Nares made a little gesture. "Often," he said. "Perhaps I was not worthy to wear the uniform and march under orders with the rank and file, but I think the Church Militant has, after all, a task for the free companies which now and then push on ahead of her regular fighting line."
"They march light," said Ormsgill. "That counts for a good deal. It has once or twice occurred to me that the authorized divisions are a little cumbered by their commissariat and baggage wagons."
Nares sighed. "Well," he said softly, "every one must, at least now and then, leave a good deal that he values or has grown attached to behind him." He stopped a moment, and then asked abruptly, "You have heard from the girl at Las Palmas. Desmond would bring you letters?"
"No," said Ormsgill, "not a word. She had no sympathy with my project—that she should have was hardly to be expected. One must endeavor to be reasonable."
"There must have been a time when you expected—everything."
Ormsgill sat silent a minute or two, and while he did so a moving light blinked among the trees below. It stopped at length, and negro voices came up faintly with the thud of hastily plied shovels. It seemed that the terrified converts were coming back and the missionaries had already set them a task. Ormsgill knew what it was, but he looked down at the rifle that glinted in the moonlight across his knee with eyes that were curiously steady. The thing he had done had been forced upon him. Then he turned to his companion, and though he was usually a reticent man he spoke what was in his mind that night.
"There certainly was such a time," he said. "No doubt it has come to others. For five long years I held fast by the memory of the girl I had left in England, and I think there were things it saved me from. Somehow there was always a vague hope that one day I might go back to her—and for that reason I kept above the foulest mire. One goes under easily here in Africa. Then at last the thing became possible."
He broke off, and laughed, a curious little laugh, before he went on again.
"I went back. Whether she was ever what I thought her I do not know—perhaps, I had expected impossibilities—or those five years had made a change. We had not an idea that was the same, and the world she lives in is one that has grown strange to me. They think me slightly crazy—and it is perfectly possible that they are right. Men do lose their mental grip in Africa."
Nares made a little gesture which vaguely suggested comprehension and sympathy before he looked at his comrade with a question in his eyes.