CHAPTER VII
THE GATES OPEN
The Countess de Mattos had a headache which was so severe, she announced, that it would prevent her from landing; besides, she was not interested in convicts. Lady Gardiner, on the contrary, was greatly interested. Never had she been more alert; never had her black eyes been so keen. She wanted to go everywhere; she wanted to see everything. She thought Noumea a charming place; she had "really no sympathy for the prisoners." One might commit a crime solely for the pleasure of being sent here.
The party of five went ashore, and Kate's principal preoccupation seemed to be to keep as close to Virginia as possible. She had the air of expecting some choice excitement, which she might miss if the girl were lost sight of for a moment. But nothing in the manner of Virginia or her brother or cousin suggested that they had come to this strange spot "at the end of the world" with any object save that of amusement. They behaved just as they had behaved at Sydney, or any other port at which they had called. All five strolled up, under a blaze of tropical sunshine, to the Place des Cocotiers, and sitting on the shaded verandah of the Hôtel de France, sipped a cooling drink concocted of oranges, lemons and pineapple. Then they sauntered on again, much observed by a few weary-looking persons they met, through broad streets, with long, low, white houses.
Dr. Grayle kept beside Lady Gardiner now, and they walked in front, as the former was supposed to have studied the subject of the penal settlement so thoroughly as to be qualified for guide.
Kate glanced over her shoulder often; but Dr. Grayle succeeded in genuinely interesting her in a story of an atrocious criminal who had been expatriated to Noumea some years before. When she looked hurriedly back, ostensibly to ask Roger Broom if he had ever heard the spicy narrative, the three had disappeared.
Lady Gardiner flushed in anger with them for their duplicity, with herself for her carelessness in letting them slip away. "Dear me! what has become of the others?" she exclaimed. "We must turn back and find them."
Dr. Grayle took the defection calmly—so calmly that Kate leaped to the conviction that he was in the plot against her. The others wanted to go somewhere or do something without her, and this little brown-faced, sharp-eyed man had been told off as a kind of decoy duck. But she would circumvent them yet. She would know what was going on.
"They have probably gone to buy some bit of carving or other souvenirs of convict make," said the doctor. "Certainly we'll turn back if you like."
They did turn back, and wandered about in all the (according to Dr. Grayle) most likely places to find the lost ones, but in vain. Kate could have burst into tears of rage. She was hot, tired, dusty, and—worst of all—thwarted. It was hateful to feel herself helpless in the plotters' hands, being made to dance when they pulled the strings, and to know that this "horrid little brown man" was secretly laughing at her behind his polite air of concern. Yet she was helpless, and had to acknowledge it. If she left the doctor and went off on an expedition of independent exploration she would not know which way to go, and might get into trouble. But at last she could no longer bear her wrongs in silence; and, after all, she had nothing to gain by being nice to Dr. Grayle.