Mrs. Vandaleur—Daisy Vandaleur, as most people called her (she signed herself “Daisie,” in her numerous letters)—was always referred to as “little”; she was, as a matter of fact, about the average height of womenkind. But she had a small head and very small hands and feet and a way of looking little and forlorn. And she was fond of calling herself a “poor little widow.” I needn’t go on describing “Daisie”—every one who has reached the age of thirty has met her and knows her by heart. She had a puggy sort of little dog and a catty sort of companion, and she was a little pious and more than a little musical, and knew how to put on her clothes (I said as much to a lady at the dance, and she replied that in that case it was a pity Mrs. Vandaleur didn’t use her knowledge more liberally; also, that she at all events knew how to put on her hair. Which gives you the attitude of feminine New Guinea towards “Daisie,” in a word).
The little widow, of course, had set her cap at the Marquis from the moment of our return. That did not trouble me or the Marquis either. (“Many dear women, they have done so, and I love them for it,” he explained to me. “I find it altogether natural.”) Nor did it trouble me much, from any ordinary point of view, that she should have sprained her ankle—just a trifle—when they were coming back from a stroll on the grass outside the hall—because Daisie was given to spraining her ankle at appropriate times. But when the Marquis lifted her up the steps of the veranda and carried her to a long chair to rest her foot for the next dance—why, then I saw Mrs. Daisie’s little hand, as it slipped down from the Marquis’ huge shoulder, pause for a moment at the odd lump under his shirt and feel it with the dexterity of a pickpocket. The Marquis did not notice; he was gazing into her eyes, which were blue eyes and went prettily with her Titian-red hair. I began to wonder, however. And when the supper-dances came and I saw Mrs. Vandaleur walking in with the Marquis as lightly as he walked himself, I concluded that it was time to offer him a hint. Which I did.
He answered with the mangled proverb I have already quoted, and filled himself another glass of ginger ale with the roystering air of a gallant in a Christmas Number supplement. It really seemed to be going to his head. I had had several whiskies myself by this time; but my head is perhaps of a different quality.
It was the southeast season at its worst; in Port Moresby, that means that you live in the midst of a roaring gale, day and night, for months. Up here on the hill where the dance-room was built, the veranda trembled like the hurricane deck of an Atlantic liner; the flags in the ball-room tore at their moorings on the walls; down the long tunnel of the supper-room the wind went yelling like a lost soul on its way to hell. The tablecloth flapped and slatted; the crackers flew about. Mrs. Daisie, dancing beyond the doorway with the fluffy boy, clutched at her woeful black skirts and twinkled the scarlet stockings that so piquantly contradicted them. I could see she was keeping an eye on me. For some reason or other, Mrs. Daisie did not like me—much.
“Look, Marky,” I said (the howling of the southeaster isolated us from the other guests, in our corner, as much as if we had been in a room by ourselves), “I want you to think for a moment what it means, if people get on to the fact that we have a diamond worth the whole island of New Guinea in our possession. From that moment, any peace we have—and Lord knows we haven’t had much—ceases. In a small place like this, one is safe enough from robbery, but once on a liner, or in Sydney, we’d want a corps of detectives to guard the stone—if we can’t keep it dark. And of course, it doesn’t matter where or how the news gets out—it’ll run over the world in a week, just the same.”
“All over the world!” said the Marquis, thoughtfully. “You have reason. We shall be famous, me and you. Flint, I love to be famous. It is the glory of our adventures that has already made that little flower of the tropic, Dai-see Vandaleur, love me as the poor little one loves. It is true, she also thinks me beautiful. But handsome is who tells no tales!”
“Will you let me keep the stone till the steamer comes in?” I asked, dropping the vexed subject. When a man of forty odd begins to tell you about the women who admire his beauty, you had better get off that line of rails as quick as you can.
“On my conscience and my honor as a peer of the ancient regiment of France, I will—not,” said the Marquis. “I have the heart of a child, as the little Dai-see tells me, but a child I am not. Tomorrow you will guard our property; the day after, I, and so on to the end. To the end, my friend.” He drank another bottle of ginger ale in two gulps and waved his empty tumbler in the air. “And even if the end shall be Death, then, my friend, a dead man is out of the wood. I love your English axes.”
“Saws, I suppose you mean,” I said.
“I knew it had to do with tools; it is altogether the same. Now I will show this little beautiful some species of dancing that will make her ready to die of love, there on my feet.”