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

in the old man eagerly. "Master Bernard, ain't it? That's right, sonny. That's right. Yes, come in! There! I never thought to see you again. That I never did. This here's little missie what comes regular to see my daughter-in-law as has been laid by this week or more. I calls her our good angel," he ended tenderly. "She's been the Lord's own blessing to us ever since she come."
Merefleet, thus invited, entered and sat down on a wooden chair by the table. Old Quiller turned in also and fussed about him with the solicitude that comes with age.
"No," he said meditatively, "I never thought to see you again, Master Bernard. Why, it's twenty year come Michaelmas since you said 'Good-bye.' And little miss was with you. Ah, dear! It do make me think of them days to see you in the old place again. I always said as I'd never see the match of little miss but this young lady, sir--she's just such another, bless her."
Merefleet, with his eyes on the busy white hands at the table, smiled at the eulogy.
The American girl glanced at him and laughed more softly than usual. "Isn't he fine?" she said. "I just love that old man."
Somehow that peculiar voice of hers did not jar upon him quite so painfully as he sat and watched her at her dexterous work. There was something about her employment that revealed to him a side of her that her frivolous manner would never have led him to suspect. While he talked to the old fisherman, more than half his attention was centred on her beautiful, innocent face.
"My!" she suddenly exclaimed, turning upon him with a dazzling smile. "I reckon you'll almost be equal to beating up an egg yourself if you watch long enough."
"Perhaps," said Merefleet.
She laughed gaily. "Are you coming along with Bert and me this afternoon in Quiller's boat?" she inquired.
"I believed I have engaged Quiller to come and do the hard work for me," Merefleet said.
"You!" She was bending over the fire, stirring the beaten egg into a saucepan. "Oh, you lazy old Bear!" she said reprovingly. "What good will that do you?"
"I don't know that I want anything to do me good," Merefleet returned. He had become almost genial under these unusual circumstances. It was certainly no easy matter to keep this exceedingly sociable young lady at a distance.
He was watching the warm colour rising in her face as she stooped over the fire. He had never imagined that the art of cookery could be conducted with so much of grace and charm. Her odd, high voice instantly broke in on this reflection.
"I'm going to see Mrs. Quiller and the baby now," she said, with her sprightly little nod. "So long, Big Bear!"
The little kitchen suddenly looked dull and empty. The sun had gone in. Old Quiller was sucking tobacco ruminatively, his fit of loquacity over.
Merefleet rose. "Well, I am glad to have seen you, Quiller," he said, patting the old man's shoulder with a kindly hand. "I must come in again. You and I are old friends, you know, and old comrades, too. Good-bye!"
Quiller looked at him rather vacantly. The fire of life was sinking low in his veins. He had grown sluggish with the years, and the spark of understanding was seldom bright.
"Aye, but she's a bonny lass, Master Bernard," he said with slow appreciation. "A bonny lass she be. You ain't thinking of getting settled now? I'm thinking she'd keep your home tidy and bright."
"Good-bye!" said Merefleet with steady persistence.
"Aye, she would," said the old man, shifting the tobacco in his cheek. "She's been a rare comfort to me and mine. She'd be a blessing to your home, Master Bernard. Take an old chap's word for it, an old chap as knows what's what. That young lady'll be the joy of some man's heart some day. You've got your chance, Master Bernard. You be that man!"


CHAPTER VI

"Say, Bert! We can take Big Bear along in our boat. Isn't that so?"
Merefleet looked up from his paper as he heard the words. They were seated at the next table at lunch, his American friend and her excessively English cousin. Merefleet noticed that she was dressed for boating. She wore a costume of white linen, and a Panama hat was crammed jauntily on the soft, dark hair. She was anything but dignified. Yet there was something splendid in the very recklessness of her beauty. She was a queen who did not need to assert her rights. There were other women present, and Merefleet was not even conscious of the fact.
"Who?" asked Seton, in response to her careless inquiry.
She nodded in Merefleet's direction and caught his eye as she did so.
"He's the cutest man in U.S.," she said, staring him straight in the face without sign of recognition. "But he's real lazy. He saw me making custard at Grandpa Quiller's this morning, and he wasn't even smart enough to lift the saucepan off the fire. I thought he might have had spunk enough for that, anyway."
Twenty-four hours earlier Merefleet would have deliberately hunched his shoulders, turned his back, and read his paper. But his education was in sure hands. He had made rapid progress since the day before.
He leant a little towards his critic and said gravely:
"Pray accept my apologies for the omission! To tell you the truth, I was not watching the progress of the cookery."
The girl nodded as if appeased.
"You can come and sit at this table," she said, indicating a chair opposite to her. "I guess you know my cousin Bert Seton."
"What makes you guess that?" Merefleet inquired, changing his seat as directed.
She looked at him with a little smile of superior knowledge. "I guess lots," she said, but proffered no explanation of her shrewd conclusion.
Young Seton greeted Merefleet with less cordiality than he had displayed on the previous evening. There was a suggestion of caution in his manner that created a somewhat unfavourable impression in Merefleet's mind.
Already he was beginning to wonder how these two came to be thus isolated in the forgotten little town of Old Silverstrand. It was not a natural state of affairs. Neither the girl with her marvellous beauty, nor the man with his peculiar concentration of purpose, was a fitting figure for such a background. They were out of place--most noticeably so.
Merefleet was the very last man to make observations of such a description. But this was a matter so obvious and so undeniably strange that it forced itself upon him half against his will. He became strongly aware that Seton did not desire his presence in the boat with him and his cousin. He did not fathom the objection. But its existence was not to be ignored. And Merefleet wondered a little, as he cast about in his mind for a suitable excuse wherewith to decline the girl's invitation.
"It's very good of you to ask me to accompany you, Miss Ward," he said presently. "But I know that Quiller the younger is under the impression that I have engaged him to row me out of the harbour and bring me back again. And I don't see very well how I can cancel the engagement."
Miss Ward nudged her cousin at this speech.
"Oh, if he isn't just quaint!" she said. "Look here, Bert! You're running this show. Tell Mr. Merefleet it's all fixed up, and if he won't come along with us he won't go at all, as we've got Quiller's boat!"
Seton glanced up, slightly frowning.
"My dear Mab," he said, "allow Mr. Merefleet to please himself! The fact that you are willing to put your life in my hands day after day is no guarantee of my skill as a rower, remember."
"Oh, skittles!" said Mab irrelevantly.
And Seton, meeting Merefleet's eyes, shrugged his shoulders as if disclaiming all further responsibility.
Mab leant forward.
"You'd better come, Mr. Merefleet," she said in a motherly tone. "It'll be a degree more lively than mooning around by yourself."
And Merefleet yielded, touched by something indescribable in the beautiful, glowing eyes that were lifted to his. Apparently she wanted him to go, and it seemed to him too small a thing to refuse. Perhaps, also, he consulted his own inclination.
Seton dropped his distant manner after a time. Nevertheless the impression of being under the young man's close observation lingered with Merefleet, and Mab herself seemed to feel a strain. She grew almost silent till lunch was over, and then, recovering, she entered into a sprightly conversation with Merefleet.
They went down to the shore shortly after, and embarked in Quiller's boat. Mab sat in the stern under a scarlet sunshade and talked gaily to her two companions. She was greatly amused when Merefleet insisted upon doing his share of the work.
"I love to see you doing the galley-slave," she said. "I know you hate it, you poor old Bear."
But Merefleet did not hate his work. He sat facing her throughout the afternoon, gazing to his heart's content on the perfect picture before him. He wore his hands to blisters, and the sun beat mercilessly down upon him. But he felt neither weariness nor impatience, neither regret nor surliness.
A magic touch had started the life in his veins; the revelation of a wandering searchlight had transformed his sordid world into a palace of delight. He accepted the fact without question. He had no wish to go either forward or backward.
The blue sea and the blue sky, and the distant, shining shore. These were what he had often longed for in the rush and tumult of a great, unresting city. But in the foreground of his picture, beyond desire and more marvellous than imagination, was the face of the loveliest woman he had ever seen.


CHAPTER VII

There was no wandering alone on the quay for Merefleet that night. It was very warm and he sat on the terrace with his American friend. Far away over at New Silverstrand, a band was playing, and the music came floating across the harbour with the silvery sweetness which water imparts. The lights of the new town were very bright. It looked like a dream-city seen from afar.
"I guess we are just a couple of Peris shut outside," said Mab in her brisk, unsentimental voice. "I like it best outside, don't you, Big Bear?"
"Yes," said Merefleet, with a simplicity that provoked her mirth.
"Oh, aren't you just perfect!" she said. "You've done me no end of good. I'd pay you back if I could."
Merefleet was silent. He could not see her beautiful face, but her words touched him inexplicably.
There was a long pause. Then, to his great surprise, a warm little hand slipped on to his knee in the darkness and a voice, so small that he hardly recognised it, said humbly:
"Mr. Merefleet, I'm real sorry."
Merefleet started a little.
"Good heavens! Why?" he said.
"Sorry you disapprove of me," she said, with a little break in her voice. "Bert used to be the same. But he's different now. He knows I wasn't made prim and proper."
She paused. Merefleet's hand was on her own. He sat in silence, but somehow his silence was kind.
She went on. "I wasn't going to speak last night. Only you looked so melancholy at dinner. And then I thought p'r'aps you were lonely, like I am. I didn't find out till afterwards that you didn't like the way I talked."
"Do you know you make me feel a most objectionable cad?" said Merefleet.
"Oh, no, you aren't that," she hastened to assure him. "I'm positive you aren't that. It was my fault. I spoke first. I thought you looked real