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.