The Odds by Ethel May Dell (best time to read books TXT) 📖

smile on the beautiful face developed into a wicked little gleam of amusement. "That's so, I daresay," said the high voice. "But you see, I wasn't consulted. I've just got to go where I'm taken."
She sank into a chair opposite Merefleet and leant forward.
Merefleet sat perfectly rigid. There was a marvellous witchery about the clasped hands and bent head before him. But he did not mean to let his idiotic sentimentality carry him away again. So long as the enchantress was speaking, the spell was wholly impotent. Therefore he should not suffer her to relapse into silence. Yet--how he hated that high, piercing voice! It was like the desecration of something sacred. It made him shrink in involuntary protest.
"Say!" suddenly exclaimed his companion, looking at him sharply. "Aren't you Bernard Merefleet of New York City?"
Merefleet frowned unconsciously at the notoriety that was his.
"I was in New York until recently," he said with some curtness.
"Exactly what I said," she returned triumphantly. "A friend of mine snap-shotted you walking up Fifth Avenue. He said to me: 'Here's Merefleet the gold-king, one of the cutest men in U.S.A. His first name is Bernard. So we call him the Big Bear for short.' Ever heard your pet name before?"
"Never," said Merefleet stiffly, with a suggestive hand on the evening paper. He wished she would leave him alone. With his eyes averted at length, the charm of her presence ceased to attract him. He even fancied he resented her freedom. But the girl only laughed carelessly. She had not the smallest intention of moving.
"Well," she said, and he imagined momentarily that her abominable accent was deliberately assumed. "I guess you've heard it now, Mr. Bernard Merefleet. Smart, I call it. What's your opinion?"
Merefleet started a little at the audacity of this speech. And again he was looking at her. There was a funny little smile twitching the corners of her mouth. Her beauty was irresistible. Even the iron barrier of his churlish avoidance was severely shaken. She was hard to withstand, this witch with her friendly eyes and frank speech, despite her jarring voice.
She nodded to him sociably as she met his grave look. "You aren't on a pleasure-trip, I reckon," she observed.
"Pleasure!" said Merefleet, giving way with abrupt bitterness. "No. There's not much pleasure in unearthing skeletons. That's what I'm doing."
The beautiful eyes opposite opened wide. She was silent for a moment. Then, "Think you're wise?" she enquired casually.
"No," said Merefleet roughly. "I'm a fool."
She nodded acquiescence. "That's so, I daresay," she said. "I was afraid you were sick."
"So I am," he said. "Sick of life--sick of everything."
"I guess you want some medicine," she said seriously.
Merefleet laughed suddenly. "Something strong and deadly, eh?" he said.
She shook her head. "Tell me what you like best in the world!" she said.
Merefleet reflected.
"You must know," she insisted briskly. "Is it a woman?"
"Good heavens, no!" said Merefleet, with an emphasis not particularly flattering to the sex.
"Well, then," she said, "p'r'aps it's the sea?"
"You may say so for the sake of argument," said Merefleet.
"I don't argue," she responded, with what he took for a touch of heat. "If people disagree with me I just shunt."
"Excellent policy," said Merefleet, interested in spite of himself. He fancied a faint shadow crossed her face. But she continued to speak with barely a pause. "If you like the sea you'd better join Bert and me. We go out every day. It's real fun."
"Exciting as well as dangerous," suggested Merefleet.
She nodded again. It was a habit of hers when roused to eagerness. "You've hit it. It's just that," she said. "Will you come?"
Merefleet hesitated. He was still inclined to be surly. But the new influence was not so easy to resist as he had imagined. The woman before him attracted him strongly, despite the fact that he now knew her loveliness to be but mortal; despite the constant jar of her shrill voice.
"Who is Bert?" he enquired at length, reluctantly aware that in temporising he signed away his freedom of action.
"Bert's my cousin," she answered. "He's English right through. You'd like Bert. He's in the smoke-room. Bert and I are great chums."
"Are you staying here alone together?" Merefleet enquired.
She nodded. "Bert is taking care of me," she explained. "He's like a son to me. I call him my English bull-dog. I just love bull-dogs, Mr. Merefleet."
Merefleet was silent.
She stretched out her arms with a swift, unconscious movement of weariness.
"Well," she said, "I'm real lazy to-night, and that's fact. I guess you want to smoke, so I'll go and leave you in peace."
She rose and stood for a few moments in the doorway, looking out into the pulsing darkness beyond. Merefleet watched her, fascinated. And as he watched, a deep shadow rose and lingered on the beautiful face. Moved by an instinct he did not stop to question, he rose abruptly and stood beside her. There was a pause. Then suddenly she looked up at him and the shadow was gone.
"Isn't he cross?" she said.
"Who?" asked Merefleet.
"Why, that funny old sea," she laughed. "He's just wild to dash over and swamp us all. Supposing he did, should you care any?"
"I don't know," said Merefleet.
Her eyes were full of a soft laughter as she looked at him. Suddenly she laid a childish hand on his arm. "Oh, you poor old Bear!" she said, dropping her voice a little. "I'm real sorry for you!"
And then she turned swiftly and was gone from his side like a flash of sunlight.


CHAPTER IV

It was some time later that Merefleet entered the smoking-room to satisfy a certain curiosity which had taken possession of him. He looked round the room as he sat down, and almost at once his attention lighted upon a broad-shouldered man of about thirty with a plain, square-jawed face of great determination, who sat, puffing at a short pipe, by the open window.
Merefleet silently observed this man for some time, till, his scrutiny making itself felt, the object of it wheeled abruptly in his chair and returned it.
Merefleet leant forward. It was so little his custom to open conversation with a stranger that his manner was abrupt and somewhat forced on this unusual occasion.
"I believe I ought to know you," he said. "But I can't recall your name."
The reply was delivered in a manner as curt as his own. "My name is Seton," said the stranger. "As you have only met me once before, you probably won't recall it now."
Merefleet nodded comprehension. He loved the straight, quiet speech of Englishmen. There was no flurry or palaver about this specimen. He spoke as a man quite sure of himself and wholly independent of his fellow men.
"Ah, I remember you now," Merefleet said. "You came as Ralph Warrender's guest to a club dinner in New York. Am I right?"
"Perfectly," said Seton. "You were the guest of the evening. You made a good speech, I remember. You were looking horribly ill. I suppose that is how I came to notice you particularly."
"I was ill," said Merefleet, "or I should have been out of New York before that dinner came off. I always detested the place. And Warrender would have done far better in my place."
"I am not an admirer of Warrender," said Seton bluntly.
Merefleet made no comment. He was never very free in the statement of his opinion.
"The railway accident in which his wife was killed took place immediately after that dinner, I believe?" he observed presently. "I remember hearing of it when I was recovering."
"It was a shocking thing--that accident," said Seton thoughtfully. "It's odd that Americans always manage to do that sort of thing on such a gigantic scale."
"They do everything on a gigantic scale," said Merefleet. "What became of Warrender afterwards? It was an awful business for him."
"I don't know anything about him," Seton answered, with a brevity that seemed to betray lack of interest. "He was no friend of mine, though I chanced to be his guest on that occasion. I was distantly connected with his wife, and I inherited some of her money at her death. She was a rich woman, as you probably know."
"So I heard. But I have never found New York gossip particularly attractive."
Seton leant his elbow on the window-sill and gazed meditatively into the night. "If it comes to that," he said slowly, "no gossip is exactly edifying. And to be the victim of it is to be in the most undesirable position under the sun."
It struck Merefleet that he uttered the words with some force, almost with the deliberate intention of conveying a warning; and, being the last man in the world to attempt to fathom the wholly irrelevant affairs of his neighbour, he dropped into silence and began to smoke.
Seton sat motionless for some time. The murmur of a conversation that was being sleepily sustained by two men in the room behind them created no disturbing influence. Presently Seton spoke casually, but with that in his tone which made Merefleet vaguely conscious of an element of suspicion.
"You didn't expect to see me just now, did you?" he asked.
"No," said Merefleet. "I should have taken the trouble to call your name to mind before I spoke if I had."
Seton nodded. "I saw you at _table d'hote_" he remarked. "I was with my cousin at the other end of the room. You were gone when we got up."
"Your cousin?" said Merefleet deliberately. "Is that the American lady who is staying here?"
"Yes. Miss Ward. She is from New York, too. You may have seen her there."
"No," said Merefleet. "I know very little of New York society, or any society for the matter of that."
Seton turned and looked at him with a smile. "Odd," he said. "For there can be scarcely a man, woman, or child, here or in America, who does not know you by name."
"Not so bad as that, I hope," said Merefleet. And Seton laughed.
"You have the reputation for shunning celebrity," he remarked.
"So I understand," said Merefleet. "I hope the reputation will be my protection."
Young Seton became genial from that point onward. Without being communicative, he managed to convey the impression that he was quite prepared to be friendly. And for some reason unexplained Merefleet was pleased. He went to bed that night with somewhat revised ideas on the subject of society in general and the society of American girls in particular.


CHAPTER V

"Is this the gentleman as was to come and see me? Come in, sir. Come in! My old eyes ain't so sharp as they used to be, but I can see a many things yet."
And old Quiller, the fisherman, removed his sou'wester from his snowy head and peered at the visitor from under his hand.
"You don't know me, eh, Quiller?" Merefleet said.
He was surprised to hear a high voice from the interior of the cottage break in on the old man's hesitating reply.
"He's a sort of walking monkey-puzzle, I guess," said the voice, and a roguish laugh followed the words.
Merefleet looked over old Quiller's shoulder into the little kitchen. She was standing by the table with her sleeves up to her elbows, making some invalid dish. A shaft of sunlight slanting through the tiny window fell full upon her as she stood. It made him think of the searchlight glory of the previous night. She shone like a princess in her lowly surroundings.
She nodded to him gaily as she met his eyes.
"Come right in!" she said hospitably. "And I shall tell Grandpa Quiller who you are."
"Aye, but I know," broke