"You would naturally sooner let me lend it you than Mr. Brown?"
"Why should you suppose that?" and the flush crept back into Austin"s face.
Mrs. Hatherly smiled again. "Ah," she said, "I am an old woman, and have my fancies, but they are right now and then. I will send you a cheque to-morrow, and, Mr. Austin, I should like you to think of me as one of your friends. Do you know that I told Muriel half an hour ago you would go?"
Austin made her a little grave inclination, though there was a smile in his eyes.
"I am not sure that any of my other friends has so much confidence in me, madam," he said. "After all, it is another responsibility, and I shall have to do what I can."
The little lady smiled at him as she turned away. "Well," she said quietly, "I think that will be a good deal."
It was ten minutes later when Austin met Jacinta, and she stopped him with a sign.
"You are going to Mr. Jefferson?" she said.
"Yes," said Austin, with a trace of dryness. "I believe so. After all, he is a friend of mine."
Jacinta watched him closely, and her pale, olive-tinting was a trifle warmer in tone than usual. His self-control was excellent, to the little smile, but she could make a shrewd guess as to what it cost him.
"Soon?" she asked.
"In two or three days. That is, if the Compania don"t get the Spaniards to lay hands on me. By the way, you may as well know now that I had to get Mrs. Hatherly to lend me part, at least, of the necessary money."
Jacinta flushed visibly. "You will not be vindictive, though, of course, I have now and then been hard on you."
"I shouldn"t venture to blame you. As we admitted, there are occasions on which one has to resort to drastic remedies."
Jacinta stopped him with a gesture. "Please--you won"t," she said. "Of course, I deserve it, but you will try to forgive me. You can afford to--now."
She stood still a moment in the moonlight, an ethereal, white-clad figure, with a suggestion of uncertainly and apprehension in her face which very few people had ever seen there before, and then turned abruptly, with a little smile of relief, as Miss Gascoyne came towards them.
"He"s going out, Muriel. You will thank him--I don"t seem able to," she said.
Muriel came forward with outstretched hands, and in another moment Austin, to his visible embarra.s.sment, felt her warm grasp.
"Oh," she said, "Mrs. Hatherly knew you meant to. I feel quite sure I can trust you to bring him back to me."
Austin managed to disengage his hands, and smiled a little, though it was Jacinta he looked at.
"I think," he said, "I have a sufficient inducement for doing what I can. Still, you will excuse me. There are one or two points I want to talk over with Captain Farquhar."
He turned away, and twenty minutes later Jacinta, standing on the bridge-deck, alone, watched his boat slide away into the blaze of moonlight that stretched suggestively towards Africa.
CHAPTER X
JACINTA IS NOT CONTENT
Darkness was closing down on the faintly shining sea, and the dull murmur of the surf grew louder as the trade-breeze died away, when Jacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat in the stern of a white gig which two barefooted Canarios pulled across Las Palmas harbour on the evening on which Austin was to sail. In front of them the spray still tossed in filmy clouds about the head of the long, dusky mole, and the lonely Isleta hill cut black as ebony against a cold green transparency, while skeins of lights twinkled into brilliancy round the sweep of bay.
Jacinta, however, saw nothing of this. She was watching the _Estremedura_"s dark hull rise higher above the line of mole, and listening to one of the boatmen who accompanied the rhythmic splash of oars with a little melodious song. She long afterwards remembered its plaintive cadence and the words of it well.
"Las aves marinas vuelen encima la mar," he sang, and then while the measured thud and splash grew a trifle faster, "No pueden escapar las penas del amor."
He did not seem to know the rest of it, and when she had heard the stanza several times Jacinta, who saw Muriel"s eyes fixed upon her enquiringly, made a little half-impatient gesture.
"It"s the usual sentimental rubbish, though he sings pa.s.sably well.
"Even the sea birds cannot escape the pains of love,"" she said.
"Absurd, isn"t it? like most of the men one comes across nowadays, they probably spend all their time in search of something to eat. Still, I suppose--you--would sympathise with the man whose perverted imagination led him to write that song."
Muriel looked at her with a hint of reproach in her big blue eyes, which were very reposeful. "I don"t think I ever quite understood you, and I don"t now, but I once went to see an English gullery," she said. "There were rows of nests packed so close that one could scarcely pick a way between, with little, half-feathered things in most of them. They all had their mouths open."
Jacinta laughed musically. "Of course," she said. "You are delightful.
But never mind me. Go on a little further."
"It was the big gulls I was thinking of," said Muriel gravely. "They didn"t fly away, but hung just above us in a great white cloud, wheeling, screaming, and now and then making little swoops at our heads.
It didn"t seem to matter what happened to them, but any one could see they were in an agony of terror lest we should tread upon some of the little, half-feathered nestlings. I came away as soon as the others would let me. It seemed a cruelty to frighten them."
"It seems to me," said Jacinta, "that you are antic.i.p.ating, or confusing things considerably, but I"ll try not to offend you by making that a little plainer, though, I should almost like to. I"m in quite a p.r.i.c.kly humour to-night."
She sat silent a moment or two, while a trace of colour crept in her companion"s face, looking out towards the eastern haze, as she had done of late somewhat frequently.
"Yes," she said, reflectively, "I feel that it would be a relief to make you upset and angry. You are so aggravatingly sure of everything, and serene. Of course, that is, perhaps, only natural, after all. You have, in one respect, got just what you wanted, and have sense enough to be content with it."
Muriel turned and looked at her with a trace of bewilderment, for there was an unusual hardness in Jacinta"s tone.
"Wouldn"t everybody be content in such a case?" she asked.
"Oh, dear no!" and Jacinta laughed. "I, for one, would begin to look for flaws in the thing, whatever it was, and wonder if it wouldn"t be wiser to change it for something else. In fact, I don"t mind telling you I feel like that to-night. You see, for a year at least, I have been trying to bring a certain thing about, and--now I have succeeded--I wish I hadn"t. Of course, you won"t understand me, and I don"t mean you to; but you may as well remember that it"s a somewhat perilous thing to keep on giving people good advice. Some day they will probably act upon it."
"But that ought to please one."
Jacinta glanced once more into the soft darkness that crept up from the East with a little shiver. "Well," she said sharply, "in my case it certainly doesn"t."
They were alongside the _Estremedura_ in another minute, but the seaman they found on deck did not know where Austin was, and led them down to Macallister"s room. It was beneath the spar-deck, and very hot, for the dynamo was not running that night, and a big oil lamp lighted it. It was also full of tobacco smoke, and--for the port was open--the rumble of the long swell tumbling against the mole came throbbing into it. A big man in very shabby serge, with a hard face, sat opposite the engineer, until the latter, seeing the two women, laid a hand upon his shoulder.
"Out ye get!" he said, and his guest was projected suddenly into the dimly-lighted s.p.a.ce about the after-hatch.
Then he smiled upon the newcomers affably. "Come away in," he said. "Was it me or Mr. Austin ye came to see?"
"On this occasion it was Mr. Austin," said Jacinta, who found a place opposite him, beside Muriel, on a settee. "Of course, that was because he is going away. Isn"t he here?"
"He is not," and Macallister beamed at her. "In one way, it"s not that much of a pity. There"s twice the light-heartedness in me that there is in Mr. Austin."
"I can quite believe it. Still, light-heartedness of one kind is now and then a little inconvenient. Where has he gone?"
"To the town. I don"t expect him until he calls for his man--the one I"ve just hove out--when the West-coast mailboat comes in. She won"t stop more than half an hour, but there"s no sign of her yet."