The white man lifted his shotgun and there was a terrified gasp from the crowd, but he handed it to the girl and said, “I showed you how to use this. If anyone—a warden, the pastor, anyone comes at me, kill him.”
Then slowly, like a wave about to crash upon the reef, he went to the warden who had beaten Maeva and with a sudden grab pulled the hulking man out of line. In silence, and in fearful efficiency, he beat the man until it seemed as if his small right hand could drive no more. The warden was fat, cowardly. Twice Mr. Morgan hauled him to his feet and waited until the bully got set. Then with merciless blows he knocked him down again. Blood was spattered across the white uniform.
So awesome was this cruel scene that no one in the procession moved, but we could see the beating from where we stood, and when it became apparent that Mr. Morgan was willing to fight the entire force of wardens, one after the other, a murmuring restlessness agitated the crowd and it appeared there might be a general uprising, but this was forestalled by the appearance of Pastor Cobbett.
“No one must move!” he cried in his great prophetic voice, but when he saw the ruined face of his leading warden he turned pale. Mr. Morgan, tired and breathless, stood back on his heels, blood across his dirty, sagging pants.
He spoke first. “The wardens told you I’d run away. Well, I like it here. I’ll probably stay the rest of my life.” He grabbed the shotgun from Maeva and walked slowly back to his house alone, and as we watched him go, barefooted and bent forward, we knew that even though he would not lead our rebellion, he was from that day on an atoll man.
We never called him by any name but Mr. Morgan. He received twelve letters a year, no more no less, each from the United States Government. Once when he cashed a batch of his pension checks with a passing trader he said, “It’s good money. I earned it. Got shot up in France while the rich kids in our block stayed home.” His only other reference to America came one night when the ocean hammered the reef in great violence, making thunder. “Sounds like the Third Avenue El,” he said.
We were much surprised that after the fight he did not take the girl Maeva home with him. It was obvious that he could have any girl he wanted. He was brave and he had a regular income. At night pretty wahines began to drift by his house, but he took no notice of them. When curfew rang he usually went right to bed and twice when girls braver than the rest snuffed out their lanterns and hid upon his porch, he put on his sagging pants and led them boldly to their homes, where he delivered them to their mothers.
It may seem strange to people not of the islands, but we were all offended, men and women alike, that a stranger should have come amongst us and found our girls undesirable. My mother was commissioned to talk this over with Mr. Morgan, and she asked, “Are they not beautiful?”
“They’re all right,” Mr. Morgan said, his hands in his pockets.
“Then why don’t you take one into your house? To mend you clothes? To cook?”
“Look,” said the man gruffly. “I don’t want any women around.”
Yet it was he who finally ended the foolishness of the lanterns. It happened this way. My mother is not easily put off. She knew that every man needs a woman for cleaning up, if for nothing more. So she went to see Maeva, whose nose had now healed. She said, “Maeva, you must not let Morgan Tane live alone. It is no good.” But Maeva replied that when she looked in the mirror she was ashamed. The wardens had beaten her so that she thought herself no longer pretty. But Mother knows well how love works and she said, “He will look at the hurts you received for him and he will let you stay.”
So Maeva combed her hair, made a wreath of frangipani for her head and washed her feet. Then she went to the new house with her bed mats. She arrived when Mr. Morgan was on the reef and by the time he returned at sunset a fine meal was ready.
“That looks good,” he said, and they ate together. Maeva had a face that men enjoyed to look at, so they spent a long time eating and finally Mr. Morgan stood up and ran his finger along her nose. “It’s not much of a nose,” he apologized.
“You fixed it well,” she insisted.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Now you must go home.”
Maeva allowed tears to come into her eyes and said, “Morgan Tane, it is no good for you to live alone. See, I have brought my things.” With her brown foot she pushed open the door to the small room and there on the floor beside his large bed lay her sleeping mats.
Mr. Morgan studied them for a while and then stooped down and rolled them into a heap. He tossed them over his shoulder and started out the door. “Please, Morgan Tane!” the girl cried. “Not while it is still light. The village will laugh at me.”
He dropped the mats and sat with Maeva while darkness crept over the lagoon. “Have you a wife?” she whispered. “In America?”
“Me? No.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “I am sorry you do not know that it is good for each man to have his wahine.” She moved very close to him and that night he did not make her leave.
Of course the wardens noticed this and early next morning, when Mr. Morgan was out to buy some canned beef from the Chinaman, they descended on the house, and arrested her, being very careful not to hurt her in any way, for they wished this affair to be completely legal.
At the jail Pastor Cobbett listened to the evidence and promptly sentenced her to three weeks at hard labor. The jail doors were locked and Maeva went to work.
When Mr. Morgan returned with the meat, he assumed that Maeva had gone back to her own home for a while, but when noon passed he felt a little relieved that he was not going to be bothered with a woman about the house. He preferred not to be bothered, so at dusk he carried Maeva’s bed mats back to her mother. Within a few minutes he learned what had happened.
In a blind rage he stormed up to the jail and demanded that Maeva be released. The jailer said Pastor Cobbett had the keys, so Mr. Morgan grabbed a chair and knocked the door down. Then he set Maeva free and when the girl stepped into the street she was surrounded by other girls, each with a lighted lantern. Angrily, Mr. Morgan took a big stick and broke every lantern. The wardens, seeing that he had no shotgun with him, started to close in on him all together, but he shouted for the men at Matareva, and at last the great rebellion was on.
We burned down the jail, ripped the handsome doors off the church and chased the wardens all across the island. Whenever we caught one we threw him back to the women who did many funny things to the fat men, I can tell you.
Under Mr. Morgan’s direction all the wardens were finally herded together by the lagoon. Their uniforms were disgraced in the mud. Their heads were sore from women’s fists. “You’ll leave the island forever,” Mr. Morgan said.
The men of Matareva then cried, “Where is the pastor?”
The mob rushed to his house, but he was waiting for us. He had been waiting since midnight, a small, watery-eyed man in a black suit. He appeared on the porch and slowly the rebellion stood at attention. Pastor Cobbett raised his eyes and moaned, “God will condemn the island of Matareva forever!” The men nearest the porch moved back.
Now Mr. Morgan came up and said, “Go on back to bed, Pastor.”
“God will bring all the curses of Babylon upon you!” the prophetic voice cried.
“What do you know about God?” Mr. Morgan asked impatiently, jumping onto the porch and shoving the little missionary back into the safety of the house.
Then there was a shout at the lagoon, and Mr. Morgan had to hurry down there, for some women had got hold of the worst warden and were beating him up all over again. Mr. Morgan made my father’s house the new jail and put three men to protect the wardens until a schooner could be sent to Tahiti.
The long night ended with everyone singing and shouting. Then suddenly there was a profound silence, for to the east, behind the church spire, the sun began to rise. It flooded Matareva with wonderful light, and it was a great majesty to all of us, for in my lifetime the people of my village had never before stayed
up all night. An old woman began a few nimble steps, and soon the entire population was chanting the fine dirty songs of long ago. “Wahine! Tane!” The music grew louder and we danced.
In the soberness of daylight my father and the village leaders met with Mr. Morgan to discuss what must be done next. “Done?” he asked. “I guess we’ll have to build a new jail.”
“What we mean is, about the pastor?”
“Why do anything about him?” Mr. Morgan asked.
“We’ll need a new government. We must report what has happened.”
“We don’t need a new government,” Mr. Morgan said.
“But the pastor?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him. You’ve just got to stand up to him, that’s all.”
“But Morgan Tane, now that you have led us … We would like it if you agreed …”
“Don’t take things too seriously,” he said sleepily. “It’s just like in France. We had a rotten sergeant. We argued with him. Then we beat the living hell out of him. After that things were all right.”
“You mean you’re willing to have Pastor Cobbett stay here?” my father asked in astonishment.
“Why not?” the tired man asked, and with that he went off to bed.
The effect of these events on Pastor Cobbett was unbelievable. When the wardens were banished we expected him to flee also. Instead, he became more active than ever. Shorn of his temporal power, he increased his spiritual dominion over us. We would see him night and day tirelessly tramping our atoll, exhorting people to mind the ways of God. He had no pride, no shame. He would burst upon unmarried lovers and stand there in the midst of their confusion, pleading with them to marry like decent Christians.
He was now in his sixties, a little man with a mass of white hair. He continued to wear black suits and his voice was more booming than ever. We were no longer required to attend church but most of us did, for he changed the service to make it more inviting. He introduced twice as many songs and even fitted his own religious words to robust island tunes. I think he knew that our women mumbled the original verses about love-making by the lagoon, but he seemed not to care so long as they came to church. And always there was that small figure, thinner now, probing into every corner of island life.
For example, he went boldly to Mr. Morgan’s house and said, “Morgan, you and Maeva ought to get married.”
“Have a chair,” Mr. Morgan said gruffly.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever thought about it,” Pastor Cobbett said, “but Maeva would like it.”
“I don’t think she’d care,” Mr. Morgan replied.
“Why not let her decide?” the pastor suggested.
“Hasn’t she had enough of your religion? Broken nose? Public shame?”
“Mr. Morgan,” the pastor cried as if he were in church, “where God is concerned things like that don’t matter.”
“You’d better go, Pastor. Such talk makes me sick.”
“I’ll call Maeva.” Without waiting for permission the little man went to the door and shouted for the girl to come in. She was pregnant at the time and seemed one great, placid ball of humanity.
“Pull up a chair,” Mr. Morgan said.
“Maeva,” Pastor Cobbett began, “I’ve come here to ask Morgan Tane to marry you. In the church. Would that please you?”
The black-haired native girl looked at the two men, the one who had broken her nose, the one who had mended it with his own hands, and although she knew that she was offending the latter she said quietly, “Yes.”
Pastor Cobbett rose dramatically and said, “You’re right, Maeva. Any decent Christian woman wants to be married.” With that he left.
There was a long discussion between Maeva and Mr. Morgan, but he finally said, “I understand how you feel, but I don’t think I’ll get married.”
Nor did Pastor Cobbett content himself merely with religious matters. He performed all his old governmental functions, aided now by a council of native men, including my father, and he evolved the new plan whereby we made a better grade of copra for sale direct to Belgium.
Once, after a long meeting about health rules, he excused himself and went back to see Mr. Morgan, who never attended any discussions.
“I’m not going to argue with you, Morgan,” he said bluntly. “I just want to tell you that I’ve seen lots of white men in the tropics. They all face three inevitable tests. One, have they the courage to marry the girl? Two, are they proud of her when she is pregnant for the first time? Three, and when the boat arrives from their own country—it always arrives, Morgan—do they introduce the woman and her dark children to their countrymen?”
That was all he said, and he must have known a great deal about Mr. Morgan, for the white man failed each test. He never married Maeva. Furthermore, he was ashamed and perplexed while she was pregnant, indifferent when the girl was born. And when schooners put into the atoll, Maeva and the baby were forbidden to appear in the front part of the house.
Once an American yacht sought refuge in our lagoon, but Mr. Morgan avoided the crew. Finally three of them forced their society upon him with loud cries of, “They say you’re a real Yankee beachcomber!” He did not invite them into his house, but they came anyway with three cases of beer. When they were brave with drink one asked, “Is it true you’re married to a beautiful native girl?”
“That’s right,” Mr. Morgan replied, his shoulders bent forward and his hands in the pockets of his sagging white pants.
We never understood what he did with his time. He didn’t write. He never read books. He didn’t like to fish nor did he sit and yarn with people about the old times. He was a man who lived entirely within himself. He did not even take pleasure in his glowing wahine, who always walked five steps behind him when they went to the beach for a swim.
And yet we knew that here was a brave man, perhaps the bravest we had ever known. Because of this knowledge, our disappointment in him was trebled, for we had hoped that he might lead us to a better way of life, one with more purpose and happiness. He was not concerned with this, and painfully we discovered that he stood for nothing. He was a moral zero and we knew that such a man could never show us how to govern Matareva.
When I became the schoolteacher I understood why my father and the other old men returned at last to the pastor. He stood for something. Of course, when he ranted, “It’s God’s will!” we were no longer fooled. We knew that no man can say what God’s will is, but we also knew it was important that we be led by someone who was at least concerned about what that will might be. We had hoped for a better man than the pastor to lead us, but failing that we had to make do with what was at hand.
The years passed and we forgot Mr. Morgan. Life passed him by and he walked the beach, a man of no consequence, a man loved by no one except perhaps Maeva. Then suddenly he was catapulted tragically back into the orbits of our village as he had been years before. Now the women of Matareva gathered before the white man’s house and wept, saying to one another, “At least he’s human, like the rest of us.”
Maeva was deeply stricken with our most dreaded illness, tuberculosis. I am told that elsewhere this disease lingers in the patient’s lungs for many years. It is not so with us. There is the racking cough, the pallor under our brown skins and the chest all caved away. There is nothing we can do against tuberculosis, nothing except die.
I often saw Maeva in the last stages of her illness. It was terrifying. Here was a strong woman who had fished off the reef in her own canoe, yet now she was thin as a ghost, her face fallen in. Here was a girl so beautiful that sailors from schooners would walk like schoolboys to her house, bringing gifts, yet now even her lovely lips were sunk into the gasping mouth. She lay on the floor where she had always slept, and no one could look at her without knowing that death must already be sailing his canoe at the reefs edge.
The effect on Mr. Morgan was something nobody could have predicted. He seemed to us never to have loved his wife, yet now he sat day after
day with her, his unlighted pipe between his teeth. He had sent his daughter to a family down the beach while he sat in the silent house caring for the dying girl.
Once when Pastor Cobbett came to talk with Maeva, Mr. Morgan could bear no longer the sight of that vanished face and he burst from the house like a madman. He came rushing down to see my father and cried, “God! God! She just lies there!” My father took him for a walk along the lagoon, but the pounding waves that roared upon the reef reminded the shivering man of Maeva fishing. The stars coming out were like the candles she had burned in his house. He walked mechanically until my father had to leave him, and all that night Pastor Cobbett stayed with Maeva. In the morning Mr. Morgan returned, apparently reconciled to what must happen. When the pastor had trudged off, the white man said, “The lagoon with stars upon it is beautiful, Maeva.” So far as we knew, he had never before commented in any way about the atoll he had shared for many years. Now he walked endlessly among us, hurrying back to Maeva to tell her how we looked, what we were doing that day. Once he stopped me and grabbed me by the arm. “Have you ever seen heron crashing down on a fish?” It was a common sight, the great black bill snipping the water, but he stood there transfixed.
The next day Pastor Cobbett asked Mr. Morgan if Maeva would like to have a few prayers. Mr. Morgan said he didn’t think so, but Pastor Cobbett said he would come in anyway. He was there when Maeva died, quietly as if not knowing that this sleep was different. For a moment Mr. Morgan would not believe that she was dead, and then he stood by the bed crying, “No! No!”
All night he stood there by the wasted figure on the mat. Our old women came to dress the body and they thought it improper that he should watch them, but he would not leave. When the village keeners came to wail their penetrating lament for the dead soul on its vast journey, he fell into a chair and kept his hands over his ears. The weird cry of the mourners drove him mad and he shouted that they must stop, but they could no more forsake the dead then they could stop the sun from climbing at last above the trees of Matareva.
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