STILL GOING THIRD

Taranaki Daily News, 19 September 1931, Page 17 (Supplement)

STILL GOING THIRD

THE POET OF THE FIJIS

(’By

“Juvenis.”)

The tall, fair girl from New Zealand at the Suva boarding-house was sitting down opposite me on the rail of the verandah. She carried a book in her hand; I put my book down because I knew she was going to begin asking questions. She was always asking questions. ‘‘What are you reading?” she. inquired. “One of Locke’s,” I replied. “What are you reading?” I asked, keeping the ball rolling. “Oh, a History of New Zealand,” she said carelessly.

One of these days I am going to carry a book round with me and sit on verandah railings in front of people with books. Then I shall say, “What are you reading?” and when they say “Ruby M. Ayres,” or ‘‘Berta Ru,ck, what are you reading?’’, I shall wave the book about in an off-handed manner and reply, “Darwin’s Origin of Species.” “What boat are you going home on?” she asked.

“I’m going on the — next month/’ I said. • '

“I’m going on the —too,” she said. I thought she would be able to ask the sailors lots and lots of questions. “I’m going first class,” she said. “Are you going first or second?” “No, ■ I’m going third,” I said, and hated the trace of snobbishness that made nie blush. Because I quite like going third. . The fact is that going third is—lijce a lady drinking gin—considered not quite “respectable.” Unless it is a plain necessity the third class is shunned by pleasure travellers. It is felt to be* an egregious social blunder, like drinking tea out of one’s saucer. It’s all a matter of convention.

Seen through the rather dusty spectacles of convention, the third class assumes a tremendously horrific aspect, a kind of resort of rogues and vagabonds who are released - within, certain areas of the ship for exercise by day, and herded together at odd times for food and sleep. It is nothing of the sort. It is simply a gathering of quiet people with pleasant manners who are not very well off. “A man’s money is much safer here than in the first* class,” said/'the old farmer from New Zealand, scratching his chin .while he let his words sink in. His .fingers’. rustled soothingly in the stubble. He had not shaved for three days-’because he was on holiday. . “Do you think so?” I inquired, “I should have thought—” “It’s like this,” he said, dragging his forefinger out .of tile undergrowth and wagging it in my face. “All the crooks go first and second, where the money m. There’s no pickings in the third.” He was a big broad man with a square, knobby face, and he wore what looked like a very hard “hard-hitter” hat. One evening undei - the stars he told us his “religion.” “Do as you would be done by •is my religion,” he said, ‘‘but, if anyone puts the dirty across you, get him! I once chased six hundred miles after a feller who took my brother down for £ r 2o0 —but he got away.” And looking at that hard frame, that hard face and that hard hat, I thought that “feller” was lusky. Nothing was more natural than that I should meet “Suva’s poet” travelling third. He had been “retrenched’’ from a business position in the Islands, and was travelling to Australia. He was a large, fleshy man with a very bald crown which he hid by parting his hair an inch above his left ear arid brushing the hair completely across the top of his head. The first time I saw him I was leaning against the rail of the ship on the second night out from Suva. The sky Was tricked out and patterned with stars, and I was looking at the Southern Cross when he lurched up unsteadily and quoted in a thick, liquorish voice: “At night the stars leapt forth and trembled.” “That’s George Meredith,” I said, and wondered who on earth was this large inebriated man who knew the works of a forgotten genius. “From the ‘Ordeal of Richard Feverel,’ ” he said. “In the. love scene between Richard and Lucy,” I continued. “Good as anything in Shakespeare,” said he, and we shook hands. He told me he had been Suva’s poet, Suva’s wicket-keeper and a capable singer, but none of these had stopped him from being retrenched. He had read all Meredith. In fact it was through happening to quote Meredith to a man many years ago that he had first got a position in the Fiji Treasury Department. We parted, but later on in the evening when I went down to supper I found him again. The winged spirit of poetry had come upon him, and he was reciting his verse, with large, palmy gestures, to the slightly surprised but., kindly tolerant crowd of passengers at the supper-table. Ships go up and ships go down From Sydney through to Suva town But as for me I sit and frown he declaimed. Everybody took it very well. . It was the same attitude of kindly tolerance that made the third class so pleasant to travel in. While the first class passengers were still glowering at one another over the tops of their newspapers and waiting for introductions, we in the third had already told one another the little histories of our lives. We were ‘not so finicky over trifling things. - This ship was the Pride of the Pacific. 'She had an air of well-being and comfort; she was richly but not showily fitted out; she had all the solid British virtues. She set a standard and the ship’s company, easily mannered and surprisingly thoughtful, lived up to it. The third class was so comfortable that one wondered why people travelled first at all.

The only thing one envied them was the bugle. It was a beautiful bugle and it seemed to blow for dressing for dinner, for dinner and even for clearing, away the dishe*. We had only a gong.