Читать книгу Sestrina - A. Safroni-Middleton - Страница 4

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O mystery that made the frenzied thug,

And winds to beat the frozen sheep:

O fates that did conspire to make a bug

To haunt sad mortals in their sleep!

“NICE gal, that!” mumbled Adams, as he and Clensy hurried away from the crowd that still loitered before the presidential palace. They quickly made their way towards the palm-sheltered portion of the dusty, heat-stricken city.

“Yes, very nice,” responded Clensy, as he gazed vacantly ahead, hurrying Adams along as though he sought to escape from his own embarrassment.

“I’d loike ter marry a bootiful crawture like ’er. Only one fault ter find about ’er—she ain’t fat!” said the sailorman, as he glanced up at Clensy, squinting his solitary eye sideways, like a curious cockatoo.

“Hem!” was Clensy’s rejoinder, as he threw his shoulders back and looked the other way to hide his cynical disgust from Adams’s eye, as that materialistic worthy still expressed several opinions about Sestrina’s face and figure. Anything of a subtle nature in Clensy’s manner or talk was naturally lost to such an intellect as Adams possessed, and so the sailorman at once changed the conversation. “’E’s gone off agin, in one of ’is balmy moods!” the reprobate murmured to himself, then he added aloud, “Hawful ’ot,” and pulled his whiskers.

“Thank God it’s shady here,” said Clensy, as they arrived in the shades of the beautiful mahogany trees. “Let’s see the sights of the town,” said Adams, as they stood under the trees and gazed on the little streets and the long, irregular rows of quaint wooden houses.

“I’m done up, nearly dead for want of sleep,” replied Clensy.

“Why, I feel as fresh as a two-year-old!” growled Adams. The true facts are, that Adams was case-hardened and hadn’t spent a wretched night in attempting to distract the attention of enormous fleas from his person as poor Clensy had done in the low lodging-house bed the night before. The Haytians love company in bed, and, from what Clensy could see, the price of a bed in Hayti was increased if the fleas were lively and plentiful. In fact, the inhabitants were kind-hearted, bohemian folk and believed in the merciful creed of live and let live! A fact that was well illustrated by the state of the streets in Port-au-Prince. Adams said the streets were worse than the streets in Shanghai and Hum-kow, Tokio. The Haytians do their washing in a tub before their front door, and hang their clothes on lines that are spread from one side of the street to the other, tied on to the stems of the palm-trees that usually grow on the pavement side. It was a quaint, semi-poetic sight to Clensy as he gazed at the yellow, crimson and white lingerie and garments of both sexes fluttering to the caresses of the hot winds: wonderful drapery placed side by side without any nice discrimination as to the modest feelings and sensibilities of those who passed by! Adams looked quite jovial as he gazed at the clothes-lines and made critical remarks. The undemocratic Clensy simply looked at the filthy streets and held a large lump of camphor to his nostrils, and often rubbed some on his moustache. Royal Clensy always carried “Keating’s,” a small tooth-comb, and lump of camphor during his travels. He was a wise fellow. Along the kerb-sides were innumerable dustbins, for the Haytians throw all their house refuse into the highway, right opposite their front door. And there it stood, incubating in the hot sunlight, heaving and buzzing, thousands of tiny worlds populated with happy life, green and sapphire-winged insects, worlds upon worlds inhabited by bright-plumaged beings that feed on the offal of their sphere as they sang and danced in their youth and grew old in their universe of inscrutable mystery. Even as Clensy and Adams watched, they saw clouds of bright, gauzy wings arise, millions of God’s humblest beings emigrating as they swarmed away, hissing and singing till they found another constellation of shining hot worlds in front of the stores farther down the great highway of their heavens! As for the black-faced population, they might have been the dead Pharaohs shuffling along in some mysterious holiday, rewakened from the tomb. On they shuffled, apparently oblivious to everything; dusky faces, yellowish faces, greenish faces and copper-coloured faces. A picturesque sight they made. The warm-coloured women and girls were clad in sarongs and scanty semi-European attire as they slouched or shuffled under the palms of the street’s side, laughing and babbling together, girls and youths of all types laughing or yawning as they swallowed the astonished insects as they migrated from one heap of refuse to another, and sometimes fell into the abyss of those open thick-lipped negro and negress mouths!

“Don’t fink much of this ’ere plyce!” mumbled Adams.

“All right in its way; good for insect collectors,” replied Clensy.

“Mulatters and niggers ain’t civilised like we are,” was Adams’s sententious remark, as he removed a cork and sniffed the shellback’s sal volatile—his rum-flask!

“Not they!” said Clensy, shaking his head with superb acquiescence. With all the drawbacks of Haytian ways, Clensy admitted that the city had its picturesque, poetic side. The half-caste girls and negresses with heads adorned with wonderful chignons, the dusky, bright-eyed youths and the musical patois they babbled, greeted Clensy’s ears and eyes in a pleasing way. Far away he saw the palm-clad mountain slopes disappearing into rugged, dreamy blue distances, and on the other side of the city stretched the dim wide plains of Gonaives. “What mahogany trees!” exclaimed Clensy, as they stood before several giant, sombre trees, the last members of the great forests that had once surrounded Port-au-Prince.

“Damn yer trees!” said Adams, who was more interested in watching several Haytian maids and negresses perform a peculiar dance, the bamboula, the steps of which gave a bold exhibition of the dancer’s physical charms. Adams, being very religious and modest by nature, said, “‘Ow can they do sich fings before civilised men like hus! It’s terryble!”

“Don’t break down; all our health is wanted to meet the trials of adversity before us,” said Clensy in a soothing voice, as Adams hung his blushing face and the maids still danced on. Then the sailorman lifted his shocked countenance and, as his solitary eye gave a merry blue twinkle, he murmured, “Let’s git out of it and go back to our lodgings.”

The fact is that it was getting late, and the stars were already shining over the plains of Gonaives. In half an hour Clensy and Adams had arrived back at their cheap lodging-house that was situated by the Sing-Song Café, in La Selle Street.

“By God’s grace I’ll sleep to-night,” said Clensy, as he took his tin of Keating’s flea powder forth and began to well pepper his bunk bed. Then he opened his baize bag (he had pawned his portmanteau), and, taking out his special bit of ship’s sheeting, he pitched the lodging-house sheet out of the window and remade the bed. “You’re too aristocratic, too ’tickler ter travel. You orter stopped ’ome with yer pa and ma,” said Adams, as he picked up a wriggling fat green lizard from his bed and tossed it out of the window.

“Maybe I am too particular,” replied Clensy, as he glanced through the window at the stars, and wondered how long the mingy oil-lamp, that swung from the ceiling, would last before the oil was exhausted. Then his heart gave a thump and nearly stopped! Adams dropped his pipe in his astonishment. They both thought the roof had fallen on top of them.

But it wasn’t as bad as that. A huge settee-pillow had been thrown, had struck Clensy on top of the head, and smashed into Adams’s back. A tremendous peal of laughter shook the room. “Flea powder! By the gods of my fathers, flea powder!” yelled a voice. They turned their heads, and there, in a bunk right opposite their own, they saw two large blue eyes staring at them from beneath a giant of a brow. They saw a great body slowly uplift from the bunk. Then the figure’s wide-open mouth gave vent to a vibrant peal of renewed laughter. The man who had so boisterously introduced himself to Clensy and Adams was a new arrival in Hayti, had only the day before left a steamer in the bay at Port-au-Prince.

Clensy and Adams still stared on the man with their mouths wide open.

“Give us some flea powder, youngster!”

Just for a moment Clensy continued to stare at those sombre yet humorous-looking eyes, then he picked up the tin of powder and courteously handed it to the big man.

“Got any baccy? Don’t stand there with yer goddamned mouths open; hand the weed up!”

At this new demand, Adams and Clensy, like two obedient children, felt quickly in their pockets and handed their giant-like bedroom companion their pouches. They couldn’t help it! The strange eyes were magnetic, the light in them not only compelled Clensy and Adams to accede to their owner’s request, but also gave them pleasure at being able to supply his wants!

“And who may you be?” asked Clensy quietly as he recovered his composure.

“I’m Samuel Bartholomew Biglow! that’s my handle!” roared the boisterous stranger. Then he half emptied their pouches, threw them on the floor, and carefully pressed his thumb into his corn-cob pipe.

“So that’s your name, and it’s a suitable one,” Clensy ventured to say; then he smiled, for he vaguely realised that a man had a right to call himself by any name he wished, especially one with such a commanding personality and giant-like proportions.

“I like the look of ye both, damned if I don’t,” said the stranger; then he well sprinkled his bunk with the flea powder and tossed Clensy back the tin.

“And what might your name be?” he said, as he gave Adams a mighty languishing glance.

“My nyme’s Adams,” mumbled that worthy in humble tones.

“And my name is Jonathan Canton Solomon Clensy,” said the young Englishman, in a voice which intimated that he too could call himself names.

For a moment the big man surveyed Clensy with a glance of admiration, then he yelled out, “Solomon Clensy and Isaac Adams, I’ve cottoned to ye both, so I’ll see more of ye both in the morning.” The next moment he had tucked his immense silken scarf about his throat, and placing two huge, wonderfully white feet over the bunk’s side, settled himself for sleep.

When Clensy and Adams awoke in the morning the new-comer was already up and dressed.

“God damn it, rise and shine, lying in bed, ye lazy loafers,” he yelled.

They lifted their tired heads and gazed vacantly on the boisterous disturber of their late slumber. For a moment a look of resentment over the man’s impertinent manner leapt into Adams’s eye. Clensy also gave Biglow a look which plainly said, “Who the devil are you that you have the cheek to order us to rise?” But when Bartholomew Biglow laid his massive hand on his velvet waistcoat and burst into a song that told of the horn of the hunters on the English hills, of grey dawns and the skylark’s melodious trills to the sunrise, Clensy and Adams rose, and, looking rather sheepish, commenced to dress. Then Biglow took them both into the big dining-room where lodgers assembled for their meals, and treated them both to a glorious breakfast.

“Get it down ye!” he yelled, as Adams and Clensy munched their toast and poached eggs and bacon. Adams nudged Clensy in the ribs, and chuckled over their sudden luck. After breakfast, the three man went outside their lodging shanty and stood under the shading mahogany trees near Selle Place. Then Samuel Biglow, for such we will call him, told Clensy and his comrade, that though he had been the paramour of queens and the confidant of kings, he reckoned he was well off to have met such a one as Adams. Adams took the big man’s hand and said in almost respectful tones, “Same ter you, Myster Samuel Bartholomew Biglow.” Then Samuel tendered them his credentials in the shape of voluminous verbal reminiscences, telling them of mighty deeds he had performed. If the man’s own accounts could be relied upon, he had been a wonder in his time.

Then Samuel listened to Adams, for that worthy also started to blow his own trumpet. Samuel Biglow bent his giant form and roared with laughter as he listened. Then Adams said he was “a man of honour,” that he would “sooner die than do unto another that which he would not like to be done to him.”

“So, so!” murmured Samuel Biglow soothingly, as he gave Adams a kindly, mother-like look, which plainly told Clensy, who thoroughly enjoyed the play, that he, Samuel, didn’t believe one word that the sailorman said, and that he was doubtlessly as big a rogue as himself. “Ye’ve got honesty written on yer mug!” he said, and Adams felt pleased.

The fact is, that circumstances were running as near dire disaster as could possibly be when two men like Samuel Biglow and Adams met in Hayti, where catastrophes were of hourly occurrence. And it can only be put down to extraordinary good luck that Royal Clensy never got his head into at least a noose of difficulties through associating with such characters. However, let it be said, that all that happened afterwards was not the fault of either Samuel Biglow or Adams; if anything, Samuel Biglow was Royal Clensy’s saviour when the hour arrived, and they had to flee, the three of them, from Hayti.