Part 16 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sed 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 thres.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances 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, n.o.body 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 a.s.sociates 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 coa.r.s.e 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sertion, but she made it unblus.h.i.+ngly, and Lister appeared to consider.