The Spinners' Book of Fiction Part 30

"_Soifua_," Pola replied, "may you sleep;" and then he added, "Be not angry, but the biscuits----"

"Are you hungry?" I asked. "Didn't you have your dinner?"

"Oh, yes, plenty of pea-soupo" (a general name for anything in tins); "but you said, in your high-chief kindness, that if I ate the two biscuits you would give me more to take home."

"And you ate them?"

He hesitated a perceptible moment, and then said:

"Yes, I ate them."

He looked so glowing and sweet, leaning forward to beg a favor, that I suddenly pulled him to me by his bare, brown shoulders for a kiss. He fell against the hammock and two large round s.h.i.+p's biscuits slipped from under his _lava-lava_.

"Oh, Pola!" I cried, reproachfully. It cut me to the heart that he should lie to me.

He picked them up in silence, repressing the tears that stood in his big black eyes, and turned to go. I felt there was something strange in this, one of those mysterious Samoan affairs that had so often baffled me.

"I will give you two more biscuits," I said, quietly, "if you will explain why you told a wicked lie and pained the heart that loved you."

"Teuila," he cried, anxiously, "I love you. I would not pain your heart for all the world. But they are starving in the village. My father, the chief, divides the food, so that each child and old person and all shall share alike, and today there was only green baked bananas, two for each, and tonight when I return there will be again a division of one for each member of the village. It seems hard that I should come here and eat and eat, and my brother and my two little sisters, and the good Tumau also, should have only one banana. So I thought I would say to you, 'Behold, I have eaten the two biscuits,' and then you would give me two more and that would be enough for one each to my two sisters and Tumau and my brother, who is older than I."

That night my brother went down to the village and interviewed the chief. It was all true, as Pola had said, only they had been too proud to mention it. Mr. Stevenson sent bags of rice and kegs of beef to the village, and gave them permission to dig for edible roots in our forest, so they were able to tide over until the taro and yams were ripe.

Pola always spoke of Vailima as "our place," and Mr. Stevenson as "my chief." I had given him a little brown pony that exactly matched his own skin. A missionary, meeting him in the forest road as he was galloping along like a young centaur, asked, "Who are you?"

"I," answered Pola, reining in his pony with a gallant air, "am one of the Vailima men!"

He proved, however, that he considered himself a true Samoan by a conversation we had together once when we were walking down to Apia. We pa.s.sed a new house where a number of half-caste carpenters were briskly at work.

"See how clever these men are, Pola," I said, "building the white man's house. When you get older perhaps I will have you taught carpentering, that you may build houses and make money."

"Me?" asked Pola, surprised.

"Yes," I replied. "Don't you think that would be a good idea?"

"I am the son of a chief," said Pola.

"I know," I said, "that your highness is a very great personage, but all the same it is good to know how to make money. Wouldn't you like to be a carpenter?"

"No," said Pola, scornfully, adding, with a wave of his arm that took in acres of breadfruit trees, banana groves, and taro patches, "Why should I work? All this land belongs to me."

Once, when Pola had been particularly adorable, I told him, in a burst of affection, that he could have anything in the world he wanted, only begging him to name it.

He smiled, looked thoughtful for an instant, and then answered, that of all things in the world, he would like ear-rings, like those the sailors wear.

I bought him a pair the next time I went to town. Then, armed with a cork and a needleful of white silk, I called Pola, and asked if he wanted the ear-rings badly enough to endure the necessary operation.

He smiled and walked up to me.

"Now, this is going to hurt, Pola," I said.

He stood perfectly straight when I pushed the needle through his ear and cut off a little piece of silk. I looked anxiously in his face as he turned his head for me to pierce the other one. I was so nervous that my hands trembled.

"Are you _sure_ it does not hurt, Pola, my pigeon?" I asked, and I have never forgotten his answer.

"My father is a soldier," he said.

Pola's dress was a simple garment, a square of white muslin hemmed by his adopted mother. Like all Samoans, he was naturally very clean, going with the rest of the "Vailima men" to swim in the waterfall twice a day.

He would wash his hair in the juice of wild oranges, clean his teeth with the inside husk of the cocoanut, and, putting on a fresh _lava-lava_, would wash out the discarded one in the river, laying it out in the suns.h.i.+ne to dry. He was always decorated with flowers in some way--a necklace of jessamine buds, pointed red peppers, or the scarlet fruit of the pandanas. Little white boys looked naked without their clothes, but Pola in a strip of muslin, with his wreath of flowers, or sea-sh.e.l.ls, some ferns twisted about one ankle, perhaps, or a boar's tusk fastened to his left arm with strands of horse-hair, looked completely, even handsomely, dressed.

He was not too proud to lend a helping hand at any work going--setting the table, polis.h.i.+ng the floor of the hall or the bra.s.s handles of the old cabinet, leading the horses to water, carrying pails for the milkmen, helping the cook in the kitchen, the butler in the pantry, or the cowboy in the fields; holding skeins of wool for Mr. Stevenson's mother, or trotting beside the lady of the house, "Tamaitai," as they all called her, carrying seeds or plants for her garden. When my brother went out with a number of natives laden with surveying implements, Pola only stopped long enough to beg for a cane-knife before he was leading the party. If Mr. Stevenson called for his horse and started to town it was always Pola who flew to open the gate for him, waving a "_Talofa_!"

and "Good luck to the traveling!"

The Samoans are not reserved, like the Indians, or haughty, like the Arabs. They are a cheerful, lively people, who keenly enjoy a joke, laughing at the slightest provocation. Pola bubbled over with fun, and his voice could be heard chattering and singing gaily at any hour of the day. He made up little verses about me, which he sang to the graceful gestures of the Siva or native dance, showing unaffected delight when commended. He cried out with joy and admiration when he first heard a hand-organ, and was excitedly happy when allowed to turn the handle. I gave him a box of tin soldiers, which he played with for hours in my room. He would arrange them on the floor, talking earnestly to himself in Samoan.

"These are brave brown men," he would mutter. "They are fighting for Mata'afa. Boom! Boom! These are white men. They are fighting the Samoans. Pouf!" And with a wave of his arm he knocked down a whole battalion, with the scornful remark, "All white men are cowards."

After Mr. Stevenson's death so many of his Samoan friends begged for his photograph that we sent to Sydney for a supply, which was soon exhausted. One afternoon Pola came in and remarked, in a very hurt and aggrieved manner, that he had been neglected in the way of photographs.

"But your father, the chief, has a large fine one."

"True," said Pola. "But that is not mine. I have the box presented to me by your high-chief goodness. It has a little cover, and there I wish to put the sun-shadow of Tusitala, the beloved chief whom we all revere, but I more than the others because he was the head of my clan."

"To be sure," I said, and looked about for a photograph. I found a picture cut from a weekly paper, one I remember that Mr. Stevenson himself had particularly disliked. He would have been pleased had he seen the scornful way Pola threw the picture on the floor.

"I will not have that!" he cried. "It is pig-faced. It is not the shadow of our chief." He leaned against the door and wept.

"I have nothing else, Pola," I protested. "Truly, if I had another picture of Tusitala I would give it to you."

He brightened up at once. "There is the one in the smoking-room," he said, "where he walks back and forth. That pleases me, for it looks like him." He referred to an oil painting of Mr. Stevenson by Sargent. I explained that I could not give him that. "Then I will take the round one," he said, "of tin." This last was the bronze _bas-relief_ by St.

Gaudens. I must have laughed involuntarily, for he went out deeply hurt.

Hearing a strange noise in the hall an hour or so later, I opened the door, and discovered Pola lying on his face, weeping bitterly.

"What _are_ you crying about?" I asked.

"The shadow, the shadow," he sobbed. "I want the sun-shadow of Tusitala."

I knocked at my mother's door across the hall, and at the sight of that tear-stained face her heart melted, and he was given the last photograph we had, which he wrapped in a banana-leaf, tying it carefully with a ribbon of gra.s.s.

We left Samoa after Mr. Stevenson's death, staying away for more than a year. Pola wrote me letters by every mail in a large round hand, but they were too conventional to bear any impress of his mind. He referred to our regretted separation, exhorting me to stand fast in the high-chief will of the Lord, and, with his love to each member of the family, mentioned by name and t.i.tle, he prayed that I might live long, sleep well, and not forget Pola, my unworthy servant.

When we returned to Samoa we were up at dawn, on s.h.i.+pboard, watching the horizon for the first faint cloud that floats above the island of Upulu.

Already the familiar perfume came floating over the waters--that sweet blending of many odors, of cocoanut-oil and baking breadfruit, of jessamine and gardenia. It smelt of home to us, leaning over the rail and watching. First a cloud, then a shadow growing more and more distinct until we saw the outline of the island. Then, as we drew nearer, the deep purple of the distant hills, the green of the rich forests, and the silvery ribbons where the waterfalls reflect the suns.h.i.+ne.

Among the fleet of boats skimming out to meet us was one far ahead of the others, a lone canoe propelled by a woman, with a single figure standing in the prow. As the steamer drew near I made out the figure of Pola, dressed in wreaths and flowers in honor of my return. As the anchor went down in the bay of Apia and the custom-house officer started to board, I called out, begging him to let the child come on first. He drew aside. The canoe shot up to the gangway, and Pola, all in his finery of fresh flowers, ran up the gangway and stepped forth on the deck. The pa.s.sengers drew back before the strange little figure, but he was too intent upon finding me to notice them.

"Teuila!" he cried, joyfully, with the tears rolling down his cheeks. I went forward to meet him, and, kneeling on the deck, caught him in my arms.