FullReads

You ate strange fruits (they grew a little sickening, after a day or two). You saw Duke, the Hawaiian world champion swimmer, come in on a surf-board, standing straight and slim and naked like a god of bronze, balancing miraculously on a plank carried in on the crest of a wave with the velocity of a steam engine. You saw Japanese women in tight kimonos and funny little stilted flapping footgear running to catch a street car; and you laughed at the incongruity of it. You made the three-day trip to the living volcano at Hilo and sat at the crater’s brink watching the molten lava lake tossing, hissing, writhing. You hung there, between horror and fascination.

“Certainly a pretty sight, isn’t it?” said her fellow travellers. “Makes the Grand Canyon look sick, I think, don’t you?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh, really!”

On her return from Hilo she saw him. A Vandyke beard; smouldering eyes; thin red lips; lean nervous hands; white flannel evening clothes; sunburned a rich brown. Maxine drew a long breath as if she had been running. It was after dinner. The broad veranda was filled with gayly gowned women; uniformed officers from the fort; tourists in white. They were drinking their after-dinner coffee, smoking, laughing. The Hawaiian orchestra made ready to play for the dancing on the veranda. They began to play. Their ukeleles throbbed and moaned. The musicians sang in their rich, melodious voices some native song of a lost empire and a dead king. It tore at your heart. You ached with the savage beauty of it. It was then she saw him. He was seated alone, smoking, drinking, watching the crowd with amused, uneager glance. She had seen him before. It was a certainty, this feeling. She had known him–seen him–before. Perhaps not in this life. Perhaps only in her dreams. But they had met.

She stared at him until her eye caught his. It was brazen, but she was shameless. Nothing mattered. This was no time for false modesty. Her eyes held his. Then, slowly, she rose, picked up her trailing scarf, and walked deliberately past him, glancing down at him as she passed. He half rose, half spoke. She went down the steps leading from the veranda to the court-yard, down this walk to the pier, down the pier to the very end, where the little roofed shelter lay out in the ocean, bathed in moonlight, fairylike, unreal. The ocean was a thing of molten silver. The sound of the wailing voices in song came to her on the breeze, agonizing in its beauty. There, beyond, lay Pearl Harbour. From the other side, faintly, you heard the music and laughter from the Yacht Club.

Maxine seated herself. The after-dinner couples had not yet strolled out. They were waiting for the dancing up there on the hotel veranda. She waited. She waited. She saw the glow of his cigar as he came down the pier, a tall, slim white figure in the moonlight. It was just like a novel. It was a novel, come to life. He stood a moment at the pier’s edge, smoking. Then he tossed his cigar into the water and it fell with a little s-st! He stood another moment, irresolutely. Then he came over to her.

“Nice night.”

In Okoochee you would have said, “Sir!” But not here. Not now. Not Maxine Pardieu. “Yes, isn’t it!”

The mellow moon fell full on him–bronzed, bearded, strangely familiar.

At his next question she felt a little faint. “Haven’t we–met before?”

She toyed with the end of her scarf. “You feel that, too?”

He nodded. He took a cigarette from a flat platinum case. “Mind if I smoke? Perhaps you’ll join me?” Maxine took a cigarette, uncertainly. Lighted it from the match he held. Put it to her lips. Coughed, gasped. “Maybe you’re not used to those. I smoke a cheap cigarette because I like ’em. Dromedaries, those are. Eighteen cents a package.”

Maxine held the cigarette in her unaccustomed fingers. Her eyes were on his face. “You said you thought–you felt–we’d met before?”

“I may be mistaken, but I never forget a face. Where are you from, may I ask?”

Maxine hesitated a moment. “Oklahoma.”

He slapped his leg a resounding thwack. “I knew it! I’m hardly ever mistaken. Name’s–wait a minute–Pardee, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But how—-“

“One of the best meals I ever had in my life, Miss Pardee. Two years ago, it was. I was lecturing on Thibet and the Far East.”

“Lecturing?” Her part of the conversation was beginning to sound a good deal like the dialogue in a badly written play.

“Yes, I’m Brainerd, you know. I thought you knew, when you spoke up there on the veranda.”

“Brainerd?” It was almost idiotic.

“Brainerd. Paul Brainerd, the travelogue man. I remember I gave you and your mother complimentary tickets to the lecture. I’ve got a great memory. Got to have, in my business. Let’s see, that town was—-“

“Okoochee,” faintly.

“Okoochee! That’s it! It’s a small world after all, isn’t it? Okoochee. Why, I’m on my way to Oklahoma now. I’m going to spend two months or more there, taking pictures of the vast oil fields, the oil wells. A new country. An Aladdin country; a new growth; one of the most amazing and picturesque bits in the history of our amazing country. History in the making. An empire over-night. Oklahoma! Well! What a relief, after war-torn Europe and an out-worn civilization.”

“But you–you’re from—-?”

“I’m from East Orange, New Jersey, myself. Got a nice little place down there that I wouldn’t swap for all the palaces of the kings. No sir!… Already? Well, yes, it is a little damp out here, so close to the water. Mrs. Brainerd won’t risk it. I’ll walk up with you. I’d like to have you meet her.”