“And became a mutineer,” intervened the girl flushing. “Why not say all? Why not catalogue his offences? Fondness for the man who killed my father, you say! Yes, I had a deep and sincere fondness for him ever since I met him at Playmore over seven years ago. Yes, a fondness which only his crime makes impossible. But in all that really matters I am still his friend. He did not know he was killing my father, who had no claims upon me, none at all, except that through him I have life and being; but it is enough to separate us for ever in the eyes of the world, and in my eyes. Not morally, of course, but legally and actually. He and I are as far apart as winter and summer; we are parted for ever and ever and ever.”
Now at last she was inflamed. Every nerve in her was alive. All she had ever felt for Dyck Calhoun came rushing to the surface, demanding recognition, reasserting itself. As she used the words, “ever and ever and ever,” it was like a Cordelia bidding farewell to Lear, her father, for ever, for there was that in her voice which said: “It is final separation, it is the judgment of Jehovah, and I must submit. It is the last word.”
Lord Mallow saw his opportunity, and did not hesitate. “No, you are wrong, wholly wrong,” he said. “I did not bias what I said in my report—a report I was bound to make—by any covert prejudice against Mr. Calhoun. I guarded myself especially”—there he lied, but he was an incomparable liar—“lest it should be used against him. It would appear, however, that the new admiral’s report with mine were laid together, and the government came to its conclusion accordingly. So I am bound to do my duty.”
“If you—oh, if you did your duty, you would not obey the command of the government. Are there not times when to obey is a crime, and is not this one of them? Lord Mallow, you would be doing as great a crime as Mr. Dyck Calhoun ever committed, or could commit, if you put this order into actual fact. You are governor here, and your judgment would be accepted—remember it is an eight weeks’ journey to London at the least, and what might not happen in that time! Are you not given discretion?”
The governor nodded. “Yes, I am given discretion, but this is an order.”
“An order!” she commented. “Then if it should not be fulfilled, break it and take the consequences. The principle should be—Do what is right, and have no fear.”
“I will think it over,” answered the governor. “What you say has immense weight with me—more even than I have words to say. Yes, I will think it over—I promise you. You are a genius—you prevail.”
Her face softened, a new something came into her manner. “You do truly mean it?” she asked with lips that almost trembled.
It seemed to her that to do this thing for Dyck Calhoun was the least that was possible, and it was perhaps the last thing she might ever be able to do. She realized how terrible it would be for him to be shorn of the liberty he had always had; how dangerous it might be in many ways; and how the people of the island might become excited by it—and troublesome.
“Yes, I mean it,” answered Lord Mallow. “I mean it exactly as I say it.”