CHAPTER V—­KING AND COMMONS

We saw but little of the commons of the isle.  At first we met them at the well, where they washed their linen and we drew water for the table.  The combination was distasteful; and, having a tyrant at command, we applied to the king and had the place enclosed in our tapu.  It was one of the few favours which Tembinok’ visibly boggled about granting, and it may be conceived how little popular it made the strangers.  Many villagers passed us daily going afield; but they fetched a wide circuit round our tapu, and seemed to avert their looks.  At times we went ourselves into the village--a strange place.  Dutch by its canals, Oriental by the height and steepness of the roofs, which looked at dusk like temples; but we were rarely called into a house:  no welcome, no friendship, was offered us; and of home life we had but the one view:  the waking of a corpse, a frigid, painful scene:  the widow holding on her lap the cold, bluish body of her husband, and now partaking of the refreshments which made the round of the company, now weeping and kissing the pale mouth. (’I fear you feel this affliction deeply,’ said the Scottish minister.  ‘Eh, sir, and that I do!’ replied the widow.  ‘I’ve been greetin’ a’ nicht; an’ noo I’m just gaun to sup this bit parritch, and then I’ll begin an’ greet again.’) In our walks abroad I have always supposed the islanders avoided us, perhaps from distaste, perhaps by order; and those whom we met we took generally by surprise.  The surface of the isle is diversified with palm groves, thickets, and romantic dingles four feet deep, relics of old taro plantation; and it is thus possible to stumble unawares on folk resting or hiding from their work.  About pistol-shot from our township there lay a pond in the bottom of a jungle; here the maids of the isle came to bathe, and were several times alarmed by our intrusion.  Not for them are the bright cold rivers of Tahiti or Upolu, not for them to splash and laugh in the hour of the dusk with a villageful of gay companions; but to steal here solitary, to crouch in a place like a cow-wallow, and wash (if that can be called washing) in lukewarm mud, brown as their own skins.  Other, but still rare, encounters occur to my memory.  I was several times arrested by a tender sound in the bush of voices talking, soft as flutes and with quiet intonations.  Hope told a flattering tale; I put aside the leaves; and behold! in place of the expected dryads, a pair of all too solid ladies squatting over a clay pipe in the ungraceful ridi.  The beauty of the voice and the eye was all that remained to those vast dames; but that of the voice was indeed exquisite.  It is strange I should have never heard a more winning sound of speech, yet the dialect should be one remarkable for violent, ugly, and outlandish vocables; so that Tembinok’ himself declared it made him weary, and professed to find repose in talking English.