"Well," he said, "if you won't have us, I'll take them back and bury them. It's tolerably sure to come to that. Two of us will not eat much, any way, and we'll be quite content to sleep on deck."
There was no answer for a moment, and then, as the bridge came slanting down, the man who leaned out from it laughed.
"It's a puncheon of oil to nothing, and I've been hard up myself," he said. "The next thing is, how the devil are you going to get them up? We've stowed away our ladder."
"Then it'll have to be a sling. I'll steady them up when she rises, and some of your crowd can hand them in."
It was done with difficulty, for the steamer rolled with a disconcerting swing, and then Austin grasped Bill's hand before he went up the rope. A gong clanged sharply, the launch slid astern, and several seamen carried the two bundles of foul blankets away. While Austin watched them vacantly a hand fell upon his shoulder, and propelled him into a room beneath the bridge. Then he heard a harsh voice:
"There isn't any factory I'm acquainted with hereabouts. Where d'you get that oil from?" it said.
Austin sat down on the settee and blinked at the burly, hard-faced man in front of him.
"I don't know if you'll be astonished, but we really came by it legitimately," he said. "In fact, we got it out of a stranded steamer—one we're endeavouring to heave off, you see."
The skipper smiled as comprehension suddenly dawned on him. "Then you're one of the —— fools who bought theCumbria?"
"I am. Still, I'm not sure that your opinion of us is quite warranted yet. If it isn't, you'll get more than the one puncheon for taking us across. In the meanwhile, I'm a little anxious about those men."
"They're all right. Pills will see to them. We have one. He probably killed somebody by accident, or did something of that kind, or he wouldn't be here. Directors had a notion we might pick up a few passengers. They, however, prefer the liners."
Austin laughed, and the skipper's eyes slowly twinkled. "The fact is, I don't blame them," he said. "Any way, you will lie down here until they get you a room in the poop ready."
He went out, and an hour or two later Austin was roused by a touch from a fitful sleep. A young man who stooped over him was regarding him intently.
"Put that in your mouth?" he said.
Austin slipped the little glass tube between his lips, and the doctor nodded when he passed it back to him.
"Yes," he said, "you have a very promising case of fever coming on. Get up and lean on me; the sooner we pack you between the blankets the better."
Austin rose unsteadily, and found that he had some difficulty in walking when they went out upon the slanting deck. He was quite sure of that, but everything else that he did, or was done to him, during the next few days, was wrapped in obscurity. Still, he had a hazy notion of the doctor and another man half dragging him into a little room.
It was fifteen days after he boarded the steamer when Austin reached Las Palmas in a condition which, at least, prevented him chafing at the delay as he otherwise would have done. On the second day something went wrong with the high-pressure engine, and the little, deep-loaded vessel lay rolling idly athwart the swell, while her engineers dismantled and re-erected it. Then the trouble they had already had with the condenser became more acute, so that they would scarcely keep a vacuum, and it also happened that the trade-breeze she had to steam against blew unusually fresh that season.
Austin, however, was not aware of this at the time. He lay rambling incoherently for several days, and when at last his senses came back to him, found himself too weak and listless to trouble about anything. He gained strength rapidly, for the swamp fever does not, as a rule, keep its victim prostrate long. It either kills him without loss of time, or allows him to escape for a season; but its effect is frequently mental as well as physical, and Austin's listlessness remained. He had borne a heavy strain, and when he went ashore at Las Palmas the inevitable reaction was intensified by the black dejection the fever had left behind. It seemed to him that he and Jefferson were only wasting their efforts, and though he still meant to go on with them, he expected no result, since he now felt thatthere was not the slightest probability of their ever getting theCumbriaoff. It was a somewhat unusual mood for a young Englishman to find himself in, though by no means an incomprehensible one in case of a man badly shaken by the malaria fever, while one of Austin's shortcomings was, or so, at least, Jacinta Brown considered, a too complaisant adaptation of himself to circumstances. She held the belief that when the latter were unpropitious, a determined attempt to alter them was much more commendable, and not infrequently successful.
In any case, Austin found Pancho Brown was away buying tomatoes when he called at his office, and the Spanish clerk also informed him that Miss Brown and Mrs. Hatherly had left Las Palmas for a while. He fancied they had gone to Madeira, but was not certain, and Austin, who left him a message for Brown and a letter Jefferson had charged him with to be forwarded to Miss Gascoyne, went on to the telegraph office more dejected than ever. Jacinta had, usually, a bracing effect upon those she came into contact with, and Austin, who felt he needed a mental stimulant, realised now that one of the things that had sustained him was the expectation of hearing her express her approval of what he had done. He had not looked for anything more, but it seemed that he must also dispense with this consolation.
He delivered one of the canarios, who was apparently recovering, to his friends, and saw the other bestowed in the hospital, and then, finding that he could not loiter about Las Palmas waiting an answer to his cable, which he did not expect for several days, decided to go across to Teneriffe with theEstremedura. There was no difficulty about this, though funds were scanty, for the Spanish manager told him he could make himself at home on board her as long as he liked, if he would instruct the new sobrecargoin his duties, as he, it appeared, had some difficulty in understanding them.
On the night they went to sea he lay upon the settee in the engineers' mess-room, with Macallister sitting opposite him, and a basket of white grapes and a garafon of red wine on the table between them. Port and door were wide open, and the trade-breeze swept through the room, fresh, and delightfully cool. Austin had also an unusually good cigar in his hand, and stretched himself on the settee with a little sigh of content when he had recounted what they had done on board theCumbria.
"I don't know if we'll ever get her off, and the astonishing thing is, that since I had the fever I don't seem to care," he said. "In the meanwhile, it's a relief to get away from her. In fact, I feel I would like to lie here and take it easy for at least a year."
Macallister nodded comprehendingly. Austin's face was blanched and hollow, and he was very thin, while the stamp of weariness and lassitude was plain on him. Still, as he glanced in his direction a little sparkle crept into the engineer's eyes.
"So Jefferson made the pump go, and ran the forehold dry!" he said. "When ye come to think of it, yon is an ingenious man."
Austin laughed. "He is also, in some respects, an astonishing one. He was perfectly at home among the smart people at the Catalina, and I fancy he would have been equally so in the Bowery, whose inhabitants, one understands, very much resemble in their manners those of your Glasgow closes or Edinburgh wynds. In fact, I've wondered, now and then, if Miss Gascoyne quite realises who she is going to marry. There are several sides to Jefferson's character, and she has, so far, only seen one of them."
"Well," said Macallister, reflectively, "I'm thinking shewill never see the rest. There are men, though they're no exactly plentiful, who can hide them, and it's scarcely likely that Jefferson will rive a steamboat out of the African swamps again."
"Once is quite enough in a lifetime, but it's when the work is done, and he has to quiet down, I foresee trouble for Jefferson. I'm not sure Miss Gascoyne's English friends would altogether appreciate him."
Again Macallister nodded. "Still," he said, "what yon man does not know he will learn. I would back him to do anything now he has made that boiler steam. Then ye will mind it's no the clever women who are the easiest to live with when ye have married them, and there's a good deal to be said for girls like Miss Gascoyne, who do not see too much. It is convenient that a wife should be content with her husband, and not be wanting to change him into somebody else, which is a thing I would not stand at any price myself."
Austin grinned, for it was known that Macallister had, at least now and then, found it advisable to entertain his friends on board theEstremeduraby stealth. The engineer however, did not appear to notice his smile.
"Ye will go back when ye get the money?" he said.
"Of course. I have to see the thing out now, though I don't quite understand how I ever came to trouble myself about it in the first place."
This time it was Macallister who grinned. "I have been in this world a weary while, and would ye pull the wool over my eyes? Ye are aware that the notion was driven into ye."
Austin was astonished, and a trifle annoyed, as he remembered a certain very similar conversation he had had with Jefferson. It was disconcerting to find that Macallister was as conversant with his affairs as his partner had shownhimself to be, especially as they had both apparently drawn the same inference.
"I wonder what made you say that?" he asked, with lifted brows.
Macallister laughed. "Well," he said drily, "I'm thinking Miss Brown knows, as well as I do, that ye would not have gone of your own accord."
"Why should Miss Brown have the slightest wish that I should go to Africa?"
"If ye do not know, how could ye expect me to? Still, it should be plain to ye that it was not for your health."
Austin raised himself a trifle, and looked at his comrade steadily. "The drift of your remarks is tolerably clear. Any way, because I would sooner you made no more of them, it might be as well to point out that no girl who cared twopence about a man would send him to the swamps where theCumbriais lying."
"Maybe she would not. There are things I do not know, but ye will mind that Jacinta Brown is not made on quite the same model as Miss Gascoyne. She sees a good deal, and if she was not content with her husband she would up and alter him. I'm thinking it would not matter if it hurt the pair o' them."
"The difficulty is that she hasn't got one."
Macallister laughed softly. "It's one that can be got over, though Jacinta's particular. It's not everybody who would suit her. Ye are still wondering why ye went to Africa?"
"No," said Austin, with a trace of grimness. "I don't think it's worth while. Mind, I'm not admitting that I didn't go because the notion pleased me, and if Miss Brown wished me to, it was certainly because of Muriel Gascoyne."
"Maybe," said Macallister, with a little incredulous smile. He rose, and, moving towards the doorway, turnedagain. "She might tell ye herself to-morrow. She's now in Santa Cruz."
He went out, apparently chuckling over something, and Austin thoughtfully smoked out his cigar. To be a friend of Jacinta Brown's was, as he had realised already, a somewhat serious thing. It implied that one must adopt her point of view, and, what was more difficult, to some extent, at least, sink his own individuality. Macallister and Jefferson were, he fancied, perhaps right upon one point, and that was that Jacinta had decided that a little strenuous action might be beneficial in his case; but if this was so, Austin was not sure that he was grateful to her. He was willing to do anything that would afford her pleasure, that was, so long as he could feel she would gain anything tangible, if it was only the satisfaction of seeing Muriel Gascoyne made happy through his endeavours. In fact, what he wished was to do her a definite service, but the notion of being reformed, as it were, against his wishes, when he was not sure that he needed it, did not please him. This was carrying a friendly interest considerably too far, and it was quite certain, he thought, that he could expect nothing more from her. He almost wished that he had never seen her, which was a desire he had hovered on the brink of before; but while he considered the matter the trade-breeze was sighing through the port, and the engines throbbed on drowsily, while from outside came the hiss and gurgle of parted seas. Austin heard it all, until the sounds grew fainter, and he went to sleep.
It also happened that while he slept and dreamed of her, Jacinta sat with Muriel Gascoyne in the garden of a certain hotel on the hillside above Santa Cruz, Teneriffe. The house had been built long ago, evidently for a Spanish gentleman of means and taste, and its latest proprietor had sufficient sense to attempt no improvement on its old-world beauty. It stood on a terrace of the hillside, quiet, quaint, and cool, with its ancient, bronze-railed balconies, red-tiled roof, and pink-washed walls, but its garden of palms and oleanders was its greatest charm.
On the night in question a full moon hung over the Cañadas' splintered rampart, and its soft radiance fell upon the white-walled city and smote a track of glittering silver across the vast plain of sea. The smell of oleanders and heliotrope was heavy in the air, and a cluster of blossoms swayed above Jacinta's shoulder. She was just then looking up at a Spanish officer in dark green uniform, who stood close by, with sword girt tight to his thigh. He had a dark, forceful face, with the stamp of distinction on it, but he received no encouragement, though he glanced at the vacant place on the stone bench suggestively.
"No," said Jacinta. "I do not think I shall go to-morrow, so you need not call for me. I have scrambled through the Mercedes Wood several times already, and we came here to be quiet. That is why we are sitting outside to-night. There are two or three tiresome people in the house who will insist upon talking."
It is seldom necessary to furnish a Spaniard, who is usually skilled in innuendo, with a second hint, and the officer took his departure gracefully. When he vanished, with jingling sword, into the shadow of the palms, Muriel looked at her companion.
"You meant me to stay?" she said.
"Of course," said Jacinta. "Still, I didn't mean you to let him see that I did, and I really did not kick you very hard. Any way, it doesn't matter. The great thing is that he is gone."
"You were anxious that he should go?"
"Yes," said Jacinta. "I feel relieved now. He is, insome respects, a very silly man. In fact, he has been wanting to marry me for ever so long."
"Why?" said Muriel, and stopped abruptly. "Of course, I mean that he is a Spaniard, you know."
Jacinta laughed, and apparently indicated herself by a little wave of her fan. She was once more attired in an evening dress that appeared to consist largely of black lace, and looked curiously dainty and sylph-like in the diaphanous drapery. The moonlight was also on her face.
"The reason," she said, "ought to be sufficiently plain. He is, as you point out, certainly Spanish, but there really are a few estimable gentlemen of that nationality. This one was Governor or Commandante in some part of Cuba, and I believe he got comparatively rich there. They usually do. Still, he's a little fond of the casino, and is reported to be unlucky, while, in spite of my obvious disadvantages, I am the daughter of Pancho Brown."
She stopped with another laugh that had a faintly suggestive ring in it. "There are times when I wish I was somebody else who hadn't a penny!"
"But it can't be nice to be poor," said Muriel, looking at her with a trace of bewilderment in her big blue eyes.
"It is probably distinctly unpleasant. Still, it would be consoling to feel that your money could neither encourage nor prevent anybody you liked falling in love with you, and it would, in one sense, be nice to know that the man you graciously approved of would have to get whatever you wanted for you. You ought to understand that."
There was a trace of pride in Muriel's smile. "Of course; but, after all, there are not many men who can do almost anything, like—Harry Jefferson. Some of the very nicest ones seem quite unable to make money."
"I really don't think there are," and Jacinta's tone was, for no very apparent reason, slightly different now. "Thenicest ones are, as you suggest, usually lazy. It's sad, but true. Still, you see, if ever I married, my husband would have to shake off his slothfulness and do something worth while."
"But he mightn't want to."
"Of course," said Jacinta, drily. "He probably wouldn't. Still, he would have to. I should make him."
"Ah," said Muriel. "Do you know that you are just a little hard, and I think when one is too hard one is generally sorry afterwards. Now, I don't understand it all, but you once told me you had got something you wished for done, and were sorry you had. I fancied you were even sorrier than you wished me to know."
Jacinta sat silent a moment or two, with a curious expression in her face, as she looked out across the clustered roofs towards the sparkling sea. It was a custom she had fallen into lately, and it was always towards the east she gazed. Then she smiled.
"Well," she said, "perhaps I was, but it was certainly very silly of me."
Neither of them spoke again for a while, and by and by a man came out of the house bearing an envelope upon a tray. Jacinta tore it open, and Muriel saw the blood surge to her face as she spread out the telegraphic message. Then the swift colour faded, and there was only a little angry glint in her eyes.
"It's from my father, and good news for you," she said. "Tell Muriel Austin was here. Salvage operations difficult, but he left Jefferson, who expects to be successful, well. Forwarding letter."
"Ah!" said Muriel, with a little gasp, "you don't know what a relief that is to me. But you seem almost angry."
Jacinta laughed a trifle harshly. "I almost think I am. It isn't exactly pleasant to find one's self mistaken, andI had expected something better from Mr. Austin. The difficulties he mentions were evidently too much for him. You were quite right, my dear. There are not many men like Jefferson."
Now Muriel Gascoyne had no very keen perceptions, and was, moreover, wrapped up in her own and Jefferson's affairs, or she might have seen that anger was not all that Jacinta was feeling. As it was, overcome by the relief the message had brought her, she quite failed to notice the pain in her companion's face or the quivering of her hands. In a minute or two Jacinta, who waited until she fancied she could do so without it appearing significant, rose and left her.
She, however, stopped on the terrace, and once more looked down on the glittering sea, with one hand closed at her side. Then, as though remembering something, she turned hastily.
"I could never have believed you were a coward—and you went out for me!" she said, and moved towards the hotel with a little air of resolution, as one who had made a painful decision.
A full moon hung over the white city, and the drowsy murmur of the surf broke fitfully through the music of the artillery band when Austin sat listlessly on a bench in the plaza of Santa Cruz. It was about eight o'clock in the evening, and the plaza was crowded, as usual at that hour. Peon and officer, merchant and clerk, paced slowly up and down, enjoying the cool of the evening with their wives and daughters, or sat in clusters outside the lighted cafés. The band was an excellent one, the crowd gravely good-humoured, and picturesquely attired, for white linen, pale-tinted draperies, sombre cloth, and green uniform formed patches of kaleidoscopic colouring as the stream of humanity flowed by under the glaring lamplight and the soft radiance of the moon.
Austin had sat there often before he went to Africa, listening to the music and watching the spectacle; but neither had any charm for him that night. The laughter sounded hollow, the waltz the band was playing had lost its swing, and the streams of light from the cafés hurt his eyes and irritated him. The deep murmur of the sea alone was faintly soothing, and remembering how often he had thought of that cool plaza, with its lights and music, in the steamy blackness of the swamps, he wondered vaguely what had happened to him. The zest and sparkle seemedto have gone out of life, and he did not attribute it to the fact that the melancholia of the swamp belt was still upon him.
He crossed the plaza, and sitting outside one of the cafés he had frequented, asked for wine. It was brought him, chilled with snow from the great peak's summit, but the greeting of the man who kept the café seemed for once devoid of cordiality, and the wine sour and thin. Still, the Spaniard stood a minute or two by his chair, and, as it happened, Jacinta passed just then with a dark-faced Spanish officer. He wore an exceedingly tight-fitting uniform, but he had a figure that carried it well, and an unmistakable air of distinction. Jacinta was also smiling at him, though she turned, and seemed to indicate somebody in the vicinity with a little gesture. As she did so her eyes rested for a moment upon Austin, who became for the first time unpleasantly conscious of his haggard face and hard, scarred hands. There was, he realised, nothing in the least distinguished about him. Then it was with a faint sense of dismay he saw that Jacinta did not mean to recognise him, for she laughed as she turned to her companion, and he heard the soft rustle of her light draperies as they went on again.
"That is the Colonel Sarramento?" he said, as carelessly as he could, though there was a faint flush in his hollow face.
"It is," said his companion. "Colonel in the military service, though he has held other offices in Cuba. A man of ability, señor, and now it is said that he will marry the English merchant's daughter. Why not? The Señorita Brown is more Spanish than English, and she is certainly rich."
"I don't know of any reason," said Austin listlessly, and the man turned away. He had no wish to waste histime upon an Englishman who apparently did not appreciate his conversation.
Austin sat still a little while, indignation struggling with his languor, for he was almost certain that Jacinta had seen him. He had never flattered himself that she would regard him as anything more than a friend who was occasionally useful, but he thought she might, at least, have expressed her appreciation of his latest efforts, and he was also a trifle puzzled. Jacinta, as a rule, would stop and speak to any of the barefooted peons she was acquainted with, and he had never known her to slight an acquaintance without a reason. It seemed only due to her to make quite sure she had intentionally passed him without recognition.
He rose and strolled round the plaza until he met her again face to face where a stream of garish light fell upon them both. She allowed her eyes to rest upon him steadily, but it was the look she would have bestowed on a stranger, and in another moment she had turned to the officer at her side. Then a bevy of laughing tourists passed between and separated them.
After that Austin strolled round the plaza several times in a far from amiable temper. He was stirred at last, and easy-going as he usually was, there was in him a certain vein of combativeness which had been shaken into activity in Africa. It was, he admitted, certainly Jacinta's privilege to ignore him; but there were occasions on which conventionalities might be disregarded, and he determined that she should, at least, make him acquainted with her purpose in doing so. He did not mean to question it, but to hear it was, he felt, no more than his due.
It was some time before he came upon her again, talking to a Spanish lady, who, seeing him approaching with a suggestion of resolution in his attitude, had sufficient sense to withdraw a pace or two and sign to another companion. Jacinta apparently recognised that he was not to be put off this time, for she indicated the vacant chairs not far away with a little wave of her fan, and when he drew one out for her sat down and looked at him.
"You are persistent," she said. "I am not sure that it was altogether commendable taste."
Austin laughed a trifle bitterly, for the pessimistic dejection the fever leaves does not, as a rule, tend to amiability, and its victim, while willing to admit that there is nothing worth worrying over, is apt to make a very human display of temper on very small provocation.
"One should not expect too much from a steamboat sobrecargo," he said. "It is scarcely fair to compare him—for example—with a distinguished Spanish officer."
"I do not think you are improving matters," said Jacinta.
"Well," said Austin drily, "I have, you see, just come from a land where life is rather a grim affair, and one has no time to study its little amenities. I am, in fact, quite willing to admit that I have left my usual suavity behind me. Still, I don't think that should count. You contrived to impress me with the fact that you preferred something more vigorously brusque before I went out."
Jacinta met his gaze directly with a little ominous sparkle in her eyes and straightening brows. She had laid down her fan, and there was a cold disdain in her face the man could not understand. It was unfortunate he did not know how Pancho Brown had worded his message, for it contained no intimation that he was going back to Africa.
"It's a pity you didn't stay there," she said.
Austin started a little. He did not see what she could mean, and the speech appeared a trifle inhuman.
"It would please me to think you haven't any clear notion what those swamps are like," he said. "One is, unfortunately, apt to stay there altogether."
"Which is a contingency you naturally wished to avoid? I congratulated you upon your prudence once before. Still, you, at least, seemed quite acquainted with the characteristics of the fever belt of Western Africa when you went out. Your friends the mailboats' officers must have told you. That being so, why did you go?"
"A persistent dropping will, it is said, in time wear away considerably harder material than I am composed of. Words are also, one could fancy, even more efficacious than water in that respect."
A trace of colour crept into Jacinta's face, and her brows grew straighter. The lines of her slight form became more rigid, and she was distinctly imperious in her anger.
"Oh, I understand!" she said. "Well, I admit that I was the cause of your going, and now you have come to reproach me for sending you. Well, I will try to bear it, and if I do show any anger it will not be at what you say, but at the fact that one who I to some extent believed in should consider himself warranted in saying anything at all. No doubt, you will not recognise the distinction, but in the meanwhile you haven't quite answered my question. You were a free agent, after all, and I could use no compulsion. Why did you go?"
Austin's temper had grown no better during the interview, which was unfortunate for him, because an angry man is usually at a disadvantage in the presence of a woman whose indignation with him is largely tempered by a chilling disdain.
"That," he said, reflectively, "is a point upon which I cannot be quite certain, though the whole thing was, naturally, in most respects a piece of egregious folly. Still, your good opinion had its value to me, especially as it wasvery evident that I could never expect anything more. A little brutal candour is, I think, admissible now and then."
The colour had faded out of Jacinta's face, but the sparkle was a trifle plainer in her eyes. "So you recognised that! Under the circumstances, it was wise of you, though how far you were warranted in telling me is a question we needn't go into now. It is a pity you ever went at all."
"In one sense I almost think it is," said Austin, gazing at her bewilderedly. "Still, there is a good deal I can't understand. I am in the dark, you see."
"Then I suppose I must try to make it clear to you. I am an essentially practical person, and any ardour you possess has hitherto been qualified by a very commendable discretion; but we are not very old, after all, and there is, fortunately, something in most of us which is occasionally stronger than the petty prudence we guide ourselves by. Now and then, as you gracefully suggest, it leads us into folly, which we have, perhaps, really no great reason to be sorry for. Well, for a little while you shook off the practical and apparently aspired after the ideal. You went out to Africa because you fancied it would please me, and it did. One may admit that a thing of that kind appeals to a woman's vanity. Still, of course, one could scarcely expect you to adhere to such a purpose. We have grown too wise to indulge in unprofitable sentimentality, and our knights errant do not come back upon their shields. They are practical gentlemen, who appreciate the comfort of a whole skin."
"I'm afraid you're confusing historical periods, and the times have certainly changed. They now use an empty gun case in Western Africa, I believe, and if they can't get that, any old blanket or piece of canvas that happens to be available."
"It should be a comfort to know that you need never anticipate anything so unpleasant."
This time the colour suffused Austin's pallid face. It was clear that she was taunting him with cowardice in leaving Jefferson, and her contempt appeared so wholly unreasonable that he would make no attempt to vindicate himself. It did not appear likely to be successful in any case, and the pessimistic bitterness the fever leaves was still upon him.
"Well," he said quietly, "I had looked for a slightly different reception; but it presumably isn't dignified to complain, especially when it's evident it wouldn't do any good, while I scarcely think there is anything to be gained by extending our conversation. You see, I am, naturally, aware that my character is a somewhat indifferent one already. You will, no doubt, excuse me?"
Jacinta made him a little inclination over her lifted fan.
"If you will tell the Señora Anasona yonder that I am waiting, I should be much obliged," she said.
It was five minutes later when Austin was admitted to the cable office as a favour, and handed a despatch from a Las Palmas banking agency.
"Your draft will be honoured to the extent of £200," it ran.
He smiled grimly as he thrust it into his pocket, and, wandering round the plaza again, came upon Muriel Gascoyne and Mrs. Hatherly sitting in two of the chairs laid out in front of a hotel. He felt tempted to slip by, but remembered that he had a duty to Jefferson. Mrs. Hatherly shook hands with him, and though he fancied there was a restraint in her cordiality, Muriel turned to him impulsively.
"Tell me everything," she said. "The letter has not arrived."
"There is a good deal of it," said Austin, with a smile.
"Then don't waste time."
Austin roused himself with an effort. Her tense interest and her simplicity, which, it seemed to him, had in it so much that was admirable, appealed to him, and he determined that she, at least, should know what Jefferson had done for her. The artistic temperament had also its influence on him, and he made her and her companion see the steaming swamps and feel the stress and strain of effort in the stifling hold, while it was his pleasure that Jefferson should stalk, a lean, dominant figure, through all the varied scenes. He felt, when he concluded, that he had drawn those sombre pictures well, and it would be Jefferson's fault if he did not henceforward pose before the girl's fancy as a knightly hero of romance. There were, naturally, difficulties to be overcome, for he recognised that she must be forced to comprehend that chivalric purposes must, nowadays, be wrought out by most prosaic means, and that the clash of the encounter occasionally leaves its mark upon a man. Still, he saw that he had succeeded when the simple pride shone through the moisture that gathered in the girl's big blue eyes, and he was moved to sympathy when she rose with a little gasp.
"I must tell Jacinta. I don't feel quite able to thank you, Mr. Austin; but you will understand," she said.
She left them, and Mrs. Hatherly turned and looked at Austin very graciously.
"So you are going back?" she said.
"Of course," said Austin. "There is a Spanish boat to Las Palmas to-morrow, and nothing to keep me now I have got the money. I don't mind admitting that the asking for it was harder than anything I did in Africa."
The little lady nodded, with a very kindly light in her eyes. "Yes," she said, "I can understand that, but in one sense I am not exactly pleased. Why didn't you come to me?"
"It sounds very ungracious, madam, but I am already in your debt, and one is naturally shy about asking favours of that kind from women. I almost think there are special reasons why it should be so in my case."
"That, presumably, means somebody has used you badly? Still, it really isn't wise to generalise too freely, and you were once good enough to promise that you would consider me as a friend of yours."
"I could scarcely have fancied you were particularly friendly a little while ago."
The little lady smiled again. "I offer you my sincere apologies, Mr. Austin. And now a question. Did you tell Jacinta what you have told us?"
"I certainly did not. To be candid, I hadn't the slightest encouragement. Miss Brown made it quite clear to me that she hadn't a trace of interest in any of my doings. In fact, she was kind enough to suggest it was rather a pity I escaped the fever, and hadn't come back upon my shield."
"For which she will probably be distinctly annoyed with herself by and by. I presume you must catch the Spanish steamer, Mr. Austin?"
"Of course. After all, I shall be glad to get back. People are not so very exacting in Africa, you see."
Mrs. Hatherly nodded, though there was a twinkle in her eyes. "Well," she said, "we will talk of something else in the meanwhile. I am alone just now, and you cannot decently leave me."
They discussed a good many things, and it seemed to Austin that his companion meant to keep him there, andwas anxious to gain time. Still, he could see no reason for it, and failed to understand her remark about Jacinta, and he sat still with an effort until Muriel came back again. She appeared a trifle vexed about something.
"I don't know what has happened to Jacinta, but she wasn't in the least sympathetic," she said. "She wouldn't even listen when I wanted to talk about Harry and theCumbria."
"Where is she now?" asked Mrs. Hatherly.
"With the Señora Anasona. They are going back to Laguna directly, though she had, as you know, practically promised to stay with us to-night. The señora, it seems, wants to drive her across to her finca at Orotava to-morrow. It is very provoking."
Mrs. Hatherly changed the subject, and it was a minute or two later when she turned to Austin again.
"I suppose it is really necessary that you should cross to Las Palmas to-morrow," she said casually. "Couldn't you get there in theEstremedurabefore the West-coast boat sailed?"
"There are several things I have to do which can't well be arranged here."
"You would insist on getting them all done, even if you knew it would cost you something?"
"I really think I should. You see, Jefferson and the others are practically depending on me, and I daren't omit anything I want, whatever trouble it might cause me, although, as a matter of fact, I don't anticipate any, and it will be rather a relief to get away."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Hatherly. "Well, I suppose that is only what one would expect from you. Muriel, will you tell Jacinta that she has not shown me the lace she mentioned, and as I think I'll get the woman at Laguna tomake me some, I want to see it before she goes away. I shall have to keep you another few minutes, Mr. Austin."
Muriel disappeared into the crowd, and it was a little time before she came back again.
"Jacinta has just driven off with the señora," she said. "I can't quite understand why she didn't come to say good-bye."
Austin smiled drily. "I think I could guess her reason."
Mrs. Hatherly rose and held out her hand. "If you can come and see us to-morrow, please do so," she said. "If not, you will remember now that whatever happens I am one of your friends."
"I shall be glad to do so, madam," and Austin made her a little inclination. "Good friends are scarce, and there are apparently not many people who believe in me."
It was in the heat of the afternoon Mrs. Hatherly and Muriel drove into old-world Laguna, which stands high upon the hill slopes above Santa Cruz. It was built four hundred years ago, and remains but little changed, for its early prosperity ebbed away with the trade in the once famous vintages of Canary, so that it stood until a few years ago with the grass in its streets, a place of drowsy stillness, picturesque in its decay, cool, and by no means over clean. Beneath it the hillside drops, dusty and sun-scorched, to the sea; but on the plateau behind it are fields of tall sugar-cane, walnuts, eucalyptus, and vines, beyond which again the shoulders of the great peak are seamed by straggling pines. Still, when Mrs. Hatherly drove into it, Laguna was once more awakening, for the British tourist had arrived, with his wife and daughters, in blue veils and inartistic raiment that roused the peasants' wonder, besides cameras, and baggage by the carriage load; and when the tourist comes, quietness and the dignified simplicity of olden Spain melt before him.
The Señora Anasona, with whom Jacinta was then residing, however, belonged to the ancient order, and she had also placed herself and all her possessions at Mrs. Hatherly's disposal. The latter had already discovered that to be a friend of Jacinta's counted for a good deal in those islands. It secured one consideration in unexpectedplaces, and opened doors at which the tweed-clad tourists' wives might knock in vain. The Castilian is somewhat behind the times, and, perhaps because he is seldom troubled with much of it, attaches rather less importance than some other people do to the possession of money. Muriel, however, was not certain why her aunt had undertaken that hot and dusty drive, although she had informed her that if there was a comfortable hotel in Laguna she might stay there a day or two, because she was not sure that Santa Cruz suited her, and she had been troubled with certain premonitory twinges in one shoulder.
In any case, she faced the scorching sun uncomplainingly, and arriving at last before an iron-bound door in a blank white wall, was led through an ill-kept garden, where flowers rioted, a chaos of blazing colour, at their will, into a big, cool house, which seemed filled with slumbrous quietness. She was received by a very reposeful lady of middle age in inconveniently tight-fitting black silk, with the powder thick upon her pallid face. The Señora Anasona was, as is usual with Spanish women who have passed their third decade, somnolent in expression, and portly; but though they could only muster a very little indifferent French between them, she promptly set her guests at ease.
"This poor house and all there is in it are yours," she said. "The friends of the Señorita Jacinta are also mine. Since you have known this for some time, why have you stayed away so long?"
It was the usual conventional formula in Spain, but there was a certain stately graciousness in her gesture which Mrs. Hatherly had never seen quite equalled before. The latter attempted an appropriate reply in French, and then inquired for Jacinta, whereupon her hostess smiled.
"She is in the patio, and, perhaps, asleep," she said. "Ifnot, it is likely that she will come in. I do not know. One does what one pleases always in this house of mine, and here one usually sleeps by the afternoon. What would you? It is a custom of the country, and there is nothing else to do. One can dream of the times when it was different with us and Spain."
"One could fancy in this island that those days have not altogether passed away, or, at least, that they had left something behind," said Mrs. Hatherly. "One sees it in even your peons' courtesy, and the modesty of the women."
"You did not feel that in Las Palmas?"
"No," said Mrs. Hatherly. "I don't think I did."
The señora laughed. "Las Palmas is not Spanish now, my friend. They have coal wharves and harbour works, and heap up the pesetas there. There are, however, things we others would not exchange for silver. This house, for example. An Englishman would buy it and make it an hotel."
"Of course, you would not sell it him?"
The señora shook her head. "It is not mine," she said. "It belongs to the Anasonas who are dead. One of them built it four hundred years ago, and one of them has lived here always, until my husband, Colonel of Cazadores, died in Cuba. Now I live alone, and remember, until by and by my nephew comes here after me. The past is all we have in Spain, but one feels that, after all, it may be worth more than the present—when one goes to Las Palmas."
Then a maid brought in a basket of grapes and a little wine, and it was some time later when the señora turned to Muriel.
"It seems that Jacinta is not coming in," she said. "Perhaps she would sooner see you alone in the patio. I do not know. Jacinta does not care about the conventions.She does what pleases her, and it is also very often the right thing. One descends from the veranda outside that window."
Muriel smiled as she went out, for she was acquainted with Jacinta's habits, and was beginning to comprehend the customs of the land she lived in, where time is not considered, and it is always drowsy afternoon. Then, though she was not an imaginative person, she trod softly as she went down the steps to the patio, for the influence of the place laid hold on her. The little white town lay silent under the cloudless heavens, and had there been any movement of busy life there, which very seldom happened, the high white walls of the garden would have shut out the sound. The house was also built round the patio in a hollow square, and interposed a double barrier between the outer world and that space of flowers.
Over it hung bronze-railed balconies, and quaint verandas with old carved pillars and rich trellises smothered in purple bougainvilla, while there were oleanders and heavy scented heliotrope in the little square below. A fountain twinkled in the midst of it, and fat goldfish from Palma swam slowly round its marble basin; but all was old, artistic, ill cared for, and steeped in a silence which seemed filled with the reminiscences of bygone years. Even Jacinta, who lay in a big cane chair near the fountain, appeared in keeping with the atmosphere of the place, for she was dressed in gauzy Castilian black, which added a suggestion of old-fashioned stateliness to her somewhat slender figure, and an ebony fan of a kind not made nowadays lay across an open book she had apparently been reading. She looked up with a little smile when she saw Muriel, and languidly pointed to the canvas lounge beside her.
"It's comfortable, and I think it's strong," she said."Any way, the señora regularly goes to sleep in it. I brought the lounges with me, because they don't have such things in Spain. I shall probably leave them here, and if they break down with the señora it is quite certain nobody will ever think of mending them. One folds one's hands and says that it doesn't matter at Laguna. You will begin to understand it if you stay here."
Muriel laughed. "It's often a little hard to tell what you mean," she said. "You have been reading?"
"Mr. Prescott's history of the Spanish occupation of Mexico—you will, no doubt, be astonished at that?"
"I am. Still, I have read it, too."
Jacinta smiled as she unfolded her fan. "I have my moments of relaxation, and can be sentimental now and then. Sentiment, you see, is in the atmosphere here. One feels mediæval, as if all the old things of the olden days had come back again, miracles, and crowned virgins that fell from the clouds, valour and knightliness, and man's faith in woman. No doubt there were more, but I don't remember them. They have, of course, gone out of fashion long ago."
She spoke lightly, but there was a trace of bitterness in her voice that Muriel noticed.
"One doesn't find that atmosphere in the book. The men who went with Cortez were cruel as well as brutal."
"They certainly seem to have been so, which is one reason why they interest me. You see, the Spaniards seized these islands a little before they discovered Cuba, and I wanted to find out what the men who built these beautiful homes here were really like when they had work on hand. As one would have fancied, the grave, ceremonious Don who posed as a most punctilious gentleman at home became a very different kind of person when he went to Mexico. The original Adam showed up there. It'sa useful lesson to any one silly enough to idealise the man she is going to marry."
Muriel flushed a little. "I think I know what you mean. Mr. Austin tried to convey the same impression when he told me what they were doing on board theCumbria. Still, he went a good deal further than you do. He made me understand that, though there are things that could only be done rudely and almost brutally, it was often only what was ideal in the men who did them that sent them to the work at all."
"Yes," said Jacinta drily. "I fancy he would do it rather well. Mr. Austin is not much of an artist, and would never be a great one; but he has the capacity of understanding, or, perhaps, I should say imagining things. Still, the pity is that he usually stops there. He doesn't want to do them, and though he once very rashly tried, he was not long in discovering that the work was a good deal too hard for him. I really think you should be glad there is a trace of primitive—we'll be candid, and call it brutality—in Harry Jefferson."
Again the colour showed in Muriel's face. "It isn't," she said. "It's only natural forcefulness; but we needn't go into that. I wonder why you are so angry with Mr. Austin?"
"Angry?" and Jacinta raised her brows. "Oh, dear no! Still, there are points on which he did not quite come up to my expectations, and after the admonitions I have wasted on him I feel a little annoyed with him."
"Still, isn't that a trifle unreasonable? What could he have done that he hasn't done? He was ill and worn out, but he wouldn't even stay a day after he got the money."
"What money?" and there was a sharp insistency in Jacinta's tone.
"The money to buy the coal with. They found they hadn't enough, you know."
"I don't."
"Well," said Muriel, "it is really your own fault. You wouldn't let me tell you about it in the plaza. Mr. Austin had to borrow the money from his English relatives, though I think it hurt him horribly to ask them. When he found they would send it he had to catch the first African steamer."
Jacinta straightened herself suddenly, and gazed at Muriel with astonishment and dismay in her face.
"So he meant to go back all the time?" she said.
"Of course," said Muriel, and Jacinta, sitting back again, sat very still, though her companion noticed that one hand had closed tightly on her fan.
"When was he to go?" she asked, with a curious quietness.
"In a day or two. He is in Las Palmas now."
Then there was a curious silence for almost a minute, and Jacinta, who could not rouse herself to break it, was glad to see that Muriel had evidently not remembered that her only information about Austin's doings was that contained in her father's message. There was no sound but the soft splashing of the fountain, and Jacinta found the stillness becoming intolerable. It was a relief when Muriel, who felt that her company was not appreciated, rose.
"Perhaps the señora will expect me to go back," she said. "Are you coming?"
"I am not," said Jacinta. "I have no doubt your aunt will come out to see me presently."
Muriel looked a little puzzled. "You will not mind my going?"
"Of course not," and Jacinta laughed somewhat curiously. "I have, as you see, a work on Mexico to keep me company."
Muriel left her, and she lay still in the chair listening to the fountain and gazing straight in front of her, until Mrs. Hatherly came down the veranda stairs alone half an hour later. She sat down and looked at Jacinta steadily.
"I suppose you know why I have come to Laguna to-day?" she said.
"Yes," said Jacinta quietly. "Still, I hadn't the faintest notion a little while ago. I shall try to bear anything you may think fit to say to me. Mr. Austin, I understand, is a friend of yours."
The little lady smiled, for she saw that Jacinta was clever enough to make no excuses, and she appreciated her candour as well as her good sense.
"Well," she said, "I want you to tell me why you sent him to Africa."
"For one thing, because Muriel was once very kind to me. Mr. Jefferson was down with fever, and I fancied that, in any case, he could do a good deal more with a comrade there. Still, that was not all. There were other reasons."
"Naturally. It is gratifying to discover how far a man's devotion will carry him."
A little flash crept into Jacinta's eyes, but it faded again. "I suppose I deserve that, but you are wrong. It wasn't to soothe my vanity."
"No?" and there was a suggestion of incredulity in Mrs. Hatherly's smile. "Still, one may be excused for pointing out that it really looks very like it."
Jacinta made a little movement with her fan. "You can't think worse of me than I do of myself; but I scarcely fancy I did wrong in sending him. He was wasting his life here, and I thought I knew what there was in him. Iwanted to rouse it—to waken him. You see, I am talking very frankly."
"In that case it must have cost you something to send him to Africa?"
The colour showed plainly in Jacinta's face. "I think that is another question. One, too, which you could scarcely expect me to answer you."
"I'm afraid it was not very delicate," and Mrs. Hatherly's eyes grew gentler. "Still, didn't you feel that you were presumptuous?"
"Of course; but I have always done what pleased me, and made others do it, too. It usually turned out well, you know. I have, however, come to grief this time, and it would almost be a relief if somebody would shake me."
Mrs. Hatherly smiled. "I fancy the feeling will do you good. Still, if you were right in sending Mr. Austin out, it is just a little incomprehensible."
"Then you don't know how I treated him?"
"No," said Mrs. Hatherly. "At least, not exactly. He only admitted that you did not seem very pleased to see him. Still, I am an old woman, and that naturally conveyed a good deal to me. Perhaps you do deserve shaking, but I want to be kind."
Jacinta turned to her with the colour in her cheeks and a haziness in her eyes.
"I taunted him with being a coward and finding the work too hard for him. The man was ill and jaded, but I had no mercy on him. He said nothing; he never told me he was going back. How was I to know? The night my father's message came I felt I could have struck him. If I had done so, he would probably not have felt it half so much as the bitterness I heaped upon him."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Hatherly. "It was, perhaps, naturalunder the circumstances, but there is a good deal that you are responsible for."
"What do you mean by under the circumstances?"
Mrs. Hatherly smiled. "I have not the slightest doubt that you quite understand, my dear. The question, however, is how you are going to set it right?"
Jacinta shivered a little. The colour had already ebbed from her face, which was a trifle more pallid than usual.
"It is a thing I may never be able to do," she said. "That is what makes it so hard. You see, a good many men go out to Africa, and so few come back again. If it hadn't been for that I don't think I should have admitted what I have done, but I feel I must have somebody's comprehension—if I can't expect sympathy."
"You have mine, my dear," and Mrs. Hatherly laid a beautiful thin hand gently upon her arm. "Besides, I think Mr. Austin will understand how it came about when he goes back to Africa."
Jacinta straightened herself slowly. "Well," she said, "that may happen, and in any case I know that I sent him, and he was glad to go."
She met the little lady's sympathetic gaze steadily. "Still, that is so very little, after all."
Mrs. Hatherly smiled reassuringly. "My dear," she said, "I think you do not quite understand all that man is yet. In spite of the climate he and his comrade are going to be successful."
Then she turned, and Jacinta rose, for the Señora Anasona and Muriel were coming down the stairway.
Austin had been gone a fortnight when Jacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat under the lee of theEstremedura's deck-house one morning, on their way to Las Palmas. Above them the mastheads swung languidly athwart a cloudless sweep of blue, and the sea frothed in white incandescence about the lurching hull below as the little yacht-like steamer reeled eastwards with a rainbow in the spray that whirled about her bows. Astern of her the Peak's white cone gleamed above its wrappings of fleecy mist, and ahead on the far horizon Grand Canary swam a purple cloud.
Jacinta was dressed ornately in the latest English mode, and it seemed to Muriel that she had put on conventional frivolity along with her attire. Indeed, Muriel had noticed a change in her companion during the last few days, one that was marked by outbreaks of flippancy and somewhat ironical humour. An English naval officer leaned upon the back of her chair, and a tourist of the same nationality stood balancing himself against the rolling with his hand on the rail that ran along the deck-house. The latter was looking down at Macallister, who sat upon the deck with a little box in front of him.
"I brought up the two or three sketches ye were asking for, Mr. Coulstin," he said. "The saloon's full of jabbering Spaniards, and the messroom's over hot."
The tourist screwed the glass he wore more tightly into his eye. "If they're equal to the one I saw in the N. W. A. store I may be open to make a purchase," he said. "I think you told me you were acquainted with the artist, Miss Brown?"
"I believe I did," said Jacinta, who was conscious that Macallister was watching her languidly. "You will, however, no doubt be able to judge his pictures for yourself."
Coulston made a little humourous gesture. "I am not a painter, and I could scarcely venture to call myself a connoisseur. Still, I buy a picture or two occasionally, and the one I mentioned rather took my fancy. A sketch or two of that kind would make a pleasant memento."
"One would fancy that a good photograph would be more reliable, as well as cheaper," said the naval officer.
Coulston reproachfully shook his head. "I'm afraid we differ there," he said. "Leaving out the question of colour, a photograph is necessarily an artificial thing. It wants life and atmosphere, and you can never put that into a picture by a mechanical process. Only a man can feel, and transmute his impressions into material. Accuracy of detail is, after all, by comparison, a secondary consideration, but perhaps I had better pull up before my hobby makes a bolt of it."
"I have heard of people riding a hobby uncomfortably hard," said Jacinta reflectively.
"That, I think, is, to be accurate, seldom what happens. If a man has a genuine hobby, it never needs spurring. It is, in fact, unpleasantly apt to run away with him on the smallest provocation. Are steamboat men addicted to making sketches, Mr. Macallister?"
"No," said Macallister, grinning. "At least its not the usual thing, but I once sailed with another of them who did. He was second engineer, and would draw the chiefone day. It was very like him, so like that it cost the man his job, and a wife as well. Says he, 'How could ye expect me to idealise a man with a mouth like yon?'"
"But how did that affect his wife?" asked the officer.
Macallister grinned more broadly, but it was Jacinta he looked at.
"Ye see," he said, "he had not got one then. He was second engineer, and would have gone chief in a new boat if he'd stayed with that company. The young woman was ambitious, and she told him she would not marry him until he was promoted, on principle. He was a long while over it after he lost that berth, and then—also on principle—he would not marry her."
Jacinta laughed, though Muriel fancied she had seen a momentary hardening of her face.
"She probably deserved it, though one can't help concluding that she wouldn't feel it much," she said. "That is one of the advantages of being a practical person; but hadn't you better get the drawings out?"
Macallister took out a sketch in water-colour and held it up. It showed a strip of a steamer's deck, with the softened sunlight beating down through an awning upon a man in skipper's uniform who lay, cigar in hand, in a hammock that swung beneath the spars. He was, to judge from his expression, languidly contented with everything, and there was a big glass of amber-coloured liquid on the little table beside him, and a tier of bottles laid out upon the deck. Beneath it ran the legend, "For men must work."
"That," said Jacinta, "is, at least, what they tell their wives."
The tourist gazed at the drawing, and then turned to her. He was, as she had discovered already, a painfully didactic person.
"The conceit," he said, "is a somewhat happy one, though the sketch is, it seems to me, a little weak in technique. As we admitted, one difference between a photograph and a painting is that the artist records his own sensations in the latter, and stamps it with, at least, a trace of his individuality. In that respect the sketch is, I fancy, characteristic. The artist, one could imagine, was in full sympathy with his subject—the far niente—but I am, no doubt, getting prosy."
For no very apparent reason a little flush of colour crept into Jacinta's face, and Macallister, who saw it, chuckled as he took out another sketch.
"Well," he said, reflectively, "I never met a man who could do nothing more gracefully than Mr. Austin, but I'll let ye see the rest of them, since they're in my charge to sell. Mr. Austin, who wants the money, took a sudden notion he'd go to Africa, and, if they've had a quick run, he's now humping palm oil puncheons in a stranded steamer's hold. I'm thinking it will be a big change for him."
The naval officer laughed softly. "From what I know of the tropics I fancy you are right. In fact, it's rather difficult to imagine the man I met at the bull fight doing that kind of thing at all. Salvage work is necessarily hard under any circumstances, and anywhere, but the last place I would care to attempt it in is Western Africa. What sent—him—there?"
"Ye must not ask me," and a little twinkle, for which Jacinta longed to shake him, crept into Macallister's eyes. "Now, there are clever folks who will look at a man, or maybe talk to him awhile, and then label him, thinking they know just what to expect of him. It does him no great harm, and it pleases them, until one day he does something that astonishes them in spite of his label. Then they're apt to get angry with him. A man, ye see, is, afterall, not that unlike an engine. Ye cannot tell what may be going on in the inside of him, and when the result's distressing it's most often the fault of injudicious handling."
Jacinta, to whom he apparently directed his observations, contrived to regard him with a little smile, and he proceeded to extricate another sketch, a canvas this time.
"This one is different," he said.
Coulston, who apparently concurred with him, gazed at the picture with a trace of astonishment. It showed a big cargo lancha lurching out, deep-loaded, through a fringe of tumbling surf with four men straining at the ponderous oars. The wet rags they wore clung about their limbs, and there was weariness in their grim, brown faces. Bent backs and set lips had their significance, and the sketch was stamped with the suggestion of endurance and endeavour. Yet, as those who saw it felt, there was triumph in it, too, for while the rollers came seething in to hurl her back the lancha was clawing off the shore.
"It's good!" said the navy man. "It's unusually good. Those fellows are played out, and they know if they slacken down for a moment she'll roll over with them or go up on the beach. The sea's running in against her—one finds out by trying it how hard it is to pull off against a surf—but they're driving her out. Presumably, that's what you call the motive of the thing."
The tourist nodded appreciatively. "Yes," he said. "In spite of certain faults in drawing, it's well worked out. What puzzles me is how the man who did the other one came to feel it as he evidently did. One could fancy he had had a revelation, and that in some respects he was a different man when he painted this. I'll offer you five guineas for it, Mr. Macallister."
"Then," said Macallister, promptly, "ye can have it.Eight guineas for the two, if ye would like the other one. There are two or three more of them here ye might care to look at." He stopped a moment, and added, as if in explanation: "I'm anxious to do what I can for Mr. Austin. Many's the time I've stole his wine and sold his clothes."
He undid a package, and, first of all, took out a photograph of a young girl with a comely English face, which Jacinta glanced at somewhat sharply. Then she became intent when there followed several rudimentary pencil and pastel sketches of herself, until Macallister handed Coulston a picture. He turned from it to Jacinta, and looked at her with a steadiness a young woman less accustomed to masculine criticism would probably have found disconcerting.
She lay smiling at him in the canvas lounge, very pretty and very dainty, with conventional indifference expressed even in her pose. She was, he fancied, a woman who knew her world thoroughly, and had the greater influence therein because she seldom asked too much from it. Then he glanced again at her portrait almost incredulously, for it showed the little shapely head held well erect, the red lips straightened and firmly closed, and the glow of a strenuous purpose in the eyes. Stooping, he laid the picture on her knees with a little smile.
Jacinta laughed softly. "Yes," she said, "of course, I know what you mean. I am essentially modern and frivolous, and not in the least like that. Still, you see, all of us have our serious moments now and then, although it is probably fortunate they don't last long."
"Ah," said Coulston, wilfully neglecting his opportunity, "I almost fancy a light breaks in on me. One could entitle this inspiration, and it is, you know, possible to transmit it occasionally. I wonder whether it would make the ideaclearer if we placed the three pictures together. Mr. Macallister will permit me?"
He set up the first sketch of the steamboat skipper against the lifeboat skids, and gazed at it critically. "Assuming that a picture contains something of its painter's ego, you will observe how the idea of petty indulgence and his appreciation of sensual comfort is impressed on one," he said. "Now we will set up the other sketch of the sailormen. There you see restraint, tense effort, abnegation—and victory—in one sense a spiritual triumph over the body. It is an interesting question how the man who painted both could have been brought to grasp what Lieutenant Onslow calls the motive of the last one; but if we might venture to place another picture between."
Jacinta raised her head sharply, and there was an ominous sparkle in her eyes. "No," she said, with quiet incisiveness, "I would sooner you didn't. There are certainly men whose hobby, now and then, runs away with them. Macallister, will you put that portrait back again?"
She handed it him face downwards, for the others had not seen it, and Lieutenant Onslow turned to the tourist.
"I don't quite understand, but I fancy Miss Brown doesn't approve of vivisection any more than I do," he said. "It really isn't decent to turn anybody inside out."
"I wonder," said Coulston, ignoring him, "if you would mind my offering to buy the three?"
He was looking steadily at her, but Jacinta contrived for a moment to catch Macallister's eye. So swift was the flashed glance that the tourist did not notice it, but Jacinta could convey a good deal with a look, and the engineer was a man of considerable intelligence.
"That one is not for sale," he said.
"No," said Onslow, who held up a strip of pasteboard and a sheet of brown paper, "I scarcely think it is. Infact, you don't appear to have noticed that there's a seal on this part of it, and instructions that this particular packet is not to be opened."