The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson Part 14

When they left San Francisco they had added another member to their party--a small donkey named d.i.c.ky, given to Mrs. Stevenson by one of the Golden Gate Park commissioners, which she intended to use in driving about the plantation to a little Studebaker cart she had had made especially for the purpose. A little stable was put up on deck for d.i.c.ky and a bale of hay provided for him, but it was not long before the little fellow had become such a pet with the carpenter and his mates that he was taken into the forecastle to live with them and share their mess, eating his meals out of a tin plate. The men taught him many amusing tricks, and it got to be quite the thing for the cabin pa.s.sengers to make trips down to the forecastle to see him do them and to feed him chocolate creams. At Waikiki Beach, where they lived in a cottage attached to the Sans Souci Hotel during their stay of several months in Hawaii, Mrs. Stevenson often drove about the park in the little cart which was just fitted to d.i.c.ky. She was surprised at first to find that he would only make short trips and then come to a dead stop, from which it was impossible to budge him. Nothing would make him go on until his mistress got out and in again, and then he would pick up his little feet and trot on for another five minutes, when the same performance would have to be repeated. At last they realized that he had been trained to make five-cent trips at Golden Gate Park, and that nothing would ever break him of it. When they left Honolulu for Samoa they had difficulty in getting him on board the steamer, for although there was a belt and tackle to hoist him up, they could not drag him to it. One man--then two--then finally six men were hauling at him, while the s.h.i.+p waited, with all pa.s.sengers on board and surveying the scene with intense amus.e.m.e.nt. The captain suddenly shouted through a megaphone: "Pull him the other way!" They did so and he immediately backed right up to the tackle and was hauled on deck amid the plaudits of the mult.i.tude. At Samoa he was a great pet; the native girls loved him and took him with them when they went to cut alfalfa for the cows. They made a pretty picture coming through the forest--the girls in leaves and flowers and d.i.c.ky a walking mountain of green, with only his long ears sticking out and his bright eyes gleaming through the foliage.

Honolulu brought back to Mrs. Stevenson many poignant memories of other days, of which she wrote to her mother-in-law in these words:

"As you suppose, this has been a sad season with me. People say that one gets used to things with time, but I do not believe it. Every day seems harder for me to bear. I say to myself many comforting things, but even though I believe them they do not comfort me. Everything here reminds me of Louis, and I do not think there is one moment that I am not thinking of him. People say: 'What a comfort his great name must be to you!' It is a pride to me, but not a comfort; I would rather have my Louis here with me, poor and unknown. And I do not like to have my friends offer me their sympathy--only you and one or two who loved him for what he was and not for what he did.... As to his Christianity his life and work show what he was. I _know_ that whether or not he always succeeded in living up to his intentions, he was a true follower of Christ, a real Christian, and not many have come as close as he; and I believe that not many have tried as honestly and earnestly. In this place everything reminds me of him, and I feel that I must see him. I cannot believe that all these months have pa.s.sed since he left us. Perhaps the whole time will not seem so long until we meet again. It gives me a sharp shock when I hear him spoken of as dead. He is not dead to me--I cannot think it nor feel it. He is only waiting, I seem to feel, somewhere near at hand."

After a winter spent in Hawaii, during which the marriage of her son took place, Mrs. Stevenson and her daughter sailed, in May, 1896, for Samoa. In these various trips between San Francisco and the islands she usually sailed on the _Mariposa_, and because she had so much baggage Captain Morse and the other officers took to calling the s.h.i.+p "Mrs. Stevenson's lighter."

Their home-coming, being unexpected, was rather forlorn. They reached Vailima in the evening and went to bed rather drearily in the empty house, Mrs. Strong having determined to get breakfast as best she could the next morning and then send out word to their former Samoan helpers. After their long journey she slept late, and, springing from her bed somewhat guiltily, ran to the window. What was her astonishment to see smoke coming out of the cookhouse chimney, Talolo at the door, and Iopu, the yard man, coming up with a pail of water--all the business of the place, in fact, going on like clockwork, just as though they had never been absent for a day!

Running into her mother's room, she found her sitting up in bed just finis.h.i.+ng her breakfast, which had been brought up on a tray by Sosimo. The news had gone forth the night before that they had returned, and every man of the Vailima force was at his post at break of day.

Once more the lonely widow took up the routine of her life, and, though its main incentive had gone, in time there came to her a sort of melancholy satisfaction in living among the scenes made dear by memories of the loved one. The scale on which the household had been conducted was now cut down very much, and she and her daughter, retaining but a few of the former great retinue of servants, led a calm and peaceful life among their tropic flowers. "Vailima is so lovely now," writes Mrs. Strong to the elder Mrs. Stevenson. "The trees are all so big, and the hibiscus hedge is over ten feet high and blazing with flowers. The lawn is like velvet and everywhere the gra.s.s is knee-high. If it is true that Louis can see us from another world he would be pleased with this day. This is the day when we decorate the grave, and all the afternoon people kept coming with flowers and strange Samoan ornaments. You should have seen Leuelu's sisters in silk bodices trimmed with gold braid, and green velvet _lavalavas_ bordered with plush furniture fringe! And they looked very fine, too.

Once arrived on the mountain top we stood looking at the magnificent view of the sea, and the coral reef, and the distant mountains. We banked the grave with flowers and the wreath of heather that you sent. Chief Justice Ide and his two beautiful daughters were there."

Mother and daughter spent pleasant days in the garden--digging up kava roots, stringing them on twine and hanging them up in the hall to dry, and in many another homely task. In the evening they played chess, and, as neither knew the game, they were well matched, and spent engrossing evenings over it. Sometimes they would light a lantern and walk over to see Mr. Caruthers, the lawyer, who lived more than a mile away. When he saw the flicker of their lantern through the palm-trees he would wind up his little musical box and they could hear its tinkle of welcome. "We walked barefoot,"[59] says Mrs. Strong, "and I shall never forget those lovely walks at night and the feel of the soft, mossy gra.s.s under our feet. Mr. Caruthers was a clever, interesting man. His Samoan wife would sit by sewing, and his children would study their lessons in the other room while we sat on his veranda and had long talks. On the night of his farewell visit to us we stood on the veranda at Vailima and looked out on a glittering moonlight night, the lawn sloping before us, the great shadowy trees beyond, and in the distance the blue line of the sea--'nothing between us and the North Pole,' we used to say. Mr. Caruthers said, 'How can you leave this for any other country? This is the "cleaner, greener land,"' and he quoted Kipling's verses."

[Footnote 59: It is the custom in Samoa to go barefoot in the wet season, in order to avoid the unpleasantness of soggy wet shoes.]

The two women lived in perfect security in their lonely forest home, never having the slightest fear of the natives who pa.s.sed that way in their comings and goings. Once in the middle of the night Mrs. Strong was waked up by the sound of voices on the veranda, and, running down, found her mother surrounded by twenty Samoans, all with baskets. Mrs.

Stevenson, hearing the sound of talking, had come down, to find these men coming heavily laden from the direction of the Vailima taro, yam, cocoanut, and banana plantation. "I politely asked them," says Mrs.

Strong, "to show my mother the contents of their baskets. They agreed readily enough, and one after another they opened their baskets at her feet, disclosing nothing but edible wild roots, until we began to feel abashed and asked them to desist. Nothing would do, however, but that each of the twenty should empty out his basket, with much laughing and joking, and thereby prove his innocence of having plundered the plantation. As a peace offering, my mother directed me to give them some twists of tobacco and tins of salmon and biscuit. Then they explained that, owing to the breadfruit having been blown off the trees while still green, by a hurricane, there had been a famine in their village. Their Samoan pride made them ashamed for the other villages to know that they were reduced to eating wild roots, and so they had sneaked up in the night to the bush back of our plantation and filled their baskets with the roots. We apologized again and went back to bed. The twenty Samoans sat on our veranda for hours singing, but, although our servants were gone for the night and we two white women were entirely alone in the house, we felt no fear. Where else in the world could this have happened?"

Secluded as Vailima was, the family could not even here escape the curiosity of tourists, for on "steamer days" there was always a procession of them going up the hill from Apia to see the home of Stevenson. One day its mistress was directing some workmen on the roof of the carriage house when a party of tourists came up and asked if that was Vailima and where was Mrs. Stevenson. She replied, "No spik English," and they went on to the house, sat on the veranda and had tea, never dreaming that the odd little person in the blue gown, directing the roofing of the carriage house, was Mrs. Stevenson herself.

The variety of her experiences and the wide scope of her abilities may be shown better than in any other way, perhaps, by quotations from a small notebook which she had carried with her from one end of the world to the other. These entries show that she did not simply "do the best she could," but that she made a conscientious study of how to take care of her invalid husband, what to do in emergencies, how to feed him when they were on s.h.i.+ps or desert islands, etc. In every place that they went to she kept her eyes open and learned new receipts for cooking, sickness, and all the other requirements of life. The entries were jotted down so hastily and often under such peculiar circ.u.mstances that in many cases they are written upside down, so that you have to keep turning the book about to follow it. I quote here a few of the most characteristic entries:

The telephone number of a chronometer maker (Butler, Clay 416).

Mr. Antone knows all about Samoan vegetation.

Our marriage day was the 19th of May. [Neither she nor Mr. Stevenson could ever remember the date of any event, not even that of their marriage, so she evidently made sure of it by putting it in the notebook.]

Name of my adopted father [in the South Seas] is Paaena. Name of Pa's village is Atuona.

Addresses of friends in San Francisco, London, Scotland, Nebraska, Philadelphia, France, Italy, New York, Hawaii.

Receipt for Spanish fish.

Lotion for the hands.

Then follow a number of prescriptions stamped and evidently written out by the chemist. They are for a "tickling cough," "night sweats,"

"for light blood spitting," "for violent hemorrhages," "how to inject ergotine tonic for weakness after spitting blood," and "hypodermic injections for violent hemorrhages." Among other doctors'

prescriptions pasted in the book there is one for cankered ear in dogs. It was this prescription that she used on a young English officer of the _Curacoa_ who was visiting Vailima, and who was suffering terribly from some ear trouble. Mrs. Stevenson said to him, "I can cure you if you will let me treat you with my dog medicine." He agreed, and, as a result, was well enough to attend a theatre that night, and before long was entirely recovered.

One interesting prescription, written and signed in a hand that looks very French, has the heading in Mrs. Stevenson's hand, "Elixir of Life."

How to make roof paint.

How to make house paint.

Dr. Funk's cure for elephantiasis. [She cured several of her Samoan servants of this dread disease with this simple remedy.]

Dr. Russel's cure for anemia.

Receipts for ginger beer, lemon pudding, icing, and candy, oranges in syrup, macaroni and corn, savory, pineapple cake, taro and fish rolled into b.a.l.l.s and fried, Abdul Ra.s.sak's mutton curry, home mincemeat, rice yeast and bannocks for cooking aboard s.h.i.+p, Butaritari potato cake and pudding, Ah Fu's pig's head, Ah Fu's yeast, pork cake, fritters, mulled wine, and green corn cakes.

A memorandum of a lock to be turned by figures.

Medicine for _tona_--boils with which Samoan children are often afflicted.

More cooking receipts--Magzar fowl, Tautira duff, raw-fish salad from a Tahiti receipt, strawberry shortcake, spontaneous yeast, banana _popoi_, Pennsylvania sc.r.a.pple, miti sauce to eat with pig roasted underground, baked breadfruit, breadfruit pudding, onion soup, bisque of lobster, bouillabaise, banana beer, Russian _risotto_, Scotch woodc.o.c.k, Russian pancake, Spanish tortillas, and blackberry cordial.

Bamboo fence.

To graft mangoes.

Fill wet boots with oats.

How to mend a hole in a boat (Captain Otis).

Abdul Ra.s.sak's receipt for taking the poison out of cuc.u.mbers.

Creosote in a cupboard to keep out flies and preserve meat.

Furniture polish.

To make a Hawaiian oven.

To make Tahitian flowers and ornaments.

To clean Benares ware.

To destroy red ants.

To preserve meats.

How to keep b.u.t.ter cool in hot weather.

To knit a baby's hood.

Crochet cover for a pincus.h.i.+on [with a little picture showing it when finished].

Surely, it would not be easy to duplicate this cosmopolitan list in any other woman's notebook.

Among the villages of the island there was one, Vaiee, with which the Stevensons had a special friends.h.i.+p, dating back to the first year of their arrival in Samoa. At that time the villagers were building a church and had saved up sixty dollars with which to buy corrugated iron for the roof. One day a deputation of elders, headed by the chief, called on Mr. Stevenson to ask if he would act as their agent in buying the iron. Of course, he was interested at once and laid out the money to such good advantage that they got more corrugated iron than sixty dollars had ever bought before. After that they came again with small sums, which were kept for them in the Vailima safe, and whenever they wanted to buy anything for the village he helped them to get good value for their money. Their grat.i.tude sometimes took embarra.s.sing forms, as on one occasion when they brought a present of a large white bull with a wreath around its neck. At other times, they brought offerings of turtles, rolls of tapa, fish, and pigs; and on the night of Mr. Stevenson's death several of the chiefs crossed the island on foot and were in time to help the men who were cutting the road to Mount Vaea.

Remembering all this, when the village of Vaiee invited Mrs. Stevenson and her daughter to make them a visit they naturally wanted to go.

This sort of visiting trip--usually lasting three days, one to arrive, one to visit, and one to go--is called a _malaga_ (accented on second syllable--malan'ga), and is a very popular inst.i.tution among the natives. The visiting party generally travels in state, taking with it a boat, food, and servants. The story of the _malaga_ to the village of Vaiee follows in Mrs. Strong's own words: