THE PHANTOM CITY
“GOD has sent you to the right place here,” said Father Studby, solemnly, to the lay brother. “Life in Lauli’i flows in the same channel, day by day, year by year, so that we wonder to grow old and are surprised to see our changing faces in the glass. When we think, it is of the goodness of God; when we fear, it is for the sick or for the machinations of the Evil One. Our little bay is a monastery, remote from all the passions and fevers of mankind; and the people we live among are pleasant children, naïve, gay, and pious.”
“You must not consider me a sick man,” said Brother Michael, with his dark smile. “I am worn out with teaching, and the hot bustle of Nukualofa. The doctor said I needed rest, that I needed peace and fresh air, and the bishop has sent me here to get them.”
“In Nukualofa,” said the old priest, who entertained a partisan’s contempt for the neighbouring island, “in Nukualofa they do not know the meaning of those words. They exist in a frenzy of excitement, amid the intrigues of three conflicting nationalities; one’s ear is dinned with rumours; and one wearies with the very names of consuls and captains. One cannot take a walk without beholding a fresh proclamation on a cocoanut-tree, or turn round without offending some preposterous regulation. The natives wear trousers and drink whisky; they model themselves on the dissolute whites set over them, and degenerate as rapidly as their masters.”
“I never could see what people found to like in the natives,” said the lay brother. “I dare say they are good enough in their way, and fill a necessary place in the world, but to me they are greasy and offensive.”
“Ah, but you have never seen the true Samoan,” exclaimed the priest. “Here it is so different from Nukualofa. Here our people are better born; here they are self-respecting, honest, and kind; here you will see at once an astonishing contrast to those you have left.”
Once launched on his favourite topic, the superiority of Lauli’i to all the villages of the group, the old missionary knew not when to stop, and his interminable tongue ran on in an unceasing harangue. The new-comer listened with a sort of detachment, as he might have done to some strange parrot screaming in a zoo, assenting by perfunctory nods to that long tale of Samoan virtue, religion, and generosity. His black eyes ranged about the room and through the open window at its back, where, within a distance of a dozen yards, a little church half barred the vista of peaks and forest. Still talking, Father Studby led him away to see it, this scene of his professional life which had been raised, stone upon stone, by his own assiduous hands. The lay brother was shown the altar, with its artless decoration of tissue-paper flowers; the pulpit inlaid with pearl-shell; the sacramental vessels in their wrappings of tapa-cloth. The father seated himself at a crazy harmonium, which was planted on the sandy floor like some derelict cast up by the sea, and ran his fingers over the yellow keys. He played, after a manner, with considerable skill and vivacity, his preference being for the sentimental ballads of his youth, and the dance-music which had then been in fashion. It was strange to hear these old waltzes, so long dead and forgotten, coming to life again in that darkened chapel and from the hands of such a player. The lay brother leaned against an open window, from which there was a wonderful view of wooded mountains half screened in mist, and sighed moodily as he gazed about him. Under the spell of those swaying measures, his heart returned to the Australian plains where he had been born, and he felt himself, indeed, an exile.