The Odds Part 43

She laughed at the idea and idly took up a paper lying at hand. Half a minute later she uttered a sharp cry and looked up with flaming cheeks.

"How--how--dare he?" she cried, almost incoherent with angry astonishment. "Sybil! For Heaven's sake! See!"

She thrust the paper upon her step-mother's knee and pointed with a finger that shook uncontrollably at a brief announcement in the society column.

"We are requested to state that the announcement in yesterday's issue that the marriage arranged between Viscount Merrivale and Miss Hilary St.

Orme would not take place was erroneous. The marriage will take place, as previously announced, towards the end of the season."

"What sublime a.s.surance!" exclaimed Bertie St. Orme, lying on his back in the luxurious punt which his sister was leisurely impelling up stream, and laughing up at her flushed face. "This viscount of yours seems to have plenty of decision of character, whatever else he may be lacking in."

Bertie St. Orme was a cripple, and spent every summer regularly upon the river with his old manservant, nicknamed "the Badger."

"Oh, he is quite impossible!" Hilary declared. "Let's talk of something else!"

"But he means to keep you to your word, eh?" her brother persisted. "How will you get out of it?"

Hilary's face flushed more deeply, and she bit her lip.

"There won't be any getting out of it. Don't be silly! I am free."

"The end of the season!" teased Bertie. "That allows you--let's see--four, five, six more weeks of freedom."

"Be quiet, if you don't want a drenching!" warned Hilary. "Besides," she added, with inconsequent optimism, "anything may happen before then. Why, I may even be married to a man I really like."

"Great Scotland, so you may!" chuckled her brother. "There's the wild man that d.i.c.k has brought down here to tame before launching at society. He's a great beast like a brown bear. He wouldn't be my taste, but that's a detail."

"I hate fashionable men!" declared Hilary, with scarlet face. "I'd rather marry a red Indian than one of these inane men about town."

"Ho! ho!" laughed Bertie. "Then d.i.c.k's wild man will be quite to your taste. As soon as he leaves off worrying mutton-bones with his fingers and teeth, we'll ask d.i.c.k to bring him to dine."

"You're perfectly disgusting!" said Hilary, digging her punt-pole into the bed of the river with a vicious plunge. "If you don't mean to behave yourself, I won't stay with you."

"Oh, yes, you will," returned Bertie with brotherly a.s.surance. "You wouldn't miss d.i.c.k's aborigine for anything--and I don't blame you, for he's worth seeing. d.i.c.k a.s.sures me that he is quite harmless, or I don't know that I should care to venture my scalp at such close quarters."

"You're positively ridiculous to-day," Hilary declared.

A perfect summer morning, a rippling blue river that shone like gla.s.s where the willows dipped and trailed, and a girl who sang a murmurous little song to herself as she slid down the bank into the laughing stream.

Ah, it was heavenly! The sun-flecks on the water danced and swam all about her. The trees whispered to one another above her floating form.

The roses on the garden bal.u.s.trade of d.i.c.k Culver's bungalow nodded as though welcoming a friend. She turned over and struck out vigorously, swimming up-stream. It was June, and the whole world was awake and singing.

"It's better than the entire London season put together," she murmured to herself, as she presently came drifting back.

A whiff of tobacco-smoke interrupted her soliloquy. She shook back her wet hair and stood up waist-deep in the clear, green water.

"What ho, d.i.c.k!" she called gaily. "I can't see you, but I know you're there. Come down and have a swim, you lazy boy!"

There followed a pause. Then a diffident voice with an unmistakably foreign accent made reply.

"Were you speaking to me?"

Glancing up in the direction of the voice, Hilary discovered a stranger seated against the trunk of a willow on the high bank above her. She started and coloured. She had forgotten d.i.c.k's wild man. She described him later as the brownest man she had ever seen. His face was brown, the lower part of it covered with a thick growth of brown beard. His eyes were brown, surmounted by very bushy eyebrows. His hair was brown. His hands were brown. His clothes were brown, and he was smoking what looked like a brown clay pipe.

Hilary regained her self-possession almost at once. The diffidence of the voice gave her a.s.surance.

"I thought my cousin was there," she explained. "You are d.i.c.k's friend, I think?"

The man on the bank smiled an affirmative, and Hilary remarked to herself that he had splendid teeth.

"I am d.i.c.k's friend," he said, speaking slowly, as if learning the lesson from her. There was a slight subdued tw.a.n.g in his utterance which attracted Hilary immensely.

She nodded encouragingly to him.

"I am d.i.c.k's cousin," she said. "He will tell you all about me if you ask him."

"I will certainly ask," the stranger said in his soft, foreign drawl.

"Don't forget!" called Hilary, as she splashed back into deep water. "And tell him to bring you to dine on our house-boat at eight to-night! Bertie and I will be delighted to see you. We were meaning to send a formal invitation. But no one stands on ceremony on the river--or in it either,"

she laughed to herself as she swam away with swift, even strokes.

"I shouldn't have asked him in that way," she explained to her brother afterwards, "if he hadn't been rather shy. One must be nice to foreigners, and dear d.i.c.kie's society undiluted would bore me to extinction."

"I don't think we had better give him a knife at dinner," remarked Bertie. "I shouldn't like you to be scalped, darling. It would ruin your prospects. I suppose my only course would be to insist upon his marrying you forthwith."

"Bertie, you're a beast!" said his sister tersely.

"We have taken you at your word, you see," sang out d.i.c.k Culver from his punt. "I hope you haven't thought better of it by any chance, for my friend has been able to think of nothing else all day."

A slim white figure danced eagerly out of the tiny dining-saloon of the house-boat.

"Come on board!" she cried hospitably. "The Badger will see to your punt.

I am glad you're not late."

She held out her hand to the new-comer with a pretty lack of ceremony. He looked more than ever like a backwoodsman, but it was quite evident that he was pleased with his surroundings. He shook hands with her almost reverently, and smiled in a quiet, well-satisfied way. But, having nothing to say, he did not vex himself to put it into words--a trait which strongly appealed to Hilary.

"His name," said d.i.c.k Culver, laughing at his cousin over the big man's shoulder, "is Jacques. He has another, but, as n.o.body ever uses it, it isn't to the point, and I never was good at p.r.o.nunciation. He is a French Canadian, with a dash of Yankee thrown in. He is of a peaceable disposition except when roused, when all his friends find it advisable to give him a wide berth. He--"

"That'll do, my dear fellow," softly interposed the stranger, with a gentle lift of the elbow in Culver's direction. "Leave Miss St. Orme to find out the rest for herself! I hope she is not easily alarmed."

"Not at all, I a.s.sure you," said Hilary. "Never mind d.i.c.k! No one does.

Come inside!"