Long Odds. Harold Bindloss
jerk of his shoulders.
"I will start for the coast to-morrow, and go to Grand Canary," he said. "As it happens, she is there now with her people. Still, before I go, padre, I will arrange with the casa Sarraminho to hand you the equivalent of £200 sterling. With that you can buy the liberty of the woman Lamartine gave Herrero, and use what is left over as you and Nares think fit. If Herrero will not part with her, or you find the thing too difficult, I will come back for a while and undertake it myself. After all, it is my affair. I owe it to Lamartine."
Then he took the little photograph and replaced it in the tin box, after which he walked quietly past them and out of the room while, when they heard him go down the veranda stairway, Father Tiebout looked at his companion with a curious smile.
"Four years!" he said. "It is a space in a woman's lifetime, and every year leaves its mark on us. It is decreed that we must grow, but we do not all grow the same."
In the meanwhile Ormsgill stood in the little compound with the sour white steam drifting past him. The forest rose out of it, a great black wall, and its hot, damp smell was in his nostrils. It was a heady savor, for something that goes with the smell of the wilderness sinks deep into the hearts of those who once allow it to enter, and is always afterwards a cause of disquietude and restlessness to some of them. Ormsgill had had his endurance and all the courage he was born with taxed to the uttermost in that steamy shade, but now when he was about to leave it he found the smell of its tall white lilies and the acrid odors of corruption stirring and shaking him. At last, with a little jerk of his shoulders, which was a trick he had acquired from Lamartine, he turned and went back to the lighted room again.
CHAPTER III
HIS OWN PEOPLE
The velvet dusk that crept up from the eastwards was held in check by the brightening flood of moonlight on the sea when Ormsgill leaned on the balustrade of the veranda outside the Hotel Catalina in Grand Canary. Close in front of him the long Atlantic swell broke upon the hammered beach with a drowsy rumbling, and flung a pungent freshness into the listless air, for the Trade breeze had fallen dead away. The fringe of surf ran southwards beside the dim white road to where the lights of Las Palmas blinked and twinkled in the shadow the great black peaks flung out upon the sparkling sea.
Ormsgill, who had turned from its contemplation at the sound of a voice he recognized, had, however, no longer any eyes for the prospect. He had arrived on an African mail-boat two hours earlier, and had somehow missed the girl whose voice had sent a little thrill through him. She had, it seemed, gone in through one of the long, lighted windows instead of by the door, but the horse she had just dismounted from was still standing with another, which carried a man's saddle, just below the veranda. Ormsgill could see that it was one of the sorry beasts the Spaniards hire to Englishmen, but it was also jaded and white with lather.
"These English have no consideration," said the peon who held its bridle, to a comrade. "This horse is old, but when I brought it here it was not more than a very little lame. Now it is certain I cannot hire it to anybody to-morrow. They were at Arucas, which for a horse of this kind is a long way, but they came home by the barranco and across the sand heaps at the gallop. The Señorita must not be late for dinner. Vaya! it is a cruelty."
The matter was, perhaps, not a great one in itself, but it had a somewhat unpleasant effect upon Ormsgill, who knew that the Iberian is not as a rule squeamish about any cruelty that the lust of gain renders it necessary to inflict upon his beast. The horse, as he could see, had certainly been ridden hard, and was very lame. The thing jarred on him, and as he leaned on the veranda waiting until the message he had left to announce his arrival should be delivered, a scene he had looked upon in the dark land forced itself upon his recollection. It was a line of jaded men staggering under the burdens on their heads through an apparently interminable sea of scorched and dusty grass. There was little water in that country at the season, and they dragged themselves along, grimed with the fibrous dust, in torments of thirst, with limbs that were reddened by the stabbing of the flinty grass stems. Then rousing himself he drove the suggestive vision from his brain and entered the hall of the big hotel.
It blazed with light, there was music somewhere, and already conventionally attired men and elaborately dressed women were descending the stairway, and appearing by twos and threes from the corridors. They were for the most part Englishmen and women, but Ormsgill was a little astonished to feel that instead of arousing sympathy their voices and bearing jarred on him. Their conversation appeared to have no point in it, and their smiles were meaningless. They seemed shallow and artificial, and he had lived at high pressure, face to face with grim realities, in the land of the shadow. He stood a little apart, quietly regarding them, a lonely figure in plain white duck with a lined brown face, until a burly man in the conventional black and white strode up to him.
"I'm uncommonly glad to see you, Tom," he said. "Ada will be down in a minute. I left her and her mother almost too startled to understand that you had arrived. The man you gave your message to had just brought it in. You should have let us know what boat you were sailing by. But I mustn't keep you talking. You have just time to change your things."
Ormsgill shook hands with him, but was conscious of a lack of enthusiasm as he did it that irritated him. He had once considered Major Chillingham a very good fellow, but now there seemed to be something wanting in his characteristic bluff geniality. Ormsgill could not tell what it was, but he felt the lack of it.
"I suppose there is," he said with a smile. "Still, you see, I haven't anything to change into. In fact, my present outfit is a considerably smarter one than the get-up I have been accustomed to dining in."
Chillingham's gaze was at first expressive of blank astonishment, and there was a sardonic gleam in Ormsgill's eyes. "You must try to remember that I've got out of the way of wearing evening clothes. I think I'd made it clear that I have been down in the depths the past four years."
His companion's red face flushed a trifle, but he laughed. "Well," he said, "that's one of the things we needn't talk about, and I'm not sure that everybody would be so ready to mention it." Then he drew back a trifle. "Tom, you're greatly changed."
Ormsgill nodded. "Yes," he said, "I dare say I am. In several ways the thing's not unnatural."
After that Chillingham discoursed about English affairs, and though it appeared to cost him a slight effort Ormsgill made no attempt to help him. He stood still, perfectly at his ease, but for all that conscious that he was an anachronism in such surroundings, while the men and women who smiled or nodded to his companion as they came into the hall cast curious glances at him. This duck-clad man with the lined face and steady eyes was clearly not of their world, which was, in the case of most of them, an essentially frivolous one.
At last he turned, and strode forward impulsively as the girl he waited for came down the stairway in a filmy dress of lace-like texture that rustled softly as it flowed about her. She was brown-haired and brown-eyed, warm in coloring, and her face, which was as comely as ever, had a certain hint of disdain in it. That, however, did not strike Ormsgill then, for she flushed a little at the sight of him, and laid a slim white hand in his.
"Tom," she said, "I am very glad, but why didn't you cable? Still, you must tell me afterwards. We are stopping the others, and mother is waiting to speak to you."
Ormsgill was conscious of a faint relief as he turned to the tall lady who stood beside the girl, imposing and formal in somber garments. The meeting he had looked forward to with longing, and at the same time a vague apprehension, was over. He had, he felt, been reinstated, permitted to resume his former footing, and the manner of the elder lady, which was quietly gracious, conveyed the same impression. Then Mrs. Ratcliffe sent her brother, the Major, on to see that places were kept for them together, and Ormsgill was thankful that the dinner which was waiting would render any confidential conversation out of the question for the next hour. He wanted time to adjust himself to the changed conditions, for a man can not cut himself adrift from all that he has been accustomed to and then resume