Many arduous and adventurous years in the Fourth Estate had sharpened
Mark Mellenger’s native ability to think and act quickly in an
emergency. He saw that Tamea’s bold onslaught for the love rights in his
friend had disturbed Pritchard greatly; the latter’s face was rosy with
an embarrassment that was all the more poignant because nothing that Dan
could do or say would relieve the situation; Maisie had apparently
exhausted her ammunition and would, unless supported promptly, retire
from the field. Weeping, doubtless. Something had to be done, and in
this emergency anything would be better than nothing.
Mellenger strolled up to Tamea and offered her his arm to take her in to
dinner. But Tamea only smiled at him the tender, tolerant smile which,
apparently, she had for all men, and said in a low voice: “Thank you,
Monsieur Mellengair, but I will take the arm of Dan Pritchard.”
“Oh, but you must not do that!” Mellenger protested confidentially and
addressing her in excellent French. “You are a member of this household,
while Miss Morrison is a guest here tonight. If Mr. Pritchard were to
permit her to go in to dinner on my arm, that would be equivalent to
informing her that she was not welcome in his home. It would be a very
great discourtesy—in this country,” he added parenthetically.
“Oh! I did not understand that. Nobody has told me these things. I would
not care to embarrass anyone.”
“Thank you, Miss Larrieau. You are very kind and considerate.” He bowed
to her with great courtesy, and she accepted his arm.
“I like you, Mellengair—no, I will call you Mel, like Dan who loves
you.”
“That’s better.”
“And you shall call me Tamea.”
“Thank you. I think that is better, too.”
She came closer to him. “And you will tell me—things?”
“You mean the things you should know in order to avoid embarrassment to
yourself—and others?”
“_Oui_, Mel.”
“There is not a great deal that you will have to be told, Tamea. Merely
an outline of the principal customs of this country which differ so
radically from yours. For instance, just now you made a very sad
mistake—oh, very, very sad!”
“But no!” the girl protested.
“But yes! You were very discourteous to Miss Morrison.”
“About Dan?”
“Yes.”
“But that is the truth.”
“It is not always necessary to tell the truth. You have assumed that
Miss Morrison is in love with Dan.”
“She is, Mel. I know.”
“But he does not know this, and she would not tell him for all the
wealth of the world.”
“Such a stupid! Why not?”
“It is the custom of the land,” he assured her.
“Then I must not tell Dan Pritchard I love him?”
“Not unless he tells you first that he loves you.” She laughed softly
but scornfully. “Has he told you that he loves you?”
“With his eyes—yes.”
“Eyes are not admissible as evidence. What you mistook for love may be
admiration. Until he speaks with his tongue you must remain silent, else
will you be dishonored.”
They had reached the dining room. Maisie and Dan were following, in
frozen silence. Mellenger tucked her chair in under Tamea, and over her
head he winked at Maisie and Dan. There was a terrifying silence until
after Julia had served the soup. Then Tamea spoke.
“It appears,” she said very contritely, “that I have been stupid and of
gross manners. I have offended you, Maisie, and to you, dear Dan, I am
as a dishonored woman. I am truly sorry. Will you both forgive, please?”
“You poor, bewildered dear,” said Maisie, and laughed. To Mellenger’s
amazement the laugh held real humor. She got up, walked around the table
to Tamea’s side and kissed her. “Of course you are forgiven. You did not
understand. How could you know, Tamea, that Dan and I are to be married?
Nobody told you, I dare say. Dan, darling, did you tell Tamea of our
engagement?”
“Of course, I didn’t,” he began. He was at once amazed, indignant and
profoundly complimented. “Why, Maisie——”
“Shut up, fool!” Mellenger’s lips formed the words without speaking
them. “Do you want to spill the beans?”
Maisie returned to her seat, flushed, bright-eyed, distinctly
triumphant, and Mellenger realized that, between himself and Maisie,
poor Tamea had been thoroughly crushed, humiliated beyond words. She
contented herself with looking at Dan very curiously, as if she were
seeing him for the first time.
“Now,” Mellenger remarked dryly, “I think we’ll all feel equal to
imbibing a modicum of soup. Maisie—pardon my effrontery in calling you
by your first name on such brief acquaintance, but then those who love
Dan always inspire me with a desire to know them better and act as if I
had known them always—how long have you and Dan been engaged?”
Dan glared at him. Maisie, scenting the deviltry behind his query, liked
him for it. “I really do not remember, Mark—pardon my effrontery in
addressing you by your first name on such brief acquaintance, but it
seems I’ve known you always. Dan, when did you first propose to me?”
“Maisie, you’re an imp.”
“A benevolent imp, at any rate,” Mellenger adjured him. “She goes out of
her way to make everybody around her comfortable.”
“Did Dan tell you he desired you, Maisie?” Tamea was speaking now.
“What makes you ask that, Tamea?”
“I inquire to know. This is important.”
“Well, Tamea, I don’t suppose Dan ever told me in so many words——”
“Ah! With his eyes, then?”
Maisie shrugged. “I suppose so.”
Tamea favored Mellenger with a sidelong glance of disillusionment and
contempt. She spoke in French. “It appears that the rules of deportment
are broken as readily by those who dwell in this country as by those who
are ignorant of those rules. Now I shall proceed to be happy again. What
an excellent soup!”
She saw by the look in Maisie’s eyes that Maisie had not understood her.
And this was true, for while Maisie was presumed to have learned French
in high school, it was high-school French, and Tamea’s rapid-fire
utterance was far beyond her understanding.
“I hope you will be very happy,” she said in English to Maisie, who
thanked her with a demure smile. To Mellenger she said in a swift aside:
“I know very well she will not! What a curious dinner party! This woman
is thinking of schemes to take from me the man whom I desire. Alas! She
is no match for me, for look you, Mel, she has not the courage to take
that which she desires.”
“Unfortunately, she has not, Tamea. Nevertheless, she may develop a form
of courage that may amaze you. Just now she gave you a bad minute or
two.”
Tamea shrugged. “I have no fear. That which I desire I take, and that
which I take I think, perhaps—I—can—keep.”
“Well, suppose we discuss something else,” Mellenger suggested in his
surprisingly good French. “And if you do not feel equal to the task of
keeping pace with the discussion, try being silent awhile.”
Tamea included Dan and Maisie in her retort to this fundamentally solid
bit of advice. “This large friend of yours does not like me, no?”
“Why, of course he likes you. Nobody could help liking you!” This from
Maisie, who was bound to be cheerful and complimentary at any cost.
“You are wrong, Maisie. Mel thinks very quickly, and he talks as quickly
as he thinks. He thinks clearly, too. . . . Well, I should like him for
my good friend. One does not care for stupeed men. Mel is very honest.
He will make a good fight, yes? I think so. Yes, you bet. And I will
make a good fight, also.”
“Something tells me you will. Are you the offspring of a nation of
warriors?” Mellenger queried.
“My mother was the daughter of a chief—a king, bred from a thousand
kings. And in Riva he who would be king must be a warrior and a leader
of warriors.”
“Is polyandry practiced in Riva?” Dan had emerged from the trance into
which the startling events of the past few minutes had thrown him.
“I do not know what that is, dear Dan Pritchard,” declared Tamea.
“I mean, do the women have more than one husband, and do the women
choose their husbands? In this country,” he hastened to add, “the men do
the choosing.”
“Indeed?” Tamea seemed to find this humorous. “Men are weaklings
everywhere, I think, and in this country, as in Riva, it appears the
women sometimes do the choosing of their husbands. What else may one do?
You men are so stupeed!”
“Let us discuss the League of Nations, Dan,” Mellenger suggested. “That
is a subject upon which you and I may hazard an opinion. Tamea, are you
an advocate of the right of self-determination for the lesser
nations—Ireland, for instance?”
“You make the josh, Mel.”
He chuckled, gave his attention to Maisie and displayed an amazing
facility at small talk and the gossip of her set. Thereafter he
addressed but an occasional word to Tamea, who, however, appeared to
relish this neglect, since it gave her ample opportunity to favor the
uncomfortable Dan with languishing looks. With the advent of the salad
Mellenger deftly piloted the conversation into the realm of trade and
finance, appealed very frequently to Dan for confirmation of some theory
or an expression of opinion. He contrived to leave Tamea quite out of
it, and when at last Maisie rose from the table and the others followed
her into the drawing room, Tamea was sensible of a feeling of neglect,
of paternalism. She resented this with all the fierce resentment of her
hot blood.
But Mellenger was tact and graciousness personified; and when, as the
evening wore on, it began to dawn on Tamea that his action was not
predicated so much on antagonism to her as on a desire to save Maisie
from humiliation, her resentment began to fade. She observed that Dan
had little to say, that the conversation was dominated by Mellenger and
Maisie; in listening to their words, in watching the play of emotions on
their faces, an hour slipped by. Then Mellenger sat at the piano and
played while Maisie sang; and later Maisie played while Mellenger sang.
Tamea enjoyed their songs immensely and urged them on until ten o’clock,
when Dan suggested that perhaps she was tired and would like to retire.
“You wish it?” Tamea queried softly.
He nodded, so Tamea kissed him good night and then followed her caress
with one each for Mellenger and Maisie.
When she had gone Mellenger swung round on the piano stool and grinned
at Dan Pritchard.
“This has been a trying evening, old horse,” he declared, “but, by and
large and thanks to two people who appear to possess the faculty of
keeping their heads when all about them are losing theirs, what
threatened to become a riot has ended in a love feast. Dan, that girl is
nobody’s fool. Her head is quite filled with brains.”
“I think, when she has become a little more civilized, she will be
adorable,” Maisie added.
“She is adorable now,” Dan reminded them. Subconsciously he desired to
defend any weakness he might have exhibited during the evening. Also, he
had an impulse to castigate Maisie for her inexplicable conduct in
declaring, in the presence of his other guests, that an engagement
existed between them.
“That’s no excuse for your losing your head over her, old son.”
“Quite so,” Maisie echoed. “Because I sensed your helpless state,
following Tamea’s frank declaration of a proprietary interest in you, I
invented our engagement as a sort of funk-hole for you to crawl into,
Dan.”
“You were very courageous, Maisie.”
“It was a forlorn hope and it failed. I might as well inform you, my
friends, that Tamea was unimpressed.” Mellenger was very serious now.
“What are you going to do about this girl, Dan? You’ve got to get her
out of your house.”
Dan shrugged helplessly.
“If you send her to a boarding school now,” Maisie suggested, “she would
matriculate in the middle of a semester. You refer to her as a child,
Dan, but she is a fully developed woman, and I fear that her education,
in English at least, has been so neglected that she would have to start
in the same class with girls of ten or twelve. This would prove
embarrassing to her. She should have a year of private tutoring.”
“Where, Maisie?”
“I do not know, Dan.”
“But you telephoned to me this evening that you had a plan to discuss.”
“My plan is not fully developed, Dan, but it contemplated the engagement
of a governess and companion for Tamea, and sending them both to a
warmer climate—say Los Angeles—until Tamea becomes acclimated. You
seemed worried about her in the cooler climate of San Francisco.”
“That’s a splendid plan,” Mellenger hastened to interrupt. “The success
of it depends upon the acquisition of the right sort of governess, of
course. She should be firm, indomitable, tactful, able and possess the
physical attributes of the champion heavyweight pugilist of the world.”
“I fear you are absolutely right,” Dan sighed.
“Well, then, I’m at my wits’ end, Dan’l,” Maisie confessed.
“I am not,” Mellenger replied coolly. “I beg of you, Maisie, to dismiss
the matter. I shall go into executive session with myself and evolve a
plan that will be puncture-proof. I fear me neither you nor Dan is able
to think clearly in this emergency.”
Maisie flashed him a swift glance of deepest gratitude. “In that event I
think I shall go home,” she said, and rang for Julia to fetch her wrap.
Dan escorted her out to her car, and as she gave him her hand at parting
he bent and kissed it humbly, turned and left her without the formality
of saying good night.
Fortunately, Maisie thought she could understand the failure of his
conversational powers.