Harold Bindloss - Long Odds

"The affair is easily understood. Lamartine bought the girl from the man who ran the labor supply business before Domingo. She was decidedly good-looking, a pretty warm brown in color, and had the most intelligent eyes I've ever seen in an African. The curious thing is that I believe Lamartine was genuinely fond of her. In any case, he was furious when one of the boys laid what looked like very conclusive evidence of her unfaithfulness before him. He meant to administer the usual penalty."

Father Tiebout made a little gesture. "Ah," he said, "these things happen. One can only protest."

"Well," said Ormsgill dryly, "as you know, they didn't in this case. I nearly broke his wrist, but I took the pistol from him. You see, I rather believed in the girl's innocence. Lamartine compromised the thing by handing her on to Herrero – though he would take no money for her. He had, as he was rather fond of mentioning, his code of honor. There was a trying scene when Herrero sent for her. The girl flung herself down and clung to Lamartine's knees. It seemed she was fond of the man, and didn't want to go away, which was, as it happens, wise of her. Though she was probably not aware of this, Herrero trains the women who take his fancy with the whip."

He stopped a moment and glared at Nares. "I have no doubt the padre knows the rest. Lamartine found out not long ago that the boy had lied, and remembered a little too late that Herrero would in all probability beat the girl to death in one of his outbreaks. He made him a very tempting offer if he would send her back, but Herrero apparently wanted to keep her, and while negotiations were in progress Lamartine fell sick. I naturally don't know what he told the padre, but he once or twice assured me that if he knew she could be sent back safe to her people in the bush he would die more contentedly. In fact, improbable as it may seem in this country, the thing was worrying him badly."

It was significant that Nares, who was something of an optimist, appeared by his expression to consider the fact that such a thing should have troubled Lamartine very improbable indeed, but Father Tiebout smiled contemplatively. His profession gave him, as had been suggested, advantages which Nares did not enjoy, and he was a wise man in his way.

"Lamartine," he said, "desired to make restitution – but to do it in his own person was not permitted him."

Then he turned, and sat still with his eyes fixed on Ormsgill, as though waiting. It was, in fact, an occupation he was accustomed to, for one who would see the result of his efforts must as a rule wait a long while in Africa.

Ormsgill met his gaze thoughtfully, with steady gray eyes, and it was a moment or two before he spoke.

"Whether a vicarious reparation will be of any benefit to the soul of Lamartine I naturally do not know," he said. "It is enough for me that he and the padre seemed to fancy it might be, and, as it happens, I owe Lamartine a good deal. This is why I practically promised to undertake his responsibility. I am not sure that either of you know I first arrived in this Colony trimming coal among the niggers in a steamer's stokehold."

Father Tiebout made a little gesture with his hands which seemed to imply that there was very little he was not acquainted with, and Ormsgill went on —

"Still, I do not think you know I was quietly compelled to abandon the service of a British Colony for a fault I never committed. My friends at home very naturally turned against me. I had brought them discredit – and it did not matter greatly whether I was guilty. How I made a living afterwards along this coast does not concern you; but I went down in one sense as far as a white man may, and the struggle has left a mark that will never quite come out on me. Still, I met with kindness from other outcasts and benighted heathen, as one usually does from the outcast and the trodden on, and, when I was flung ashore after nearly pounding the life out of a brutal second engineer, Lamartine, who had gone down to the coast on business, held out a hand to me. As I said, I feel that I owe him a little."

He stopped for a moment with a little grim smile. "Herrero has gone South somewhere, taking the girl with him, but if she is alive I think I can promise that he will give her up. After that it would not be so very difficult to send her back to where she comes from in the bush."

"For the repose of the soul of Lamartine!" and Nares glanced at Father Tiebout, with a challenge in his eyes.

The little priest's gesture seemed to imply that he declined to be drawn into a controversy, and it was Ormsgill who answered the American.

"To discharge a debt – among other reasons – and as a protest. I have been driven to exhaustion myself more than once. Have you any hope at all to offer these African people, I mean in this world, padre?"

Father Tiebout smiled. "Yes," he said simply. "One does what one can, and waits patiently. How long, I do not know, but slowly or suddenly, in our time, or in the time of these people's children, the change will come."

He looked at Nares, the man of action, who bore with waiting ill, and he, flushed with fever, laid a hand that was clenched hard upon the table.

"You expect them to endure to the second generation. I tell you that they are forging spears in the interior now. A little more, and they will come down and wipe out every bush mission and garrison, and can we blame them, who stand by and tolerate the abominable traffic in black men's souls and bodies? There was more excuse for the old-time slavery. Horrible as it would be, one could almost welcome the catastrophe which would force the outside world to recognize what white men are doing here."

There were, perhaps, men in the outside world who knew it already, and could suggest no remedy. After all, labor is essential to the prosperity of any African colony, and while in some which are ruled as justly as circumstances permit the negro is offered wages for his services, and can go home with his earnings when he likes, there are others where more drastic measures are adopted. There the labor purveyor collects the white man's servants in the bush, and it is not the business of the Administration to inquire whether they are prisoners of war or have been sold by their friends. They are bound down to toil for a term of years, and if they die off during it few troublesome questions are asked. The African climate is an unhealthy one, as everybody knows.

In the meanwhile neither of Nares' companions said anything for a space. They were thinking of the same thing, each in his own way, while the dense steamy blackness of the African night shut them in. Ormsgill, who had been driven until the sweat of anguished effort dripped from him, wondered vaguely what a man with brains and nerve and money might do on the negroes' behalf in spite of the opposition of a corrupt administration. The priest was also wondering how much he could accomplish with Lamartine's bequest, very little of which would, however, in all probability, be allowed to remain in his hands, though he knew that it would in any case not go very far, for he was one who recognized that the new beneficent order must be evolved slowly, here a little and there a little, with other men to carry out what he had begun. Father Tiebout seldom rode a tilt at impossibilities, as Nares and Ormsgill occasionally did. He was a wise man, and knew the world too well. At last Nares made a little gesture of weariness.

"Well, the thing may happen, but that hardly concerns us in the meanwhile, and our work here is done. I wonder if you remember that you haven't read the letters Father Tiebout brought up, Ormsgill?"

Ormsgill had, as it happened, quite forgotten them. He had arrived worn out with a long and hasty journey, and Nares and he had then kept close watch beside his comrade's bed. When at last their watch was over there was still much to be done, and now for the first time he had leisure to open the packet the priest had handed him. He took out a stiff blue envelope with an English postmark, and gazed at it heavy eyed and vacantly before he broke the cover. Then he slowly straightened himself in his chair, and incredulity gave place to bewilderment as he read the letter he shook out. Lamartine's death had left him an outcast and one obnoxious to constituted authority again. Five minutes ago he had not known what his next step would be, but the stiff legal writing held out before him dazzling possibilities. Then he laid down the letter, and turned to his companions with a curious little laugh.