Madame Gilbert, standing by the rail, watched the boat come alongside which bore Lord Topsham and his legal adviser from Port Kennedy. They appeared to have been shopping with energy, for the boat was laden with packages. Among the spoils of Thursday Island were three wooden cases around which the seamen clustered, like wasps about honey, when they had been hauled up and laid upon the deck. Ching, who was standing beside Madame, and looking the happier for his stroll ashore, frowned savagely.
"Shall I have them thrown overboard?" asked he.
Madame did not reply. She was speechless with the fury of one who has been outraged publicly. Picture to yourself the feelings of a hostess who invites guests to dinner, and watches them enter her drawing-room, each with a bottle under the arm. Though strong drink may not be looked for at her board, does she not regard this ostentatious liquid supplement to her hospitality as a public outrage? So Madame felt in her "dry ship" when Lord Topsham and his slave John brought their cases of alcoholic refreshment aboard. For a moment she was strongly inclined to let Ching have his will, but reflected that even if guests should bring their own liquor to one's dinner, one should not retaliate by smashing the bottles on the carpet. The only adequate retort would be to write the cads' names off the list of one's acquaintance. That is exactly what Madame was most disposed to do. She seriously thought of instantly sending Willie and Clifford to the right about with their baggage, and leaving them to find some other means of transport than the Humming Top. Had Willie been educated in the ways of white men she would certainly have shot him forth. But she realised that the blame lay with the man Clifford, and that she could not dismiss the servant while retaining the master. It must be both or neither. And while she hung upon the edge of decision, Willie himself determined the issue by one of those small unconscious actions which so often determine human destinies. He looked up, saw Madame, forgot for a moment his resentment against her, and smiled as the Willatopy of old had been wont to smile.
"I had just made up my mind to send the pair of them packing off to Port Kennedy," said Madame to me, "when the boy looked up and smiled. There was an unholy fascination about the brown creature, and sometimes I almost came within sympathetic range of my wicked maid Marie. The bright blue eyes, which shone like the sky at dawn, had a potency which no woman could wholly resist. When he smiled at me then, I remembered the boy who had kissed my wet trench coat—and I let him be. The cases were taken down to Willie's cabin. I was beaten again, and as soon as I was set free from the charm of those eyes, suffered the agonies of defeat. But I was helpless. I could not ostracise that wretch Clifford any more than he was already ostracised. One cannot exile an inhabitant of Coventry in his own city. If our relations had not suffered so great a change, had not a gulf of bitter resentment yawned between us, I would have reasoned with the boy Willie—who at heart was a natural born gentleman—and have shown him his error, as I had done when he ordered port to be served in my own smoke-room. If that Clifford ever turns up again, and approaches within pistol shot of me, even in Piccadilly Circus at noonday, I am sure that I shall plug a hole in his waistcoat." Our Madame is a very human woman; she can love and she can hate, and after years of friendship and intimate knowledge of her, I cannot tell which is the more dangerous—her love or her hate.
Wine in cases was not the only result of Willie's shopping expedition in the outpost of white resources. He had gone ashore to gather covering for his feet and person which would be in harmony with his exalted dignity. The boy, who had happily roamed almost naked about his own island, and had lived for nineteen years the simple, untrammelled life of a native, had now become obsessed with the vice of clothes.
Madame Gilbert was standing in the saloon, waiting for her fellow diners to collect, when the shuffle of strange feet behind fell upon her quick ears. She spun round and beheld a portent. Lord Topsham had entered, a Lord Topsham transfigured most abominably. Upon his shoulders hung an ill-fitting dinner jacket, pumps of incredible vastness covered his broad, naturally developed feet, and the edges of his black trousers—some three inches too long—trailed upon the carpet. Upon what long-neglected peg in Thursday Island that villainous suit had hung, and for how long, Madame was never privileged to discover. Willie, in delighted zeal, had torn it down, and wrapped it about himself, and now stood forth the perfect European. Madame had been so completely absorbed in Willie's clothes that some few seconds passed before her eyes travelled upwards to his head. Then she had a further surprise—his long, frizzy hair had been cropped quite close to his skull.
The boy, in equipping himself as the Lord Topsham of his imagination, had lost for ever all the natural dignity of Willatopy. He had become the very image of an uncouth brown waiter in a Pacific Island hotel. It was pitiful, and Madame hung poised between laughter and tears.
"Am I all right, Madame?" asked Willie anxiously. "John fastened my tie. I could not do it myself."
"You are quite all right," said Madame kindly. "You were very lucky to find so splendid a dinner jacket in Thursday Island."
He glowed with pleasure, and stretched out a black, shining foot. "I am not ashamed now to sit at dinner with you, Madame."