Educated at Harvard, he had become for a time a world-wandering scientist and social favourite.After serving in the Philippines, he had accompanied various expeditions through Malaysia, South America, and Africa in the post of official entomologist.At forty-one he still retained his travelling commission from the Smithsonian Institution, while his friends insisted that he knew more about sugar "bugs" than the expert entomologists employed by him and his fellow sugar planters in the Experiment Station.Bulking large at home, he was the best-known representative of Hawaii abroad.It was the axiom among travelled Hawaii folk, that wherever over the world they might mention they were from Hawaii, the invariable first question asked of them was: "And do you know Sonny Grandison?"In brief, he was a wealthy man's son who had made good.His father's million he inherited he had increased to ten millions, at the same time keeping up his father's benefactions and endowments and overshadowing them with his own.
But there was still more to him.A ten years' widower, without issue, he was the most eligible and most pathetically sought-after marriageable man in all Hawaii.A clean-and-strong-featured brunette, tall, slenderly graceful, with the lean runner's stomach, always fit as a fiddle, a distinguished figure in any group, the greying of hair over his temples (injuxtaposition to his young- textured skin and bright vital eyes) made him appear even more distinguished.Despite the social demands upon his time, and despite his many committee meetings, and meetings of boards of directors and political conferences, he yet found time and space to captain the Lakanaii polo team to more than occasional victory, and on his own island of Lakanaii vied with the Baldwins of Maui in the breeding and importing of polo ponies.
Given a markedly strong and vital man and woman, when a second equally markedly strong and vital man enters the scene, the peril of a markedly strong and vital triangle of tragedy becomes imminent.Indeed, such a triangle of tragedy may be described, in the terminology of the flat- floor folk, as "super" and "impossible." Perhaps, since within himself originated the desire and the daring, it was Sonny Grandison who first was conscious of the situation, although he had to be quick to anticipate the sensing intuition of a woman like Ida Barton.At any rate, and undebatable, the last of the three to attain awareness was Lee Barton, who promptly laughed away what was impossible to laugh away.
His first awareness, he quickly saw, was so belated that half his hosts and hostesses were already aware.Casting back, he realized that for some time any affair to which he and his wife were invited found Sonny Grandison likewise invited.Wherever the two had been, the three had been.To Kahuku or to Haleiwa, to Ahuimanu, or to Kaneohe for the coral gardens, or to Koko Head for a picnicking and a swimming, somehow it invariably happened that Ida rode in Sonny's car or that both rode in somebody's car.Dances, luaus, dinners, and outings were all one; the three of them were there.
Having become aware, Lee Barton could not fail to register Ida's note of happiness ever rising when in the same company with Sonny Grandison, and her willingness to ride in the same cars with him, to dance with him, or to sit out dances with him.Most convincing of all, was Sonny Grandison himself.Forty-one, strong, experienced, his face could no more conceal what he felt than could be concealed a lad of twenty's ordinary lad's love.Despite the control and restraint of forty years, he could no more mask his soul with his face than could Lee Barton, of equalyears, fail to read that soul through so transparent a face.And often, to other women, talking, when the topic of Sonny came up, Lee Barton heard Ida express her fondness for Sonny, or her almost too-eloquent appreciation of his polo-playing, his work in the world, and his general all- rightness of achievement.
About Sonny's state of mind and heart Lee had no doubt.It was patent enough for the world to read.But how about Ida, his own dozen- years' wife of a glorious love-match? He knew that woman, ever the mysterious sex, was capable any time of unguessed mystery.Did her frank comradeliness with Grandison token merely frank comradeliness and childhood contacts continued and recrudesced into adult years? or did it hide, in woman's subtler and more secretive ways, a beat of heart and return of feeling that might even out- balance what Sonny's face advertised?
Lee Barton was not happy.A dozen years of utmost and post-nuptial possession of his wife had proved to him, so far as he was concerned, that she was his one woman in the world, and that the woman was unborn, much less unglimpsed, who could for a moment compete with her in his heart, his soul, and his brain.Impossible of existence was the woman who could lure him away from her, much less over-bid her in the myriad, continual satisfactions she rendered him.
Was this, then, he asked himself, the dreaded contingency of all fond Benedicts, to be her first "affair?" He tormented himself with the ever iterant query, and, to the astonishment of the reformed Kohala poker crowd of wise and middle-aged youngsters as well as to the reward of the keen scrutiny of the dinner-giving and dinner-attending women, he began to drink King William instead of orange juice, to bully up the poker limit, to drive of nights his own car more than rather recklessly over the Pali and Diamond Head roads, and, ere dinner or lunch or after, to take more than an average man's due of old-fashioned cocktails and Scotch highs.
