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_ The most patient man in the world is prone to impatience in love--
and Sheldon was in love. He called himself an ass a score of times
a day, and strove to contain himself by directing his mind in other
channels, but more than a score of times each day his thoughts
roved back and dwelt on Joan. It was a pretty problem she
presented, and he was continually debating with himself as to what
was the best way to approach her.
He was not an adept at love-making. He had had but one experience
in the gentle art (in which he had been more wooed than wooing),
and the affair had profited him little. This was another affair,
and he assured himself continually that it was a uniquely different
and difficult affair. Not only was here a woman who was not bent
on finding a husband, but it was a woman who wasn't a woman at all;
who was genuinely appalled by the thought of a husband; who joyed
in boys' games, and sentimentalized over such things as adventure;
who was healthy and normal and wholesome, and who was so immature
that a husband stood for nothing more than an encumbrance in her
cherished scheme of existence.
But how to approach her? He divined the fanatical love of freedom
in her, the deep-seated antipathy for restraint of any sort. No
man could ever put his arm around her and win her. She would
flutter away like a frightened bird. Approach by contact--that, he
realized, was the one thing he must never do. His hand-clasp must
be what it had always been, the hand-clasp of hearty friendship and
nothing more. Never by action must he advertise his feeling for
her. Remained speech. But what speech? Appeal to her love? But
she did not love him. Appeal to her brain? But it was apparently
a boy's brain. All the deliciousness and fineness of a finely bred
woman was hers; but, for all he could discern, her mental processes
were sexless and boyish. And yet speech it must be, for a
beginning had to be made somewhere, some time; her mind must be
made accustomed to the idea, her thoughts turned upon the matter of
marriage.
And so he rode overseeing about the plantation, with tightly drawn
and puckered brows, puzzling over the problem, and steeling himself
to the first attempt. A dozen ways he planned an intricate leading
up to the first breaking of the ice, and each time some link in the
chain snapped and the talk went off on unexpected and irrelevant
lines. And then one morning, quite fortuitously, the opportunity
came.
"My dearest wish is the success of Berande," Joan had just said,
apropos of a discussion about the cheapening of freights on copra
to market.
"Do you mind if I tell you the dearest wish of my heart?" he
promptly returned. "I long for it. I dream about it. It is my
dearest desire."
He paused and looked at her with intent significance; but it was
plain to him that she thought there was nothing more at issue than
mutual confidences about things in general.
"Yes, go ahead," she said, a trifle impatient at his delay.
"I love to think of the success of Berande," he said; "but that is
secondary. It is subordinate to the dearest wish, which is that
some day you will share Berande with me in a completer way than
that of mere business partnership. It is for you, some day, when
you are ready, to be my wife."
She started back from him as if she had been stung. Her face went
white on the instant, not from maidenly embarrassment, but from the
anger which he could see flaming in her eyes.
"This taking for granted!--this when I am ready!" she cried
passionately. Then her voice swiftly became cold and steady, and
she talked in the way he imagined she must have talked business
with Morgan and Raff at Guvutu. "Listen to me, Mr. Sheldon. I
like you very well, though you are slow and a muddler; but I want
you to understand, once and for all, that I did not come to the
Solomons to get married. That is an affliction I could have
accumulated at home, without sailing ten thousand miles after it.
I have my own way to make in the world, and I came to the Solomons
to do it. Getting married is not making MY way in the world. It
may do for some women, but not for me, thank you. When I sit down
to talk over the freight on copra, I don't care to have proposals
of marriage sandwiched in. Besides--besides--"
Her voice broke for the moment, and when she went on there was a
note of appeal in it that well-nigh convicted him to himself of
being a brute.
"Don't you see?--it spoils everything; it makes the whole situation
impossible . . . and . . . and I so loved our partnership, and was
proud of it. Don't you see?--I can't go on being your partner if
you make love to me. And I was so happy."
Tears of disappointment were in her eyes, and she caught a swift
sob in her throat.
"I warned you," he said gravely. "Such unusual situations between
men and women cannot endure. I told you so at the beginning."
"Oh, yes; it is quite clear to me what you did." She was angry
again, and the feminine appeal had disappeared. "You were very
discreet in your warning. You took good care to warn me against
every other man in the Solomons except yourself."
It was a blow in the face to Sheldon. He smarted with the truth of
it, and at the same time he smarted with what he was convinced was
the injustice of it. A gleam of triumph that flickered in her eye
because of the hit she had made decided him.
"It is not so one-sided as you seem to think it is," he began. "I
was doing very nicely on Berande before you came. At least I was
not suffering indignities, such as being accused of cowardly
conduct, as you have just accused me. Remember--please remember, I
did not invite you to Berande. Nor did I invite you to stay on at
Berande. It was by staying that you brought about this--to you--
unpleasant situation. By staying you made yourself a temptation,
and now you would blame me for it. I did not want you to stay. I
wasn't in love with you then. I wanted you to go to Sydney; to go
back to Hawaii. But you insisted on staying. You virtually--"
He paused for a softer word than the one that had risen to his
lips, and she took it away from him.
"Forced myself on you--that's what you meant to say," she cried,
the flags of battle painting her cheeks. "Go ahead. Don't mind my
feelings."
"All right; I won't," he said decisively, realizing that the
discussion was in danger of becoming a vituperative, schoolboy
argument. "You have insisted on being considered as a man.
Consistency would demand that you talk like a man, and like a man
listen to man-talk. And listen you shall. It is not your fault
that this unpleasantness has arisen. I do not blame you for
anything; remember that. And for the same reason you should not
blame me for anything."
He noticed her bosom heaving as she sat with clenched hands, and it
was all he could do to conquer the desire to flash his arms out and
around her instead of going on with his coolly planned campaign.
As it was, he nearly told her that she was a most adorable boy.
But he checked all such wayward fancies, and held himself rigidly
down to his disquisition.
"You can't help being yourself. You can't help being a very
desirable creature so far as I am concerned. You have made me want
you. You didn't intend to; you didn't try to. You were so made,
that is all. And I was so made that I was ripe to want you. But I
can't help being myself. I can't by an effort of will cease from
wanting you, any more than you by an effort of will can make
yourself undesirable to me."
"Oh, this desire! this want! want! want!" she broke in
rebelliously. "I am not quite a fool. I understand some things.
And the whole thing is so foolish and absurd--and uncomfortable. I
wish I could get away from it. I really think it would be a good
idea for me to marry Noa Noah, or Adamu Adam, or Lalaperu there, or
any black boy. Then I could give him orders, and keep him penned
away from me; and men like you would leave me alone, and not talk
marriage and 'I want, I want.'"
Sheldon laughed in spite of himself, and far from any genuine
impulse to laugh.
"You are positively soulless," he said savagely.
"Because I've a soul that doesn't yearn for a man for master?" she
took up the gage. "Very well, then. I am soulless, and what are
you going to do about it?"
"I am going to ask you why you look like a woman? Why have you the
form of a woman? the lips of a woman? the wonderful hair of a
woman? And I am going to answer: because you are a woman--though
the woman in you is asleep--and that some day the woman will wake
up."
"Heaven forbid!" she cried, in such sudden and genuine dismay as to
make him laugh, and to bring a smile to her own lips against
herself.
"I've got some more to say to you," Sheldon pursued. "I did try to
protect you from every other man in the Solomons, and from yourself
as well. As for me, I didn't dream that danger lay in that
quarter. So I failed to protect you from myself. I failed to
protect you at all. You went your own wilful way, just as though I
didn't exist--wrecking schooners, recruiting on Malaita, and
sailing schooners; one lone, unprotected girl in the company of
some of the worst scoundrels in the Solomons. Fowler! and Brahms!
and Curtis! And such is the perverseness of human nature--I am
frank, you see--I love you for that too. I love you for all of
you, just as you are."
She made a moue of distaste and raised a hand protestingly.
"Don't," he said. "You have no right to recoil from the mention of
my love for you. Remember this is a man-talk. From the point of
view of the talk, you are a man. The woman in you is only
incidental, accidental, and irrelevant. You've got to listen to
the bald statement of fact, strange though it is, that I love you."
"And now I won't bother you any more about love. We'll go on the
same as before. You are better off and safer on Berande, in spite
of the fact that I love you, than anywhere else in the Solomons.
But I want you, as a final item of man-talk, to remember, from time
to time, that I love you, and that it will be the dearest day of my
life when you consent to marry me. I want you to think of it
sometimes. You can't help but think of it sometimes. And now we
won't talk about it any more. As between men, there's my hand."
He held out his hand. She hesitated, then gripped it heartily, and
smiled through her tears.
"I wish--" she faltered, "I wish, instead of that black Mary, you'd
given me somebody to swear for me."
And with this enigmatic utterance she turned away. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXI - CONTRABAND
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