The Lion and the Unicorn

by Richard Harding Davis

“But nobody wants to go to Vladivostok,” said Miss Cameron, “or anywhere else in a wagon-lit. But with a yacht you can explore out-of-the-way places, and you meet new and interesting people. We wouldn’t have met Sir Charles if we had waited for a wagon-lit.” She bowed her head to the Governor, and he smiled with gratitude. He had lost Mr. Collier somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and he was glad she had brought them back to the Windless Isles once more.

“And again I repeat that the answer to that is, ‘Why not? said the March Hare,’” remarked Mr. Collier, determinedly.

The answer, as an answer, did not strike Sir Charles as a very good one. But the ladies seemed to comprehend, for Miss Cameron said: “Did I tell you about meeting him at Oxford just a few months before his death—at a children’s tea-party? He was so sweet and understanding with them! Two women tried to lionize him, and he ran away and played with the children. I was more glad to meet him than any one I can think of. Not as a personage, you know, but because I felt grateful to him.”

“Yes, that way, distinctly,” said Mrs. Collier. “I should have felt that way towards Mrs. Ewing more than any one else.”

“I know, ‘Jackanapes,’” remarked Collier, shortly; “a brutal assault upon the feelings, I say.”

“Some one else said it before you, Robert,” Mrs. Collier commented, calmly. “Perhaps Sir Charles met him at Apia.” They all turned and looked at him. He wished he could say he had met him at Apia. He did not quite see how they had made their way from a children’s tea party at Oxford to the South Pacific islands, but he was anxious to join in somewhere with a clever observation. But they never seemed to settle in one place sufficiently long for him to recollect what he knew of it. He hoped they would get around to the west coast of Africa in time. He had been Governor of Sierra Leone for five years.

His success that night at dinner on the yacht was far better. The others seemed a little tired after the hours of sight-seeing to which he had treated them, and they were content to listen. In the absence of Mr. Clarges, who knew them word by word, he felt free to tell his three stories of life at Sierra Leone. He took his time in the telling, and could congratulate himself that his efforts had never been more keenly appreciated. He felt that he was holding his own.

The night was still and warm, and while the men lingered below at the table, the two women mounted to the deck and watched the lights of the town as they vanished one by one and left the moon in unchallenged possession of the harbor. For a long time Miss Cameron stood silent, looking out across the bay at the shore and the hills beyond. A fish splashed near them, and the sound of oars rose from the mist that floated above the water, until they were muffled in the distance. The palms along the shore glistened like silver, and overhead the Southern Cross shone white against a sky of purple. The silence deepened and continued for so long a time that Mrs. Collier felt its significance, and waited for the girl to end it.

Miss Cameron raised her eyes to the stars and frowned. “I am not surprised that he is content to stay here,” she said. “Are you? It is so beautiful, so wonderfully beautiful.”

For a moment Mrs. Collier made no answer. “Two years is a long time, Florence,” she said; “and he is all I have; he is not only my only brother, he is the only living soul who is related to me. That makes it harder.”