Читать книгу Seibert of the Island - Gordon Young - Страница 9

When Combe, in a puttering, unhappy sort of way, decided to do something handsome for Waller he had the doctor, who was an atheist, and the French padre, who was Dr. Lemaitre's closest friend, help him to order a big tombstone. Combe's idea—and about the only one he had in mind—was to secure something big, monumental. In time the tombstone was sent from Paris.

Onlookers gathered about and made comments while it, covered with grating and packing, was being laboriously hoisted out of the hold and set down on the rickety wharf, already crowded with rum barrels and copra that were to be taken on board.

Black boys from the plantation, with horses, chains, and a couple of wagons, were brought down to the wharf's edge. Combe stood about helplessly, while idling bystanders said what should be done. The boys did little, and that sulkily. There was chattering, insult, and ironical advice.

Adolph Seibert chanced to ride down to the beach on his grey stallion. For his personal use he had big stallions; his weight would soon have injured any but a powerful horse, for he was a heavy man, with a chest like a barrel. Seibert had a big, round, cheerful face and a high, bald forehead, a big voice, big, fleshy shoulders, and a grinning air of worldly success that was like a rebuke to unthrifty idlers. He was not popular at the Pulotu Club, where sometimes he would drop into a veranda chair with an air of slight weariness and talk in a way that disturbed the lotus-eaters dozing in their long cane chairs.

Talking with an aimless wave of his big hand, he would tell what he had been doing—of the cinnamon grove he had been experimenting with, of tobacco land he was clearing, of pepper vine holes he was digging and manuring—he seemed to be always talking about manures and fertiliser—of the new hillside that was going into cane; and of how he had ridden or walked or climbed somewhere.

He would have a drink or two on the veranda—not sipped, just gulped down with powerful suction in that hearty, healthy, fleshly way that so exasperated the half-sickly, heat-stricken men about him on their cane chairs; then with a few loud, careless words, a wave of the big arm, a cut of the whip on boot-top to stir himself, as if his legs were a part of somebody else that carried him along, and he would be gone, leaving a kind of gasping irritation behind. People did not believe in his grinning heartiness; and somehow he seemed trying to make everybody feel insignificant, and with that burly, overbearing manner and mask-like grin of his did so. In fact, he was now the big man of the island. Hundreds of cannibal blacks worked on his plantation—and they worked!

On the day that the great tombstone sat at the wharf's end and could not be budged, Seibert had ridden down for a casual look at what was going on. Presently, dismounting, he strode along the wharf and in among the babblers and loafers. Spurs jangled at the heels of his high boots, a long riding-whip swung from a wrist that was thicker than Combe's arm.

"Ho, there is something that is wrong here, eh?" he said loudly to Combe, who looked away nervously and mumbled something about nobody seeming to know what to do.

Seibert grunted. "Huh! Is that so? I will show you somethings."

He began to give orders. A heavy-faced black foreman of Combe's gaped stupidly, pretending not to understand. Seibert, with no sign of anger, struck the fellow across the shoulders with the whip, and said loudly, cheerfully: "There is no interpreter more better than this." The monument moved. Seibert had cleared square miles and miles of jungle, and knew all about moving things.

When the tombstone reached the little mound, already overgrown with grass and weeds, and was set in place where only a stick had been to mark the head, all Pulotu came to see. There was nothing like it anywhere in any of the islands. It had an angel in flowing skirts, who held a long trumpet to her lips; many wreaths had been chiselled; a circlet of pretty cupid faces looked up from lily chalices; there was an open Bible and the tablets of Moses.

A bystander remarked, "With all that on him, he'll have the devil of a time crawlin' out when Gabriel toots."

Old Combe thought that it was beautiful. The ornamentation had been left entirely to the Parisian firm, and the firm with extravagant courtesy had tried to do enough. The one thing that was slightly wrong was in the name. Life, as a final wallop, had taken advantage of the dead man. The name deeply cut into the stone was "Walter," but as Combe could not read he did not greatly mind the error. Everybody knew who was meant, which was enough.

From that day on Seibert showed an aggressive neighbourliness for Combe. The big German rode over every day, and soon had just about taken charge of the plantation. He gave advice, and brought over men from his own grounds to see that it was followed. He told Combe, who knew nothing of accounts, that his affairs were in a bad mess; moreover, that he wasn't getting what he should out of his groves, out of his sales, out of his blacks; that the best thing would be to let him manage the plantation, giving statements and figures of what could be done that way. But Combe's muddled head was useless, though Seibert was patient and cheerful—always cheerful—about explaining.

Combe, sure that Seibert planned to rob him, had, with the vague idea of somewhat baffling his enemy, one night gathered up all the papers and books and records Waller had used and hid them.

Then at this time an evil-hearted Fate made life worse for him. His pretty little dark wife took consumption, and its fever ate her rapidly. Combe, old enough to have been her father, went about in pathetic dejection, trying in a fumbling, gentle, silently anguished way to be of help. By the time she was buried Seibert had put his own overseers on the Combe plantation, carried off all the papers and accounts he found, and announced, as if the matter was settled, that Combe ought to be pleased that the management was in good hands.

Combe complained to everybody in Pulotu. He was told on all sides what he already believed—that Seibert was after his property, which was to be the property of his two small daughters. About the only fellow that stood up for Seibert was a labour recruiter, a man that furnished blacks to planters, and his own reputation was not of the best; but he said that the half-cracked Combe was lucky to have a man like Seibert take charge of things; that he himself had had lots of dealings with Seibert, and asked for nothing better than the German's word. But this recruiter was known to be pretty much of a ruffian, and it was known that Seibert was not very particular about how his blacks were obtained, for he was perpetually in need of labourers. Besides, Seibert was not popular on Pulotu. His grinning and heartiness were not convincing, and, though he was always talking of his experiments with an air of triumph, it was pretty generally known that the only thing he made much money on was cocoanuts.