CHAPTER XXV
At seven o’clock the following morning Dan Pritchard was awakened from a light and fitful slumber by forceful hammering at his bedroom door. To his query, “Yes, yes, who is it?” a voice freighted with tears and fright answered:
“ ’Tis Julia, sor. Miss Tammy’s gone, God help us.”
“Gone? Gone? Gone where?”
“Sorra wan o’ me knows, but she’s not in the house and her bed has not been shlept in. I found a letther for you, sor, on her bureau.” And Julia opened his door an inch and slid an envelope in to him. He read:
Beloved:
I was very foolish to think you truly loved me, to think that I, a half-caste Polynesian girl, could make you love me as I desire to be loved. Therefore, I leave you, though I love you. Because I love you, last night I offered you all that I have. You needed it, but—you could not accept it from me because that would have made you feel that you must accept me also. I have been shamed. I am not a woman of common blood, yet you refused from me what you gladly accepted from your Chinese servant. So I have learned my lesson. I am not angry, dear one, but I am beginning to understand Mellenger was right. Your world is not for me. Please tell Mellenger that I forgive him and that I am sorry I spoke certain words to him, for he is both wise and brave and a loyal friend. Tell him I know he will forgive me, and why.
I have begged of Sooey Wan five hundred dollars. Please repay him. As for the money my father gave me, I leave it to you, for I love you. You need it and I would have you happy, even though I may not know happiness myself. Where I go I shall never require money.
Good-by, Dan Pritchard. Good-by to our love. Perhaps some day we shall meet in Paliuli, for the missionaries say that there even a half-caste girl shall be washed whiter than snow. But alas, I have never seen snow. I know not what it is.
And now I depart from this house, with naught in my heart for you but love.
Your
Tamea.
Dan’s heart was constricted. For several minutes he sat dumbly on the side of the bed, reading and rereading the letter, striving to realize that for the second time within twelve hours his world had come tumbling about his ears. Julia’s sniffling came to him through the slightly opened door. The sound irritated him.
“Send Sooey Wan up to me, Julia, please,” he ordered.
“He’s here now, sor.”
“Come in, you yellow idiot,” Dan roared, and the old Chinaman shuffled into the room and stood before him dejectedly, but with eyes that met his master’s glance unflinchingly. “When Miss Larrieau asked you to lend her five hundred dollars, why did you not come up and tell me immediately?” he demanded.
“Sometime, Missa Dan,” Sooey Wan answered humbly, “evlybody klazy. Las’ night I think Sooey Wan klazy, too. After Missa Dan go bed, lady queen knock my door. She say: ‘Sooey Wan, I likee fi’ hund’ed dolla’.’ I think velly funny, so I say ‘Wha’ for?’ and lady queen get velly mad, so Sooey Wan think maybe lady queen wanchee buy plesent Missa Dan, maybe likee make suplise party. Wha’ for Sooey Wan ketchum light for ask question to lady queen? Sooey Wan allee same cook, lady queen allee same lady boss. No can do, Missa Dan.”
“That confounded single-track Oriental mind of yours has broken my heart,” Dan groaned. “Sooey Wan, last night the lady queen offered to give me a quarter of a million dollars, but I would not accept it. It was a trust and I couldn’t take advantage of her generous nature. I dared not risk losing her money. Her father trusted me, and I couldn’t accept money from a woman anyhow. She knows that you offered me money, however, and that I accepted it from you, only she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t understand that you’re a man, Sooey Wan, that you can take a gambler’s chance, that I’ll throw old Casson out of the business and put you in as a silent partner; she doesn’t understand that as a baby I acquired the habit of accepting money from you. You remember how you would give me spending money when my father wouldn’t? You old fool, you’ve spoiled me, but you love me like a son and—well, Sooey Wan, you’re not a Chinaman to me—a servant. You’re my friend—the whitest white man and the truest friend I’ve ever known, God bless you—but oh, I could kill you this morning! You’re such a lovable, loyal old booby, and because of you the girl has gone. She thinks now that I do not want her.”
“Women,” said Sooey Wan, “all klazy.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea where the girl could have gone.”
“I think maybe go back same place lady queen come from,” the crafty Chinaman suggested. “Maybe ketchum steamer today. I think velly good job talkee policeeman, policeeman ketchum velly quick. If lady queen no come back Sooey Wan shootum blains”—and he struck fiercely his bony, yellow temple.
“I have an idea, Sooey Wan. Last Sunday morning we walked along the waterfront together. I had a schooner in from the south and I wanted to talk to the captain. At Pacific Street bulkhead there was a trading schooner, the Pelorus, unloading copra, and Tamea spoke to the Kanaka mate in his own language.”
He reached for the telephone and called up the Meiggs wharf lookout of the Merchants’ Exchange.
“Has the schooner Pelorus sailed?” he queried, after introducing himself as a member of the Exchange.
“Towed out with the tide about five o’clock this morning, Mr. Pritchard.”
“What towed her out?”
“A Crowley gasoline tug, sir. Wait a minute until I get the glass on her. She’s just coming back after dropping the Pelorus off the Gate.” A silence. Then, “Crowley Number Thirty-four.”
“Thank you.” Dan hung up and turned to Sooey Wan. “Bring me a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Get Graves out and tell him to have the car waiting in front in fifteen minutes,” he ordered, and leaped for his shower bath. By the time he was dressed Sooey Wan appeared with the coffee and just as Crowley tug Number Thirty-four slid into her berth to await another towing job, Dan Pritchard appeared on the dock and hailed her skipper in the pilot house.
“You towed the Pelorus out a couple of hours ago. Did you happen to observe whether she carried any passengers?”
“I did. One, sir. A young lady.”
“Describe her.”
“A handsome young lady, sir, dark complected in a way, and yet not dark. Struck me she might have just a drop of Island blood in her, sir. She was wearin’ a blue suit but no hat, and when I saw her first as I bumped alongside she was settin’ on the main hatch coamin’ and she’d been cryin’.”
“Any baggage?”
“A suitcase and an accordion. The skipper of the Pelorus found her settin’ there and she introduced herself. I gathered that he knew her people and was glad to meet her. She must have shipped as a passenger, because she was standin’ aft lookin’ back at the city the last I saw of the Pelorus.”
“How fast is the fastest tug or launch in the Crowley fleet?” Dan next inquired.
“Fifteen miles an hour.”
“Great! I’ll charter her. I want to overhaul the Pelorus and take that girl off.”
The man in the pilot house shook his head. “No use, sir. The Pelorus has lines like a yacht and she’s a witch in a breeze of wind. There’s a thirty mile nor’west breeze on her quarter and she’s logging fifteen knots if she’s logging an inch this minute. I cast her off at six fifteen—two hours ago. She’d be hull down on the horizon in an hour. You couldn’t hope to overhaul her, sir.”
“Thank you, friend. I dare say you’re right.” He wadded a bill into a ball and tossed it in the pilot house window, smiled wanly and returned to his car. On the way up to the office of Casson and Pritchard he formulated a plan of action, which he proceeded to place in operation the moment he found himself alone in his private office.
First he looked up the Pelorus in Lloyd’s Register and satisfied himself that she was staunch and seaworthy, or rather that she had been a year previous. She was owned in Honolulu. Well, Tamea would doubtless be safe aboard her—that is, safe from the elements, although a cold feeling swept over him as he thought of that glorious creature alone on a trading schooner, at the mercy of her captain. He hoped the man was different from the majority of his kind.
At nine o’clock he telephoned the Customs House and learned that the Pelorus had cleared for general cruising in the South Pacific, with her first port of call Tahiti. With a sinking heart Dan recalled that there was neither wireless station nor cable station at Tahiti, and a close scrutiny of the Shipping Guide disclosed the fact that the next steamer for Sidney, via Tahiti, Pago Pago and Raratonga would not sail for two weeks. Well, he would write Casson and Pritchard’s agent at Tahiti to board the Pelorus when she dropped hook in the harbor and deliver to the girl a letter and a draft on the French bank in Tahiti, to enable her to purchase a first class steamer passage back to San Francisco, where they would be married immediately. Undoubtedly the steamer would beat the Pelorus to Tahiti, even though the latter vessel should have a two weeks’ start. Even should the Pelorus beat her in, the schooner would probably lie in Tahiti harbor for a week and Tamea would go ashore and visit friends of her father’s while awaiting passage on a schooner that could drop her off at Riva. The chances for overhauling the heart-broken fugitive were excellent; the letter which would reach her, via the steamer and later by hand of Casson and Pritchard’s agent, would bring her back to him. Of that he felt assured.
However, in the event the steamer should never reach Tahiti, he essayed two other means of communicating with her, via his agent. There was a wireless station at Fanning Island and another at Noumea, so he sent a message to each, with a request that it be relayed to Tamea by the first vessels touching there and bound for Tahiti.
He had done all he could to retrieve the situation now, so he spread his long arms out on his desk, laid his face in them and suffered. He yearned for the blessed relief of tears, for at last Dan Pritchard was realizing that he did indeed love Tamea with all of the wild and passionate love of which he had dreamed. He had not believed that it would be possible for him to love any woman so. His heart ached for her. He was thoroughly wretched.
What matter if her mother had been a Polynesian princess, her father a carefree, wandering love-pirate, a very Centaur? Tamea was—Tamea—and in all this world there would never, by God’s grace, exist another like her.
He got out her letter and read it again, and a lump gathered in his throat as he realized how sweet it was, how benignant, how overflowing with love and the gladness of love’s sacrifice. How prideful she was and how childish! What a tremendous indication was her act, of a tremendously regal character! Poor, bruised, misunderstanding and misunderstood heart. His tears came at last. . . .
By noon he had regained control of himself, and resolutely driving from his mind all thoughts of Tamea, he concentrated upon his business affairs. His first move was to order the firm’s books closed as of that date and a schedule of assets and liabilities drawn up, after which he wrote a form letter to the firm’s customers explaining the predicament in which Casson and Pritchard found themselves and the reason for it, pledged his own private fortune to retrieve the situation in part and invited the creditors to meet with him and his attorneys in the assembly room of the Merchants’ Exchange a week hence, when a thorough and comprehensive review of the situation would be possible and at which time he hoped to have worked out a scheme for the rehabilitation of the business and the payment of one hundred cents on every dollar of the firm’s obligations.
As yet no one, not even the chief clerk, knew that Casson and Pritchard were listed among the casualties in the post-war collapse of values which Dan had feared so long. Dan and his partner were the sole custodians of that cheerless information, but in their minds existed no illusions regarding their situation. That eight thousand tons of rice aboard the Malayan alone spelled a loss of at least a million and a half. Already the market on coffee, sugar, Oriental oils, copra and a hundred other commodities had commenced to slump, and, in the wild scramble to throw trades overboard before too heavy a loss should accrue, Dan knew that every importing and exporting house in the country would be hard put to weather the storm. Casson and Pritchard would have to face other losses in the natural order of business, and Dan was shrewd enough to realize that these, coupled with the tremendous loss on old Casson’s rice gamble, would force him to cry for quarter. Therefore he faced the issue resolutely and calmly made his preparations for the assault of the firm’s creditors by assuming the initiative.
For a week he worked all day and part of each night at the office. Old Casson, cruelly stung with remorse and fright, remained at home and did not communicate with him, a condition for which Dan was grateful. He heard nothing from Maisie, nor did his thoughts dwell long or frequently upon her. He had room in his harassed mind for thoughts of but one woman—Tamea.
All during that terrible week gossip linked irremediable disaster with some of the oldest and soundest firms on the Street. Apparently Katsuma and Company had been smashed beyond all hope of rehabilitation, for Katsuma, Jap-like, had solved his problem by hanging himself and was as dead as Julius Cæsar. There was a panic in Wall Street and already local banks had grown timid and were refusing the loans so necessary to the successful operation of the commerce upon which banks must, perforce, predicate their existence. Demand loans were being called, and when not met the collateral back of them was levied upon.
At the conclusion of that week’s business Dan had before him a written record of Casson and Pritchard’s affairs; the letters to creditors lay on his desk, awaiting his signature, and his plan of rehabilitation, even his address to the firm’s creditors, had been rehearsed until he knew it by heart. At eleven o’clock on Saturday his bank called a large loan. Over the telephone the banker informed Dan crisply but courteously that they expected the note to be paid on Monday; whereupon Dan Pritchard sent out his letters to Casson and Pritchard’s creditors and then sent for Mark Mellenger, whom he had not seen since the latter’s sudden retreat from the Italian restaurant in the Latin quarter.
“I’ve sent for you, Mel,” Dan informed his friend, “to give you two exclusive stories, one of which is for publication. In the first place, Tamea has returned to Riva, or at least she is now en route there. I am endeavoring, however, to turn her back at Tahiti in order that I may marry her.”
“Why did she leave? Did you send her away?”
Dan briefly explained and Mellenger listened in silence; at the conclusion of Dan’s recital he merely nodded and said: “I suppose any man would be a very great fool not to marry a woman like Tamea. She is the only one of her kind I ever heard of. What’s the other story?”
“It’s contained in this letter to the creditors of our firm. I’m busted, Mel. However, I shall rise, like the phenix, from my ashes, thanks to Sooey Wan. I’ll reorganize the firm, eliminating Casson, who is in no position to dictate terms or claim an interest for alleged good-will. I hope he has means to enable him to take care of Mrs. Casson and Maisie, and if he hasn’t I dare say Maisie can do something to support herself.”
“I’ll write you a nice, kindly story regarding the embarrassment of your firm. I’ve been writing such stories for two weeks. I dislike to air your difficulty, Dan, but if I do not the other papers will, so I might as well scoop them in the Sunday edition. Poor Tamea! I shall probably not see her again, but I am glad to have her friendship at least. Her friendship is worth something.”
He accepted one of Dan’s cigars and commenced to talk of other things; at parting he remarked, casually, that he would be up to the house for dinner the following Thursday night—now that Tamea was no longer there to be oppressed by his presence.