Ormsgill's forehead was furrowed, and the perspiration stood in beads on it. The love that had driven him out to win his spurs in the land of shadow still in some degree, at least, remained with him; but he was conscious of the change in him which the girl with her upbringing might well shrink from. He had lived with the outcasts until he had become one of them, a hater of conventional formulas and shams, while there had crept into his nature a trace of the somberness of the dark land. What, he wondered, would the sunny-tempered English girl he had left make of such a man. Still, as the priest had said, his duty was clear, and, what was perhaps more, his inclination marched with it. He straightened himself suddenly with a little resolute jerk of his shoulders.
"I will start for the coast to-morrow, and go to Grand Canary," he said. "As it happens, she is there now with her people. Still, before I go, padre, I will arrange with the casa Sarraminho to hand you the equivalent of £200 sterling. With that you can buy the liberty of the woman Lamartine gave Herrero, and use what is left over as you and Nares think fit. If Herrero will not part with her, or you find the thing too difficult, I will come back for a while and undertake it myself. After all, it is my affair. I owe it to Lamartine."
Then he took the little photograph and replaced it in the tin box, after which he walked quietly past them and out of the room while, when they heard him go down the veranda stairway, Father Tiebout looked at his companion with a curious smile.
"Four years!" he said. "It is a space in a woman's lifetime, and every year leaves its mark on us. It is decreed that we must grow, but we do not all grow the same."
In the meanwhile Ormsgill stood in the little compound with the sour white steam drifting past him. The forest rose out of it, a great black wall, and its hot, damp smell was in his nostrils. It was a heady savor, for something that goes with the smell of the wilderness sinks deep into the hearts of those who once allow it to enter, and is always afterwards a cause of disquietude and restlessness to some of them. Ormsgill had had his endurance and all the courage he was born with taxed to the uttermost in that steamy shade, but now when he was about to leave it he found the smell of its tall white lilies and the acrid odors of corruption stirring and shaking him. At last, with a little jerk of his shoulders, which was a trick he had acquired from Lamartine, he turned and went back to the lighted room again.
CHAPTER III
HIS OWN PEOPLE
The velvet dusk that crept up from the eastwards was held in check by the brightening flood of moonlight on the sea when Ormsgill leaned on the balustrade of the veranda outside the Hotel Catalina in Grand Canary. Close in front of him the long Atlantic swell broke upon the hammered beach with a drowsy rumbling, and flung a pungent freshness into the listless air, for the Trade breeze had fallen dead away. The fringe of surf ran southwards beside the dim white road to where the lights of Las Palmas blinked and twinkled in the shadow the great black peaks flung out upon the sparkling sea.
Ormsgill, who had turned from its contemplation at the sound of a voice he recognized, had, however, no longer any eyes for the prospect. He had arrived on an African mail-boat two hours earlier, and had somehow missed the girl whose voice had sent a little thrill through him. She had, it seemed, gone in through one of the long, lighted windows instead of by the door, but the horse she had just dismounted from was still standing with another, which carried a man's saddle, just below the veranda. Ormsgill could see that it was one of the sorry beasts the Spaniards hire to Englishmen, but it was also jaded and white with lather.
"These English have no consideration," said the peon who held its bridle, to a comrade. "This horse is old, but when I brought it here it was not more than a very little lame. Now it is certain I cannot hire it to anybody to-morrow. They were at Arucas, which for a horse of this kind is a long way, but they came home by the barranco and across the sand heaps at the gallop. The Señorita must not be late for dinner. Vaya! it is a cruelty."