I replied that I knew a Jeanette who answered the description beautiful, but that she was not from Chile.
Now, My Darling Hope knit her brow. Why would the mutoi take hold of her son, as he feared?
I soothed her anxiety. The mutoi walked up and down in front of the hotel, but he would not bother her son as long as her son could get a few piasters now and then to hand to him. The woman was rich, and would not miss a trifling sum, five or ten piasters a month for the mutoi.
But why was it forbidden for her son to live with Jeanette, being not married to her?
That was our law, but it was seldom enforced. The mutois were fat men who carried war-clubs and struck the poor with them, but her son was tapu because of Jeanette's money.
She was at ease now, she said. Her son could not marry without her permission. No Marquesan had ever done so. She would send the word by the next schooner, or I might take it with me to my own island and hand it to her son. He could then marry.
I had done her a great kindness, but one thing more. Neither she nor Titihuti nor Water could make out what Pahorai Calizte meant by “Coot Pae, Mama.” “A.P.A. Dieu.” was his commendation of her to God, but Coot Pae was not Marquesan, neither was it French. She pronounced the words in the Marquesan way, and I knew at once. Coot pae is pronounced Coot Pye, and Coot Pye was Pahorai Calizte's way of imitating the American for Apae Kaoha. “Good-by, mama,” was his quite Philadelphia closing of his letter to his mother.
I addressed an envelop to her son with The Iron Fingers That Make Words, and gave it to My Darling Hope. A tear came in her eye. She rubbed my bare back affectionately and caressed my nose with hers as she smelled me solemnly. Then she went up the valley to enlighten the hill people.
CHAPTER XXXIX
The chants of departure; night falls on the Land of the War Fleet.