Читать книгу The Venture Book - Elinor Mordaunt - Страница 9

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All night we have been going dead slow so that we may avoid reaching the tangle of the Tuamotu Archipelago—the Dangerous Isles, as we English call them—at night. Now we are in the midst of hundreds upon hundreds of atolls lying level with the sea, broken rings of coral a few hundred—or less than one hundred—feet broad, with wide-open lagoons inside them and cocoanut-palms on the northwest side, away from the prevailing winds. Rings of coral and scanty sand, simmering in an eternal haze of damp heat, overhung by a thick cloud of mosquitos which looks like a mist about them. Islands where sane or specially courageous white men may yet be found to make their homes. Amid these islands—some of the largest of which are less than two miles one from another—we must now steer our course.

It is late afternoon when we reach Tahiti, and I tremble with excitement at the first sight of it, as something which I could never have imagined. I had thought Martinique green, as I once thought p. 60Ireland green, but they are drab in comparison with this. It seems, indeed, as though there were no other color in the world which could ever again matter in the slightest degree; as though one not only saw it but was shot through and through with it, permeated with it, so that one’s every thought was green, reflecting the glitter of the shining, opaque, enamel-like leaves which cast back the light like mirrors, of the fine transparent leaves, the fern-like foliage. I am old enough now to have schooled myself not to expect much, but I could never have expected anything like this, excelling all expectation, full in the blaze of the late afternoon sun.

One end of the island runs up from the sea in a sharp wedge, and then come mountains. Mountain upon mountain, rocky, gray-blue, purple-blue, indigo, and a blue which is close upon black; peaked and jagged; with more faraway mountains the precise shade of faded harebells.

The highest peak of all, Aorai—and it is these vowels that make the Tahitian language so lovely—has her head in the lead-gray and silver of cumulus clouds, but the Diadem, the pride of Tahiti, with her seven piercing peaks of deep indigo, is flung across with no more than the p. 61lightest scarf of that mist which lies thick among the innumerable ravines. The foot-hills and lower slopes are of that same vivid and indescribable green, with—and here is an extravagance of beauty—a broken rainbow arched above the town. The white wooden buildings and toy churches are embowered and almost lost in trees deeply green as the velvet of a huntsman’s coat, splashed in places with the clear fervent scarlet of the flamboyant, not yet in its full glory.

There is no ugly quay to mar Papeete, the one town and port of the island; no chimneys, cranes, and blackened buildings, the cloven hoof of most seabound towns. The small wooden landing-stage, this afternoon, resembles the tulip-beds at Hampton Court, with a breeze-blown parterre of girls in the lightest of muslin and thin silk gowns,—straw-colored and daffodil yellow and white and pink and rose, mauve and fuchsia, gray and blue of every shade,—the most of them flounced to the waist. Girls with broad-brimmed hats or with flowing wavy hair falling far below their waists, wreathed with flowers; and mingled with these, young men and old men in white suits or shirts and paréus. For the whole island takes holiday at the incoming of the French boats.

p. 62Right opposite to Papeete, seemingly so near that its reflection almost touches us (though it may be in truth twelve or fifteen miles away) lies the island of Moorea, all its many peaks pure amethyst, filmed over with gold in the light of the setting sun; the shadows a deeper purple cut with gold, the water in the little lagoon deep olive. Though mountain and water are alike black—the mountain black velvet, the sea a shimmering satin, before I can get away from the ship. For the young French officers insist upon my drinking to what they call our “friendhood,” in a glass of sweet champagne; while the murmur of voices from the landing-stage beneath us, slurred syllables, soft vowels, lap like small waves on a sandy shore.

It is Saturday night and mercifully the customs officer has started celebrating it in good time, being so altogether “market ripe” that seeing two boxes for every one of mine he shakes his head in despair and allows me to go my way without so much as a tentative offer of keys, along the shore to “Johnny’s.” Johnny’s is the only place in which any one with any sort of soul can stay in Papeete, though there is a pretentious hotel in the heart of the town where you can put your body when you have nothing better p. 63to do with it, and eat your meals. At Johnny’s nothing is supplied beyond the rooms and the petit déjeuner; actually supplied that is, for how infinitely more there is to it!

First Johnny himself, or Paree, as he prefers to be called, the son of the fattest woman and most famous cook in the Pacific, the friend of innumerable wanderers, the last refuge of innumerable derelicts. Johnny himself is round and fat and cherubic, with the forehead of a dean. One can see him wearing a round black shovel hat and a bishop’s apron or wreathed like Bacchus in vine-leaves, his smiling mouth smeared with grape-juice. As it is, he is attired in a dark silk paréu and white singlet. He is kind and smiling, and beyond belief glad to see one; so altogether and artlessly charming that it is little wonder to me that in speaking of Tahiti every one I have ever met who came from here has spoken of Johnny first. And this is not all there is to it, either, for his house is immediately opposite the sea, and from my latticed veranda—which forms in reality a second room—I look down upon it, through a tapestry of solid green and scarlet, to where the lanterns of the fishermen flicker like fireflies along the reef.

I have just come back from eating my dinner p. 64at an unorthodox little restaurant facing the quay. It is kept by a Frenchman and an Irishman, who, dripping with heat in their singlets and white trousers, serve the most delicious food imaginable, helped by one small bronze boy beautiful as a statue.

The tables are on a veranda debouching on the road; and here were officers of all grades from the boats; young Frenchmen and other young men of every gradation of shade with their Tahitian friends, dark beauties with flower-bound hair and pale flower-like silk dresses; four black cats with brilliant green eyes, all precisely alike, which sprang up on every side of one like the creatures of a dream. Laughter and light, the twang of a guitar; salad and grilled chicken and omelette and good red wine with friendliness.

I was happy there and I am happy now, back at Johnny’s, wandering about my room,—grandiloquently designated “the countess’s room,”—which is fantastically hung with scarlet and white paréus. I revel in that sense of space which makes the end of a voyage almost as good as the beginning. It is one of the many delightful reactions of life, such as the unsung joy of falling p. 65out of love, with its delightful sense of altogether fresh possibilities.

There seems to be nothing more than a bottom sheet on my bed,—of course no blankets,—and trying to attract the attention of a maid of some sort I am reassured by a distinctly masculine, friendly American voice on the other side of the thin wooden partition, informing me that I shall find a top sheet folded across the foot. An informal little introduction which seems to warrant my protesting against the rattle of a typewriter close against my head, spoiling the beat of the surf in my ears; apart from which there is no sound save the murmur of voices as barefooted people pad softly by in the dusty road, the whisper of lovers along the strip of green between it and the sea.

I was up at five o’clock this morning, to visit the market. But there was nothing whatever interesting in it, though I enjoyed meandering back to Johnny’s along the waterfront, where the families aboard the tiny ketches and schooners and cutters anchored there were making their morning toilet in a bland, leisurely way, regardless of the long hiatus which occurred between p. 66discarding their night wear, hanging it out among the rigging to air, and getting into their best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

There were rolls and butter and coffee, and paw-paw and bananas and melon on the veranda at Johnny’s when I got back. All of Johnny’s boarders were there: two American men, the Englishman who came over on the same boat with me, a Russian, and an American married couple in their dressing-gowns, talking and laughing, wandering off to the bath-room,—a large, cool stone tank, walled round and roofed over, with an immense shower,—and reappearing, picking up the conversation where they had dropped it, with their hair still dripping. These Americans had evidently been in Tahiti long enough to have all their country’s irritable restlessness buffed off them.

I have an idea that my veranda will be a very good place to write in; at least so I tell myself, though at the back of my mind I know better. I know that it is, indeed, a place in which to dream, leaning back in a long chair or opening one of the small lattice shutters and lolling over the rail, exchanging pleasantries with passers-by whom one has never seen before. In my room at the back of the veranda the serving maid is sweeping the p. 67floor. She wears a bright pink-silk dress flounced to the waist, with purple violets embroidered upon the low and sleeveless bodice; her wavy hair, flowing to her waist, is wreathed with flowers, and she is smoking a cigarette.

Another maid comes into the room to talk to her. This girl, who is dressed in pale lemon-colored muslin, has a guitar in her hand and the two of them chat together,—chat, chat, chat,—discussing p. 68the tune which she picks out upon it, and love and lovers. What a place, what a place for me to find myself in! I who am in general ravaged by activity. A place where time melts like the mist upon the mountains, and is no more to be caught or woven to any useful end.