CHAPTER XV
Under a shady wild orange-tree which grew just above high-water mark on the white beach of Samatau Bay, Marie Raymond and Mrs. Marston were seated together on a cane lounge imagining they were sewing, but in reality only talking on subjects dear to every woman's heart.
Quite near them, and seated on mats, were the old nurse Mâlu, who held Mrs. Marston's baby-girl, and Raymond's own little daughter Loisé, who was playing with a young native girl—Olivee—grey-haired old Main's assistant.
It was early in the morning—an hour after breakfast—and the two ladies had come down to the beach to watch Raymond and his partners and some hundreds of natives working at a jetty being constructed from slabs of coral stone, and which was to be carried out into deep water.
The day was delightfully bright, and the soft cool breath of the brave south-east trade wind, which rippled the blue of the ocean before them, stirred and swayed and made rhythmic music among the plumed crests of the graceful coco-palms above. And, as they talked, they heard, every now and then, Raymond's cheery voice giving orders, and the workmen's response, which was generally sung, some one among them improvising a chant—for the Samoans, like many other Polynesian peoples, love to work to the accompaniment of song.
“Marie,” said Mrs. Marston, as she let the piece of sewing which she held in her hand fall unheeded to the ground and looked dreamily out upon the blue ocean before them, “you must be a happy woman.”
“I am a very, very happy woman, Amy. And I shall be happier still if you decide to remain and live near us. Oh, Amy, if you only knew how I try not to think of the possibility of your going away from us—to think that when you do go, it means that I may never see you again.”
“I do not want to go away, Marie. I have told you the story of my life, and how very unhappy I was in my girlhood—an orphan without a friend in the world except my aunt, who resented my orphanage, and treated me as 'a thorn in the flesh,' but I did not tell you that until I met you I never had a girl or woman friend in all my life. And now I feel that as I have found one, I cannot sever myself from her, now that my husband is dead and I and the babe are alone in the world.”
Marie Raymond passed her arms around her friend's waist. “Amy, dear, do stay in Samoa. I, too, have no woman friend except some of my mother's people—who would give their lives for me. But I am not a white woman. My mother's blood—of which I am proud—is in my veins, and when I was at school in Australia, it used to cut me to the heart to have to submit to insults from girls who took a delight in torturing and harassing me because of it. One day I lost control of myself; I heard them whispering something about 'the wild girl from the woods,' and I told them that my mother could trace her descent back for five hundred years in an unbroken line, whilst I was quite certain none of them would like to say who their grandfathers were. My words told, for there were really five or six girls in the school who had the convict taint. I was called before the principal, and asked to apologise. I refused, and said that I had only said openly and under the greatest provocation what more than a dozen other girls had told me!”
“How did it end?”