level-browed girl with romance shining out of her gray eyes and
adventure shouting from the long-barrelled Colt’s on her hip, who
had landed on the beach that piping gale, along with her stalwart
Tahitian crew, and who had entered his bungalow to hang with boy’s
hands her revolver-belt and Baden-Powell hat on the nail by the
billiard table. He forgot all the early exasperations, remembering
only her charms and sweetnesses and glorying much in the traits he
at first had disliked most–her boyishness and adventurousness, her
delight to swim and risk the sharks, her desire to go recruiting,
her love of the sea and ships, her sharp authoritative words when
she launched the whale-boat and, with firestick in one hand and
dynamite-stick in the other, departed with her picturesque crew to
shoot fish in the Balesuna; her super-innocent disdain for the
commonest conventions, her juvenile joy in argument, her
fluttering, wild-bird love of freedom and mad passion for
independence. All this he now loved, and he no longer desired to
tame and hold her, though the paradox was the winning of her
without the taming and the holding.
There were times when he was dizzy with thought of her and love of
her, when he would stop his horse and with closed eyes picture her
as he had seen her that first day, in the stern-sheets of the
whale-boat, dashing madly in to shore and marching belligerently
along his veranda to remark that it was pretty hospitality this
letting strangers sink or swim in his front yard. And as he opened
his eyes and urged his horse onward, he would ponder for the ten
thousandth time how possibly he was ever to hold her when she was
so wild and bird-like that she was bound to flutter out and away
from under his hand.
It was patent to Sheldon that Tudor had become interested in Joan.
That convalescent visitor practically lived on the veranda, though,
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while preposterously weak and shaky in the legs, he had for some
time insisted on coming in to join them at the table at meals. The
first warning Sheldon had of the other’s growing interest in the
girl was when Tudor eased down and finally ceased pricking him with
his habitual sharpness of quip and speech. This cessation of
verbal sparring was like the breaking off of diplomatic relations
between countries at the beginning of war, and, once Sheldon’s
suspicions were aroused, he was not long in finding other
confirmations. Tudor too obviously joyed in Joan’s presence, too
obviously laid himself out to amuse and fascinate her with his own
glorious and adventurous personality. Often, after his morning
ride over the plantation, or coming in from the store or from
inspection of the copra-drying, Sheldon found the pair of them
together on the veranda, Joan listening, intent and excited, and
Tudor deep in some recital of personal adventure at the ends of the
earth.
Sheldon noticed, too, the way Tudor looked at her and followed her
about with his eyes, and in those eyes he noted a certain hungry
look, and on the face a certain wistful expression; and he wondered
if on his own face he carried a similar involuntary advertisement.
He was sure of several things: first, that Tudor was not the right
man for Joan and could not possibly make her permanently happy;
next, that Joan was too sensible a girl really to fall in love with
a man of such superficial stamp; and, finally, that Tudor would
blunder his love-making somehow. And at the same time, with true
lover’s anxiety, Sheldon feared that the other might somehow fail
to blunder, and win the girl with purely fortuitous and successful
meretricious show. But of the one thing Sheldon was sure: Tudor
had no intimate knowledge of her and was unaware of how vital in
her was her wildness and love of independence. That was where he
would blunder–in the catching and the holding of her. And then,
in spite of all his certitude, Sheldon could not forbear wondering
if his theories of Joan might not be wrong, and if Tudor was not
going the right way about after all.
The situation was very unsatisfactory and perplexing. Sheldon
played the difficult part of waiting and looking on, while his
rival devoted himself energetically to reaching out and grasping at
the fluttering prize. Then, again, Tudor had such an irritating
way about him. It had become quite elusive and intangible, now
that he had tacitly severed diplomatic relations; but Sheldon
sensed what he deemed a growing antagonism and promptly magnified
it through the jealous lenses of his own lover’s eyes. The other
was an interloper. He did not belong to Berande, and now that he
was well and strong again it was time for him to go. Instead of
which, and despite the calling in of the mail steamer bound for
Sydney, Tudor had settled himself down comfortably, resumed
swimming, went dynamiting fish with Joan, spent hours with her
hunting pigeons, trapping crocodiles, and at target practice with
rifle and revolver.
But there were certain traditions of hospitality that prevented
Sheldon from breathing a hint that it was time for his guest to
take himself off. And in similar fashion, feeling that it was not
playing the game, he fought down the temptation to warn Joan. Had
he known anything, not too serious, to Tudor’s detriment, he would
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have been unable to utter it; but the worst of it was that he knew
nothing at all against the man. That was the confounded part of
it, and sometimes he was so baffled and overwrought by his feelings
that he assumed a super-judicial calm and assured himself that his
dislike of Tudor was a matter of unsubstantial prejudice and
jealousy.
Outwardly, he maintained a calm and smiling aspect. The work of
the plantation went on. The Martha and the Flibberty-Gibbet came
and went, as did all the miscellany of coasting craft that dropped
in to wait for a breeze and have a gossip, a drink or two, and a
game of billiards. Satan kept the compound free of niggers.
Boucher came down regularly in his whale-boat to pass Sunday.
Twice a day, at breakfast and dinner, Joan and Sheldon and Tudor
met amicably at table, and the evenings were as amicably spent on
the veranda.
And then it happened. Tudor made his blunder. Never divining
Joan’s fluttering wildness, her blind hatred of restraint and
compulsion, her abhorrence of mastery by another, and mistaking the
warmth and enthusiasm in her eyes (aroused by his latest tale) for
something tender and acquiescent, he drew her to him, laid a
forcible detaining arm about her waist, and misapprehended her
frantic revolt for an exhibition of maidenly reluctance. It
occurred on the veranda, after breakfast, and Sheldon, within,
pondering a Sydney wholesaler’s catalogue and making up his orders
for next steamer-day, heard the sharp exclamation of Joan, followed
by the equally sharp impact of an open hand against a cheek.
Jerking free from the arm that was all distasteful compulsion, Joan
had slapped Tudor’s face resoundingly and with far more vim and
weight than when she had cuffed Gogoomy.
Sheldon had half-started up, then controlled himself and sunk back
in his chair, so that by the time Joan entered the door his
composure was recovered. Her right fore-arm was clutched tightly
in her left hand, while the white cheeks, centred with the spots of
flaming red, reminded him of the time he had first seen her angry.
“He hurt my arm,” she blurted out, in reply to his look of inquiry.
He smiled involuntarily. It was so like her, so like the boy she
was, to come running to complain of the physical hurt which had
been done her. She was certainly not a woman versed in the ways of
man and in the ways of handling man. The resounding slap she had
given Tudor seemed still echoing in Sheldon’s ears, and as he
looked at the girl before him crying out that her arm was hurt, his
smile grew broader.
It was the smile that did it, convicting Joan in her own eyes of
the silliness of her cry and sending over her face the most amazing
blush he had ever seen. Throat, cheeks, and forehead flamed with
the rush of the shamed blood.
“He–he–” she attempted to vindicate her deeper indignation, then
whirled abruptly away and passed out the rear door and down the
steps.
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Sheldon sat and mused. He was a trifle angry, and the more he
dwelt upon the happening the angrier he grew. If it had been any
woman except Joan it would have been amusing. But Joan was the
last woman in the world to attempt to kiss forcibly. The thing
smacked of the back stairs anyway–a sordid little comedy perhaps,
but to have tried it on Joan was nothing less than sacrilege. The
man should have had better sense. Then, too, Sheldon was