CHAPTER XXVIII
Two weeks later the brown crew of the Pelorus set Dan Pritchard and Sooey Wan ashore in the whaleboat.
“I’ll drop in here on my way back—say a year hence,” Captain Hackett promised him as they shook hands at the Jacob’s-ladder. “I’m a little bit curious about you and when I’m curious about anybody I have to find out. I think six months will be long enough to cure you, however. Good-by, Mr. Pritchard, and good luck to you. Kiss the bride for me and—forgive me if I venture to remind you once more—you really do not have to marry her! Tamea hasn’t any very serious thoughts on the validity or the sanctity of marriage. It is, comparatively, a recent institution here.” He shook a horny finger at Dan and answered the latter’s scowl with a mellow laugh. Dan thought he might be just a little bit jingled a few hours earlier than was his wont. Strange man. Dan had an idea he had fallen from high estate.
A Kanaka sailor carried Dan ashore from the boat through the wash of the surf, and followed with Dan’s trunk. Sooey Wan, presumed to be a person of no importance, struggled ashore in water up to his knees, and the moment he found himself high and dry on the shingle he looked about him with interest. What he saw was a half mile of white beach with a fringe of tufted coconut palms leaning seaward, a few canoes hauled up on the beach, a large corrugated iron godown and a small wooden bungalow, painted white with green trimmings and wide, deep verandas, squatted on the low bluff above the beach.
From the veranda of this bungalow a white man detached himself and came down over the bluff to meet them. He introduced himself as the Reverend Cyrus Muggridge, the resident missionary. He was a gloomy, liverish sort of man and Dan had a feeling that to Mr. Muggridge his martyrdom in Riva was a thing of the flesh and scarcely of the spirit. He repaid the reverend gentleman’s compliment in kind and introduced himself. Then, because he observed in the missionary’s eyes an unspoken query, he said:
“Are you, by any chance, Mr. Muggridge, acquainted with Miss Tamea Larrieau, who is, I understand, the last blood of the ancient chiefs of Riva?”
“I am, unhappily, acquainted with the young woman,” Muggridge replied wearily, and added, “She is, like her father, wholly irreclaimable.”
“Perhaps you would be so good as to direct me to her home?” Dan suggested. “That is, if she has arrived in Riva recently, as I have reason to suspect she may have. You seem a bit shy on population, Mr. Muggridge,” he added parenthetically.
“I think my last census showed some four hundred souls, but since then we have had two epidemics of influenza and the birth rate has scarcely kept pace with the mortality rate. Really, I must have another census. Counting them roughly, I should say that the total population of the island is two hundred and fifty, of which, perhaps, thirty families reside in the village.”
“Where is the village?”
“About a quarter of a mile up a valley which runs up to those mountains from the sea. Miss Larrieau, by the way, is again in Riva. She arrived a week ago and has taken up her residence in her old home. I will point it out to you, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are, perhaps, wondering why none of my people are present,” Mr. Muggridge continued. “You have unfortunately arrived in mid-afternoon, when my people are sleeping or, what is more probable, over in the river bathing.”
The Kanaka sailors having disposed Dan’s baggage above high-water mark, the whaleboat pulled back to the ship and was hoisted aboard even while the Pelorus slowly came about and headed for the open sea again. Mr. Muggridge, evidently greatly pleased at the prospect of white company—and a gentleman at that—courteously led the way to the white bungalow and extended to Dan and his servant the hospitality of his home.
“Thank you, Mr. Muggridge,” said Dan gratefully. “I shall be most happy to accept your invitation—for the present at least. May I ask you to point out to me Miss Larrieau’s habitation?”
Mr. Muggridge’s eyebrows went up perceptibly. What a hurry this well bred, respectable-looking stranger was in to see that half-caste Jezebel! “Follow the road up past the church yonder until you come to the river, which you will cross on two coco-palm logs. They are very slippery. Be careful. Having crossed the bridge, turn to the left and follow the path up the hill to a house that is as distinctly a white man’s dwelling as my own. You should find the lady you seek asleep on the veranda.”
“Thank you, Mr. Muggridge. If you don’t mind, I think I shall run up to Miss Larrieau’s house.”
“Dinner will be served at five-thirty,” the missionary warned him. “I shall have my servant help your man bring the baggage up to your room.”
Tamea’s home stood in a grove of coco-palms, interspersed with some flowering shrubs and a few lesser trees with luxuriant green foliage. The house had been built on a solid foundation of cement and creosoted redwood underpinning, to protect it from the native wood-devouring insects. Dan suspected that the green paint which had at some distant date been applied to the house was anti-fouling—the sort of paint used on ships’ bottoms to protect them from teredos. From under the house the snouts of half a dozen young pigs, taking their siesta, protruded, and in the yard a stately gamecock and some hens were prospecting for worms. The place smelled a little of neglect, of semi-decayed vegetation, of insanitation—the smell peculiar to the homes of native dwellers in the tropics. A well worn flight of five steps led up from the front of the house to the veranda, from which one might glean a view of miles of coastline. About the place there was a silence so profound that Dan feared he might have come too late, after all.
He mounted the steps and rapped at a door with bronze screening on it. There was no answer, so he opened the door and gazed into a large living room. On the floor was a huge, blue, very old and very valuable Chinese rug; in the center of this rug stood a large, plain table, of native hardwood and—so Dan judged—native workmanship. In a corner he saw a grand piano and on top of the piano Tamea’s accordion and a mandolin and some scattered music. A few chairs and hardwood benches arranged along the wall under windows which ran the full length of each wall and which, when it was desired to ventilate the house, dropped down into a pocket after the fashion of a train window, completed the furnishings, with the exception of half a dozen rudely framed sketches of native life, and ships at sea.
“Nobody home,” thought Dan, and walked around the veranda on three sides of the house. On the fourth side, which gave upon the vivid green mountain peak in the background and into which the late afternoon sun could not penetrate, Dan paused.
Before him, on a folding cot, with a native mat spread over it, Tamea lay, with her head pillowed on her left arm and her face turned slightly toward him. Her eyes were closed, but she was not asleep, for even as Dan gazed upon the beloved face he saw tears creep out from between the shut lids, saw the beautiful, semi-naked body shaken by an ill suppressed sob. Two swift strides and he was kneeling beside her, and as she opened her eyes and sought to rise at sight of him, his arms went around her and strained her to his heart while his lips kissed her tear-dimmed eyes.
Thus, long, he held her, while her heart pounded madly against his breast and the pent-up sorrow of weeks struggled with the rhapsody of that one perfect moment and left her weak and trembling, able only to gasp: “Ah, beloved! Beloved! You have come! Is it then that you love your Tamea—after all?”
He held her closer and in that tremendous moment his soul overflowed and he mingled, unashamed, his tears with hers. “Yes, love, I have come,” he answered chokingly. “You could not be happy with me in my country—so I have come to be happy with you—in yours.”
“You come—you mean you come to stay—that you have left—Maisie—your friends——”
“I am here, Tamea. I love you. I cannot live without you. I need you—when you left me you did not understand.”
“I understand now,” she whispered. “Captain Hackett of the Pelorus was at pains to explain for you, but I could not believe then. But—you have come to Riva—so now I understand. Captain Hackett was right, so let there be no more explanations. Ah, dear one, my heart is bursting with love for you. If you had not come life would have lost its taste and your Tamea would have died.”
“Don’t,” he pleaded, “don’t,” and held her closer. “From this moment until death we shall not be separated. Tonight we shall go to Mr. Muggridge and be married.”
Tamea was suddenly thoughtful. “Since I have been away the wife of the missionary has died, and he is mad about your Tamea. Before I left Riva it was his habit to follow me about and in his eyes there was that look I know and hate. I have been home a week and his madness has increased a hundredfold. Dear one, I am afraid of him.”
“You need not be,” Dan assured her and stroked the glorious head of her. “I met Mr. Muggridge half an hour ago when I landed and I observed that he seemed interested when I asked about you. He looked to me like a man with a fire in his soul. . . . Well, he’s a minister of the Gospel, however, so I dare say if he struggles hard enough he can put the fire out long enough to pronounce us man and wife.”
“But—a license is necessary if we would marry after the fashion of your people, beloved,” she reminded him. “And there is no law in Riva, although the island is claimed by the French Government.”
“It will be better than no marriage at all, Tamea.”
She smiled. “Such a queer, strange people, you all-whites,” was her comment. “It is not a marriage but a substitute, yet you would ask this man to perform a mummery to satisfy something in you that is a heritage from your ancestors. I have no such heritage. For me, no mumbling of words by this mad priest is necessary to happiness.”
“Well, they are necessary to me, strange as it may seem to you, Tamea,” Dan replied with his shy smile. “You are half white and I am all white and it is my purpose to dwell with you on a white basis. Therefore, we will wed according to the custom of my people.”
“As you will,” Tamea agreed. “Is it that this matter touches your honor if I will it otherwise?”
He nodded. “Then come to Mr. Muggridge,” the girl urged, and led him by the hand down the hill to the missionary’s house. Sooey Wan was standing in the doorway and at sight of Tamea he uncovered respectfully.
“Faithful one,” Tamea hailed him and gave him her hand in huge delight. Sooey Wan shook it gingerly, his yellow teeth flashing the while in an ecstatic grin.
At the sound of voices and footsteps on the veranda, Mr. Muggridge came out. “You have returned quite soon, Mr. Pritchard,” he began, and then his glance rested on Tamea. “Well?” he demanded irritably.
“Mr. Muggridge,” Dan said to him, “it is my desire that you should marry Mademoiselle Larrieau and me at once.”
The missionary grew pale and his somber eyes grew even more somber. “I shall require her father’s permission before performing the ceremony, Mr. Pritchard,” he said with an effort.
“Her father is dead, Mr. Muggridge.”
“Have you a license of any sort?”
“No. Is it your custom to require a license when performing the marriage ceremony between two of your converts?”
“No, indeed. My people do not understand what a license is, and it has been deemed unnecessary to insist upon it with these primitive people. In your case, however——”
“I understand that white man’s law is non-operative in Riva,” Dan interrupted. “The sole regulations of this island have been promulgated by you and other missionaries, have they not?”
Mr. Muggridge nodded, his blazing eyes still fastened on Tamea.
“Well,” Dan explained earnestly, “in the absence of white law I desire you to marry me according to missionary law. I wish to feel that my marriage has been sanctioned by a representative of a Christian faith. I am a Christian.”
“A true Christian would not marry this woman, sir.”
“I did not come here to argue with you, Mr. Muggridge. It is my firm intention to dwell in Riva with Tamea and I prefer to dwell with her in accordance with the custom of my own people.”
“I must decline to perform the ceremony,” said Muggridge doggedly. “In your case, without a license, should I perform this ceremony, I would be sanctioning your right to live with this woman in defiance of the law of the land.”
“But there is no law, Mr. Muggridge.”
“There is,” said the missionary tersely. “I am the Law, and in this matter I am inexorable.”
“You’re a lunatic. You’re as crazy as a March hare,” Dan retorted hotly.
“It is because he has looked upon me with desire,” said Tamea coolly. “Come, beloved. It is foolish to argue with one who is quite mad.”
She took his hand and led him back up the hill and out on to the edge of the high headland that gave a view of the entire eastern coast of the island. Inland, a high conical peak, which Dan now realized was a volcano, lifted some four thousand feet into the sky, now rapidly darkening as the sun sank. Still holding Dan’s hand, Tamea took her stand beside him.
“Dear one,” she said, “if you would take me to wife, then must it be after the fashion of my people, since it is plainly impossible that it can be after the fashion of yours. I think I understand how it is that you would take me to wife. You would be very serious, very sincere, very solemn. It is something you would not do lightly.”
He nodded and the girl, turning, pointed to the volcano. From the crater a rosy glow was beginning to appear, cast against the sky, and as twilight crept over Riva this glow deepened.
“My heart,” said Tamea softly, “is like unto the hot heart of Hakataua yonder. Throughout the day the sunlight beats down the glow so that no man may see it, but with the coming of night comes the glow that all men may see it, even those afar at sea in ships. With the coming of night I yearn for you, beloved; the flame of my desire burns high and I am unashamed that I desire you as all true women must desire a mate.” She turned and kissed him solemnly and tenderly. “I love you, heart of my heart,” she told him, “and though I live to be as old as Hakataua, I swear, by your God, never shall I love any man but you, Dan Pritchard. And, loving you, I shall respect you and obey you, nor shall I bring dishonor or shame upon you, my husband. Here, in the presence of the sea and the earth and the sky, I make my promise. While I can make you happy that promise shall hold, but when I can no longer please you then are you released. For that is the way of my people.”
“Here in the presence of God,” Dan Pritchard murmured, with bowed head and a full heart, “I take thee, Tamea, for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, in honor, always.” And he kissed her now, solemnly, tenderly, without passion.
“My husband,” she said happily, “now it will not be necessary to beg that mad Muggridge to quench the fire in his soul.”
“Poor devil,” Dan answered her, and together they returned to the green bungalow. They found Sooey Wan sitting on the steps, mopping his high, bony forehead.
“Kitchen lady queen no hab got. Cookee no can do,” he complained bitterly. “House where leavee trunk kitchen hab got. Cookee can do.”
“You mean that missionary’s house, Sooey Wan?”
The old Chinaman nodded.
“Well, we’ll have to get along without his kitchen, I think, Sooey Wan.” He turned to Tamea. “Have you no kitchen, dear? Strange that your father should build and furnish a house such as this and yet not provide a kitchen.”
“When my father and I left Riva, we did not bother to take anything out of this house. Upon my return many things were missing. All were returned by my people with the exception of the stove, which fell from the shoulders of the men who carried it and was destroyed.”
“Sooey Wan isn’t accustomed to cooking over an open fire. He will be continuously peeved and develop into a frightful nuisance.”
“I shall have my serving women wait upon my husband,” Tamea assured him lightly. “As for this servant of yours, let his task be the catching of fish, which will provide him with amusement. He has labored long and faithfully in your house, dear one. He has earned his rest.”
“I hope he can see his way clear to take it,” Dan sighed. Then, turning to his servant: “Sooey Wan, you’re retired. You do not have to cook any more. From now on your job will consist in enjoying yourself. Tomorrow we’ll find some sort of habitation for you, but for tonight park yourself on the veranda.”
Sooey Wan vouchsafed no reply, until Tamea had entered the house and he found himself alone for a moment with his master. “Boss,” he then said confidentially, “missionaly heap klazy. Look out. Sooey Wan look out.” And he permitted the butt of a long-barreled Colt’s .45 to slide down from his voluminous sleeve. “Sooey Wan no likee. That missionaly ketchum devil inside heap plenty.”