CHAPTER XXVI
The wisdom of Dan’s course in announcing the insolvency of Casson and Pritchard before the announcement should be forced from him by the firm’s creditors was fully manifested at the meeting of the creditors. Each creditor had received a copy of the firm’s trial balance and the schedule of assets and liabilities; also a copy of Dan’s proposed plan of settlement and reorganization. The settlement contemplated a payment of twenty-five per cent on all liabilities at once, with a three-year extension on the balance due, at five per cent, and a payment of the interest and twenty-five per cent of the principal annually. All of the creditors had had three days in which to read this plan, study it and discuss it with their principals, and the result was that Dan’s plan was enthusiastically and gratefully accepted, with the proviso that John Casson retire from the partnership. The method of his retirement the creditors left to Pritchard.
The task of severing Casson from the firm was not a difficult one. His share of the debts practically equaled his equity in the assets and he accepted eagerly Dan’s offer to take over his assets and liabilities in return for a release from the creditors for Casson’s share of the firm’s indebtedness to them. He had about a quarter of a million dollars in cash and real estate in his private fortune and this Dan forced him to turn over to his wife, as the only guarantee that he could think of against a disastrous reëntry into business and, consequently, a penniless and sorrowful old age for all concerned.
At the last moment a hitch occurred. Two banks, carrying nearly half a million dollars’ worth of Casson and Pritchard paper, bearing Dan Pritchard’s endorsement, suddenly decided, after the fashion of banks, to play safe. “Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost” is ever the fashion of the banker who finds himself the possessor of a slight advantage over other creditors. Overnight they entered suit against Dan, as endorser and guarantor of Casson and Pritchard’s notes, and levied attachments against every asset of his they could locate. In the face of this unexpected treachery Dan had but one alternative, and he chose it unhesitatingly. He filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy, for himself and for the firm, thus vitiating the banks’ attachments and placing all of his and Casson and Pritchard’s creditors upon an equal footing. Thereupon the bank withdrew its suit against Dan and petitioned the court for a receiver for Casson and Pritchard—a petition in which the other creditors were now forced to join. A receiver was immediately appointed and took charge of the business of Casson and Pritchard.
It was then that Dan Pritchard’s spirit broke. The day the receiver took charge he cleaned out his desk and departed from that office. The following day he had leased his home furnished, dismissed Graves and Julia, stored his cars and purchased a passage to Tahiti. With Tamea’s money he promptly purchased Liberty Bonds, which in the panic had dropped twenty points, and established a trust fund for her with a local trust company. Then, accompanied by Sooey Wan, he went aboard the Union Line steamer Aorangi and departed for Tahiti, hoping to find Tamea, marry her there and then consider what he should do with his life thereafter. He was crushed at the unexpected turn his business affairs had taken. He had turned over to the receiver every dollar, every asset he possessed, and he no longer had the slightest interest in the affairs of Casson and Pritchard.
The creditors might do what they pleased with the business. They could either operate it under a receivership until it paid out, or they could liquidate it. It was their business now and Dan had done all that any honorable man could do to meet his obligations. Old Casson had his release from all of the creditors, including the banks, for these latter had fairly accurate information as to the latter’s finances, and, with Pritchard’s endorsement to protect them, they had concluded to dispense with picking old Casson’s financial bones.
The knowledge that Maisie would not be thrown under the feet of the world comforted Dan greatly. He was too depressed to call upon her and say good-by before sailing, so he wrote her a brief note of farewell instead; desirous of losing touch with his world, he did not tell her where he was bound. To Mellenger only did he confide, and that silent and thoughtful man had merely nodded and declined comment.
At last, Dan reflected as, stretched out in a steamer chair in the snug lee of the Aorangi’s funnel, he watched the coast of California fade into the haze, he was free. Business no longer claimed him. If the receiver desired any information touching the firm’s affairs he had complete and comprehensive records before him, and if he could not understand those records, there was the efficient office force to aid him. Yes, he was free. He would wander now, with Sooey Wan to take care of him financially and physically.
And he felt no qualms in the realization that he was now dependent entirely upon Sooey Wan. In a way he had always been dependent upon Sooey Wan, but on the other hand, was not Sooey Wan dependent upon his Missa Dan?
As the old Chinaman had often assured him, the only human being in the world to whom he was bound by the tightest tethers of affection was Dan Pritchard. Wherefore, why should he decline a loan from Sooey Wan? To have done so would have been to inflict upon the loyal old heathen a cruel hurt. And money meant little to Sooey Wan; it was good to gamble with, that was all. In the end Sooey Wan, dying, would have willed his entire estate to his beloved Missa Dan; why, therefore, be a sentimental idiot and decline to accept it while Sooey Wan lived? Why deny the old man this great happiness?
Sooey Wan, neatly and unostentatiously arrayed in Oriental costume and occupying a first class cabin all to himself, lolled in a chair alongside Dan and puffed contentedly at a long briarwood pipe. He was having the first vacation he had ever known and he was enjoying it, for presently he turned to Dan and said:
“Missa Dan, I think evlybody pretty damn happy. No ketchum work, ketchum plenty money, ketchum nice lest, ketchum lady queen, velly nice. Eh, Missa Dan?”
“Sooey Wan,” Dan replied, “so far as I am concerned, I never want to operate another ship or buy another pound of copra or draw another check. I’m going to marry the lady queen the very day we find her; after that I’m going to paint pictures and dream and soak myself from soul to liver with just plain, unruffled, untroubled, simple living. Sooey Wan, I’m content just to sit here and look at the ocean. The other fellows can have all the worry now. They wanted it and I gave it to them and I hope they enjoy it. I’m content to know they will get their money out of Casson and Pritchard, although it ruins me.”
“You allee time talkee like klazy man, boss. Wha’ for you luined? Plenty money hab got. Shut up! You makee me sick.”
Fell a long, blissful silence, while Dan stared at the sea and permitted his brain to sink into a state of absolute quiescence, and Sooey Wan speculated on the expectancy of life in superannuated Chinamen in general and of himself in particular. For the paternal instinct was strong in Sooey Wan and the years had been long since Dan’s baby arms had been around his neck and Dan’s soft cheek had been pressed in love against Sooey Wan’s. Sweet memories of a sweet experience! Childless old Sooey Wan yearned for it again, yearned to have his Missa Dan know the thrill that had been denied to Sooey Wan—the thrill of fatherhood.
Arrived at Tahiti, Dan’s eager glance swept the little harbor as the Aorangi crept in. The Pelorus lay at anchor. The skipper of the tug that had towed her out of San Francisco bay was right. She was a witch in a breeze! The French customs officials who boarded the steamer informed Dan that she had arrived the day before. Zounds, what a smashing passage! And Tamea was over yonder in the town—just exactly where, he would ascertain from the master of the Pelorus.
Dan and Sooey Wan were into a short boat and pulling toward the Pelorus five minutes after the Aorangi had been given pratique. The master of the Pelorus met them at the rail as Dan came up over the Jacob’s ladder.
“You had a passenger, Captain,” said Dan. “A Mademoiselle Tamea Larrieau.”
The master of the Pelorus eyed him gravely and nodded. “You are Mr. Pritchard, I take it, sir,” he said.
“I am, Captain. Where is Tamea?”
“I wanted her to wait, Mr. Pritchard. I told her you’d be following on the first steamer, but she wouldn’t listen to me. And I one of her father’s oldest and closest friends, Mr. Pritchard. But she was what you might call broken-hearted. Nothing would do but she must get back to Riva and lose herself. The day we got in she booked a passage on the auxiliary schooner Doris Crane that was just leaving. The Crane has a passenger license and very excellent passenger accommodations, and Tamea will get as far as Tamakuku on her. Riva lies about eighty miles due west and the girl will charter a gasoline launch for the remainder of the journey.”
“I doubt if she has sufficient money, Captain.”
“She has. I charged her nothing for her passage. By the way,” he continued with a sly smile, “the Doris Crane can be reached by wireless—maybe. Why not have the operator on the Aorangi try to get your message to Tamea?”
“Tamea told you about me, Captain?” asked Dan.
The skipper nodded, smiling. “When you know her better, sir, you’ll make allowances for her native blood and her primitive way of reasoning.”
“Thank you,” Dan replied, and departed overside, to be pulled back to the Aorangi, where he filed a message to Tamea informing her that he would meet her in Riva, asking her to await him there, telling her that he loved her and begging her to wireless him in reply.
Just before the Aorangi pulled out that night the wireless operator telephoned him at his hotel to report that he had been unable to get in touch with the Doris Crane. Dan was cruelly disappointed and Sooey Wan, observing this, trotted out to the hotel bar and returned with two Gibson cocktails which he had prevailed upon the barkeeper to mix according to a time-honored formula. One of these cocktails Sooey Wan drank, in silent sympathy and understanding, while Dan partook of the other.
When the old cook noted a lifting of the cloud on Dan’s face, he spoke, for Sooey Wan was one of those rare men who never speak out of their turn.
“Captain of schooner velly nice man. Wha’ for you no rentum schooner? Plenty money hab got.”
Dan’s long arm rested affectionately across Sooey Wan’s shoulders. “You dad-fetched old heathen, what would I do without you? You’re the shadow of a rock in a weary land. Let’s go.”
Together they went—out to the Pelorus. Her master, seated on deck under an awning with a glass of grog before him, smiled as they came over the rail.
“I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Pritchard. I was ready to sail at four this afternoon, but something told me I’d best wait. It’s about five hundred miles out of my way, but if you will insist on going to Riva I might as well have the job as anybody. Mighty few vessels cruise down that way. You might be hung up here for six months. Passage for two will cost you two thousand dollars.”
“Hab got,” said Sooey Wan promptly, and shed his duck coat. Up out of his linen trousers came his shirt tail and around his middle showed a wide money belt. This he unbuckled and gravely counted out two thousand dollars into the master’s palm.
“Now I go ketchum baggage,” he announced and went ashore. Half an hour later the Pelorus, in tow of a launch, was slipping out of the harbor. Once in the open sea, she heeled gently to the trade wind and rolled away into the southwest in the wake of the Doris Crane.
CHAPTER XXVII
Pelorus proved to be a comfortable and seaworthy vessel and her master (his name was Hackett) a most comfortable and seaworthy person. Although plainly hungry for a more intellectual brand of masculine society than ordinarily was to be found in the out-of-the-way places he visited, he tactfully forbore to obtrude upon Dan’s mood of depression until quite certain that he was not obtruding—whereupon he would become a most delightful and entertaining companion. His besetting sin was Scotch and soda, albeit he resolutely declined, when at sea, to touch a drop before five o’clock in the afternoon and while he helped himself liberally until the steward announced dinner, the liquor never appeared to affect him. It developed that he and Gaston of the Beard had been warm friends. Hackett’s admiration for the old Breton skipper had been very profound.
One day he said suddenly to Dan: “You have an unasked question in the back of your head, Mr. Pritchard. You need not bother to ask it. I shall answer it, however. Old Gaston Larrieau was my friend. We stood back to back, once, and shot our way out of rather a dirty mess in the New Hebrides; I was wounded and unconscious at the finish and he swam with me half a mile through shark-infested waters to his ship. I am what I am and rather less than that in port, but I behave myself at sea and I have a long memory. Tamea was as nice a girl when she left the Pelorus as she was when she came aboard. I wasn’t fixed to accommodate a woman passenger, but to such as I had she was welcome and no questions asked.”
Dan smiled. “Thank you,” he replied. “Iwaswondering.”
“You’re devilish frank,” Hackett laughed. “I think I like you the better for your insulting thought. However, I wouldn’t have been above it with anybody save old Gaston’s girl. One grows to hold them rather cheaply, you know. Half-caste or full blood, they come and they go. Hearts are not too readily broken down this way, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Tamea,” said Dan Pritchard, “is a white woman.”
“Nonsense, my dear sir. She’s a half-caste.”
“Her soul is white,” said Dan doggedly.
“I am not prepared to dispute that assertion,” Hackett replied casually. “I never quarrel with any man’s likes or dislikes.” He eyed Dan narrowly. “Something tells me you’re going to marry this girl, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Certainly.”
“And take her back to the United States with you?”
Dan nodded.
Hackett shrugged, as who should say: “Well, it’s none of my business what you do.”
“You deprecate my decision,” Dan charged irritably.
“I do not. I don’t give a hoot what you do. I was thinking of the girl. If I stood in your shoes I wouldn’t marry her. Why should you? You don’t have to, and she doesn’t expect you to. You’ll regret it if you take her back to the United States, because she’ll never be truly happy there. When you transplant these people they die of homesickness. They’re so far behind our civilization they can never catch up, and the effort to do so wearies them and they die. They have the home instinct and the home yearning of a lost fox hound. They are children, I tell you. They never grow up—and you are not the man to wed with a woman who will never grow up.”
“Nonsense,” Dan growled. “Sheer, unadulterated nonsense.”
Hackett shrugged and poured himself another peg of Scotch. “I’ve had three of them in my day. I think I ought to know. One was a Pitcairn islander and more than half white. I sailed a thousand miles off my course to bring her back to Pitcairn. She was slowly dying. She loved me but she loved Pitcairn and her people more.”
There the conversation ceased, yet the effect of it remained. Day after day, night after night, as the Pelorus rolled lazily before the trades, Dan Pritchard’s mind dwelled on his problem. What if Hackett should be proved right, after all? Dan recalled how swiftly, how inevitably, Tamea’s hurt heart had called her back to Riva and her own people. How poignantly had that bruised heart yearned for the understanding of those who could understand her?
His mind harked back to the nights when Tamea lay upon the hearthrug in his Pacific Avenue home and played sad little songs of Riva on her accordion. Could it have been that on such occasions her soul had been steeped in a vague, unsuspected nostalgia? If Hackett was right, then he, Dan Pritchard, journeyed upon worse than a fool’s errand. Might he not be doing the kindly, the decent thing, to turn back, to trust to time and some other man to mend that broken heart? He wondered.
He could not, however, cherish seriously even for a moment the thought of abandoning his journey. Old Gaston had given Tamea to him to care for; the Triton had trusted him and he must go on. There was that cursed money he held in trust for her. She had abandoned it to him, out of the greatness of her love, but he could no more accept it now than he could the night she had offered it. He had to see her and return it to her. He had to win her complete forgiveness and understanding, to render her happy again.
Suddenly, one evening while he paced slowly backward and forward in the waist of the ship, he found the solution. He would marry Tamea and end his days in the Islands. He wanted a change. He told himself he was sick of civilization; he wanted to be simple and natural, free of the competition of existence.
Down there nobody would wonder why he had married Tamea. Conventions did not exist, nor foolish tradition nor social codes—and he could paint landscapes to his heart’s content. He would establish a South Sea school of landscape painting. He would be through with the riddle of existence. . . and there was the embarrassment of Maisie and her aunt and old Casson and Mellenger and all of his friends should he return to San Francisco!
His decision, arrived at so suddenly, was peculiarly inexorable. He had thought too long and too hard: mentally he had come to the jumping-off place. On the instant his motto was: “The devil take everything—including me!” The rewards to be gleaned from the struggle that faced him, should he return to his white civilization, were scarcely commensurate with the effort required. A sudden, passionate yearning had seized him to chuck it all, to drift with the tide, to sample life in its elemental phases, to be happy in a land where all of the rules of existence were reversed . . . a man lived but once and he was a long time dead. . . and Dan wanted Tamea. . . . Ah, how ardently he desired her and how lonely and desolate would be his life without her! Civilization demands much of repression, since civilized man, like the domestic dog, still retains many of the instincts of his primitive ancestors; and Dan was weary of repression. Hang it, he would go on the loose! He would take the gifts that the gods provided and cease to worry over the opinions of people whose sole claims to his consideration lay in the fact that they were white and dwelled in his world and were hobbled and frightened by tradition.
In all his life Dan had never arrived at a decision that he grasped more tenaciously or which yielded him a greater measure of comfort. A subconscious appeal permeated this new thought of freedom as a phrase runs through an opera. Free! He was going to be free! He was a volatile spirit and he had been corked too long; the collapse of his business offered him a splendid excuse for pulling the cork, and by all the gods, Christian and pagan, he would pull it. That was the idea! Chuck it, chuck it all and walk out of the picture without even a word of farewell to his world.
“I’ll do it! By judas priest, I’ll do it,” he said audibly.
“I thought you would,” said Captain Hackett’s calm voice. Dan turned and caught the glow of the master’s cigar as the latter stood on the companion with his head and shoulders out of the cabin scuttle. “You’ve been thinking it over long enough. Your brains must be addled.”
“Well, it is comforting to have come to a conclusion, at any rate,” Dan defended.
“My guess is that you have concluded to settle in Riva and let the rest of the world go by, Mr. Pritchard.”
“That remark forces me to wonder again why you continue to skipper a trading schooner, Captain. You should hang out your shingle as a clairvoyant or mind reader or fortune teller.”
“I’ve seen your kind come and I’ve seen your kind go,” Hackett retorted. “Once I was one of you—and I came but never went—and now it is too late. Which is why I repeat, in all respect, that even if you stay, it will not be necessary to marry Tamea. Let the world go by, if you choose—you are the best judge of your wisdom in that regard—but remember that down under the Line it goes by very slowly, my son. These islands are not for white men—that is, your kind of white man—unless you contemplate vegetating and going to pieces mentally, morally and physically before you are forty. The sun does things to fair-haired and blue-eyed men and women down in the latitude and longitude of Riva. You will not be happy there, Mr. Pritchard, and one of these days when I drop in at Riva you’ll hear your white world calling—and the Chink will dig up another two thousand dollars for me. And when you leave, Mr. Pritchard, it would be well to have nolegalappendages.”
Dan was silent. He wanted to bash this tropical philosopher over the head with a belaying pin and cause him to stow forever his insulting and impossible advice. But—he reflected—if he did that he would be delayed getting to Riva and Tamea, and he could not bear that she should suffer one moment longer than necessary. Hackett read his thoughts.
“We will not discuss this subject again, Mr. Pritchard,” he said gently. “I have said my say because I have felt it my duty to do so. Personally, I don’t give a damn what happens to you, but I should not care to see Gaston’s daughter made unhappy. I have roved through these islands some thirty years and I know what I know. Have a cigar. They’re genuine Sumatras. A bit dry, but if you like a dry cigar—— No? Well, you needn’t grow huffy.”
Dan continued his swift walk up and down the deck and Hackett continued to smoke contemplatively. After a while he said:
“I’m going to install an ice-making machine with part of the two thousand dollars the Chink paid me. Going to sea is a hard life and I make enough money for my owners to entitle me to do myself rather well. One does grow a bit weary of boiled Scotch and tepid wines.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Two weeks later the brown crew of the Pelorus set Dan Pritchard and Sooey Wan ashore in the whaleboat.
“I’ll drop in here on my way back—say a year hence,” Captain Hackett promised him as they shook hands at the Jacob’s-ladder. “I’m a little bit curious about you and when I’m curious about anybody I have to find out. I think six months will be long enough to cure you, however. Good-by, Mr. Pritchard, and good luck to you. Kiss the bride for me and—forgive me if I venture to remind you once more—you really do not have to marry her! Tamea hasn’t any very serious thoughts on the validity or the sanctity of marriage. It is, comparatively, a recent institution here.” He shook a horny finger at Dan and answered the latter’s scowl with a mellow laugh. Dan thought he might be just a little bit jingled a few hours earlier than was his wont. Strange man. Dan had an idea he had fallen from high estate.
A Kanaka sailor carried Dan ashore from the boat through the wash of the surf, and followed with Dan’s trunk. Sooey Wan, presumed to be a person of no importance, struggled ashore in water up to his knees, and the moment he found himself high and dry on the shingle he looked about him with interest. What he saw was a half mile of white beach with a fringe of tufted coconut palms leaning seaward, a few canoes hauled up on the beach, a large corrugated iron godown and a small wooden bungalow, painted white with green trimmings and wide, deep verandas, squatted on the low bluff above the beach.
From the veranda of this bungalow a white man detached himself and came down over the bluff to meet them. He introduced himself as the Reverend Cyrus Muggridge, the resident missionary. He was a gloomy, liverish sort of man and Dan had a feeling that to Mr. Muggridge his martyrdom in Riva was a thing of the flesh and scarcely of the spirit. He repaid the reverend gentleman’s compliment in kind and introduced himself. Then, because he observed in the missionary’s eyes an unspoken query, he said:
“Are you, by any chance, Mr. Muggridge, acquainted with Miss Tamea Larrieau, who is, I understand, the last blood of the ancient chiefs of Riva?”
“I am, unhappily, acquainted with the young woman,” Muggridge replied wearily, and added, “She is, like her father, wholly irreclaimable.”
“Perhaps you would be so good as to direct me to her home?” Dan suggested. “That is, if she has arrived in Riva recently, as I have reason to suspect she may have. You seem a bit shy on population, Mr. Muggridge,” he added parenthetically.
“I think my last census showed some four hundred souls, but since then we have had two epidemics of influenza and the birth rate has scarcely kept pace with the mortality rate. Really, I must have another census. Counting them roughly, I should say that the total population of the island is two hundred and fifty, of which, perhaps, thirty families reside in the village.”
“Where is the village?”
“About a quarter of a mile up a valley which runs up to those mountains from the sea. Miss Larrieau, by the way, is again in Riva. She arrived a week ago and has taken up her residence in her old home. I will point it out to you, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are, perhaps, wondering why none of my people are present,” Mr. Muggridge continued. “You have unfortunately arrived in mid-afternoon, when my people are sleeping or, what is more probable, over in the river bathing.”
The Kanaka sailors having disposed Dan’s baggage above high-water mark, the whaleboat pulled back to the ship and was hoisted aboard even while the Pelorus slowly came about and headed for the open sea again. Mr. Muggridge, evidently greatly pleased at the prospect of white company—and a gentleman at that—courteously led the way to the white bungalow and extended to Dan and his servant the hospitality of his home.
“Thank you, Mr. Muggridge,” said Dan gratefully. “I shall be most happy to accept your invitation—for the present at least. May I ask you to point out to me Miss Larrieau’s habitation?”
Mr. Muggridge’s eyebrows went up perceptibly. What a hurry this well bred, respectable-looking stranger was in to see that half-caste Jezebel! “Follow the road up past the church yonder until you come to the river, which you will cross on two coco-palm logs. They are very slippery. Be careful. Having crossed the bridge, turn to the left and follow the path up the hill to a house that is as distinctly a white man’s dwelling as my own. You should find the lady you seek asleep on the veranda.”
“Thank you, Mr. Muggridge. If you don’t mind, I think I shall run up to Miss Larrieau’s house.”
“Dinner will be served at five-thirty,” the missionary warned him. “I shall have my servant help your man bring the baggage up to your room.”
Tamea’s home stood in a grove of coco-palms, interspersed with some flowering shrubs and a few lesser trees with luxuriant green foliage. The house had been built on a solid foundation of cement and creosoted redwood underpinning, to protect it from the native wood-devouring insects. Dan suspected that the green paint which had at some distant date been applied to the house was anti-fouling—the sort of paint used on ships’ bottoms to protect them from teredos. From under the house the snouts of half a dozen young pigs, taking their siesta, protruded, and in the yard a stately gamecock and some hens were prospecting for worms. The place smelled a little of neglect, of semi-decayed vegetation, of insanitation—the smell peculiar to the homes of native dwellers in the tropics. A well worn flight of five steps led up from the front of the house to the veranda, from which one might glean a view of miles of coastline. About the place there was a silence so profound that Dan feared he might have come too late, after all.
He mounted the steps and rapped at a door with bronze screening on it. There was no answer, so he opened the door and gazed into a large living room. On the floor was a huge, blue, very old and very valuable Chinese rug; in the center of this rug stood a large, plain table, of native hardwood and—so Dan judged—native workmanship. In a corner he saw a grand piano and on top of the piano Tamea’s accordion and a mandolin and some scattered music. A few chairs and hardwood benches arranged along the wall under windows which ran the full length of each wall and which, when it was desired to ventilate the house, dropped down into a pocket after the fashion of a train window, completed the furnishings, with the exception of half a dozen rudely framed sketches of native life, and ships at sea.
“Nobody home,” thought Dan, and walked around the veranda on three sides of the house. On the fourth side, which gave upon the vivid green mountain peak in the background and into which the late afternoon sun could not penetrate, Dan paused.
Before him, on a folding cot, with a native mat spread over it, Tamea lay, with her head pillowed on her left arm and her face turned slightly toward him. Her eyes were closed, but she was not asleep, for even as Dan gazed upon the beloved face he saw tears creep out from between the shut lids, saw the beautiful, semi-naked body shaken by an ill suppressed sob. Two swift strides and he was kneeling beside her, and as she opened her eyes and sought to rise at sight of him, his arms went around her and strained her to his heart while his lips kissed her tear-dimmed eyes.
Thus, long, he held her, while her heart pounded madly against his breast and the pent-up sorrow of weeks struggled with the rhapsody of that one perfect moment and left her weak and trembling, able only to gasp: “Ah, beloved! Beloved! You have come! Is it then that you love your Tamea—after all?”
He held her closer and in that tremendous moment his soul overflowed and he mingled, unashamed, his tears with hers. “Yes, love, I have come,” he answered chokingly. “You could not be happy with me in my country—so I have come to be happy with you—in yours.”
“You come—you mean you come to stay—that you have left—Maisie—your friends——”
“I am here, Tamea. I love you. I cannot live without you. I need you—when you left me you did not understand.”
“I understand now,” she whispered. “Captain Hackett of the Pelorus was at pains to explain for you, but I could not believe then. But—you have come to Riva—so now I understand. Captain Hackett was right, so let there be no more explanations. Ah, dear one, my heart is bursting with love for you. If you had not come life would have lost its taste and your Tamea would have died.”
“Don’t,” he pleaded, “don’t,” and held her closer. “From this moment until death we shall not be separated. Tonight we shall go to Mr. Muggridge and be married.”
Tamea was suddenly thoughtful. “Since I have been away the wife of the missionary has died, and he is mad about your Tamea. Before I left Riva it was his habit to follow me about and in his eyes there was that look I know and hate. I have been home a week and his madness has increased a hundredfold. Dear one, I am afraid of him.”
“You need not be,” Dan assured her and stroked the glorious head of her. “I met Mr. Muggridge half an hour ago when I landed and I observed that he seemed interested when I asked about you. He looked to me like a man with a fire in his soul. . . . Well, he’s a minister of the Gospel, however, so I dare say if he struggles hard enough he can put the fire out long enough to pronounce us man and wife.”
“But—a license is necessary if we would marry after the fashion of your people, beloved,” she reminded him. “And there is no law in Riva, although the island is claimed by the French Government.”
“It will be better than no marriage at all, Tamea.”
She smiled. “Such a queer, strange people, you all-whites,” was her comment. “It is not a marriage but a substitute, yet you would ask this man to perform a mummery to satisfy something in you that is a heritage from your ancestors. I have no such heritage. For me, no mumbling of words by this mad priest is necessary to happiness.”
“Well, they are necessary to me, strange as it may seem to you, Tamea,” Dan replied with his shy smile. “You are half white and I am all white and it is my purpose to dwell with you on a white basis. Therefore, we will wed according to the custom of my people.”
“As you will,” Tamea agreed. “Is it that this matter touches your honor if I will it otherwise?”
He nodded. “Then come to Mr. Muggridge,” the girl urged, and led him by the hand down the hill to the missionary’s house. Sooey Wan was standing in the doorway and at sight of Tamea he uncovered respectfully.
“Faithful one,” Tamea hailed him and gave him her hand in huge delight. Sooey Wan shook it gingerly, his yellow teeth flashing the while in an ecstatic grin.
At the sound of voices and footsteps on the veranda, Mr. Muggridge came out. “You have returned quite soon, Mr. Pritchard,” he began, and then his glance rested on Tamea. “Well?” he demanded irritably.
“Mr. Muggridge,” Dan said to him, “it is my desire that you should marry Mademoiselle Larrieau and me at once.”
The missionary grew pale and his somber eyes grew even more somber. “I shall require her father’s permission before performing the ceremony, Mr. Pritchard,” he said with an effort.
“Her father is dead, Mr. Muggridge.”
“Have you a license of any sort?”
“No. Is it your custom to require a license when performing the marriage ceremony between two of your converts?”
“No, indeed. My people do not understand what a license is, and it has been deemed unnecessary to insist upon it with these primitive people. In your case, however——”
“I understand that white man’s law is non-operative in Riva,” Dan interrupted. “The sole regulations of this island have been promulgated by you and other missionaries, have they not?”
Mr. Muggridge nodded, his blazing eyes still fastened on Tamea.
“Well,” Dan explained earnestly, “in the absence of white law I desire you to marry me according to missionary law. I wish to feel that my marriage has been sanctioned by a representative of a Christian faith. I am a Christian.”
“A true Christian would not marry this woman, sir.”
“I did not come here to argue with you, Mr. Muggridge. It is my firm intention to dwell in Riva with Tamea and I prefer to dwell with her in accordance with the custom of my own people.”
“I must decline to perform the ceremony,” said Muggridge doggedly. “In your case, without a license, should I perform this ceremony, I would be sanctioning your right to live with this woman in defiance of the law of the land.”
“But there is no law, Mr. Muggridge.”
“There is,” said the missionary tersely. “I am the Law, and in this matter I am inexorable.”
“You’re a lunatic. You’re as crazy as a March hare,” Dan retorted hotly.
“It is because he has looked upon me with desire,” said Tamea coolly. “Come, beloved. It is foolish to argue with one who is quite mad.”
She took his hand and led him back up the hill and out on to the edge of the high headland that gave a view of the entire eastern coast of the island. Inland, a high conical peak, which Dan now realized was a volcano, lifted some four thousand feet into the sky, now rapidly darkening as the sun sank. Still holding Dan’s hand, Tamea took her stand beside him.
“Dear one,” she said, “if you would take me to wife, then must it be after the fashion of my people, since it is plainly impossible that it can be after the fashion of yours. I think I understand how it is that you would take me to wife. You would be very serious, very sincere, very solemn. It is something you would not do lightly.”
He nodded and the girl, turning, pointed to the volcano. From the crater a rosy glow was beginning to appear, cast against the sky, and as twilight crept over Riva this glow deepened.
“My heart,” said Tamea softly, “is like unto the hot heart of Hakataua yonder. Throughout the day the sunlight beats down the glow so that no man may see it, but with the coming of night comes the glow that all men may see it, even those afar at sea in ships. With the coming of night I yearn for you, beloved; the flame of my desire burns high and I am unashamed that I desire you as all true women must desire a mate.” She turned and kissed him solemnly and tenderly. “I love you, heart of my heart,” she told him, “and though I live to be as old as Hakataua, I swear, by your God, never shall I love any man but you, Dan Pritchard. And, loving you, I shall respect you and obey you, nor shall I bring dishonor or shame upon you, my husband. Here, in the presence of the sea and the earth and the sky, I make my promise. While I can make you happy that promise shall hold, but when I can no longer please you then are you released. For that is the way of my people.”
“Here in the presence of God,” Dan Pritchard murmured, with bowed head and a full heart, “I take thee, Tamea, for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, in honor, always.” And he kissed her now, solemnly, tenderly, without passion.
“My husband,” she said happily, “now it will not be necessary to beg that mad Muggridge to quench the fire in his soul.”
“Poor devil,” Dan answered her, and together they returned to the green bungalow. They found Sooey Wan sitting on the steps, mopping his high, bony forehead.
“Kitchen lady queen no hab got. Cookee no can do,” he complained bitterly. “House where leavee trunk kitchen hab got. Cookee can do.”
“You mean that missionary’s house, Sooey Wan?”
The old Chinaman nodded.
“Well, we’ll have to get along without his kitchen, I think, Sooey Wan.” He turned to Tamea. “Have you no kitchen, dear? Strange that your father should build and furnish a house such as this and yet not provide a kitchen.”
“When my father and I left Riva, we did not bother to take anything out of this house. Upon my return many things were missing. All were returned by my people with the exception of the stove, which fell from the shoulders of the men who carried it and was destroyed.”
“Sooey Wan isn’t accustomed to cooking over an open fire. He will be continuously peeved and develop into a frightful nuisance.”
“I shall have my serving women wait upon my husband,” Tamea assured him lightly. “As for this servant of yours, let his task be the catching of fish, which will provide him with amusement. He has labored long and faithfully in your house, dear one. He has earned his rest.”
“I hope he can see his way clear to take it,” Dan sighed. Then, turning to his servant: “Sooey Wan, you’re retired. You do not have to cook any more. From now on your job will consist in enjoying yourself. Tomorrow we’ll find some sort of habitation for you, but for tonight park yourself on the veranda.”
Sooey Wan vouchsafed no reply, until Tamea had entered the house and he found himself alone for a moment with his master. “Boss,” he then said confidentially, “missionaly heap klazy. Look out. Sooey Wan look out.” And he permitted the butt of a long-barreled Colt’s .45 to slide down from his voluminous sleeve. “Sooey Wan no likee. That missionaly ketchum devil inside heap plenty.”
CHAPTER XXIX
Ten months had passed since Dan Pritchard had seen a human being whiter than Tamea or talked English to a white man. He was acutely conscious of this flight of time as he sat on the veranda of the green bungalow and watched a schooner beating up the coast of Riva.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the Pelorus, Tamea,” he remarked. “Even at this distance her lines look too fine for an ordinary trading schooner. I hope she drops in. I’d like to have a visit with Hackett. That man has a superior mind.”
Tamea glanced sharply at him from under lowered lids. Her lips trembled ever so slightly and she bit them to stop the trembling. At length she said: “Yes, that is the Pelorus, dear heart. She will drop anchor in the lagoon for the night and Hackett will come ashore to visit us. Doubtless he has supplies for the mission.”
“Won’t it be splendid to have him up for dinner, Tamea? Confound it, I wish we had a really decent dinner to offer him. He must be as weary of canned goods, chicken, fish and pig as I am.”
To this Tamea made no reply, but her sweet face was slightly clouded as she sat down at the piano and commenced picking out a hymn by ear. Her basses were not very good, and the piano, hard driven for many a year without tuning, rendering sterling assistance in the attack upon Dan’s nerves. He rose and walked out of the house and down the hill to the beach, where he sat on an upturned canoe and waited patiently for the Pelorus to negotiate the opening in the reef. She did it prettily enough, and as her anchor splashed overside and the harsh grating of the chain in her hawse-pipe floated across the lagoon to Dan, for a reason scarcely possible for analysis, a lump rose in his throat.
Perhaps it was the impending drama of a meeting with his own kind after ten months of alien association that thrilled him so, for he rose and ran down to the wash of the surf on the white shingle, hallooing and waving his arms. Two men on the poop waved back at him. One wore a singlet, a short pair of white trousers and a Panama hat. The other was arrayed in white linen and, at that distance, reminded Dan of a yacht owner out with his guests for a cruise.
The whaleboat splashed overboard and the two men dropped overside into it and were rowed ashore. The man in the short breeks and singlet was Captain Hackett. He leaped overboard as the whaleboat grounded and splashed through the wash, with outstretched hand, his face wearing a hearty but cynical smile.
“How do you do, Mr. Pritchard?” he cried. “Do not bother to answer. I know. You don’t do worth two squirts of bilge water.” He shook hands. “Riva on your nerves a bit?” He laughed. “Well, they always wait for us at the edge of the surf—the ‘back to nature and the simple life’ boys.” He slapped the embarrassed Dan on the shoulder. “Got a friend of yours with me.” He turned and waved toward a Kanaka sailor upon whose back was just mounting, preparatory to being carried ashore so his feet would not get wet, no less a person than—Mark Mellenger!
“Mel!” Dan’s cry of welcome sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Mel, my dear old friend! Lord, man, what a joy to see you again!” And he folded Mellenger to his heart and was silent for a minute, fighting his emotions.
“It’s Thursday night, old son,” said Mellenger calmly, “so I thought I’d drop around for dinner—as usual. Is Sooey Wan still dishing up the grub in your Lares and Penates?” He cuffed Dan affectionately on the ear. “I’m sort of halfway glad to see you again, Dan.”
They walked up the beach to the Muggridge residence. Captain Hackett paused beside the veranda and looked the house over critically. “Where is the sky pilot?” he queried.
“He’s dead, Captain. His wife died shortly before you were here last. Before that he had been a little bit obsessed by Tamea and after his wife’s death he rather went on the loose among the natives. I imagine he was about half cracked——”
“Half?” Hackett sneered, “All. He was half cracked when he came here, otherwise he would not have come. His wife was the last tie that bound him to his self-respect, and when she died, doubtless it commenced to dawn on him that she had been a martyr to a cause not particularly worth while. The heat and the loneliness killed her. I could see it coming.”
“I dare say you are right, Captain. She was, as you say, the last tie that bound him to his self-respect. Here, where there was no law save his, after Gaston left and before I came, there was no longer any incentive to remain a white man, and he started to degenerate. Religion was not sufficient to sustain him. He had an uphill job here, at best, and there was nothing to read except the Bible and he had known that by heart for twenty years. I wouldn’t talk to him and neither would Tamea.”
“Why?”
“Because he was half crazy. When he wasn’t striving to convert Tamea he was reviling her for an abandoned woman. Of course I had to put a stop to that, and when I did he reviled me. Finally I warned him to stay off the hill. But he wouldn’t. He came prowling up there one night and set fire to our house. Sooey Wan caught him and we put out the fire before any damage had been done. A week later I heard shooting outside our veranda—three rifle shots and six pistol shots. Muggridge owned the only rifle on the island and Sooey Wan owned the only pistol—and he slept on the veranda.
“In the morning Muggridge was gone, there were three bullet holes through our house and Sooey Wan was cleaning his .45 with kerosene. He said nothing and I asked no questions. I did not care to know.”
“Comfortable old Chink, that, to have around one’s house,” Hackett remarked dryly. “Well, I have a year’s supply of grub and trade goods for the mission, so I suppose I might as well dump it here to await the arrival of the successor to the mad Muggridge. It’s all paid for.”
“Comforting. I’ll use it, Hackett.”
Mellenger walked up into the mission house veranda and sat down. “It’s as cool here as anywhere,” he reminded Dan. “I’d like to have a chat with you, Dan, before I meet Tamea.”
“Certainly, Mel.”
“Well, while my crew is busy landing the supplies for the mission I’m going up to your house and have a chin-chin with Tamea,” Captain Hackett suggested. “By the way, Mr. Pritchard,” he added innocently, “did you marry her?”
Dan flushed. “Muggridge, in his insane jealousy, refused to perform the ceremony without some sort of a license, procurable God knows where—or when—so we—that is—well, we did the best we could without him.”
The old sea dog went up the path to the hill, chuckling softly.
“Mel,” Dan demanded the instant the captain was out of hearing, “what under the canopy has brought you here?”
“I came to get you and bring you home.”
Dan shook his head. “My home is here, Mel.” He threw out his arm tragically toward the east. “I’m quite through with all of that.”
“Fortunately, you are not. Your private fortune and the business formerly owned by Casson and Pritchard await your return. There’s a hole amounting to approximately half a million dollars in your private fortune but the business is all yours now and intact. As soon as you appear to relieve the receiver of his task of managing your affairs, the court will discharge him.”
Dan Pritchard stared at his friend, wide unbelief in his glance. “Explain yourself, Mel. This is most astounding.”
“Some folks are fools for luck,” Mellenger sighed. “Banning and Company paid forty-two cents on the dollar and that receiver managed to pry fifty cents on the dollar out of the Katsuma estate. Other losses were not as heavy as anticipated, and several of your heaviest debtors will manage to pay out in three or four years, if your luck holds. The thing that saved you, however, was a typhoon in the China Sea. The steamer Malayan, with eight thousand tons of high-priced rice insured to its full value, must have foundered in that typhoon, for she never reached Havana and was eventually posted at Lloyd’s as missing. Consequently the receiver collected the insurance, which put your business back on its feet again. You’re still a rich man, Dan.”
Dan Pritchard placed his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. He quivered a little. Mellenger ignored him. He lighted one of Hackett’s Sumatra cigars and puffed away silently, gazing out to the white water purling over the reef.
“Peaceful spot, this,” he observed presently. “The Land of Never Worry. How are you fixed for points of intellectual contact?”
“I haven’t any,” Dan confessed in a strangled voice.
“Been doing any painting, old son?”
“Half a dozen canvases. They’re no good.”
“You haven’t asked me about Maisie Morrison, Dan.”
“I haven’t any right to, Mel.”
“Then I shall tell you about her. She is in good health, but not very happy. That is because she loves you. Splendid woman, Maisie. You made a grave mistake by not marrying her. I told you to.”
“I didn’t think she cared—that much.”
“It appears she did. Everybody knew that except you, and sometimes I think you suspected it, but were afraid to take a chance. If you had your chance all over again, would you marry Maisie?”
“Mel,” Dan admitted wretchedly, “any man is a fool to marry out of his class. Tamea is a wonderful woman, but——”
“I understand, my friend. It requires something more than love to sustain love. Is Riva on your nerves?”
Dan raised his haggard face from his hands. “Well, I am beginning to understand Muggridge a little better lately,” he confessed. “And, unlike poor Muggridge, I have nothing spiritual to cling to. Nothing but my sanity, and sometimes when I reflect that all of my future life will be like this——”
“Ah, but it will not continue to be like this,” Mellenger interrupted gently. “Tamea will see to that.”
“Tamea is a lovely, wonderful child of nature. She is happy here—so happy, Mel, that she will never, never be able to understand why I cannot be happy, too.”
“As usual,” Mellenger growled, “you continue to give abundant proof of your monumental asininity and masculine ego. I have here a letter which Tamea wrote Maisie three months ago, via the schooner Doris Crane.”
Dan could only stare at him. “You know the Doris Crane, of course?” Mellenger queried.
“She came here three months ago for the accumulated trade. I was pig-hunting on the northern coast of the island at the time, and missed her. Mel, what could Tamea possibly have to write Maisie about?”
“About you, fool.”
“About me?”
“None other. Hold your peace now, old son, while I read you her letter to Maisie.” And Mellenger read: