My South Sea Sweetheart | Page 5

childish bravado, but I was never the boy-girl type that courts an actual

danger. As for Luke's horror of "being afraid" I saw it, and admired it,
but I did not understand it.
In truth, I felt then, as I felt on the morning when we rushed down into
the lagoon, that Luke was somehow or other getting away from me. He
was changing. How, I did not know. But it seemed to me that Luke and
I were somehow no longer one. We had been used to speak without
thinking, to talk as we breathed, to understand without talking. Now...
It came back right in the middle of our swim, as we landed together on
a coral "horsehead" to rest after a vigorous bout of the misnamed
"crawl." I was examining a grazed elbow with some attention, when I
looked up, and saw Luke's eyes fixed on my face.
"Don't look at me like that," I snapped.
"Like what?"
"Don't look at me as if you as if you saw me!"
"You talk a great deal of nonsense," he said calmly.
"There's more sense in it than in some of your sense," I retorted (more
wisely than I knew) and immediately did a sitting dive.
But I had been right. Luke was changed.
That very morning he amazed the household, already collected for
prayers in the main hall, by walking in clad only in a bathing towel, and
dropping the entire collection of his tunics and knickers at his
grandfather's feet.
"What's the meaning of this conduct?" demanded old Ivory, looking,
with the Bible in his hand, quite frightfully like an ancient Hebrew
lawgiver. I do not mean that there was any Jewish ancestry about the
Ivorys. I only mean that old Ivory was amazingly
Michael-Angeloesque, in moments of any stress.
"Grandfather," replied Luke, with a courage that turned me cold, "you

have dressed me like a girl or a child long enough. I want clothes like
yours and Mr. Hamilton's. Proper clothes."
"Do you know how old you are?" demanded the prophet with the Book,
in a windy voice.
"Of course. I'm fourteen and two weeks."
"And you want a set of grown-up clothes."
"Yes, sir." There was no "please" attached. I trembled. I thought old
Ivory would crush him with the mighty Book.
Ivory put down the Bible without a word, went, still without a word, to
my father's room, and returned with a shirt and trousers belonging to
him.
"I'll square with you, Hamilton," he said briefly. "Let Lorraine take up
the legs of these a bit. Mine are too big altogether."
Lorraine did take up the legs, after prayers. During prayers, Luke,
holding firmly on to his point, sat and knelt, draped in the bath towel
only. I whispered to him that he was just like the infant Samuel, and
had the satisfaction of seeing a vexed flash in his eyes. It was pleasant,
I thought, to make him feel. I would try it again in some other way.
Making people feel was sport except with Lorraine.
"... Be with us all for evermore. Hamilton!"
"What is it?"
"If Dara had heard, or joined in, a single word of the prayers, I am very
much mistaken."
"Is this accusation true?" asked father, pulling me to him, and pinching
my ear.
Ivory looked at him, and at me, disapprovingly.

"Train up a child..." he said. "I suppose breakfast's ready."
"There's fried flying fish. And honeycake," I said, jumping up and
down, and clapping my hands. "I love them both."
"You should never say you ' love ' things," chid Lorraine, sweeping on
in her black dress.
"But I do," I said. "I love everything in all the world sometimes. Things
to eat, and things to see, and things to feel, things to ... I wouldn't care
to live if I couldn't go on loving."
"Dara, Dara!" said my father, half reproachfully, half sadly. But he did
not check me; he never checked my childish running-on.
"When I go to the world," I said, scampering in front of him (we
always called the projected exodus of Luke and of myself "going to the
world--" I don't know why) "it will be delightful, for there will be new
things to love there."
"True, for you," said my father, somewhat sarcastically. No one else
took any notice at all. We were entering the dining hall now, and the
smell of the good things on the table seemed to occupy all thoughts....
I must tell about our dining hall. It was the glory of Hiliwa Dara, and
would have been the wonder of all that part of the Pacific, had tourists
ever come within five miles of it. But no one ever did; and so its
beauties were ours and ours alone.
Nowadays,