BY

ISOBEL STRONG

medallion

Reprinted from Scribner's Magazine by permission

IF YOU want a child as badly as all that," my brother said, "why not adopt a chief's son, some one who is handsome and well-born, and will be a credit to you, instead of crying your eyes out over a little common brat who is an ungrateful cub, and ugly into the bargain?"

I wasn't particularly fond of the "common brat," but I had grown used to tending him, bandaging his miserable little foot and trying to make his lot easier to bear; and he had been spirited away. One may live long in Samoa without understanding the whys and wherefores. His mother may have been jealous of my care of the child and carried him away in the night; or the clan to which he belonged may have sent for him, though his reputed father was our assistant cook. At any rate, he had gone—departed as completely and entirely as though he had vanished into thin air, and I, sitting on the steps of the veranda, gave way to tears.

Two days later, as I hastened across the courtyard, I turned the corner suddenly, nearly falling over a small Samoan boy, who stood erect in a gallant pose before the house, leaning upon a long stick of sugar-cane, as though it were a spear.

"Who are you?" I asked, in the native language.

"I am your son," was the surprising reply.

"And what is your name?"

"Pola," he said. "Pola, of Tanugamanono, and my mother is the white chief lady, Teuila of Vailima."

He was a beautiful creature, of an even tint of light bronze-brown; his slender body reflected the polish of scented cocoanut oil, the tiny garment he called his lava-lava fastened at the waist was coquettishly kilted above one knee. He wore a necklace of scarlet berries across his shoulders, and a bright red hibiscus flower stuck behind his ear. On his round, smooth cheek a single rose-leaf hid the dimple. His large black eyes looked up at me with an expression of terror, overcome by pure physical courage. From the top of his curly head to the soles of his high-arched slender foot he looked tama'alii—high-bred. To all my inquiries he answered in purest high-chief Samoan that he was my son.

My brother came to the rescue with explanations. Taking pity on me, he had gone to our village (as we called Tanugamanono) and adopted the chief's second son in my name, and here he was come to present himself in person.

I shook hands with him, a ceremony he performed very gracefully with great dignity. Then he offered me the six feet of sugar-cane, with the remark that it was a small, trifling gift, unworthy of my high-chief notice. I accepted it with a show of great joy and appreciation, though by a turn of the head one could see acres of sugar-cane growing on the other side of the river.

There was an element of embarrassment in the possession of this charming creature. I could not speak the Samoan language very well at that time, and saw, by his vague but polite smile, that much of my conversation was incomprehensible to him. His language to me was so extremely "high-chief" that I couldn't understand more than three words in a sentence. What made the situation still more poignant was that look of repressed fear glinting in the depths of his black velvety eyes.

I took him by the hand (that trembled slightly in mine, though he walked boldly along with me) and led him about the house, thinking the sight of all the wonders of Vailima might divert his mind. When I threw open the door of the hall, with its pictures and statues, waxed floor and glitter of silver on the sideboard, Pola made the regulation quotation from Scripture, "And behold the half has not been told me."

He went quite close to the tiger-skin, with the glass eyes and big teeth. "It is not living?" he asked, and when I assured him it was dead he remarked that it was a large pussy, and then added, gravely, that he supposed the forests of London were filled with these animals.

He held my hand quite tightly going up the stairs, and I realized then that he could never have mounted a staircase before. Indeed, everything in the house, even chairs and tables, books and pictures, were new and strange to this little savage gentleman.

I took him to my room, where I had a number of letters to write. He sat on the floor at my feet very obediently while I went on with my work. Looking down a few minutes later I saw that he had fallen asleep, lying on a while rug in a childish, graceful attitude, and I realized again his wild beauty and charm.

Late in the day, as it began to grow dark, I asked Pola if he did not want to go home.

"No, Teuila," he answered, bravely.

"But you will be my boy just the same," I explained. "Only you see Tumau (his real mother) will be lonely at first. So you can sleep at the village and come and see me during the day."

His eyes lit up with that and the first smile of the day overspread his face, showing the whitest teeth imaginable.

It was not long before he was perfectly at home in Vailima. He would arrive in the morning early, attended by a serving-man of his family, who walked meekly in the young chief's footsteps, carrying the usual gift for me. Sometimes it was sugar-cane, or a wreath woven by the village girls, or a single fish wrapped in a piece of banana-leaf, or a few fresh water prawns, or even a bunch of wayside flowers; my little son seldom came empty-handed.

It was Pola who really taught me the Samoan language. Ordinarily the natives cannot simplify their remarks for foreigners, but Pola invented a sort of Samoan baby-talk for me; sometimes, if I could not understand, he would shake me with his fierce little brown hands, crying, "Stupid, stupid!" But generally he was extremely patient with me, trying a sentence in half a dozen different ways, with his bright eyes fixed eagerly on my face, and when the sense of what he said dawned upon me and I repeated it to prove that I understood, his own countenance would light up with an expression of absolute pride and triumph. "Good!" he would say, approvingly. "Great is your high-chief wisdom!"

Once we spent a happy afternoon together in the forest picking up queer land-shells, bright berries and curious flowers, while Pola dug up a number of plants by the roots. I asked him the next day what he had done with the beautiful red flowers. His reply was beyond me, so I shook my head. He looked at me anxiously for a moment with that worried expression that so often crossed his face in conversation with me, and, patting the floor, scraped up an imaginary hole, "They sit down in the dusty," he said in baby Samoan. "Where?" I asked. "In front of Tumau." And then I understood that he had planted them in the ground before his mother's house.

Another time he came up all laughter and excitement to tell of an adventure.

"Your brother," he said, "the high-chief Loia, he of the four eyes (eye-glasses), came riding by the village as I was walking up to Vailima. He offered me a ride on his chief-horse and gave me his chief-hand. I put my foot on the stirrup, and just as I jumped the horse shied, and, as I had hold of the high-chief Loia, we both fell off into the road palasi."

"Yes," I said, "you both fell off. That was very funny."

"Palasi!" he reiterated.

But here I looked doubtful. Pola repeated his word several times as though the very sound ought to convey some idea to my bemuddled brain, and then a bright idea struck him. I heard his bare feet pattering swiftly down the stairs. He came flying back, still laughing, and laid a heavy dictionary in my lap. I hastily turned the leaves, Pola questing in each one like an excited little dog, till I found the definition of his word, "to fall squash like a ripe fruit on the ground."

"Palasi!" he cried, triumphantly, when he saw I understood, making a gesture downward with both hands, the while laughing heartily. "We both fell off palasi!"

It was through Pola that I learned all the news of Tanugamanono. He would curl up on the floor at my feet as I sat in my room sewing, and pour forth an endless stream of village gossip. How Mata, the native parson, had whipped his daughter for going to a picnic on Sunday and drinking a glass of beer.

"Her father went whack! whack!" Pola illustrated the scene with gusto, "and Maua cried, ah! ah! But the village says Mata is right, for we must not let the white man's evil come near us."

"Evil?" I said; "what evil?"

"Drink," said Pola, solemnly.

Then he told how "the ladies of Tanugamanono" bought a pig of Mr. B., a trader, each contributing a dollar until forty dollars were collected. There was to be a grand feast among the ladies on account of the choosing of a maid or taupo, the young girl who represents the village on all state occasions. When the pig came it turned out to be an old boar, so tough and rank it could not be eaten. The ladies were much ashamed before their guests, and asked the white man for another pig, but he only laughed at them. He had their money, so he did not care, "That was very, very bad of him," I exclaimed, indignantly.

"It is the way of white people," said Pola, philosophically.

It was through my little chief that we learned of a bit of fine hospitality. It seems that pigs were scarce in the village, so each house-chief pledged himself to refrain from killing one of them for six months. Any one breaking this rule agreed to give over his house to be looted by the village.

Pola came up rather late one morning, and told me, hilariously, of the fun they had had looting Tupuola's house.

"But Tupuola is a friend of ours," I said. "I don't like to hear of all his belongings being scattered."

"It is all right," Pola explained. "Tupuola said to the village, 'Come and loot. I have broken the law and I will pay the forfeit.'"

"How did he break the law?" I asked.

"When the high-chief Loia, your brother of the four eyes, stopped the night at Tanugamanono, on his way to the shark fishing, he stayed with Tupuola, so of course it was chiefly to kill a pig in his honor."

"But it was against the law. My brother would not have liked it, and Tupuola must have felt badly to know his house was to be looted."

"He would have felt worse," said Pola, "to have acted unchiefly to a friend."

We never would have known of the famine in Tanugamanono if it had not been for Pola. The hurricane had blown off all the young nuts from the cocoanut palms and the fruit from the breadfruit trees, while the taro was not yet ripe. We passed the village daily. The chief was my brother's dear friend; the girls often came up to decorate the place for a dinner party, but we had no hint of any distress in the village.

One morning I gave Pola two large ship's biscuits from the pantry.

"Be not angry," said Pola, "but I prefer to carry these home."

"Eat them," I said, "and I will give you more."

Before leaving that night he came to remind me of this. I was swinging in a hammock reading a novel when Pola came to kiss my hand and bid me good night.

"Love," I said, "Talofa."

"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 ship'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 passed 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 sunshine 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-shells, 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, polishing the floor of the hall or the brass 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 grass.

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 title, 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 shipboard, 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 sunshine.

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 passengers 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.

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