Farewell to Tautira--My good-bye feast--Back at the Tiare--A talk with
Lovaina--The Cercle Bougainville--Death of David--My visit to the
cemetery--Off for the Marquesas.
The smell of the burning wood of the Umuti was hardly out of my
nostrils before my day of leaving Tautira came. I had long wanted to
visit the Marquesas Islands, and the first communication I had from
Papeete in nearly three months was from the owners of the schooner
Fetia Taiao, notifying me that that vessel, commanded by Captain
William Pincher, would sail for the archipelago in a few days,
"crew and weather willing." I was eager for the adventure, to voyage
to the valley of Typee, where Herman Melville had lived with Fayaway
and Kori-Kori, where Captain Porter had erected the American flag a
century before, and where cannibalism and tattooing had reached their
most artistic development. But to sever the tie with Tautira was
saddening. Mataiea and the tribe of Tetuanui had won my affections,
but at Tautira I had become a Tahitian. I had lived in every way as
if bred in the island, and had fallen so in love with the people and
the mode of life, the peace and simplicity of the place, that only
the already formed resolution to visit all the seas about stirred me
to depart.
The village united to say good-by to me at a feast which was
spread in the greenwood of the Greek god along the shore of the
lagoon. T'yonni and Choti, the student and the painter, were foremost
in the preparations of the amuraa ma, and many houses supplied the
extensive, soft mats which were put on the sward for the table,
while the ladies laid the cloth of banana leaves down their center,
and adorned it with flowers.
Ori-a-Ori sat at the head and I beside him. His venerable countenance
bore a smile of delight in being in such jovial company, and he
answered the quips and drank the toasts as if a youth. I was leaving
early in the afternoon, and the banquet was begun before midday. We
had hardly reached the dessert when the accordions burst into the
allegro airs of the adapted songs of America and Europe. Between them
speeches of friendship were addressed to me by the chief and others,
and I sorrowfully replied. Choti gave the key-note to our mutual
regrets at my leaving by quoting the letter in Tahitian written by
Ori-a-Ori to Rui at Honolulu long ago:
I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us,
I was filled with tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and all of my
household. When you embarked I felt a great sorrow. It is for this that
I went up on the road, and you looked from that ship, and I looked
at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised the anchor
and hoisted the sails. When the ship started I ran along the beach to
see you still; and when you were on the open sea I cried out to you,
"Farewell, Louis"; and when I was coming back to my house I seemed to
hear your voice crying, "Rui, farewell." Afterwards I watched the ship
as long as I could until the night fell; and when it was dark I said
to myself, "If I had wings I should fly to the ship to meet you, and to
sleep amongst you, so that I might be able to come back to shore and to
tell to Rui Telime, 'I have slept upon the ship of Teriitera.'" After
that we passed that night in the impatience of grief. Towards eight
o'clock I seemed to hear your voice, "Teriitera--Rui--here is the hour
for putter and tiro (cheese and syrup)." I did not sleep that night,
thinking continually of you, my very dear friend, until the morning;
being then still awake, I went to see Tapina Tutu on her bed, and
alas, she was not there. Afterwards I looked into your rooms; they did
not please me as they used to do. I did not hear your voice saying,
"Hail, Rui"; I thought then that you had gone, and that you had left
me. Rising up, I went to the beach to see your ship, and I could not
see it. I wept, then, until the night, telling myself continually,
"Teriitera returns into his own country and leaves his dear Rui
in grief, so that I suffer for him, and weep for him." I will not
forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you
again. It is my dear Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in
this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be
that your body and my body shall eat together at one table: there is
what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God
be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you
may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul.
The chief listened throughout the message with his eyes empty of us,
conjuring a vision of the Rui who so far back had won his heart;
and when Choti had concluded, Ori-a-Ori lifted his glass, and said,
"Rui e Maru!" coupling me in his affection with the dim figure of
his sweet guest of the late eighties.
The last toast was to my return.
"You have eaten the fei in Tahiti nei, and you will come back,"
they chanted.
Raiere drove me in his cart to Taravao, where I had arranged for
an automobile to meet me. At Mataiea I was clasped to the bosom of
Haamoura, and spent a few minutes with the Chevalier Tetuanui. They
could not understand us cold-blooded whites, who go long distances
from loved ones. My contemplated journey to the Marquesas Islands
was to them a foolish and dangerous labor for no good reason.
The trip to Papeete from Mataiea by motor-car took only an hour and
a half, and I was in another world, on the camphorwood chest at the
Tiare hotel, by five o'clock.
"Mais, Brien, you long time go district!" exclaimed Lovaina. "What
you do so long no see you? I think may be you love one country vahine!"
She rubbed my back, and said that Lying Bill, who had been at the
Tiare for luncheon, hoped to sail in two days. McHenry was to go
with us as a passenger on the schooner. Everybody knew everybody's
business. Lovaina suddenly bethought herself of a richer morsel of
gossip. She struck her forehead.
"My God! how long you been? You not meet that rich uncle of David
from America? You not hear about that turribil thing?"
She was on the point of beginning her narrative when the telephone
rang, and she was called away. I knew I would catch the before-dinner
groups at the Cercle Bougainville, and walked there, waving my hand or
speaking to a dozen acquaintances on the route. I climbed the steep
stairs, and at the first table saw Fung Wah, a Chinese immigrant
importer and pearl merchant, with Lying Bill, McHenry, Hallman, and
Landers, the latter only recently back from Auckland. I was immediately
aware of the sad contrast with Tautira. The club-room looked mean
and tawdry after so many weeks among the cocoas and breadfruits; the
floor, tables, and chairs ugly compared with the grass, the puraus,
the roses, and the gardenias, the endearing environment of that
lovely village. The white men before me had as hard, unsympathetic
faces as the Asiatic, who was reputed to deal in opium as well as
men and women and jewels.
Yet their welcoming shout of fellowship was pleasant, despite a
note of derision for my staying so long away from the fleshpots of
Papeete. Pincher and McHenry were themselves lately arrived, but
evidently had learned of my absence from Lovaina.
"What did you do? Buy a vanilla plantation?" asked McHenry.
"Vanilla, hell!" said Hallman, whose harp had one string, "he's been
having his pick of country produce."
Lying Bill said:
"Well, you'd better pack your chest for the northern islands to-morrow
if you're goin' with the Fetia Taiao. We'11 be off for Atuona and
Hallman's tribe of cannibals nex' mornin'."
I sat down and quaffed a Doctor Funk, and then inquired idly:
"Where's David?"
"David!" said Hallman. "For God's sake! don't dig into any graves!"
"'E's a proper ghoul, 'e is," Lying Bill said sarcastically. "'E
thinks you're a mejum!"
They all stared at me as if I were crazy, and I felt myself in an
atmosphere of mystery, in which I had broached a distasteful subject. I
wondered what it could be, but determined to know at all hazards,
reckoning on no fine feelings to hurt.
"What is the secret?" I asked. "I've been away a few months, and
haven't heard the news. Has David run off with Miri or Caroline?"
Was this what Lovaina was bursting with?
They all remained quiet, until McHenry, with an oath, blurted out:
"What the hell's the good of all this bloody silence? He's been away
and don't know." Then turning to me, he slapped me on the shoulder
and bawled:
"We'll have a drink on you, O'Brien! David blew his brains out on
Llewellyn's doorstep just after we left for the Marquesas. Joseph,
bring one all around!"
As if at his word Llewellyn came up the stairs. His countenance
was blacker than usual, his eyes more than half closed under their
clouds of brows. His shoulders drooped, and he thumped his stick
on the floor of the club as he came toward us. I felt certain that
he detected something in the air--a sudden cessation of talk or
a strained attitude on our part. He drooped heavily into a chair,
and banged his stick on his chair-leg.
"Joseph," he called, "give me a Doctor Funk. Quick! No, make it
straight absinthe."
Our own drinks were coming by now, and as the steward stirred about,
Llewellyn for the first time saw me.
"Hello! Where did you come from? I thought you had gone back to
the States."
"I've been past the isthmus," I replied, "and I haven't seen a
soul or heard a word in that time. What's this terrible thing about
young David?"
Llewellyn's arm jerked convulsively toward his body and knocked his
glass from the table.
"Joseph, for God's sake, bring me a drink! Bring me a double absinthe!"
Joseph fetched the drink hurriedly, and stopped to pick up the
broken glass.
"Mon dieu!" snapped Llewellyn, "you can do that afterward. Clear out!"
Then he turned to me, and his eyes contracted into mere black gleams
as he asked:
"Are you like all these others? By God! I was passing the opium den
here a few minutes ago, and I heard Hip Sing say something like that:
What have I to do with David? Was I responsible for his death? Any
man can come to your front door and kill himself. He was a friend
of mine. I didn't see much of him before he died; I was busy with
the vanilla."
Llewellyn swept us with an inclusive glance.
"Now you fellows have got to stop bringing up this David matter when
I come in here, or I'll quit this club."
Hallman answered him, spitefully:
"For Heaven's sake, Llewellyn, I never heard a living soul mention
David before, except at first, when there was so much curiosity. You're
bughouse."
Fung Wah sat there, his small, astute eyes, in a saffron face,
fixed alternately upon the speakers, with an appraising grimace but
half-veiled. And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he
admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his rise from the estate
of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these Taipans,
the whites of Tahiti. He may or may not have known what rumors there
were, but wanting the good-will of all influential residents in his
widening scheme for money-making, he tried to soften the asperities
of the interchange:
"Wa'ss mallah, Mis' Le'llyn?" he asked. "Ev'ybody fliend fo'
you. Nobody makee tlouble fo' you 'bout Davie. My think 'm dlinkee
too muchee, too muchee vahine, maybe play cart, losee too muchee
flanc. He thlinkee mo' bettah finish."
The words of Fung Wah were poison in the ears of Llewellyn. He leaned
forward and, raising his forefinger, pointed it at the Chinese.
"Aue! You hold your damned yellow mouth!" he said huskily. "I'll
get out of the islands if you people keep up this any longer. I'm
sick of it all. That old liar Morton has made my good name black in
Tahiti. Everybody knows the Llewellyns. God damn him! I ought to have
killed him when he threatened me in the Tiare!"
He took my untouched glass of Dr. Funk, and gulped the mixture,
nervously. Then he stood up unsteadily.
"I don't get any sleep," he said, as if to himself, wearily. "I'm
going to my shop and lie down."
He moved heavily down the stairs, and we breathed relief.
"Too muchee Pernoud!" Fung Wah commented.
"No, Fung Wah, you've sized 'im wrong," answered Lying Bill. "'E's
seein' things. 'E's put enough absint' down his throat, but 'he's
proper used to that. Let's take the matter up, an' consider it like ol'
Raoul, the lawyer, did when Murray killed the gendarme at Areu. David's
a young kid, an' wild, an' without any good home like you an 'me 've
got, an' runnin' round the Barbary Coast in Frisco, with those bloody
vampires there. 'Is uncle, Morton, is afraid 'e'll get the 'abit,
and wants to sen' 'im pretty far. Well, 'e remembers 'e was in Tahiti
forty years before, an' 'e been dealin' in a way in vanilla with ol'
Llewellyn's 'ouse 'ere. So 'e makes arrangements to put ten thousan'
dollars in with our friend that 's jus' gone out, and buy the kid
a interest in the business. Down comes David, and Llewellyn takes a
shine to 'im, an' soon they're thick as thieves. I see it all between
voyages. It's the cinema, the prize-fight, the upaupa, the women, an'
the bloody booze, day an' night. The vanilla business goes to hell
or to Fung Wah or some other Chink. David blows in all 'is bleedin'
capital, 'e busts in 'is 'ealth, an' may be, 'e's afraid o' somepin'
worse. 'E gets a bloody funk, an' goes to Llewellyn's desk an' gets
the gun. Then 'e writes a letter to 'is uncle in Frisco, an' goin'
out on the step, 'e blows out 'is brains. I'm on the schooner, so I
can't get any blame."
Captain Pincher lit his pipe, and the glasses were refilled.
McHenry attempted to pick up the thread of the tragedy, and began:
"Me, too, I'm with Bill drivin' the Fetia for Nuka-Hiva when David
croaks himself. I drank as much as he did ashore, and I 'm no slouch
with the vahines; but I can hold my booze, I can."
Lying Bill, with his drink down, and his pipe smoking, resumed,
with no attention to McHenry, and a withering glance at Fung Wah,
who was bored and walked over to the wall to glance at the barometer.
"Well, there's David dead on the doorstep,--'e probably shot 'imself
about midnight,--and Llewellyn comes rollin' in a couple o' hours
later, an' stumbles over 'is bloody corpse. 'E's tired, but 'e gets a
lantern, an' sees the kid there, like a bleedin' wreck on the reef. It
fair knocks 'im out, an' 'e sits down on the same step, an' when the
kanaka comes in the mornin' to sweep up, 'e fin's the two o' them."
Landers broke in:
"Blow me! I'd 'a' hated to been that poor kanaka! But Doctor Cassiou,
the coroner, said it was suicide all right. Llewellyn's in the clear."
"Of course, 'e 's in the clear, an' proper right," said Pincher,
irritatedly. "But when the letter's mailed to ol' Morton in Frisco,
'e comes down on the nex' steamer, an' carries a gun to kill Llewellyn,
an' tells everybody 'at Llewellyn dragged his nephew to 'ell, an'
M'seer Lontane takes 'is gun away when Llewellyn meets 'im in Lovaina's
porch, an' 'e pulls the gun, an' the Dummy stops 'im, and Llewellyn
grabs a knife off the table. Why, there's some reason for 'im comin'
in 'ere like a bloody queer un an' abusin' us."
"Hell! that's all over!" said Hallman. "I'll tell you, Llewellyn's
always been sour. That's what that dam' German university highfalutin'
education does for you. It takes the guts out of you. I know. I never
had any of it. I'm a business man, by God! and I'm not crammed full
of Dago and other rot. All the Davids in the world could croak on my
doorstep, and if the police couldn't get me for it, I'd worry. I--"
"Belay there!" Lying Bill shouted at Hallman. "You don't know
Llewellyn like I do. How about the tupapau, the bloody ghosts? You
forget that Llewellyn's a quarter Kanaka, an' born 'ere. All that
German university stuff ain't no good against the tupapau. Suppose
you were part Kanaka, an' the kid 'ad done what 'e did? I've seen
some things myself in these waters. That's what's eatin' Llewellyn,
an', believe me, it's goin' to kill 'im if he don't bloody well drink
'imself dead, first. I've seen too many Kanakas go that way when the
tahua got the tupapau after them. Llewellyn remembers what Lovaina said
ol' man Morton hollered when M'seer Lontane took the gun away from him
at the Tiare. 'All right!' hollered the uncle. 'All right! I'll leave
it to God!' The ol' boy loved that kid. 'E told Lovaina 'at 'is whole
bloody family was drowned when the Rio Janeiro went down off Mile Rock
in Frisco bay. The kid was 'is sister's only child, an' 'is uncle left
a thousand francs with the American consul for a proper tombstone on
'is grave in the cemetery. The ol' gent worshipped that kid."
Our session was over, the dinner hour having come; but Hallman had
his final say:
"If Llewellyn 's got the tupapau horrors, for God's sake! let him
stay away from the club. It's got so I hate to see him come in here,
looking like a death's head. He spoils my drink. I'd rather be in
the Marquesas with old Hemeury François, who is dyin' by inches of
the spell Mohuto 's put on him. They're alike, these Kanakas; they're
afraid of God and the devil, their own and the dam' missionary outfit,
too. They've got them coming and going. No wonder they're getting so
scarce you can't get any work done."
The next day was all preparation. I would be gone several months,
the usual time for the voyage of a trading schooner to the Marquesas
and return to Papeete. I had no bother about clothes, as I was to
be in the same climate, and in less formal circles even than in
Tahiti. But I desired to carry with me a type-writer, and mine was
out of order. There was no tinker of skill in Papeete, and I had
about given up hope of repairs, when Lovaina said:
"May be that eye doctor do you. He married one of those girl whose
father before ran away with that English ship and Tahiti girls to
Pitcairn Island, and get los' there till all chil'ren grow up big. He
has little house on rue de Petit Pologne."
I found on that street in a cottage an American vendor of spectacles,
who by some chance of propinquity had married a descendant of a
mutineer of the Bounty. I surrendered my machine to him while I talked
with his wife, whose ancestors, one English, the other Tahitian, had
sailed away from here generations ago, after the crew had possessed
themselves of the British warship Bounty, and cast their officers
adrift at sea. She was a resident of Norfolk Island, and I wished I
had time to hear the full story of her life. But before we had come
to more than platitudes, the eye doctor had repaired the type-writer,
and called his wife to other duties.
We had a going-away dinner at the Tiare hotel, Landers, Polonsky,
McHenry, Hallman, Schlyter, the tailor, and Lieutenant L'Hermier des
Plantes, a French army surgeon who was sailing on the Fetia Taiao to
the Marquesas to be acting governor there. Lovaina would not join
us, but after we had eaten an excellent dinner, she came in while
we drank her health. Llewellyn had been asked, but did not appear,
and McHenry said he was "very low" at five o'clock when he passed him
on the rue de Rivoli. Lying Bill preferred to spend his last evening
ashore with his native wife, or else wished to avoid the chance of
a headache on the morrow.
We drank our last toasts at midnight, and I was averse to arising
when called at six by Atupu for the early breakfast and the last
disposition of my affairs. By nine o'clock I had put my baggage on
board the schooner, Lovaina taking me in her carriage, driven by the
Dummy. Vava was excited and puzzled by my return from the country,
and my sudden departure for the sea. While Lovaina stayed in the
garden of the Annexe, gathering a garland of roses for my hat, the
Dummy endeavored to narrate to me the tragedy of David. His own part
in preventing Morton from shooting, Vava showed in vivid pantomime
with a fervor that would have made a moving-picture actor's fame; and
when he indicated Morton's abandonment of revenge, though the Dummy
could have no knowledge of his words, he gestured with a dignity that
conveyed all the meaning of Lying Bill's relation of the incident. In
the expression and motion of the dramatic mute the aged uncle had
the sublimity of Lear. For Vava, in a mask and an attitude, by some
cryptic understanding encompassed the resignation and appeal to Deity.
Lovaina had left me on the deck of the Fetia Taiao, as Captain Pincher
said that it would be an hour or two before he sailed. His crew
was having a few extra upaupas in the Cocoanut House. I sat on the
rail with Vava's dumb-show uppermost in my mind, and a strong desire
came to me to see the grave of David, and the tombstone erected by
his frenzied kinsman. I strolled up the Broom road to the Annexe,
and past Madame Fanny's restaurant to the garden of the Banque de
l'Indo-Chine, and continued westward to the cemetery.
It was a lonely spot, that acre of God in these South Seas, for the
resting-place of one who had been so alive as that young American. The
hours of our last wassail, the bowl of velvet, and my waking by the
Pool of Psyche with the mahu and the Dummy beside me, were painted
on my brain.
"There, but for the grace of God, goes John Wesley," said the exhorter
when he saw a murderer on the way to the gallows.
Some such dismal thought assailed me as the lofty exotic cypress in
the center of the Golgotha met my eye; the tree of the dead over all
the world. I halted to view the expanse of mausoleums and foliage. The
rich had built small houses or pagodas to roof their loved from the
torrential rains, and, from my distance, only these buildings and the
trees could be seen; but as I was about to cross the road to enter
the gate, a figure approached. I drew back, for, of all men, it was
Llewellyn. He seemed to walk an accustomed course, observing none
of the surroundings, and with his head down, and his stick touching
the ground like the staff of a blind man. He turned in the entrance
and moved up the winding path until he came to a grave. There he
stood a few seconds irresolutely, and then stooped beside the white
stone. He leaned over, and appeared to read the inscription. Instantly
he turned, and started almost to run, but halted after a few paces,
and returned to the stone. I saw him put his hand to his forehead,
cover his eyes, and then he took off his hat and dropped upon his
knees, and bent nearly to the rounded earth. When he stood up again,
he kept the hat in his left hand, and, his cane tapping hard upon
the soil, came through the gate, and passed me, unseeing. There was
a look of terror on his face that affected me deeply.
I crossed the road behind him, and walked swiftly to the grave. My time
was short. There I perceived that the tombstone had just been raised,
for the tools of the cemetery keeper were near by. On a plain, white
slab of marble was the name, Morton David, and the date; and below
these, an inscription:
Vengeance Is Mine
I Will Repay.
This was what had frozen that look upon the face of Llewellyn. The
tupaupa that should haunt him was this inscription. The old uncle
who had loved the dead man had well left it to God.
I hurried away and back to the schooner. Lovaina was sitting in
her shabby surrey under the flamboyants, the Dummy at the horse's
head. Lying Bill was giving orders for raising his bow anchor, and
the loosening of the shore lines. McHenry and Lieutenant L'Hermier
des Plantes shouted to me to come aboard. Lovaina hugged me to her
capacious bosom, the Dummy stroked my back a moment, and I was off
for the cannibal isles.
IONEI OE!
A letter from Fragrance of the Jasmine, to Frederick O'Brien, at
Sausalito, California:
"Ia ora na oe! Maru:
"Great sorrow has come to Tahiti. The people die by thousands from a
devil sickness, the grippe, or influenza. It came from your country
as we were rejoicing for the peace in France. The Navua brought it,
and for weeks we have died. Tati is dead. Tetuanui is dead. They cannot
lay the corpses in the graves, they fall so fast. There are no people
to help. The dogs and pigs have eaten them as they slept their last
sleep in their gardens. Now the corpses are burning in great trenches,
and drunken white sailors with scared faces burn them, and drive the
dead wagons crosswise in the streets. The burning of our loved ones is
affrighting, and the old people who are not dead are in terrible fear
of the flames. It is like the savages of the Marquesas in olden times.
"Your dear friend Lovaina was the first to die of the hotahota, as
some call this sickness. Lovaina had a bad cough. The man who looks
after the engines of the Navua went to see her, and she kissed him on
the cheek. Then the good doctor of Papeete who visits the ships was
called to see her. Maru, could that doctor have brought the hotahota
to Lovaina? She was dead in a little while.
"Lovaina had good fortune all her life, for, being the first one
to die, she was buried as we have always buried our people. All of
Tahiti that was not ill walked with her coffin. Oh, Maru, I wept for
Lovaina. Vava, whom you whites call the Dummy, is dead, too. When
Lovaina was taken to the cemetery, Vava drove her old chaise with her
children in it; and then, Maru, he was seen again only by a Tahitian
who had gone to bathe in the lagoon because the fever was burning
him. You know how Vava always took the old horse of Lovaina at sunset
to swim in front of the Annexe. This man who was ill said that he
saw Vava ride the horse into the sea, and straight out toward the
reef. Vava signed farewell to the man with the fever. The man stayed
in the lagoon to cool his body until the sun was below Moorea, and
your friend, the Dummy, did not return. Maru, we loved dear Lovaina,
but to Vava she was mother and God.
"It is strange, Maru, the way of things in the world. The lepers who
are confined towards Arue were forgotten, and as nobody went near them,
the hotahota passed them by.
"I cannot write more. O Maru, come back to aid us. It is a long time
since those happy days when we walked in the Valley of Fautaua.
"Ia ora na i te Atua!
"NOANOA TIARE."