He had led a varied and more or less picturesque career up and down the warm seas. He had been a copra buyer through black Melanesia in the open days; had owned his ships and sailed them after labor in the Archipelago with a price on his head and his life in his hand. And now, rich in phosphate shares and plantation partnerships, a sort of comfortable island squire, he had retired to peaceful Wailoa at last as a quiet corner where business was play and the hot roll dropped on time from the breadfruit-tree. So much was said of him, and it was not considered the part either of wisdom or of island etiquette to say much more—nor was much else required to set him in his place. Certainly he might have seemed somewhat out of it now. The type does not pervade the parlors of the missionaries as a rule.
But Captain Gregson turned it off very well. Once he had recovered his breath, and a purplish haze had cleared from his face, he comported himself easily, even impressively, neither belittling nor forcing the social event, the while that Pastor Spener beamed encouragement and smoothed a complacent brow....
"It's like I told you to-day, Pastor. The notion came to me like that—I've been a bad neighbor. There's so few of us marooned here, like. I said to myself—where's the use of being strangers, hey? Why not get neighborly with those good folks and help along that good work of faith and righteousness. Why not, hey—?"
He spoke with an effect of heartiness that delighted the Reverend Spener, and that fell on the ear of the Reverend Spener's daughter as hollow as a drum.
"Why not, indeed?" echoed the pastor.
"So many places you find a kind of feud betwixt the commercial people and the mission people," continued Captain Gregson. "Where's the sense of it? I believe in you, Pastor, and your work and your church. Yes, and I feel the need of the church myself, and a chance to visit a fine respectable home like this.... Why shouldn't I have it?"
Miss Matilda carefully avoided looking toward him, where he sat wedged between the fragile bamboo what-not and the lacquer tabouret, well knowing that she must cross his smoldering gaze and shunning it.
"And perhaps, by the same token, perhaps you might need me too and not know it," he continued. "I've a notion I might be of some service to the cause, d'y see?"
"Undeniably, Captain," said the pastor, eagerly. "A man so influential—so experienced as yourself—"
"Could help, hey? It's what I think myself. I could. Why even now I'll lay I could tell you matters—things going on right under your nose, so to speak—that you'd hardly dream yourself."