Part 12 (2/2)

”--but he never calls for either,” Mrs. Collier continued, ”for I know that if he had read my letters he would have come home.”

The girl lifted her head as though she were about to speak, and then turned and walked slowly away. After a few moments she returned, and stood, with her hands resting on the rail, looking down into the water.

”I wrote him two letters,” she said. In the silence of the night her voice was unusually clear and distinct. ”I--you make me wonder--if they ever reached him.”

Mrs. Collier, with her eyes fixed upon the girl, rose slowly from her chair and came towards her. She reached out her hand and touched Miss Cameron on the arm.

”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 a.s.sist 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 sh.o.r.es and disturbed his G.o.ds 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.mped 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 a.s.sets 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-wors.h.i.+pping 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.

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