The most patient man in the world is prone to impatience in love--and
Sheldon was in love. He called himself an ass a score of times a day,
and strove to contain himself by directing his mind in other channels,
but more than a score of times each day his thoughts roved back and dwelt
on Joan. It was a pretty problem she presented, and he was continually
debating with himself as to what was the best way to approach her.
He was not an adept at love-making. He had had but one experience in the
gentle art (in which he had been more wooed than wooing), and the affair
had profited him little. This was another affair, and he assured himself
continually that it was a uniquely different and difficult affair. Not
only was here a woman who was not bent on finding a husband, but it was a
woman who wasn't a woman at all; who was genuinely appalled by the
thought of a husband; who joyed in boys' games, and sentimentalized over
such things as adventure; who was healthy and normal and wholesome, and
who was so immature that a husband stood for nothing more than an
encumbrance in her cherished scheme of existence.
But how to approach her? He divined the fanatical love of freedom in
her, the deep-seated antipathy for restraint of any sort. No man could
ever put his arm around her and win her. She would flutter away like a
frightened bird. Approach by contact--that, he realized, was the one
thing he must never do. His hand-clasp must be what it had always been,
the hand-clasp of hearty friendship and nothing more. Never by action
must he advertise his feeling for her. Remained speech. But what
speech? Appeal to her love? But she did not love him. Appeal to her
brain? But it was apparently a boy's brain. All the deliciousness and
fineness of a finely bred woman was hers; but, for all he could discern,
her mental processes were sexless and boyish. And yet speech it must be,
for a beginning had to be made somewhere, some time; her mind must be
made accustomed to the idea, her thoughts turned upon the matter of
marriage.
And so he rode overseeing about the plantation, with tightly drawn and
puckered brows, puzzling over the problem, and steeling himself to the
first attempt. A dozen ways he planned an intricate leading up to the
first breaking of the ice, and each time some link in the chain snapped
and the talk went off on unexpected and irrelevant lines. And then one
morning, quite fortuitously, the opportunity came.
"My dearest wish is the success of Berande," Joan had just said, apropos
of a discussion about the cheapening of freights on copra to market.
"Do you mind if I tell you the dearest wish of my heart?" he promptly
returned. "I long for it. I dream about it. It is my dearest desire."
He paused and looked at her with intent significance; but it was plain to
him that she thought there was nothing more at issue than mutual
confidences about things in general.
"Yes, go ahead," she said, a trifle impatient at his delay.
"I love to think of the success of Berande," he said; "but that is
secondary. It is subordinate to the dearest wish, which is that some day
you will share Berande with me in a completer way than that of mere
business partnership. It is for you, some day, when you are ready, to be
my wife."
She started back from him as if she had been stung. Her face went white
on the instant, not from maidenly embarrassment, but from the anger which
he could see flaming in her eyes.
"This taking for granted!--this when I am ready!" she cried passionately.
Then her voice swiftly became cold and steady, and she talked in the way
he imagined she must have talked business with Morgan and Raff at Guvutu.
"Listen to me, Mr. Sheldon. I like you very well, though you are slow
and a muddler; but I want you to understand, once and for all, that I did
not come to the Solomons to get married. That is an affliction I could
have accumulated at home, without sailing ten thousand miles after it. I
have my own way to make in the world, and I came to the Solomons to do
it. Getting married is not making _my_ way in the world. It may do for
some women, but not for me, thank you. When I sit down to talk over the
freight on copra, I don't care to have proposals of marriage sandwiched
in. Besides--besides--"
Her voice broke for the moment, and when she went on there was a note of
appeal in it that well-nigh convicted him to himself of being a brute.
"Don't you see?--it spoils everything; it makes the whole situation
impossible . . . and . . . and I so loved our partnership, and was proud
of it. Don't you see?--I can't go on being your partner if you make love
to me. And I was so happy."
Tears of disappointment were in her eyes, and she caught a swift sob in
her throat.
"I warned you," he said gravely. "Such unusual situations between men
and women cannot endure. I told you so at the beginning."
"Oh, yes; it is quite clear to me what you did." She was angry again,
and the feminine appeal had disappeared. "You were very discreet in your
warning. You took good care to warn me against every other man in the
Solomons except yourself."
It was a blow in the face to Sheldon. He smarted with the truth of it,
and at the same time he smarted with what he was convinced was the
injustice of it. A gleam of triumph that flickered in her eye because of
the hit she had made decided him.
"It is not so one-sided as you seem to think it is," he began. "I was
doing very nicely on Berande before you came. At least I was not
suffering indignities, such as being accused of cowardly conduct, as you
have just accused me. Remember--please remember, I did not invite you to
Berande. Nor did I invite you to stay on at Berande. It was by staying
that you brought about this--to you--unpleasant situation. By staying
you made yourself a temptation, and now you would blame me for it. I did
not want you to stay. I wasn't in love with you then. I wanted you to
go to Sydney; to go back to Hawaii. But you insisted on staying. You
virtually--"
He paused for a softer word than the one that had risen to his lips, and
she took it away from him.
"Forced myself on you--that's what you meant to say," she cried, the
flags of battle painting her cheeks. "Go ahead. Don't mind my
feelings."
"All right; I won't," he said decisively, realizing that the discussion
was in danger of becoming a vituperative, schoolboy argument. "You have
insisted on being considered as a man. Consistency would demand that you
talk like a man, and like a man listen to man-talk. And listen you
shall. It is not your fault that this unpleasantness has arisen. I do
not blame you for anything; remember that. And for the same reason you
should not blame me for anything."
He noticed her bosom heaving as she sat with clenched hands, and it was
all he could do to conquer the desire to flash his arms out and around
her instead of going on with his coolly planned campaign. As it was, he
nearly told her that she was a most adorable boy. But he checked all
such wayward fancies, and held himself rigidly down to his disquisition.
"You can't help being yourself. You can't help being a very desirable
creature so far as I am concerned. You have made me want you. You
didn't intend to; you didn't try to. You were so made, that is all. And
I was so made that I was ripe to want you. But I can't help being
myself. I can't by an effort of will cease from wanting you, any more
than you by an effort of will can make yourself undesirable to me."
"Oh, this desire! this want! want! want!" she broke in rebelliously. "I
am not quite a fool. I understand some things. And the whole thing is
so foolish and absurd--and uncomfortable. I wish I could get away from
it. I really think it would be a good idea for me to marry Noa Noah, or
Adamu Adam, or Lalaperu there, or any black boy. Then I could give him
orders, and keep him penned away from me; and men like you would leave me
alone, and not talk marriage and 'I want, I want.'"
Sheldon laughed in spite of himself, and far from any genuine impulse to
laugh.
"You are positively soulless," he said savagely.
"Because I've a soul that doesn't yearn for a man for master?" she took
up the gage. "Very well, then. I am soulless, and what are you going to
do about it?"
"I am going to ask you why you look like a woman? Why have you the form
of a woman? the lips of a woman? the wonderful hair of a woman? And I am
going to answer: because you are a woman--though the woman in you is
asleep--and that some day the woman will wake up."
"Heaven forbid!" she cried, in such sudden and genuine dismay as to make
him laugh, and to bring a smile to her own lips against herself.
"I've got some more to say to you," Sheldon pursued. "I did try to
protect you from every other man in the Solomons, and from yourself as
well. As for me, I didn't dream that danger lay in that quarter. So I
failed to protect you from myself. I failed to protect you at all. You
went your own wilful way, just as though I didn't exist--wrecking
schooners, recruiting on Malaita, and sailing schooners; one lone,
unprotected girl in the company of some of the worst scoundrels in the
Solomons. Fowler! and Brahms! and Curtis! And such is the perverseness
of human nature--I am frank, you see--I love you for that too. I love
you for all of you, just as you are."
She made a _moue_ of distaste and raised a hand protestingly.
"Don't," he said. "You have no right to recoil from the mention of my
love for you. Remember this is a man-talk. From the point of view of
the talk, you are a man. The woman in you is only incidental,
accidental, and irrelevant. You've got to listen to the bald statement
of fact, strange though it is, that I love you."
"And now I won't bother you any more about love. We'll go on the same as
before. You are better off and safer on Berande, in spite of the fact
that I love you, than anywhere else in the Solomons. But I want you, as
a final item of man-talk, to remember, from time to time, that I love
you, and that it will be the dearest day of my life when you consent to
marry me. I want you to think of it sometimes. You can't help but think
of it sometimes. And now we won't talk about it any more. As between
men, there's my hand."
He held out his hand. She hesitated, then gripped it heartily, and
smiled through her tears.
"I wish--" she faltered, "I wish, instead of that black Mary, you'd given
me somebody to swear for me."
And with this enigmatic utterance she turned away.