The Dust of Conflict Part 19

It was not by accident he employed the Castilian word which implies a kindly regard as well as familiarity, and the man seemed to recognize it, for he smiled curiously.

"It is nothing, senor," he said. "I did not sleep well, and saw the man creep into the veranda from my bed, which is near the window. In not sending him to the Alcalde you were wise."

"I am not sure that I was," said Appleby.

Pancho made a little gesture. "It is a turbulent country, and the man who escapes trouble is the one who lives the most quietly."

He turned away, as though to avoid further questions, while Appleby went back to bed, and, contrary to his expectations, slept until the morning.

It was some days later when he rode over to Santa Marta and, leaving the mule at the "Four Nations," called at the banker's house, where he found Nettie Harding sitting with her host and hostess on the flat roof. It was, though still early in the evening, dark, and the after-dinner coffee, the choicest product of Costa Rica, was set out in very little cups on the table before them; while the banker, who was stout and elderly, lay drowsily in a big chair. His wife had also little to say, and Appleby drew his chair up to Nettie Harding's side. The lamp on the table burned without a flicker in the still air, and a cloudless vault of indigo stretched above the sun-scorched town. Beyond the rows of roofs a band was playing in the plaza, and a hum of voices rose from the shadowy streets beneath. It was a little cooler now, and a pleasant scent of heliotrope came up from the patio.

Nettie Harding raised her head as though to listen to the music, and then glanced at the stars above. "All this," she said, "is distinctly Cuban, isn't it?"

Appleby nodded. "It's Spanish, which is the same thing. They're a consistent people," he said. "Still, I'm not sure that I quite catch your meaning."

Nettie laughed, and turned so that the lamplight touched her face. "Oh, I talk quite casually now and then. I meant that being Cuban it couldn't be English."

"That is apparent."

"Well, I was wondering if, bearing in mind the difference you were content with it."

Appleby laughed. "I am, you will also remember, an adventurer, and the country that feeds me is, as they say in yours, quite good enough for me. A little to eat, a little sunshine, a comrade's smile, and enough kindly earth to cover one at the last, is all, I believe, that one is ent.i.tled to expect."

He had meant to answer lightly, but a curious little inflection crept into his voice against his will, and he sat still a moment while the memories crowded upon him, with a longing that would not be shaken off.

Once more he seemed to be gazing down on the red beech woods and palely flashing river from the terrace at Northrop Hall, though he recognized that in the meanwhile Nettie Harding was watching him with a gleam of sympathetic comprehension in her eyes. It was significant that he did not feel impelled to speak, for they had arrived at a degree of intimacy which made silence admissible, and still were comrades, and nothing more.

"If you had said that with a purpose I wouldn't have been in the least sorry for you," she said. "It would have been cheap, but that's just why I know you didn't. Still, are you quite sure there is nothing you long for over there? I mean, of course, in England."

Appleby was on the roof in Santa Marta in body, and noticed that Miss Harding made a very effective picture in her long white dress as she glanced at him with the little smile, but he was at the same time dually sensible of the crimson flush on the English beech woods and the meadows streaked with wisps of mist, while once more the alluring vision he had fought against glided into the scene. It was a girl with gray eyes and ruddy hair, graver, deeper of thought and emotion, and more imperious than Nettie Harding.

"Nothing that I am ever likely to get," he said.

Nettie laughed, but there was a faint ring in her voice, and long afterwards Appleby remembered her words, which then appeared prophetic.

"Well," she said, "do you know that if I could I would get it you, and there is very little an American girl can't get when she sets her heart on it? Now that sounds bombastic, but I'm not sure that it is. Anyway, I'm going to England presently."

Appleby looked up sharply. "To England!"

"Yes; you heard me. You will be sorry, but, of course, I'm coming back again."

"I know I can tell you that I certainly shall without its appearing presumption," said Appleby.

The girl nodded. "We haven't any use for that word in our country. In fact, we have rather a liking for a presumptuous man so long as he is sensible," she said. "Then there is nothing I can do for you there?"

"No," said Appleby.

Nettie leaned a little nearer him, and though she smiled a faint flush crept into her cheek. "If there were, you would tell me? I can't help remembering what you did for me."

"I think I would. Still, you see there is nothing."

"Well, I'm not quite sure, and one never knows who they may meet in England. It's quite a small place, anyway."

Then there was a ringing of steel on stone, and she looked round with a little impatient gesture as she said, "Here is that odious Morales again!"

The banker rose, and brought a chair as the colonel came forward, but the little pressure of the girl's hand on his arm warned Appleby that she desired him to remain, and for an hour they discussed the campaign.

Then Appleby decided to relate what had happened at the hacienda a few nights earlier, though he said very little about the papers and nothing concerning the hidden receptacle. Morales, he fancied, listened with eagerness, and once his dark eyes flashed.

"You were wrong when you let him go," he said. "If it happens again I should suggest the pistol. One gains nothing by showing those gentlemen toleration."

Then he shrugged his shoulders, and turned to the banker's wife with a smile; but Appleby had noticed the vindictiveness in his tone, and as he surmised it was not accounted for by the fact that the man had broken into Harding's office, wondered whether it was because he had failed to accomplish his purpose. He, however, felt that Nettie Harding desired him to outstay the colonel, and was content with the little grateful glance she cast at him when Morales went away. Ten minutes later Appleby also rose, but the banker detained him a minute or two.

"You have a consignment of sugar to be shipped," he said "Some one will go down to the port. Yourself, I think?"

"Yes," said Appleby.

"Then it would be a kindness if you would hand this letter to the captain to post in America," he said. "It is of some importance to the Senor Harding and others."

"With pleasure, but why not post it here?"

The banker laid his hand on Appleby's shoulder, and shook his head significantly. "One does not trust anything of importance to the post just now," he said. "This is an affair in which the greatest discretion is necessary. When one puts anything he does not wish the administration to know in a letter he burns the blotting paper."

Appleby was not altogether astonished, but he took the packet the banker handed him; and when they shook hands the latter once more glanced at him warningly.

"The discretion!" he said. "You will remember-the discretion."

XIII - THE SECOND ATTEMPT

IT was at a brisk walk Appleby left the banker's house, but he stopped a few minutes later where several streets branched off from a little plaza. He had some trifling business with a tobacco merchant who lived in one of them, but he decided after a moment's reflection that it was scarcely likely he would find the man, who probably spent the evenings at a cafe, at home just then. Appleby had, however, stopped somewhat suddenly, and noticed that the footsteps he had heard behind him also ceased a second or two later. This, he surmised, had in all probability no special significance; but he raised his hand to an inner pocket where the letter the banker had given him lay. It was evidently of some importance, and he remembered that it was not money the man he had surprised at the hacienda was in search of.

As it happened he carried another letter, which he meant to ask somebody at the "Four Nations" to post. It was of very little consequence, and contained only a list of American tools and machinery which Harding dealt in, and Appleby smiled as he slipped it into the lower pocket of his jacket. Then he took out his cigar-case and slowly lighted a cigar, so that anybody who might be watching him should find a motive for his delay. He looked about him cautiously as he did so.

The plaza was small and dark, though a thin crescent moon was just rising over the cl.u.s.tering roofs. Its faint light silvered the higher portions of the two square church towers that rose blackly against the velvety indigo with one great star between them, but the rest of the building, which was the one Nettie Harding had found shelter in, was blurred and shadowy. Beyond it a few lights blinked in the calle he had just pa.s.sed through, but they only intensified the darkness of the narrow gap between the flat-roofed houses, and-for it was getting late- the street seemed utterly silent. Yet Appleby had certainly heard footsteps, and no closing of a door to account for their cessation. The houses were large in that vicinity, and built, for the most part, round a patio, the outer door of which not infrequently consisted of a heavy iron grille which could scarcely be closed noiselessly. In front of him two streets branched off, one broad and well paved, the other narrow and very dark. The latter, however, led straight to the "Four Nations," past the carniceria, or butchery, and two or three of the little wine-shops of shady repute which are usually to be found close to the princ.i.p.al church in a Spanish town. Here and there a blink of light streamed out from the open lattice of one of them.

Appleby stood still a moment, and then, reflecting that anybody who might be following him would expect him to take the broader way, slipped into the narrow street. A day or two earlier he would have laughed at the notion, but the footsteps which had stopped so abruptly troubled him. He had pa.s.sed one wine-shop when he heard them again, and, though it seemed at least possible that they were those of some citizen going home, there was an unpleasant suggestiveness in them, and when the light of the second wine-shop fell across the street he decided to enter it.

If the man behind him also stopped, his motive would be apparent.

Two or three men sat in the wine-shop with little gla.s.ses of cana before them, and Appleby was rea.s.sured when he glanced at them. They were evidently of the humbler orders, men who earned a meagre two or three pesetas a day; but their garments of cotton and coa.r.s.e unstarched linen were, as usual, spotlessly clean, and he surmised from their shade of complexion that they had emigrated to Cuba from the Canaries. They saluted him courteously when he took off his hat on entering, and one laid down the torn and wine-stained journal he was reading.

"The war is making sugar dearer, senor," he said.

Appleby was not altogether pleased at being recognized, as the observation implied, but the man seemed civil, and he smiled.

"It also puts up the cost of making it," he said, turning to the landlord, as an excuse for remaining a little occurred to him. "You have Vermouth in an open bottle?"