Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/449

Rh Rao? Their countrymen gloried in them both, and they knew it. They lived a little apart from their fellow-villagers in a shadowed spot beneath cocoa-palms and chestnuts and breadfruit trees; the low wall that parted off their plot of home-ground from the luxuriant tropical wilderness around them was hidden with vines tangled among roses in perpetual bloom; from the distance the sound of the rushing breakers foaming against the coral rocks came softened into a lullaby. Here the married lovers lived in blissful peace, sharing together the gentle duties of home and, says Rao in her dirge, scarcely ever separated. Only the brave delight of war could draw Tupa from his darling's side; then he would hasten from the battle-field, clad with fresh renown, and bearing his prey with him; and there was rejoicing and banquetting, and Rao had composed a new song, one of the sweet little love-ditties or plaintive laments for which she was celebrated, and sang it tenderly when the feast was over and the savory foeman put away. A sister of Tupa's came to live with them, but she was devoted to her sister-in-law, and made no mischief. There was no cloud in the sky till the day when the enthusiasm of the too uxorious husband passed the wonted bounds and he loved not wisely but too well.

One day Rao, having little to do, bethought herself that her luxuriant raven tresses had been too much neglected of late, and set to work to restore them to their natural splendor. But they were so impenetrably matted that all her pains went for nothing, and finally she thought it best to shave them off altogether; they would grow again more abundant than ever. She called Tupa to her aid, and he obligingly proceeded to remove her hair with a razor made of a shark's tooth fixed on a reed. Soon, to her joy, he had discovered a new beauty in his beautiful wife: as the white skin began to shine in patches through the thinned locks his eyes dwelled on it in admiration, and from time to time he burst into interjections of rapture. Presently the whole scalp was bare, and Tupa gazed in silence lost in estatic thought "Does it all look so white?" said Rao, coquetishly bent on more compliments. It did, and Tupa's resolution was already formed. Kindly but resolutely he announced to her his intention of forthwith eating her; a woman with so fairskinned a head was too appetizing to resist. And when she had given one quick appealing glance at him she knew he was in earnest. Boccaccio puts into the mouth of Griselda, when Walter of Saluzzo demanded of her the sacrifice of her infant son, an exquisite little speech full of tender subservience, "Signor mio, pensa di contentar te e di sodisfare al piacer tuo, e di me non avere pensiere alcuno, per ciò che niuna cosa m' è cara se non quant' io la veggo a te piacere" — or as the English ballad tersely renders it, —

In like spirit, but more laconically, Rao accepted her master's behest "Do as thou wilt," she said simply. And then, while Tupa busied herself in getting ready the oven outside the house, she sat still indoors and composed a poem. With a confidence in her fidelity which does honor to them both, Tupa appears to have kept no watch over her; the village was not far off, two brothers of hers lived at an easy distance, but Rao had no thought of flight. She could not but know that public opinion would be against Tupa's manner of using his marital authority, for wife-eating was far from being a recognized custom in Rarotonga, but the true-hearted wife knew her duty, and would invoke no aid against her husband. She had

and the will of the natural arbiter of her destiny sufficed her. Still it must be owned that here she seems to fall short of the ideal perfection of Griselda. Griselda would have got ready the oven herself. Griselda, however, was not a poet; and Rao had her dirge to make. One might have been tempted to point from this a moral against literary occupations for women, since even a Rao could be drawn away by them from her housewifely duties, but that we are expressly told that she had been habitually diligent in preparing the daily food, and that she herself in her last poem refers with a pardonable touch of pride to the condition of her oven. Perhaps we may assume that it was by Tupa's desire she devoted her last moments to immortalizing their love and its fatal issue in her celebrated lament, instead of assisting him in the needful preparations.

Tupa's work took some time. The oven, a hole in the ground, was deep and wide, and he had to split firewood enough nearly to fill it, then to lay stones on the firewood. Next the firewood had to be all burnt to ashes, and the red-hot stones to be carefully arranged above the ashes 