Читать книгу The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories онлайн

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We rose at no stated hour in the morning, the sun being our only clock, and, as we read it, a very uncertain one. Hinton and I bathed in the lagoon, where he taught me daily how to dive with the greatest good humour and zeal, roaring with laughter at my failures, and applauding my successes to the skies. He often spoke to me in Pingalap, forgetting for the moment his own mother-tongue, and would wear a hang-dog expression for an hour afterwards, as though in some way he had disgraced himself. On our return to the boat-house we would find breakfast awaiting us, Bo guarding it with a switch from the depredations of the monkey and the parrot. After breakfast, when the Beautiful Man and I would lie against the wall and smoke our pipes, the little savage would wash her dishes, and putting them away in an empty gin-case, would next turn her attention to the pets, cleaning and brushing them with scrupulous care. Then, for another hour, we would see no more of her, while she retired behind a sail to effect fresh combinations of costume, reappearing at last with her hair nicely combed, and her breast dazzling like a robin’s. There was to me something touching in the sight of this little person doing the round of a treadmill she had invented for herself, and spending the bright days in stringing her unending beads. It seemed a shame that she should be abandoned, so forlorn, solitary, and friendless, on the alien shore of Ruk; and the matter weighed on me so much that it often disturbed my dreams and gave rise to an anxiety that I was half ashamed to feel. Several times I spoke to the Beautiful Man on the subject, drawing a little on my imagination in depicting the wretchedness and degradation to which he was meaning to leave poor Bo, who could not fail, circumstanced as she was, to come to a miserable end. He always took my lecture in good part; for, in fairness to the Beautiful Man, I must confess he was the most good-natured creature alive, and used invariably to reply that he would not think of doing such a thing were it not for the pressing needs of his health, which, he assured me with solemnity, was in a bad way. I never could learn the exact nature of his malady, nor persuade him into any recital of his symptoms beyond a vague reference to what he called constitutional decay. Of course, I knew well enough that this was a mere cloak to excuse his conduct to Bo, whom I could see he meant to desert in the most heartless fashion, if in the meantime he failed to sell her to some passing trader. This he was always trying to do, on the sly, for he had enough decency left to screen the business from my view and carry on the negotiations with as much secrecy as he could manage. But the prospective buyer invariably cried off when he was shown the article for sale, however much it was bedizened with beads and shined up with oil, and the matter usually ended in a big drunk at the station, from which the Beautiful Man was more than once dragged insensible by his helpmeet. He even hinted to me that, owing to our long and intimate relations, I might myself become Bo’s proprietor for a merely nominal sum; and when I told him straight out that I had come to the Islands to study, and not to entangle myself in any disreputable connection with a native woman, he begged my pardon very earnestly, and said that he wished to Gord he had been as well guided. But he always had a bargaining look in his eye when I praised Bo’s bread, which indeed was our greatest luxury, or happened to pass my plate for another of her waffles.