Louis Becke - Âmona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others

Âmona was, as his master so frequently told him—accentuating the remark with a blow or a kick—only “a miserable kanaka.” Of his miserableness there was no doubt, for Denison, who lived in the same house as he did, was a daily witness of it—and his happiness. Also, he was a kanaka—a native of Niué, in the South Pacific; Savage Island it is called by the traders and is named on the charts, though its five thousand sturdy, brown-skinned inhabitants have been civilised, Christianised, and have lived fairly cleanly for the past thirty years.

Âmona and Denison had the distinction of being employed by Armitage, one of the most unmitigated blackguards in the Pacific. He was a shipowner, planter, merchant, and speculator; was looked upon by a good many people as “not a bad sort of a fellow, you know—and the soul of hospitality.” In addition, he was an incorrigible drunken bully, and broke his wife’s heart within four years after she married him. Âmona was his cook. Denison was one of his supercargoes, and (when a long boat of drunkenness made him see weird visions of impossible creatures) manager of the business on shore, overseer, accountant, and Jack-of-all-trades. How he managed to stay on with such a brute I don’t know. He certainly paid him well enough, but he (Denison) could have got another berth from other people in Samoa, Fiji, or Tonga had he wanted it. And, although Armitage was always painfully civil to Denison—who tried to keep his business from going to the dogs—the man hated him as much as he despised Âmona, and would have liked to have kicked him, as he would have liked to have kicked or strangled any one who knew the secret of his wife’s death and his child’s lameness. And three people in Samoa did know it—Âmona, the Niué cook, Dr. Eckhardt, and Denison. Armitage has been dead now these five-and-twenty years—died, as he deserved to die, alone and friendless in an Australian bush hospital out in the God-forsaken Never-Never country, and when Denison heard of his death, he looked at the gentle wife’s dim, faded photograph, and wondered if the Beast saw her sweet, sad face in his dying moments. He trusted not; for in her eyes would have shown only the holy light of love and forgiveness—things which a man like Armitage could not have understood—even then.

She had been married three years when she came with him to Samoa to live on Solo-Solo Plantation, in a great white-painted bungalow, standing amid a grove of breadfruit and coco-palms, and overlooking the sea to the north, east, and west; to the south was the dark green of the mountain-forest.

“Oh! I think it is the fairest, sweetest picture in the world,” she said to Denison the first time he met her. She was sitting on the verandah with her son in her lap, and as she spoke she pressed her lips to his soft little cheek and caressed the tiny hands. “So different from where I was born and lived all my life—on the doll, sun-baked plains of the Riverina—isn’t it, my pet?”

“I am glad that you like the place, Mrs. Armitage,” the supercargo said as he looked at the young, girlish face and thought that she, too, with her baby, made a fair, sweet picture. How she loved the child! And how the soft, grey-blue eyes would lose their sadness when the little one turned its face up to hers and smiled! How came it, he wondered, that such a tender, flower-like woman was mated to such a man as Armitage!

Long after she was dead, Denison heard the story—one common enough. Her father, whose station adjoined that of Armitage, got into financial difficulties, went to Armitage for help, and practically sold his daughter to the Beast for a couple of thousand pounds. Very likely such a man would have sold his daughter’s mother as well if he wanted money.

As they sat talking, Armitage rode up, half-drunk as usual. He was a big man, good-looking.

“Hallo, Nell! Pawing the damned kid as usual! Why the hell don’t you let one of the girls take the little animal and let him tumble about on the grass? You’re spoiling the child—by God, you are.”

“Ah, he’s so happy, Fred, here with me, and–”

“Happy be damned—you’re always letting him maul you about. I want a whisky-and-soda, and so does Denison—don’t you?” And then the Beast, as soon as his wife with the child in her arms had left the room, began to tell his subordinate of a “new” girl he had met that morning in Joe D’Acosta’s saloon.

“Oh, shut up, man. Your wife is in the next room.”

“Let her hear—and be damned to her! She knows what I do. I don’t disguise anything from her. I’m not a sneak in that way. By God, I’m not the man to lose any fun from sentimental reasons. Have you seen this new girl at Joe’s? She’s a Manhiki half-caste. God, man! She’s glorious, simply glorious!”

“You mean Laea, I suppose. She’s a common beacher—sailor man’s trull. Surely you wouldn’t be seen ever speaking to her? ”

“Wouldn’t I! You don’t know me yet! I like the girl, and I’ve fixed things up with her. She’s coming here as my nursemaid—twenty dollars a month! What do you think of that?”

“You would not insult your wife so horribly!”

He looked at Denison sullenly, but made no answer, as the supercargo went on:

“You’ll get the dead cut from every white man in Samoa. Not a soul will put foot inside your store door, and Joe D’Acosta himself would refuse to sell you a drink! Might as well shoot yourself at once.”

“Oh, well, damn it all, don’t keep on preaching. I—I was more in fun than anything else. Ha! Here’s Âmona with the drinks. Why don’t you be a bit smarter, you damned frizzy-haired man-eater?”

Amona’s sallow face flushed deeply, but he made no reply to the insult as he handed a glass to his master.

“Put the tray down there, confound you! Don’t stand there like a blarsted mummy; clear out till we want you again.”

The native made no answer, bent his head in silence, and stepped quietly away. Then Armitage began to grumble at him as a “useless swine.”

“Why,” said Denison, “Mrs. Armitage was only just telling me that he’s worth all the rest of the servants put together. And, by Jove, he is fond of your youngster—simply worships the little chap.”

Armitage snorted, and turned his lips down. Ten minutes later, he was asleep in his chair.

Nearly six months had passed—six months of wretchedness to the young wife, whose heart was slowly breaking under the strain of living with the Beast. Such happiness as was hers lay in the companionship of her little son, and every evening Tom Denison would see her watching the child and the patient, faithful Âmona, as the two played together on the smooth lawn in front of the sitting-room, or ran races in and out among the mango-trees. She was becoming paler and thinner every day—the Beast was getting fatter and coarser, and more brutalised. Sometimes he would remain in Apia for a week, returning home either boisterously drunk or sullen and scowling-faced. In the latter case, he would come into the office where Denison worked (he had left the schooner of which he was supercargo, and was now “overseering” Solo-Solo) and try to grasp the muddled condition of his financial affairs. Then, with much variegated language, he would stride away, cursing the servants and the place and everything in general, mount his horse, and ride off again to the society of the loafers, gamblers, and flaunting unfortunates who haunted the drinking saloons of Apia and Matafele.

One day came a crisis. Denison was rigging a tackle to haul a tree-trunk into position in the plantation saw-pit, when Armitage rode up to the house. He dismounted and went inside. Five minutes later Amona came staggering down the path to him. His left cheek was cut to the bone by a blow from Armitage’s fist. Denison brought him into his own room, stitched up the wound, and gave him a glass of grog, and told him to light his pipe and rest.