"Well, why worry about her?" It was I who put it calmly. Six hours
before, I had not been calm; but now I looked back at that fever with
contempt.
"She's been to Stires's," he went on; and I could see the words hurt
him.
"Well, then, ask him."
"He was asleep. She left her beloved gramophone there. He found it when
he waked."
"Her gramophone?" I ejaculated. "Where is Stires?"
"Looking for her--and hoping he won't find her, curse him!"
Follet took hold of me and drew me down the steps. "Come along," he
said. Then he turned to Madame Maür. "Sorry, madame. This is urgent.
We'll tell you all about it later."
Félicité Maür did not approve of Follet, but he could do no wrong when
she was actually confronted with him. She took refuge in a shrug and
went within.
When we were outside the gate, I stood still and faced Follet. "What did
Ching Po tell you and Stires?"
"Don't you know?" Sheer surprise looked out at me from his eyes.
"Of course, I think I know. Do you really want to tear the place up,
looking for her?"
"It's not that!" he shouted. "If it had been, every one would have known
it long since. Ching Po got it out of old Dubois. I shook Dubois out of
his opium long enough to confirm it. I had to threaten him.--Ching Po's
a dirty beast, but, according to the old man he told the truth. Ching Po
did want to marry her once. She wouldn't, of course, and he's just been
waiting to spike her guns. When he found out she really wanted that
impossible Yankee, he said he'd tell. She had hysterics. He waited for
her outside the Maürs', hoping, I suppose, it would work out another
way. When we appeared, he decided to get his work in. He probably
thought she had sent for us. And he was determined no one should stop
him from telling. Now do you see? Come on." He pulled at my arm.
"In heaven's name, man, _what_ did he tell?" I almost shrieked.
"Just the one thing you Yankees can't stand," Follet sneered. "A touch
of the tar-brush. She wasn't altogether French, you see. Old Dubois
knows her pedigree. Her grandmother was a mulatto, over Penang way. She
knew how Stires felt on the subject--a damn, dirty ship-chandler no
self-respecting officer deals with--"
"None of that!" I said sharply. "He's a good man, Stires. A darned sight
too good for the Naapu grafters. A darned sight too good to go native--"
Then I stopped, for Follet was hardly himself, nor did I like the look
of myself as a common scold.
We did not find Stires, and after an hour or two we gave up the search.
By dusk, Follet had got to the breaking-point. He was jumpy. I took him
back myself to the hotel, and pushed him viciously into Ching Po's arms.
The expressionless Chinese face might have been a mask for all the
virtues; and he received the shaking burden of Follet as meekly as a
sister of charity.
I bought some tinned things for my dinner and took my way home. I should
not, I felt sure, be interrupted, and I meant to turn in early. Madame
Maür would be telling the tale to her husband; Follet would, of a
certainty, be drunk; and Stires would be looking, I supposed, for French
Eva. French Eva, I thought, would take some finding; but Stires was the
best man for the job. It was certainly not my business to notify any one
that night. So I chowed alone, out of the tins, and smoked a long
time--alone--in the moonlight.
* * * * *
It was not Stires, after all, who found her, though he must have hunted
the better part of that night. It was three days before she was washed
ashore. She was discovered by a crew of fishermen whom she had often
beaten down in the way of business. They brought her in from the remote
cove, with loud lamentations and much pride. She must have rocked back
and forth between the shore and the reef, for when they found her, her
body was badly battered. From the cliff above, they said, she looked at
first like a monstrous catch of seaweed on the sand Her hair--
Follet had treated himself to a three days' drinking-bout, and only
emerged, blanched and palsied, into a town filled with the clamor of her
funeral. Stires had shut up his junk-shop for a time and stayed strictly
at home. I went to see him, the day after they found her. His face was
drawn and gloomy, but it was the face of a man in his right mind. I
think his worst time was that hour after Follet had followed Ching Po
out of his warehouse. He never told me just how things had stood between
French Eva and him, but I am sure that he believed Ching Po at once, and
that, from the moment Ching Po spoke, it was all over. It was no longer
even real to him, so surely had his inborn prejudice worked. Stires was
no Pierre Loti.
In decency we had to mention her. There was a great to-do about it in
the town, and the tom-toms had mysteriously returned from the hillsides.
"I've been pretty cut up about it all," he admitted. "But there's no
doubt it's for the best. As I look back on it, I see she never was
comfortable in her mind. On and off, hot and cold--and I took it for
flightiness. The light broke in on me, all of a sudden, when that dirty
yellow rascal began to talk. But if you'll believe me, sir, I used to be
jealous of Follet. Think of it, now." He began to whittle.
Evidently her ravings to Madame Maür had not yet come to his ears.
Madame Maür was capable of holding her tongue; and there was a chance
Follet might hold his. At all events, I would not tell Stires how
seriously she had loved him. He was a very provincial person, and I
think--considering her pedigree--it would have shocked him.
French Eva's cerebrations are in some ways a mystery to me, but I am
sure she knew what she wanted. I fancy she thought--but, as I say, I do
not know--that the mode of her passing would at least make all clear to
Stires. Perhaps she hoped for tardy regrets on his part; an
ex-post-facto decision that it didn't matter. The hot-and-cold business
had probably been the poor girl's sense of honor working--though,
naturally, she couldn't have known (on Naapu) the peculiar
impregnability of Stires's prejudices. When you stop to think of it,
Stires and his prejudices had no business in such a place, and nothing
in earth or sky or sea could have foretold them to the population of
that landscape. Perhaps when she let herself go, in the strong seas, she
thought that he would be at heart her widower. Don't ask me. Whatever
poor little posthumous success of the sort she may have hoped for, she
at least paid for it heavily--and in advance. And, as you see, her ghost
never got what her body had paid for. It is just as well: why should
Stires have paid, all his life? But if you doubt the strength of her
sincerity, let me tell you what every one on Naapu was perfectly aware
of: she could swim like a Kanaka; and she must have let herself go on
those familiar waters, against every instinct, like a piece of
driftwood. Stires may have managed to blink that fact; but no one else
did.
Lockerbie gave a dinner-party at the end of the week, and Follet got
drunk quite early in the evening. He embarrassed every one (except me)
by announcing thickly, at dessert, that he would have married French Eva
if she hadn't drowned herself. I believed it no more the second time
than I had believed it the first. Anyhow, she wouldn't have had him.
Schneider left us during those days. We hardly noticed his departure.
Ching Po still prospers. Except Stires, we are not squeamish on Naapu.