It was the first time Sheldon had been at close quarters with an American
girl, and he would have wondered if all American girls were like Joan
Lackland had he not had wit enough to realize that she was not at all
typical. Her quick mind and changing moods bewildered him, while her
outlook on life was so different from what he conceived a woman's outlook
should be, that he was more often than not at sixes and sevens with her.
He could never anticipate what she would say or do next. Of only one
thing was he sure, and that was that whatever she said or did was bound
to be unexpected and unsuspected. There seemed, too, something almost
hysterical in her make-up. Her temper was quick and stormy, and she
relied too much on herself and too little on him, which did not
approximate at all to his ideal of woman's conduct when a man was around.
Her assumption of equality with him was disconcerting, and at times he
half-consciously resented the impudence and bizarreness of her intrusion
upon him--rising out of the sea in a howling nor'wester, fresh from
poking her revolver under Ericson's nose, protected by her gang of huge
Polynesian sailors, and settling down in Berande like any shipwrecked
sailor. It was all on a par with her Baden-Powell and the long 38
Colt's.
At any rate, she did not look the part. And that was what he could not
forgive. Had she been short-haired, heavy-jawed, large-muscled, hard-
bitten, and utterly unlovely in every way, all would have been well.
Instead of which she was hopelessly and deliciously feminine. Her hair
worried him, it was so generously beautiful. And she was so slenderly
and prettily the woman--the girl, rather--that it cut him like a knife to
see her, with quick, comprehensive eyes and sharply imperative voice,
superintend the launching of the whale-boat through the surf. In
imagination he could see her roping a horse, and it always made him
shudder. Then, too, she was so many-sided. Her knowledge of literature
and art surprised him, while deep down was the feeling that a girl who
knew such things had no right to know how to rig tackles, heave up
anchors, and sail schooners around the South Seas. Such things in her
brain were like so many oaths on her lips. While for such a girl to
insist that she was going on a recruiting cruise around Malaita was
positive self-sacrilege.
He always perturbedly harked back to her feminineness. She could play
the piano far better than his sisters at home, and with far finer
appreciation--the piano that poor Hughie had so heroically laboured over
to keep in condition. And when she strummed the guitar and sang liquid,
velvety Hawaiian _hulas_, he sat entranced. Then she was all woman, and
the magic of sex kidnapped the irritations of the day and made him forget
the big revolver, the Baden-Powell, and all the rest. But what right,
the next thought in his brain would whisper, had such a girl to swagger
around like a man and exult that adventure was not dead? Woman that
adventured were adventuresses, and the connotation was not nice. Besides,
he was not enamoured of adventure. Not since he was a boy had it
appealed to him--though it would have driven him hard to explain what had
brought him from England to the Solomons if it had not been adventure.
Sheldon certainly was not happy. The unconventional state of affairs was
too much for his conservative disposition and training. Berande,
inhabited by one lone white man, was no place for Joan Lackland. Yet he
racked his brain for a way out, and even talked it over with her. In the
first place, the steamer from Australia was not due for three weeks.
"One thing is evident: you don't want me here," she said. "I'll man the
whale-boat to-morrow and go over to Tulagi."
"But as I told you before, that is impossible," he cried. "There is no
one there. The Resident Commissioner is away in Australia. Them is only
one white man, a third assistant understrapper and ex-sailor--a common
sailor. He is in charge of the government of the Solomons, to say
nothing of a hundred or so niggers--prisoners. Besides, he is such a
fool that he would fine you five pounds for not having entered at Tulagi,
which is the port of entry, you know. He is not a nice man, and, I
repeat, it is impossible."
"There is Guvutu," she suggested.
He shook his head.
"There's nothing there but fever and five white men who are drinking
themselves to death. I couldn't permit it."
"Oh thank you," she said quietly. "I guess I'll start to-day.--Viaburi!
You go along Noa Noah, speak 'm come along me."
Noa Noah was her head sailor, who had been boatswain of the _Miele_.
"Where are you going?" Sheldon asked in surprise.--"Vlaburi! You stop."
"To Guvutu--immediately," was her reply.
"But I won't permit it."
"That is why I am going. You said it once before, and it is something I
cannot brook."
"What?" He was bewildered by her sudden anger. "If I have offended in
any way--"
"Viaburi, you fetch 'm one fella Noa Noah along me," she commanded.
The black boy started to obey.
"Viaburi! You no stop I break 'm head belong you. And now, Miss
Lackland, I insist--you must explain. What have I said or done to merit
this?"
"You have presumed, you have dared--"
She choked and swallowed, and could not go on.
Sheldon looked the picture of despair.
"I confess my head is going around with it all," he said. "If you could
only be explicit."
"As explicit as you were when you told me that you would not permit me to
go to Guvutu?"
"But what's wrong with that?"
"But you have no right--no man has the right--to tell me what he will
permit or not permit. I'm too old to have a guardian, nor did I sail all
the way to the Solomons to find one."
"A gentleman is every woman's guardian."
"Well, I'm not every woman--that's all. Will you kindly allow me to send
your boy for Noa Noah? I wish him to launch the whale-boat. Or shall I
go myself for him?"
Both were now on their feet, she with flushed cheeks and angry eyes, he,
puzzled, vexed, and alarmed. The black boy stood like a statue--a plum-
black statue--taking no interest in the transactions of these
incomprehensible whites, but dreaming with calm eyes of a certain bush
village high on the jungle slopes of Malaita, with blue smoke curling up
from the grass houses against the gray background of an oncoming mountain-
squall.
"But you won't do anything so foolish--" he began.
"There you go again," she cried.
"I didn't mean it that way, and you know I didn't." He was speaking
slowly and gravely. "And that other thing, that not permitting--it is
only a manner of speaking. Of course I am not your guardian. You know
you can go to Guvutu if you want to"--"or to the devil," he was almost
tempted to add. "Only, I should deeply regret it, that is all. And I am
very sorry that I should have said anything that hurt you. Remember, I
am an Englishman."
Joan smiled and sat down again.
"Perhaps I have been hasty," she admitted. "You see, I am intolerant of
restraint. If you only knew how I have been compelled to fight for my
freedom. It is a sore point with me, this being told what I am to do or
not do by you self-constituted lords of creation.-Viaburi I You stop
along kitchen. No bring 'm Noa Noah.--And now, Mr. Sheldon, what am I to
do? You don't want me here, and there doesn't seem to be any place for
me to go."
"That is unfair. Your being wrecked here has been a godsend to me. I
was very lonely and very sick. I really am not certain whether or not I
should have pulled through had you not happened along. But that is not
the point. Personally, purely selfishly personally, I should be sorry to
see you go. But I am not considering myself. I am considering you.
It--it is hardly the proper thing, you know. If I were married--if there
were some woman of your own race here--but as it is--"
She threw up her hands in mock despair.
"I cannot follow you," she said. "In one breath you tell me I must go,
and in the next breath you tell me there is no place to go and that you
will not permit me to go. What is a poor girl to do?"
"That's the trouble," he said helplessly.
"And the situation annoys you."
"Only for your sake."
"Then let me save your feelings by telling you that it does not annoy me
at all--except for the row you are making about it. I never allow what
can't be changed to annoy me. There is no use in fighting the
inevitable. Here is the situation. You are here. I am here. I can't
go elsewhere, by your own account. You certainly can't go elsewhere and
leave me here alone with a whole plantation and two hundred woolly
cannibals on my hands. Therefore you stay, and I stay. It is very
simple. Also, it is adventure. And furthermore, you needn't worry for
yourself. I am not matrimonially inclined. I came to the Solomons for a
plantation, not a husband."
Sheldon flushed, but remained silent.
"I know what you are thinking," she laughed gaily. "That if I were a man
you'd wring my neck for me. And I deserve it, too. I'm so sorry. I
ought not to keep on hurting your feelings."
"I'm afraid I rather invite it," he said, relieved by the signs of the
tempest subsiding.
"I have it," she announced. "Lend me a gang of your boys for to-day.
I'll build a grass house for myself over in the far corner of the
compound--on piles, of course. I can move in to-night. I'll be
comfortable and safe. The Tahitians can keep an anchor watch just as
aboard ship. And then I'll study cocoanut planting. In return, I'll run
the kitchen end of your household and give you some decent food to eat.
And finally, I won't listen to any of your protests. I know all that you
are going to say and offer--your giving the bungalow up to me and
building a grass house for yourself. And I won't have it. You may as
well consider everything settled. On the other hand, if you don't agree,
I will go across the river, beyond your jurisdiction, and build a village
for myself and my sailors, whom I shall send in the whale-boat to Guvutu
for provisions. And now I want you to teach me billiards."