Chapter IX
This is an unexpected pleasure, murmured Mrs. Collingwood, giving to Judge Barton a warm pressure of the hand. For though she was proud and sensitive, she was not vindictive, and the Judge’s conduct on her wedding day had gone far to blot out the recollection of their of their unamicable past. Also his presence was a compliment, an assurance that his professions of interest were not wholly perfunctory.
“It should not be so,” he replied. “What did I tell you on your wedding day? You’ve forgotten. I haven’t, you see, and here I am! Moreover, I have brought you a commissioner and a gentleman interested in pearl shells.” By the time he had finished this long speech, the Judge had shaken hands with both husband and wife, and stood ready to introduce the men who followed him. They were respectively a member of the Philippine Commission and an American agent for a button factory in the United States, who was desirous of making arrangements for a permanent supply of shells.
“The Commissioner is headed for Cuyo, and will go on there to-morrow,” said Judge Barton. “Mr. Jones would like to stay and see the field and talk business with Mr. Collingwood until the steamer returns, in about a week; and I have wondered if you could put up with me that long also. But nobody is to be inconvenienced. Knowing the limited resources of islands in the Visaya Sea, each of us has come provided with an army cot and bedding, and we have also a first-class shelter tent. Likewise, remembering Mr. Collingwood’s reminiscences in hospital, and being minded of the scarcity of fresh beef, I ventured to bring along the quarter of a cow—I believe a part of the hind quarter.”
He got no further. Martin had again taken his hand between two bronzed paws and was shaking it fervently.
“I understand, Judge,” he declared, “just why you hold your eminent position. A man can’t be great these days without a head for detail, and you have one. There are plenty of men who would have forgotten all I said about this place, but you haven’t. You remembered it at the right time. Now, frankly, Judge, where is that beef at the present moment?”
The Judge hooked a thumb in the direction of the steamer’s boat. “That beef is in that dinghey,” he replied, “and, without desiring to advise Mrs. Collingwood in her domestic arrangements, I should suggest that the sooner it is eaten the better. The steamer’s ice-carrying facilities are limited, and it is by the grace of God that it has ‘kept’ till now.”
“He means by the grace of Government coal, Mrs. Collingwood,” interrupted the steamer’s captain, who was standing by talking to Kingsnorth, whom he knew. “I had nearly to ruin my engines getting that beef down here, the Judge was so concerned about it.” It came ashore at that minute, a suggestively dead piece of beef in cheese-cloth wrappings, but the fishers received it almost with rites of welcome.
Kingsnorth and the Maclaughlins having been presented, the group wandered leisurely toward the Collingwood cottage. The newcomers protested that there was no need of Mrs. Collingwood’s giving herself trouble about dinner; they could go back to the steamer for dinner; it would be waiting for them. It was the stereotyped convention throughout a land where hospitality is as catholic as is the necessity for it. Martin and Charlotte, naturally, would hear nothing of the visitors’ returning to the steamer before bedtime.
“If you don’t mind dinner’s being a little late,” Charlotte added, while Mrs. Maclaughlin threw in, in response to a last weak protest, “Trouble! Why we would cook for twenty people to get to talk to one.”