第48章 THE TWO CHIEFS OF ATUONA(3)

Mr.Osbourne had gone into Atuona photographing;the population of the village had gathered together for the occasion on the place before the church,and Paaaeua,highly delighted with this new appearance of his family,played the master of ceremonies.The church had been taken,with its jolly architect before the door;the nuns with their pupils;sundry damsels in the ancient and singularly unbecoming robes of tapa;and Father Orens in the midst of a group of his parishioners.I know not what else was in hand,when the photographer became aware of a sensation in the crowd,and,looking around,beheld a very noble figure of a man appear upon the margin of a thicket and stroll nonchalantly near.The nonchalance was visibly affected;it was plain he came there to arouse attention,and his success was instant.He was introduced;he was civil,he was obliging,he was always ineffably superior and certain of himself;a well-graced actor.It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume;he gracefully consented;and returned in that strange,inappropriate and ill-omened array (which very well became his handsome person)to strut in a circle of admirers,and be thenceforth the centre of photography.Thus had Moipu effected his introduction,as by accident,to the white strangers,made it a favour to display his finery,and reduced his rival to a secondary ROLE on the theatre of the disputed village.Paaaeua felt the blow;and,with a spirit which we never dreamed he could possess,asserted his priority.It was found impossible that day to get a photograph of Moipu alone;for whenever he stood up before the camera his successor placed himself unbidden by his side,and gently but firmly held to his position.The portraits of the pair,Jacob and Esau,standing shoulder to shoulder,one in his careful European dress,one in his barbaric trappings,figure the past and present of their island.Agraveyard with its humble crosses would be the aptest symbol of the future.

We are all impressed with the belief that Moipu had planned his campaign from the beginning to the end.It is certain that he lost no time in pushing his advantage.Mr.Osbourne was inveigled to his house;various gifts were fished out of an old sea-chest;Father Orens was called into service as interpreter,and Moipu formally proposed to 'make brothers'with Mata-Galahi -Glass-Eyes,-the not very euphonious name under which Mr.Osbourne passed in the Marquesas.The feast of brotherhood took place on board the CASCO.Paaaeua had arrived with his family,like a plain man;and his presents,which had been numerous,had followed one another,at intervals through several days.Moipu,as if to mark at every point the opposition,came with a certain feudal pomp,attended by retainers bearing gifts of all descriptions,from plumes of old men's beard to little,pious,Catholic engravings.

I had met the man before this in the village,and detested him on sight;there was something indescribably raffish in his looks and ways that raised my gorge;and when man-eating was referred to,and he laughed a low,cruel laugh,part boastful,part bashful,like one reminded of some dashing peccadillo,my repugnance was mingled with nausea.This is no very human attitude,nor one at all becoming in a traveller.And,seen more privately,the man improved.Something negroid in character and face was still displeasing;but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled,his figure and bearing were certainly noble,and his eyes superb.

In his appreciation of jams and pickles,in is delight in the reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin,and consequent endless repetition of Moipus and Mata-Galahis,he showed himself engagingly a child.And yet I am not sure;and what seemed childishness may have been rather courtly art.His manners struck me as beyond the mark;they were refined and caressing to the point of grossness,and when I think of the serene absent-mindedness with which he first strolled in upon our party,and then recall him running on hands and knees along the cabin sofas,pawing the velvet,dipping into the beds,and bleating commendatory 'MITAIS'with exaggerated emphasis,like some enormous over-mannered ape,I feel the more sure that both must have been calculated.And I sometimes wonder next,if Moipu were quite alone in this polite duplicity,and ask myself whether the CASCO were quite so much admired in the Marquesas as our visitors desired us to suppose.

I will complete this sketch of an incurable cannibal grandee with two incongruous traits.His favourite morsel was the human hand,of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness.And when he said good-bye to Mrs.Stevenson,holding her hand,viewing her with tearful eyes,and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of Marquesan high society,he wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression which I try in vain to share.