“Not yet, though I have ventured as far as the door.”
“Come along,” he said unceremoniously. “It is just up the hill—I’ll take you round.”
Mrs. Lewin smiled inwardly, and picking up her spotless skirts stepped into the next furrow. Here the cane had been cut, but a little further on the golden green blades drove them into the draining ditch until they struck the road which cut the field in two. There were rough tram-lines running along it, and a small engine was hauling the trucks up and down the hillside to the factory. Gregory stopped the man who was just starting the load, and there was a brief colloquy. Then he turned to the last truck, which, unlike its fellows, was not open to the sky and loaded with the cane, but resembled a waggon without ends, and had rough seats running down each side of it. This was the riding truck, and throwing a piece of matting over a seat he put his hand under Mrs. Lewin’s arm and lifted rather than helped her in, for the step was steep. In the midst of her amused excitement she was conscious of his unceremonious strength, and with the instinctive feminine compliment to it her own weakness and helplessness seemed suddenly to have increased.
“We shall have time to go round before that breakfast you insist on my eating in my official capacity,” he said, and his lips smiled, while his lidless eyes never narrowed from their intense stare at her. It began to give her a sense of weariness, a feeling that he had never ceased looking at her since the night before, when he was first conscious of her presence. Perhaps he had been doing it in his own mind all the night.
The movement of the trucks was surprisingly smooth, but they were all worked on springs. They swept up through the furrowed fields, and came to a clinking standstill before the gaping mouth of the factory. It seemed to Mrs. Lewin a zinc building with a whirr of machinery inside too large for its frail shell, and the impression increased, rather than otherwise, when she entered. All the world was suddenly transformed to sugar—the rich smell of it was in the air, the dark stream of it falling from the pipes to the big teaches and the cooler, the very floor sticky with it, so that she stepped aside from the pools of hot liquid. After the increasing glare outside the dark of the place was grateful, and through the dark were visible bronzed forms, stripped and dripping with sweat, guiding the machinery, shovelling down the waste for fuel, and chopping at the congealed masses of the later stages of the sugar with some pronged instrument. There was labour on every hand, and the restless tide of human life seemed gathered into an ordered groove of industry.
Gregory led his companion up steep ladders and over wet stones without consideration for her fresh skirts, explaining the process as they went on. It was wonderful how his forceful whispers carried through the whirr of the flying wheels, and he took it off-handedly for granted that Mrs. Lewin would miss no detail on account of her clothes. He knew the work as well as its owner, and dipped the testing-tube into the refining sugar to show her how the lime had purified the dirty liqueur to a pure gold like honey. Further on, at the end of the building, were the great vats where rum was fermenting, and an odour like rich wine rose in Chum’s nostrils as he lifted the lid and showed her the frothy, muddy contents.
“Dip in your finger—it’s warm,” he said, stirring it with his own. Mrs. Lewin, balancing on a precarious plank, with her dainty skirts held high, was conscious of an inward shudder as her long white hand touched the strong-smelling stuff, and yet it never occurred to her to disobey, or so much as enter a protest.
“Is this what the natives drink?” she said, in mild surprise.
“Yes—by-and-by, when it’s cleared. Filthy stuff!” he said shortly. “It’s better than hemp, though. Can you get down? Better let me lift you——”
But she laid her cool hands in his and jumped, landing safely at his side, and again conscious of his physical as well as mental power. Then the sight-seeing was over, and he led the way out by another door and round to the waiting trucks to ride back. Here Gregory paused a minute, and looked over the waving crops and the flourishing scene of labour with an expression that Mrs. Lewin did not at the moment understand. When he had come to Key Island the sugar-planters were sullen and depressed; they wanted encouragement from the Home Government, and they regarded the change of administration in Key Island as no benefit to themselves. The old régime had been a bad one, and had ended in disaster; but they knew at least what they had to expect, and the first “spring cleaning” of the Imperial Government had alarmed them with grave prognostications for the future of the island. Gregory had already made them change their opinions during the short time he had been in possession. He had thrown himself heart and soul into the industries of the island, and so assured the planters that Port Victoria would not be merely a coaling-station. Because he was in earnest he gained their confidence, and worked with them to make the land prosperous again. The humming factories were a proof of his success; he saw his schemes fulfilling themselves actually before him, and his hard eyes brightened with the strange look over which Mrs. Lewin pondered all the way home. It was, in a degree, the same look that makes a young mother most ineffably, justifiably proud—the look that is but a reflex of God’s when, His work spread before Him, He saw that it was very good. For there is no joy like the joy of creation.