They are in a position to discharge them so much more efficiently."
Ormsgill did not reply to this, though there was a faint sardonic twinkle in his eyes. He was not, as a rule, addicted to pa.s.sing on a responsibility, but he remembered then that he had handed a little Belgian priest 200 to carry out a duty that had been laid on him. The fact that he had done so vaguely troubled him. Mrs. Ratcliffe, however, went on again.
"One of the disadvantages of living here is the number of invalids one is thrown into contact with," she said. "I find it depressing. You will notice the woman in the singularly unbecoming black dress yonder.
She insists on drinking thick cocoa with a spoon at dinner."
One could have fancied that she felt this breach of custom to be an enormity, and Ormsgill wondered afterwards what malignant impulse suddenly possessed him. Still, the worthy lady"s coldly even voice and formal manner jarred upon him, while the pleasure of meeting the girl he had thought of for four long years was much less than he felt it should have been. He resented the fact, and most men"s tempers grow a trifle sharp in tropical Africa.
"Well," he said dryly, "one understands that it is nourishing, and, after all, we are to some extent cannibals."
"Cannibals?" said Mrs. Ratcliffe with a swift suspicious glance which seemed to suggest that she was wondering whether the African climate had been too much for him.
"Yes," said Ormsgill, "cocoa, or, at least, that grown in parts of Africa where the choicest comes from, could almost be considered human flesh and blood. Any way, both are expended lavishly to produce it. I fancy you will bear me out in this, Senor?"
He looked at the little, olive-faced gentleman in plain white duck who sat not far away across the table. He had grave dark eyes with a little glint in them, and slim yellow hands with brown tips to some of the fingers, and was just then twisting a cigarette between them.
Ormsgill surmised that it cost him an effort to refrain from lighting it, since men usually smoke between the courses of a dinner in his country. There was a certain likeness between him and the Commandant of San Roque, sufficient at least, to indicate that they were of the same nationality, but the man at the table in the _Catalina_ had been cast in a finer mold, and there was upon him the unmistakable stamp of authority.
"One is a.s.sured that what is done is necessary," he said in slow deliberate English. "I am, however, not a commercialist."
"You, of course, believe those a.s.surances?"
The little white-clad gentleman smiled in a somewhat curious fashion.
"A wise man believes what is told him--while it is expedient. Some day, perhaps, the time comes when it is no longer so."
"And then?"
A faint, suggestive glint replaced the smile in the keen dark eyes.
"Then he acts on what he thinks himself. Though I can not remember when, it seems to me, senhor, that I have had the pleasure of meeting you before."
"You have," said Ormsgill dryly. "It was one very hot morning in the rainy season, and you were sitting at breakfast outside a tent beneath a great rock. Two files of infantry accompanied me."
"I recollect perfectly. Still, as it happens, I had just finished breakfast, which was, I think, in some respects fortunate. One is rather apt to proceed summarily before it--in the rainy season."
Ormsgill laughed, and the girl who sat beside the man he had spoken to flashed a swift glance at him. She was dressed in some thin, soft fabric, of a pale gold tint, and the firm, round modeling of the figure it clung about proclaimed her a native of the Iberian peninsula, the Peninsula, as those who are born there love to call it.
Still, there was no tinge of olive in her face, which, like her arms and shoulders, was of the whiteness of ivory. Her eyes, which had a faint scintillation in them, were of a violet black, and her hair of the tint of ebony, though it was l.u.s.trous, too. She, however, said nothing, and Major Chillingham, who seemed to feel himself neglected, broke in.
"I"m afraid you were at your old tricks again, Tom," he said. "What had you been up to then?"
"Interfering with two or three black soldiers, who resented it. They were trying to burn up a native hut with a couple of wounded n.i.g.g.e.rs inside it. I believe there was a woman inside it, too."
Chillingham shook his head reproachfully. "One can"t help these things now and then, and I don"t know where you got your notions from," he said. "It certainly wasn"t from your father. He was a credit to the service, and a sensible man. You can only expect trouble when you kick against authority."
Ormsgill looked at Ada Ratcliffe, but there was only a faint suggestion of impatience in her face. Then, without exactly knowing why, he glanced across the table, and caught the little gleam of sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt in the other girl"s violet eyes. She, at least, it seemed, had comprehension, and that vaguely displeased him, since he had expected it from the woman he had come back to marry, instead of a stranger. Then the man with the olive face looked up again.
"You have it in contemplation to go back to Africa?"
"No," said Ormsgill, who felt that Mrs. Ratcliffe was listening. "At least, I scarcely think it will be necessary."
"Ah," said the other, with a little dry smile, "It is, one might, perhaps, suggest, not advisable. There are several men who do not bear you any great good will in that country."
Ormsgill laughed. "One," he said, "is forced to do a good many things which do not seem advisable yonder, and I have one or two very excellent friends."
Then he turned to Ada Ratcliffe, and discoursed with her and her mother on subjects he found it difficult to take much interest in, which was a fresh surprise to him, for he had considered them subjects of importance before he left England. The effort he made to display a becoming attention was not apparent, but it was a slight relief to two of the party when the dinner was over. Another hour had, however, pa.s.sed before he had the girl to himself, and they sauntered down through the dusty garden and along the dim white road until they reached a little mole that ran out into the harbor. The moon had just dipped behind the black peaks, and they sat down in the soft darkness on a ledge of stone, and listened for a while to the rumble of the long Atlantic swell that edged to the strip of shadowy coast with a fringe of spouting foam. Both felt there was a good deal to be said, but the commencement was difficult, and it was significant that the man gazed westwards--towards Africa--across the dusky heaven, until he looked round when his companion spoke to him.
"Tom," she said quietly, "you have not come back the same as when you went away."
"I believe I haven"t," and Ormsgill"s voice was gentle. "My dear, you must bear with me awhile. You see, there are so many things I have lost touch with, and it will take me a little time to pick it up again. Still, if you will wait and humor me, I will try."
He turned, and glanced towards a great block of hotel buildings that cut harsh and square against the soft blueness of the night not far away. The long rows of open windows blazed, and the music that came out from them reached the two who sat listening through the deep-toned rumble of the surf. It was evident that an entertainment of some kind was going on, but Ormsgill found the signs of it vaguely disquieting.
"One feels that building shouldn"t be there," he said. "They should have placed it in the city. It"s too new and aggressive where it is, and the ways of the folks who stay in it are almost as out of place."
He stopped a moment with a little laugh. "I expect I"m talking nonsense, and it"s really not so very long since that kind of thing used to appeal to me. After all, there must be a certain amount of satisfaction to be got out of purposeless flirtation, cards, dining, and dancing."
It was not very dark, and, when he looked round, the shapely form of his companion was silhouetted blackly against the sky on the step above him. There was something vaguely suggestive of an impatience that was, perhaps, excusable in her att.i.tude.
"Oh," she said, "there is not a great deal. I admit that, but one must live as the others do, and have these things to pa.s.s the time. You know there is nothing to be gained by making oneself singular."
Ormsgill smiled, though once more the smell of the wilderness, the odors of lilies and spices, and the sourness of corruption, was in his nostrils. Men grappled for dear life with stern and occasionally appalling realities there, and he was one in whom the love of conflict had been born.
"No," he said, "I suppose there isn"t. At least, it usually involves one in trouble, and, as you say, one must have something to pa.s.s the time away. Still, Ada, for a while you will try to put up with my little impatiences and idiosyncrasies. No doubt I shall fit myself to my surroundings by and by."
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 on the 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.
CHAPTER IV