The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 21

Stires scratched his head. The trident trailed upon the ground. "It's serious or nothing with me, I guess. And she's got something against me.

I don't know what. Thinks I don't blarney the Kanakas enough, perhaps.

Then there's Follet."

"Oh, is he in it?" I forgot to go.

"He's more in it than I am, and I'm darned if I know what she's up to with the three of us. I'm playing 'possum, till I find out."

"If you can stand Follet b.u.t.ting in, why can't you stand Schneider?

Safety in numbers, you know."

"Well, Mr. Follet belongs here. I can have it out with him any time.

He'll have to play the game. But if I know Schneider, there's no wedding bells in his. And Mam'selle Eva hasn't, as you might say, got a chaperon."

The spectacle of "Mam'selle Eva," as I had last seen her, perspiring, loosely girdled, buying a catch of fish at a fair price from three mercenary natives adorned with shark's-tooth necklaces, rose before me.

"Man alive, you don't have to chaperon _her_," I cried. "She's on to everything."

The sun-and-wind-whipt eyes flashed at me. The spanner trembled a little.

"Don't misunderstand me," I insisted. "But it stands to reason that, here on Naapu, she's learned a good many things they don't teach in little red schoolhouses. I have a great respect for her, and, between you and me, I shouldn't wonder if she had sized Schneider up already."

The eyes were appeased. "Maybe, maybe," he grunted. "But lies come easy to him, I guess. Miss Eva wouldn't be the first he'd fooled."

"Do you know anything about him?"

"Not a thing, except what sticks out all over him. For a man's eyes, that is. You never can tell what a woman will see."

I left him poking in the dust with his spanner.

I dined that night at Lockerbie's. There was no Mrs. Lockerbie, and it was a man's party. Follet was there, of course, and Schneider, too, his teeth and his clothes whiter than the rest of ours. I was surprised to see Schneider, for Lockerbie had suspected the Teuton of designs on his very privately and not too authentically owned lagoon. Lockerbie did a fair business in pearls; no great beauties or values among them, but a good marketable cheap product. But no one held out very long against any one on Naapu.

Schneider was drunk before he ever got to Lockerbie's that night. It was part of the Naapu ritual not to drink just before you reached your host's house, and that ritual, it soon became evident, Schneider had not observed. I saw Lockerbie scowl, and Follet wince, and some of the others stare. I could not help being amused, for I knew that no one would object to his being in that condition an hour later. The only point was that he should not have arrived like that. If Schneider had had anything resembling a skin, he would have felt about as comfortable as Mother Eve at a woman's club. Lockerbie's scowl was no joke; and Follet had a way of wriggling his backbone gracefully.--It was up to me to save Schneider, and I did. The honor of Naapu was nothing to me; and by dint of almost embracing him, I made myself a kind of absorbent for his worst breaks. It was not a pleasant hour for me before the rest began to loosen up.

In my eagerness to prevent Lockerbie from insulting his guest, I drank nothing, myself, after the first c.o.c.ktail. So it came to pa.s.s that by the time I could safely leave Schneider to the others, I found myself unwontedly incarnating the spirit of criticism.

They were a motley crowd, coalesced for the moment into a vinous solidarity. Follet spat his words out very sweetly; his poisonous grace grew on him in his cups. Lockerbie, warmed by wine, was as simple--and charming--as a wart-hog. Old Maskell, who had seen wind-jammer days and ways and come very close, I suspected, to piracy, always prayed at least once. Pasquier, the successful merchant who imported finery for the ladies of Naapu, rolled out socialistic plat.i.tudes--he was always flanked, at the end of the feast, by two empty chairs. Little Morlot began the endless tale of his conquests in more civilized lands: all patchouli and hair-oil. Anything served as a cue for all of them to dive into the welter of their own preoccupations. Just because they knew each other and Naapu so well, they seemed free to wander at will in the secret recesses of their predilections and their memories. I felt like Circe--or perhaps Ulysses; save that I had none of that wise man's wisdom.

The reward of my abstinence, I found, was to be the seeing home of Schneider. It would have come more naturally to Follet, who also lived at Dubois's, but Follet was fairly snarling at Schneider. French Eva's name had been mentioned. On my word, as I saw Follet curving his spinal column, and Schneider lighting up his face with his perfect teeth, I thought with an immense admiration of the unpolished and loose-hung Stires amid the eternal smell of tar and dust. It was a mere discussion of her hair, incoherent and pointless enough. No scandal, even from Schneider. There had been some sense, of a dirty sort, in his talk to me; but more wine had scattered his wits.

I took Schneider home, protesting to myself that I would never be so caught again. He lurched rather stiffly along, needing my help only when we crossed the unpaved roads in the darkness. Follet went ahead, and I gave him a good start. When we reached the hotel, Ching Po surged up out of the black veranda and crooked his arm for Schneider to lean upon.

They pa.s.sed into the building, silently, like old friends.

A stupid indisposition housed me for a little after Lockerbie's feast. I resented the discomfort of temporary illness, but rather liked being alone, and told Joe to refuse me to callers--even the Maurs, who were more like friends and neighbors than any one else in the place. My own affairs should not obtrude on this tale at all; and I will not go into them more than to say that I came to the end of my dosing and emerged upon the world after three days. The foolish thought came to me that I would have a look at French Eva's hair, of which little Morlot had spoken in such gallant hiccoughs.

The lady was not upon her veranda, nor yet in her poultry-yard, as I paced past her dwelling. I had got nearly by, when I heard myself addressed from the unglazed window.

"Monsieur!"

I strolled back, wondering if at last I should be invited to hear the gramophone--her chiefest treasure. The ma.s.s of hair spread out of the crude opening in the bamboo wall, for all the world like Rapunzel's. I faced a great curtain of black. Then hands appeared and made a rift in it, and a face showed in the loose black frame.

"Monsieur, what is the German for 'cochon'?"

My German is scanty, and I reflected. "'Schweinhund' will do, I think,"

I answered after consideration.

"A thousand thanks." The face disappeared, and the hair was pulled after it.

I waited. I could hear nothing distinctly, but in a moment Schneider came running quickly and stiffly down the creaky ladder from the door.

He saw me--of that I am sure--but I did not blame him for not greeting one who had doubtless been giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I squatted on the low railing of French Eva's compound, but she herself was not forthcoming. After ten minutes I heard a commotion in the poultry yard, and found her at the back among her chickens. Her hair was piled up into an amazing structure: it looked as if some one had placed the great pyramid on top of the sphinx.

"Do you need my further services?"

She smiled. "Not in the least. But I like to speak to animals, when possible, in their own language. It saves time." By way of ill.u.s.tration, she clucked to a group of hens. She turned her back to me, and I was dismissed from her barefoot presence.

Stires was my logical goal after that, and I found him busy with the second mate of a tramp just in from Papua and bound for the Carolines.

After the man had gone, I informed Stires of the episode. For a man who had d.a.m.ned Schneider up and down for making presents to a lady, Stires reacted disappointingly.

"He got his, eh?" was all he said.

"Evidently. You don't seem to be much affected."

"So long as she's s.h.i.+pped him, that's all right," he drawled.

"I can't make out what your interest in the matter is," I suggested.

"Sure you can't," Stires began to whistle creakily, and took up some nameless object to repair.

"How long is Schneider staying round these parts?"

"Not long, I guess. I heard he was leaving on the Sydney packet next week."

"So you're only up against Follet?" I pressed him.

"I ain't up against anybody. Miss Eva'll settle her own affairs."

"Excuse me." And I made the gesture of withdrawing.

"Don't get het up under the collar," he protested. "Only I never did like this discussing ladies. She don't cotton to me for some reason. I'm free to say I admire her very much. I guess that's all."

"Nothing I can do for you, then?"

Stires lighted a pipe. "If you're so set on helping me, you might watch over Ching Po a little."

"What is he up to?"

"Don't know. But it ain't like him to be sitting round idle when there's harm to be done. He's got something up his sleeve--and a c.h.i.n.k's sleeve's big enough to hold a good-sized crime," he finished, with a grim essay of humor.

"Are these mere suspicions on your part, or do you know that something's up?"