“But you have touched me, Tamea. You have caressed me——”
“And shall again, dear one. The disease has but recently made its appearance. There are no active lesions and I am not fearful, father Larrieau.”
“In this country, Tamea, when one is afflicted so, he is restrained of his liberty. He is confined in a hospital called the pesthouse. There are no men or women there with whom I should care to associate—and I am old enough to die, anyhow. I would be free from this tainted body and dwell with your mother in Paliuli”—the Polynesian equivalent of heaven.
Tamea had no answer for this. All too thoroughly she divined the hidden meaning in his speech, but because she was what she was—a glorious pagan—the knowledge of the course which Gaston of the Beard contemplated aroused in her neither apprehension nor grief. To Tamea the mystery of death was no greater than the mystery of birth. Men and women lived their appointed time and passed on to Paliuli, if they were worthy like her father; or to Po, the world of darkness, if they were unworthy. The departure for Paliuli was not one to cause a grief greater than that experienced when one’s nearest and dearest departed for a neighboring island, to be absent for an indefinite period. Of course she would weep, for were not her people the most affectionate and tender-hearted race in the world?
And was not she, the last of her line, a descendant of kings and expected to meet with complacency whatever of good or of evil life might have in store for her? So she tugged the great bush of a beard affectionately, from time to time, as her father talked, telling her of his plans for her, his ambitions and desires, impressing upon her, above all things, the necessity for absolute obedience to the man whom he would name her guardian.
With a full heart Tamea gave him the promise he desired, and when she noticed how much the assurance comforted him her triumphant youth routed for the nonce consideration of everything save the necessity for cheering her father. So she went to her stateroom and returned with—an accordion! It was a splendid instrument belonging to old Larrieau, and Tamea had learned to play it very well by ear. She lay back in her chair and commenced to play very, very softly a ballad that was old a decade before Tamea was born, to wit, “Down Went McGinty!”
But—it had a lilt to it, and presently her father was beating time and humming the song. And Tamea, like her father, like so many of her mother’s race, had a gift for clowning; now, as she played, she swayed her body a trifle, raised her shoulders on the long drawn out “D-o-w-n” and made funny faces; somehow the instrument seemed to wail and sob as McGinty sank to the bottom of the sea. It was ridiculous, wholly amusing, and old Gaston’s mellow bellow of laughter reached the ears of Dan Pritchard while yet his launch was a cable’s length from the Moorea. And then Tamea swung her instrument and broke into “La Marseillaise” while her father sang it as only a Frenchman can.
Dan Pritchard came overside and stuck his head down through the ventilator over the deck-house. “Gaston,” he remarked, when the singer ceased, “I came because I heard you were very ill.”
“Ill, mon petit, ill? I am worse than ill. I am a dead man and I sing at my own wake. Come down, rascal! By my beard, my old heart sings to see you, Dan Pritchard. Come down, I tell you.”
“Coming,” Dan answered laughingly—and came.