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.