Kat and Copy-Cat/Chapter 9
THERE surely was plenty of sunshine the next morning when Dick came over the rail and found a very bright-eyed girl awaiting him, already decked out in the stephanotis and mulang lei. It someway seemed as if all of the clouds had been cleared away and everything was ready to begin a new day and a new regime of happiness.
"Well," said Dick, still holding her hands after their greetings, "I've got it all worked out to a finish, and I can tell you now that it is as pretty a little scheme as you ever saw; and all that you have to do is to fall in with it and watch it spin along to success with us right in the middle of it. Now sit down here and listen while I hold forth;" and he drew her down beside him on a wide wicker divan. "To begin with, what am I going to call you? You are no longer Evalani, and I can't possibly go back to the chilly distance of calling you Mrs. Malua."
"I was always called Jean," said the girl, smiling.
"All right, Jean it is, then; and now I'll christen you;" which he proceeded to do after the most approved fashion. "Now, the next thing: I gather that the real Evalani is homesick and wants to come home."
"Oh, she is, she is!" said Jean, "but she didn't let us know until recently, and there didn't seem to be any way. I couldn't confess to my people and go back home, because my marriage to David Malua had been under an assumed name and I didn't know whether the marriage was valid or not; and if it were not, then it would make my baby publicly—nameless. And besides, when the gossips found out that my baby was not a monster, they might think—what my husband did. The Morton girls would manage that. They might even make my mother think that, for their own purposes."
"Now, my dear," said Dick, tenderly, "give that imagination of yours a little rest. It's much too active."
"Of course! Oh, I know I'm foolish and full of notions; but my brain is all tangled up with thinking and wondering and trying to find a way when there isn't any. You see, I couldn't let Evalani come home and go away myself while David is so little, for there would be no way for me to support myself until he is big enough for school."
"But I asked you to let me take you both away," reproached Dick.
"I know," said Jean, "but I couldn't involve you in this terrible mix-up, and, besides, we have only just learned that Evalani wants to come home. Before that I couldn't ask her to give up her career just because I wanted to have another chance in my own life. Grandma's daughter in town has died since I came up here, and there was no one for the old woman to stay with. You see, there really wasn't any way, then."
"Well, there's going to be a way now," said Dick, decisively; "And we're going to be traveling on it mighty suddenly. I've got plans all worked out and we're going to get matters fixed up so quickly that it will make you dizzy. Now listen. To begin with, you are going to write to Evalani today, so that I can take the letter down to the boat tomorrow morning, and tell her to be ready to start for home in a fortnight. Next, I'm going to book you and the boy for San Francisco on the next boat out. I'm going to book you merely as Mrs. D. Malua, and nobody seeing the list will think anything about it, for there are plenty of Maluas here, without counting you in. You will go aboard early and keep to your room on the voyage, and when you get to the Coast you are going to a big, rambling old hotel in Berkeley, where you will stay quietly until I come for you, which will be just as quickly as I can get there via Los Angeles, for I am going to obviate any possible opening for Mrs. Grundy to exercise her tongue, should anything ever leak out, which it won't. Also, I shall see your sister and be sure that she is going to be on the job at the proper moment. And then, when that is attended to, I am coming post haste to Berkeley and we are going to be married and I am going to legally adopt the youngster, pronto. And then we are going to take a nice, little honeymoon wherever you most want to go; but I suggest that it be a motor trip up and down the Coast, just to such points as the notion calls us."
"Yes, but" began Jean.
"No buts about it!" proceeded Dick; "I'm not through yet. We have still to fix up the job for our coadjutor. As soon as we are off, Bert Sands will go and tell your mother that I have alighted upon a clue regarding her daughter and that I believe that she is still alive, and that I have gone to the Coast to follow it up, and will report just as soon as I have anything definite. And then I'll cable from Los Angeles and say that I have found her and that she is all right and that she will return home inside of a month. And then we'll follow that up with a letter to your mother, giving a glimpse of your life over there during these years, and that you have been married and lost your husband, but that you have a son whom you will bring home with you;—and then everything will be all set. And then, in the next letter, we will tell how we have fallen in love with each other and are going to be married right off and come home together. And so there you are!" and Dick sat back proudly and regarded his companion.
"But what about Evalani?" asked Jean, anxiously.
"Just as easy as can be," promulgated Dick. "Bert will be the circulating medium and she will confidentially give forth the fact here and there that Evalani has gone to the mainland with her poor little boy, (Nobody but the Morton girls know but that he is everything that he isn't), to put him in some school for such kiddies. And thus exit the poor little boy who never existed and enter David Harris, your son and my adopted son. And then, when Evalani comes back, supposedly relieved of the care and worry of the unfortunate child, she can gradually take her place again among her old friends; and will probably eventually marry and live happily ever after, which is exactly what we are going to do. Now then, young lady, pick some flaws in that scheme, if you can find any to pick."
Jean was smiling by now and her face had come alight with the hope of actual relief from her bondage of unhappiness. "It does look possible at every point, doesn't it?" she exclaimed. "It looks perfectly splendid. Oh, do you suppose that it really, really will work out?"
"It positively is going to work out," said Dick. "Just you watch it. Now you run along and write that letter to Evalani and get it out of your system, and I'll take it down first thing in the morning and at the same time I'll go and see Bert and put her onto her part of the job."
"Have we got to tell her—everything?" asked Jean, deprecatingly.
"Every solitary thing," said Dick, decisively. "She's got to be our right-hand man in this game, and she can't go it blind. Besides, she's deserving. The Lord knows what would have happened to us on several occasions, if it hadn't been for her; but she'll never breathe a word excepting what we tell her to. I predict that you and she are going to be wonderful friends as time goes on."
"It won't be my fault if we are not," said Jean, with conviction.
Dick rose up. "All right; run along and write your letter, so that it won't encroach upon our evening, and so tomorrow things will really be under way."
It was still fairly early on the following morning when Dick drove out to the Sands' home at Waikiki. Bert had just come in from a swim and was looking particularly boyish with the rings of damp black hair clinging to her small round head. "Well," she greeted him, "how goes it?"
"Fine!" said Dick. "Wonderful!"
Bert grinned. "Got it all fixed up, have you?"
"Got what?" asked Dick, somewhat chap-fallen.
"When are the solemn rites to be performed?"
"Oh, I say!" said Dick, "Do you mean that you knew that I wasThat I"
"That you were head over heels in love with the girl? Well, for goodness sake, I'm not deaf and blind and—lolo, am I?"
"Not that anybody knows of!" said Dick, emphatically. "I would rise to state that you are just about as far from that description as anyone that I ever knew."
"Thank you so much," said Bert, with mock smugness. "Well, tell us about the happy circumstances and what I can do to help along."
Dick spoke seriously. "To tell the truth, you can do a lot to help along and that is just what I have come to see you about; but there will be a lot of things to explain to you first."
"Oh, not so much!" said Bert, airily. "But go on; when and where is the lady going to make her debut in her own proper person?
Dick slumped back in his chair flabbergasted. "Well, I'll be jiggered!" he said. "How long have you known about that?"
"Ever since I saw you working like a Trojan to bring Mrs. Walters's blessed little grandson back from over the range."
"But how did you know then?"
"My little friend," said Bert, "I have been spending about one third of my time with that dear lady ever since we came back from Japan. It has bothered the Kat sisters a lot, but not so much as if they hadn't known that I am already beyond the reach of penury, and therefore had no ulterior motive. However, I have been with her so much that I know every line of her face and every expression of her eyes; and when you told me that the youngster was the child of the girl up on the mountain, and the youngster lifted his lids and looked at me; why there wasn't any guessing to do, it was all an open book."
"But I never thought of it."
"You don't know Mrs. Morton well; and anyway, you were too close to the problem to get any perspective."
"But why didn't you tell me?"
"And let you get things all messed up before it was time? No indeed! And besides, it wasn't my secret, nor my business to do any talking until matters worked around to the right point. You say that they have all come out right now; then what have you got to fuss about?"
"Nothing," said Dick, devoutly. "Absolutely nothing. The world is mine." And then he proceeded to set forth in detail the part which they were hoping for Bert to play in the planned return.
When he had finished, Bert grinned her approval. "Perfect!" she said. "You certainly have done yourself proud, the way that you have it all conjured out, and I ask only one thing by way of return for my valuable services in the matter."
"Name it!" said Dick.
"That mine may be the voice to break the news to the Kat sisters, when the time comes."
"Granted with enthusiasm," said Dick. "Nobody could do it so perfectly as you, and I only wish that I might be there to see."
"Well, you can't," said Bert; "You'll be busy elsewhere; but oh, I shall have such a good time! As soon as I have announced Jean's discovery to Mrs. Walters, then I shall call upon them and break the news delightfully. It will be gorgeous! Of course they will have to pretend that they are tickled pink; but under the surface they will be getting ready on the instant to start some fussy tales; and I shall calmly tell them that if they let out a squeak of any kind I will tell Auntie the whole story from A to Z, including the fact that they knew where Jean was and still let the mother suffer by their silence; and also that they tried to drown her beloved grandchild, and likewise to do away with her beloved daughter; and if I told all that narrative, it would be good-bye for them to any hopes whatever of profiting by way of legacies from her. Doesn't that sound perfectly scrumptious?"
"It does," said Dick. "Go ahead and gloat all you want to; it's coming to you; and meanwhile, I must be getting back home."
"Of course you must," said Bert, with another of her boyish grins. "Run along. Fate has been pretty kind to you after all. Give the lady my love and tell her that I'm counting upon exchanging a lot of reminiscences with her some day. Good-bye."
And so Dick, the stage all set, went back up the mountain, glowing with satisfaction and anticipation.
The following week was a busy one, with Jean's preparations for departure. The old grandmother, pathetically happy over the prospect of the return of her beloved grandchild, hovered about eagerly in her efforts to assist, forgetting her bitterness toward Jean, whom she had childishly accused for many months, of keeping Evalani away. And Dick was no less eager and perhaps only a trifle less of a hindrance. It was on the last night before Jean's sailing, that they sat in the starlight on the lanai and listened to the music coming to them over the leagues of water, and again there came the voices of the Hawaiian boys in the old songs that the two loved so dearly; and while they were singing, Jean whispered to her lover, "Evalani should have gotten my letter today. I wonder if it has made her happy."
"Not as happy as we are," whispered Dick; but just then, as if in answer came once more the sweet voice of the woman singer whom they had not heard again since the weird chant of a week ago. Eagerly they bent forward to listen, and instead of the plaintive chant, there came a gay, rollicking melody sung in tones so full of joy and ecstacy that the very notes seemed to dance with delight.
And then, when the last joyous cadence had died away, came an eager, tremulous, long drawn "A-l-o-h-a!"
And from the deep shadow in the far corner of the lanai came an answering call in the grandmother's cracked and quavering voice; "Aloha! Aloha nui!"