Charlie joined the stream of servants and we both followed. The natives had collected inside a small, dimly lit room entered through the library, a chamber we would later hear referred to as the master’s den or sanctum. Each took his or her place sitting on the floor, forming a semicircle around a narrow bed. Charlie threw a look back that cautioned us not to come closer, so we remained in the library.
Leaning my body toward the French doors, I could see arms, long and gaunt as oars, of the man who was sitting up in bed, wrapped in what appeared to be shawls and blankets, and propped up by pillows. Though his face was obscured from view, I knew at once it was him. That is one thing about Stevenson. Even a fingertip of his was unmistakable. In a pitch-dark room, one would surely feel his presence before ever seeing him.
I could also see the profile of Fanny standing by the bed, guarding him like some enchanted dragon beside a medieval king.
Stevenson began a prayer in English, his voice sonorous, commanding. “Our God, look down upon us and shine into our hearts. Help us to be far from falsehood so that each of us may stand before thy face in his integrity.”
The rest of the bizarre session was conducted in the native tongue. Each servant came up to the bed and placed his or her hand on a Bible, which Stevenson gripped with his long fingers, then repeated the very serious and absurd oath stated by their master.
We found Charlie later that day, and he translated the refrain best he could remember: “This is the Holy Bible here that I am touching. Behold me, O God! If I knew who it was that took away the pig or the place to which the stolen pig was taken, or have heard anything relating to the pig, and shall not declare the same—be made an end of by God this life of mine!”
Even before we knew what the words meant, I could make out enough to know that the ritual ensnared a bowlegged young man who trembled and stammered when it came to his turn to recite. After a brief exchange, the bowleg confessed to having eaten the missing pig in question.
“Fiaali’i,” Stevenson intoned after the culprit groveled for forgiveness, the master now switching to English, “your wish to eat was greater than your wish to be a gentleman. You have shown a bad heart and your sin is a great one, not for the pig—I hope you know the damn pig counts as naught—but because you have been false to your Vailima family. It is easy to say that you are sorry, that you wish you were dead: but that is no answer. We have lost far more than food meant for Lloyd’s birthday. We have lost our trust in you, which used to be so great, our confidence in your loyalty. See how many bad things have resulted from your first sin? You have hurt all our hearts here, not because of the pig, but because we are ashamed and mortified before the world. I am not your father. I am not your chief. The belly is your chief!”
Lloyd Osbourne would make an offhand remark during our stay in Samoa, capped by the philosophical shrug of his, that I cannot help but recall as I think of that scene we witnessed. “This, Fergus,” he said to me of Vailima, “is the only place where you will ever see Samoans run.”
? ? ?
IT WAS A BURNING HOT DAY on our next call to Vailima. Sitting in the great hall felt like being inside a volcano. A little native girl was fanning one side of Belle’s face with a beautiful span of crimson feathers, while Belle fanned her other cheek with a Japanese-style fan. She mentioned to us that her stepfather had been out on the grounds before our arrival but now, yet again, had retreated to the seclusion of his sanctum. I could see Davenport was trying his best to appear unmoved by our continuing bad luck. The more time went on without developing some kind of relationship with Stevenson, the harder it would be to invent excuses to keep calling on them, and I knew he worried that our invitations would run dry before he had a chance to ingratiate himself with the writer.
“It is a hard and unexciting life. Most times the only people there are to talk to around here are the domestics,” Belle complained, her plump pink lips puckered. “And they hardly speak English.”
“New faces must be a welcome sight, then,” Davenport ventured, perhaps hoping she would be our way of ensuring the continuation of our visits.
She looked him up and down, studying him with as much interest and doubt as when she had first met us. “Sometimes,” she said with so little inflection, it might have come from Davenport himself.
Fanny was bent over the spotless but dusty fireplace smoking a cigarette. I still had to swallow down my horror at the sight of the wife of one of the world’s greatest novelists smoking in a public room.
“Unexciting?” I wriggled into the conversation. “It seems there is no lack of excitement here, Miss Strong.”
“Yes,” she answered, taking a long puff from a cigarette. “For instance, when I found my husband had taken his opium and his native wife to the other side of the island. The ape, the disgusting ape, the foppish little drunken ape.”
“I see,” I surrendered.
“If you brought Austin home from school, you would be less lonely. A boy should be with his mother.”
“Even when the mother is as miserable as I am?” Belle replied to Fanny, then I swear the two women blew smoke at each other.
“Mrs. Stevenson,” Davenport said, “how long did it take to build this fine home?”
“Oh, quite long.”
It was like that between Davenport and Fanny Stevenson. He tried to nurture conversation with her, but she gave him nothing in return. She never told him to call her Fanny. Belle soon felt so warm she would not say more than a word or two at a time. After rolling his own cigarette, which I knew he despised, and smoking a little, Davenport looked over at the piano and said something horrifying.
“My dear Fergins,” he began without looking my way, “why not play a song for us?”
“What?”
“I’m sure the ladies would appreciate a distraction from the heat,” he said. “Mr. Fergins is often asked to play at parties and such. Go on now, Fergins.”