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 passed 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 threshing 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 circumstances 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.