Coral Sands/Chapter 18

HEY came back along the coral, scarcely speaking a word. The yacht lying out on the blue water showed the dinghy streamed astern on a line, but June had forgotten that it was waiting there to be rowed off for her. The old derelict canoe that they had salved yesterday was lying on the beach. Fernand got it afloat, and she stepped in and they paddled for the yacht.

Cyrus was leaning on the rail, puffing a cigar and watching them as they drew near. As they pulled along the landing stage and June stepped from the canoe onto the gratings, they felt his eyes on them.

They could say nothing to each other without being overheard, and the canoe pushed off, the girl turning for a momentary glance at it. Then she came up the companionway.

Cyrus had left the rail and walked aft, taking a chair under the awning. Not a word to her.

Was he angry with her? What had happened? She came and sat down close to him.

“So you're back,” said he.

“Yes, I'm back,” she replied. “I went to look at the reef pools.”

He flung away his cigar stump and proceeded to light another cigar. Then he picked up a magazine he had been reading and engaged himself with it.

The girl noticed the curious fact that he was reading it upside down. Then she rose and went below. Cyrus was angry with her.

As a matter of fact, he was. June had become to him not only a daughter but a chum, a necessity.

The thought of a man taking her away from him had troubled him at times, but never much. She wasn't the marrying sort, so he fancied; anyhow, he knew her opinion of the young society men she had come in contact with and her predeliction [sic] for the men who did things with their hands as well as their heads. She was a sensible girl—as though sense had anything to do with the heart. If at some future date she ever did marry, it would be with some serious and sensible man, wealthy of course, and of good repute, and it would be a long time hence, when he, Cyrus, would be older and caring less for things, and maybe she would have children, and he would be a grandfather to them—and they would all live together.

In this manner he had doped himself when the thought of June and marriage came together in his mind. No particular man had ever given him much uneasiness, a young American had shown her attention, but there was nothing in it, and an Englishman had proposed to her and been turned down. June had told him of the business. “I'm not going to marry any one ever,” she said. “I want to be free.” And he believed her.

Well, all of a sudden into her life had come disturbance. Just as an animal scents danger, or sees fate in the form of a distant hunter, so of a sudden yesterday and without any very apparent reason, he had taken fright.

The thing was absolutely preposterous. Yet something in her manner, something in the way she spoke of Fernand—this scamp who had taken her into danger—something perhaps telepathic had turned him against the very name of this man.

And to-day, awakening from his siesta, he had found her gone ashore, and she had come back with Fernand!

“Been to see the reef pools with him.” And she had never said she was going ashore for such a purpose. She must have arranged it yesterday—and not said a word!

Cyrus, with the real truth of the situation hidden from him, had some cause to grumble. On top of everything else, there was the personal appearance of Fernand. There was no denying that the chap was good looking—one of those good-looking scamps that women run after. He ought to have been a film star.

He was a boatman—worse, a canoeman; fished for his living. Why, great Scott!—the idea that there might perchance be any love between him and June made Cyrus drop his magazine.

What would San Francisco say? “Cy Hardanger's girl has gone and married a Kanaka boatman.” That is what Frisco would say, what Milligan and White and Delmage and the rest at the club would say.

However, there was no use in his losing his hair prematurely; there might be absolutely nothing in it. So, calling the steward for a cocktail, he took his magazine and began reading it, this time right side up.

Dinner passed off that evening as if nothing had happened. June was strung up; she talked and chatted with the surface of her mind, while deep down her subconscious and semisubconscious self was brooding on the events that might be taking place on shore.

Had she done wrong in not trying to stop Fernand in his design to fight these two men, these two evil creatures worse than any beasts, but still men? Suppose now, Fernand were to kill two tigers that threatened Cyrus—would that be wrong? No. Yet these men were worse than tigers, and he was going to use fair play and give each a fighting chance. Was that wrong? No—and yet—and yet—so strong is the effect on the civilized mind of the sophistry that, bred of the law, differentiates between crimes that in the sight of Heaven must be equal, she felt a doubt.

These men were not out to kill Cyrus, but to rob him. Death was being loosed on them because they were robbers, blackmailers—death! Well, were they not merciless? Were they not indeed threatening Cyrus with what was as bad as death? So she argued with herself while talking to the other about indifferent matters.

Curiously, she never said to herself: “What if they kill Fernand?” So absolute was her confidence in the power and personality of the man she loved, that fear for his safety did not trouble her. He was the sea eagle pursuing the fish. The hawk pursuing the carrion crow.

After dinner they passed to the deckhouse smoking room where coffee was served.

When they were alone, Cyrus, who had been holding himself back all dinner time, turned to June.

“Say,” said he, “I didn't know you were going on the reef this afternoon. Woke up and found you gone. Did that young chap ask you to go with him?”

“Yes.”

“Asked you yesterday?”

“No, this morning.”

“But he wasn't here this morning.”

“Yes, he was, before you were up. I was on deck and he came along in his canoe and asked me.”

“I think you might have told me.”

June did not reply. How could she? How could she say: “He asked me to go because he wanted to tell me about two men who are threatening you.” To tell that would be to reveal everything, and this business was now Fernand's; she had acquiesced in his determination; he was risking all, and she had no right to tell any one, not even Cyrus.

“I want to be straight with you,” said Cyrus. “You know I never bother how you come and go, but seems to me—seems to me”

“Yes?”

“Seems to me—well, not to put too fine a point on it, this young chap would be better attending to his fishing than coming round the yacht like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like this—taking you off and risking your life. You and he were all day yesterday together and you come back praising him up. See here, June; you're young and I'm old and I've seen a lot of the world—and men are men and women are women, and I've been worried lest you'd suddenly taken a liking for this boy. There, it's out.”

“I have,” said June calmly.

Cyrus got up, then he sat down with his hands on his knees, gave a laugh and, turning sidewise in his easy-chair, sought in his pocket for the little cigar cutter he always carried. He chose a cigar from the box at his elbow and lit it and blew a cloud of smoke.

“June,” said he, “if you mean what you say, this is pure craziness.”

“How?”

“Oh, how! You know very well that I've never worried about you, given you a free hand, trusting to your sense, and you've never disappointed me.”

“And how have I disappointed you now?” asked she.

“How! Well, look at him.”

“Who?”

“This chap.”

“Yes.”

“He's harpooned you. You admit it, and I say again, look at him, a common boatman.”

“He is not common and he is not a boatman,” said June, “and he hasn't harpooned me. He is a man different from any other man I have ever met. You needn't go on like that. Dad, I'm going to talk and you've got to listen. Only it's you, I'd say you'd insulted me by talking about my being harpooned. I have eyes and I hope sense. Fernand is not a modern man; he is a being who has grown up outside the world of men here where there is little else than sea. He is simple and straight, primitive and honest. I've heard you say yourself that one grain of honesty was worth a ton of cleverness.”

“I was talking of politicians.”

“No matter; it's true of all men. There is nothing else to a man in my opinion”

“But heavens above!” broke in Cyrus—“you've only known this fellow a few hours. This is your impression, but what do you really know about him, after all?”

“I know that he is capable of risking his life to save another man from injury.”

“He told you that?”

“Never mind. I know it.”

Cyrus smoked for a moment in silence. Then he said:

“I stand to you in the place of father and mother. I have a right to interfere all I can if I see things shaping against your future interests and happiness. Unless you get a clutch on this, you will be carried away. A momentary infatuation may damn a whole life. Granted that this man may be everything you say, you have known him only a few hours. Leaving that aside, the whole position is monstrous. He is not of our class. I reckon I'm no snob, but there's no getting away from class. I'd be a fool and a fathead and unfaithful to the trust your mother placed in me if I did not put my foot down now, definitely. I will never consent to this folly.”

June rose up, paused for a moment as if about to speak, and then, without a word, left the smoke room and went below to her own cabin.

It was their first semblance of a quarrel. Cyrus, left to himself, sat with a frown on his forehead, deep in meditation.

It had to be done. This insanity had to be met and fought. She would get over it in time, and better to hurt her now than to let her injure herself beyond recovery. That canoeman! That confounded reef-scraping scalawag! Was there ever such a complication?

A knock came to the door and a quartermaster entered.

“If you please, sir, there's a man come on board by name of Yakoff. He says it's by appointment about some pearls.”

Cyrus remembered the pearl man. He hesitated a moment, half disinclined to be bothered by the matter. Then he said:

“Show him in.”