And then came the missionary ("Before the missionary came," in the mouth of an old Tahitian, is fraught with all the wildness of regret of "Before the Gringo came" on the lips of an old Spanish Don of California) and the "Areo" grew less and less and finally was no more. What of its legacies? We have seen how the missionaries adopted and turned the song to their own good ends. Has the dance also had the vitality to survive without the patronage of the real arbiters of island destiny? Hardly in its pristine purity—or impurity. The hula in Tahiti today is in about the same state as "The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls"; the only evidence of its existence is when some overstrung string of vahines breaks (out) to show that still it lives. If the "breaking" is in public you will probably see the frayed ends of the string being chivvied down to the city bastile by a couple of motherly gendarmes.
And yet the ancient dance is not quite dead; there are a few strings that will yet give back a responsive chord if one knows how to twang them. But don't think it will be you, Mr. Tourist. I never heard of but one man who chanced to strike the "Lost Chord," and his fingers had been wandering over the worn strings for a year or more before they twanged the right combination. I will write of how this befell presently.
The usual hula that is arranged for those of the "personally-conducted-limited-to-fifty-all-expenses-paid" party who are in search of something deliciously naughty is about as devilish as a quadrille at a Sunday school picnic—a squad of portly vahines marching soberly through a half dozen simple figures to the music of a couple of accordions and an old drum. But at every one of these performances a darkly mysterious Kanaka is sure to slip quietly around among the men of the party and hint vaguely of the "real thing" that has been arranged for that very evening, and to which admission may be gained for, say, ten Chilean pesos apiece. Like half-starved trout to the first grasshopper of the season they rise, and, with felicitous mutterings of "A chance of a lifetime to see a hula—last one ever to be pulled off; fancy it occurring during our visit"—a party of a dozen or more, leaving its distractedly envious ladies behind, is steered off from the hotel into the scented twilight.
The "subscriptions" are collected en route to a deserted shack on the outskirts of the town, where, by the light of a couple of battered ship side-lamps, the searchers for local colour see a dozen anaemic frailties from the "beach"—dull-eyed, sad-looking vahines, flotsam and jetsam from half the island groups of the South Pacific, with strong hints of elephantiasis in their heavy ankles and blotchy skin—writhe and wriggle for half an hour in action more suggestive of the popular vaudeville imitation of a portly dame trying to make the hooks of her evening gown meet than a terpsichorean performance. The girls are a shameless lot of hussies of the class—you met them what times you whiled away the tedium of your steamer stop in Singapore, Colombo and Port Said with those swift but illuminating studies of "native life"—that dextrously appropriates your scarf pin under pretence of putting a flower in your button hole, and when you discover the loss boldly challenges you to tell the police.
And yet—what an indescribable lure there is in the "real thing" bait any time after you have been bitten by the "search-for-local colour" bug! It would hardly be fair for me to hold the glass on the researches of other Tahitian visitors without confessing that I, also, was once an eager follower of the "real thing" will-o'-the wisp, and under circumstances particularly aggravating. So here's for a clean breast of it.
I had noticed with increasing curiosity as our Tahitian visit wore on that the sailors from the yacht had been returning for several days from shore leave with new hats and new neckties, and with wreaths of flowers about their shoulders—sure signs that they were basking in female favour in some part of the island capital—so that when the mate came to me with a story of how he and his fellows had been adopted (a not unusual Kanaka custom) by families of an outlying Papeetan suburb, I accepted the truth of the yarn without question.
"As a special favour, sir, a lot of the vahines are going to give us the 'real thing' in the way of a hula tomorrow night," he confided to me, "and we thought that as you was saying that you didn't think much of them tourist hulas they get up for the steamer people that you might like to see the genuine article."
"Thanks, Victor," I said eagerly. "Write down the directions for reaching the place and I will pick up W—— and be there."