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Show aao liMbEN Ames Williams 1 . Ti'." . svxorsis G.Nu-i't' Mi'.V.isI.unl was 311 years oUi tthen ho s.uUi (rom Ami'iiiM to under- t l: p.l ;ts a missionary in the FIJI Islam). A crime he (md committed In a tit o( excitement had shattered all his continence in himseK. He felt forced to avoid pretty Mary Dojicaster. who boarded board-ed the ship at Honolulu. She was en route to visit her parents, who were missionaries on Cilead Island. Mary was attracted by George's attempts to avoid her. One day George accidentally fell overboard. Mary unhesitatingly dove Into the sea to rescue George. George is talhni; in love with her. When the boat approached her home on Gllead lsl.ind. they learned that Mary's parents had both died. George volunteered to lake charge of the mission. CHATTER III Continued Mary nodded, a secret amusement in her eyes. '"So, for our reputations' reputa-tions' sake you think we ought to ask John Gale to marry us, and stay and work together? Is that what you want?" "Yes." "George," she urged smilingly. "Why did you decide you wanted to stay here? Honestly?" Something for a moment rose in him, choking him. He came strongly strong-ly to his feet; he cried in a sort of fury: "Because I won't leave you here with Joseph Neargood!" She nodded, seemed almost content, con-tent, said gently: "Well, that will do for now, I think, George Mc-Ausland." Mc-Ausland." Her eyes were laughing. "It isn't very much, perhaps! Most men would say more. But I think it's a lot for you to say. I'd lots rather be married to you than not Shall I tell you why? It hasn't anything any-thing to do with duty at all." She had come close to him. "Or maybe you'd like to tell me why you don't want to leave me here with Joseph?" Her eyes were dancing, teasing him. "Tell me, George!" He took a backward step, like one escaping; he stammered: "I don't know!" Mary Doncaster smiled again, as if at a secret of her own. "Well, maybe you'll find out by and by," she decided. She touched his hand. "George, if you do find out, promise to tell me, will you? It's a thing a girl likes to hear." George and Mary, all their possessions pos-sessions in trunks and bags and boxes on the ground about them, stood on the ledges above the landing land-ing place to watch the Sunset put to sea. But they did not wait to watch her out of sight Willing hands had borne their gear away up the trail past the bathing pool toward Eph-raim Eph-raim Doneaster's house; and when the shiD yonder passed out of the roadstead George McAusland sneezed that cold he had contracted contract-ed when he fell overboard had lingered lin-gered and said awkwardly: "Well, Mary, we'll want to settle ourselves before dark. Shall we go to the house?" John Gale had married them that morning, on the after deck of the Sunset, with canoes in a circle under her stern for audience, and the sailors watching from forward. Mary noticed that Corkran was not among the men there; and she was a little hurt by his absence, but she asked no question, lest George too be distressed. CHAPTER TV When they came into the house, since Mary had not been ashore before, be-fore, she looked around with brimming brim-ming eyes, recognizing familiar objects ob-jects everywhere. She crossed, softly soft-ly as though she might disturb someone some-one sleeping, to look into her father's fa-ther's room; and she called George to her. "This was Father's," she said. "And this -is Mother's room, next to his." He saw the two beds close together, to-gether, the flimsy wall between. "Where did you sleep?" he asked. "Over here." She led him across to the other bedroom in the opposite end of the house; and they stood in the doorway together. "I think you'd better take your father's room," he decided. "I'll take this one. Then you can have two rooms to yourself, won't be crowded." She said in a soft surprise: "Won't you take Father's, and I'll be in Mother's, close beside you?" He shook his head. "No. This arrangement will give us each some privacy, Mary." She smiled faintly, amused and thinking she understood. "We won't have much privacy, George, at best. With no doors, no curtains, no shutters shut-ters on the windows." "We'll arrange something." Now a girl came in carrying a gourd cut into the shape of a bowl, filled with a yellowish viscous stuff which she presented smilingly, placing plac-ing it on the table set for meals. The girl was beautiful. There were two or three faint lines tattooed near her mouth and on her shoulder, and she wore blossoms in her hair. Mary told her husband: "This is Ieni, George. Jarambo brought her to take care of us." He looked dubious. "She's just a child, isn't she? Must we have anyone? any-one? Where's the kitchen, Mary? And what do we eat this with?" Mary laughed. "Dip your finger in it, twist it around, and stick it in your mouth," she directed. "That's much the easiest way. It's too stringy and sticky for a fork or a spoon." George nodded, and tried. "I don't care for the flavor," he decided. "I'd ns soon eat glue!" Jarambo and Ieni stood beaming by. He looked toward the girl nnd said, lowering his voice as though by doing so he could avoid being understood: "Can we persuade her into a more civilized civi-lized costume, Mary? What's that she has on?" "They make the cloth by soaking some sort of bark like flax and beating it over a log. Tappy, they call it." She smiled. "But Ieni has on her prettiest frock, George, in our honor. Usually she won't be so dressed up!" "Haven't you an old dress you can give her?" "She wouldn't wear it" "Try her and see." "I will in the morning," Mary assented. as-sented. He took her old room, she her father's, with the length of the house between them. Mary lay long awake, drenched in the night sounds half forgotten that had once been so familiar. Once she heard George sneeze, and she called softly: "All right, my dear? Warm enough?" "Perfectly!" In the morning he appeared in the heavy black suit he had worn on shipboard. The first shower of the day pelted on the thatch, thrummed among the palms, passed to leave a stifling humid heat behind. Mary was cool in white; in a dress she had worn in school which she now left unbuttoned at the throat, and 151 "I have my husband," she reminded re-minded him. without petticoats or other foundation, founda-tion, George said in a low tone: "Your dress, Mary." "My dress?" She did not understand under-stand him. "Button it," he said. "And I think you have forgotten your petticoats." petti-coats." She protested: "I've left them off, yes. You surely don't expect . . . George, you must realize how ridiculous ridic-ulous you look, and how uncomfortable uncomforta-ble you will be in that heavy suit." He said, almost pleadingly: "I'm a fool of course; but to keep my head here, I'm going to have to hold on to something, Mary. It's so easy to begin to live as these savages sav-ages do, to lie around half-dressed, idle, useless, unless we hang on to our own ways of doing things." And he confessed: "If I were strong enough, I could let down my standards stand-ards in some ways and still keep them in others; but I can't Mary." He added, half laughing at himself: "I know wearing this suit is foolish, but I guess it's a symbol or something." some-thing." She would find always in him this humble consciousness of his own weakness behind any outward arrogance arro-gance of certainty he might put on. She surrendered, and went to dress as he wished her to. From her own room she heard his voice raised angrily, and called a question, and he said: "We can't have the house full of these people staring at us all the time, Mary. I'm trying to send them away. And when you come out, bring something for Jennie to wear." She called to him: . "Don't scold so, George. You just frighten them. They're ready to love you if you give them a chance. After that, they'll do anything any-thing for you; but you'll have to go easily at first." Those first weeks after her return to the Island were for Mary pleasant pleas-ant enough. George maintained a reserve toward her which she waited wait-ed for time to break down, but she had the delight of seeing him happy in these scenes she loved. He was full of questions, intensely interested interest-ed in every aspect of the Island life, going to and fro along the many trails that led to the thatch-roofed houses of poles built on rock platforms plat-forms like their own. There were houses near theirs, and along the shore, and by the beach at the end of the bay. The beach ended on the farther side at a low cliff not easily to be climbed, which limited their explorations; but one night George spoke of the fact that there was a considerable traffic of canoes across the bay. "I notice men going over to the other side and landing there," he said. "But never any women. Why, Mary?" She remembered the explanation from her childhood here. "Women never go in the canoes," she said. "Canoes are tabu for them. The men go over to the grove. I know Father never went over." "Would they let me?" She agreed to ask Jarambo. He was firm in saying no, but reticent reti-cent in giving reasons. Mary told George: "I think they're entitled to some privacy, don't you? Just as we value ours?" He agreed not to force the issue. But Mary was more curious than he. Jarambo's manner had puzzled her. She did not believe the Islanders Island-ers had any secret temple consecrated conse-crated to pagan rites, as George suspected; and she questioned Ieni. What she heard was startling. Ieni said a white man with black hair lived across the bay, who had insisted in-sisted that his presence there be concealed from George and Mary. The white man talked very loud and he had a talking bird. The white man had come down out of the mountains the day after the Sunset sailed, with the bird on his shoulder; shoul-der; and he now lived happily in a house above the cliff beyond the beach. Mary recognized Corkran. He must have swum ashore from the Sunset the night before the ship sailed, and Captain Keen had known the uselessness of trying to capture the deserter. She was disturbed, and angry too. Corkran's presence, and the manner of his life as Ieni described it, would make George unhappy. un-happy. But as a result of Ieni's story, Mary herself sometimes walked toward the beach alone, thinking she might encounter the sailor. So Mary had persuaded George to sleep for a while every afternoon; and sometimes some-times she left him asleep and went abroad among these people who were her friends. It was on such an occasion that she saw the sailor again. Mary, emerging from the forest for-est saw Corkran on the sands, barefooted. bare-footed. In white pants and a ragged shirt lying with his head In a girl's lap, watching the swimmers. Mary was near before he saw her. Then he came scrambling to his feet in some dismay and touched his forehead fore-head respectfully. "Sorry, ma'am," said Corkran and looked past her toward the trail. "Is himself coming?" "No, he's asleep." "Don't be letting him know I'm here," he urged quickly. "It would bother him." She nodded. "Yes, it would. Why did you desert the ship, Corkran?" He flushed with embarrassment "Ma'am, when I knew himself and you would stay here, says I to myself: my-self: 'It's no place for the likes of them. They just might be needing a good fighting man some day.' So that night when the mate that was watching to see we were good little boys and stayed where we belonged looked the other way for a minute, I slid overside like an eel, ma'am; and into the jungle I went till the ship was gone. I know himself would not like my being about You'll never nev-er be telling him?" "I'd rather he didn't know," she agreed. "But you'd better keep away from the beach. He comes here sometimes." "Aye, that I will. It was a careless care-less chance I took today." A friendly impudence was in his tone. I knew you had been told I was here. I sent that word, so you'd know there was one to call on if you ever needed need-ed anyone." "I have my husband," she reminded re-minded him. "Aye, ma'am, and big and strong he is inside of him, in his heart and his head, ma'am. But sometimes a fist saves trouble and argument and I'm stronger in the fist than himself him-self will ever be." He said acutely: "You know, that little man has a hard time with himself, but there's stuff in him. He'll surprise us all one day, and never a bit surprised will I be!" She smiled, deeply pleased. "I think so too," she agreed. "I like him too." "We'll take care of him between us, ma'am," Corkran assured her. "You with him, and me here if I'm needed. But don't tell him I'm here." "We'll not see each other again," she said. "Only if you send for me." George for some reason found it hard to learn the Island tongue, so he could not yet preach to the Islanders. Is-landers. Mary sometimes thought he was homesick, because he often talked about his boyhood in Maine; and he liked to ask her about her years at school in New Bedford, about her uncle who was mate aboard the whaler, and her cousin, young Tommy Hanline. There were other occasions when George asked her questions about the Venturer, and about the men aboard her, and especially about Richard Corr. As though the secret thought in George's mind took shape in hers, she sometimes wondered whether she would have fallen in love with Richard if she had been older, if he had ever wooed her, if they had met again before she married mar-ried George. Now of course it would never happen; but she smiled sometimes, some-times, remembering the dreams she had used to dream when she was a child and Richard already a man. (TO BE COATIM ED) |