NEVER THE TWAIN

SHALL MEET

PETER B. KYNE

AUTHOR OF

CAPPY RICKS RETIRES,

THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR,

KINDRED OF THE DUST, Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Peter B. Kyne

including the Scandinavian

Manufactured in the United States of America

To a Little Girl—

who believed

that when the fairies married,

one might, by lying very quietly

in the grass,

hear the bluebells ringing

Never the Twain Shall Meet

CHAPTER I

It was a song that never before had been sung; once sung, never again would it be heard. Such a song, indeed, as little girls croon to their dolls; half funeral chant, half hymn, sung in a minor key by a girl with a powerfully sweet lyric soprano. The last of the land breeze carried it aft to Gaston Larrieau, the master of the 200-ton auxiliary trading schooner Moorea, where he stood on the top step of the companion, his leonine head and tremendous shoulders showing above the deck-house, as he smoked his first after-breakfast pipe.

While he listened, a shadow passed over the man’s face, as when winds drive a dark cloud above a sunny plain. He removed his pipe thoughtfully to murmur:

“Ah, my poor Tamea! Dear child of the sun! Homesick already!” Then he came out on deck and stood by the weather rail, looking forward until he espied the figure of the singer stretched face downward, at full length, alongside the bowsprit, but snuggled comfortably in the belly of the jib. One arm enveloped the bowsprit; at each rise and fall of the Moorea’s long clipper bow, her feet, sandal-clad, beat the canvas in rhythm. And, because she was young and athrill with the music of the spheres, because the dark blue water purling under the schooner’s forefoot brought to her memories of the insistent, peaceful swish of the surf enveloping the outer reef at Riva, the girl Tamea sang:

“Behold! Tamea, Queen of Riva,

Has forsaken her mother’s people.

In her father’s great canoe called Moorea

After the mother of Tamea, who loved him,

Tamea sails over a cold sea

To the white man’s country.

Tamea is happy and curious.

But if the hearts in this new land

Are cold as the fog this morning,

Then will the heart of Tamea grow heavy.

Then will she weep for a sight of Riva.

Then will she yearn for love and pleasure,

For dancing and feasting; for the water

White on the reef where the fishermen stand . . .”

“I must shake her out of that mood,” Larrieau muttered, and strode aft to the wheel. The Tahitian helmsman gave way to him and as the master put the helm down and the schooner came sharply up into the wind and hung there shivering her canvas until it cracked like pistol shots, Tamea rose briskly from her hammock in the belly of the jib and stood poised on the bowsprit, with one hand clasping the jib to steady her. The suddenness with which she had been disturbed and the air of regal hauteur she assumed as she faced aft for an explanation from the Tahitian helmsman, who had now resumed the wheel and was easing the Moorea away on her course once more, brought a bellow of Brobdingnagian laughter from Larrieau.

Tamea came aft with stately tread, pausing at the forward end of the deck-house. “So it was you, great, wicked Frenchman,” she cried in a Polynesian dialect. “Truly, my father forgets that he is but a wandering trader, while I am Tamea, Queen of Riva!” Simulating a royal fury she was far from feeling, Tamea grasped a bucket attached to a rope, dropped it overboard, drew it back filled with water and, poising it in position to hurl its contents, advanced to the assault.

“Tiens!” Gaston Larrieau chuckled. “I shall never succeed in making a Christian of you. It is written that even a queen shall honor her father and mother? nevertheless you, my own child, would dishonor me with sea water!” As she threatened him laughingly, he leaped for the opposite corner of the deck-house, and she saw that it was his humor to invite the deluge. Wherefore, with the perversity of her sex and royal blood, she deluged the helmsman, who stood grinning at her.

“Your eye belongs on the lubber’s mark, on the sails, on the horizon—anywhere but on me, Kahanaha,” she admonished the amazed fellow. And then, while Gaston Larrieau, momentarily off guard, stood roaring great gales of laughter at the discomfited Kahanaha, Queen Tamea of Riva dashed into his face fully a quart of water remaining in the bucket. She smiled upon Larrieau adorably.

“He laughs best who laughs last. Kahanaha, you may laugh.”

Larrieau dashed the water from his bush of a beard. “Nom d’un chien! This is mutiny. Tamea, come here!” But Tamea merely wrinkled her nose at him, and when he charged at her she cried aloud, half delighted, half deliciously apprehensive, and started up the starboard main shrouds. Her father followed her, moving, despite his sixty years and his tremendous bulk, with something of the ease and swiftness of a bear.

At the masthead Tamea cowered, pretending to be frightened and cornered, until his hand reached for her slim ankle; when without the slightest hesitation she sprang for the backstay and went whizzing swiftly down to the deck. Here she threw him a peace offering, in the way of a kiss, but he ignored her. From the masthead he was looking out over the low-lying smear of fog that shrouded the coast of California, and the girl thrilled as his stentorian voice rang through the ship.

“Land, ho!”

Within a few minutes the Moorea had slipped through the cordon of fog into the sunshine. Off to starboard the red hull of the lightship loomed vividly against the blue of sea and sky; a white pilot schooner ratched lazily across their bows, while off to port three gasoline trawlers out of San Francisco coughed violently away toward the Cordelia banks, their hulls painted in bizarre effects of Mediterranean blue with yellow decks and upper works. Their Sicilian crews waved tassled, multicolored tam-o’-shanter caps at Tamea and when she threw kisses to them with both hands they shouted their approval in ringing fashion.

From Point San Pedro on the south to Point Reyes on the north fifty miles of green, mountainous shore line sweeping down abruptly to ocher-tinted bluffs lay outspread before Tamea. She viewed it with mixed feelings of awe, delight and a half sensed feeling of apprehension, for all that enthralling vision impressed her with the thought that beyond the indentation which her father called to her was the Golden Gate, lay another world of romance, of dreams, curiosity-compelling, palpitant with something of the same warmth that had nurtured Tamea in the little known, seldom visited and uncharted island kingdom under the Southern Cross. Following the fashion of her people when their emotions are profoundly stirred, again Tamea’s golden voice was lifted in a semi-chant, an improvised pæan of appreciation.

Down through the entrance the Moorea ramped, with Tamea standing far out on the bowsprit, as if she would be the first to arrive, the first to see the wonders she felt certain lurked just around the bend behind crumbling old Fort Winfield Scott. As she leaned against the jib stay and held on with her elbows she searched the shore line with her father’s marine glasses until, the Moorea having loafed up to the quarantine grounds, the crew disturbed the girl in order to take in the headsails.

They were scarcely snugged down before the Customs tug scraped alongside. While Gaston was down below in the cabin presenting his papers for the inspection of the port officer, a representative of the Public Health Service examined the crew on deck. Before Tamea he stood several moments in silent admiration. Then he asked:

“Miss, do you speak English?”

Tamea looked him over with frank admiration and approval. “You bet your sweet life I speak English,” she replied melodiously; and from her English the doctor knew that she also spoke French. Having heard her giving an order to the Kanaka steward in an alien tongue, he concluded she spoke Hawaiian and sought confirmation of that conclusion.

“No, mister, I do not speak Hawaiian,” said Tamea. “I can understand much of it, because all Polynesian languages are derived from the same Aryan source. The difference between the hundreds of languages in Polynesia is mostly one of dialect—phonetic differences, you know.”

He sighed. “I didn’t know, but I’m glad to find out—from you. Are you Venus or Juno or one of the Valkyries from some tropical Valhalla?”

“Now you grow very queer,” she retorted soberly. “You make the josh, and I do not like men who do that. I am Tamea Oluolu Larrieau. I am the Queen of Riva, and in Riva it is taboo to josh the Queen.”

“I think the Queen is a josher, however,” he replied gravely.

“Ah! You do not believe, then, that I am the Queen of Riva?”

“No, I do not. You’re the Queen of Hearts.”

Fortunately for Tamea she knew how to play casino and was, therefore, acquainted with the queen of hearts. Hence she could assimilate the compliment, and a ravishing smile was the reward of the daring doctor.

He bowed low.

“Will Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, Queen of Riva—wherever that may be, if it isn’t another name for Paradise, since an houri has come from Riva—oblige a mere mortal by opening her mouth, sticking out her tongue and saying, ‘Ah-h-h!’—like that.”

“Why?” There was suspicion in Tamea’s glance now.

“It is a ceremonial peculiar to this country, Your Majesty. It is required of all visitors, of whatever rank. An Indian prince did it yesterday and a dato from Java will do it this afternoon.”

Tamea shrugged—a Gallic shrug—and complied.

“What a lovely death it would be to be fatally bitten by those teeth! Now, just one more ceremonial, if you please. It is required that I shall look into your eyes very closely. You may have trachoma, but if you have I’ll never survive the shock of having to deport you.”

Again Tamea shrugged. A peculiar custom, she thought, but one that was not difficult to comply with.

“Well, if you’re a fair sample of the womanhood of Riva, O Tamea Oluolu Larrieau, I’m mighty glad that I’m not a practicing physician there. I should never earn a fee.”

“And if you should earn a fee nobody would think of paying it,” she laughed. “Perhaps, if you liked bananas or coconuts——” And her shoulders came up in collaboration, as it were, with an adorable little moue. The young doctor laughed happily.

“Alas! God help the poor missionaries with sirens like her on every hand,” he thought as he descended into the cabin, where Larrieau was in conference with an immigration official touching his daughter’s right to land. This detail was, happily, quickly passed and the health officer tapped Gaston Larrieau on the arm.

“Captain, it will be necessary for me to give you a physical examination before I can issue your vessel a clean bill of health.”

“Open your mouth and say, ‘Ah-h-h!’” commanded Tamea, who had followed the doctor below. “Then open your eyes and look wise. Is my father not a frail little man, eh?” she demanded of the doctor.

“The examination of this physical wreck is merely a matter of routine, Your Majesty.”

Gaston Larrieau; came close to the doctor and opened his cavernous mouth.

“Ah-h-h!” he said.

“Ah!” the doctor repeated softly—and touched lightly, in succession, a slightly puffed spot high up on each of the captain’s cheeks. As he pressed the color fled, leaving a somewhat sickly whitish spot that stood out prominently in an otherwise ruddy face. A moment later the spots in question had regained their original color, which had been a ruddiness somewhat less pronounced than the surrounding tissue.

Perhaps only a doctor’s eye—an eye especially alert for such spots—would have detected them.

“Is this not a fine doctor, father Larrieau!” Tamea exclaimed almost breathlessly. “You open your mouth—and he looks at your eyes!”

The health officer glanced at her. A minute before he had noted particularly the glory of her complexion—pale gold, with an old-rose tint, very faintly diffused through the clear skin, like a yellow light masked by a pale pink silk cloth. Now the rose tint was gone and old ivory had replaced the pale gold. There was a gleam of excitement, of fear, in her smoky eyes, and the smile which accompanied her attempted badinage was just a bit forced. As the glances of the two met each realized that the other knew!

“I cannot help it; I must do my duty,” the doctor murmured helplessly, and turned to look down Gaston Larrieau’s open throat. “Any soreness in the nose, Captain?”

“A little, of late, Doctor.”

“Any other pain?”

“Well, for a couple of months I’ve had a small, steady pain in my right shoulder—like rheumatism.”

“No. It is neuritis.” He picked up the captain’s ham-like hand and noted on the back of it, close to the knuckles, the same faintly white, puffy spots. “Now please remove your shirt.”

Tamea’s eyes closed in momentary pain before she retired to a stateroom adjoining the main cabin. Larrieau removed his shirt and the doctor examined his torso critically. On his back, partially covering the right scapula, he found that which he sought. “That will be all,” he informed Larrieau. “Replace your garments.”

An assistant poured some disinfectant on his hands and he washed them vigorously in it, wiping them on a handkerchief which he tossed overboard through a porthole. At a sign from the doctor the others went on deck.

He lighted a cigarette and when Larrieau faced him inquiringly he said:

“Now, regarding your daughter, Captain. What are your plans for her?”

“I have brought her up to San Francisco to place her in a convent to complete her education. As you have observed, she speaks English very well, but with a very slight French accent. She has had some schooling in English, but not very much.”

“Her mother, I take it, is a Polynesian.”

“Pure-bred Polynesian. She died a year ago, during the influenza epidemic.”

“Forgive me, Captain, if my questions appear impertinent. They are not, strictly speaking, questions which I should ask you, but under the circumstances the immigration officer has left the asking of them to me. Have you or your daughter any friends or relatives in this country?”

“We have no relatives, Monsieur Doctor, and the only friends I have in this country are my owners.”

“Is your financial situation such that, should you be taken away from your daughter, she would be provided for to the extent that she would not be likely to become a public charge?”

Gaston Larrieau smiled. “And you ask that of a Frenchman, to whom thrift is a virtue? I have not traded among the South Pacific islands more than thirty-five years to come away without the price of a peaceful old age. I am worth a quarter of a million dollars, and with the exception of a few pearls and a quarter interest in this vessel, all of my fortune is in cash.”

“Did you plan to return to the Islands after placing your child in school here?”

“Parbleu, no! No one could manage Tamea without my help. I am finished with the sea. All of my interests and those of Tamea in the South have been sold. Two years hence, when Tamea has grown used to civilized customs, we will return to France—to Brittany, where I was born.”

“Tamea will probably marry well in France,” the doctor suggested.

“Yes. We Frenchmen are more democratic than Americans or the English in our choice of wives. The fact that my Tamea is half Polynesian—ah, they would not forget that, though she is more wonderful than a white girl! I was married to her mother,” he added, as if he suspected the doctor might secretly be questioning that point. “We were married by the mission priest in Nukahiva.”

The doctor finished his cigarette and suddenly hurled the butt through the porthole. “Lord!” he growled. “I’m so tired of breaking people’s hearts and shattering their hopes.”

“Eh? What is that? Have you, then, unpleasant news for me?”

The doctor nodded gravely. “Captain, I have very unpleasant news for you. Dreadful news, in fact. While I hesitate to state so absolutely until a microscopic examination has been made and the presence of the bacillus in your body determined beyond question, I am morally certain that you have contracted—leprosy!”

The master of the Moorea met the terrible blow as a ship meets an unexpected squall. He flinched and trembled for a moment, then righted himself. His wind-and-sun-bitten face and neck went greenish white; his eyes closed for perhaps ten seconds; his shoulders sagged and his great breast heaved with a single sigh. In those ten seconds old age appeared to have touched him for the first time. When his eyes opened again he was the same calm, good-natured, almost boyish man who had romped through the rigging of the Moorea with his child that morning. He smiled a little sadly—and shrugged.

“Well, that’s over,” he murmured. “I am very sorry for you, Doctor. These things are very unpleasant. However, I have no regrets. I have enjoyed my life—down yonder—because nothing matters. There are not many rules and regulations—and we ignore them.”

“It is different here.”

“Alas, yes!”

“You are a naturalized citizen of the United States?”

“Yes, Monsieur Doctor.”

“It is my duty to remove you from this schooner to the quarantine station at Angel Island. You will be held there for observation, and when the fact that you are a leper is officially determined, you will be removed to the Isolation Hospital in San Francisco. However, it might be arranged to have you sent to the colony at Molokai. If you were not a citizen of the United States you would be deported to the country of which you are a subject.”

“We have said good-by to Riva and the South, and we are not going back. The white blood predominates in my girl; I want her to live her life among white men and women. Besides, she can afford it. She may marry some fine fellow here. Who knows? I had picked on Brittany for my old age—so Molokai will not do. Bon dieu! I should have such ennui in Molokai. I could not stand that.”

“Rules and regulations, Captain,” the doctor reminded him sympathetically.

Gaston Larrieau shook his head. “Old Gaston of the Beard caged like a pet monkey, eh? I think not.” He sat down and tugged at his beard thoughtfully. “Well, one thing is certain,” he continued. “It is more than seventeen years since I begot Tamea. I was clean then and for all the years since until this morning.”

“Non-leprous children are born of leprous parents, Captain. Tamea is clean.”

“She must not know that I am not.”

“Ah, but she does know it.”

Larrieau sprang erect, terrible. “You dared to tell her——” he roared, and advanced with upraised hand.

“Sit down. The girl has eyes, and in Riva she has, doubtless, seen more than one leper. I told her nothing. Listen, Captain.”

From the stateroom came the sound of a muffled sob.

Larrieau sat down, dumb and distressed. “Yes, there is leprosy in Riva. And tuberculosis and worse. The scourges of our white civilization are creeping in and where they strike there is no hope. So I brought Tamea away—only to be stricken—— Well, I knew that was one of the risks I had to take, and a life without risks is as an egg without salt. In my day I have adventured in strange and terrible places, and while this is the very devil of a joke to have fate play on me, still”—he shrugged again—“I have lived my life and I have loved my love, and by the blood of the devil, life owes me nothing. I am ready! Voilà!” And the Triton snapped his fingers. “I am no mealy-mouthed clerk to go whimpering to my finish, protesting at the last that my heart is breaking with sorrow for my sins.” He laughed his mellow, resonant, roaring laugh.

“No, no. Old Gaston of the Beard has enjoyed his sins. They were not many, for I was ever a simple man, but such sins as I had—ah, they were magnificent! I have children in a hundred islands. But Tamea is the child of my love, and like her mother she is a glorious pagan.”

“You say her mother is dead.”

Gaston of the Beard nodded. “She was a queen and believed herself descended from her Polynesian gods. Damnation! She had every right to, for she was a goddess. Tall, Monsieur Doctor—six feet, for she came of a race of hereditary rulers and in Polynesia before the white men came to ruin and degenerate these children of nature, a king was not a king in very truth unless, standing among his people, he could gaze over their heads as one gazes over a wheat field from the top rail of a fence. Tamea’s great-great-grandfather was deposed and exiled to an island five hundred miles to the west, where his enemies enslaved him. In his old age his people rescued him and offered him the scepter he had lost in his youth. But he would not accept, for age and toil had crooked his back and he could no longer stand head and shoulders over his people.”

“What a magnificent old chap he must have been, Captain!” said the doctor.

Larrieau nodded. “Tamea’s mother, Moorea, could walk! You, my young friend, have never seen a woman walk; it is a lost art; our women mince or hop or strut. Moorea was a beautiful woman in point of features. Her hair was a wonderful seal-brown and her skin—well, her skin——”

“Was Tamea’s,” the doctor interrupted.

Gaston of the Beard smiled and nodded. “She was regal of bearing and regal of soul—and the missionaries called her a heathen. For years I kept them out of Riva, with their mummery of morals and religion. Why, there was no sin in Riva until I came—and then it wasn’t recognized until the missionaries gave it a name. Monsieur Doctor, behold a man who dwelt in Eden until the serpents drove him out.”

The doctor chuckled quietly.

“Tamea’s mother,” the sailor resumed, “had features as fine and regular as any white woman. But then, why should she not? Her blood was pure, because it was a chief’s blood. The dark skin, the flat nose and the crinkly hair are souvenirs, in the Polynesian race, of their sojourn in the Fijis before they resumed their age-old hegira that started in Asia Minor. In the common people we find evidences of Papuan blood, and that is negroid, Monsieur Doctor. But the pure-bred Polynesian is not a nigger, as ignorant and stupid people might have you believe. They are a lost fragment of the Caucasian race, and any ethnologist who has studied them carefully and sympathetically knows this. Monsieur Doctor, they are not of Malayan origin, but Cushite, and the Cushites were an Aryan people, as doubtless you know.”

“My knowledge of ethnology is very meager, Captain Larrieau,” said the doctor.

“Mine is not. Gaston of the Beard they call me down under the Line, but I have a head to hold up my beard. How do you account for the fact that the Polynesian priesthood in Hawaii was possessed of the story of the Hebrew Genesis as early as the sixth century, and that, in many respects, this version is more complete than the Jewish?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” the doctor protested. He had the feeling that to argue with Larrieau was to argue with an encyclopedia.

“Well, they acquired the story while drifting eastward from the land of their origin and establishing contact with the Israelites, although on the other hand it may be an independent and original version of legends common to the Semite and Aryan tribes of the remote past and handed down to posterity quite as accurately as the Jewish version before the latter became a part of the literature of that race.”

The doctor glanced at his watch. “Captain, it would be most delightful to linger and receive instruction in so interesting a subject, but we have a Japanese liner to clear before noon, so I must be off.”

“But,” persisted the sailor, “have I convinced you that, if this brutal and iconoclastic world but knew it, my little Tamea is all Caucasian, not merely half?”

“Captain, your daughter is the most dazzling, the most glorious woman I have ever seen.”

“Would you care to marry her, Monsieur Doctor?” The words shot out from the man who had been condemned to a living death with calm but deadly earnestness. “That is,” Larrieau continued, “provided you are not already married.”

“I am engaged to be married, Captain.”

“You have seen Tamea. It will not be hard to forget the other woman. Come, come, my boy! How does the proposition strike you?”

“It doesn’t strike me at all. One does not accept such a proposition for consideration quite so abruptly, my friend.”

“Ah, why not? Why not, indeed? Because others do not? Blood of the devil, what a horrible thing is tradition! If it were not a tradition that a woman shall accept from her fiancé a diamond ring which the idiot cannot, in all probability, afford to give her—well, women would not accept them. If it were the custom, they would accept a blow or a brass ring through the nose or a brand, with equal eagerness. Monsieur Doctor, he who has not learned to accept both good and evil, the usual and the unusual, abruptly and without mature consideration, has not learned to live. Life has not given him of its richness and fulness. Why be afraid? Why shrink from the silly comment of silly people who do not understand when you have a woman with a glorious body, a glorious soul and a glorious mind, to compensate you?”

“I am not free to marry her——”

Gaston of the Beard brushed aside this feeble excuse with a quotation from Epictetus: “‘He only is free who does as he pleases.’”

But the young doctor was not to be persuaded by such philosophical considerations.

“Has your fiancée a dot of a quarter of a million dollars?” Larrieau shot at him.

“It is quite useless to discuss the matter, Captain.”

The latter hung his head, disappointed. “You realize why I asked you, of course,” he said presently.

“I do, Captain. You must see her provided for. You were at some pains to prove to me that her blood was the equal of mine——”

“I spoke of her mother’s people. But I am not a common man. There is blood and breeding back of me—yes, far back, but I can trace it.”

“You pay me a tremendous compliment, Captain.”

“You are young, you have education, intelligence. You are a doctor, a man of broad human sympathy and understanding. It is too bad your spirit is not free. Too bad!”

“I will return for you this afternoon, about six o’clock, Captain. You will not attempt to leave the Moorea, will you?”

“I told you I was a thrifty man, but I did not tell you, also, that I am generous.”

“I am rebuked, Captain Larrieau. Forgive me.”

“On one condition. Give my vessel pratique—now.”

“I dare say we can risk that. But why do you ask it?”

“So that young Mr. Pritchard, of Casson and Pritchard, my owners, may be permitted to come aboard, with an attorney. I have some business details to attend to before I accompany you to the quarantine shed at Angel Island. There is the business of the Moorea, and the financial future of my Tamea must be provided for.”

“Do you wish me to return to the dock and telephone Mr. Pritchard?”

“If you will be so kind. And ask Mr. Pritchard to bring flowers—a great many beautiful flowers. We sons of Cush are childishly fond of flowers.”

The health officer nodded and went over the side into the Customs tug with a constricted feeling in his throat. Had he not gone then he would have remained to weep, with Tamea, for old Gaston of the Beard!

CHAPTER II

In his office in the suite of Casson and Pritchard, on the top floor of a building in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district, Daniel Pritchard, the junior partner, sat with his back to his desk and his feet on the sill of a window that gave a view, across the roofs of the city, to the bay beyond. He was watching the ferryboats ply backward and forward between the old gray town and Oakland; viewed from that height and distance their foamy wakes held for him a subconscious fascination. Indeed, whenever he desired to indulge a habit of day-dreaming, the view from his window on a clear, warm day could quickly lull him into that state of mind. This morning Dan Pritchard was day-dreaming.

A buzzer sounding at his elbow aroused him. He reached for the inter-office telephone and murmured “Yes?” in the low-pitched, kindly, reassuring voice that is inseparable from men of studious habits and placid dispositions.

“The Moorea is passing in, Mr. Pritchard. The Merchants’ Exchange lookout has just telephoned,” his secretary informed him.

“Thank you.” He glanced at his desk clock. “She should clear quarantine and the Customs before noon, and Captain Larrieau should report in by one o’clock at the latest. You’ll recognize him immediately, Miss Mather. A perfectly tremendous fellow with a huge black beard a foot long. When he arrives show him in at once, please. Meanwhile I’m not in to anybody else.”

He resumed his day-dreaming, drawing long blissful drafts from a pleasant smelling pipe, his mind in a state of absolute quiescence in so far as business was concerned. He had that sort of control over himself; a control that rested him mentally and armed his nerves against the attrition that comes of the high mental pressure under which modern American business men so frequently operate.

At twelve-fifteen Miss Mather entered.

“The Meiggs Wharf office of the Merchants’ Exchange telephoned that the Moorea has been given pratique, but that Captain Larrieau is ill and the health officer is going to have him removed to the quarantine station at Angel Island,” she informed him. “Evidently his disease is not contagious, because the health officer said it would be quite safe for you to visit him. The Captain requests that you come aboard at your earliest convenience and that you bring an attorney and some flowers.”

Dan Pritchard’s eyebrows went up. “That request is suggestive of approaching dissolution, Miss Mather.”

“Scarcely, Mr. Pritchard. If that were the case would the Captain not have requested the attendance of your doctor to confirm the health officer’s diagnosis? And would he not have sent for a clergyman?”

“Not that great pagan! His approach to death would be marked by an active scientific curiosity in the matter up to the moment when his mind should cease to function. Please telephone Mr. Henderson, of Page and Henderson, our attorneys, and ascertain what hour will be convenient for him to accompany me to the Moorea.”

“I have already done so, Mr. Pritchard. Mr. Henderson is playing in a golf tournament at Ingleside and will be finished about three o’clock. He is in the club-house now and says he can meet you at Meiggs Wharf at four o’clock, provided the matter cannot go over until tomorrow morning.”

“It cannot. Old Gaston of the Beard is an impatient man, and this is an urgent call. Please telephone Mr. Henderson that I will meet him at Meiggs Wharf at four o’clock. Then telephone Crowley’s boathouse to have a launch waiting there for us at five o’clock. When you have done that, Miss Mather, you might close up shop and enjoy your Saturday afternoon freedom.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pritchard. Miss Morrison is in Mr. Casson’s office. She said she might look in on you a little later.”

When his secretary had departed he resumed his reverie, to be roused from it at twelve-thirty o’clock by the soft click of the latch as his office door was gently opened. He turned and observed a girl who stood in the general office, with her head and one shoulder thrust into Dan’s office.

“May I come in?” she queried.

“Of course you may, Maisie. You’re as welcome as a gale in the doldrums. The best seat in my office isn’t half worthy of you.” He rose and took her hand as she advanced into the room.

“Doing a little ground and lofty dreaming, I observe.” The girl—her name was Maisie Morrison, and she was the niece of Casson, the senior member of the firm—seated herself in a swivel desk chair and looked brightly up at him as he stood before her, his somewhat long grave face alight with approval and welcome.

“It’s very nice of you to pay me this little visit, Maisie,” he declared. “And I like that hat you’re wearing. Indeed, I don’t think I have ever seen you looking more—er—lookable!”

It was like him to ignore her implied query and voice the thought in his mind.

“Sit down, Abraham Lincoln, do, please,” she urged.

He obeyed. “Why do you call me Abraham Lincoln?”

“Oh, you’re so long and loose-jointed and raw-boned and lantern-jawed! Your shoulders are bowed just a little, as if from bearing great burdens, and when I caught a glimpse of your face, as I entered, it was in repose and incredibly sad and wistful. Really, Dan, you’re a very plain man and very dolorous until you smile, and then you’re easy to look at. Your right eyebrow is about a quarter of an inch higher than your left and that lends whimsicality to your smile, even when you are feeling far from whimsical.”

His chin sank low on his breast and he appeared to be pondering something. “Perhaps,” he said aloud, but addressing himself nevertheless, “it’s spring fever. But then I have it in the summer, autumn and winter also. I want to go away. Where, I do not know.”

“Perhaps you are suffering from what soul analysts call ‘the divine unrest.’”

“I’m suffering from the friction that comes to a square peg in a round hole. That much I know. The round hole I refer to is the world of business, and I’m the square peg. The situation is truly horrible, Maisie, because the world believes I fit into that hole perfectly. But I know I do not.”

Her calm glance rested on him critically but not sympathetically. In common with the majority of her sex she believed that men are prone to conjure profound pity for themselves over trifles, and her alert mind, which was naturally disposed toward practicalities, told her that Daniel Pritchard had, doubtless, been up too late the night previous and had eaten something indigestible.

“This is an interesting and hitherto unsuspected condition, Dan. I have always been told, and believed, that you are a particularly brilliant business man.”

“I am not,” he objected, with some vehemence. “But if I am, that is because I work mighty hard to be efficient at a disgusting trade. I know I am regarded as being far from a commercial dud, for I am a director in a bank, a director in a tugboat company, and really the managing partner of Casson and Pritchard. But I loathe it all. Consider, Maisie, the monstrous depravity of dedicating all of one’s waking hours to the mere making of money. Why, if any man of ordinary intelligence and prudence will do that for a lifetime he just can’t help leaving a fortune for his heirs to squabble over. Making money isn’t a difficult task. On the other hand, painting a great picture is, and if one’s task isn’t difficult and above the commonplace, how is one to enjoy it?”

“I was right,” the girl declared triumphantly. “It is the divine unrest. You are possessed of a creative instinct which is being stifled. It requires elbow room.”

He smiled an embarrassed little smile. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “I like to work with my hands as well as with my head. I think I could have been happy as a surgeon, slicing wens and warts and things out of people, and I could have been happiest of all if I had nothing to do except paint pictures. If I could afford it I would devote my life to an attempt to paint a better picture of Mount Tamalpais yonder, with the late afternoon sun upon it, than did Thad Walsh. And I do not think that is possible.”

“That picture yonder,” she said, pointing to an oil on the wall of his office, “indicates that you have excellent judgment. What is the subject, Dan?”

“Blossom time in the Santa Clara Valley.”

“It’s a beautiful thing and much too fine for a business office.”

His face, on the instant, was alight with happiness. “Now, I’m glad to have you say that, Maisie, because I painted that picture.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“But you never told us——”

“My dear Maisie, you must never breathe a word of this to anybody. If the world of business had discovered ten years ago that I would rather dabble in paint and oil than figure interest, it would not now be regarding me as a capable, conservative business man. I would be that crazy artist fellow, Pritchard.”

She walked to a point where the best view of the picture was obtainable and studied it thoughtfully for several minutes.

“It’s very beautiful and the colors are quite natural, I think,” was her comment. “What do you say it is worth, Dan?”

“Oh, about a million dollars in satisfaction over a good job accomplished, and fifty or a hundred dollars in the average art shop.”

Maisie returned to her seat. “Well,” she declared with an emphasis and note of finality in her tone that stamped her as a young woman of initiative and decision, “if I were as rich as you, Dan Pritchard, I’d continue to be a square peg in a round hole just long enough to send that picture home and then walk out of this office forever. How old are you?”

“Thirty-four, in point of years, but at least a hundred viewed from any other angle.”

“Fiddlesticks! Why don’t you retire and live your life the way you want to live it? I would if I were you. . . . Now, Dan, there you go again with that sad Abraham Lincoln look!”

“I am sad. I’ve just had a great disappointment. I told you I wanted to go away but that I didn’t know where to go. Well, I did know where I wanted to go—until this morning. I had planned to take one more cruise with old Gaston of the Beard——”

“With whom?”

“Captain Gaston Larrieau, master of our South Seas trading schooner Moorea. I had planned to knock around with him in strange places for the next six months.”

“I cannot visualize you making a pal of a sea captain, Dan.”

“Nonsense, Maisie. Gaston is a satyr with a soul. Twelve years ago I took a cruise with him and I’ve never had time for another. Gaston of the Beard—my father dubbed him that thirty years ago and the name has stuck to him ever since—is like no other man living. He’s about sixty years old now, six feet six inches tall, and weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds in condition. He’s a Breton sailor with the blood of Vikings in him, and if I ever find the tailor who makes his clothes I’m going to pension the man in order to remove a monster from the sartorial world. When going ashore in a temperate climate Gaston affects very wide trousers, a long black Prince Albert coat, a top silk hat, vintage of 1880, and a stiff white linen shirt with round detachable cuffs bearing tremendous moss-agate cuff buttons. When he walks he waddles like a bear and when I walk with him I run.

“He is most positive in his likes and dislikes; he has read everything and remembers it; he plays every card game anybody ever heard of and plays them all well; he performs very well on the accordion, the flute and the French horn; he knows music and the history of music. He speaks four or five European languages and a dozen South Seas dialects. He is a sinful man, but none of his sins are secret. He loathes swanks, frauds and pretenders, and he bubbles with temperament. When he is enthusiastic about anything or when he is angry, his voice rises to a roar; when he is touched he weeps like a baby. He knows more English poetry than any man living and is quite as much at home with the best of our modern literature as he is with all of the ancient classics. He knows all about ships and shipping since the days of the Phoenicians and the Hanseatic League; there are as many facets to his character as to a well cut diamond, and every facet sparkles. Good Lord, Maisie, the man’s different, and I want a change.”

“Well, then, as I said before, why not have it? You can afford it, Dan.”

“That’s the rub. I cannot. And even if I could I’ve just received word that Gaston of the Beard is ill with some sort of disease that requires his removal to quarantine. It must be a very serious illness, because he has sent for an attorney—to draw his will, doubtless. Henderson and I are going aboard at four o’clock this afternoon.”

“But why can’t you go for a cruise if and when your satyr recovers his health?”

“A man cannot drop a business just because he desires to. My going would disorganize everything and distress a great many people. I’m the binder that holds this organization together.”

“Don’t take yourself too seriously, Dan. You weren’t born to daddy the world, you know. You worry too much about other people and what will happen to them when they can no longer lean against you for support. Why not give them an opportunity to care for themselves for a change?”

From the tip of her small feet to the cockade on her dainty little hat, his calm, serious glance roved over her. “Well,” he replied soberly, “how would you relish the prospect of caring for yourself—for a change?”

“I’m sure I do not know. I fear I’d be rather helpless—for a while.”

“Do you think I ought to accord your uncle and aunt an opportunity to care for themselves—for a change?”

“Good gracious, no! Is there a possibility of that situation presenting itself?”

“An excellent possibility—if I elect to forget that I am a square peg in a round hole and doomed to remain such.”

“Oh, Dan, I’m so sorry!”

“Sorry for whom?”

“For—everybody.”

The slight hesitation between her words caused him to smile faintly. Vaguely he had hoped she would feel sorry for him exclusively. Her next question convinced him that Maisie, in common with the rest of the world, had a more alert interest in herself than in him.

“Then there is danger, Dan? Something may happen to us?”

“There is a possibility, Maisie. However, I must admit that my feeling that such a possibility exists is based on nothing tangible. If I leave the office for a long vacation, this firm will be in the position of a pugilist who has incautiously left a wide opening for his opponent to swat him to defeat.”

“Whose fault is it?” said Maisie.

“I do not mean to criticize my partner, Maisie, but if, while I should be away, we climb out on the end of a limb and then somebody saws off the limb, the responsibility for our fall will be entirely your Uncle John Casson’s. The man is an optimist, devoid of mental balance.”

“Have you and Uncle John been quarreling, Dan?”

“No. What good does that do? If mischief is done, quarreling will neither avert nor cure it. In a business dilemma your uncle always loses his head, so I practise the gentle art of keeping mine!” He drew a chair up to her and prepared for a confidential chat. “You must know, Maisie, that following my entrance into this firm after my father’s death we have had five narrow escapes from serious financial embarrassment, due to Mr. Casson’s passion for taking long chances for large profits. And if five beatings fail to cure a man my opinion is that he is incurable. Holding that opinion as I do, I fear the result if I leave the office for more than a month and expose your uncle to temptation.”

“It is kind of you to say that, Dan. Perhaps you have been too gentle with Uncle John. Perhaps if you had asserted yourself——”

He held up a deprecating hand. “Forgive me, Maisie, if I assure you that the only way to assert oneself with your avuncular relative is with some sort of heavy blunt instrument.”

His bluntness caused her to flush faintly, but she kept her temper. “I believe your father and Uncle John quarreled frequently, Dan.”

“Yes, that is true. But that was not because your uncle is a difficult man to get along with in the ordinary day to day business. He is a charming and agreeable old gentleman for whom I entertain a great deal of respect and affection. My father was undiplomatic, aggressive and extremely capable. For a quarter of a century he dominated the affairs of Casson and Pritchard, and before he died he warned me if I should take his place in the firm to do likewise.” He was silent, looking out of the window at the ferryboats. “A horrible legacy,” he said. “I loathe dominating people.”

“Uncle John always resented your father’s domination.”

“I have observed that most people resent that which is good for them. Since my father’s death your uncle has evinced a disposition to run hog-wild with power, as the senior member of the firm. The sublimated old jackass!”

“My uncle is nothing of the sort, Dan Pritchard.”

He disregarded her protest, because he knew she had protested out of a sense of loyalty to an uncle who had stood in the place of a father to her since her fifth birthday. And John Casson, he knew, was both kind and indulgent. But he also knew that Maisie knew her relative was exactly what Dan Pritchard had called him.

“The first time Mr. Casson disregarded my youth and lack of business experience and jumped in over his head,” Dan continued, “I hauled him out by the simple method of disregarding him and insuring all of our ledger accounts, because one of them was very doubtful. Well, we collected that insurance and all we were out was the premium. Your uncle talked of suicide when he thought he had ruined both of us, but when he discovered I’d saved the firm he accepted about seventy-five per cent of the credit for my perspicacity. In those days, Maisie, it wasn’t necessary for us to have a very heavy loss in order to be embarrassed or ruined. All that saved us the last time was the war, which caught us with a flock of schooners on long time charters at low freight rates.

“Why, Maisie, I haven’t dared to leave him alone for years. He is no longer a young man, and his naturally uncertain judgment hasn’t improved with age. From August, nineteen fourteen, when the Great War began until April, nineteen seventeen, when this country joined with the Allies, I admit I gambled. I gambled everything I had and I induced your uncle to gamble everything he had, and between us we committed Casson and Pritchard to a point miles in advance of what would, ordinarily, have been the danger point.

“I am a conservative in business, but I knew then that we were gambling on a rising market and that we would be safe while the war lasted. Even during the year and a half I was in the navy and your uncle had a free hand in the direction of our business, I did not worry. Those were the days when all radicals made quick fortunes because they just could not go wrong on charters and the prices of commodities. Three months after the armistice had been signed I returned to civil life and since then I have been very busy getting our firm out from under the avalanche of deflation which must inevitably follow this war, even as it followed the Civil War. It has not been an easy task, Maisie, for your uncle has developed a spirit of arrogance and stubbornness difficult to combat.”

“Yes,” Maisie agreed, “Uncle John has acquired a very good opinion of himself as a business man.”

Pritchard nodded. “Those days when I was in the service and he operated alone have spoiled him. However, only this morning I succeeded in gaining his consent—in writing—to the sale, at a nice profit, of the last of our long-term charters at war rates. Now, if I can hold him in line until the deflation process commences, I shall be well pleased with myself.”

“Is the money burning a hole in Uncle’s pocket?”

“I fear it is. He is seventy years old; yet, instead of planning to retire, he seethes with a desire to double his present fortune. He has dreams of vast emprise. I wish he had gout instead!”

“Casson and Pritchard is a partnership, Dan. Why do you not incorporate? Then if the business fails, through any indiscretion of Uncle John, you will not be responsible for more than your fifty per cent of the company’s debts.”

“Forty per cent, Maisie. I was admitted to partnership on that basis, although my father was an equal partner. However, his death terminated that partnership and I suppose Mr. Casson felt that with my youth and inexperience forty per cent was generous.”

The girl was silent, gazing abstractedly out of the window. Dan realized that she was striving to scheme a way out for him, and he smiled in anticipation of what her plan would be. He was not mistaken.

“Dan,” she said presently, “I believe you are more or less of a thorn in Uncle John’s side. Why do you not sell out to him, retire and paint pictures? I feel certain he would be glad to buy you out.”

He sighed. “There are several minor reasons and one major reason why such a course would be repugnant to me.”

“Name them.”

“Mr. Casson, Mrs. Casson and all of our employees constitute the minor reasons. You constitute the major one.”

She flushed pleasurably and the lambent light of a great affection leaped into her fine eyes. He continued:

“I fear the old gentleman would make a mess of the business if my guiding hand should be withdrawn, and at his age—consider the sheltered life you have led, the ease and comfort and luxury and freedom from financial worry! Maisie, it would be a sorry mess, indeed.”

“So you have concluded to hang on, eh, Dan?”

He nodded. “And while hanging on I hang back, like a balky mule on his halter.”

“‘Go not, like the quarry slave, scourged to his dungeon,’” she quoted bitterly. “Nevertheless, I fail to see why a nice consideration of my—of our—comfort should deter you from seeking your own happiness.”

“Why, Maisie, you know very well I’m terribly fond of you.”

“Indeed, Dan! This is the first official knowledge I have had of it, although, of course, I have for years suspected that you and I were very dear friends. However, Dan, my friendship is not one that demands great sacrifices. I—I——”

Tears blurred her eyes and her voice choked, but she recovered her poise quickly. With averted face she said: “I’m sure, my dear Dan, I would much prefer to see you painting your pictures than serving as a sacrifice on the altar of your—of our—friendship.”

“I think I might be able to glean a certain melancholy happiness from the sacrifice,” he protested.

“Dan Pritchard, you are exasperatingly dull today. I dislike being under obligation to anybody.”

He held up a deprecating hand. “You know, Maisie, I have always given you my fullest confidence, as I would to a sister. And I do this in the belief that you will understand perfectly. My dear girl, I am not complaining because I have to stick by this business. I am merely voicing my disappointment at the impossibility of taking the sort of vacation I had planned. If I——”

A knock sounded on the door, and a moment later John Casson entered. He was a large, florid old gentleman, groomed to the acme of sartorial and tonsorial perfection—a handsome old fellow with a hearty and expansive manner, but a man, nevertheless, whom a keen student of human nature would instantly deduce to be one who thought rather well of himself.

“What? Dan, my boy, are you still on the job? Maisie, can’t you induce him to drive to the country club with us? How about nine holes of golf?”

Dan Pritchard shook his head. “Not today, sir, thank you.”

“No? Sorry, my boy. Maisie, are you ready to run along?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

She rose hurriedly, went to the mirror in Dan’s wash cabinet and powdered her nose. And while powdering it she studied critically the reflection, in that mirror, of Dan Pritchard’s long, sad, wistful, thoughtful face. It was in repose now, for Casson had walked to the window and was looking out over the bay; and Maisie had ample opportunity to watch Dan and wonder what was going on inside that bent head.

“Sweet old thing,” she soliloquized. “I love you so. I wonder if you’ll ever know—if you’ll ever care—if it will ever occur to you, dear dreamer, to diagnose that warm friendship and discover that it may be love. For just now, stupid, you talked of sacrifice—for me. Oh, Dan, I could beat you!”

She crossed the room silently and stood beside his chair. As he started, politely, to rise, she bent and placed her lips to his ear. “Art is a jealous mistress. I am told. I hope, Dan, you’ll be as true to her as you can be. I’m almost jealous of her.”

He glanced meaningly at old Casson, who was beating time with his fingers on the window-pane and striving to hum a popular fox-trot. “The old bungler!” Dan whispered. “Come in and visit me the next time you come to the office. And if you’ll invite me over to dinner some night next week I shall accept. I want to continue our conversation. I——”

He glanced swiftly at Casson, saw that the old gentleman was still preoccupied with his pseudo-valuable thoughts and decided to risk putting through a plan which had that instant popped into his head. He took Maisie’s chin in thumb and forefinger, drew her swiftly toward him and kissed her on the lips. Old Casson continued to beat his unmusical tattoo on the window-pane, and Maisie, observing this, grimaced at his broad back and—returned Dan’s kiss! For a breathless instant they stood staring at each other—and then old Casson turned.

“Au revoir, Danny dear,” said Maisie in a voice that rang with joy.

“Good-by, Maisie. Good afternoon, Mr. Casson. I hope you’ll enjoy your game.”

“Thank you, boy. Ta-ta!”

Dan bowed them out of his office and returned to his seat by the window.

“Thunder!” he murmured presently. “Thunder, lightning and a downpour of frogs and small fishes! Now, what imp put into my silly head that impulse to kiss Maisie! I’m mighty fond of Maisie, but I’m not at all certain that I’d care to marry her—she’s so practical and dominating and lovable. Such a good pal. I wonder if I’d be happy married to Maisie. . . . I’m a lunatic. When fellows of my mental type marry they give hostages to fortune, and I haven’t lived yet. My life has been dull and prosaic—nothing new under heaven—and then I had that impulse—yes, that was new! That kiss from Maisie was an adventure. It thrilled me. I wonder what put the idea into my fool head!”

If he had not been fully as stupid as Maisie gave him credit for being, he would have known that Maisie had put the idea into his head. Being what he was, however, he went down to Meiggs Wharf at four o’clock to meet Henderson, still obsessed with the belief that, all unknown to himself hitherto, he was a singularly daring, devilish and original character!

CHAPTER III

Following the departure of the Customs tug, Gaston of the Beard had sat below in earnest converse with Tamea. The Triton had wept a little at first, albeit his tears were not for himself but for Tamea; and after her initial gust of despair and grief, the girl had remembered that strength and not weakness was what her father expected of her. Accordingly she had rallied to the task of comforting him.

“And you knew I had contracted this disease, my daughter?” old Gaston queried amazedly.

“Oui, mon père. I saw the puffy places on your cheeks and knuckles before we sailed from Riva, but I was not certain until I saw you one day in swimming. There is a white patch on your right shoulder.”

“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.