The dismal abode of the Peyrals—Stark-white daughter of Peyral—Only
white maiden in the Marquesas—I hunt wild bulls—Peyral’s
friendliness—I visit his house—He strikes me and threatens to kill
me—I go armed—Explanation of the bizarre tragic comedy.
AS I walked up from the beach of Atuona, where I had touched the shore
of the Marquesas for the first time, I had remarked a European dwelling,
squalid, forbidding and peculiarly desolate. Painted black originally,
the heat and storms of years had worn and defaced it, the sun had shrunk
the boards from one another, and posts and beams had gone awry. It was
set in a cocoanut-grove, the trees so close together that their huge
fronds joined and roofed out sky and light. The narrow road along the
grove had been raised later, and formed a dike so that with the heavy
rains of the season the land all about was a gloomy marsh to which the
sun seldom penetrated. The dingy gallery of the house fronting the road
had a broken rail and dilapidated stairs, and in the shallow swamp and
about the entrance were cast-off articles of household and plantation. A
dismaying mingling of decayed European inventions with native bareness
framed a dismal and foreboding scene, contrasting with the brilliancy of
nature in the open.
I had felt a sudden fear of the possibilities of degradation, as if the
dreary house were a symbol of the white man’s deterioration in these
wild places. A sense of physical and spiritual abandonment to alien
environment, without fitness of soul or habit, depressed me.
As we passed, I saw on the veranda a girl of sixteen or seventeen, with
a white face and light blue eyes. Her long yellow hair was slightly
confined by a piece of ribbon, but hung down loose on her rounded
shoulders. She wore a blue cotton gown, becoming and not in keeping with
her soiled and frayed surroundings. She seemed not to notice us until we
were opposite her, when she raised her head and glanced at us a moment.
Those off the schooner she must have known, for she fixed her eyes on me
the fleeting instant of her gaze. They had the innocence and appeal of a
fawn and the melancholy and detachment of a cloistered nun. There was no
curiosity in them, though we were the only white visitors in months, and
had come with the new governor, who had landed but the day before. A
second or two her eyes met mine and conveyed an unconscious message of
youth and sorrow, of budding womanhood that had had no guidance or
companionship, and only sad dreams.
From the room opening on the gallery a man came and shouted to us “_Bon
jour!_” in a raven-like croak. He was in soiled overalls, barefooted,
and reeling drunk. His brown hair and beard had not been cut for months
or years, and rudely margined his bloated, grievous face, of rugged
strength, in which grim despair contended with fierce pride.
“That is Peyral,” said Ducat, the second mate of the _Fetia Taiao_. He
is always half-seas over, except when he sews. He is the village tailor,
and makes the priest’s gowns and clothes for any one who will buy them.
That daughter of his is the only white girl in the Marquesas. She is all
white, and he keeps her chained in that dark house as if he was afraid
some one would eat her.”
“You know bloody well why ’e keeps ’er there,” said Lying Bill. “’E
knows you an’ me and ’Allman and ’earty bucks like us is not to be
trusted; ’at’s why! I knew ’er mother and ’er grandparents. ’E was a
British calvary officer ’oo ’ad served in Injia, an’ come ’ere with ’is
wife, an Irish lady, to take charge of the store an’ plantation now
owned by the Germans at Tahaaku. They ’ad one daughter. Peyral was a
non-com. on a French war-ship that come ’ere to shoot up the natives,
an’ ’e was purty good to look at then. ’E could do anything, an’ when ’e
got ’is papers from the French navy ’e went to work for the plantation,
courted the girl, an’, when ’er parents weren’t lookin’, married ’er.
They died, an’ ’e set up a proper ’ouse ’ere, an’ was bloomin’
prosp’rous till ’is wife died o’ the _pokoko_, this gallopin’
consumption that takes off the natives. Then he give in, and went to
’ell. ’E ’as three girls, two little ones, an’ ‘ow they live I don’t
know. When ’is wife died ’e painted that ’ouse black, an’ ’e ain’t
touched it since. ’E gathers ’is copra, an’ makes a few clo’s now an’
’en, an’ spends all the money on absinthe. The girl looks after ’er
sisters, but ’e guards ’er like a bleedin’ dragon. She never goes off
the veranda there now except to church on Sundays and ’olidays. I don’t
know what’ll ’e do with ’er, but ’e’ll kill any one that goes too near
’er like Ducat ’ere or meself.”
When I was settled in the House of the Golden Bed, as the Marquesans
called the cabin I had rented from Apporo, the wife of Great Fern, in
exchange for my brass bed at my departure, I went almost every day with
Exploding Eggs to the beach to fish or swim or to ride the surf on a
board. The road wended from my house past the garden of the palace and
thence to the sea. Between the governor’s and the beach was only
Peyral’s noisome residence, and twice a day I passed it within a few
feet. Sometimes he was at his sewing-machine on the veranda, or
gathering the cocoanuts that had fallen and drying them in the sun, but
generally the shaggy Breton was in a stupor or murmurously intoxicated,
sitting on a bench or lying on the ground, and talking to himself in the
way of morose, unsocial men when inebriated. His daughter was usually on
the veranda sewing by hand, or apparently wrapt in thoughts which
obscured her consciousness and painted despondence on her countenance. I
tried not to stare at her, but when I made sure that she was oblivious
of me, or intentionally not seeing, I observed her narrowly.
How could she have preserved that miraculous blondness in these islands?
It was amazing. Her skin was like the inside of a cocoanut, smooth as
satin. The years in that shadowy house had bleached her white flesh
until it was pearl-like in transparency, the blue veins as in fine
marble. Though hardly seventeen her figure was the luxuriant one of
these latitudes, rounded as the breadfruit, curving in opulency under
her single garment, a diaphanous tunic. Her hair that I had judged
yellow at first sight was silver-gold, almost as white as her flesh, but
with glints of topaz and amber. Silky, glistening, as fine as the
filament of a web, it did not hide her shapely ears and fell in
profusion almost to her waist. I never saw her smile. Her azure eyes had
wept until their fountains were dried. She was numb, mute, never having
seen aught in sleep but ghosts. She was, in this voluptuous atmosphere,
herself voluptuous in contour and color, but frozen. A thousand brutal
words from Peyral must have made her so. In drunkenness he was harsh,
and in less violent hours sullen and suspicious. The children feared him
as _Nancy_ had _Bill Sykes_, but there was a powerful attachment between
them. He must have described to her horrible things that he guarded her
against, and have threatened unspeakable punishments if she disobeyed
him.
Daughter of Europeans, granddaughter of Celt and Anglo-Saxon, this girl
did not know her father’s or mother’s language but feebly, and had no
more knowledge of or contact with the world of her forefathers than if
she were all Marquesan. I fancied her spirit infinitely confused by her
blood and her surroundings, vague aspirations perhaps stirring her to
desire for other things than the savage and stupid ones about her. In
the church she must have had some respite. I watched her there a number
of times, bowed over her Marquesan book of the ritual, reciting the
prayers, and beating her sweet breast at the _mea culpa_ as might the
most repentant sinner or worst hypocrite.
No one called on Peyral save a very occasional buyer of copra or an
infrequent customer for clothes. These, prevalently, met him on the
trail or at church, and dealt with him there. Either his jealous
solitude was respected, or disagreeable experiences had caused the
villagers to shun his dwelling. He himself infrequently dropped in at
the store of Le Brunnec, or the German’s establishment at Tahaaku where
he had wooed the daughter of the English officer and the Irish exile. At
the Catholic church only was he a regular attendant, sitting in the rear
by the _pahua_ shell holy-water font, and mumbling the responses. The
children were in the pews, the sexes separated, and I, the few times I
was there, at the door where the breeze was freshest and I might go out
unseen. One Sunday he spoke to me. I was as astonished as if Father
David had begun a _hula_ at the altar.
“You are American,” he said in French, his voice hoarse and broken.
I said I was and that I had come to the islands to stay an uncertain
length of time. We exchanged the day’s greetings after that, and when
Painter Le Moine and I were examining the remains of the studio of Paul
Gauguin, who had died here ten years before, it was Peyral who showed us
how everything had been and who told me of his daily intercourse with
the famous symbolist. Thus we struck up a real acquaintance, if not
friendship, and he would tarry a quarter of an hour on my _paepae_ to
drink a shell of rum and to talk about copra and the coming and going of
schooners. He drew me out about my plans, whether I was going to settle
in the Marquesas or return to my own country, and evinced a flattering
interest in my future. And I was flattered, as I am easily by the
friendliness of unfriendly people, and did not question his genuine
liking for me.
Ah Suey, the Chinese baker and storekeeper, who had been tried for the
murder of an American, and who spoke English he had learned at Los
Angeles and at sea, might have enlightened me, but that I was beyond
doubt. I was at Ah Suey’s to dance a jig and to sing “The Good Old
Summertime” to amuse him. The saturnine Chinese, after a drink of rum,
said:
“Peylalee all time come you housee takee dlinkee. He no good. More
better you tell him _poponihoó_ go hellee! Makee tlubble for you his
daughtah.”
Ah Suey puzzled me, but I do not like advice or warning, and I shunted
the subject.
Peyral was a hunter. He would wander, always alone, in the upper
valleys, to shoot _kuku_, or along the beach for salt-water birds,
walking slowly and not alertly; but he was a crack shot and hardly ever
failed to bring back a bag of game. He had learned marksmanship at sea,
or perhaps in his native Brittany, and his cartridges went far. He was
not contented with birds, but also tramped to the mountains to kill
goats or even the wild bulls that were growing scarce there under a
promiscuous use of firearms. Le Brunnec, the trader, an amiable and
intelligent Breton, and I met him there, fortunately, at a critical
moment for me. We had, Le Brunnec and I, climbed on horses in the late
afternoon to a plateau high up in the hills and camped there the night.
In that altitude it was cool after the sun had set, and we sat about a
fire of twigs and branches until we were sleepy. We were considerably
past the line of cocoanut-palms, and in a rich and varied flora.
Magnificent chestnut, ironwood, rose-apple, and other tropical trees
formed dark groups about us, and masses of _huetu_ or mountain plantains
lined the slopes. We had washed down our dinner with a bottle of
Moselle, and had a mellow and philosophical hour before sleep.
Far above us we could see a pair of ducks, a kind of non-migratory
mallard. They lived only in the lonely valleys or woods, and nested on
the tops of distant ridges where they laid a half dozen eggs. The
ducklings must be carried by their parents to the feeding grounds
hundreds of feet below.
We talked about the decimation of the Marquesans—Le Brunnec in ten years
had seen them depopulated almost 50 per cent.
“They are unhappy and soul-sick,” he said. “They are animals, and, when
they had freedom under their own rule, prospered enormously. Now there
are a couple of thousand instead of the hundred thousand the whites
found. They are in the cage of civilization and cannot stand the bars.
We are adaptable because we are an admixture of many races, and have had
to exist in changing environments or die. Millions must have died from
the same thing that destroys the Marquesans, but there were enough to
keep on and build up again. The quality of adaptability, of making the
best of it, is wonderful. One time in Tahiti I was at the Annexe
lodging-house of Lovaina when a Frenchman arrived by steamer from
Martinique. He had with him his four children. The mother, a native of
that island, was dead, and the oldest child was a girl of thirteen, a
child-woman, naive but clever, and very charming. For four years she had
been mother to the other three, since she was nine, and they were as
neat as a gunboat. She was tiny and undeveloped physically, but
necessity had adapted her perfectly to her task. The father was looking
for work, and, not finding it in Tahiti, was off to Dacca, in Africa,
leaving the babies in her care. _Mon Dieu!_ It was brave to see her
bathing them, brushing their hair, reproving them, and feeding them. If
she had been five years older I would have tried to marry her, and the
whole flock. Now, you see, she could keep on because she was continuing
the white race customs and ideals, and understood them, hard as it was;
but these poor people have been told to do something they don’t
understand, and that is not their ideal. Now take that girl of old
Peyral! Her mother spoke English, and her father is French, and she went
to the nuns’ school here for four or five years. Yet she can hardly
speak anything but Marquesan, and in that tongue she replies to her
father, and talks to her sisters. She is almost a Marquesan, and as they
are unhappy in their prison so is she. She is the only white woman here,
and she has no companions, and her father won’t let her be a native.
_Pauvre enfant!_ Now, her I wouldn’t marry for all the cocoanuts on this
island. There is one other, Mademoiselle Narbonne, who is the richest
person in the Marquesas, for she, too, is fit neither for native life
nor for white. The nuns have spoiled her, as her mother spoiled the
Peyral girl.”
And so to bed on the grass with a blanket about us.
In the morning we were up at daybreak, and, after coffee and hardtack,
we rode toward the sea. There was a faint trail, but Le Brunnec was a
skilled tracker and picked up the spoor in a few minutes. After half an
hour we saw fresher traces of our prey, and began to make plans for the
attack. We felt sure we were the only ones on the plateau, and so were
safe, for Marquesans are reckless with guns, and when we heard a horse
coming toward us we halted and waited. It was Peyral. We could see his
frowsy head a quarter of a mile away as it bobbed in the trot.
“_Eh bien!_” said Le Brunnec, philosophically. “He is not so bad here.
It is curious that when Peyral has been drunk for a month, and reforms
so as not to die, he goes to the mountains for a week and shoots an
animal.”
We said _bon jour_, and he joined us. Le Brunnec proposed that we try to
kill two bulls, share the labor of carrying the meat to Atuona, and
divide it there. Peyral gruffly assented, and, as he was the more
skillful _chasseur_, gave us our stations. We were to start up one or
more _taureaux sauvages_ and to endeavor to refrain from firing at them
until they were as near as possible to the cliff. We were successful and
had felled one, when another appeared.
“_Prennez garde!_” shouted Le Brunnec. “That _hakiuka_ has blood in his
eye.”
“Go around to the left and drive him toward me,” commanded Peyral.
I was riding fast about his flank when my horse put his foot in a rat’s
hole. I had my rifle on my right arm and I must have used it as a
vaulting-pole unwittingly, for I struck the earth about ten feet from my
mount. I was struggling to my feet when I became aware that the
_hakiuka_ was approaching with malice in his snortings. My horse had got
up but too late to bear me to security, and my rifle was choked with
mud. I rushed for a tree but could see none with low branches. I had a
big knife in my belt, a kind of Bowie, and, as I felt the hot breath of
the animal on me and saw his horns magnified to elephant’s tusks, I drew
the weapon. The beast was within five feet of me when he dropped. Peyral
had put a Winchester bullet in his heart. His head was at my feet as he
gave it a mighty toss, and laid it on the sward of maidenhair ferns in
submission to man’s invention.
When I had made sure of the poor _hakiuka’s_ being absolutely dead, and
had shaken myself together, finding no injuries, I thanked Peyral, whom
Le Brunnec was already extolling for marksmanship and quickness of
thought.
“_Rien!_ It is nothing!” replied the shaggy man. “I like to kill.”
We put ropes over the horns of the victims, and forced our horses to
drag them to a certain spot at the edge of the cliff. Below was a wide
shelf of rocks at water-level. We pushed the stiffening bodies over the
edge and let them fall. Then we rode back to Atuona, and in a big canoe
with three Marquesans, Great Fern, Mouth of God, and Exploding Eggs,
went for the carcasses. To retrieve them into the craft was a difficult
task.
[Illustration:
Malicious Gossip, Le Brunnec, and his wife, at peace
]
[Illustration:
Photo by Dr. Malcolm Douglas
Exploding Eggs and his chums packing copra
]
[Illustration:
Frederick O’Brien and Dr. Malcolm Douglas at home in Tahiti
]
The sea surged against the rocks so that we could not tie up close to
them, but several of us jumped on them while others remained in the
canoe, with a line ashore and a kedge-anchor aft. The Marquesans cut up
the bulls into quarters, and each we tied to a rope and dragged through
the water into the canoe. Over our heads a cloud of heron and sea-gulls
shrieked for their share, and when we had left the rocks these birds
screamed and fought for the entrails. They had been attracted when the
bulls were killed, and for hours had peeked vainly at the carcasses. The
dragging them over the land and hurling them to the ledge, and their
hours of lying there, had drawn an immense concourse of the sea-birds.
There were many thousands before we got away, and so rapacious were they
that they circled over our heads and snatched at the bloody meat in the
canoe. We had to wave our shirts at them to frighten them away. Sharks
smelling the blood swam about the canoe, and we were not a little
afraid. We had brought no guns in the canoe, and we were forced to
strike at them with paddles, and shout imprecations at them. They did
not enter the breakers, which we ran to the sand. At the beach near
_Commissaire_ Bauda’s residence and offices, we turned over to Peyral
his third, and, taking the remainder into the village, Great Fern with
saw and knife provided every household, including the Catholic and
Protestant clergy and the nuns, with ample for a meal or two. Peyral
threw his part over his horse’s back and left us, muttering that he
would salt it down for the uncertain future.
Peyral became increasingly friendly, and a number of times stopped me on
my way to and from the shore to invite me to drink with him. Le Brunnec
said that this was something new for Peyral, and that he must be “going
crazy.” But, like Ah Suey, Le Brunnec hid his real thought from me when
I defended Peyral and said that he was sinned against overmuch. Peyral’s
daughter—I hardly ever caught sight of the younger two—would desert the
veranda if I came upon it, but once he called her, and when she did not
respond immediately added a “_sacré_” to his order for her to come and
be presented to me.
“She is a fine girl, but shy,” he said, and patted her clumsily.
Mademoiselle Peyral trembled under his heavy caress, and with merely a
slight, awkward bow to me hurried into the sombre chamber.
“She is shy,” he repeated as he drank his absinthe with mouthing and
grimacing. “She needs a man to train her right, a husband, eh, a
gentleman, _mon garçon_. Is not that right?”
Peyral’s voice was almost gentle, but his mood changed in a breath. He
struck the board hard with his shell, and yelled, “Do you understand,
American, I said a gentleman. Her mother was aristocrat. Do you get that
into your noddle?”
Exploding Eggs, who had waited for me on the road with my towels,
laughed as we ran toward the surf.
“Peyral _paeá_,” he said. “Too much drink, too much fight.”
I did not stop after that when he bade me have a _goutte_ with him, for
I was sensible of a deep pity for the girl and an ardent desire to save
her embarrassment, the deadly unreasoning shame or perplexity that
overwhelmed her at her father’s gross attitude and my presence. After a
few weeks, Peyral did not sing out to me any more, and I was conscious
of a coldness, of a return of his first relation to me, and then of fits
and starts of friendship. I felt oppressed by his changing tempers, and
attributed them to his varying degrees of inebriety.
I split my rain-coat one day, and, after making a bad job of repairing
it, thought of Peyral and his skill as a tailor. With the coat on my arm
I climbed the stairs to his porch, and, finding no one there, called out
Peyral’s name. My voice echoed through the house, and, with the
intention of scribbling a note and leaving the coat, I entered the
nearest room. Mademoiselle Peyral was sitting near the machine but was
not sewing. She trembled as I approached her, and looked frightened. I
am timid with women, and her nervousness communicated itself to me. I
wished I was not there. She was half uncovered, having on only a
chemise, and her dishabille added to my confusion, though that very
morning I had bathed in the river nude with Titihuti and others.
“Please give your father this coat, and ask him to repair it,” I said,
and put it down. Her downcast eyes and heaving bosom, her evident
extreme timidity, and her pitiable situation overcame me. She was of my
own race, and she was so white and so fair. Before I could restrain
myself, I said in English, “Don’t be afraid of me! I am very sorry for
you,” and I patted her shoulder as I might have a child’s.
She shrank from me in apparent horror, and ran from the room into a
farther one, screaming in Marquesan. I started to follow her to explain
or to appease her, but reconsidered.
Though I was conscious of no wrong, the familiar incidents in newspapers
and gossip of misinterpreted gestures and of false allegations rose to
my mind as her cries resounded through the black and tristful house. I
moved toward the porch to leave, and deliberated, and awaited some one’s
coming. Better to tell the fact and make a stand there and then, said
common sense. But no one answered her alarm, and after a few minutes I
left, with the coat, and returned to my own cabin. For half an hour my
mind was actively going over the affair to find out what might be at the
bottom of it, and, of course, to make certain of my clearance of the
least onus of guilt.
Perhaps I was the first man other than her father who had put his hand
on her, and I had done that, no matter how innocently! The nuns had
overbalanced her standard of modesty, and her father’s brutal
admonitions had made her hysterical! I tried myself and, having found
myself not guilty of even forwardness or discourtesy, I cooked my
dinner, poured myself a shell of Munich beer that had been cooled in the
river, and dismissed the trifle.
The next afternoon as I passed the governor’s garden on the road to the
beach, I saw Peyral on the veranda with the official. I thought of the
rent in my rain-coat, and entered the grounds to speak to him about it.
As I approached the steps I heard the tailor speaking loudly and
vehemently to Monsieur l’Hermier, and spilling the absinthe in the glass
in his hand.
“_Kaoha!_” I said, and Peyral turned and saw me. His face purpled, and
he shouted in French something I did not understand, and appealed to the
governor for corroboration. A twinge of privity with his emotion swept
over me, and I am sure I flushed and looked the culprit. I hadn’t much
time for analysis, for Peyral stood up and flung his glass at my head.
It went wide. I took a step toward him and asked:
“What’s the matter with him, _Monsieur l’Administrateur_? Is he drunker
than usual?”
“_Je ne sais pas_,” replied the governor, with a shrug of his shoulder.
“He has come here to lodge a complaint against you of maltreating his
daughter. He wants you tried and sent to prison, and he wants to
institute a suit against you for damages. I have told him to return when
he is sober. He is bitter, Monsieur, and he is, after all, a Frenchman.”
Peyral got up from his chair, unsteadily. The governor discreetly left
the veranda and entered his study. I sat down in sheer weariness, when
suddenly the frenzied drunkard confronted me.
“_Sacré Americain!_” he yelled. “You will insult the daughter of a
French patriot. _Cochon!_ I will show you what I do to such people as
you!”
He flung himself upon me and struck me in the face. Peyral was fifty
pounds heavier than I, but he was very drunk. I drove my fist into his
chin, and, following the blow with another, sent him sprawling. I
regretted my violence as I saw the poor devil staggering to his feet
unsteadily, but when, with the most blasphemous profanity and the basest
epithets in the dialect of Brest, he lurched at me again with his two
hundred pounds of rank bulk, charity fled from my panting heart, and I
realized that I must fight or retreat. Years of addiction to alcohol had
not made my assailant anything but tough and strong physically, and I
was no match for him if he was not reeling. He plunged toward me as a
drunken elephant might go to combat. I decided not to run, because I
wanted to continue to live in Atuona underided, and so I sprang to meet
him, and hitting him full tilt in the chin and chest, carried him hard
down to the boards, where we grappled and exchanged powerless blows.
We had knocked over table, bottle, glasses, and chairs, and the uproar
was immense. Song of the Nightingale, Exploding Eggs, Ghost Girl and
Many Daughters, the little leper lass, had come scurrying from the
kitchen. Maybe the governor had a plan, or his dignity was offended,
for, without appearing, he gave an order to Song, and the quartet of
natives threw themselves on us, and disentangled us. Song, who later
confessed to me that he had a grudge against the tailor, took the
opportunity in the hurly-burly to deal him vicious blows, and then drove
the cursing, struggling Breton through the garden and out the gateway.
Peyral’s last words were a threat to kill me the next time we met. The
village had gathered, and Apporo, my landlady, Mouth of God, Malicious
Gossip, his wife, and a dozen others were running toward the palace.
Song dismissed them with a grandiloquent gesture, and his obscene
badinage dissolved their curiosity in gales of laughter.
With the disturbance abated, the governor joined me, his ordinary merry
self again, and we drank a libation to Mars. My clothes were torn, my
jaw ached, and my body was bruised from the clutches of the tailor.
“Do not molest yourself!” said the executive. “I do not entertain any
evil of you. When the allegation is formally made, I, as magistrate,
will hear the evidence. According to his own statement, no one was there
but his daughter and you. I believe you a man of honor. And women? _Mon
vieux_, I have known and loved many of them. I am a doctor, and a
student of life. They are incomprehensible. But we must take
precautions. He has said he will kill you, so you must be on guard. You
have no pistol? _Eh bien!_ I will lend you my Browning automatic I had
in Senegal. It is loaded. Defend yourself, but do not step on his
property. _Nous verrons!_”
The governor was dramatic, not to say melodramatic, and, to my nervous
conception, he took too lightly the crime upon my person. I was the one
to bring a charge, not Peyral. Assaulted in the palace, at the throne of
justice, in the presence of the judge, I was handed a deadly firearm by
the arbiter, and told to protect myself. It was like the Wild West, or a
stage farce. But I had come a thousand miles with him on a small vessel,
and knew his delight in the least diversion that would relieve his
_ennui_ in a monotonous period of service. This was but a scherzo in a
slow program. However, I thanked him and, with the heavy pistol, went to
the House of the Golden Bed. The girl was uppermost in my unstable
reflections.
What had possessed her to lie so? She must have distorted my ingenuous
action damnably to cause her father to beset me before the governor, and
to swear to kill me! I pictured her as I had last seen her, and try as I
would I could not hate her. I lay down with the Browning beside me, and
dreamed that she was testifying against me at the seat of judgment, and
that an austere God pointed downward. Exploding Eggs was cooking a
rasher of bacon on my improvised stove on the _paepae_ the next morning,
when Flag, the _mutoi_, brought a note, he acting as general messenger
of the island. It was in a strange hand and on dirty paper. I could not
make out the language except a few French words, and the signature not
at all, and so after breakfast I took it to Le Brunnec at his store.
Le Brunnec glanced over it and looked puzzled. Then he spoke low, in
French, so that the natives in the room might not glean a word.
“_Mais_,” he said, “it is from Peyral, and it is written in Breton and
absinthe. I translate it for you into your English:
“‘Monsieur: You cannot _éviter_’—what you say?—‘escape—from your insult
to _ma fille_. You have insulted and struck me, too. I will not seek the
tribunal to make your apology. The governor has told me you are
Irishman, and so you are of the same blood like the grandparent of my
child. In France what you have done must be paid for in blood or by
marriage. Even if you make intention to return to your own country no
matter. You must marry my daughter or you will be buried in _Calvaire
cimetière_—what you say—graveyard?—It is necessary that you send me word
by to-morrow or I will make justice on you.’ He says he is yours
respectful. Well, by gar, it is a situation, my friend, but I say to you
one thing: do not be afraid. He slip back already. You have a revolver?
Yes? Keep it in the hand or the pants.”
The merchant took up his sugar scoop to begin business. My wholeness or
health seemed not to interest him seriously. I sauntered up the path in
meditation. My feet took me into the mission churchyard, and I sat on
the roots of a gigantic banian-tree near the colossal crucifix brought
from France by the priests for the jubilee of 1900. The mad note of
Peyral had stunned me, and, instead of thinking hard and clearly upon my
situation, I fell into fatuous reverie.
A gentle and lovely savage she was, and unspoiled by civilization. What
a singular and perhaps entrancing task to teach her only the best in it,
to unfold through English or French the music and literature of the
world, to take her perhaps to the great cities? Or if I myself was done
with civilization, as I sometimes persuaded myself I was, what more
delightful companion than this simple virgin of Atuona? To fish, to
swim, to roam the plateaus; to have a library and to get the reviews and
the new books by the schooners, to create a living idyll! Love would
undoubtedly be the response of kindness, of sympathy, of tenderness, of
love itself. But could I love her? There would be children. And they
would grow up here. I remembered her own white feet in the mud of this
village. Their mother! And with Peyral’s blood in them! Peyral! Damn
him! What had I done to make him attack me, to say he would kill me? To
spoil my peace? I would wear the Browning about my waist, and if he
winked an eyelash I would shoot first. He had brought it on himself. She
had lied to him. I had no liking to be in Calvary with Gauguin. My grave
would be forgotten like his. A man here was a bubble in the breeze. It
burst and was nothing.
All these ideas rushed through my head as I returned to my house. I had
concluded not to pass Peyral’s house unarmed, so I tied a string about
my middle over my _pareu_ and fastened the revolver to it. With one pull
the knot undid and the gun came loose into my hand. I wore a light linen
coat over my bare body, and no one was the wiser.
Thus ready for my would-be murderer or father-in-law, I whistled to
Exploding Eggs the next forenoon, and, he with towels in hand, we walked
toward the sands. There was no one on the veranda of the palace. Except
for the residence of the lepers by the cemetery there was no other house
toward the beach but that of my enemy.
Obscure under the heavy-leaved palms, I could not be sure that Peyral
was not ensconced on his gallery with a bottle of absinthe and a
shot-gun or rifle waiting to pot-shot me. He knew my habit of bathing
every day, and maybe was chuckling over scaring me from the spot. I
walked boldly and briskly past his house. There was no figure on the
porch but that of a girl. I glimpsed her only, for an emotion of
shame—inexplicable shame—directed my eyes away from her. I continued on
to the water, and, hiding my revolver in the trailing _pahue_ with its
morning-glory blossoms, I took up my surfboard and forgot Peyral in that
most exhilarating of sports.
Exploding Eggs dragged his tiny canoe from the bushes, and we launched
it and pushed it through the surf. With rare dexterity he paddled it
seaward, I with my board on my knees, a calm admirer of his marvelous
control of the little craft: he and it the first Marquesan and the first
canoe I had seen in this archipelago. When we were out half a mile or so
we lay still for the right breaker. He watched and after a few minutes
began to paddle with intense energy until the wave caught him. We swung
to its crest and clung there as we dashed in at a fast pace without
motion on our part. But, when half-way, Exploding Eggs took my board
from me, and, handing me the paddle, he suddenly plunged with it from
the canoe and, extended full on the board in rhythm with the billow I
rode, accompanied me to shore.
The sun was dropping down the western sky when we dressed to leave the
beach, Exploding Eggs in his loin-cloth and I in mine, with my coat over
the Browning. The hours in the salt water with the exercise and the
laughter had cleared the cobwebs of blame from my brain. My innocent
blood would be on the guilty head of Peyral did he kill me. That was
comforting. However, I made sure that the knot slipped easily, and with
my valet beside me I made the start.
I had gained half-way when I saw Peyral coming toward me, a thousand
feet away, with a shot-gun over his shoulder. He was silhouetted against
the setting sun and could not be mistaken. His burly form, his beard,
his general shagginess made him unmistakable, as was also the outline of
the weapon.
There was no stopping. The swamp was on either side of the ten-foot
road, the beach behind me. Fleeing was out of the question. I might have
taken a side road had there been one, but just such conditions as
presented themselves then must be met daily. I kept on, and, as we came
nearer, our eyes joined and remained steadily fixed. I do not know how
Peyral felt, but I was as fascinated as the proverbial bird by the
snake. I moved as if by magnetic power toward my probable slayer, and he
toward me. Neither of us made a movement except that of our legs and
stiff bodies.
There came a second when we were about four feet apart, each hugging the
edge of the road. Our eyes were held straight ahead, and mine remained
so. We appeared to hesitate as if we might whirl and seize each other or
draw our weapons. The shot-gun was on his shoulder but in the flash of
an eye might be brought down to the level of my vitals. But the eye did
not flash. The gun swayed only with his footfalls, and we continued our
mechanical advance away from each other.
Prudence whispered to me to turn and protect myself from a rear attack,
but the message did not affect my legs. I winced momentarily for the
expected load of shot in my back, but I walked stiffly as if a great ray
of light were penetrating my cerebellum. Exploding Eggs, who knew only
about our fight upon the palace balcony and nothing of my having the
Browning, was chanting about the god of night, Po, and paid no attention
to Peyral, except to say quite audibly, “_Peyralé aoe metai!_ Peyral is
no good!” That did not add to my surety, and the imagined missile or
missiles from behind did not become less vivid until I was beyond
shooting distance. Just as I calculated with incredible relief that the
crisis was past, Peyral’s gun roared out.
My muscles squirmed, my heart leaped, my knees bent, and my chin touched
my bosom. Exploding Eggs laughed.
“_Peyralé puhi kuku_,” he said regretfully; “Peyral has shot a
_kuku_”—as if I should have shot it. I laughed heartily with him. The
joke was on me, but I enjoyed it to the echo. I recalled that often of
an evening my enemy replenished his larder with an expenditure of Number
Four shot. It was funny, and when I reached the palace I was trembling
with the reverberations of the absurd climax to my fears.
L’Hermier des Plantes was dancing opposite Many Daughters a _hura-hura_,
and Song of the Nightingale was fetching cold water from the brook to
water the wine, in the temperate French way.
“_Hola!_” called out the governor. “Come in, _mon ami_! Sit down and
have a _goutte de Pernod_. You are jolly. What? You met Peyral, and he
shot not you but a _kuku_? _O lalala!_ You give me back the Browning?
All right. You could not have done much harm with it. See, the
cartridges are blanks for firing a salute on the Fall of the Bastille
_fête_. _O sapristi!_ It is droll! I will die!”
He held his stomach while he laughed and laughed. I grinned with fury.
“What the devil is the _drôlerie_?” I questioned, earnestly.
The governor wiped his eyes, and emptied his glass.
“_Attendez!_” he answered. You were not in any great danger or I would
have come to your rescue. You know I have here a _dossier_ of every one
in these islands who has been complained against, or has complained. The
first week I was here Peyral declared that _Commissaire_ Bauda had
insulted his daughter, and that he must marry her or he would kill him.
Bauda denied the charge, and Peyral did nothing. Then I opened his
_dossier_, and in two years he had made three such charges, one against
a professor who was here a month, and one against Le Brunnec. _C’est
curieux._ The man is mad with alcohol, but more so with a determination
to marry that stark daughter of his to a white man who might take her
away. Others have been eliminated after such foolishness as this. See,
there was no one but you. Lutz is after higher game, and besides he is a
German, and Peyral hates him. _Voilà, mon garçon._ You were the _parti_
inevitable. It is strange the way he goes about getting a son-in-law.
One might expect a _dot_, or a little hospitality, but no, he runs true
to type, and he is not a _chic_ type. But, _c’est fini_. He has tried
and failed. You have met him, and knocked him down, and now you know his
gun is for _kuku_. Well, we will drink to the health of the _pauvre
diable_, and a good husband for the girl. But not you, eh?”
I drank with as much grace as I could, but when I walked in the upper
valley at dusk, and was alone by the _paepae tapu_, the shattered and
grown-over temple of the old Marquesan gods, I could have cried for pity
for that girl.
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