CHAPTER XV
“Well, Mel,” Dan declared as he returned to the drawing room after seeing Maisie to her car, “I am prepared for the worst. Fly to it, old philosopher. I observe you are fairly bristling with bellicose veins.”
“That is only additional proof that you are purblind.” Mellenger helped himself to a cigar, rang for Sooey Wan, ordered a Scotch and soda and removed his dinner coat. The major portion of his existence was spent working in his shirt-sleeves, and tonight he had work to do. So he cleared for action.
“Now, then,” he began, “are you or are you not engaged to be married to Maisie Morrison?”
“I am not.”
“I thought so. Going to be?”
“I—don’t know, Mel.”
“I’ll make up your mind for you. You are.”
“Why?”
“For any number of incontestable reasons. However, the principal reason is that she is very much in love with you, and she is not particularly happy about it. You’re such a dull dog.”
“Granting that, why should I engage myself to Maisie?”
“Because it would be good for you. It would be protection from the world. You’re going to marry Maisie sooner or later. Why not do it now and get the worry of it off your mind?”
“But, you double-dyed idiot, I’m not at all certain I’d be perfectly happy with Maisie.”
“I’ll dissipate your doubts. You wouldn’t be. No man ever is perfectly happy in the married state.”
“How do you know?”
“Observation and philosophical meditation. You would be perfectly happy with Maisie about eighty-five per cent of the time, and all you have to have in order to win is a controlling interest, or fifty-one per cent. All married life is a continuous adjustment of conflicting personalities. What you are seeking, we all seek—the wild, abandoned thrill of a love that will never grow old or stale or commonplace—a love that will punctuate your life with wonderful, breathless moments—moments that you would not miss, even though in claiming them you realized that sorrow and heartbreak might be the inevitable outcome of your yielding. My dear old friend, you paint pictures in water colors and see them turn to crude charcoal smudges. Dan, you seek the unattainable; when you have found her, she will have been married ten years to a barber!”
There fell between them a long and pregnant silence. Then:
“You spoke just now of—breathless moments, moments one would not miss, even though in claiming them one realizes that sorrow and heartbreak may be the inevitable outcome. Have you ever known such a breathless moment?”
“Yes—in France, during the war. She was a little dancer, about twenty, I should say. I found her weeping and half conscious in the Place Vendôme at four o’clock of a winter morning. There had been an air raid and a great deal of anti-aircraft firing; she had been struck in the foot by a shrapnel falling five thousand meters. I carried her to my billet. . . two months. . . she will never dance again. . . fortunately I was ordered home. . . send her a few francs every month. . . not very much, because I can’t afford much, but she writes. . . breathless moments when I get her letters. . . brains, imagination. . . I think she loves me—always will, perhaps, but it’s no good thinking too much about it. I have gotten over it.” Mellenger blew a succession of smoke rings and watched them float upward to frame a face he would never see again, except in his dreams. And dreams fade as men grow older and the fires of youth burn out.
“And was it worth the price, Mel?”
“No, I knew that in the beginning. No joy that leaves a pain is quite worth having.”
“Yet we will never have done with our longing for the adventure. I suppose that is why men who have never worn a uniform feel their hearts beat high at the sight of homecoming troops.”
“Yes, I think so. But remember, those civilians see only the avenue with the flags flying; they have never seen the wreckage or heard the wail of a funeral march. They’ve only dreamed of that and painted a vision they call the Field of Honor, with a trail across it labeled the Path of Glory. They know it leads to Hell, but they know also that some men escape. You know, Dan, we can always visualize ourselves escaping, because the wish is father to the thought.”
“Well, at any rate, Mel, I have lived to know—one breathless moment.”
“Do not know another, my friend.”
“Believe me, I did not desire to know this one. I—I——”
Mellenger waved his cigar in absolution. “You didn’t have any help at the critical moment. I observed the event. I was sitting in the semi-twilight of this room, thinking—I had asked Julia not to turn on the light except in the hall. And then you and Tamea came in. . . I saw your face, I saw hers. . . . And I had seen the face of the other girl this afternoon. Tamea has told me in so many words, in French, that she is going to land you; that she doesn’t consider Maisie a foeman worthy of her steel. Says Maisie hasn’t got the courage to take that which she desires. Tamea has. I’ll swear to that.”
“There is nothing wrong about that.”
“Certainly not. A convention of maidenly modesty has metamorphosed many a fine woman into an embittered, disillusioned old maid. She could have had her man for the asking—for the taking; and because she neither asked nor took he thought her repression spelled indifference or dislike.
“There are many shy, embarrassed men in this world, you know. They are always unhappy because always married to terrible women.
“Big women, fat women, red-headed, dominating, coarse women, women with thick ankles, sloppy women, dull women, over-dressed women, loud women, but all women who flouted convention and who just naturally helped themselves to the shy, embarrassed, gentle little men they coveted.”
“Praise be, Tamea doesn’t come within the scope of your female index expurgatorius. Isn’t she a glorious creature?”
“Of course she is,” Mellenger agreed petulantly. “She’s more than glorious. She’s devastating, and all the more ruinous to your peace of mind because she is simple, natural, unspoiled, eager and amorous. But you’ve got to put your bright day-dreams behind you and marry Maisie Morrison.”
“But why, Mel?”
“Why, man, you cannot possibly contemplate the prospect of miscegenation?”
“Does Tamea remotely resemble a mulatto, a quadroon or an octoroon?”
“She is half Polynesian.”
“But a pure-bred Polynesian is a Caucasian.”
“Very well, then, if you insist. But I insist that the Caucasian race has many subdivisions. An Arab is a Caucasian; so is a Hindoo; but if you marry a woman of Arabic or Hindoo blood and have children by her, your offspring will be Eurasians. Tamea is a half-breed brown white. And she’s not very brown, either—sort of old ivory. She’d pass for a white girl anywhere. People who do not know her blood will say, ‘Isn’t she a marvelous brunette type of beauty!’”
“Well?”
“If she bore you sons, how would you feel if they should grow up to be great, hearty, brown fellows, unmistakably Polynesian, with prehensile great toes, an aversion to work, a penchant for white vices? You cannot dodge the Mendelian law, my boy. Like begets like, but in a union of opposites we get throwbacks. Breed a black rabbit to a white one and you will get piebald rabbits. Breed these latter to a white rabbit, and continue to breed the offspring of succeeding unions to other white rabbits until you have bred all the black out of them. About the time you think you have beaten the Mendelian law, the pure white descendant of a black and white union, a hundred generations removed, will present you with a litter of pure black rabbits! You’re not going to run the risk of mongrelizing the species, are you?”
“No, I do not think I am, Mel.”
“Do you know you are not?”
“No.”
“I thought so.” Mellenger rose, walked to Dan and thrust the ruddy end of his cigar in the latter’s face. “You’re in love with Tamea already, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, Mel. Something has happened. It happened tonight. You saw it happen. It never happened to me before. Good Lord, Mel, old man, my head has been in a whirl ever since.”
“That isn’t love. It’s infatuation. I’ve been through it. I know. It’s a wonderful madness. It’s what’s wrong with the world today. It’s at the root of the divorce problem. Infatuation. And the fools think it is love.
“Nothing divine about it, nothing spiritual; its victims take no thought of the qualifications so essential to successful marriage—an even temper, generosity, unselfishness, tenderness, physical fitness, the absence of mental and physical repulsiveness.
“My dear man, love should be born in reverence, and if later it develops into infatuation—well, I suppose that would be quite all right, since in that case infatuation would be the natural, normal outgrowth of love—the apotheosis of it. If you marry Maisie Morrison—look here, Dan, you say you do not love her——”
“I’m not certain, Mel.”
“Then it is a fact that you think a very great deal of her. You have the utmost respect for her, you are happy in her society, you feel reverent toward her.”
“Of course I do.”
“Then, you star-gazing jackanapes, marry her and become infatuated with her afterward. She can’t reach out and grab you and maul you and paw you over and kiss you and whisper love words to you—like this child of nature, Tamea. It’s up to you to do that, Dan. How are you going to discover Maisie’s possibilities to compete with this passion-flower, Tamea, unless you uncover them yourself? You’re a weak, cowardly sort of man where women are concerned. I grow very weary of you, my friend. You want to eat your cake and have it.”
Dan laughed long and pleasurably at his old friend’s outburst. “You’re such a comfort to me, Mel,” he declared. “I dare say you are right. I’m cowardly. But then, one shouldn’t take even the most remote chance when he marries. Marriage is until death.”
“Death sometimes comes early to some married men, and it is welcome. If you marry Tamea you will die spiritually long before the breath leaves your carcass and the doctor signs a death certificate authorizing your burial.”
“What a gloomy picture you paint!”
“Marrying an exotic woman like Tamea—a half aborigine—is like marrying any other aborigine, because all aborigines are pigmented. And no matter how transcendent the beauty of a pigmented aborigine—or half-breed aborigine—that beauty fades early. They degenerate physically and mentally. They are old at thirty, repulsive at forty, hags at fifty.”
“Nonsense! Educate Tamea, spread over her the veneer of civilization, teach her how to play, cultivate her voice, dress her exquisitely, and who shall say of her, ‘You—you—are half aborigine’?”
“You speak of a veneer of civilization. Sometimes I think the veneer is very thin and that man today stands, basically, where he stood five thousand years ago. Dan, it isn’t a question of a veneer of civilization. It’s a question of the adaptability of species to its environment. How long do you suppose it would take you, a white man, to adapt yourself to the environment of such an island, say, as Riva, in eastern Polynesia?”
“I couldn’t hazard a guess.”
“I could, and it would be a fairly accurate guess, since the history of white occupation of the isles of the south Pacific will support my contention. You would be an infinitesimal portion of the moral and physical decay before you had lived there five years. After that you wouldn’t care. It’s like mixing two acids that, combined, produce an explosion. There is never any real adaptability of the human species, you know. As long as you and Tamea lived you would have different thoughts and different thought impulses, different moral values. This difference would prove an attraction at first; then, gradually, you would begin to find her ways inferior to yours, so you would have a contempt for them, which means that presently you would grow to hate Tamea.”
Mellenger sat down and rested his head in his hands. “I wish I could remember my geology and paleontology,” he complained. “However, I never cared for it, so I swept it out of my rag bag of a mind. At any rate, you are much older than Tamea——”
“Oh, not so old as to make a vital difference. About eighteen years.”
“Shut up, you ass. You ditch my train of thought. You are millions of years older than Tamea. She is a Neolithic maid and you’re Paleozoic or Silurian or Cretaceous or something, and in order to reach common ground she’ll have to climb up through a lot of queer strata or you’ll have to dig down. You paint mighty fine pictures, but down in Riva they’re still carving hideous gods out of limestone and making hieroglyphics with a burned stick; they’re still chasing each other around stumps with knobby clubs.”
“You’re the man who can paint pictures!”
Mellenger sighed. “No, I cannot. I used to think I could, but nobody else agrees with me, and now I agree with them. Thought once I’d develop into a great novelist, when all that God Almighty created me for was to be a great newspaper man!. . . Well, I’m not embittered, because I can still think clearly and without illusion. And I can see fairly clearly, too. . . . You’ve got to get rid of this girl.”
“You’re quite bent on clearing the way for Maisie, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But you are my friend, faithful and just to me, and I’ve loved you since our freshman days in college. The years and wealth and success haven’t changed you. You’re still the same shy, helpless, gentle, obstinate, wistful boy, and—and—I—I want to do something for you, old son. The best thing I can do is to clear the decks for Maisie and marry you off to her. She’s a fine woman.”
“But I do not know, really, how to get rid of Tamea. I can’t just chuck her out, you know. Can’t send her to a hotel or an apartment house and let her go on the loose. Maisie’s plan is ill-advised. You realized that.”
“Maisie didn’t have any plan. She isn’t up to the job of collected thinking now.”
“But she said she had a plan.”
“Yes, I know. She wanted an excuse to come over here this evening to guard you from Tamea.”
“Mel, you have the most extraordinary ideas. You newspaper men are always so suspicious of motives.”
“Rats! Not suspicion. Absolute knowledge. When you asked her for her plan she floundered. Got into deep water close to the shore and I had to throw her a line. Immediately thereafter—but not until Tamea had retired—Maisie went home.”
“Have you a plan?”
“You bet I have. The talk of a school is sheer nonsense. That girl is beyond school, and if you put her in a school she’ll not remain put.”
“You’ve overlooked one important detail. If she may not remain here or in school she may promptly go to the deuce, for lack of proper control.”
“That would be all right, Dan. The main point is that she must not take you with her. If she sticks around this house she’ll get you into Town Topics. She has designs on you, my boy. That’s why I suggest you queer them by marrying Maisie Morrison immediately, if not sooner. Maisie has, in effect, proposed to you, and you’ve been very cavalier in your treatment of the proposal.”
“What do you suppose made her make that wild statement to Tamea, Mel?”
“The best excuse in life. Self-preservation. It’s the first law of human nature.”
“Just starting a backfire, eh?”
Mellenger nodded and put on his dinner jacket. “I suppose you have observed that women usually marry the men they make up their minds to marry.”
“No, I have not observed it.”
“You’re a greater numbskull than I thought you were. Two women have made up their minds to get you, and one of them is going to succeed.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, I suppose Maisie Morrison is safe in her bed by this time, crying herself to sleep, wondering how she is ever to muster the courage to face you again after tonight. Better send her some flowers in the morning and ask her to go for a drive with you. That will put her at her ease. I managed to give Tamea some food for thought, and with her sleep has been out of the question. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw Maisie drive away. Then she crept downstairs, and even now she is sitting out on the hall stairs listening to every word we say. Tamea! Enter!”
Tamea appeared in the doorway.
“I am such a splendid clairvoyant. I can see around a corner,” Mellenger remarked dryly. . . . “Well, if I had heard the stairs squeak a little earlier in the evening I would not have talked so freely. Good night, Tamea. Good night, Dan. Thanks for a wonderful dinner and a wonderful evening. I’ll be back next Thursday night, as usual.”
He smiled patronizingly as, on his way to the door, he passed Tamea. She turned slowly and her fiery glance followed him.
“No, Monsieur Mellengair, you have made the great mistake. I am not the go-to-the-deuce kind. But if that is interesting, perhaps I shall make the experiment, no? Well, when I do I shall make it alone, thank you.”
“Now I suppose you’re very angry with me, Tamea.”
“A little. Not so much as I think I shall be tomorrow. I forgive you much tonight because you are not a fool. But—I shall remember some things that you said—and those things that I remember I shall not forgive. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Dan Pritchard roused from the dumb amazement into which he had been thrown by Tamea’s sudden appearance on the scene. “Hey, wait a moment, Mel! I’ll walk downtown with you,” he called. He had a sudden impulse to flee from danger.
But the heavy oaken door had already closed behind his friend, and in the entrance to the drawing room Tamea stood looking at him. “Come to me,” she murmured. “Come, chéri!”
He went.
Tamea’s round, beautiful arms came up around his neck slowly, caressingly, and his head was drawn gently down toward her glorious face until her lips touched his ear.
“That man Mellengair—he is your friend. He is not mine. But if I had, like you, such a friend—ah, I would be so rich! You must never lose him, chéri! Oh, yes, I hate him, but that does not matter. He is very wise, but he does not know your Tamea. Ah, no, dear one. I would have you—ah, so happy—and I would be happy with you. But if to be with me meant sorrow for you—oh, I could not be so cruel! First I would die. And you will believe that? Yes?”
Dan’s heart swelled—with that ecstacy that was almost a pain. And then Tamea kissed his ear lightly, patted his cheek and fled upstairs to her room, leaving him standing there—breathless, with a feeling that, be the price what it might be, he could not afford to miss such another moment as this. . . . It did not occur to him that sorrow and heartbreak might be the outcome of his yielding.