Father Zosimus sat for a long time in a kind of dream. A glass of wine served to rouse and strengthen him, and the unaccustomed stimulant put him in some sort of trim to carry on the duties of the day. But a recurring dizziness and a sinking at the heart soon drove him to take an enforced rest. He told Filipo he did not care to eat, bidding him put away the wine, and call Iosefo and his family to the feast that had been made ready for such different guests.
With the passing of Christmas Father Zosimus began to work harder than ever in his garden; early and late he could be seen in the midst of its blooming flower-beds, digging, weeding, or transplanting with passionate intensity. A loutish fellow from the westward, a heavy-featured son of Wallis Island, had been engaged to divide the burden of these tasks, and for a wage infinitesimally small toiled and sweated under the father’s eye. To guard this creature from the prattle of the passers-by, and to check his tendency to gaze dreamily into the sun; to stifle his inclination to drink, to smoke, to chatter, to explain how much better they did things in Wallis Island; to keep his fat face, in fact, on the weeds in front of him, became, indeed, Father Zosimus’s constant study. Day by day, he stood sentinel over his Uvean, applied the man’s clumsy force to profitable ends, and kept his own unconquerable heart from breaking.
It was not every day he could pursue the occupation he loved best, and watch his plans take shape with slow but appreciable success. January falls in the depth of the wet season; furious rains and long stretches of boisterous weather often interrupted the Uvean’s labours, driving both him and his taskmaster to the enforced idleness of the house—the former to sleep on the floor or to smoke interminable suluis with Filipo: the priest to read his breviary by dim lamplight as the deluge pounded on the roof. It was during one of these black days, when all the world was awash outside, and a wild westerly wind was tearing through the trees, bombarding the village with crashing boughs and cocoanuts, that the priest’s ancient barometer sank to 29°, and gave a quivering promise of worse to follow. He was looking at the mercury, and setting the gauge, when Filipo appeared in the passage, his face bright with news.
“The partner of Tutumanaia is known to your Highness?” he began, with a question that might well have appeared superfluous.
Father Zosimus turned instantly.
“God is high-chief angry with her rock-like heart,” went on Filipo, with the calm intonation of one vindicated. “She was presumptuous and beautiful like an angel; now she is pig-faced and torn of devils; and her man, oh, he weeps like an aitu in the wilderness.”
“Whence didst thou get this tala?” asked the priest, mindful of past mare’s nests on his servant’s part.
“The tala is a true one, Zosimus,” he said. “Even now the pastor of Faleapuni is praying with a loud voice in the room of the sick, tussling with the devil, while the family shrieks and is distracted. The hand of God lies heavy upon her, and they say she will die; her face scorches the touch like a hot lamp, and she talks constantly the words of devils.”
Zosimus made a gesture of annoyance; at any other time he would have reproved Filipo for retailing such heathenish fables, and reopened a discussion that had continued between them for upward of thirty years; but his solicitude for Wesley Cook monopolized every thought, and he allowed his servant’s words to pass unchallenged.
“But her sickness?” he demanded. “How first did it come upon her?”