第64章 A PAUMOTUAN FUNERAL(2)

By rights it should have been otherwise.The mat should have been buried with its owner;but,the family being poor,it was thriftily reserved for a fresh service.The widow should have flung herself upon the grave and raised the voice of official grief,the neighbours have chimed in,and the narrow isle rung for a space with lamentation.But the widow was old;perhaps she had forgotten,perhaps never understood,and she played like a child with leaves and coffin-stretchers.In all ways my guest was buried with maimed rites.Strange to think that his last conscious pleasure was the CASCO and my feast;strange to think that he had limped there,an old child,looking for some new good.And the good thing,rest,had been allotted him.

But though the widow had neglected much,there was one part she must not utterly neglect.She came away with the dispersing funeral;but the dead man's mat was left behind upon the grave,and I learned that by set of sun she must return to sleep there.This vigil is imperative.From sundown till the rising of the morning star the Paumotuan must hold his watch above the ashes of his kindred.Many friends,if the dead have been a man of mark,will keep the watchers company;they will be well supplied with coverings against the weather;I believe they bring food,and the rite is persevered in for two weeks.Our poor survivor,if,indeed,she properly survived,had little to cover,and few to sit with her;on the night of the funeral a strong squall chased her from her place of watch;for days the weather held uncertain and outrageous;and ere seven nights were up she had desisted,and returned to sleep in her low roof.That she should be at the pains of returning for so short a visit to a solitary house,that this borderer of the grave should fear a little wind and a wet blanket,filled me at the time with musings.I could not say she was indifferent;she was so far beyond me in experience that the court of my criticism waived jurisdiction;but I forged excuses,telling myself she had perhaps little to lament,perhaps suffered much,perhaps understood nothing.And lo!in the whole affair there was no question whether of tenderness or piety,and the sturdy return of this old remnant was a mark either of uncommon sense or of uncommon fortitude.

Yet one thing had occurred that partly set me on the trail.I have said the funeral passed much as at home.But when all was over,when we were trooping in decent silence from the graveyard gate and down the path to the settlement,a sudden inbreak of a different spirit startled and perhaps dismayed us.Two people walked not far apart in our procession:my friend Mr.Donat -Donat-Rimarau:

'Donat the much-handed'-acting Vice-Resident,present ruler of the archipelago,by far the man of chief importance on the scene,but known besides for one of an unshakable good temper;and a certain comely,strapping young Paumotuan woman,the comeliest on the isle,not (let us hope)the bravest or the most polite.Of a sudden,ere yet the grave silence of the funeral was broken,she made a leap at the Resident,with pointed finger,shrieked a few words,and fell back again with a laughter,not a natural mirth.

'What did she say to you?'I asked.'She did not speak to ME,'said Donat,a shade perturbed;'she spoke to the ghost of the dead man.'And the purport of her speech was this:'See there!Donat will be a fine feast for you to-night.'

'M.Donat called it a jest,'I wrote at the time in my diary.'It seemed to me more in the nature of a terrified conjuration,as though she would divert the ghost's attention from herself.Acannibal race may well have cannibal phantoms.'The guesses of the traveller appear foredoomed to be erroneous;yet in these I was precisely right.The woman had stood by in terror at the funeral,being then in a dread spot,the graveyard.She looked on in terror to the coming night,with that ogre,a new spirit,loosed upon the isle.And the words she had cried in Donat's face were indeed a terrified conjuration,basely to shield herself,basely to dedicate another in her stead.One thing is to be said in her excuse.

Doubtless she partly chose Donat because he was a man of great good-nature,but partly,too,because he was a man of the half-caste.For I believe all natives regard white blood as a kind of talisman against the powers of hell.In no other way can they explain the unpunished recklessness of Europeans.