I remember writing the last paragraph—and reading over the conclusion, and then impulsively writing the envoy, and beginning to weep bitterly.
I took the two copies, one for England and one for USA to Chatto and Windus myself. I was afraid to trust them by post. It was a very foggy day, and I was nearly run over. I left them with a sense that my world was now nicely and neatly over.
—SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER, DORSET, 1978
THOUGH the Reverend Timothy Fortune had spent three years in the island of Fanua he had made but one convert. Some missionaries might have been galled by this state of things, or if too good to be galled, at least flustered; but Mr. Fortune was a humble man of heart and he had the blessing which rests upon humility: an easy-going nature. In appearance he was tall, raw-boned, and rather rummaged-looking; even as a young man he had learnt that to jump in first doesn’t make the ’bus start any sooner; and his favourite psalm was the one which begins: “My soul truly waiteth still upon God.”
Mr. Fortune was not a scholar, he did not know that the psalms express bygone thoughts and a bygone way of life. In his literal way he believed that the sixty-second psalm applied to him. For many years he had been a clerk in the Hornsey branch of Lloyds Bank, but he had not liked it. Whenever he weighed out the golden sovereigns in the brass scales, which tacked and sidled like a yacht in a light breeze, he remembered uneasily that the children of men are deceitful upon the weights, that they are altogether lighter than vanity itself.
In the bank, too, he had seen riches increase. But he had not set his heart upon them: and when his godmother, whose pass-book he kept, died and left him one thousand pounds, he went to a training-college, was ordained deacon, and quitted England for St. Fabien, a port on an island of the Raratongan Archipelago in the Pacific.
St. Fabien was a centre of Christianity. It had four missions: one Catholic, one Protestant, one Wesleyan, and one American. Mr. Fortune belonged to the Protestant mission. He gave great satisfaction to his superiors by doing as he was bid, teaching in the school, visiting the sick, and carrying the subscription list to the English visitors, and even greater satisfaction when they had discovered that he could keep all the accounts. At the end of ten years Archdeacon Mason was sorry to hear that Mr. Fortune (who was now a priest) had felt a call to go to the island of Fanua.
Fanua was a small remote island which could only be seen in imagination from that beach edged with tin huts where Mr. Fortune walked slowly up and down on evenings when he had time to. No steamers called there, the Archdeacon had visited it many years ago in a canoe. Now his assistant felt a call thither, not merely to visit it in the new mission launch, but to settle there, and perhaps for life.
The two clergymen strolled along the beach in the cool of the evening. The air smelt of the sea, of flowers, and of the islanders’ suppers.
“I must warn you, Fortune, you are not likely to make many converts in Fanua.”
“What, are they cannibals?”
“No, no! But they are like children, always singing and dancing, and of course immoral. But all the natives are like that. I believe I have told you that the Raratongan language has no words for chastity or for gratitude?”
“Yes, I believe you did.”
“Well, well! You are not a young man, Fortune, you will not expect too much of the Fanuans. Singing and dancing! No actual harm in that, of course, and no doubt the climate is partly responsible. But light, my dear Fortune, light! And not only in their heels either.”
“I am afraid that none of the children of men weigh altogether true,” said Mr. Fortune. “For that matter, I have heard that many cannibals are fond of dancing.”
“Humanly speaking I fear that you would be wasted in Fanua. Still, if you have felt a call I must not dissuade you, I won’t put any obstacles in your way. But you will be a great loss.”
The Archdeacon spoke so sadly that Mr. Fortune, knowing how much he disliked accounts, wondered for a moment if God would prefer him to wait still in St. Fabien. God tries the souls of men in crafty ways, and perhaps the call had been a temptation, a temptation sent to try his humility. He turned his eyes towards where he knew the island of Fanua to lie. What his superior had said about it had not displeased him, on the contrary he liked to think of the islanders dancing and singing. It would be a beautiful estate to live among them and gather their souls as a child gathers daisies in a field.
But now the horizon was hidden in the evening haze, and Fanua seemed more remote than ever. A little cloud was coming up the heavens, slowly, towards the sunset; as it passed above the place of Fanua it brightened, it shone like a pearl, it caught the rays of the sun and glowed with a rosy rim. Mr. Fortune took the cloud to be a sign.
Heartened by a novel certainty that he was doing the right thing, he disappointed the Archdeacon quite unflinchingly and set about his preparations for the new life. Since the island was so unfrequented it was necessary to take with him provisions for at least a year. In the ordinary course of things the Mission would have supplied his outfit, but he had a scruple against availing himself of this custom because, having kept the accounts, he knew their poverty and their good works, and also because he was aware that the expedition to Fanua was looked on as, at best, a sort of pious escapade. Fortunately there were the remains of his godmother’s legacy. With feelings that were a nice mixture of thrift and extravagance he bought tinned meat, soup-squares, a chest of tea, soap, a tool-box, a medicine chest, a gentleman’s housewife, a second-hand harmonium (rather cumbrous and wheezy but certainly a bargain), and an oil-lamp. He also bought a quantity of those coloured glass baubles which hang so ravishingly on Christmas trees, some picture-books, rolls of white cotton, and a sewing-machine to make clothes for his converts. The Archdeacon gave him a service of altar furniture and the other mission-workers presented him with a silver teapot. With the addition of some plate-powder Mr. Fortune was now ready to embark.
In fancy he had seen himself setting foot upon the island alone, though he knew that in fact some one must go with him if only to manage the launch. But that some one would be a sailor, a being so aloofly maritime as scarcely to partake in the act of landing. He was slightly dashed when he discovered that the Archdeacon, accompanied by his secretary, was coming too in order to install him with a proper appearance of ceremony.
“We cannot impress upon them too early,” said the Archdeacon, “the solemn nature of your undertaking. “ And Mr. Fortune hung his head, a grey one, old and wise enough to heed an admonition or a rebuke.
The voyage was uneventful. The Archdeacon sat in the bows dictating to the secretary, and Mr. Fortune looked at the Pacific Ocean until he fell asleep, for he was tired out with packing.
About sunset he was aroused by the noise of surf and by peals of excited laughter; and opening his eyes he found that they were close in under the shadow of the island of Fanua. The launch was manœuvring round seeking for an inlet in the reef, and the islanders were gathered together to view this strange apparition. Some were standing on the rocks, some were in the sea, others were diving from cliff to water, in movement and uproar like a flock of seagulls disturbed by a fishing-boat.
It seemed to Mr. Fortune that there must be thousands of them, and for a moment his heart sank. But there was no time for second thoughts; for behold! a canoe shot forward to the side of the launch, a rope was thrown and caught, the Archdeacon, the secretary, and himself were miraculously jumped in, the sea was alive with brown heads, every one talked at once, the canoe turned, darted up the smooth back of a wave, descended into a cloud of spray, and the three clergymen, splashed and stiff, were standing on the beach.
Now Mr. Fortune was properly grateful for the presence of the Archdeacon, for like a child arriving late at a party he felt perfectly bewildered and would have remained in the same spot, smiling and staring. But like the child at a party he found himself taken charge of and shepherded in the right direction until, in the house of the chief islander, he was seated on a low stool
with his hat taken off, a garland round his neck, and food in his hands, smiling and staring still.
Before dark the luggage was also landed. The evening was spent in conversation and feasting. Every one who could squeeze himself into Ori’s house did so, and the rest of them (the thousands did not seem above a few hundreds now) squatted round outside. Even the babies seemed prepared to sit there all night, but at length the Archdeacon, pleading fatigue, asked leave of his host to go to bed.
Ori dismissed the visitors, his household prepared the strangers’ sleeping place, unrolling the best mats and shooing away a couple of flying foxes, the missionaries prayed together and the last good-nights were said.
From where he lay Mr. Fortune could look out of the door. He saw a tendril of some creeper waving gently to and fro across the star Canopus, and once more he realised, as though he were looking at it for the first time, how strangely and powerfully he had been led from his native land to lie down in peace under the constellations of the southern sky.
“So this is my first night in Fanua,” he thought, as he settled himself on his mat. “My first night...”
And he would have looked at the star, a sun whose planets must depend wholly upon God for their salvation, for no missionary could reach them; but his eyes were heavy with seafaring, and in another minute he had fallen asleep.
As though while his body lay sleeping his ghost had gone wandering and ascertaining through the island Mr. Fortune woke on the morrow feeling perfectly at home in Fanua. So much so that when he stood on the beach waving farewell to the launch he had the sensations of a host, who from seeing off his guests turns back with a renewed sense of ownership to the house which the fact of their departure makes more deeply and dearly his. Few hosts indeed could claim an ownership equally secure. For when the Archdeacon, visited with a sudden qualm at the thought of Mr. Fortune’s isolation, had suggested that he should come again in three months’ time, just to see how he was getting on, Mr. Fortune was able to say quite serenely and legitimately that he would prefer to be left alone for at least a year.
Having waved to the proper degree of perspective he turned briskly inland. The time was come to explore Fanua.
The island of Fanua is of volcanic origin, though at the time of Mr. Fortune’s arrival the volcano had been for many years extinct. It rises steeply out of the ocean, and seen from thence it appears disproportionately tall for its base, for the main peak reaches to a height of near three thousand feet, and the extremely indented coast-line does not measure more than seventy miles. On three sides of the island there are steep cliffs worked into caverns and flying buttresses by the action of the waves, but to the east a fertile valley slopes gently down to a low-lying promontory of salt-meadow and beach where once a torrent of lava burst from the side of the mountain and crushed its path to the sea; and in this valley lies the village.
The lower slopes of the mountain are wooded, and broken into many deep gorges where the noise of the cataract echoes from cliff to cliff, where the air is cool with shade and moist with spray, and where bright green ferns grow on the black face of the rock. Above this swirl and foam of tree-tops the mountain rises up in crags or steep tracts of scrub and clinker to the old crater, whose ramparts are broken into curious cactus-shaped pinnacles of rock, in colour the reddish-lavender of rhododendron blossoms.
A socket of molten stone, rent and deserted by its ancient fires and garlanded round with a vegetation as wild as fire and more inexhaustible, the whole island breathes the peculiar romance of a being with a stormy past. The ripened fruit falls from the tree, the tree falls too and the ferns leap up from it as though it were being consumed with green flames. The air is sleepy with salt and honey, and the sharp wild cries of the birds seem to float like fragments of coloured paper upon the monotonous background of breaking waves and falling cataract.
Mr. Fortune spent the whole day exploring, and when he felt hungry he made a meal of guavas and rose-apples. There seemed to be no end to the marvels and delights of his island, and he was as thrilled as though he had been let loose into the world for the first time. But he returned with all the day’s wonders almost forgotten in the excitement and satisfaction of having discovered the place where he wanted to live.
It was a forsaken hut, about a mile from the village and less than that distance from the sea. It stood in a little dell amongst the woods, before it there was a natural lawn of fine grass, behind it was a rocky spur of the mountain. There was a spring for water and a clump of coco-palms for shade.
The hut consisted of one large room opening on to a deep verandah. The framework was of wood, the floor of beaten earth, and it was thatched and walled with reeds.
Ori told him that it could be his for the taking. An old woman had lived there with her daughter, but she had died and the daughter, who didn’t like being out of the world, had removed to the village. Mr. Fortune immediately set about putting it in order, and while he worked almost every one in the island dropped in at some time or other to admire, encourage, or lend a hand. There was not much to do: a little strengthening of the thatch, the floor to be weeded and trodden smooth, the creepers to be cut back—and on the third day he moved in.
This took place with ceremony. The islanders accompanied him on his many journeys to and from the village, they carried the crate containing the harmonium with flattering eulogies of its weight and size, and when everything was transported they sat on the lawn and watched him unpacking. When he unpacked the teapot they burst into delighted laughter.
Except for the lamp, the sewing-machine, and the harmonium, Mr. Fortune’s house had not an European appearance, for while on the island he wished to live as its natives did. His bowls and platters and drinking-vessels were made of polished wood, his bed (Ori’s gift) was a small wooden platform spread with many white mats. When everything was completed he gave each of the islanders a ginger-bread nut and made a little formal speech, first thanking them for their gifts and their assistance, and going on to explain his reasons for coming to Fanua. He had heard, he said, with pleasure how happy a people they were, and he had come to dwell with them and teach them how they might be as happy in another life as they were in this.
The islanders received his speech in silence broken only by crunching. Their expressions were those of people struck into awe by some surprising novelty: Mr. Fortune wondered if he were that novelty, or Huntley and Palmers.
He was anxious to do things befittingly, for the Archdeacon’s admonition on the need for being solemn still hung about the back of his mind. This occasion, it seemed to him, was something between a ceremony and a social function. It was a gathering, and as such it had its proper routine: first there comes an address, after the address a hymn is sung, then comes a collect and sometimes a collection, and after that the congregation disperses.
Mr. Fortune sat down to his harmonium and sang and played through a hymn.
His back was to the islanders, he could not see how they were taking it. But when, having finished the hymn and added two chords for the Amen, he turned round to announce the collect, he discovered that they had already dispersed, the last of them even then vanishing noiselessly and enigmatically through the bushes.
The sun was setting behind the mountain, great shafts of glory moved among the topmost crags. Mr. Fortune thought of God’s winnowing-fan, he imagined Him holding the rays of the sun in His hand. God winnows the souls of men with the beauty of this world: the chaff is blown away, the true grain lies still and adoring.
In the dell it was already night. He sat for a long time in his verandah listening to the boom of the waves. He did not think much, he was tired with a long day’s work and his back ached. At last he went indoors, lighted his lamp, and began to write in his diary. Just as he was dropping off to sleep a pleasant thought came to him, and he smiled, murmuring in a drowsy voice: “To-morrow is Sunday.”
In the morning he was up and shaved and dressed before sunrise. With a happy face he stepped on to his l
awn and stood listening to the birds. They did not sing anywhere near so sweetly as English blackbirds and thrushes, but Mr. Fortune was pleased with their notes, a music which seemed proper to this gay landscape which might have been coloured out of a child’s paint-box.
He stood there till the sun had risen and shone into the dell, then he went back into his hut; when he came out again he was dressed in his priest’s clothes and carried a black tin box.
He walked across the dell to where there was a stone with a flat top. Opening the box he took out, first a linen cloth which he spread on the stone, then a wooden cross and two brass vases. He knelt down and very carefully placed the cross so that it stood firm on the middle of the stone. The vases he carried to the spring, where he filled them with water, and gathering some red blossoms which grew on a bush near by he arranged them in the vases, which he then carried back and set on either side of the cross. Standing beside the stone and looking into the sun, he said in a loud voice: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
The sun shone upon the white cloth and the scarlet flowers, upon the cross of wood and upon the priest standing serious, grey-headed and alone in the green dell all sparkling with dew as though it had never known the darkness of night.
Once more he turned and went back to the hut. When he came out again he carried in either hand a cup and a dish which shone like gold. These he put down upon the stone, and bowed himself before them and began to pray.
Mr. Fortune knelt very upright. His eyes were shut, he did not see the beauty of the landscape glittering in the sun-rise, the coco-palms waving their green feather head-dresses gently to and fro in the light breeze, the wreaths of rosy mist floating high up across the purple crags of the mountain—and yet from the expression on his face one would have said that he was all the more aware of the beauty around him for having his eyes shut, for he seemed like one in an ecstasy and his clasped hands trembled as though they had hold of a joy too great for him. He knelt on, absorbed in prayer. He did not see that a naked brown boy had come to the edge of the dell and was gazing at him and at the stone which he had decked to the glory of God—gazing with wonder and admiration, and step by step coming softly across the grass. Only when he had finished his prayer and stretched out his hands towards the altar did Mr. Fortune discover that a boy was kneeling at his side.
Mr. Fortune Page 2