Читать книгу Seibert of the Island - Gordon Young - Страница 19

There was no anchorage off the beach where Williams landed, and McGuire was at the wheel while the schooner was being brought to.

Nada came on deck, dressed for a triumphant landing, though it was to be through the surf, and she must tramp a mile pretty well up-hill before astonishing her household. She felt a little ridiculous in such preposterous finery as a hat aglow with flowers and feathers, glittering with rhinestones, a tight-fitting jacket sort of waist with a row of large buttons down the front, a long, full skirt that both hands could hardly keep from trailing, white gloves that reached to her elbows; but she knew how her father would have pride if she came in such an array, and how the servants would gape. Her sparkling, polished shoes were tied together, and hung across her shoulders. For the walk up the trail she wore flat-footed slippers.

When McGuire from behind the wheel first saw her he said unkind things about her appearance; but she knew that he was in the dumps, and forgave him with laughter that was calculated to make him feel worse. Already they understood and liked each other well enough to pretend to quarrel.

Five natives were at the oars of the boat that took Nada and McGuire ashore; and it shot the surf with bound on bound; and when its bottom scraped, the largest of these natives, Sanniuu, carried her twenty yards over the dry shingle. She gave his bare shoulders a rewarding pat, and was placed down with hardly a drop of spray having touched her.

The boat went back to the schooner, returning with Williams, and Paullen on a stretcher made of sail and oars.

Nada was excited by the familiar landmarks, and she pointed about, talking rapidly. Everything that she saw meant something. Childhood came back with a rush; for a little while it was almost as if she had merely dreamed of the places and people known in her absence.

"There. Ooo-oo! Right there, out of that tree, I saw a pili fall on a man—a white man, too! I was standing by father, my hand in his, here where we are now! The man laughed, and killed the little lizard. You know, its touch is the warning of death. He went on down to the beach—this very beach. He was a good swimmer, but what of that? The surf broke him on the coral. They carried his body up—right up this trail as they are now carrying——"

"Stop it!" said McGuire. "You're a heathen."

"I wasn't more than six—so big——"

"Are no older now. An' less civilised!"

She ran aside with beskirted clumsiness to a flowering tree, soiling her gloves and snatching at sprays, getting her hat twisted and awry in the branches; then put the sprays in the litter for Paullen to smell. He smiled at her.

"Your hat is spoiled!" said McGuire, with an air of satisfaction.

They came up into the grounds, and though it was a bright, warm day, gloom and dilapidation that was like a chill, as if the place had taken on something of old Combe's puttering shiftlessness, pervaded everything.

On three sides of the immense old house a wide veranda ran under a covering of thatch; and this shut out light from the rooms that were always dark, and where voices and footsteps resounded with echoing hollowness. The second story was thrust among palms; their leaves fumbled like blind men's fingers against the roof, and at times of storm beat ragefully, as if the blind men had lost patience. One of the veranda posts was broken, and the roof sagged. The bottom steps that led on to the veranda had long ago rotted. Trees locked their branches and laced their leaves together, as if to keep the sun from finding out what went on below. An echoing emptiness answered their voices, even outside the house. A shout through a doorway, to rouse up whoever might be there, was like a voice down a rain-barrel.

"So changed," said Nada dispiritedly.

It was really less the change than the fact that the gloomy dilapidation to which she had been imperceptibly accustomed from childhood (after Waller's death) seemed to have all taken place during her absence, since now for the first time she realised its run-down and dismal condition.

No one appeared to welcome her. Quite bewildered, she looked about from across the veranda rail. Her polished shoes dangled from over her shoulders; it had not seemed worth while to put them on. She laughed nervously, being that near to crying; and she said almost hopefully, "There is no one here," as if that would give her an excuse for not remaining.

Williams disappeared inside the house. The big Sanniuu and another native vanished hurriedly, looking for somebody, anybody. Sanniuu had the determined air of a pursuer, and presently came back with a fat native woman. He walked slightly behind her, like a suspicious warder, afraid that she might try to get away. The woman was sullenly curious, a little uneasy, and still looked sleepy.

Nada rushed to her and stopped short. She did not know the woman. The woman did not know her. Nada's thwarted eagerness changed to an expression of pain; and bad news from an old, astonished, loving servant would have been less shocking than the doubtful answers of this dull creature, who stared with misgiving.

"Where is my father?" Nada cried, almost accusingly; and, without pausing, asked of her sister, and for name after name of old servants.

The fat woman was in a loose wrapper that had once been red, but was now merely dirty. Her hair was down. She stared distrustfully at the strange girl in American finery, and was fascinated by the hat. Her dull black eyes went doubtfully again and again toward McGuire.

Mr. Combe, she said, was at the town. He was there most of the time. Mr. Grinnell, the manager, was over there—and her heavy hand moved vaguely. Miss Combe was married. She did not come to the house any more. Nobody lived here now but Mr. Combe.

"Who are you?" McGuire asked.

"I am Lily."

"Well, flower of the English hedgerow, what do you do around here besides eat and sleep?"

"I am married," she answered, with unruffled dullness.

"An' your sisters an' brothers an' uncles an' aunts—where does the family stay?"

The woman uncomfortably recognised his familiarity with island ways; there was rather a lazy swarm dependent on Lily and her husband for provisions from the Combe kitchen.

With dignity she replied: "My husband is a white man, as you are."

Williams reappeared on the veranda and called up some of his sailors. They moved a bed to the veranda and rigged a mosquito netting above it. Paullen, relieved of the sickly rocking of the sea, had already fallen into a sleep, and was placed in the bed without fully awakening.

Williams might have sent a message to the town, some eight miles across the island, for Combe; but he had nothing necessary to say to Combe, and it was important that he go on his way.

All of the parting that he had with McGuire was: "Paullen will be up and about in two or three weeks. Urge him to go home—to his home, wherever it is, for whoever his father is makes no difference. There is no sternness that can resist the return of a boy like that. There is honour in him, and courage. Take care of him, McGuire. You wait here till I come."

"Aye, skipper," said McGuire.