Page:Coming of age in Samoa.pdf/181

ontempt.) But Sila was devoted to Mutu, her stepfather’s younger brother, to the point of frenzy. She had been his mistress and still lived in his household, but his dilettantism had veered away from her indecorous intensity. When she discovered that he had lived with her sister, her fury knew no bounds, Masked under a deep solicitude for the younger girl, whom she claimed was an innocent untouched child, she denounced Mutu the length of the three villages. Moana’s parents fetched her home again in a great rage and a family feud resulted. Village feeling ran high, but opinion was divided as to whether Mutu was guilty, Moana lying to cover some other peccadillo or Sila gossiping from spite. The incident was in direct violation of the brother and sister taboo for Mutu was young enough for Moana to speak of him as tuagane (brother). But when two months later, another older sister died during pregnancy, it was necessary to find some one stout-hearted enough to perform the necessary Cæsarian post-mortem operation. After a violent family debate, expediency triumphed and Mutu, most skilled of native surgeons, was summoned to operate on the dead body of the sister of the girl he had vioLated. When he later on announced. his intention of marrying a girl from another island, Sila again displayed the most uncontrolled grief and despair, although she herself was carrying on a love affair at the time.

The lives of the girls who lived in the pastor’s