第60章 LAUPEPA AND MATAAFA(2)

I may not say that trouble was hoped.I must say -if it were not feared,the practice of diplomacy must teach a very hopeful view of human nature.Mataafa and Laupepa,by the sudden repatriation of the last,found themselves face to face in conditions of exasperating rivalry.The one returned from the dead of exile to find himself replaced and excelled.The other,at the end of a long,anxious,and successful struggle,beheld his only possible competitor resuscitated from the grave.The qualities of both,in this difficult moment,shone out nobly.I feel I seem always less than partial to the lovable Laupepa;his virtues are perhaps not those which chiefly please me,and are certainly not royal;but he found on his return an opportunity to display the admirable sweetness of his nature.The two entered into a competition of generosity,for which I can recall no parallel in history,each waiving the throne for himself,each pressing it upon his rival;and they embraced at last a compromise the terms of which seem to have been always obscure and are now disputed.Laupepa at least resumed his style of King of Samoa;Mataafa retained much of the conduct of affairs,and continued to receive much of the attendance and respect befitting royalty;and the two Malietoas,with so many causes of disunion,dwelt and met together in the same town like kinsmen.It was so,that I first saw them;so,in a house set about with sentries -for there was still a haunting fear of Germany,-that I heard them relate their various experience in the past;heard Laupepa tell with touching candour of the sorrows of his exile,and Mataafa with mirthful simplicity of his resources and anxieties in the war.The relation was perhaps too beautiful to last;it was perhaps impossible but the titular king should grow at last uneasily conscious of the MAIRE DE PALAIS at his side,or the king-maker be at last offended by some shadow of distrust or assumption in his creature.I repeat the words king-maker and creature;it is so that Mataafa himself conceives of their relation:surely not without justice;for,had he not contended and prevailed,and been helped by the folly of consuls and the fury of the storm,Laupepa must have died in exile.

Foreigners in these islands know little of the course of native intrigue.Partly the Samoans cannot explain,partly they will not tell.Ask how much a master can follow of the puerile politics in any school;so much and no more we may understand of the events which surround and menace us with their results.The missions may perhaps have been to blame.Missionaries are perhaps apt to meddle overmuch outside their discipline;it is a fault which should be judged with mercy;the problem is sometimes so insidiously presented that even a moderate and able man is betrayed beyond his own intention;and the missionary in such a land as Samoa is something else besides a minister of mere religion;he represents civilisation,he is condemned to be an organ of reform,he could scarce evade (even if he desired)a certain influence in political affairs.And it is believed,besides,by those who fancy they know,that the effective force of division between Mataafa and Laupepa came from the natives rather than from whites.Before the end of 1890,at least,it began to be rumoured that there was dispeace between the two Malietoas;and doubtless this had an unsettling influence throughout the islands.But there was another ingredient of anxiety.The Berlin convention had long closed its sittings;the text of the Act had been long in our hands;commissioners were announced to right the wrongs of the land question,and two high officials,a chief justice and a president,to guide policy and administer law in Samoa.Their coming was expected with an impatience,with a childishness of trust,that can hardly be exaggerated.Months passed,these angel-deliverers still delayed to arrive,and the impatience of the natives became changed to an ominous irritation.They have had much experience of being deceived,and they began to think they were deceived again.Asudden crop of superstitious stories buzzed about the islands.

Rivers had come down red;unknown fishes had been taken on the reef and found to be marked with menacing runes;a headless lizard crawled among chiefs in council;the gods of Upolu and Savaii made war by night,they swam the straits to battle,and,defaced by dreadful wounds,they had besieged the house of a medical missionary.Readers will remember the portents in mediaeval chronicles,or those in JULIUS CAESAR when "Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds In ranks and squadrons."And doubtless such fabrications are,in simple societies,a natural expression of discontent;and those who forge,and even those who spread them,work towards a conscious purpose.

Early in January 1891this period of expectancy was brought to an end by the arrival of Conrad Cedarcrantz,chief justice of Samoa.