________________________________________________
_
Tenez, voila le Capitaine Brunot," said Tiare, one day
when I was fitting together what she could tell me of Strickland.
"He knew Strickland well; he visited him at his house."
I saw a middle-aged Frenchman with a big black beard, streaked
with gray, a sunburned face, and large, shining eyes. He was
dressed in a neat suit of ducks. I had noticed him at
luncheon, and Ah Lin, the Chinese boy, told me he had come
from the Paumotus on the boat that had that day arrived.
Tiare introduced me to him, and he handed me his card, a large
card on which was printed Rene Brunot, and underneath,
Capitaine au Long Cours. We were sitting on a little
verandah outside the kitchen, and Tiare was cutting out a
dress that she was making for one of the girls about the
house. He sat down with us.
"Yes; I knew Strickland well," he said. "I am very fond of
chess, and he was always glad of a game. I come to Tahiti
three or four times a year for my business, and when he was at
Papeete he would come here and we would play. When he
married" -- Captain Brunot smiled and shrugged his shoulders --
" enfin, when he went to live with the girl that Tiare
gave him, he asked me to go and see him. I was one of the
guests at the wedding feast." He looked at Tiare, and they
both laughed. "He did not come much to Papeete after that,
and about a year later it chanced that I had to go to that
part of the island for I forgot what business, and when I had
finished it I said to myself: ` Voyons, why should I not
go and see that poor Strickland?' I asked one or two natives
if they knew anything about him, and I discovered that he
lived not more than five kilometres from where I was. So I went.
I shall never forget the impression my visit made on me.
I live on an atoll, a low island, it is a strip of land
surrounding a lagoon, and its beauty is the beauty of the sea
and sky and the varied colour of the lagoon and the grace of
the cocoa-nut trees; but the place where Strickland lived had
the beauty of the Garden of Eden. Ah, I wish I could make you
see the enchantment of that spot, a corner hidden away from
all the world, with the blue sky overhead and the rich,
luxuriant trees. It was a feast of colour. And it was
fragrant and cool. Words cannot describe that paradise.
And here he lived, unmindful of the world and by the
world forgotten. I suppose to European eyes it would have
seemed astonishingly sordid. The house was dilapidated and none
too clean. Three or four natives were lying on the verandah.
You know how natives love to herd together. There was a young
man lying full length, smoking a cigarette, and he wore nothing
but a pareo"
The pareo is a long strip of trade cotton, red or blue,
stamped with a white pattern. It is worn round the waist and
hangs to the knees.
"A girl of fifteen, perhaps, was plaiting pandanus-leaf to
make a hat, and an old woman was sitting on her haunches
smoking a pipe. Then I saw Ata. She was suckling a new-born
child, and another child, stark naked, was playing at her feet.
When she saw me she called out to Strickland, and he
came to the door. He, too, wore nothing but a pareo.
He was an extraordinary figure, with his red beard and matted
hair, and his great hairy chest. His feet were horny and
scarred, so that I knew he went always bare foot. He had gone
native with a vengeance. He seemed pleased to see me, and
told Ata to kill a chicken for our dinner. He took me into
the house to show me the picture he was at work on when I came in.
In one corner of the room was the bed, and in the middle
was an easel with the canvas upon it. Because I was sorry for
him, I had bought a couple of his pictures for small sums, and
I had sent others to friends of mine in France. And though I
had bought them out of compassion, after living with them I
began to like them. Indeed, I found a strange beauty in them.
Everyone thought I was mad, but it turns out that I was right.
I was his first admirer in the islands."
He smiled maliciously at Tiare, and with lamentations she told
us again the story of how at the sale of Strickland's effects
she had neglected the pictures, but bought an American stove
for twenty-seven francs.
"Have you the pictures still?" I asked.
"Yes; I am keeping them till my daughter is of marriageable
age, and then I shall sell them. They will be her dot."
Then he went on with the account of his visit to Strickland.
"I shall never forget the evening I spent with him. I had not
intended to stay more than an hour, but he insisted that I
should spend the night. I hesitated, for I confess I did not
much like the look of the mats on which he proposed that I
should sleep; but I shrugged my shoulders. When I was
building my house in the Paumotus I had slept out for weeks on
a harder bed than that, with nothing to shelter me but wild
shrubs; and as for vermin, my tough skin should be proof
against their malice.
"We went down to the stream to bathe while Ata was preparing
the dinner, and after we had eaten it we sat on the verandah.
We smoked and chatted. The young man had a concertina, and he
played the tunes popular on the music-halls a dozen years
before. They sounded strangely in the tropical night
thousands of miles from civilisation. I asked Strickland if
it did not irk him to live in that promiscuity. No, he said;
he liked to have his models under his hand. Presently, after
loud yawning, the natives went away to sleep, and Strickland
and I were left alone. I cannot describe to you the intense
silence of the night. On my island in the Paumotus there is
never at night the complete stillness that there was here.
There is the rustle of the myriad animals on the beach, all
the little shelled things that crawl about ceaselessly, and
there is the noisy scurrying of the land-crabs. Now and then
in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish, and sometimes a
hurried noisy splashing as a brown shark sends all the other
fish scampering for their lives. And above all, ceaseless
like time, is the dull roar of the breakers on the reef.
But here there was not a sound, and the air was scented with the
white flowers of the night. It was a night so beautiful that
your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body.
You felt that it was ready to be wafted away on the immaterial air,
and death bore all the aspect of a beloved friend."
Tiare sighed.
"Ah, I wish I were fifteen again."
Then she caught sight of a cat trying to get at a dish of
prawns on the kitchen table, and with a dexterous gesture and
a lively volley of abuse flung a book at its scampering tail.
"I asked him if he was happy with Ata.
"`She leaves me alone,' he said. 'She cooks my food and looks
after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me
what I want from a woman.'
"`And do you never regret Europe? Do you not yearn sometimes
for the light of the streets in Paris or London, the
companionship of your friends, and equals, que sais-je?
for theatres and newspapers, and the rumble of omnibuses on
the cobbled pavements?'
"For a long time he was silent. Then he said:
"`I shall stay here till I die.'
"`But are you never bored or lonely?' I asked.
"He chuckled.
"` Mon pauvre ami,' he said. `It is evident that you do
not know what it is to be an artist.'"
Capitaine Brunot turned to me with a gentle smile, and there
was a wonderful look in his dark, kind eyes.
"He did me an injustice, for I too know what it is to have
dreams. I have my visions too. In my way I also am an artist."
We were all silent for a while, and Tiare fished out of her
capacious pocket a handful of cigarettes. She handed one to
each of us, and we all three smoked. At last she said:
"Since ce monsieur is interested in Strickland, why do you
not take him to see Dr. Coutras? He can tell him something
about his illness and death."
"Volontiers," said the Captain, looking at me.
I thanked him, and he looked at his watch.
"It is past six o'clock. We should find him at home if you
care to come now."
I got up without further ado, and we walked along the road
that led to the doctor's house. He lived out of the town,
but the Hotel de la Fleur was on the edge of it, and we were
quickly in the country. The broad road was shaded by pepper-trees,
and on each side were the plantations, cocoa-nut and vanilla.
The pirate birds were screeching among the leaves of the palms.
We came to a stone bridge over a shallow river,
and we stopped for a few minutes to see the native boys bathing.
They chased one another with shrill cries and laughter,
and their bodies, brown and wet, gleamed in the sunlight. _
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