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

Merefleet the place was deserted.
Seton knelt down and held the glass to his cousin's lips.
Merefleet returned softly and paused behind her chair.
"It's this confounded heat," said Seton in a savage undertone. "She will be all right directly."
Merefleet said nothing. Again he was keenly conscious of the fact that Seton wanted to get rid of him. But a stronger influence than Seton possessed kept him standing there.
Mab opened her eyes as the neat spirit burnt her lips. She tried to push the glass away, but Seton would not allow it.
"Just a drain, my dear girl," he said. "It will do you all the good in the world. And then--Merefleet," glancing up at him, "will you fetch some water?"
Merefleet went as desired.
When he returned, Mab was lying forward in Seton's arms, crying as he had never seen any woman cry before. And Seton was stroking her hair in silence.
Merefleet set down the water noiselessly, and went softly out into the summer dusk. But the great waves beating on the shore could not drown the memory of a woman's bitter sobbing. And the man's heart was dumb and heavy with the trouble he could not fathom.
Some hours later, returning from a weary tramp along the shore, he encountered Seton pacing to and fro on the terrace.
"She is better," he said, in answer to Merefleet's conventional enquiry. "It was the heat, you know, that upset her."
"Yes," said Merefleet quietly. "I know."
Seton walked away restlessly, more as if he wished to keep on the move than to avoid Merefleet. He came back, however, after a few seconds.
"Look here, Merefleet," he said abruptly, "you may take offence, but you can't quarrel without my consent. For Heaven's sake, leave this place! You are doing more mischief than you have the smallest notion of."
There was that in his manner which roused the instinct of opposition in Merefleet.
"You will either tell me what you mean," he said, "or you need not expect to gain your point. Veiled hints, like anonymous letters, do not deserve any man's serious consideration."
Seton muttered something inaudible and became silent.
Merefleet waited for some moments and then began to move off. But the younger man instantly turned and detained him with an imperative hand.
"What I mean is this," he said, and the starlight on his face showed it to be very determined. "My cousin is not in a position to receive any man's attentions. She is not free. I have tried to persuade myself into thinking you want nothing but ordinary friendship. I should infinitely prefer to think that if you can assure me that I am justified in so doing."
"What is it to you?" said Merefleet.
"To me personally it is more a matter of family honour than anything else. Moreover I am her sole protector, and as such I am bound to assert a certain amount of authority."
"So you may," said Merefleet quietly. "But I do not see that that involves my departure."
Seton struck the balustrade of the terrace with an impatient hand. "Can't you understand?" he said rather thickly. "How else can I put it?"
"I have no desire to pry into your affairs, Heaven knows," Merefleet said, "but this I will say. If I can be of use to either of you in helping to dispose of what appears to be a somewhat awkward predicament you may rely upon me with absolute safety."
"Thanks!" Seton turned slowly and held out his hand. "There is only one thing you can do," he said, with an awkward laugh. "And that is precisely what you are not prepared to do. All right. I suppose it's human nature. I am obliged to you all the same. Good-night!"


CHAPTER X

"Say, Big Bear! Will you take me on the water?"
Merefleet, lounging on the shingle with a pipe and newspaper, looked up with a start and hastened to knock out the half-burnt tobacco on the heel of his boot.
His American friend stood above him, clad in the white linen costume she always wore for boating. She looked very enchanting and very childlike. Merefleet who had seen her last sobbing bitterly in her cousin's arms, stared up at her with wonder and relief on his face.
She nodded to him. Her eyes were marvellously bright, but he did not ascribe their brilliance to recent tears.
"You don't look exactly smart," she said critically. "Hope I don't intrude?"
"Not a bit." Merefleet stumbled to his feet and raised his hat. "Pardon my sluggishness! How are you this morning?"
"Fresh as paint," she returned. "But I'm just dying to get on the water. And Bert has gone off somewhere by himself. I guess you'll help me, Big Bear. Won't you?"
Merefleet glanced from the sea to the sun.
"There's a change coming," he said. "I will go with you with pleasure. But I think it would be advisable to wait till the afternoon as usual. We shall probably know by then what sort of weather to expect."
Mab pouted a little.
"We shan't go at all if we wait," she declared. "Why can't we go while the fine weather lasts? I believe you want to back out of it. It's real lazy of you, Big Bear. You shan't read, anyhow."
She took his paper from his unresisting hands, dug a hole in the shingle with vicious energy, and covered it over.
"Now what?" she said, looking up at him with an impudent smile.
"Now," said Merefleet gravely, "I will take you for a row."
"Will you? Big Bear, you're a brick. I'll put you into my will. No, I won't, because I haven't got anything to leave. And you wouldn't want it if I had. Say, Big Bear! Haven't you got any friends?"
Merefleet looked surprised at the abrupt question.
"I have one friend in England besides yourself, Miss Ward," he replied. "His name is Clinton. But he is married and done for."
"My! What a pity!" she exclaimed. "Isn't he happy?"
"Oh, yes, I think so. Still, you know, most fellows have to sacrifice something when they marry. He was a war-correspondent. But he has spoilt himself for that."
"I see." Mab was prodding the shingle with the end of her sunshade, her face very thoughtful. Suddenly she looked up. "Never get married, Big Bear!" she said vehemently. "It's the most miserable state in Christendom."
"Anyone would think you spoke from experience," said Merefleet, smiling a little.
But Mab did not smile.
"I know a lot, Big Bear," she said, with a sharp sigh.
Merefleet was silent. His thoughts had gone back to the previous night. He was surprised when she suddenly alluded to the episode.
"There's that man Ralph Warrender," she said. "I guess the woman that's married him thinks he's A1 and gilt-edged now, poor soul. But he's just a miserable patchwork mummy really, and there isn't any white in him--no, not a speck."
She spoke with such intense, even violent bitterness that Merefleet was utterly astonished. He stood gravely contemplating her flushed, upturned face.
"What has he done to make you say that, I wonder?" he said.
"Nothing to me," she answered quickly. "Nothing at all to me. But I used to know his first wife. She was a sort of friend of mine. They used to call her the loveliest woman in U.S., Mr. Merefleet. And she belonged to that fiend."
They began to walk towards the boats through the shifting shingle. Merefleet had nothing to say. There was something in her passionate speech that disturbed him vaguely. She spoke as one whose most sacred personal interests had once been at stake.
"Lucky for her she's dead, Big Bear," she said presently, with a side-glance at him. "I've never regretted any of my friends less than Mrs. Ralph Warrender. Oh, she was real miserable. I've seen her with diamonds piled high in her hair and her face all shining with smiles. And I've known all the time that her heart was broken. And when I heard that she was dead, do you know, I was glad--yes, thankful. And I guess Warrender wasn't sorry. For she hated him."
"I never cared for Warrender," said Merefleet. "But I always took him for a gentleman."
She laughed at his words with a gaiety that jarred upon him. "Do you know, Big Bear," she said, "I think they must have forgotten to teach you your ABC when you went to school? You're such an innocent."
Merefleet tramped by her side in silence. There was something in him that shrank when she spoke in this vein.
But quite suddenly her tone changed. She spoke very gently. "Still, it's better to know too little than too much," she said. "And oh, Big Bear, I know such a lot."
Merefleet looked at her sharply and surprised an expression on her face which he did not easily forget.
He knew in that moment that this woman had suffered, and his heart gave a wild, tumultuous throb. From that moment he also knew that she had taken his heart by storm.


CHAPTER XI

Half-an-hour later they were out on the open sea beyond the harbour in a cockleshell even frailer than Quiller's little craft which they had not been able to secure.
The sea was very quiet, only broken by an occasional long swell that drove them southward like driftwood. Merefleet, who had been persuaded to quit the harbour against his better judgment, was not greatly disturbed by this fact. He did not anticipate any difficulty in returning. A little extra labour was the worst he expected, for he knew that a southward course would bring him into no awkward currents. Away to the eastward he was aware of treacherous streams and shoals. But he had no intention of going in that direction, and Mab, who steered, knew the water well.
There was no sun, a circumstance which Mab deplored, but for which Merefleet was profoundly grateful.
"You're not nearly so lazy as you used to be," she said to him approvingly, as he rested his oars after a long pull.
"No," said Merefleet. "I am beginning to see the error of my ways."
"I'm real glad to hear you say so," she said heartily. "And I want to tell you, Big Bear--that as I'm never going to New York again, I've decided to be an Englishwoman. And you've got to help me."
Merefleet looked at her with undisguised appreciation, but he shook his head at her words. She was marvellous; she was inimitable; she was unique. She would never, never be English. His gesture said as much. But she was not discouraged.
"I guess I'll try, anyhow," she said with brisk determination. "You don't like American women, Mr. Merefleet."
"Depends," said Merefleet.
And she laughed gaily.
They were drifting in long sweeps towards the south. Imperceptibly also the distance was widening between the boat and the shore. The wind was veering to the west.
"My! Look at that oar!" Mab suddenly exclaimed.
Merefleet started at the note of dismay in her tone. He had shipped his oars. They were the only ones that had been provided. He glanced hastily at the oar Mab indicated. It had been broken and roughly spliced together. The wood that had been used for the splicing was rotten, and the friction in the rowlocks had almost worn it through. Merefleet examined it in silence.
The girl's voice, high, with a quiver in it that might have stood for either laughter or consternation, broke in on him.
"Well," she said, "I guess we're in the suds this time, Big Bear; and no mistake about it."
Merefleet glanced at her helplessly. He did not think she realised the gravity of the situation, but something in the little smile that twitched her lips undeceived him.
"The sea was full of boats a