Ten months had passed since Dan Pritchard had seen a human being whiter
than Tamea or talked English to a white man. He was acutely conscious of
this flight of time as he sat on the veranda of the green bungalow and
watched a schooner beating up the coast of Riva.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the Pelorus, Tamea,” he remarked.
“Even at this distance her lines look too fine for an ordinary trading
schooner. I hope she drops in. I’d like to have a visit with Hackett.
That man has a superior mind.”
Tamea glanced sharply at him from under lowered lids. Her lips trembled
ever so slightly and she bit them to stop the trembling. At length she
said: “Yes, that is the Pelorus, dear heart. She will drop anchor in the
lagoon for the night and Hackett will come ashore to visit us. Doubtless
he has supplies for the mission.”
“Won’t it be splendid to have him up for dinner, Tamea? Confound it, I
wish we had a really decent dinner to offer him. He must be as weary of
canned goods, chicken, fish and pig as I am.”
To this Tamea made no reply, but her sweet face was slightly clouded as
she sat down at the piano and commenced picking out a hymn by ear. Her
basses were not very good, and the piano, hard driven for many a year
without tuning, rendering sterling assistance in the attack upon Dan’s
nerves. He rose and walked out of the house and down the hill to the
beach, where he sat on an upturned canoe and waited patiently for the
Pelorus to negotiate the opening in the reef. She did it prettily
enough, and as her anchor splashed overside and the harsh grating of the
chain in her hawse-pipe floated across the lagoon to Dan, for a reason
scarcely possible for analysis, a lump rose in his throat.
Perhaps it was the impending drama of a meeting with his own kind after
ten months of alien association that thrilled him so, for he rose and
ran down to the wash of the surf on the white shingle, hallooing and
waving his arms. Two men on the poop waved back at him. One wore a
singlet, a short pair of white trousers and a Panama hat. The other was
arrayed in white linen and, at that distance, reminded Dan of a yacht
owner out with his guests for a cruise.
The whaleboat splashed overboard and the two men dropped overside into
it and were rowed ashore. The man in the short breeks and singlet was
Captain Hackett. He leaped overboard as the whaleboat grounded and
splashed through the wash, with outstretched hand, his face wearing a
hearty but cynical smile.
“How do you do, Mr. Pritchard?” he cried. “Do not bother to answer. I
know. You don’t do worth two squirts of bilge water.” He shook hands.
“Riva on your nerves a bit?” He laughed. “Well, they always wait for us
at the edge of the surf—the ‘back to nature and the simple life’ boys.”
He slapped the embarrassed Dan on the shoulder. “Got a friend of yours
with me.” He turned and waved toward a Kanaka sailor upon whose back was
just mounting, preparatory to being carried ashore so his feet would not
get wet, no less a person than—Mark Mellenger!
“Mel!” Dan’s cry of welcome sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Mel, my
dear old friend! Lord, man, what a joy to see you again!” And he folded
Mellenger to his heart and was silent for a minute, fighting his
emotions.
“It’s Thursday night, old son,” said Mellenger calmly, “so I thought I’d
drop around for dinner—as usual. Is Sooey Wan still dishing up the grub
in your Lares and Penates?” He cuffed Dan affectionately on the ear.
“I’m sort of halfway glad to see you again, Dan.”
They walked up the beach to the Muggridge residence. Captain Hackett
paused beside the veranda and looked the house over critically. “Where
is the sky pilot?” he queried.
“He’s dead, Captain. His wife died shortly before you were here last.
Before that he had been a little bit obsessed by Tamea and after his
wife’s death he rather went on the loose among the natives. I imagine he
was about half cracked——”
“Half?” Hackett sneered, “All. He was half cracked when he came here,
otherwise he would not have come. His wife was the last tie that bound
him to his self-respect, and when she died, doubtless it commenced to
dawn on him that she had been a martyr to a cause not particularly worth
while. The heat and the loneliness killed her. I could see it coming.”
“I dare say you are right, Captain. She was, as you say, the last tie
that bound him to his self-respect. Here, where there was no law save
his, after Gaston left and before I came, there was no longer any
incentive to remain a white man, and he started to degenerate. Religion
was not sufficient to sustain him. He had an uphill job here, at best,
and there was nothing to read except the Bible and he had known that by
heart for twenty years. I wouldn’t talk to him and neither would Tamea.”
“Why?”
“Because he was half crazy. When he wasn’t striving to convert Tamea he
was reviling her for an abandoned woman. Of course I had to put a stop
to that, and when I did he reviled me. Finally I warned him to stay off
the hill. But he wouldn’t. He came prowling up there one night and set
fire to our house. Sooey Wan caught him and we put out the fire before
any damage had been done. A week later I heard shooting outside our
veranda—three rifle shots and six pistol shots. Muggridge owned the
only rifle on the island and Sooey Wan owned the only pistol—and he
slept on the veranda.
“In the morning Muggridge was gone, there were three bullet holes
through our house and Sooey Wan was cleaning his .45 with kerosene. He
said nothing and I asked no questions. I did not care to know.”
“Comfortable old Chink, that, to have around one’s house,” Hackett
remarked dryly. “Well, I have a year’s supply of grub and trade goods
for the mission, so I suppose I might as well dump it here to await the
arrival of the successor to the mad Muggridge. It’s all paid for.”
“Comforting. I’ll use it, Hackett.”
Mellenger walked up into the mission house veranda and sat down. “It’s
as cool here as anywhere,” he reminded Dan. “I’d like to have a chat
with you, Dan, before I meet Tamea.”
“Certainly, Mel.”
“Well, while my crew is busy landing the supplies for the mission I’m
going up to your house and have a chin-chin with Tamea,” Captain Hackett
suggested. “By the way, Mr. Pritchard,” he added innocently, “did you
marry her?”
Dan flushed. “Muggridge, in his insane jealousy, refused to perform the
ceremony without some sort of a license, procurable God knows where—or
when—so we—that is—well, we did the best we could without him.”
The old sea dog went up the path to the hill, chuckling softly.
“Mel,” Dan demanded the instant the captain was out of hearing, “what
under the canopy has brought you here?”
“I came to get you and bring you home.”
Dan shook his head. “My home is here, Mel.” He threw out his arm
tragically toward the east. “I’m quite through with all of that.”
“Fortunately, you are not. Your private fortune and the business
formerly owned by Casson and Pritchard await your return. There’s a hole
amounting to approximately half a million dollars in your private
fortune but the business is all yours now and intact. As soon as you
appear to relieve the receiver of his task of managing your affairs, the
court will discharge him.”
Dan Pritchard stared at his friend, wide unbelief in his glance.
“Explain yourself, Mel. This is most astounding.”
“Some folks are fools for luck,” Mellenger sighed. “Banning and Company
paid forty-two cents on the dollar and that receiver managed to pry
fifty cents on the dollar out of the Katsuma estate. Other losses were
not as heavy as anticipated, and several of your heaviest debtors will
manage to pay out in three or four years, if your luck holds. The thing
that saved you, however, was a typhoon in the China Sea. The steamer
Malayan, with eight thousand tons of high-priced rice insured to its
full value, must have foundered in that typhoon, for she never reached
Havana and was eventually posted at Lloyd’s as missing. Consequently the
receiver collected the insurance, which put your business back on its
feet again. You’re still a rich man, Dan.”
Dan Pritchard placed his elbows on his knees and covered his face with
his hands. He quivered a little. Mellenger ignored him. He lighted one
of Hackett’s Sumatra cigars and puffed away silently, gazing out to the
white water purling over the reef.
“Peaceful spot, this,” he observed presently. “The Land of Never Worry.
How are you fixed for points of intellectual contact?”
“I haven’t any,” Dan confessed in a strangled voice.
“Been doing any painting, old son?”
“Half a dozen canvases. They’re no good.”
“You haven’t asked me about Maisie Morrison, Dan.”
“I haven’t any right to, Mel.”
“Then I shall tell you about her. She is in good health, but not very
happy. That is because she loves you. Splendid woman, Maisie. You made a
grave mistake by not marrying her. I told you to.”
“I didn’t think she cared—that much.”
“It appears she did. Everybody knew that except you, and sometimes I
think you suspected it, but were afraid to take a chance. If you had
your chance all over again, would you marry Maisie?”
“Mel,” Dan admitted wretchedly, “any man is a fool to marry out of his
class. Tamea is a wonderful woman, but——”
“I understand, my friend. It requires something more than love to
sustain love. Is Riva on your nerves?”
Dan raised his haggard face from his hands. “Well, I am beginning to
understand Muggridge a little better lately,” he confessed. “And, unlike
poor Muggridge, I have nothing spiritual to cling to. Nothing but my
sanity, and sometimes when I reflect that all of my future life will be
like this——”
“Ah, but it will not continue to be like this,” Mellenger interrupted
gently. “Tamea will see to that.”
“Tamea is a lovely, wonderful child of nature. She is happy here—so
happy, Mel, that she will never, never be able to understand why I
cannot be happy, too.”
“As usual,” Mellenger growled, “you continue to give abundant proof of
your monumental asininity and masculine ego. I have here a letter which
Tamea wrote Maisie three months ago, via the schooner Doris Crane.”
Dan could only stare at him. “You know the Doris Crane, of course?”
Mellenger queried.
“She came here three months ago for the accumulated trade. I was
pig-hunting on the northern coast of the island at the time, and missed
her. Mel, what could Tamea possibly have to write Maisie about?”
“About you, fool.”
“About me?”
“None other. Hold your peace now, old son, while I read you her letter
to Maisie.” And Mellenger read:
Riva, 16th August.
Dear Maisie:
Please read this letter from one who has spoiled much that was
beautiful, one who has taken the taste out of three lives,
yours, Dan Pritchard’s and my own.
Maisie, Dan Pritchard is here with me. He is my husband, and to
me he is very kind and loving and faithful. When he came first
it was his desire to marry me according to the way of your
people, but the missionary here was mad and would not oblige
him, so we were married according to the desire of our hearts.
In the presence of the sea and the earth and the sky we swore,
each to the other, that we would love each other and dwell
together in honor. This we have done. But Dan is no longer
happy. Life slowly loses its taste for him, I have watched and I
know. He is very lonely, nor can all of my love compensate him
for the loss of his friends, for the loss of the world that was
his. I know he feels as sometimes I felt when I dwelled in his
house in San Francisco, and that is terrible.
The thought has come to me that if Dan lives here he will some
day grow to hate me. And I shall some day be too unlovely to
hold him. These things cannot be helped. They are a part of
life. My love wearies him even now. He is nervous and unhappy
and sometimes he withdraws from my caresses, and last night in
his sleep he spoke of you and his sorrow because you had not
loved him. Perhaps you do not know this truth, Maisie, but men
can never love as women love. It is very foolish to expect this.
A woman can love one man until death, but a man can love two
women, or even more, but he will love best that woman who gives
to him the most comfort and peace of mind, the woman who makes
few demands and who refrains from forcing love upon him when he
is unhappy.
Dan Pritchard does not like my people. We are as oil and water.
He does not like the food we have here, nor the heat nor the
rain nor the silence nor the loneliness. He would have his own
people about him. Alas, I would have mine about me. He fits not
into my world, nor can I ever fit into his. Therefore, it is
wise that we should part. I would not have him in unhappiness.
Rather would I die.
Maisie, come for him. Please! Evil will befall him if you do
not. If you love him as I think you do, you will come; nor will
pride—the false pride of a woman—keep you from your happiness.
Dan was always your man, Maisie. Never was he truly mine. I do
not know why, but this is true. I would give him back to you,
Maisie. Please come.
TAMEA
Mellenger folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. Dan hid his
face in his hands and wept.
“Poor child,” Mellenger murmured. “She has never heard that pity is akin
to love—that she stirred in you all the profound pity and tenderness of
your naturally kind and chivalrous heart. I wouldn’t feel so badly about
it if I were you, Dan. You weep now because your love lies dead and you
have killed it. You merely made a very human mistake. So did Tamea. But
she realizes it and has the courage to confess it. Old son, your romance
is at an end.”
“I shall not abandon her, Mel,” Dan cried brokenly. “My unhappiness
shall not be paid off against hers. She’s too tremendously fine, too
noble.”
“That is true. She is too tremendously fine, too noble, to permit you to
dramatize yourself for her sake. There is only one sacrifice necessary
here, and Tamea is making it—gladly, without regret and all because she
possesses in full measure a love so wonderful, so glorious that no man
can ever possibly understand it or appreciate it. There will be no
pandering to your ego, my son. You are no longer infatuated with Tamea,
she knows it and you might as well acknowledge it. Heroics are quite
unnecessary. Tamea, I take it, does not desire them and I shall not
permit them.”
“But Maisie. What of her, Mel?”
“Well, when she received this letter she sent for me and gave it to me
to read. She knew I was your friend so she sought my counsel. I asked
her pointblank if she loved you and she said she did. I asked her why
she had permitted you to escape and she told me. I think I can
understand her point of view. Then I asked her if she had any conception
of your point of view in this triangle and she said she thought she
understood enough of it to forgive you. I know you rather well, Dan, and
I tried to paint for Maisie a word picture of you as I know you. I told
her that you had never been truly in love with Tamea but rather in love
with love.
“It is your nature to idealize everything. You yearned for a high
romance and Tamea was a romantic figure. She appealed to you physically
and romantically. She aroused your pity, she stirred you and set your
soul afire, and neither of you knew that it was the sort of
conflagration that burns itself out and leaves only a heap of
ashes—ashes of sorrow and regret. I tried to make Maisie see that it
was largely her fault. She had declined to reach forth and possess you
as Tamea, in her primitive innocence, did not hesitate to do.
“I asked her if the memory of this escapade of yours would cloud her
future happiness, if she should marry you, and she said she thought she
could manage to forget it.” Mellenger paused and gazed out to sea
through half closed eyes. “As a matter of fact,” he continued, “there is
not the slightest necessity that anybody in our world need know what has
happened. You have merely been knocking around the isles of the South
Sea, painting and enjoying yourself. Nobody knows except Tamea, Maisie,
you, Hackett and myself—and none of us will ever tell.”
“But, Mel, Maisie refused to marry me. If she had, this would never have
happened.”
“You are a sublimated idiot. You never told Maisie that you loved her.
Women love love, too. You dawdled around, wishful to have your cake and
eat it, hating the freedom of your bachelorhood, yet dreading to abandon
it, restless, perturbed, unhappy—ah, you’re a _nut_. Understand? A
NUT!”
By his silence under fire Dan admitted the truth of this charge and
instantly the great-hearted Mellenger was sorry he had spoken. He laid
his hand gently on his friend’s shoulder.
“Buck up, old son,” he pleaded. “At least you’ve done your best to be a
gentleman all through this affair. Maisie understands that.”
“Tamea asked Maisie to come and get me. Did she come? Is she here?”
“She is aboard the Pelorus now. Old Casson and his wife think she is in
Tahiti. Nothing wrong with taking a summer trip to Tahiti, is there?
What the old folks do not know will not worry them. Well, we came down
on the same steamer and in the harbor at Tahiti we found the Pelorus.
When I told Hackett that I wanted to charter his vessel for a passage to
Riva, he eyed me curiously and said he had been expecting somebody to
come along and charter him for that trip. Then it developed that he knew
you. He wanted more money than Maisie and I could scrape up, but when I
informed him of this he said he’d collect the deficit at Riva. Said he’d
draw a draft on your Chinese bank. So he cleaned up a stateroom for
Maisie and shipped a real cook. He has an ice plant in his hold and we
had a pleasant trip. Hackett is a most agreeable man and for a monetary
consideration is prepared to carry us all directly to San Francisco.”
“Sorry, but I can’t go,” Dan repeated doggedly. “Nor will I inflict on
myself the pain of seeing Maisie.”
“Better toddle along home and talk it over with Tamea,” his friend
suggested patiently. “You may change your mind after that.”
Without a word Dan left him. On the way up the hill he met the master of
the Pelorus coming down. “I’ll send up a couple of my boys to carry down
your trunk,” he told Dan. “Your Tamea is packing it now.” And he smiled
his knowing little smile and continued on toward the mission.
Tamea met Dan as he came up the stairs. “Tamea, dear,” he began, “what
does this mean?”
“You have talked to Mellenger. You know what it means. When I took you
for my husband, _chéri_, I said: ‘I will take you and cherish you only
so long as I may make you happy.’ That time has passed. You are no
longer happy, so I have arranged that you shall leave me. There must be
no argument.”
“Tamea,” he almost groaned, “I cannot bear to break your heart.”
She smiled sadly. “My heart will not be broken. It will be hurt but time
will cure that. I do not wish you to remain longer. If you do I shall be
much more unhappy than if you go away. You will, perhaps, not
understand, but these are true words, dear one. We have both made a
large mistake and it would be foolish not to admit it and strive to mend
that mistake.”
He bowed his head. “And you truly desire this, Tamea?”
“With all my heart,” she answered. She came to him and placed her arms
around his neck. “Love of my life,” she said softly, and in her voice
the stored-up pathos and longing of her shattered life vibrated, “you
will kiss me once and then you will go—quickly.”
“Oh, sweetheart!” he moaned.
“Sh-h,” she pleaded. “I desire this parting, dear love, and because I
desire it I have been to some pains and expense to accomplish it. Here
you are as a fish cast up on the beach. You gasp and struggle for life
and in the end you will die—living. I understand, darling. _Chéri_,
believe me, I understand truly, and there is naught to grieve over.”
She kissed him and clung to him, wet-eyed and trembling, but resolute.
“Now, dear love, you will go,” she whispered, “nor will you look back as
you descend the hill. And sometimes you will think of your Tamea who
loved you better than you will ever be loved again. Adieu, my husband.”
She left him abruptly. He stood for about a minute, his thoughts
inchoate, his brain numbed; yet, out of the chaos of his conflicting
emotions there rose, almost subconsciously, the tiniest flicker of
relief. He hated himself for it. He felt low and mean and treacherous,
felt that he had played a sorry part, indeed, yet he had not meant to do
this, nor had he even contemplated doing it. The situation existed, that
was all, nor could any power of his or Tamea’s alter it in the
slightest. As well strive to restrain a falling star!
His heart constricted, his eyes blurred with tears of sorrow and shame,
he turned away at last and stumbled down the path to the Muggridge
bungalow. Hackett and Mellenger, seeing him coming, walked around to the
opposite side of the house, in order that he might be spared the
humiliation of knowing they had seen him with his soul laid bare.
Straight for the whaleboat, drawn up at the edge of the wash, Dan
headed, and the Kanaka sailors, seeing him coming, ran the boat into the
surf until it floated; there they held it, waiting; and when Dan
Pritchard climbed wearily in, they pulled him out to the Pelorus.
Up on the veranda of the mission house Captain Hackett produced two of
his famous Sumatra cigars. “We’ll give him a couple of hours in which to
straighten out his record with Miss Morrison,” the maritime philosopher
suggested. “Smoke up.”
Mellenger took the cigar, but he did not light it. “I think I shall make
a brief call on Tamea,” he declared. “I really think she would enjoy
seeing me, and until the Pelorus leaves Riva, I imagine Tamea will have
herself rather well under control. How does one reach her habitation?”
Hackett described the way and Mellenger left him. On the steps of
Tamea’s home he found Sooey Wan seated; the old Chinaman looked angry
and disconsolate, but at sight of Mellenger his yellow fangs showed in a
glad smile of welcome. He rose, proffered his hand, which Mellenger
grasped heartily, and for several seconds they stood, looking into each
other’s faces; then the look of desolation sifted back over Sooey Wan’s
face and he shook his head dolefully.
“Missa Mel,” he quavered, “evelybody clazy. Pitty soon Sooey Wan clazy,
too.”
“Yes, Sooey, my friend,” Mellenger replied, “everybody is. In fact, I’m
half crazy myself. Where is Tamea?”
Sooey Wan jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Lady queen packum tlunk,
Missa Mel.”
Mellenger entered the house. In the center of the living room Tamea sat,
folding Dan’s well worn linen and packing it away in trunk trays. She
looked up at his entrance—and stared unbelievingly a moment before
scrambling to her feet and rushing to him with outstretched arms.
“Mellengair! Mellengair, my friend!” she cried, and then she was sobbing
out, upon that great, understanding heart, the agony she had seen fit to
repress in the presence of Dan. He held her to him, stroking the
beautiful head but saying nothing, for he knew that her full heart was
emptying itself, that she would be the better for her tears.
Presently she ceased to sob, but still she clung to him; long,
heart-breaking sighs finally told Mellenger that she was getting herself
under control once more. Gently he lifted her face and with his own
handkerchief dried her eyes. “Poor Tamea!” he murmured. “Poor, unhappy,
misunderstood waif!”
“Do not pity me, my friend,” she pleaded. “It is the fate of half-breeds
to dwell in a world apart; in time we learn to make the best of it.” She
smiled wanly. “It was, perhaps, unfortunate for me that my father was
Gaston of the Beard. He put upon me the imprint of his own soul. So I
see too clearly, I understand too readily, I feel too deeply.” She
lifted his great hand and laid her cheek against the back of it. “Once I
hurt you, Mellengair. I am sorry. I have wept many tears because I have
called you Stoneface.”
“Don’t! Please don’t!” he pleaded hoarsely. “I didn’t mind. Really, I
didn’t.”
“You are a kind liar.” She kissed his hand humbly. “And now,” she added,
with just a suspicion of a quaver in her voice, “it is your friend,
Tamea, who is Stoneface—always to look out to sea for that which
came—and went—and will never, never come again.”
Mellenger’s poker face twitched ever so slightly. “I am here to help
you. Tell me how.”
“There can be no help, Mel. Dan is very unhappy with me. He loves me,
but he is not happy with me, and it has come to the knowledge that never
can the poor boy be happy with me. Great unhappiness is stronger than
great love. It will kill love—and I have watched and his love is dying.
I would have him leave me, loving me. If he remains he will grow mad,
like that missionary Muggridge. Something in him that is fine and very
like a little boy will wither and die.”
Mellenger nodded and Tamea continued: “To Dan also has been given the
gift of seeing too clearly, understanding too readily, feeling too
deeply.”
“Dan is my friend,” said Mellenger. “He has many virtues. He is lovable.
But he is too much given to introspection. He thinks too much about
himself and too little about others. He has not known great happiness
and he has been eager to protect the little he has known. He has a
restless soul, always poised for flight. In a word, he is utterly
selfish and doesn’t know it. He would be highly insulted if he heard me
say so, and he knows as much about women as a pig does about the
binomial theorem.”
Tamea smiled wistfully. “Yes, he knows little of women. He is not
observing, and, as you say, I think it is because he thinks overmuch
about what each new day may bring him. I am to be the mother of his
child, but he does not know this—and I have, for reasons of my own, not
told him.”
“Ah!” Mellenger gasped. “That complicates matters. You are not married,
I take it.”
“No, not the way you take it. You will not tell this to Dan, of course.”
“Of course I shall. If he is the father of your child he shall not evade
the responsibility of fatherhood, although, to do him full justice, I do
not think it would ever occur to him to evade it.”
“In his world, Mellengair, it is not quite _au fait_ to be the father of
a quarter-bred Polynesian child while still a bachelor.”
“It would be regarded as embarrassing.”
“I would not have Dan embarrassed.”
“You can obviate the embarrassment. Come with us to Tahiti and marry Dan
legally before the child is born. Nobody in his world, then, need know.”
“I could not be happy in Dan’s world any more than he can be happy in
mine. You do not seem to understand, Mellengair. I love him. I do not
delude myself, my friend. If I want him I can hold fast to him. I know
my power. But I love him too greatly to hold him when the holding will
smash his life. It is better that I should smash my own, for look you,
Mellengair,” she explained with an odd wistfulness, “I am but Tamea, the
half-caste Queen of Riva. I am old—very old—and I—I do not matter. I
have known the fulness of life. I am content. I cannot leave this land
in which the roots of my soul will ever cling; always when I dwelt with
Dan Pritchard in San Francisco I heard the sound of the surf on the reef
yonder I heard the sigh of these coco-palms, I heard the songs and the
woes of my people. You will, perhaps, not understand, Mellengair, but I
know that I am right.”
He bowed his head. He knew she was right, knew that only a great and
noble soul could so calmly enunciate such a bitter truth. The old,
immutable law of existence could not be shattered. Kind begets kind,
yearns for it, is happy with nothing else. Human beings, habituated to
their environment, cast in certain molds of evolution, may not progress
forward or backward when such progression is not a part of the Infinite
Plan. To attempt it is ruinous; to defy that immutable law—particularly
in the case of super-intelligences like Dan and Tamea—invites disaster.
“Dan Pritchard will go tonight and I shall not see him again,” Tamea
said, following the long silence while Mellenger revolved this sad
puzzle in his poor brain. “Farewells do but bear down the heart, and if
I do not see him again it will be much easier for him, poor dear. He
knows I love him. Why, then, tell him this at parting, why hurt him with
my tears, why subject him to the shame of having me see him bent and
broken? He will go. He greatly desires to go, and I know why, and it is
the law and I am not embittered. Nothing matters in life save that human
beings shall know true happiness—and I have known that. When my baby
comes I shall know it again. I have in me the blood of my mother, and we
were proud of our line. And I have in me the blood of my father and he
was brave and laughed when the seas boiled over the knightheads. I too
shall laugh.”
“I dare say you do not care to visit Maisie, or have her visit you.”
“You are right. You are always right, dear Stoneface. I give to her the
man she loves, the man who, in the bottom of his heart, has always loved
her, the man I took from her. From me he has learned something of life;
at least I have not hurt him, nor have I dwelt with him in dishonor. He
will be comforted by Maisie; life will have a taste for him again; and
of his life here with me, none in his world should ever know. You see, I
understand your people, Mellengair,” she added, with that same odd,
twisted, wistful little smile. “It is that you do not like to be found
out.”
Fell a silence. “You will go now, please, and take Dan Pritchard with
you. Sooey Wan is ready and the sailors from the Pelorus will come for
his trunk.” She gave him her hand.
“May I kiss you, Tamea?” he whispered, and there was that in his
deep-set, unlovely eyes, in his poker face, that might have been seen in
the face of Christ, writhing on the Cross. She lifted her face to his
and he kissed her, very tenderly, on each cheek, after the fashion of
her father’s people. Then he left her, and he descended the hill to the
beach.
“Well?” said Hackett, as Mellenger came up on the Muggridge veranda and
heaved himself wearily into a chair.
“I have just talked with the finest woman God Almighty ever made,”
Mellenger replied huskily. “Compared with her the noblest of men is so
low he could kiss a flounder without bending his knees.” He thoughtfully
bit the end off the cigar Hackett had given him and the latter struck a
match and held it to the tip of the cigar. “Brave, like her father,”
Mellenger continued. “Faces the issue without cringing. She is
magnificent—perfectly tremendous!”
“Well, that’s a comfort, Mr. Mellenger.”
Fell a silence. Then: “Captain Hackett, when you return to the Pelorus,
please send my dunnage ashore and have one of your men dump it in this
veranda. I have decided to remain in Riva. I do not fancy that long trip
home with Dan and Maisie. My presence would make them both
uncomfortable, and I am quite finished with my self-appointed task of
directing that man’s love affairs. He’s a fine man but a poor lover.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Mellenger,” Hackett urged. “The Pelorus is a hundred and
thirty feet long and there is room enough aboard her to make yourself
scarce.”
“Well, I have other reasons for staying. Unlike Dan Pritchard, I have no
dollars calling me back. All I had was a heart-breaking job on a
newspaper and I chucked that forever when I started for Riva. I have
never had a vacation and I have a notion I’ll enjoy knocking around in
the islands. At any rate, I’m going to remain. Having no conscience to
speak of, I will help myself to the supplies you are going to land for
this deserted mission. I shall get along quite nicely.”
“There is no accounting for the ways of white men,” Captain Hackett
declared. “Here comes the whaleboat, loaded with supplies.” He held out
his hand. “Happy days, Mr. Mellenger.”
“Thank you. Good-by. Do not tell Dan I have stayed. He might take it
into his fool head to come ashore and argue with me. And the next time
you happen to be passing along the coast of Riva, drop in and say howdy.
I might be ready to leave at that time.”