On the other hand, the interior of the famous palace, which had been sent out complete from London, and which was wont to fill the wives of the colonials with awe or to reduce them to whispers, for some reason failed of its effect. But they said they “loved” the large gold V. R.’s on the back of the Councillors’ chairs, and they exclaimed aloud over the red leather despatch-boxes and the great seal of the colony, and the mysterious envelopes marked “On her Majesty’s service.”
“Isn’t it too exciting, Florence?” demanded Mrs. Collier. “This is the table where Sir Charles sits and writes letters ‘on her Majesty’s service,’ and presses these buttons, and war-ships spring up in perfect shoals. Oh, Robert,” she sighed, “I do wish you had been a Governor!”
The young lady called Florence stood looking down into the great arm-chair in front of the Governor’s table.
“May I?” she asked. She slid fearlessly in between the oak arms of the chair and smiled about her. Afterwards Sir Charles remembered her as she appeared at that moment with the red leather of the chair behind her, with her gloved hands resting on the carved oak, and her head on one side, smiling up at him. She gazed with large eyes at the blue linen envelopes, the stiff documents in red tape, the tray of black sand, and the goose-quill pens.
“I am now the Countess Zika,” she announced; “no, I am Diana of the Crossways, and I mean to discover a state secret and sell it to the Daily Telegraph. Sir Charles,” she demanded, “if I press this electric button is war declared anywhere, or what happens?”
“That second button,” said Sir Charles, after deliberate scrutiny, “is the one which communicates with the pantry.”
The Governor would not consider their returning to the yacht for luncheon.
“You might decide to steam away as suddenly as you came,” he said, gallantly, “and I cannot take that chance. This is Bachelor’s Hall, so you must pardon my people if things do not go very smoothly.” He himself led them to the great guest-chamber, where there had not been a guest for many years, and he noticed, as though for the first time, that the halls through which they passed were bare, and that the floor was littered with unpacked boxes and gun-cases. He also observed for the first time that maps of the colony, with the coffee-plantations and mahogany belt marked in different inks, were not perhaps so decorative as pictures and mirrors and family portraits. And he could have wished that the native servants had not stared so admiringly at the guests, nor directed each other in such aggressive whispers. On those other occasions, when the wives of the Councillors came to the semi-annual dinners, the native servants had seemed adequate to all that was required of them. He recollected with a flush that in the town these semi-annual dinners were described as banquets. He wondered if to these visitors from the outside world it was all equally provincial.
But their enjoyment was apparently unfeigned and generous. It was evident that they had known each other for many years, yet they received every remark that any of them made as though it had been pronounced by a new and interesting acquaintance. Sir Charles found it rather difficult to keep up with the talk across the table, they changed the subject so rapidly, and they half spoke of so many things without waiting to explain. He could not at once grasp the fact that people who had no other position in the world save that of observers were speaking so authoritatively of public men and public measures. He found, to his delight, that for the first time in several years he was not presiding at his own table, and that his guests seemed to feel no awe of him.
“What’s the use of a yacht nowadays?” Collier was saying—“what’s the use of a yacht, when you can go to sleep in a wagon-lit at the Gare du Nord, and wake up at Vladivostok? And look at the time it saves; eleven days to Gib, six to Port Said, and fifteen to Colombo—there you are, only half-way around, and you’re already sixteen days behind the man in the wagon-lit.”