第33章 THE PRINCESS(6)
"She was the daughter of Queen Mamare.She was the woman wonderful.Unlike the Diana type of Polynesian, she was almost ethereal.She WAS ethereal, sublimated by purity, as shy and modest as a violet, as fragile-slender as a lily, and her eyes, luminous and shrinking tender, were as asphodels on the sward of heaven.She was all flower, and fire, and dew.Hers was the sweetness of the mountain rose, the gentleness of the dove.And she was all of good as well as all of beauty, devout in her belief in her mother's worship, which was the worship introduced by Ebenezer Naismith, the Baptist missionary.But make no mistake.She was no mere sweet spirit ripe for the bosom of Abraham.All of exquisite deliciousness of woman was she.She was woman, all woman, to the last sensitive quivering atom of her -"And I? I was a wastrel of the beach.The wildest was not so wild as I, the keenest not so keen, of all that wild, keen trading crowd.It was esteemed I played the stiffest hand of poker.I was the only living man, white, brown, or black, who dared run the Kuni-kuni Passage in the dark.And on a black night I have done it under reefs in a gale of wind.Well, anyway, I had a bad reputation on a beach where there were no good reputations.I was reckless, dangerous, stopped at nothing in fight or frolic; and the trading captains used to bring boiler-sheeted prodigies from the vilest holes of the South Pacific to try and drink me under the table.I remember one, a calcined Scotchman from the New Hebrides.It was a great drinking.He died of it, and we laded him aboard ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own place.A sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up on the beach of Manatomana.
"And of all unthinkable things, what did I up and do, one day, but look upon the Princess to find her good and to fall in love with her.It was the real thing.I was as mad as a March hare, and after that I got only madder.I reformed.Think of that! Think of what a slip of a woman can do to a busy, roving man! - By the Lord Harry, it's true.I reformed.I went to church.Hear me! I became converted.I cleared my soul before God and kept my hands - I had two then - off the ribald crew of the beach when it laughed at this, my latest antic, and wanted to know what was my game.
"I tell you I reformed, and gave myself in passion and sincerity to a religious experience that has made me tolerant of all religion ever since.I discharged my best captain for immorality.So did I my cook, and a better never boiled water in Manatomana.For the same reason I discharged my chief clerk.And for the first time in the history of trading my schooners to the westward carried Bibles in their stock.I built a little anchorite bungalow up town on a mango-lined street squarely alongside the little house occupied by Ebenezer Naismith.And I made him my pal and comrade, and found him a veritable honey pot of sweetnesses and goodnesses.And he was a man, through and through a man.And he died long after like a man, which I would like to tell you about, were the tale of it not so deservedly long.
"It was the Princess, more than the missionary, who was responsible for my expressing my faith in works, and especially in that crowning work, the New Church, Our Church, the Queen-mother's church.
"'Our poor church,' she said to me, one night after prayer-meeting.I had been converted only a fortnight.'It is so small its congregation can never grow.And the roof leaks.And King John, my hard-hearted father, will not contribute a penny.Yet he has a big balance in the treasury.And Manatomana is not poor.Much money is made and squandered, I know.I hear the gossip of the wild ways of the beach.Less than a month ago you lost more in one night, gambling at cards, than the cost of the upkeep of our poor church for a year.'
"And I told her it was true, but that it was before I had seen the light.(I'd had an infernal run of bad luck.) I told her I had not tasted liquor since, nor turned a card.I told her that the roof would be repaired at once, by Christian carpenters selected by her from the congregation.But she was filled with the thought of a great revival that Ebenezer Naismith could preach - she was a dear saint - and she spoke of a great church, saying:
"'You are rich.You have many schooners, and traders in far islands, and I have heard of a great contract you have signed to recruit labour for the German plantations of Upolu.They say, next to Sweitzer, you are the richest trader here.I should love to see some use of all this money placed to the glory of God.It would be a noble thing to do, and I shouldbe proud to know the man who would do it.'
"I told her that Ebenezer Naismith would preach the revival, and that I would build a church great enough in which to house it.
"'As big as the Catholic church?' she asked.
"This was the ruined cathedral, built at the time when the entire population was converted, and it was a large order; but I was afire with love, and I told her that the church I would build would be even bigger.
"'But it will take money,' I explained.'And it takes time to make money.'
"'You have much,' she said.'Some say you have more money than my father, the King.
"'I have more credit,' I explained.'But you do not understand money.It takes money to have credit.So, with the money I have, and the credit I have, I will work to make more money and credit, and the church shall be built.'
"Work! I was a surprise to myself.It is an amazement, the amount of time a man finds on his hands after he's given up carousing, and gambling, and all the time-eating diversions of the beach.And I didn't waste a second of all my new-found time.Instead I worked it overtime.I did the work of half a dozen men.I became a driver.My captains made faster runs than ever and earned bigger bonuses, as did my supercargoes, who saw to it that my schooners did not loaf and dawdle along the way.And I saw to it that my supercargoes did see to it.