Mystic Isles of the South Seas.

by Frederick O'Brien

Chapter XXVI

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.