Long Odds

by Harold Bindloss

  CHAPTER V

  A DETERMINED MAN

  It was the following afternoon when Ormsgill stood on the wide verandaoutside Mrs. Ratcliffe's room. That lady sat somewhat stiffly facinghim in a big basket chair, while her daughter lay close by in one ofcanvas with her eyes also fixed upon the man languidly. She wasdressed in white, and looked very cool and dainty, though her face wasalmost expressionless. In fact, her attitude was characterized by acertain well-bred serenity which is seldom without its effect when itis an essential part of the person who exhibits it, though a passableimitation of it may be cultivated.

  Then one sometimes wonders what may lie behind it, though an attemptto ascertain is not always advisable. In some cases there is nothing,and in others things which it is wiser to leave unseen.

  Ormsgill had, as it happened, been busy that morning with an Englishlawyer whom he had met at the hotel, and had taken him over to theoffice of the Vice-Consul, who signed a document the lawyer drew out.He had also made other preparations for a journey, but he had sent thepriest no word that he was going back to Africa. This, he felt, wasnot necessary, since Father Tiebout would expect him. He leanedbareheaded against the rails, with the furrows showing plainly on hisbronzed face, while the Trade breeze, which was fresh that afternoon,swept the cool veranda and piled the long Atlantic swell rumbling onthe beach. He could see the spray fly high and white, and the dustwhirl down the glaring road that led to the Spanish city, and oncemore he felt his blood stir in harmony with the throb of restless lifein the frothing sea. Still, the task before him was difficult, and heset about it diffidently.

  It was, as he realized, a very lame story and one open to seriousmisconception that fell from his lips. He could, of course, saynothing in favor of Lamartine's mode of life, though it was by nomeans an unusual one, and he had to mention it. The subject was asomewhat delicate one in itself, but it was not that alone whichbrought a faint flush to his face. Mrs. Ratcliffe's pose grewperceptibly primmer as he proceeded, and he recognized that anyconfidence she might have had in him was being severely shaken. Still,he had not expected her to understand, and he glanced at her daughterwith a certain anxiety. The girl's languid indifference was lessmarked now, for there was a spot of color in her cheek, and her lipswere set disdainfully. Ormsgill closed one lean hand a trifle, forthese things had their significance, and he had expected that she, atleast, would have found his assurance sufficient.

  "I think you will agree with me that I must go," he said.

  Mrs. Ratcliffe's tone was sharp and she looked at him steadily.

  "I'm afraid I don't," she said. "The man was on your own showing analtogether depraved person."

  "No," said Ormsgill dryly. "I should be sorry to admit as much. But ifhe had been, would that have rendered a promise to him less binding?"

  "Yes," said the elder lady sturdily. "If he really felt any remorse atall--of which I am very dubious--he brought it upon himself. Onecannot do wrong without bearing the consequences. Still, I do notsuppose it was penitence. It was more probably pagan fear of death.The man, you admit, was under priestly influence. Of course, if he hadbeen brought up differently----"

  Ormsgill could not help a little smile. "He would have consideredrepentance sufficient, and left the woman to bear the consequences?Somehow I have a hazy notion that restitution is insisted on. But ifwe dismiss that subject there are still the boys. You see, I pledgedmyself to send them home again."

  Ada Ratcliffe looked up, and her expression was quietly disdainful."Half-naked, thick-lipped niggers. Would it hurt them very much towork a little and become a trifle civilized? One understands thatthere is no actual slavery in any part of Africa under Europeancontrol."

  Ormsgill winced, and it was, perhaps, only natural that Mrs. Ratcliffeshould not understand why he did so. Then his face grew a trifle hard,but he answered quietly.

  "I have no doubt there are folks who would tell you so, but there is,at least, something very like it in one or two colonies," he said."Still, that is not quite the point."

  The girl laughed. "I am a little afraid there is no point at all."

  She rose languidly, and the way she did so suggested collusion, thoughOrmsgill had not noticed that her mother made her any sign. She sweptpast him with a swish of filmy fabric, and he turned to the elderlady, who made a little gesture of resignation.

  "It seems," she said, "you are determined to go, and in that casethere is something to be said. As you are bent on exposing yourself tothe hazards of a climate I have heard described as deadly, one has toconsider--eventualities."

  "Exactly!" and Ormsgill found it difficult to repress a sardonicsmile. "I have endeavored to provide against them in the one waypossible to me. An hour ago I handed Major Chillingham a documentwhich will place Ada in possession of a considerable proportion of myproperty in six months from my death. The absence of any word from mefor that period is to be considered as proof of it. I have norelatives with any claim on me, and I think I am only carrying out anobligation."

  "You are very generous," and his companion's tone was expressive ofsincere satisfaction. "Though it is, of course, painful, one isreluctantly compelled to take these things into consideration."

  She said rather more to the same effect, and the man's face, which wasa trifle hard when she went away, suggested that some, at least, ofher observations had jarred on him. He was also somewhat astonishedto find Ada waiting for him when he strolled moodily into the bigdrawing-room.

  "Tom," she said, "you won't go back there, after all. I don't want youto."

  There was a tinge of color in her cheeks and a tense appeal in hereyes, and for a moment Ormsgill was almost tempted to forget hispromise and break his word. It seemed that she did care, though he hadscarcely fancied that she would feel the parting with him very much alittle while ago, and something suggested that she was apprehensive,too. He stood very still, and she saw him slowly close one of hishands.

  "My dear," he said, "I have to go."

  The girl looked at him steadily a moment, and then made a littlehopeless gesture of resignation.

  "In that case I should gain nothing by attempting to urge you," shesaid with a curious quietness. "Still, Tom, you will write to me whenyou can."

  Ormsgill was stirred, as well as a trifle astonished. She had seldomshown him very much tenderness, and he had said nothing that mightlead her to believe that he was undertaking a somewhat dangerous thingor that the country was especially unhealthy. Still, he could not helpfeeling that she was afraid of something. Then, as it happened, theyheard her mother speaking to somebody in the corridor, and making hima little sign she slipped out softly. Ormsgill sat where he was,wondering why she had done so, until a rustle of dresses suggestedthat she and the people she had apparently spoken to had moved away.Then he went out, and met Desmond in front of the hotel.

  "Been having it out with Mrs. Ratcliffe?" he said. "I saw you on theveranda. Found it rather difficult? I couldn't stand that old woman."

  "It was not exactly pleasant," said Ormsgill, dryly.

  Desmond grinned. "Told her what you were going back for--and shedidn't believe a word of it? As a matter of fact, you could hardlyexpect her to. Still, you needn't be unduly anxious. It wouldn'tmatter very much what you did out there. She might be horrified whenshe heard of it, but she wouldn't let you go."

  The blood rose to Ormsgill's face. He fancied his companion was rightin this, but it suggested another thought, and it appeared impossiblethat the girl's views should coincide with her mother's. It waspainful to feel that she might have placed an unfavorable constructionupon his narrative, but that she should believe him a libertine andstill be willing to marry him because he was rich was a thing heshrank with horror from admitting. He was aware that women now andthen made such marriages, but although he did not as a rule expect toomuch of human nature, he looked for a good deal from the woman hemeant to make his wife. He could not quite disguise the fact thatthere were aspects of her character which did not altogether pleasehi
m.

  "Well," he said grimly, "we will talk about something else. You arestill determined on going with me?"

  "Of course," said Desmond.

  Ormsgill took him into his room, and by and by unrolled a chart uponthe table.

  "There's shelter off this beach in about six fathoms under the point,"he said. "She will roll rather wildly, but the holding's excellent,and a surf-boat could get off most days in the week. As some of themail-boat skippers will probably see you and mention it, you will calland report yourself to the Commandant and the customs on your way downthe coast. Bring one or two of them off to dinner and inquire aboutthe sport to be had. As a matter of fact, there is something to shoota few days' march back from the beach, and there is no reason why youshouldn't go after it."

  "You haven't said very much about yourself," observed his companion.

  "I'm going direct by mail-boat. There is to be no apparent connectionbetween us. If you are at the beach by the date I mentioned and waitthere fourteen days, it will be sufficient. If I don't join you bythat time something will have gone radically wrong."

  "Then," said Desmond cheerfully, "I'll fit the whole crowd out down tothe firemen with elephant guns and rifles, and go ashore to fetch you,if we have to sack every bush fort in the country."

  Ormsgill only laughed, and going out together they swung themselves ona passing steam tram and were whirled away to the steamship offices inthe Spanish city through a blinding cloud of dust.

  Two days later Ormsgill boarded a yellow-funneled steamer, which creptout of harbor presently with the Portuguese flag at the fore, andfaded into a streak of hull and a smoke trail low down on the dazzlingsea. From the veranda of the hotel, Ada Ratcliffe watched it slowlymelt, with her lips tight set and a curious look in her eyes, untilwhen the blue expanse was once more empty she rose with a little sigh.There was, of course, nothing to be gained by sitting theredisconsolate, and she had to array herself becomingly for an excursionto a village among the black volcanic hills. She also took a prominentpart in it very gracefully, while a quiet brown-faced man leaned on alittle wildly-rolling steamer's rail, looking southwest across thedazzling white-flecked combers towards the shadowy land.

  He reached it in due time, and one afternoon two or three days afterhe arrived at a little decadent city, sat talking to the olive-facedgentleman he had met at the Las Palmas hotel. The latter now wore avery tight white uniform, and a rather high and cumbrous kepi lay onthe chair at his side. He was singularly spare in figure; his face,which was a trifle worn and hollow, was in no way suggestive ofphysical virility, and the brown-tipped fingers of the hand whichrested on his knee very much resembled claws; but, as MajorChillingham had noticed, he wore the unmistakable stamp of highauthority.

  "Ah," he said in Portuguese, "you are not as most of your countrymen,and seem to understand that haste is not always advisable--especiallyin this land."

  Ormsgill smiled a little as he gazed down on the straggling city. Theroom he and his companion sat in had no front to it. A row of slenderpillars with crude whitewashed arches between them served instead, andhe could look out on the curiously jumbled buildings below. Some wereof wood and had red iron roofs and broad verandas, others of stone, orwhat appeared to be blocks of sun-baked mud, and these were mostlyglaringly whitewashed and roofed with tiles, though a few were flattopped. Some stood in clusters, but as a rule there were wide spaces,strewn with ruins and rubbish, between them. Scarcely a sound rosefrom any of them. Here and there a white-clad figure reclined in a bigchair on a veranda, and odd clusters of negroes, some loosely drapedin raw colors, and some half-naked, slept in the shadow. Everythingwas so still that one could have fancied the place was peopled by thedead. Beyond the long strip of land across the harbor the glaringlevels of the Atlantic stretched away, and the hot air quivered withthe dull insistent roar and rumble of the surf.

  "It is certainly as I suggested," said the little olive-facedgentleman. "You have been here three days, and I do not even know whatyou expect from me yet."

  "It is very little. A concession of exploitation in the countryinland."

  "In which district?"

  Ormsgill mentioned it, and his companion looked at him with a littlesmile. "The request can be granted, but I gave you good advice oncebefore, and I venture to offer it again. This Africa is not a healthycountry, and it is not, I think, advisable that you should stay here,especially up yonder in the bush. There are gentlemen of someimportance there whom you have offended, and we are, it seems, not allforgiving. It is, perhaps, a fact to be deprecated, but one to becounted on."

  "One has occasionally to do a thing that doesn't seem advisable," saidOrmsgill reflectively.

  "In this case the reasons cannot be financial. I heard of your goodfortune in Las Palmas."

  Ormsgill was not pleased at this, but he laughed. "A little money isnot always a fortune. Perhaps it would be permissible for me toexpress my pleasure that your administrative genius has beenrecognized?"

  Dom Clemente made him a little grave inclination. "I hold authority,but the man who does so seldom sleeps on roses, especially in thiscountry. Well, you still want the concession of exploitation, thoughthe region you mention is not a productive one?"

  "There are articles of commerce which come down that way from theinterior."

  Dom Clemente looked at him steadily. "Ah," he said, "if one could tellwhat went on there. Still, as you say, there are things we have needof that come down from the interior."

  Ormsgill's face was expressionless, though he was not pleased to see alittle smile creep into his companion's eyes, but just then anotherman of very dusky color came up the outside stairway with a bigclanking sword strapped on to him, and Dom Clemente rose.

  "I make my excuses, but the permit will be ready to-morrow," he said."In the meanwhile my daughter, who is in the patio, would thank youfor several courtesies at Las Palmas."

  Ormsgill turned away, and went down to the little pink-washed patiowhich was filled with straggling flowers and was, at least,comparatively cool. The girl who lay in a big chair did not rise, butsigned to him to take another near her side, and then looked up at himwith big violet eyes. It did not occur to Ormsgill that there was anysignificance in the fact that the only two chairs in the patio shouldbe close together, but it struck him that Benicia Figuera was a verywell-favored young woman, and very much in harmony with hersurroundings. Colorless as her face was, there was a scintillation inher eyes, and a depth of hue in her somewhat full red lips, which withthe sweeping lines of her lightly-draped, rounded form suggested thatthere was in her a full measure of the warm and vivid life of thetropics. Her voice was low and quiet, and her English passable.

  "I believe my father has been giving you good advice," she said.

  "Why should you think that?" asked Ormsgill, lightly.

  His companion's gesture might have meant anything. "You feel theadvice is excellent, but you do not mean to take it? It is not a thingyou often do. In one way I am sorry."

  Ormsgill laughed. "Might one ask why you should take so much interestin an obstinate stranger?"

  The girl moved her hands, which were white and very shapely, in afashion which seemed to imply a protest. Ormsgill noticed that theyhad also the appearance of capable hands, and he fancied that theirgrasp could be tenacious.

  "Ah," she said, "there were little courtesies shown us at Las Palmas,things that made our stay there pleasanter, and I think there was,perhaps, no great reason why you should have done them for my father."Then her eyes twinkled. "I am not sure that all your friends were verypleased with you."

  Ormsgill did not smile this time. He recollected now that AdaRatcliffe had been distinctly less gracious and her mother more formalthan usual after one or two of the trifling courtesies he had shownDom Clemente and the girl, but it had not occurred to him to put thetwo things together.

  "I wonder," he said reflectively "how you come to speak such excellentEnglish."

  The girl laughed.

  "My mot
her's name was O'Donnel, though she was rather more Portuguesethan I am. She was born in the Peninsula. It seems I have gone backtwo or three generations. They assured me of it once in Wicklow.Still, all that does not interest you. You are going into theinterior."

  Ormsgill said he was, and the girl appeared thoughtful for a moment ortwo.

  "Then one might again advise you to be careful. There are, at least,two men who do not wish you well. One of them is a certain Commandant,and the other the trader Herrero."

  "I wonder if you could tell me where the trader Herrero is?"

  "If I can I will send you word to-morrow."

  Ormsgill thanked her and took his leave ceremoniously, but he was alittle annoyed to find that his thoughts would wander back to the coolpatio as he strolled through the dazzling, sun-scorched town. He feltit would have been pleasant to stay there a little in the shadow, andthat Benicia Figuera would not have resented it. There was somethingvaguely attractive about her, and she had Irish eyes in which he hadseen a hint of the reckless inconsequent courage of that people. This,he reflected, did not concern him, and dismissing all further thoughtof her he went about his business. Still, when the concession was sentto him next morning the negro who brought it also handed him a littlenote. It had no signature, and merely contained the name of a certainvillage on the fringe of the hills that cut off the coast levels fromthe island plateaux.