Kitabı oku: «Long Odds», sayfa 2

CHAPTER II
RESTITUTION

Darkness had closed down suddenly on the forest, but it was hotter than ever in the primitively furnished general room of Lamartine's house, where the lamp further raised the already almost insupportable temperature. There was also a deep, impressive silence in the bush that shut the rickety dwelling in, though now and then the sound of a big drop splashing upon a quivering leaf came in through the open window with startling distinctness. Lamartine, the French trader, was dead, and had been buried that afternoon, as was customary, within an hour or two after the breath has left his body. His career, like that of most men in his business, had not been a very exemplary one, but he had, at least, now and then shown that he possessed certain somewhat fantastic and elementary notions of ethics, which he was in the habit of alluding to as his code of honor. It was, as Father Tiebout, who had once or twice given him spiritual advice when he was very sick of fever, admitted, a rather indifferent one, but very few white men in that country had any code at all, and, as the good padre said, it was possible that too much would not be expected from any one who had lived in that forest long.

In any case, Lamartine had gone to answer for the deeds that he had done, and the three men who had buried him and had constituted themselves his executors sat about his little table with the perspiration dripping from them. There was Nares, gaunt and hollow-faced, weak from fever and worn with watching; Father Tiebout, the Belgian priest, little, and also haggard; and Ormsgill, the gray-eyed, brown-faced Englishman, who sat looking at them with set lips and furrowed forehead. Their creeds were widely different, but men acquire a certain wide toleration in the land of the shadow, where it is exceedingly difficult to believe in any thing beyond the omnipotence of evil.

It was, perhaps, characteristic that it was the priest who tore up certain papers Ormsgill had selected from the pile upon the table.

"I do not think that anything would be gained by allowing them to come under the notice of the authorities," he said. "I am not sure that they might not consider they invalidated the trifling bequest to the Mission, which with good management should enable us to rescue a few more of the heathen."

"A very few!" and Ormsgill smiled. "The market's stiff now Domingo has practically a monopoly as purveyor. Converts will be dearer. One understands that you buy most of yours."

Father Tiebout's eyes twinkled good-humoredly. "One must use the means available, and it is, at least, something if we can save their bodies. But to proceed, our companion will agree with me that repentance must be followed by restitution or reparation. In the case of the friend we have buried one must take the will for the deed, and the will was there. Restitution may also be efficacious if it is vicarious. As you know, it was the thought of the woman from the interior that most troubled Lamartine."

Ormsgill glanced at Nares, for both had heard some, at least, of the dying man's words on that subject, but for a time the American looked straight in front of him. Then he turned to Ormsgill.

"He seemed to expect you to make that restitution for him. Tell us what you know. Most of it will not be news to Father Tiebout, but I haven't his advantages."

"The affair is easily understood. Lamartine bought the girl from the man who ran the labor supply business before Domingo. She was decidedly good-looking, a pretty warm brown in color, and had the most intelligent eyes I've ever seen in an African. The curious thing is that I believe Lamartine was genuinely fond of her. In any case, he was furious when one of the boys laid what looked like very conclusive evidence of her unfaithfulness before him. He meant to administer the usual penalty."

Father Tiebout made a little gesture. "Ah," he said, "these things happen. One can only protest."

"Well," said Ormsgill dryly, "as you know, they didn't in this case. I nearly broke his wrist, but I took the pistol from him. You see, I rather believed in the girl's innocence. Lamartine compromised the thing by handing her on to Herrero – though he would take no money for her. He had, as he was rather fond of mentioning, his code of honor. There was a trying scene when Herrero sent for her. The girl flung herself down and clung to Lamartine's knees. It seemed she was fond of the man, and didn't want to go away, which was, as it happens, wise of her. Though she was probably not aware of this, Herrero trains the women who take his fancy with the whip."

He stopped a moment and glared at Nares. "I have no doubt the padre knows the rest. Lamartine found out not long ago that the boy had lied, and remembered a little too late that Herrero would in all probability beat the girl to death in one of his outbreaks. He made him a very tempting offer if he would send her back, but Herrero apparently wanted to keep her, and while negotiations were in progress Lamartine fell sick. I naturally don't know what he told the padre, but he once or twice assured me that if he knew she could be sent back safe to her people in the bush he would die more contentedly. In fact, improbable as it may seem in this country, the thing was worrying him badly."

It was significant that Nares, who was something of an optimist, appeared by his expression to consider the fact that such a thing should have troubled Lamartine very improbable indeed, but Father Tiebout smiled contemplatively. His profession gave him, as had been suggested, advantages which Nares did not enjoy, and he was a wise man in his way.

"Lamartine," he said, "desired to make restitution – but to do it in his own person was not permitted him."

Then he turned, and sat still with his eyes fixed on Ormsgill, as though waiting. It was, in fact, an occupation he was accustomed to, for one who would see the result of his efforts must as a rule wait a long while in Africa.

Ormsgill met his gaze thoughtfully, with steady gray eyes, and it was a moment or two before he spoke.

"Whether a vicarious reparation will be of any benefit to the soul of Lamartine I naturally do not know," he said. "It is enough for me that he and the padre seemed to fancy it might be, and, as it happens, I owe Lamartine a good deal. This is why I practically promised to undertake his responsibility. I am not sure that either of you know I first arrived in this Colony trimming coal among the niggers in a steamer's stokehold."

Father Tiebout made a little gesture with his hands which seemed to imply that there was very little he was not acquainted with, and Ormsgill went on —

"Still, I do not think you know I was quietly compelled to abandon the service of a British Colony for a fault I never committed. My friends at home very naturally turned against me. I had brought them discredit – and it did not matter greatly whether I was guilty. How I made a living afterwards along this coast does not concern you; but I went down in one sense as far as a white man may, and the struggle has left a mark that will never quite come out on me. Still, I met with kindness from other outcasts and benighted heathen, as one usually does from the outcast and the trodden on, and, when I was flung ashore after nearly pounding the life out of a brutal second engineer, Lamartine, who had gone down to the coast on business, held out a hand to me. As I said, I feel that I owe him a little."

He stopped for a moment with a little grim smile. "Herrero has gone South somewhere, taking the girl with him, but if she is alive I think I can promise that he will give her up. After that it would not be so very difficult to send her back to where she comes from in the bush."

"For the repose of the soul of Lamartine!" and Nares glanced at Father Tiebout, with a challenge in his eyes.

The little priest's gesture seemed to imply that he declined to be drawn into a controversy, and it was Ormsgill who answered the American.

"To discharge a debt – among other reasons – and as a protest. I have been driven to exhaustion myself more than once. Have you any hope at all to offer these African people, I mean in this world, padre?"

Father Tiebout smiled. "Yes," he said simply. "One does what one can, and waits patiently. How long, I do not know, but slowly or suddenly, in our time, or in the time of these people's children, the change will come."

He looked at Nares, the man of action, who bore with waiting ill, and he, flushed with fever, laid a hand that was clenched hard upon the table.

"You expect them to endure to the second generation. I tell you that they are forging spears in the interior now. A little more, and they will come down and wipe out every bush mission and garrison, and can we blame them, who stand by and tolerate the abominable traffic in black men's souls and bodies? There was more excuse for the old-time slavery. Horrible as it would be, one could almost welcome the catastrophe which would force the outside world to recognize what white men are doing here."

There were, perhaps, men in the outside world who knew it already, and could suggest no remedy. After all, labor is essential to the prosperity of any African colony, and while in some which are ruled as justly as circumstances permit the negro is offered wages for his services, and can go home with his earnings when he likes, there are others where more drastic measures are adopted. There the labor purveyor collects the white man's servants in the bush, and it is not the business of the Administration to inquire whether they are prisoners of war or have been sold by their friends. They are bound down to toil for a term of years, and if they die off during it few troublesome questions are asked. The African climate is an unhealthy one, as everybody knows.

In the meanwhile neither of Nares' companions said anything for a space. They were thinking of the same thing, each in his own way, while the dense steamy blackness of the African night shut them in. Ormsgill, who had been driven until the sweat of anguished effort dripped from him, wondered vaguely what a man with brains and nerve and money might do on the negroes' behalf in spite of the opposition of a corrupt administration. The priest was also wondering how much he could accomplish with Lamartine's bequest, very little of which would, however, in all probability, be allowed to remain in his hands, though he knew that it would in any case not go very far, for he was one who recognized that the new beneficent order must be evolved slowly, here a little and there a little, with other men to carry out what he had begun. Father Tiebout seldom rode a tilt at impossibilities, as Nares and Ormsgill occasionally did. He was a wise man, and knew the world too well. At last Nares made a little gesture of weariness.

"Well, the thing may happen, but that hardly concerns us in the meanwhile, and our work here is done. I wonder if you remember that you haven't read the letters Father Tiebout brought up, Ormsgill?"

Ormsgill had, as it happened, quite forgotten them. He had arrived worn out with a long and hasty journey, and Nares and he had then kept close watch beside his comrade's bed. When at last their watch was over there was still much to be done, and now for the first time he had leisure to open the packet the priest had handed him. He took out a stiff blue envelope with an English postmark, and gazed at it heavy eyed and vacantly before he broke the cover. Then he slowly straightened himself in his chair, and incredulity gave place to bewilderment as he read the letter he shook out. Lamartine's death had left him an outcast and one obnoxious to constituted authority again. Five minutes ago he had not known what his next step would be, but the stiff legal writing held out before him dazzling possibilities. Then he laid down the letter, and turned to his companions with a curious little laugh.

"The thing is almost incredible," he said. "A man who I was told would never forgive the discredit I brought upon the family has died in England and left me what looks very like a fortune. The other letters may bear upon it. You'll excuse me."

They watched him in silence for ten minutes, and there was a faint flush in his bronzed face when he quietly rose and took out a photograph from a little tin box.

"Padre," he said, "you are the wisest man I know, and, though distinctions are invidious, Nares is, I think, the honestest. That is why I am going to put a case before you. Well, I had a good upbringing, and I think my English friends expected something from me before I was flung out of the British service and became a pariah. After that I never troubled them again, which was no doubt a cause of satisfaction to everybody. There was, however, a thing I had to do which was not easy, and this picture should make it clear to you. It was arranged that we should be married when I had brought my laurels home from Africa."

He handed Nares the photograph. "When I was made a scapegoat I gave her back her liberty. It is now intimated that she has not so far profited by it."

Nares bent over the portrait of a young and very comely English girl, and saw only the fresh, innocent face, and the smiling eyes. Then he handed it to the little haggard priest, who had a deeper understanding, and saw a good deal more than that.

"It is a beautiful face," he said when Father Tiebout had gazed at it steadily, but the latter said nothing, and turned towards Ormsgill, as though still ready to give him his attention, which he seemed to understand.

"It is more than four years since I saw her, and I have spent them with the outcasts," he said. "You can realize what effect that has upon one, padre. The stamp this country sets on the white man is plain on you, but you have not lived here as I have been forced to do. Well, I think the woman is still the same, and I have greatly changed. I do not know my duty."

Father Tiebout sat silent for at least a minute, looking reflectively at the man before him. Ormsgill was young still, but his lean face was furrowed, and there was a suggestiveness in the lines on it. He had seen death and pestilence, human nature stripped naked, and unmentionable cruelty; and the priest was quite aware that one cannot live with the outcast, in Africa, and remain unchanged. Then he looked at the photograph again, for he knew that the four years had also had their effect upon the woman.

"Ah," he said, "we all grow, some towards the beneficent light, and some in the blighting shadow. The training and the pruning we are subjected to also has its effect. Her people?"

"I almost think you would consider them children of this world," said Ormsgill dryly.

"And you have been left a good deal of money?"

Ormsgill told him what the amount was, and once more the priest said nothing for awhile. Quiet and unobtrusive as he was, he never forgot that he was one of the vanguard of the Church militant, and was ready to use with skill any weapon that was offered him. It was also necessary to thrust hard now and then, and he knew that in his hands the man who had lived with the outcast and the oppressed would prove a reliable blade. Ormsgill, as he recognized, had capacities. Still, his counsel had been asked, and he would answer honestly, knowing that he could afford to do it if his knowledge of human nature, and the girl's face, had not deceived him. After all, he fancied, whatever he said the result would be the same, and he was playing a skillful game of which the stakes were black men's bodies, and, perhaps, human souls.

"With a sum like that there is so much that one could do," he said. "With discretion – you understand – here and there a little. Domingo put down, women dying at their tasks redeemed and enfolded in the shelter of the Mission, men with brutal masters set at liberty, and concessions where they are driven to death suppressed. One could also bring about a reckoning with corrupt authority. When admonition is of no service one may try the scourge."

He saw the little glint in Ormsgill's eyes, and made a deprecatory gesture with his hands. "Still, you have asked for counsel, and you have another duty. With us marriage is not a social contract, and the promise that precedes it is almost as sacred. You are pledged to this Englishwoman if she has not released you, and that you are changed will not matter if she loves you. It is your duty to go back to her."

Nares looked up and nodded. "Of course!" he said. "You must go."

Ormsgill's forehead was furrowed, and the perspiration stood in beads on it. The love that had driven him out to win his spurs in the land of shadow still in some degree, at least, remained with him; but he was conscious of the change in him which the girl with her upbringing might well shrink from. He had lived with the outcasts until he had become one of them, a hater of conventional formulas and shams, while there had crept into his nature a trace of the somberness of the dark land. What, he wondered, would the sunny-tempered English girl he had left make of such a man. Still, as the priest had said, his duty was clear, and, what was perhaps more, his inclination marched with it. He straightened himself suddenly with a little resolute 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 his 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.