My South Sea Sweetheart | Page 2

whipped them into life had blown itself away.
Old Ivory settled himself more comfortably on the wrack-filled cushion
of his seat.
"It's just that looking for Paradise that does the mischief," he said. "I'm
too old to deny that you see the Paradise business once in a way oh, in
a very long way indeed! But it's a million to one sort of chance at the
best. As for it's being worth any risk, that's poppycock. And the usual
love match isn't a risk at all, it's a practical certainty of the wrong kind.
Marriage is the great danger of life. Nature has to make us drunk to
drive us into it. When I think of all the fine men I've seen spoiled--" He
looked at his great-grandson. I thought he checked a sigh.
"And all the fine women made miserable by brutes," added father. His
eyes were on me as he spoke.

"How typical you are of your ages!" commented Lorraine. "Mr. Ivory
all for the man, as they used to be; Arthur more for the women, as
people are now."
"What are you for, Lorraine?" I asked curiously.
"The children," she said, with more sadness in her tone than I could
believe altogether natural there is such a temptation in having a golden
voice! "We three are wrecks of one sort and another, but you two are
boats still in harbor. You'll have to face the gales some day."
For it was understood that I, and Luke, were going to school going to
see the world in a very few years.
"I shall just love to face the gales," I said.
"They won't be wanting," answered Lorraine.
"Now what do you mean by that?" asked father, alert to any tone of
disparagement directed towards me.
For answer, my aunt took my small face in her hands, and silently
turned it up to father's view. I do not know what he saw in it, to make
him look so long. A strange light dawned in his eyes.
"Yes, Lorraine," he said, as she released me. "You're right; she is." And
he drew a long, long sigh.
"Well," he said presently, "so much the wiser I think myself."
"I think," spoke Lorraine, "that there's never any use in trying to play
chess with Fate."
"Poppycock!" exploded old Ivory again.
It was clear to me by this time and I think to Luke also, though he did
not look from his arrow that our elders were talking secrets of some
kind. Curiosity began to burn me. But, with the cunning of childhood, I
kept all expression out of my face, in the hope of hearing more.

"Luke," spoke old Ivory from his throne, "go to bed."
The boy rose instantly, and put his knife and his arrow on a shelf.
"Good night, Miss Hamilton," he said. "Good night, Dara. Good night,
grandfather. Good night, Mr. Hamilton."
He walked off down the dark corridor at the far end of the cave without
a backward glance.
"Hamilton," said old Ivory, "you spoil her."
"Ivory," countered father, in his pleasant voice
I have never heard sweeter tones than father's and Lorraine's "you're too
hard with him, sometimes."
"If I am, it's in your interests. Yours. I wish you considered mine as
carefully."
"I don't think they're neglected. And there's five years or so to look
round in, at the very least."
"Luke's like our family," observed Ivory, with what appeared to be an
abrupt change of subject. "A mighty good fourteen. Mark was ready for
college at sixteen, I remember, if they would have taken him so early. I
was preaching at eighteen. As for Matthew my son he was precocious
enough in other ways. He'd raise the devil in the village, before he was
seventeen, with well, I hope Luke won't follow the rule of a
skip-a-generation. Rather skip two, and model after me. But he's an
Ivory, all right. We start soon, and keep going along, if you don't kill
us."
I could not make anything interesting out of all this, but so convinced
was I that there was something interesting in it, if one could only track
it out, that I feigned sleep, and lay with my face buried in my long hair,
on the comfortable fire-warmed sand beside my father. I knew he liked
to have me thus sleeping near him, and I hoped to gain an unobserved

half hour.
But I had reckoned without Lorraine.
"Get up," she said, in a low, penetrating whisper; "don't sham, or I'll tell
your father."
At this (though I could cheerfully have slapped her) I thought fit to
awake by slow degrees, stretch, yawn, and rise to my feet. I knew she
would carry out her threat if I persisted, and my father was not to