by Nancy Horan
At the mission house, they found Reverend Clarke, who confirmed that war was under way. “Three dead came in,” he said, “and several wounded. There is a doctor from the German man-of-war in the other room, doing surgery. I heard eleven heads were taken to the camp of Laupepa. One of the heads belonged to a girl.”
“Dear God, how can that be?” Louis said.
“She was probably mistaken for a man,” Clarke said. “Her hair was cut short.”
Louis went into the surgery room and came back looking pale. “Two men in there are dying.”
Within days, Mata’afa was thoroughly routed and taken as a prisoner of war to the Marshall Islands, while twenty-three of his subchiefs were jailed in Apia. The war stories flowed into Vailima. Villages burned. Many dead. Mata’afa’s son was killed in battle, along with his wife, who refused to stay behind. Fanny and Louis knew them both.
“Never,” Lafaele assured Fanny. Never before had women’s heads been taken. One warrior was said to have carried a man’s head triumphantly to Laupepa, only to discover upon washing off the black war paint that it was the head of his brother.
Mata’afa’s men did not take heads, the Vailima men insisted. Fanny didn’t know what to believe.
CHAPTER 85
Talolo had laid out Louis’s formal clothes—his best white linen suit and his boots polished to a high shine. Dressed and combed, Louis went to Fanny’s room and found her at her desk.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing to Kew Garden,” she said. “I want to get this into the mail.”
“Hurry now. It’s time.”
They went out together into the paddock, where their horses were waiting to take Belle, Lloyd, Fanny, and himself to the Apia jail. All of them had taken turns over the past few months, riding down by horseback with food or gifts for the twenty-three chiefs, followers of Mata’ afa who’d landed in jail after their defeat. But today would be different. They were to be guests at a feast hosted by the imprisoned chiefs.
The jail was a dreary little building consisting of one room and six cells. It had been absolutely filthy at the beginning of their incarceration, but Louis now paid a man to clean it regularly. Any fool could break out of the jail, but these men stayed of their own accord. It was the responsibility of the prisoners to provide their own support; their people showed up every day with food.
When Louis and his family arrived, they found an almost festive scene outside, with relatives of the prisoners milling about. Entering the building, they were led single-file through a hallway toward the courtyard behind, surrounded by a corrugated metal fence. Fanny stopped in the hallway and looked into a cell. Inside, an old chief they knew named Po’e lay on a mat, moaning in pain.
“He wasn’t ill when I was here last time,” she said, turning to a younger chief. “Do you know what his sickness is?”
“No.”
In the outdoor courtyard stood a row of makeshift huts put up by the jailer to alleviate the crowding in the fetid jail. Following their guide to the largest hut, Louis detected the smells of roasted pork, oranges, cocoa, and rice. Inside, a gathering of eighteen high chiefs awaited them, along with the jailer, who looked nervous indeed. The main chief, named Auilua, was a magnificent-looking creature, tall and muscled, with a square head and massive shoulders that were shiny with oil. Around his thick neck, he wore a large ula—a wreath of dried fruit pods painted brilliant red that Samoans wore on special occasions. Auilua arranged the guests alternately among the chiefs. Fanny was served kava first, as the wife of himself, the high dignitary of the day. Auilua began to speak, and the interpreter said over and over a particular phrase as he translated: “Tusitala, our only friend.”
At the end of the meal, the chiefs approached Fanny and Belle. The men removed their own crimson ulas and put them over the women’s heads, and then Louis’s and Lloyd’s. As they emerged from the hut one by one, it dawned on Louis that there was some surprise in the offing, for they were being led to another hut. Inside, they discovered more chiefs and a pile of gifts. Once again, Auilua was master of the ceremony, speaking of the objects arrayed in front of them as the handiwork of the enslaved chiefs and their families. Exquisite tapas, baskets, fans, and a kava cup were presented to Tusitala with much fanfare.
Then came a promise. When and if the chiefs are released, Auilua announced, they would build a road to Vailima from the main road to show their gratitude for Louis’s unending support.
“Their words are sincere,” the jailer assured him as they prepared to depart. “The chiefs told me this giving of gifts to you has never been done for any other white man by Samoan chiefs.”
“Sir,” Fanny interjected, “I am going to need your help. I want to get Po’e out of here so he can be doctored properly. He looks very, very ill. I trust you will perhaps be engaged in some distraction when I come by tomorrow and take him? I will arrange to have him carried up to Vailima.”
The jailer, a softhearted Austrian named Wurmbrand, looked miserable at the idea but agreed to let her spring the old chief from jail on the morrow. Louis smiled in wonder at the turn of events. He knew it shouldn’t surprise him; no matter how storm-tossed his own life had been over the years, Fanny had always found a way to get him to safe ground.
In the days that followed, Louis watched Fanny as she tended Po’e in Maggie’s old bedroom. Though she had done the same thing for Louis a thousand times—brewing broths, putting cold cloths on his forehead—he’d not studied the operation from the outside. He was struck by how competently she brought the old man back in stages, until he could stand on his own feet and walk.
He would regret to his dying day that he’d called her a peasant. It’s a grave mistake to identify a person as one thing especially one’s wife. The woman he saw was kind, skilled, and generous—his wife of old, but so much more than a tender of others; she was every bit the adventurer he fancied himself to be. She could write a book of her own about her life in the South Seas. Courage was her greatest strength, and it had gotten her into places no other whites had been.
Some days she was an explosive engine, but to tamper with her inner workings seemed futile and rather dangerous. She was not his to muck with, anyway. He did not doubt her love or devotion. For the past fifteen years, she’d spent her lavish valor on him. And all the while he’d pined for Scotland, she had wanted only to be with him.
He meant to explain to her soon something he’d come to understand. She really was an artist, but her art was not something that would be viewed in a museum or contained between the covers of a book. Fanny’s art was in how she had lived her own extraordinary life. She was her best creation.
In trying to nurse Fanny back from her netherworld, he’d rediscovered something within himself. It had done him good to know an essential decency still resided there. That much had not changed. In the end, what really matters? Only kindness. Only making somebody a little happier for your presence.
CHAPTER 86
1894
“A letter from Colvin,” Louis remarked when he came out onto the porch, where Fanny and Maggie sat doing needlework. “He starts with just a few tidbits of news, and then— Listen to this.”
Do these things interest you at all; or do any of our white affairs? I could remark in passing that for three letters or more you have not uttered a single word about anything but your beloved blacks—or chocolates—confound them; beloved no doubt to you; to us detested, as shutting out your thoughts, or so it often seems from the main currents of human affairs, and oh so much less interesting than any dog, cat, mouse, house or jenny-wren of our own hereditary associations, loves and latitudes … Please let us have a letter or two with something besides native politics, prisons, kava feasts, and such things as our Cockney stomachs can ill assimilate.
“Ah, Sidney,” Maggie groaned. “Why doesn’t he write about the weather?”
“How can such a cultivated man be so appallingly narrow?” Louis asked.
“It appears to
be ignorance, and it is, to a degree,” Maggie said. “But I just saw Sidney a few months ago, and he adores you, Lou.”
“I know that. But with Colvin, it’s as if I have betrayed him. He feels I have repudiated my homeland by planting myself here. He forgets it was my lungs that rebelled against his precious literary air.”
“If I know Sidney,” Fanny said, “you will get an apology in the next mail.”
Maggie put down her sewing. “Sidney may be tired of Samoan news, but Henry James laps it up like a kitten. He told me so when I was in London. He follows everything you write about it.”
“Colvin thinks I’ll lose my powers as a writer by separating myself from my roots. It’s the old refrain.”
“He’s wrong,” Maggie said. “You’ve said yourself that your South Seas stories are some of your best.”
“Ignore Sidney’s grousing. That’s the thinking of a man who lives in the British Museum, after all,” Fanny said. “And it’s normal for those left behind to feel abandoned when someone they love moves far away. It’s a sign of his loyalty.”
Louis would write back to tell Colvin that he was still devoted to him but that he could not report any news without mentioning his “black and chocolates,” because the Samoans were the people among whom he now passed his days. He loved many of them as friends and a handful of them as members of his family. To not discuss them would be to cut off Colvin from his whole life.
No scolding was necessary to remind him how much he missed his friends back in Britain. Maybe it was impossible to stay attached to people when you were separated by ten thousand miles. So much life had occurred for everyone since he was in England. Henley and his wife had had a daughter and lost her, all in the space of five years. Baxter’s wife had just died. Symonds had finally succumbed to consumption in Davos. Even Colvin, whose life seemed to have settled into permanent bachelorhood with Fanny Sitwell, had sent news of a change: Fanny’s wretched old husband, the vicar, had died. Maybe she and Colvin would finally marry.
Last week’s mail had brought news that made Louis feel exceedingly removed from his former life. Adelaide Boodle was going off to be a missionary. Louis had responded with a fatherly letter offering up good wishes, but he was unable to restrain himself from dispensing advice. Forget wholly and forever all small pruderies, and remember that you cannot change ancestral feelings of right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder.
How would Adelaide receive such advice? She might well take his words to be those of a world-weary old man. Maybe he was just such a man, for he thought almost every day about death. He couldn’t say so to his family, only to Colvin. But he could go at this moment and be glad of the event. My God, I am nearly forty-four. Never had he imagined he’d live so long. He had no taste for getting old if he was sickly; he could think of nothing worse than a wasting, prolonged deterioration followed by a tardy death. Healthier now than he had been in many years, he still suffered a host of degrading ailments, even on his best days.
There is much to be thankful for. His mother, energetic and cheerful, had come back from Scotland, and the evening circle on the verandah had grown merrier for her presence. He’d had a long letter from Bob and felt their old bond regenerating in his cousin’s friendly words. Money worries had lessened, thanks to Baxter’s brilliant idea: a handsomely bound release of Louis’s collected works in a set to be called The Edinburgh Edition. Best of all, Baxter had promised to come to Samoa with a set of proofs. When that letter came, Louis had leaped to his feet and crowed the news to his startled family. “Baxter is coming! Baxter is really coming to Vailima!”
The prospect of his old friend joining them all on the verandah was almost more excitement than he could bear. He had told Baxter about Fanny’s troubles, but his friend would not see her as she’d been. Miraculously, in small, slow steps, Fanny had returned very nearly to herself. They were both tender, though, and spoke cautiously to each other. There were sore places that only time might heal.
The next day, bent on exercise, Louis set out to reach the top of Mount Vaea. He had wanted to climb it since they bought their land, so he packed a lunch and threw it in a knapsack.
“A blessing on your journey,” Talolo saluted Louis as he departed.
“A blessing on the house,” Louis replied in Samoan.
He stepped over branches and vines in the heavy bush, pushing his way upward. It was a sunny morning of crystalline air, dewdrops on shiny leaves, and joyous birdsong. Along the way, he saw majestic banyan trees and an astonishing array of multicolored birds flitting through the forest. The last part of the climb went straight up to a small plateau—the burial place of an ancient chief, Henry Simele once told him.
Sweating profusely when he reached the top, Louis shouted, “Talofa lava!” The magnificent prospect fit the requirements for a regal resting place, but there was no sign of humans anywhere.
He sat on the ground eating his sandwich with considerable satisfaction. How quiet it was in this place. How vivid and lovely the birdcalls. He lay on his back to soak up the sun and was flooded with another memory of Scotland.
He used to walk up to Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, an ancient volcano similar to this place. To climb to that peak was worth it any time of year, but especially in winter, when he could look down and see the frozen ice of Duddingston Loch covered with skaters. He remembered vividly how he’d stayed through a winter sunset to watch one skater spark another’s torch until dots of twinkling light flitted across the dark ice.
The sun soaked him through with a peaceful feeling he’d not felt in all too long a time. Sated, he stood and broke up the remains of his bread into crumbs, then scattered them around the mountaintop. Below him he could see white sand beaches, the buildings of Apia, the red roof of Vailima.
It came clear to him as he stood at the top of Mount Vaea. This is where I shall be buried.
CHAPTER 87
Louis knocked on the frame of Fanny’s bedroom door. “May I come in?”
She looked up from the book she was reading. “Of course.”
“Do you want to hear a bit more of Weir of Hermiston?”
“Yes,” she said.
He sat down on a chair opposite her, but before he started, he blurted out, “I have been downhearted.”
“I know. You tend to get down in the dumps just before you write something wonderful.”
He shifted in his seat. “What do you say we bury the hatchet?”
“For what?’
“For everything that hasn’t been good in the past year,” he said. “For all of it. It’s not helpful for either of us to carry around the bad old feelings. I would like to return to what we used to have.”
“It’s that simple?” She shot him an ironic smile.
“Ah, Fanny. I know this life you’ve had with me hasn’t been easy. You’ve given over a whole chunk of your life to being a nurse. You’ve had to pick up and move so many times. It occurred to me that I don’t ask what you long for. You never talk about missing California.”
She tipped her head thoughtfully. “Since the day we married, you were my home. I never longed to go back to America. And I never felt lonely until the past year or two.”
“You’ve been lonely?”
Fanny laughed. “How could I not be? You don’t come to me when you are thinking something through, or to tell me about your day, as you used to. We have drifted pretty far afield from each other, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’ve made mistakes. I have said things I regret, Fanny.” He sighed deeply. “Sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.”
“It’s my fault, too. I know that. Maybe I’ve wanted too much of you. But lately, it seems you don’t care to know what is inside here.” She put her palm to her breast.
“I can see how you might have felt that, but it changed when you broke down. Truly.” Louis reached over and picked up his manuscript from the floor. “I want you to listen to this. You remember the premise, don’t y
ou? A young man, Archie, is at odds with his father, Lord Justice Clerk, a terrifying man. Archie has denounced his father publicly for hanging a man, and he’s been banished to the family’s country estate. That’s where Archie meets a woman named Kirstie.”
“There are two Kirsties, as I recall.”
“Aye. The first one we meet is the aunt, who’s handsome, passionate—she’s the housekeeper at Hermiston. She spends evenings talking deeply with him, ranging over many subjects, and becomes a bit sweet on him, though he’s much younger. Later, she introduces him to her niece, Kirstie, a pretty, coquettish girl, and Archie falls in love with her.”
Louis read to Fanny for nearly an hour. He stood as he read, and swayed as he felt the rhythm of the sentences in his body. Near the end, he came to a part he’d written about the aunt.
Kirstie had many causes of distress. More and more as we grow old—and yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of age—we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul … Talk is the last link, the last relation. But with the end of the conversation, when the voice stops and the bright face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls again on the bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her “cannie hour at e’en”; she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you will, but a happy ghost, in fields Elysian. And to her it was as if the whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarkable change of amusements. And she raged to know it. The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within her at times to bursting point.
When Louis glanced up, he saw that Fanny looked troubled. “So I am the elder Kirstie,” she said.
“A man’s wife gets into his fiction. You are in her, my girl. But there is much Fanny Stevenson in the young Kirstie, too.”