In this building all the pomp and circumstance of the Nations in Tahiti had been on parade, kings and queens of the island had pleaded and submitted, admirals and ensigns had whispered love to dusky vahines, and the petty wars of Oceanic had been planned between waltzes and wines. Here Loti put his arms about his first Tahitian sweetheart, and practised that vocabulary of love he used so well in “Rarahu,” “Madame Chrysantheme,” and his other studies of the exotic woman. A hundred noted men, soldiers, and sailors, scientists and dilettanti, governors and writers, had walked or worked in those tumbling rooms.
Lovaina had owned the building many years, buying it from the thrifty French Government.
My apartment was of two rooms, and my section of the balcony was cut off by a door, giving privacy unusual in Tahiti. The coloring of the wall was rich in hue.
Any color, so it’s red, said a satirist, who might have been characterizing my rooms. Turkey-red muslin with a large, white diamond figure was pasted on the plaster walls and hung in the doorways.
“It very bes’ the baroness could do in T’ytee,” explained Lovaina. “She must be bright all about, and she buy and fix rooms. She have whole top floor Annexe, and spen’ money like gentleman, two or three thousand dollar’ every month. I wish you know her. She talk beautiful’, and never one word smut. Hones’, true. Johnny, my son, read ‘Three Weeks’ that time, and he speak the baroness, ‘You jus’ like that woman in the book.’ She have baby here and take with her to Paris. She want that baby jus’ like ‘Three Weeks.’ Oh, but she live high! She have her own servants, get everything in market, bring peacocks and pheasants and turkeys from America. How you think? Dead? No. She sen’ man to bring on foot on boat. You go visit her, she give champagne jus’ like Papenoo River. She beautiful? My God! I tell you she like angel. She speak French, English, Russian, German, Italian, anything the same. She good, but she don’t care a dam’ what people say. When she go ’way Europe she give frien’s all her thing’. Now she back in her palace with her baby. She write once say she come back T’ytee some day by’n’by. She love T’ytee somethin’ crazee.”
At the Cercle Bougainville Captain William Pincher told me more of the baroness.
“Is the bloody meat-safe still on the back porch? The baroness made a voyage with me to the Paumotus just for the air. She sat on deck all the time, rain or shine. I’d put a’ awnin’ over ’er in fair weather or when it rained and there wasn’t much wind. She was a bloody good sailor, too, and ate like us, only she never went below except at night. I give her my cabin. She’d spen’ hours lookin’ over the side in a calm—we had no engine—an’ she’d listen to all the yarns.”
Lying Bill burst out with one of his choicest oaths.
“She wasn’t like some of those ladees I’ve ’ad aboard. She was a proper salt-water lass. She loved to ’ear my yarns of the sea. When she was big with child an’ I ashore, I ’ad the ’abit o’ droppin’ in o’ afternoons and ’avin’ a slice of ’am or chicken out o’ the safe. Afa ran ’er bloody show for ’er, an’ it cost ’er a bloody fortune. I used to lie for ’er to ’ear ’er laugh. You know I’m called Lyin’ Bill, but McHenry tells more real lies in a day than I do in a bloody year. She was the finest-looking girl of the delicate kind I ever saw, all pink and white an’ with fringy clothes an’ little feet. Oh! there was nothing between us but the sea, an’ I know that subject.”
Lying Bill sighed like a diver just up from the bottom of the lagoon.