Part 23 (1/2)
On reaching the cabin, Calamity shut the door and swung a chair round for her to sit upon.
”Now,” he said, ”just tell me what you want me to do. You say you have no home, and you object, apparently, to being placed in charge of the British Consul. What then?”
He spoke very quietly, almost gently, and because of this, perhaps, a feeling of utter hopelessness came over the girl.
”You must do as you think best,” she answered in a voice from which all fire and spirit had gone.
”But just now you refused to let me do this.”
”I know. I--I was foolish and unreasonable, I suppose.”
Calamity remained silent for a minute or two, regarding her curiously.
He read her better than she guessed. When he spoke again she recognised a new quality in his voice. It made her feel as if they two, though so near, were yet miles apart. There was a note of pity in it which hurt her more than anything she had ever known before because it demonstrated so positively the distance between them.
”You and I, Miss Fletcher,” he said slowly, ”can never be friends; at least, not in the sense I am thinking of, for our paths lie wide apart.
If my a.s.sumption is wrong--and you have sense and discrimination enough to know what I mean by that--you must pardon me and put it down to lack of insight on my part, not to any presumption or vanity. If it is not wrong, you will understand without my saying more, why it is necessary that you should leave this s.h.i.+p for good at Singapore.”
The girl was looking at him with large, startled eyes. What, she wondered, was that unnamable something about him which she had never observed before? Why was it that, of a sudden, he seemed to have a.s.sumed the guise of another cla.s.s--a cla.s.s about which she had read, but with which she had never come into contact? The bold, fearless sea-captain, the man of infinite resource, unscrupulous and even brutal, had disappeared. In his place was a quiet, self-contained gentleman, speaking in a low, kind voice; chiding her while he apologised for doing it.
In some subtle way he had made her feel pitifully small and ignorant; he awed her; but in a way she had never been awed before. It was impossible to resent this, because she did not know how to do so; it was something outside her experience. For the first time in her life she felt herself up against that indefinable power which for centuries has made the ma.s.ses of the world subject to the few. It was something more than the power to command, it was the power to be obeyed.
There was a long pause, and then the girl, too proud to deny her love for him, spoke.
”You have not misunderstood me,” she said, with a frankness that lent dignity to her confession. ”Without knowing it I have come to love you.
I think I would willingly and gladly have followed you to the uttermost ends of the earth; I would have suffered with and for you. I believed that I was meant for such as you; but you have made me see how foolish I have been. Don't think that I am ashamed you should know this. I'm not.”
She stopped, her eyes fixed on his defiantly as though daring him to misunderstand her. In any other man but Calamity her words would have produced a deep impression, but he, to all appearances, was perfectly unmoved.
”We will forget all this,” he said quietly. ”The thing still to be settled is this matter of what's to become of you when we reach Singapore.”
CHAPTER XVIII
DORA FLETCHER'S CHANCE
”From what you have told me, I a.s.sume you have no mother,” Calamity went on. The note of pity had left his voice, and his manner, if not brusque, was cold and judicial.
”No,” answered the girl, ”my mother died when I was four years old.” Her manner, too, had changed; all the heat and defiance had left it and she spoke in a subdued, colourless voice, as though these matters hardly concerned her.
”And you have no relatives living?”
”I have a couple of aunts in Sunderland. I stayed with them until I was eight years old. I--I hate them!” She made a pa.s.sionate gesture as though the very mention of these people aroused bitter memories. ”It was not that they were unkind exactly; but--well, it doesn't matter now.
Soon after my eighth birthday my father took me away with him on a voyage to the East, and after that I went with him on nearly all his voyages. He educated me, too; taught me French, mathematics, navigation, and so on.”
”Navigation, eh?” remarked Calamity with a note of surprise in his voice.
”Yes; if I had been a man I could have pa.s.sed for mate and got my master's ticket long ago. I'd pit my knowledge of seamans.h.i.+p against that of any man on this s.h.i.+p,” she concluded defiantly.