Lechworthy’s project for a pamphlet dealing with mission work in the South Seas had never been of a very ambitious character. It was to be nothing more than the notes of a passing traveller, with no intention of comprehensiveness or finality, designed only to awaken more interest in the missions. Very rarely did Lechworthy lay aside any work that he had projected and actually begun; persistence and self-reliance had been the distinguishing notes of his commercial career. But now he gathered together the memoranda that he had already made, wrapped them in a big envelope, endorsed it and sealed it.

“Hilda,” he said, “you remember an idea I had of writing something about the missionary work, you know—I’ve given that up.”

“Yes,” said Hilda, who understood him well, “I suppose so. There’s a good deal else, isn’t there?”

Lechworthy’s mind had always been far less constricted than his opponents had supposed, and he was beginning now to adjust himself to the new ideas and facts that had lately come within his experience. Some change of view had been dawning upon him before he ever reached Faloo. His belief in Christianity as expounded by the evangelical section of the Church of England remained unshaken, the main pillar of his life as it had ever been. He still felt the encouragement of missionary enterprise to be part of his religious duty. But he had seen things, and he had lost faith in some of the faithful.

He had found quite good men making hypocrites and calling them native converts, and had regretted that the wisdom of the serpent is so seldom joined to the harmlessness of the dove. He had found that the teaching of Christianity had involved too often the teaching of much which was worthless in European civilisation and positively dangerous when transported to these islands. With many illustrations the King had made that clear to him. He had found, too, that much good work was being done by men whom he regarded as lost heretics and spoke of as “Romans.” To write the truth as he had found it might do harm. And here, in this remote island, out of the political and commercial atmosphere that had sometimes distorted his vision, and far from the petty wars of sects, specious misrepresentation refused to be called by any prettier name. Hilda herself would not have shrunk from it with more acute disgust.

Accustomed as he was to regard all that happened to him as specially ordained by Providence, he meekly submitted to the change in his plans which it seemed to him that Providence had directed. The work which he had designed had been taken out of his hands; it might be that some vainglorious thoughts had mingled with that design. And other work had been given him. He regarded it as no blind chance which had brought him to Faloo, had saved him from Bassett’s revolver and Hilda from the island fever, and had put him into the hands of this strange native king, with his scheme for making of his own little island a refuge for some remnant of his race against the devastating inroad of an unsuitable civilisation.

In his new work Lechworthy was yoked with an unbeliever, or at least with one who doubted. The King made no profession of Christianity. With the fundamental facts of Christianity he was already acquainted, and for a philosophical discussion of them he was always ready. He professed a general toleration and a readiness to be convinced by events. But he left Lechworthy with no more than a conviction of his honesty and a hope for his future.

“You see,” said the King, one evening, “we are very good and mild people here, and we wish to please. On some islands they fight very often, and they eat man. But my people are gentle, unless they are greatly hurt, and so also am I. You, too, I specially wish to please, and a little lie is easy and costs nothing. But suppose you find me out, what then? Would you be pleased?”

“I should not, sir,” said Lechworthy. “I should resent it. In fact, it would make it impossible for us to work together.”

“All right. Very good. That is what I thought. So I do not say I think just the same as you and repeat pieces of your sacred books. It would be pleasant but untrue. So when I say something else that may please you, then you can believe me. You go to get me British protection, to shut out the white men, to leave Faloo for its own people. But you want Protestant religion. I say that shall be. In return I give this Protestant religion a very good chance. I bring in the best native converts I find, and they shall teach the religion. Not boots, and square-face, and English weights and measures, but just the religion. And I build a fine church all correct. If I do not do all I have said, then I am a liar and you may take the British protection away from us again.”

Lechworthy smiled patiently. “You will keep talking as if I carried British protection in my pocket. I hope that something can be done, and I shall do my best. But how often have I told you that it is all very doubtful and may end in nothing?”

“No,” said the King, stolidly, “you are a political man, just the same as Gladstone. So you understand how this can be managed.”

“But I’m not at all the same as Gladstone,” said Lechworthy. “I have not the gifts, nor the position, nor the influence that he had. I—”

“But still you will do it. You have a newspaper, much money, many friends. I think you too modest. If you wish you will do it. If you do it I will give your Protestant religion a very good chance.”

“Wouldn’t the chance be better,” said Lechworthy, “if you allowed one white missionary. I could select the man myself—a man who would be in sympathy with your views.”

“It is not then a religion for all races?” asked the King. “Without the help of the white man it cannot work—eh?” These were calculated questions.

Gradually he brought Lechworthy to agree with him. In the face of the doubter Lechworthy felt that he himself must show no doubt. In uplifted moments he did really feel enthusiastic and confident.

Lechworthy went on in a steady and business-like way, preparing his appeal for a native Faloo, and requiring from the King endless information. Were the people sober? They were. As a matter of fact they had no chance of drinking. Were they industrious? Here the King hesitated a little. The people of his race were naturally less active than Europeans. But they could be made to work—oh, yes. What were the statistics as to the prevalence of crime and violence? There were no statistics, but the King could give a general assurance. Above all, was the Government strong and stable, able to control the inhabitants, and properly representative of their interests?

“But I myself am the Government,” said Smith, slightly aggrieved. “And what does it matter?”

“I must show that your people are quiet and orderly, and that they can with safety and humanity be left to themselves; that no interference, even in the guise of help, from the more civilised nations is required here. It is part of the foundation of the whole thing—the essential foundation.”

And Lechworthy went on collecting such facts and concrete instances as he could, showing an appetite for names and figures that dismayed the King. None the less, the King was quite docile and did his best. Either by the extent of his knowledge, or by the extent of his ignorance, he was always astounding Lechworthy.

The Exiles’ Club also astounded—and possibly illuminated—Lechworthy. He got on well, amazingly well, with Dr Pryce, whom he could not help liking and admiring, and to whom he was very deeply and sincerely grateful, but Pryce was very reticent as to his fellow-members. It was the King who was Lechworthy’s principal source of information, and the King had many strange stories to tell of the Exiles’ Club.

Lechworthy had not often been brought into contact with bad men and criminals, and his idea of the bad man was crude to the point of childishness. He would have admitted that we were all sinners, and that even the best of men have their trivial defects and lapses, but he had always thought of criminals as men bad all through, bad in every thought and act. He had never realised the share in humanity that even the worst men sometimes hold.

It did not surprise him that there were occasional scenes of disorder and excess at the Exiles’ Club, but it did surprise him to find that as a rule all was orderly and well-organised, and that, without policeman or magistrate, they obeyed the laws that they had been forced to make. It did surprise him to hear that the Rev. Cyril Mast, when he first came to the island, instituted a Sunday morning service, and that several members of the club, Sir John Sweetling among them, attended it regularly. It was Mast himself who, under an acute and slightly maudlin sense of his own unworthiness, had discontinued these services.

“Yes,” said Smith, simply, “this Mast lives badly, talks badly, drinks very much. But he is a religious man and most unhappy about it. If he had a choice I think he would sooner be quite good.”

“Every man has the choice,” said Lechworthy, firmly; but to himself he admitted that every man has not the same kind of choice.

The King was perfectly fair, too, in speaking of the trouble between the exiles and the natives. It was due to one special cause, and it was a cause which drove the natives mad; it made them forget all benefits that they had received, and include both the innocent and the guilty in one condemnation.

“The innocent?” said Lechworthy.

“Yes, innocent so far as the natives are concerned. The native servants at the club are treated well as a rule, well fed and well paid, and they get many presents. Some of the members have handled them roughly at times, through drink or anger, but that is uncommon, and Sir John does not like it. If any of them is sick then Pryce comes and makes him well again, just as he is making your niece well again, and never anything to pay. The native who has something good—fish or fruit or fresh milk, can sell it better to the white man than to another native. It is a few of the younger men at the club who have greatly wronged my people, but there are many of my people who would like to destroy them all.”

“I wish you could tell me more of this Dr Pryce. Apart from all he has done for us I like him. I can’t understand your ideas about him.”

“What ideas?”

“When Hilda was ill you said—truly, I think—that Dr Pryce could save her. But you said it would be necessary to frighten him. Did you frighten him? Why was it necessary?”

“I thought he might like to kill her—you too. But I did not frighten him, and I believe I was wrong.”

“And that story of yours about the Snowflake?”

“I do not know. He asked me to get him a passage on the Snowflake. I wondered—and then I warned you. I said the ship and all aboard her would be lost. I think I was right then, and that it would not be so now.”

“Well, sir, I think you were wrong. He knows that I would give him that passage, that I’d give him the boat, that I’d give him anything. He has asked for nothing.”

“That is because, when your niece was ill, I made a little mistake, and he saw that I suspected him. If he is suspected then his plan is no good. He would know that.”

“It’s not an easy thing to find a good man who’ll sacrifice his life for his friends. Why should Dr Pryce do it for the scum at the Exiles’ Club?”

Smith shook his head. “I do not understand him,” he said. “He is the one man there that I do not see through. He is straight—yes, but then he has plenty. He does not take much care of his own skin. I myself have seen him risk his life—just for a game, for the sport. Why not then also for the sake of the men with whom he has lived for so long?”

“But you think he means us no harm now?”

The King waved his hand, as though to put the suggestion aside. “I leave him here alone with you. He takes you out—you and your niece—shows you the island. Very well. Every day he has a hundred chances, if he meant harm. If I did not know that he meant no harm he would have no chance at all. You are the guest of the King of Faloo, and that is an important thing with me. Besides, on your safety all my plan depends.”

“I’m glad you think that way about him now. You certainly would not be able to convince me of the opposite. Why did he ever come to Faloo?”

The King shrugged his shoulders. “I did once ask him that question. I have not asked it of many of the exiles. The man they call Charles will chat and laugh about anything, past or present. Bassett once, when he had drunk a little cognac, told me about himself. Mast has made confessions when he was drunk, and said they were all lies when he was sober again. But most of them will not speak of the past, and questions make them very angry. However, I was very sick, and Pryce looked after me. Perhaps he saved my life—who knows? So I thought he would make me his friend, and one night when he had sat late with me I did ask him.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Go to the devil!’ and put the little thermometer-machine in my mouth.”

“Well,” said Lechworthy, “I’ve half a mind to ask him myself.”

“If you take my advice, then no. If he wishes to tell you, he will tell you. If he does not wish it will be no good to ask.”

The general tendency of Lechworthy’s mind was optimistic. His perplexities did not lead him to depression. With a complete confidence in an omnipotent power of good, cognisant of and concerned in the smallest details of even the least of the human swarm, pessimism is impossible. Side by side with “I do not understand” comes the consolatory “I do not need to understand.” It is probable that a patient submission to the limitation of knowledge, at those very points where the thirst to know is most acute, is one of the conditions of happiness. It is rare among the thoughtful men of the day.

His nature being simple and without vanity, the ludicrous had no terrors for him. When, for example, Tiva and Ioia made for him a garland of flowers, he wore it with as little concern as he would have worn a hat, and met the cheerful chaff of Hilda or the doctor quite unperturbed. He took a paternal interest in Tiva and Ioia, but after one trial relinquished any attempt to instruct them in Christianity. Their readiness to make any declaration which they thought was wanted, without the slightest regard to its basis in fact, baffled him, and their unintentional irreverence appalled him. He had to admit that his knowledge of the native mind was insufficient for his purpose. He found himself at times regarding these pleasant, brown, graceful, unthinking creatures rather as some new kind of pet animal than as human beings; and, finding himself in this attitude, repented of it. He and Hilda learned from them a native game, a sort of “knuckle-bones.” It is doubtful whether Tiva or Ioia cheated the more shamelessly at it; when detected, they laughed cheerfully. In return he taught them to avoid a frequent use of the word “damn” as a simple intensive, and answered so far as he could their many questions about Queen Victoria and the British method of executing murderers. He was equally ready to instruct them about tube railways and telephones. But when he spoke of such things they became very polite but asked no questions; they did not believe a word he said on those subjects and were not interested.

It was a time of relief after danger—danger to his own life and to Hilda’s. And of any further danger that threatened Lechworthy knew little or nothing. But the patrol at the King’s house got plenty of shooting-practice under the direction of the King himself; and the King wore the air of a man who was watching and listening, always listening.