White Fire Part 36

So their arms were p.r.i.c.ked and they got their badges, and were no longer subject to the taunts of the favoured first batch, which had nearly led to friction in the village the night before.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LIFTING VEIL

Jean, and Alison Evans, and Mary Stuart found the tubby youngsters, and especially the little round, brown babies, irresistibly attractive.

Such merry, mischievous little imps the former, and each newcomer such a wonder of soft, sleek, dimpled, black-velvet-eyed brownness, that their hearts went out to them, and the mothers laughed at their doting absorption and cackled strenuously and meaningly among themselves. And Aunt Jannet, never having had any children of her own, knew more about the rights and wrongs of their upbringing than any single mother ever knew in this world before, and had to be restrained by main force at times from putting some of her more strenuous theories into practice.

But the good-natured brown women came to understand even Aunt Jannet's peculiarities in time, and to accept her efforts, so far as they accorded with their own ideas, with something like appreciation.

For educative purposes the children were, up to a certain age, left entirely to the care of the ladies, and it would have been hard to say whether pupils or teachers enjoyed most the time spent in nominal study in the wide, open schoolroom, or the still merrier jinks on the beach and river bank.

If Jean Blair's quondam friends in London could have seen her at play with her naked brown boys and girls on Kapaa'a front--well, in the first place they would not have known her, and when they did they would have renounced her acquaintance at once.

For the purpose of opening their little minds to better things than their fathers and mothers had known, she brought herself down to their level, became almost one of themselves, romped and played and danced with them, in the water and out of it, and captured all their hearts.

And she enjoyed this partial and temporary reversion to nature as she had never enjoyed life before. The children learned many things without knowing that they were being taught, and Jean herself learned not a little also.

Aunt Jannet looked on with surprise, and spasms of doubt at times--it was all so different from her ideas of missionary work. But she had much to occupy her in connection with the other women, and as regards things generally she held an open mind, with a reserve of gentle sarcasm in case these extremely odd ways should turn out worse than she knew her own more precise methods would have done.

The men took the older boys in hand and employed ways quite as unconventional and with equally happy results, and the girls of size were well left to the care of Alison Evans and Mary Stuart, whose special training had fitted them excellently for the work.

In addition to the extraordinary curriculum of their school, the men were working hard at the new foundations of life in Kapaa'a.

It was a beginning of things such as Kenneth Blair's soul delighted in.

He was at it night and day, and suffered no whit from all the hard work. For it was better even than recreation, since to all intents and purposes it was creation itself, the bringing of order out of chaos, the evolution of new life.

Ha'o, in the large hope of becoming a nation, worked with them hand to hand, and heart to heart. Savage born and all untutored, he was gifted with a sharp wit and a clear understanding, and he was a born ruler of men. He was tall in stature, and his bearing they had noted even in the hold of the _Blackbirder_. Of late his presence had seemed to increase in dignity, possibly from his own large belief in the future, possibly because they viewed him in the light of what they hoped to make him. Whatever it was, his own people noticed it also, and even the last returned prodigals never ventured to cross him.

His confidence in the wisdom and good faith of the white men was implicit. When he placed his hand in Blair's, the day they landed, and proclaimed himself his man, and again when they discussed the delicate subject of man-eating after his illness, he meant what he said and stuck to it loyally.

Not that he by any means a.s.sented at once to every suggestion they made. He could argue like an Old Bailey lawyer, and until a matter was explained to him so that he understood all the ins and outs, and the ultimate end and aim of it, and saw from his own point of view just how it would affect his people and himself, he would have none of it.

He would listen politely, follow with the most patient intentness, question till it was clear, argue-bargle occasionally, as Captain Cathie put it, and then,--"Kenni, it is good. It shall be,"--and some new brick was ready for the foundations.

They all enjoyed an argument with Ha'o. The turns of his quick mind were so odd and illuminating at times, that, as Evans said, it was actually educational.

Stuart especially delighted in him.

"He's an absolute revelation," he said, "And I'm more and more certain that there's more than ordinary savage blood in him. It's very queer to think of, you know, Blair. It's a clear case of reversion."

"And of evolution."

"I wonder now, if, by any conjunction of circ.u.mstances, we in Great Britain could ever go back like that."

"Impossible. The very suggestion is horrible."

"Nothing is impossible," said Evans. "The whole country might be devastated by a pestilence, and the few survivors might lapse into anything."

"Unless the whole earth were devastated in the same way, the survivors would have common sense enough to get back to their kind. But all this won't help Kapaa'a boys, so let's get to business."

They went very wisely to work, with the wisdom of long deliberation on other men's failures and successes. They imposed no restrictions save such as were absolutely necessary for the general well-being, and even these made for freedom. For the freedom of savagery is bondage worse than slavery.

They promulgated through Ha'o simple rules for the protection of life and property, and saw them carried out with the most rigid inflexibility. Any disputes, and there were many, were brought before the chief sitting in judgment on the verandah of his house on certain days, with the white men in attendance to a.s.sist his deliberations.

At first the _Torch_ men acted as police when necessary, and carried out the orders of the court. But before long certain of the tribesmen, becoming distinguished above their fellows for their sobriety of conduct and general demeanour, were nominated to headships of sections, and did all that was necessary.

And Kapaa'a slept of a night, freed for ever from the stealthy terrors of the dark.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE GENTLE MARTYR

All these matters took time, and while their hands and hearts were full of them there came to them certain other little matters which filled both hands and hearts to overflowing.

To Kenneth and Jean Blair was born a son, and a month later to Charles and Alison Evans a daughter, and it is doubtful if anything in the history of Kapaa'a had ever stirred the feminine portion of the community to such a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm as did the arrival of these little white strangers.

"Now," said the brown women, with deeper lights in their l.u.s.trous eyes, as they gazed admiringly on the little pink-and-white squirmers, "you belong to us indeed, since you have borne children among us."

And every day they made pilgrimages to the two new shrines, and sat worshipfully, while the unconscious little saints performed their morning ablutions and then lay gazing placidly out of their blue eyes at the sights which no one else could see. Those striking blue eyes--the blue of the sky up above--completed the capture of the dark-eyed ones. There were blue eyes in plenty among the grown-up whites, but never were blue eyes like these, and the dark eyes never tired of gazing at them.

Of the rapturous joy of the two mothers, and the deep thankfulness of the fathers, there is no need to speak. For a time the new maternal cares monopolised the former, and the latter went into their island work with new high lights in their faces and with even greater vigour than before.

Aunt Harvey exulted in those babies as though she had had not a little to do with bringing them about, and Mary Stuart gloated over them with blushing cheeks and kindling eyes that told their own hopeful stories.

Every man of the _Torch_ offered his services as nursemaid to carry them about the beach, and the numbers of small brothers and sisters they had all been in the habit of devoting their early years to was simply marvellous.

The christening ceremony--Kenneth Kapaa'a Blair and Alison Kaapa'a Evans--was an occasion of high festival throughout the islands, and Blair, with his life-work always large in his mind, turned it to account. Aunt Harvey was not present at that high ceremony, to her very great regret but more greatly to her honour. And this is how it came about.

Intercourse with the other islands had been constantly maintained by the regular visitations of the _Torch_ and the quondam _Blackbird_ schooner--renamed the _Jean Arnot_ and captained by Jim Gregor, first officer of the _Torch_; but, compared with what had been done on Kapaa'a, the advances had been small.

Blair had, for a long while past, recognised the fact that the greatest object-lesson he could possibly offer the other chiefs was the sight of what was being done on Kapaa'a. But at the first suggestion of taking them over in the ship to see for themselves, their suspicions were in arms. That was an old trick of the white men's. They had all heard how the brown men were decoyed on board the white men's ships under wonderful promises, and never heard of again. They accepted all he gave them, they listened to all he had to say, but sail away in the big ship they would not.

Here was a chance not to be missed. Surely never in this world was there seen a younger pair of missionaries than Master Kenneth Kapaa'a Blair--Kenni-Kenni to the natives--and Miss Alison Kapaa'a Evans--Alivani--when they set out, in their frills and furbelows, to wile the hearts of the brown men and women of the outer islands.

Ha'o and Nai went with them, to add their persuasions and the argument of their presence to the rest, and Aunt Jannet went because she knew something untoward would happen to those babies unless her eye was on them.

Blair knew it would be no easy matter at best, and it was not.

At Kanele, the first island they came to, the largest of the group after Kapaa'a, about thirty miles away, the old chief Maru received them with the heartiest of welcomes, and his old wife and her daughter-in-law and all the other women went into raptures over the blue-eyed babies.

But when the subject of the visit was cautiously broached, the old man stiffened at once with his natural suspicion and declined the invitation on the spot, and nothing they could say would persuade him to it.

They stayed the night, however, and Ha'o had much talk with the old man's son, a bright stalwart fellow over six feet high whose name was Kahili. In the morning Kahili announced his intention of going with the white men. Whereupon loud lamentations from his father and mother and wife and children, who clung to him wherever they could grip, and expressed their intention of anchoring him to his native soil at cost of their lives. He reasoned with them good-humouredly at first, but finally began to get angry at the exhibition, and the more they tried to dissuade him the more determined was he to go.