Long Odds Part 12

He set out in the early morning, taking two letters from Father Tiebout, one for the man who directed the San Thome Mission, and one to be sent on from there to certain friends of his host's on the coast, and it was two days later when he lay a little apart from his carriers in a glade in the bush. Blazing sunshine beat down into it.

There was an overpowering heat, and a deep stillness pervaded the encircling forest, for the beasts had slunk into their darkest lairs in the burning afternoon. The snapping of the fire made it the more perceptible, and Ormsgill could see the blue smoke curl up above a belt of gra.s.s behind which the boys were cooking a meal. Anita, who was with them, would, he knew, bring him his portion, and in the meanwhile he felt it was advisable to keep away from her. She had talked very little with him during the last two days, but that was his fault, and he fancied that she failed to understand his reticence. In fact, the signs of favor she had once or twice shown him had rendered him a little uncomfortable.

For all that, his face relaxed into a little dry smile as he wondered what the very formal Mrs. Ratcliffe would think of that journey. He remembered that he had always been more or less of a trial to his conventional friends even before he had been dismissed from his country's service for an offense he had not committed, but he was one of the men who do not greatly trouble themselves about being misunderstood. It is a misfortune which those who undertake anything worth doing have usually to bear with.

He was, however, a little drowsy, for they had started at sunrise and marched a long way since then. There was only one hammock, which somewhat to the carriers' astonishment Anita had occupied, for this was distinctly at variance with the customs of a country in which n.o.body concerns himself about the comfort of a native woman. It would also be an hour before the boys went on again, and he stretched himself out among the gra.s.s wearily, but, for all that, with a little sigh of content. He had found the restraints of civilization galling, and the untrammeled life of the wilderness appealed to him. The need of constant vigilance, and the recognition of the hazards he had exposed himself to, had a bracing effect. It roused the combativeness that was in his nature, and left him intent, strung up, and resolute.

The task he had saddled himself with had become more engrossing since it promised to be difficult.

He did not think he slept, for he was conscious of the pungent smell of the wood smoke all the time, but at last he roused himself to attention suddenly, and looked about him with dazzled eyes. He could see the faint blue vapor hanging about the trunks, and hear the boys'

low voices, but except for that the bush was very still. Yet he was certainly leaning on one elbow with every sense strung up, and he knew that there must be some cause for it. What had roused him he could not tell, but he had, perhaps, lived long enough in that land to acquire a little of the bushman's unreasoning recognition of an approaching peril. There was, he knew, something that menaced him not far away.

For a moment or two his heart beat faster than usual, and the perspiration trickled down his set face, and then laying a restraint upon himself he rose a trifle higher, and swept his eyes steadily round the glade. There was one spot where it seemed to him that the outer leaves of a screen of creepers moved. He did not waste a moment in watching them, but letting his arm fall under him rolled over amidst the gra.s.s which covered him, for it was evidently advisable to take precautions promptly. Just as the crackling stems closed about him there was a pale flash and a detonation, and a puff of smoke floated out from the creepers.

Ormsgill was on his feet in another moment, and running his hardest plunged into them, but when he had smashed through the tangled, th.o.r.n.y stems there was n.o.body there, and except for the clamor of the boys the bush was very still. Still, this was very much what he had expected, and looking round he saw the print of naked toes and a knee in the damp soil before his eyes rested on the bra.s.s sh.e.l.l of a spent cartridge. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, recognizing it as one made for a heavy, single-shot rifle of old fashioned type, which had its significance for him. He fancied his would-be a.s.sa.s.sin had been lent the rifle by a white man who in all probability knew what he meant to do with it. Then he glanced at the cartridge again, and noticed a slight outward bending of its rim.

There was a portentous little glint in his eyes as he slipped it into his pocket.

"Some day I may come across the man who owns that rifle," he said.

He stood still for another few moments, grim in face, with his jacket rent, and a little trickle of blood running from one hand which a thorn had gashed. Every nerve in him tingled with fierce anger, but he knew that the man who runs counter to established customs has usually more than misconception to face in Africa, especially if he sympathizes with the oppressed, and he was one who could wait. Then the boys came floundering through the undergrowth, one or two with heavy matchets, and one or two with long flintlock guns, but Ormsgill, who recognized that pursuit would certainly prove futile even if they were willing to undertake it, drove them back to the fire again.

"We will start when I have eaten," was all he said.

Anita brought him his meal, and stood watching him curiously while he ate, but Ormsgill said nothing, and in half an hour they went on again and spent the rest of that day and a number of others floundering amidst and hacking a way through tangled creepers in the dim shadow of the bush. It was a relief to all of them when at last the thatched roofs of San Thome Mission rose out of a little opening into which the dazzling sunlight shone. Ormsgill was received by an emaciated priest with a dead white face and the intolerant eyes of a fanatic, who supplied him and the boys with a very frugal meal and took Anita away from him. Then he read Father Tiebout's letters, and after he had done so sat with Ormsgill on the veranda.

"Father Tiebout vouches for you--and your purpose," he said, watching his companion with doubt in his eyes.

"If he had not done so I should probably not have been welcome?" said Ormsgill, smiling.

The priest made a little gesture which seemed to imply that he did not intend to discuss that point. "The girl would be safe with the people he mentions. They are good Catholics."

"I am not sure that is quite sufficient in itself," said Ormsgill reflectively. "Still, Father Tiebout would scarcely have suggested sending her to them unless he had felt reasonably certain that they would show her kindness."

His companion's face hardened. "They are people of blameless lives.

There are, perhaps, two or three such in that city. You could count upon the woman receiving kindness from them, but one would have you quite clear about the fact that my recommendation is necessary. It is, of course, in my power to withhold it, and if it is given you will undertake not to claim the woman again?"

Ormsgill looked at him with a little smile. "I have no wish to claim her, though I have only that a.s.surance to offer you, and I must tell you that I am going to the coast. There are, however, one or two conditions. She must be treated well, and paid for her services."

"That would be arranged. It is convenient that she should understand what would be required of her. I will send for her."

Ormsgill made a sign of concurrence, and in another five minutes Anita stood before them, slight and lithe in form, and very comely, but with apprehension and anxiety in her brown face. The priest spoke to her concisely in a coldly even voice, and it was evident that the course he mentioned was one she had no wish to take. Then he turned from her to Ormsgill as she stretched out her hands with a little gesture of appeal towards the latter.

"It is your will that I should go away and live with these people?"

she said.

Ormsgill knew that the priest was watching him, and that there was only one answer, but he shrank from uttering it. The girl's eyes were beseeching, and she looked curiously forlorn. She was a castaway without kindred or country, one who had lived the untrammeled life of the bush, and he feared that she would find the restraints of the city intolerably galling.

"It is," he said gravely.

The girl stood very still a moment or two looking at him, and Ormsgill felt the blood creep into his face. He was, in all probability, the only man who had ever shown her kindness, and he recognized that she too had misunderstood his motives and regarded him as rather more than her rescuer. Then as he made no sign she flung out her hands again, hopelessly this time, and slowly straightened herself.

"I go," she said simply and turned away from them.

Ormsgill watched her cross the compound, a forlorn object, with the white cotton robe that flowed about her gleaming in the dazzling sunlight, and then turn for a moment in the shadowy entrance of a palm-thatched hut. He was stirred with a vague compa.s.sion, but putting a firm restraint upon himself he sat still, and the girl turning suddenly once more vanished into the dark gap. It also happened that he never met her again.

"One's powers are limited, Father. After all, there is not much one can do for another," he said.

The priest looked hard at him, and then made a little grave gesture.

"It is something if one can ease for a moment another's burden. I have, it seems, to ask your pardon for a misconception that was, perhaps, not altogether an unnatural one, Senor."

Ormsgill saw little more of him during the day, and started for the coast early next morning. He had only accomplished half his purpose, and that in some respects the easier half, but it was necessary for him to procure further supplies and communicate with Desmond. Before he started, however, he sent home most of the boys Father Tiebout had obtained for him, keeping only two or three of them, for these and the others he had brought up with him could, he fancied, be relied upon. They were thick-lipped, wooly-haired heathen, stupid in all matters beyond their acquaintance, but after the first few weeks they had, at least, done his bidding unquestioningly.

This quiet white man with the lined face had never used the stick on one of them, and did not, so far as they were aware, even carry a pistol. When they slept at a bush village or obtained provisions there he made the headman a due return before he went away, which was not the invariable custom of other white men they had traveled with. In fact, they looked upon him as somewhat of an anachronism in that country, but since the one attempt a few of them had made to disregard his authority had signally failed they obeyed him, and little by little became sensible of a curious confidence in him. What he said he did, and, what was rather more to the purpose, when he told them that a certain course was expected from them they usually adopted it, even when it was far from coinciding with their wishes.

There are a few men of Ormsgill's kind and one or two women who have made adventurous journeys in the shadowy land unarmed, and carried away with them the dusky tribesmen's good will, while others have found it necessary to march with a band of hired swashbucklers and mark their trail with burnt villages and cartridge sh.e.l.ls. As usual, a good deal depended upon how they set about it.

CHAPTER X

ORMSGILL ASKS A FAVOR

A silver lamp burned on the little table where two diminutive cups of bitter coffee were set out, but its indifferent light was scarcely needed in the open-fronted upper room of Dom Clemente's house. A full moon hung above the Atlantic, and the clear radiance that rested on the glittering harbor streamed in between the fretted arches and slender pillars. Throughout tropical Africa all there is of grace and beauty in man's handiwork bears the stamp of the unchanging East, and one finds something faintly suggestive of the art of olden days where the eye rests with pleasure on any of its sweltering towns, which is, however, not often the case. It is incontrovertible that most of the towns are characterized by native squalor and that some of them are unpleasantly filthy, but, after all, filth and squalor are usual in the East, and serve by contrast to enhance the elusive beauty of its cities.

It was almost cool that evening, and Ormsgill, looking down between the slim pillars across the white walls and flat roofs, though some were ridged and tiled, towards the blaze of moonlight on the harbor, was well content to be where he was after his journey through the steamy bush and across the sun-scorched littoral. He had arrived that afternoon, and had spent the last hour with Benicia Figuera, who had shown herself gracious to him. She lay not far away from him in a big Madeira chair, loosely draped in diaphanous white attire which enhanced the violet depths of her eyes and the duskiness of her hair, and her face showed in the moonlight the clear pallor of ivory.

Ormsgill fancied that her attendant the Senora Castro sat in the room behind them from which a soft light streamed out through quaintly patterned wooden lattices, though he had seen nothing of the latter lady since the comida had been cleared away.

He had said very little about his journey, though he intended to tell Dom Clemente rather more, but he presently became conscious that Benicia was regarding him with a little smile. He also noticed, and was somewhat annoyed with himself for thinking of it, that she had lips like the crimson pulp of the pomegranate, the grandadilla which figures in the imagery of the Iberian Peninsula as well as in that of parts of Africa, where it is seldom grown. Ormsgill was quite aware of this, and it had its a.s.sociations of Eastern mysticism and sensuality, for he was a man of education and the outcasts he had lived with had not all been of low degree. Among them there had been a certain green-turbaned Moslem who had taught him things unknown to his kind at home. He felt that it was advisable to put a restraint upon himself.

"You are not sorry you have come back to us?" said Benicia.

Ormsgill was by no means sorry, and permitted himself to admit as much. He had accomplished part, at least, of his purpose successfully, and that in itself had a tranquilizing effect on him, while after the weary marches through tall gra.s.s and tangled bush under scorching heat it was distinctly pleasant to sit there cleanly clad, in the cool air with such a companion. Benicia, it almost seemed, guessed his thoughts, for she laughed softly.

"It is comforting to feel that one has done what he has undertaken,"

she said. "Still, you were, at least, not alone by those campfires in the bush."

Ormsgill flushed a little, though he contrived not to start. He had naturally not considered it necessary to tell Miss Figuera anything about Anita.

"No," he said simply. "I don't know how you could have heard about it, but I was not alone."

It was characteristic of him that he offered no explanation, and was content to leave what he had done open to misconception. In fact, he had a vague but unpleasant feeling that the latter course might be the wiser one. Benicia turned her dark eyes full upon him, and there was a faint sparkle in the depths of them.

"My friend, I hear of almost everything," she said. "As it happens, I know what you went up into the bush for."

"Well," said Ormsgill reflectively, "perhaps, I should not be surprised at that. It was only natural that I should be watched."

He met her gaze without wavering, and, though he was not aware of this, his eyes had a question in them. It was one he could not have asked directly even if he had wished, but remembering that Anita was to live in that city he took a bold course.

"I wonder if one could venture to mention that your interest in the woman I brought down from the bush would go a long way?" he said. "It is, I think, deserved, and in case of any difficulty would ensure her being left in quietness here, though, perhaps, the favor is too much to expect."