THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11843, 21 December 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE.

' ' " [by llotd obbotteke.] •His thirtieth birthday 1 His first youth wns behind him, with all its heart-burnings, its failures, its ; manifold humiliations. What had he done these years past but drift for--ioni, penniless, and unattached over those shadows where others had stuck and prospered? A gentle decline all the way from college in hop© and fulfilment. The army and Civil Service had alike refused him. In the colonies he had toiled unremittingly in half a hundred characters—groom, cook, "boundary-rider, steamer roustabout, always sinking, always failing. Then those last four years in tho islands and his tumble-down stcro in Yaiala. Had life nothing more for ■ him than an endless succession of, hot, empty days on the furthest beach of Upolu, with scarcely more to eat than the commonest : kanaka, and no other outlet for his energies than the bartering of salt beef for copra and an occasional night's fishing on the reef? On s the other hand, he was*well in body, and had times of even thinking himself happy in this fag-end of the world. "The old store, rotten and leaky though it was, gave him a drier bed than he'had often found in his wandering, hunted life, and the food, if monotonous and poor, was better than the empty belly with "which he had often begun an arduous day in 'Australia. And the place was extraordinarily beautifui. Yes, lie had always admitted that, s even in his blackest days of depression, though tho. beauty of it seemed almost to op-> press him at times. But beautiful or not, this was a strange place for his father's son, a strange thirtieth birthday for one who had I-' ;' begun the world with every prospect of faring well and rising high in its esteem, and the «enso of his failure again seized him by the throat. - • The noise of an incoming boat drew him to - \ the door, and he looked out to see the pastor's . . -old whaler heading through the pass. They ' bad made a night trip to avoid. the heat, 'and r sill looked tired and weary with their long pull ' from Apia, and the song with which they timed their paddles sounded mournfully across the lagoon. A half-grown girl leaped into the water'and hastened up to the store" with & something fastened in a banana leaf. It was letter, which she shyly handed the trader. Walter Kinross looked at it with surprise; ;; " for it .was tho first ho had received in four years, and the sight of its English stamp and • ' familiar handwriting filled him with something like awe. , ' . "The white man said you would give us a tin of salmon and six masi," said tho little girl in native. . . ~.'■■■■ . "•'{?? roS3 unlocked the dingy trade-room, . still in a maze of wonder and impatience, and . gave the little girl a box of matches in excess of postage. Then ho opened the letter. . ".My dear Nephew," it ran, "your letter asking me to send you a book or two or any old. papers I might happen to have about me has just com e to haad and finds me at Long's ■Hotel, pretty miserable, and ill. Yours was l . a strange note, after a silence of eight years, . telling me nothing on earth about yourself, «aye that you are trading in some islands, and seldom see a white face from one year's end ■'to another. . When a man is seventy years of age and is ill and his nigh-spent life unrolls Before him like the pages of a musty old book, and when ho wonders a little how'it will feel . to bo dead and done with it altogether, I tell you, my boy, he begins to see the spectres of -all sorts of misdeeds rising before him. Past luikindnesses, past neglects, a cold word here, a.teni pound note saved there, and an old friend turned empty away— well. Without actually going the length of saying that I f-'i' was either unkind or negligent in your case I feel sometimes I was rather hard on you as to that mess of yours in London, and that ail air at Lowestoft the same year, when I told you to go to tho devil. ■ „„'i 1 lm you arc pretty old to come back and art life afresh here, but if you haven't >' had the unmitigated folly to get married out thero and tied by the log for ever I'll help you 'to make a new start if you have the grit to do it. You shan't starve if 300 a year will • keep you, ancl if you will try and turn over a r.ew leaf and make a man of yourself in good earnest I am prepared to mark you down v- ' substantially mmy will. But mind—no pror - payment strictly by results. You're &J. *=■ no longer a boy, and this is probably the last chance you 11 ever get of entering" civilised " e , again and meeting respectable folk. I -• enclose you a draft at sight on Sydney, Now tidp ?•?. ' for £ , 2 , 50 for yoXl will doubtless ' need • clothes as well as your passage monev, and if - you decide not to return you can act, ' cept it as a present from your old uncle. I have told Jones (you would scarcely know kv. ■■ the old fellow, Walter, he's so changed) to . send you a bundle of books and illustrated «" t papers, which I hope will amuse you moro . than they seem, to do me. "Affectionately yours,

• ' "Alfred Bannock." V "._. Th trader read the letter with extraorS dinary attention, though the drift of it was at iirsfc almost beyond him—road it and re-read it, dazed and - overcome, scarcely realising Jus good fortune.:: He spread out the bill on 'I : his; knee a ? d smoothed it as he might have 4■" patted th hed ° a dog. It spelled freedom, • mends, the life he had been trained and fit-' W#' - a- •to lead a future worth having and worth dividing. The elation of it all tingled in his veins, and ho felt like singing. London, the k- v iar-(iistant, the inaccessible, now hummed in ; ' UV" f" 3 He sau ." the eddying, crowded $ streets, the emptying playhouses, the grey river sparking with lights. The smoke of a native oven thrilled him with memories of the Underground, and ho had but to close his " . «yea and the surf thundered with the noise of - arriving trains. ;• , •, > V:".; The .house could not contain him and his 'eager thoughts;, he must needs feel the sky overhead and ' 10 trades against his cheek and take all Nature into his puny confidence. ■Besides, Vaiala had nor/ a. new charm for apt? him; one he had never counted 011 to find boon now it would begin to melt into the ?&;> irrevocable past, its mist-swept mountains," its forests and roaring waterfalls would fade into nothingness and bccome no more than an impalpable phantom of his mind, the stuff that dreams are made of. He wandered along the path from one settlement to another" round the great half-moon of the bay, absorbing every impression with a now and tender interest. There were ti dozen little villages to be . ' passed before he could attain the rocky pro-~-c- montory that barred the western shore, pretty hamlets in groves of cocoanuts and breadi ; fruit, in each perhaps a dozen beehive houses V and as many sheds and boat shelters. Between village and village the path led him under rustling palms and beside the shallow , V-aters of_the lagoon and across a river where '■ 'he surprised some ,laughing girls at their bath. In the deep shade old men were mendfi-"-' ing nets, and children were playing tag and fe/l"--/- cricket with boisterous shouts, or marbles in £?% sandy places; from one house he heard the -clapping hands that announced the " ! ava;" an another the song and stamp of practising dancers. Hard and lonely though his life had been, this Samoan bay was endeared to him I" by a thousand pleasant memories and even'' by . the recollection of his prist unhappiness. ISK" •Here he had found peace and love, freedom from taskmasters, scenes more beautiful thanany picture, and not least a sufficiency to :■ eat*. A little money and his life might have been tolerable, even happy— enough money for a good-sized boat, a cow or two, and those six acres of the Pascoo estate he had so often ' longed to buy. Only the month before the American Consul had offered them for two ■ j-. hundred dollars Oho money, and here ho was with two hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket—seventeen hundred and fifty dollars currency. Cruel fate, that had made him in one turn of her wrist far too rich to care, Ho would buy them for Leata, he supposed: he must leave the girl some land to live on. -But whero now were all the day-dreams of the laying - out of his littlo estate?—the damming of , the noisy stream,' the fencing, terracing, and pathraaking ho nact had in his mind; the mangoes, oranges, >>~ nd avocadoes lie had meant to plant in that iSp Tn e o^?iv so -nfu wth coffce enough for a modest TCsene. ' What - 0 . snug, cog y- garden a man Mtght make of it. _ What a satisfaction and m-. £** D ? 1 -! ht .'?, avc bcen " How often had'ho talked of it with eata ' who had been no less IP * aorf A n h - lmSelf to harness their Quarterparadise! - 1X °° . them all a little h< i m he had taken 30 lightly " er fathers hou.se and paid for in min- , ■ > ssscw, iff xt s at ? eß would r | jwiauts and 'uf course; 111 • breadfruit, il^^adlyfoff^bu&h^Ilnas1 lnas^E he .would: not bo r • ~-«ho in her heart for°i Wa j ? solace for the donment? Be ilv, \ >er desolation and abanS tho kw-SS'S "«>¥*" of l^r, J wanderings. He would £f ?, in ail/ his > ler 7 from 'Apia and 1 I 4 £ , hcr some jeweland a big musical box if Hif S f°* new dresses, /.' \ 1 lf ell o fancied it. What

•would it matter if lie did go home in the steerage? It would be no hardship to a man like him. She would soon forget him, no •• doubt, and take up with : somebody else, and live happily ever afterwards 011 the six acres. Ah, well; ho mus'n't think too much about her or it would take r the edge; off 113 . high spirits and spoil the happiest day of his life. By this time he had worked quite round the bay, and almost without knowing it lie found. himself in front of Paul Englebert s store; Englebert was the other trader in Yialaa, a peppery, middle-aged Prussian who had been a good friend of his before those seven 'breadfruit trees had come between them. In his new-found affluence and consequent good humour the bitterness of that old 'feud suddenly passed away. He recalled Jinglebert's rough, jovial kindness; remembered how Paul had cared for him through the fever and helped him afterwards with money and trade. How could ho have been so petty as to make a quarrel of those breadfruit trees? He recollected, with irritable wonder at himself, that he had once drawn a pistol on tho old fellow; and all this over six feet of boundary and seven gnawed breadfruits. By Jove, he could afford to be generous, and hold out the right hand of friendship. Poor old Paul; it was a shame they hadn't spoken these two vears. . ■ . On the verandah, barefoot and m striped pyjamas, was Englebert, pretending not to see him. To Kinross as he walked up the path and mounted the verandah stairs the man looked old and sick' and not a little changed. ■ ' How do you do, Englebert V ho said. Tho German looked at him with smouldering eyes. " Gan't you seo I'm busy?" ho " You might offer a man a chair," said Kinross seating himself on the tool-chest. "Dere is no jair for dem clafc isn't welgome," said the German. "I used to bo welcome here," said Kinross. "There was a time when you were a precious good friend of mine, Paul Englebert." Dat wass long ago," said the trader. "I've been thinking," said Kinross, "that I've acted like a fool about those trees." ■ Dat was what I was' clinking, too—deso two-dree years," responded the other. "Take them; they are yours," said Kinross. "You can build your fence there tomorrow." , . - . , " " So," said Englebert, with dawning intelligence, "tho Yerman Gosnul lias at last to my gomplaint listened." "Hang the German Consul! No," cried Kinross, "I do it myself, because I was wrong; because you were good to me that time I was sick, and 'lent mo the hundred dollars and the trade." -- "And you want nodding?" asked Englebert, still incredulous. " I want to shake your hand and be friends again, old man," said Kinross, "same as we used to bo when we played dominoes every night, and you told me about the Austrian war, and how tho prince divided his cigars with you when you were wounded." The German looked away. "Oh, Kinross," ho said, with a queer shining look in his eyes, "you make mo much ashamed." . He turned suddenly round and wrung the Englishman's hand in an iron grasp. "I, too, was dam fool." "A friend is worth more than seven breadfruit," said Kinross. " It wass not breadfruit, it wass brinciple," said the German. "Proof; do drees dey aro nodding; hero it wass I wass hutted," and he laid a heavy paw against his breast. "Ho, Alalia, de beer!" His ' strapping native wife appeared with bottles and mugs. At the sight of their guest she could scarcely conceal her surprise. Prosit," said Englebert, touching glasses. "You know dem six agres of do Pascoe estate," ho said, looking very hard at his companion. "Very nice little place; very cheap; yoost behind your store?" Kinross nodded, but his face fell in spite of himself.

"I from the American Consul bought him," went on the German, " very sheap; two hundred dollars, Chile money." Kinross looked back. Englebert patted his hand and smiled ambiguously. " "Bey are yours," he said. "Pay me back when you have do money. I buy dem only to spite you. My friend, take dem." "Paul, Paul," cried Kinross, "I don't know what to say; how to thank you. Only this morning I got money from home, and the first thing I meant to do was to buy thorn."

; " All do Letter," said Englebert; " and •my boy, you plant coffee. Gobra, proof! gotton proof! It's do goffce at pays, and I will get you blenty leetle trees from my friend de gaptain in Utumapu plantation. You must go? So? Yoost one glass beer. Nein? Ho, Malia, de beer!" Kinross tore himself away with difficulty and started homewards, his heart swelling with kindness for the old Prussian. Ho exulted in the six acres he had so nearly lost and they now seemed him more precious than ever. Ho could hare kissed Paul Englebert's hand— was so pleased and grateful. It was no empty promise, that of the coffee trees from Utumapu; these would save him all manner of preparatory labour and put his little plantation six months ahead. Then he remembered he was leaving Vaiala and again he heard the hum of London in his ears. Well, he would explain about the trees to Leata, and would beg old Englebert to holp and advise her a bit. Poor Leata, she had lots of good sense and was very quick to Team. He could trust Leata.

He was crossing the malae or common of Polopolo when the sight of the chief's house put a new thought into his head. It was Tangaloa's house and he could see the chief himself bulking dimly in the shadow of a siapo. Tangaloa! Ho hadn't spoken with him in a year. This old war-worn chief had been good to him and in the beginning had overwhelmed him with kindnesses. But that was before he had shot the chief's dog and brought about the feud that had existed between them for a long time. It was annoying to have that everlasting dog 011 his verandah •at night, frightening Leata ' to fits and spilling the improvised larder au about the floor, not to speak of the chickens it had eaten and the eggs it had sucked. No, be couldn't blame himself for having shot that beast of a dog. But it had made bad blood between him and Tangaloa, and had cost him in one way or another, through the loss of the old chief's custom and influence, the value of a thousand chickens. But lie would make ii; up with Tangaloa, for ho meant to leave 110 man's ill-mill behind him. So lie walked deliberately towards the house and slipped under the eaves near the place where the old chief was sitting alone. " Talofa, Tangaloa," he cried out cordially, shaking hands. . The chief responded somewhat drily to the salutation and assumed the bored,'vacant expression of the unfriendly highbred. "That dog," began the trader. " That dog," repeated the chief, with counterfeit surprise. • •*" Your dogthe one I shot near my house," said Kinross, firing up with the memory of its misdeeds, " the dog that chased my chickens and ate my eggs, and plagued me all nght, like a forest devil. I want to take counsel with your highness about it." " But it is dead," said Tangaloa. " But. your high-chief-anger is not dead." faid Kinross. "Behold, I used to be like your eldest son, and tho day was 110 longer than your love for me. lam overcome with sorrow to remember the years that are gone, and now to live together as we do in enmity. What is the value of your dog that •I may pay you for it? And what present can I make besides that will turn your heart towards me again?" 'Cease," said the chief; "there was no worth to tho dog, and I have no anger against you. Kinilosi."

"You mock at me, Tangaloa," said Kinross. "There is anger in your eyes even as you speak tome." " Great was my love for that dog," said the chief; "it licked my face when I lav wounded on tho battleground. If I whistled it came to me, so wise was it and loving; and if I were sick it would not eat." " Weighty is ray shame and nam," said the trader. Would that I had never lifted my gun against it. But I will pay vou its worth and make you a present besides." "Impossible," said Tangaloa. " When the coeoanut is split, who can make it whole?" 'One can always get a new cocoanut." said Kinross. I will buy you tho best dog in Apia a high-chief of a dog, clever like a consul, and with a bark melodious as a musi-cal-box." ; At this Tangaloa laughed for tho first time. And what about your chickens?" he demanded And your things to eat hung out at night?" , 0 " It can eat all the chickens it likes " returned Kinross, "and I will feed it daily, also, with salt beef and sardines, if that will make us friends again, your highness." " Cease, Kinilosi.; I am your friend already," said Tangaloa, extending his hand. It is forgotten about tho dog, and, 10, the anger is buried."

«iri ' ie price-" inquired Kinross. One cannot buy friendship or barter loving kindness," said Tangaloa. "Again, I tell you there is no price. But if you would pare to give .me a bottle of kerosene, 5 for the lack of , which ... am V sore . distressed, those eights, well, I should be very glad." I shall be pleased indeed," said the trader, who of a sudden resumed an intent, listening attitude, : •" ,

"What is the matter?" demanded Tanga-

■ loa. " . • .■>_■-■■ "Sh-sh," exclaimed the white man. " There is nothing," said the chief. "Yes, : yes," said Kinross, "listen, your highness. A faint, faint bark like that of a spirit-dog—behold, like our two-one dog." " Oh," said the chief, looking about un- ! easily. • " Don't you hear it?" cried Kinross incredu- ' lously. "To me it is clear like tho mission L bell, thus—bow-wow-wow-give-some-sugar-and-some-tea-and-some tobacco-to-his-high--1 ness-Tangaloa-bow-bow-wow!'' The old chief fairly beamed. " Blessed was my dog in life, and blessed in death also," he cried. "Behold, Kinilosi, he also barks about a few fish hooks in a bag and for a small subscription to our new church -."I think ho.says fifty cents," said Kinross. __ "No, no," cried the chief, "it was like this, quite plain. One dollar—one dollar." "That ends it," said Kinross. "I must haste to obey the voice of tho spirit dog. Good-bye, your highness." " Good-bye, Kinilosi," returned tho chief warmly. "I laugh and talk jestingly, but my heart — "Barks," added Kinross quickly. ""Mine also, old friend. Good-bye." Ho strode off with a light step in the glow of enthusiasm and high spirits. It would be hard to leave the old village after all. Ho might travel far and not find hearts more generous or kindly, and vowed he would never forget his Samoans, no, if he lived a thousand years. And if, after all, the new order of things should fail to please and he should find himself stifled by the civilisation to which he had been so long a stranger, could ho not always return to this little paradise and live out the number of his days in perennial content? He would search for some savings bank in London and place , there to his credit a sum large enough to ship him back to the islands.. Whatever the pinch it should lie there untouched and sacred; and as he toiled in the stern, grey land of his birth tho thought. of that shining hoard would always be a comfort to him. But what it the bank should break—as banks do in /those centres of high civilisation, and ho should find himself stranded half the world away from the place lie loved so dearly! He shuddered at the thought. There should be two hoards, in two banks, or else; he would feel continually uneasy and disheartened.. The lino to the rear must be kept open at any cost. Ho found Leata sitting on .the floor spelling out " The Good News from New Guinea" in the missionary magazine. She was fresh from her bath, and her black, damp hair was outspread to the sunshine to dry. She rippled with smiles at his approach, and it seemed to him + hat she had never looked more radiant and engaging. He sat down beside her and pressed her curly hair against his lips and kissed it. How was it that such a little savage could appear to him more alluring, more daintily and gracefully formed than any white woman he had ever seen? Was he bewitched? He looked at her critically, dispassionately, and marvelled at the perfection of her wild, young beauty, marvelled, too, at her elegance and delicacy. And for heart and tenderness where was her match in all tho seas? Ho threw his arm around her and kissed her on the lips. " Of all things in the world what wouldst thou like most, Leata?" he asked. "To have theo always near me, Kinilosi," sho answered. " Before I had no understanding, and was like the black people in tho missionary book, but now my heart is pained, so full it is of love. When thou goest from mo I have no peace, and people talk and talk and I have no ears. I am like a mother when her little child is taken from her arms." "But hero are other things than love," persisted Kinross. " Earrings, musical-boxes, print for dresses." "Yes, many things," she said. "But I trouble not myself about them, Kinilosi. Sometimes I think of the land behind our house and the fine plantation we will make thero some day." "But if I gave you a little bag of gold shillings," he said, "and took thee to Apia, my pigeon, what wouldst thou buy?" "First, I would give ten dollars to the new church," she began. "Then for my father I would buy an umbrella and a shiny bag, in which he could carry his cartridges and tobacco when ho goes to war. . For my mother also an umbrella and a picture-book, like that of the missionary, with /photographs of Queen Victoria and captains of men-of-war. For my sister a Bible and a hymn-book, and for my brother a little pigeon-gun." Oh, thou foolish Leata, said Kinross, "and nothing at all for thyself?" "There is still more in my, bag," sho answered, "enough for a golden locket and a golden chain. And in tho locket there will be your picture and a lock of your hair —like the one the naval officer gave Titi's sister; and when I die, 10, 110 one shall touch it, for it shall lie on my breast in the grave." ' To-morrow we shall go to Apia and buy them," said Kinross. "This morning tho pastor brought me a letter from Britain with a present of many dollars, the six acres I have already purchased, and in Apia I shall get prickly wire for fencing, and many things we need for the clearing and planting of the land." . 1

Loato, clapped her hands for joy. "Oh, Kinilosi." sho cried, "it was breaking my heart; I feared the letter would make you go back to the white man's country." Kinross looked at her with a great gentleness. His resolution was taken, be it for good or evil. J " I shall never go back," he said. . Then in a rousing voice lie cried, so loudly that the natives started in the neighbouring houses, "In Vaiala shall I live and in Vaiala die."