Long Odds

by Harold Bindloss

There were, as it happened, men in that country who held similar views, but the other reason the girl had proffered seemed to Dom Clemente the most obvious one, though he fancied it did not go quite far enough. It was conceivable that she should hate Dom Erminio, who had been sent up into the bush after bringing discredit upon himself as well as certain friends of hers. Still, he realized that this was a matter on which she would never fully enlighten him, and he recognized his disabilities. It was, perhaps, one of his strong points that he usually did recognize them, and seldom attempted the impossible. As the result of this he generally carried out what he took in hand. Dom Clemente was first of all a soldier, and not one who shone in civilized society or cared to scheme for preferment by social influence, which was probably why he had been sent out to a secondary command in Africa. He had friends who said he might have gone further had he been less faithful to his dead wife's memory.

"Well," he said, "it was certainly my intention to arrest this man Ormsgill. I admit that I have a certain sympathy with him, and that is partly why I am a little anxious to keep him from involving himself in useless difficulties."

"Do you think a man of his kind would be grateful for that?"

Dom Clemente made a little gesture of indifference. "I do not know. It is, after all, not a point that very much concerns me, though he is doing a perilous thing by meddling with our affairs, especially in the bush yonder."

"Ah," said Benicia, "then is nobody to meddle, and is this iniquity to go on?"

Dom Clemente smiled dryly. "I almost think," he said, "that when the time is ripe there will, as usual, be a man ready to take the affair in hand. In the meanwhile it would be a very undesirable thing that any one should point to you as a friend of this rash Englishman."

He rose, and buckling on his sword went down the outer stairway, while Benicia sat still with her cheeks burning. She fancied Dom Clemente had meant a good deal more than he had said, but, after all, that did not greatly trouble her. She was not one who counted the cost, and it was not quite clear that she had failed, though she knew troops had been dispatched to head off Ormsgill from the coast. It was possible that he had slipped past them, and the Palestrina would be waiting at the Bahia Santiago, and then it flashed upon her that it would not be difficult for her father to send the man in command of the troops instructions to proceed direct to the Bahia by a fast messenger. While she considered the point it happened that the officer he had handed the instructions to came up the stairway.

"I wonder if you know where the messenger Pacheco is, Señorita?" he said. "I have an urgent errand for him."

Benicia saw that he had a packet in his hand, and a swift glance at the table showed her that the writing materials were not exactly as they had been laid out an hour or two earlier. Somebody, it seemed, had written a letter, and she could make a shrewd guess at its purport. For a moment she stood looking at the officer, and thinking hard. It was evident that her father had a certain liking for Ormsgill, but she felt that he would probably not allow it to influence him to any great extent. He was apparently working out some cleverly laid plan of his own, and it was evident that she would incur a heavy responsibility by meddling with it, but after all Ormsgill's safety stood first with her.

"I am not sure, but I think he is in the house," she said.