Long Odds. Harold Bindloss
former life just as he left it, especially if he has dwelt with the outcast in the meanwhile.
A chair had been placed for him between Ada Ratcliffe and her mother, while Major Chillingham sat almost opposite him across the long table. The glow of light, glitter of glass and silver, scent of flowers and perfumes, and hum of voices had a curious effect on him after the silence of the shadowy forest and the primitive fashion in which he had lived with Lamartine, and some minutes had passed before he turned to the girl at his side.
"I was a little astonished to hear that you were in Las Palmas," he said.
Ada Ratcliffe looked at him with a smile, and a slight lifting of her brows. She was perfectly composed, and in one way he was glad of that, though he vaguely felt that her attitude was not quite what he had expected.
"Astonished only?" she said. "As you would have had to change steamers here and wait a few days it would probably have taken you two weeks more to join us in England. At least, so the Major said."
Ormsgill felt he had deserved this, for he had recognized the inanity of the observation when he made it. It was evident that his companion had recognized it, too. Still, it is difficult to express oneself feelingly to order.
"I should have said delighted," he ventured.
The girl smiled again, and he felt that he had chosen an injudicious word. "In any case, it isn't in the least astonishing that we are here. It is becoming a recognized thing to come out to Las Palmas in the winter, and I believe it is a good deal cheaper than Egypt or Algeria. That is, of course, a consideration."
"It certainly is," broke in the lady at her side. "When they are always finding a new way to tax us in, and incomes persist in going down. Tom is fortunate. It will scarcely be necessary for him to trouble himself very much about such considerations."
Ormsgill for the first time noticed the signs of care in Mrs. Ratcliffe's face, and the wrinkles about her eyes. Neither had, he fancied, been there when he had last seen her in England nearly five years earlier, but the change in her was as nothing compared to that in her daughter. Ada Ratcliffe was no longer a fresh and somewhat simple-minded English girl. She was a self-possessed and dignified woman of the world, but what else she might be he could not at the moment tell. He blamed himself for the desire to ascertain it, since he felt it was more fitting that he should accept her without question as the embodiment of all that was adorable. Still, he could not do it. The four years he had spent apart from her had given him too keen an insight.
"Well," he said, "there are people who believe that the possession of even a very small fortune is something of a responsibility."
"That," said Mrs. Ratcliffe, "is a mistake nowadays. There are so many excellent organized charities ready to undertake one's duties for one. They are in a position to discharge them so much more efficiently."
Ormsgill did not reply to this, though there was a faint sardonic twinkle in his eyes. He was not, as a rule, addicted to passing on a responsibility, but he remembered then that he had handed a little Belgian priest £200 to carry out a duty that had been laid on him. The fact that he had done so vaguely troubled him. Mrs. Ratcliffe, however, went on again.
"One of the disadvantages of living here is the number of invalids one is thrown into contact with," she said. "I find it depressing. You will notice the woman in the singularly unbecoming black dress yonder. She insists on drinking thick cocoa with a spoon at dinner."
One could have fancied that she felt this breach of custom to be an enormity, and Ormsgill wondered afterwards what malignant impulse suddenly possessed him. Still, the worthy lady's coldly even voice and formal manner jarred upon him, while the pleasure of meeting the girl he had thought of for four long years was much less than he felt it should have been. He resented the fact, and most men's tempers grow a trifle sharp in tropical Africa.
"Well," he said dryly, "one understands that it is nourishing, and, after all, we are to some extent cannibals."
"Cannibals?" said Mrs. Ratcliffe with a swift suspicious glance which seemed to suggest that she was wondering whether the African climate had been too much for him.
"Yes," said Ormsgill, "cocoa, or, at least, that grown in parts of Africa where the choicest comes from, could almost be considered human flesh and blood. Any way, both are expended lavishly to produce it. I fancy you will bear me out in this, Señor?"
He looked at the little, olive-faced gentleman in plain white duck who sat not far away across the table. He had grave dark eyes with a little glint in them, and slim yellow hands with brown tips to some of the fingers, and was just then twisting a cigarette between them. Ormsgill surmised that it cost him an effort to refrain from lighting it, since men usually smoke between the courses of a dinner in his country. There was a certain likeness between him and the Commandant of San Roque, sufficient at least, to indicate that they were of the same nationality, but the man at the table in the Catalina had been cast in a finer mold, and there was upon him the unmistakable stamp of authority.
"One is assured that what is done is necessary," he said in slow deliberate English. "I am, however, not a commercialist."
"You, of course, believe those assurances?"
The little white-clad gentleman smiled in a somewhat curious fashion. "A wise man believes what is told him—while it is expedient. Some day, perhaps, the time comes when it is no longer so."
"And then?"
A faint, suggestive glint replaced the smile in the keen dark eyes. "Then he acts on what he thinks himself. Though I can not remember when, it seems to me, senhor, that I have had the pleasure of meeting you before."
"You have," said Ormsgill dryly. "It was one very hot morning in the rainy season, and you were sitting at breakfast outside a tent beneath a great rock. Two files of infantry accompanied me."
"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