I now arose, confronting her, and flung the wicker chair to the other side of the deck. Then, taking off my hat, I left her standing there.
CHAPTER XVIII
I am tired of my own shortcomings, and I have no doubt the reader is also, if she has read this far. I shall therefore make no attempt to excuse my language toward Gertrude Hemster. The heated conversation in which we indulged had, however, one effect upon my future course. I resolved not to say a word to her father against his treatment of her. Whatever the old gentleman had said to her, it could not have been cruder or ruder than the language which I had myself employed. Therefore I felt it would be ludicrous for me to act the part of censor or adviser. I had shown my own unfitness for either of those rôles. Besides this, I had been convinced that Hilda Stretton was entirely mistaken in thinking that the young woman would commit suicide or do any injury to herself. My summing up of her character led me to the belief that although she would be quite willing to inflict pain upon others, she would take good care not to act to her own discomfort. Seizing the first opportunity that presented itself, I told Miss Stretton my determination, and, while she did not agree with me, she made no effort to induce me to forego my resolution.
The bustle pertaining to our safe arrival at Nagasaki drove all other subjects from my mind, and I was inclined to think that my recent troubles and quarrels arose through the well-known activity of Satan to provide employment for idle hands. We were now busy enough. There had accumulated at Nagasaki a mass of letters and a bundle of cablegrams for Mr. Hemster which required his immediate attention, and in his disposal of these messages I caught a glimpse of the great business man he really was. However lax he might have proved in his conduct toward his only daughter, he showed himself a very Napoleon in the way he faced the problems presented to him, settling momentous affairs thousands of miles away by the dispatch of a code word or two.
In all this, so far as my abilities permitted, I was his humble assistant, and I found myself filled with admiration and astonishment at his powers of concentration and the brilliancy of his methods. The little naphtha launch was kept running backward and forward between the yacht and the telegraph office, and during the long day that followed our arrival at Nagasaki that roll-top desk was a centre of commercial activity vastly different in its efficiency from the lazy routine to which I had been accustomed in the diplomatic service. My own nervous tension kept me going until the long day had passed, and the time seemed as but a few minutes. At the end I was as tired as if I had spent twelve hours continuously on the football field, and for the first time in my life I realized how men are burnt up in their pursuit of the mighty dollar. My natural inclination was to doubt whether the game was worth the candle, but during the progress of the game there was no question, for it held on the alert every faculty a man possessed, and I could well believe that it might exert a fascination that indulgence in mere gambling could never equal.
Silas K. Hemster himself was like a man transformed; the eyes which I had hitherto considered dull and uninteresting became aglow with the excitement of battle. His face was keen, stern, and relentless; I saw he was an enemy who gave no quarter and expected none. His orders to me were sharp and decisive, and I no more thought of questioning them than of offering unsought advice regarding them. He was like an exiled monarch come again to his throne; for the first time in our brief acquaintance I had seen the real Hemster, and the sight had given me a feeling of my own inane inadequacy in the scheme of things here below. When at last the day was done, his face relaxed, and he leaned back in his swivel chair, regarding me with eyes that had taken on their old kindliness. He seemed enlivened rather than exhausted by the contest, as if he had taken a sip of the elixir of youth.
“Well, my boy,” he said, “you’re tired out. You look as if you had been running a race.”
“That is exactly what I’ve been doing, sir.”