I accepted the gift she had carried in a saddlebag.
Her face tightened. “Mr. Fergins, you know that I welcomed your presence around Vailima from the time of your arrival. I have not been able to speak freely for fear of Louis hearing, but I have tried to warn you.”
“Please go on, Fanny.” Still worried I might place the mission in jeopardy, I glanced around furtively but there was no sign of Davenport. “Should we speak inside our cottage?”
I balanced the large melon on my hip and we began to walk side by side, but she guided me farther from the cottage. “No, let us stay outside. I cannot stay very long before I am missed. Besides, my warning is for you, and concerns Mr. Porter. I had one of our outside boys watching your cottage so I knew when I could speak to you alone. I am afraid for your safety.”
“How do you mean?”
“When you first arrived with Mr. Porter, I understood you gentlemen were passing through. You know how rare visitors are out here, and can imagine why I was so anxious to find out the latest news from Britain and Europe from you. But then there came a change in his eyes.”
“Tusitala’s?” I asked.
Her own eyes flashed with urgency as she turned toward me. “Mr. Porter’s. The island infected him. Just as it had my Louis long before you came.”
“Do you mean to suggest some kind of tropical illness?”
She grabbed my wrist. “I mean something far more dangerous than fever, than the hurricanes or even the most warlike of the savages—well, I do not like to call them that—it is the effect of being here for too long on certain white men. How do I explain it? It . . . casts a spell . . .” She shook her head and tried again. “Returns a man to his primal state. Louis thinks my peasant soul comes out when I work on the land, but it is men who become drunk with dominion over the earth and soon are ready to sell their trousers and douse themselves in coconut oil. Their imagination grows out of proportion to real life. It is why Louis likes to write here, because he feels free of all constraints. But it is also what scares me down in my bones. You see it in the foreign consuls who seek power here, in the missionaries, and now in my husband and your friend. Vailima is no longer just a home we built for our family; it is an ancestral home—and we are the ancestors. Don’t you see it forming in his eyes? In Mr. Porter’s?”
I adjusted the fruit, which became heavier as I thought about her frantic questions.
“That melon—I brought the seeds with me to Samoa, you know. Look at it again, Mr. Fergins,” she went on, her bushy eyebrows curling downward with impatience. I held it up and the lamplight went right through it, as though it were a round, fat telescope. My fingers touched the hollow, slimy middle of the melon.
“The rats have been eating through them. A rich and beautiful fruit from this infertile ground, but the core is eaten away by invisible forces.”
She began hurrying back toward the tree where she had tied her horse. I shifted my balance and caught up with her. “I can assure you, Fanny, we have no plans to stay indefinitely. Mr. Porter’s work, the book he wishes to write, simply takes time.”
“I must go before I am missed. They say that after two months in Samoa, a white man will go mad. If you wish to save yourself, then see to it that you both leave this place quickly. You must promise me that.” In her gaze and her imploring voice, I saw the stern mother in her, and understood how both of her grown children had trouble leaving her side.
? ? ?
THE NEXT THREE DAYS and nights Davenport barely said a word, and I must admit I did not try very hard to persuade him to break his silence. Of course, I told him of Fanny Stevenson’s visit and my conversation with her, but he had so little to say in reply that this exchange deepened the chasm between us. The longer we avoided talking, the harder it was to try. What would you do about it, Mr. Clover?
—About what, Mr. Fergins?
If your friend were responsible for such a . . . horrible . . . wretched . . . such a tragic death, how would you have proceeded?
—I suppose I would have just the same thoughts as you. How could he still be a friend of mine after that? I would have marched right out the door and run away, very far away, as Mrs. Stevenson urged you to do.
I told you the story enters dark places. So you would have jettisoned him altogether?
—Yes, exactly. Why, I would have asked Cipaou to take me to the British consulate and make immediate arrangements to go home.