The Moon and Sixpence
was willing to live in penury where they had enjoyed consideration.
During his sea faring days he had cruised the South Seas, and he
determined now to seek his fortune there. He spent some months in
Papeete to make his plans and gain experience; then, on money borrowed
from a friend in France, he bought an island in the Paumotus. It was a
ring of land round a deep lagoon, uninhabited, and covered only with
scrub and wild guava. With the intrepid woman who was his wife, and a
few natives, he landed there, and set about building a house, and
clearing the scrub so that he could plant cocoa-nuts. That was twenty
years before, and now what had been a barren island was a garden.
“It was hard and anxious work at first, and we worked strenuously, both
of us. Every day I was up at dawn, clearing, planting, working on my
house, and at night when I threw myself on my bed it was to sleep like
a log till morning. My wife worked as hard as I did. Then children were
born to us, first a son and then a daughter. My wife and I have taught
them all they know. We had a piano sent out from France, and she has
taught them to play and to speak English, and I have taught them Latin
and mathematics, and we read history together. They can sail a boat.
They can swim as well as the natives. There is nothing about the land
of which they are ignorant. Our trees have prospered, and there is
shell on my reef. I have come to Tahiti now to buy a schooner. I can
get enough shell to make it worth while to fish for it, and, who knows?
I may find pearls. I have made something where there was nothing. I too
have made beauty. Ah, you do not know what it is to look at those tall,
healthy trees and think that every one I planted myself.”
“Let me ask you the question that you asked Strickland. Do you never
regret France and your old home in Brittany?”
“Some day, when my daughter is married and my son has a wife and is
able to take my place on the island, we shall go back and finish our
days in the old house in which I was born.”
“You will look back on a happy life,” I said.
“_Evidemment_, it is not exciting on my island, and we are very far
from the world—imagine, it takes me four days to come to Tahiti—but we
are happy there. It is given to few men to attempt a work and to
achieve it. Our life is simple and innocent. We are untouched by
ambition, and what pride we have is due only to our contemplation of
the work of our hands. Malice cannot touch us, nor envy attack. Ah,
_mon cher monsieur_, they talk of the blessedness of labour, and it is
a meaningless phrase, but to me it has the most intense significance. I
am a happy man.”
“I am sure you deserve to be,” I smiled.
“I wish I could think so. I do not know how I have deserved to have a
wife who was the perfect friend and helpmate, the perfect mistress and
the perfect mother.”
I reflected for a while on the life that the Captain suggested to my
imagination.
“It is obvious that to lead such an existence and make so great a
success of it, you must both have needed a strong will and a determined
character.”
“Perhaps; but without one other factor we could have achieved nothing.”
“And what was that?”
He stopped, somewhat dramatically, and stretched out his arm.
“Belief in God. Without that we should have been lost.”
Then we arrived at the house of Dr. Coutras.
Chapter LV
Mr. Coutras was an old Frenchman of great stature and exceeding bulk.
His body was shaped like a huge duck’s egg; and his eyes, sharp, blue,
and good-natured, rested now and then with self-satisfaction on his
enormous paunch. His complexion was florid and his hair white. He was a
man to attract immediate sympathy. He received us in a room that might
have been in a house in a provincial town in France, and the one or two
Polynesian curios had an odd look. He took my hand in both of his—they
were huge—and gave me a hearty look, in which, however, was great
shrewdness. When he shook hands with Capitaine Brunot he enquired
politely after _Madame et les enfants._ For some minutes there was an
exchange of courtesies and some local gossip about the island, the
prospects of copra and the vanilla crop; then we came to the object of
my visit.
I shall not tell what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my
own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his
vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his
massive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was,
as the phrase goes, as good as a play; and much better than most.
It appears that Dr. Coutras had gone one day to Taravao in order to see
an old chiefess who was ill, and he gave a vivid picture of the obese
old lady, lying in a huge bed, smoking cigarettes, and surrounded by a
crowd of dark-skinned retainers. When he had seen her he was taken into
another room and given dinner—raw fish, fried bananas, and chicken—_que
sais-je_, the typical dinner of the _indigène_—and while he was eating
it he saw a young girl being driven away from the door in tears. He
thought nothing of it, but when he went out to get into his trap and
drive home, he saw her again, standing a little way off; she looked at
him with a woebegone air, and tears streamed down her cheeks. He asked
someone what was wrong with her, and was told that she had come down
from the hills to ask him to visit a white man who was sick. They had
told her that the doctor could not be disturbed. He called her, and
himself asked what she wanted. She told him that Ata had sent her, she
who used to be at the Hôtel de la Fleur, and that the Red One was ill.
She thrust into his hand a crumpled piece of newspaper, and when he
opened it he found in it a hundred-franc note.
“Who is the Red One?” he asked of one of the bystanders.
He was told that that was what they called the Englishman, a painter,
who lived with Ata up in the valley seven kilometres from where they
were. He recognised Strickland by the description. But it was necessary
to walk. It was impossible for him to go; that was why they had sent
the girl away.
“I confess,” said the doctor, turning to me, “that I hesitated. I did
not relish fourteen kilometres over a bad pathway, and there was no
chance that I could get back to Papeete that night. Besides, Strickland
was not sympathetic to me. He was an idle, useless scoundrel, who
preferred to live with a native woman rather than work for his living
like the rest of us. _Mon Dieu_, how was I to know that one day the
world would come to the conclusion that he had genius? I asked the girl
if he was not well enough to have come down to see me. I asked her what
she thought was the matter with him. She would not answer. I pressed
her, angrily perhaps, but she looked down on the ground and began to
cry. Then I shrugged my shoulders; after all, perhaps it was my duty to
go, and in a very bad temper I bade her lead the way.”
His temper was certainly no better when he arrived, perspiring freely
and thirsty. Ata was on the look-out for him, and came a little way
along the path to meet him.
“Before I see anyone give me something to drink or I shall die of
thirst,” he cried out. “_Pour l’amour de Dieu_, get me a cocoa-nut.”
She called out, and a boy came running along. He swarmed up a tree, and
presently threw down a ripe nut. Ata pierced a hole in it, and the
doctor took a long, refreshing draught. Then he rolled himself a
cigarette and felt in a better humour.
“Now, where is the Red One?” he asked.
“He is in the house, painting. I have not told him you were coming. Go
in and see him.”
“But what does he complain of? If he is well enough to paint, he is
well enough to have come down to Taravao and save me this confounded
walk. I presume my time is no less valuable than his.”
Ata did not speak, but with the boy followed him to the house. The girl
who had brought him was by this time sitting on the verandah, and here
was lying an old woman, with her back to the wall, making native
cigarettes. Ata pointed to the door. The doctor, wondering irritably
why they behaved so strangely, entered, and there found Strickland
cleaning his palette. There was a picture on the easel. Strickland,
clad only in a _pareo_, was standing with his back to the door, but he
turned round when he heard the sound of boots. He gave the doctor a
look of vexation. He was surprised to see him, and resented the
intrusion. But the doctor gave a gasp, he was rooted to the floor, and
he stared with all his eyes. This was not what he expected. He was
seized with horror.
“You enter without ceremony,” said Strickland. “What can I do for you?”
The doctor recovered himself, but it required quite an effort for him
to find his voice. All his irritation was gone, and he felt—_eh bien,
oui, je ne le nie pas_—he felt an overwhelming pity.
“I am Dr. Coutras. I was down at Taravao to see the chiefess, and Ata
sent for me to see you.”
“She’s a damned fool. I have had a few aches and pains lately and a
little fever, but that’s nothing; it will pass off. Next time anyone
went to Papeete I was going to send for some quinine.”
“Look at yourself in the glass.”
Strickland gave him a glance, smiled, and went over to a cheap mirror
in a little wooden frame, that hung on the wall.
“Well?”
“Do you not see a strange change in your face? Do you not see the
thickening of your features and a look—how shall I describe it?—the
books call it lion-faced. _Mon pauvre ami_, must I tell you that you
have a terrible disease?”
“I?”
“When you look at yourself in the glass you see the typical appearance
of the leper.”
“You are jesting,” said Strickland.
“I wish to God I were.”
“Do you intend to tell me that I have leprosy?”
“Unfortunately, there can be no doubt of it.”
Dr. Coutras had delivered sentence of death on many men, and he could
never overcome the horror with which it filled him. He felt always the
furious hatred that must seize a man condemned when he compared himself
with the doctor, sane and healthy, who had the inestimable privilege of
life. Strickland looked at him in silence. Nothing of emotion could be
seen on his face, disfigured already by the loathsome disease.
“Do they know?” he asked at last, pointing to the persons on the
verandah, now sitting in unusual, unaccountable silence.
“These natives know the signs so well,” said the doctor. “They were
afraid to tell you.”
Strickland stepped to the door and looked out. There must have been
something terrible in his face, for suddenly they all burst out into
loud cries and lamentation. They lifted up their voices and they wept.
Strickland did not speak. After looking at them for a moment, he came
back into the room.
“How long do you think I can last?”
“Who knows? Sometimes the disease continues for twenty years. It is a
mercy when it runs its course quickly.”
Strickland went to his easel and looked reflectively at the picture
that stood on it.
“You have had a long journey. It is fitting that the bearer of
important tidings should be rewarded. Take this picture. It means
nothing to you now, but it may be that one day you will be glad to have
it.”
Dr. Coutras protested that he needed no payment for his journey; he had
already given back to Ata the hundred-franc note, but Strickland
insisted that he should take the picture. Then together they went out
on the verandah. The natives were sobbing violently. “Be quiet, woman.
Dry thy tears,” said Strickland, addressing Ata. “There is no great
harm. I shall leave thee very soon.”
“They are not going to take thee away?” she cried.
At that time there was no rigid sequestration on the islands, and
lepers, if they chose, were allowed to go free.
“I shall go up into the mountain,” said Strickland.