Part 22

“Florence,” she said, in a whisper, “have you--”

The girl raised her head slowly, and lowered it again. “Yes,” she answered; “I told him to come back--to come back to me. Alice,” she cried, “I--I begged him to come back!” She tossed her hands apart and again walked rapidly away, leaving the older woman standing motionless.

A moment later, when Sir Charles and Mr. Collier stepped out upon the deck, they discovered the two women standing close together, two white, ghostly figures in the moonlight, and as they advanced towards them they saw Mrs. Collier take the girl for an instant in her arms.

Sir Charles was asking Miss Cameron how long she thought an immigrant should be made to work for his freehold allotment, when Mr. Collier and his wife rose at the same moment and departed on separate errands. They met most mysteriously in the shadow of the wheel-house.

“What is it? Is anything wrong with Florence?” Collier asked, anxiously. “Not homesick, is she?”

Mrs. Collier put her hands on her husband’s shoulders and shook her head.

“Wrong? No, thank Heaven! it’s as right as right can be!” she cried. “She’s written to him to come back, but he’s never answered, and so--and now it’s all right.”

Mr. Collier gazed blankly at his wife’s upturned face. “Well, I don’t see that,” he remonstrated. “What’s the use of her being in love with him now when he can’t be found? What? Why didn’t she love him two years ago when he was where you could get at him--at her house, for instance. He was there most of his time. She would have saved a lot of trouble. However,” he added, energetically, “this makes it absolutely necessary to find that young man and bring him to his senses. We’ll search this place for the next few days, and then we’ll try the mainland again. I think I’ll offer a reward for him, and have it printed in Spanish, and paste it up in all the plazas. We might add a line in English, ‘She has changed her mind.’ That would bring him home, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t be unfeeling, Robert,” said Mrs. Collier.

Her husband raised his eyes appealingly, and addressed himself to the moon. “I ask you now,” he complained, “is that fair to a man who has spent six months on muleback trying to round up a prodigal brother-in-law?”

That same evening, after the ladies had gone below, Mr. Collier asked Sir Charles to assist him in his search for his wife’s brother, and Sir Charles heartily promised his most active co-operation. There were several Americans at work in the interior, he said, as overseers on the coffee-plantations. It was possible that the runaway might be among them. It was only that morning, Sir Charles remembered, that an American had been at work “repairing his lawn-mower,” as he considerately expressed it. He would send for him on the morrow.

But on the morrow the slave of the lawn-mower was reported on the list of prisoners as “missing,” and Corporal Mallon was grieved, but refused to consider himself responsible. Sir Charles himself had allowed the vagrant unusual freedom, and the vagrant had taken advantage of it, and probably escaped to the hills, or up the river to the logwood camp.

“Telegraph a description of him to Inspector Garrett,” Sir Charles directed, “and to the heads of all up stations. And when he returns, bring him to me.”

So great was his zeal that Sir Charles further offered to join Mr. Collier in his search among the outlying plantations; but Mr. Collier preferred to work alone. He accordingly set out at once, armed with letters to the different district inspectors, and in his absence delegated to Sir Charles the pleasant duty of caring for the wants of Miss Cameron and his wife. Sir Charles regarded the latter as deserving of all sympathy, for Mr. Collier, in his efforts to conceal the fact from the Governor that Florence Cameron was responsible, or in any way concerned, in the disappearance of the missing man, had been too mysterious. Sir Charles was convinced that the fugitive had swindled his brother-in-law and stolen his sister’s jewels.

The days which followed were to the Governor days and nights of strange discoveries. He recognized that the missionaries from the great outside world had invaded his shores and disturbed his gods and temples. Their religion of progress and activity filled him with doubt and unrest.

“In this century,” Mr. Collier had declared, “nothing can stand still. It’s the same with a corporation, or a country, or a man. We must either march ahead or fall out. We can’t mark time. What?”

“Exactly--certainly not,” Sir Charles had answered. But in his heart he knew that he himself had been marking time under these soft tropical skies while the world was pushing forward. The thought had not disturbed him before. Now he felt guilty. He conceived a sudden intolerance, if not contempt, for the little village of whitewashed houses, for the rafts of mahogany and of logwood that bumped against the pier-heads, for the sacks of coffee piled high like barricades under the corrugated zinc sheds along the wharf. Each season it had been his pride to note the increase in these exports. The development of the resources of his colony had been a work in which he had felt that the Colonial Secretary took an immediate interest. He had believed that he was one of the important wheels of the machinery which moved the British Empire: and now, in a day, he was undeceived. It was forced upon him that to the eyes of the outside world he was only a greengrocer operating on a large scale; he provided the British public with coffee for its breakfast, with drugs for its stomach, and with strange woods for its dining-room furniture and walking-sticks. He combated this ignominious characterization of his position indignantly. The new arrivals certainly gave him no hint that they considered him so lightly. This thought greatly comforted him, for he felt that in some way he was summoning to his aid all of his assets and resources to meet an expert and final valuation. As he ranged them before him he was disturbed and happy to find that the value he placed upon them was the value they would have in the eyes of a young girl--not a girl of the shy, mother-obeying, man-worshipping English type, but a girl such as Miss Cameron seemed to be, a girl who could understand what you were trying to say before you said it, who could take an interest in rates of exchange and preside at a dinner table, who was charmingly feminine and clever, and who was respectful of herself and of others. In fact, he decided, with a flush, that Miss Cameron herself was the young girl he had in his mind.

“Why not?” he asked.

The question came to him in his room, the sixth night of their visit, and he strode over to the long pier-glass and stood studying himself critically for the first time in years. He was still a fine-looking, well-kept man. His hair was thin, but that fact did not show; and his waist was lost, but riding and tennis would set that right. He had means outside of his official salary, and there was the title, such as it was. Lady Greville the wife of the birthday knight sounded as well as Lady Greville the marchioness. And Americans cared for these things. He doubted whether this particular American would do so, but he was adding up all he had to offer, and that was one of the assets. He was sure she would not be content to remain mistress of the Windless Isles. Nor, indeed, did he longer care to be master there, now that he had inhaled this quick, stirring breath from the outer world. He would resign, and return and mix with the world again. He would enter Parliament; a man so well acquainted as himself with the Gold Coast of Africa and with the trade of the West Indies must always be of value in the Lower House. This value would be recognized, no doubt, and he would become at first an Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and then, in time, Colonial Secretary and a cabinet minister. She would like that, he thought. And after that place had been reached, all things were possible. For years he had not dreamed such dreams--not since he had been a clerk in the Foreign Office. They seemed just as possible now as they had seemed real then, and just as near. He felt it was all absolutely in his own hands.

He descended to the dining-room with the air of a man who already felt the cares of high responsibility upon his shoulders. His head was erect and his chest thrown forward. He was ten years younger; his manner was alert, assured, and gracious. As he passed through the halls he was impatient of the familiar settings of Government House; they seemed to him like the furnishings of a hotel where he had paid his bill, and where his luggage was lying strapped for departure in the hallway.

In his library he saw on his table a number of papers lying open waiting for his signature, the dog-tax among the others. He smiled to remember how important it had seemed to him in the past--in that past of indolence and easy content. Now he was on fire to put this rekindled ambition to work, to tell the woman who had lighted it that it was all from her and for her, that without her he had existed, that now he had begun to live.

They had never found him so delighful{sic} as he appeared that night. He was like a man on the eve of a holiday. He made a jest of his past efforts; he made them see, as he now saw it for the first time, that side of the life of the Windless Isles which was narrow and petty, even ridiculous. He talked of big men in a big way; he criticised, and expounded, and advanced his own theories of government and the proper control of an empire.

Collier, who had returned from his unsuccessful search of the plantations, shook his head.

“It’s a pity you are not in London now,” he said, sincerely. “They need some one there who has been on the spot. They can’t direct the colonies from what they know of them in Whitehall.”

Sir Charles fingered the dinner cloth nervously, and when he spoke, fixed his eyes anxiously upon Miss Cameron.

“Do you know,” he said, “I have been thinking of doing that very thing, of resigning my post here and going back, entering Parliament, and all the rest of it.”

His declaration met with a unanimous chorus of delight. Miss Cameron nodded her head with eager approval.

“Yes, if I were a man, that is where I should wish to be,” she said, “at the heart of it. Why, whatever you say in the House of Commons is heard all over the world the next morning.”