“With pleasure; I am as dry as the inside of an old skull.”
“But, my friend,” I remonstrated with the executive, aside. “She is a leper. Her sister is, too. Are you not afraid? She drinks from our glasses.”
“Me? I am a soldier, and a student of leprosy. It is my hobby. It is mysterious, that disease. I watch her closely.”
If the apostolic vicar felt keenly his inability to manage the affairs of the village and the islands to suit his ideas of morality and religion, so did the Protestant pastor. My house was very near the mission, and it was some days after I had arrived before I went to the dissenting church, half a mile across the valley. Monsieur Paul Vernier, the Protestant pastor, had been many years in the Marquesas. He was respected by the ungodly. Guillitoue hailed him as a brother, anarchist and infidel though he was himself. Vernier alternated between hunting souls to save and bulls to shoot, for he was a very son of Cush, and his quest of the wild cattle of the mountains had put him upon their horns more than once. Salvation he held first, and he was canny in copra, but many nights he lay upon the tops of the great hills when pursuit of game had led him far.
Vernier had a background, for, though born in Tahiti, his father had been a man of culture and his mother a charming Frenchwoman, whose home in Tahiti was memorable to visitors. Vernier had devoted his life to the Marquesans, and lived in this simple atmosphere without regret for Tahiti. The apostolic vicar said that Vernier was Antichrist made manifest in the flesh, but that was on account of the odium theologicum, which here was as bitter as in Worms or Geneva of old. The spirit of Père David was pierced by the occasional defections from his flock caused by the proselytizing of Vernier. Before I met him I had gone to his church with Great Fern and Apporo. It was a box-like, redwood building, its interior lacking the imagery and coloring of the Roman congregation. The fat angels of Brother Michel, the cherubim and seraphim in plaster on the façade of Father David’s structure were typical of the genius of that faith, round, smiling, and breathing good will to the faithful. Protestantism was not in accord with the palms, the flowers, and the brilliancy of the sunlight. Thirty made up the congregation, of whom fourteen were men, twelve women, and four children, though the benches would seat a hundred. The women, as in the Catholic church, wore hats, but I was the only person shod.
Men and women sat apart. During the service, except when they sang, no man paid any attention to the preacher, nor did but three or four of the men. They seemed to have no piety. The women with children walked in and out, and four dogs coursed up and down the aisle. No one stirred a hand or tongue at them.
Fariura, a Tahitian preacher, who replaced Vernier, was a devout figure in blackest alpaca suit and silk tie, but barefooted. As he stood on a platform by a deal table and read the Bible, I saw his toes were well spread, which in this country was like the horny hand of the laborer, proof of industry. Climbing the cocoanut-trees made one’s toes ape one’s fingers in radiation.
Tevao Kekela led the singing in a high-pitched coppery voice, and those who sang with her had much the same intonation and manner. Often the sound was like that of a Tyrolean yodel, and the lingering on the last note was fantastic. They sang without animation, rapidly, and as if repeating a lesson. In the Catholic church the natives were assisted by the nuns. These words were, of course, Marquesan, and I copied down a stanza or two:
Haere noara ta matorae
Va nia i te ea tiare,