White Shadows in the South Seas Part 10

Even after years of faithful church-going many of my friends still struggled with their doubts, and when these were propounded to me I was fain to wrinkle my own brow and ponder deeply.

The burning question as to the color of Adam and Eve had long been settled. Adam and Eve were brown, like themselves. But if, as the priests said was most probable, Adam and Eve had received pardon and were in heaven, why had their guilt stained all mankind?

Also, would Satan have been able to tempt Eve if G.o.d had not made the tree of knowledge _tapu_? Was not knowledge a good thing? What motive had led the Maker and Knower of all things to do this deed?

What made the angels fall? Pride, said the priests. Then how did it get into heaven? demanded the perplexed.

The resurrection of the body at the last judgment horrified them.

This fact, said the husband of Kake, had led to the abandonment of the old manner of burying corpses in a sitting posture, with the face between the knees and the hands under the thighs, the whole bound round with cords. Obviously, a man buried in such a position would rise deformed. Their dead in the cemetery on the heights slept now in long coffins of wood, their limbs at ease. But other and less premeditated interments still befell the unwary islander.

What would G.o.d do in cases where sharks had eaten a Marquesan? And what, when the same shark had been killed and eaten by other Marquesans? And in the case of the early Christian forefathers, who were eaten by men of other tribes, and afterward the cannibals eaten in retaliation, and then the last feaster eaten by sharks? _Aue!_ There was a headache query!

At this point in the discussion an aged stranger from the valley of Taaoa, a withered man whose whole naked chest was covered with intricate tattooing, laid down his pipe and artlessly revealed his idea of the communion service. It was, he thought, a religious cannibalism, no more. And he was puzzled that his people should be told that it was wrong to feed on the flesh of a fellow human creature when they were urged to "eat the body and drink the blood"

of _Ietu Kirito_ himself.

It was long afterward, in that far-away America so incomprehensible to my simple savage friends, that I read beneath the light of an electric lamp a paragraph in "Folkways," by William Graham Summer, of Yale:

"Language used in communion about eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ refers to nothing in our _mores_ and appeals to nothing in our experience. It comes down from very remote ages; very probably from cannibalism."

The printed page vanished, and before my eyes rose a vision of my _paepae_ among the breadfruit- and cocoanut-trees, the ring of squatting dusky figures in flickering sunlit leaf-shade, Kake in her red tunic with the babe at her breast, Exploding Eggs standing by with a half-eaten cocoanut, and the many dark eyes in their circles of ink fixed upon the shriveled face of the reformed cannibal whose head ached with the mysteries of the white man's religion.

None too soon for me, the talk turned about history, the tales of which were confused in my guests' minds with those of the saints.

Great Fern insisted that if the English roasted Joan of Arc they ate her, because no man would apply live coals, which pain exceedingly, to any living person, and fire was never placed upon a human body save to cook it for consumption. This theory seemed reasonable to most of the listeners, for since such cruelty as the Marquesans practiced in their native state was thoughtless and never intentional, the idea of torture was incomprehensible to their simple minds.

Malicious Gossip, a comely savage of twenty-five with false-coffee leaves in her hair, declared, however, that the governor had told her the English roasted Joan alive because she was a heretic. The statement was received with startled protests by those present who had themselves incurred that charge when they deserted Catholicism for Protestantism some time earlier.

"Exploding Eggs," said I hastily, "make tea for all." Every shade vanished from s.h.i.+ning eyes when I produced the bottle of rum and added a spoonful of flavor to each br.i.m.m.i.n.g sh.e.l.lful. All perplexing questions were forgotten, and simple social pleasure reigned again on my _paepae_, while Great Fern explained to all his idea of the Christian devil.

The Marquesan deity of darkness was Po, a vague and elemental spirit.

But the _kuhane anera maaa_ of the new religion had definite and fearful attributes explained by the priests. So Great Fern conceived him as a kind of cross between a man and a boar, with a tail like that of a shark, running through the forests with a bunch of lighted candlenuts and setting fire to the houses of the wicked.

And the wicked? Morals as we know them had nothing to do with their sin in his mind. The wicked were the unkind, those who were cruel to children, wives who made bad _popoi_, and whites with rum privileges who forgot hospitality.

Non-Christians may grin at the efforts of missionaries among heathens.

But the missionaries are the only influence for good in the islands, the only white men seeking to mitigate the misery and ruin brought by the white man's system of trade. The extension of civilized commerce has crushed every natural impulse of brotherliness, kindness, and generosity, destroyed every good and clean custom of these children of nature. Traders and sailors, whalers and soldiers, have been their enemies.

Whatever the errors of the men of G.o.d, they have given their lives day by day in unremitting, self-sacrificing toil, suffering much to share with these despoiled people the light of their own faith in a better world hereafter. In so far as they have failed, they have failed because they have lacked what proselytizing religion has always lacked--a joy in life that seeks to make this mundane existence more endurable, a grace of humor, and a broad simplicity.

Polynesians have always been respecters of authority. Under their own rule, where priest and king equally rose to rank because of admired deeds, the _tapus_ of the priests had the same force as those of chiefs, and life was conducted by few and simple rules. Now, when sect fights sect; when priests a.s.sure the people that France is a Catholic nation and the Governor says the statement is false; where the Protestant pastor teaches that Sunday is a day of solemnity and prayer, and the Frenchmen make it a day of merriment as in France; where salvation depends on many beliefs bewildering and incompatible, the puzzled Marquesan scratches his head and swings from creed to creed, while his secret heart clings to the old G.o.ds.

The Marquesan had a joyful religion, full of humor and abandon, dances and chants, and exaltation of nature, of the greatness of their tribe or race, a wors.h.i.+p that was, despite its ghastly rites of human sacrifice, a stimulus to life.

The efforts of missionaries have killed the joy of living as they have crushed out the old barbarities, uprooting together everything, good and bad, that religion meant to the native. They have given him instead rites that mystify him, dogmas he can only dimly understand, and a little comfort in the miseries brought upon him by trade.

I have seen a leper alone on his _paepae_, deep in the Scriptures, and when I asked him if he got comfort from them I was answered, "They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig." But only a St. Francis Xavier or a Livingstone, a great moral force, could lift the people now from the slough of despond in which they expire.

Upon this people, sparkingly alive, spirited as wild horses, not depressed as were their conquerors by a heritage of thousands of years of metes and bounds, religion as forced upon them has been not only a narcotic, but a death potion.

CHAPTER X

The marriage of Malicious Gossip; matrimonial customs of the simple natives; the domestic difficulties of Haabuani.

Mouth of G.o.d and his wife, Malicious Gossip, soon became intimates of my _paepae_. Coming first to see the marvelous Golden Bed and to listen to the click-click of the Iron Fingers That Make Words, they remained to talk, and I found them both charming.

Both were in their early twenties, ingenuous, generous, clever, and devoted to each other and to their friends. Malicious Gossip was beautiful, with soft dark eyes, clear-cut features, and a grace and lovely line of figure that in New York would make all heads whirl.

She was all Marquesan, but her husband, Mouth of G.o.d, had white blood in him. Whose it was, he did not know, for his mother's consort had been an islander. His mother, a large, stern, and Calvinistic cannibal, believed in predestination, and spent her days in fear that she would be among the lost. Her Bible was ever near, and often, pa.s.sing their house, I saw her climb with it into a breadfruit-tree and read a chapter in the high branches where she could avoid distraction.

They lived in a s.p.a.cious house set in three acres of breadfruit and cocoanuts, an ancient grove long in their family. Often I squatted on their mats, dipping a gingerly finger in their _popoi_ bowl and drinking the sweet wine of the half-ripe cocoanut, the while Mouth of G.o.d's mother spoke long and earnestly on the abode of the d.a.m.ned and the necessity for seeking salvation. In return, Malicious Gossip spent hours on my _paepae_ telling me of the customs of her people new and old.

"When I was thirteen," she said, "the whalers still came to Vait-hua, my valley. There came a young _Menike_ man, straight and bright-eyed, a pa.s.senger on a whaling-s.h.i.+p seeking adventure. I sighed the first time in my life when I looked on him. He was handsome, and not like other men on your s.h.i.+ps.

"The kiss you white men give he taught me to like. He was generous and gentle and good. Months we dwelt together in a house by the stream in the valley. When he sailed away at last, as all white men do who are worth wanting to stay, he tore out my heart. My milk turned to poison and killed our little child.

"I met long after with Mouth of G.o.d. He took me to his house in the breadfruit-grove. He was good and gentle, but I was long in learning to love him. It was the governor who made me know that I was his woman. It came about in this manner:

"That governor was one whom all hated for his coldness and cruelty.

Mouth of G.o.d worked for him in the house where medicines are made, having learned to mix the medicines in a bowl and to wrap cloths about the wounds of those who were sick. One day, according to the custom of white men who rule, the governor said to Mouth of G.o.d that he must send me to the palace that night.

"When he came home to the house where we lived together, Mouth of G.o.d gave me his word. He said: 'Go to the river and bathe. Put on your crimson tunic and flowers in your hair and go to the palace. The governor gives a feast to-night, and you are to dance and to sleep in the governor's bed.'"

Malicious Gossip shuddered, and rocked herself to and fro upon the mats. "Then I would have killed him! I cried out to him and said: 'I will not go to the governor! He is a devil. My heart hates him. I am a Marquesan. What have I to do with a man I hate?'"

"'Go!' said Mouth of G.o.d, and his eyes were hard as the black stones of the High Place. 'The governor asks for you. He is the government.

Since when have Marquesan women said no to the command of the _adminstrateur_?'

"I wept, but I took my brightest _kahu ropa_ from the sandalwood chest my _Menike_ man had given me, and I went down the path to the stream. As I went I wept, but my heart was black, and I thought to take a keen-edged knife beneath my tunic when I went to the palace.

But my feet were not yet wet in the edge of the water when Mouth of G.o.d called to me.

"'Do not go,' he said.

"I answered: 'I will go. You told me to go. I am on my way.' My tears were salt in my mouth.

"'No!' said Mouth of G.o.d. He ran, and he came to me in the pool where I had flung myself. There in the water he held me, and his arms crushed the breath from my ribs. 'You will not go!' he said. 'I spoke those words to know if you would go to the governor. If you had gone quickly, if you had not wept, I would kill you. You are my woman. No other shall have you.'

"Then I knew that I was his woman, and I forgot my _Menike_ lover.

"You see," she said to me after a pause, "I would have gone to the palace. But I would never have come back to the house of Mouth of G.o.d.

That was the beginning of our love. He would yield me to n.o.body. He told the governor that I would not come, and he waited to kill the governor if he must. But the governor laughed, and said there were many others. Mouth of G.o.d and I were married then by Monsieur Vernier, in the church of his mother.

"That was the manner of my marriage. The same as that of the girls in your own island, is it not?"

It was much the same, I said. It differed only in some slight matters of custom. She listened fascinated while I described to her our complicated conventions of courts.h.i.+p, our calling upon young ladies for months and even years, our gifts, our entertainments, our giving of rings, our setting of the marriage months far in the future, our orange wreaths and veils and bridesmaids. She found these things almost incredible.

"Marriage here," she said, "may come to a young man when he does not seek or even expect it. No Marquesan can marry without the consent of his mother, and often she marries him to a girl without his even thinking of such a thing.