Читать книгу Sestrina - A. Safroni-Middleton - Страница 3

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A dusky maid stood ’neath a lone palm tree

Down Makewayo beach, on Savaii Isles;

A perfect shape and curved lips had she

As stared her bright eyes o’er the lone sea miles;

Maids have grown old, brave men seen their best day,

But she was made of terra-cotta clay—

In beauty by the sea still stands and smiles!

“OSWEET is woman clad in modest smiles and grass!”

The speaker, Royal Clensy, was an ardent dreamer, romanticist and mystic. He did not wear a flowing robe or seer’s beard, he was simply a handsome young Englishman attired in a serge suit, wearing a topee as he leaned against the stem of a palm tree. And had our hero have been able to express his opinions in distinguished poetic style, instead of in the crude phrase which opens this chapter, it is an extremely dubious point as to whether he would ever have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Vers Libre. However, though Clensy was ambitious, he was quite devoid of pretence, which was as well since competition seems keen wherever one goes.

“Cah! Cah! Cah! Too whoo Ha He!” said a second voice. It was the voice of wisdom, the philosophy of the ages was expressed on the wrinkled brow, in the solemn bright eyes and on the shining grey and crimson striped homespun suit, as away, in its own private aeroplane, it sailed over the palms—out of this story! It was a full-blooded native of the Marquesas Isles—a cockatoo!

The first speaker, who still stood under a palm by the lagoons, swished his hand and scattered the swarm of sandflies that buzzed before his eyes obstructing his curious gaze at the pretty, symmetrical brown maid who glided under the palms and then vanished! It was a common enough sight to see a modest maid or youth clad only in smallest green attire stitched on by invisible stiff grass thread, run from the village doorways into another hut opposite. It was a sight to sweep a dreamer’s reflective mind into the golden age of Eden’s fountains before the Tree of Knowledge upset the innocence and beauty of the first sylvan shades. And oh, the prevailing terrific heat, and the coolness suggested by such artless attire. True enough the glowing tropic heat had its drawbacks on those Isles. But Old Dame Nature toiled on, patiently and artlessly for art’s sake, devising suitable clothes, mysteriously sewing and stitching wonderfully hued patterns and greenest, cheapest materials for her artless children. And what a fascinating code of morals was hers! An ill-timed sneeze before the altar, and the dusky bride’s wedding-robe—her mass of shining hair—lo, became disarranged, and made the amorous chiefs sigh. How awful!

No wonder the young Englishman meditated profoundly and continued his preposterous reflections: “Who knows, I may have been happier had I have been born here, in Temeroka village, within sounds of the tribal drums instead of the chimes of Bow Bells.” He gazed down on his much worn boots and wondered what would happen when they fell off! “How on earth can I ever get them re-soled and heeled here, on Isles where men and women wipe their noses on sweet-scented leaves, where the highest social society discuss morals and politics as they somersault in these shore lagoons. Truly, a sylvan utopia of fierce happiness and clotheless modesty. God’s finest sculptural art done in smooth terra-cotta clays, sun-varnished, finished off with muscular curves, and, to say the least, picturesque feminine outlines as folk roam under these coco-palms.” Our hero’s reflections did him credit, nothing was truer. Even the first wonder over creation seemed to gleam in the eyes of those wild peoples. Only one odious odour disturbed the rich scents of tropic flowers. It came from the copra sheds round the bend of the bay, by the primitive wharf where a fore-and-aft schooner lay. It was at that spot where beggared tattooed chiefs and melancholy kings and queens of fallen dynasties cracked nuts ready for the extraction of suspicious looking fats to smear on the artificial breadfruit and well-combed smooth hair of civilised Man! O world of inscrutable mystery!

“‘Ow gloryhus is rum, woman and coco-nuts!” grunted a third voice. Our hero was not startled. It was the voice of one of a noble lineage, that presumably dated back to Bacchus down in Thebes. It was none other than Beer de Beer Adams who spoke thus. It’s a crying shame to have to introduce such a character to polite society. He would never have entered these pages, but for the fact that he stood by Royal Clensy that day. Adams was a derelict sailorman. Even as he spoke he conclusively proved how unfit he was to enter the society of the humblest pages of polite literature, except, perhaps, as a character of the most menial position—lo, he pursed his vulgar lips and sent a stream of filthy tobacco-juice across the line of Clensy’s vision. But what cared our hero? He was young! twenty years of age!

As this script will probably be the only serious, authentic record of Clensy’s life from that time when he left Hiva-oa on a schooner for the South American coast, to arrive eventually at Port-au-Prince, Hayti, it will be as well to let the uninformed know something about his mode of life at the date when he met Adams. It will be sufficient to say that Clensy had been roaming about the various isles of the Marquesan group for three months before he decided to go farther afield. Adams was a destitute drunken reprobate—and he looked it. To be seen in his company was sufficient to exclude one from any decent society that might exist between Terra del Fuego and the Coral Sea. Probably that is why Clensy cottoned to Adams like a shot when he first ran across him in Taiohae. Clensy was out to see the world and enjoy the vigorous novelty of roughing it; and Adams was out to cadge from unsophisticated young men. (Adams is not to be taken as a specimen of an honest South Sea shellback.) As for Royal Clensy, he was physically perfect. He had a fine brow, and eyes that shone with the light of a gay personality. His mind was in the spongy state that readily absorbs good and bad influences; but his belief in the goodness of human nature sent the mud to the bottom of the living-waters to nourish and help the roots of the lilies grow in the summer of his days. His temperament was, under sunny conditions, sanguine and decidedly amorous. Anyone who knew him well was not likely to die of shock were they suddenly informed that he had eloped with a princess or a pretty serving maid. However, he did neither of these things, and they are only suggested to help explain that which is so difficult to explain—temperament. Like all men who have good in them, he was his own godly priest, and instinctively knelt at the altar of his own secret faith to confess his sins to a remorseful conscience. Consequently his religion was sincere and quite devoid of hypocrisy. He was bound to improve with time, as the mud settled down, and the lilies took firm root. So much for Clensy’s embryo sins and virtues. This gay young Englishman was of good birth; that was certain. Earlier incidents connected with his life cannot be given. Whether on first entering into the light of mundane things he was bottle or breast-fed, or was reared in suitable surroundings for so erratic a temperament, is immaterial. It can, however, be relied upon that he was born as he was, inheriting all those peculiarities which made him solely responsible for the drama of passion that put his life out of joint before he was twenty-one years of age. All wise men agree that temperament is the ruling passion that controls man’s actions, all impulses good or bad, be they successfully curbed or blazed before an admiring or shocked world, as the case may be. Adams swallowing rum or gassing Royal Clensy with smoke from his filthy clay pipe, was Adams proper; and Clensy standing beneath the coco palms staring with serious eyes, wondering what would become of him should his people not soon send his remittance, was, and, without a libellous statement on the reputation of his great natural mother, Dame Nature, none other than the legitimate, handsome, sun-tanned inconsequential Royal Clensy.

Instead of Clensy being shocked over Adams’s wicked yarns and disgusted to see a man squirt tobacco-juice with such marvellous precision over his shoulder, he stared his admiration of such vulgarity, and then roared with laughter.

“So yer wants ter git to ther coast of Sarth America, do yer?” said Adams. Then he added. “Look ye here, Myster Clensy, you’re a young gent, anyone can spot that by the cut of yer jib. And anyones who knows me, knows I’m ther man ter be an honest fren’ and guide ter yer.”

“You really do seem a good sort,” responded Clensy as he tugged the little tip of his virgin moustache and looked critically at Adams’s wrinkled, semi-humorous, rum-stricken countenance. Then Clensy, summing up his inward thoughts, murmured to himself: “You look like a hardened old sinner to me, blessed if you don’t.”

Adams who only saw the distinct surface of things, thought he had made a fine impression. He rolled his solitary eye (he had lost his right eye during a brawl in a heathen seraglio, New Guinea) and said: “So you’re a remittance man, and want ter git ter a plyce wheres yer can ’ave the spondulicks sent?”

Clensy nodded, and said, “I want to get to Acapulco, on the South American coast, my uncle’s British Consul there.”

“‘Is E indyed!” gasped Adams as he at once obsequiously began to brush an imaginary speck of dust from Clensy’s shoulder. Visions of coming affluence loomed before his solitary eye.

“How can it be managed? I must leave this place soon or I’ll be dead broke,” said Clensy. Thereupon Adams immediately informed the young Englishman that the French tramp steamer, La Belle France, was leaving Hiva-oa for the South American coast with a cargo of copra in a few days. “She puts into Acapulco, so the thing’s done—if yer’ve got the cash for passages?”

“I have,” said Clensy, then he handed the sailorman a sovereign on account.

“Leave it all to me, I’ll get passages for about ten quid each,” said the old reprobate as he spat on the golden coin for luck. So was the matter settled between them. Two days after that, Adams informed Clensy that he had managed to secure berths as deck passengers at twelve pounds apiece. He watched Clensy’s face, and then smiled his inward delight, for he had made five pounds over the deal with the skipper of the La Belle France. Clensy, who guessed that he had secured berths for less money than he said, made no remark.

“She’s sailing day after termorrer, so we’d better go and say good-bye to our fren’s on the islets tother side; agreed?”

And so Clensy agreed to go to the neighbouring isle to say good-bye to Adams’s old friend, the widowed queen, Mara Le Vakamoa. “You must see heathen royalty afore you leaves these islands,” said Adams.

That same night Adams paddled Clensy in a canoe across the narrow strip of ocean that divided them from the isle where dwelt several pagan kings and much-married queens. When Clensy arrived at the unpalatial-looking wooden building which was the residence of Queen Mara Le Vakamoa, much of the glamour which Adams’s description of native royalty had conjured up in his mind faded. They only stopped one night and day in the royal village. True enough the queen and high chiefs were extremely courteous and paid great homage to the noble papalagai’s (white men). But though Adams was in his element when in the company of full-blooded South Sea royalty, Clensy soon sickened of the ceaseless chattering and royal display of limbs. The fact is, that the queens and princesses belonged to an ancient dynasty, and had long since passed the zenith of their beauty. Even Adams screwed up his lean, humorous-looking mouth and took in a deep breath when the Queen Vakamoa opened her enormous thick-lipped mouth and gave him a smacking farewell kiss. Then Clensy, too, bowed before the inevitable, took a large nip of Hollands gin from Adams’s flask, and saluted the queen likewise. It was only when the pretty native girls took flowers from their hair, and handed them to Clensy as they murmured, “Aloah, papalagi”; that he really took an interest in the farewell ceremonies. Then they trekked down to the beach and paddled away in their canoe. It all seemed like some weird dream to Clensy as Adams chewed tobacco plug and diligently paddled back for the shore lagoons of the mainland. Night had swept the lovely tropic stars over the dusky skies, and they could faintly hear the musical cries of “Aloah, e mako, papalagi,” as they faded away into the ocean’s silence.

Next day Adams and Clensy went aboard the La Belle France which sailed in the afternoon. They both felt quite depressed as they watched the Marquesan Isles fade like blue blotches far away on the western horizon. Clensy was every bit as depressed as his comrade. He had thoroughly enjoyed his three months’ sojourn in the beautiful archipelago of golden-skinned men, palms and sylvan valleys shaded by breadfruits and coco-palms. He had also been well liked by the rough traders and shellbacks whom he had come in contact with, for he had often gained the respect and affection of sunburnt men from the seas who hated snobs.

The voyage to the South American coast was extremely monotonous to Clensy. Adams’s constant companionship and swashbuckling deportment on the dreary passage across tropic seas gave Clensy bad intellectual spasms. But still, he patiently tolerated his presence. He probably well knew that Adams too had his place in this scheme of intelligent things, and that one change of a footstep at the beginning of Adams’s career might have made him a splendid Government official or Controller, and well respected by all who didn’t know him! The fact is, that Clensy was by nature a genuine democrat. He was well bred, and so, carelessly unconscious of his worldly advantages over the uneducated men with whom he so readily consorted. He had proper pride, but it was humble enough. His head did not swell overmuch. He could not realise that when he was wealthy, and still dined side by side with penniless shellbacks, he was doing something that should be vigorously blown from the highest peak on democracy’s brass bugle so that it might reverberate and echo down the halls of boasted brotherhood. His nature had no kinship with the great boast of a democracy that shouts: “See how our millionaires sit by the side of the wage-earning cowboy and dine on beans and corn-cobs.” Thus pointing out to all who can see and hear, how wide a gulf really divides the poor man from the eternal boast of the democratic brotherhood. In short, Clensy was a splendid specimen of the democratic-aristocrat Englishman dwelling under the great socialistic government of the human heart. His intellect was fair: he knew that kings could feel humble, and a pope be really religious. He was a gentleman.

Clensy breathed a sigh of relief when he sighted the coast of South America, and the La Belle France eventually entered the ancient bay of Acapulco. But he was greatly disappointed when he discovered that his uncle had left the consulate and had returned to England two months before his arrival. “We’re done!” said Clensy as he realised that he would have to wait quite three months before his remittance money arrived from England. For a long while he and Adams were on their “beam-ends.” Clensy had a few pounds which was augmented by Adams’s musical accomplishments. For the derelict reprobate would go off on his own and perform on his wretched accordion, playing to the Mexican storekeepers. Sometimes he wrapped an old silk robe about him, and putting on a Spanish hidalgo mein, would go busking outside the old-fashioned homesteads of Vera Domingo. So did he help Clensy out of his predicament.

In due course Royal Clensy’s remittance arrived. Acapulco was a quiet, lazy town in those days. The inhabitants were mostly Spaniards, Mexicans and niggers. Consequently Clensy made up his mind to clear out of the place and make for the larger states. What really happened after Clensy received his remittance whilst in Acapulco can only be guessed at. Clensy was as improvident and reckless with money as Adams, so it is possible that they had a pretty good time while the bulk of the money lasted. The only thing that can be recorded with certainty is, that they left Acapulco and made their way to Vera Cruz, and eventually arrived by steamer at Port-au-Prince, Hayti.

“It’s no use you grousing, Myster Clensy,” said Adams.

“I suppose not,” replied the young Englishman as he gazed mournfully on the dark faced population of the semi-barbarian city of the Black Republic, Port-au-Prince. “Reminds me of what I’ve read about ancient Babylon and the Assyrian cities,” said Clensy as he watched the swarthy Haytian chiefs and handsome mulatto women, clad in yellow and blue silken robes, as they shuffled along the stone pavements in their loose sandals. Many of the quaintly robed folk stood by the doorways of their verandahed weatherboard homes conversing, making a hushed kind of hubbub as they muttered and stared with large dark eyes at Clensy and Adams.

“What’s Babylony and Asyery ter do with it? It b— well reminds me of hell, and of being damned ’ard up, it do!” responded the unpoetical ex-sailor.

“What on earth shall we do? We’re dead broke till my remittance arrives again,” reiterated Clensy as he wiped his perspiring brow and smiled wearily as the pretty Haytian girl passed by and gave him a languishing glance.

“Don’t you worry, myster, the only thing ter do, is ter take up ter the buskin’ again, but I can’t play alone in this ’ell of a ’ole, I’ll p’raps get shot by one of these smut-faced devils.”

“Can’t play alone! What do you mean?” said Clensy.

“I simply means thet you must stand by me, and see that I’m unmolysted by these ere b— ’eathens.”

“Good heavens, have I come to this!” moaned our hero as he once again wiped his brow and made a thousand good resolutions as to how careful he would be when the next remittance came! But withal Royal Clensy was game. He brushed his misgivings away and smiled, and thought, “Well, I suppose I must adapt myself to circumstances in this world of woe and tears.” Then he came to the sensible conclusion that it was best to cast one’s pride aside when the digestive apparatus made pathetic appeals to the higher senses.

That same afternoon, to Clensy’s extreme mortification, he found himself standing just outside the presidential palace at Port-au-Prince. “It’s best ter ply before people who ’as got money,” Adams had said, and so there they stood as Adams opened his villainous mouth and wailed out “Little Annie Rooney’s My Sweetheart” to his vile accordion accompaniment. Clensy gnashed his teeth and hid his perspiring face in his silk handkerchief of other days when the chorus came. It was then that Adams shuffled his feet and, doubling the tempo of the song, danced a hideous jig. “God our help in ages past,” murmured Clensy in an insane way, as the ebony-hued population swarmed around them, and gazed in astonishment at the one-eyed sailorman as he played on, quite unconcerned and careless of Clensy’s anguished feelings. “What! you have the infernal cheek to think I’ll go round with your coco-nut shell and collect!” said Clensy, when Adams calmly stood on one leg, stopped dancing, and intimated that Clensy might make a “whip round.” “Not I. I’d sooner get a ship! Why, it’s bad enough to hear you make that damned row,” said Clensy angrily. Consequently Adams went round himself with the shell. To Clensy’s surprise, when Adams had passed among the crowd of onlookers, and had come back, the coco-nut shell was nearly full of peculiar-looking coins that neither knew the exact value of.

The Haytians and mulattoes are a naturally unostentatious folk in their likes and dislikes, a peculiar kind of calmness pervading their most deliberate acts. One cynical-looking Haytian chief gazed critically into Adams’s collecting calabash as he once more went round, and dropped a dead putrid rat inside! The Haytian chief was evidently not feeling exactly partial towards white men, and chose that way of showing his resentment.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t get ratty!” whispered Clensy as he pulled his comrade’s coat-tail and gave a warning glance. Fortunately for them both, Adams swiftly realised that Clensy was generally right, and so he cooled down and soothed his outraged feelings by swearing at the Haytian chief in the choicest Billingsgate English. With that marvellous precision which brings envy to the hearts of foreign sailormen throughout the world, Adams squirted a stream of tobacco-juice—splash! it had sent a dark stain down the length of the chief’s yellow robe as he stalked majestically away. Then once more the Cockney sailorman began to play and sing.

“Wish I’d never written home from Acapulco and given an address at this hole for my remittance to be sent to,” thought Clensy. His heart quaked in the thought that he had to exist by aid of Adams’s musical accomplishments for nearly two months. It was dreadful! But it was only a momentary spasm of deepest gloom that afflicted our hero. Fate is kind, in a way, to mortals. The silver lining generally appears on the cloud when the day seems darkest; and though the cloud may be charged with the thunders and lightnings of undreamed-of future storms to break over the sanguine wayfarer’s head, it does look silvery for a time, and so cheers the despondent soul. In fact, Royal Clensy’s thoughts had already suddenly leapt into another channel, had become charged with warm, sensuous feelings that had blazed into existence by the magic gleam of beautiful eyes! Adams had just finished his last song, and was hand-pedalling his accordion into a thrilling wail, when a beautiful Haytian girl ran out of the open gate of the presidential palace and stared with evident admiration straight in Royal Clensy’s sun-tanned handsome face. Then she stared in astonishment at Adams’s accordion. (Accordions were great novelties in Hayti in those days.) Clensy blushed to the ears. Her eyes shone like baby stars; her hair tumbled in a glittering mass around her neck, rippling below her waist, floating in artless confusion over her neglige attire—a pale blue sarong. Her complexion was of an olive hue, delicately tinted with the rosy blush of health, like the complexion of a fair Italian girl.

“What cursed luck! Travelled the world over only to meet her at this dire moment, outside a palace busking with a reprobate like Adams playing a wretched accordion.” In that swift realisation of his degradation, Clensy felt atheistical. He could have turned round and screwed Adams’s neck till the scoundrel’s spine snapped! For the first time in his career he became a child of modern democracy. A great wave of snobbishness overwhelmed his senses. He longed to turn round and shout into the Haytian girl’s ear: “Behold Me! the son of wealthy parents, the blood of great ancestors flowing in my veins, yet here I stand, happy in the society of this drunken old reprobate and his damnable accordion.” Swiftly recovering from his embarrassment, he made a courtly bow. The girl’s lips parted in a delicious smile as she daintily imitated Clensy’s salutation. It was most fascinating. The palace and the surrounding weatherboard houses seemed to fall on top of Clensy’s head as the girl placed a coin in the collection-box. Then, looking into Adams’s rum-stricken face, as he still sang, she said, “Oh, monsieur, you have gotter voice!”

Clensy whipped his handkerchief out and wiped his sweating brow, then stared again and gave the maid the benefit of the doubt. “That can be taken as the reverse of a compliment; the girl must have a sense of humour,” he thought. As for Adams, he bit the coin with his blackened teeth to assure himself that it was gold, then he made himself look as awkward as a frog. He wasn’t going to be outdone by a whippersnapper like Clensy. Arching his back as though the world of chivalry weighted it he bowed too! The next moment an elderly negress poked her frizzy head round the rim of the palace gateway and said in a squeaky voice, “Oh, Madamselle Sestrina, ze president, your father, wish to zee you.” At hearing this, the girl who had so impressed Royal Clensy gave a silvery peal of laughter and ran back within the palace gates. Clensy was not so much to blame for his sudden infatuation for the girl who had appeared before him and had then vanished like a dream! She did have red lips that looked like smashed pomegranates formed to charm men to taste. The beautiful morn of maidenhood shone on her brow; the first golden streak of creation’s first sunrise seemed to twinkle in the ocean-like depths of her eyes. Yes, Clensy saw her as woman standing on the threshold of the temple of Beauty, her loveliness unconsciously inviting some one to come and worship at her altar as she stared over those visionary seas, seas where the shadows of the unborn children sit on the shore reefs, singing their luring, plaintive, sunrise songs till sad, wandering men pass along! Sounds sentimental and poetic? Well, Clensy had suddenly become strangely endowed with the poetic instinct. And so, the girl’s maiden beauty had presented itself to his mind in a highly imaginative form. Beautiful Sestrina, President Gravelot’s daughter, for such she was, had fired Clensy’s brain with an undying passion, had unknowingly made the first fateful footstep down the path of destiny that was to lead to the sad drama, the terrible catastrophe that is alone responsible for this story.