There was in her manner a melancholy and a longing.
“Tahitians wear flowers all the day,” I said. “They are gay, and life is pleasant upon their island. There are automobiles by the score, cinemas, singing, and dancing every evening, and many Europeans and Americans. With money you could have everything.”
“It is not singing and dancing I desire!” she exclaimed. “Pas de tout! I must know more people, and not people like priests and these copra dealers. I have read in novels of men who are like gods, who are bold and strong, but who make their women happy. Do you know an officer of the Zelee, with hair like a ripe banana? He is tall and plays the banjo. I saw him one time long ago when the warship was here. He was on the governor's veranda. Oh, that was long ago, but such a young man would be the man that I want.”
Her Marquesan blood was speaking in that cry of the heart, unrestrained and passionate. They are not the cold, chaste women of other climes, these women of the Marquesas; with blood at fever heat and hearts beating like wild things against bars, they listen when love or its counterfeit pours into their ears those soft words with nothing in them that make a song. They have no barriers of reserve or haughtiness; they make no bargains; they go where the heart goes, careless of certified vows.
“Mon dieu!” Mademoiselle N—— exclaimed and put her tiny hand to her red lips. “What if the good sisters heard me? I am bad. I know. Eh bien! I am Marquesan after all.”
We were about to cross the stream by my cabin, and I mounted the horse behind her to save a wetting. She turned impulsively and looked at me, her lovely face close to mine, her dark eyes burning, and her hot breath on my cheek.
“Write to me when you are in Tahiti, and tell me if you think I would be happy there?” she said imploringly. “I have no friends here, except the nuns. I need so much to go away. I am dying here.”
Coming up my trail a few days later, I found on my paepae a shabbily dressed little bag-of-bones of a white man, with a dirty gray beard and a harsh voice like that of Baufré. He had a note to me from Le Brunnec, introducing M. Lemoal, born in Brest, a naturalized American. The note was sealed, and I put it carefully away before turning to my visitor. It read:
“CHER CITOYEN:
“I send you a specimen of the Marquesan beaches, so that you can have a little fun. This fellow have a very tremendous life. He is an old sailor, pirate, gold-miner, Chinese-hanger, thief, robber, honest-man, baker, trader; in a word, an interesting type. With the aid of several glasses of wine I have put him in the mood to talk delightfully.”
A low-browed man was Lemoal, sapped and ruthless, but certainly he had adventured.