“Lemoal said that!” she cried. “It is a lie! What ill have I? Tuberculosis? Do I cough? Am I thin? The miserable! It is strange. Kahuiti and two others have asked me in the past few days if I were ill. Monsieur Frederick, you are my friend. Look at me! Am I not well?”
She leaped to her feet. An instant she entertained the suggestion of stripping her tunic from her, and revealing her entire body for judgment. She bared her girlish bosom, and her hands tore at the gown, and then the convent inhibitions conquered, and she hastily covered herself.
She blushed darkly, and turned from me. The mortal sin of immodesty had been the daily preachment of the nuns.
“I must go home before the night,” she said weakly. “I will not go on to the convent. Good-by, my friend. Pray for me!”
The dusk was already thick as she mounted her horse, and I made out the trail to Atuona with difficulty. Dimly, I discerned the workings of an unholy spell, or my sympathy for her and my hatred for Lemoal conjured up a web of witchcraft that would affright her suitor, and bind her to the scene of her birth. How far this web had been spun I could only guess. I put the matter flatly to Le Brunnec. Yes, he had had the same story from Lemoal, and so had many others. As to Lutz’s hearing it, he did not know, but Lemoal was despised by Lutz, who had quarreled with him long ago. He would not dare to carry his tale to Tahauku, nor would any one. The Prussian trader in his dealings had inculcated respect and a decent fear of himself.
That evening I sent Exploding Eggs to tell Song of the Nightingale I wanted to see him at my house. When he came, I referred, after the customary drink of rum, to the taua, and declared my eager wish to meet him. I knew Kahuiti, of the valley of Taaoa, who was still a cannibal, and I must know the last of the pagan priests there. The cook was well pleased, and we agreed that the first evening the governor took his dinner at the house of Bauda he would come for me. Le Brunnec smiled when I let him know my plan.
“Go ahead!” he said. “I am no believer in anything but a reasonable profit, and a merry time. You can do nothing if you are trying to help Mademoiselle Narbonne. I have seen too often the meddling white fail with these Marquesans. They know more about many important things than we do, even if they don’t wear shoes or eat with a fork. That old taua may be a fool, but they don’t think so, and there’s the secret.”
Song of the Nightingale appeared at six, a few evenings later, and we started on the five miles’ ride to Taaoa. I had borrowed a horse of Mouth of God, and the prisoner-cook had no difficulty in finding one. Too many people dreaded his bitter tongue and violent disposition to refuse him. As we went through the pass at Otupotu and descended the winding trail to the adjoining valley, the sun was below the far tops of the green hills and was tinting all the sky in shades of softest red. Clouds, edged with brilliant gold, were like lilies in a garden of roses. The air was still and heavy when we rode by the sulphurous springs where Mouth of God’s grandfather was slain by Kahuiti’s spear. My guide avoided the village of Taaoa, and took a path which led by a graveyard.
On an obelisk had been inscribed half a century before:
Inei Teavi o te mata einana o Taaoa.