Читать книгу ODTAA - John 1878-1967 Masefield - Страница 6

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During the drive, he asked Winter if he feared any civil trouble.

“Yes and no,” he said. “The Whites and Reds always bicker a bit at Easter; they go out of their way to do it. They’ll do it this year. But it will be nothing. And my advice to you is to pay no attention to politics here, unless you’re naturalised. I’m not a citizen, and don’t intend to be, so I keep clear of both parties. What you want to steer clear of in this country are foreigners with axes to grind, like Weycock’s old uncle. I say nothing against young Weycock; he’s friendly and decent, and all that, but when I hear him boosting the Reds I wonder how much his uncle’s had to make him sing.”

“But he said that Lopez was in fear of being murdered by the Whites.”

“Rats. The Whites won’t murder Lopez; they’ve got no one to put in his place, and they know it. Besides, they know that it isn’t Lopez who is running this land, but the foreign firms who’ve put money into it and mean to get it back. As for Lopez being afraid of being murdered, I say, rats again. He’s afraid of nothing, from hell-fire up; never has been.”

Hi spent a happy day at Quezon, slept there, and was driven back to his hotel the next morning. “You go in and see your friends,” Mr. Winter said, “then come out here again and spend a week or two. Everything’s hard work here, like everywhere else. A lot of these young bloods come out here thinking life’s going to dances and belonging to the Cocktail Club. You’re too wise for that foolishness; you’ve got some sense.

“And now just let me say this, I stand in loco parentis here, mind. Don’t accept a job from the United Sugar people without just coming and talking it over with me. They may have nothing for you, of course. They’re in with a very queer set, who aren’t out for sugar or any other kind of sweetness, but just both hands in the till. I see their workings, and I know. The matter with Lopez is not that he’s afraid, but that he’s too darned indolent to watch their steps a little.”

*******

When he returned to the hotel, Hi found no letter from the Piranhas. “No answer,” he thought. “She’s had time enough for a dozen answers. It means that she’s out of town. Yet Rosa, in her last letter, said that she would be in town now.”

He wandered out into the streets, where the work and beauty of a seaport filled every yard with wonder. He felt that he could never tire of a life so varied, so full of colour, passed in such light. Yet again the people gave him the impression that all was not well. He was a newcomer, who saw the game from outside, with fresh eyes. He felt that the Whites and Reds were certainly going out of their ways to bicker at this coming Easter. On his way back to the hotel, he saw some Red officials sacking (as it seemed) a little newspaper office. A young American, who seemed amused at his want of grasp of the case, explained that the cops were pulling the joint and pinching the editor.

“What for?”

“I dunno. He’s one of these White guys. I guess he wrote something some big bug didn’t quite stand for.”

He watched the sack to its completion. He could tell from the looks on people’s faces what their politics were, and his heart went out to the under dogs, the Whites, who were outnumbered there, and dared not show all that they felt. “Rosa is a White,” he thought, “I’ll get her to tell me what is going on.”

*******

He was just about to lunch at his hotel, when a negro waiter, who seemed impressed by something, came to tell him, chiefly by signs, that he was wanted in the foyer. Wondering what he could have done wrong, or what could cause the negro’s manner, he went out to the foyer, where a footman, in a green and white livery, very politely told him, in Spanish and pantomime, that there was something very important for him, seemingly outside the doors. Looking as the footman’s signs directed, he saw an old carriage, in which two ladies sat, beneath green parasols. “Rosa,” he thought, “Rosa and her mother.”

One of the ladies was old, with white hair; she sat upright with an absorbed look as though she were praying. The other was Rosa, but changed indeed from the Rosa of the Foliats; this creature was painted into a kind of purple mask with high lights of white powder on her nose. Over her eyes, arches of plainly false eyebrows had been put in with the brow-stick. Great gold ear-rings, enclosing green stones, hung from her ears, her mouth was scarlet. He had never seen a more raddled-looking baggage, yet this was the Rosa of four months before, who had galloped hatless astraddle before breakfast with him. Both ladies turned to him at once with an air which made him feel ashamed that he had no hat to take off to them and very thankful that he hadn’t. The old lady was more subtly made up than her daughter, but even she seemed to wear a mask or glaze of enamel. “I suppose it’s the fashion here,” he thought.

Glaze or not, they were plainly great ladies here, conferring incredible honour upon the hotel. Half the staff was there to attend their pleasure already. The Señora held her hand for Hi to kiss (his good angel guarded him from shaking it), she bade him welcome in English. He had not seen her since he was a little child, but he remembered her clearly, as Donna Emilia, a lady who held herself very straight and was always praying. “She needed not to have made up,” Hi thought. “There is something very beautiful in her face.”

“Welcome,” she said; “your father has been a good friend to us. You and yours have been good friends to Rosa. I hope that all your household was well when you left England. Let me see you, Highworth. You are liker your mother than your father. But my eyes are failing, I cannot be sure of this. Come now, with us, will you, to spend some hours at our house?”

“I should love to,” Hi said.

“Go and get your hat, then, and put it on,” Rosa said. “Never, never come out without a hat again. Put it on at once, or this sun will skin you. It doesn’t come through a watery envelope as it does in England. That is your vanity, wanting to look brown. You wouldn’t look brown, you’d crack, and all your poor little brains would pop.”

They drove down the water-front, past the Viceroy’s garden, to the gate. Several houses on the water-front were displaying the scarlet banners, starred with gold, which Lopez had declared to be the national flag.

“Is there to be some sort of celebration?” Hi asked.

“A display, I understand,” Donna Emilia said.

“How wonderful the bay looks with the shipping,” Rosa said quickly. “Do you see, Hi, the shallows beyond the bay? All that southern bay is only about six feet deep.”

“Good bathing, I should think,” Hi said. “Is one allowed to bathe there?”

“I believe that some of the Indians sometimes bathe there,” Rosa said, “but there are swarms of sharks. If you go out in a boat, they’ll come all round you, and rub along the side and try to tip you out.”

“What do you do then?” Hi asked. “Sing them to sleep?”

“The best way is to hit them a bat with the flat of an oar-blade.”

“I wonder you don’t stare at them,” Hi said. “No shark can resist the power of the human eye.”

“Women’s eyes excite them,” Rosa said.

“I should have thought a haughty look would shrivel them. The books are full of it: ‘She darted a freezing glance at him.’ ”

At this moment they were passing through the gate of the city. On their right was a park of palms, flowers and busts, on their left, beyond the fortress, was the approach to the market pier, where the boats landed fish, fruit and other produce at dawn each morning. A party of men and women were coming from this pier with donkey carts laden with fruits, eggs and vegetables. “They’re the second market,” Rosa said, “they buy up the leavings from the boats and hawk them through the closes.”

The men of the second market recognised the liveries of the Piranhas. They stopped their carts, stood still, uncovered and cried, “Long live the Whites. Long live the Whites. Let the Reds perish.” To Hi’s astonishment neither woman took the slightest notice. They stared ahead as though they neither saw nor heard. Hi thought it odd that they did not bow; Rosa turned to him.

“Do you see the boats, Hi?” she asked. “Those are some of the coast boats which bring the produce. There are many market gardens along this great shallow bay, especially at La Boca, ten miles down. The gardeners send their things in the boats, which are just as fast as boats can be. They often race both ways. We can see them from our windows.”

Out in the bay there was enough wind to ruffle the water. About a dozen boats of queer rigs were rushing home under all the sail they could set. Some were lateen-rigged with striped sails of blue and white; most were polacca schooners with steeved bowsprits setting a sprit beneath upon a yard. The sails of these were of a bright orange colour. All had high curved whaler’s bows topped with gilt emblems. All were fast boats; even Hi was surprised at the way they travelled. A rounded white gleam at their sides showed their speed and the cleanness of their thrust.

“Aren’t they like dolphins?” Rosa said. “Don’t they seem to enjoy it?”

Less than half a mile from the gate of the city they entered the gates of the Piranhas’ estate, which lay to the left, between the road and the sea. In the niches of the masonry of the gates were figures of painted terra-cotta, representing Friendship and Affection, one on each side. They had been labelled when new, but time had destroyed the plaster on which the labels were painted. “We can’t tell t’other from which now,” Rosa said. “People think they’re both the Virgin, and lay little bunches of flowers before them on their way to work.”

The gates were old masterpieces of wrought iron, now frail from rust, their palm leaves were snapping, some of their bars had worn through. All within the gates showed the same marks of decay. It had once been an Italian garden, but time, poverty and the sea winds had helped to bring it to ruin. Marble busts of poets and nymphs were fallen, or overgrown with trailers. The great red clay or terra-cotta urns had been split by the roots of their flowers, so that they looked like fountains of flowers falling under the living glitter of the humming birds. The shingle of the walk, though marked with wheels and horse-hoofs, was almost overgrown with a thick green-leaved trailer, full of minute blue flowers. The house was a biggish, oblong, yellow building, with decorative panels of scarlet plaster in the recesses of the masonry. The scarlet had faded to pale red, it was scaley and mildewed; altogether, the house looked out of fashion. There had been a device between supporters over the door. The supporters were now nothing but legs, two hairy, with paws, two human, with feet. The device was wholly gone. Part of a label bore the legend:

non sufficit.

Hi wondered what it was that did not suffice.

As the carriage stopped below the perron an old negro with powdered hair, wearing the uniform of the Piranhas, white with green splashes on the shoulders, came down the steps to welcome them. He carried a long ebony cane with a gold pineapple at the end. Hi helped Donna Emilia up the steps. Outside the house, all things gave evidence of a great family coming down in the world. Inside, it was all as it had been in the time of its splendour, except that colours had faded.

“Come into my room, Highworth,” Donna Emilia said.

She led him into a pleasant room hung with portraits of her own and her husband’s families. She took her seat in a great brocaded chair that was like a throne. Hi was only a boy, but he was impressed by her bearing. She gave him the impression of being a work of art held together by nothing but will, and a sense of style.

Hi closed the door at her bidding. Rosa was gone.

“It is thirty years, Highworth,” she said, “since your father in this room brought news to my husband and myself that our fortunes were secured in the days of the copper crisis. My husband promised then that this house should be a home to any of your race. There to your right you will see a drawing of your father as he was then. It is a pleasure to me to see you stand where your father stood.”

She rang a little bell which stood on a table beside her; the negro with the ebony cane appeared. “This is my old retainer, Pablo,” she said, “faithful as one of the old age. Pablo,” she said, “this is Mr. Highworth, whose father you will remember. In all ways and at all times you are to consider him as one of this household.”

After Pablo had gone she turned again to Hi.

“This is talking beneath the surface,” she said, “which the English do not do. Now tell me. What are your plans for your life in this country? Your father says that you have letters and that we are not to help you till we see that you have helped yourself.”

“I have only just landed,” Hi said. “I have letters to Mr. Weycock and Mr. Winter.”

“To Mr. Mordred Weycock?” she asked.

“No, his nephew.”

“Did either Mr. Winter or Mr. Weycock tell you of troubles impending in this country.”

“They seemed to think that things were not perfectly settled,” Hi said.

“And what do you yourself think, now that you have seen them?”

“They don’t seem quite happy somehow,” Hi said.

“How can they be happy,” she said, “with Antichrist upon the throne? I am a woman and meddle little with politics, but very much with religion, which is a force that your Mr. Weycocks do not admit to exist. He and his friends, Highworth, are rousing up in this country something which they cannot understand, the very depths of the soul of this people. But come, Highworth, take this flower. Give me your arm. Open that door for me. This is the chapel of the Piranhas; this tomb is where my husband lies. He loved your father, who was more than a friend to us in a time of calamity. Lay the flower upon his tomb. He will be glad to know that your father’s son is in this house in this time of calamity.”

“Surely Señora,” he said, “the calamity is not so great.”

She looked at him and could not answer.

“Leave me here a little, Highworth,” she said. “There is a Greco over the altar. But you will not care for these things. You will find Rosa in the garden room.”

It was dim in the chapel. It was built of white Otorin marble in barrel vaulting, with one piercing in the sanctuary. Hi saw a blackness with bronze gleams where he laid his flower. He knew that Donna Emilia was crying.

“O Señora,” he said. He felt that he could not stay there: he went quickly back to the light.

Pablo led the way to a room full of sunlight: it opened upon the garden, but was itself more full of flowers than the garden, from a bank of white cuencas near the French windows. The light poured upon these, so that every white trumpet of the cuencas seemed to quiver with life. Little yellow butterflies poised above the flowers. A crested humming bird with a dazzling throat hovered in the light near the door.

“Well, Hi,” Rosa said, “how are you liking Santa Barbara?”

“Oh, I love it.”

“You came in the Recalde, of course. When did you write to mother; do you remember?”

“Yes, the day before yesterday; a few hours after I landed.”

“I thought so,” she said. “I suppose you wondered why we didn’t answer.”

“I thought you were out of town.”

“We did not receive your letter till this morning,” she said. “The censorship is on again.”

“What censorship?”

“The Government’s. You see, we are a White family. All our people are Whites, or Surplices even, the sort of purest of the pure. The Reds have been planning something unusual for some time. They have been talking about a conspiracy to kill Don Lopez and evidence of a White rebellion. They always talk like that before a devilry. Then they say that they were provoked to measures of safeguard.

“Latterly there has been no censorship of letters; but I was afraid that one had begun two or three days ago. Now I am sure of it.”

“What do they do?”

“Take all the letters addressed to eminent Whites to some Red officer in the fortress; then he steams them, I suppose, and reads them and has them photographed or copied before they are delivered.”

“I wonder they take the pains,” Hi said. “If they’re dirty enough skunks to read other people’s letters, they’re dirty enough skunks to forge false ones.”

“Oh, they are; but they like to know what is going on, as well as what they imagine. Don’t speak of these things to mother, or before her, Hi, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I rather shut you up when you asked about the celebrations. But mother hasn’t been well for some time. She thinks that something terrible is happening; or soon going to happen. Any allusion to the Reds just now upsets her.”

“Right,” Hi said, “I’ll be silent. But I say, Rosa; I wish you’d tell me why you didn’t bow or smile or anything when those market people cheered you.”

“Did it seem very bad manners?”

“It struck me as a little odd.”

“We’re Whites,” she answered. “We’re watched pretty closely. What is to stop the Reds from sending agents to cheer the Whites in our presence, and watching whether we applaud? What would stop them arresting us for fomenting party feeling or ‘encouraging White excesses,’ as they would call it?”

“They couldn’t,”

“Why not? What is to stop them?”

“For smiling and bowing just because people cheer you?”

“Yes, Hi, and for even looking as though you wished to smile and bow. ‘Gestures prejudicial to civil peace,’ is the phrase they use, or ‘conduct deemed to be provocative of civil disturbance,’ that is another.”

“Arrest you and your mother?”

“Yes, rather; like billio.”

“But, good Lord, what are the Whites doing to let these Reds do these things? They must be jugginses.”

“There aren’t many Whites on this side of Santa Barbara: the Whites are all in the west.”

“Yes; but they must know.”

“It isn’t so easy as it sounds. The Whites did a lot of stupid things when they were in power; trying to stop the Schools Acts and other Acts which the Reds had just passed; naturally the Reds were furious.”

“Yes; but hang it all, Rosa, stopping a sort of Act of Parliament is done in a civilised way, by law; but these Reds have brought in all these yellow devils. I can’t see why the Whites allow that.”

“The Pitubas? We’re used to them here. They’re not so bad as they look. They don’t eat all the babies they’re credited with. They may munch a finger here and there. What I mind is the censorship and the spying, and the knowledge that all the time these Red officers are making dossiers against all whom one holds dear: false dossiers, with forged evidence, which they may use.”

“Why should they use them?”

“You haven’t seen the gang who governs us? They are in touch with a set of people who want to ‘open up’ this land, as they call it and will pay for the privilege. Naturally, they would get their money back a hundredfold. Since the Whites stand in the way, naturally the Reds want to get rid of them; and the dirty way is the way the Reds take by nature, being what they are, people without dignity and without belief.”

“I don’t know anything about it, of course,” Hi said, “but I should have thought it would be a good thing to get opened up a bit: have a few more railways and get more of the land under cultivation.”

“If a gang of scoundrels came down on England, to open England up a bit, would you like that, Hi?”

“Father always says that that is what is always happening in England, so I suppose we are used to it.”

“Well, we aren’t. Now I’ve got heaps to do. I’ve got to cut all this linen to pattern for our children’s Easter frocks. So although you may not think it a manly job, I want you to help me at it, will you, like a brick? We’ll open this linen up a bit to make little panties for our bambini.”

Hi was always ready for any job. They set to work.

“By the way, Hi,” Rosa said, “my cousin, Carlotta de Leyva, will be here at lunch. She talks English, so you needn’t be scared.”

“I shan’t be scared, if she’s anything like you,” he said.

“Well, she isn’t, worse luck,” Rosa said. “But I thought I’d have you alone to warn you. Carlotta is a very special person. She’s not like anybody else; but it’s no good your falling in love with her.”

“All right,” he said; “I shan’t fall in love.”

“It won’t be any good if you do,” she said. “Carlotta is to be married from here in less than a month. By the way, you’ll have to come to the wedding, heretic or no.”

“Who is she marrying?” he asked; not that he cared.

“Don Manuel.”

“A sort of local buck?”

“You would call him that.”

“Has he a surname?”

“Yes. Encinitas.”

“I thought that was a province.”

“So it is: he owns most of it.”

“And she owns most of the province next to it?”

“Her brother does.”

“So when the two marry, they will control about half of Santa Barbara between them?”

“Why shouldn’t they, if they are wise and good?”

“It seems rather a lot for two; what sort of a man is Don Manuel; a good sort?” Rosa made a grimace.

“He hasn’t done much good yet. Even if he had, he wouldn’t be good enough for her.”

“That is what women always say before a wedding,” he said, “ ‘... of course he isn’t good enough for her.’ ”

“Any man before his wedding will say it’s true.”

“Men in love will agree to anything. I say, Rosa, is there anything I ought not to do at lunch?”

“Any local custom?” she said. “Yes, we don’t eat with our knives and we always cluck as we swallow to show how much we are enjoying it.”

“No; I say Rosa, you’re always ragging. What ought I not to do? You might tell a fellow.”

“I’ve warned you, Hi: not to fall in love with my cousin.”

“Fall in love: rats,” he said.

“That’s the spirit,” she said. “Rats.”

Someone in the hall outside was moving to and fro, arranging flowers in the bowls on the tables. At first, Hi thought that this was Donna Emilia; then the unseen woman began to sing in a low voice, as though thinking of something else. It was not Donna Emilia. Hi could not make out the words, but thought the voice and tune pretty.

“What’s the song, Rosa?” he asked.

“That? An old lullaby. It’s about roses going to bed because it’s late.”

“It’s pretty.”

“My dear boy, you’re cutting that thing so that it’ll have neither cut nor hang.”

“Oh, dash it, so I am.”

“You pay attention to what you’re doing and never mind about lullabies.”

Presently, after the song had stopped, something bumped upon the door; the voice of the singer called to them in English to “open the door, please.” Hi opened the door. A woman stood on the threshold, holding a jar full of sprays of white stellas.

“I’ve brought these for you, Rosa,” she said.

“That’s sweet of you,” Rosa said. “You two haven’t met yet. Carlotta, this is Mr. Highworth Ridden, an old flame of mine. He’s helping me to cut panties; men do these things in England. Hi, this is my cousin, Señorita de Leyva.”

“How do you do, Mr. Ridden?” Carlotta said. “Will you take these flowers for me?”

He said something in broken Spanish and took the jar to the table; the stellas were the sweetest flowers he had ever known. In a gush of memory he saw a hedge of honeysuckle at home in June. At the table, he turned to look at Carlotta, who was unlike anyone he had ever seen. “She’s an angel of Paradise,” he thought.

He had not thought of women; until that moment he had never bothered his head about them. He had considered them as a race apart, with ways of their own which, on the whole, he resented. From time to time he had met a girl who had been a jolly good sport: Rosa was rather a good sport; anyhow, they were the exceptions. The rest were in a world of their own, with nerves and standards of their own which he disliked but respected. Now suddenly there stood before him a woman who realised all his dreams of what a woman should be. Yet she was not like any other woman. She was as little like a woman as a humming bird is like a bird. She was a small, perfect, spiritual shape, glowing like a humming bird. He had once heard somebody say that “you only get perfection in small things”; he had thought the man an ass at the time, but remembered it now. This woman was perfect. Her hair was of a most deep, dark brown, very abundant, but caught close to her head by a narrow fillet of gold. This gave her something the look of a boy, enough, perhaps, to establish a sympathy with a boy like Hi. The eyes were darker than the hair. They shone as though the brain behind them were one glow of light. They were not only kind, good eyes, but so very merry. The eyebrows were remarkable. As in most clever faces, the base of her nose, at the brow, was broad, and the space between the eyes not small. The unusual beauty of the eyebrows was their length; they continued the demarcation of the brow to the right and left; they were straight in line over the eyes, and lifted a little at the right and left sides, in a way impossible to describe, though it made the face most vivid and unusual. The nose was straight. The ears, which are seldom beautiful, even in the beautiful, were perfect in her. The cheeks were of a rich colour as though the life within were very intense. The mouth was the great distinction: it was of a faultless beauty. All fun, all thoughtfulness, all generosity, were in those gentle, sensitive, proud curves. She wore white, with a green jacket. Her voice seemed to Hi to be the quality of voice he had always most longed to hear. She spoke English faultlessly.

“So Rosa has put you to cutting out Easter dresses?” she asked.

“Women are always making men slaves,” he said.

“Well, after lunch, you shall be free. Manuel will be here to lunch, Rosa, so if it’s cool enough we might play tennis afterwards. Would you play, Mr. Ridden?”

“I’d love some tennis.”

She picked up some pattern-paper, turned it, folded it, snipped it with scissors, refolded it, snipped it again, and then shook it out as a sort of cape or shawl of lace.

“That is what the negresses wear in San Jacinto,” she said. “They cut the linen and wear it over scarlet; it looks just like lace at a little distance.”

“You are clever,” Hi said, “to cut it all out like that. I wish you’d show me how you did it.”

“Like this,” she said, picking up another piece of paper.

“The English are always wanting to do things,” Rosa said. “They never say, ‘Here’s a perfect day, let’s think about perfection.’ They say, ‘Here, it’s stopped raining, let’s do something.’ ”

“You did your share when you were in England,” he said, “so you needn’t talk.”

“She seems to have been busy this morning,” Carlotta said. “We’ll talk about perfection, if you like.”

“I don’t want to talk, but to listen,” Rosa said. “Suppose you sing.”

Carlotta went to the piano and sang a couple of Spanish songs, one strange, the other grim, both haunting. Hi thought them the most beautiful things he had ever heard, sung by the most marvellous voice. He could not turn his eyes from her face and throat. She was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. He felt himself to be vile and a boor, and unfit to walk the same planet. He wondered whether he could possibly take the pattern-papers which she had cut, or the scissors she had used. He stared and stared. He knew it to be rude, but could not help it. “My God, she is beautiful,” he thought. “She is lovely, lovely. O God, I wish I could fight for her or do something for her.”

He noticed her hands. They were not the thin, pale, very knuckly bundles of skewers which ladies’ hands usually seemed to him, but perfections of form and marks of capacities. There was a ring on one finger. “There it is,” he thought; “she’s engaged to be married, to this devil Manuel, who isn’t good enough for her. This devil Manuel can kiss her. I’d like to call him out.” Glancing suddenly away from the lovely face he saw Rosa watching him with a certain malice tinged just a little, unselfish as she was, with envy. No one had stared at her in quite that way before she had taken any pains to secure it.

Rosa smiled somewhat bitterly; a gong was beaten to call them to lunch.

“Manuel is late,” Carlotta said; “he said he might be.”

Hi hated Manuel for being late, and for being called “Manuel,” and for being at all. He wanted to shine before her, but could think of nothing to say; he seemed to be spurting orange-juice everywhere. Then he was ashamed that three women, living in this lovely room, should all speak good English, in compliment to himself, while he could hardly say, “Thank you” in Spanish.