“But the baby,” he reminded her.
“I will give him to you, my friend. Would you not care to have my son and love him as your own?”
The poker face twitched, the unlovely eyes blinked a little. Mel bowed his head affirmatively.
“I have an illness—here,” Tamea murmured, and placed her hand on her side. “It is the lung disease that comes to so many of us Polynesians, and when I knew my length of life was measured by but a year or two, I did not hesitate. I had to make haste, since I did not desire Dan to grow like Muggridge in his mind. Muggridge was here too long, too long removed from his kind; in striving to draw my people upward, he drew himself downward. I would not have Dan remember me as a thin and haggard invalid, old before my time, no longer beautiful. Do you understand, Mellengair?”
“I understand.”
“I have money. You know how much my father left me. When I am gone you will take it and my child, both for your own. You are a poor man in your own land, wherefore you must have money to dwell in contentment. And you will never tell Dan Pritchard I have borne him a child, because that would render him unhappy. And you will raise my child as a full white, in white ways, and none shall know that my baby’s mother was a half-breed Polynesian. Understand, I am not ashamed of my blood, but”—through her tears she smiled the odd, wistful little smile—“it is inconvenient. There are some who might regard my blood as base and remind my child of it in years to come. In a three-quarter white none but the very wise, the very observant, can tell the blood of the other quarter.”
He held her close to him and stroked her wonderful black hair. “Poor child,” he kept saying, “poor child.” And finally: “Remember, I do not ask for love, but service.”
“I understand, dear, kind Stoneface. We are two with stone faces now, are we not, my friend?. . . Well, you shall take me to my house, and then you shall go to the house of Muggridge and dwell there until the period of service shall be over. Or,” she added, “until it shall begin!”
She lifted his big hand and kissed it. “My friend,” she whispered, “my good, kind friend!”
“Poor child,” said Mellenger. “Poor, poor child!”