Part 14 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+ning 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.