of having women on the plantation. And now it’s antiseptics and
drainage tubes, I suppose. It’s a nasty mess, and I’ll have to
read up on it before I tackle the job.”
“I don’t see that it’s my fault,” she began. “I couldn’t help it
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because he kissed me. I never dreamed he would attempt it.”
“We didn’t fight for that reason. But there isn’t time to explain.
If you’ll get dressings and bandages ready I’ll look up ‘gun-shot
wounds’ and see what’s to be done.”
“Is he bleeding seriously?” she asked.
“No; the bullet seems to have missed the important arteries. But
that would have been a pickle.”
“Then there’s no need to bother about reading up,” Joan said. “And
I’m just dying to hear what it was all about. The Apostle is lying
becalmed inside the point, and her boats are out to wing. She’ll
be at anchor in five minutes, and Doctor Welshmere is sure to be on
board. So all we’ve got to do is to make Tudor comfortable. We’d
better put him in your room under the mosquito-netting, and send a
boat off to tell Dr. Welshmere to bring his instruments.”
An hour afterward, Dr. Welshmere left the patient comfortable and
attended to, and went down to the beach to go on board, promising
to come back to dinner. Joan and Sheldon, standing on the veranda,
watched him depart.
“I’ll never have it in for the missionaries again since seeing them
here in the Solomons,” she said, seating herself in a steamer-
chair.
She looked at Sheldon and began to laugh.
“That’s right,” he said. “It’s the way I feel, playing the fool
and trying to murder a guest.”
“But you haven’t told me what it was all about.”
“You,” he answered shortly.
“Me? But you just said it wasn’t.”
“Oh, it wasn’t the kiss.” He walked over to the railing and leaned
against it, facing her. “But it was about you all the same, and I
may as well tell you. You remember, I warned you long ago what
would happen when you wanted to become a partner in Berande. Well,
all the beach is gossiping about it; and Tudor persisted in
repeating the gossip to me. So you see it won’t do for you to stay
on here under present conditions. It would be better if you went
away.”
“But I don’t want to go away,” she objected with rueful
countenance.
“A chaperone, then–”
“No, nor a chaperone.”
“But you surely don’t expect me to go around shooting every
slanderer in the Solomons that opens his mouth?” he demanded
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gloomily.
“No, nor that either,” she answered with quick impulsiveness.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll get married and put a stop to
it all. There!”
He looked at her in amazement, and would have believed that she was
making fun of him had it not been for the warm blood that suddenly
suffused her cheeks.
“Do you mean that?” he asked unsteadily. “Why?”
“To put a stop to all the nasty gossip of the beach. That’s a
pretty good reason, isn’t it?”
The temptation was strong enough and sudden enough to make him
waver, but all the disgust came back to him that was his when he
lay in the grass fighting gnats and cursing adventure, and he
answered, –
“No; it is worse than no reason at all. I don’t care to marry you
as a matter of expedience–”
“You are the most ridiculous creature!” she broke in, with a flash
of her old-time anger. “You talk love and marriage to me, very
much against my wish, and go mooning around over the plantation
week after week because you can’t have me, and look at me when you
think I’m not noticing and when all the time I’m wondering when you
had your last square meal because of the hungry look in your eyes,
and make eyes at my revolver-belt hanging on a nail, and fight
duels about me, and all the rest–and–and now, when I say I’ll
marry you, you do yourself the honour of refusing me.”
“You can’t make me any more ridiculous than I feel,” he answered,
rubbing the lump on his forehead reflectively. “And if this is the
accepted romantic programme–a duel over a girl, and the girl
rushing into the arms of the winner–why, I shall not make a bigger
ass of myself by going in for it.”
“I thought you’d jump at it,” she confessed, with a naivete he
could not but question, for he thought he saw a roguish gleam in
her eyes.
“My conception of love must differ from yours then,” he said. “I
should want a woman to marry me for love of me, and not out of
romantic admiration because I was lucky enough to drill a hole in a
man’s shoulder with smokeless powder. I tell you I am disgusted
with this adventure tom-foolery and rot. I don’t like it. Tudor
is a sample of the adventure-kind–picking a quarrel with me and
behaving like a monkey, insisting on fighting with me–‘to the
death,’ he said. It was like a penny dreadful.”
She was biting her lip, and though her eyes were cool and level-
looking as ever, the tell-tale angry red was in her cheeks.
“Of course, if you don’t want to marry me–”
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“But I do,” he hastily interposed.
“Oh, you do–”
“But don’t you see, little girl, I want you to love me,” he hurried
on. “Otherwise, it would be only half a marriage. I don’t want
you to marry me simply because by so doing a stop is put to the
beach gossip, nor do I want you to marry me out of some foolish
romantic notion. I shouldn’t want you . . . that way.”
“Oh, in that case,” she said with assumed deliberateness, and he
could have sworn to the roguish gleam, “in that case, since you are
willing to consider my offer, let me make a few remarks. In the
first place, you needn’t sneer at adventure when you are living it
yourself; and you were certainly living it when I found you first,
down with fever on a lonely plantation with a couple of hundred
wild cannibals thirsting for your life. Then I came along–”
“And what with your arriving in a gale,” he broke in, “fresh from
the wreck of the schooner, landing on the beach in a whale-boat
full of picturesque Tahitian sailors, and coming into the bungalow
with a Baden-Powell on your head, sea-boots on your feet, and a
whacking big Colt’s dangling on your hip–why, I am only too ready
to admit that you were the quintessence of adventure.”
“Very good,” she cried exultantly. “It’s mere simple arithmetic–
the adding of your adventure and my adventure together. So that’s
settled, and you needn’t jeer at adventure any more. Next, I don’t
think there was anything romantic in Tudor’s attempting to kiss me,
nor anything like adventure in this absurd duel. But I do think,
now, that it was romantic for you to fall in love with me. And
finally, and it is adding romance to romance, I think . . . I think
I do love you, Dave–oh, Dave!”
The last was a sighing dove-cry as he caught her up in his arms and
pressed her to him.
“But I don’t love you because you played the fool to-day,” she
whispered on his shoulder. “White men shouldn’t go around killing
each other.”
“Then why do you love me?” he questioned, enthralled after the
manner of all lovers in the everlasting query that for ever has
remained unanswered.
“I don’t know–just because I do, I guess. And that’s all the
satisfaction you gave me when we had that man-talk. But I have
been loving you for weeks–during all the time you have been so
deliciously and unobtrusively jealous of Tudor.”
“Yes, yes, go on,” he urged breathlessly, when she paused.
“I wondered when you’d break out, and because you didn’t I loved
you all the more. You were like Dad, and Von. You could hold
yourself in check. You didn’t make a fool of yourself.”
“Not until to-day,” he suggested.
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“Yes, and I loved you for that, too. It was about time. I began
to think you were never going to bring up the subject again. And
now that I have offered myself you haven’t even accepted.”
With both hands on her shoulders he held her at arm’s-length from
him and looked long into her eyes, no longer cool but seemingly
pervaded with a golden flush. The lids drooped and yet bravely did
not droop as she returned his gaze. Then he fondly and solemnly
drew her to him.
“And how about that hearth and saddle of your own?” he asked, a
moment later.
“I well-nigh won to them. The grass house is my hearth, and the
Martha my saddle, and–and look at all the trees I’ve planted, to