You see, he was a persistent chap, and hated to acknowledge defeat.
It–it makes me uncomfortable to think of it myself. We were
running slowly behind, but with the Jessie we hoped to muddle
through in some fashion.”
“You were muddlers, the pair of you, without doubt. But you
needn’t sell to Morgan and Raff. I shall go down to Sydney on the
next steamer, and I’ll come back in a second-hand schooner. I
should be able to buy one for five or six thousand dollars–”
He held up his hand in protest, but she waved it aside.
“I may manage to freight a cargo back as well. At any rate, the
schooner will take over the Jessie’s business. You can make your
arrangements accordingly, and have plenty of work for her when I
get back. I’m going to become a partner in Berande to the extent
of my bag of sovereigns–I’ve got over fifteen hundred of them, you
know. We’ll draw up an agreement right now–that is, with your
permission, and I know you won’t refuse it.”
He looked at her with good-natured amusement.
“You know I sailed here all the way from Tahiti in order to become
a planter,” she insisted. “You know what my plans were. Now I’ve
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changed them, that’s all. I’d rather be a part owner of Berande
and get my returns in three years, than break ground on Pari-Sulay
and wait seven years.”
“And this–er–this schooner. . . . ” Sheldon changed his mind and
stopped.
“Yes, go on.”
“You won’t be angry?” he queried.
“No, no; this is business. Go on.”
“You–er–you would run her yourself?–be the captain, in short?–
and go recruiting on Malaita?”
“Certainly. We would save the cost of a skipper. Under an
agreement you would be credited with a manager’s salary, and I with
a captain’s. It’s quite simple. Besides, if you won’t let me be
your partner, I shall buy Pari-Sulay, get a much smaller vessel,
and run her myself. So what is the difference?”
“The difference?–why, all the difference in the world. In the
case of Pari-Sulay you would be on an independent venture. You
could turn cannibal for all I could interfere in the matter. But
on Berande, you would be my partner, and then I would be
responsible. And of course I couldn’t permit you, as my partner,
to be skipper of a recruiter. I tell you, the thing is what I
would not permit any sister or wife of mine–”
“But I’m not going to be your wife, thank goodness–only your
partner.”
“Besides, it’s all ridiculous,” he held on steadily. “Think of the
situation. A man and a woman, both young, partners on an isolated
plantation. Why, the only practical way out would be that I’d have
to marry you–”
“Mine was a business proposition, not a marriage proposal,” she
interrupted, coldly angry. “I wonder if somewhere in this world
there is one man who could accept me for a comrade.”
“But you are a woman just the same,” he began, “and there are
certain conventions, certain decencies–”
She sprang up and stamped her foot.
“Do you know what I’d like to say?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he smiled, “you’d like to say, ‘Damn petticoats!'”
She nodded her head ruefully.
“That’s what I wanted to say, but it sounds different on your lips.
It sounds as though you meant it yourself, and that you meant it
because of me.”
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“Well, I am going to bed. But do, please, think over my
proposition, and let me know in the morning. There’s no use in my
discussing it now. You make me so angry. You are cowardly, you
know, and very egotistic. You are afraid of what other fools will
say. No matter how honest your motives, if others criticized your
actions your feelings would be hurt. And you think more about your
own wretched feelings than you do about mine. And then, being a
coward–all men are at heart cowards–you disguise your cowardice
by calling it chivalry. I thank heaven that I was not born a man.
Good-night. Do think it over. And don’t be foolish. What Berande
needs is good American hustle. You don’t know what that is. You
are a muddler. Besides, you are enervated. I’m fresh to the
climate. Let me be your partner, and you’ll see me rattle the dry
bones of the Solomons. Confess, I’ve rattled yours already.”
“I should say so,” he answered. “Really, you know, you have. I
never received such a dressing-down in my life. If any one had
ever told me that I’d be a party even to the present situation. . .
. Yes, I confess, you have rattled my dry bones pretty
considerably.”
“But that is nothing to the rattling they are going to get,” she
assured him, as he rose and took her hand. “Good-night. And do,
do give me a rational decision in the morning.”
CHAPTER XIII–THE LOGIC OF YOUTH
“I wish I knew whether you are merely headstrong, or whether you
really intend to be a Solomon planter,” Sheldon said in the
morning, at breakfast.
“I wish you were more adaptable,” Joan retorted. “You have more
preconceived notions than any man I ever met. Why in the name of
common sense, in the name of . . . fair play, can’t you get it into
your head that I am different from the women you have known, and
treat me accordingly? You surely ought to know I am different. I
sailed my own schooner here–skipper, if you please. I came here
to make my living. You know that; I’ve told you often enough. It
was Dad’s plan, and I’m carrying it out, just as you are trying to
carry out your Hughie’s plan. Dad started to sail and sail until
he could find the proper islands for planting. He died, and I
sailed and sailed until I arrived here. Well,”–she shrugged her
shoulders–“the schooner is at the bottom of the sea. I can’t sail
any farther, therefore I remain here. And a planter I shall
certainly be.”
“You see–” he began.
“I haven’t got to the point,” she interrupted. “Looking back on my
conduct from the moment I first set foot on your beach, I can see
no false pretence that I have made about myself or my intentions.
I was my natural self to you from the first. I told you my plans;
and yet you sit there and calmly tell me that you don’t know
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whether I really intend to become a planter, or whether it is all
obstinacy and pretence. Now let me assure you, for the last time,
that I really and truly shall become a planter, thanks to you, or
in spite of you. Do you want me for a partner?”
“But do you realize that I would be looked upon as the most foolish
jackanapes in the South Seas if I took a young girl like you in
with me here on Berande?” he asked.
“No; decidedly not. But there you are again, worrying about what
idiots and the generally evil-minded will think of you. I should
have thought you had learned self-reliance on Berande, instead of
needing to lean upon the moral support of every whisky-guzzling
worthless South Sea vagabond.”
He smiled, and said, –
“Yes, that is the worst of it. You are unanswerable. Yours is the
logic of youth, and no man can answer that. The facts of life can,
but they have no place in the logic of youth. Youth must try to
live according to its logic. That is the only way to learn
better.”
“There is no harm in trying?” she interjected.
“But there is. That is the very point. The facts always smash
youth’s logic, and they usually smash youth’s heart, too. It’s
like platonic friendships and . . . and all such things; they are
all right in theory, but they won’t work in practice. I used to
believe in such things once. That is why I am here in the Solomons
at present.”
Joan was impatient. He saw that she could not understand. Life
was too clearly simple to her. It was only the youth who was
arguing with him, the youth with youth’s pure-minded and invincible
reasoning. Hers was only the boy’s soul in a woman’s body. He
looked at her flushed, eager face, at the great ropes of hair
coiled on the small head, at the rounded lines of the figure
showing plainly through the home-made gown, and at the eyes–boy’s
eyes, under cool, level brows–and he wondered why a being that was
so much beautiful woman should be no woman at all. Why in the
deuce was she not carroty-haired, or cross-eyed, or hare-lipped?
“Suppose we do become partners on Berande,” he said, at the same
time experiencing a feeling of fright at the prospect that was
tangled with a contradictory feeling of charm, “either I’ll fall in
love with you, or you with me. Propinquity is dangerous, you know.