The Turtles of Tasman | Page 8

room. He had never
dreamed such potencies resided in music. And then, and he
remembered it with shame, he had stolen back outside to listen, and she
had known, and once more she had devilled him.
When Mary asked him what he thought of Polly's playing, an unbidden
contrast leaped to his mind. Mary's music reminded him of church. It
was cold and bare as a Methodist meeting house. But Polly's was like
the mad and lawless ceremonial of some heathen temple where incense
arose and nautch girls writhed.
"She plays like a foreigner," he answered, pleased with the success and
oppositeness of his evasion.
"She is an artist," Mary affirmed solemnly. "She is a genius. When
does she ever practise? When did she ever practise? You know how I
have. My best is like a five-finger exercise compared with the
foolishest thing she ripples off. Her music tells me things--oh, things
wonderful and unutterable. Mine tells me, 'one-two-three,
one-two-three.' Oh, it is maddening! I work and work and get nowhere.
It is unfair. Why should she be born that way, and not I?"
"Love," was Frederick's immediate and secret thought; but before he
could dwell upon the conclusion, the unprecedented had happened and
Mary was sobbing in a break-down of tears. He would have liked to
take her in his arms, after Tom's fashion, but he did not know how. He
tried, and found Mary as unschooled as himself. It resulted only in an
embarrassed awkwardness for both of them.
The contrasting of the two girls was inevitable. Like father like
daughter. Mary was no more than a pale camp-follower of a gorgeous,
conquering general. Frederick's thrift had been sorely educated in the

matter of clothes. He knew just how expensive Mary's clothes were, yet
he could not blind himself to the fact that Polly's vagabond makeshifts,
cheap and apparently haphazard, were always all right and far more
successful. Her taste was unerring. Her ways with a shawl were
inimitable. With a scarf she performed miracles.
"She just throws things together," Mary complained. "She doesn't even
try. She can dress in fifteen minutes, and when she goes swimming she
beats the boys out of the dressing rooms." Mary was honest and
incredulous in her admiration. "I can't see how she does it. No one
could dare those colours, but they look just right on her."
"She's always threatened that when I became finally flat broke she'd set
up dressmaking and take care of both of us," Tom contributed.
Frederick, looking over the top of a newspaper, was witness to an
illuminating scene; Mary, to his certain knowledge, had been primping
for an hour ere she appeared.
"Oh! How lovely!" was Polly's ready appreciation. Her eyes and face
glowed with honest pleasure, and her hands wove their delight in the
air. "But why not wear that bow so and thus?"
Her hands flashed to the task, and in a moment the miracle of taste and
difference achieved by her touch was apparent even to Frederick.
Polly was like her father, generous to the point of absurdity with her
meagre possessions. Mary admired a Spanish fan--a Mexican treasure
that had come down from one of the grand ladies of the Court of the
Emperor Maximilian. Polly's delight flamed like wild-fire. Mary found
herself the immediate owner of the fan, almost labouring under the
fictitious impression that she had conferred an obligation by accepting
it. Only a foreign woman could do such things, and Polly was guilty of
similar gifts to all the young women. It was her way. It might be a lace
handkerchief, a pink Paumotan pearl, or a comb of hawksbill turtle. It
was all the same. Whatever their eyes rested on in joy was theirs. To
women, as to men, she was irresistible.

"I don't dare admire anything any more," was Mary's plaint. "If I do she
always gives it to me."
Frederick had never dreamed such a creature could exist. The women
of his own race and place had never adumbrated such a possibility. He
knew that whatever she did--her quick generosities, her hot
enthusiasms or angers, her birdlike caressing ways--was unbelievably
sincere. Her extravagant moods at the same time shocked and
fascinated him. Her voice was as mercurial as her feelings. There were
no even tones, and she talked with her hands. Yet, in her mouth,
English was a new and beautiful language, softly limpid, with an
audacity of phrase and tellingness of expression that conveyed
subtleties and nuances as unambiguous and direct as they were
unexpected from one of such childlikeness and simplicity. He woke up
of nights and on his darkened eyelids saw bright memory-pictures of
the backward turn of her vivid, laughing face.
IV
Like daughter like father. Tom, too, had been irresistible. All the