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

sad. And I always want to hearten up sad folks. You see I've been there, and I know what it is."
"You!" said Merefleet.
Did he hear a sob in the darkness beside him? He fancied so. The hand that lay beneath his own twitched as if agitated.
"What do you know about trouble?" said Merefleet.
She did not answer him. Only he heard a long, hard sigh. Then she laughed rather mirthlessly.
"Well," she said, "there aren't many things in this world worth crying for. You've had enough of me, I guess. It's time I shunted."
She tried to withdraw her hand, but Merefleet's hold tightened.
"No, no. Not yet," he said, almost as if he were pleading with her. "I've behaved abominably. But don't punish me like this!"
She laughed again and yielded.
"You ought to know your own mind by now," she said, with something of her former briskness. "It's a rum world, Mr. Merefleet."
"It isn't the world," said Merefleet. "It's the people in it. Now, Miss Ward, I have a favour to ask. Promise me that you will never again imagine for a moment that I am not pleased--more, honoured--when you are good enough to stop by the way and speak to me. Of your charity you have stooped to pity my loneliness. And, believe me, I do most sincerely appreciate it."
"My!" she said. "That's the nicest thing you've said yet. Yes, I promise that. You're real kind, do you know? You make me feel miles better."
She drew her hand gently away. Merefleet was trying to discern her features in the darkness.
"Are you really lonely, I wonder?" he said. "Or is that a figure of speech?"
"It's solid fact," she said. "But, never mind me! Let's talk of something nicer."
"No, thanks!" Merefleet could be obstinate when he liked. "Unless you object, I prefer to talk about you."
She laughed a little, but said nothing.
"I want to know what makes you lonely," he said. "Don't tell me, of course, if there is any difficulty about it!"
"No," she responded coolly. "I won't. But I guess I'm lonely for much the same reason that you are."
"I have never been anything else since I became a man," said Merefleet.
"Ah!" she said. "I might say the same. Fact is"--she spoke with sudden startling emphasis--"I ought to be dead. And I'm not. That's my trouble in a nutshell."
"Great heavens, child!" Merefleet exclaimed, with an involuntary start. "Don't talk like that!"
"Why not?" she asked innocently. "Is it wrong?"
"It isn't literal truth, you know," he answered gravely. "You will not persuade me that it is."
"I'm no judge then," she said, with a note of recklessness in her voice.
"You have your cousin," Merefleet pointed out, feeling that he was on uncertain ground, yet unaccountably anxious to prove it. "You are not utterly alone while he is with you."
She uttered a shrill little laugh. "Why," she said, "I believe you think I'm in love with Bert."
Merefleet was silent.
"I'm not, you know," she said, after a momentary pause. "I'm years older than Bert, anyhow."
"Oh, come!" said Merefleet.
"Figuratively, of course," she explained.
"I understand," said Merefleet. And there was a silence.
Suddenly she laughed again merrily.
"May I share the joke?" asked Merefleet.
"You won't see it," she returned. "I'm laughing at you, Big Bear. You are just too quaint for anything."
Merefleet did not see the joke, but he did not ask for an explanation.
Seton himself strolled on to the terrace and joined them directly after; and Mab began to shiver and went indoors.
The two men sat together for some time, talking little. Seton seemed preoccupied and Merefleet became sleepy. It was he who at length proposed a move.
Seton rose instantly. "Mr. Merefleet," he said rather awkwardly, "I want to say a word to you."
Merefleet waited in silence.
"Concerning my cousin," Seton proceeded. "You will probably misread my motive for saying this. But nevertheless it must be said. It is not advisable that you should become very intimate with her."
He brought out the words with a jerk. It had been a difficult thing to say, but he was not a man to shrink from difficulties. Having said it, he waited quietly for the result.
Merefleet paused a moment before he spoke. Seton had surprised him, but he did not show it.
"I shall not misread your motive," he said, "as I seldom speculate on matters that do not concern me. But allow me to say that I consider your warning wholly uncalled for."
"Exactly," said Seton, "I expected you to say that. Well, I am sorry. It is quite impossible for me to explain myself. I hope for your sake you will never be placed in the position in which I am now. I assure you it is anything but an enviable one."
His manner, blunt and direct, appealed very strongly to Merefleet. He said nothing, however, and they went in together in unbroken silence. Mab did not reappear that night.


CHAPTER VIII

A fortnight passed away and Merefleet was still at the hotel at Old Silverstrand. Mab was there also, the idol of the fisher-folk, and an unfailing source of interest and admiration to casual visitors at the hotel.
Merefleet, though he had become a privileged acquaintance, was still wholly unenlightened with regard to the circumstances which had brought her to the place under Seton's escort.
As time went on, it struck Merefleet that these two were a somewhat incongruous couple. They dined together and they usually boated together in the afternoon--this last item on account of Mab's passion for the sea; but beyond this they lived considerably apart. Neither seemed to seek the other's society, and if they met at lunch, it was never by preconceived arrangement.
Merefleet saw more of Mab when she was ashore than Seton did. They would meet on the quay, in old Quiller's cottage, or in the hotel-garden, several times a day. Occasionally he would accompany them on the water, but not often. He had a notion that Seton preferred his absence, and he would not go where he felt himself to be an intruder.
Nevertheless, the primary fascination had not ceased to act upon him; the glamour of the girl's beauty was still in his eyes something more than earthly. And there came a time when Bernard Merefleet listened with unconscious craving for the high, unmodulated voice, and smiled with a tender indulgence over the curiously naive audacity which once had made him shrink.
As for Mab, she was too eagerly interested in various matters to give more than a passing thought to the fact that the man she called Big Bear had laid aside his surliness. If she thought about it at all, it was only to conclude that their daily intercourse had worn away the outer crust of his shyness.
She was always busy--in and out of the fishermen's cottages, where she was welcomed as an angel--to and fro on a hundred schemes, all equally interesting and equally absorbing. And Merefleet was called upon to assist. She singled him out for her friendship because he was as one apart and without interests. She drew him into her own bubbling life. She laughed at him, consulted him, enslaved him.
All innocently she wove her spell about this man. He was lonely, she knew; and she, in her ardent, great-souled pity for all such, was willing to make cheerful sacrifice of her own time and strength if thus she might ease but a little the burden that galled a fellow-traveller's shoulders.
Merefleet came upon her once standing in the sunshine with Mrs. Quiller's baby in her arms. She beckoned him to speak to her. "Come here if you aren't afraid of babies!" she said, displaying her charge. "Look at him, Big Bear! He's three weeks old to-day. Isn't he fine?"
"What do you know about babies?" said Merefleet, with his eyes on her lovely flushed face.
She nodded in her sprightly fashion, but her eyes were far away on the distant horizon, and her soul with them. "I know a lot, Big Bear," she said.
Merefleet watched her, well pleased with the sight. She stood rocking to and fro. Her gaze was fixed and tender.
"I wonder what you see," Merefleet said, after a pause.
Her eyes came back at once to her immediate surroundings.
"Shall I tell you, Big Bear?" she said.
"Yes," said Merefleet, marvelling at the radiance of her face.
And, her voice hushed to a whisper, she moved a pace nearer to him and told him.
"Just a little baby friend of mine who lives over there," she said. "I'm going to see him some day. I guess he'll be glad, don't you?"
"Who wouldn't?" said Merefleet. "But that's not the West, you know."
"No," she said simply. "He's in the Land beyond the sea, Big Bear." And with a strange little smile into his face, she drew the shawl closer about the child in her arms and disappeared into Quiller's cottage.
There was something in this interview that troubled Merefleet unaccountably. But when he saw her again, her mirth was brimming over, and he thought she had forgotten.


CHAPTER IX

It was about a week after this conversation that Merefleet, invited by Seton, joined his two friends at _table d'hote_ at their table. The suggestion came from Mab, he strongly suspected, for she seconded Seton's proposal so vigorously that to decline would have been almost an impossibility.
"You look so lonely there," she said. "It's miles nicer over here. What's your opinion?"
"I agree with you, of course," said Merefleet, with a glance at Seton which discovered little.
"Isn't he getting polite?" said the American girl approvingly. "Say, Bert! I guess you'll have to take lessons in manners or he'll get ahead of you."
Seton smiled indulgently. He was this girl's watch-dog and protector. He aspired to be no more.
"My dear girl, you will never make a social ornament of me as long as you live," he said.
And Mab patted his arm affectionately.
"You're nicer as you are, dear boy," she said. "You aren't smart, it's true, but I give you the highest mark for real niceness."
Seton's eyes met Merefleet's for a second. There was a touch of uneasiness about him, as if he feared Merefleet might misconstrue something. And Merefleet considerately struck a topic which he believed to be wholly impersonal.
"By the way," he said, "I had an American paper sent me to-day. It may interest you to hear that Ralph Warrender has resigned his seat in Congress and married again."
"What?" said Seton.
"My!" cried Mab, with a shrill laugh. "That is news, Mr. Merefleet!"
Merefleet glanced at her sharply, his attention arrested by something he did not understand. Seton pushed a glass of sherry towards her, but he was looking at Merefleet.
"News indeed!" he said deliberately. "Is it actually an accomplished fact?"
"According to the _New York Herald_," said Merefleet.
Mab's face was growing whiter and whiter. Seton still leant over the table, striving with all his resolution to force Merefleet's attention away from her. But Merefleet would not allow it. He saw what Seton did not stop to see; and it was he, not Seton, who lifted her to her feet a moment later and half-led, half-carried her out of the stifling room.
With a practical commonsense eminently characteristic of him, Seton remained to pour out a glass of brandy; and thus armed he followed them into the vestibule. Mab was lying back in an arm-chair when he arrived. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing quickly. Merefleet was propping open the door on to the terrace. The lights flickered in the draught and gave a strange look to the colourless face on the cushion. It was like a beautifully carved marble. But for