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I am not married. It is forbidden. Five months I am with this woman of mine. The mutoi has a war-club that is hard as stone. "Give me quickly the paper to marry her. I await your word. "My word is done. I am at Philadelphia, New York Hotel. A.P.A. Dieu. Coot pae, mama." Mauitetai had read the letter many times.
It was seldom visited by white tourists, as even the post brought by the diligence ended at Taravao, and letters for farther on were carried afoot by the mutoi, or postman-policeman of the adjoining district, who handed on to his contiguous confrère those for more distant confines.
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.
Arriving at a chefferie, the stage halted, the district mutoi, or native policeman-postman, appeared leisurely, opened the locked box on the diligence, looked at ease over the contents, took out what he liked, and put back the remainder, with the postings of the chefferie. A glance at the map of Tahiti shows it shaped like a Samoan fan, or, roughly, like a lady's hand mirror.
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.
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