf in the kitchen, and at every turn veritable mountains of half-roasted pork. It was a wild scene for a man new come from quiet England, and the long, even days of life at sea; the unceasing press and bustle of the multitude, the squawking of chickens, and the screams of fettered pigs, all wore on his nerves until his head was giddy and his pulse throbbing. It was late in the afternoon before the mob scampered off with the suddenness and decision of a flock of birds, leaving the missionary and his wife to the peace they so sorely needed. The poor exiles, with sinking hearts, brewed their tea beside a packing-case, and wondered (much in the spirit of convicts who have left another world beyond the prison door) whether the captain had won his philopena of Mrs. McDougall, or if Miss Mossby had made it up with young Sturgis.

A year later the new missionary found himself somewhat at home in Fangaloa. He had preached a halting sermon in the native tongue, which, though no one could understand it, had evoked a respectful admiration. The school was now on its feet, and the children came eagerly, seemingly pleased with the rudiments of learning he managed to teach them. His parishioners, too, began to give evidence of their finer and nobler qualities, and warmed his heart by their kindness, generosity, and intelligence. Their laborious talks, as they sat at night round the fires, or on mats beneath the tropic moon, revealed to him a tenderness and refinement he was little prepared to find; and, from a task, these gatherings became an entertainment to be prepared for by anxious study of the phrase-book, and bewildering consultations with an old man who was supposed to understand English. Cook liked the admiration and deference of these ragged chiefs; he loved to note the bustle that heralded his own approach; the shaking out of the finest mats for his special seat; the polite chorus of “Maliu mai, susu mai Tutumanaia” (“You are high chief come, Cook the Handsome”); the closing up of the ranks, and the row of expectant faces. He was the little god of Fangaloa Bay, and in a hesitating, humble way he began to taste the sweets of power and authority.

But with his wife it was very different. Her beautiful face grew pale and sharp, as the days rolled on in a blank succession of household tasks begun and ended. In the long night hours, when the heat made sleep impossible, and her heart turned to England and those dear ones she could not hope to see again for years, she would abandon herself to despair. She never complained, but went about her duties with sad-eyed patience, mixing very little with the many servants provided for her—the young men who studied for the ministry in the intervals of bread-making and waiting at table, and the girls of rank whose fathers were eager for them to keep pace with the strange new times they lived in. She never chid them, as most missionaries’ wives would have done, for trifling faults or petty forgetfulnesses. She never realised the enormity of breaking a plate, or the crime of tinting the pudding with washing-blue to enrich the colour; she allowed things to take their untroubled course in a way that amazed her household. When one’s heart is slowly breaking, it is hard to count the sugar in the bowl or watch the soap with housewifely care. In the hot afternoons she would take her work and seek the shadow of a tall cocoanut-grove which stood on a hill behind the town, and there remain for hours, gazing out at the vast shining bosom of the ocean, or at the blue mountains of Upolu, far across the strait. So regular was her visit to this little grove that her boys built a bench of tamanu wood for her to sit on, and raised a roof overhead to protect her from passing showers or the glancing rays of the sun; and the place was called “o le Nofoali’i o Misi Mini,” or the Throne of Mrs. Minnie, which name it bears to the present day, though all the actors in this story have long been laid beneath the sod. Once, after a solitary vigil of more than usual length, she returned and sought her room, now a little sanctuary of her irrevocable life; for here were gathered the treasures of her past; the photographs, mementoes, and keepsakes that she had clung to in her exile. Here she breathed again the air of home; here she could caress the fading photographs that were so dear to her, and indulge unstinted in passionate rebellion against her fate. On the day of which we write she found no comfort in her shrine. The faces of her friends looked down mournfully at her from the walls, tormenting her with a thousand recollections. Existence was unbearable enough without such added bitterness. These things, inanimate though they were, devoured her while they pretended to comfort; they broke her heart while she looked to them for solace. For a moment she saw the truth and trembled for herself. Madness lay on the road she had begun to follow.

One by one, she gathered them together; the picture of her father and mother, the photographs of her relations and girl friends, old Christmas cards, bits of ribbon, little odds and ends that had played each a part in those bygone days. There were letters, too, precious bundles of letters tied with ribbon, which she kissed and cried over before consigning to destruction; and from one such packet dropped the likeness of a man in uniform, which she pressed to her breast before tearing it into a hundred pieces. When at last the room was stripped of everything, she bore the heap of tender rubbish to the fire, and, with a stony face, fed it to the flames.

The Rev. Wesley Cook and his wife were not the only whites in their corner of Savai’i, as indeed they had first imagined themselves to be. There was still another in Fangaloa, an old, white-haired Irish priest called Father Zosimus. No one could remember how many years had passed since Father Zosimus came to Fangaloa and built the tiny house and chapel in the mango-grove; for he was an old, old man, and had come to that sleepy hollow when his hair was as black and his feet were as light as those of the nimblest warrior of the bay. He had no followers to speak of, for Fangaloa was Protestant to the core, and his congregation numbered no more than one family of eight, three transient young men who had run away with as many girls from Upolu, and Filipo, the aged catechist, who acted as his servant. But Father Zosimus never faltered in the path he had set himself to follow. For seven and forty years he had daily broken the stillness of the grove with the tinkle of his little bell, and never failed to carry on the service of his church. He scarcely heeded the new arrivals, and more than once he had had to chide old Filipo for gossiping about the papalangi on the hill. He never gave them a second thought, in fact, until one day he happened to see Tutumanaia passing on his way to church. The sight of that fresh, clear-eyed youngster greatly moved the old priest. He was troubled and uneasy as he walked home, and his heart ached a little. The new missionary belonged to his own race; he had the air of a scholar, and the frank, open face and quick eyes of a man full of enthusiasms and generous impulses; yet, so mused Zosimus on his homeward way, this charity, this noble purpose, were all for the aborigines alone. There would be none to spare for an old man to whom no music was so sweet as his mother-tongue, and whose loneliness was intensified by the burden of advancing years. For nearly half a century Father Zosimus had lived in exile, and his soul continually thirsted for the companionship which had been denied him all his life. The few whites who had come his way before had been scrubby traders, a priest or two a year, or some nondescript beach-comber, rough and foul-mouthed, begging brandy and food. True, he had spent eighteen years within a furlong of the Rev. Josiah Fison, Cook’s predecessor in Fangaloa; but that gentleman’s Christian charity stopped short at what he called a “rank Jesuit,” and they had never exchanged even so much as a word. In Father Zosimus there was a strain of Irish gaiety; he loved talk, and laughter, and argument; and the humblest white man who could speak English was welcomed to his table and treated to the best that Fangaloa afforded. Indeed, among the “squires of Savai’i” he was honoured and respected, from Falealupo to the strait. But these men were, most of them, gross and common. In Wesley Cook he saw a being of another world, a young man of refinement and spirituality, a fellow-missionary, a fellow-countryman, with whom all intercourse was inexorably barred, with whom he should live out the balance of his days and know no more than if an ocean rolled between them. No longer did he stem the tide of old Filipo’s gossip; on the contrary, he could now never learn enough of the new arrivals, and little passed in the mission-house that was not reported to him at once. He learned, with a singular feeling of delight, of the young minister’s kindness and ability; how he had mastered the language in less time than a foreigner had been ever before known to take; how he had raised the dying, nay, the breathless dead themselves, back to life with the costly medicines he never stinted to the poorest. “Oh, he is a minister wise and good,” said Filipo, “and his heart is not stony against us Catholics like the last pig-face; only yesterday he said that thou, Zosimus, wert honourable, and deserving of respect as a man who had trod the narrow road his whole life long.”

The old priest hung upon his words as though Filipo were inspired. The next day he went purposely out of his way to gain another look at Tutumanaia, and came back more affected than he had been before.

“Had I not entered the priesthood, I might have had a son like that,” he mused to himself, as he trudged homeward. “But that I gave to God, scarce knowing the sacrifice.” Then he rebuked himself for his impiety.