Adventure - Jack London (the false prince series .txt) 📗

had slapped Tudor’s face resoundingly and with far more vim and weight than when she had cuffed Gogoomy.

Sheldon had half-started up, then controlled himself and sunk back in his chair, so that by the time Joan entered the door his composure was recovered. Her right forearm was clutched tightly in her left hand, while the white cheeks, centred with the spots of flaming red, reminded him of the time he had first seen her angry.

“He hurt my arm,” she blurted out, in reply to his look of inquiry.

He smiled involuntarily. It was so like her, so like the boy she was, to come running to complain of the physical hurt which had been done her. She was certainly not a woman versed in the ways of man and in the ways of handling man. The resounding slap she had given Tudor seemed still echoing in Sheldon’s ears, and as he looked at the girl before him crying out that her arm was hurt, his smile grew broader.

It was the smile that did it, convicting Joan in her own eyes of the silliness of her cry and sending over her face the most amazing blush he had ever seen. Throat, cheeks, and forehead flamed with the rush of the shamed blood.

“He—he—” she attempted to vindicate her deeper indignation, then whirled abruptly away and passed out the rear door and down the steps.

Sheldon sat and mused. He was a trifle angry, and the more he dwelt upon the happening the angrier he grew. If it had been any woman except Joan it would have been amusing. But Joan was the last woman in the world to attempt to kiss forcibly. The thing smacked of the back stairs anyway—a sordid little comedy perhaps, but to have tried it on Joan was nothing less than sacrilege. The man should have had better sense. Then, too, Sheldon was personally aggrieved. He had been filched of something that he felt was almost his, and his lover’s jealousy was rampant at thought of this forced familiarity.

It was while in this mood that the screen door banged loudly behind the heels of Tudor, who strode into the room and paused before him. Sheldon was unprepared, though it was very apparent that the other was furious.

“Well?” Tudor demanded defiantly.

And on the instant speech rushed to Sheldon’s lips.

“I hope you won’t attempt anything like it again, that’s all— except that I shall be only too happy any time to extend to you the courtesy of my whale-boat. It will land you in Tulagi in a few hours.”

“As if that would settle it,” was the retort.

“I don’t understand,” Sheldon said simply.

“Then it is because you don’t wish to understand.”

“Still I don’t understand,” Sheldon said in steady, level tones. “All that is clear to me is that you are exaggerating your own blunder into something serious.”

Tudor grinned maliciously and replied, -

“It would seem that you are doing the exaggerating, inviting me to leave in your whale-boat. It is telling me that Berande is not big enough for the pair of us. Now let me tell you that the Solomon Islands is not big enough for the pair of us. This thing’s got to be settled between us, and it may as well be settled right here and now.”

“I can understand your fire-eating manners as being natural to you,” Sheldon went on wearily, “but why you should try them on me is what I can’t comprehend. You surely don’t want to quarrel with me.”

“I certainly do.”

“But what in heaven’s name for?”

Tudor surveyed him with withering disgust.

“You haven’t the soul of a louse. I suppose any man could make love to your wife—”

“But I have no wife,” Sheldon interrupted.

“Then you ought to have. The situation is outrageous. You might at least marry her, as I am honourably willing to do.”

For the first time Sheldon’s rising anger boiled over.

“You—” he began violently, then abruptly caught control of himself and went on soothingly, “you’d better take a drink and think it over. That’s my advice to you. Of course, when you do get cool, after talking to me in this fashion you won’t want to stay on any longer, so while you’re getting that drink I’ll call the boat’s-crew and launch a boat. You’ll be in Tulagi by eight this evening.”

He turned toward the door, as if to put his words into execution, but the other caught him by the shoulder and twirled him around.

“Look here, Sheldon, I told you the Solomons were too small for the pair of us, and I meant it.”

“Is that an offer to buy Berande, lock, stock, and barrel?” Sheldon queried.

“No, it isn’t. It’s an invitation to fight.”

“But what the devil do you want to fight with me for?” Sheldon’s irritation was growing at the other’s persistence. “I’ve no quarrel with you. And what quarrel can you have with me? I have never interfered with you. You were my guest. Miss Lackland is my partner. If you saw fit to make love to her, and somehow failed to succeed, why should you want to fight with me? This is the twentieth century, my dear fellow, and duelling went out of fashion before you and I were born.”

“You began the row,” Tudor doggedly asserted. “You gave me to understand that it was time for me to go. You fired me out of your house, in short. And then you have the cheek to want to know why I am starting the row. It won’t do, I tell you. You started it, and I am going to see it through.”

Sheldon smiled tolerantly and proceeded to light a cigarette. But Tudor was not to be turned aside.

“You started this row,” he urged.

“There isn’t any row. It takes two to make a row, and I, for one, refuse to have anything to do with such tomfoolery.”

“You started it, I say, and I’ll tell you why you started it.”

“I fancy you’ve been drinking,” Sheldon interposed. “It’s the only explanation I can find for your unreasonableness.”

“And I’ll tell you why you started it. It wasn’t silliness on your part to exaggerate this little trifle of love-making into something serious. I was poaching on your preserves, and you wanted to get rid of me. It was all very nice and snug here, you and the girl, until I came along. And now you’re jealous—that’s it, jealousy— and want me out of it. But I won’t go.”

“Then stay on by all means. I won’t quarrel with you about it. Make yourself comfortable. Stay for a year, if you wish.”

“She’s not your wife,” Tudor continued, as though the other had not spoken. “A fellow has the right to make love to her unless she’s your—well, perhaps it was an error after all, due to ignorance, perfectly excusable, on my part. I might have seen it with half an eye if I’d listened to the gossip on the beach. All Guvutu and Tulagi were laughing about it. I was a fool, and I certainly made the mistake of taking the situation on its assumed innocent face-value.”

So angry was Sheldon becoming that the face and form of the other seemed to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. Yet outwardly Sheldon was calm and apparently weary of the discussion.

“Please keep her out of the conversation,” he said.

“But why should I?” was the demand. “The pair of you trapped me into making a fool of myself. How was I to know that everything was not all right? You and she acted as if everything were on the square. But my eyes are open now. Why, she played the outraged wife to perfection, slapped the transgressor and fled to you. Pretty good proof of what all the beach has been saying. Partners, eh?—a business partnership? Gammon my eye, that’s what it is.”

Then it was that Sheldon struck out, coolly and deliberately, with all the strength of his arm, and Tudor, caught on the jaw, fell sideways, crumpling as he did so and crushing a chair to kindling wood beneath the weight of his falling body. He pulled himself slowly to his feet, but did not offer to rush.

“Now will you fight?” Tudor said grimly.

Sheldon laughed, and for the first time with true spontaneity. The intrinsic ridiculousness of the situation was too much for his sense of humour. He made as if to repeat the blow, but Tudor, white of face, with arms hanging resistlessly at his sides, offered no defence.

“I don’t mean a fight with fists,” he said slowly. “I mean to a finish, to the death. You’re a good shot with revolver and rifle. So am I. That’s the way we’ll settle it.”

“You have gone clean mad. You are a lunatic.”

“No, I’m not,” Tudor retorted. “I’m a man in love. And once again I ask you to go outside and settle it, with any weapons you choose.”

Sheldon regarded him for the first time with genuine seriousness, wondering what strange maggots could be gnawing in his brain to drive him to such unusual conduct.

“But men don’t act this way in real life,” Sheldon remarked.

“You’ll find I’m pretty real before you’re done with me. I’m going to kill you to-day.”

“Bosh and nonsense, man.” This time Sheldon had lost his temper over the superficial aspects of the situation. “Bosh and nonsense, that’s all it is. Men don’t fight duels in the twentieth century. It’s—it’s antediluvian, I tell you.”

“Speaking of Joan—”

“Please keep her name out of it,” Sheldon warned him.

“I will, if you’ll fight.”

Sheldon threw up his arms despairingly.

“Speaking of Joan—”

“Look out,” Sheldon warned again.

“Oh, go ahead, knock me down. But that won’t close my mouth. You can knock me down all day, but as fast as I get to my feet I’ll speak of Joan again. Now will you fight?”

“Listen to me, Tudor,” Sheldon began, with an effort at decisiveness. “I am not used to taking from men a tithe of what I’ve already taken from you.”

“You’ll take a lot more before the day’s out,” was the answer. “I tell you, you simply must fight. I’ll give you a fair chance to kill me, but I’ll kill you before the day’s out. This isn’t civilization. It’s the Solomon Islands, and a pretty primitive proposition for all that. King Edward and law and order are represented by the Commissioner at Tulagi and an occasional visiting gunboat. And two men and one woman is an equally primitive proposition. We’ll settle it in the good old primitive way.”

As Sheldon looked at him the thought came to his mind that after all there might be something in the other’s wild adventures over the earth. It required a man of that calibre, a man capable of obtruding a duel into orderly twentieth century life, to find such wild adventures.

“There’s only one way to stop me,” Tudor went on. “I can’t insult you directly, I know. You are too easy-going, or cowardly, or both, for that. But I can narrate for you the talk of the beach— ah, that grinds you, doesn’t it? I can tell you what the beach has to say about you and this young girl running a plantation under a business partnership.”

“Stop!” Sheldon cried, for the other was beginning to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. “You want a duel. I’ll give it to you.” Then his common-sense and dislike for the ridiculous asserted themselves, and he added, “But it’s absurd, impossible.”

“Joan and David—partners, eh? Joan and David—partners,” Tudor began to iterate and reiterate in a malicious and scornful chant.

“For heaven’s sake keep quiet, and I’ll let you have your way,” Sheldon cried. “I never saw a fool so bent on his folly.