Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 9

"I have it straight from Papalangi Mativa himself."

"Have what?" I asked.

"Excellency," said Papalangi Mativa, "perhaps it is not high-chief-known to thee that I and mine come from a n.o.ble Savai'i stock, and that the son of my mother's sister, a stripling named O, numbered himself among the enemy and was to-day killed and his head taken on the field of Vaitele."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'This is a black business, Silver Tongue,' I said."]

"_Aue!_" I said, which in Kanaka is being sympathetic.

"Dat is not all," said Silver Tongue. "Listen, gabtain!"

"I'm listening," I said.

"The warrior that killed O was To'oto'o, the _matai_," continued Papalangi Mativa with the air of one announcing the end of the world.

"To'oto'o!" I said in all innocence.

"To'oto'o," cried Silver Tongue; "why, Rosalie's uncle, the _faipule_, in whose house this very minute the head of my murdered relation lies!"

"'Pon my soul," I exclaimed, "this is really unfortunate!"

"Unfordunate!" cried Silver Tongue; "is it with such a word you describe two hearts broken, two lives plasted, the fairest prospect with suddenly crash the curdain led down!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "It's disagreeable, I admit, but I can't see what difference it can make to you and Rosalie."

"An Oppenstedt," said Silver Tongue, "could never indermarry with the family of a murderer, and least of all with a family that had the head of my dead wife's relation cut off and carried with gapers and cries of joy down the main street of Apia and past my place of peeziness!"

"Do you mean to say it's all off with you and Rosalie?" I demanded.

Silver Tongue nodded grimly. "All off," he said.

"And you're going to break my girl's heart," I cried with what I think, under the circ.u.mstances, was a very justifiable indignation, "because the son of the aunt of your father-in-law has had his head cut off by poor Rosalie's adopted uncle?"

"That's right," said Silver Tongue.

"Old friend," I said, "let me go before I say something I might regret."

I got up without waiting for any answer and strode into the street, too consumed with anger to utter another word. I walked along the beach, stopping here and there to discuss the news of the battle with those of my friends I happened to meet, until at last I pa.s.sed Savalalo and drew near To'oto'o's house at Songi. Rosalie was standing at the gate, and when she saw me she ran up, threw her arms round my neck and kissed me.

I had never known her so excited or so gay, and even in the dark I could see that her beautiful eyes were s.h.i.+ning.

"Captain," she said, giving me a hug, "n.o.body will ever say a word against To'oto'o again, or try to belittle him as they used to, just because he's poor and lives on Seu's land, for to-day he fought like a lion and covered himself with glory!"

"Took a head, or something?" I said.

"A hero!" she exclaimed. "They are composing a song in his honor; all Songi is ringing with his name; and he was complimented for his valor by the President and Chief Justice! You must come in and see it at once."

"See what?" I asked.

"The head!" she cried.

I haven't the heart to write how the news was broken to Rosalie, who steadfastly refused to believe the truth until she had heard it from Silver Tongue himself. I had hoped he might relent, with a night to think it over and a letter from myself in the morning pointing out his injustice and folly. Perhaps, now I remember it, that letter was a mistake. It was a trifle warm in spots, and I dare say I let a natural irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to ally himself with the family of a murderer. Indeed, so ridiculous did he get on the subject that he sent to Sydney for a tombstone (I daren't write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in a gin case.

When a girl has gone a certain length she seems less able than a man to withstand a disappointment in love. Silver Tongue simply clenched his teeth, withdrew from the Concordia Club and the Wednesday night bowls at Conrad's, and went on baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so well in the old slaving days among the Line women in their chains.

You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined never to go near him again.

One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of mine, Sasa French, a charming and most accomplished young native lady, our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's pretty head--one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas--that seemed to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Munic.i.p.ality at such an hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal, demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfolk and children melted away and left us alone with To'oto'o, whose ferretty eyes betrayed no small degree of curiosity and alarm. This man was one of the few Samoans I never liked. He was a gaunt, dangerous, crafty-looking customer of about fifty, and I never had had any use for him since he had stolen my tethering rope one evening when I was calling on the king. Well, to get on with my story, we talked about the weather, and the war, and what an a.s.s the Ta'ita'ifono was, and finally got round to the matter in hand.

Seumanutafa began mild, for he was a past master in the art of graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that he had to make _ifonga_ for the death of O and be carried on the morrow by the _taulelea_ to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This _ifonga_, as they call it, is a sort of public humiliation to expiate a fault, and n.o.body's very keen about doing it unless they have to--for it involves rubbing dirt in your hair, and singing small, and suffering a sort of social eclipse for a week or two afterwards. To'oto'o's face grew several shades darker at the suggestion, and though I promised him twenty dollars out of hand for himself and two kegs of beef and three tins of biscuit by way of peace offering to Papalangi Mativa, he hemmed and hawed and finally said no.

Then Sasa bore a hand and spoke beautifully of Rosalie, and how this unfortunate business of O's head had divided her from Silver Tongue.

"If thou makest peace with his _ainga_," said Sasa, "lo, what is there left for the white man to say? His bond is that of marriage; theirs, that of blood; and if the last be satisfied, what room is there for the former to complain?"

"But to be carried like a pig through the public street!" cried To'oto'o. "Preferable far would be death itself than that the son of chiefs should be thus degraded, and his name become a mock throughout the Tuamasanga!"

"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "we know thee for a brave man, and that thou tookst this head in open battle, even as David did that of Goliath, and I swear thee thy honor shall remain undimmed for all the seeming appearance of humiliation. Besides, is it not written in the Holy Book that thou shouldst turn the other cheek to the smiter? Is it not said also that blessed is the peacemaker, and that the meek shall inherit the earth?"

"Weighty is my grief and pain," said To'oto'o, "but what your Highness asks of me is impossible!"

"O To'oto'o," said Seumanutafa, "this house is mine; this land is mine; the plantation _i uta_ is mine also. Thou livest under the shadow of my power, and it is meet thou shouldst pay in service for the bounty thou hast so long enjoyed. First I spoke to thee as one brave man to another; then as a Christian to a fellow-Christian; now I command thee as thy chief, and verily thou shalt obey!"

"And I will add to that twenty, making it twenty-five," I said.

"And Rosalie shall marry her Silver Tongue after all," said Sasa.

To'oto'o argued a little more for form's sake, and bl.u.s.tered somewhat about the Chief Justice, and how he would fight the matter out in the courts; but Seumanutafa's tone grew peremptory, and the old fellow finally gave way all round. Then _'ava_ was brought in, the arrangements made for the morrow, and we at length said _tofa_ on the threshold, well pleased with our night's work.

I wish you could have seen us next day going through the town in a little procession, headed by To'oto'o lashed to a pole and borne by a crowd of retainers. There was a flavor of the burial of Sir John Moore about the whole business--especially the hush--and not a funeral note being heard; we marching with measured tread, the munic.i.p.al police bringing up the rear, and Seumanutafa in the center, nearly seven feet high, and bearing a white umbrella above his stately head.

Silver Tongue was standing in the front of his shop having an altercation with the Chief Justice about a ham (for he did a little in groceries as well as baked) as we hove in sight and began to file down the lane to Papalangi Mativa's quarters behind the Southern Cross Bakery. I suppose Silver Tongue thought our man was hurt, or something, for he came running after us with a bottle of square-face and a packet of first aid to the wounded, elbowing his way excitedly through the crowd to where we had deposited To'oto'o at the feet of Papalangi Mativa. He was the most astonished baker in the South Seas as he saw who lay there in the jumble of beef and biscuit, and for a moment was too stupefied to let out a word.

I don't mean to go into the speech-making part of the performance, for what between Seumanutafa and Papalangi Mativa, and the talking-man Sasa had lent me for the occasion, and a divinity student who happened along, and somebody who said he was Fale Upolu and spoke for the entire Group, and an aged _faipule_ from the Union Islands who seemed to have some kind of a grievance about his father's head, and the Chief Justice who had to b.u.t.t in with the capitation tax--we were kept there a matter of three hours or more, until at last the princ.i.p.als officially made it up, To'oto'o was forgiven, and everything ended happily.

"Now, Silver Tongue," I said as the meeting dispersed, "we'll consider that head affair canceled, and if you'll come over to my house to-night I dare say you'll find Rosalie sitting on the front veranda!"

"And do you for a moment think," he said with a strange, writhen smile, "dat all dis talk and domfoolery will a gruel murder undo, and the young man cut off in his brime restore? Weel those lips, so gold in death, stir, think you, in the box where we laid him? Will my dead wife's family be less bereaved because of two kegs of peef and three tins of biscuit, or Rosalie's family less disgraced because her uncle was triced through the streets like a big? No, Gaptain Brans...o...b.., I'm only a poor paker, but I'd count myself a traidor to my family were I to dake a murderess for my pride!"

"Rosalie isn't a murderess," I said.

"I meant niece of a murderer," he returned.

I was too speechless with indignation to utter another word. In the course of sixty years on this planet I've seen many kinds of men, and I've learned to detect in some a certain look about the eyes--a curious light and a far-away dreaminess of expression--that seems always the sign or mark of an unflinching obstinacy. I remember that self-same look on Brand's face as we lay all flattened on the water tanks of the _Moroa_, and he blew the main deck off the s.h.i.+p together with three hundred human beings; and I guess the Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed a.s.s and lunatic this side of Muggin.

I gave him a wide berth after this, and took the other side of the street when I saw him coming; while he, for his part, would have cheerfully run a mile for the chance of avoiding me. I had cares of my own, too, about this time, what with the loss of the _Daisy Walker_, and my libel suit with Grevsmuhl, and other things to think about than that of bringing twin souls together. So the days drifted on and months came and went, and it seemed all over for good between Rosalie and Silver Tongue. Then that labor captain turned up again, him I had had trouble with before, a black-eyed, fierce, handsome little fellow, who was hotter than ever after my girl. Rosalie was just in the humor to do something awful, for she was desperately unhappy, with spells of wild gayety between, and a recklessness about herself that frightened me more than I can tell. She laughed in my face when I warned her about the labor captain, and told me straight out she was only a half-caste and it didn't matter what became of her. And from the way she carried on and got herself talked about from one end of the beach to the other, it began to look as though she meant what she said. Altogether I felt pretty blue about her, and savage enough against Silver Tongue to have--Well, what on earth could I do? What could anybody do? Why had G.o.d ever made such a silly a.s.s of a baker?