CHAPTER XXX
When Dan Pritchard descended into the main cabin of the Pelorus, he found Maisie seated there. She stared at him a moment, not recognizing in the brown, somewhat unkempt figure at the foot of the companion, the man she had known and loved in another world.
“It is I—Dan,” he told her.
Maisie made no effort to rise. She knew she was unequal to the effort. “I—I came—to see if you—cared to come home, Dan,” she said with difficulty. “Tamea wrote—asked me to come and get you. It has been very hard for me to do this, Dan. Perhaps you can understand why.”
He came and took her hand in both of his, but made no movement toward a more affectionate greeting. He was not quite equal to such disloyalty so soon, even though at sight of Maisie his heart thrilled wildly. “I can understand your reluctance to running after any man, Maisie,” he answered her. “Least of all myself.”
“This situation is perfectly amazing. I cannot, even now, understand why I have come here, Dan.”
“Perhaps it would be just as well not to try to understand some things, Maisie,” he pleaded. “Do you think it is possible for us to take up our lives where they were when we saw each other last? You know all about me, of course.”
“Mark Mellenger was at some pains to attempt a long, scientific and, at times, reasonable, defense of masculine weaknesses in general and of yours in particular. Somehow, Dan, I cannot feel that you have been either weak or wicked. It—it—just happened. I cannot conceive that you would ever be less than a gentleman.”
He bowed his head. “I have tried to be that, Maisie, although today I do not feel that I have succeeded. But I cannot do otherwise than leave Tamea. I do not think it would have occurred to me to leave her, no matter how bitter the price of staying, but—she willed it otherwise. We have parted without bitterness; I want you to know that so long as I live she shall remain a holy and tender memory.”
“You love her?” Maisie choked on the query.
“I love her as one loves a beautiful and lovable child; for the nobility of soul she possesses I feel a tremendous reverence.”
“I understand—being a woman. You have entertained for me something of that same affection, I think. Well, it is no fault of yours, is it, if you mistook infatuation for love?”
“Perhaps, at some future date, Maisie, it will not seem so—so terrible—to discuss so intimately my feelings toward you or toward Tamea. I only know that—at last—I am quite certain of myself. I tried my best to play the game with Tamea, but I wasn’t smart enough to conceal my true feelings from her, once those feelings became apparent to myself. She has the mind of a warlock. I—I—tried to love her, but—oh, my God, forgive me—we were as oil and water. We could not mix. I couldn’t stand this place. There is beauty here and peace; life tiptoes by so serenely that the sameness of the days was driving me mad. I had no social intercourse—no points of intellectual contact—and every relative of Tamea’s, no matter how distantly related—was dwelling under the mantle of our—of her—philanthropy. She loves them all and hasn’t the heart to drive them away. It is the custom and she is the last of her blood. She will not alter the custom. I hate the food, I hate the smell of decaying vegetation, I hate the rain, I hate the music, I hate the sunshine—and the loneliness would, eventually, have driven me insane. That’s what it did to Muggridge. I did some sketching the first few months. Since then I have had no heart for it. My mind is back in San Francisco; I can’t shake off the memories of the old life. Tamea spends her days adoring me—and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it, I tell you. I’m fed up on love. I’m—I’m——”
Maisie managed to stand up. She placed her hands on Dan’s shoulders. “Buck up, old booby,” she murmured, with something of the adorable camaraderie that had charmed him so in happier days. “You are the victim of a terrible tragedy and so is poor Tamea. But she was wise enough to see that something radical had to be done—and she did it. You see, Dan’l, you weren’t truly in love with Tamea and I knew it all the time. You were in love with love, or perhaps your pity led you, like a will-o’-the-wisp. At any rate, it’s all over and nobody shall ever know and—and—I love you, Dan. I never thought I would be brave enough, or unmaidenly enough, to tell you this. But I know you love me, Dan. I knew it long before Tamea flashed across your life like a meteor and swept you off your silly old feet. I was weak, or I would have saved you—and when I found I could manage the strength, you were gone and it was too late. You’ve been such an old stupid. I should have made allowance for you, because I know you so well. . . . Well, I am here—and nothing that has happened matters any more. There, there you go with that sad old Abraham Lincoln look again—and now I’ll have to be friend Maisie again.”
She forced him down into a seat and he laid his arms on the cabin table and buried his face in them, in order that Maisie might not see the agony in his soul. “Nobody can ever understand except one who has had the experience,” he tried to explain. “Tamea is all white—and half native. She gazes upon life native-fashion—she’s a tragic contradiction. I could never quite know what was in her mind when she gazed upon me so sweetly and tragically and she could never quite know what was in mine.”
“Ah, but she did know, poor dear,” Maisie contradicted. “She has proved that she knew.”
“She is old—old, with the wisdom of the aged and the philosophy of patriarchs——”
“And the heart of a woman, Dan.”
“No, the heart of a child.”
Maisie smiled wistfully. Poor old booby Dan’l! He would never, never know that a woman is always a child! Because she had tact and more imagination than Dan Pritchard had ever given her credit for possessing, she left him and went up on deck.
At sunset the Pelorus passed out of the lagoon and as her bow lifted to the long, lazy rollers beyond the outer reef, Dan Pritchard, from her quarter-deck, through a mist gazed back on his Paradise lost. High up on the headland where Tamea’s home nestled in the grove, a white figure, silhouetted against the sunset glow, waved to him. And presently, as the Pelorus drew clear of the coast and the full force of the trades bellied her canvas, to send her ramping toward the horizon, that white figure slowly faded; the last Dan Pritchard saw of Riva was the steadily deepening glow of the hot heart of Hakataua, pulsating against the purple sky. And whatever thoughts occurred to him in that supreme moment were never given utterance, for Maisie came and stood beside him and said:
“Don’t be ashamed of it, Dan, dear. I understand. Truly, I do.”
“It will be terrible if you do not, Maisie, for I have lived to be too thoroughly understood—I who am not worth understanding.”