CHAPTER II
A WOMAN, RED AND PURPLE, LIKE FIRE AND BRUISES
A BEACH-COMBER known as McGuire was usually among the idlers around the boat-landing, with wreath-makers, fruit-venders, sailors waiting for boats, other loafers of one kind and another and small naked youngsters who came out of the water from time to time and sprawled on the warm sand.
A soothing drowsy laziness like the restful weariness of work well done filled the days, put even the more civilized men into long cane chairs with tall glasses and siphons near by. In the evening they would stir about leisurely, with cigars aglow and leis on their necks, talk of home, shipments, sugar in the valleys, coffee in the uplands—and be bumped from the path by the whirling flash of some brown-bodied boy grasping at a happily excited girl, coming out of the dark breathless in love-drunken play and vanishing with a blur of soft footfalls into shadows.
McGuire was known as a happy-go-lucky beach-comber, a harmless sort of fellow, worthless. The tedium of existence seemed just about all that he could stagger through the world with unless he happened to get into the water. He was a good swimmer.
Oddly enough McGuire had innocent blue eyes somewhat obscured by drooping lids. The innocent light, appealing as sadness, was unconvincing to those who knew him or of him. Whatever attractiveness he had was in his personality, not in his appearance. The ugliness was pronounced, unescapable on sight, but hardly remembered. The smile was remembered and the words, often unexpected as epigrams. He had a sun-burned, freckle-splattered face, a wide mouth and badly formed, long nose. He would talk freely of anything to anybody and spoke native languages like a Kanaka. His voice was gentle, slow, disarmingly amiable; but it was the height of unwisdom to believe anything that he said.
A long, lean, silent old man by the name of Brundage was his friend. Brundage was thought to have money. For a time he had tried to buy a small schooner, then suddenly decided to buy nothing and took to the backless chair on the porch of a sailors' boarding-house in Market Street. McGuire lived with him.
After the Heraldr arrived, McGuire began loafing by the landing. He would lie motionless in the shade, his brick-red head on a tattooed arm, and sleepily watch the ship.
Near him the flower-girls chattered, laughing, eating, teasing. When a drunken sailor came by like an unlovely reveler, his pawing hands would be beaten away amid shrill words. They would laugh, unangered, as he staggered off, covered with flowers thrown at him.
As the boat approached the landing with the consul's guests McGuire began from afar to guess at the strange faces.
Among them was the familiar face of Matt Ward, the new captain of Heraldr—a fellow with a large waistline and an overhanging mustache with tobacco-stained fringe. He was hard-spoken and glowered at whomever he talked. With his own hands he had been picking a crew for the Heraldr even before she came, and he seemed to want all of the scoundrels and roughs in sight. A lot of them, lured by the hint of trouble and treasure, were eager to sign on.
Some weeks before, Ward had appeared at Honolulu and began making inquiries about two fellows whom nobody knew. He had fallen in with McGuire, and the talk drifted around to “Hurricane Williams,” the “pirate” who had lately made off with a big iron bark and, so rumor said, her treasure chest held a half-million pounds sterling, in gold. Ward did not say why he wanted a deck full of rough fighting men. Like a discreet treasure hunter he asked questions and told nothing, but maintained an air of mystery and gave vague hints. They were enough for McGuire. And after that Brundage took to his backless chair and quit looking for a schooner.
The consul, all in white, his red freshly shaven face aglow, and swinging a gold-headed cane, strolled toward the landing to wait for his guest. He stopped by the wreath-makers—very pretty girls, some of them, in their long one-piece loose gowns of white muslin and colored calico. While leis were placed about his neck and hat-crown he talked to them, or thought that he did, in the native tongue; but he had no sooner walked away than they turned on McGuire, demanding to know of him what the consul had tried to say.
“Ever'thing that is true,” he answered carelessly. “You are lazy girls. Ought to be bending in taro patches—that you ought to send your pretty sisters to the beach so strangers won't be disappointed.”
They jeered him stormily. The consul was a gallant man. They knew that. McGuire was the father of all untruth. They knew that, too.
Three women were in the approaching boat, and McGuire recognized far off the one of whom the runaway sailors talked so much.
“I tell uh,” a gin-laden fellow had said, his head unsteadily bobbing while a gestural arm feebly wandered about, “I tell uh she's beau-beau-t'ful—like a show-girl.”
His ill-stocked brain had no memories to draw on for comparison but the tawdry tinseled wastrel women of shows in drinking-places along port water fronts.
Jeanne Vaughn—he knew her name—was beautiful in the surprising, bizarre way of remote and unattainable women. He had seen her on deck when he was at the wheel, had been close to her and had been left with the haunting shadow of her in his brain.
“She's got red hair—not like your'n. An jew'lry. The mate—he put 'is hand on 'er. That black devil throwed him over. Mos' beaut'ful like a show-girl.”
The boat curved broadside to the landing-steps where the consul stood hatless and bowing. Native girls and loafers pressed respectfully about the party.
Gorvhalsen, huge, black-bearded, almost as awkward as an animal unused to its hind legs, fascinated the water-front idlers.
“He ought to live in a tree,” McGuire muttered to a native girl in front of him. She turned alertly. Her dark face, overhung with a coronal of white blossoms, was puzzled but eager. “You never saw a gorilla. If you had, Tilua, you'd pick up your skirts now an' run.”
She knew that McGuire talked much nonsense, so she smiled understandingly and looked again, not at Gorvhalsen but at the flame-woman, the wonderful creature with red hair.
Jeanne Vaughn was without a head-covering other than the purple parasol that matched her silken waist and stockings. Her hair was an auroral glory, shortened, bushily curling, bright. It flared, startling, unreal, like the head-dress of a Fijian. Her dark eyes were alert, watchful, as if to see who was not admiring her.
“Poor moths,” said McGuire.
He had been drinking before he got to the boarding-house that night and found Brundage, like a piece of stonework with animated eyes, sitting on his backless chair, feet on the railing. He was a grim old man, stern, erect, silent, and he hated women, all of them.
“Damned beautiful. You'd like her, Jake. “Flame woman, Tilua calls her. Must have moths, these women. You'd be a fine gray old moth. I'd sit a long time to see you flutter.”
McGuire flapped his thin arms up and down in pantomime. Brundage smoked on, his eyes looking away into the darkness.
“Bold as a woman who doesn't know she isn't pretty. Nothin' bolder, Jake. Always at the mast head—these danger-women. Always on the watch. Wantin' some man to make 'em love him.
“There's your chance. Aye, twenty years ago when your blood was warm. No—too soon. Forty years ago. You were human forty years ago, weren't you? I doubt it.
“She thinks she's full o' life, too. She's empty. That's the trouble. Her eagerness is hunger—for moths. She flamed up on the Heraldr's poop because there were some half-shaped devils that looked like men in the fo'c's'le. Always on the look out, Jake, to stir men up. All red an purple—like fire an' bruises. One o' these days her soul'll go up to God, an' God'll say”
Brundage growled. The ineffable name on McGuire's lips made him uneasy. It was the only thing under heaven that could stir him from his remote, stony aspect; but McGuire's drunken tongue was at times enough to disquiet an atheist. Brundage was nothing so philosophical as an atheist. He was an old tough-bodied man, full of crime and no repentance, though he thought that any man might rest a little easier if a prayer was said at his grave's edge.
McGuire had closely watched everybody in the party.
Mrs. Gorvhalsen was tall, poised and unexpectedly refined for the mate of an anthropoid.
With her was a young boy and an even younger girl, not more than sixteen or seventeen. The boy had the friendliness of a lanky ill-fed pup that has hopefully attached himself to strangers. The shoulders were prematurely rounded with the marked curvature that books put on their victims. His curly blond hair did not belong above the pinched face that needed only a few wrinkles to look aged. His clothes did not fit.
His sister—there could be no doubt that she was his sister—had a wide-eyed trustfulness and wonder in her eyes. She was a blonde little thing, not yet in bloom; hipless and breastless. In the midst of dark robust maidens who bloomed rapidly she seemed pathetically immature, faded if not blighted; and as yet she was unconscious of the graces woman is supposed to have. She was learning geography, but was unaware of men—except as races. A man of judgment, the consul for instance, would have seen in Mrs. Gorvhalsen's niece only a little school-girl, unwisely innocent but protectively unattractive. McGuire guessed that if she did not believe in giants and dragons, surely she had faith in pots of gold where rainbows end, princes in disguise, and probably kept a diary.
Matt Ward gripped a cigar at the corner of his mouth, firmly, almost savagely, as though letting the world know he could hold men as he held that cigar. McGuire thought this captain would have a fine time with his bold sea-dog manner if he ever got in the way of the great black, brainy animal that owned the ship.
One of the native girls threw a wreath about the boy's neck. He jumped guiltily, then thanked her as soberly as he had ever thanked any of his sister's convent friends for a nosegay.
The flower-girls, giggling, laughing, acting shy but being bold, adorned the party.
The heaviest shower fell about the neck of Gorvhalsen, who was like some great muscular Silenus being decked for a drunken feast. He stooped submissively while flower-chains were put on his neck. His hat had been snatched away and Tilua was swiftly fastening a lei on it. Bare-headed, his thick dark hair falling to his ears, he stood awkwardly, powerful, amiable. A calicoed girl with sudden boldness began to weave red flowers into the black wavy beard that overflowed his breast.
From hat-crown to waist he was festooned. He straightened toweringly; then with a gesture almost like that of capture his hand reached out and closed on the arm of a girl. She pulled back, jerking as hard as she could and laughing nervously. Her embarrassment was real. He was more than a strange man; he was a strange kind of man. Slowly he drew her toward him. She struggled, begging and laughing together. His hand slipped along her arm and held her wrist, then pressed money into her fingers. Some change fell through; and at once, like imps exploded into flight, little black bare bodied boys darted scramblingly into the sandy dust.
The girl whirled away. Others pressed toward him with eager fluttering and happy cries: Gorvhalsen was emptying his pockets into their hands, sometimes tossing the coins, sometimes holding his hand closed so they must pry and pull at his fingers. Then he strode off, laughing deep, swaying, dripping petals at every step.
McGuire caught the seasickly-looking youth straggling behind the party. He would turn aside at each bush to poke it with his nose.
“See those girls?” McGuire asked. “Used to put women to death for that.”
Young Corydon was startled both by the stranger's approach and words. All that he could see were two fat women in the shade munching bananas, and he sidled off distrustfully.
“That's right,” McGuire affirmed.
“You know I'm just a stranger.”
“Sure I know it. Thought you'd like to learn some things. Ask the consul. 'F you come ashore some time I'll take you round. Ask the consul about the bananas. See this tree? Candle-nut tree. Grows candles an'”
But his sister called to him, and Corydon hurried off.
Later he did ask the consul about the bananas. He asked with exceeding timidity, feeling a little foolish as one does when suspicious of a question's good sense; then he felt surprise and some gratitude toward McGuire. In the heathen times women were put to death for eating bananas—and for eating many other things that men particularly liked.