Long Odds Part 28

"You are stronger to-day," she said, with a composure that was a little difficult to a.s.sume, as she took a chair beside him.

"I am," said Ormsgill quietly. "In fact I have been getting stronger rapidly of late, and I am glad of it. You see, I have been blissfully idle for a while and I have a good deal to do."

Benicia knew what was coming, but she smiled. "You are sure of that?"

she said. "I mean, you still think it is your business?"

"Perhaps it's a little absurd of me, but I do. Anyway, I don't know of anybody else who is willing to undertake it."

"Ah," said Benicia, "would it matter greatly if it was not done, after all? There are so many things one would have altered in Africa--and they still go on. It is possible that n.o.body will ever succeed in changing them."

It was, though she was, perhaps, not aware of this, a very strong argument she used, one whose force is now and then instinctively realized by every thinking white man in the western half of Africa, and in other parts as well. It is a land that has absorbed many civilizations and continued in its barbarism. Nature unsubdued is against the white man there, and against her tremendous forces his most strenuous efforts are of little avail. Where the air reeks with germs of pestilence and there are countless leagues of swamps breeding corruption, one can expect very little from a few scattered hospitals and an odd mile of drains. Besides, there is in the la.s.situde born of its steamy heat something that insidiously saps away the white man's will until he feels that effort of any kind is futile, and that in the land of the shadow it is wiser to leave things as they are.

Ormsgill nodded gravely. "Yes," he said, "one recognizes that, but, you see, I don't expect to do very much--merely to keep a promise, and set a few thick-headed heathen at liberty. I think I could accomplish that."

"Why should you wish to set them at liberty?"

"It's a trifle difficult to answer," and Ormsgill laughed. "After all, the motive is probably to some extent a personal one. Anyway, it's not a thing I have any occasion to inflict on you. There was a time when you didn't adopt this att.i.tude, but sympathized with me."

The girl made a little gesture. "I would like to understand. You and Desmond have all that most men wish for. Why are you risking your life and health in Africa?"

A curious little smile crept into Ormsgill's eyes. "Well," he said reflectively, "there are respects in which one's possessions are apt to become burdensome. They seem to carry so many obligations along with them that one falls into bondage under them, and I think some of us are rebels born. We feel we must make our little protest, if it's only by doing the thing everybody else considers reprehensible."

He stopped a moment, and his face grew a trifle grim when he went on again. "In my case it must be made now since I shall probably never have an opportunity of doing anything of the kind again."

Benicia understood him, for she had watched Miss Ratcliffe carefully at Las Palmas. In fact, she had understood him all along. That he should shrink from any claim to philanthropy was only what she had expected from him, and it was also characteristic that he should have made as little as possible of his motives. Admitting that he had to some extent been swayed by the rebellious impulse he had mentioned, she knew there was beneath it a chivalrous purpose that was likely to prove the more effective from its practical simplicity. The Latins can appreciate chivalry, though they do not invariably practice it now, and she realized vaguely that there is nothing in man more knightly than the desire to strike a blow for the oppressed or at his peril to redress a wrong. Ormsgill's sentiments and methods were, perhaps, a trifle crude, and, from one point of view, somewhat old fashioned. He did not preach a crusade, but couched the lance himself. After all, he belonged to a nation which had once, using crude effective means, swept the slavers off that coast, and still stamps its coinage with the George and Dragon.

It was, however, after all, not so much as a redresser of grievances and a friend of the oppressed, but as a man that Benicia regarded her companion, for she knew that she loved him. She said nothing, and in a minute or two he spoke again.

"There is a thing that has been on my mind the last few days," he said. "The fever must have left me too shaky to think of it before. I am afraid, though it was very pleasant to see you, I haven't quite kept faith with your father in allowing you to come and talk with me.

You, of course, don't understand exactly how the Authorities regard me."

Benicia smiled a little, for she understood very well. "I don't think that counts," she said, "and what is, perhaps, more to the purpose, my father is not here; he has gone, I believe, on business of the State, into the bush country. If you had remembered earlier you would have been anxious to send me away?"

She leaned forward looking at him, and saw the tension in his face. It told her a good deal, and she felt that for all his resolution she could, if she wished, bend him to her will.

"No," he said, "I'm not sure I could have done it if I had wished. In fact, the week--is it a week?--I have lain here has been such a one as I have never spent before. Now I am horribly sorry that it is over."

There was something in his voice which fully bore out what he had said, but Benicia was aware that it was she who had forced the admission from him without his quite realizing its significance. She knew that he would speak more plainly still if she kept her eyes on him.

"It is over? You can countenance no more of my visits, then?" she asked.

"I am," said Ormsgill gravely, "going away again before to-morrow."

Benicia sat very quiet, and contrived that he did not see her face for a moment or two. She had, at least, not expected this, and it sent a thrill of dismay through her. Steady as his voice was, she was aware that the simple announcement had cost the man a good deal.

"You are not strong enough for the journey yet," she said at length.

"It would not be safe."

Ormsgill smiled in a curious wry fashion. "It does not require much strength to lie still in a hammock, and I shall no doubt get a little more every day. Besides, I almost think there is a certain danger here. In fact, it would be safer for me up yonder in the bush."

Benicia was quite aware that he was not thinking chiefly of the danger of arrest, and again a little thrill that was no longer altogether one of dismay ran through her. He was, it seemed, afraid of sinking wholly under her influence. Again she leaned a little forward, and laid her hand upon his arm.

"You must go? Would nothing keep you here--at least until you are fit to travel?" she asked.

She saw his lips set for a moment, and the tinge of grayness creep into his face. Then, with a visible effort, he laid a restraint upon himself.

"If I do not go," he said simply, "I should be ashamed the rest of my life. Perhaps, that would not matter so much, but, as it happens, one can't always bear his shame himself."

Benicia turned a little in her chair, and let her hand fall back again. She knew that if she chose to exert her power he would not go at all, but it was probably fortunate that she did not choose. After all, she was a lady of importance in that land, and had the pride of her station in her. Though he loved her, she would not stoop to claim him against his will, and, what was more, she had a vague perception of the fact that he was right. A wrong done could not be wiped out by the mere wish to obliterate it, and she felt that if he broke faith with the Englishwoman in Las Palmas and slackly turned back from the task which he, at least, fancied was an obligation upon him, there might come a time when the fact would stand between them and she would remember the stain upon his shield. She hated the Englishwoman with Latin sincerity, but in this case her pride saved her from a fall.

There are other people who owe their pride a good deal.

"Then," she said slowly, "one can only tell you to go. Some time, perhaps, you will come back again?"

She rose, and Ormsgill with an effort stood up awkwardly, and taking the hand she held out held it a moment. "I do not know," he said with a faint trace of hoa.r.s.eness. "It is not often possible for one to do what one would wish, and there are--duties--laid on me. Still, if it should be possible--" He broke off for a moment, and then went on again in a different tone very quietly, "In the meanwhile I must thank you. I owe you a good deal."

He watched her go down the stairway, and then leaned on the bal.u.s.trade for awhile wondering vaguely what would have happened if he had flung off all restraint and let himself go. He did not know that while he was nearest to doing so Benicia Figuera had laid a restraint on him, and that had she permitted it he would have rushed headlong to a fall.

There are times when the strength of a usually resolute man is apt to prove a snare to him. Then he sat down wearily in the canvas chair again, and when the land breeze swept through the city that night he and his handful of carriers slipped quietly out of it.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SLACKENING OF RESTRAINT

A half moon had just sailed up above the shoulder of a hill, and its pale light streamed into the veranda of the little mission house which stood in a rift of the great scarp where the high inland plateau breaks down to the levels of the sun-scorched littoral. The barren hillslopes round about it were streaked with belts of gleaming sand, and above them scrubby forests, dest.i.tute of anything that man or beast could eat, rolled back to the vast marshes of the western watershed, but the bottom of the deep valley was green and fertile as a garden. It had, however, only been made so by patient labor, for even in the tropics there is no escape from the primeval ban. It is by somebody's tense effort that man is provided with his daily bread, and where he labors least he lives most like the animals, for nature unsubdued is very rarely bountiful. She sends thorns and creepers to choke the young plantations, and the forest invades the clearing when the planter stays his hand. But in Western Africa the white man sees that the negro fights the ceaseless battle for him. It is, in his opinion, what the black man was made for, and those who know by what methods he obtains and controls his dusky laborers in certain tracts of the dark land wonder now and then why such things are permitted and if there will never be a reckoning. That is, however, only one aspect of a very old question, and it is admittedly difficult to be an optimist in Africa.

Still, there was, for the time being, at least, quietness and good will in that lonely rift among the hills, and Nares, sitting on the mission house veranda in the moonlight, felt its beneficent influence, though he was suffering from that most exasperating thing the p.r.i.c.kly heat, which had, as it frequently does, followed a slight attack of fever. Two patient men from his own country sat with him, and it was clear that their toil had not been in vain. He could see the sprinkling of white blossom on the trees beneath him that bore green limes, and beyond these were rows of mangoes, coffee plants, and sweet potato vines, but the huts of the dusky converts were silent and hidden among the leaves. There was no sound but the soft murmur of running water. A deep serenity brooded over it all.

"A garden!" he said. "In this country one could call it a garden of the Lord."

The elder of his two companions smiled, for he had shrewdness as well as faith.

"Thanks in part, at least, to our mountain wall," he said. "We lie several leagues from the only road, and that is not a much frequented one. There is, most fortunately, little commerce in this strip of country, and the great roads lie as you know far to the south of us.

Still, I sometimes wonder how we have been left alone so long, and we have had our warnings."

"Herrero now and then comes up this way?"

The missionary nodded. "He is the thorn in our side," he said.

"Domingo, his a.s.sociate, as of course you know, rambles through the back country. There is no one else to cause us anxiety, but Herrero has an old grudge against us. There were villages in these valleys when he first came here, and he swept them almost clean. We gathered up the remnant of the people, and now they will not buy his rum from him."

"If the news we got with our last supplies is correct he can not be more than a few days' march away," the younger man broke in. "I have been wondering how often he will pa.s.s us by. Some day he will come down on us. It's a sure thing."

Nares straightened himself a trifle. He had for several years borne almost all a man could bear and live through in that land, and after he left Ormsgill had fled inland, proscribed, finding no safety anywhere until his countrymen at their peril had offered him shelter at the mission. Besides, he had fever and p.r.i.c.kly heat, which tries the meekest white man's patience, and it was New England stock he sprang from. He was a Puritan by birth as well as training, of the old grim Calvinistic strain, and his forbears had believed that the sword of the Lord is now and then entrusted to human hands. In that faith they had faced their king at Naseby, and in later days and another land held their own at Bunker Hill, and again crushed the Southern slave-owners' riflemen. It awoke once more deep down in the heart of their descendant as he sat on the mission veranda that night.

"What will you do then?" he said. "It sometimes seems to me that we have borne enough. One could almost wonder if there is anything more than prudence in our non-resistance. That alone seldom carries one very far."