When the last sunlight faded from the earth and the sea and the swift
tropic twilight had swallowed the Pelorus, Tamea cast herself upon the
earth and beat it with her beautiful hands, sobbing aloud, in the
language of her mother’s people, the agony of her broken heart. Upon her
the gods had rained the supreme blow and she could no longer stand erect
and take it smiling. Upon the pungent, fetid earth she groveled in her
despair until, utterly spent, she lay like a beautiful wilted lily, an
occasional long, constricted gasp alone giving evidence that she still
lived—and suffered.
After a long time a voice spoke in the semi-darkness.
“Tamea! Stoneface is speaking.”
The girl started up. “Mellengair! You have not gone?”
“Did I not tell you once, Tamea, that I loved you? That when you too
were a Stoneface, with your flower face in the dust, I would love you
more than ever, because your child’s heart would have been broken? And
did I not tell you that I would lift you up and hold you to my heart and
comfort you? Behold, Tamea, these hands outthrust to you.” And with the
words he lifted her from the ground and held her against his great
breast. “Poor child!” he kept murmuring, and stroked her hair.
“Oh, why did you stay?” she sobbed. “I do not love you, Mel. You are to
me a true friend only.”
“I do not ask for love, Tamea,” he replied gently. “I seek service. I
thought I would stay until your baby should be born—it seemed I ought
to wait awhile and see that all goes well with you, child.”
“My race is dying. I too shall die, and that soon. Life has lost its
taste, and when my baby has been born—my friend, when such as we have
lost our taste for life, life departs. We do not live for the coward’s
love of life, but for life’s joys.”
“But the baby,” he reminded her.
“I will give him to you, my friend. Would you not care to have my son
and love him as your own?”
The poker face twitched, the unlovely eyes blinked a little. Mel bowed
his head affirmatively.
“I have an illness—here,” Tamea murmured, and placed her hand on her
side. “It is the lung disease that comes to so many of us Polynesians,
and when I knew my length of life was measured by but a year or two, I
did not hesitate. I had to make haste, since I did not desire Dan to
grow like Muggridge in his mind. Muggridge was here too long, too long
removed from his kind; in striving to draw my people upward, he drew
himself downward. I would not have Dan remember me as a thin and haggard
invalid, old before my time, no longer beautiful. Do you understand,
Mellengair?”
“I understand.”
“I have money. You know how much my father left me. When I am gone you
will take it and my child, both for your own. You are a poor man in your
own land, wherefore you must have money to dwell in contentment. And you
will never tell Dan Pritchard I have borne him a child, because that
would render him unhappy. And you will raise my child as a full white,
in white ways, and none shall know that my baby’s mother was a
half-breed Polynesian. Understand, I am not ashamed of my blood,
but”—through her tears she smiled the odd, wistful little smile—“it is
inconvenient. There are some who might regard my blood as base and
remind my child of it in years to come. In a three-quarter white none
but the very wise, the very observant, can tell the blood of the other
quarter.”
He held her close to him and stroked her wonderful black hair. “Poor
child,” he kept saying, “poor child.” And finally: “Remember, I do not
ask for love, but service.”
“I understand, dear, kind Stoneface. We are two with stone faces now,
are we not, my friend?. . . Well, you shall take me to my house, and
then you shall go to the house of Muggridge and dwell there until the
period of service shall be over. Or,” she added, “until it shall begin!”
She lifted his big hand and kissed it. “My friend,” she whispered, “my
good, kind friend!”
“Poor child,” said Mellenger. “Poor, poor child!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
When nested quoting was encountered, nested double quotes were changed
to single quotes.
A cover was created for this ebook which is placed in the public domain.
Some pages of advertising by the publisher were removed from the end of
the ebook.