Kitabı oku: «Kit Musgrave's Luck», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XI
THE PLANS WORK

Dinner was over, the night was hot, and Mrs. Austin had taken her party to the veranda. Wolf had gone; he declared he could not put off another engagement, but Mrs. Austin wondered. The fellow was clever and knew when to stop. A man like that did not go farther than was necessary and risk losing ground he had won. All the same, Mrs. Austin was satisfied. She had paid her debt, and although she had hesitated about asking Wolf, she now felt her doing so was justified. He had interested her famous guests; the dinner party had gone well.

Señor Ramirez occupied a chair by a table that carried some fine glass copitas from which one drinks the scented liquors used in Spain. His family was old and distinguished, and his post important. He was thin, dark-skinned and marked by an urbane dignity. As a rule, he looked languid, but sometimes his glance was keen.

Don Arturo sat opposite. He was strongly built and getting fat. Although his hair and eyes were very black, he was essentially British. He had known poverty, but now controlled large commercial undertakings and steamship lines. Don Arturo was loved and hated. Some found him strangely generous, and some thought him hard and careless about the tools he used and broke. He made bold plans, and had opened wide belts in Africa to British trade.

Mrs. Jefferson, Austin, and two or three others occupied the background. They were, so to speak, the chorus, and in the meantime not important. Austin knew when to let his wife play the leading part.

"When I was honoured by your opening your house to me I knew my entertainment would be good, but I must own it was better than I thought," Ramirez presently remarked.

"Ah," said Mrs. Austin, "I hesitated. You have public duties; I doubted if you could come."

"Duties are always numerous and pleasures strangely few. Besides, at Las Palmas, you command. But if one is allowed to talk about your other guest – "

"Señor Wolf wanted to meet you. I hope you were not bored."

Ramirez smiled. "Some people want to meet me and some do not, but I was not bored at all. Your friend is an interesting man; he told me much about which I must think. You have known him long?"

"Not long," said Mrs. Austin. She wanted to hint that she did not altogether make herself accountable for her guest, and resumed: "Still, at Las Palmas, we are foreigners, and since he is English – "

"Then you imagine Señor Wolf is English?"

"I have imagined so," said Mrs. Austin with some surprise. "However, his skin is rather dark."

"Darker than mine, for example?" Ramirez rejoined with a twinkle. "Well, the colour of one's skin is not important. In Spain there are descendants of the Visi-Goths whose colors is white and pink. One must rather study mental characteristics."

"Then you think Wolf's mentality is foreign?" said Don Arturo.

"It is not English. One notes a touch of subtlety, an understanding of one's thoughts, a keen intelligence – "

Don Arturo laughed and Mrs. Austin waved her fan.

"But, señor, I am patriotic. Are we very dull?"

"My lady, your grounds for patriotic pride are good. Your people have qualities. Let me state an example. In these islands our peons are frugal, sober, and industrious; a fine race. Our merchants are intellectual and cultivated. In mathematics, philosophy, and argument I think no brains are better than ours. It is possible we got much from the Moors – "

"My coaling and banana clerks are not philosophical, and I doubt if many are cultivated," Don Arturo remarked.

Ramirez spread out his hands. "You use my argument! I admit you have qualities. These raw English lads do things we cannot. They load in a night bananas we cannot load in two days, they get the best fruit, they use our fishermen and labourers to coal your ships. The profit and all that is good in Grand Canary goes to you. At the hill villages where the peons went to bed at dark, your mule carts arrive with cheap candles and oil. The shops are full of English clothes and tools. When the peon finds he needs your goods he grows things to sell. Sometimes we are jealous, but we trust you."

"It looks as if you trusted Wolf, although you imagine he is not English," Don Arturo said dryly.

"He is the señora's guest," said Ramirez, bowing to Mrs. Austin.

"Ah," said Mrs. Austin, "this does not carry much weight! I am not a clever politician, and perhaps my judgment is not very sound."

"All the same, I did trust Señor Wolf. He wanted some concessions; a little slackening of our rules about trading on the African coast."

"Your rules are rather numerous," Don Arturo remarked.

"It is so, my friend. Our possessions in Africa are small and the Moors of Rio de Oro are fierce and troublesome, but I think that belt of Atlantic coast will some time be worth much. Valuable goods cross the Sahara from the West Soudan, and when we have made harbours, caravans that now go to Morocco and Algiers will arrive. Well, perhaps we are cautious. We have greedy neighbours, and when one has not got much, one keeps what one has."

Don Arturo looked thoughtful. "West Africa's my field, and I don't know the North, but now France has got all the hinterland, I sometimes think the dispute about the Atlantic coast may be reopened. I imagine the Spanish Government is not a friend of Islam."

"When we are not anarchists we are staunch Catholics," Ramirez agreed. "Well, in North Africa the sun and the tribesmen's blood are hot. A strange, wild country, where the agreements diplomatists make do not go. But this is not important. I think the señora's talented friend interested you."

"I promised to charter him a steamer," said Don Arturo dryly.

"A Spanish steamer?"

"She is now an English cargo-boat of two thousand tons. I do not know if Wolf will hoist the Spanish flag. Perhaps this might be allowed."

Ramirez's eyes twinkled. "It is possible. We are poor and cannot pay our officers much. But two thousand tons? To carry a few sheep!"

"I understand Wolf will send her to Mojador and Saffi for maize and beans."

"Oh, well," said Ramirez, "we will talk about something else." He turned to Mrs. Austin. "My lady, you have seen our politeness is not as deep as people think, but you will make allowances. When one meets a famous English merchant, and a man of talent who knows the Rio de Oro, like Señor Wolf – "

"Although he is not English," Mrs. Austin remarked, but Ramirez smiled and turned to the others, who played up.

After a time the guests went off and Mrs. Austin said to her husband. "Somehow I feel I've meddled with a bigger thing than I knew. In fact, I rather wish I had not."

"Your object's good," said Austin. "You have got Kit a job. I suppose this was all you wanted?"

Mrs. Austin smiled. "I didn't want to help Wolf, and if I have helped, it's because one gets nothing unless one pays. However, we'll let it go."

When Kit returned to Las Palmas he found a note from Wolf, and in the evening went to a house in an old quarter of the town. The street was narrow, quiet and dark, but the moon touched one side with misty light. Kit heard the throbbing rumble of the surf, and coming from the noisy steam tram and the lights of the main street, he got a hint of mystery in the quietness and gloom. The houses had flat tops and looked like forts. Their straight fronts were pierced by a few narrow slits and a low arch. The slits were high up and barred. Kit thought that part of the city looked as if it had not been built by Europeans; it rather belonged to Egypt or Algiers. There was something romantic but sinister about it.

He knocked at a door and an old man took him across a patio where a ray of moonlight fell. The man showed him into a room furnished like an office, and Kit waited and looked about. There was no window, but an arch opened on to a passage with dark wooden pillars supporting a balcony. A few maps occupied the wall, and Kit began to study one of the Rio de Oro belt. Maps drew him; they called one to countries one had not seen, and this map pictured a wild land white men did not know much about. For all that, Kit thought it good. Green rings marked the oases, blue threads the wadys where water sometimes runs, and the red lines were the tracks by which loaded camels came from the Soudan. The marks, however, were not numerous, and Kit mused about the blank spaces.

Then he turned with a start and saw Wolf. He had not heard the fellow come in, and noted that he wore slippers of soft red leather. His shirt and trousers were white, but he wore a red silk sash and a Fez cap.

"My map interests you?" he said. "Well, I doubt if the Spanish government owns one as good. I expect to have noted that for the most part it is not printed?"

Kit had noted that the caravan roads and wadys were drawn by a pen.

"I was studying the unmarked spaces," he replied.

Wolf smiled and indicated a chair. "The explorer's instinct; there's something about the unknown that pulls. All the same, more is known about the country than some people think, and in one sense, it is not a desert. Then the people are not savages, although their rules are the rules the Arabs brought a thousand years since. They spring from famous stocks; Carthaginian, Roman; Saracen adventurers who pushed across the Atlas range and vanished. The country's intriguing, but to know it one must be resolute."

"I suppose the tribes are Mohammedans?" Kit remarked.

Wolf gave him some scented wine and a cigarette with a curious taste, and while he smoked Kit heard the measured beat of the surf. Somebody on a neighbouring roof played a guitar and the music was strange and melancholy.

"Some of the tribes are fanatics," Wolf replied. "Islam was born in the desert and its driving force comes from the wilds. When the prophets were made caliphs they lost their real power. The Turk has got slack and meddles with forbidden things, but the faith lives and has spread far recently. Its missionaries, however, do not come from Constantinople. Lean John Baptists appear in the desert and found fierce, reforming sects. One has grounds for imagining their job is something like this."

"Ah," said Kit. "Do they expect a new Mohammed?"

"I think they expect a new prophet," Wolf said quietly. "Not a political caliph, but a man from the wilds who will re-enforce the ancient Arab laws. They have waited for him long and have sometimes been cheated. Their habit is to wait. It is possible they will be cheated again."

Kit was young, and romance and mystery appealed. "Well," he said, "I'd like to see something of North-west Africa."

"Then the chance is yours. I am sending a steamer to the Morocco coast and want a man I can trust to meet the Jew merchants and put on board the maize and beans I've bought. Then she'll steam south to pick up goods at Rio de Oro, and my agent must go inland with an interpreter to meet the tribesmen. If you like, you can go."

Kit's eyes sparkled. "I'll take the post," he said, and then stopped and frowned. "I forgot," he resumed. "My engagement with the correos runs for some time."

"This is not much of an obstacle. I am chartering the steamer from the company and expect Don Ramon will let you off."

"If Don Ramon is willing, there is no obstacle," Kit declared, and when Wolf told him about his pay and duties his resolve was keener. He would use a power and responsibility he had not yet known and be richer than he had thought.

"Very well," said Wolf. "When you come back from Palma you had better see Don Ramon. In the meantime, I'll get things in trim."

Kit went down the street with a light step. The old Spanish house, the map, and Wolf's talk had fired his imagination. Adventure called. In a week or two he was going to see the desert and try his powers.

PART II
RESPONSIBILITY

CHAPTER I
OLIVIA'S EXPERIMENT

When the correillo returned from Palma and Kit went to the company's office he was bothered by doubts. Don Ramon, the Spanish manager, had been kind, and Kit felt shabby. He had engaged to serve the company for twelve months and doubted if his asking the other to release him was justified. For all that he wanted to go to Africa.

He was shown into the private office, and Don Ramon, after indicating a chair, occupied himself for a few minutes with the papers on his desk. Kit's embarrassment was obvious, and the manager was amused.

"I have studied your notes about business at the ports Compeador touched on her new round," he said presently. "Some of your suggestions are useful. I expect you wanted to talk to me about this?"

"Not altogether," Kit replied.

"Then, perhaps, you meant to talk about painting the passengers' rooms?"

"No," said Kit. "The rooms need painting, but I really meant to ask you to let me off my engagement. I have heard about another post."

Don Ramon studied him quietly for a few moments. Kit's glance was direct, but the blood had come to his skin. The Spaniard was very subtle and knew something about young Englishmen; he rather approved Kit.

"A better post?" he said.

"It is better, but I'm not altogether influenced by this," Kit replied awkwardly. "I haven't much scope on board Campeador. One likes to feel one is responsible and doing something worth while."

"Ah," said Don Ramon, "a number of your countrymen arrive at this office with the resolve to do as little as possible. However, I imagined you were satisfied on board."

"In a way I am satisfied. The captain and engineer are my friends, I like the company's agents, and your clerks make things easy. In fact, if you think I ought to stop, I will stop."

"You imply that you are willing to give up the better post unless we agree to your leaving us?"

"Of course!" said Kit. "I won't urge you to agree."

Don Ramon smiled. "After all, your joining Mr. Wolf has some advantages, particularly since the steamer he has chartered is ours, and I don't know that it is necessary for you to break your engagement with us. If it is not broken, you could go back to Campeador after the other boat's return, and, in the meantime, will get your pay. I expect Mr. Wolf did not state how long he wanted you."

"He did not," said Kit and pondered.

Perhaps it was strange, but he had not stipulated that he must be employed for a fixed time. He ought to have stipulated. Then he was surprised because Don Ramon knew his object for wanting to go. Don Ramon was clever and his remarks hardly indicated much confidence in Wolf.

"You are generous," Kit resumed. "However, I doubt if I can honestly work for you and Wolf. You see, the office now and then buys corn at the Moorish ports."

"I think I see," Don Ramon replied with a twinkle. "You imply that so long as you take Wolf's pay you are his man, and we must not expect you to study his business for our benefit? Well, we do not expect this, and you will find Wolf's business is, for the most part, transacted at a neighbourhood we leave alone. All the same, the chartered steamer is valuable, and although we have asked for some guarantees, we would like a company's servant on board. Don Erminio and Macallister will join the ship."

Kit's hesitation vanished. His luck was strangely good, and he thanked Don Ramon, who presently sent him off. While his double engagement lasted he would be rich, and when he returned to the correillo he wrote to his mother, asking her to make some plan for helping Betty. For example, Betty might take a holiday and, if Mrs. Musgrave used proper tact, need not know Kit had borne the cost. He wanted Betty to get a holiday that would brace her up. Yet it was obvious he was not in love.

His reflections were disturbed. A fowl, cackling in wild alarm, came down the ventilator shaft that pierced the ceiling of his small room. It struck the rack above the folding washstand, and Kit's hairbrush and a box of brass buttons fell. The buttons rolled about the floor and under his berth. Then the fowl swept his desk with fluttering wings and the inkpot overturned. Kit frowned and put his letter in the envelope. His friends on board liked a rude joke, and a fowl had come down the shaft before. Kit had thought he had spoiled the joke by painting the inside of the bowl-head on deck, but the paint did not long keep wet. He tried to catch the fowl, with the object of putting it in Macallister's bed, and finding he could not, opened the door, and drove it out. Soon afterward Macallister came in and indicated the stained desk.

"She's no' rolling, but it looks as if ye couldna' keep your inkpot right-side-up," he said. "Weel, I've kenned Garcia's sherry account for stranger things than yon."

"I've known it account for your losing your boots," Kit rejoined.

Macallister grinned. "The night was balmy. I was tired and my feet were sair. Ye'll mind I scalded them, saving the ship when the boiler tubes burst – "

"I was not on board," said Kit. "Anyhow, Don Erminio states Felix, your stoker, stopped the tubes. But you certainly lost your boots."

"How was I to ken the Spaniards would rob me while I slumbered? And I have my doubts. Mills o' the Estremedura was tacking along the mole, and they're no' a' gentlemen aboard yon boat. But we'll let it go. Ye dinna ken what auld Peter has done for ye?"

"My notion is, you have done enough," Kit remarked. "It's some time since the mate and you sold my clothes when I was ashore, but you haven't paid me yet."

"If my luck is good, ye will be paid, and ye have not heard my news. The company is chartering the old Mossamedes and ye're to gang to Africa on board. I got ye the job."

"Go on," said Kit dryly. "I expect it's a romantic tale."

Macallister lighted his pipe and put his coaly boots on the locker cushions.

"It was like this. Don Ramon called me to the office. 'We have chartered Mossamedes for a run to the Morocco coast,' says he. 'Captain Erminio is no' much o' a navigator and the mate's eyes are no' very good, but if ye're in the engine-room, I'll ken all's weel. Then we need a sobrecargo. Whom would ye like?'

"'Maybe Mr. Musgrave would suit,' says I. 'He's slow and dour, but for a crabbit Englishman, he has some parts. Besides, when he gangs ashore the lassies will not bother him. He's no' the sort to charm a fastidious e'e. If ye send Mr. Musgrave, ye'll not go far wrang.'"

"Did you argue in Scots or Castilian?" Kit inquired.

"In Edinburgh Scots; better English than ye use. What for would I use Castilian?"

"I see one important obstacle," said Kit. "When a man who has long been chief-engineer on board a Spanish ship is forced to paint the pressure gauge and chalk the clock, in order to let his firemen know what steam must be raised – "

"There's no' a shabby hotel tout who canna speak six languages," Macallister rejoined. "Don Arturo and I use English. Since I dinna convairse with foreigners, what for would I learn their language? If they want to talk to me, they must use mine."

He went off and Kit laughed. He owned that his conventional notion of the grim, parsimonious Scot was strangely inaccurate. The Scots he knew in the Canaries were marked by freakish humour and rash generosity. They were kind with the kindness of a benevolent Puck. In fact, all the correilleros were to some extent like that, a reckless, irresponsible lot, but Kit had known men with virtues shabbier than the sailors' faults.

A week afterwards, he got up one evening from his revolving chair in the Mossamedes' saloon. She was going to sea at daybreak, and Don Erminio had brought his friends on board. All the chairs were occupied, and cigarette smoke drifted about the green trailers of a sweet-potato that grew across the beams. The empty bottles were numerous, and at the end of the table Don Erminio made a speech. Kit heard something about animals and anarchists, and noted that the wine dripped from the glass in the captain's hand. At the other end of the table Macallister sang.

Kit had had enough. He thought he had done all politeness required, and the noisy revels jarred. It was a relief to go on deck and breathe the cool night breeze. Mossamedes was a larger boat than the correillo. Riding near the harbour mouth, her masts and funnel swung languidly, and her lights threw trembling reflections on the black water. A long deckhouse ran aft from the captain's room and pilot house at the bridge, and a row of stanchions carried its top level with the rail. Luminous smoke rolled from the funnel; one heard the clank of shovels and hiss of steam. In the background were glimmering surf, lights that twinkled in clusters against dark rocks, and then a gap where the Atlantic rolled back to Africa.

When he ordered his boat Kit's heart beat. His last duty before the vessel sailed was to get some documents from the commandancia, and then he was going to Mrs. Austin's. Mrs. Austin was not at home, but Olivia received him on the veranda.

"Harry and Jacinta will not be very long," she said.

"I'm sorry," said Kit. "I can't stop, but I wanted to say good-bye, and thank your sister."

"Then you waited for some time. Didn't you know Jacinta was going to the Metropole?"

"Not altogether," Kit replied with some awkwardness. "I think I knew she might go, but the captain was giving a party and I couldn't get off."

Olivia smiled. She knew her charm, and Kit was rather obvious.

"When his guests started I was at the mole and I expect the port-guards will get some amusement when they come back," she said. "But why do you want to thank Jacinta?"

"I imagine she had something to do with my getting the new post."

Olivia gave him a keen glance and was quiet for a few moments. Then she said, "It's possible! You feel you ought to thank her?"

"Of course," said Kit and pondered. It looked as if Olivia were angry, and this was puzzling.

"The post is good," he resumed. "I could get no farther on board the correillo and my work was not important. On the bigger boat I'll have some responsibility. Wolf is not going with her and gives me control. You see – "

"I think I do see," Olivia interrupted with a touch of scornful impatience. "You imagine you are going to force people to own your talents? This, of course, is enough for you, and you see nothing else. You imagine Jacinta knew your ambition and wanted to help?"

"I'm satisfied she did want to help, and she has helped. Mrs. Austin's kind."

Olivia laughed. Kit was very dull, but Jacinta's firm rule was sometimes galling. Olivia saw her object and wanted to baffle her. Besides, she doubted Wolf and knew Austin did not like him.

"Kit," she said, "suppose I asked you to do something for me?"

"Try!" he said, rather tensely, and waited.

"Then don't go to Africa. Stop at Las Palmas."

Kit's heart beat. Olivia had come nearer him; if he moved his hand he would touch her. Her voice had a strange, soft note, and she fixed her eyes on his. For a moment he hesitated and then braced himself to resist. It was not for nothing he sprang from Puritan stock.

"But this is not for you, and I am forced to go. Mossamedes sails in the morning, and Wolf cannot get another man. Besides, the company ordered me on board, and I have the ship's papers. I can't break my engagement when the boat is ready to start."

Olivia gave him a glance that fired his blood, and then turned her head. At the beginning she had meant to baffle Jacinta, but she had another object now. Kit's stubbornness was a challenge, and if she could not move him, she must own her charm was weak. Vanity accounted for something, but not for all. His resistance moved her to passion.

"Is it a drawback that the thing I ask is rather for your sake than mine?" she said, looking up. "Would you sooner I didn't care if you ran a risk or not?"

Kit used stern control. Olivia was very alluring, and he noted the tremble in her voice. He was strongly tempted, but although he thrilled he was not a fool. She did not belong to his circle; he was poor and her sister, with careless kindness, had tried to help him. By and by perhaps, if he got a good post – He pulled himself up. If he meant to be honest and justify Mrs. Austin's kindness, he must stick to his job. Besides, if there was a way at all, this was the way that led to Olivia.

"I think you know I'd like you to care," he said and paused. To talk like this was dangerous. "But why do you want me to stop?" he resumed with an effort for calm.

"Are you very dull, Kit?" Olivia asked quietly.

Kit coloured and got up. After all, he was human and knew he could not hold out long. He thrilled and his hands shook as he turned his soft hat. Mrs. Austin trusted him, and since he could not see another plan, he must run away.

"If my luck is good and I get promotion, I won't refuse another time. Now, because your sister got me the post, I must stick to it and go on board."

Olivia gave him a cool, level glance. "Oh, well! I know your obstinacy; you baffled me before." Then her look got softer and she added: "But be cautious Kit! I don't like Wolf."

She let him go and when he went down the steps he frowned. He had tried to take the proper line, but he was young and wondered whether his scruples were extravagant.