CHAPTER XX
In the morning Mellenger was gone. He left a note to Dan explaining that he had received a sudden and wholly unexpected call to return to San Francisco and begged Dan to present his compliments to the ladies and to express his regret at an unceremonious departure.
“The man’s a poor slave,” Dan declared.
Tamea, who had been at his elbow as he read, inquired: “Who?”
“Mellenger. He has left us.”
“Ah,” Tamea breathed—thoughtfully. After a brief silence she said: “Then Maisie will have an opportunity to play with you. I am glad Mellengair has gone.”
“Tamea, you mustn’t hold a grudge against my friend Mark. He is not an enemy of yours.”
“An enemy conquered is no longer an enemy, Dan. I do not hold the grudge. I have taken my vengeance on that man for the hurt he has done me, and I am content to forget him.”
“But you’ll always be pleasant and courteous to him when you meet him at my house?”
“Certainement.”
“Sorry you cannot play golf, or we’d make it a threesome, Tamea.”
“What man would be delayed and annoyed in his sports by an unlearned woman? I have letters to write to friends in Riva and Tahiti, so go you with Maisie.”
Dan was glad to accept an invitation so heartily extended. He had a feeling that, in the delicate operation of remaining strictly neutral, he had neglected Maisie; he felt that Maisie sensed the neglect. With a light heart and a beaming smile, therefore, he sought her out and drove off with her to the golf links at Pebble Beach. They played eighteen holes and had luncheon at the Lodge, and not once during the day did either refer to Tamea, her future or her avowed attitude toward her guardian.
Late in the afternoon they drove down the Monterey County coast. Dan could not recall an occasion when Maisie had been more delightful in conversation or more winsome as to personal appearance. She appeared to have fallen suddenly into a habit he had not previously noted, that of adjusting herself to his moods. Throughout that drive there were long, blissful silences when Maisie observed his head sunk on his breast and the dreamer’s look in his troubled eyes; when he saw fit to toss her a conversational bone she seized it eagerly and managed to extract from it a surprising quantity of red meat. He was thrilled with a new sense of the girl’s potentialities for comradeship and sympathy, for abrupt and infallible understanding. Today she made no attempt to dominate him, to encompass and envelop him in the aura of her penchant for leadership, for direction. And he liked that quite as much as he disliked criticism, whether expressed or implied. Had Maisie at last sensed what had been keeping them apart for so long—his repugnance to the slightest suggestion of a hindrance to his masculine freedom? He pondered this.
Dan wished that women viewed men and their affairs from a more masculine point of view. He wished that they did not have such a tendency to condemn without trial by jury, as it were. He deplored their prompt and definite acting on instinct or intuition, and he wished that the girl he might desire ardently to marry should be possessed of a modicum of the sportsmanship of a very gallant gentleman. Why did they dislike each other so on sight? Why did they provoke silly little tiffs over nothing in particular; and why, when they were not on speaking terms with each other, did they decline to avoid the embarrassment of a meeting, as men do? Why were they controlled by their emotions? How difficult of understanding they were!
Well, at any rate, Tamea appeared to have a fairly well developed sense of sportsmanship, for she had deliberately abdicated today in favor of her rival, and Dan thought that was mighty decent of her. She had a definite philosophy, and, it seemed to him, she could smother an active dislike and not develop the remotest indications of a soul convulsion. Poor child! He wondered if he had been quite kind in leaving her to amuse herself all day at the hotel.
He shifted his position and his hand fell, not by design, on top of Maisie’s. Instantly her soft, warm fingers closed over it. The touch thrilled him pleasurably; he wanted to hold Maisie’s hand, so soft and small and fragile; he did not want her to hold his. So he removed his hand from hers and she drew away from him.
“Ah, don’t,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean that,” and his arm went up and around her neck, deliberately, possessively. She leaned toward him and he felt her tremble. “This has been a wonderful, wonderful day,” he said huskily. “It’s been one of those rare days that upthrust themselves for years in one’s dearest memories. You’re such a bully little comrade, Maisie. I’m getting quite wild about you, dear,” and he kissed her tenderly on the cheek closest to him and patted the other cheek.
Her eyes were starry with love; she snuggled closer to him and laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder. “I’m glad you wanted to play with me today, old dear,” she whispered. “I’ve been so happy. I was afraid, when I heard Mark Mellenger had left early this morning, that you would attempt the impossible task of spreading yourself over too much territory. I don’t think I could have stood more than nine holes with Tamea along for a gallery.”
“Score one for Tamea there,” he blurted undiplomatically. “She declined to come with us.”
She raised her head and looked out of the window. “Oh,” she breathed, “so you did ask her!”
He was suddenly annoyed. “No, I did not, Maisie. She was the first to suggest that I take you golfing.”
“Indeed! What magnanimity! I wonder why.”
“She said she had some letters to write.”
“Her letters could have waited. She had some other reason. I do not relish being the recipient of her—of her—forbearance and generosity. I’ll not be patronized by that barbarian.”
He was furious. “I’m sorry you mentioned her name,” he retorted. “I have carefully refrained all day long from doing so.”
“Why?”
“Maisie, that eternal ‘why?’ of yours grows provoking. You make me feel like a cadaver on a dissecting table.”
“You’re mixed in your metaphor, my dear Dan,” she replied with a small clink of ice in her tones. “Your statement that you have carefully refrained, all day long, from mentioning Tamea’s name to me seems to imply an impression on your part that such mention would be distasteful to me. I have a normal, healthy feminine curiosity, so I asked you why. If one would ascertain information, one must make inquiries, I’m sure.”
“Well, you didn’t mention her name, and that seemed a bit queer. I merely bowed to what I gathered was your unspoken wish.”
“How silly! Why, I didn’t refer to the girl today because I never once thought of her today—until just now. Why should I think of her? She doesn’t interest me in the least, Dan.”
“I’m glad to know that. I had a sneaking impression she did interest you—vitally.”
“You amazing man! Now, why should she?”
“There you go,” he declared furiously, “driving me into a corner and forcing me to say crazy things so you will not have to say them. How like a woman!”
She laughed softly. Evidently she was enjoying his discomfiture immensely. “Don’t evade the issue, Dan. Why did you have that sneaking impression that Tamea did interest me—vitally?”
“Well, after that night Mel was up to dinner—that was a bit awkward, you know. And you two do not like each other.”
“If you mean that I decline to fall on that young hussy’s neck and make over her——”
“Don’t call her a hussy, Maisie. That doesn’t sound like you, and besides, she isn’t a hussy. She’s a poor, lonely, misunderstood young girl and——”
“And making desperate love to you,” Maisie taunted him.
“Well,” he chuckled, “that doesn’t annoy me particularly. In fact I feel complimented.” Maisie winced. There was a note of sincerity in his tone that robbed it of any hint of badinage. Dan continued: “The fact that she is making desperate love to me—it would be useless and stupid to endeavor to hide that fact—seemed to me to constitute sufficient ground for my suspicion that you would prefer not to discuss her.”
Maisie turned abruptly and faced him with wide, curious eyes. There was cleverly simulated amusement in those sea-blue orbs, and Dan’s train of thought running his single-track mind was completely ditched.
“Indeed, Dan, my dear old friend, what possible interest could I have in anything Tamea does—with you or any other man? You say you are complimented. Perhaps you may even be delighted. I’m sure I do not know, and I’m not sufficiently interested to inquire. It hasn’t occurred to me to take you or Tamea or your love-making at all seriously.”
He was crushed. “I see I’ve made a star-spangled monkey of myself,” he said gloomily.
“Oh, say not so, old boy!” Maisie bantered. She had him down in his corner now; a little more battering and he would be counted out. “Have you been indulging in some day-dreams, Dan?”
He nodded, and she laid her little hand on his forearm with an adorable look of simulated interest, tenderness and banter. With a fascinating uplift and outthrust of her lovely chin, Maisie said: “Tell Auntie about it.”
“Oh, don’t annoy me. You’re a most provoking woman.”
“Do please tell, Dan’l. I’m that cur’ous.”
“Well, I suppose I might as well. It appears I have laid the flattering unction to my soul that you loved me.”
“Yes?” Maisie barely cooed the word.
“And you do not.”
“How do you know, old snarleyow?”
“I’m not exactly feeble-minded.”
“No, indeed. I think you’re a high-grade moron. At least, you act like one. Now, I want to know how you could possibly have gathered the impression that I am in love with you.”
“I cannot answer that query, Maisie. I only know that very recently I began to think you did.”
“You take too much for granted, Dan. Why didn’t you ask me to make certain?”
“It’s not too late, Maisie.” He was desperate—afraid of Tamea and what might happen to him if he did not forestall her by some definite strategy—fearful of being “spoofed” so outrageously by Maisie for a minute longer. In her present mood, half childish, half devilish, wholly womanish, Maisie held a tremendous lure for him. Indeed, the environment was ideal for such a situation. There was the blue sea out beyond them, with the white waves breaking on a white beach; their little subdued thunder as they broke, and then the mournful swish as the broken water raced up the shingle, had a particularly soothing effect upon him. It stimulated his imagination. On the mountains to their right the blue sunset haze still lingered; cock quails were calling to their families to “Come right home, come right home,” and somewhere over in the chapparal a cowbell tinkled melodiously. Why, the man who could ride with Maisie Morrison in such surroundings and not feel his pulse throb with desire for love and contentment was fit for treason, stratagems and spoils.
With a mighty sigh he said: “Well, Maisie, do you?”
Alas! The blundering idiot had neglected to postulate his monumental query with a plain, blunt assertion of his own love for her. Maisie, being what she was, could never by any possibility admit anything now. She would not have him think of her in the years to come as a brazen woman who had proposed to him—that she had been at all gauche. So she looked him coolly in the eyes with a glance that did not conceal the fact that she was irritated profoundly; with a certain silky waspishness she gave him his answer.
“Well, not particularly, Dan.”
Fell a silence. Maisie, glancing sidewise at her victim, observed him gulp. There was a momentary flush and then Dan took up the annunciator and said very distinctly to Graves:
“Step on it, Graves. I think the county motorcycle officer has gone home to dinner. At any rate, if we’re arrested I’ll pay the fine.”
Graves nodded and the car leaped to forty-five miles an hour. “I have a special arrangement with Graves,” Dan continued, turning to Maisie as calmly as if his heart were beating at its normal rate of seventy-six, full and strong. “Unless instructions to the contrary are given him, his orders from me are to obey the traffic laws. If he is arrested in the absence of such instructions to the contrary, he pays his own fine. Under any other circumstances, I pay it.”
“Fair enough,” Maisie answered, with a near approach to slang which, coming from her, was rather delightful. To herself she said: “What a charming old idiot he is! I’ve gotten him quite fussed and he is in a hurry to get back to the hotel so he can go to his room and sulk. Well, he almost proposed that time. I wonder if I wasn’t just a little bit too feminine with him. I had an opportunity and failed to take advantage of it. . . . Oh well, he shall propose again before the night is over, and this time. . .”
Dan was humming a crazy little lumber-jack song:
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!
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 monumental omadhaun! 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 so very proud,” 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.