CHAPTER III
CONVENT FEET TOUCH PAGAN GROUND
IN A few days McGuire had a devoted admirer, and scarcely knew what to do with him. Young Corydon rapidly became at ease with the oddest companion that the world's rag-bag could have furnished, and for a long time believed that McGuire was a real friend of his own kind.
He had never heard of beach-combers, the outcasts from even tropic tolerance, who live—that is about all that can be said. By some satanic miracle, they live and do not die off.
Day after day Corydon came ashore, looking for and finding him. McGuire was puzzled at first, then liked the boy—he was so blazingly innocent and incurious. He did not drink—or anything. He did not want to see a hulahula. He wanted to see landmarks and have McGuire tell their legends. McGuire could imagine legends as fast as he could talk—good lively ones.
One morning McGuire was drowsily listening to native gossips when Corydon touched his shoulder, saying:
“I brought my sister to go with us to-day.”
The answer came in a language that Corydon had the luck not to understand; and McGuire, quite awakened, was looking at the girl. Slight, immature, alone as though lost, she stood some fifty yards away, watching him with wide curious eyes. She held a little pasteboard box.
“She has brought lunch for us,” Corydon said.
“She can't go. It won't do. Hell, no!”
The boy was stubborn. He wanted her to go. He said:
“And I've told her of you, how you know everything!”
If she had been a woman, McGuire would not have cared. He was hardened enough for that. Jeanne Vaughn, for instance. He would not have minded how much embarrassment, confusion, anger, came upon her at learning she had spent the day with a beach-comber. But a girl-child— No!
And he could not explain to her that white women did not speak to him. He was not the type of sinner, anyhow, to redeem himself by self-depreciation. It would have been too much like claiming virtue.
There she stood, like a colorless little straggler in browns and grays, wistfully expectant. Her light hair strayed inquisitively from under her stiff straw hat that was held by an elastic under the chin. The cut of her thin gray blouse gave her shoulders a rounded effect, much like her brother's curvature. The brown skirt fell formlessly against her legs. There was a simple, uninteresting, bud-like beauty in her face—a very innocent and unthrilling face, devoid of the stimulation that awakens men sud denly, stirring the worst or the best in them. She was a sober little mortal and all eager to know about the world. Her faith in McGuire was great, rooted in the confidences and admiration communicated by her brother.
McGuire abruptly decided that it wouldn't greatly hurt anybody if she had at least one day of her youth to remember in her old age. The three of them got into a cab and drove rapidly over the smooth streets, out through the green and white town, into the valley.
As suddenly as if by the raising of a foliage curtain they came into a little clearing where three or four houses stood like shaggy hayricks with door ways in the end. Chickens scattered from under the pony's feet. A dog barked half-welcomingly from a doorway, then stretched himself stiffly and came forward with much tail-wagging and head-bobbing. He knew McGuire, but those funny strangers would have to be nosed and looked over.
A naked baby, its full little brown stomach advanced like an alderman's and a small mouth stretched over the end of a sugar cane, stared stolidly.
Voices were heard, faces peered out. Around the houses came four or five nearly naked boys of all the small sizes. Knowing that strangers had come, the girls paused to slip hastily into their loose gowns, then bounded out with brown legs flashing under white muslin.
They pawed and bantered McGuire, but fell upon Eve as though to tear her to pieces in delight at having her for a guest. Her little half-frozen soul was startled. The unsightly hat was whisked from her feebly groping hands, and out of their own hair they took wreaths and flowers for her blonde head.
In the whole of her life she had never known more of a welcome than the perfunctory embrace and dull flat kiss of a relative. Now she was just about lifted and carried to where one of the youngsters struggled with a rolled mat, brought through the doorway for the stranger guests.
A matronly woman, big, fat, came up slowly, smiling at McGuire. Her loose dress was spotted, her big feet were bare; but somehow she had dignity, even grace.
McGuire, after expressing his unconvincing opinion of her daughters, nieces, and all the youthful maiden connection she had, spoke of his friends.
The baby waddled importantly across to the mat, wedged between the girls and, advancing into the midst of the circle, collapsed and regarded Eve with dignified appraisement. She reached out coaxingly. But it was beneath him to yield to the arms of a strange woman.
McGuire was saying: “—from a great cold country where people freeze in the cradle. Never get warm, some of 'em, till they die—then they roast.”
The baby, having passed judgment, thrust out its sugar stick, offering to share its worldly goods. Eve leaned forward and opened her mouth; and as the sticky baby hand came against her face, something warm and overpowering seemed to burst inside of her breast. With a gesture convulsively eager she snatched the baby into her arms. That was no way to treat a fellow. He kicked and squirmed, wriggled loose, got out from among the girls and with waddling, pompous steps approached McGuire.
“—taught from babyhood to believe they'll go to a warm island—like this—somewhere up there, if they're good an not too happy”
Lest there should be a trace of hunger in the guests, a wooden calabash half as big as a wagon wheel, heaped with bananas, mangos, papayas, blue grapes and oranges, was placed before Eve and Corydon. A beflowered cupbearer broke into and offered cool green cocoanuts.
“—their bare feet have never known the touch of the naked earth. They get their flowers from bottles, one drop at a time”
That night two weary, bedraggled young people, one with her stiff hat askew and the other with his ears flattened by the soiled, over-sized helmet, trailed tired feet toward the landing. Their faces were alight with inner contentment and their arms were loaded with boughs. They were covered with dust and flowers. Their clothes were ruined. Every muscle ached in astonished anger. But the boy and girl were happy. They looked at each other again and again, too worn out to speak; but reassuring glances declared each to the other that it had been a day of days.
A weary confusion of pleasant impressions bore upon Eve. She was past trying to think, and knew only that she had never been so tired and had so many delights. There was warmth of satisfaction in the very exhaustion.
All day they had climbed about, finding fruit and flowers, eating, sniffing, laughing, racing.
At a deep clear pool the boys had been sent away. The brown girls, dropping their dresses with swift disrobing-gestures, flashed into the water.
Eve removed her shoes and stockings and for the first time her pale little bleached feet and ankles felt anything like the pagan caress of earth, sun and hillside water.
The floor of the pool was enameled with smooth stones. Like water-girls of fables the Hawaiians danced and glided, laughed and splashed.
Twitches of vague uneasiness came to Eve. It seemed wrong to be bathing unclothed in the sunlight, with only leafy beflowered screens about; but she had been comforted by the thought that it must be all right, for McGuire had readily gone away with the boys. She never doubted that he would have disapproved had it really been wrong.
McGuire was totally beyond her experience and imagination. His slow, lazy, good-humored manner fascinated her; but when he took to words she was thrilled. He talked so effortlessly and rounded everything like a story-teller, and he seemed to know all things and understand them. She was happily unconscious of his disregard for the truth in the legends and folk-lore. That would have troubled her. She would have preferred the strict truth and enjoyed it less, and no doubt she would still have admired him too; but growing wonderment would not have touched and filled her until the man himself was distorted almost heroically.
He returned to them in the dusk with two Kanakas following. The natives ran a boat off the sand and shot alongside the steps. McGuire helped her into it, making sure that she had every twig that bore a precious blossom. Her little fingers were not too weary to be greedy for all the floral loot.
Corydon, of course, almost fell into the water getting seated. His feet and hands were always in his way. He tried to tell McGuire what a splendid day they had spent.
Eve, somehow, as women can, put nearly all that she felt into a simple good-by. She waved at him in the darkness.
His answering smile was obscured in the thickening twilight; and it was just as well. It was a weary, half-mocking smile, perhaps self-mocking.
They never saw him again on shore.
The consul, who had come to the Heraldr for dinner, heard about the day from the exhausted boy and girl. He managed to restrain himself until he had Mrs. Gorvhalsen's ears alone with his shocked voice.
“That McGuire”
Mrs. Gorvhalsen was not excitable. She said nothing at all to Eve, but took pains to see that she did not again go wandering away with a stray beach-comber. Somehow Corydon also found his aunt making arrangements that kept him from getting on shore by himself.