Tamea, secretly delighted at Maisie’s misfortune, expressed to Mrs.
Casson and Dan a concern about Maisie which she was far from feeling.
Maisie had had him all day, and it had been Tamea’s generous thought to
abandon the evening to her rival. However, since fate had willed
otherwise, she decided promptly to make the most of her opportunity.
After dinner she managed to locate a bridge game with one partner
missing. The players were acquaintances of Mrs. Casson’s and it was no
trick at all for Tamea to steer her chaperon into this vacancy;
whereupon she took Dan’s arm and wandered with him down into the art
gallery. There was nothing in the art gallery that Dan could cheer for,
and Tamea quickly discovered this. Almost before he knew it, she had him
outside and was walking him through the scented starlit night down the
road toward Monterey Bay.
As they walked Tamea attempted no conversation. Instinctively she
realized that Dan did not want that. He had something on his mind and it
was depressing him. What he needed, therefore, was love and sympathy and
song; whereat Tamea twined her long soft fingers in his, swung his hand
as they walked and commenced softly, very softly, to sing a song of
Riva. It must have been a love song, for although Dan Pritchard could
not understand a word of it, yet in the soft succession of syllables he
caught a hint of passion, of longing, of pathos. . . . Once when,
apparently, Tamea had a half rest in her music, she raised his hand to
her lips before resuming her crooning love lullaby.
They came to a wooden bench on a low bluff, against which the waves beat
at extreme high tides. They sat down, Tamea still holding Dan’s hand.
She released it long enough for him to light a cigar, then she drew his
arm around her neck and laid her cheek against his. She continued to
sing and like a modern Circe she wove her spell about him.
Suddenly she ceased, placed one hand on his cheek and tilted his face
toward her.
“_Chéri_,” she whispered, “I love you with all my heart and soul.”
He stared at her incredulously. He seemed to be thinking of something
else—and he was. He was thinking how different—this—from his
experience of that afternoon with Maisie.
“But,” Tamea continued sadly, and let her hand fall back into her lap,
“my _chéri_ does not love his Tamea. She is half Kanaka.”
“Hush, child,” he admonished. “I have never thought of you as anything
save as one of God’s most glorious creations.”
“But,” Tamea persisted, “it makes a great difference—to be half Kanaka.
It makes a great difference to a white man like you.”
“It doesn’t make the slightest difference, sweetheart,” he cried, and
wondered why he had called her sweetheart. His heart was pounding now,
there was a drumming in his ears, he was atremble with the trembling
that had shaken him as a zephyr shakes the leaves of a forest that
evening on the Moorea after old Gaston had departed for Paliuli and the
girl had clung to him, weeping and despairing. “You’re wonderful,
glorious,” he continued, his words outpouring in a sort of rapturous
jumble and mumble, and swept her into his arms. Their lips met. . .
Tamea could kiss.
“Then you love your Tamea—truly, dear one?” she whispered finally.
“I adore you.”
“And you will not wed Maisie, even though you are engaged to her?”
“I am not engaged to Maisie and never have been. What’s more, I never
shall be, Tamea. No man could marry a more wonderful woman than Maisie,
but unfortunately for me, Maisie isn’t the least bit in love with me.”
Tamea started, drew away from him and eyed him wonderingly.
“You are wrong, dear one. Maisie adores you.”
He shook his head. “I asked her—once,” he explained. “She assured me
she did not.”
“She assured you of that which is not true, Dan Pritchard. Now why
should she do this? The women of your country are strange women, love of
my heart. They deny that which they feel. They pretend to be interested
in that which bores them. They desire a husband, yet they shrink from
taking him, even after he has looked upon them with the look that no
true woman should mistake.
“I do not understand this. I wanted you, dear one, and when you looked
upon me with favor I came to you. And I am very happy—so happy,
perhaps, that when we are married and I have borne children for you, I
may forget that I am not exactly that which you would wish me to be.
“But I shall learn, dear one. And I shall obey my lord because he is my
master and I love him.”
He stood up and held her tightly to his heart that was pounding so
madly, so rapturously. He rained kisses on her upturned flower face, and
the perfume of her glorious hair was as myrrh and incense to him.
“You’ve bewitched me, Tamea,” he muttered hoarsely. “Come, let us go
back to the hotel. Come!”
They went. Tamea knew better than to oppose a man. She knew that men
love best the women who give them their own way, who do not seek to
restrain or discipline or mold them to their own desires. Daughter of a
race that would disappear before emerging from the condition of family
life where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage for the
avoidance of sin and the preservation of property rights, Tamea was
following woman’s truest and most primitive instinct. She was ruling by
love and not by the sad and silly principle that possession is nine
points of the law.
Young as she was, Tamea was a fully developed woman, watchful,
observant, philosophical, courageous, resourceful; she had the gift,
rare in a woman, of initiative and instantaneous power of decision.
Gaston of the Beard had richly endowed her with the treasures of his
massive mind. She realized that she had swept Dan Pritchard off his
feet, that he was her slave, but that his servitude was not as yet
wholly voluntary. And she knew why. He was mentally hobbled by the
knowledge of her island blood and a vision of Maisie Morrison.
But Tamea was not dismayed. She had faith in her power—in the power of
love—to make him forget both. In the belief that he had been pledged to
Maisie she had decided gallantly to surrender him to Maisie that day.
She had told herself that if Maisie desired him, then, that day, she
would make certain of him, and if she did not, then was she a fool.
Well, she had not closed her deal, wherefore here was a fair field and
no favor. Tamea told herself that she had acted with a degree of
sportsmanship pleasing to Dan; and now, when from Dan’s own lips she
learned that Maisie had denied her love for him, Tamea had promptly
renewed the campaign; like a good soldier she had taken the offensive
and, as usually occurs in offensive campaigns, she had won. She had felt
Dan Pritchard’s wild kisses on her lips, her cheek, her hair, and she
was content.
Had Tamea been more conversant with Nordic custom, had she even a remote
conception of the holding power of the marriage vow even in a land where
thinking people speak learnedly of a divorce problem, she would have
urged upon Dan the desirability of motoring into Monterey that night and
getting married. It is probable that she would have urged this anyhow
had she the slightest fear of Maisie as a rival. All anxiety on that
point had now disappeared, however; on the morrow she would set herself
to the task of making friends with Maisie. . . . Meanwhile, if her
heart’s desire persisted in striding back to the hotel without speaking
to her, who was she to obtrude upon his mood? Instinctively she realized
that men resent intrusions upon their moods of depression or deep
thoughtfulness. Her father had been like that.
A white bench, gleaming through the cypress and fir trees down a path
that led off at right angles, caught her eye. She steered him toward it,
but he balked and shook his head in negation.
“You will come, dear one,” Tamea cooed.
“No, no,” he cried huskily. “Do not tempt me, Tamea.” And he moved a few
feet. When he looked back she was standing where he had left her and her
arms were outstretched to him. “No, I tell you,” he protested, and
hurried away from her. So Tamea walked down the little path and sat down
on the bench to await his return.
He returned to her. She knew he would.
“You are thinking, dear one, of what your friend Mellengair said to you
about me,” she challenged. “You are thinking of the danger to a great
white man to mate with a half-breed Kanaka.”
“Please,” he pleaded. “I wasn’t thinking of that at all.”
“Then you were wondering what Maisie would think—what she will say when
you tell her how it is with us two.”
“I—I do not think I shall tell her—yet.”
Tamea’s breast heaved and her dark eyes flashed. “Then I will tell her,
Dan. What have we to conceal? Maisie means nothing in my young life,”
she added, tossing in a colloquialism she had picked up, the Lord knows
where. “Why do you fear?”
“I do not fear.”
“I am glad to hear you say so. I should not love you if you were afraid
of anything.”
“Ah, but I am afraid of something, Tamea dear. I am afraid I do not love
you, with a sufficiently great love to marry you. Perhaps that which I
think is love is not really love, but passion.”
She laughed softly. Such fine distinctions were too difficult for her to
fathom. “What is love without passion?” she protested, “and what an
unlovely thing would be passion without love. Fear not, beloved. All is
well with that dear heart of yours, and even if it should be that you do
not love me too well—that some day your love should grow cold and you
should leave me—still would I ask of you tonight all the love of which
you are capable. Is it not better to have known a little happiness than
none at all? I think so. For look you, dear one. When the parting
comes—if come it should as Mellengair foretold that night—you will
leave me as you came to me—in love. What manner of fool is the woman
who would strive to hold a man whose love has grown cold and dim like
the stars at dawn? When you weary of me, Dan Pritchard, you will tell
me; then, because I shall always love you, I will prove my love; I will
send you away with a smile and a kiss. Ah, sweetheart, will that day
ever come? I think not. I think I shall never grow old or stale or
intolerable to you.”
“Never,” he promised, profoundly touched by her sweetness, her candor
and amazing magnetism. “You are driving me mad with longing for you,
Tamea.”
“And I am driving you mad against your will?”
He nodded.
Tamea actually chuckled, took his none too handsome, solemn face between
her two palms and looked at him long, earnestly and impersonally, as one
looks at an infant. She appeared to be puzzling something out in her
unspoiled mind.
“Such men as have sought me heretofore,” she said presently—“and I have
not been without attraction to several—have desired me—well, you
understand. There was that in their eyes that frightened me or disgusted
me and I would have none of them. I could read their hearts. They said
of me: ‘Ah, here is a half-caste maid. She is like the others—a
trusting, silly half-caste, without pride or dignity. I will amuse
myself with her.’ But you are different, _chéri_. It is not a woman you
seek, but a woman with a soul. I think I love you best because you are a
gentleman. I have not had many advantages, but something calls out in me
here”—she beat her breast—“to be different, that I may be beloved by
such as you.”
He murmured helplessly: “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Possibly. Your white world is a strange world, with many things and
many customs that damn one—particularly a woman. Yet would I follow you
to damnation. Would you follow me?”
“I don’t know, Tamea. It requires courage for a white man to quarrel
with his white world—that is, such a white man as am I. Some of us
choose unhappiness rather than affront our world, you know.”
“Yes, I think I understand. That is your Christian religion. It teaches
strange things, such as duty, and the battle against sin. It is
something that makes one unhappy, uncertain, filled with many fears. It
causes men and women to be unhappy in this life that they may be happy
in a life to come. The missionary’s wife in Riva explained it to me—and
I laughed. I told her I would be happy in this, the only life I know I
shall know, and she grew angry and said I was a hopeless heathen.”
Tamea’s silvery little chuckle tinkled faintly on his ear like a distant
sheep bell. He hadn’t the slightest objection to spooning with Tamea,
but his natural refinement rebelled at a park bench. He felt like a
country lover; he wanted to go back to the hotel; he feared some one of
the guests might see them and start some silly gossip.
“Let us return to the hotel,” he blurted out bluntly. “Mrs. Casson will
be wondering what has become of us.”
Tamea raised his hand and looked at his wrist watch. “We will sit here
and talk until midnight,” she declared. “Two hours. It is little
enough.”
“Impossible, Tamea. We will get ourselves talked about. Of course I can
stand it, but you——”
“I can stand it too, dear Dan. Sit down, do!”
“Tamea! Please be sensible.”
The Queen of Riva stamped her foot. “You will place your arms around me
and speak to me of our love,” she commanded.
He obeyed. Nevertheless, while he held her to his breast and whispered
to her warm words of love; while his heart poured forth its passion and
longing and ecstasy so poignant it was almost pain, the vision of
Mellenger obtruded.
He was making a mistake. What his personal opinion of an alliance with
Tamea might be mattered not. His friends, the code of his class, forbade
the banns; and the realization of this brought him uneasiness and
unhappiness even in the midst of his wild happiness. He feared for the
future. Tonight the world appeared to stand still in space, but tomorrow
it would continue to revolve, and unless he took a very brave and
resolute stand, it would move on toward a tragedy.
However, he had sufficient sense, now that he found himself involved
with this tropic wild flower, to attempt the exercise of his undoubted
power over her to the end that he might outline definite plans for her
future and secure her acquiescence in them. He reverted, therefore, to
her father’s plans for her education and reminded Tamea that he had
promised her father to see to it that the latter’s plans were carried
out. He impressed upon her the vital necessity for acquiring as much
education, knowledge of the world and refinement, as white girls of her
age. She must have music lessons, she must learn to dance, to ride, to
drive a motor-car, to manage a household, to sing, to meet his white
friends on their own social level. In a word, she must make him very
proud of her.
Tamea agreed to obey him implicitly, but fought desperately against the
idea of a convent. She pleaded to be permitted to live at Dan’s house
and have private tutors; she reminded him that she was amply able to
afford them. When he explained to her the impossibility of this he saw
that she accepted his explanation as something irrelevant and immaterial
and decidedly peculiar. Reluctantly she abandoned her stand and sought a
compromise. If she went to a convent all week could she come home of
week-ends? Dan said she could not. Then would he come to the convent to
see her on Sundays? He promised to do this every Sunday, and thus the
momentous issue was settled. Tamea promised to enter the convent the day
after their return to San Francisco.
This was the first long, uninterrupted confidential conversation they
had ever had. Dan was an understanding and sympathetic listener with
sufficient patience to continue answering childish questions long after
the majority of his sex would have become irritated. And Tamea asked him
hundreds of questions on an amazing variety of topics; she discussed
intimately the principal features of her own life and extracted the last
shred of information he had to give concerning himself. He observed how
clear, direct and straightforward was her method of reasoning; she had a
nicely balanced choice of words, and a fascinating habit of clothing her
odd fancies in brilliant, brief, illuminating metaphor or simile. In
those two hours when Tamea talked to him, with her head on his breast,
he really began to know her; and to the spell which her physical beauty
had cast upon him was now added an ardent admiration for her mental
equipment. She possessed none of the flightiness, frivolity or
empty-headedness of the white flapper. To her, life was something very,
very real, something to be studied, considered and not to be tasted
indiscriminately. She had inherited from her father an insatiable
yearning for information on every subject that interested her remotely.
It was twelve-thirty before Dan, with a start, cast off his thraldom and
looked at his watch.
“Yes, I suppose we should go in,” Tamea said softly. “I have had my
delight spoiled for half an hour in the fear that you would look at your
watch. And now you have looked at it and the suspense is over.”
They walked slowly back to the hotel and came in the front entrance. In
the lobby of the hotel they came across Maisie reading a magazine.
“Hello, Maisie, my dear,” said Dan, “I had an impression you had a bad
headache and had retired. If I had remotely suspected you had recovered
we would have remained to keep you company.”
Maisie acknowledged this cheerful salutation with a forced smile. Her
eyes were cold and blue. “You must have taken a long walk, Dan. Were you
in to Monterey?”
“No, just down to the beach and back. The night is so balmy we’ve been
sitting outside. Tamea has been asking questions and I have been
answering them.”
“I had so many to ask,” said Tamea demurely, “that it was very late when
I finished.” She patted her mouth to stifle a little yawn. “I’m so
sleepy. Excuse me, please, Maisie. I am going to my room. Good night,
Dan, you darling. Good night, Maisie.”
Dan escorted her to the elevator, then returned to Maisie and sat down
beside her. Said she, coolly:
“Well, Dan, did Tamea propose to you tonight?”
On the instant he was irritated. He scowled at Maisie who, disdaining an
answer, reached over on his left shoulder and carefully brushed away a
very noticeable white patch on the blue cloth of his coat.
“I’ve told Tamea several times not to use so much powder,” she
complained.
Dan was aware that he was flushing very noticeably. When Maisie spoke
again the flush deepened.
“Aren’t you too old for that sort of thing—with that sort of
semi-developed girl, Dan?”
He knew that Maisie, coming downstairs for some purpose earlier in the
evening and learning from her aunt that he and Tamea had strolled away
together, had decided to sit where she could keep watch over both
entrances and await their return. What business had she spying upon
them? He was distinctly irritated.
“I must confess, Maisie, I do not relish——” he began, but Maisie
interrupted him.
“Oh, I dare say you’re thinking I’m an old snooper and that this is none
of my business. I’d be prepared to admit that if you had not asked me to
look after the child here. If you wish to have yourselves talked about,
why then, spooning around the hotel grounds until twelve-thirty o’clock
is a very good way.”
“Tamea is perfectly safe with me,” he defended, “and you ought to know
it.”
“I do. With any woman you have as much boldness as a canary bird, my
dear. What I object to, Dan, is the fact that you are not perfectly safe
with Tamea, and we might as well have an understanding regarding her now
as later. If you’re to be her guardian you cannot afford to let her vamp
you. As one of your very oldest and dearest friends I’m going to take
the liberty of painting you a picture of the future. I feel certain you
cannot see the future clearly, Dan, or else you refuse to see it. May I
speak very plainly, Dan?”
“What’s the use, Maisie? Mel has already painted me the same picture and
I disagree with his color tones. I think I know what I am doing and I
think, also, that one of the rarest gifts God ever grants to civilized
woman is a nicely balanced diplomacy. They have too much or too little.”
It was Maisie’s turn to flush now—with embarrassment and anger. The
flush departed, leaving her pale and trembling. “The first bearer of
unwelcome news hath but a losing office,” she forced herself to say.
“Are you driving back to town in the morning, Dan?”
He nodded.
“I think it would be just as well if you took Tamea with you,” Maisie
continued icily. “Aunt and I will remain here for a few weeks. I do not
feel quite up to the task of helping you with Tamea when you decline to
help me to help you to help her.”
“Oh, Maisie, I’m sorry——”
“Of course you are. And you’ll be much sorrier some day, old dear. I may
not have much of a gift for diplomacy, Dan, but it does not require the
gift of second sight to see that you are madly infatuated with this
girl, and common sense is as far from an infatuated man as the north
pole from the south. When you come to your senses send for me—should
you feel that you need me. Meanwhile—good night and—good-by until we
meet again.”
He was furious. He had assimilated smilingly one terrific blow from
Maisie within the past twelve hours and now he was forced to assimilate
another. He rose and bowed to Maisie with polite frigidity.
“You are perfectly right, Maisie,” he assured her. “I am, beyond
question, the most monumental ass in all California. Fortunately for
both of us, I was just about to inform you that Tamea has consented to
enter a convent immediately; consequently she no longer assumes the
proportions of a white elephant to both of us. I shall take her home
with me tomorrow and place her in school the day after. I am deeply
grateful to you for all that you have done for me in this emergency,
Maisie, and I am sincerely sorry my conduct has been displeasing to you.
It has been eminently satisfactory to myself! Good night and—since I
shall not see you before I leave tomorrow morning—_au revoir_. When I
need you again I shall not, however, send for you. I am already too deep
in your debt. Good night.”
Maisie managed her leave-taking admirably. A little nod, a cold and
twisted smile—and she was gone. The instant the elevator deposited her
on her floor, however, she fairly ran to her room, nor did she observe
that the door to Tamea’s room was opened ever so little; that Tamea’s
eye was at that crack and that the tears that rained down Maisie’s
cheeks had not escaped that keen scrutiny.
“I am right,” Tamea soliloquized as she switched off her bedside lamp
and slipped into bed. “Maisie loves him. She was too sure of him and
that is a mistake. No woman should be too sure of any man because all
men are children. After I left Dan with her they quarreled. That is
well. Dan is not ashamed of me, then. Now Maisie weeps. That is well,
too.”
The telephone tinkled faintly and Tamea took down the telephone.
“How do you do?” said Tamea cordially into the mouthpiece.
“Dan speaking, Tamea. I am going back to San Francisco tomorrow morning
and you are to accompany me.”
“But Maisie and her aunt remain here?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I am a very wonderful girl. I am smart—yes, you bet.” Her triumphant,
musical little chuckle was soothing to his scarred soul.
“Julia will be in your room at six o’clock to awaken you and pack your
suitcase and trunk. Good night, my dear.”
“I kiss you once—for luck,” said Tamea and smacked her lips loudly.
Then she hung up, snuggled down in bed and fell asleep almost instantly.
She had started the day with a handicap, but her finish had been
magnificent and she was well content.