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.