THE GIRL HERSELF
As for the girl herself, words fail me in trying to picture her, just as
my brush and pencil (save perhaps for that one rough memory sketch, done
at white heat while still gripped in the exaltation that first glimpse
of her splashing inside the reef had thrown me into) have always failed.
This is, I fancy, because, unbelievably beautiful though she was, there
was still so much of her appeal that was of the spirit rather than the
flesh--something intangible which had to be sensed rather than seen. She
was compact of contradictions, physical as well as mental. So slender as
almost to suggest fragility at a first glance, there was still not a
straight line, nor an angle, nor a hint of boniness, from the arch of
her instep to the tips of her ears. Again, pixie-like as she was in the
dainty perfection of her modelling, there was yet a fairly feral
suggestion of suppleness and strength underrunning the soft fluency of
contour. The strength was there, too, held in reserve in the flexible
frame like the power of a coiled spring. I saw her unleash it one
morning when, impatient of the slowness of a clumsy Fijian who was
launching a very sizable dugout for her, she yanked him aside by the
hair of his fuzzy head and did the job herself. I can still see the run
of muscles under the olive-silk skin of arm and ankle, and the bent-bow
arch of her slender back, as she gave a last push to the cranky
outrigger. Indeed, my mind is full of pictures like that--paddling,
swimming, leaning hard against the buffets of a passing squall, with a
lock of wet hair streaking across her glowing face and her drenched
garments clinging to her lithe limbs; and yet, as I have said, the
buoyant, flaming spirit of her always escaped my brush and pencil as it
now eludes portrayal by my pen.
But the most baffling, as it was also the most fascinating, of Rona's
contradictions was the combination she presented of inward intensity and
outward calm. The fire of her was, perhaps, the first thing one was
conscious of. Even I, with my blood thinned and cooled with the ice of
absinthe, could never watch her movements without a quickening of my
jaded pulses; to the sanguine combers of Kai the sight of her (whether
the rippling undulations of arms and shoulders as she drove a canoe
through the water, or the hawk-like immobility of her as she poised on a
pinnacle of reef waiting for a chance to cast her little Dyak purse-net)
was palpably maddening.
So much for the flaming appeal of the girl in action, or suspended
action, which was, of course, about the only way in which she was ever
revealed to the "beach." Now picture the same creature (as Bell--and
occasionally myself, his only intimate friend on the island--so often
saw her) seated cross-legged on a mat, her sloe-eyes, set slightly
slant, fixed dreamily on nothingness, like a sort of reincarnated
girl-Buddha. The sight of her thus never failed to awaken in my nostrils
the smell of smouldering _yakka_ sticks, and to set my ears ringing with
the throb of temple bells.
To my hyper-sophisticated (I will not say degenerate) senses this
Oriental side of the girl made a subtle appeal that was like an
enchantment. The passion to paint her--always burning within me when I
saw her in action--never assailed me when she fell into one of those
contemplative calms. Rather the peace of her soothed me like an opiate
and made me content to sit and dream myself. It was the one thing (until
I got the habit by the throat years afterward) that ever held my nerves
steady when the "absinthe hour" drew near at the end of the afternoon.
As long as Rona would continue to "sit Buddha" I had myself completely
in hand, even till well on after sunset. But if she moved, or spoke, or
even showed by her eyes that she was following Bell's words (it was
he--less sensitive to this phase of her than I--who did most of the
talking at these times), the spell was broken. The haste of my bolt for
home was almost indecent. I have sometimes thought that a few months
alone with Rona at this time might have effected very near to a complete
cure in me--by a sort of involuntary mental therapeutic treatment on her
part, I mean. But perhaps the other side of her--the "unreposeful"
one--might have complicated the case.
Both the fire and the repose of Rona--the passion and the peace of
her--were reflected in the olive oval of her face, the one by the full,
sensuous lips and the sensitive nostrils, and the other by the smooth,
low brow. The low-lidded blue-black eyes were "debatable territory," now
in the hands of one, now the other. So, too, that infallible "gauge of
temperament," whose dial is the pucker between the eyebrows. With Rona,
this "passion-pressure index" was a corrugated knot of intensity or an
olive blank according as to whether her inner fires were flaming or
banked.
Bell knew little of the girl's origin and said less. "Rona's _trousseau_
consisted of huh peacock sca'f an' this heah baby _bolo_," he said in
his slow drawl one afternoon when he had borrowed the exquisite little
dagger to show me how the Jolo _juramentado_ executed his favourite
belly-ripping stroke; "an' I reckon they'll comprise 'bout the sum total
of huh mo'nin' at mah fun'ral." That, and "I guess Rona knows no mo'
'bout mah past reco'd than I do 'bout huhs," was all I recollect his
ever having said on the subject. He was content to let it rest at that.
It was old Jackson who told me that he had seen the girl at
Ponape, where she had been brought by an "owl-eyed" (referring to
horn-spectacles rather than to the almond orbs themselves, I took it)
"chink" when he came back to the Carolines after buying bird-of-paradise
skins down New Guinea-way. She was dressed "Java-style" at the time, and
was said to have been picked up at Ternate or Ambon in the Moluccas.
Although the wily old Celestial kept the girl practically under lock and
key from the first, customers of his shop occasionally glimpsed her, and
she them, it would seem. Among these was the Yankee skipper of the
trading schooner, _Flying Scud_. The coming together of those two must
have been like the touching off of a _ku-kui_-nut torch, Jackson opined,
adding that he supposed I "twigged that thar was no snuffin' uv
_ku-kui_, onst aflar."
Just how the sequel eventuated no one in Ponape save the old Chinaman
knew, and he never told. With only half her copra discharged, the _Scud_
was heard getting under way at midnight, shortly after which the
silhouette of her, close-reefed, was observed to blot out the moon three
or four times as she beat out of that "hell's craw" of a passage in the
teeth of a rising sou'wester. The girl was never seen in the Carolines
again. Neither was Bell nor the _Scud_, for that matter, as it was but a
few days later that he attempted his disastrous short-cut across
Tuka-tuva Reef.
The next morning the Chinaman waited on his customers with his neck
heavily, obscuringly swathed in bandages. He kept these on for a
fortnight or more, and when they were finally dispensed with replaced
his loose shirt with a close-buttoned jacket having an unusually
high-cut neck. Even the latter, however, could not entirely conceal a
number of parallel red cicatrices which, beginning on his fat jowls, ran
down, slightly converging, onto his puffy yellow throat. Jackson felt
sure that the point where those red furrows came to a focus must have
been "fairish messed up."
On the beach of Ponape opinion was fairly divided as to whether the big,
close-mouthed Yank had "strong-armed" the Chinaman and carried off the
girl bodily, perhaps against her will, or whether she had made the
get-away unaided, going off to the _Scud_ on her own. In Jackson's mind
there were no doubts.
"I see them welts wi' my own peepers," he said, "an' they wan't the
marks uv a man. They wuz _scratches_. That lanky Yank don't scratch ...
'e _wallops_. But that gal--s'y, did y'u ever tyke a squint at 'er
taloons? Them's the ans'er. She kum to 'im; an' she's stickin' lika
oktypus."
Again I must credit old "Jack" with handing me pretty near to the
"stryght dope."
Yes, I had indeed noticed Rona's wonderful fingernails; likewise the
astonishing amount of care she lavished on them. One could not have
helped noticing them. A quarter to half an inch long, meticulously
manicured, and stained a maroon-brown (rather darker than the rich _sang
du boeuf_ of _henna_), she was always polishing them--those of one hand
on the palm of the other--even when "sitting Buddha" with dreaming
half-closed eyes. I inferred the habit of letting them grow was acquired
in the course of her association with the Chinese. She cut them just
short of where they would begin to curl and be a nuisance. A fraction of
an inch longer, and they would have been as useless as the tusks of an
old boar that had curved back more than a half circle. As they were....
One man's guess was as good as another's in the matter of Rona's racial
origin. Kai, though agreeing that she came from "somewhere Java-side,"
always spoke of her as a Kanaka, just as they did of all the rest of the
"beach" women who were not palpably Jap, Chinese or white. I doubt very
much, however, that she had a drop of real Polynesian blood in her
veins. Flaring with temperament though she was, there was still nothing
about her of the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care sensuousness of the
Caroline or Samoan, the only women of the Islands to whom she bore even
the faintest resemblance in face or figure. If she had come from
Marquesas-way--but no, not even an admixture of old Spanish pirate blood
would have accounted for either the spirit or the body of Rona.
The girl's practice of wearing her _sulu_ (Kai used the Fijian name for
the inevitable South Sea waist-cloth which the Samoans call _lava-lava_
and the Tahitians _pareo_) Malay-fashion--looped over the breasts and
secured by a hitch under the left arm--indicated that her outdoor life
at least had been spent somewhere in the Insulinde Archipelago. Her very
considerable English vocabulary, however, and especially her fluency in
"pidgin," could hardly have been acquired save through some years of
residence in the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malay States. I
was inclined to favour Singapore, especially as she had once let slip
something about a fling at _fan-tan_ at Johore. But even had she been
born in that amazing island melting pot, her unmistakably Hindu cast of
features and mould of figure were hardly accounted for. The Madrassi
Tamils of the Straits were coolies, and Rona radiated _caste_ from her
slender pink-tipped toes to her crown of indigo-black hair coils.
In my own mind I harboured the theory that the girl was a "by-product"
of the harem of one of the innumerable petty Sultanates of Malaysia,
among which I knew were to be found girls of all the tribes and races of
the Moslem world. In no other way could I account for the flaming spirit
and the physical perfection of her. Not even descent from that strange
Hindu remnant of the lovely island of Lombok, just east of Java (a
theory which I had also turned over in my mind), quite satisfied on both
these scores. As to what sort of a centrifugal impulse might have
operated to spin her forth to the clutches of the currents of the
outside world, I had not speculated very deeply. But--well, I knew
something of the strange currencies in which Malaysian potentates paid
their debts to Singapore rug and jewel merchants!
In spite of the increasing warmth of Bell's friendship for me, my way to
Rona's confidence proved far from easy sledding. This was partly because
I had got in bad at the outset by starting to sketch that capricious
lady at her reef-side bath in the face of her very outspoken disapproval
of anything so unseemly, and partly because she was slow in making up
her mind that I did not necessarily classify with the predatory males
against whom her whole life had unquestionably been an unrelieved
defence. Obsessed by the desire to paint her, I had not improved my
standing with the girl by asking Bell (after she had refused me
pointblank) to intercede to get her to sit for me. Indeed, that _faux
pas_ on my part seemed to have put an end for good to any chance I might
have had of getting her to pose. Rona was openly indignant that I should
have presumed to regard her own decision as other than final in the
matter, while Bell, though perfectly good-natured about it, was no less
decided in his disapproval.
"No, sah, I'm not fo' it in the least, ol' man," he drawled decisively.
"Lil' Rona's 'bout the neahest thing to a true, lovin' an' lawful wife I
evah had, awh evah will have, fo' that mattah. So you must see that it
doan quite jibe with mah sense o' what is right an' propah unda the
ci'cumstances fo' me to aid an' abet a proceduah that might culminate in
huh appeahin' on the wall o' somun's bathroom as a spo'tin nymph awh a
wallowin' mumaid. Nothin' doin', ol' man; not with mah blessin'."
That ended it, of course. From then on I had to content myself with the
hopeless "sketches from memory," in not the best of which was I able to
catch more than a suggestion of what I sought. I could not have failed
more utterly had I set myself to do a "character portrait" of the "Green
Lady" herself.
But on the personal side it was not long before I began to make an
appreciable gain of ground with Rona. First she ceased avoiding me when
I dropped in for a mid-afternoon yarn with Bell; then she began to
assume a sort of "benevolent tolerance" by coming and sitting on the mat
as we talked; finally she started taking an active interest in the
conversation, coming out of her Buddha-like trances every now and then
to cut in with some trenchant comment in fluent _bêche-de-mer_ jargon,
or perhaps a shrewd question phrased in carefully chosen and enunciated
English.
At last, one memorable afternoon, she came (quite on her own initiative,
he assured me) with Bell to call at the little thatch-roofed,
woven-walled hut I was calling home at the time, wearing in honour of
the occasion her most treasured possession, the "peacock" shawl. It was
this astonishingly fine piece of Cantonese embroidery which Bell had
mentioned as having made up, with the little Malay _kris_, the sum total
of the dower Rona had brought him. It was the first time I had had a
chance to examine it at close quarters and I saw at a glance that,
however it had come into her possession, it had once been a priceless
thing, a real work of art, a treasure fit for the _trousseau_ of a
princess.
The body of the shawl was amber-coloured silk of so close a weave that
it would have shed water as it stopped light. A rubber blanket would not
have thrown a blacker shadow when held against the sun. Yet so sheer and
fine was the fabric that a twist of it streamed from one hand to the
other as brandy pours out of a flask. The peacock itself, done in a
thousand tints and shades of delicate floss, was all of life-size in
body and something more than that in tail. Stitching and matching,
stitching and matching--you could almost _see_ the artist growing old
before your eyes as you thought of the years he must have bent above his
glacially-growing masterpiece.
With this rainbow-bright rectangle of shimmering silks worn folded over
the shoulders in the ordinary way the peacock must have been
considerably telescoped and distorted. It was doubtless for this reason
that Rona always wore it Malay-fashion, as the Javanese women wear their
_sarongs_. This displayed the jewel-gay bird in all his pride, the
bright breast swelling over Rona's own and the coruscant cascade of tail
(you could almost hear the rustle of it) falling about her limbs like
the feather mantle of an early Hawaiian queen.
I have said that this shawl _had been_ a priceless thing. As a matter of
fact it still was such. So lovingly had it been cared for, not only by
Rona but by the many owners it may well have had before her (for Canton
had done no such work as this for half a century at least), that not a
corner was frayed, not a one of its countless thousands of stitches
started. In texture it was scarcely less perfect than the day it was
finished. The only thing wrong with it was that the colours were a good
deal dulled, not by age (for the old Cantonese dyes are as deathless of
hue as ancient Phoenician glass), but by grease. This had happened, I
suspected, largely during Rona's stewardship, for the _tiare_-scented
coco oil she used so freely as a hair-perfume often found its way to her
arms and shoulders--and so to the shawl. All the latter needed to
restore it to its pristine freshness and refulgency was a good
"dry-cleaning."
"Even Rona does not dream of the brilliance of colour under that
grease," I said to myself. "Oh, for a can of naphtha!" Then the fact
that my benzine would do the same trick flashed into my mind. I was all
but out of it, I reflected, with replenishment uncertain; but I could at
least contrive to spare enough to make a start with. Pouring a teacupful
of the pungent solvent out of the scant pint I found still on hand, I
saturated a clean rag with it and, without a word of explanation to the
girl, walked up to her and started washing the bird's face and hackle.
For an instant she stiffened angrily, evidently under the impression
that my solicitude for the embroidery was only a thinly veiled excuse
for chucking her under the chin. (Indeed, she confessed to me later
that "gentlemen" could always be counted on to employ such indirect
methods of approach, and that she found them rather more difficult to
combat than the straight cave-man stuff of the less sophisticated
beach-comber). But as the first glad flash of brightening colour caught
the corner of a suspiciously-lowered eye, the innocence--even the
laudability--of my purpose shot home to her quick mind. With a twirl of
thumbs and a twist of shoulders, she came out of the shawl as a golden
moth spurns its cocoon, and, leaving it in my hand, darted over to a peg
and purloined an old smoking-jacket to take its place.
"Bath heem good, Whitnee," she chirruped, giving her slipping _sulu_ a
hitch with one hand as she thrust the other into an arm of the jacket.
"Makee heem first-chop clean. He too much dirtee long time."
That she lapsed thus into "pidgin" was a sure sign of the girl's
ecstatic excitement. Usually her English--especially when she had time
to ponder and polish it in advance, as when she put questions--was much
better than that.
Sopping gently to avoid pulling the delicate stitches, I managed to
"bath heem good" from his saucy crest, down over the royal purple
hackle, and well out upon his comparatively sober-coloured breast before
my benzine came to an end. A slightly more vigorous dabbing beyond the
embroidery line "alchemized" a patch of clouded amber to a halo of
lucent gold, against which the bird's haughtily-held head stood out like
the profile of a martyred saint on an old stained-glass window. Thus far
would the precious contents of that teacup go, and no farther.
Rona was in raptures. What though there was a blotchy high- (or rather
low-) water mark where the dabbing had ceased near the base of the
erupting splash of tail-feathers, what though the magic liquid had come
off second best in its bout with an indurated gob of egg-yolk drooling
across one wing, what though the worst of our Augean labours--the
cleansing of the mighty green tail--had yet to be tackled--just look at
the glory already wrought!
Crooning with pleasure, the girl stroked and petted the renovated
iridescence of the lordly neck--until I called her attention to the fact
that the still unevaporated benzine was dissolving her finger-nail
stain. It was an ill-advised remark on my part, for it turned her
attention to the still unreclaimed tail and set her begging for "just
nuff fo' one-piecee featha, Whitnee; he need it vehry ba-ad."
She had her way, of course, and would have finished my benzine then and
there had not Bell come to my rescue. Laughing and muttering something
about "thustiness" (not drinking whisky myself, I had none in stock), he
took Rona by the arm and started off on the homeward path. Strutting and
preening she went, the very reincarnation of the royal bird upon her
bosom, the very living, breathing spirit of "peacock-iness."
She might just as well have finished the job--or rather the benzine--at
once, though, for she got it all in the end. Every day or two--sometimes
with Bell, sometimes alone--she began paying calls. Always she was in
gala dress and always, after more or less "finessive" preliminaries, she
made the same plea.
"Just one mo' featha, Whitnee," she would coo ingratiatingly, putting a
long-nailed finger-tip on the "eye" of the particular quill next in line
for renovation. "Ple-ese, Whitnee.... 'Peakie' has been one veh-ry good
fella bird too-dayee. Pu-retty ple'ese, Whitnee."
Of course that always got me, and incidentally the benzine--as long as
it lasted. I had remarked to Bell once or twice how his soft Southern
drawl was beginning to creep into Rona's English, and how fetching a
combination it made with her "pidgin-_bêche-de-mer_" blend. Getting wind
of this, the sly minx played the card to the limit. That "one mo' fetha,
Whitnee," had me fated, and she knew it. I was completely out of benzine
for three weeks, and at a time when I was in especial need of it in
connection with my experiments in colour-mixing; but Rona's friendship
was cheap at the price. When I finally got hold of a five-gallon can of
naphtha from Suva (sent up to Bougainville by Burns, Phillip packet,
where one of Jackson's cutters picked it up), the dry-cleaning the two
of us gave old "Peakie" was the best fun I'd had since I used to scrub
my Newfoundland pup as a kid.