Part 26 (1/2)

”Lord,” he said, ”how little some of us are content with when we marry--a woman to sit at the head of out table, and talk prettily, one who asks for everything that isn't worth while, and sees you never do anything her friends don't consider quite fitting. Still, there is another kind, the ones who give instead of asking, and who would, for the man they loved, face the malice of the world with a smile in their eyes. I think,” and he made a little vague gesture, ”I have said something of the kind before, but I have to let myself go now and then. I can't help it.”

”One would almost fancy you were in love with the girl yourself,” said Ormsgill quietly.

Desmond leaned forward a trifle, and looked hard at him. ”No. I might have been had things been different. At least, she is certainly not in love with me.”

Ormsgill said nothing, but he was sensible of a curious stirring of his blood. He would not ask himself exactly what his comrade meant, or if, indeed, he meant anything in particular, for it was a consolation to remember that Desmond now and then talked inconsequently. He sat still, vacantly watching the blue smoke wreaths curl up between the palms. The boys had lain down now, and only an occasional faint rustle as one moved broke the heavy silence. Then, and, perhaps he was a trifle overwrought and fanciful, as he watched the drifting smoke wreaths a figure seemed to materialize out of them. It was filmy and unsubstantial, etherealized by the moonlight, but it grew plainer, and once more he saw Benicia Figuera as he had talked with her in the shady patio. She seemed to be looking at him with reposeful eyes that had nevertheless a little glint in the depths of them, and now the desire to see her in the flesh took him by the throat and shook the resolution out of him. At last he knew. There could no longer be any brus.h.i.+ng of disconcerting facts aside. There was one woman in the world whom he desired, and he had pledged himself to marry another one. Still, his duty remained, and he sat silent with one lean hand closed tightly and the lines on his worn face deepening until at last he became conscious that Desmond was watching him, and he roused himself with an effort.

”Well,” he said quietly, ”she has laid me under a heavy obligation, but we have other things to talk of.”

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE BEACH

Desmond was asleep when the men his comrade had left behind came in, but the negroes' sense of hearing was quicker than his, and when he rose drowsily to his feet there was already a bustle in the camp.

Ormsgill, who was giving terse directions, turned to him.

”These boys have brought me word that there is a handful of troops in a village a few hours' march away,” he said, pointing towards two half-seen men who were talking excitedly to the dusky carriers. ”As they know where we are heading for they will probably be upon our trail as soon as the sun is up.” He did not seem very much concerned, and when he once more turned to the negroes, Desmond, rea.s.sured by his quietness, glanced about him. The fire had died out, and there was no longer any moonlight, but the palms cut with a sharp black distinctness against the eastern sky. It was also a little cooler.

Indeed, Desmond s.h.i.+vered, for he was stiff and clammy with the dew.

The negroes were hurrying to and fro, apparently getting their loads together, and the seamen were asking each other disjointed questions as they scrambled to their feet. Desmond could see their faces faintly white which he had not been able to do when he went to sleep.

”Well,” he said, ”I suppose we'll have to make a move of some kind?”

”It would be advisable,” said Ormsgill. ”Fortunately, it will be daylight in a few minutes. You will start for the coast as soon as you are ready, and take most of the boys I brought down along. It would be wiser to push on as fast as possible, though it's scarcely likely that the troops will come up with you. If they do, you will give the boys up to them, but in that case one of the carriers will slip away and bring me word. Any resistance you could make would be useless and very apt to involve you in serious difficulties.”

Desmond smiled dryly, and did not pledge himself. He was not a man who invariably did the most prudent thing.

”You are not coming with us?” he said.

”No,” said Ormsgill. ”There are six boys not accounted for yet. I am going back inland for them. The troops will, of course, pick up your trail, and they will probably be content with that. It's scarcely likely to occur to them that there might be another.”

Desmond exerted all his powers of persuasion during the next minute or two, and it was not his fault if his comrade did not realize that it was a folly he was undertaking. Desmond, at least made a strenuous attempt to impress that point on him, in spite of the fact that it was a folly he would in all probability have been guilty of himself.

Ormsgill, however, only smiled.

”As you have pointed out, anything I can do to straighten out things in this country is scarcely worth while,” he said. ”I'm also willing to admit that it's not exactly my business, and I'm far from sure that the role of professional philanthropist is one that fits me. Still, you see, I have undertaken the thing, and I can't very well leave it half done.” He stopped a moment, and laughed, a trifle harshly.

”Especially as it's scarcely probable that I shall have an opportunity of doing anything of the kind again.”

Then he turned to the negroes, and spoke to them for several minutes in sc.r.a.ps of Portuguese and a native tongue. Their villages on the inland plateau had been burned, he said, and there was, so far as he knew, no one he could trust them to in the country. If they stayed in it some white man would in all probability claim them, and they would be sent to toil for a term of years upon the plantations. They knew what that meant.

They certainly appeared to do so by the murmurs that rose from them, and Ormsgill pointed to Desmond. He had pledged himself to set them at liberty, he said, and his friend would take them to a country where negroes were reasonably paid for their services, and, unless they deserved it, very seldom beaten. What was more to the purpose, if they did not like the factory they worked at they could leave it and go to another, which was a thing that appeared incomprehensible to them, until a man with a blue stripe down his forehead stood up and told them it certainly was as Ormsgill had said. He had himself earned as much by twelve months' labor at a white man's factory as would have kept him several years in luxury. Then one of the boys, a thick-lipped, woolly-haired pagan with nothing about him that suggested intelligence or sensibility asked Ormsgill a question in the native tongue, and the latter looked at Desmond.

”He asks if I can give my word that they will not be ill-used in Nigeria, and it's a good deal to a.s.sure them of,” he said. ”Still, I think it could be done. There are outcasts in those factories, men outside the pale, and it's possible that some of them occasionally belabor a n.i.g.g.e.r with a wooden kernel-shovel, but considering what the negro is accustomed to in this country that is a little thing, and they usually stop at it. After all, it is not men of their kind who practice systematic oppression or grind the toiler down. When I was a ragged outcast it was the men outside the pale who held out their hands to me.”

He turned to the negro saying a few words quietly, and there was a low murmuring until one of the boys pointed to Desmond.

”Then,” he said, ”we are ready to go with him.”

Even Desmond could understand all that this implied, and it stirred the hot Celtic blood in him. It was a crucial test of faith, for it seemed that these half-naked bushmen had a confidence in his comrade which no one acquainted with the customs of the country could reasonably have expected of them. They knew how their fellows were driven by men of his color, but in face of that his word that it should not be so with them was, it seemed, sufficient.