L’Hermier des Plantes was dancing opposite Many Daughters a hura-hura, and Song of the Nightingale was fetching cold water from the brook to water the wine, in the temperate French way.
“Hola!” called out the governor. “Come in, mon ami! Sit down and have a goutte de Pernod. You are jolly. What? You met Peyral, and he shot not you but a kuku? O lalala! You give me back the Browning? All right. You could not have done much harm with it. See, the cartridges are blanks for firing a salute on the Fall of the Bastille fête. O sapristi! It is droll! I will die!”
He held his stomach while he laughed and laughed. I grinned with fury.
“What the devil is the drôlerie?” I questioned, earnestly.
The governor wiped his eyes, and emptied his glass.
“Attendez!” he answered. You were not in any great danger or I would have come to your rescue. You know I have here a dossier of every one in these islands who has been complained against, or has complained. The first week I was here Peyral declared that Commissaire Bauda had insulted his daughter, and that he must marry her or he would kill him. Bauda denied the charge, and Peyral did nothing. Then I opened his dossier, and in two years he had made three such charges, one against a professor who was here a month, and one against Le Brunnec. C’est curieux. The man is mad with alcohol, but more so with a determination to marry that stark daughter of his to a white man who might take her away. Others have been eliminated after such foolishness as this. See, there was no one but you. Lutz is after higher game, and besides he is a German, and Peyral hates him. Voilà, mon garçon. You were the parti inevitable. It is strange the way he goes about getting a son-in-law. One might expect a dot, or a little hospitality, but no, he runs true to type, and he is not a chic type. But, c’est fini. He has tried and failed. You have met him, and knocked him down, and now you know his gun is for kuku. Well, we will drink to the health of the pauvre diable, and a good husband for the girl. But not you, eh?”
I drank with as much grace as I could, but when I walked in the upper valley at dusk, and was alone by the paepae tapu, the shattered and grown-over temple of the old Marquesan gods, I could have cried for pity for that girl.
CHAPTER XVI
In the valley of Vaitahu—With Vanquished Often and Seventh Man He Is So Angry He wallows in the Mire—Worship of beauty in the South Seas—Like the ancient Greeks—Care of the body—Preparations for a belle’s début—Massage as a cure for ills.