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There was rare life at Lovaina's, for besides all the diners in ordinary and extraordinary in the salle-
They were short; merely a few puffs. Afa, the tane of the lovely Evoa of the Annexe, brought to the luncheon Annabelle Lee, the buxom wife of Lovaina's negro chauffeur. She was a quadroon, a belle of dark Kentucky, with more than a touch of the tar-brush in her skin and hair, and her gaudy clothes and friendly manner had won the Tahitians completely.
The girls do it mostly, but I thought this jackpuddin' could make an honest pound or two. He came tearin' back to me sayin' I'd insulted him with the work, askin' him, a nobleman, to pander in the vegetable kingdom." "I know him. He was at Lovaina's," I interposed. "He was at the bar all the time, quoting Pope and Dryden and himself. He said he was going around the globe on a wager of a fortune.
The band of the cinema led the entourage, and played a free choice of appropriate music, "Lohengrin" before the governor's palace, and "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night" as they passed Lovaina's. The company sang lustily, and toasts to the embracing couple were drunk generously from spouting champagne-bottles as the cortege circled the principal streets.
When heads were counted, Landers's was missing, and jumping into Llewellyn's carriage, an old-fashioned phaëton, I drove to Lovaina's, where he occupied the room next to mine in the detached house in the animal-yard. He was sound asleep, having played poker and drunk until an hour before; but when I awoke him I could not but admire the serenity of the man.
For three days the girls at Lovaina's had worn their best peignoirs, and several times donned shoes and stockings to go to the quay. Passengers for San Francisco who had packed their trunks had unpacked them. The air of expectancy which Papeete wore for a day or two before steamer-day had been so heated by postponement that nerves came to the surface. Tahiti was a place of no exact knowledge.
How their memory must survive with the guests of the Tiare Hotel! One read of them in every book of travel encompassing Tahiti. One heard of them from every man who had dropped upon this beach. Once in Mukden, Manchuria, I sat up half the night while the American consul and a globe-trotter painted for me the portraits of Lovaina's girls.
I was atop a disorderly camel named Mark Twain nosing about the Sphinx when my companion remarked that that stony-faced lady looked a good deal like Temanu of Lovaina's. Then I had to have the whole story of Lovaina and her household. I have heard it away from Tahiti a dozen times and always different.
Captain Benson and his companions hastened from the dentist's to Lovaina's, where they were given a table on the veranda alone. They remained an hour secluded after Iromea and Atupu had piled their table with dishes. They drank quarts of coffee, and ate a beefsteak each, dozens of eggs, and many slices of fried ham, with scores of hot biscuits. They never spoke during the meal.
Her captain, M. Moet, Woronick, a pearl merchant, a government physician, and the passengers from the Paumotus were soon ashore shaking hands with friends. I walked behind them to Lovaina's for coffee, and was introduced to them all. Woronick took me to his house across the street from the Tiare Hotel, and there opened a massive safe and showed me drawer after drawer of pearls.
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