“It is a hard and difficult place. But I am quite interested to see if you gentlemen will find, as I think you will, that this life is far better fun than people dream who fall asleep among the chimney stacks and telegraph wires. This is paradise, so close to heaven that to be really ill is almost impossible. This is the way it should be,” he said, suddenly returning his pencil to his paper with brightened eyes. “Yes, this is what I wanted to say!”
Wherever we went with him around the grounds of the estate, Stevenson’s shadow, John Chinaman, was usually behind us; I had heard one of the servants refer to him as a cook, though I had never seen him go toward the European-style kitchen with the natives who prepared the family meals. When Stevenson sat down in one of his writing fits, he would send John away on some chore. “He is a loyal fellow,” was how Stevenson described him once, “and when I write he watches with disapproval, as though I might break my fingers doing it. He is the opposite of my publishers. They want a sequel to Jekyll, a sequel to Treasure Island, sequels to sequels! What they don’t realize is that sequels are bound to disappoint those who have waited for them. I believe what I write now, Mr. Fergins, is in some ways my best work. I am—” he paused to shrug“—pretty sure.”
But the most telling comment of all made by the Scottish novelist was on another occasion, looking at us with arched eyebrows and an air of confession. We were gathered in the library, while he was carelessly storing away some of those pages he had just composed in a fit. “What I am writing,” said Stevenson, “will be my masterpiece, elusive until now.” Mouthwatering as it was, it was not the talk of masterpieces that was so important to a bookaneer’s ear. It was the other revelation. The novel was not finished yet—will be—and that meant Davenport had no choice but to wait before taking any action. It meant we would have to extend our presence in Samoa and at Vailima. Treading water could be the most dangerous part of a bookaneer’s mission. It multiplied the chances for something to go wrong.
Of course, any comments Davenport or I heard from Stevenson about his novel were received casually, remembered verbatim, and entered at the first opportunity into my notebook. The trick was to give him opportunities to speak about it without ever being asked. Another afternoon, he asked us to help carry several bundles. The towering palms swayed above us and helped us along with a light breeze. The novelist carried a shovel under his arm as we entered the bush.
“I do not want you to get the wrong idea about the houseboys. They are awfully good on the whole, but Samoans rather enjoy discipline. They always look older than they are, which makes you forget they are not very mature. They are more like a set of well-behaved young ladies. That is why I hate to do this.”
“What exactly are we doing, Tusitala?” Davenport interrupted him, growing a little anxious at the enigmatic errand. Stevenson was now tiring himself out digging a hole that began to take on the shape of a small grave.
He waved away our offers to help. “Burying that. Go ahead, my white gentlemen. Have a look for yourself.”
Davenport and I both eyed the bundles we had carried into the woods. I opened one, half-imagining finding one of the severed heads we’d heard were valued by the natives. “Clothes,” I announced.
“These are old clothes of mine and Lloyd’s we no longer use. If my native boys find them, they’ll start wearing them.”
“Wouldn’t that be better than burying them?” I asked.
“Oh, if a houseboy wants to wear a cast-off shirt over his lavalava, so be it. But European clothes do not suit their bodies. The scant covering and raw materials of their native style may look strange to our eyes, but their race developed that way for a good reason. Our clothes cling to them when wet, and do not protect them from the strong sun. They must be who they are, if they are to survive life and labor in the tropical climate. If they try to look European, which amuses them and some of the local whites, they die.”
“That is rather bleak,” I said.
He nodded and looked on with a cloudy gaze. “Sometimes I watch, as they are pushed from their lands, as whites introduce disease and opium and alcohol, and in a perspective of centuries I see their cases as ours, death coming in like a tide, and the day already numbered when there should be no more Samoans, and no more of any race whatever, and—here is a curious extension of my dream—no more literary works or readers.”
Stevenson broke his own reverie by coughing and wheezing.
“It is just the smoking,” he said, smiling unconvincingly between coughs. “You know my motto is ‘Cigarettes without intermission, except when coughing or kissing.’”
“May I?” Davenport asked, taking the shovel from Stevenson’s hands.
The novelist gave us more specifics about his book in progress, while Davenport deliberately slowed his digging. “The story begins about 1660 and ends in 1830, but perhaps I may even continue it to 1875 or so. Five, six generations, perhaps seven, figure therein. I can see it all. Some of the brevity of history, some of the detail of romance. The Shovels of Newton French will be the name. My finest novel yet written—mark my words, gentlemen, I will be remembered for this, if nothing else.”