Long Odds

"I recollect perfectly. Still, as it happens, I had just finished breakfast, which was, I think, in some respects fortunate. One is rather apt to proceed summarily before it – in the rainy season."

Ormsgill laughed, and the girl who sat beside the man he had spoken to flashed a swift glance at him. She was dressed in some thin, soft fabric, of a pale gold tint, and the firm, round modeling of the figure it clung about proclaimed her a native of the Iberian peninsula, the Peninsula, as those who are born there love to call it. Still, there was no tinge of olive in her face, which, like her arms and shoulders, was of the whiteness of ivory. Her eyes, which had a faint scintillation in them, were of a violet black, and her hair of the tint of ebony, though it was lustrous, too. She, however, said nothing, and Major Chillingham, who seemed to feel himself neglected, broke in.

"I'm afraid you were at your old tricks again, Tom," he said. "What had you been up to then?"

"Interfering with two or three black soldiers, who resented it. They were trying to burn up a native hut with a couple of wounded niggers inside it. I believe there was a woman inside it, too."

Chillingham shook his head reproachfully. "One can't help these things now and then, and I don't know where you got your notions from," he said. "It certainly wasn't from your father. He was a credit to the service, and a sensible man. You can only expect trouble when you kick against authority."

Ormsgill looked at Ada Ratcliffe, but there was only a faint suggestion of impatience in her face. Then, without exactly knowing why, he glanced across the table, and caught the little gleam of sardonic amusement in the other girl's violet eyes. She, at least, it seemed, had comprehension, and that vaguely displeased him, since he had expected it from the woman he had come back to marry, instead of a stranger. Then the man with the olive face looked up again.

"You have it in contemplation to go back to Africa?"

"No," said Ormsgill, who felt that Mrs. Ratcliffe was listening. "At least, I scarcely think it will be necessary."

"Ah," said the other, with a little dry smile, "It is, one might, perhaps, suggest, not advisable. There are several men who do not bear you any great good will in that country."

Ormsgill laughed. "One," he said, "is forced to do a good many things which do not seem advisable yonder, and I have one or two very excellent friends."

Then he turned to Ada Ratcliffe, and discoursed with her and her mother on subjects he found it difficult to take much interest in, which was a fresh surprise to him, for he had considered them subjects of importance before he left England. The effort he made to display a becoming attention was not apparent, but it was a slight relief to two of the party when the dinner was over. Another hour had, however, passed before he had the girl to himself, and they sauntered down through the dusty garden and along the dim white road until they reached a little mole that ran out into the harbor. The moon had just dipped behind the black peaks, and they sat down in the soft darkness on a ledge of stone, and listened for a while to the rumble of the long Atlantic swell that edged to the strip of shadowy coast with a fringe of spouting foam. Both felt there was a good deal to be said, but the commencement was difficult, and it was significant that the man gazed westwards – towards Africa – across the dusky heaven, until he looked round when his companion spoke to him.

"Tom," she said quietly, "you have not come back the same as when you went away."

"I believe I haven't," and Ormsgill's voice was gentle. "My dear, you must bear with me awhile. You see, there are so many things I have lost touch with, and it will take me a little time to pick it up again. Still, if you will wait and humor me, I will try."

He turned, and glanced towards a great block of hotel buildings that cut harsh and square against the soft blueness of the night not far away. The long rows of open windows blazed, and the music that came out from them reached the two who sat listening through the deep-toned rumble of the surf. It was evident that an entertainment of some kind was going on, but Ormsgill found the signs of it vaguely disquieting.

"One feels that building shouldn't be there," he said. "They should have placed it in the city. It's too new and aggressive where it is, and the ways of the folks who stay in it are almost as out of place."

He stopped a moment with a little laugh. "I expect I'm talking nonsense, and it's really not so very long since that kind of thing used to appeal to me. After all, there must be a certain amount of satisfaction to be got out of purposeless flirtation, cards, dining, and dancing."

It was not very dark, and, when he looked round, the shapely form of his companion was silhouetted blackly against the sky on the step above him. There was something vaguely suggestive of an impatience that was, perhaps, excusable in her attitude.

"Oh," she said, "there is not a great deal. I admit that, but one must live as the others do, and have these things to pass the time. You know there is nothing to be gained by making oneself singular."

Ormsgill smiled, though once more the smell of the wilderness, the odors of lilies and spices, and the sourness of corruption, was in his nostrils. Men grappled for dear life with stern and occasionally appalling realities there, and he was one in whom the love of conflict had been born.

"No," he said, "I suppose there isn't. At least, it usually involves one in trouble, and, as you say, one must have something to pass the time away. Still, Ada, for a while you will try to put up with my little impatiences and idiosyncrasies. No doubt I shall fit myself to my surroundings by and by."

Ada Ratcliffe had a face that was almost beautiful, and a slim, delicately modeled form in keeping with it, but perhaps they had been given her as makeweights and a counterbalance for the lack of more important things. At times, when her own interests were concerned, she could show herself almost clever but she fell short of average intelligence just then, when a sympathetic word or a sign of comprehension would have bound the man to her.

Leaning a little towards him she laid her hand on the sleeve of his duck jacket. "I would like you to do it soon," she said. "Tom, to please me, you won't come in to dinner dressed this way again."

There was a suggestion of harshness in Ormsgill's laugh, but he checked himself. "Of course not, if you don't wish it. If there is a tailor in Las Palmas I will try to set that right to-morrow. Now we will talk of something else. You want to live in England?"

It appeared that Ada did, and she was disposed to talk at length upon that topic. She also drew closer to him, and while the man's arm rested on her shoulder discussed the house he was to buy in the country, and how far his means, which were, after all, not very large, would permit the renting of another in town each season. He listened gravely, and saw that there were no aspirations in the scheme. Their lives were evidently to be spent in a round of conventional frivolities, and all the time he heard the boom of the restless sea, and the smell of the wilderness, pungent and heady, grew stronger in his nostrils. Then he closed a hand tighter on the shoulder of the girl, in a fashion that suggested he felt the need of something to hold fast by, as perhaps he did.

"There is one point we have to keep in view, for the thing may be remembered against me still," he said. "I was turned out of the service of a British Colony."

"Ah," said the girl, "I felt it cruelly at the time, but, after all, it happened more than four years ago – and not very many people heard of it."

Ormsgill sat still a minute, and his grasp grew a trifle slacker on her arm. "I told you I didn't do the thing they accused me of," he said.

"Of course! Still, everybody believed you did, and that was almost as hard to bear. The great thing is that it was quite a long while ago. Tom," and she turned to him quickly, "I believe you are smiling."

"I almost think I was," said Ormsgill. "Still, I don't know why I should do so. Well, I understand we are to stay here a month or two, and we will have everything arranged before we go back to England."

It was half an hour later when his companion rose. "The time is slipping by," she said. "There is to be some singing, and one or two of the people we have met lately are coming round to-night. I must go in and talk to them. These things are in a way one's duty. One has to do one's part."

Ormsgill made no protest. He rose and walked quietly back with her to the hotel, but his face was a trifle grave, and he was troubled by vague misgivings.

CHAPTER IV

THE SUMMONS

The month Ormsgill spent at Las Palmas was a time of some anxiety to Mrs. Ratcliffe. He had, as she complained to her brother, no sense of the responsibility that devolved upon a man of his means, and was addicted to making friends with all kinds of impossible people, grimy English coaling clerks, and the skippers of Spanish schooners, and, what was more objectionable, now and then bringing them to the hotel. He expressed his regret when she pointed out the undesirability of such proceedings, but, for all that, made no very perceptible change in his conduct.

Major Chillingham as a rule listened gravely, and said very little, for his sister was one who seldom welcomed advice from anybody, and though not a brilliant man he was by no means a fool. On the last occasion he, however, showed a little impatience.

"Well," he said, "he seems to have got hold of a few first-class people, too. There is that Ayutante fellow on the Governor's staff, and the Senhor Figuera, the little, quiet man with the yellow hands, is evidently a person of some consequence in his own country. You can't mistake the stamp of authority. After all, it's no doubt just as well he and the girl have gone. Tom seemed on excellent terms with them."

Mrs. Ratcliffe looked indignant. "A Portuguese with a powdered face, and no notion of what is fitting!"

"An uncommonly good-looking one," and the Major grinned. "A woman with brains enough to get the thing she sets her mind on, too, and I have rather a fancy that she was pleased with Tom. Still, that's not the question, and anyway she's back again in Africa. Now, if you'll take advice from me you'll keep a light hand on him, and not touch the curb. If you do he's quite capable of making a bolt of it."

"That," said the lady, "would be so disgraceful as to be inconceivable – when Ada has waited more than four years for him."

Her brother's eyes twinkled. "In one way, I suppose she did. Still, of course, Urmston didn't get the Colonial appointment he expected, and, one has to be candid, young Hatherly seemed proof against the blandishments you wasted on him."

"A marriageable daughter is a heavy responsibility," said Mrs. Ratcliffe with a sigh.

"No doubt," said the Major. "That is precisely why I recommended the judicious handling of Tom Ormsgill. If he hasn't quite as much as you would like, it's enough to keep them comfortably, and in several ways he's worth the other two put together. The man's straight, and quiet. In fact, I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer him with a few more gentlemanly dissipations. They act as a safety valve occasionally."

His sister raised her hands in protest, and Chillingham withdrew with a chuckle, but she was rather more gracious to Ormsgill than usual that day, and during the next one accompanied him with her daughter and one or two acquaintances in a launch he had borrowed to look at the wreck of a steamer which had gone ashore a night or two earlier. The unfortunate vessel afforded a somewhat impressive spectacle as she lay grinding on the reef with the long yeasty seas washing over her, and the little party spent some time watching her from the launch which swung with the steep, green swell.

It was, however, very hot and dazzling bright, and no protests were made when Ormsgill, who it seemed knew all about steam launches, leaned forward from the helm and started the engines. The little propeller thudded, and they slid away with a long, smooth lurch across the slopes of glittering water that were here and there flecked with foam, for the beach they skirted lies open to the heave of the Atlantic. The Trade breeze fanned their faces pleasantly, and Ada Ratcliffe sat almost contented for the time being at Ormsgill's side. It was refreshing that hot day, to listen to the swish of sliding brine, and there was a certain exhilaration in the swift smooth motion, while she realized that the man she was to marry appeared to greater advantage than he did as a rule in the drawing room of the big hotel.

He was never awkward, or ill at ease, but she had noticed – and resented – the air of aloofness he sometimes wore when he listened to her companions' pointless badinage and vapid conversation. Now as he sat with a lean brown hand on the tiller controlling the little hissing craft he seemed curiously at home. There was also, as generally happened when he was occupied, a suggestion of reserved force in his face and attitude. He was, she realized, a man one could have confidence in when there were difficult things to be done. This however, brought her presently a vague dissatisfaction, for she felt there were certain aspects of his character which had never been revealed to her, and she was faintly conscious of the antagonism to and shrinking from what one cannot quite understand which is not infrequently a characteristic of people with imperfectly developed minds.

The fresh Trade breeze which blew down out of the harbor from the black Isleta hill was, however, evidently much less pleasant to the Spanish peons who toiled at the ponderous sweeps of an empty coal lighter the launch was rapidly drawing level with. She was floating high above the flaming swell, and the perspiration dripped from the men's grimy faces as they labored, two of them at each of the huge oars. Indeed Ormsgill could see the swollen veins stand out on their wet foreheads, and the overtaxed muscles swell on their half-covered chests and naked arms, for the barge was of some forty tons, and it was very heavy work pulling her against the wind. She had evidently been to a Spanish steamer lying well out beyond the mole, and there was, as he noticed, no tug available to tow her back again, while the sea foamed whitely on a reef close astern of her. It was only by a strenuous effort that the men were propelling the big clumsy craft clear of the reef, and there were signs that they could not keep it up much longer.

He glanced at the little group of daintily attired, soft-handed men and women on board the launch, to whom the stress of physical labor was an unknown thing, and then looked back towards the coal-grimed toilers on the lighter. As yet they worked on stubbornly, with tense furrowed faces, under a scorching sun, taxing to the uttermost every muscle in their bodies, but it seemed to him that the lighter was no further from the reef. He flung an arm up, and hailed them, for he had acquired a working acquaintance with several Latin languages on the fever coast.

"You can't clear that point," he said. "Have you no anchor?"

"No, señor," cried one of the peons breathlessly. "The tug should have come for us, but she is taking the water boat to the English steamer."

Ormsgill turned to his companions. "You won't mind if I pull them in? They're almost worn out, and it will not detain us more than ten minutes."