His nature being simple and without vanity, the ludicrous had no terrors for him. When, for example, Tiva and Ioia made for him a garland of flowers, he wore it with as little concern as he would have worn a hat, and met the cheerful chaff of Hilda or the doctor quite unperturbed. He took a paternal interest in Tiva and Ioia, but after one trial relinquished any attempt to instruct them in Christianity. Their readiness to make any declaration which they thought was wanted, without the slightest regard to its basis in fact, baffled him, and their unintentional irreverence appalled him. He had to admit that his knowledge of the native mind was insufficient for his purpose. He found himself at times regarding these pleasant, brown, graceful, unthinking creatures rather as some new kind of pet animal than as human beings; and, finding himself in this attitude, repented of it. He and Hilda learned from them a native game, a sort of “knuckle-bones.” It is doubtful whether Tiva or Ioia cheated the more shamelessly at it; when detected, they laughed cheerfully. In return he taught them to avoid a frequent use of the word “damn” as a simple intensive, and answered so far as he could their many questions about Queen Victoria and the British method of executing murderers. He was equally ready to instruct them about tube railways and telephones. But when he spoke of such things they became very polite but asked no questions; they did not believe a word he said on those subjects and were not interested.
It was a time of relief after danger—danger to his own life and to Hilda’s. And of any further danger that threatened Lechworthy knew little or nothing. But the patrol at the King’s house got plenty of shooting-practice under the direction of the King himself; and the King wore the air of a man who was watching and listening, always listening.
CHAPTER XI
Lechworthy, instructed by Dr Soames Pryce, caught fishes with names like music and colours like the rainbow. Also, instructed by Dr Soames Pryce, he mastered the management of his simple snap-shot camera and learned developing and printing. Every day he was busy with King Smith in working out the details of the scheme for a native Faloo and preparing draft statements to advocate it in England. “My holiday!” he exclaimed to Hilda. “Why, I’ve never had so much to do in my life. And I like it.”
Hilda, on the other hand, did very little. She had been since her illness quieter and gentler. She was listless and at times a little melancholy. She let her management of her uncle slip through her fingers, and even ceased to manage herself; she was ready for anything that Tiva or Ioia suggested, unless, of course, it happened to be something that she thought Dr Pryce would not like. Her uncle, vaguely conscious of the change in her, said that she was still a little weakened by her illness. Hilda put it all down to the enervating climate. Tiva and Ioia, who had their own ideas, produced for her a new music—songs in the native tongue that spoke also in the universal tongue. They sang one moonlit night on the verandah outside Hilda’s room, when she had just gone to bed. It was the music of ecstasy and surrender. Hilda, in her night-gown, stepped bare-footed across the room and pushed the plaited blind aside. “Tell me what the words of that mean,” said Hilda.
Tiva hesitated. She threw her head back and her dark poetical eyes looked up to the golden moon. “He mean,” she said in a voice that was like a caress, “he mean ‘I love you pretty dam much.’”
“You darlings!” said Hilda. “Sing it all through once more, please.”
“Thank you so much,” she called when the music stopped, and gave one long sigh. These island nights, she thought, were beyond words, too beautiful, overpowering.
On the following morning Mr Lechworthy desired to speak with Dr Pryce, and the two men walked in the garden together.