The hosts were Euro-Polynesians; the father a lawyer and son of a clergyman of Sydney, Australia, who had settled in the islands years ago. I do not recall whether, like his closest friend, Stevenson, he was buried on the island, but certainly he left by no means unworthy offspring, whatever prejudice may say.
Thus, in the mixture of emotions often sterile, and in the bones of white devotees is the reunion of the races of these regions being slowly effected. And at the two extremities of the Pacific—New Zealand and Hawaii—we find the process nearer completion.
4
In the journeys to and fro across the vast spaces of the South Pacific one rarely meets a white man who takes his native wife with him. One such I did meet when slipping down from Hawaii to the Fiji Islands. There were two couples on board who always kept more or less to themselves, two rough-looking white men, a white woman, and one who for all I could tell was a middle-class Southern European woman. She wore simple clothes,—a blouse hanging over her skirt and comfortable shoes. She was in no sense shy, laughed heartily, moved about with a self-conscious air of importance, but with ease, and made no effort to hide the curving blue lines of tattooing that decorated her chin. She was a Maori princess, and all the vigor of her race disported itself in the supple lines of her figure.
Her husband, Mr. Webb, however, was not a British prince. Blunt in his manners, he was ultra-radical in his opinions,—a proud member of New Zealand's working class. Domineering in his temperament he was, but she was a match for him. It was obvious that she had missed in her native training any lessons in subservience to a mere husband. She spoke a clear, broad, fluent English without the slightest accent, and when her extremely argumentative husband made a strong point, she gave her assent in no mistaken terms.
At table she was more mannerly than her spouse, though laboring under no difficulties whatever in the acquisition of food. I have never seen a person more self-possessed. Her royal lineage was writ large in her every expression. Though out on deck they both seemed somewhat out of place among the white folk and preferred a corner apart, in the dining-room they were kin to all men.
I found them both extremely interesting, and when the usual invitations were passed round for a continuance of the acquaintanceship after landing, I accepted theirs more readily than any other. Blunt and without finesse as they were, there was an obvious cordiality and virility in their manner, and no man alert to adventure turns so promising an offer aside.
Months afterward I was in Auckland, New Zealand, and made myself known to them. Most cordial was the reception they gave me when I stepped upon the well-built pier that jutted out into the inlet from the little launch that brought me there. Back upon the knoll stood Madame, her heavy head of curly hair loose about her shoulders. Her very being greeted me with welcome, firmness of foot and arm and calmness of poise proclaiming her nativity. When I approached, her strong hand grasped mine, her face beamed, and she led the way over the grass-grown path to the porch with even more self-confidence than when she had gone to her seat in the saloon, on shipboard.
Yet it was no saloon they led me into, but a simple hollow-tile structure with slate roofing and plain plastered walls. Just an ordinary four-roomed house, the haven of the rising pioneer. There were no decorations on the walls, no modern equipment of any kind, not even a stove. The table was machine-turned, the chairs ordinary, and on the mantelpiece stood some bleached photographs. My hosts went about in their bare feet, and otherwise as loosely clad as the early November spring permitted. They prepared their meals on the open fire, and the menu was as simple as anything ever offered me; and for the first time in my life I ate boiled eels, the great Maori staple and delicacy. Had it not been for the emanation of her genial personality and his vigorous, breezy, almost hard pleasure in my presence, I should have felt chilled in that habitation. But in place of things was sincere welcome. I had proof of that that night, for I was placed in the guest-room, upon a soft, comfortable bed, while my hosts themselves spread a mattress on the floor in the living-room. Lest I misunderstand, they explained that it was their custom, Maori fashion, to sleep on the floor, as they preferred the hard support to that of the yielding spring.
I woke next morning just as the sun peeped over the hill directly into my window. It was a sober dawn,—just a healthy flush of life, with crisp, invigorating air. One branch of a young kauri pine-tree stretched across the rising orb like nature rousing itself from sleep. And in the other room I could hear my hosts moving quietly about, preparing breakfast.