Oh, the Olson boys they built a shingle mill,They built it up on the side of a hill,They worked all night and they worked all day,And they tried to make the old mill pay.And—by heck—they couldn’t!So the Olson boys just took that shingle mill,And turned it into a whisky still;They worked all night and they worked all day,And tried to make the old still pay.And—by heck—they done it!
Oh, the Olson boys they built a shingle mill,They built it up on the side of a hill,They worked all night and they worked all day,And they tried to make the old mill pay.And—by heck—they couldn’t!So the Olson boys just took that shingle mill,And turned it into a whisky still;They worked all night and they worked all day,And tried to make the old still pay.And—by heck—they done it!
Oh, the Olson boys they built a shingle mill,They built it up on the side of a hill,They worked all night and they worked all day,And they tried to make the old mill pay.And—by heck—they couldn’t!
Oh, the Olson boys they built a shingle mill,
They built it up on the side of a hill,
They worked all night and they worked all day,
And they tried to make the old mill pay.
And—by heck—they couldn’t!
So the Olson boys just took that shingle mill,And turned it into a whisky still;They worked all night and they worked all day,And tried to make the old still pay.And—by heck—they done it!
So the Olson boys just took that shingle mill,
And turned it into a whisky still;
They worked all night and they worked all day,
And tried to make the old still pay.
And—by heck—they done it!
The golden moment had, indeed, passed. Maisie made one heroic attempt at a rally. “Well?” she queried.
“Well, what?” Dan demanded.
“What we were discussing a moment ago.”
“I make a motion that we lay that motion on the table, Maisie.”
“The motion’s denied.”
“Well, a motion to lay on the table is not debatable. The question must be put to a vote. All those in favor of laying on the table will vote aye. Contrary minded—no!”
“No!” said Maisie.
“Aye!” boomed Daniel. “The ayes have it and it is so ordered.”
“Steam roller tactics,” Maisie protested and laughed to conceal her chagrin. She had obeyed the instinct of her sex, which is to flee from the male, even while obsessed with the desire to be overtaken. She had yielded to the feminine impulse to chastise him for his clumsiness in love-making, to play with him awhile, as a cat plays with a mouse, before claiming the poor victim. She wanted him to be rough and resolute, to thrust aside her protestations and claim her by brute force and the right of discovery. She was very happy and she had desired to linger a brief moment in the afterglow of her decision to surrender to him—before surrendering. She wanted to be deferred to, to have him plead with her for her love, to deluge her with a swift avalanche of love words. How could she confess her yearning for him until he had laid at her feet the wondrous burden of his own great love and asked her, humbly, to accept the gift in exchange for her own?
Maisie had never really had a sweetheart before. She was a girl of the type that has a cool habit of keeping amorous youths at arm’s length. Unlike so many of her girl friends, she could not bear to be pawed over by youths who failed to arouse in her the slightest interest. She had never sought conquest for the sake of conquest, although all of her life she had hugged to her heart an ideal of love. She would marry the one great love of her life, and having married, she would devote her life to making her husband happy and comfortable. She would bear children for him; she would keep herself young and fresh; she would not do any of the stupid things she frequently observed young matrons in her set doing to their husbands—driving them crazy by daily, almost hourly, demands for renewed, fervid assurances of undying love; tagging after them always, herding them in, cutting them off from healthy association with other harassed males, protesting against everything not connected with the office and the home.
For Maisie was, without anybody close to her remotely suspecting it, a tremendously romantic young woman. She yearned with a great yearning to be wooed by a romantic lover who was fifty per cent slave and fifty per cent Prince Charming. Long before she had ever fallen in love with Dan Pritchard she had fallen in love with love; hence her automatic resentment of Dan Pritchard’s peculiar approach to the Great Adventure. Having shyly hidden within herself all her life, how could she expose her heart to Dan merely to satisfy his accursed curiosity? What assurance had she that he would, in turn, expose his heart to her? Moreover, wasn’t it his first move, the monumentalomadhaun! Maisie smiled sweetly, but what she really wanted to do to Dan Pritchard was to slap him furiously and then cry herself to silence and forgiveness in his arms.
“Well, pride comes before a fall,” Dan answered her lugubriously.
“You weren’t soveryproud,” Maisie assured him, with a forgiving glance.
“Perhaps. But that didn’t soften my fall.”
“I think perhaps you were quite within your rights in asking,” she pursued eagerly. “You’ve known me so long and we’ve always been such good pals, I suppose you concluded——”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted. “I’m so glad you understand. Well, I’ll not embarrass you again, my dear. You’re much too sweet and lovely to have my silly action of a few minutes ago cast a shadow over our perfect friendship.”
“I’ll have to propose to him after all,” Maisie thought. And she would have done it if a car hadn’t come up behind them and with a hoarse toot warned them of a desire to pass. Maisie could not bring herself to speak at that moment. One does not desire to hint of one’s love to the accompaniment of a motor siren. And to complicate matters Graves glanced back quickly, measured at a glance the speed limit of the following car, and proceeded to run away from it. This infuriated the driver of the other car, who in turn speeded up and continued to honk at them until Graves turned in at the entrance to the hotel grounds and, before Maisie could renew the conversation, had paused before the portals of the hotel and was standing beside the car holding the door open.
As Dan helped her out of the limousine she squeezed his hand and favored him with a look of abject adoration.
“I know, dear,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have presumed. It is sweet of you to forgive me.”
Maisie ran quickly to her room, cast herself upon her bed and sought surcease from her rage and chagrin in that soothing form of feminine comfort known as “a good cry.” Indeed, she wept so long and so hard that she decided she was too red and swollen of eye and nose to venture forth where Tamea would see her. So she sent down word by her maid that she had developed a severe headache, as a result of the hard day in the sun, and would have dinner in her room.
CHAPTER XXI
Tamea, secretly delighted at Maisie’s misfortune, expressed to Mrs. Casson and Dan a concern about Maisie which she was far from feeling. Maisie had had him all day, and it had been Tamea’s generous thought to abandon the evening to her rival. However, since fate had willed otherwise, she decided promptly to make the most of her opportunity. After dinner she managed to locate a bridge game with one partner missing. The players were acquaintances of Mrs. Casson’s and it was no trick at all for Tamea to steer her chaperon into this vacancy; whereupon she took Dan’s arm and wandered with him down into the art gallery. There was nothing in the art gallery that Dan could cheer for, and Tamea quickly discovered this. Almost before he knew it, she had him outside and was walking him through the scented starlit night down the road toward Monterey Bay.
As they walked Tamea attempted no conversation. Instinctively she realized that Dan did not want that. He had something on his mind and it was depressing him. What he needed, therefore, was love and sympathy and song; whereat Tamea twined her long soft fingers in his, swung his hand as they walked and commenced softly, very softly, to sing a song of Riva. It must have been a love song, for although Dan Pritchard could not understand a word of it, yet in the soft succession of syllables he caught a hint of passion, of longing, of pathos. . . . Once when, apparently, Tamea had a half rest in her music, she raised his hand to her lips before resuming her crooning love lullaby.
They came to a wooden bench on a low bluff, against which the waves beat at extreme high tides. They sat down, Tamea still holding Dan’s hand. She released it long enough for him to light a cigar, then she drew his arm around her neck and laid her cheek against his. She continued to sing and like a modern Circe she wove her spell about him.
Suddenly she ceased, placed one hand on his cheek and tilted his face toward her.
“Chéri,” she whispered, “I love you with all my heart and soul.”
He stared at her incredulously. He seemed to be thinking of something else—and he was. He was thinking how different—this—from his experience of that afternoon with Maisie.
“But,” Tamea continued sadly, and let her hand fall back into her lap, “mychéridoes not love his Tamea. She is half Kanaka.”
“Hush, child,” he admonished. “I have never thought of you as anything save as one of God’s most glorious creations.”
“But,” Tamea persisted, “it makes a great difference—to be half Kanaka. It makes a great difference to a white man like you.”
“It doesn’t make the slightest difference, sweetheart,” he cried, and wondered why he had called her sweetheart. His heart was pounding now, there was a drumming in his ears, he was atremble with the trembling that had shaken him as a zephyr shakes the leaves of a forest that evening on the Moorea after old Gaston had departed for Paliuli and the girl had clung to him, weeping and despairing. “You’re wonderful, glorious,” he continued, his words outpouring in a sort of rapturous jumble and mumble, and swept her into his arms. Their lips met. . . Tamea could kiss.
“Then you love your Tamea—truly, dear one?” she whispered finally.
“I adore you.”
“And you will not wed Maisie, even though you are engaged to her?”
“I am not engaged to Maisie and never have been. What’s more, I never shall be, Tamea. No man could marry a more wonderful woman than Maisie, but unfortunately for me, Maisie isn’t the least bit in love with me.”
Tamea started, drew away from him and eyed him wonderingly.
“You are wrong, dear one. Maisie adores you.”
He shook his head. “I asked her—once,” he explained. “She assured me she did not.”
“She assured you of that which is not true, Dan Pritchard. Now why should she do this? The women of your country are strange women, love of my heart. They deny that which they feel. They pretend to be interested in that which bores them. They desire a husband, yet they shrink from taking him, even after he has looked upon them with the look that no true woman should mistake.
“I do not understand this. I wanted you, dear one, and when you looked upon me with favor I came to you. And I am very happy—so happy, perhaps, that when we are married and I have borne children for you, I may forget that I am not exactly that which you would wish me to be.
“But I shall learn, dear one. And I shall obey my lord because he is my master and I love him.”
He stood up and held her tightly to his heart that was pounding so madly, so rapturously. He rained kisses on her upturned flower face, and the perfume of her glorious hair was as myrrh and incense to him. “You’ve bewitched me, Tamea,” he muttered hoarsely. “Come, let us go back to the hotel. Come!”
They went. Tamea knew better than to oppose a man. She knew that men love best the women who give them their own way, who do not seek to restrain or discipline or mold them to their own desires. Daughter of a race that would disappear before emerging from the condition of family life where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage for the avoidance of sin and the preservation of property rights, Tamea was following woman’s truest and most primitive instinct. She was ruling by love and not by the sad and silly principle that possession is nine points of the law.
Young as she was, Tamea was a fully developed woman, watchful, observant, philosophical, courageous, resourceful; she had the gift, rare in a woman, of initiative and instantaneous power of decision. Gaston of the Beard had richly endowed her with the treasures of his massive mind. She realized that she had swept Dan Pritchard off his feet, that he was her slave, but that his servitude was not as yet wholly voluntary. And she knew why. He was mentally hobbled by the knowledge of her island blood and a vision of Maisie Morrison.
But Tamea was not dismayed. She had faith in her power—in the power of love—to make him forget both. In the belief that he had been pledged to Maisie she had decided gallantly to surrender him to Maisie that day. She had told herself that if Maisie desired him, then, that day, she would make certain of him, and if she did not, then was she a fool. Well, she had not closed her deal, wherefore here was a fair field and no favor. Tamea told herself that she had acted with a degree of sportsmanship pleasing to Dan; and now, when from Dan’s own lips she learned that Maisie had denied her love for him, Tamea had promptly renewed the campaign; like a good soldier she had taken the offensive and, as usually occurs in offensive campaigns, she had won. She had felt Dan Pritchard’s wild kisses on her lips, her cheek, her hair, and she was content.
Had Tamea been more conversant with Nordic custom, had she even a remote conception of the holding power of the marriage vow even in a land where thinking people speak learnedly of a divorce problem, she would have urged upon Dan the desirability of motoring into Monterey that night and getting married. It is probable that she would have urged this anyhow had she the slightest fear of Maisie as a rival. All anxiety on that point had now disappeared, however; on the morrow she would set herself to the task of making friends with Maisie. . . . Meanwhile, if her heart’s desire persisted in striding back to the hotel without speaking to her, who was she to obtrude upon his mood? Instinctively she realized that men resent intrusions upon their moods of depression or deep thoughtfulness. Her father had been like that.
A white bench, gleaming through the cypress and fir trees down a path that led off at right angles, caught her eye. She steered him toward it, but he balked and shook his head in negation.
“You will come, dear one,” Tamea cooed.
“No, no,” he cried huskily. “Do not tempt me, Tamea.” And he moved a few feet. When he looked back she was standing where he had left her and her arms were outstretched to him. “No, I tell you,” he protested, and hurried away from her. So Tamea walked down the little path and sat down on the bench to await his return.
He returned to her. She knew he would.
“You are thinking, dear one, of what your friend Mellengair said to you about me,” she challenged. “You are thinking of the danger to a great white man to mate with a half-breed Kanaka.”
“Please,” he pleaded. “I wasn’t thinking of that at all.”
“Then you were wondering what Maisie would think—what she will say when you tell her how it is with us two.”
“I—I do not think I shall tell her—yet.”
Tamea’s breast heaved and her dark eyes flashed. “Then I will tell her, Dan. What have we to conceal? Maisie means nothing in my young life,” she added, tossing in a colloquialism she had picked up, the Lord knows where. “Why do you fear?”
“I do not fear.”
“I am glad to hear you say so. I should not love you if you were afraid of anything.”
“Ah, but I am afraid of something, Tamea dear. I am afraid I do not love you, with a sufficiently great love to marry you. Perhaps that which I think is love is not really love, but passion.”
She laughed softly. Such fine distinctions were too difficult for her to fathom. “What is love without passion?” she protested, “and what an unlovely thing would be passion without love. Fear not, beloved. All is well with that dear heart of yours, and even if it should be that you do not love me too well—that some day your love should grow cold and you should leave me—still would I ask of you tonight all the love of which you are capable. Is it not better to have known a little happiness than none at all? I think so. For look you, dear one. When the parting comes—if come it should as Mellengair foretold that night—you will leave me as you came to me—in love. What manner of fool is the woman who would strive to hold a man whose love has grown cold and dim like the stars at dawn? When you weary of me, Dan Pritchard, you will tell me; then, because I shall always love you, I will prove my love; I will send you away with a smile and a kiss. Ah, sweetheart, will that day ever come? I think not. I think I shall never grow old or stale or intolerable to you.”
“Never,” he promised, profoundly touched by her sweetness, her candor and amazing magnetism. “You are driving me mad with longing for you, Tamea.”
“And I am driving you mad against your will?”
He nodded.
Tamea actually chuckled, took his none too handsome, solemn face between her two palms and looked at him long, earnestly and impersonally, as one looks at an infant. She appeared to be puzzling something out in her unspoiled mind.
“Such men as have sought me heretofore,” she said presently—“and I have not been without attraction to several—have desired me—well, you understand. There was that in their eyes that frightened me or disgusted me and I would have none of them. I could read their hearts. They said of me: ‘Ah, here is a half-caste maid. She is like the others—a trusting, silly half-caste, without pride or dignity. I will amuse myself with her.’ But you are different,chéri. It is not a woman you seek, but a woman with a soul. I think I love you best because you are a gentleman. I have not had many advantages, but something calls out in me here”—she beat her breast—“to be different, that I may be beloved by such as you.”
He murmured helplessly: “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Possibly. Your white world is a strange world, with many things and many customs that damn one—particularly a woman. Yet would I follow you to damnation. Would you follow me?”
“I don’t know, Tamea. It requires courage for a white man to quarrel with his white world—that is, such a white man as am I. Some of us choose unhappiness rather than affront our world, you know.”
“Yes, I think I understand. That is your Christian religion. It teaches strange things, such as duty, and the battle against sin. It is something that makes one unhappy, uncertain, filled with many fears. It causes men and women to be unhappy in this life that they may be happy in a life to come. The missionary’s wife in Riva explained it to me—and I laughed. I told her I would be happy in this, the only life I know I shall know, and she grew angry and said I was a hopeless heathen.”
Tamea’s silvery little chuckle tinkled faintly on his ear like a distant sheep bell. He hadn’t the slightest objection to spooning with Tamea, but his natural refinement rebelled at a park bench. He felt like a country lover; he wanted to go back to the hotel; he feared some one of the guests might see them and start some silly gossip.
“Let us return to the hotel,” he blurted out bluntly. “Mrs. Casson will be wondering what has become of us.”
Tamea raised his hand and looked at his wrist watch. “We will sit here and talk until midnight,” she declared. “Two hours. It is little enough.”
“Impossible, Tamea. We will get ourselves talked about. Of course I can stand it, but you——”
“I can stand it too, dear Dan. Sit down, do!”
“Tamea! Please be sensible.”
The Queen of Riva stamped her foot. “You will place your arms around me and speak to me of our love,” she commanded.
He obeyed. Nevertheless, while he held her to his breast and whispered to her warm words of love; while his heart poured forth its passion and longing and ecstasy so poignant it was almost pain, the vision of Mellenger obtruded.
He was making a mistake. What his personal opinion of an alliance with Tamea might be mattered not. His friends, the code of his class, forbade the banns; and the realization of this brought him uneasiness and unhappiness even in the midst of his wild happiness. He feared for the future. Tonight the world appeared to stand still in space, but tomorrow it would continue to revolve, and unless he took a very brave and resolute stand, it would move on toward a tragedy.
However, he had sufficient sense, now that he found himself involved with this tropic wild flower, to attempt the exercise of his undoubted power over her to the end that he might outline definite plans for her future and secure her acquiescence in them. He reverted, therefore, to her father’s plans for her education and reminded Tamea that he had promised her father to see to it that the latter’s plans were carried out. He impressed upon her the vital necessity for acquiring as much education, knowledge of the world and refinement, as white girls of her age. She must have music lessons, she must learn to dance, to ride, to drive a motor-car, to manage a household, to sing, to meet his white friends on their own social level. In a word, she must make him very proud of her.
Tamea agreed to obey him implicitly, but fought desperately against the idea of a convent. She pleaded to be permitted to live at Dan’s house and have private tutors; she reminded him that she was amply able to afford them. When he explained to her the impossibility of this he saw that she accepted his explanation as something irrelevant and immaterial and decidedly peculiar. Reluctantly she abandoned her stand and sought a compromise. If she went to a convent all week could she come home of week-ends? Dan said she could not. Then would he come to the convent to see her on Sundays? He promised to do this every Sunday, and thus the momentous issue was settled. Tamea promised to enter the convent the day after their return to San Francisco.
This was the first long, uninterrupted confidential conversation they had ever had. Dan was an understanding and sympathetic listener with sufficient patience to continue answering childish questions long after the majority of his sex would have become irritated. And Tamea asked him hundreds of questions on an amazing variety of topics; she discussed intimately the principal features of her own life and extracted the last shred of information he had to give concerning himself. He observed how clear, direct and straightforward was her method of reasoning; she had a nicely balanced choice of words, and a fascinating habit of clothing her odd fancies in brilliant, brief, illuminating metaphor or simile. In those two hours when Tamea talked to him, with her head on his breast, he really began to know her; and to the spell which her physical beauty had cast upon him was now added an ardent admiration for her mental equipment. She possessed none of the flightiness, frivolity or empty-headedness of the white flapper. To her, life was something very, very real, something to be studied, considered and not to be tasted indiscriminately. She had inherited from her father an insatiable yearning for information on every subject that interested her remotely.
It was twelve-thirty before Dan, with a start, cast off his thraldom and looked at his watch.
“Yes, I suppose we should go in,” Tamea said softly. “I have had my delight spoiled for half an hour in the fear that you would look at your watch. And now you have looked at it and the suspense is over.”
They walked slowly back to the hotel and came in the front entrance. In the lobby of the hotel they came across Maisie reading a magazine.
“Hello, Maisie, my dear,” said Dan, “I had an impression you had a bad headache and had retired. If I had remotely suspected you had recovered we would have remained to keep you company.”
Maisie acknowledged this cheerful salutation with a forced smile. Her eyes were cold and blue. “You must have taken a long walk, Dan. Were you in to Monterey?”
“No, just down to the beach and back. The night is so balmy we’ve been sitting outside. Tamea has been asking questions and I have been answering them.”
“I had so many to ask,” said Tamea demurely, “that it was very late when I finished.” She patted her mouth to stifle a little yawn. “I’m so sleepy. Excuse me, please, Maisie. I am going to my room. Good night, Dan, you darling. Good night, Maisie.”
Dan escorted her to the elevator, then returned to Maisie and sat down beside her. Said she, coolly:
“Well, Dan, did Tamea propose to you tonight?”
On the instant he was irritated. He scowled at Maisie who, disdaining an answer, reached over on his left shoulder and carefully brushed away a very noticeable white patch on the blue cloth of his coat.
“I’ve told Tamea several times not to use so much powder,” she complained.
Dan was aware that he was flushing very noticeably. When Maisie spoke again the flush deepened.
“Aren’t you too old for that sort of thing—with that sort of semi-developed girl, Dan?”
He knew that Maisie, coming downstairs for some purpose earlier in the evening and learning from her aunt that he and Tamea had strolled away together, had decided to sit where she could keep watch over both entrances and await their return. What business had she spying upon them? He was distinctly irritated.
“I must confess, Maisie, I do not relish——” he began, but Maisie interrupted him.
“Oh, I dare say you’re thinking I’m an old snooper and that this is none of my business. I’d be prepared to admit that if you had not asked me to look after the child here. If you wish to have yourselves talked about, why then, spooning around the hotel grounds until twelve-thirty o’clock is a very good way.”
“Tamea is perfectly safe with me,” he defended, “and you ought to know it.”
“I do. With any woman you have as much boldness as a canary bird, my dear. What I object to, Dan, is the fact that you are not perfectly safe with Tamea, and we might as well have an understanding regarding her now as later. If you’re to be her guardian you cannot afford to let her vamp you. As one of your very oldest and dearest friends I’m going to take the liberty of painting you a picture of the future. I feel certain you cannot see the future clearly, Dan, or else you refuse to see it. May I speak very plainly, Dan?”
“What’s the use, Maisie? Mel has already painted me the same picture and I disagree with his color tones. I think I know what I am doing and I think, also, that one of the rarest gifts God ever grants to civilized woman is a nicely balanced diplomacy. They have too much or too little.”
It was Maisie’s turn to flush now—with embarrassment and anger. The flush departed, leaving her pale and trembling. “The first bearer of unwelcome news hath but a losing office,” she forced herself to say. “Are you driving back to town in the morning, Dan?”
He nodded.
“I think it would be just as well if you took Tamea with you,” Maisie continued icily. “Aunt and I will remain here for a few weeks. I do not feel quite up to the task of helping you with Tamea when you decline to help me to help you to help her.”
“Oh, Maisie, I’m sorry——”
“Of course you are. And you’ll be much sorrier some day, old dear. I may not have much of a gift for diplomacy, Dan, but it does not require the gift of second sight to see that you are madly infatuated with this girl, and common sense is as far from an infatuated man as the north pole from the south. When you come to your senses send for me—should you feel that you need me. Meanwhile—good night and—good-by until we meet again.”
He was furious. He had assimilated smilingly one terrific blow from Maisie within the past twelve hours and now he was forced to assimilate another. He rose and bowed to Maisie with polite frigidity.
“You are perfectly right, Maisie,” he assured her. “I am, beyond question, the most monumental ass in all California. Fortunately for both of us, I was just about to inform you that Tamea has consented to enter a convent immediately; consequently she no longer assumes the proportions of a white elephant to both of us. I shall take her home with me tomorrow and place her in school the day after. I am deeply grateful to you for all that you have done for me in this emergency, Maisie, and I am sincerely sorry my conduct has been displeasing to you. It has been eminently satisfactory to myself! Good night and—since I shall not see you before I leave tomorrow morning—au revoir. When I need you again I shall not, however, send for you. I am already too deep in your debt. Good night.”
Maisie managed her leave-taking admirably. A little nod, a cold and twisted smile—and she was gone. The instant the elevator deposited her on her floor, however, she fairly ran to her room, nor did she observe that the door to Tamea’s room was opened ever so little; that Tamea’s eye was at that crack and that the tears that rained down Maisie’s cheeks had not escaped that keen scrutiny.
“I am right,” Tamea soliloquized as she switched off her bedside lamp and slipped into bed. “Maisie loves him. She was too sure of him and that is a mistake. No woman should be too sure of any man because all men are children. After I left Dan with her they quarreled. That is well. Dan is not ashamed of me, then. Now Maisie weeps. That is well, too.”
The telephone tinkled faintly and Tamea took down the telephone.
“How do you do?” said Tamea cordially into the mouthpiece.
“Dan speaking, Tamea. I am going back to San Francisco tomorrow morning and you are to accompany me.”
“But Maisie and her aunt remain here?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I am a very wonderful girl. I am smart—yes, you bet.” Her triumphant, musical little chuckle was soothing to his scarred soul.
“Julia will be in your room at six o’clock to awaken you and pack your suitcase and trunk. Good night, my dear.”
“I kiss you once—for luck,” said Tamea and smacked her lips loudly. Then she hung up, snuggled down in bed and fell asleep almost instantly. She had started the day with a handicap, but her finish had been magnificent and she was well content.
CHAPTER XXII
Tamea was awakened by Julia at six o’clock. At seven she and Dan breakfasted together; at seven-thirty they entered Dan’s limousine, the smiling Julia tucked the robe in around her charge, took her seat beside Graves, and the homeward hegira began. At San José they looked in on the Mother Superior of a splendid convent that catered to the educational needs of young ladies of high school age, and Dan made arrangements to enter Tamea there the following day.
And this he did. Tamea had quite a wild weeping spell at the parting and Dan had to promise to write to her daily. Then the necessity for abandoning Julia was provocative of another outburst of grief, and to add to the complications this proof of devotion so touched Julia, all unused to such appreciation, that she wept loudly and copiously and was pathetically homely after two minutes of it. Dan, aware that all incoming and outgoing mail would be censored at this convent, realized that he, faced daily the awful task of composing an innocuous little letter to Tamea, and he was troubled with the thought that Tamea might not understand and go into open revolt as a result.
Finally the ordeal was over and Dan motored back to San Francisco. Here he discovered that there was trouble in the Seattle office of Casson and Pritchard and that it was necessary for him to go there at once. He welcomed the opportunity. Promptly he wrote Tamea that he was called away, but that he would telegraph her every day while he was traveling. Telegraphing was so much easier than writing under a handicap. Surely Tamea would understand that he could not afford to call her endearing names by wire. She must realize that men of his class did not do that sort of thing.
He was gone two weeks. Graves met him at the ferry depot upon his return.
“I’m glad you’ve returned, sir,” Graves announced. “The fur has been flying since you left. Mrs. Pippy gave Julia the air the minute you and Miss Larrieau were out of the house, so Julia beat it down to the convent and reported to Miss Larrieau. Up comes Miss Larrieau from the convent and tells Mrs. Pippy where to head in, and there’s a grand row. Mrs. Pippy calls on Sooey Wan to give Julia the bum’s rush out of the house and Sooey Wan tells her to go to Halifax or some other seaport. Then Mrs. Pippy cries and Julia cries and Sooey Wan cusses like a pirate and Miss Larrieau takes charge of the house and she and Sooey Wan are running it.”
Dan gasped. “But where is Mrs. Pippy?”
“She must have got frightened and left, or else Miss Larrieau fired her. Anyhow, she’s gone.”
“Has Miss Larrieau returned to school?”
“No, sir. I think she’s waiting until you get back.”
Dan sighed in lieu of the words he could not muster. Here indeed, in the expressive terminology of Graves, was “hell to pay and no pitch hot.”
He dropped in at the office for a few minutes to look through his accumulated mail. In it he found a formal resignation from Mrs. Pippy, who regretted that the lack of his moral support at a time when her position had grown untenable rendered her resignation imperative. She informed him of the address to which he might mail her check.
“I suppose I shall never have another Mrs. Pippy,” Dan sighed, and added, “and I hope I never shall.”
The moment he entered his home Tamea leaped out at him suddenly from behind the portières where she had been hiding. “Chéri!” she cried and favored him with a bone-cracking hug. “My adored one,” she added, and delivered a barrage of osculation that left Dan quite breathless. When he could speak he said:
“Graves has told me of the battle which took place here during my absence. Tamea, I am not pleased with your high-handed procedure.”
“P-f-f.Dear one, that Pippy was offensive. I disliked that old woman the first time she looked at me—like this,” and Tamea wrinkled her adorable nose. “There was nothing else to do. She had defied me by dismissing Julia, and this was mutiny, since Julia was mine and you had given her to me. If the king fails to protect those who come under the king’s protection, the people murmur and there is discontent and perhaps revolt, is there not? My place was here to protect my servant and I came and protected her. I have done well and you must not reprove me, dear one. If you do I shall be very unhappy.”
“Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right,” Dan protested. “It’s just that I hate a beastly row. You did not secure permission from the Mother Superior to come here?”
“I?” the amazed girl demanded. “I—Tamea, plead for permission? You do not know me, I think, dear one. Julia came in the car with Graves and I left at once. At the gate the nun on watch desired to stop me. She even laid hands upon me, but I thrust her aside.Tiens, I was angry!”
“I judged as much from a letter which the Mother Superior wrote me. Tamea, you may not return to that convent. They cannot control you and they do not desire that you remain there longer. My dear, can you not realize that this is very, very embarrassing to me?”
“It is very delightful to me, darling Dan. I did not wish to remain there. They opened your letters to me and before I could seal my letters to you they were read. So I did not send them, but kept them all for you. Tonight, after dinner, you shall read them, one by one. Yes, at that convent there was much between us of what you call in this country rough house.”
Sooey Wan came in from the kitchen, grunted a greeting to his employer, picked up Dan’s bags and disappeared upstairs with them. Returning, he paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs and said:
“Missa Dan, you fire Julia, Sooey Wan ketchum boat, go back China pretty quick.”
His impudence enraged Dan. “You may start now, Sooey Wan,” he told the Celestial. “I’ll keep Julia, but you’re fired.”
Sooey Wan looked at Tamea, who smiled and nodded to him. In effect she said to him: “Don’t pay any attention to him, Sooey Wan. I am in command here.”
Sooey Wan had evidently planned for this moment. His shrill, unmirthful cachinnation rang through the house. “Boss,” he piped, “you klazy, allee same Missie Pip. You fire me? Pooh-pooh! No can do. Sooey Wan belong your papa, papa give me to you, how can do? You fire me, who ketchum dinner, eh? You klazy.”
Again Dan sighed. It appeared that Sooey Wan’s first introduction to the Pritchard household had been due to a tong war in Chinatown. Sooey Wan, young, bold, aggressive, had been marked for slaughter in a tong feud, and the high-binder whose duty it had been, for a consideration, to waft him into the spirit world, had dropped Sooey Wan with his first shot. Then a cane had descended upon his wrist, causing him to drop his pistol. The peacemaker, Dan’s father, had thereupon possessed himself of it, handed the would-be assassin over to the police and forgotten the incident. Sooey Wan eventually recovered from his wound and at once sought out Pritchard senior, to whom he explained that by reason of an ancient Chinese custom he who saved a human life was forever after responsible for that life. Therefore, it behooved Dan’s father to place Sooey Wan on his payroll instanter, which, being done, the latter became one of the assets of the Pritchard estate. Inasmuch as Dan had been the sole heir to that estate, naturally, to Sooey Wan’s way of thinking, he had inherited his father’s responsibility for Sooey Wan’s life while the latter continued to live.Ergo, Sooey Wan could not be dismissed!
Decidedly, reprisals were not in order. There was naught to do save accept the situation gratefully, cast about for another school for Tamea and try, try again. Dan recalled that there was a very excellent convent in Sacramento. He would call upon the Mother Superior there, explain Tamea at length and seek to have the censorship law repealed in so far as she was concerned. He would offer to pay double the customary rate in return for special treatment and forbearance in Tamea’s case. And he would tell that infernal Julia what he thought about her—no, he would not. If he did she would weep and when Julia wept her pathetic lack of beauty was extraordinarily depressing.
“Well, I’m awfully happy to see you again, sweetheart,” he said, and favored Tamea with one hearty kiss in return for the dozens she had showered upon him. “Any news from Maisie or her aunt?”
“Divil a wor’rd, sor,” said Julia, coming downstairs at that moment. “I called her up, makin’ bould enough to ax her to reason wit’ Mrs. Pippy, sor, but she would not. Says she to me, says she: ‘Julia, there’s no reasonin’ wit’ anybody in that household, so I’ll not be botherin’ me poor head about them. When Misther Pritchard wants me he’ll sind for me’.”
“Quite so, Julia, quite so. She is absolutely right.”
He went upstairs, bathed and changed his clothes. He intended returning to the office, but Tamea pleaded with him to spend the remainder of the day amusing her. So he took her to a vaudeville show, and Tamea held his hand and, between acts, whispered to him little messages of love. Once, when the house was dark, she leaned over and kissed him very tenderly on the ear. Then, remembering that he held a grudge against Sooey Wan, whom he knew would prepare a special dinner to celebrate his return, Dan decided to take Tamea out to dinner and, deliberately, to fail to telephone Sooey Wan. He knew that would infuriate the old Chinaman and indicate to him that he had been reproved.
They went to an Italian restaurant, the Fiore d’Italia, up in the Latin quarter. It was a restaurant which was patronized nightly by the same guests; indeed, Dan, who had a weakness for some of the toothsome specialties of the house, had been a guest there about three times a month for years, and Mark Mellenger had been, with the exception of Thursday nights when he dined at Dan’s house, a nightly habitué of the Fiore d’Italia for fifteen years. Dan had a desire to bask for an hour in the light of Mellenger’s delightful but infrequent smile and had chosen to take Tamea to the Fiore d’Italia in the hope of seeing him there.
Mellenger was just rising from his table as they entered. He greeted them both cordially, but to Dan’s pressing invitation to sit and talk awhile he replied that he was much too busy at the office and hurried away. Scarcely had he gone when Grandpère, an ancient waiter who looked for his evening tip from Mark Mellenger as regularly as evening descended upon San Francisco, came in with an order of striped bassà laMellenger. Dan and Tamea had seated themselves at the table vacated by Mellenger, and Grandpère stood a moment, blinking at the vacant chair. Then he glanced toward the peg upon which Mellenger’s wide soft hat always hung and, finding it gone, sighed and returned to the kitchen with the order.
“Why, Mel left without eating!” Dan exclaimed.
“Yes, he saw us first, dear one. He desired to spare himself the embarrassment of having to speak too much with me,” Tamea explained. “At Del Monte I told Mellengair some things he did not like.”
“Oh, Tamea, how could you? He is my dearest friend.”
She shrugged. “He told me things I did not like. We are even now. I think I should tell you that he will not come to your house again for dinner while I am there.”
Again Dan sighed. Things were closing in around him. He had lost an excellent housekeeper, his maid and his cook were in open revolt, his best man friend avoided him and his best woman friend had quarreled with him—and all over Tamea. The amazing part of it all was that he simply could not quarrel with Tamea. He could only adore her and strive to believe that it wasn’t adoration. Tamea, watching him narrowly, saw that he had surrendered to the situation and, as was his custom, he would forbear seeking the details of a situation repugnant to him. So she dipped a small radish in salt and handed it to him with the air of royalty conferring the accolade.
There was dancing to the music of an accordion played by an Italian. He was a genial man, with smiles for all the dancers, and very generous with his encores. Old patrons nodded to one another across the tables, there was much pleasant conversation and some noisy eating, for the Fiore d’Italia was a restaurant dedicated to food rather than the niceties of eating, and was patronized by democratic folk who held good food to be superior to table manners. The camaraderie of the place appealed to Tamea at once, and when presently the accordion player, between dances, commenced to play very softly “O Sole Mio,” and an Italian waiter who had almost attained grand opera paused with a stack of soiled dishes on his arm and sang it, Tamea was transported with delight.
“We will dance, no?” she pleaded brightly.
Dan would have preferred the bastinado, but—they danced. All eyes were on Tamea. Who was she? Where did she come from? That was Pritchard with her, was it not? Who was Pritchard? Zounds, that girl was a corker! How she could dance and how she loved it! A regular Bohemian, eh?
“You play very well, Monsieur,” Tamea complimented the musician as the dance ceased. “Please, I would play your accordion. It is so much finer than my own.”
Before Dan could protest the Italian had handed her his instrument, Tamea had seated herself and commenced to play “Blue Danube Waves.” Dan stood, beseeching her with his eyes to cease making a spectacle of herself and return to the table, but the spirit of carnival had entered into Tamea and she would not be denied. She knew what Dan wanted her to do but she would not do it.
“Every one dance,” she commanded. “And I will play that this tired musician may dance also. It is not fair that he should play always.”
There was a hearty round of applause and the dancers came out on the floor.
“Tamea, dear, you’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Dan pleaded.
“If you would do the same, dear one,” she replied lightly, “you would be such a happy boy.”
She was beating time with her foot; and when the dance was ended she played a ballad of Riva and sang it. The Fiore d’Italia was in an uproar of appreciation, athrill at a new sensation, as the girl handed the accordion back to its owner, thanked him and joined Dan at their table. Immediately all who knew Dan personally or who could rely on the democracy and camaraderie of the place to excuse their action, came over to be introduced to Tamea and felicitate her on her playing and singing. Marinetti, the proprietor, was delighted, and in defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment presented Tamea with a quart of California champagne, which Grandpère fell upon and carried away to be frappéd.
The girl’s face glowed with a happiness that was touching. “Here is life, dear one,” she cried. “Why should I stifle in a convent when there is joy and singing and dancing in your world? We will come here very frequently, no?. . . Oh, but yes! You would not deny your Tamea the pleasure of this beautiful place? Would you, darling Dan Pritchard? Say no—very loud—like that—No.”
“No,” he growled.
His reward was a loving twig at his nose while those around him laughed at his embarrassment. What a dull fellow he was to be so evidently appreciated by such a glorious creature, they thought. Some youths among the diners even wondered if it might not be possible to relieve him of the source of his embarrassment!
It was eleven o’clock when they left the Fiore d’Italia, and Tamea had sung, danced and played her way into the hearts of the patrons to such an extent that Dan felt he could never bear to patronize that restaurant again. Thus he retired with the added conviction that in addition to robbing him of his friends Tamea had now robbed him of his favorite restaurant. Like all bachelors he was a creature of habit and resented the slightest interference with those habits.
The following morning he journeyed to Sacramento to arrange for Tamea’s entrance into the convent there. To his huge disgust small-pox had developed in the school and the convent was under quarantine. So he returned to San Francisco and, feeling a trifle depressed at the manner in which fate was pursuing him, he telephoned to Maisie.
With characteristic feminine ease Maisie elected to forget that she had been fifty per cent responsible for their disagreement at Del Monte. She had thought the matter over, tearfully but at great length, and had come to the conclusion that even if she was not a martyr she could not afford to let Dan Pritchard think so. After a silence of about two weeks Dan had a habit of ringing up and burying the hatchet, and Maisie hadn’t the slightest doubt but that this was his mission now. She resolved to be dignified and enjoy his suit for reëstablishment of theentente cordiale.
“Hello, Dan’l,” she answered, and her clear, cool voice sounded like music in Dan’s ears. “Are you in trouble?”
“I’m up to my eyebrows in it, Maisie!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Dan! But then it’s no more than I expected. I thought you’d send for me when you needed me.”
“I do not need you!” he replied furiously, and hung up.