第32章 THE PRINCESS(5)

"Far be it from me to boast of no matter what place of birth I have descended from to sit here by this fire with such as...as chance along.I may say, however, that I, too, was once a considerable figure of a man.I may add that it was horses, plus parents too indulgent, that exiled me out over the world.I may still wonder to query: 'Are Dover's cliffs still white?'""Huh!" Bruce Cadogan Cavendish sneered."Next you'll be asking: 'How fares the old Lord Warden?'""And I took every liberty, and vainly, with a constitution that was iron," Whiskers hurried on."Here I am with my three score and ten behind me, and back on that long road have I buried many a youngster that was as rare and devilish as I, but who could not stand the pace.I knewthe worst too young.And now I know the worst too old.But there was a time, alas all too short, when I knew, the best.

"I, too, kiss my hand to the Princess of my heart.She was truly a princess, Polynesian, a thousand miles and more away to the eastward and the south from Delaney's Isle of Love.The natives of all around that part of the South Seas called it the Jolly Island.Their own name, the name of the people who dwelt thereon, translates delicately and justly into 'The Island of Tranquil Laughter.' On the chart you will find the erroneous name given to it by the old navigators to be Manatomana.The seafaring gentry the round ocean around called it the Adamless Eden.And the missionaries for a time called it God's Witness - so great had been their success at converting the inhabitants.As for me, it was, and ever shall be, Paradise.

"It was MY Paradise, for it was there my Princess lived.John Asibeli Tungi was king.He was full-blooded native, descended out of the oldest and highest chief-stock that traced back to Manua which was the primeval sea home of the race.Also was he known as John the Apostate.He lived a long life and apostasized frequently.First converted by the Catholics, he threw down the idols, broke the tabus, cleaned out the native priests, executed a few of the recalcitrant ones, and sent all his subjects to church.

"Next he fell for the traders, who developed in him a champagne thirst, and he shipped off the Catholic priests to New Zealand.The great majority of his subjects always followed his lead, and, having no religion at all, ensued the time of the Great Licentiousness, when by all South Seas missionaries his island, in sermons, was spoken of as Babylon.

"But the traders ruined his digestion with too much champagne, and after several years he fell for the Gospel according to the Methodists, sent his people to church, and cleaned up the beach and the trading crowd so spick and span that he would not permit them to smoke a pipe out of doors on Sunday, and, fined one of the chief traders one hundred gold sovereigns for washing his schooner's decks on the Sabbath morn.

"That was the time of the Blue Laws, but perhaps it was too rigorous for King John.Off he packed the Methodists, one fine day, exiledseveral hundred of his people to Samoa for sticking to Methodism, and, of all things, invented a religion of his own, with himself the figure-head of worship.In this he was aided and abetted by a renegade Fijian.This lasted five years.Maybe he grew tired of being God, or maybe it was because the Fijian decamped with the six thousand pounds in the royal treasury; but at any rate the Second Reformed Wesleyans got him, and his entire kingdom went Wesleyan.The pioneer Wesleyan missionary he actually made prime minister, and what he did to the trading crowd was a caution.Why, in the end, King John's kingdom was blacklisted and boycotted by the traders till the revenues diminished to zero, the people went bankrupt, and King John couldn't borrow a shilling from his most powerful chief.

"By this time he was getting old, and philosophic, and tolerant, and spiritually atavistic.He fired out the Second Reformed Wesleyans, called back the exiles from Samoa, invited in the traders, held a general love-feast, took the lid off, proclaimed religious liberty and high tariff, and as for himself went back to the worship of his ancestors, dug up the idols, reinstated a few octogenarian priests, and observed the tabus.All of which was lovely for the traders, and prosperity reigned.Of course, most of his subjects followed him back into heathen worship.Yet quite a sprinkling of Catholics, Methodists and Wesleyans remained true to their beliefs and managed to maintain a few squalid, one-horse churches.But King John didn't mind, any more than did he the high times of the traders along the beach.Everything went, so long as the taxes were paid.Even when his wife, Queen Mamare, elected to become a Baptist, and invited in a little, weazened, sweet- spirited, club-footed Baptist missionary, King John did not object.All he insisted on was that these wandering religions should be self-supporting and not feed a pennyworth's out of the royal coffers.

"And now the threads of my recital draw together in the paragon of female exquisiteness - my Princess."Whiskers paused, placed carefully on the ground his half-full condensed milk can with which he had been absently toying, and kissed the fingers of his one hand audibly aloft.