CHAPTER XXII
Tamea was awakened by Julia at six o’clock. At seven she and Dan breakfasted together; at seven-thirty they entered Dan’s limousine, the smiling Julia tucked the robe in around her charge, took her seat beside Graves, and the homeward hegira began. At San José they looked in on the Mother Superior of a splendid convent that catered to the educational needs of young ladies of high school age, and Dan made arrangements to enter Tamea there the following day.
And this he did. Tamea had quite a wild weeping spell at the parting and Dan had to promise to write to her daily. Then the necessity for abandoning Julia was provocative of another outburst of grief, and to add to the complications this proof of devotion so touched Julia, all unused to such appreciation, that she wept loudly and copiously and was pathetically homely after two minutes of it. Dan, aware that all incoming and outgoing mail would be censored at this convent, realized that he, faced daily the awful task of composing an innocuous little letter to Tamea, and he was troubled with the thought that Tamea might not understand and go into open revolt as a result.
Finally the ordeal was over and Dan motored back to San Francisco. Here he discovered that there was trouble in the Seattle office of Casson and Pritchard and that it was necessary for him to go there at once. He welcomed the opportunity. Promptly he wrote Tamea that he was called away, but that he would telegraph her every day while he was traveling. Telegraphing was so much easier than writing under a handicap. Surely Tamea would understand that he could not afford to call her endearing names by wire. She must realize that men of his class did not do that sort of thing.
He was gone two weeks. Graves met him at the ferry depot upon his return.
“I’m glad you’ve returned, sir,” Graves announced. “The fur has been flying since you left. Mrs. Pippy gave Julia the air the minute you and Miss Larrieau were out of the house, so Julia beat it down to the convent and reported to Miss Larrieau. Up comes Miss Larrieau from the convent and tells Mrs. Pippy where to head in, and there’s a grand row. Mrs. Pippy calls on Sooey Wan to give Julia the bum’s rush out of the house and Sooey Wan tells her to go to Halifax or some other seaport. Then Mrs. Pippy cries and Julia cries and Sooey Wan cusses like a pirate and Miss Larrieau takes charge of the house and she and Sooey Wan are running it.”
Dan gasped. “But where is Mrs. Pippy?”
“She must have got frightened and left, or else Miss Larrieau fired her. Anyhow, she’s gone.”
“Has Miss Larrieau returned to school?”
“No, sir. I think she’s waiting until you get back.”
Dan sighed in lieu of the words he could not muster. Here indeed, in the expressive terminology of Graves, was “hell to pay and no pitch hot.”
He dropped in at the office for a few minutes to look through his accumulated mail. In it he found a formal resignation from Mrs. Pippy, who regretted that the lack of his moral support at a time when her position had grown untenable rendered her resignation imperative. She informed him of the address to which he might mail her check.
“I suppose I shall never have another Mrs. Pippy,” Dan sighed, and added, “and I hope I never shall.”
The moment he entered his home Tamea leaped out at him suddenly from behind the portières where she had been hiding. “Chéri!” she cried and favored him with a bone-cracking hug. “My adored one,” she added, and delivered a barrage of osculation that left Dan quite breathless. When he could speak he said:
“Graves has told me of the battle which took place here during my absence. Tamea, I am not pleased with your high-handed procedure.”
“P-f-f. Dear one, that Pippy was offensive. I disliked that old woman the first time she looked at me—like this,” and Tamea wrinkled her adorable nose. “There was nothing else to do. She had defied me by dismissing Julia, and this was mutiny, since Julia was mine and you had given her to me. If the king fails to protect those who come under the king’s protection, the people murmur and there is discontent and perhaps revolt, is there not? My place was here to protect my servant and I came and protected her. I have done well and you must not reprove me, dear one. If you do I shall be very unhappy.”
“Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right,” Dan protested. “It’s just that I hate a beastly row. You did not secure permission from the Mother Superior to come here?”
“I?” the amazed girl demanded. “I—Tamea, plead for permission? You do not know me, I think, dear one. Julia came in the car with Graves and I left at once. At the gate the nun on watch desired to stop me. She even laid hands upon me, but I thrust her aside. Tiens, I was angry!”
“I judged as much from a letter which the Mother Superior wrote me. Tamea, you may not return to that convent. They cannot control you and they do not desire that you remain there longer. My dear, can you not realize that this is very, very embarrassing to me?”
“It is very delightful to me, darling Dan. I did not wish to remain there. They opened your letters to me and before I could seal my letters to you they were read. So I did not send them, but kept them all for you. Tonight, after dinner, you shall read them, one by one. Yes, at that convent there was much between us of what you call in this country rough house.”
Sooey Wan came in from the kitchen, grunted a greeting to his employer, picked up Dan’s bags and disappeared upstairs with them. Returning, he paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs and said:
“Missa Dan, you fire Julia, Sooey Wan ketchum boat, go back China pretty quick.”
His impudence enraged Dan. “You may start now, Sooey Wan,” he told the Celestial. “I’ll keep Julia, but you’re fired.”
Sooey Wan looked at Tamea, who smiled and nodded to him. In effect she said to him: “Don’t pay any attention to him, Sooey Wan. I am in command here.”
Sooey Wan had evidently planned for this moment. His shrill, unmirthful cachinnation rang through the house. “Boss,” he piped, “you klazy, allee same Missie Pip. You fire me? Pooh-pooh! No can do. Sooey Wan belong your papa, papa give me to you, how can do? You fire me, who ketchum dinner, eh? You klazy.”
Again Dan sighed. It appeared that Sooey Wan’s first introduction to the Pritchard household had been due to a tong war in Chinatown. Sooey Wan, young, bold, aggressive, had been marked for slaughter in a tong feud, and the high-binder whose duty it had been, for a consideration, to waft him into the spirit world, had dropped Sooey Wan with his first shot. Then a cane had descended upon his wrist, causing him to drop his pistol. The peacemaker, Dan’s father, had thereupon possessed himself of it, handed the would-be assassin over to the police and forgotten the incident. Sooey Wan eventually recovered from his wound and at once sought out Pritchard senior, to whom he explained that by reason of an ancient Chinese custom he who saved a human life was forever after responsible for that life. Therefore, it behooved Dan’s father to place Sooey Wan on his payroll instanter, which, being done, the latter became one of the assets of the Pritchard estate. Inasmuch as Dan had been the sole heir to that estate, naturally, to Sooey Wan’s way of thinking, he had inherited his father’s responsibility for Sooey Wan’s life while the latter continued to live. Ergo, Sooey Wan could not be dismissed!
Decidedly, reprisals were not in order. There was naught to do save accept the situation gratefully, cast about for another school for Tamea and try, try again. Dan recalled that there was a very excellent convent in Sacramento. He would call upon the Mother Superior there, explain Tamea at length and seek to have the censorship law repealed in so far as she was concerned. He would offer to pay double the customary rate in return for special treatment and forbearance in Tamea’s case. And he would tell that infernal Julia what he thought about her—no, he would not. If he did she would weep and when Julia wept her pathetic lack of beauty was extraordinarily depressing.
“Well, I’m awfully happy to see you again, sweetheart,” he said, and favored Tamea with one hearty kiss in return for the dozens she had showered upon him. “Any news from Maisie or her aunt?”
“Divil a wor’rd, sor,” said Julia, coming downstairs at that moment. “I called her up, makin’ bould enough to ax her to reason wit’ Mrs. Pippy, sor, but she would not. Says she to me, says she: ‘Julia, there’s no reasonin’ wit’ anybody in that household, so I’ll not be botherin’ me poor head about them. When Misther Pritchard wants me he’ll sind for me’.”
“Quite so, Julia, quite so. She is absolutely right.”
He went upstairs, bathed and changed his clothes. He intended returning to the office, but Tamea pleaded with him to spend the remainder of the day amusing her. So he took her to a vaudeville show, and Tamea held his hand and, between acts, whispered to him little messages of love. Once, when the house was dark, she leaned over and kissed him very tenderly on the ear. Then, remembering that he held a grudge against Sooey Wan, whom he knew would prepare a special dinner to celebrate his return, Dan decided to take Tamea out to dinner and, deliberately, to fail to telephone Sooey Wan. He knew that would infuriate the old Chinaman and indicate to him that he had been reproved.
They went to an Italian restaurant, the Fiore d’Italia, up in the Latin quarter. It was a restaurant which was patronized nightly by the same guests; indeed, Dan, who had a weakness for some of the toothsome specialties of the house, had been a guest there about three times a month for years, and Mark Mellenger had been, with the exception of Thursday nights when he dined at Dan’s house, a nightly habitué of the Fiore d’Italia for fifteen years. Dan had a desire to bask for an hour in the light of Mellenger’s delightful but infrequent smile and had chosen to take Tamea to the Fiore d’Italia in the hope of seeing him there.
Mellenger was just rising from his table as they entered. He greeted them both cordially, but to Dan’s pressing invitation to sit and talk awhile he replied that he was much too busy at the office and hurried away. Scarcely had he gone when Grandpère, an ancient waiter who looked for his evening tip from Mark Mellenger as regularly as evening descended upon San Francisco, came in with an order of striped bass à la Mellenger. Dan and Tamea had seated themselves at the table vacated by Mellenger, and Grandpère stood a moment, blinking at the vacant chair. Then he glanced toward the peg upon which Mellenger’s wide soft hat always hung and, finding it gone, sighed and returned to the kitchen with the order.
“Why, Mel left without eating!” Dan exclaimed.
“Yes, he saw us first, dear one. He desired to spare himself the embarrassment of having to speak too much with me,” Tamea explained. “At Del Monte I told Mellengair some things he did not like.”
“Oh, Tamea, how could you? He is my dearest friend.”
She shrugged. “He told me things I did not like. We are even now. I think I should tell you that he will not come to your house again for dinner while I am there.”
Again Dan sighed. Things were closing in around him. He had lost an excellent housekeeper, his maid and his cook were in open revolt, his best man friend avoided him and his best woman friend had quarreled with him—and all over Tamea. The amazing part of it all was that he simply could not quarrel with Tamea. He could only adore her and strive to believe that it wasn’t adoration. Tamea, watching him narrowly, saw that he had surrendered to the situation and, as was his custom, he would forbear seeking the details of a situation repugnant to him. So she dipped a small radish in salt and handed it to him with the air of royalty conferring the accolade.
There was dancing to the music of an accordion played by an Italian. He was a genial man, with smiles for all the dancers, and very generous with his encores. Old patrons nodded to one another across the tables, there was much pleasant conversation and some noisy eating, for the Fiore d’Italia was a restaurant dedicated to food rather than the niceties of eating, and was patronized by democratic folk who held good food to be superior to table manners. The camaraderie of the place appealed to Tamea at once, and when presently the accordion player, between dances, commenced to play very softly “O Sole Mio,” and an Italian waiter who had almost attained grand opera paused with a stack of soiled dishes on his arm and sang it, Tamea was transported with delight.
“We will dance, no?” she pleaded brightly.
Dan would have preferred the bastinado, but—they danced. All eyes were on Tamea. Who was she? Where did she come from? That was Pritchard with her, was it not? Who was Pritchard? Zounds, that girl was a corker! How she could dance and how she loved it! A regular Bohemian, eh?
“You play very well, Monsieur,” Tamea complimented the musician as the dance ceased. “Please, I would play your accordion. It is so much finer than my own.”
Before Dan could protest the Italian had handed her his instrument, Tamea had seated herself and commenced to play “Blue Danube Waves.” Dan stood, beseeching her with his eyes to cease making a spectacle of herself and return to the table, but the spirit of carnival had entered into Tamea and she would not be denied. She knew what Dan wanted her to do but she would not do it.
“Every one dance,” she commanded. “And I will play that this tired musician may dance also. It is not fair that he should play always.”
There was a hearty round of applause and the dancers came out on the floor.
“Tamea, dear, you’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Dan pleaded.
“If you would do the same, dear one,” she replied lightly, “you would be such a happy boy.”
She was beating time with her foot; and when the dance was ended she played a ballad of Riva and sang it. The Fiore d’Italia was in an uproar of appreciation, athrill at a new sensation, as the girl handed the accordion back to its owner, thanked him and joined Dan at their table. Immediately all who knew Dan personally or who could rely on the democracy and camaraderie of the place to excuse their action, came over to be introduced to Tamea and felicitate her on her playing and singing. Marinetti, the proprietor, was delighted, and in defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment presented Tamea with a quart of California champagne, which Grandpère fell upon and carried away to be frappéd.
The girl’s face glowed with a happiness that was touching. “Here is life, dear one,” she cried. “Why should I stifle in a convent when there is joy and singing and dancing in your world? We will come here very frequently, no?. . . Oh, but yes! You would not deny your Tamea the pleasure of this beautiful place? Would you, darling Dan Pritchard? Say no—very loud—like that—No.”
“No,” he growled.
His reward was a loving twig at his nose while those around him laughed at his embarrassment. What a dull fellow he was to be so evidently appreciated by such a glorious creature, they thought. Some youths among the diners even wondered if it might not be possible to relieve him of the source of his embarrassment!
It was eleven o’clock when they left the Fiore d’Italia, and Tamea had sung, danced and played her way into the hearts of the patrons to such an extent that Dan felt he could never bear to patronize that restaurant again. Thus he retired with the added conviction that in addition to robbing him of his friends Tamea had now robbed him of his favorite restaurant. Like all bachelors he was a creature of habit and resented the slightest interference with those habits.
The following morning he journeyed to Sacramento to arrange for Tamea’s entrance into the convent there. To his huge disgust small-pox had developed in the school and the convent was under quarantine. So he returned to San Francisco and, feeling a trifle depressed at the manner in which fate was pursuing him, he telephoned to Maisie.
With characteristic feminine ease Maisie elected to forget that she had been fifty per cent responsible for their disagreement at Del Monte. She had thought the matter over, tearfully but at great length, and had come to the conclusion that even if she was not a martyr she could not afford to let Dan Pritchard think so. After a silence of about two weeks Dan had a habit of ringing up and burying the hatchet, and Maisie hadn’t the slightest doubt but that this was his mission now. She resolved to be dignified and enjoy his suit for reëstablishment of the entente cordiale.
“Hello, Dan’l,” she answered, and her clear, cool voice sounded like music in Dan’s ears. “Are you in trouble?”
“I’m up to my eyebrows in it, Maisie!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Dan! But then it’s no more than I expected. I thought you’d send for me when you needed me.”
“I do not need you!” he replied furiously, and hung up.