He was behaving as though he had never been out in the rain before. It had rained quite often in St. Fabien, indeed there were times when it seemed never to do anything else. But rain there had been a very different matter, veiling the melancholy quayside, clanking on the roofs of the rabble of tin church premises, and churning the soft grit of the roads into mud. It had rained in St. Fabien and he had constantly been out in it, but with no more ecstasy than he had known when it rained in Hornsey. No doubt the ownership of a rain-gauge accounted for much; but there was more to it than that—a secret core of delight, a sense of truancy, of freedom, because now for the first time in his life he was walking in the rain entirely of his own accord, and not because it was his duty, or what public opinion conceived to be so.
Public opinion was waiting for him in the hut when he got back. While he was still shaking himself like a dog in the verandah, Lueli appeared in the doorway, looking very dry and demure, and began to pet and expostulate in the same breath.
“How very wet! How very silly! Come in at once! Why do you go out when it rains?”
“It is healthy to go for a walk in the rain,” replied Mr. Fortune, trampling firmly on public opinion.
“It would be better to stay under a roof and sleep.”
“Not at all. In England it rains for days at a time, but every one goes out just the same. We should think it very effeminate to stop indoors and sleep.”
“I haven’t been asleep the whole time,” Lueli remarked in a defensive voice. “That new pot of yours—I’ve been out to fetch it in case it got spoilt.”
While he was drinking his tea (Lueli drank tea also, because his affection and pride made him in everything a copy-cat, but he sipped it with a dubious and wary expression), Mr. Fortune found himself thinking of England. He thought about his father, a sanguine man who suddenly upped and shot himself through the head; and thence his thoughts jumped to a Whitsuntide bank holiday which he had spent in a field near Ruislip. The sky was a pale milky blue, the field was edged with some dowdy elms and beyond them was a view of distant gasworks. At two o’clock he had eaten his lunch—a cold pork chop; and clear as ever he could recall the exquisite unmeaning felicity of that moment.
How little pleasure his youth had known, that this outing should remain with him like an engraved gem! And now he scarcely knew himself for happiness. The former things were passed away: the bank with its façade trimmed with slabs of rusticated stone—a sort of mural tripe; his bed-sitting-room at “Marmion,” 239 Lyttleton Road, N.E., so encumbered and subfusc; and the horrible disappointment of St. Fabien. There had passed the worst days of his life; for he had expected something of them, he had gone there with an intention of happiness and doing good. But though he had tried his best he had not been able to love the converts, they were degenerate, sickly, and servile; and in his discouragement he had thought to himself: “It’s a good thing I know about book-keeping, for I shall never be fit to do anything better.” And now he was at Fanua, and at his side squatted Lueli, carving a pattern on the rain-gauge.
The next day it rained again, and he went for another walk, a walk not so ecstatic as the former, but quite as wet and no doubt quite as healthy. Hollow peals of thunder rumbled through the cold glades, the chilling South wind blew and the coco-nuts fell thumping from the trees. He walked to his promontory and stood for some time watching the clouds—which were to-day rounded, dark, and voluminous, a presentation to the eye of what the thunder was to the ear—and the waves. He felt no love for the sea, but he respected it. That evening the rain-gauge recorded 1.24.
The project of bathing by moonlight never came to much, for somehow when the time came he was always too sleepy to be bothered; but he was extremely successful in keeping regular hours, for all that so many of them were hours of idleness. Morning prayers, of course, began the day, and after prayers came breakfast. A good breakfast is the foundation of a good day. Mr. Fortune supposed that a great deal of the islanders’ lack of steadfastness might be attributed to their ignorance of this maxim. Lueli, for instance, was perfectly content to have no breakfast at all, or satisfied himself with a flibberty-gibberty meal of fruit eaten off the bushes. Mr. Fortune made tea, softened and sweetened at once by coco-milk, and on Sundays coffee. With this he had three boiled eggs. The eggs were those of the wild pigeon, eggs so small that three were really a quite moderate allowance. Unfortunately there was no certainty of them being new-laid, and very often they were not. So it was a notable day when it occurred to him that a native dish of bread-fruit sopped into a paste was sufficiently stodgy and sticky to be perfectly well eaten in lieu of porridge.
After breakfast and a pipe shared with Lueli—he did not really approve of boys of Lueli’s years smoking, but he knew that pipe-sharing was such an established Polynesian civility that Lueli’s feelings would be seriously wounded if he didn’t fall in with the custom—the hut was tidied, the mats shaken in the sun, and the breakfast things put away. Then came instruction in befitting branches of Christian lore; then, because the pupil was at hand and it was well to make sure of him while he had him. For all that there were a good many holidays given and taken. With such an admirable pupil he could afford himself the pleasures of approbation.
Since the teaching had to be entirely conversational, Lueli learnt much that was various and seemingly irrelevant. Strange alleys branched off from the subject in hand, references and similes that strayed into the teacher’s discourse as the most natural things in the world had to be explained and enlarged upon. In the middle of an account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem Mr. Fortune would find himself obliged to break off and describe a donkey. This would lead naturally to the sands of Weston-super-Mare, and a short account of bathing-machines; and that afternoon he would take his pupil down to the beach and show him how English children turned sand out of buckets, and built castles with a moat round them. Moats might lead to the Feudal System and the Wars of the Barons. Fighting Lueli understood very well, but other aspects of civilisation needed a great deal of explaining; and Mr. Fortune nearly gave himself heat apoplexy by demonstrating in the course of one morning the technique of urging a golf ball out of a bunker and how English housewives crawl about on their hands and knees scrubbing the linoleum.
After dismissing Lueli from his lessons Mr. Fortune generally strolled down to the village to enlarge the work of conversion. By now he had given up general preaching and exhortation—not that he thought it a bad way to go to work, on the contrary, he knew that it had been sanctioned by the best Apostolic usage; but preaching demands the concurrence of an audience, even though it be one of fishes or pigs; and since he was no longer a novelty the islanders had become as slippery as the one, as artful and determined in dodging away as the other. He practised instead the Socratic method of pouncing upon any solitary and defenceless person who happened to pass by. And like Socrates he would lead them aside into the shade and ask them questions.
Many charming conversations took place. But nothing ever came of them, and the fields so white for the harvest continued to ripple and rustle in the sun, eluding all his efforts to reap and bind them into sheaves and carry them into God’s barn in time for the harvest-home.
He had now been on the island for nearly six months, and every day he knew himself to have less attractive power. How he wished that he had thought of bringing some fireworks with him! Two or three rockets touched off, a green Bengal light or a Catherine wheel, he would have been sure of a congregation then. And there is no religious reason why fireworks should not be used as a means to conversion. Did not God allure the fainting Israelites by letting Himself off as a pillar of fire by night? He thought, though, that had he fireworks at his command he would draw the line at that variety which is known as British Cannon. They are very effective, but they are dangerous; and he did not wish to frighten his flock.
From midday till about two or three in the afternoon there was no possibility of converting anybody, for the islanders one and all went firmly to
sleep. This was the time when Mr. Fortune went for his daily walk. After so much endeavour he would have been quite pleased to take a nap himself; but he knew the value of regular exercise, and by taking it at this time of day he was safe from molestation by the bevies. He usually ate a good deal of fruit on these walks, because he had not yet accustomed himself to such a long stretch between breakfast and dinner. Indeed for some time after his arrival on the island he felt rather underfed. Dinner consisted of more bread-fruit, messes prepared by Lueli, fish sometimes, roots flavoured with sea-water. Lueli preferred his fish raw. Sometimes Mr. Fortune made soup or opened a tin of sardines.
Dinner was immediately followed by afternoon tea. Mr. Fortune would not forego that comfortable meal, so they had it as a sort of dessert. Then followed a long subafternoon, spent in various ways of doing nothing in particular. Lueli always went bathing then. He had no theories about it being dangerous to bathe on the heels of a large meal, and after an interval for digestion Mr. Fortune bathed too. Sometimes they paid visits, or received them. On these occasions Mr. Fortune never spoke of religion. He produced his pocket magnifying-glass and showed them his pores. At other times they went sailing or took a stroll.
These were all pleasant doings, but perhaps the moment he enjoyed best was when, dusk having fallen, he lit the lamp. He had a peculiar affection for his lamp. It hung from the ridge-pole of the hut, and he felt about it much as Sappho felt about the evening star. It shone as though with a kindness upon everything that was dear to him: upon his books and the harmonium; upon the bowls and dishes and woven mats that were both dear in themselves as tokens of the islanders’ good-will, and endeared by use; upon the wakeful shine of the teapot and the black tin box, and upon Lueli’s sleepy head. He would often walk out into the darkness for the pleasure of seeing his hut lighted up within, the rays of warm light shining through the chinks in the latticed walls as though they were shining through a very large birds’ nest. Overhead were the stars trembling with the intensity of their remote fires. The air was very sweet and the dark grass gentle underfoot as he walked round about his home.
He whistled to himself, softly, an air that Delilah sings in the oratorio of Samson—a rather foolish, chirruping tune, in which Handel expressed his private opinion of soprano Delilahs: but he liked the words—
How charming is domestic ease,
A thousand ways I’ll strive to please:
(after that they ceased to be appropriate).
A thousand, thousand ways he would strive to please until he had converted all the islanders. And planning new holy wiles for the morrow, he re-entered the hut to eat a slight supper, and perhaps to darn a rent or replace a button, and then to write up his diary, to read prayers, and so to end another day.
Saturdays and Saints’ days were holidays, for himself and Lueli both. Lueli disported himself as he pleased, and Mr. Fortune watched clouds. On Sundays they performed the services appointed by the Church of England.
There was a week or two when he believed that he was in the way to make another convert. She was a very old woman, extremely ugly, not very agreeable, and rather doting. But she seemed perfectly able to understand about eternal life, and showed great anxiety to lay hold on it. Mr. Fortune visited her daily and tried hard to teach her the love of God, and the Christian belief. But she seemed deaf to all topics save one—and her anxiety to lay hold became as the days went by positively grasping.
One day the wife of Teioa, a sensible woman whom Mr. Fortune had a great respect for, came in with some food for the invalid and overheard part of their colloquy.
“Live for ever,” she remarked rather scornfully to the missionary as they left the house. “Why, isn’t she old enough already? How much more does she want?” And though Mr. Fortune deplored her blindness, yet in this particular instance he admitted to himself that she had perceived clearly enough, and that his old woman was no sort of genuine convert, only very old and frightened and rapacious. None the less he continued to visit her, and to do what he could to comfort her. And often as he sat by her bedside he thought what a mystery this business of eternal life is, and how strangely, though almost all desire it, they differ in their conception of what it is they desire; some, like Shakespeare (and how many others unknown?) coolly confident of an immortality
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men;
some, like Buddha, hoping for an eternal life in which their own shall be absolved and lost; some, like this old woman, desiring an eternity like an interminable piece of string which she could clutch one end of and reel for ever about herself. “And how do I desire it?” he thought. “I want to feel it on every side, more abundantly. But I want to die first.”
In the end he grew quite attached to the old creature, and when she died he was sorry. He would have liked, as a mark of respect, to attend her funeral: (he certainly did not feel that he had any claim to conduct it himself). But no one suggested that he should, and he hesitated to suggest it lest he should be offending against some taboo. So he went off by himself for a day in the woods and thought about her, and said a prayer or two. And in the evening he returned to Lueli. One convert at any rate had been granted to him, and perhaps it would be greedy to want more, especially as that one was in every way so exemplary and delightful.
The two friends—for such they were despite more than sixty degrees of latitude and over thirty years between them (and the latter is a more insuperable barrier than an equator)—lived together in the greatest amity. Lueli had now quite given up running away. He settled down to Mr. Fortune’s ways, and curled himself up amidst the new customs and regulations as peacefully as though he had never known any other manner of existence. Indeed Mr. Fortune was sometimes obliged to pack him off to the village to play with the other boys, thinking that it would harm him never to be with company of his own age.
Lueli was no anchorite, he enjoyed larking about the island with his friends as much as any boy should do; but what he loved beyond anything was novelty, and for this he worshipped Mr. Fortune, whose every action might reveal some new and august entertainment. The faces he made in shaving, the patch of hair on his chest, his ceremonious method of spitting out pips into his hand, the way in which his boot-laces went round the little hooks, his watch, his pockets and the things he kept in them—Lueli might grow accustomed to these daily delights, but he did not tire of them any more than Wordsworth tired of the Lesser Celandine. And there was more than this, and much more: prayer, the harmonium, the sewing-machine, religious instruction and occasional examples of European cookery. Prayer Lueli had taken to from the beginning, but he needed to acclimatise himself to the harmonium. When Mr. Fortune played to him he would sit as close as possible to the instrument, quivering like a dog and tilting up his chin with such an ecstatic and woebegone look that Mr. Fortune almost expected him to howl; and thinking that he didn’t really enjoy it he would leave off playing. But Lueli would then edge a little closer and beg for more, and Mr. Fortune was only too glad to comply.
Like the harpsichord, the harmonium has a repertory of its own, pieces that can only be properly rendered on this instrument. Naturally I do not speak of the harmonium compositions of such recent composers as Schoenberg or Max Reger: these would have been too difficult for Mr. Fortune to play even if they had been stocked by the music-shop he had frequented. But without being in any way a virtuoso—and some think that the harmonium, being essentially a domesticated instrument, sober and of a religious cast, is inherently unsuited for displays of skill—Mr. Fortune played quite nicely and had a repertory of many classical larghettos and loud marches, besides, of course, the usual hymns and chants. Haydn was his favourite composer; and arrangements from the string quartets go rather well on the harmonium.
Lueli too was a musician after a simpler fashion. He had a wooden pipe, rather like a flageolet, of a small compass and a sad, squeaky tone; and the two friends passed many happy evenings entertaining each other with their performances. First Mr. Fortu
ne obliged, leaning forward at an acute angle on the music-stool, his knees rising and falling like parts of a machine, his face very close to the music, his large hands manœuvring among the narrow keys, or sometimes hovering like a bee in a flower border over the ranks of stops, pulling out one, hitting another back with a tap, as though his fingers could read, though rather short-sightedly, in black Gothic lettering on the ivory knobs such names as Gamba, Corno di Bassetto, Bourdon, or Dulciana. And then, when rising he released the last throbbing chord and stretched himself (for he was a tall man, and in order to adjust his body and legs to the instrument he had to assume a rather cramped position), it was pleasant to see Lueli discoursing music in his turn, and a curious study in contrasts. For the boy sat cross-legged on the floor, or leant against the wall in the attitude of the boy in the statue, an attitude so physically nonchalant, so spiritually intent, that whoever looks at the statue, or even a cast of it or a photograph, understands, sometimes with a kind of jealous horror, how musicians are free of a world of their own, inhabiting their bodies as it were nominally or by proxy—just as we say of a house: That is Mr. So-and-So’s; but the house is empty save for a sleepy caretaker, the owner is away travelling in Africa.
Lueli’s tunes were very long tunes, though the phrases composing them were short; the music seemed to waver to and fro, alighting unexpectedly and then taking another small flight, and listening to it was like watching a bird flitting about in a bush; the music ends, the bird flies away; and one is equally at a loss to explain why the bird stayed so long and seemed so busy or why it suddenly made up its mind that the time had come for a longer flight, for a flight that dismisses it from our vision.
Mr. Fortune Page 5