CHAPTER XII
Meanwhile, back in Dan’s office, the childishly curious Tamea had started a critical inspection of the room. She looked in the wash closet, turned on the water, inspected the books in the bookcase and the model of a clipper ship on top of it, and presently discovered on the side of Dan’s desk a row of push buttons. She touched one of these and almost immediately Dan’s secretary, Miss Mather, entered the office. She glanced around and failing to see Pritchard, she said:
“You called me?”
Tamea shook her head and Miss Mather excused herself and retired. Instantly Tamea pressed another button, and to her amazement a youth of about sixteen summers entered, gazed around the room and said:
“Yes’m. Whadja want? Me?”
Tamea solemnly shook her head and the youth departed, mystified, leaving her with a delightful sense of occult power. She tried another button, and some thirty seconds later a bald-headed man, the chief clerk, entered very deferentially.
“Ha! ha!” Tamea laughed. “Nothing doing, Monsieur, nothing, I assure.”
The chief clerk retired, registering amazement, and Tamea adventured with the fourth button, this time without result. So she turned her attention to the telephone switch box and commenced pressing buttons and ringing bells all over the suite of Casson and Pritchard, with the result that everybody was trying to answer his telephone at once. Impelled by curiosity, Tamea picked up the receiver just in time to hear a tiny voice say very distinctly: “Hello! Hello! Casson speaking.”
With a shriek she dropped the receiver. Here, indeed, was magic. Trembling and white, she pressed all four push buttons in succession, and again Miss Mather entered.
“It speaks,” Tamea gasped. “There are devils in this house.Regardez!”
Miss Mather saw the dangling telephone receiver and replaced it on the hook. “It is silent now. The devil is dumb,” she assured Tamea. “Have you never seen a telephone before?”
“But no, never. And I press here—and here—and servants come without a summons. This is proof that Monsieur Dan Pritchard is indeed a great chief.”
“He is a very kind chief, at any rate. We all love him here.”
Tamea stared at Miss Mather disapprovingly. “I have heard that he is much beloved by women.” She frowned. “You may go,” she decreed.
Miss Mather, highly amused, retired. At the door she found the office boy, the chief clerk and Dan Pritchard about to enter, and explained to them the reason for the excitement. Dan entered, chuckling.
“You laugh!” Tamea challenged him haughtily.
“Yes, and I laugh at you.”
“Is that—what shall I say—very nice, very polite?”
“No, but I can’t help it. However, I’ll be fair with you, Tamea. You may laugh at me whenever you desire.”
“I shall never desire to laugh at you, Dan.”
“Forgive me, my dear.” He got his hat and overcoat from the closet. “We will go home now, Tamea.”
She took hold of his hand and walked with him thus out through the general office and down the hall. He was slightly embarrassed and wished that she would let go his hand, but he dared not suggest it. During the swift drop in the elevator Tamea gasped, quivered and clung tightly to his arm. When the car reached the lobby and the passengers made their exit, the girl retreated into the corner and dragged Dan with her.
“We get out here, Tamea.”
“I know, dear one. But I like this. It is a longer and swifter fall than when the stern of a schooner drops down a heavy sea. I would rise once more.”
“Oh, come, Tamea! This is nonsense. One does not ride in an elevator unless one has to.”
“Is a second ride, then, forbidden by this man?” She indicated the elevator operator.
“No, you may ride up and down all day if you desire. But it’s so silly, Tamea.”
“In this country men fear they may be thought foolish. But you are a brave man. You will not deny your Tamea this simple pleasure.” He frowned. “Very well. I obey.”
Tamea started for the door; but Dan pressed her back into the corner again; the elevator operator favored him with a knowing grin and the car shot upward without a pause to the fifteenth floor. . . .
When they were settled in the limousine the girl reached again for his hand and possessed herself of it. “I think I shall be very happy with you,” she confided.
He reflected that Tamea would always be happy if given free rein to her desires. Aloud he said: “Tamea, it is my duty to make you happy.”
Gratefully she cuddled his hand to her cheek and implanted upon it a fervent kiss.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Certainement.”
They rolled out Market Street through the heavy evening traffic, and presently were climbing to the crest of Twin Peaks. As the car swept around the last curve and gave a view of the city from the Potrero to the Cliff House snuggled below them, Tamea gasped. A little wisp of fog was creeping in the Golden Gate, but the light, still lingering although the sun had almost set, clothed the city in an amethyst haze that softened its ugly architecture and made of it a thing of superlative beauty. The sweep of blue bay, the islands and the shipping, the departing light heliographed from the western windows of homes on the Alameda County shore, the high green hills on the eastern horizon, all combined to make a picture so impressively beautiful that Tamea, born with the appreciation of beauty so distinct a characteristic of her mother’s race, sighed with the shock of it. Graves had stopped the car and the girl gazed her fill in silence.
“I wanted to bring you up here and prove to you that ours is not an ugly land, although not so beautiful perhaps as Riva,” Dan explained.
Then they swept down the western slope of Twin Peaks, up the Great Highway along the Pacific shore and home through Golden Gate Park. As was his custom, Dan opened the front door with his latchkey and he and Tamea stepped into the hall.
“You have an hour in which to dress for dinner, child,” he told her. “Ring for Julia. She will help you.”
The girl came close to him, drew his head down on her shoulder and pressed her lips to his ear.
“Yesterday,” she whispered, “was a day of sorrow. It did not seem that I could bear it. But today has been so joyous I have almost forgotten my sorrow; in a week it will be quite gone. To you I am indebted for this great happiness.”
She kissed him rapturously, first on one cheek, then on the other, and Dan reflected that this Gallic form of osculation had evidently been learned from old Gaston of the Beard. How warm and soft her lips were, how fragrant her breath and hair! In the dim light of the hall her marvelous eyes beamed up at him with a light that suddenly set his pulse to pounding wildly. A tremor ran through him.
“You tremble, dear one,” the girl whispered. “You are cold! Ah, but my love shall warm,” and she lifted her lips to his.
She was Circe, born again. Decidedly, here was dangerous ground. He was far too intelligent not to realize the complication that might ensue should he yield to this sudden gust of desire, this strange new yearning never felt before, this impulse for possession without passion, that shook his very soul. He told himself he must continue to play a part, to decline to take her otherwise than paternally, to evade, at all hazard, the pitfall yawning before him.
“It is not well to think too long or too hard,” Tamea whispered. “Your people count the costs, but mine do not.”
Apparently the amazing creature knew of what he was thinking! He was cornered, he would have to escape and that quickly. “I was just thinking, Tamea, that my house will be lonely after your bright presence,” he said, a trifle unsteadily.
She gasped. “You plan to send me from you, Dan Pritchard?”
“Temporarily, my dear. In spring the climate of this part of California is too cold and raw for you. Tomorrow you and Julia and Mrs. Pippy will go in the car to Del Monte, where it is more like your own country. After you have been there a month and have grown accustomed to our ways, you will go to a convent to be educated.”
She stood with her hands on his shoulders, pondering this. Then: “This is your desire?”
“Yes.”
She looked into the very soul of him. “I do not believe that,” she declared and looked up at him so wistfully that his reason tottered on its throne and fell, crashing, into the valley of his desire. He crushed her to him and their lips met. . . .
Out of the semi-darkness a familiar voice spoke. “Captain’s girl velly nice. What Sooey Wan tell you, boss? Now you ketchum heap savvy.”
Dan Pritchard fled upstairs, leaving the triumphant Tamea to follow at her leisure. “Fool, fool!” The voice of conscience beat in his brain.
“That wasn’t kind of me. . . no, not even sensible. . . . I’ve spoiled, everything. . . Maisie. . . . Why wasn’t I man enough to be strong?. . . Gaston entrusted her to me and I’ve failed. . . .”
As he reached the door of his room Tamea’s voice floated up the stairway. She was singing a pæan of triumph, and she sang it in her mother tongue. Ah, youth and love and golden dreams! In Tamea’s heart there was no longer room for sorrow, in her primitive but wonderfully acute intelligence there was no room for disturbing reflections touching the whys and wherefores which, in Dan Pritchard’s world, were concomitant with all decisions and made the wisdom of all issues doubtful.
“She is exotic—overpowering, like a seductive perfume. She appeals profoundly, in her solitary state, to my sympathy; her beauty, her vitality, her unspoiled and innocent outlook, the impulsiveness and naturalness of her desire, in which, from her viewpoint, there is nothing to criticize, all conspire to drive me into the very situation I would avoid because I know it to be ruinous. ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.’ Kipling knew. When they do meet it is only an illusion of meeting, and the illusion fades. And yet, from the moment that girl first gazed upon me, Maisie has been receding farther and farther from my conscious mind. An incredibly bad compliment to Maisie, and the deuce of it is I think that, subconsciously, Maisie realizes this. What a cad I have been!”
Julia knocked at his door. “Miss Morrison on the ’phone, sir.”
He went into the hall and took down the receiver. “Yes, Maisie.”
“Dan, dear,” Maisie replied, almost breathlessly, “would you think me very forward if I were to invite myself to dinner at your house tonight?”
“Indeed I would not! As a matter of fact, Maisie, I very much desire your presence at dinner tonight. I wasn’t quite aware of this desire until you spoke, but I think that in about five minutes the same bright idea would have occurred to me.”
“Uncle John came home in an ill humor. Scolded me all the way up and complained to me about you, and of course that put me in a bad temper——”
“Why have your dinner spoiled by being forced to sit and listen to your avuncular relative rave? Shall I send my car for you?”
“Do, please!” A silence. Then: “You’re quite sure you would have telephoned and invited me to dinner if I had not telephoned and invited myself?”
“Positive, Maisie. I’m at a loose end. I need your moral support. My duties as a foster father——”
“I understand. I thought too, Dan, it might relieve you of your embarrassment if the school or convent question could be settled tonight. I’ve been doing some thinking and am prepared to submit a plan.”
“Good news! Graves will call for you at seven o’clock. And by the way, my oldest and dearest man friend, Mark Mellenger, is coming. You met him in the office this afternoon.”
“Good! Is he interesting, Dan?”
“The Lord made but one Mellenger and then the plates were destroyed. He dines with me every Thursday night he is in town. He’s a newspaper man and Thursday is his day off. He celebrates it with me. Women have never appeared to interest Mel, and I’m looking forward to watching the effect on him of two extremes in interesting and charming women.”
“So Tamea has grown up—so soon,” Maisie challenged. Then she added, while he searched his puzzled mind for an answer: “Thank you so much for asking me over, Dan. Until a quarter past seven, then. Good-by, booby!”
CHAPTER XIII
When Dan came downstairs he found Mark Mellenger seated before the fire in the living room. Sooey Wan stood before him, vigorously shaking a cocktail mixer and discussing volubly with the newspaper man some inside facts concerning the latest tong war in Chinatown.
“Hello, here come boss. Hello, boss. How my boy tonight, eh? Velly happy, eh?” Thus Sooey Wan, his idol face wreathed in a smile that indicated his entire satisfaction with the world as at that moment constituted. Dan glared at him, for he knew the thought uppermost in that curious Oriental mind; Sooey Wan assimilated the hint but continued to grin and giggle. Mellenger stood up.
“I drink success to your administration of your new job,” he said.
“It’s a perfectly horrible job, Mel, and nothing but woe can come out of it. Keeping pace with Tamea is a real chore.”
“Would that the gods had favored me with her father’s faith and friendship. Dan, that girl is as glorious as a tropical sunset.”
“I thought something had happened to you, Mel. So you’re a casualty, eh? And in the name of the late Jehoshaphat, what do you mean by coming to my house in dinner clothes? I have never suspected you of owning dinner clothes.”
“I am a very easy man to fit in ready-made clothing,” his guest replied. “I bought these after leaving your office tonight. Made up my mind you’d be dining more or less formally.”
“But my dear Mel, you might have known Tamea would not have considered youde tropif you had appeared for dinner in a suit of striped pajamas.”
“No, but Miss Morrison would.”
“What sorcery is this? I did not invite her until twenty minutes ago.”
Mellenger drank his cocktail slowly and thoughtfully and held out his glass for Sooey Wan’s further attention.
“I am not one of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not. I’m a fairly good judge of human nature, and I always judge the characters of men and women—particularly women—the moment the sample is submitted. Which reminds me that for the first time I suspect you of a failure to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“That’s a definite charge. State your specification.”
Mellenger’s somewhat heavy, impassive face lighted humorously. “Now, didn’t Miss Morrison invite herself?” he challenged.
Dan’s mouth flew open in amazement. “Yes. How did you know?”
Mellenger sat down and gazed owlishly at the fire before replying: “I had a suspicion, amounting to a moral certainty, that she would. Usually, as you know, I am a careless fellow. I snatch quick meals in cheap restaurants and I work like a dog. Hence my one day of rest is devoted to rest, meditation and observation. Observation and subsequent meditation convinced me that Miss Morrison would be a guest here tonight.”
“Remarkable man!”
“I had never had the privilege of meeting Miss Morrison before this afternoon,” Mellenger continued. “A very striking, intelligent, splendid looking girl. She has brains and wit.”
“How do you know? She spoke four-words to you—‘How do you do?’”
“She has eyes. Why have you delayed marrying her? You’re a bit of a dodo, Dan.”
“How do I know she’d marry me, Mel?”
“Because you do not know constitutes the basis for my charge that you’re a bit of a dodo. Anybody else would know.” He looked up at Dan suddenly, his gray, deep-set eyes very earnest under shaggy brows. “Are you aware that this very excellent young woman is deeply in love with you?”
“No, I’m not.”
Mellenger sighed. “Have you ever suspected she might be?”
“That sounds presumptuous, Mel. Of course, once in a while——”
“You have suspected it but have banished the suspicion. . . . You’re very comfortable here; you’re rich and getting richer; you have a yearning to chuck business one day and woo art.” He stared again at the fire and sipped at his cocktail. “The victim of a suppressed artistic desire is loath to give hostages to fortune in the way of a wife and children. Good Lord, I’ve written a trunkful of short stories and novels that haven’t sold; I have never been satisfied with one of them, and until I am satisfied I have planned to remain single and live in a hotel. . . . Everybody in town in your set knows how Maisie Morrison feels toward you. Your indifference constitutes a choice topic of conversation among the tea tabbies.”
“You are a mine of information, Mel.”
“I get it from our society editor. She knows all the gossip.”
“Oh!”
“Ever consider marrying Miss Morrison, Dan?”
“Yes, I have.”
“He who hesitates is lost, my friend.”
Dan’s face had suddenly gone haggard. “I must not hesitate,” he murmured, “or I may be lost.”
“Yes,” Mellenger agreed coolly, “only in this case suppose we substitute for the wordmaythe wordshall.”
“Tamea?” asked Dan.
Mellenger nodded. “She is exotic, marvelous, irresistible—just the sort of woman to sweep an idealistic ass like you off his feet—into the abyss. Maisie Morrison knows that, and Tamea, young as she is, knows that Maisie Morrison knows it. This afternoon in your office your ward favored you with an impulsive, childish hug and kiss. That was a stab to the other girl. They exchanged swift glances. There was challenge in Maisie’s and triumph and purpose in Tamea’s.”
“This is perfectly horrible, Mel.”
“We-l-l, at any rate it’s inconvenient and embarrassing. It would be horrible for Maisie to have to come to a realization that this half-caste islander had won you away from her—and it would be very horrible for you to arrive at the same realization after it was too late.”
“But I entertain no such crazy intention.”
“You don’t know what intentions youmayentertain. You may never truly fall in love with Tamea, but—you may become infatuated with her. She has a singularly potent lure for men—men who love beauty and fire and vitality—men who feel mentally crowded by a mediocre world. I have known such men, when infatuated, to sacrifice everything they valued in life for the transient favor of women who did not assay very highly in mental or moral values. As a matter of fact, my boy, you are infatuated with Tamea already.”
“How do you know?”
“I do not know how or why I know. I just know it, and now I am sure I know it. Forget it, Dan.”
Pritchard’s head sunk on his chest in the thoughtful, half sad posture that Maisie termed the Abraham Lincoln look. He sighed and said presently, “What should I do about it, Mel?”
“Get this girl out of your life at once and marry Maisie Morrison as soon as you can procure a license.”
“I think that’s very sound advice, Mel.”
“I think so, too.”
Mellenger drifted over to the piano and commenced playing very softly; the words of the song he played rang in Dan Pritchard’s mind with something of the sad poignancy of the distant tolling of church bells:
Tow-see mon-ga-lay, my dear,You’ll leave me some day, I fear,Sailing home across the seaTo blue-eyed girl in Melikee.If you stay, I love you true,If you leave me—no can do!Me no cry, me only sayTow-see mon-ga-lay.
Tow-see mon-ga-lay, my dear,You’ll leave me some day, I fear,Sailing home across the seaTo blue-eyed girl in Melikee.If you stay, I love you true,If you leave me—no can do!Me no cry, me only sayTow-see mon-ga-lay.
Tow-see mon-ga-lay, my dear,You’ll leave me some day, I fear,Sailing home across the seaTo blue-eyed girl in Melikee.If you stay, I love you true,If you leave me—no can do!Me no cry, me only sayTow-see mon-ga-lay.
Tow-see mon-ga-lay, my dear,
You’ll leave me some day, I fear,
Sailing home across the sea
To blue-eyed girl in Melikee.
If you stay, I love you true,
If you leave me—no can do!
Me no cry, me only say
Tow-see mon-ga-lay.
“Yes”—Mellenger resumed the train of his thoughts—“my advice is eminently sound—but you’ll not follow it.” The doorbell rang. “There’s Maisie Morrison now, Dan.”
“I shall ask her this very night to marry me, Mel.”
“I think not, old-timer.”
“You are a very wise man, Monsieur Mel.”
Tamea spoke from the doorway and Dan, looking up startled, beheld her standing there, a thing of beauty, dazzling, glorious, shimmering, in a dinner gown of old rose that displayed her matchless figure to bewildering perfection. Her eyes, not flashing but softly luminous, were bent upon Dan Pritchard a little bit sadly, a little bit puzzled.
“I have been a stranger here,chéri,” she said very distinctly, “but you have looked with favor upon your Tamea, Dan Pritchard—and we are strangers to each other no longer. You are my man. I love you, and though I die this Maisie shall not possess that which I love.”
She crossed swiftly to Dan’s side; as he sought to rise she drew him down in his chair again and pressed his head back to meet her glance as she bent over him, her arms around his neck. A silence, while she searched the soul of him. Then: “You do love your Tamea?”
Dan Pritchard murmured, “I don’t know, Tamea.”
“Je t’adore!” She patted his cheek. “I have no wish to hurt this Maisie,” she informed him and with a glance included Mellenger in the confidence, “but that which I have, I hold.”
“Exactly,” said Mellenger and commenced to play again, softly and with devilish humor:
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling,For you and not for me . . .
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling,For you and not for me . . .
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling,For you and not for me . . .
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling,
For you and not for me . . .
Dan sprang up and brushed Tamea aside as Julia appeared in the doorway.
“Miss Morrison,” she announced.
As Maisie entered Mark Mellenger’s heart almost skipped a beat. “She has accepted the challenge. Zounds! What a woman!” he thought, and stared at her in vast admiration as she advanced to meet Dan and carelessly gave him her hand—to kiss! As Dan bent his white face over it Tamea’s voice shattered the silence.
“I think, Maisie, perhaps you should know that Dan Pritchard belongs to me. I love him and he is mine.”
Maisie’s smile was tolerant, humorous, maddening; it was apparent to the watching Mellenger that she had anticipated some such open, direct attack and had schooled herself to meet it.
“Indeed, Tamea, my dear!” she drawled. “Has Mr. Pritchard, then, given himself to you so soon?”
“No,” Tamea replied honestly, “he has not. But—he will.”
“How interesting!” She turned to Dan. “Dan, old boy, since it is your mission in life to make Tamea happy, permit me to give you to her. Here he is, Tamea, you greedy girl.” She chuckled adorably, gave Dan a little shove toward Tamea and crossed to the piano where Mellenger stood, grave and embarrassed. She gave him her hand in friendly fashion.
“Clever, clever woman,” he breathed, for her ear alone.
“How adorably primitive she is, Mr. Mellenger!”
He nodded. “Between the two of us, however,” he answered, still in low voice, “we’ll fix the young lady’s clock.”
The mask fell from Maisie’s face and Mellenger saw in it naught but pain and terror.
And then Julia announced dinner.
CHAPTER XIV
Many arduous and adventurous years in the Fourth Estate had sharpened Mark Mellenger’s native ability to think and act quickly in an emergency. He saw that Tamea’s bold onslaught for the love rights in his friend had disturbed Pritchard greatly; the latter’s face was rosy with an embarrassment that was all the more poignant because nothing that Dan could do or say would relieve the situation; Maisie had apparently exhausted her ammunition and would, unless supported promptly, retire from the field. Weeping, doubtless. Something had to be done, and in this emergency anything would be better than nothing.
Mellenger strolled up to Tamea and offered her his arm to take her in to dinner. But Tamea only smiled at him the tender, tolerant smile which, apparently, she had for all men, and said in a low voice: “Thank you, Monsieur Mellengair, but I will take the arm of Dan Pritchard.”
“Oh, but you must not do that!” Mellenger protested confidentially and addressing her in excellent French. “You are a member of this household, while Miss Morrison is a guest here tonight. If Mr. Pritchard were to permit her to go in to dinner on my arm, that would be equivalent to informing her that she was not welcome in his home. It would be a very great discourtesy—in this country,” he added parenthetically.
“Oh! I did not understand that. Nobody has told me these things. I would not care to embarrass anyone.”
“Thank you, Miss Larrieau. You are very kind and considerate.” He bowed to her with great courtesy, and she accepted his arm.
“I like you, Mellengair—no, I will call you Mel, like Dan who loves you.”
“That’s better.”
“And you shall call me Tamea.”
“Thank you. I think that is better, too.”
She came closer to him. “And you will tell me—things?”
“You mean the things you should know in order to avoid embarrassment to yourself—and others?”
“Oui, Mel.”
“There is not a great deal that you will have to be told, Tamea. Merely an outline of the principal customs of this country which differ so radically from yours. For instance, just now you made a very sad mistake—oh, very, very sad!”
“But no!” the girl protested.
“But yes! You were very discourteous to Miss Morrison.”
“About Dan?”
“Yes.”
“But that is the truth.”
“It is not always necessary to tell the truth. You have assumed that Miss Morrison is in love with Dan.”
“She is, Mel. I know.”
“But he does not know this, and she would not tell him for all the wealth of the world.”
“Such a stupid! Why not?”
“It is the custom of the land,” he assured her.
“Then I must not tell Dan Pritchard I love him?”
“Not unless he tells you first that he loves you.” She laughed softly but scornfully. “Has he told you that he loves you?”
“With his eyes—yes.”
“Eyes are not admissible as evidence. What you mistook for love may be admiration. Until he speaks with his tongue you must remain silent, else will you be dishonored.”
They had reached the dining room. Maisie and Dan were following, in frozen silence. Mellenger tucked her chair in under Tamea, and over her head he winked at Maisie and Dan. There was a terrifying silence until after Julia had served the soup. Then Tamea spoke.
“It appears,” she said very contritely, “that I have been stupid and of gross manners. I have offended you, Maisie, and to you, dear Dan, I am as a dishonored woman. I am truly sorry. Will you both forgive, please?”
“You poor, bewildered dear,” said Maisie, and laughed. To Mellenger’s amazement the laugh held real humor. She got up, walked around the table to Tamea’s side and kissed her. “Of course you are forgiven. You did not understand. How could you know, Tamea, that Dan and I are to be married? Nobody told you, I dare say. Dan, darling, did you tell Tamea of our engagement?”
“Of course, I didn’t,” he began. He was at once amazed, indignant and profoundly complimented. “Why, Maisie——”
“Shut up, fool!” Mellenger’s lips formed the words without speaking them. “Do you want to spill the beans?”
Maisie returned to her seat, flushed, bright-eyed, distinctly triumphant, and Mellenger realized that, between himself and Maisie, poor Tamea had been thoroughly crushed, humiliated beyond words. She contented herself with looking at Dan very curiously, as if she were seeing him for the first time.
“Now,” Mellenger remarked dryly, “I think we’ll all feel equal to imbibing a modicum of soup. Maisie—pardon my effrontery in calling you by your first name on such brief acquaintance, but then those who love Dan always inspire me with a desire to know them better and act as if I had known them always—how long have you and Dan been engaged?”
Dan glared at him. Maisie, scenting the deviltry behind his query, liked him for it. “I really do not remember, Mark—pardon my effrontery in addressing you by your first name on such brief acquaintance, but it seems I’ve known you always. Dan, when did you first propose to me?”
“Maisie, you’re an imp.”
“A benevolent imp, at any rate,” Mellenger adjured him. “She goes out of her way to make everybody around her comfortable.”
“Did Dan tell you he desired you, Maisie?” Tamea was speaking now.
“What makes you ask that, Tamea?”
“I inquire to know. This is important.”
“Well, Tamea, I don’t suppose Dan ever told me in so many words——”
“Ah! With his eyes, then?”
Maisie shrugged. “I suppose so.”
Tamea favored Mellenger with a sidelong glance of disillusionment and contempt. She spoke in French. “It appears that the rules of deportment are broken as readily by those who dwell in this country as by those who are ignorant of those rules. Now I shall proceed to be happy again. What an excellent soup!”
She saw by the look in Maisie’s eyes that Maisie had not understood her. And this was true, for while Maisie was presumed to have learned French in high school, it was high-school French, and Tamea’s rapid-fire utterance was far beyond her understanding.
“I hope you will be very happy,” she said in English to Maisie, who thanked her with a demure smile. To Mellenger she said in a swift aside: “I know very well she will not! What a curious dinner party! This woman is thinking of schemes to take from me the man whom I desire. Alas! She is no match for me, for look you, Mel, she has not the courage to take that which she desires.”
“Unfortunately, she has not, Tamea. Nevertheless, she may develop a form of courage that may amaze you. Just now she gave you a bad minute or two.”
Tamea shrugged. “I have no fear. That which I desire I take, and that which I take I think, perhaps—I—can—keep.”
“Well, suppose we discuss something else,” Mellenger suggested in his surprisingly good French. “And if you do not feel equal to the task of keeping pace with the discussion, try being silent awhile.”
Tamea included Dan and Maisie in her retort to this fundamentally solid bit of advice. “This large friend of yours does not like me, no?”
“Why, of course he likes you. Nobody could help liking you!” This from Maisie, who was bound to be cheerful and complimentary at any cost.
“You are wrong, Maisie. Mel thinks very quickly, and he talks as quickly as he thinks. He thinks clearly, too. . . . Well, I should like him for my good friend. One does not care for stupeed men. Mel is very honest. He will make a good fight, yes? I think so. Yes, you bet. And I will make a good fight, also.”
“Something tells me you will. Are you the offspring of a nation of warriors?” Mellenger queried.
“My mother was the daughter of a chief—a king, bred from a thousand kings. And in Riva he who would be king must be a warrior and a leader of warriors.”
“Is polyandry practiced in Riva?” Dan had emerged from the trance into which the startling events of the past few minutes had thrown him.
“I do not know what that is, dear Dan Pritchard,” declared Tamea.
“I mean, do the women have more than one husband, and do the women choose their husbands? In this country,” he hastened to add, “the men do the choosing.”
“Indeed?” Tamea seemed to find this humorous. “Men are weaklings everywhere, I think, and in this country, as in Riva, it appears the women sometimes do the choosing of their husbands. What else may one do? You men are so stupeed!”
“Let us discuss the League of Nations, Dan,” Mellenger suggested. “That is a subject upon which you and I may hazard an opinion. Tamea, are you an advocate of the right of self-determination for the lesser nations—Ireland, for instance?”
“You make the josh, Mel.”
He chuckled, gave his attention to Maisie and displayed an amazing facility at small talk and the gossip of her set. Thereafter he addressed but an occasional word to Tamea, who, however, appeared to relish this neglect, since it gave her ample opportunity to favor the uncomfortable Dan with languishing looks. With the advent of the salad Mellenger deftly piloted the conversation into the realm of trade and finance, appealed very frequently to Dan for confirmation of some theory or an expression of opinion. He contrived to leave Tamea quite out of it, and when at last Maisie rose from the table and the others followed her into the drawing room, Tamea was sensible of a feeling of neglect, of paternalism. She resented this with all the fierce resentment of her hot blood.
But Mellenger was tact and graciousness personified; and when, as the evening wore on, it began to dawn on Tamea that his action was not predicated so much on antagonism to her as on a desire to save Maisie from humiliation, her resentment began to fade. She observed that Dan had little to say, that the conversation was dominated by Mellenger and Maisie; in listening to their words, in watching the play of emotions on their faces, an hour slipped by. Then Mellenger sat at the piano and played while Maisie sang; and later Maisie played while Mellenger sang. Tamea enjoyed their songs immensely and urged them on until ten o’clock, when Dan suggested that perhaps she was tired and would like to retire.
“You wish it?” Tamea queried softly.
He nodded, so Tamea kissed him good night and then followed her caress with one each for Mellenger and Maisie.
When she had gone Mellenger swung round on the piano stool and grinned at Dan Pritchard.
“This has been a trying evening, old horse,” he declared, “but, by and large and thanks to two people who appear to possess the faculty of keeping their heads when all about them are losing theirs, what threatened to become a riot has ended in a love feast. Dan, that girl is nobody’s fool. Her head is quite filled with brains.”
“I think, when she has become a little more civilized, she will be adorable,” Maisie added.
“She is adorable now,” Dan reminded them. Subconsciously he desired to defend any weakness he might have exhibited during the evening. Also, he had an impulse to castigate Maisie for her inexplicable conduct in declaring, in the presence of his other guests, that an engagement existed between them.
“That’s no excuse for your losing your head over her, old son.”
“Quite so,” Maisie echoed. “Because I sensed your helpless state, following Tamea’s frank declaration of a proprietary interest in you, I invented our engagement as a sort of funk-hole for you to crawl into, Dan.”
“You were very courageous, Maisie.”
“It was a forlorn hope and it failed. I might as well inform you, my friends, that Tamea was unimpressed.” Mellenger was very serious now. “What are you going to do about this girl, Dan? You’ve got to get her out of your house.”
Dan shrugged helplessly.
“If you send her to a boarding school now,” Maisie suggested, “she would matriculate in the middle of a semester. You refer to her as a child, Dan, but she is a fully developed woman, and I fear that her education, in English at least, has been so neglected that she would have to start in the same class with girls of ten or twelve. This would prove embarrassing to her. She should have a year of private tutoring.”
“Where, Maisie?”
“I do not know, Dan.”
“But you telephoned to me this evening that you had a plan to discuss.”
“My plan is not fully developed, Dan, but it contemplated the engagement of a governess and companion for Tamea, and sending them both to a warmer climate—say Los Angeles—until Tamea becomes acclimated. You seemed worried about her in the cooler climate of San Francisco.”
“That’s a splendid plan,” Mellenger hastened to interrupt. “The success of it depends upon the acquisition of the right sort of governess, of course. She should be firm, indomitable, tactful, able and possess the physical attributes of the champion heavyweight pugilist of the world.”
“I fear you are absolutely right,” Dan sighed.
“Well, then, I’m at my wits’ end, Dan’l,” Maisie confessed.
“I am not,” Mellenger replied coolly. “I beg of you, Maisie, to dismiss the matter. I shall go into executive session with myself and evolve a plan that will be puncture-proof. I fear me neither you nor Dan is able to think clearly in this emergency.”
Maisie flashed him a swift glance of deepest gratitude. “In that event I think I shall go home,” she said, and rang for Julia to fetch her wrap. Dan escorted her out to her car, and as she gave him her hand at parting he bent and kissed it humbly, turned and left her without the formality of saying good night.
Fortunately, Maisie thought she could understand the failure of his conversational powers.
CHAPTER XV
“Well, Mel,” Dan declared as he returned to the drawing room after seeing Maisie to her car, “I am prepared for the worst. Fly to it, old philosopher. I observe you are fairly bristling with bellicose veins.”
“That is only additional proof that you are purblind.” Mellenger helped himself to a cigar, rang for Sooey Wan, ordered a Scotch and soda and removed his dinner coat. The major portion of his existence was spent working in his shirt-sleeves, and tonight he had work to do. So he cleared for action.
“Now, then,” he began, “are you or are you not engaged to be married to Maisie Morrison?”
“I am not.”
“I thought so. Going to be?”
“I—don’t know, Mel.”
“I’ll make up your mind for you. You are.”
“Why?”
“For any number of incontestable reasons. However, the principal reason is that she is very much in love with you, and she is not particularly happy about it. You’re such a dull dog.”
“Granting that, why should I engage myself to Maisie?”
“Because it would be good for you. It would be protection from the world. You’re going to marry Maisie sooner or later. Why not do it now and get the worry of it off your mind?”
“But, you double-dyed idiot, I’m not at all certain I’d be perfectly happy with Maisie.”
“I’ll dissipate your doubts. You wouldn’t be. No man ever is perfectly happy in the married state.”
“How do you know?”
“Observation and philosophical meditation. You would be perfectly happy with Maisie about eighty-five per cent of the time, and all you have to have in order to win is a controlling interest, or fifty-one per cent. All married life is a continuous adjustment of conflicting personalities. What you are seeking, we all seek—the wild, abandoned thrill of a love that will never grow old or stale or commonplace—a love that will punctuate your life with wonderful, breathless moments—moments that you would not miss, even though in claiming them you realized that sorrow and heartbreak might be the inevitable outcome of your yielding. My dear old friend, you paint pictures in water colors and see them turn to crude charcoal smudges. Dan, you seek the unattainable; when you have found her, she will have been married ten years to a barber!”
There fell between them a long and pregnant silence. Then:
“You spoke just now of—breathless moments, moments one would not miss, even though in claiming them one realizes that sorrow and heartbreak may be the inevitable outcome. Have you ever known such a breathless moment?”
“Yes—in France, during the war. She was a little dancer, about twenty, I should say. I found her weeping and half conscious in the Place Vendôme at four o’clock of a winter morning. There had been an air raid and a great deal of anti-aircraft firing; she had been struck in the foot by a shrapnel falling five thousand meters. I carried her to my billet. . . two months. . . she will never dance again. . . fortunately I was ordered home. . . send her a few francs every month. . . not very much, because I can’t afford much, but she writes. . . breathless moments when I get her letters. . . brains, imagination. . . I think she loves me—always will, perhaps, but it’s no good thinking too much about it. I have gotten over it.” Mellenger blew a succession of smoke rings and watched them float upward to frame a face he would never see again, except in his dreams. And dreams fade as men grow older and the fires of youth burn out.
“And was it worth the price, Mel?”
“No, I knew that in the beginning. No joy that leaves a pain is quite worth having.”
“Yet we will never have done with our longing for the adventure. I suppose that is why men who have never worn a uniform feel their hearts beat high at the sight of homecoming troops.”
“Yes, I think so. But remember, those civilians see only the avenue with the flags flying; they have never seen the wreckage or heard the wail of a funeral march. They’ve only dreamed of that and painted a vision they call the Field of Honor, with a trail across it labeled the Path of Glory. They know it leads to Hell, but they know also that some men escape. You know, Dan, we can always visualize ourselves escaping, because the wish is father to the thought.”
“Well, at any rate, Mel, I have lived to know—one breathless moment.”
“Do not know another, my friend.”
“Believe me, I did not desire to know this one. I—I——”
Mellenger waved his cigar in absolution. “You didn’t have any help at the critical moment. I observed the event. I was sitting in the semi-twilight of this room, thinking—I had asked Julia not to turn on the light except in the hall. And then you and Tamea came in. . . I saw your face, I saw hers. . . . And I had seen the face of the other girl this afternoon. Tamea has told me in so many words, in French, that she is going to land you; that she doesn’t consider Maisie a foeman worthy of her steel. Says Maisie hasn’t got the courage to take that which she desires. Tamea has. I’ll swear to that.”
“There is nothing wrong about that.”
“Certainly not. A convention of maidenly modesty has metamorphosed many a fine woman into an embittered, disillusioned old maid. She could have had her man for the asking—for the taking; and because she neither asked nor took he thought her repression spelled indifference or dislike.
“There are many shy, embarrassed men in this world, you know. They are always unhappy because always married to terrible women.
“Big women, fat women, red-headed, dominating, coarse women, women with thick ankles, sloppy women, dull women, over-dressed women, loud women, but all women who flouted convention and who just naturally helped themselves to the shy, embarrassed, gentle little men they coveted.”
“Praise be, Tamea doesn’t come within the scope of your femaleindex expurgatorius. Isn’t she a glorious creature?”
“Of course she is,” Mellenger agreed petulantly. “She’s more than glorious. She’s devastating, and all the more ruinous to your peace of mind because she is simple, natural, unspoiled, eager and amorous. But you’ve got to put your bright day-dreams behind you and marry Maisie Morrison.”
“But why, Mel?”
“Why, man, you cannot possibly contemplate the prospect of miscegenation?”
“Does Tamea remotely resemble a mulatto, a quadroon or an octoroon?”
“She is half Polynesian.”
“But a pure-bred Polynesian is a Caucasian.”
“Very well, then, if you insist. But I insist that the Caucasian race has many subdivisions. An Arab is a Caucasian; so is a Hindoo; but if you marry a woman of Arabic or Hindoo blood and have children by her, your offspring will be Eurasians. Tamea is a half-breed brown white. And she’s not very brown, either—sort of old ivory. She’d pass for a white girl anywhere. People who do not know her blood will say, ‘Isn’t she a marvelous brunette type of beauty!’”
“Well?”
“If she bore you sons, how would you feel if they should grow up to be great, hearty, brown fellows, unmistakably Polynesian, with prehensile great toes, an aversion to work, a penchant for white vices? You cannot dodge the Mendelian law, my boy. Like begets like, but in a union of opposites we get throwbacks. Breed a black rabbit to a white one and you will get piebald rabbits. Breed these latter to a white rabbit, and continue to breed the offspring of succeeding unions to other white rabbits until you have bred all the black out of them. About the time you think you have beaten the Mendelian law, the pure white descendant of a black and white union, a hundred generations removed, will present you with a litter of pure black rabbits! You’re not going to run the risk of mongrelizing the species, are you?”
“No, I do not think I am, Mel.”
“Do you know you are not?”
“No.”
“I thought so.” Mellenger rose, walked to Dan and thrust the ruddy end of his cigar in the latter’s face. “You’re in love with Tamea already, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, Mel. Something has happened. It happened tonight. You saw it happen. It never happened to me before. Good Lord, Mel, old man, my head has been in a whirl ever since.”
“That isn’t love. It’s infatuation. I’ve been through it. I know. It’s a wonderful madness. It’s what’s wrong with the world today. It’s at the root of the divorce problem. Infatuation. And the fools think it is love.
“Nothing divine about it, nothing spiritual; its victims take no thought of the qualifications so essential to successful marriage—an even temper, generosity, unselfishness, tenderness, physical fitness, the absence of mental and physical repulsiveness.
“My dear man, love should be born in reverence, and if later it develops into infatuation—well, I suppose that would be quite all right, since in that case infatuation would be the natural, normal outgrowth of love—the apotheosis of it. If you marry Maisie Morrison—look here, Dan, you say you do not love her——”
“I’m not certain, Mel.”
“Then it is a fact that you think a very great deal of her. You have the utmost respect for her, you are happy in her society, you feel reverent toward her.”
“Of course I do.”
“Then, you star-gazing jackanapes, marry her and become infatuated with her afterward. She can’t reach out and grab you and maul you and paw you over and kiss you and whisper love words to you—like this child of nature, Tamea. It’s up to you to do that, Dan. How are you going to discover Maisie’s possibilities to compete with this passion-flower, Tamea, unless you uncover them yourself? You’re a weak, cowardly sort of man where women are concerned. I grow very weary of you, my friend. You want to eat your cake and have it.”
Dan laughed long and pleasurably at his old friend’s outburst. “You’re such a comfort to me, Mel,” he declared. “I dare say you are right. I’m cowardly. But then, one shouldn’t take even the most remote chance when he marries. Marriage is until death.”
“Death sometimes comes early to some married men, and it is welcome. If you marry Tamea you will die spiritually long before the breath leaves your carcass and the doctor signs a death certificate authorizing your burial.”
“What a gloomy picture you paint!”
“Marrying an exotic woman like Tamea—a half aborigine—is like marrying any other aborigine, because all aborigines are pigmented. And no matter how transcendent the beauty of a pigmented aborigine—or half-breed aborigine—that beauty fades early. They degenerate physically and mentally. They are old at thirty, repulsive at forty, hags at fifty.”
“Nonsense! Educate Tamea, spread over her the veneer of civilization, teach her how to play, cultivate her voice, dress her exquisitely, and who shall say of her, ‘You—you—are half aborigine’?”
“You speak of a veneer of civilization. Sometimes I think the veneer is very thin and that man today stands, basically, where he stood five thousand years ago. Dan, it isn’t a question of a veneer of civilization. It’s a question of the adaptability of species to its environment. How long do you suppose it would take you, a white man, to adapt yourself to the environment of such an island, say, as Riva, in eastern Polynesia?”
“I couldn’t hazard a guess.”
“I could, and it would be a fairly accurate guess, since the history of white occupation of the isles of the south Pacific will support my contention. You would be an infinitesimal portion of the moral and physical decay before you had lived there five years. After that you wouldn’t care. It’s like mixing two acids that, combined, produce an explosion. There is never any real adaptability of the human species, you know. As long as you and Tamea lived you would have different thoughts and different thought impulses, different moral values. This difference would prove an attraction at first; then, gradually, you would begin to find her ways inferior to yours, so you would have a contempt for them, which means that presently you would grow to hate Tamea.”
Mellenger sat down and rested his head in his hands. “I wish I could remember my geology and paleontology,” he complained. “However, I never cared for it, so I swept it out of my rag bag of a mind. At any rate, you are much older than Tamea——”
“Oh, not so old as to make a vital difference. About eighteen years.”
“Shut up, you ass. You ditch my train of thought. You are millions of years older than Tamea. She is a Neolithic maid and you’re Paleozoic or Silurian or Cretaceous or something, and in order to reach common ground she’ll have to climb up through a lot of queer strata or you’ll have to dig down. You paint mighty fine pictures, but down in Riva they’re still carving hideous gods out of limestone and making hieroglyphics with a burned stick; they’re still chasing each other around stumps with knobby clubs.”
“You’re the man who can paint pictures!”
Mellenger sighed. “No, I cannot. I used to think I could, but nobody else agrees with me, and now I agree with them. Thought once I’d develop into a great novelist, when all that God Almighty created me for was to be a great newspaper man!. . . Well, I’m not embittered, because I can still think clearly and without illusion. And I can see fairly clearly, too. . . . You’ve got to get rid of this girl.”
“You’re quite bent on clearing the way for Maisie, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But you are my friend, faithful and just to me, and I’ve loved you since our freshman days in college. The years and wealth and success haven’t changed you. You’re still the same shy, helpless, gentle, obstinate, wistful boy, and—and—I—I want to do something for you, old son. The best thing I can do is to clear the decks for Maisie and marry you off to her. She’s a fine woman.”
“But I do not know, really, how to get rid of Tamea. I can’t just chuck her out, you know. Can’t send her to a hotel or an apartment house and let her go on the loose. Maisie’s plan is ill-advised. You realized that.”
“Maisie didn’t have any plan. She isn’t up to the job of collected thinking now.”
“But she said she had a plan.”
“Yes, I know. She wanted an excuse to come over here this evening to guard you from Tamea.”
“Mel, you have the most extraordinary ideas. You newspaper men are always so suspicious of motives.”
“Rats! Not suspicion. Absolute knowledge. When you asked her for her plan she floundered. Got into deep water close to the shore and I had to throw her a line. Immediately thereafter—but not until Tamea had retired—Maisie went home.”
“Have you a plan?”
“You bet I have. The talk of a school is sheer nonsense. That girl is beyond school, and if you put her in a school she’ll not remain put.”
“You’ve overlooked one important detail. If she may not remain here or in school she may promptly go to the deuce, for lack of proper control.”
“That would be all right, Dan. The main point is that she must not take you with her. If she sticks around this house she’ll get you into Town Topics. She has designs on you, my boy. That’s why I suggest you queer them by marrying Maisie Morrison immediately, if not sooner. Maisie has, in effect, proposed to you, and you’ve been very cavalier in your treatment of the proposal.”
“What do you suppose made her make that wild statement to Tamea, Mel?”
“The best excuse in life. Self-preservation. It’s the first law of human nature.”
“Just starting a backfire, eh?”
Mellenger nodded and put on his dinner jacket. “I suppose you have observed that women usually marry the men they make up their minds to marry.”
“No, I have not observed it.”
“You’re a greater numbskull than I thought you were. Two women have made up their minds to get you, and one of them is going to succeed.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, I suppose Maisie Morrison is safe in her bed by this time, crying herself to sleep, wondering how she is ever to muster the courage to face you again after tonight. Better send her some flowers in the morning and ask her to go for a drive with you. That will put her at her ease. I managed to give Tamea some food for thought, and with her sleep has been out of the question. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw Maisie drive away. Then she crept downstairs, and even now she is sitting out on the hall stairs listening to every word we say. Tamea! Enter!”
Tamea appeared in the doorway.
“I am such a splendid clairvoyant. I can see around a corner,” Mellenger remarked dryly. . . . “Well, if I had heard the stairs squeak a little earlier in the evening I would not have talked so freely. Good night, Tamea. Good night, Dan. Thanks for a wonderful dinner and a wonderful evening. I’ll be back next Thursday night, as usual.”
He smiled patronizingly as, on his way to the door, he passed Tamea. She turned slowly and her fiery glance followed him.
“No, Monsieur Mellengair, you have made the great mistake. I am not the go-to-the-deuce kind. But if that is interesting, perhaps I shall make the experiment, no? Well, when I do I shall make it alone, thank you.”
“Now I suppose you’re very angry with me, Tamea.”
“A little. Not so much as I think I shall be tomorrow. I forgive you much tonight because you are not a fool. But—I shall remember some things that you said—and those things that I remember I shall not forgive. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Dan Pritchard roused from the dumb amazement into which he had been thrown by Tamea’s sudden appearance on the scene. “Hey, wait a moment, Mel! I’ll walk downtown with you,” he called. He had a sudden impulse to flee from danger.
But the heavy oaken door had already closed behind his friend, and in the entrance to the drawing room Tamea stood looking at him. “Come to me,” she murmured. “Come,chéri!”
He went.
Tamea’s round, beautiful arms came up around his neck slowly, caressingly, and his head was drawn gently down toward her glorious face until her lips touched his ear.
“That man Mellengair—he is your friend. He is not mine. But if I had, like you, such a friend—ah, I would be so rich! You must never lose him,chéri! Oh, yes, I hate him, but that does not matter. He is very wise, but he does not know your Tamea. Ah, no, dear one. I would have you—ah, so happy—and I would be happy with you. But if to be with me meant sorrow for you—oh, I could not be so cruel! First I would die. And you will believe that? Yes?”
Dan’s heart swelled—with that ecstacy that was almost a pain. And then Tamea kissed his ear lightly, patted his cheek and fled upstairs to her room, leaving him standing there—breathless, with a feeling that, be the price what it might be, he could not afford to miss such another moment as this. . . . It did not occur to him that sorrow and heartbreak might be the outcome of his yielding.