The governor looked alert. “And you have not seen him since that day?”
“I have seen him, but I have not spoken to him. It was in the distance only.”
“I understand your manager, Mr. Boland, sees him.”
“My manager does not share my private interests—or troubles. He is free to go where he will, to speak to whom he chooses. He visits Enniskillen, I suppose—it is a well-managed plantation on Jamaican lines, and its owner is a man of mark.”
Sheila spoke without agitation of any kind; her face was firm and calm, her manner composed, her voice even. As she talked, she seemed to be probing the centre of a flower which she had caught from a basket at the window, and her whole personality was alight and vivifying, her good temper and spirit complete. As he looked at her, he had an overmastering desire to make her his own—his wife. She was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds; she had beauty, ability and authority. She was the acme of charm and good bearing. With her he could climb high on the ladder of life. He might be a really great figure in the British world-if she gave her will to help him, to hold up his hands. It had never occurred to him that Dyck Calhoun could be a rival, till he had heard of Dyck’s visit to Sheila and her mother, till he had heard Sheila praise him at the first dinner he had given to the two ladies on Christmas Day.
On that day it was clear Sheila did not know who her father was; but stranger things had happened than that she should take up with, and even marry, a man imprisoned for killing another, even one who had been condemned as a mutineer, and had won freedom by saving the king’s navy. But now that Sheila knew the truth there could be no danger! Dyck Calhoun would be relegated to his proper place in the scheme of things. Who was there to stand between him and his desire? What was there to stay the great event? He himself was a peer and high-placed, for it was a time when the West Indian Islands were a centre of the world’s fighting, where men like Rodney had made everlasting fame; where the currents of world-controversy challenged, met and fought for control.
The West Indies was as much a cock-pit of the fighting powers as ever Belgium was; and in those islands there was wealth and the power which wealth buys; the clash of white and black and coloured peoples; the naval contests on the sea; the horrible massacres and enslavement of free white peoples, as in St. Domingo and Grenada; the dominating attacks of people fighting for control—peoples of old empires like France and Spain, and new empires like that of Britain. These were a centre of colonial life as important as had been the life in Virginia and New York and the New England States and Canada—indeed, more important than Canada in one sense, for the West Indies brought wealth to the British Isles, and had a big export trade. He lost no time in bringing matters to an issue.
He got to his feet and came near to her. His eyes were inflamed with passion, his manner was impressive. He had a distinguished face, become more distinguished since his assumption of governorship, and authority had increased his personality.
“A man of mark!” he said. “You mean a marked man. Let me tell you I have an order from the British Government to confine him to his estate; not to permit him to leave it; and, if he does, to arrest him. That is my commanded duty. You approve, do you not? Or are you like most women, soft at heart to bold criminals?”
Sheila did not reply at once. The news was no news to her, for Darius Boland had told her; but she thought it well to let the governor think he had made a new, sensational statement.