The Amazing Inheritance Part 17

"I'm glad, too," murmured Tessie, quite ready to forget Joe Cary. "I don't care what Joe Cary said! And I am going to try and be a good queen and do my duty by my people! Be simple and honest, is what Madame Cabot said."

"Of course you are! But what is there in this Sons of Sunshine business?" curiously. "Anything?"

"I'm afraid there is!" A little frown broke the pretty curve of Tessie's eyebrows. "It's true. Joe is right that some of the people want a native ruler. They rebelled against Uncle Pete, but he kept them down. Now that he is gone they don't want a white queen. They aren't the best people, Ka-kee-ta said," she explained apologetically. "They're the--the lower cla.s.ses. And they haven't seen me! They don't know how I plan to help them!"

"They'll adore you the minute they do see you!" declared Mr. Bill unsteadily.

"Oh, I hope they will!" faltered blushing Tessie.

"Of course they will! Didn't I?" Mr. Bill caught her hand and squeezed it hard.

XIV

Joe Cary's rude and reckless words had an effect, although perhaps not the one he had hoped. But they did make Tessie think of something besides Mr. Bill, her new frocks and her new pleasures. The interruption of the Evergreen banquet did not bother her long, for that was a problem for the store detective to solve. But Joe Cary made her realize that the Sunshine Islands were more than a throne and a bank for their queen. It was odd that, when Tessie returned to the Waloo, she should find Granny reading one of the big books in which there was an entire chapter devoted to "The Pearl of the Pacific--The Sunshine Islands." Granny looked up from a picture of sea and palms when Tessie came in.

"Tessie," she began at once, "are you sure you're going to like being a queen for a lot of naked cannibals?"

"Why, Granny!" Tessie stood still and stared at her. What did Granny mean? Of course Joe Cary had been talking to her, and for a moment Tessie hated him. She didn't care if he had been her only friend when she was a salesgirl at the Evergreen. She quite forgot that he had taken her to a moving-picture show once in two weeks. "What's the matter now?" she asked impatiently. "Have people been complaining about Ka-kee-ta again?" For there were people who had complained of Ka-kee-ta, and it must be confessed that it was disconcerting to a timid woman, or even a brave man, to walk down a dimly lighted corridor and find oneself face to face with a bare-footed colored man, in loosely fitting blue clothes; a man with a tattooed nose and frizzled hair stiffened with cocoanut oil, and carrying a shining ax. Tessie herself would have shrieked if she had come upon such a man in a dimly lighted corridor. As it was, she often felt like screaming when she saw him, and just now, after her talk with Joe, she was impatient. "What is it now, Granny?"

she wanted to know. A lot of her nervous impatience was in her voice as she stood in front of Granny, and there was more nervous impatience in her frowning little face.

Granny looked up and sighed as she saw the slim little creature in a very modish frock and a very modish hat. Tessie was very, very different from the shabby little girl in the cheap black cotton dress, but that was no reason why Granny should sigh mournfully as she looked at her.

Surely Granny did not want Tessie to be the shabby little girl of those old days!

"I was just wondering," Granny said meekly, "as I read this book if you had learned to eat raw fish yet?"

An angry flush stained Tessie's face, and she stamped her high-heeled shoe.

"No, I don't like raw fish!" she cried stormily. "And I don't ever expect to like raw fish! Why should I? Can't I have somebody cook fish for me?" she demanded haughtily.

"In the Sunshine Islands it's the custom to eat it raw," Granny said very gently, for she could recognize the beginning of a tantrum as well as any one. "And there isn't anything that's harder to change than a custom. When I read about the food and some other things in this book, and looked at a few of these pictures, I got to wondering how we are going to like those islands and the customs the people have there. You know, Tessie," she went on, when Tessie said never a word, but just stood sulkily tapping the rug with the pointed toe of her shoe, "when you came home from the Evergreen that day and told me about your Uncle Pete and how he had died and made you a queen, I couldn't think of anything but how wonderful it was. My boy a king! And my girl a queen!

And I pictured those Sunshine Islands like England and Italy, and perhaps a little like the United States, even if the United States ain't got crowned kings and queens. It was so wonderful that I was all puffed up like bread sponge. But since we came to the Waloo, and I got so much time, no washing or cooking to do, I've looked into some of these books and talked to Ka-kee-ta as much as a body can talk to a critter that don't know more than the rudiments of real language, and I can't find that these islands are like any place I ever heard of. I don't know as we're going to like them. The folks don't all wear clothes," she confided to Tessie in a dubious whisper.

"I can teach them to wear clothes," Tessie said coldly. "I've talked to Mr. Kingley, and he's going to send me some clothes from the Evergreen.

We're going to begin with bathing suits."

"Mr. Kingley's a real business man, ain't he? Always thinking of the Evergreen!" Granny had to admire Mr. Kingley's ability to think of his business at all times. She went on a bit sarcastically. "And is young Mr. Bill going to take charge and open a branch in the islands? It won't pay in your lifetime, Tessie. You mustn't count on it! It'll take more than Mr. Kingley's say-so to put even bathing suits on folks that don't wear anything but a bit of fringe around their waists. And it ain't only clothes," she added mournfully. "It's white ants and centipedes and snakes and sharks and----"

"For goodness sakes, Granny!" Tessie jumped when Granny spoke of sharks, and she was almost at the end of her patience when there was a loud thump on the door. "I do wish," exclaimed Tessie, glad of a legitimate reason to let Granny see that she had reached the end of her patience, "that Ka-kee-ta would learn to knock. I hate to hear him hit the door with his old ax!"

"That's just what I've been telling you," began Granny. "You ain't going to like the Sunshine Islands' way of doing things."

But Tessie did not listen to her. She walked to the door and threw it wide open. "Ka-kee-ta," she began sternly, but instead of facing Ka-kee-ta she looked at a fat man with a light, oh very light, hair, and a big nose. "Oh," Tessie murmured feebly. "Oh!"

"Queen Teresa?" asked the stranger eagerly, although he knew very well that she was Queen Teresa. "Of the Sunshine Islands?" He came into the room and shut the door carefully behind him.

A great hope dashed into Tessie's mind. He was the special representative from the Sunshine Islands, the man who was to escort her to her kingdom in obedience to the orders in her Uncle Pete's last will and testament. Of course he was the special representative. In spite of the fact that he made Tessie think that he must be made of tubs, large and small, neatly piled upon one another. He had an air of great a.s.surance and greater authority. He could tell her all about the islands and that it would not be necessary for her to eat native food nor to have Ka-kee-ta bang on the door with his ax. He would tell her everything. He looked as full of information as a complete set of encyclopedia. And when he spoke, she was sure he was the special representative, for he said smilingly, ingratiatingly, "I have come to talk to you about the Sunshine Islands."

"Is that so!" exclaimed the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. She looked triumphantly at Granny. "Won't you sit down?" She hesitated in choosing a chair for herself and at last took one which stood near Granny. After she was seated in it she moved it even closer to Granny as if she wanted her comfort or protection.

"You must think it is very romantic to be a queen," went on the tublike man, still smiling pleasantly. "And it is romantic! I suppose you picture your kingdom as another England or Spain or----"

"I don't," interrupted Granny. "Not any more. I might as well confess that at first I did that very thing, but I've just read a few things in these books about the Sunshine Islands, and I know now that they ain't a bit like England or even Spain. I was just telling Tessie--the queen--that when Ka-kee-ta knocked on the door with his ax."

"You are quite right!" He smiled at Granny and nodded his white thatched head. "But I can tell you much more than you will find in any book. To begin with, the pleasant parts of the islands are beautiful, very beautiful. They are not large; you could crowd the half a dozen into the state of Minnesota and have room to spare. But the climate! Ah, the climate! It is perfect! The islands are south of Hawaii, you know, but nearer the United States--nearer Mexico would be more correct--but it is the same thing. They are coral islands with cocoanut palms and banana and breadfruit trees. The villages are made up of palm leaf huts with a larger hut on the largest island for the ruler."

"Isn't there any electric light or any gas or any city water?" asked Granny, who could not believe that there was any place without those three necessities.

"There is not. But there is a sky bluer than any sky you ever saw, and the water in the lagoon is as clear as crystal and of a wonderful blue-green color. The coral sand is so white that it makes your eyes ache. The Sunshine Islands are rarely beautiful, but they are not convenient. It would be safe to say that they have not a single convenience," he insisted as Granny gasped and exclaimed:

"Not even in the king's palace?"

"Palace!" He laughed scornfully almost, as Joe Cary had laughed at kings and palaces. "Palm-leaf huts," he explained. "And the people--you know they are cannibals?" He looked at Tessie, as if he were vastly amused to know that her people were cannibals.

"Not cannibals now," faltered Tessie, almost in tears to hear how unlike her dreams her kingdom was. "Uncle Pete civilized them and showed them how wrong it was to eat each other."

"Not all," corrected the tubular blond. "The last election showed that one out of every two inhabitants was a conservative--a cannibal."

"Elections!" Tessie did not know that elections were held in the Sunshine Islands, and she wondered vaguely if she were a democrat or a republican. She knew she was not a conservative! if conservatives were cannibals.

"The islands are really no place for a white woman, for a young and beautiful white woman," the man said bluntly. He gazed at Tessie with such open admiration that she moved impatiently and wished that he would stop looking at her and look at Granny. "You can't live there, Miss Gilfooly--is that the name? I know. It's out of the question. I've spent months on Ta-ri-ha, that's the largest island, and I know what I'm talking about when I say it is no place for a white woman. A white man might keep the natives in hand if he were----"

"Big and strong and brutal," suggested Granny thoughtfully.

He turned to her. "I see you knew King Pete, madam?"

"I was his mother." Granny sighed as if she could remember times when she had found her son big and strong and brutal. "But if you don't think my granddaughter should live on her islands what do you think she should do with them?" Granny believed in the straight line. She had absolutely no use for that beautiful curved line we are taught to admire. Straight lines are so much more direct. She looked at the stranger, but she could not find any straight lines about him; he was all curves.

"Granny!" exclaimed Tessie indignantly. The idea of Granny speaking as if there was even a possibility that she would not go to the Sunshine Islands. In imagination Tessie saw herself on a great white ship which was drawing near a sh.o.r.e that bore a marked resemblance to the pictures she had seen of New York harbor. And she saw great throngs of natives clothed in queer shapeless garments--but fully clothed--and she heard their joyous shouts of welcome. She liked the picture her imagination showed her far better than she liked the one drawn by this white-headed stranger. In the back of her mind there was a faint memory of something unpleasant in connection with a fat, white-headed man with a big nose and freckles, but she could not think what it was while this man regarded her with such bright blue eyes. She wished she could, it might be easier to talk to him if she could remember.

"Who are you?" she asked suddenly, oddly uncomfortable under his steady, unblinking stare.

"My name is Pracht," he said frankly. "Frederic Pracht. I have lived in the Sunshine Islands for months. I knew King Pete very well."

"Pracht," meditated Granny. "That sounds like a German name."

He stopped smiling at Tessie to smile at Granny, and Tessie drew a deep breath of relief, as if at last she had more s.p.a.ce about her.

"It is not strange that my name sounds German, because it is German,"

Mr. Pracht explained to Granny. "My great-grandfather came from Frankfort and settled in Pennsylvania. There are many German names in Pennsylvania."

"H-m," muttered Granny, and she regarded him gravely, as if she were not quite satisfied with the explanation, as if she suspected that it would not wear well--that it would shrink or fade. "My son Pete," she said slowly, "he inherited the islands, didn't he?"

"From the old king. He cured the old king's toothache."