The Odds - Ethel May Dell (read full novel .TXT) 📗

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, Dick!" 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 Dick'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 assurance.
"I thought my cousin was there," she explained. "You are Dick's friend, I think?"
The man on the bank smiled an affirmative, and Hilary remarked to herself that he had splendid teeth.
"I am Dick's friend," he said, speaking slowly, as if learning the lesson from her. There was a slight subdued twang in his utterance which attracted Hilary immensely.
She nodded encouragingly to him.
"I am Dick'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 Dickie'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 Dick 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 Dick Culver, laughing at his cousin over the big man's shoulder, "is Jacques. He has another, but, as nobody ever uses it, it isn't to the point, and I never was good at pronunciation. 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 assure you," said Hilary. "Never mind Dick! No one does. Come inside!"
She led the way with light feet. Her exile from London during the season promised to be less deadly than she had anticipated. Unmistakably she liked Dick's wild man.
They found Bertie in the little roselit saloon, and as he welcomed the stranger Culver drew Hilary aside. There was much mystery on his comical face.
"I'll tell you a secret," he murmured; "this fellow is a great chief in his own country, but he doesn't want anyone to know it. He's coming here to learn a little of our ways, and he's particularly interested in English women, so be nice to him."
"I thought you said he was a French Canadian," said Hilary.
"That's what he wants to appear," said Culver. "And, anyhow, he had a Yankee mother. I know that for a fact. He's quite civilised, you know. You needn't be afraid of him."
"Afraid!" exclaimed Hilary.
Turning, she found the new-comer looking at her with brown eyes that were soft under the bushy brows.
"He can't be a red man," she said to herself. "He hasn't got the cheek-bones."
Leaving Dick to amuse himself, she smiled upon her other guest with winning graciousness and forthwith began the dainty task of initiating him into the ways of English women.
She was relieved to find that, notwithstanding his hairy appearance, he was, as Dick had assured her, quite civilised. As the meal proceeded she suddenly conceived an interest in Canada and the States, which had never before possessed her. She questioned him with growing eagerness, and he replied with a smile and always that half-reverent, half-shy courtliness that had first attracted her. Undoubtedly he was a pleasant companion. He clothed the information for which she asked in careful and picturesque language. He was ready at any moment to render any service, however slight, but his attentions were so unobtrusive that Hilary could not but accept them with pleasure. She maintained her pretty graciousness throughout dinner, anxious to set him at his ease.
"Englishmen are not half so nice," she said to herself, as she rose from the table. And she thought of the stubborn Viscount Merrivale as she said it.
There was a friendly regret at her departure written in the man's eyes as he opened the door for her, and with a sudden girlish impulse she paused.
"Why don't you come and smoke your cigar in the punt?" she said.
He glanced irresolutely over his shoulder at the other two men who were discussing some political problem with much absorption.
With a curious desire to have her way with him, the girl waited with a little laugh.
"Come!" she said softly. "You can't be interested in British politics."
He looked at her with his friendly, silent smile, and followed her out.
* * * * *


"Isn't it heavenly?" breathed Hilary, as she lay back on the velvet cushions and watched the man's strong figure bend to the punt-pole.
"I think it is Heaven, Miss St. Orme," he answered in a hushed voice.
The sun had scarcely set in a cloudless shimmer of rose, and, sailing up from the east, a full moon cast a rippling, silvery pathway upon the mysterious water.
The girl drew a long sigh of satisfaction, then laughed a little.
"What a shame to make you work after dinner!" she said.
She saw his smile in the moonlight.
"Do you call this work?" She seemed to hear a faint ring of amusement in the slowly-uttered question.
"You are very strong," she said almost involuntarily.
"Yes," he agreed quietly, and there suddenly ran a curious thrill through her--a feeling that she and he had once been kindred spirits together in another world.
She felt as if their intimacy had advanced by strides when she spoke again, and the sensation was one of a strange, quivering delight which the perfection of the June night seemed to wholly justify. Anyhow, it was not a moment for probing her inner self with searching questions. She turned a little and suffered her fingers to trail through the moonlit water.
"I wonder if you would tell me something?" she said almost diffidently.
"If it lies in my power," he answered courteously.
"You may think it rude," she suggested, with a most unusual attack of timidity. It had been her habit all her life to command rather than to request. But somehow the very courtesy with which this man treated her made her uncertain of herself.
"I shall not think anything so--impossible," he assured her gently, and again she saw his smile.
"Well," she said, looking up at him intently, "will you--please--let me into your secret? I promise I won't tell. But do tell me who you are!"
There followed a silence, during which the man leaned a little on his pole, gazing downwards while he kept the punt motionless. The water babbled round them with a tinkling murmur that was like the laughter of fairy voices. They had passed beyond the region of house-boats and bungalows, and the night was very still.
At last the man spoke, and the girl gave a queer little motion of relief.
"I should like to tell you everything there is to know about me," he said in his careful, foreign English. "But--will you forgive me?--I do not feel myself able to do so--yet. Some day I will answer your question gladly--I hope some day soon--if you are kind enough to continue to extend to me your interest and your friendship."
He looked down into Hilary's uplifted face with a queer wistfulness that struck unexpectedly straight to her heart. She felt suddenly that this man's past contained something of loss and disappointment of which he could not lightly speak to a mere casual acquaintance.
With the quickness of impulse characteristic of her, she smiled sympathetic comprehension.
"And you won't even tell me your name?" she said.
He bent again to the pole, and she saw his teeth shine in the moonlight. "I think my friend told you one of my names," he said.
"Oh, it's much too commonplace," she protested. "Quite half the men I know are called Jack."
And then for the first time she heard him laugh--a low, exultant laugh that sent the blood in a sudden rush to her cheeks.
"Shall we go back now?" she suggested, turning her face away.
He obeyed her instantly, and the punt began to glide back through the ripples.
No further word passed between them till, as they neared the house-boat, the high, keen notes of a flute floated out upon the tender silence.
Hilary glanced up sharply, the moonlight on her face, and saw a group of men in a punt moored under the shadowy bank. One of them raised his hand and sent a ringing salutation across the water.
Hilary nodded and turned aside. There was annoyance on her face--the annoyance of one suddenly awakened from a dream of complete enjoyment.
Her companion asked no question. He was bending vigorously to his work. But she seemed to consider some explanation to be due to him.
"That," she said, "is a man I know slightly. His name is Cosmo Fletcher."
"A friend?" asked the big man.
Hilary coloured a little.
"Well," she said half-reluctantly, "I suppose one would call him that."
*