Ada Ratcliffe had a face that was almost beautiful, and a slim, delicately modeled form in keeping with it, but perhaps they had been given her as makeweights and a counterbalance for the lack of more important things. At times, when her own interests were concerned, she could show herself almost clever but she fell short of average intelligence just then, when a sympathetic word or a sign of comprehension would have bound the man to her.
Leaning a little towards him she laid her hand onthe sleeve of his duck jacket. "I would like you to do it soon," she said. "Tom, to please me, you won't come in to dinner dressed this way again."
There was a suggestion of harshness in Ormsgill's laugh, but he checked himself. "Of course not, if you don't wish it. If there is a tailor in Las Palmas I will try to set that right to-morrow. Now we will talk of something else. You want to live in England?"
It appeared that Ada did, and she was disposed to talk at length upon that topic. She also drew closer to him, and while the man's arm rested on her shoulder discussed the house he was to buy in the country, and how far his means, which were, after all, not very large, would permit the renting of another in town each season. He listened gravely, and saw that there were no aspirations in the scheme. Their lives were evidently to be spent in a round of conventional frivolities, and all the time he heard the boom of the restless sea, and the smell of the wilderness, pungent and heady, grew stronger in his nostrils. Then he closed a hand tighter on the shoulder of the girl, in a fashion that suggested he felt the need of something to hold fast by, as perhaps he did.
"There is one point we have to keep in view, for the thing may be remembered against me still," he said. "I was turned out of the service of a British Colony."
"Ah," said the girl, "I felt it cruelly at the time, but, after all, it happened more than four years ago—and not very many people heard of it."
Ormsgill sat still a minute, and his grasp grew a trifle slacker on her arm. "I told you I didn't do the thing they accused me of," he said.
"Of course! Still, everybody believed you did, and that was almost as hard to bear. The great thing is that it was quite a long while ago. Tom," and she turned to him quickly, "I believe you are smiling."
"I almost think I was," said Ormsgill. "Still, I don't know why I should do so. Well, I understand we are to stay here a month or two, and we will have everything arranged before we go back to England."
It was half an hour later when his companion rose. "The time is slipping by," she said. "There is to be some singing, and one or two of the people we have met lately are coming round to-night. I must go in and talk to them. These things are in a way one's duty. One has to do one's part."
Ormsgill made no protest. He rose and walked quietly back with her to the hotel, but his face was a trifle grave, and he was troubled by vague misgivings.
The month Ormsgill spent at Las Palmas was a time of some anxiety to Mrs. Ratcliffe. He had, as she complained to her brother, no sense of the responsibility that devolved upon a man of his means, and was addicted to making friends with all kinds of impossible people, grimy English coaling clerks, and the skippers of Spanish schooners, and, what was more objectionable, now and then bringing them to the hotel. He expressed his regret when she pointed out the undesirability of such proceedings, but, for all that, made no very perceptible change in his conduct.
Major Chillingham as a rule listened gravely, and said very little, for his sister was one who seldom welcomed advice from anybody, and though not a brilliant man he was by no means a fool. On the last occasion he, however, showed a little impatience.
"Well," he said, "he seems to have got hold of a few first-class people, too. There is that Ayutante fellow on the Governor's staff, and the Senhor Figuera, the little, quiet man with the yellow hands, is evidently a person of some consequence in his own country. You can't mistake the stamp of authority. After all,it's no doubt just as well he and the girl have gone. Tom seemed on excellent terms with them."
Mrs. Ratcliffe looked indignant. "A Portuguese with a powdered face, and no notion of what is fitting!"
"An uncommonly good-looking one," and the Major grinned. "A woman with brains enough to get the thing she sets her mind on, too, and I have rather a fancy that she was pleased with Tom. Still, that's not the question, and anyway she's back again in Africa. Now, if you'll take advice from me you'll keep a light hand on him, and not touch the curb. If you do he's quite capable of making a bolt of it."
"That," said the lady, "would be so disgraceful as to be inconceivable—when Ada has waited more than four years for him."
Her brother's eyes twinkled. "In one way, I suppose she did. Still, of course, Urmston didn't get the Colonial appointment he expected, and, one has to be candid, young Hatherly seemed proof against the blandishments you wasted on him."
"A marriageable daughter is a heavy responsibility," said Mrs. Ratcliffe with a sigh.
"No doubt," said the Major. "That is precisely why I recommended the judicious handling of Tom Ormsgill. If he hasn't quite as much as you would like, it's enough to keep them comfortably, and in several ways he's worth the other two put together. The man's straight, and quiet. In fact, I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer him with a few more gentlemanly dissipations. They act as a safety valve occasionally."
His sister raised her hands in protest, and Chillingham withdrew with a chuckle, but she was rather more gracious to Ormsgill than usual that day, and during the next one accompanied him with her daughter and one or two acquaintances in a launch he had borrowed to look at the wreck of a steamer which had gone ashore a night or two earlier. The unfortunate vessel afforded a somewhat impressive spectacle as she lay grinding on the reef with the long yeasty seas washing over her, and the little party spent some time watching her from the launch which swung with the steep, green swell.
It was, however, very hot and dazzling bright, and no protests were made when Ormsgill, who it seemed knew all about steam launches, leaned forward from the helm and started the engines. The little propeller thudded, and they slid away with a long, smooth lurch across the slopes of glittering water that were here and there flecked with foam, for the beach they skirted lies open to the heave of the Atlantic. The Trade breeze fanned their faces pleasantly, and Ada Ratcliffe sat almost contented for the time being at Ormsgill's side. It was refreshing that hot day, to listen to the swish of sliding brine, and there was a certain exhilaration in the swift smooth motion, while she realized that the man she was to marry appeared to greater advantage than he did as a rule in the drawing room of the big hotel.
He was never awkward, or ill at ease, but she had noticed—and resented—the air of aloofness he sometimes wore when he listened to her companions'pointless badinage and vapid conversation. Now as he sat with a lean brown hand on the tiller controlling the little hissing craft he seemed curiously at home. There was also, as generally happened when he was occupied, a suggestion of reserved force in his face and attitude. He was, she realized, a man one could have confidence in when there were difficult things to be done. This however, brought her presently a vague dissatisfaction, for she felt there were certain aspects of his character which had never been revealed to her, and she was faintly conscious of the antagonism to and shrinking from what one cannot quite understand which is not infrequently a characteristic of people with imperfectly developed minds.
The fresh Trade breeze which blew down out of the harbor from the black Isleta hill was, however, evidently much less pleasant to the Spanish peons who toiled at the ponderous sweeps of an empty coal lighter the launch was rapidly drawing level with. She was floating high above the flaming swell, and the perspiration dripped from the men's grimy faces as they labored, two of them at each of the huge oars. Indeed Ormsgill could see the swollen veins stand out on their wet foreheads, and the overtaxed muscles swell on their half-covered chests and naked arms, for the barge was of some forty tons, and it was very heavy work pulling her against the wind. She had evidently been to a Spanish steamer lying well out beyond the mole, and there was, as he noticed, no tug available to tow her back again, while the sea foamed whitely on a reef close astern of her. It was only by a strenuous effortthat the men were propelling the big clumsy craft clear of the reef, and there were signs that they could not keep it up much longer.
He glanced at the little group of daintily attired, soft-handed men and women on board the launch, to whom the stress of physical labor was an unknown thing, and then looked back towards the coal-grimed toilers on the lighter. As yet they worked on stubbornly, with tense furrowed faces, under a scorching sun, taxing to the uttermost every muscle in their bodies, but it seemed to him that the lighter was no further from the reef. He flung an arm up, and hailed them, for he had acquired a working acquaintance with several Latin languages on the fever coast.
"You can't clear that point," he said. "Have you no anchor?"
"No, señor," cried one of the peons breathlessly. "The tug should have come for us, but she is taking the water boat to the English steamer."
Ormsgill turned to his companions. "You won't mind if I pull them in? They're almost worn out, and it will not detain us more than ten minutes."
One of the men made a little gesture of concurrence which had a hint of good-humored toleration in it, but Mrs. Ratcliffe appeared displeased, and Ada flushed a trifle. One could have fancied she did not wish the man who belonged to her to display his little idiosyncrasies before her friends.
"One understands that all Spaniards avoid exertion when they can," she said. "Perhaps a little hard work wouldn't hurt them very much."
There was a slight change in Ormsgill's expression. "I fancy the men can do no more."
Then he waved his hand to the peons. "Get your hawser ready."
He was alongside the lighter in another minute, but she rolled wildly above the launch, big and empty, and the sea broke whitely about her, for now the men had ceased rowing she was drifting towards the reef. The hawser was also dripping and smeared with coal dust when Ormsgill, who seemed to understand such matters, hauled it in, and while the sea splashed on board the launch, streams of gritty brine ran from it over everything. Then he stirred the little furnace with an iron bar before he pulled over the starting lever, and a rush of sparks and thin hot smoke poured down upon his companions as the little craft went full speed ahead. Ada, perhaps half-consciously, drew herself a little farther away from him. There was coal grit on his wet duck jacket, and he had handled hawser and furnace rubble like one accustomed to them, in fact as a fireman or a sailor would have done. That was a thing which did not please her, and she wondered if the others had noticed it. It became evident that one of them had.
"You did that rather smartly," he said.
Ormsgill's smile was a trifle dry. "I have," he said, "done much the same thing before professionally."
There was a struggle for the next few minutes. Launch and lighter had drifted into shoal water while they made the hawser fast, and the swell had pileditself up and was breaking whitely. The little launch plunged through it with flame at her funnel and a spray-cloud blowing from her bows, and as she hauled the big lighter out yard by yard a little glint crept into Ormsgill's eyes. Ada Ratcliffe almost resented it, for he had never looked like that at any of the social functions she had insisted on his taking a part in, but her forbearance was further taxed when they crept slowly beneath the side of a big white steam yacht. A little cluster of men and daintily dressed women sat beneath the awning on her deck, and one or two of them were people her mother had taken pains to cultivate an acquaintance with.
One man leaned upon her rail and looked down with a little smile. "Have you been going into the coal business, Fernside?" he said. "Considering the figure they charged Desmond it ought to be a profitable one."
The man in the launch he addressed laughed, and Ormsgill towed the lighter on until at last he cast the tow rope off, and a very grimy peon stood upon her deck. He took off his big, shapeless hat, and as he swung, cut in black against the dazzling sea, there was in his poise a lithe gracefulness and a certain elaborate courtesy.
"Señor," he said, "our thanks are yours, and everything else that belongs to us. May the saints watch over you, and send you a friend if ever your task is too heavy and the breakers are close beneath your lee."
Ormsgill took off his hat gravely, as equal toequal, but he smiled a little as the launch swept on.
"Well," he said, "after all, I may need one some day."
They were back in the hotel in another half-hour, and Mrs. Ratcliffe took him to task as they sat on the shady veranda. Ormsgill lay back in his big Madeira chair, with half-closed eyes, and listened dutifully. He felt he could afford it, for the few minutes of tense uncertainty when he had hauled the lighter out of the grasp of the breakers had been curiously pleasant to him.
"There was, of course, no harm in the thing itself," she said at last.
"No," said Ormsgill with an air of deep reflection, "I almost think that to save a fellow creature who is badly worn out an effort he is scarcely fit to make isn't really very wrong. Still, the men were certainly very dirty—I suppose that is the point?"
The lady, who looked very stiff and formal in the black she persisted in wearing, favored him with a searching glance, but there was only grave inquiry in his steady eyes.
"The point is that things which may be commendable in themselves are not always—appropriate," she said.
"Expedient—isn't it?" suggested Ormsgill languidly.
"Expedient," said Mrs. Ratcliffe with a little flush in her face. "In this world one has to be guided by circumstances, and must endeavor to fit oneself to that station in life to which one has been—appointed."
"I suppose so," said Ormsgill. "The trouble is that I really don't know what particular station I have been appointed to. I was thrown out of the Colonial service, you see, and afterwards drove a steam launch for a very dissolute mahogany trader. Then I floated the same kind of trees down another river with the niggers, and followed a few other somewhat unusual occupations. In fact, I've been in so many stations that it's almost bewildering."
His companion got away from the point. She did not like having the fact that he had been, as he expressed it, thrown out of the Colonial service forced upon her recollection.
"One has, at least, to consider one's friends," she said. "We are on rather good terms with two or three of the people who came out with Mr. Desmond, whom I have not met yet, in thePalestrina. In fact, Ada is a little anxious that you should make their acquaintance. You will probably come across them in England."
"Well," said Ormsgill cheerfully, "I really don't think Dick Desmond would mind if I took up coal heaving as an amusement. He isn't a particularly conventional man himself."
"You know him?"
"Oh, yes. I know him tolerably well."
"Then didn't you consider it your duty to go off and call upon him?"
"I suppose it was," said Ormsgill meditatively. "Still, as a rule, I rather like my friends to call on me. I've no doubt that Dick will do it presently. He onlyarrived here yesterday, as you know. The people he brought out came on from Teneriffe, I think. Somebody told me thePalestrinalay a week there with something wrong with her engines."
Mrs. Ratcliffe smiled approvingly at last. "Yes," she said, "in one way the course you mention is usually preferable. It places one on a surer footing."
Then she discussed other subjects, and supplied him with a good deal of excellent advice to which he listened patiently, though he was sensible of a certain weariness and there was a little dry smile in his eyes when she went away. As it happened, Desmond, who owned thePalestrina, came ashore that evening and was received by Mrs. Ratcliffe very graciously. The two men had also a good deal to say to each other, and the meeting was not without its results to both of them.
It was late the following afternoon when a little yellow-funneled mail-boat with poop and forecastle painted white steamed into the harbor with awnings spread, and an hour or two later a waiter handed Ormsgill a letter. His face grew intent as he read it, and the curious little glint that Ada Ratcliffe had noticed when he towed the coal lighter clear of the surf crept back into his eyes. It was also significant that, although she and her mother were sitting near him on the veranda, he appeared oblivious of them when he rose and stepped back through an open window into the hotel. Five minutes later they saw him stride through the garden and down the long white road.
"I think he is going to the little mole," said Ada."I don't know why he does so, but when anything seems to ruffle him he generally goes there."
Then she flashed a quick questioning glance at her mother. "That letter was from Africa. I saw the stamp on it."
Mrs. Ratcliffe shook her head. "I don't think there is any reason why you should disturb yourself," she said. "After all, one has to excuse a good deal in the case of men who live in the tropics, and though the ways Tom has evidently acquired there now and then jar on me I venture to believe he will grow out of them and become a credit to you with judicious management. It would, perhaps, be wiser not to mention that letter, my dear."
Ada said nothing, though she was a trifle uneasy. She had seen the sudden intentness of Ormsgill's face, and was far from sure that he would submit to management of any kind. Nobody acquainted with her considered her a clever woman, but, after all, her intelligence was keener than her mother's.
In the meanwhile Ormsgill sat down on the steps of the little mole. It was pleasantly cool there, and he had already found the rush and rumble of frothing brine tranquilizing, though he was scarcely conscious of it as he took out the letter and read it again. It was from the missionary Nares.
"Father Tiebout has just come in very shaky with fever," he read. "It appears that Herrero, who will not let her go, has gone back towards the interior with the woman Lamartine gave him, and has been systematically ill-using her. There is another matter tomention. Soon after you went Domingo seized the opportunity of raiding Lamartine's station, and took all the boys away while we were arranging to send them home as you asked us to do. It will, in view of the feeling against us, be difficult or impossible to bring the thing home to him, but I understand from Father Tiebout that you engaged the boys for Lamartine and pledged your word to send them home when the time agreed upon expired. Father Tiebout merely asked me to tell you. He said that if you recognized any responsibility in the matter you would not shrink from it."
Ormsgill crumpled up the letter and sat very still, gazing into the dimness that was creeping up from Africa across the sea. The message was terse, and though the writing was that of Nares he saw the wisdom of Father Tiebout in it. Nares when he was moved spoke at length and plainly, but the little priest had a way of making other folks do what he wanted, as it were, of their own accord, and without his prompting them.
It grew rapidly darker, but Ormsgill did not notice it. The deep rumble of the surf was in his ears, and the restlessness of the sea crept in on him. He had heard that thunderous booming on sweltering African beaches, and had watched the filmy spray-cloud float far inland athwart the dingy mangroves, and a curious gravity crept into his eyes as he gazed at the Eastern haze beyond which lay the shadowy land. Life was intense and primitive there, and his sojourn in the big hotel had left him with a growing weariness. Thenthere was the debt he owed Lamartine, and the promise he had made, and he wondered vaguely what Ada Ratcliffe would say when he told her he was going back again. She would protest, but, for all that, he fancied she would not feel his absence very much, though there were times when her manner to him had been characterized by a certain tenderness. As he thought of it he sighed.
By and by a boat from the white steam yacht slid up to the foot of the steps, and a man who ascended them started when he came upon Ormsgill. He was tall and long-limbed, and his voice rang pleasantly.
"What in the name of wonder are you doing here alone?" he asked.
"I think I'm worrying, Dick," said Ormsgill. "The fact is, I'm going back yonder."
Desmond looked hard at him—but it was already almost dark. "Well," he said, "we're rather old friends. Would it be too much if I asked you why?"
"Sit down," said Ormsgill. "I'll try to tell you."
He did so concisely and quietly, and Desmond made a little sign of comprehension. "Well," he said, "if you feel yourself under an obligation to that Frenchman I'm not sure it isn't just as binding now he's dead."
"I was on my beam-ends, without a dollar in my pocket, when he held out his hand to me. Of course, neither of us know much about these questions, and, as a matter of fact, it's scarcely likely that Lamartine did, but he seemed to believe what the padre told him, and there's no doubt it was a load off his mind whenhe understood I'd have the woman set at liberty."
Desmond sat silent for a minute. Then he said, "There are two points that occur to me. Since you are willing to supply the money, can't the priest and the missionary arrange the thing?"
"Nares says they can't. After all, they're there on sufferance, and every official keeps a jealous eye on them. You couldn't expect them to throw away all they've done for several years, and that's very much what it would amount to if they were run out of the Colony."
"Then suppose you bought the woman back, and got those boys set free? From what I've heard about the country somebody else would probably lay hands on them again. Since the Frenchman has broken them in they'd be desirable property."
"That's one of the things I'm worrying over," said Ormsgill reflectively. "I had thought of running them up the coast and turning them loose in British Nigeria. They'd be reasonably well treated, and get wages at the factories there. Still, I'd have some trouble in getting them out of the country, especially as I'm not greatly tempted to buy the boys. If I was it's quite likely that Domingo, who is not a friend of mine, wouldn't let me have them. You see, I'd have to get papers at the port, though there are plenty of lonely beaches where one could get a surf-boat off. I had a notion of trying to pick up a schooner at Sierra Leone or Lagos."
Again Desmond said nothing for a few moments. Then he laughed. "Well," he said, "there's thePalestrina, and when we shake her up she can do her fourteen knots. You can have her for a shooting expedition at a pound a month. Now don't raise any—nonsensical objections. I'm about sick of loafing. The thing would be a relief to me."
"There's your father," said Ormsgill suggestively.
"Just so! There's also the whole estimable family, who have made up their minds I'm to go into Parliament whether I'm willing or not. Well, it seems to me that if I'm to have a hand in governing my country it will be an education to see how they mismanage things in other ones."
Then the scion of a political family who could talk like a fireman, and frequently did so, laughed again. "If I get into trouble over it it will be a big advertisement. Besides, it's two years since I had a frolic of any kind. Been nursing the constituency, taking a benevolent interest in everything from women's rights to village cricket clubs, and I'm coming with you to rake up brimstone now. After all, though I've had no opportunity of displaying my abilities in that direction lately, it's one of the few things I really excel in."
Ormsgill was far from sure that this was what he desired, but he knew his man, and that, for all his apparent inconsequence, he was one who when the pinch came could be relied upon. Then Desmond's effervescence usually vanished, and gave place to a cold determined quietness that had carried him through a good many difficulties. This was fortunate, since he was addicted to involving himself in them rather frequently.
"Well," said Ormsgill, "I'll be glad to have you, but it's rather a big thing. I think they're expecting you at the hotel. We'll talk of it again."
He rose, and as they went back together Desmond said reflectively. "I suppose you understand that it's scarcely likely your prospective mother-in-law will be pleased with you?"
"I wasn't aware that you knew her until you came across her here," said Ormsgill.
"I didn't. My cousins do. Perhaps you won't mind my saying that they seem a little sorry for you. From what they have said about Mrs. Ratcliffe it seems to me that you may have trouble in convincing her of the disinterestedness of your intentions."
Ormsgill felt that this was very probable, though he said nothing.
It was the following afternoon when Ormsgill stood on the wide veranda outside Mrs. Ratcliffe's room. That lady sat somewhat stiffly facing him in a big basket chair, while her daughter lay close by in one of canvas with her eyes also fixed upon the man languidly. She was dressed in white, and looked very cool and dainty, though her face was almost expressionless. In fact, her attitude was characterized by a certain well-bred serenity which is seldom without its effect when it is an essential part of the person who exhibits it, though a passable imitation of it may be cultivated.
Then one sometimes wonders what may lie behind it, though an attempt to ascertain is not always advisable. In some cases there is nothing, and in others things which it is wiser to leave unseen.
Ormsgill had, as it happened, been busy that morning with an English lawyer whom he had met at the hotel, and had taken him over to the office of the Vice-Consul, who signed a document the lawyer drew out. He had also made other preparations for a journey, but he had sent the priest no word that he was going back to Africa. This, he felt, was not necessary, since Father Tiebout would expect him. He leaned bareheaded against the rails, with the furrows showingplainly on his bronzed face, while the Trade breeze, which was fresh that afternoon, swept the cool veranda and piled the long Atlantic swell rumbling on the beach. He could see the spray fly high and white, and the dust whirl down the glaring road that led to the Spanish city, and once more he felt his blood stir in harmony with the throb of restless life in the frothing sea. Still, the task before him was difficult, and he set about it diffidently.
It was, as he realized, a very lame story and one open to serious misconception that fell from his lips. He could, of course, say nothing in favor of Lamartine's mode of life, though it was by no means an unusual one, and he had to mention it. The subject was a somewhat delicate one in itself, but it was not that alone which brought a faint flush to his face. Mrs. Ratcliffe's pose grew perceptibly primmer as he proceeded, and he recognized that any confidence she might have had in him was being severely shaken. Still, he had not expected her to understand, and he glanced at her daughter with a certain anxiety. The girl's languid indifference was less marked now, for there was a spot of color in her cheek, and her lips were set disdainfully. Ormsgill closed one lean hand a trifle, for these things had their significance, and he had expected that she, at least, would have found his assurance sufficient.
"I think you will agree with me that I must go," he said.
Mrs. Ratcliffe's tone was sharp and she looked at him steadily.
"I'm afraid I don't," she said. "The man was on your own showing an altogether depraved person."
"No," said Ormsgill dryly. "I should be sorry to admit as much. But if he had been, would that have rendered a promise to him less binding?"
"Yes," said the elder lady sturdily. "If he really felt any remorse at all—of which I am very dubious—he brought it upon himself. One cannot do wrong without bearing the consequences. Still, I do not suppose it was penitence. It was more probably pagan fear of death. The man, you admit, was under priestly influence. Of course, if he had been brought up differently——"
Ormsgill could not help a little smile. "He would have considered repentance sufficient, and left the woman to bear the consequences? Somehow I have a hazy notion that restitution is insisted on. But if we dismiss that subject there are still the boys. You see, I pledged myself to send them home again."
Ada Ratcliffe looked up, and her expression was quietly disdainful. "Half-naked, thick-lipped niggers. Would it hurt them very much to work a little and become a trifle civilized? One understands that there is no actual slavery in any part of Africa under European control."
Ormsgill winced, and it was, perhaps, only natural that Mrs. Ratcliffe should not understand why he did so. Then his face grew a trifle hard, but he answered quietly.
"I have no doubt there are folks who would tell you so, but there is, at least, something very like it inone or two colonies," he said. "Still, that is not quite the point."
The girl laughed. "I am a little afraid there is no point at all."
She rose languidly, and the way she did so suggested collusion, though Ormsgill had not noticed that her mother made her any sign. She swept past him with a swish of filmy fabric, and he turned to the elder lady, who made a little gesture of resignation.
"It seems," she said, "you are determined to go, and in that case there is something to be said. As you are bent on exposing yourself to the hazards of a climate I have heard described as deadly, one has to consider—eventualities."
"Exactly!" and Ormsgill found it difficult to repress a sardonic smile. "I have endeavored to provide against them in the one way possible to me. An hour ago I handed Major Chillingham a document which will place Ada in possession of a considerable proportion of my property in six months from my death. The absence of any word from me for that period is to be considered as proof of it. I have no relatives with any claim on me, and I think I am only carrying out an obligation."
"You are very generous," and his companion's tone was expressive of sincere satisfaction. "Though it is, of course, painful, one is reluctantly compelled to take these things into consideration."
She said rather more to the same effect, and the man's face, which was a trifle hard when she went away, suggested that some, at least, of her observations had jarred on him. He was also somewhat astonished to find Ada waiting for him when he strolled moodily into the big drawing-room.
"Tom," she said, "you won't go back there, after all. I don't want you to."
There was a tinge of color in her cheeks and a tense appeal in her eyes, and for a moment Ormsgill was almost tempted to forget his promise and break his word. It seemed that she did care, though he had scarcely fancied that she would feel the parting with him very much a little while ago, and something suggested that she was apprehensive, too. He stood very still, and she saw him slowly close one of his hands.
"My dear," he said, "I have to go."
The girl looked at him steadily a moment, and then made a little hopeless gesture of resignation.
"In that case I should gain nothing by attempting to urge you," she said with a curious quietness. "Still, Tom, you will write to me when you can."
Ormsgill was stirred, as well as a trifle astonished. She had seldom shown him very much tenderness, and he had said nothing that might lead her to believe that he was undertaking a somewhat dangerous thing or that the country was especially unhealthy. Still, he could not help feeling that she was afraid of something. Then, as it happened, they heard her mother speaking to somebody in the corridor, and making him a little sign she slipped out softly. Ormsgill sat where he was, wondering why she had done so, until a rustle of dresses suggested that she and the people she hadapparently spoken to had moved away. Then he went out, and met Desmond in front of the hotel.
"Been having it out with Mrs. Ratcliffe?" he said. "I saw you on the veranda. Found it rather difficult? I couldn't stand that old woman."
"It was not exactly pleasant," said Ormsgill, dryly.
Desmond grinned. "Told her what you were going back for—and she didn't believe a word of it? As a matter of fact, you could hardly expect her to. Still, you needn't be unduly anxious. It wouldn't matter very much what you did out there. She might be horrified when she heard of it, but she wouldn't let you go."
The blood rose to Ormsgill's face. He fancied his companion was right in this, but it suggested another thought, and it appeared impossible that the girl's views should coincide with her mother's. It was painful to feel that she might have placed an unfavorable construction upon his narrative, but that she should believe him a libertine and still be willing to marry him because he was rich was a thing he shrank with horror from admitting. He was aware that women now and then made such marriages, but although he did not as a rule expect too much of human nature, he looked for a good deal from the woman he meant to make his wife. He could not quite disguise the fact that there were aspects of her character which did not altogether please him.
"Well," he said grimly, "we will talk about something else. You are still determined on going with me?"
"Of course," said Desmond.
Ormsgill took him into his room, and by and by unrolled a chart upon the table.
"There's shelter off this beach in about six fathoms under the point," he said. "She will roll rather wildly, but the holding's excellent, and a surf-boat could get off most days in the week. As some of the mail-boat skippers will probably see you and mention it, you will call and report yourself to the Commandant and the customs on your way down the coast. Bring one or two of them off to dinner and inquire about the sport to be had. As a matter of fact, there is something to shoot a few days' march back from the beach, and there is no reason why you shouldn't go after it."
"You haven't said very much about yourself," observed his companion.
"I'm going direct by mail-boat. There is to be no apparent connection between us. If you are at the beach by the date I mentioned and wait there fourteen days, it will be sufficient. If I don't join you by that time something will have gone radically wrong."
"Then," said Desmond cheerfully, "I'll fit the whole crowd out down to the firemen with elephant guns and rifles, and go ashore to fetch you, if we have to sack every bush fort in the country."
Ormsgill only laughed, and going out together they swung themselves on a passing steam tram and were whirled away to the steamship offices in the Spanish city through a blinding cloud of dust.
Two days later Ormsgill boarded a yellow-funneled steamer, which crept out of harbor presently withthe Portuguese flag at the fore, and faded into a streak of hull and a smoke trail low down on the dazzling sea. From the veranda of the hotel, Ada Ratcliffe watched it slowly melt, with her lips tight set and a curious look in her eyes, until when the blue expanse was once more empty she rose with a little sigh. There was, of course, nothing to be gained by sitting there disconsolate, and she had to array herself becomingly for an excursion to a village among the black volcanic hills. She also took a prominent part in it very gracefully, while a quiet brown-faced man leaned on a little wildly-rolling steamer's rail, looking southwest across the dazzling white-flecked combers towards the shadowy land.
He reached it in due time, and one afternoon two or three days after he arrived at a little decadent city, sat talking to the olive-faced gentleman he had met at the Las Palmas hotel. The latter now wore a very tight white uniform, and a rather high and cumbrous kepi lay on the chair at his side. He was singularly spare in figure; his face, which was a trifle worn and hollow, was in no way suggestive of physical virility, and the brown-tipped fingers of the hand which rested on his knee very much resembled claws; but, as Major Chillingham had noticed, he wore the unmistakable stamp of high authority.
"Ah," he said in Portuguese, "you are not as most of your countrymen, and seem to understand that haste is not always advisable—especially in this land."
Ormsgill smiled a little as he gazed down on the straggling city. The room he and his companion sat inhad no front to it. A row of slender pillars with crude whitewashed arches between them served instead, and he could look out on the curiously jumbled buildings below. Some were of wood and had red iron roofs and broad verandas, others of stone, or what appeared to be blocks of sun-baked mud, and these were mostly glaringly whitewashed and roofed with tiles, though a few were flat topped. Some stood in clusters, but as a rule there were wide spaces, strewn with ruins and rubbish, between them. Scarcely a sound rose from any of them. Here and there a white-clad figure reclined in a big chair on a veranda, and odd clusters of negroes, some loosely draped in raw colors, and some half-naked, slept in the shadow. Everything was so still that one could have fancied the place was peopled by the dead. Beyond the long strip of land across the harbor the glaring levels of the Atlantic stretched away, and the hot air quivered with the dull insistent roar and rumble of the surf.
"It is certainly as I suggested," said the little olive-faced gentleman. "You have been here three days, and I do not even know what you expect from me yet."
"It is very little. A concession of exploitation in the country inland."
"In which district?"
Ormsgill mentioned it, and his companion looked at him with a little smile. "The request can be granted, but I gave you good advice once before, and I venture to offer it again. This Africa is not a healthycountry, and it is not, I think, advisable that you should stay here, especially up yonder in the bush. There are gentlemen of some importance there whom you have offended, and we are, it seems, not all forgiving. It is, perhaps, a fact to be deprecated, but one to be counted on."
"One has occasionally to do a thing that doesn't seem advisable," said Ormsgill reflectively.
"In this case the reasons cannot be financial. I heard of your good fortune in Las Palmas."
Ormsgill was not pleased at this, but he laughed. "A little money is not always a fortune. Perhaps it would be permissible for me to express my pleasure that your administrative genius has been recognized?"
Dom Clemente made him a little grave inclination. "I hold authority, but the man who does so seldom sleeps on roses, especially in this country. Well, you still want the concession of exploitation, though the region you mention is not a productive one?"
"There are articles of commerce which come down that way from the interior."
Dom Clemente looked at him steadily. "Ah," he said, "if one could tell what went on there. Still, as you say, there are things we have need of that come down from the interior."
Ormsgill's face was expressionless, though he was not pleased to see a little smile creep into his companion's eyes, but just then another man of very dusky color came up the outside stairway with a big clanking sword strapped on to him, and Dom Clemente rose.
"I make my excuses, but the permit will be ready to-morrow," he said. "In the meanwhile my daughter, who is in the patio, would thank you for several courtesies at Las Palmas."
Ormsgill turned away, and went down to the little pink-washed patio which was filled with straggling flowers and was, at least, comparatively cool. The girl who lay in a big chair did not rise, but signed to him to take another near her side, and then looked up at him with big violet eyes. It did not occur to Ormsgill that there was any significance in the fact that the only two chairs in the patio should be close together, but it struck him that Benicia Figuera was a very well-favored young woman, and very much in harmony with her surroundings. Colorless as her face was, there was a scintillation in her eyes, and a depth of hue in her somewhat full red lips, which with the sweeping lines of her lightly-draped, rounded form suggested that there was in her a full measure of the warm and vivid life of the tropics. Her voice was low and quiet, and her English passable.
"I believe my father has been giving you good advice," she said.
"Why should you think that?" asked Ormsgill, lightly.
His companion's gesture might have meant anything. "You feel the advice is excellent, but you do not mean to take it? It is not a thing you often do. In one way I am sorry."
Ormsgill laughed. "Might one ask why youshould take so much interest in an obstinate stranger?"
The girl moved her hands, which were white and very shapely, in a fashion which seemed to imply a protest. Ormsgill noticed that they had also the appearance of capable hands, and he fancied that their grasp could be tenacious.
"Ah," she said, "there were little courtesies shown us at Las Palmas, things that made our stay there pleasanter, and I think there was, perhaps, no great reason why you should have done them for my father." Then her eyes twinkled. "I am not sure that all your friends were very pleased with you."
Ormsgill did not smile this time. He recollected now that Ada Ratcliffe had been distinctly less gracious and her mother more formal than usual after one or two of the trifling courtesies he had shown Dom Clemente and the girl, but it had not occurred to him to put the two things together.
"I wonder," he said reflectively "how you come to speak such excellent English."
The girl laughed.
"My mother's name was O'Donnel, though she was rather more Portuguese than I am. She was born in the Peninsula. It seems I have gone back two or three generations. They assured me of it once in Wicklow. Still, all that does not interest you. You are going into the interior."
Ormsgill said he was, and the girl appeared thoughtful for a moment or two.
"Then one might again advise you to be careful.There are, at least, two men who do not wish you well. One of them is a certain Commandant, and the other the trader Herrero."
"I wonder if you could tell me where the trader Herrero is?"
"If I can I will send you word to-morrow."
Ormsgill thanked her and took his leave ceremoniously, but he was a little annoyed to find that his thoughts would wander back to the cool patio as he strolled through the dazzling, sun-scorched town. He felt it would have been pleasant to stay there a little in the shadow, and that Benicia Figuera would not have resented it. There was something vaguely attractive about her, and she had Irish eyes in which he had seen a hint of the reckless inconsequent courage of that people. This, he reflected, did not concern him, and dismissing all further thought of her he went about his business. Still, when the concession was sent to him next morning the negro who brought it also handed him a little note. It had no signature, and merely contained the name of a certain village on the fringe of the hills that cut off the coast levels from the island plateaux.
Two months had slipped by since Ormsgill and his carefully chosen carriers had vanished into the steamy bush which climbs the slopes of the inland plateaux, when thePalestrinasteamed in towards the straggling, sun-scorched town. She came on at half-speed, gleaming ivory white, in a blaze of brightness, with a man strapped outside her bridge swinging the heavy lead, until Desmond, who swept the shore line with his glasses, raised his hand. Then the propeller whirled hard astern and she stopped amidst a roar of running chain. Next the awnings were stretched across her aft, and after a beautiful white gig sank down her side, a trimly uniformed crew pulled Desmond ashore to interview the men in authority.
He found them courteous. Though that is not a coast which English yachts frequent, one had called there not very long before, and they had a pleasant recollection of the hospitality they had enjoyed on board her. Besides, it was very soon evident that this red-faced yachtsman was not one of the troublesome Englishmen who demand information about social and political matters which do not concern them. Desmond took the authorities off to dinner, and showed them his sporting rifles and one or two letters givenhim by gentlemen of their own nationality whom he had similarly entertained at Funchal Madeira. His young companion with the heavy sea-bronzed face was even more ingenuous, and there was no doubt that the wine and cigars were excellent.
Strangers with any means were also singularly scarce in that town, and its rulers finding Desmond friendly made much of him, and supplied him freely with the information he required respecting the localities where one might still come across big game. He was, in fact, a social success, and contrived to spend a fortnight there very pleasantly. Still, there was one of his new friends who considered it advisable to take certain precautions, which came indirectly to the knowledge of the latter's daughter.
It also happened that Desmond's companion, Lister, who went ashore alone now and then, enjoyed himself in his own fashion. He was a young man whose tastes and idiosyncrasies had caused his friends at home some anxiety, and they had for certain reasons prevailed upon Desmond to take him to sea for a few months out of harm's way. Lister submitted unwillingly, but he discovered that even that sweltering African town had pleasures to offer him, and determined on making the most of them.
It was a very hot evening when he sat in the patio of a little flat-topped house which bore a legend outside announcing that it was acaffee. A full moon hung above the city and flooded half the little square round which the building rose with silvery light. The summit of the white walls cut sharply against thecloudless blue, and the land breeze flowed in through a low archway heavy with heat and smells. Now and then the roar of the Atlantic surf swelled in volume and rolled across the roofs in a deep-toned rumbling. Lister, however, naturally noticed very little of this.
He lay in a Madeira chair near a little table upon which stood several flasks of wine and glasses, as well as a bundle of cigarettes. A lamp hung above him, and his light white clothing displayed the fleshiness of his big, loosely-hung frame. His face was a trifle flushed, and there was a suggestive gleam in his eyes when he glanced towards the unglazed square of lighted window behind which a comely damsel of somewhat dusky skin was singing to a mandolin, but the occasional bursts of hoarse laughter made it evident that the lady had other companions, and there was then a little but rather painful punctured wound in one of Lister's hands. She had made it that afternoon with a slender silver-headed strip of steel which she wore in her dusky hair, and Lister could take a hint when it was plain enough.
As it happened, a partial acquaintance with one or two Latin languages had been drilled into him in preparation for a certain branch of his country's service to which prejudiced persons had eventually denied him admission, and he had afterwards acquired sundry scraps of Portuguese in Madeiran wine-shops. As the result of this, his companions understood part, at least, of what he said. Two of them who had very yellow hands and somewhat crisp black hair were shaking dice upon the table, while a third lay quietly in a basketlounge watching the Englishman with keen dark eyes. The latter threw a piece of paper money down on the table.
"It's against me," he said. "I'll double on the same odds you don't shake as high again. Pass your friend the wine, Dom Domingo."
The quiet man made this a trifle plainer, and thrust the wine flask across the table, but Lister did not notice that one of the others looked at him as if for permission or instructions before he flung the dice back into the box.
"One who knows the game would not give quite such odds," he said in passable French. "It is the cards you play on board the steamer?"
"No," said Lister, who had consumed a good deal of wine, "not often. I wish we did. It would pass the time while we lie waiting off your blazing beaches."
"Ah," said the little man, "you wait for somebody, then?"
Lister's little start was quite perceptible, but he grinned. "You can't go inland without taking somebody who knows the way. I think I told you we were going up country to kill big game."
"But certainly!" and the other spread out his hands. "This is, however, not the season when one usually sets out on such a journey. It would be wiser to make it in a month or two. For good heads you must also go inland a long way. You start from—?"
"The Bahia Santiago," but Lister recollected next moment, and looked at his companion truculently with half-closed eyes. "It seems to me you have a goodmany questions to ask. Besides, you stop the game."
The little man waved his hand deprecatingly, and answered one of the others' inquiring glance with a just perceptible motion of his head.
"Your pardon, señor," he said. "It was good advice I gave you about the odds."
He rose and slowly sauntered across the patio, but Lister did not notice that he stopped in the black shadow of the archway. Neither did the other men, one of whom shook the dice again.
"Ah!" he said. "The luck is once more against you."
Lister poured himself out another glass of wine. He was feeling a trifle drowsy, and the patio was very hot, but he wished to rouse himself enough to watch one of the player's thick-fingered yellow hands. Then flinging down another piece of paper money he reached out and took the box himself. His lips had shut tight, and though his face had flushed more deeply his eyes were keen.
They threw twice more while the other man, who appeared to relinquish his share in the proceedings, good-humoredly looked on, and then Lister leaned forward suddenly and seized the yellow hand. The box fell with a clatter, and Lister clutched one of the little spotted cubes that rolled out upon the table. Then the player's companion swung out his right arm with a flick of his sleeve, and Lister caught the gleam of steel. Loosely hung and a trifle slouching as he was, he was big, and had, at least, no lack of animal courage. He said nothing, but he flung the manwhose hand he held backward upon the table, which overturned in front of his companion, and snatching a heavy wine flask from one close by, swung it by the neck.
The man with the knife was a moment recovering his footing, and then he moved forward, half-crouching, with a cat-like gait. The veins rose swollen on Lister's forehead, but he stood still, and his big red hand tightened savagely on the neck of the heavy vessel, which held a quart or two. The tinkle of the mandolin had ceased abruptly, and for a few moments there was not a sound in the little patio. Then there was a sharp command, and the man with the knife slunk backward, as a figure moved quietly out of the shadow beneath the archway. It was the man who had questioned Lister, and he laid his hand upon the flask the latter held.
"With permission I will take it from you," he said. "It is, I think, convenient that you go back to your steamer."
Lister fancied that he was right, and when three or four men who had now come out from the lighted room made way for them he followed his companion out through the archway. The latter called to a man in dilapidated white uniform, and they proceeded together to where a boat was waiting. They put Lister on board her, and stood still a minute or two watching while a couple of negroes rowed him off to thePalestrina. Then one of them laughed.
"There are many fools in this world but one hasperhaps no cause to pity them," he said. "It is as a rule their friends they bring to grief."
Twenty minutes later he called at Dom Clemente's residence, and was not exactly pleased when he was shown into the presence of Benicia Figuera.
"My father is on board the yacht. You have come about the Englishman you have been watching?" she said.
The man made a little deprecatory gesture. "It is not permissible to contradict the señorita."
Benicia laughed. "It would not be worth while, my friend. You will leave your message."
"It is a report for Dom Clemente," and again the man spread out his hands. One could have fancied he felt it necessary to excuse himself for such an answer.
"Then," said the girl, "it is, as I think you know, quite safe with me."
There was no smile in her eyes this time, and her companion thought rapidly. Then, after another gesture which expressed resignation, he spoke for some three or four minutes until the girl checked him with a sign.
"If Dom Clemente has any questions to ask he will send for you," she said. "If not, you must not trouble him about the matter. I think you understand?"
It was evident that the man did so, for he went out with a respectful gesture of comprehension, and then turned and shook a yellow fist at the door which closed behind him. He could foresee that to do as he wasbidden might involve him in difficulties, but Benicia Figuera was something of a power in that country, and he knew it was seldom advisable to thwart her. She, as it happened, sat still thinking for a time, and as the result of it when Desmond's gig went ashore next morning a negro handed one of her crew a little note. That afternoon Desmond dressed himself with somewhat unusual care before he was rowed ashore, and on being ushered into a white house by a uniformed negro was not altogether astonished to find Benicia Figuera waiting for him alone in a big cool room. He had met her in Las Palmas, and she smiled at him graciously as she pointed to a little table where wine and cigarettes were laid out.
"They are at your disposal. Here one smokes at all times and everywhere," she said.
Desmond sat down some distance away from her, for as he said afterwards, she was astonishingly pretty as well as most artistically got up, and he was on his guard.
"I almost fancy it is advisable that I should keep my head just now, and it already promises to be sufficiently difficult," he said with a twinkle in his eyes. "Dom Clemente is presumably not at home. That is why you sent for me?"
Now the compliments men offer a lady in the Iberian Peninsula are as a rule artistically involved, but the girl laughed.
"He will not be back until this evening, but the excellent Señora Castro in whose charge I am is now sitting on the veranda," she said. "You need not putyour armor on, my friend. It would be useless anyway."
"Yes," said the man reflectively, "I almost think it would be."
"And my intentions are friendly."
Desmond spread his hands out as the men of her own nationality did. "The assurance is a relief to me, but I should feel easier if you told me what you wanted. After all, it could not have been merely the pleasure of seeing me."
Benicia nodded approvingly. His keenness and good-humored candor appealed to her. It was also in some respects a pleasure to meet a man who could come straight to the point. Her Portuguese friends usually spent an unreasonable time going around it.
"Well," she said, leaning forward and looking at him with eyes which he afterwards told Ormsgill were worth risking a fortune for, "I will tell you what I know, and I leave you to decide how far it is desirable for you to be frank with me. In the first place, you are not going inland to shoot big game. You are going to wait at the Bahia Santiago for somebody."
Desmond's face grew a trifle red. "If I had Lister here I think I should feel tempted to twist his neck for him."
The girl laughed. "It would be an interesting spectacle. I suppose you know that last night he broke a man's wrist?"
"I did not," said Desmond dryly. "When he amuses himself in that way he seldom tells me—but, to be quite frank, I've almost had enough of him. It'srather a pity the other fellow didn't break his head. Still, perhaps, that's a little outside the question."
"The question is—who are you going to wait for at the Bahia Santiago?"
"Ah," said Desmond, "I almost think you know."
Benicia smiled. "It is, of course, Mr. Ormsgill. He is a friend of yours. Now, as you can recognize, it is in my power or that of my father to involve you in a good many difficulties. I wish to know what Ormsgill went inland for. It was certainly not on a commercial venture."
Desmond thought hard for the next half-minute. He was a man who could face a responsibility, and it was quite clear to him that Miss Figuera already knew quite enough to ruin his comrade's project if she thought fit to do so. Still, he felt that she would not think fit. He did not know how she conveyed this impression, or even if she meant to convey it, for Benicia Figuera was a lady of some importance in that country, and, as he reflected, no doubt recognized the fact. She sat impassively still, with her dark eyes fixed on him, and there was a certain hint of imperiousness in her manner, until he suddenly made his mind up.
"Well," he said, "I will try to tell you, though there are, I think, people who would scarcely understand the thing."
He spoke for some ten minutes, and Benicia sat silent a while when at last he stopped abruptly. Then she made a little gesture of comprehension.
"Yes," she said simply, "I think your friend is one of the few men who could be expected to do suchthings." Then she laughed. "The girl he is to marry, the one I saw in Las Palmas, is naturally very vexed with him?"
"That," said Desmond gravely, "is a subject I scarcely feel warranted in going into. Besides, as a matter of fact, I don't know. There is, however, another point I am a little anxious about."
"The course I am likely to take?" and Benicia rose. "Well, it is scarcely likely to be to your disadvantage, and I think you are wise in telling me. Still, as you see, I do not bind myself to anything."
Desmond stood up in turn, and made her a little grave inclination. "I leave it in your hands with confidence. After all, that is the only course open to me."
"Yes," said Benicia, "I believe it is. Still, you seem to have no great fear of me betraying you."
"I certainly haven't," said Desmond. "I don't know why."
His companion laughed, and held out her hand to him, and in a few more minutes Desmond was striding down the hot street towards the beach. When he reached the boat he turned a moment and looked back towards the big white house.
"It looks very much as if I'd made a fool of myself, and spoiled the whole thing, but I don't think I have," he said.
It was two or three hours later, and darkness had suddenly closed down on the sweltering town, when the scream of a whistle broke through the drowsy roar of the surf as a mail-boat ringed with blinking lightscrept up to the anchorage. Then Desmond sent for Lister, and drew him into the room beneath the bridge.
"There doesn't appear to be anything very much for that boat, and she'll probably clear for the north to-morrow," he said. "You had better get your things together."
Lister gazed at him with astonishment in his heavy face. "I don't quite understand you," he said.
"The thing's perfectly simple. You're going north in her. In one or two respects I'm sorry I have to turn you out, but, to be quite straight, you're not the kind of man I want beside me now. You're too fond of company, and have a—inconvenient habit of talking in your cups."
Lister flushed. "I presume you are referring to my conversation with that slinking yellow-handed fellow I came across last night? He was a little inquisitive, but I didn't tell him anything."
"No," said Desmond dryly, "I don't suppose you did. It's often the points a man of your capacity doesn't mention one deduces the most from. He generally makes it evident that he's working away from them. That, however, wouldn't strike you, and any way it doesn't affect the case. I'm sorry I can't offer to accommodate you on board thePalestrinaany longer. I told your folks I'd keep an eye on you, but it's becoming too big a responsibility."
Lister gazed at him almost incredulously. "Of course, I'll have to go if you really mean it. Still, I would like to point out that in some respects you're not exactly a model yourself."
"That," said Desmond dryly, "is a fact I'm naturally quite aware of. I like a frolic now and then as well as most other men, but I've sense enough not to indulge in it when I'm out on business. The trouble is that what you have done you will very probably do again, and that wouldn't suit either me or Ormsgill. I'm afraid you'll have to take the boat north to-morrow."