Peter B. Kyne

“ You are to me a true friend only.”
“I do not ask for love, Tamea,” he replied gently. “I seek service. I thought I would stay until your baby should be born—it seemed I ought to wait awhile and see that all goes well with you, child.”
“My race is dying. I too shall die, and that soon. Life has lost its taste, and when my baby has been born—my friend, when such as we have lost our taste for life, life departs. We do not live for the coward’s love of life, but for life’s joys.” ”

“ Maisie smiled wistfully. Poor old booby Dan’l! He would never, never know that a woman is always a child! Because she had tact and more imagination than Dan Pritchard had ever given her credit for possessing, she left him and went up on deck.
At sunset the Pelorus passed out of the lagoon and as her bow lifted to the long, lazy rollers beyond the outer reef, Dan Pritchard, from her quarter-deck, through a mist gazed back on his Paradise lost. High up on the headland where Tamea’s home nestled in the grove, a white figure, silhouetted against the sunset glow, waved to him. ”

“ What manner of fool is the woman who would strive to hold a man whose love has grown cold and dim like the stars at dawn? When you weary of me, Dan Pritchard, you will tell me; then, because I shall always love you, I will prove my love; I will send you away with a smile and a kiss. Ah, sweetheart, will that day ever come? I think not. I think I shall never grow old or stale or intolerable to you.”
“Never,” he promised, profoundly touched by her sweetness, her candor and amazing magnetism. “You are driving me mad with longing for you, Tamea.” ”

“ Somehow, Dan, I cannot feel that you have been either weak or wicked. It—it—just happened. I cannot conceive that you would ever be less than a gentleman.”
He bowed his head. “I have tried to be that, Maisie, although today I do not feel that I have succeeded. But I cannot do otherwise than leave Tamea. I do not think it would have occurred to me to leave her, no matter how bitter the price of staying, but—she willed it otherwise. We have parted without bitterness; I want you to know that so long as I live she shall remain a holy and tender memory.”
“You love her?” Maisie choked on the query. ”

“ Tamea’s breast heaved and her dark eyes flashed. “Then I will tell her, Dan. What have we to conceal? Maisie means nothing in my young life,” she added, tossing in a colloquialism she had picked up, the Lord knows where. “Why do you fear?”
“I do not fear.”
“I am glad to hear you say so. I should not love you if you were afraid of anything.”
“Ah, but I am afraid of something, Tamea dear. I am afraid I do not love you, with a sufficiently great love to marry you. Perhaps that which I think is love is not really love, but passion.” ”

“ With the coming of night I yearn for you, beloved; the flame of my desire burns high and I am unashamed that I desire you as all true women must desire a mate.” She turned and kissed him solemnly and tenderly. “I love you, heart of my heart,” she told him, “and though I live to be as old as Hakataua, I swear, by your God, never shall I love any man but you, Dan Pritchard. And, loving you, I shall respect you and obey you, nor shall I bring dishonor or shame upon you, my husband. ”

“ Dan is very unhappy with me. He loves me, but he is not happy with me, and it has come to the knowledge that never can the poor boy be happy with me. Great unhappiness is stronger than great love. It will kill love—and I have watched and his love is dying. I would have him leave me, loving me. If he remains he will grow mad, like that missionary Muggridge. Something in him that is fine and very like a little boy will wither and die.”
Mellenger nodded and Tamea continued: “To Dan also has been given the gift of seeing too clearly, understanding too readily, feeling too deeply.” ”

“ You will not understand because your love blinds you, Tamea, but the white men of my world have a code and we must never break it.”
“Oh,” said Tamea softly, and her eyes filled with tears. “Of what use is money save to buy happiness? When a man takes a woman to wife does he not take all she has—all of her love, all of her wealth, all of her faith? Is she not to be the mother of his children? ”

“ No mourning clothes or mourning period to bolster up a pretense of an affection for the deceased stronger than that which actually existed; no tolling of bells, no sonorous ritual. That is the hokum of our civilization. But tradition, mummery and religion are unknown to Tamea. She is simple, sane and philosophical, and whatever you do, Mrs. Pippy, and you, Julia, don’t pretend that anything unusual has happened. Do not proffer her sympathy. What she craves is affection and understanding.”
“You are already late to dinner, Mr. Pritchard. Sooey Wan is on the warpath,” Mrs. Pippy suggested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You would be perfectly happy with Maisie about eighty-five per cent of the time, and all you have to have in order to win is a controlling interest, or fifty-one per cent. All married life is a continuous adjustment of conflicting personalities. What you are seeking, we all seek—the wild, abandoned thrill of a love that will never grow old or stale or commonplace—a love that will punctuate your life with wonderful, breathless moments—moments that you would not miss, even though in claiming them you realized that sorrow and heartbreak might be the inevitable outcome of your yielding. ”

“ A sudden, passionate yearning had seized him to chuck it all, to drift with the tide, to sample life in its elemental phases, to be happy in a land where all of the rules of existence were reversed . . . a man lived but once and he was a long time dead. . . and Dan wanted Tamea. . . . Ah, how ardently he desired her and how lonely and desolate would be his life without her! Civilization demands much of repression, since civilized man, like the domestic dog, still retains many of the instincts of his primitive ancestors; and Dan was weary of repression. ”

“ It is hard to quarrel with the true friend of him I love, but you are in my way, Stoneface, and you are a resolute man. So I shall not have mercy. Of two women who love your friend, you must, it seems, approve of one. I am not that one. . . . Well, when the gods rain blows on Tamea she will take them standing and none shall know how much they hurt. And you have hurt me, Stoneface. Still, I shall be what you call a good sport. Dan Pritchard has come to this place for a few days to play—with me—and you are here to have him play—with you! ”

“ Presently, at his suggestion, Tamea called the steward, who brought glasses and a dusty bottle of old French Malaga. When the glasses had been filled and passed by Tamea, Gaston of the Beard raised his on high.
“I drink to my loves, living and dead; to you, friend Dan Pritchard, and to you, Monsieur l’Avocat! Morituri te salutamus! I wish you good luck, good health, happiness and a life just long enough not to become a burden. May you live as joyously as I have lived and love life as I have loved it; may you die as contented as I shall die, and without repining. ”