“Is your mind so base that you cannot see and admire what is beautiful in the form God Almighty has created? Do you not see that what you do on this beautiful island is pollute their minds and sully their modest thoughts?”
Hines, fidgeting like a marionette with the strings loose, offered to send a fresh pig over for the feast—a gift of hospitality from one white man to another, he said before he hurriedly gathered himself to exit. Stevenson did not make a move to see him out. The novelist closed his eyes as though he were going to take a nap. I was relieved, confident Hines would never be seen near Vailima again. I suppose I shouldn’t have savored the moment as much as I did—as I leaned forward, my spectacles started to slip and, before I could catch them, fell from my face, drifting over the railing of the mezzanine.
They didn’t break. But it might have been better if they had, so they would not be recognizable. They floated down and landed with a rattle in Hines’s path. He noticed them right before his boot was about to crush them. He picked them up and studied them, before placing them back on the floor.
Davenport had received my message from Vao’s hand and remained in the outbuilding until Hines was gone. Running down the stairs to retrieve my spectacles and make my exit, I nearly ran headlong into Fanny, who did not flinch from a possible collision. She stood stock-still, with the same hard glare I had seen her direct toward us in the fields.
“What is it you want here?”
I do not know how a person can be described both as almost whispering and almost yelling, but that is how I remember her words sounded. I was prepared to babble out an answer when she turned on her heel and went to check on her husband, who had broken down into a violent cough.
When I recounted these details later that day to Davenport, he seemed neither as concerned with Hines’s visit nor as relieved at its outcome as I’d expected. Other things preoccupied him. The slow pace of Stevenson’s writing, the novelist’s untimely seclusion, my description of Fanny’s sudden hostility and her peculiar question to me. And Belial, I suspected, more than anything. Not that Davenport would talk about any of it, lately less than ever. Instead, he was spending hours at a time in a laconic and expressionless state; he appeared suddenly plumper than he really was (this happened regularly with him, like phases of the moon). At Vailima, he had to play the part of the amiable visitor. When he was with me in our hut, he dropped all pretense and resembled one of the Stevensons’ Buddhas.
Since Davenport’s stony muteness in this period renders him rather resistant to all descriptions, I will return for a moment to an earlier point in time, and recount for you a conversation that occurred when he was in a more loquacious state. I had interrupted myself before—weren’t you supposed to remind me, Mr. Clover?—when telling you of the time riding side by side when Davenport suddenly saw fit to finally answer a question of mine about whether he ever desired to be a writer. “Of course, every young man of a certain kind at a certain time in his life wishes to be a writer, often confusing eagerness and talent for reading with ability to write. You did not feel that way?”
“Who am I?” I replied. “It would never have crossed my mind.”
“A born bookseller.”
“How did your plans change?”
“About?”
I reminded him of the topic—his young self. “College,” Davenport began, “was a bitter disappointment.” At seventeen years old, he said, he knew with great passion what he did not want. He would not sit in a dusty chamber breathing the smoky air of a city street through a window while copying out legal documents. No, he would not share the destiny of other fellows who also had no fortunes to inherit. His would be a life of sophistication, a life of invitations into the best social circles and men of letters. He expected college to provide him with that.
Instead, Davenport explained to me, during his sophomore year he was accused of stealing. The matter had to do with a classmate, a rich bore named Halsey Alexander. The theft was that of a book, and the president of the faculty insisted Davenport confess. He did so, without coercion.
“Do you claim the book was yours?”
“No.”
“Young man, I hope you understand the seriousness of this action. A student in our college is forbidden to steal. You must know that. Are you aware that it is a rare and priceless book? A family heirloom that belonged to his grandfather.”
“Wait a minute there, just wait a minute. Professor, do you know where I found the book? It was propping open the window, the heavy pane crunching down the spine. Where I come from, books are rare treasures, and a book like this . . . Tell me honestly, do you think, sir, that Alexander deserves such a treasure?”
“Who do you think, young man, is in a position to judge that? A man from a family such as the Alexanders, or a man with an ancestry such as yours, a family of day laborers and wanderers?”
The president went on to insist that Davenport return the book at once and apologize for so basely insulting Alexander. Davenport handed over the book, shook the president’s hand, and said he would not apologize were the earth to start orbiting Venus.
? ? ?
PREPARING FOR HIS DEPARTURE from Princeton, New Jersey, the latent ambition to be a writer increased by the minute. His departure, and its basis in the theft of a book, in retrospect pointed out his true destiny. The whole truth was, Davenport had no particular interest in book editions or in collecting books. His antagonism toward his classmate was against his ignorance and undeserved wealth.
Davenport would attain his goals not only for himself but also on behalf of anyone whose dreams had been buried.
“What in the land do you intend to do for funds?” Flowers, one of his college friends, had asked him when he announced his plan to go to Boston.
“Boston is an expensive place, Davenport,” added in his roommate, Lank Bailey.