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Updated: June 8, 2025
The sun was down, and the lagoon a purple lake when we were again at the bust of Bougainville. I thanked her at parting. "Noanoa Tiare," I said, "this day has a heavenly blue page in my record. It has made Tahiti a different island for me." "Maru, mon ami, you are sympathetic to my race. We shall be dear friends. I will send you the note to Tetuanui, the chief of Mataiea, to-morrow.
There was a dreadful flutter among the girls. Some one went to the piano and began to play, "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot," and the Americans and English sang, the French humming the air. The wine flattened in the glasses and open bottles, but no one cared. They gathered in the garden, where the perfume of the tiare scented the night, and the stars were a million lamps sublime in the sky.
My father give me that house, now Tiare Hotel, for weddin' present. All furnish. You should see that marry! My God! there was bottle in yard all broken. Admiral French fleet send band; come hisself with all his officer'. Five o'clock mornin'-time still dance and drink. Bigges' time T'ytee. You not walk barefoot long time 'count broken glass everywhere."
He became indignant, and in pantomime vividly described the suffering of guests at the Tiare with the ice exhausted, and Lovaina's plight if she could sell no more drinks. Lovaina persisted, and when I went to take the ice myself, he struck me with his horsewhip.
It was not hot like the summer heat of New York, for Tahiti has the most admirable climate I have found the world over, but at midday I had felt the warmth penetratingly. Noanoa Tiare made nothing of it, but suggested that we both leap into the tarn. I knew a moment of squeamishness, echo of the immorality of my catechism and my race conventions.
You say you can always live in the bush with one or other of the natives, and they're glad to have you because you're a white man, but it's not decent for a white man. Now, listen to me, Strickland." Tiare mingled French with English in her conversation, for she used both languages with equal facility. She spoke them with a singing accent which was not unpleasing.
The Annexe, like the Tiare Hotel, made no pretense to elegance or convenience. The French never demand the latter at home, and the Tahitian is so much an outdoor man that water-pipes and what they signify are not of interest to him. The bath of the Annexe was a large cement tank, primarily for washing clothes. Its floor was as slippery as ice.
He is best known the world about because his name is given to the "four-o'clock" shrub in warm countries, as in Tahiti, which sends huge masses of magenta or crimson blossoms climbing on trellises and roofs. I walked to this monument from the Tiare along the mossy bank of a little rivulet which ran to the beach. It was early morning. The humble natives and whites were about their daily tasks.
Tiare introduced me to him, and he handed me his card, a large card on which was printed <i Rene Brunot>, and underneath, <i 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.
Lovina, who keeps the Tiare Hotel in Papeite and who knows the gossip of all the South Seas, told me the story one day after he had come to the hotel to fetch two dinners to his home. He had a handsome motor-car, and the man himself was so clean-looking, so precise in every word and motion, that I spoke of the contrast to the skippers, officials, and tourists who lounged about Lovina's bar.
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