A Primal Woman

A Primal Woman

"A Primal Woman" by H. De Vere Stacpoole is a short story set on Utara, a remote and beautiful island in the Pacific, and follows the fate of George Lygon, a fugitive English gentleman who escapes a miserable year aboard the whaler Sarah Dodsley by deserting onto the island when the ship stops to take on wood. Lygon is taken in by Captain Charles Jourdain, a dignified elderly Frenchman who has lived on Utara for years as a sole trader, working a copra business with his own schooner. Jourdain's wife, a native woman named Nalia, has recently died, and he lives with his young half-caste daughter Kineia. Lygon, hiding from his shipmates until the whaler departs, proves himself honest and capable, and over two years Jourdain raises him from a sheltered fugitive to a full and equal business partner. Lygon falls in love with Kineia, and after confessing to Jourdain that he once accidentally killed a man in a New York gambling house brawl and fled to avoid prosecution, he is judged worthy and given Jourdain's blessing to marry her. Jourdain makes a will leaving everything to the couple, then dies peacefully not long after the marriage, satisfied that Kineia's future is secure. For a year Lygon lives in paradise, rich, married to a woman of extraordinary beauty, and at peace. However, the call of civilization begins to nag at him, and he arranges to sail to San Francisco on the next visit of the trading schooner Haliotis for a temporary change. When the Haliotis arrives, its captain is not the familiar Morris, who has fallen ill, but a man named Packard, the one person in the world Lygon most fears. Packard was present at the killing in New York and knows everything. The recognition between the two men is immediate. That night Packard reveals his intentions. He is not content with half of Lygon's wealth. He intends to strip Lygon of virtually everything, leaving him only a thousand dollars, and will expose him to the law unless Lygon complies. Lygon collapses under the pressure, beginning to drink heavily and sinking into helpless passivity. Kineia observes her husband's disintegration with a growing, cold clarity. She draws out of him the full story of the killing and sees at once that it was accidental, but she also sees in his submission to Packard a weakness she had not previously recognized in the man she loves. Kineia resolves the situation in her own way. Over several days she allows Packard to believe that she is attracted to him, playing on his vanity and his assumption that she, recognizing him as the stronger man, is naturally drawn to him. On the night Lygon is too drunk to come to dinner, Kineia dines alone with Packard and afterwards lures him into the moonlit woods under the pretense of having a private gift and secret words for him. She leads him to a ruined amphitheater, a place where the ancient gods of the island were once worshipped. When Packard confirms aloud, with contemptuous satisfaction, that he did witness Lygon commit the killing, Kineia stabs him in the throat with the same knife her mother Nalia once used to kill a man who had attacked and nearly murdered Captain Jourdain years before. She waits until Packard is dead, weeping over the man she loves lying drunk in the house, and then returns, kisses Lygon's hair, and goes to find the islander Taro. She tells Taro that Packard went drunk to the beach intending to swim out to his ship, that she tried to stop him, and that a shark took him before he had gone far. Taro accepts this without question. The shark story spreads as the explanation for Packard's disappearance, and in its wake Kineia institutes a prohibition on alcohol on the island. Lygon recovers, never learns the truth, and returns to sobriety, freedom, and happiness. Kineia resumes her joyful life beside him. The secret lies buried in the ferns among the old stones where the island gods once held their revels.

By H. De Vere Stacpoole · First published 1910 · Genre: Adventure Fiction, Romance, Psychological Fiction · 4 chapters · 6,751 words

First lines

Something about the female of the species which most of us appreciate but seldom realize. It is a tragedy of first principles, but a tragedy that leaves us satisfied.

Utara lies northeast of Clermont Tonnerre, a high island out of trade tracks and the most lonely and beautiful in the Pacific.

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A Primal Woman is listed on Textopian as a short story by H. De Vere Stacpoole, dated 1910 CE.

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Tags

adventure · romance · fiction · early twentieth century · British literature · island setting · South Seas · colonial era · wilderness · survival · nature · human relationships

Contents

More by H. De Vere Stacpoole