“You are a sublimated idiot. You never told Maisie that you loved her. Women love love, too. You dawdled around, wishful to have your cake and eat it, hating the freedom of your bachelorhood, yet dreading to abandon it, restless, perturbed, unhappy—ah, you’re a nut. Understand? A nut!”
By his silence under fire Dan admitted the truth of this charge and instantly the great-hearted Mellenger was sorry he had spoken. He laid his hand gently on his friend’s shoulder.
“Buck up, old son,” he pleaded. “At least you’ve done your best to be a gentleman all through this affair. Maisie understands that.”
“Tamea asked Maisie to come and get me. Did she come? Is she here?”
“She is aboard the Pelorus now. Old Casson and his wife think she is in Tahiti. Nothing wrong with taking a summer trip to Tahiti, is there? What the old folks do not know will not worry them. Well, we came down on the same steamer and in the harbor at Tahiti we found the Pelorus. When I told Hackett that I wanted to charter his vessel for a passage to Riva, he eyed me curiously and said he had been expecting somebody to come along and charter him for that trip. Then it developed that he knew you. He wanted more money than Maisie and I could scrape up, but when I informed him of this he said he’d collect the deficit at Riva. Said he’d draw a draft on your Chinese bank. So he cleaned up a stateroom for Maisie and shipped a real cook. He has an ice plant in his hold and we had a pleasant trip. Hackett is a most agreeable man and for a monetary consideration is prepared to carry us all directly to San Francisco.”
“Sorry, but I can’t go,” Dan repeated doggedly. “Nor will I inflict on myself the pain of seeing Maisie.”
“Better toddle along home and talk it over with Tamea,” his friend suggested patiently. “You may change your mind after that.”
Without a word Dan left him. On the way up the hill he met the master of the Pelorus coming down. “I’ll send up a couple of my boys to carry down your trunk,” he told Dan. “Your Tamea is packing it now.” And he smiled his knowing little smile and continued on toward the mission.
Tamea met Dan as he came up the stairs. “Tamea, dear,” he began, “what does this mean?”
“You have talked to Mellenger. You know what it means. When I took you for my husband, chéri, I said: ‘I will take you and cherish you only so long as I may make you happy.’ That time has passed. You are no longer happy, so I have arranged that you shall leave me. There must be no argument.”