CHAPTER XII
Meanwhile, back in Dan’s office, the childishly curious Tamea had started a critical inspection of the room. She looked in the wash closet, turned on the water, inspected the books in the bookcase and the model of a clipper ship on top of it, and presently discovered on the side of Dan’s desk a row of push buttons. She touched one of these and almost immediately Dan’s secretary, Miss Mather, entered the office. She glanced around and failing to see Pritchard, she said:
“You called me?”
Tamea shook her head and Miss Mather excused herself and retired. Instantly Tamea pressed another button, and to her amazement a youth of about sixteen summers entered, gazed around the room and said:
“Yes’m. Whadja want? Me?”
Tamea solemnly shook her head and the youth departed, mystified, leaving her with a delightful sense of occult power. She tried another button, and some thirty seconds later a bald-headed man, the chief clerk, entered very deferentially.
“Ha! ha!” Tamea laughed. “Nothing doing, Monsieur, nothing, I assure.”
The chief clerk retired, registering amazement, and Tamea adventured with the fourth button, this time without result. So she turned her attention to the telephone switch box and commenced pressing buttons and ringing bells all over the suite of Casson and Pritchard, with the result that everybody was trying to answer his telephone at once. Impelled by curiosity, Tamea picked up the receiver just in time to hear a tiny voice say very distinctly: “Hello! Hello! Casson speaking.”
With a shriek she dropped the receiver. Here, indeed, was magic. Trembling and white, she pressed all four push buttons in succession, and again Miss Mather entered.
“It speaks,” Tamea gasped. “There are devils in this house. Regardez!”
Miss Mather saw the dangling telephone receiver and replaced it on the hook. “It is silent now. The devil is dumb,” she assured Tamea. “Have you never seen a telephone before?”
“But no, never. And I press here—and here—and servants come without a summons. This is proof that Monsieur Dan Pritchard is indeed a great chief.”
“He is a very kind chief, at any rate. We all love him here.”
Tamea stared at Miss Mather disapprovingly. “I have heard that he is much beloved by women.” She frowned. “You may go,” she decreed.
Miss Mather, highly amused, retired. At the door she found the office boy, the chief clerk and Dan Pritchard about to enter, and explained to them the reason for the excitement. Dan entered, chuckling.
“You laugh!” Tamea challenged him haughtily.
“Yes, and I laugh at you.”
“Is that—what shall I say—very nice, very polite?”
“No, but I can’t help it. However, I’ll be fair with you, Tamea. You may laugh at me whenever you desire.”
“I shall never desire to laugh at you, Dan.”
“Forgive me, my dear.” He got his hat and overcoat from the closet. “We will go home now, Tamea.”
She took hold of his hand and walked with him thus out through the general office and down the hall. He was slightly embarrassed and wished that she would let go his hand, but he dared not suggest it. During the swift drop in the elevator Tamea gasped, quivered and clung tightly to his arm. When the car reached the lobby and the passengers made their exit, the girl retreated into the corner and dragged Dan with her.
“We get out here, Tamea.”
“I know, dear one. But I like this. It is a longer and swifter fall than when the stern of a schooner drops down a heavy sea. I would rise once more.”
“Oh, come, Tamea! This is nonsense. One does not ride in an elevator unless one has to.”
“Is a second ride, then, forbidden by this man?” She indicated the elevator operator.
“No, you may ride up and down all day if you desire. But it’s so silly, Tamea.”
“In this country men fear they may be thought foolish. But you are a brave man. You will not deny your Tamea this simple pleasure.” He frowned. “Very well. I obey.”
Tamea started for the door; but Dan pressed her back into the corner again; the elevator operator favored him with a knowing grin and the car shot upward without a pause to the fifteenth floor. . . .
When they were settled in the limousine the girl reached again for his hand and possessed herself of it. “I think I shall be very happy with you,” she confided.
He reflected that Tamea would always be happy if given free rein to her desires. Aloud he said: “Tamea, it is my duty to make you happy.”
Gratefully she cuddled his hand to her cheek and implanted upon it a fervent kiss.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Certainement.”
They rolled out Market Street through the heavy evening traffic, and presently were climbing to the crest of Twin Peaks. As the car swept around the last curve and gave a view of the city from the Potrero to the Cliff House snuggled below them, Tamea gasped. A little wisp of fog was creeping in the Golden Gate, but the light, still lingering although the sun had almost set, clothed the city in an amethyst haze that softened its ugly architecture and made of it a thing of superlative beauty. The sweep of blue bay, the islands and the shipping, the departing light heliographed from the western windows of homes on the Alameda County shore, the high green hills on the eastern horizon, all combined to make a picture so impressively beautiful that Tamea, born with the appreciation of beauty so distinct a characteristic of her mother’s race, sighed with the shock of it. Graves had stopped the car and the girl gazed her fill in silence.
“I wanted to bring you up here and prove to you that ours is not an ugly land, although not so beautiful perhaps as Riva,” Dan explained.
Then they swept down the western slope of Twin Peaks, up the Great Highway along the Pacific shore and home through Golden Gate Park. As was his custom, Dan opened the front door with his latchkey and he and Tamea stepped into the hall.
“You have an hour in which to dress for dinner, child,” he told her. “Ring for Julia. She will help you.”
The girl came close to him, drew his head down on her shoulder and pressed her lips to his ear.
“Yesterday,” she whispered, “was a day of sorrow. It did not seem that I could bear it. But today has been so joyous I have almost forgotten my sorrow; in a week it will be quite gone. To you I am indebted for this great happiness.”
She kissed him rapturously, first on one cheek, then on the other, and Dan reflected that this Gallic form of osculation had evidently been learned from old Gaston of the Beard. How warm and soft her lips were, how fragrant her breath and hair! In the dim light of the hall her marvelous eyes beamed up at him with a light that suddenly set his pulse to pounding wildly. A tremor ran through him.
“You tremble, dear one,” the girl whispered. “You are cold! Ah, but my love shall warm,” and she lifted her lips to his.
She was Circe, born again. Decidedly, here was dangerous ground. He was far too intelligent not to realize the complication that might ensue should he yield to this sudden gust of desire, this strange new yearning never felt before, this impulse for possession without passion, that shook his very soul. He told himself he must continue to play a part, to decline to take her otherwise than paternally, to evade, at all hazard, the pitfall yawning before him.
“It is not well to think too long or too hard,” Tamea whispered. “Your people count the costs, but mine do not.”
Apparently the amazing creature knew of what he was thinking! He was cornered, he would have to escape and that quickly. “I was just thinking, Tamea, that my house will be lonely after your bright presence,” he said, a trifle unsteadily.
She gasped. “You plan to send me from you, Dan Pritchard?”
“Temporarily, my dear. In spring the climate of this part of California is too cold and raw for you. Tomorrow you and Julia and Mrs. Pippy will go in the car to Del Monte, where it is more like your own country. After you have been there a month and have grown accustomed to our ways, you will go to a convent to be educated.”
She stood with her hands on his shoulders, pondering this. Then: “This is your desire?”
“Yes.”
She looked into the very soul of him. “I do not believe that,” she declared and looked up at him so wistfully that his reason tottered on its throne and fell, crashing, into the valley of his desire. He crushed her to him and their lips met. . . .
Out of the semi-darkness a familiar voice spoke. “Captain’s girl velly nice. What Sooey Wan tell you, boss? Now you ketchum heap savvy.”
Dan Pritchard fled upstairs, leaving the triumphant Tamea to follow at her leisure. “Fool, fool!” The voice of conscience beat in his brain.
“That wasn’t kind of me. . . no, not even sensible. . . . I’ve spoiled, everything. . . Maisie. . . . Why wasn’t I man enough to be strong?. . . Gaston entrusted her to me and I’ve failed. . . .”
As he reached the door of his room Tamea’s voice floated up the stairway. She was singing a pæan of triumph, and she sang it in her mother tongue. Ah, youth and love and golden dreams! In Tamea’s heart there was no longer room for sorrow, in her primitive but wonderfully acute intelligence there was no room for disturbing reflections touching the whys and wherefores which, in Dan Pritchard’s world, were concomitant with all decisions and made the wisdom of all issues doubtful.
“She is exotic—overpowering, like a seductive perfume. She appeals profoundly, in her solitary state, to my sympathy; her beauty, her vitality, her unspoiled and innocent outlook, the impulsiveness and naturalness of her desire, in which, from her viewpoint, there is nothing to criticize, all conspire to drive me into the very situation I would avoid because I know it to be ruinous. ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.’ Kipling knew. When they do meet it is only an illusion of meeting, and the illusion fades. And yet, from the moment that girl first gazed upon me, Maisie has been receding farther and farther from my conscious mind. An incredibly bad compliment to Maisie, and the deuce of it is I think that, subconsciously, Maisie realizes this. What a cad I have been!”
Julia knocked at his door. “Miss Morrison on the ’phone, sir.”
He went into the hall and took down the receiver. “Yes, Maisie.”
“Dan, dear,” Maisie replied, almost breathlessly, “would you think me very forward if I were to invite myself to dinner at your house tonight?”
“Indeed I would not! As a matter of fact, Maisie, I very much desire your presence at dinner tonight. I wasn’t quite aware of this desire until you spoke, but I think that in about five minutes the same bright idea would have occurred to me.”
“Uncle John came home in an ill humor. Scolded me all the way up and complained to me about you, and of course that put me in a bad temper——”
“Why have your dinner spoiled by being forced to sit and listen to your avuncular relative rave? Shall I send my car for you?”
“Do, please!” A silence. Then: “You’re quite sure you would have telephoned and invited me to dinner if I had not telephoned and invited myself?”
“Positive, Maisie. I’m at a loose end. I need your moral support. My duties as a foster father——”
“I understand. I thought too, Dan, it might relieve you of your embarrassment if the school or convent question could be settled tonight. I’ve been doing some thinking and am prepared to submit a plan.”
“Good news! Graves will call for you at seven o’clock. And by the way, my oldest and dearest man friend, Mark Mellenger, is coming. You met him in the office this afternoon.”
“Good! Is he interesting, Dan?”
“The Lord made but one Mellenger and then the plates were destroyed. He dines with me every Thursday night he is in town. He’s a newspaper man and Thursday is his day off. He celebrates it with me. Women have never appeared to interest Mel, and I’m looking forward to watching the effect on him of two extremes in interesting and charming women.”
“So Tamea has grown up—so soon,” Maisie challenged. Then she added, while he searched his puzzled mind for an answer: “Thank you so much for asking me over, Dan. Until a quarter past seven, then. Good-by, booby!”