CHAPTER VI
With a shower bath, a change of linen and the donning of dinner clothes, Dan always felt a freshening of the spirit—rather as if the grime of commercialism had been washed away. Whether he dined alone or with guests he always dressed for dinner.
Sooey Wan, who added to his duties as cook those of general superintendent of Dan’s establishment, in defiance of the authority vested in Mrs. Pippy, and who was, on occasion, valet, counselor and friend, came up to his room with another cocktail just as Dan finished dressing. Also, he brought a cocktail for himself, and, while waiting for Dan to adjust his tie, the old Chinaman helped himself to one of Dan’s gold-tipped cigarettes.
Ordinarily, Sooey Wan permitted himself few liberties with his boss, but upon occasions when his acute intuition told him that the boss was low in spirits, Sooey Wan always forgot that Dan was his boss. Then Dan became merely Sooey Wan’s boy, the adored male baby of the first white man for whom Sooey Wan had ever worked. The years fell away and Dan was just a ten-year-old, and he and Sooey Wan were making red dragon kites in the kitchen and planning to fly them the following Saturday from Twin Peaks.
Indeed, Pritchard, senior, had left to Sooey Wan a large share in the upbringing and character-building of his only son, for Dan’s mother had died that Dan might live. It had been Sooey Wan who had imparted to Dan a respect for the inflexible code of the Chinese that a man shall honor his father and his mother and accord due reverence to the bones of his ancestors and the land that gave him birth. It had been Sooey Wan who, inveterate gambler himself, nevertheless taught Dan that when a man loses he shall take his losses smilingly and never neglect to pay his debts. Into Dan’s small head he had instilled as much Chinese philosophy and as much Chinese honor as he would have instilled into a son of his own had his strange gods not denied him this supreme privilege.
Dan knew the old Chinaman for the treasure he was and nothing that Sooey Wan might do could possibly have offended him. In thirty-five years of perfect service to the Pritchards, father and son, Sooey Wan had bought and paid for the few liberties he took—an occasional cigarette in their presence and about six cocktails per annum.
What Sooey Wan realized his boss needed tonight was human society. Sooey Wan felt fully equal to the task of supplying that rare commodity, and he was in Dan’s room now for that purpose.
“My boy feelee little better, eh?” he suggested.
“Considerably. Life isn’t half bad, Sooey Wan. The world isn’t filled entirely with muckers.”
“Oh, velly nice world!” Sooey Wan agreed. “Today I ketchum ten spot in China lottery. I play fi’ dollar. Tonight Sooey Wan feel pretty damn good, too.”
A silence while Dan sat down, lighted a cigarette and sipped his cocktail. Then:
“Julia velly happy, boss. Captain’s girl give Julia velly nice plesent. She come show me. Missie Pip velly sorry no can understand at first. No ketchum pearl.” And Sooey Wan chuckled like a malevolent old gnome, while Dan laughed with him.
“Missie Pip too high-tone’,” Sooey Wan decided. “Yeh, too muchee. No pay muchee Missie Pip for be high-tone’. Sooey Wan don’t give a damn. Sooey Wan ketchum pearl, all li’. No ketchum pearl, all li’. Ketchum ten spot China lottery, velly good. Ketchum ten spot for Julia, too, but Julia no playum heavy. Twenty-fi’ cen’s, two bittee limit.”
The Chinese lottery was then discussed, with Sooey Wan adverting with delightful regularity to the fact that Mrs. Pippy was in a mood to kick herself up hill and down dale because of her lamentable failure to recognize a queen. The gift of all the pearls ever collected in the South Seas could not have afforded the old Chinese schemer one-half the delight this knowledge afforded him, and Dan quickly realized that for the pleasure of this social visit from Sooey Wan he was indebted quite as much to Mrs. Pippy’s misfortune as he was to Sooey Wan’s unfaltering affection. Hehadto share this joyous news with somebody who could appreciate it!
Presently Sooey Wan grew serious. “I lookee thlough dining room door when Captain’s girl go upstair,” he confided. “Velly pitty girl. Velly damn nice, Missa Dan, you mally lady queen?”
“No, confound you, no. What put that idea into your fool head?”
“Captain’s girl velly nice. Bimeby, boss, you have fi’, six, seven, maybe eight son! Sure, you have good luck. She give you many son.”
“I don’t want many sons. Just now I do not want any.”
“You klazy. What you think Sooey Wan stick around for, anyhow. You no ketchum baby pretty quick wha’ for I workee for you? Hey? Me ketchum plenty money. Me go China.”
“You’re an interfering, scheming old duffer, Sooey. Get back to your kitchen.”
Sooey Wan departed in huge disgust, slamming the door. A moment later he opened it a couple of inches and looked in. “Lady queen leady for dinner. Look velly nice. Missa Dan, you listen Sooey Wan. Captain’s girl velly nice.”
Dan threw a book at him and descended to dinner.
At the foot of the stairs he met Tamea, attended by Mrs. Pippy and Julia. Mrs. Pippy was a being reincarnated. She beamed, she seemed fairly to drip with the milk of human kindness. The simple Julia stood, grinning like a gargoyle, head on one side and hands clasped under her chin, presenting a picture of pride personified.
“Look at her now, Misther Pritchard, an’ the day you got her,” said Julia.
Tamea looked up at him pridefully. She was wearing a white dress, white silk stockings and white buckskin shoes. Her hair, caught at her nape with a scarlet ribbon, hung in a dusky cascade down her fine straight back.
The combination was startling, vivid, amazingly artistic, and Dan stood lost in admiration. If Tamea could only have managed a smile that predicated happiness rather than sadness, Dan told himself she would have been ravishingly beautiful.
“You’re tremendous! Perfectly tremendous!” he assured Tamea. “But that stunning dress——”
“I took the liberty of telephoning Miss Morrison,” Mrs. Pippy gurgled. “I sent Graves over after some things of hers I thought might fit Miss Larrieau.”
“I am extremely grateful to you, Mrs. Pippy.” In the back of his head the words of Sooey Wan were ringing: “Missie Pip velly sorry no can understand at first. No ketchum pearl.” Whatever the reason behind her present cordiality, she was making a strenuous effort to overcome the unfortunate impression she had made upon Tamea a half-hour previous.
Sooey Wan appeared in the dining room entrance and beamed cordially upon the guest. “What Sooey Wan tell you, boss? Velly nice, eh? You bet. Dinner leady.”
Dan silenced the wretch with a furious glance, took Tamea by the arm and steered her into the dining room. Sooey Wan retreated, but paused at the entrance to the butler’s pantry and grinned his approval before disappearing into the kitchen to pass out two plates of soup for Julia to serve. Mrs. Pippy disappeared.
Having tucked Tamea’s chair in under her, Dan took his place opposite. Tamea looked around the dining room with frank approval. She appeared a trifle subdued by the somber richness of it, the vague shadows cast by the warm pale pink glow of the four candles in four old silver candlesticks, the dark bowl, flower-laden, in the center of the table.
Dan was aware that she was watching him; not until he had selected his soup spoon from among—to Tamea—a bewildering array of silverware, did she imitate his action. Her host instantly realized that the niceties of hospitality would have to be dispensed with for the sake of Tamea’s education; consequently, when Julia entered with some toasted crackers and approached Tamea with the intention of serving her first, Dan caught Julia’s eye and directed her to his side.
“You will serve me first,” he whispered and helped himself. Tamea did likewise.
“Now, her French father taught her to break her crackers into her soup and partake of the soup without regard to the resultant melody. I will see if she is a victim of habit,” he decided.
He waited. Tamea set the crackers on her butter plate, as she had observed him do; like him, she made no movement to eat them. Dan took up his butter knife and buttered a cracker. Tamea instantly searched out her butter knife—Dan would have been willing to wager considerable she had never seen one before—and buttered her cracker. Bite for bite and sip for sip she followed his lead, her smoky glance seldom straying from him. Observing that she was not using her napkin, Dan flirted his, on pretense of straightening it out, and respread it. Immediately Tamea unfolded her napkin and spread it.
“She’ll do,” Dan soliloquized. “Doesn’t know a thing, but has the God-given grace to know she doesn’t know and is smart enough not to try to four-flush. That girl has brains to spare. She speaks when she is spoken to, but tonight silence is not good for her. She must not think too much about her father.” Aloud he said: “Tamea, what was your life in Riva like?”
“Very simple, Dan Pritchard. While our family ruled Riva we were rulers with little ruling to do. Ten years ago my mother’s father died. After that my mother and I spent many months each year with my father aboard the Moorea. My mother did not speak good French, but my father would speak to me in no other tongue. He taught me to read and write French and English, and when I was twelve years old he brought a woman from Manga Riva to be my governess. She was half Samoan and half English, and she had been educated in England. The island blood called her back. She played the piano and was lazy and would get drunk if she could, but she feared my father, so she taught me faithfully each day when sober. My father paid her well—too well.”
“What became of her, Tamea?”
“She is dead. Influenza in nineteen eighteen. Our people do not survive it, although I was very ill with it. My father said it was his blood that saved me.”
“Doubtless. What did you do all day in Riva?”
“In the morning, early, I swam in the river or to the lagoon. The tiger shark seldom comes inside the reef. Then breakfast and lessons for two hours, then some sleep and more lessons late in the afternoon, followed, perhaps, by another swim. Then dinner and after dinner some music and song and perhaps a dance. Twice a year, sometimes three times a year, we would have a big feast when some schooner would call for water and supplies and offer trade for our copra. But my father controlled that.”
“Were you happy, Tamea?”
“Oh, yes, very!”
“When your mother died, was your father in Riva?”
“No, he came two months later. When he left I went with him, to go to school in Tahiti. I have lived two years in Tahiti, and studied English and French with a school teacher from Australia. She was governess to the children of a Frenchman who was a good friend of my father.”
“So that’s why you speak such good English.”
She smiled happily. “You think so, Monsieur Dan Pritchard?”
He nodded. “And do not call me Monsieur Dan Pritchard,” he suggested. “Just call me plain Dan.”
“As you like, Plain Dan.”
Julia, listening, burst into a guffaw, caught herself in the middle of it and was covered with confusion. Tamea looked at her very suspiciously, but Julia’s quick Celtic wit saved her. She pretended to have a violent fit of coughing.
“Do you think you will be happy in San Francisco, Tamea?” Dan queried, in an effort to stimulate conversation.
“Who knows? Where one is not known, where it is cold and there is neither singing nor dancing nor laughter nor love——”
“Oh, that will come after you get acquainted! The first thing you must do is to become familiar with your surroundings and outgrow a very natural feeling of loneliness and, perhaps, homesickness. Then you shall be sent to a boarding school and become a very fine young lady.”
The suggestion aroused no enthusiasm in his guest, so he tried a new tack and one which he felt assured would appeal to the eternal feminine in her.
“Tomorrow I shall ask Miss Morrison to go shopping with you and buy a wonderful wardrobe for you, Tamea.”
“I will take this woman Julia instead, if you please, Plain Dan,” she replied.
“Call me Dan,” he pleaded. “Just one word—Dan.”
She nodded. “How long will I stay in your house, Dan?”
“Why, as long as you care to, Tamea.”
Again the grateful and adorable smile. “Then I shall stay here with you always, Dan.”
“Do you think we can manage without quarreling?”
“There will be no quarreling.”
“But you will obey me, Tamea. You will recognize my authority and do exactly what I tell you to do.”
She sighed.
“Privately she thinks that’s a pretty large order,” Dan decided.
Slowly Tamea sipped a glass of light white wine and pecked, without enthusiasm, at a lamb chop. She sighed again.
“I am very tired, Dan,” she said wearily. “I cannot eat more. I would sleep.”
Dan nodded to Julia, who set her tray on the sideboard and stood prepared to escort her charge to bed. Tamea rose, walked around to Dan’s chair, put her arms around his neck and drew his head toward her until her cheek rested against his.
“You are a good father and kind. I shall love you,chéri,” she said softly. “You will kiss your little girl good night? No? But, yes, I demand it,mon père. There, that is better. . . . Good night. In the morning I will be brave; I will not be sad and oppress this household with my sorrows.”
She kissed him. It was not a mere peck but it was undoubtedly filial, and Dan indeed was grateful in a full realization of this.
“Good night, Tamea, dear child,” he said, and watched Julia lead her away.
He was still watching her as she crossed the entrance hall to the foot of the stairs, when the door of the butler’s pantry squeaked very slightly. Dan turned. Sooey Wan’s nose was at the aperture, and one of his slant eyes was bent appreciatively upon Dan.
“Get out,” Dan cried. “What are you spying for, you outrageous heathen?”
“Velly nice. Captain’s girl velly nice. Heap nice kissee, eh? You bet! Velly nice!”
Dan was instantly furious. “Sooey Wan,” he roared, “you’re fired!”
“Boss,” retorted Sooey Wan in dulcet, honeyed tones, “you klazy.”
The door slid back into place and Sooey Wan returned chuckling to the domain where he was king.
An hour later, as Dan finished his first postprandial cigar, he decided that after all there might be a modicum of truth in Sooey Wan’s assertion. Sane he might be now—that is, moderately sane—but for all that a still small voice had commenced to whisper that the extraordinary events of this day were but a preliminary to still more extraordinary events to follow. And that night he dreamed that a Chinese infant, with a tuft of white ribbon tied in a bow at his midriff and armed with bow and arrow, climbed up on the footboard of his bed and shot him, crying meanwhile:
“Velly nice! Velly, velly nice!”
CHAPTER VII
The guest chambers in Dan Pritchard’s home were two in number—richly furnished but solid looking rooms for men. Julia scuttled from one to the other, in a frenzy of indecision as to which was worthy to receive her charge, while Tamea sat at the head of the staircase and waited. Julia was several minutes making her decision as to whether Tamea would look best in the room with taupe carpet and the French gray single bed, or the one with the old-rose carpet and the old black walnut double bed. Finally she decided on the former, and then sought Mrs. Pippy to ask if Miss Morrison had sent over a spare nightgown. It developed that Miss Morrison had neglected this important detail, so Mrs. Pippy graciously donated one of her own and Julia returned with it.
Then she discovered that Tamea, being a young woman of initiative and decision, had very promptly solved the problem of sleeping quarters. While she had been no stranger to bedsteads and pillows, nevertheless her upbringing in Riva had taught Tamea that there was no necessity to be particular as to a lodging for the night. She could always glean an excellent rest on a mat spread on a stone floor, with a polished section of the trunk of a coco-palm as a pillow; and while waiting for Julia to return, the richly carpeted floor had attracted her attention. Promptly she lay down in the hall, pillowed her head on her arm and went to sleep almost instantly.
“Poor lamb!” murmured the sympathetic Julia, and fled to summon Mrs. Pippy to behold the unconventional guest. Mrs. Pippy gazed disapprovingly, shook her handsome silvery head as if to say, “Mr. Pritchard’s action in bringing this tomboy home for us to care for is quite beyondme!” and retired to her room again, still shaking her head.
Julia awakened her sleepy charge. “Come with me, Tammy, darlin’,” she pleaded. “Sure, the flure is no place for you.”
“It is very soft,” Tamea protested. “And very warm, for such a cold country.”
“Wait till Sooey Wan—bad cess to him!—puts the furnace out. Ye’d be froze shtiff in the mornin’, Tammy——”
“My name is Tamea Oluolu Larrieau. You may call me Tamea, but to others I must be Mademoiselle Larrieau.”
“Oh, sure, why not lave me call ye Tammy? Not a one but me will use that name.”
“Your desire is granted because you are kind to me, Julia.”
“Thank you, Tammy. Here, sit you down in this chair and I’ll take off your shlippers. . . . Now, thin, here’s your nightgown. Take off your clothes and put the nightgown on whilst I fix the bed for you and get you a dhrink of wather.”
Tamea held up Mrs. Pippy’s nightgown and looked it over critically. “The wife of the missionary in Riva had several such as this,” she commented. “It is not pretty. I had prettier ones than this aboard ship, but—for a reason—I brought no baggage ashore with me. I do not like this garment.” She tossed it through the open bathroom door into the tub.
“Now, Tammy,” began Julia, mildly expostulating.
“I will not wear it, Julia.”
“Sure, why not, Tammy, you little ninny, you?”
“What is a ninny?”
“Heaven knows,” the helpless Julia replied, “but I’m thinkin’ I’m it, whatever it may be. Why won’t you wear the nightgown, Tammy? Sure all nice gir’rls——”
“It belongs to her,” said Tamea and pointed majestically upward. “It bears the letterP.”
“Be the Rock of Cashel,” sighed poor Julia, “you’re windictive so you are,” and without further ado she went upstairs and brought down one of her own plainchemises de nuit. Without a word Tamea donned it and crept dutifully into bed.
“Do you not say your prayers before you get into bed, Tammy?” the pious Julia queried reproachfully.
Tamea shook her head, dark and beautiful against the snowy pillow. Julia sighed. Her own problems were always dumped, metaphorically speaking, in the lap of her Christian God, night and morning.
“This is truly a bed for a queen,” said Tamea thoughtfully. “Is Monsieur Dan Pritchard, then, a very rich man?”
“He have barrels of it,” Julia replied reverently.
“My father gave me to him, Julia.”
“Faith, an’ that’s where he showed his common sinse. Divil a finer gintleman could you find the wide wur’rld over.”
Fell a long silence. Then: “Where is Madame Pritchard?”
“The masther has never been married, Tammy.”
“What? Has he, then, in his house none but serving women?”
“Ssh! Don’t talk like that, Tammy. Of course he hasn’t.”
“Strange,” murmured Tamea thoughtfully. “He is different from other men of his race. Have no women sought his favor?”
Julia was embarrassed and exasperated. “How the divil should I know?” she protested indignantly.
“You live in this house. You are his servant. Have you not ears? Are you blind?”
“I never shpy on the masther.”
“Perhaps,” Tamea suggested, “it is because Monsieur Dan Pritchard has a hatred of women.”
“Sorra bit o’ that.”
“Then is it that women have a hatred of him?”
“They’d give the two eyes out of their heads to marry him.”
A silence. “All this is very strange, Julia.”
“Don’t worry about it, Tammy. Go to sleep now.”
“Here is a great mystery. Has Monsieur Dan Pritchard, then, no children?”
“Heaven forbid!” Julia was now thoroughly scandalized.
“Hereisa mystery. Does he not desire sons to inherit his name and wealth?”
“I never discussed the matther wit’ him.”
“This is, indeed, a strange country with strange customs.”
“We’ll think o’ that in the mornin’, Tammy darlin’. Shall I put out the light?”
“Yes, my good Julia. Good night.”
“Good night, dear.” Julia switched off the light and retired to the door. Here, poised for flight, she turned and shot back at her charge a question that had been perplexing her:
“Are you a Protestant or a Catholic, Tammy?”
“Neither,” murmured Tamea.
“Glory be! ’Tis not a Jew you are?”
“No.”
“Well, what, thin?”
“Are you trying to convert me, Julia?”
“I am not.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“I’m that curious, Tammy.”
“If you act like a missionary’s wife I shall dismiss you from my service, Julia. I have no religion. I am free. I do what I jolly well please. Yes, you bet.”
“An’ there’s an idea for you!” Julia soliloquized as she passed softly out. “Begorry, we’ll have a grand time of it with that one, so we will. Somebody’s been puttin’ notions in her head.Ochone!Where the divil was that one raised, I dunno. Angel that she is to look at she’s had a slack father an’ mother, I’ll lay odds on that.”
Julia sighed and went downstairs to seek the aid of Sooey Wan in scratching out the numbers of her choice on a ticket for the next day’s drawing in the Chinese lottery. She found Sooey Wan washing the dishes and singing softly.
“Are you singin’ or cryin’, Sooey Wan?” Julia greeted him.
“Hullah for hell,” said Sooey Wan. He tossed a soup plate to the ceiling and caught it deftly as it came down. “Boss ketchum velly nice girl,” he began.
“Can’t the poor man be kind to an orphan without you, you yellow divil, puttin’ dogs in windows?”
“Velly nice,” Sooey Wan repeated doggedly. “Pretty soon I think give boss many sons.”
“Say-y-y, what sort o’ place is this gettin’ to be, anyhow?”
“Pretty soon Sooey Wan think this going be legular place. One house no ketchum baby, no legular house.”
“Say nothin’ to Mrs. Pippy of what’s in that ould head of yours, Sooey Wan. What wit’ one haythen downstairs an’ another upstairs the woman’ll be givin’ notice.”
Sooey Wan pulled open a drawer in the kitchen table and tossed out a handful of bills and silver. “Ketchum ten spot for you today, Julia,” he explained. “You lucky. Ketchum ten spot, ketchum pearl.”
“Faith, you’ll catch more than that if you don’t lear’rn to mind your own business,” Julia warned him.
Long after the household had retired Dan Pritchard sat before the living room fireplace reviewing in his mind’s eye the startling events of that day. He felt depressed, obsessed by an unreasonable, wholly inexplicable presentiment of events still more startling to occur in the not very distant future.
As a rule, the majority of women puzzled Dan, many of them frightened him, and all of them disturbed him. Of all the women he had ever known, Maisie Morrison alone appeared to possess the gift of contributing to his mental rest, his sense of spiritual well-being, even while her practical, definite and positive personality occasionally disturbed his creature comfort, robbed him of that sense of leadership and strength which it is the right of all men to exhibit toward the women of their choice, and appeared to render null and void the necessity for any exhibition of the protective instinct. Infrequently Dan complained to himself that Maisie would be a transcendently wonderful girl if she but possessed just a trifle more imagination; having convinced himself that this was so, he would watch for definite evidence to convict Maisie of such a lack, only to be hurled back into his old state of mental confusion by indubitable evidence that Maisie could read him and his innermost thoughts as readily as if he were a signboard.
When he had complained to Maisie that morning that he was a square peg in the round hole, he had voiced the unrest which all born radicals experience when forced to live conservatively. For Dan knew he was a radical in his viewpoint on many things held sacred by his conservative brethren; he knew he lacked the instinctive caution and constructive conservatism so evident in Maisie. He felt as one whose soul was hobbled with a ball and chain. Maisie, he knew, suffered from no such sense of repression, and this knowledge of her mental freedom sometimes forced upon him a secret, almost womanish irritation.
Sometimes Dan was almost convinced that he ought to rid himself of his habit of introspection, marry Maisie and live happily ever afterward. Then, just as he would be almost on the point of growing loverlike, Maisie would seem to pop out at him from a mental ambush; would seem to lay a cool finger on the soul of him and say quite positively: “Here, Dan, is where it hurts. The pain isn’t where you think it is at all. You are a foolish, imaginative man, and if you do not heed my direction now, you will eventually regret that you did not.”
And then Dan, outwardly smiling and expansive but inwardly glum and shriveling, would tell himself that he could never, never dwell in idyllic married bliss with such a dominating and interfering woman; and Maisie, secretly furious, baffled, would watch him change from the devoted admirer to the warm friend.
Tonight Dan decided that he was, beyond the slightest vestige of a doubt, tremendously fond of Maisie Morrison. But—he was not at all certain that he loved her well enough to ask her to marry him; he marveled now, more than ever previously, what imp of impulse had moved him to kiss her that morning. How warm and sweet and responsive had been that momentary pressure of her lips to his? He visualized again that lambent light that had leaped into her eyes. . . had he gone too far?
The telephone in the booth under the stairs in the entrance hall rang faintly. He reached for the extension telephone on the living room table and said: “Yes, Maisie?”
“How did you know it was I?” Maisie’s voice demanded.
“I cannot answer that question, Maisie. I merely knew. You see, I was just beginning to think that I might have called you up and——”
“Indeed, yes,” she interrupted. How like her, he reflected. Her agile brain was always leaping ahead to a conclusion and landing on it fairly and squarely. “I have waited three hours for a report from you, Dan, and when eleven o’clock came and you had not telephoned I couldn’t restrain my curiosity any longer. Mrs. Pippy telephoned about seven o’clock and told me an extraordinary and unbelievable tale of a semi-savage young woman whom you had brought home and established as a guest in your bachelor domicile. Mrs. Pippy tried her best to appear calm, but I sensed——”
“I’m quite certain you did, Maisie,” he interrupted in turn. “You sensed Mrs. Pippy’s amazement, indignation and disapproval. You’re the most marvelous woman for sensing things that I have ever known.”
“But then, Dan,” she reminded him, “you haven’t known very many women intimately. You’re such a shy man. Sometimes I think you must have gleaned all of your knowledge of my sex from your father and Sooey Wan. Who is the South Sea belle, Dan, and whatdoyou mean by picking up with such a creature and expecting me to help you render her presentable?”
“I didn’t expect you to, Maisie. I didn’t ask you and I didn’t suggest that Mrs. Pippy ask you.”
“I couldn’t get any very coherent information from Mrs. Pippy. She was greatly agitated. However, I called Julia up a few minutes later and from Julia I learned that your guest hasn’t sufficient of a wardrobe to pad a crutch.”
“Julia is very amusing,” he replied evenly. “However, do not think the young lady arrived here in a hula-hula costume. I am her guardian.”
“How do you know you are?” Maisie demanded, a bit crisply.
“Her father, Captain Larrieau, of our schooner Moorea, asked me to be before he died this afternoon.”
“Hum-m-m!” Maisie was silent momentarily. “How like a man to think he can fill such an order without outside help.”
He was exasperated. “There you go, Maisie,” he complained, “jumping to a conclusion.”
“If I’ve jumped to a conclusion, Dan, rest assured I have landed squarely on my objective. Why didn’t you telephone me the instant you reached home with your ward? I would have been happy to aid you, Dan.”
“I am sure you would have been, Maisie, but—well——”
“I knew I was right, Dan. The only way I can find things out is to be rude and ask questions. You thought I might not approve of——”
“Of what?” he demanded triumphantly.
“Of the young woman you brought home with you, of course.” Maisie’s voice carried just a hint of irritation.
“Certainly not. I was certain you would approve of her. She’s quite a child—about seventeen or eighteen years old, I should say—and a perfectly dazzling creature—ah, that is, amazingly interesting in her directness, her frankness, her unconventionality and innocence. I do hope you’ll like her. I thought at first I could entrust her to Mrs. Pippy but——”
“I gathered as much, Dan. Now, start at the beginning and tell me everything about her.”
Dan complied with her demand. When the recital was ended, said Maisie: “What are you going to do with her, Dan?”
“My instructions from her father were to educate her and affiance her to some worthy fellow. I shall cast my eye around the local French colony after the girl has completed her schooling. She has a fortune of approximately a quarter of a million dollars—always an interesting subject for contemplation and discussion in the matrimonial preliminaries.” He heard her chuckle softly and realized that she found amusement visualizing him in the role of a matchmaker. “I suppose,” he ventured, “you’re wondering why I didn’t take her to a hotel.”
“Any other man in your sphere of life would, but I am not so optimistic as to expect you to do the usual thing. I’m consumed with curiosity to see your Tamea, Dan.”
“A meeting can be arranged,” he answered dryly. “As soon as my little queen has had an opportunity to purchase a wardrobe befitting her rank and wealth, I shall be happy to have you presented at court, Maisie.”
“I suppose you’re going to select her wardrobe?”
“No, I think Julia will attend to that.”
“In heaven’s name, Dan, why Julia? Have you ever seen Julia all dressed up and about to set out for Golden Gate Park? Mrs. Pippy has excellent taste.”
“Mrs. Pippy is not, I fear, the favorite of the queen.”
“Then I shall attend to her outfitting, Dan.
“Will you, Maisie, dear?”
“Of course, idiot.”
“Well, that lifts a burden off my shoulders.”
“You do not deserve such consideration, Dan. You’re too uncommunicative when you are the possessor of amazing news. However, you’re such a helpless, blundering Simple Simon I knew somebody would have to manage you while you’re managing Tamea. So I concluded to volunteer for the sacrifice.”
“Maisie, you’re a peach. I could kiss you for that speech.”
“Really, you’re running wild, Dan. You kissed me once today. And I’ve been wondering why ever since.”
“How should I know?” he confessed. He had a sudden, freakish impulse to annoy her.
“Stupid! Were I as stupid as you—— I’ll be at your house at about ten o’clock tomorrow and take charge of your problem.”
“I shall be eternally grateful.”
“And eternally silly and eternally afraid of me and what I’m going to think about everything. I could pull your nose. Good night.” She hung up without waiting for his answer.
“I fear me Maisie is the bossy, efficient type of young woman,” he soliloquized as he replaced the receiver. “I hope she and Tamea will hit it off together. I sincerely hope it.”
At midnight Sooey Wan came in from Chinatown, following a prodigious burning of devil papers in a local joss-house and a somewhat profitable two hours of poker.
His slant eyes appraised Dan kindly. “Boss,” he ordered, “go bed. You all time burn ’em too muchee light, too muchee coal, too muchee wood. Cost muchee money.” He moved briskly about the room, switching off the electric light. “Too muchee thinkee, too muchee headache,” he warned Dan. “You not happy, boss, you thinkee too much. No good!”
“Oh, confound your Oriental philosophy!” Dan rasped back at him. “The curse of it is, you’re right!”
Sooey Wan pointed authoritatively upward and Dan slowly climbed the stairs to his room.
Thus ended a momentous day.
CHAPTER VIII
At breakfast the following morning Maisie Morrison decided to make no mention to her aunt and uncle of the interesting bit of news concerning Dan Pritchard of which she was the possessor.
Always cautious and conservative, she preferred to place herself in full possession of the facts in the case, and to have this information bolstered up by her own feeling about the situation following a meeting with Dan’s ward, before discussing his business with anybody.
Maisie was mildly amused in the knowledge that Dan, of all men, should have such a problem thrust upon him; she looked forward with no little interest to watching the peculiar man approach his unusual duty. She expected if she mentioned the matter that old Casson would laugh patronizingly and pretend to find the situation devoid of a mature man’s interest; he might even indulge himself in some light and caustic criticism, with a touch of elephantine humor in it. That had seemed to be his attitude toward Dan for a year past and Maisie resented it fiercely—all the more fiercely, in fact, because her position in Casson’s household forbade an expression of her resentment.
“I think I shall motor to Del Monte this morning for two weeks of golf,” old Casson announced to his wife and Maisie at breakfast. “Suppose you two pack up and go with me.”
“I think that would be delightful, John,” his wife replied.
“I have other fish to fry. Sorry!” Maisie answered him. “If you had hinted of this yesterday, Uncle John——”
“My dear Maisie, the idea but this moment occurred to me. Better alter your plans and come along.”
She shook her head.
“It occurred to me this instant—as I have already stated—” Casson continued, “to escape boredom for two weeks. Our schooner Moorea is in port and will remain here that long, in all probability. That means the office will be set by the heels. Her bear-like skipper, Larrieau, will go roaring from one room to the other, disturbing everybody except Pritchard and amusing everybody except me. I cannot tolerate the man, and if I should see too much of him I fear I might forget his record for efficiency and dismiss him. He was a pet of Dan’s father, and Dan, too, makes much of him. I dislike pets in a business office.”
Maisie looked at him coolly. “Then you will be happy to know that your contemplated exile to Del Monte is quite unnecessary, Uncle John. Captain Larrieau was discovered, upon arrival, to be a leper, so he sent ashore for Dan, settled all of his business and committed suicide by drowning yesterday evening.”
“Bless my soul! Where did you glean this astounding intelligence?”
“I talked with Dan over the telephone late last night.”
“You should have told me sooner, Maisie.”
Old Casson’s voice was stern; his weak, handsome face pretended chagrin.
“Why?”
“Why? What a question! Isn’t the man in my employ—or, at least, wasn’t he?”
“He was in the employ of Casson and Pritchard, and Dan Pritchard has attended to the matter for the firm.”
“I should have been communicated with immediately. Pritchard should have telephoned to me, not to you.”
“Oh dear, Uncle John! One would think you revered the man so highly you planned to have the bay dragged to recover his body, instead of being happy in the knowledge that you have gotten rid of the nuisance.”
“Humph-h-h-h! We’ll not discuss it further, my dear. However, it is difficult for me to refrain from expressing my irritation. How like young Pritchard it was to disregard me entirely in this matter! For all the deference or consideration that fellow pays me as the senior member of the firm, I might as well be a traffic policeman.”
Maisie’s fine eyes flamed in sudden anger. “Has it ever occurred to you, Uncle John, that in declining to annoy you with unnecessary details, by his persistence in relieving you of the labor and worry of the business management of Casson and Pritchard, Dan may be showing you the courtesy and consideration due you as the senior member of the firm?”
“I am not a back number—yet, Maisie,” he assured her.
“Why do you not buy him out, Uncle John? He seems to be a very great trial to you.”
Old Casson appeared to consider this suggestion very seriously as he gravely tapped the shell of his matutinal egg. “That isn’t a half bad idea, Maisie,” he answered. “At present, however, I am scarcely in position to buy his interest. I anticipate this condition will be materially changed within the next three or four months, and then——”
He paused eloquently and scooped his egg into the glass.
“I infer you have a hen on,” Maisie suggested.
“Perhaps the metaphor would be less mixed if we substituted a goose for the hen. I believe the goose is the fowl currently credited with the ability to lay golden eggs.”
“John Casson!” His wife now spoke for the first time. “Are you mixed in another gamble?”
“Not at all, my dear, not at all. I have invested in several cargoes of Chinese rice at a very low price, and I have sold one cargo at a very high price. I am holding the others for the crest of a market that is rising like a toy balloon. It isn’t gambling, my dear. It’s just a mortal certainty.”
The good lady sighed. How often, in the thirty years of her life with John Casson, had she heard him, in those same buoyant, confident, mellifluous tones, assure her of the infallibility of victory due to his superior judgment!
As usual, Maisie placed her finger on the sore spot. “What does Dan think of it, Uncle John?”
“He doesn’t think anything, my dear. He doesn’t know.”
“Oh, I see! This is a private venture of yours?”
He nodded. “Yes—and no, Maisie. It’s a Casson and Pritchard deal, only I’m engineering it myself. I’m going to prove to that overconfident young man the truth of the old saying ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained.’ Why, the biggest thing in years lay right under his nose—and he passed it by.”
“He was in Honolulu on that pineapple deal when you stumbled across this good thing, was he not, Uncle John?”
“Yes, but then he knew about it before he left for Honolulu.”
“Well, I hope you’ll make a killing, Uncle John.”
He beamed his thanks upon her. “When I do—and I cannothelpdoing it—I’m going to be mighty nice to my niece,” he assured her. “However,” he continued reminiscently, “my day for taking a sporting chance is over. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Have you?” his wife ventured hopefully.
“Just to prove to you that I have,” he challenged, “if I get an offer of twenty-four cents per pound, f.o.b. Havana, today, I’ll sell every pound of rice I have in transit or hold under purchase contract.”
“What was the market yesterday, John?”
“Twenty-three cents.”
“Sell at that today,” Maisie urged him.
He smiled and shook his head. These women! How little they knew of the great game of business! How little did they realize that, to succeed, a man must be possessed of an amazing courage, a stupendous belief in his own powers, in his knowledge of the game he is playing. Maisie read him accurately. He was as easy to read as an electric sign.
When he had departed for the office, Mrs. Casson, a dainty, very youthful appearing woman of fifty-five, and long since robbed of any illusions concerning certain impossible phases of her husband’s character spoke up:
“Sometimes, Maisie, I suspect John Casson is in his second childhood.”
“You’re wrong, Auntie. In some respects he hasn’t emerged from his first childhood. For instance, Uncle John is nurturing the belief that Dan isn’t aware of his operations.”
“You think Dan knows?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Has he told you so?”
“No.”
“He ought to be told.”
“I shall tell him—this very morning. Uncle John, wrapped in his supreme sense of self-sufficiency, appears to have forgotten that in an unlimited partnership each partner is irrevocably bound by the actions of the other.”
“I wonder at Dan’s patience with him.”
“I do not. Dan has explained it to me.”
Mrs. Casson’s maternal glance dwelt tenderly upon her dead sister’s daughter. “Maisie, I want to talk to you about Dan,” she began, but Maisie raised a deprecating hand.
“What profit could possibly arise from such a discussion?”
Mrs. Casson, however, was a woman driven by curiosity. “I wonder if he is in love with you, my dear. Sometimes I am almost certain of it, and at other times I am not so certain.”
“I think dear old simple Dan finds himself similarly afflicted.”
“Well?” The query, the inflection and the dramatic pause before the good soul continued were not lost on Maisie. “Why don’t you do something about it, dear?”
“Why should I?”
“You’re twenty-four years old—and certainly Dan Pritchard is the most eligible bachelor in your set. And I know you’re very, very fond of him.”
“Everybody is. He is wholly lovable.”
“Well, then, Maisie——”
“Men dislike pursuit, dear. That is their peculiar prerogative. I prefer to be dear to Dan Pritchard, as his closest friend, rather than to disturb him as a prospective wife. Dan is old-fashioned, quite dignified, idealistic, altruistic, artistic, and as shy and retiring as a rabbit. I’m certain he isn’t the least bit interested in your plans to alter his scheme of existence by adding a wife to it.”
“You’d marry Dan Pritchard tomorrow if he asked you today.”
“Perhaps,” Maisie agreed. “However, I shall not pursue him nor shall I hurl myself at him. I prefer to operate on the principle that, after all, I may prove more or less eligible myself!”
“You desire to be pursued, I see.”
“What woman does not—by the right man?”
“Then is Dan Pritchard the right man?”
“No woman could really answer such a question truthfully until after she had been married to Dan. I have never given much thought to Dan as a matrimonial possibility.”
“That is an admission that you have at least given himsomethought, Maisie.”
“Of course, silly. What is a girl to think when a man’s freakish humor dictates that he shall develop all of the outward evidences of a sentimental interest one week and shrink from exhibiting the slightest evidence of it a week later? Sometimes I think that Dan is a habit with me; sometimes I’m quite certain I am a habit with him. I think I was twelve years old when Dan took me to a vaudeville show one Saturday afternoon. I remember I held his hand all through the show and he fed me so much candy I was ill. However, he is a pleasant and delightful habit to me, and I am not anxious to renounce him; I hope he feels the same toward me. By the way, I have an engagement with him this morning. I must run along and dress.”
She left her aunt gazing speculatively after her. Mrs. Casson shook her head and sighed. “It’s her frightful spirit of independence,” she soliloquized. “She scares him away. I just know it. And I do wish I knew what to do about it.”
Providentially, she did not!