The Rajah took in the whole situation and the impression he had made at this first glance at the father and daughter. He swelled his chest and assumed his most majestic attitude, and then behaved as though he knew he had befriended the girl by being at her homestead at that opportune moment.
“My darter!” said old Everard, inclining his lean face and introducing the girl with a grin.
“Your daughter!” gasped the Rajah as he stared with all the boldness and brazen admiration that Hillary’s eyes had lacked into Gabrielle’s face. He was taking no risks, had no idealistic views about innocence and beauty to thwart his heart’s desires—in a sense he had already captured her!
Gabrielle, recovering from that thrilling glance, blushed deeply. She stared at the dark moustache; it was waxed, and curled artistically at the tips. “What eyes!—luminous, warm-looking, alive with romantic dreams!” she thought.
The Rajah looked again at the girl. That second swift glance made her heart tremble with fright, but somehow she liked to see a man stare so.
“My darter ’andsome girl,” gurgled old Everard, stumping his wooden leg twenty times in swift succession, as Gabrielle brought out the rum bottle. The business confab that had been going on between Everard and his guest ceased abruptly. The old ex-sailor took the Rajah’s proffered cigar, stuck it in his mouth and gripped the ex-missionary’s hand, with secret delight bubbling in his heart. That grip said to Everard: “Everard, old pal, I never knew you had such a bonny daughter. Never mind the business I came here about, I’ll supply you with cash for rum!” The old sailor rubbed his hands. He knew that the man before him was wealthy, owned a schooner, and was boss of two plantations in Honolulu, where he had first met him. He put forth his horny fist and gave the Rajah the first familiar nudge of equality.
Everard was altogether worldly, but utterly unworldly in the great human sense of that phrase. He lacked the swift instincts that should have made him discern the truth and see how the wind might blow. His drunken eyes could not read the deeper meaning in the Rajah’s eyes as that worthy glanced at his daughter. He could see nothing of the passion and lust that is so often in the hearts of the men of mixed blood in the dark races.
Even Gabrielle’s half-fledged instincts of womanhood made her realise that the man before her did not exactly represent her preconceived ideas of what the old heroes of romance would look like could they stand before her in the flesh; the look in the Rajah’s eyes as he gazed on her was rather too obvious.
That night as the three of them sat at the table and Everard roared with laughter over Rajah Macka’s jokes, and giggled in delight at discovering that the Papuan potentate was such a fine fellow after all, Gabrielle’s heart fluttered like a caught bird. Rajah Koo Macka had leaned across the table once and stared into her eyes in such a way that even old Everard had ceased his narrative concerning his own astuteness and, like the idiot he was, stared at the Rajah, the rum goblet still between his lips and the table. But the Rajah, noticing that swift look in the old ex-sailor’s face, immediately recovered his mental equilibrium, and with astute cunning swiftly turned to his host and said: “I really couldn’t help staring so. Why, bless me, Everard, this Miss Gabrielle is the dead spit of the Madonna, the glorious painting that adorned the sacred walls of my missionary home when I studied Christianity’s holy precepts.”
“Damn it! Is she?” wailed old Everard, as the artful heathen gent shaded his eyes archwise with one dusky hand and, staring unabashed with a long, reflective glance at Gabrielle, murmured in holiest tones: “Virginity! Virginity! O blessed word!”