The hanging business had hit Floyd a hard blow; more than that, the thought of Schumer was now beginning to threaten his peace like a phantom.
The running away of Isbel at the sight of the hanging had suddenly cast a new light upon Schumer and incidentally upon himself.
It was as though Innocence had spoken, condemning them both. And yet the man had deserved his fate. Floyd told himself this again and again; it was the knowledge of this that had prevented him from interfering. He told himself that, even as a matter of policy and to protect their own lives against another outbreak headed by the same leader, the action was justified.
And yet the phantom remained to disturb his thoughts. Schumer, the man who had bound himself up so closely in his life, the man whom he did not understand in the least, the man whose personality was so powerful, whose wishes always made themselves good, and whose word was practically law on that island.
Schumer was always right; that was part of the origin of his power; he had the genius to foresee everything that was coming and the head to prepare for eventualities. His suggestions were commands based on reason; his orders were worded so as to seem suggestions; his personality suffused everything, dominated all things, and made Floyd feel at times as though he were an automaton worked by strings instead of a living man moved by will.
Yet never had Schumer stirred resentment in him.
That is the most magical power in a great and dominating personality. It does not irritate; it lulls. Your little strong man gets his will—if he gets it—by setting everybody by the ears. Your big strong man works without friction; his men become part of him, his motives part of them; when they are free to think they may vaguely wonder at their own subservience and even resent it in a way, yet they come under again to the will that bends them as surely as the wheat stalks come under to the wind when it blows.
Floyd, having smoked for a while, tapped the ashes out of his pipe and rose up. As he was returning to the tent he caught the glimmer of something white among the outer trees of the grove and came toward it. It passed among the trees, and he followed it, pushing branches of the hibiscus aside and trampling down the fern that grew here in profusion.
He was following Isbel, and there, in a little glade amid the ferns, with her back to an artus tree, crouched in the moonlight, he brought her to bay.
There was something feline in her attitude, as though she were about to spring, and her eyes were fixed on him steadfastly as though watching for his next move.