Early one morning, just as the trade
wind began to lift the white mountain mist which enveloped
the dark valleys and mountain slopes of the island,
Denison, the supercargo of the trading schooner Palestine,
put off from her side and was pulled ashore to the
house of the one white trader. The man’s
name was Handle, and as he heard the supercargo’s
footstep he came to the door and bade him good morning.
“How are you, Randle?”
said the young man, shaking hands with the quiet-voiced,
white-haired old trader, and following him inside.
“I’m going for a day’s shooting
while I have the chance. Can you come?”
Randle shook his head. “Would
like to, but can’t spare the time to-day; but
Harry and the girls will be delighted to go with you.
Wait a minute, and have a cup of coffee first.
They’ll be here presently.”
Denison put down his gun and took
a seat in the cool, comfortable-looking sitting-room,
and in a few minutes Hester and Kate Randle and their
brother came in. The two girls were both over
twenty years of age. Hester, the elder, was remarkably
handsome, and much resembled her father in voice and
manner. Kate was of much smaller build, full
of vivacity, and her big, merry brown eyes matched
the dimples on her soft, sun-tanned cheeks. Harry,
who was Randle’s youngest child, was a heavily-built,
somewhat sullen-faced youth of eighteen, and the native
blood in his veins showed much more strongly than it
did with his sisters. They were all pleased to
see the supercargo, and at once set about making preparations,
Harry getting their guns ready and the two girls packing
a basket with cold food.
“You’ll get any amount
of pigeons about two miles from here,” said the
old trader, “and very likely a pig or two.
The girls know the way, and if two of you take the
right branch of the river and two the left you’ll
have some fine sport.”
“Father,” said the elder
girl, in her pretty, halting English, as she picked
up her gun, “don’ you think Mr. Denison
would like to see ol’ Mary? We hav’
been tell him so much about her. Don’ you
think we might stop there and let Mr. Denison have
some talk with her?”
“Ay, ay, my girl. Yes;
go and see the poor old thing. I’m sure
she’ll be delighted. You’ll like
her, Mr. Denison. She’s as fine an old woman
as ever breathed. But don’t take that basket
of food with you, Kate. She’d feel awfully
insulted if you did not eat in her house.”
The girls obeyed, much to their brother’s
satisfaction, inasmuch as the basket was rather heavy,
and also awkward to carry through the mountain forest.
In a few minutes the four started, and Hester, as she
stepped out beside Denison, said that she was glad
he was visiting old Mary. “You see,”
she said, “she hav’ not good eyesight now,
and so she cannot now come an’ see us as she
do plenty times before.”
“I’m glad I shall see
her,” said the young man; “she must be
a good old soul.”
“Oh, yes,” broke in Kate,
“she is good and brave, an’ we all
love her. Every one mus’ love her.
She hav’ known us since we were born, and when
our mother died in Samoa ten years ago old Mary was
jus’ like a second mother to us. An’
my father tried so hard to get her to come and live
with us; but no, she would not, not even fo’
us. So she went back to her house in the mountain,
because she says she wants to die there. Ah,
you will like her... and she will tell you how she
saved the ship when her husband was killed, and about
many, many things.”
Two hours later Denison and his friends
emerged out upon cultivated ground at the foot of
the mountain, on which stood three or four native
houses, all neatly enclosed by low stone walls formed
of coral slabs. In front of the village a crystal
stream poured swiftly and noisily over its rocky bed
on its way seaward, and on each thickly wooded bank
the stately boles of some scores of graceful coco-palms
rose high above the surrounding foliage. Except
for the hum of the brawling stream and the cries of
birds, the silence was unbroken, and only two or three
small children, who were playing under the shade of
a breadfruit-tree, were visible. But these, as
they heard the sound of the visitors’ voices,
came towards them shouting out to their elders within
the huts that “four white people with guns”
had come. In a moment some grown people of both
sexes came out and shook hands with the party.
“This is Mary’s house,”
said Hester to Denison, pointing out the largest;
“let us go there at once. Ah, see, there
she is at the door waiting for us.”
“Come, come inside,” cried
the old woman in a firm yet pleasant voice, and Denison,
looking to the right, saw that “Mary,”
in spite of her years and blindness, was still robust
and active-looking. She was dressed in a blue
print gown and blouse, and her grey hair was neatly
dressed in the island fashion. In her smooth,
brown right hand she grasped the handle of a polished
walking-stick, her left arm she held across her bosom the
hand was missing from the wrist.
“How do you do, sir?”
she said in clear English, as, giving her stick to
Kate Randle, she held out her hand to the supercargo.
“I am so glad that you have come to see me.
You are Mr. Denison, I know. Is Captain Packenham
quite well? Come, Kitty, see to your friend.
There, that cane lounge is the most comfortable.
Harry, please shoot a couple of chickens at once,
and then tell my people to get some taro, and make
an oven.”
“Oh, that is just like you,
Mary,” said Kate, laughing, “before we
have spoken three words to you you begin cooking things
for us.”
The old woman turned her sunburnt
face towards the girl and shook her stick warningly,
and said in the native tongue
“Leave me to rule in mine own
house, saucy,” and then Denison had an effort
to restrain his gravity as Mary, unaware that he had
a very fair knowledge of the dialect in which she
spoke, asked the two girls if either of them had thought
of him as a husband. Kate put her hand over Mary’s
mouth and whispered to her to cease. She drew
the girl to her and hugged her.
Whilst the meal was being prepared
Denison was studying the house and its contents.
Exteriorly the place bore no difference to the usual
native house, but within it was plainly but yet comfortably
furnished in European fashion, and the tables, chairs,
and sideboard had evidently been a portion of a ship’s
cabin fittings. From the sitting-room the
floor of which was covered by white China matting he
could see a bedroom opposite, a bed with snowy white
mosquito curtains, and two mahogany chairs draped
with old-fashioned antimacassars. The sight of
these simple furnishings first made him smile, then
sigh he had not seen such things since
he had left his own home nearly six years before.
Hung upon the walls of the sitting-room were half a
dozen old and faded engravings, and on a side-table
were a sextant and chronometer case, each containing
instruments so clumsy and obsolete that a modern seaman
would have looked upon them as veritable curiosities.
From the surroundings within the room
Denison’s eyes wandered to the placid beauty
of the scene without, where the plumes of the coco-palms
overhanging the swift waters of the tiny stream scarce
stirred to the light air that blew softly up the valley
from the sea, and when they did move narrow shafts
of light from the now high-mounted sun would glint
and shine through upon the pale green foliage of the
scrub beneath. Then once again his attention
was directed to their hostess, who was now talking
quietly to the two Randle girls, her calm, peaceful
features seeming to him to derive an added but yet
consistent dignity from the harmonies of Nature around
her.
What was the story of her infancy?
he wondered. That she did not know it herself
he had been told by old Randle, who yet knew more of
her history and the tragedy of her later life than
any one else. Both young Denison, the supercargo
of five-and-twenty, and Randle, the grizzled wanderer
and veteran of sixty-five, had known many tragedies
during their career in the Pacific; but the story
of this half-blind, crippled old woman, when he learnt
it in full, appealed strongly to the younger man, and
was never forgotten in his after life.
They had had a merry midday meal,
during which Mary Eury for that was her
name promised Denison that she would tell
him all about herself after he and the Randles came
back from shooting, “but,” she added, with
her soft, tremulous laugh, “only on one condition,
Mr. Denison only on one condition.
You must bring Captain Packenham to see me before the
Palestine sails. I am an old woman-now,
and would like to see him. I knew him many years
ago when he was a lad of nineteen. Ah, it is so
long ago! That was in Samoa. Has he never
spoken of me?”
“Often, Mrs. Eury ”
“Don’t call me Mrs. Eury,
Mr. Denison. Call me ‘Mary,’ as do
these dear friends of mine. ‘Mary’ ’old’
Mary if you like. Every one who knew me and my
dear husband in those far, far back days used to call
me ‘Mary’ and my husband ‘Bob Eury’
instead of ‘Mrs. Eury’ and ‘Captain
Eury.’ And now, so many, many years have
gone... and now I am ’Old Mary’... and
I think I like it better than Mrs. Eury. And
so Captain Packenham has not forgotten me?”
Denison hastened to explain.
“Indeed he has not. He remembers you very
well, and would have come with me, but he is putting
the schooner on the beach to-day to clean her.
And I am sure he will be delighted to come and see
you to-morrow.”
“Of course he must. Surely
every English and American in the South Seas should
come and see me; for my husband was ever a good friend
to every sailor that ever sailed in the island trade from
Fiji to the Bonins. There now, I won’t
chatter any more, or else you will be too frightened
to come back to such a garrulous old creature.
Ah, if God had but spared to me my eyesight I should
come with you into the mountains. I love the
solitude, and the sweet call of the pigeons, and the
sound of the waterfall at the side of Taomaunga.
And I know every inch of the country, and blind as
I am, I could yet find my way along the mountain-side.
Kate, and you, Harry, do not keep Mr. Denison out too
late.”
By sunset the shooting party had returned,
and after a bathe in the cool waters of the mountain
stream Denison returned to the house. Kate Handle
and her sister, assisted by some native women, were
plucking pigeons for the evening meal. Harry
was lying down on the broad of his back on the grassy
sward with closed eyes, smoking, and their hostess
was sitting on a wide cane bench outside the house.
She heard the young man’s footstep, and beckoned
him to seat himself beside her. And then she told
him her story.