My South Sea Sweetheart | Page 2

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 be trifled with, on any question of lying or trickery.
So I bade them good night in proper order father first, then Lorraine, then old Mr. Ivory and went off to my room, leaving them sitting there round the great driftwood fire, with the smoke springing up into the