As she owned a
gramophone and one silk dress, it was clear that her business prospered.
Even Ching Po bought eggs of her, though there was a nameless,
uninterpreted hostility between them.
Let me give you, at once, the few facts I could gather about French Eva.
There were rumors a-plenty, but most of them sifted down to a little
residual malice. I confined my questionings to the respectable
inhabitants of Naapu; they were a very small circle. At last, I got some
sort of "line" on French Eva.
None within our ken fathered or mothered her. Old Dubois knew most about
her, but old Dubois, a semi-paralyzed colossus, "doped" most of the
time, kept his thick lips closed. "An excellent girl" was all that any
one could wring from him. As she had begun life on Naapu by being _dame
de comptoir_ for him, he had some right to his judgment. She had
eventually preferred independence, and had forsaken him; and if he still
had no quarrel with her, that speaks loudly for her many virtues.
Whether Dubois had sent for her originally, no one knew. His memory was
clouded by opium, and you could get little out of him. Besides, by the
time I arrived on Naapu, French Eva belonged to the landscape and to
history. She was generally supposed to be pure French, and her accent
supported the theory, though she was in a small way a linguist.
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