Kitabı oku: «Long Odds», sayfa 8

His comrade's expression might have warned another man, but Desmond went on.

"I don't know if my views are worth anything, and some of my friends doubt it, but you shall have them. After all, the matter's rather an important one. The wife for you is one who would sympathize with your notions even if she knew they were crazy ones, because they were yours, and when they led you into lumber, as such notions generally do, stand beside you smiling to face the world and the devil. There are such women. I've met one or two."

There was silence for a moment or two when he stopped, and Ormsgill, gazing straight before him with vacant eyes, saw a dark-eyed girl with dusky hair and a face of the pale ivory tint sitting where the moonlight streamed in between a colonnade of slender pillars. As it happened, Desmond saw her, too, and sighed. Then Ormsgill seemed to rouse himself.

"I am," he said, "going to marry Miss Ratcliffe, as I think you must be quite aware."

Desmond could have laughed. He fancied that it would have been almost warranted, but he laid a restraint upon himself. "Then," he said, "if you have both made up your minds and the thing is settled what in the name of wonder are you wandering about Africa for? The fact that you like it doesn't count. Why don't you go back – now – to her? It would be considerably wiser."

Ormsgill looked at him with half-closed eyes. "I'll have to ask you to speak plainly."

"I'll try," and Desmond made a little deprecatory gesture. "There are women it isn't wise to leave too long alone. They were not made to live that way, and if they find it insupportable you can't blame them. How many years is it since Miss Ratcliffe has had more than a few weeks of your company, and is it natural that a young woman should be quietly content while the man she is to marry wanders through these forests endeavoring to throw his life away? Besides that, the thing might very possibly not commend itself to her mother."

The lines grew a trifle deeper on Ormsgill's forehead, and his eyes were grave. "I have," he said, "been a little afraid of what her mother might do myself."

"Then why don't you go across to Grand Canary and make sure she doesn't try to influence the girl? Isn't it only reasonable that she should expect you to be there and save her all unpleasantness in case of anything of that kind happening?"

Ormsgill said nothing for several minutes, but it was borne in upon his comrade that his efforts had been thrown away. He had, however, after all, not expected them to be successful. At length Ormsgill spoke quietly.

"I can't go," he said. "Domingo has carried those boys away into the interior and I pledged myself that they should go home when their time was up. As it is, unless I can take them from him they will be driven to death in a few years. For that, I think, I should be held responsible."

He rose with a little sigh. "Dick," he said, "I have this thing to do, and even if it costs me a good deal it must be done. I am going back inland, and may be three or four months away. You can't stay here. After all, I don't know that I shall have much difficulty in getting the boys out of the country when I come down again."

Desmond smiled. "I may go to Las Palmas or Madeira, but I'll be here when you want me. We can fix that later. It seems to me I've said quite enough to-night."

Then they went up the companion, and Ormsgill talked of other matters as they sat under the lee of the deck-house, and watched the white seas sweep out of the darkness and vanish into it again.

CHAPTER XII
LISTER OFFERS SATISFACTION

Desmond's informant had, as it happened, been quite warranted in mentioning that Lister's proceedings had aroused the interest of the English colony in Las Palmas. He provided those who belonged to it with something to talk about as they lounged on the hotel verandas, which was a cause for gratification, since a good many of them had no more profitable occupation. That dusty city has, like others in the south, distractions to offer the idler with liberal views, though a certain proportion of them are of distinctly doubtful character. There are also in it gentlemen of easy morality who are willing to act as cicerone to the stranger with means, that is, provided he possesses a generous disposition. Spaniards of the old régime call them the Sin Verguenza, "men without shame," and there are one or two coarsely forceful Anglo-Saxon terms that might be aptly applied to them. It is, unfortunately, a fact that there are Englishmen among them.

Lister, who was young, and had never imposed much restraint upon himself, profited by the opportunities they provided him. He had the command of more money than was, perhaps, desirable, and for several weeks the pace he made was hot. He was naturally preyed upon and victimized, though, after all, the latter happened less frequently than those who watched his proceedings supposed. The lad was careless and generous, but there was a certain shrewdness in him as well as a vein of cold British stubbornness which made him a trifle difficult to handle when once his dislike was aroused. Indeed, one or two of his acquaintances fancied he had not gone so very deep in the mire, after all. How much Mrs. Ratcliffe knew about his doings did not appear. One desires to be charitable, and since Major Chillingham had gone back to England, it is possible, though far from likely, that she had not heard of them at all. In any case, she took him up, and was gracious to him in a motherly fashion, and there was suddenly a change in him.

Lister henceforward spent his evenings at the hotel, generally near the piano when Ada Ratcliffe sang. He also planned excursions for her and her mother to little palm-shrouded villages among the volcanic hills, and, since there was nobody who understood exactly how Miss Ratcliffe stood with regard to the man who had gone to Africa, the onlookers chuckled, and said that the girl's mother was a clever woman. She said that Lister was a very likable young man, who had no mother of his own, which was always a misfortune, and that it was almost a duty to look after him.

It was, in any case, one she discharged efficiently, and for a time his former companions had very little of Lister's company. Several of them were also sorry he had, apparently, as the result of their persistent efforts to undermine her authority, flung off the restraints Mrs. Ratcliffe had gradually imposed on him when at last he spent a night with them again.

They had reasonable cause for dissatisfaction when they sat in a certain caffee which stood near the cathedral. The latter fact has a significance for those acquainted with Spanish cities, but, after all, the Church is needed most where sinners abound. The caffee had wide unglazed windows, and clear moonlight streamed down into the hot, unsavory street, which under that pure radiance looked for once curiously clean and white. Tall limewashed walls rose above it, and, for the flat roofs lay beneath their crests, cut against the strip of velvety indigo, while a little cool breeze swept between them with a welcome freshness. There was no gleam of light behind any of the green lattices that broke their flat monotony and, save for the deep rumble of the surf, the city was very still. Once a measured tramp of feet rang across the flat roofs and indicated that two of the armed civiles were patroling a neighboring calle where the principal shops stand, but their business would not take them near the caffee. It is, in fact, not often that authority obtrudes itself unadvisedly into certain parts of most Spanish towns.

The moonlight also streamed into the caffee where a big lamp in which the oil was running low burned dimly. The table beneath it was stained with cheap red wine, and a good many bottles stood upon it among a litter of Spanish cards. Four men sat about it, and two more lounged upon the settee which ran along the discolored wall. The place was filled with tobacco smoke and the sickly odor of anisado, which was, however, no great disadvantage, since the natural reek of a Spanish Alsatia is more unpleasant still. The men had been there four or five hours when Lister flung down a card and noisily pushed back his chair. His face was a trifle flushed, and his hands were not quite steady, but his half-closed eyes were, as one or two of the others noticed, almost unpleasantly calm. There was a pile of silver at his side on the table, for he had, as the red-faced English skipper opposite him had once or twice observed, been favored with an astonishing run of luck. It is, however, possible that the skipper did not go quite far enough. Lister had certainly been fortunate, but he had also a nice judgment in such matters, and his nerve was unusually good. He looked round at his companions with a little dry smile.

"You should have left me alone," he said. "I didn't want to come here, but when you insisted I did it to oblige you. As you pointed out, considering what I took out of some of you on another occasion, it seemed the fair thing. Now I hope you're satisfied."

He indicated the pile of silver with a little wave of his hand, and the others, among whom there were two Englishmen beside the skipper, waited in some astonishment, with very little sign of content in their faces, until he went on again.

"Well," he said, "I'm still willing to do the fair thing, though, while I don't wish to be unduly personal, that is a point which has evidently not caused one or two of you any undue anxiety. You can explain that, Walters, to the Spanish gentlemen, though I don't altogether confine my remarks to them."

An Englishman straightened himself suddenly, and one of the Spaniard's eyes flashed when the man Lister turned to did his bidding. Lister, however, grinned at them.

"The question," he said, "is simply do you feel I owe you any further satisfaction, or have you had enough? I want you to understand that I'm never coming here again, and if you care to double the stakes I'll play you another round."

There was no doubt that they had had enough, and while three of them might have taken another hand with a view to getting back the pile of silver by certain means they were acquainted with they refrained, perhaps because they felt that the man called Walters and the burly steamboat skipper would in case of necessity stand by Lister. The silence that lasted a moment or two grew uncomfortable, but it did not seem to trouble Lister, who sat still looking at them with a little sardonic smile.

"Well," he said, "it's evident that you don't expect anything more from me. Will you and Captain Wilson come with me, Walters?"

He rose when the men addressed reached out for their hats, and then clapped his hands until a girl came in. She was very young, and looked jaded, which was not particularly astonishing considering that she had been keeping the party supplied with refreshment for more than half the night. The smudgy patches of powder on it emphasized the weariness of her olive-tinted face, but there was for all that a certain suggestion of daintiness and freshness about her which was not what one would have expected in such surroundings.

Lister stood looking at her with half-closed eyes, while the others watched them both until he made a little abrupt gesture.

"It is not you, but your father, the patron, the man who owns this place, I want, but you can stop here and call him," he said in a half-intelligible muddle of Castilian and Portuguese.

Walters made it a little plainer, and the girl spread out her hands. "The patron does not live here," she said. "My father, he is only in charge."

"Call him!" said Lister.

The man came in, and his dark eyes as well as those of all the others were fixed expectantly on Lister when he once more turned to the girl.

"You like waiting on and singing for these pigs?" he asked.

Walters rendered the word puerco, which is not a complimentary term in Spain, but the men it was applied to forgot to resent it in their expectancy. A flicker of color swept into the girl's face, and it was evident that her task was not a congenial one. She was, however, about to retreat when Lister raised his hand in protest, and turned to the man.

"What do you mean," he said, "by keeping a girl of that kind in a place like this?"

Again Walters translated, and the little flicker of color grew a trifle plainer in the girl's olive-tinted cheek. One could have fancied that she had suddenly realized how others might regard her occupation and surroundings. The man, however, spread his hands out.

"It is certainly not what one would wish for her, and she would be a modista," he said. "But what would you – when one is very poor?"

Lister caught up a double handful of the silver which still lay upon the table and signed to the girl.

"That should make it a little easier. It's for you," he said. "If it is not enough you can let me know. You will go and learn to make hats and dresses to-morrow. If your father makes any more objections I'll send the little fat priest after him. You know the one I mean. He has a cross eye and likes a good dinner as well as any man. He is a friend of mine."

The others gazed at Lister in blank astonishment when Walters made this clear, until the Spaniard became suddenly profuse. Lister, however, disregarded him, and picking up the rest of the silver turned towards the door. He went out, and Walters looked at him curiously when he stopped and stood still a moment, apparently reflecting, with the moonlight on his face. The combativeness with which he had regarded his gaming companions had faded out of it, and left it, as it usually was, heavy and inanimate. Lister was skillful at games of chance, where his impassiveness served him well, but Walters fancied he was by no means likely to shine at anything else. He was a young man of no mental capacity, and his tastes were not refined, but there was hidden in his dull nature a germ of the rudimentary chivalry which now and then rouses such men as he was to deeds which astonish their friends. It had lain inert until the dew of a beneficent influence had rested on it, and then there was a sudden growth that was to result in the production of unlooked for fruit. Because of the love he bore one woman he had become compassionate, and, perhaps, it did not matter greatly that she was unworthy, since the gracious impulse was merely brought him by, and not born of, the reverence he had for her. After all, its source was higher than that. It was, however, not to be expected that he should realize such a fact, and he stood wrinkling his brows as though ruminating over his proceedings, until he became conscious that his companion was looking at him inquiringly.

"I don't know what made me do that," he said. "It's quite certain I wouldn't have thought of it a month or two ago."

"No," said Walters, a trifle drily, "one would not have expected it from you. Still, you have made a few changes lately. What has come over you?"

Lister did not answer him. "If that blamed ass of a skipper means to stop I'm not going to wait for him. He'll get a knife slipped into him some night and it will serve him right," he said. "We'll get out of this place. Once we strike the big calle it will be fresher."

They strode on down the hot, stale smelling street, and Lister appeared to draw in a deep breath of relief when they turned into the broad road that runs close by the surf-swept beach to the harbor. Though there were tall white stores and houses on its seaward side the night breeze swept down it exhilaratingly fresh and cool, and Lister bared his hot forehead to it.

"Well," he said, "I've been down among the swine in a number of places, and, though I suppose it sometimes falls out differently, I've scratched some of the bristles off a few of them. Now I want to forget the tricks they've taught me. You see, I'm never going back to any of the – stys again. It's a thing I owe myself and somebody else."

He had certainly consumed a good deal of wine, but it was clear that he was fully in command of his senses, and Walters endeavored to check his laugh as comprehension suddenly dawned upon him. Still, he was not quite successful, and his companion turned on him.

"I meant it," he said. "There'll probably be trouble between us if you attempt to work off any of your assinine witticisms."

Walters said nothing. He had seen his companion calmly insult four men whose dollars he had pocketed, and he did not consider it advisable to explain what he thought about Mrs. Ratcliffe and the interest she had taken in his friend. Still, like most of the English residents who had made her acquaintance, he had his views upon the subject. Lister was, at least, rich enough to make a desirable son-in-law, and if he fancied it was essential that he should reform before he offered himself as a candidate there was nothing to be gained by undeceiving him.

They walked on until they left the tall white houses and little rows of flat-topped dwellings that replaced them behind, and the dim, dusty road stretched away before them with a filmy spray-cloud and glistening Atlantic heave on one side of it. Lister glanced at the fringe of crumbling combers with slow appreciation.

"In one way that's inspiriting," he said. "I might have sat and watched them half the evening from the veranda of the hotel. In that case I'd have had a clearer head and been considerably fresher to-morrow. Still, those hogs would have me out. It's a consolation to realize that it has cost them something."

Walters stopped when they reached the hotel and glanced at his companion. "Aren't you going in?" he said. "You could still get a little sleep before it's breakfast time."

"No," said Lister simply, "I'm going for a swim. It's no doubt an assinine notion, but the smell of the sty seems to cling to me."

Walters laughed. "Is that a custom you mean to adopt invariably after a night of this kind?"

"No," said Lister. "It won't be necessary. You see there will never be another one."

They went on, and Walters sat down on the little mole not far away while his comrade stripped off his thin attire. Then Lister stood a moment, gleaming white in the moonlight, a big, loose-limbed figure, on the head of the mole before he went down with flung-out hands and stiffened body into the cool Atlantic swell. It closed about him glittering, and he was well out in the harbor when he came up again and slid away down the blaze of radiance with left arm swinging. The chill of the deep sea water, at least, cooled his slightly fevered skin, and, perhaps, there was something in his half pagan fancy that it also washed a stain off him. In any case, the desire to escape from the most unusual sense of contamination was a wholesome one.

CHAPTER XIII
HIS BENEFICENT INFLUENCE

There is a certain aldea, a little straggling village of flat-topped houses, among the black volcanic hills of Grand Canary which has like one or two others of its kind a good deal to offer the discerning traveler who will take the trouble to visit it. It is certainly a trifle difficult to reach, which is, perhaps, in one sense not altogether a misfortune, since the Englishmen and Englishwomen who visit that island in the winter seldom leave such places exactly as they find them. One goes up by slippery bridle paths on horse or mule back over hot sand and wastes of dust and ashes into a rift between the hills, and when once the tremendous gateway of fire-rent rock has been passed discovers that it costs one an effort to go away again.

In the bottom of the barranco lie maize-fields and vines. Tall green palms fling streaks of shadow over them, and close beneath the black crags stands a little ancient church and odd cubes of lava houses tinted with delicate pink or ochre or whitewashed dazzlingly. They nestle among their fig trees shut in by tall aloes, and oleanders, and a drowsy quietness which is intensified by the murmur of running water pervades the rock-walled hollow. It is the stillness of a land where nothing matters greatly, and there is in it the essence of the resignation which regards haste and effort and protest as futile, that is characteristic of old world Spain, for Spain was never until lately bounded by the confines of the Peninsula.

Las Palmas down beside the smoking beach is no longer Spanish. It is filled with bustle and a rampant commercialism, and English is spoken there; but the quietness of the ages lingers among the hills where the grapes of Moscatel are still trodden in the winepress by barelegged men in unstarched linen who live very much as one fancies the patriarchs did, plowing with oxen and wooden plows, and beating out their corn on wind-swept threshing floors. They also comport themselves, even towards the wandering Briton, who does not always deserve it, with an almost stately courtesy, and seldom trouble themselves about the morrow. All that is essentially Spanish is Eastern, too. The life in the hill pueblos is that portrayed in the Jewish scriptures, and the olive-skinned men whose forefathers once ruled half the world have also like the Hebrew the remembrance of their departed glory to sadden them.

It is, however, scarcely probable that any fancies of this kind occurred to Mrs. Ratcliffe as she lay in a somewhat rickety chair under a vine-draped pergola outside a pink-washed house in that aldea one afternoon. She was essentially modern, and usually practical, in which respects Ada, who sat not far away, was not unlike her. A man, at least, seldom expects to find the commercial instinct and a shrewd capacity for estimating and balancing worldly advantages in a young woman of prepossessing appearance with innocent eyes, which is, perhaps, a pity, since it now and then happens that the fact that she possesses a reasonable share of both of them is made clear to him in due time. Then it is apt to cause him pain, for man being vain prefers to believe that it is personal merit that counts for most where he is concerned.

Ada Ratcliffe was listening to the drowsy splash of falling water, and looking down through the rocky gateway over tall palms and creeping vines, blackened hillslopes, and gleaming sands, on the vast plain of the Atlantic which lay, a sheet of turquoise, very far below. Above her, tremendous fire-rent pinnacles ran up into the upper sweep of ethereal blue, but all this scarcely roused her interest. She had seen it already, and had said it was very pretty. Besides, she was thinking of other things which appealed to her considerably more, a London house, an acknowledged station in smart society, and the command of money. These were things she greatly desired to have, and it was evident that Thomas Ormsgill could only offer her them in a certain measure. It was, in some respects, only natural that her mother should set a high value on them too, and desire them for her daughter. She had made a long and gallant fight against adverse circumstances since her husband died, and there was in her face the hardness of one who has more than once been almost beaten. There were, she knew, women who would freely give themselves with all that had been given them to the man they loved, but Mrs. Ratcliffe had never had much sympathy with them. It was, she felt, a much more sensible thing to make a bargain, and secure something in return.

Still, nobody would have fancied that Ada Ratcliffe had any such ideas just then. Her face was quietly tranquil, and the pose she had fallen into in the big basket chair was, if not quite unstudied, a singularly graceful one. In her hands lay a Spanish fan, a beautiful, costly thing of silk and feathers and fretted ebony which Lister had given her a few days earlier. He sat on a block of lava watching her with a little significant gleam that she was perfectly conscious of in his usually apathetic eyes. Still, though he had a heavy face of the kind one seldom associates with self-restraint, there was nothing in his expression which could have jarred upon a woman of the most sensitive temperament. There were not many things which Albert Lister had much reverence for, but during the last few weeks a change had been going on in him, and it was a blind, unreasoning devotion which none of his friends would have believed him capable of that he offered this girl.

His pleasures had been coarse ones, and there was much in him that she might have shrunk from, but he had, at least, of late fought with the desires of his lower nature, and, for the time being, trampled on one or two of them. Slow of thought, and of very moderate intelligence, as he was, he had yet endeavored to purge himself of grossness before he ventured into her presence. He had not spoken for awhile when Mrs. Ratcliffe turned to him.

"You were not in the drawing-room last night," she said, and her manner subtly conveyed the impression that she had expected him. "No doubt you had something more interesting on hand?"

"No," said Lister slowly, "I don't think I had. In fact, I was playing cards!"

Mrs. Ratcliffe was a trifle perplexed, for she had now and then ventured to express her disapproval of one or two of his favorite distractions in a motherly fashion, and she could not quite understand his candor. It was, perhaps, natural that she should not credit him with a simple desire for honesty, since this was a motive which would not have had much weight with her.

"Ah," she said, with an air of playful reproach, "everybody plays cards nowadays, and I suppose one must not be too hard on you. Still, I think you know what my views are upon that subject."

They were scarcely likely to be very charitable ones, since she owed her own long struggle to the fact that there were few forms of gaming her husband had not unsuccessfully experimented with, and she continued feelingly, "If one had no graver objections, it is apt to prove expensive."

Lister laughed a little. "It proved so – to the other people – last night, but I think you are right. In fact, it's scarcely likely I'll touch a card again. In one way," – and he appeared to reflect laboriously, "it's a waste of life."

His companions were both a trifle astonished. They had scarcely expected a sentiment of this kind from him, and though the elder lady would probably not have admitted it, gaming did not appear to her so objectionable a thing provided that one won and had the sense to leave off when that was the case. Ada Ratcliffe, however, smiled.

"To be candid, one would hardly have fancied you would look at it in that light," she said. "Still, you seem to have been changing your views lately."

"I have," said the man slowly, with a faint flush in his heavy face. "After all, one comes to look at these things differently, and I dare say those fellows are right who lay it down that one ought to do something for his country or his living. Once I had the opportunity, but I let it go, or rather I flung it away. I often wish I hadn't, but I'm not quite sure it's altogether too late now."

He spoke with an awkward diffidence, for though he was very young, ideas of this kind were quite new to him. The love of the girl he looked at appealingly had stirred his slow coarse nature, and something that had sprung up in its depths was growing towards the light. It might have grown to grace and beauty had the light been a benignant one, for, after all, it is not upon the soil alone that growth of any kind depends. Ada Ratcliffe, however, did not recognize in the least that this laid upon her a heavy responsibility.

"No," she said with an encouraging smile, "there is no reason why you shouldn't make a career yet. I almost think you could if you wanted to."

It was a bold assertion, but she made it unblushingly, and Lister appeared to consider.

"There are not many things I'm good at – that is, useful ones," he said. "You have to be able to talk sensibly, anyway, before you can make your mark at politics, and some of them don't do it under twenty years."

He stopped for a moment with a little sigh. "Still, I suppose there must be something worth while for one to do, even if it's not exactly what one would like."

"One's duty is usually made clear to one," said Mrs. Ratcliffe encouragingly.

"Well," said Lister, "I'm not sure it is, though it's probably his own fault if he doesn't want to recognize it. As I mentioned, you can look at the same thing differently. There was Desmond's friend Ormsgill. A little while ago I thought he was a trifle crazy. Now I begin to see it's a big thing he's doing, something to look back on afterwards even if he never does anything worth while again."

He saw the faint flush of color in Ada Ratcliffe's face, though he did not in the least understand it. There was a good deal this man could give her, and she knew that he would in due time press it upon her, but she was naturally aware that his mental capacity was painfully small. This made the fact that he should look upon Ormsgill's errand as one a man could take pride in a reproach to her. Mrs. Ratcliffe's face was, however, if anything, expressive of anxiety, for she had asked herself frequently if Lister could by any chance have heard that the girl's pledge to Ormsgill had never been retracted. She did not think he had, but this was a point it was well to be sure upon.

"I didn't think you had met him," she said.

"I haven't. You see, I stayed behind in Madeira while the Palestrina came on, and when I got here Ormsgill had gone. Desmond told me about him. I understood he was to marry somebody when he had done his errand, though, if he knew, Desmond never mentioned who she was."

He stopped, and Mrs. Ratcliffe sighed with sheer relief when he turned and looked eastwards towards Africa across the vast stretch of sea with a vague longing in his eyes.

"Well," he said, "when he comes back again he will have done something that should make the girl look up to him."

Again the flicker of color crept into Ada Ratcliffe's cheek, for she was conscious just then of a curious resentment against the man who had gone to Africa for an idea. It was singularly galling that a man of Lister's caliber should make her ashamed. Still, she smiled at him.