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With Edged Tools

by Henry Seton Merriman · English · Gutenberg #8939 · 611,666 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: With Edged Tools

Author: Henry Seton Merriman


        
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8939]
                Most recently updated: March 12, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8939

Credits: Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH EDGED TOOLS ***




Produced by Les Bowler





WITH EDGED TOOLS


By Henry Seton Merriman


  “Of the same clay he maketh both the vessels that serve for clean
  uses, and likewise also such as serve to the contrary; but what is
  the use of either sort, the potter himself is the judge.”



                               TO JAMES PAYN

                         A TOKEN OF SINCERE REGARD



CONTENTS

     I.        TWO GENERATIONS
     II.       OVER THE OLD GROUND
     III.      A FAREWELL
     IV.       A TRAGEDY
     V.        WITH EDGED TOOLS
     VI.       UNDER THE LINE
     VII.      THE SECRET OF THE SIMIACINE
     VIII.     A RECRUIT
     IX.       TO PASS THE TIME
     X.        LOANGO
     XI.       A COMPACT
     XII.      A MEETING
     XIII.     IN BLACK AND WHITE
     XIV.      PANIC-STRICKEN
     XV.       A CONFIDENCE
     XVI.      WAR
     XVII.     UNDERHAND
     XVIII.    A REQUEST
     XIX.      IVORY
     XX.       BROUGHT TO THE SCRATCH
     XXI.      THE FIRST CONSIGNMENT
     XXII.     THE SECOND CONSIGNMENT
     XXIII.    MERCURY
     XXIV.     NEMESIS
     XXV.      TO THE RESCUE
     XXVI.     IN PERIL
     XXVII.    OFF DUTY
     XXVIII.   A SLOW RECOVERY
     XXIX.     A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE
     XXX.      OLD BIRDS
     XXXI.     SEED-TIME
     XXXII.    AN ENVOY
     XXXIII.   DARK DEALING
     XXXIV.    AMONG THORNS
     XXXV.     ENGAGED
     XXXVI.    NO COMPROMISE
     XXXVII.   FOUL PLAY
     XXXVIII.  THE ACCURSED CAMP
     XXXIX.    THE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCE
     XL.       SIR JOHNS LAST CARD
     XLI.      A TROIS
     XLII.     A STRONG FRIENDSHIP
     XLIII.    A LONG DEBT
     XLIV.     MADE UP
     XLV.      THE TELEGRAM





CHAPTER I. TWO GENERATIONS



     Why all delights are vain, but that most vain
     Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain.

“My dear--Madam--what you call heart does not come into the question at
all.”

Sir John Meredith was sitting slightly behind Lady Cantourne, leaning
towards her with a somewhat stiffened replica of his former grace. But
he was not looking at her--and she knew it.

They were both watching a group at the other side of the great ballroom.

“Sir John Meredith on Heart,” said the old lady, with a depth of
significance in her voice.

“And why not?”

“Yes, indeed. Why not?”

Sir John smiled with that well-bred cynicism which a new school has not
yet succeeded in imitating. They were of the old school, these two;
and their worldliness, their cynicism, their conversational attitude,
belonged to a bygone period. It was a cleaner period in some ways--a
period devoid of slums. Ours, on the contrary, is an age of slums
wherein we all dabble to the detriment of our hands--mental, literary,
and theological.

Sir John moved slightly in his chair, leaning one hand on one knee. His
back was very flat, his clothes were perfect, his hair was not his own,
nor yet his teeth. But his manners were entirely his own. His face was
eighty years old, and yet he smiled his keen society smile with the best
of them. There was not a young man in the room of whom he was afraid,
conversationally.

“No, Lady Cantourne,” he repeated. “Your charming niece is heartless.
She will get on.”

Lady Cantourne smiled, and drew the glove further up her stout and
motherly right arm.

“She will get on,” she admitted. “As to the other, it is early to give
an opinion.”

“She has had the best of trainings--,” he murmured. And Lady Cantourne
turned on him with a twinkle amidst the wrinkles.

“For which?” she asked.

“Choisissez!” he answered, with a bow.

One sees a veteran swordsman take up the foil with a tentative turn of
the wrist, lunging at thin air. His zest for the game has gone; but the
skill lingers, and at times he is tempted to show the younger blades a
pass or two. These were veteran fencers with a skill of their own, which
they loved to display at times. The zest was that of remembrance; the
sword-play of words was above the head of a younger generation given to
slang and music-hall airs; and so these two had little bouts for their
own edification, and enjoyed the glitter of it vastly.

Sir John's face relaxed into the only repose he ever allowed it; for he
had a habit of twitching and moving his lips such as some old men have.
And occasionally, in an access of further senility, he fumbled with his
fingers at his mouth. He was clean shaven, and even in his old age he
was handsome beyond other men--standing an upright six feet two.

The object of his attention was the belle of that ball, Miss Millicent
Chyne, who was hemmed into a corner by a group of eager dancers anxious
to insert their names in some corner of her card. She was the fashion at
that time. And she probably did not know that at least half of the men
crowded round because the other half were there. Nothing succeeds like
the success that knows how to draw a crowd.

She received the ovation self-possessedly enough, but without that
hauteur affected by belles of balls--in books. She seemed to have a
fresh smile for each new applicant--a smile which conveyed to each
in turn the fact that she had been attempting all along to get her
programme safely into his hands. A halting masculine pen will not be
expected to explain how she compassed this, beyond a gentle intimation
that masculine vanity had a good deal to do with her success.

“She is having an excellent time,” said Sir John, weighing on the modern
phrase with a subtle sarcasm. He was addicted to the use of modern
phraseology, spiced with a cynicism of his own.

“Yes, I cannot help sympathising with her--a little,” answered the lady.

“Nor I. It will not last.”

“Well, she is only gathering the rosebuds.”

“Wisely so, your ladyship. They at least LOOK as if they were going to
last. The full-blown roses do not.”

Lady Cantourne gave a little sigh. This was the difference between them.
She could not watch without an occasional thought for a time that was no
more. The man seemed to be content that the past had been lived through
and would never renew itself.

“After all,” she said, “she is my sister's child. The sympathy may only
be a matter of blood. Perhaps I was like that myself once. Was I? You
can tell me.”

She looked slowly round the room and his face hardened. He knew that she
was reflecting that there was no one else who could tell her; and he did
not like it.

“No,” he answered readily.

“And what was the difference?”

She looked straight in front of her with a strange old-fashioned
demureness.

“Their name is legion, for they are many.”

“Name a few. Was I as good-looking as that, for instance?”

He smiled--a wise, old, woman-searching smile.

“You were better-looking than that,” he said, with a glance beneath his
lashless lids. “Moreover, there was more of the grand lady about you.
You behaved better. There was less shaking hands with your partners,
less nodding and becking, and none of that modern forwardness which is
called, I believe, camaraderie.”

“Thank you, Sir John,” she answered, looking at him frankly with a
pleasant smile. “But it is probable that we had the faults of our age.”

He fumbled at his lips, having reasons of his own for disliking too
close a scrutiny of his face.

“That is more than probable,” he answered, rather indistinctly.

“Then,” she said, tapping the back of his gloved hand with her fan, “we
ought to be merciful to the faults of a succeeding generation. Tell
me who is that young man with the long stride who is getting himself
introduced now.”

“That,” answered Sir John, who prided himself upon knowing every
one--knowing who they were and who they were not--“is young Oscard.”

“Son of the eccentric Oscard?”

“Son of the eccentric Oscard.”

“And where did he get that brown face?”

“He got that in Africa, where he has been shooting. He forms part of
some one else's bag at the present moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has been apportioned a dance. Your fair niece has bagged him.”

If he had only known it, Guy Oscard won the privilege of a waltz by the
same brown face which Lady Cantourne had so promptly noted. Coupled with
a sturdy uprightness of carriage, this raised him at a bound above the
pallid habitues of ballroom and pavement. It was, perhaps, only natural
that Millicent Chyne should have noted this man as soon as he crossed
the threshold. He was as remarkable as some free and dignified denizen
of the forest in the midst of domestic animals. She mentally put him
down for a waltz, and before five minutes had elapsed he was bowing
before her while a mutual friend murmured his name. One does not know
how young ladies manage these little affairs, but the fact remains
that they are managed. Moreover, it is a singular thing that the young
persons who succeed in the ballroom rarely succeed on the larger
and rougher floor of life. Your belle of the ball, like your Senior
Wrangler, never seems to do much afterwards--and Afterwards is Life.

The other young men rather fell back before Guy Oscard--scared, perhaps,
by his long stride, and afraid that he might crush their puny toes. This
enabled Miss Chyne to give him the very next dance, of which the music
was commencing.

“I feel rather out of all this,” said Oscard, as they moved away
together. “You must excuse uncouthness.”

“I see no signs of it,” laughed Millicent. “You are behaving very
nicely. You cannot help being larger and stronger than--the others. I
should say it was an advantage and something to be proud of.”

“Oh, it is not that,” replied Oscard; “it is a feeling of unkemptness
and want of smartness among these men who look so clean and correct.
Shall we dance?”

He looked down at her, with an admiration which almost amounted to awe,
as if afraid of entering the throng with such a dainty and wonderful
charge upon his powers of steering. Millicent Chyne saw the glance and
liked it. It was different from the others, quite devoid of criticism,
rather simple and full of honest admiration. She was so beautiful that
she could hardly be expected to be unaware of the fact. She had merely
to make comparisons, to look in the mirror and see that her hair was
fairer and softer, that her complexion was more delicately perfect, that
her slight, rounded figure was more graceful than any around her. Added
to this, she knew that she had more to say than other girls--a larger
stock of those little frivolous, advice-seeking, aid-demanding nothings
than her compeers seemed to possess.

She knew that in saying them she could look brighter and prettier and
more intelligent than her competitors.

“Yes,” she said, “let us dance by all means.”

Here also she knew her own proficiency, and in a few seconds she found
that her partner was worthy of her skill.

“Where have you been?” she asked presently. “I am sure you have been
away somewhere, exploring or something.”

“I have only been in Africa, shooting.”

“Oh, how interesting! You must tell me all about it!”

“I am afraid,” replied Guy Oscard, with a somewhat shy laugh, “that that
would NOT be interesting. Besides, I could not tell you now.”

“No, but some other time. I suppose you are not going back to Africa
to-morrow, Mr. Oscard?”

“Not quite. And perhaps we may meet somewhere else.”

“I hope so,” replied Miss Chyne. “Besides, you know my aunt, Lady
Cantourne. I live with her, you know.”

“I know her slightly.”

“Then take an opportunity of improving the acquaintanceship. She is
sitting under the ragged banner over there.”

Millicent Chyne indicated the direction with a nod of the head, and
while he looked she took the opportunity of glancing hastily round the
room. She was seeking some one.

“Yes,” said Oscard, “I see her, talking to an old gentleman who looks
like Voltaire. I shall give her a chance of recognising me before the
evening is out. I don't mind being snubbed if--”

He paused and steered neatly through a narrow place.

“If what?” she asked, when they were in swing again.

“If it means seeing you again,” he answered bluntly--more bluntly than
she was accustomed to. But she liked it. It was a novelty after the
smaller change of ballroom compliments.

She was watching the door all the while.

Presently the music ceased and they made their way back to the
spot whence he had taken her. She led the way thither by an almost
imperceptible pressure of her fingers on his arm. There were several
men waiting there, and one or two more entering the room and looking
languidly round.

“There comes the favoured one,” Lady Cantourne muttered, with a veiled
glance towards her companion.

Sir John's grey eyes followed the direction of her glance.

“My bright boy?” he inquired, with a wealth of sarcasm on the adjective.

“Your bright boy,” she replied.

“I hope not,” he said curtly.

They were watching a tall fair man in the doorway who seemed to know
everybody, so slow was his progress into the room. The most remarkable
thing about this man was a certain grace of movement. He seemed to be
specially constructed to live in narrow, hampered places. He was
above six feet; but, being of slight build, he moved with a certain
languidness which saved him from that unwieldiness usually associated
with large men in a drawing-room.

Such was Jack Meredith, one of the best known figures in London society.
He had hitherto succeeded in moving through the mazes of that coterie,
as he now moved through this room, without jarring against any one.



CHAPTER II. OVER THE OLD GROUND



     A man who never makes mistakes never makes anything else
either.

Miss Millicent Chyne was vaguely conscious of success--and such a
consciousness is apt to make the best of us a trifle elated. It was
certainly one of the best balls of the season, and Miss Chyne's dress
was, without doubt, one of the most successful articles of its sort
there.

Jack Meredith saw that fact and noted it as soon as he came into the
room. Moreover, it gratified him, and he was pleased to reflect that he
was no mean critic in such matters. There could be no doubt about it,
because he KNEW as well as any woman there. He knew that Millicent Chyne
was dressed in the latest fashion--no furbished-up gown from the hands
of her maid, but a unique creation from Bond Street.

“Well,” she asked in a low voice, as she handed him her programme, “are
you pleased with it?”

“Eminently so.”

She glanced down at her own dress. It was not the nervous glance of the
debutante, but the practised flash of experienced eyes which see without
appearing to look.

“I am glad,” she murmured.

He handed her back the card with the orthodox smile and bow of
gratitude, but there was something more in his eyes.

“Is that what you did it for?” he inquired.

“Of course,” with a glance half coquettish, half humble.

She took the card and allowed it to drop pendent from her fan without
looking at it. He had written nothing on it. This was all a form. The
dances that were his had been inscribed on the engagement-card long
before by smaller fingers than his.

She turned to take her attendant partner's arm with a little flaunt--a
little movement of the hips to bring her dress, and possibly herself,
more prominently beneath Jack Meredith's notice. His eyes followed her
with that incomparably pleasant society smile which he had no doubt
inherited from his father. Then he turned and mingled with the
well-dressed throng, bowing where he ought to bow--asking with fervour
for dances in plain but influential quarters where dances were to be
easily obtained.

And all the while his father and Lady Cantourne watched.

“Yes, I THINK,” the lady was saying, “that that is the favoured one.”

“I fear so.”

“I noticed,” observed Lady Cantourne, “that he asked for a dance.”

“And apparently got one--or more.”

“Apparently so, Sir John.”

“Moreover--”

Lady Cantourne turned on him with her usual vivacity.

“Moreover?” she repeated.

“He did not need to write it down on the card; it was written there
already.”

She closed her fan with a faint smile

“I sometimes wonder,” she said, “whether, in our young days, you were so
preternaturally observant as you are now.”

“No,” he answered, “I was not. I affected scales of the very opaquest
description, like the rest of my kind.”

In the meantime this man's son was going about his business with a
leisurely savoir-faire which few could rival. Jack Meredith was the
beau-ideal of the society man in the best acceptation of the word. One
met him wherever the best people congregated, and he invariably seemed
to know what to do and how to do it better than his compeers. If it was
dancing in the season, Jack Meredith danced, and no man rivalled him.
If it was grouse shooting, Jack Meredith held his gun as straight as any
man. All the polite accomplishments in their season seemed to come to
him without effort; but there was in all the same lack of heart--that
utter want of enthusiasm which imparted to his presence a subtle
suggestion of boredom. The truth was that he was over-educated. Sir John
had taught him how to live and move and have his being with so minute
a care, so keen an insight, that existence seemed to be nothing but an
habitual observance of set rules.

Sir John called him sarcastically his “bright boy,” his “hopeful
offspring,” the “pride of his old age”; but somewhere in his shrivelled
old heart there nestled an unbounded love and admiration for his son.
Jack had assimilated his teaching with a wonderful aptitude. He had as
nearly as possible realised Sir John Meredith's idea of what an
English gentleman should be, and the old aristocrat's standard was
uncompromisingly high. Public school, University, and two years on the
Continent had produced a finished man, educated to the finger-tips,
deeply read, clever, bright, and occasionally witty; but Jack Meredith
was at this time nothing more than a brilliant conglomerate of
possibilities. He had obeyed his father to the letter with a
conscientiousness bred of admiration. He had always felt that his father
knew best. And now he seemed to be waiting--possibly for further orders.
He was suggestive of a perfect piece of mechanism standing idle for want
of work delicate enough to be manipulated by its delicate craft. Sir
John had impressed upon him the desirability of being independent, and
he had promptly cultivated that excellent quality, taking kindly enough
to rooms of his own in a fashionable quarter. But upon the principle of
taking a horse to the water and being unable to make him drink, Sir John
had not hitherto succeeded in making Jack take the initiative. He had
turned out such a finished and polished English gentleman as his soul
delighted in, and now he waited in cynical silence for Jack Meredith to
take his life into his own hands and do something brilliant with it. All
that he had done up to now had been to prove that he could attain to a
greater social popularity than any other man of his age and station; but
this was not exactly the success that Sir John Meredith coveted for his
son. He had tasted of this success himself, and knew its thinness of
flavour--its fleeting value.

Behind his keen old eyes such thoughts as these were passing, while he
watched Jack go up and claim his dance at the hands of Miss Millicent
Chyne. He could almost guess what they said; for Jack was grave and she
smiled demurely. They began dancing at once, and as soon as the floor
became crowded they disappeared.

Jack Meredith was an adept at such matters. He knew a seat at the end
of a long passage where they could sit, the beheld of all beholders
who happened to pass; but no one could possibly overhear their
conversation--no one could surprise them. It was essentially a
strategical position.

“Well,” inquired Jack, with a peculiar breathlessness, when they were
seated, “have you thought about it?”

She gave a little nod.

They seemed to be taking up some conversation at a point where it had
been dropped on a previous occasion.

“And?” he inquired suavely. The society polish was very thickly coated
over the man; but his eyes had a hungry look.

By way of reply her gloved hand crept out towards his, which rested on
the chair at his side.

“Jack!” she whispered; and that was all.

It was very prettily done, and quite naturally. He was a judge of such
matters, and appreciated the girlish simplicity of the action.

He took the small gloved hand and pressed it lovingly. The thoroughness
of his social training prevented any further display of affection.

“Thank Heaven!” he murmured.

They were essentially of the nineteenth century--these two. At a
previous dance he had asked her to marry him; she had deferred her
answer, and now she had given it. These little matters are all a
question of taste. We do not kneel nowadays, either physically or
morally. If we are a trifle off hand, it is the women who are to blame.
They should not write in magazines of a doubtful reputation in language
devoid of the benefit of the doubt. They are equal to us. Bien! One
does not kneel to an equal. A better writer than any of us says that men
serve women kneeling, and when they get to their feet they go away. We
are being hauled up to our feet now.

“But--?” began the girl, and went no further.

“But what?”

“There will be difficulties.”

“No doubt,” he answered, with quiet mockery. “There always are. I will
see to them. Difficulties are not without a certain advantage. They keep
one on the alert.”

“Your father,” said the girl. “Sir John--he will object.”

Jack Meredith reflected for a moment, lazily, with that leisureliness
which gave a sense of repose to his presence.

“Possibly,” he admitted gravely.

“He dislikes me,” said the girl. “He is one of my failures.”

“I did not know you had any. Have you tried? I cannot quite admit the
possibility of failure.”

Millicent Chyne smiled. He had emphasised the last remark with
lover-like glance and tone. She was young enough; her own beauty was new
enough to herself to blind her to the possibility mentioned. She had not
even got to the stage of classifying as dull all men who did not fall
in love with her at first sight. It was her first season, one must
remember.

“I have not tried very hard,” she said. “But I don't see why I should
not fail.”

“That is easily explained.”

“Why?”

“No looking-glass about.”

She gave a little pout, but she liked it.

The music of the next dance was beginning, and, remembering their social
obligations, they both rose. She laid her hand on his arm, and for a
moment his fingers pressed hers. He smiled down into her upturned
eyes with love, but without passion. He never for a second risked the
“gentleman” and showed the “man.” He was suggestive of a forest pool
with a smiling rippled surface. There might be depth, but it was yet
unpenetrated.

“Shall we go now,” he said, “and say a few words in passing to my
redoubtable father? It might be effective.”

“Yes, if you like,” she answered promptly. There is no more confident
being on earth than a pretty girl in a successful dress.

They met Sir John at the entrance of the ballroom. He was wandering
about, taking in a vast deal of detail.

“Well, young lady,” he said, with an old-world bow, “are you having a
successful evening?”

Millicent laughed. She never knew quite how to take Sir John.

“Yes, I think so, thank you,” she answered, with a pretty smile. “I am
enjoying myself very much.”

There was just the least suggestion of shyness in her manner, and it is
just possible that this softened the old cynic's heart, for his manner
was kinder and almost fatherly when he spoke again.

“Ah!” he said, “at your time of life you do not want much--plenty of
partners and a few ices. Both easily obtainable.”

The last words were turned into a compliment by the courtly inclination
of the head that accompanied them.

The exigencies of the moment forced the young people to go with the
stream.

“Jack,” said Sir John, as they passed on, “when you have been deprived
of Miss Chyne's society, come and console yourself with a glass of
sherry.”

The dutiful son nodded a semi-indifferent acquiescence and disappeared.

“Wonderful thing, sherry!” observed Sir John Meredith for his own
edification.

He waited there until Jack returned, and then they set off in search
of refreshment. The son seemed to know his whereabouts better than the
father.

“This way,” he said, “through the conservatory.”

Amidst the palms and tropical ferns Sir John paused. A great deal of
care had been devoted to this conservatory. Half hidden among languorous
scented flowers were a thousand tiny lights, while overhead in the
gloom towered graceful palms and bananas. A fountain murmured pleasantly
amidst a cluster of maidenhairs. The music from the ballroom fell softly
over all.

Sir John Meredith and his son stood in silence, looking around them.
Finally their eyes met.

“Are you in earnest with that girl?” asked Sir John abruptly.

“I am,” replied Jack. He was smiling pleasantly.

“And you think there is a chance of her marrying you--unless, of course,
something better turns up?”

“With all due modesty I do.”

Sir John's hand was at his mouth. He stood up his full six feet two and
looked hard at his son, whose eyes were level with his own. They were
ideal representatives of their school.

“And what do you propose marrying upon? She, I understand, has about
eight hundred a year. I respect you too much to suspect any foolish
notions of love in a cottage.”

Jack Meredith made no reply. He was entirely dependent upon his father.

“Of course,” said Sir John, “when I die you will be a baronet, and there
will be enough to live on like a gentleman. You had better tell Miss
Chyne that. She may not know it. Girls are so innocent. But I am not
dead yet, and I shall take especial care to live some time.”

“In order to prevent my marriage?” suggested Jack. He was still smiling,
and somehow Sir John felt a little uneasy. He did not understand that
smile.

“Precisely so,” he said, rather indistinctly.

“What is your objection?” inquired Jack Meredith, after a little pause.

“I object to the girl.”

“Upon what grounds?”

“I should prefer you to marry a woman of heart.”

“Heart?” repeated Jack, with a suspicion of hereditary cynicism. “I do
not think heart is of much consequence. Besides, in this case, surely
that is my province! you would not have her wear it on her sleeve?”

“She could not do that: not enough sleeve.”

Sir John Meredith had his own views on ladies' dress.

“But,” he added, “we will not quarrel. Arrange matters with the young
lady as best you can. I shall never approve of such a match, and without
my approval you cannot well marry.”

“I do not admit that.”

“Indeed?”

“Your approval means money,” explained this dutiful son politely. “I
might manage to make the money for myself.”

Sir John moved away.

“You might,” he admitted, looking back. “I should be very glad to see
you doing so. It is an excellent thing--money.”

And he walked leisurely away.



CHAPTER III. A FAREWELL



                              Since called
     The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.

Having been taught to take all the chances and changes of life with
a well-bred calmness of demeanour, Jack Meredith turned the teaching
against the instructor. He pursued the course of his social duties
without appearing to devote so much as a thought to the quarrel which
had taken place in the conservatory. His smile was as ready as ever, his
sight as keen where an elderly lady looked hungry, his laughter as near
the surface as society demands. It is probable that Sir John suffered
more, though he betrayed nothing. Youth has the upper hand in these
cases, for life is a larger thing when we are young. As we get on in
years, our eggs, to use a homely simile, have a way of accumulating into
one basket.

At eleven o'clock the next morning Sir John Meredith's valet intimated
to his master that Mr. Meredith was waiting in the breakfast-room. Sir
John was in the midst of his toilet--a complicated affair, which, like
other works of art, would not bear contemplation when incomplete.

“Tell him,” said the uncompromising old gentleman, “that I will come
down when I am ready.”

He made a more careful toilet than usual, and finally came down in a gay
tweed suit, of which the general effect was distinctly heightened by a
pair of white gaiters. He was upright, trim, and perfectly determined.
Jack noted that his clothes looked a little emptier than usual--that was
all.

“Well,” said the father, “I suppose we both made fools of ourselves last
night.”

“I have not yet seen you do that,” replied the son, laying aside the
morning paper which he had been reading.

Sir John smiled grimly. He hoped that Jack was right.

“Well,” he added, “let us call it a difference of opinion.”

“Yes.”

Something in the monosyllable made the old gentleman's lips twitch
nervously.

“I may mention,” he said, with a dangerous suavity, “that I still hold
to my opinion.”

Jack Meredith rose, without haste. This, like the interview of the
previous night, was conducted upon strictly high-bred and gentlemanly
lines.

“And I to mine,” he said. “That is why I took the liberty of calling at
this early hour. I thought that perhaps we might effect some sort of a
compromise.”

“It is very good of you to make the proposal.” Sir John kept his fingers
away from his lips by an obvious exercise of self-control. “I am not
partial to compromises: they savour of commerce.”

Jack gave a queer, curt nod, and moved towards the door. Sir John
extended his unsteady hand and rang the bell.

“Good-morning,” he said.

“Graves,” he added, to the servant who stood in the doorway, “when you
have closed the door behind Mr. Meredith, bring up breakfast, if you
please.”

On the doorstep Jack Meredith looked at his watch. He had an appointment
with Millicent Chyne at half-past eleven--an hour when Lady Cantourne
might reasonably be expected to be absent at the weekly meeting of a
society which, under the guise and nomenclature of friendship, busied
itself in making servant girls discontented with their situations.

It was only eleven o'clock. Jack turned to the left, out of the quiet
but fashionable street, and a few steps took him to Piccadilly. He went
into the first jeweller's shop he saw, and bought a plain diamond ring.
Then he walked on to keep his appointment with his affianced wife.

Miss Millicent Chyne was waiting for him with that mixture of maidenly
feelings of which the discreet novelist only details a selection. It is
not customary to dwell upon thoughts of vague regret at the approaching
withdrawal of a universal admiration--at the future necessity for
discreet and humdrum behaviour quite devoid of the excitement that lurks
in a double meaning. Let it, therefore, be ours to note the outward
signs of a very natural emotion. Miss Chyne noted them herself with
care, and not without a few deft touches to hair and dress. When Jack
Meredith entered the room she was standing near the window, holding back
the curtain with one hand and watching, half shyly, for his advent.

What struck her at once was his gravity; and he must have seen the droop
in her eyes, for he immediately assumed the pleasant, half-reckless
smile which the world of London society had learnt to associate with his
name.

He played the lover rather well, with that finish and absence of
self-consciousness which only comes from sincerity; and when Miss Chyne
found opportunity to look at him a second time she was fully
convinced that she loved him. She was, perhaps, carried off her feet a
little--metaphorically speaking, of course--by his evident sincerity.
At that moment she would have done anything that he had asked her. The
pleasures of society, the social amenities of aristocratic life, seemed
to have vanished suddenly into thin air, and only love was left. She had
always known that Jack Meredith was superior in a thousand ways to all
her admirers. More gentlemanly, more truthful, honester, nobler, more
worthy of love. Beyond that, he was cleverer, despite a certain laziness
of disposition--more brilliant and more amusing. He had always been to a
great extent the chosen one; and yet it was with a certain surprise and
sense of unreality that she found what she had drifted into. She saw the
diamond ring, and looked upon it with the beautiful emotions aroused
by those small stones in the female breast; but she did not seem to
recognise her own finger within the golden hoop.

It was at this moment--while she dwelt in this new unreal world--that he
elected to tell her of his quarrel with his father. And when one walks
through a maze of unrealities nothing seems to come amiss or to cause
surprise. He detailed the very words they had used, and to Millicent
Chyne it did not sound like a real quarrel such as might affect two
lives to their very end. It was not important. It did not come into her
life; for at that moment she did not know what her life was.

“And so,” said Jack Meredith, finishing his story, “we have begun
badly--as badly as the most romantic might desire.”

“Yes, theoretically it is consoling. But I am sorry, Jack, very sorry. I
hate quarrelling with anybody.”

“So do I. I haven't time as a rule. But the old gentleman is so easy to
quarrel with, he takes all the trouble.”

“Jack,” she said, with pretty determination, “you must go and say you
are sorry. Go now! I wish I could go with you.”

But Meredith did not move. He was smiling at her in evident admiration.
She looked very pretty with that determined little pout of the lips,
and perhaps she knew it. Moreover, he did not seem to attach so much
importance to the thought as to the result--to the mind as to the lips.

“Ah!” he said, “you do not know the old gentleman. That is not our way
of doing things. We are not expansive.”

His face was grave again, and she noticed it with a sudden throb of
misgiving. She did not want to begin taking life seriously so soon. It
was like going back to school in the middle of the holidays.

“But it will be all right in a day or two, will it not? It is not
serious,” she said.

“I am afraid it is serious, Millicent.”

He took her hand with a gravity which made matters worse.

“What a pity!” she exclaimed; and somehow both the words and the speaker
rang shallow. She did not seem to grasp the situation, which was perhaps
beyond her reach. But she did the next best thing. She looked puzzled,
pretty, and helpless.

“What is to be done, Jack?” she said, laying her two hands on his breast
and looking up pleadingly.

There was something in the man's clear-cut face--something beyond
aristocratic repose--as he looked down into her eyes--something which
Sir John Meredith might perhaps have liked to see there. To all men
comes, soon or late, the moment wherein their lives are suddenly thrust
into their own hands to shape or spoil, to make or mar. It seemed that
where a clever man had failed, this light-hearted girl was about
to succeed. Two small clinging hands on Jack Meredith's breast had
apparently wrought more than all Sir John's care and foresight. At last
the light of energy gleamed in Jack Meredith's lazy eyes. At last he
faced the “initiative,” and seemed in no wise abashed.

“There are two things,” he answered; “a small choice.”

“Yes.”

“The first and the simplest,” he went on in the tone of voice which she
had never quite fathomed--half cynical, half amused--“is to pretend that
last night--never was.”

He waited for her verdict.

“We will not do that,” she replied softly; “we will take the other
alternative, whatever it is.”

She glanced up half shyly beneath her lashes, and he felt that no
difficulty could affright him.

“The other is generally supposed to be very difficult,” he said. “It
means--waiting.”

“Oh,” she answered cheerfully, “there is no hurry. I do not want to be
married yet.”

“Waiting perhaps for years,” he added--and he saw her face drop.

“Why?”

“Because I am dependent on my father for everything. We could not marry
without his consent.”

A peculiar, hard look crept into her eyes, and in some subtle way it
made her look older. After a little pause she said:

“But we can surely get that--between us?”

“I propose doing without it.”

She looked up--past him--out of the window. All the youthfulness seemed
to have left her face, but he did not appear to see that.

“How can you do so?”

“Well, I can work. I suppose I must be good for something--a bountiful
Providence must surely have seen to that. The difficulty is to find out
what it intends me for. We are not called in the night nowadays to a
special mission--we have to find it out for ourselves.”

“Do you know what I should like you to be?” she said, with a bright
smile and one of those sudden descents into shallowness which he
appeared to like.

“What?”

“A politician.”

“Then I shall be a politician,” he answered, with loverlike promptness.

“That would be very nice,” she said; and the castles she at once began
to build were not entirely aerial in their structure.

This was not a new idea. They had talked of politics before as a
possible career for himself. They had moved in a circle where politics
and politicians held a first place--a circle removed above the glamour
of art, and wherein Bohemianism was not reckoned an attraction. She knew
that behind his listlessness of manner he possessed a certain steady
energy, perfect self-command, and that combination of self-confidence
and indifference which usually attains success in the world. She was
ambitious not only for herself but for him, and she was shrewd enough to
know that the only safe outlet for a woman's ambition is the channel of
a husband's career.

“But,” he said, “it will mean waiting.”

He paused, and then the worldly wisdom which he had learnt from his
father--that worldly wisdom which is sometimes called cynicism--prompted
him to lay the matter before her in its worst light.

“It will mean waiting for a couple of years at least. And for you it
will mean the dulness of a long engagement, and the anomalous position
of an engaged girl without her rightful protector. It will mean that
your position in society will be quite different--that half the world
will pity you, while the other half thinks you--well, a fool for your
pains.”

“I don't care,” she answered.

“Of course,” he went on, “I must go away. That is the only way to get on
in politics in these days. I must go away and get a speciality. I must
know more about some country than any other man; and when I come back
I must keep that country ever before the eye of the intelligent British
workman who reads the halfpenny evening paper. That is fame--those are
politics.”

She laughed. There seemed to be no fear of her taking life too seriously
yet. And, truth to tell, he did not appear to wish her to do so.

“But you must not go very far,” she said sweetly.

“Africa.”

“Africa? That does not sound interesting.”

“It is interesting: moreover, it is the coming country. I may be able to
make money out there, and money is a necessity at present.”

“I do not like it, Jack,” she said in a foreboding voice. “When do you
go?”

“At once--in fact, I came to say good-bye. It is better to do these
things very promptly--to disappear before the onlookers have quite
understood what is happening. When they begin to understand they begin
to interfere. They cannot help it. I will write to Lady Cantourne if you
like.”

“No, I will tell her.”

So he bade her good-bye, and those things that lovers say were duly
said; but they are not for us to chronicle. Such words are better left
to be remembered or forgotten as time and circumstance and result may
decree. For one may never tell what words will do when they are laid
within the years like the little morsel of leaven that leaveneth the
whole.



CHAPTER IV. A TRAGEDY



     Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.

In his stately bedroom on the second floor of the quietest house in
Russell Square Mr. Thomas Oscard--the eccentric Oscard--lay, perhaps,
a-dying.

Thomas Oscard had written the finest history of an extinct people that
had ever been penned; and it has been decreed that he who writes a
fine history or paints a fine picture can hardly be too eccentric. Our
business, however, does not lie in the life of this historian--a life
which certain grave wiseacres from the West End had shaken their
heads over a few hours before we find him lying prone on a four-poster
counting for the thousandth time the number of tassels fringing the
roof of it. In bold contradiction to the medical opinion, the nurse was,
however, hopeful. Whether this comforting condition of mind arose from
long experience of the ways of doctors, or from an acquired philosophy,
it is not our place to inquire. But that her opinion was sincere is
not to be doubted. She had, as a matter of fact, gone to the pantomime,
leaving the patient under the immediate eye of his son, Guy Oscard.

The temporary nurse was sitting in a cretonne-covered armchair, with a
book of travel on his knee, and thoughts of Millicent Chyne in his mind.
The astute have no doubt discovered ere this that the mind of Mr. Guy
Oscard was a piece of mental mechanism more noticeable for solidity of
structure than brilliancy or rapidity of execution. Thoughts and ideas
and principles had a strange way of getting mixed up with the machinery,
and sticking there. Guy Oscard had, for instance, concluded some years
before that the Winchester rifle was, as he termed it, “no go”; and if
the Pope of Rome and the patentee of the firearm in question had crossed
Europe upon their bended knees to persuade him to use a Winchester
rifle, he would have received them with a pleasant smile and an offer
of refreshment. He would have listened to their arguments with that
patience of manner which characterises men of large stature, and for
the rest of his days he would have continued to follow big game with
an “Express” double-barrelled rifle as heretofore. Men who decide such
small matters as these for themselves, after mature and somewhat slow
consideration, have a way of also deciding the large issues of life
without pausing to consider either expediency or the experience of their
neighbours.

During the last forty-eight hours Guy Oscard had made the decision that
life without Millicent Chyne would not be worth having, and in the
hush of the great house he was pondering over this new feature in his
existence. Like all deliberate men, he was placidly sanguine. Something
in the life of savage sport that he had led had no doubt taught him to
rely upon his own nerve and capacity more than do most men. It is the
indoor atmosphere that contains the germ of pessimism.

His thoughts cannot have been disturbing, for presently his eyes closed
and he appeared to be slumbering. If it was sleep, it was the light
unconsciousness of the traveller; for a sound so small, that waking ears
could scarce have heard it, caused him to lift his lashes cautiously. It
was the sound of bare feet on carpet.

Through his lashes Guy Oscard saw his father standing on the hearthrug
within two yards of him. There was something strange, something
unnatural and disturbing, about the movements of the man that made Guy
keep quite still--watching him.

Upon the mantelpiece the medicine bottles were arranged in a row, and
the “eccentric Oscard” was studying the labels with a feverish haste.
One bottle--a blue one--bore two labels: the smaller, of brilliant
orange colour, with the word “Poison” in startling simplicity. He took
this up and slowly drew the cork. It was a liniment for neuralgic
pains in an overwrought head--belladonna. He poured some into a
medicine-glass, carefully measuring two tablespoonsful.

Then Guy Oscard sprang up and wrenched the glass away from him, throwing
the contents into the fire, which flared up. Quick as thought the bottle
was at the sick man's lips. He was a heavily built man with powerful
limbs. Guy seized his arm, closed with him, and for a moment there was
a deadly struggle, while the pungent odour of the poison filled
the atmosphere. At last Guy fell back on art: he tripped his father
cleverly, and they both rolled on the floor.

The sick man still gripped the bottle, but he could not get it to his
lips. He poured some of the stuff over his son's face, but fortunately
missed his eyes. They struggled on the floor in the dim light, panting
and gasping, but speaking no word. The strength of the elder man was
unnatural--it frightened the younger and stronger combatant.

At last Guy Oscard got his knee on his father's neck, and bent his wrist
back until he was forced to let go his hold on the bottle.

“Get back to bed!” said the son breathlessly. “Get back to bed.”

Thomas Oscard suddenly changed his tactics. He whined and cringed to his
own offspring, and begged him to give him the bottle. He dragged across
the floor on his knees--three thousand pounds a year on its knees to Guy
Oscard, who wanted that money because he knew that he would never get
Millicent Chyne without it.

“Get back to bed!” repeated Guy sternly, and at last the man crept
sullenly between the rumpled sheets.

Guy put things straight in a simple, man-like way. The doctor's
instructions were quite clear. If any sign of excitement or mental
unrest manifested itself, the sleeping-draught contained in a small
bottle on the mantelpiece was to be administered at once, or the
consequences would be fatal. But Thomas Oscard refused to take it. He
seemed determined to kill himself. The son stood over him and tried
threats, persuasion, prayers; and all the while there was in his heart
the knowledge that, unless his father could be made to sleep, the
reputed three thousand a year would be his before the morning.

It was worse than the actual physical struggle on the floor. The
temptation was almost too strong.

After a while the sick man became quieter, but he still refused to take
the opiate. He closed his eyes and made no answer to Guy's repeated
supplication. Finally he ceased shaking his head in negation, and at
last breathed regularly like a child asleep.

Afterwards Guy Oscard reproached himself for suspecting nothing. But
he knew nothing of brain diseases--those strange maladies that kill the
human in the human being. He knew, however, why his father had tried to
kill himself. It was not the first time. It was panic. He was afraid of
going mad, of dying mad like his father before him. People called him
eccentric. Some said that he was mad. But it was not so. It was only
fear of madness. He was still asleep when the nurse came back from the
pantomime in a cab, and Guy crept softly downstairs to let her in.

They stood in the hall for some time while Guy told her in whispers
about the belladonna liniment. Then they went upstairs together and
found Thomas Oscard--the great historian--dead on the floor. The
liniment bottle, which Guy had left on the mantelpiece, was in his
hand--empty. He had feigned sleep in order to carry out his purpose.
He had preferred death, of which the meaning was unknown to him, to the
possibility of that living death in which his father had lingered for
many years. And who shall say that his thoughts were entirely selfish?
There may have been a father's love somewhere in this action. Thomas
Oscard, the eccentric savant, had always been a strong man, independent
of the world's opinion. He had done this thing deliberately, of mature
thought, going straight to his Creator with his poor human brain full of
argument and reason to prove himself right before the Judge.

They picked him up and laid him reverently on the bed, and then Guy went
for the doctor.

“I could,” said the attendant of Death, when he had heard the whole
story--“I could give you a certificate. I could reconcile it, I mean,
with my professional conscience and my--other conscience. He could not
have lived thirty hours--there was an abscess on his brain. But I should
advise you to face the inquest. It might be”--he paused, looking keenly
into the young fellow's face--“it might be that at some future date,
when you are quite an old man, you may feel inclined to tell this
story.”

Again the doctor paused, glancing with a vague smile towards the woman
who stood beside them. “Or even nurse--” he added, not troubling to
finish his sentence. “We all have our moments of expansiveness. And it
is a story that might easily be--discredited.”

So the “eccentric Oscard” finished his earthly career in the
intellectual atmosphere of a coroner's jury. And the world rather liked
it than otherwise. The world, one finds, does like novelty, even in
death. Some day an American will invent a new funeral, and if he can
only get the patent, will make a fortune.

The world was, moreover, pleased to pity Guy Oscard with that pure and
simple sympathy which is ever accorded to the wealthy in affliction.
Every one knew that Thomas Oscard had enjoyed affluence during his
lifetime, and there was no reason to suppose that Guy would not step
into very comfortably lined shoes. It was unfortunate that he should
lose his father in such a tragic way, and the keen eye of the world
saw the weak point in his story at once. But the coroner's jury was
respectful, and the rest of society never so much as hinted at the
possibility that Guy had not tried his best to keep his father alive.

Among the letters of sympathy, the young fellow received a note from
Lady Cantourne, whose acquaintance he had successfully renewed, and in
due course he called at her house in Vere Gardens to express somewhat
lamely his gratitude.

Her ladyship was at home, and Guy Oscard was ushered into her presence.
He looked round the room, with a half-suppressed gleam of searching
which was not overlooked by Millicent Chyne's aunt.

“It is very good of you to call,” she said, “so soon after your poor
father's death. You must have had a great deal of trouble and worry.
Millicent and I have often talked of you, and sympathised with you. She
is out at the moment, but I expect her back almost at once. Will you sit
down?”

“Thanks,” he said; and after he had drawn forward a chair he repeated
the word vaguely and comprehensively--“Thanks”--as if to cover as many
demands for gratitude as she could make.

“I knew your father very well,” continued the lady, “when we were young.
Great things were expected of him. Perhaps he expected them himself.
That may have accounted for a tone of pessimism that always seemed
to pervade his life. Now, you are quite different. You are not a
pessimist--eh?”

Guy gravely examined the back of his gloved hand. “Well, I am afraid I
have not given much thought to the question.”

Lady Cantourne gave him the benefit of a very wise smile. She was
unrivalled in the art of turning a young man's mind inside out and
shaking it.

“No! you need not apologise. I am glad you have given no thought to it.
Thought is the beginning of pessimism, especially with young men; for if
they think at all, they naturally think of themselves.”

“Well, I suppose I think as much of myself as other people.”

“Possibly; but I doubt it. Will you ring the bell? We will have some
tea.”

He obeyed, and she watched him with approval. For some reason--possibly
because he had not sought it--Lady Cantourne had bestowed her entire
approval on this young man. She had been duly informed, a few weeks
before this visit, that Miss Millicent Chyne had engaged herself to be
married to Jack Meredith whenever that youth should find himself in
a position to claim the fulfilment of her promise. She said nothing
against the choice or the decision, merely observing that she was sorry
that Jack had quarrelled with his father. By way of counsel she advised
strongly that the engagement be kept as much in the background as
possible. She did not, she said, want Millicent to be a sort of red rag
to Sir John, and there was no necessity to publish abroad the lamentable
fact that a quarrel had resulted from a very natural and convenient
attachment. Sir John was a faddist, and, like the rest of his kind,
eminently pig-headed. It was more than likely that in a few months he
would recall his son, and, in the meantime, it never did a girl any good
to be quarrelled over.

Lady Cantourne was too clever a woman to object to the engagement. On
the contrary, she allowed it to be understood that such a match was
in many ways entirely satisfactory. At the same time, however, she
encouraged Guy Oscard to come to the house, knowing quite well that he
was entirely unaware of the existence of Jack Meredith.

“I am,” she was in the habit of saying, “a great advocate for allowing
young people to manage their affairs themselves. One young man, if he be
the right one, has more influence with a girl than a thousand old women;
and it is just possible that he knows better than they do what is for
her happiness. It is the interference that makes mischief.”

So she did not interfere. She merely invited Guy Oscard to stay to tea.



CHAPTER V. WITH EDGED TOOLS



                    Do not give dalliance
     Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw
     To the fire i' the blood.

“And what do you intend to do with yourself?” asked Lady Cantourne when
she had poured out tea. “You surely do not intend to mope in that dismal
house in Russell Square?”

“No, I shall let it if I can.”

“Oh, you will have no difficulty in doing that. People live in Russell
Square again now, and try to make one believe that it is a fashionable
quarter. Your father stayed on there because the carpets fitted the
rooms, and on account of other ancestral conveniences. He did not
live there--he knew nothing of his immediate environments. He lived in
Phoenicia.”

“Then,” continued Guy Oscard, “I shall go abroad.”

“Ah! Will you have a second cup? Why will you go abroad?”

Guy Oscard paused for a moment. “I know an old hippopotamus in a certain
African river who has twice upset me. I want to go back and shoot him.”

“Don't go at once; that would be running away from it--not from the
hippopotamus--from the inquest. It does not matter being upset in an
African river; but you must not be upset in London by--an inquest.”

“I did not propose going at once,” replied Guy Oscard, with a peculiar
smile which Lady Cantourne thought she understood. “It will take me some
time to set my affairs in order--the will, and all that.”

Lady Cantourne waited with perfectly suppressed curiosity, and while
she was waiting Millicent Chyne came into the room. The girl was dressed
with her habitual perfect taste and success, and she came forward with
a smile of genuine pleasure, holding out a small hand neatly gloved in
Suede. Her ladyship was looking not at Millicent, but at Guy Oscard.

Millicent was glad that he had called, and said so. She did not add that
during the three months that had elapsed since Jack Meredith's sudden
departure she had gradually recognised the approaching ebb of a very
full tide of popularity. It was rather dull at times, when Jack's
letters arrived at intervals of two and sometimes of three weeks--when
her girl friends allowed her to see somewhat plainly that she was no
longer to be counted as one of themselves. An engagement sits as it were
on a young lady like a weak heart on a schoolboy, setting her apart in
work and play, debarring her from participation in that game of life
which is ever going forward where young folks do congregate.

Moreover, she liked Guy Oscard. He aroused her curiosity. There was
something in him--something which she vaguely suspected to be connected
with herself--which she wanted to drag out and examine. She possessed
more than the usual allowance of curiosity--which is saying a good deal;
for one may take it that the beginning of all things in the feminine
mind is curiosity. They want to know what is inside Love before they
love. Guy Oscard was a new specimen of the genus homo; and while
remaining perfectly faithful to Jack, Miss Millicent Chyne saw no reason
why she should not pass the time by studying him, merely, of course,
in a safe and innocent manner. She was one of those intelligent young
ladies who think deeply--about young men. And such thinking usually
takes the form of speculation as to how the various specimens selected
will act under specified circumstances. The circumstances need hardly
be mentioned. Young men are only interesting to young women in
circumstances strictly personal to and bearing upon themselves. In a
word, maidens of a speculative mind are always desirous of finding out
how different men will act when they are in love; and we all know
and cannot fail to applaud the assiduity with which they pursue their
studies.

“Ah!” said Miss Chyne, “it is very good of you to take pity upon two
lone females. I was afraid that you had gone off to the wilds of America
or somewhere in search of big game. Do you know, Mr. Oscard, you are
quite a celebrity? I heard you called the 'big-game man' the other day,
also the 'travelling fellow.'”

The specimen smiled happily under this delicate handling.

“It is not,” he said modestly, “a very lofty fame. Anybody could let off
a rifle.”

“I am afraid I could not,” replied Millicent, with a pretty little
shudder of horror, “if anything growled.”

“Mr. Oscard has just been telling me,” interposed Lady Cantourne
conversationally, “that he is thinking of going off to the wilds again.”

“Then it is very disappointing of him,” said Millicent, with a
little droop of the eyelids which went home. “It seems to be only the
uninteresting people who stay at home and live humdrum lives of enormous
duration.”

“He seems to think that his friends are going to cast him off because
his poor father died without the assistance of a medical man,” continued
the old lady meaningly.

“No--I never said that, Lady Cantourne.”

“But you implied it.”

Guy Oscard shook his head. “I hate being a notoriety,” he said. “I like
to pass through with the crowd. If I go away for a little while I shall
return a nonentity.”

At this moment another visitor was announced, and presently made his
appearance. He was an old gentleman of no personality whatever, who was
nevertheless welcomed effusively, because two people in the room had
a distinct use for him. Lady Cantourne was exceedingly gracious. She
remembered instantly that horticulture was among his somewhat antiquated
accomplishments, and she was immediately consumed with a desire to show
him the conservatory which she had had built outside the drawing-room
window. She took a genuine interest in this abode of flowers, and
watered the plants herself with much enthusiasm--when she remembered.

Added to a number of positive virtues the old gentleman possessed that
of abstaining from tea, which enabled the two horticulturists to repair
to the conservatory at once, leaving the young people alone at the other
end of the drawing-room.

Millicent smoothed her gloves with downcast eyes and that demure air by
which the talented fair imply the consciousness of being alone and out
of others' earshot with an interesting member of the stronger sex.

Guy sat and watched the Suede gloves with a certain sense of placid
enjoyment. Then suddenly he spoke, continuing his remarks where they had
been broken off by the advent of the useful old gentleman.

“You see,” he said, “it is only natural that a great many people should
give me the cold shoulder. My story was a little lame. There is no
reason why they should believe in me.”

“I believe in you,” she answered.

“Thank you.”

He looked at her in a strange way, as if he liked her terse creed, and
would fain have heard it a second time. Then suddenly he leant back with
his head against a corner of the piano. The fronds of a maidenhair fern
hanging in delicate profusion almost hid his face. He was essentially
muscular in his thoughts, and did not make the most of his dramatic
effects. The next remark was made by a pair of long legs ending off
with patent-leather boots which were not quite new. The rest of him was
invisible.

“It was a very unpleasant business,” he said, in a jerky, self-conscious
voice. “I didn't know that I was that sort of fellow. The temptation was
very great. I nearly gave in and let him do it. He was a stronger man
than I. You know--we did not get on well together. He always hoped
that I would turn out a literary sort of fellow, and I suppose he was
disappointed. I tried at one time, but I found it was no good. From
indifference it turned almost to hatred. He disliked me intensely, and I
am afraid I did not care for him very much.”

She nodded her head, and he went on. Perhaps he could see her through
the maidenhair fern. She was getting more and more interested in this
man. He obviously disliked talking of himself--a pleasant change which
aroused her curiosity. He was so unlike other men, and his life seemed
to be different from the lives of the men whom she had known--stronger,
more intense, and of greater variety of incident.

“Of course,” he went on, “his death was really of enormous advantage to
me. They say that I shall have two or three thousand a year, instead of
five hundred, paid quarterly at Cox's. He could not prevent it coming to
me. It was my mother's money. He would have done so if he could, for
we never disguised our antipathy for each other. Yet we lived together,
and--and I had the nursing of him.”

Millicent was listening gravely without interrupting--like a man. She
had the gift of adapting herself to her environments in a marked degree.

“And,” he added curtly, “no one knows how much I wanted that three
thousand a year.”

The girl moved uneasily, and glanced towards the conservatory.

“He was not an old man,” Guy Oscard went on. “He was only forty-nine. He
might have lived another thirty years.”

She nodded, understanding the significance of his tone.

“There,” he said, with an awkward laugh, “do you still believe in me?”

“Yes,” she answered, still looking away.

There was a little pause. They were both sitting forward in their chairs
looking towards the conservatory.

“It was not the money that tempted me,” said Guy very deliberately; “it
was you.”

She rose from her chair as if to join her aunt and the horticultural old
gentleman.

“You must not say that,” she said, in little more than a whisper, and
without looking round she went towards Lady Cantourne. Her eyes were
gleaming with a singular suppressed excitement, such as one sees in the
eyes of a man fresh from a mad run across country.

Guy Oscard rose also, and followed more deliberately. There was nothing
for him to do but to take his leave.

“But,” said Lady Cantourne graciously, “if you are determined to go away
you must at least come and say good-bye before you leave.”

“Thanks; I should like to do so, if I may.”

“We shall be deeply disappointed if you forget,” said Millicent, holding
out her hand, with a smile full of light-heartedness and innocent
girlish friendship.



CHAPTER VI. UNDER THE LINE



     Enough of simpering and grimace,
     Enough of vacuity, trimmed with lace.

“Curse this country! Curse it--curse it!” The man spoke aloud, but there
was no one near to hear. He shook his skinny yellow fist out over the
broad river that crept greasily down to the equatorial sea.

All around him the vegetable kingdom had asserted its sovereignty. At
his back loomed a dense forest, impenetrable to the foot of man, defying
his puny hand armed with axe or saw. The trees were not high, few of
them being above twenty feet, but from their branches creepers and
parasites hung in tangled profusion, interlaced, joining tree to tree
for acres, nay for miles.

As far as the eye could reach either bank of the slow river was thus
covered with rank vegetation--mile after mile without variety, without
hope. The glassy surface of the water was broken here and there by
certain black forms floating like logs half hidden beneath the wave.
These were crocodiles. The river was the Ogowe, and the man who cursed
it was Victor Durnovo, employe of the Loango Trading Association, whose
business it was at that season to travel into the interior of Africa to
buy, barter, or steal ivory for his masters.

He was a small-faced man, with a squarely aquiline nose and a black
moustache, which hung like a valance over his mouth. From the growth of
that curtain-like moustache Victor Durnovo's worldly prosperity might
have been said to date. No one seeing his mouth had before that time
been prevailed upon to trust him. Nature has a way of hanging out signs
and then covering them up, so that the casual fail to see. He was a man
of medium height, with abnormally long arms and a somewhat truculent way
of walking, as if his foot was ever ready to kick anything or any person
who might come in his way.

His movements were nervous and restless, although he was tired out and
half-starved. The irritability of Africa was upon him--had hold over
him--gripped him remorselessly. No one knows what it is, but it is
there, and sometimes it is responsible for murder. It makes honourable
European gentlemen commit crimes of which they blush to think in after
days. The Powers may draw up treaties and sign the same, but there
will never be a peaceful division of the great wasted land so near to
Southern Europe. There may be peace in Berlin, or Brussels, or London,
but because the atmosphere of Africa is not the same as that of the
great cities, there will be no peace beneath the Equator. From the West
Coast of Africa to the East men will fight and quarrel and bicker so
long as human nerves are human nerves. The irritability lurks in the
shades of boundless forests where men may starve for want of animal
sustenance; it hovers over the broad bosoms of a hundred slow rivers
haunted by the mysterious crocodile, the weird hippopotamus. It is
everywhere, and by reason of it men quarrel about trifles and descend to
brutal passion over a futile discussion.

Victor Durnovo had sent his boatmen into the forest to find a few
bananas, a few handsful of firewood, and while they were absent he gave
vent to that wild unreasoning passion which is inhaled into the white
man's lungs with the air of equatorial Africa. For there are moral
microbes in the atmosphere of different countries, and we must not judge
one land by the laws of another. There is the fatalism of India, the
restlessness of New York, the fear of the Arctic, the irritability of
Africa.

“Curse this country!” he shouted, “curse it--curse it! River and
tree--man and beast!”

He rose and slouched down to his boat, which lay moored to a snag
alongside the bank, trodden hard to the consistency of asphalte by a
hundred bare feet. He stepped over the gunwale and made his way aft with
a practised balancing step. The after part of the canoe was decked in
and closed with lock and key. The key hung at his watch-chain--a large
chain with square links and a suggestive doubtfulness of colour. It
might have been gold, but the man who wore it somehow imparted to it a
suggestion of baser metal.

He opened the locker and took from it a small chest. From this he
selected a bottle, and, rummaging in the recesses of the locker, he
found an unwashed tumbler. Into half a glass of water he dropped a
minute quantity from the bottle and drank off the mixture. The passion
had left him now, and quite suddenly he looked yellow and very weak. He
was treating himself scientifically for the irritability to which he had
given way. Then he returned to the bank and laid down at full length.
The skin of his face must have been giving him great pain, for it was
scarlet in places and exuding from sun-blisters. He had long ago given
up wiping the perspiration from his brow, and evidently did not care to
wash his face.

Presently a peacefulness seemed to come over him, for his eyes lost
their glitter and his heavy lids drooped. His arms were crossed behind
his head--before him lay the river.

Suddenly he sat upright, all eagerness and attention. Not a leaf
stirred. It was about five o'clock in the evening, the stillest hour of
the twenty-four. In such a silence the least sound would travel almost
any distance, and there was a sound travelling over the water to him.
It was nothing but a thud repeated with singular regularity; but to his
practised ears it conveyed much. He knew that a boat was approaching,
as yet hidden by some distant curve in the river. The thud was caused by
the contact of six paddles with the gunwale of the canoe as the paddlers
withdrew them from the water.

Victor Durnovo rose again and brought from the boat a second rifle,
which he laid beside the double-barrelled Reilly which was never more
than a yard away from him, waking or sleeping. Then he waited. He knew
that no boat could reach the bank without his full permission, for every
rower would be dead before they got within a hundred yards of his rifle.
He was probably the best rifle-shot but one in that country--and the
other, the very best, happened to be in the approaching canoe.

After the space of ten minutes the boat came in sight--a long black form
on the still waters. It was too far away for him to distinguish anything
beyond the fact that it was a native boat.

“Eight hundred yards,” muttered Durnovo over the sight of his rifle.

He looked upon this river as his own, and he knew the native of
equatorial Africa. Therefore he dropped a bullet into the water, under
the bow of the canoe, at eight hundred yards.

A moment later there was a sound which can only be written “P-ttt”
 between his legs, and he had to wipe a shower of dust from his eyes. A
puff of blue smoke rose slowly over the boat and a sharp report broke
the silence a second time.

Then Victor Durnovo leapt to his feet and waved his hat in the air. From
the canoe there was an answering greeting, and the man on the bank went
to the water's edge, still carrying the rifle from which he was never
parted.

Durnovo was the first to speak when the boat came within hail.

“Very sorry,” he shouted. “Thought you were a native boat. Must
establish a funk--get in the first shot, you know.”

“All right,” replied one of the Europeans in the approaching craft, with
a courteous wave of the hand, “no harm done.”

There were two white men and six blacks in the long and clumsy boat. One
of the Europeans lay in the bows while the other was stretched at his
ease in the stern, reclining on the canvas of a neatly folded tent. The
last-named was evidently the leader of the little expedition, while the
manner and attitude of the man in the bows suggested the servitude of a
disciplined soldier slightly relaxed by abnormal circumstances.

“Who fired that shot?” inquired Durnovo, when there was no longer any
necessity to shout.

“Joseph,” replied the man in the stern of the boat, indicating his
companion. “Was it a near thing?”

“About as near as I care about--it threw up the dust between my legs.”

The man called Joseph grinned. Nature had given him liberally of the
wherewithal for indulgence in that relaxation, and Durnovo smiled rather
constrainedly. Joseph was grabbing at the long reedy grass, bringing
the canoe to a standstill, and it was some moments before his extensive
mouth submitted to control.

“I presume you are Mr. Durnovo,” said the man in the stern of the
boat, rising leisurely from his recumbent position and speaking with a
courteous savoir-faire which seemed slightly out of place in the wilds
of Central Africa. He was a tall man with a small aristocratic head and
a refined face, which somehow suggested an aristocrat of old France.

“Yes,” answered Durnovo.

The tall man stepped ashore and held out his hand.

“I am glad we have met you,” he said; “I have a letter of introduction
to you from Maurice Gordon, of Loango.”

Victor Durnovo's dark face changed slightly; his eyes--bilious,
fever-shot, unhealthy--took a new light.

“Ah!” he answered, “are you a friend of Maurice Gordon's?”

There was another question in this, an unasked one; and Victor Durnovo
was watching for the answer. But the face he watched was like a
delicately carved piece of brown marble, with a courteous, impenetrable
smile.

“I met him again the other day at Loango. He is an old Etonian like
myself.”

This conveyed nothing to Durnovo, who belonged to a different world,
whose education was, like other things about him, an unknown quantity.

“My name,” continued the tall man, “is Meredith--John
Meredith--sometimes called Jack.”

They were walking up the bank towards the dusky and uninviting tent.

“And the other fellow?” inquired Durnovo, with a backward jerk of the
head.

“Oh--he is my servant.”

Durnovo raised his eyebrows in somewhat contemptuous amusement, and
proceeded to open the letter which Meredith had handed him.

“Not many fellows,” he said, “on this coast can afford to keep a
European servant.”

Jack Meredith bowed, and ignored the irony.

“But,” he said courteously, “I suppose you find these coloured chaps
just as good when they have once got into your ways?”

“Oh yes,” muttered Durnovo. He was reading the letter. “Maurice Gordon,”
 he continued, “says you are travelling for pleasure--just looking about
you. What do you think of it?”

He indicated the dismal prospect with a harsh laugh.

“A bit suggestive of Hell,” he went on, “eh? How does it strike you?”

“Finer timber, I should think,” suggested Jack Meredith, and Durnovo
laughed more pleasantly.

“The truth is,” he explained, “that it strikes one as a bit absurd that
any man should travel up here for pleasure. If you take my advice you
will come down-stream again with me to-morrow.”

He evidently distrusted him; and the sidelong, furtive glance suggested
vaguely that Victor Durnovo had something farther up this river which he
wished to keep concealed.

“I understand,” answered Meredith, with a half-suppressed yawn, “that
the country gets finer farther up--more mountainous--less suggestive
of--Hell.”

The proprietors of very dark eyes would do well to remember that it is
dangerous to glance furtively to one side or the other. The attention of
dark eyes is more easily felt than the glances of grey or blue orbs.

Jack Meredith's suspicions were aroused by the suspicious manner of his
interlocutor.

“There is no white man knows this river as I do, and I do not recommend
it. Look at me--on the verge of jaundice--look at this wound on my arm;
it began with a scratch and has never healed. All that comes from a
month up this cursed river. Take my advice, try somewhere else.”

“I certainly shall,” replied Meredith. “We will discuss it after dinner.
My chap is a first-rate cook. Have you got anything to add to the menu?”

“Not a thing. I've been living on plantains and dried elephant-meat for
the last fortnight.”

“Doesn't sound nourishing. Well, we are pretty well provided, so perhaps
you will give me the pleasure of your company to dinner? Come as you
are: no ceremony. I think I will wash though. It is as well to keep up
these old customs.”

With a pleasant smile he went towards the tent which had just been
erected. Joseph was very busy, and his admonishing voice was heard at
times.

“Here, Johnny, hammer in that peg. Now, old cups and saucers, stop that
grinning and fetch me some water. None of your frogs and creepy crawly
thing this time, my blonde beauty, but clean water, comprenny?”

With these and similar lightsome turns of speech was Joseph in the habit
of keeping his men up to the mark. The method was eminently successful.
His coloured compeers crowded round him “all of a grin,” as he himself
described it, and eager to do his slightest behest. From the throne to
the back-kitchen the secret of success is the art of managing men--and
women.



CHAPTER VII. THE SECRET OF THE SIMIACINE



     Surtout, Messieurs, pas de zele.

Such was the meeting of Victor Durnovo and Jack Meredith. Two men with
absolutely nothing in common--no taste, no past, no kinship--nothing but
the future. Such men as Fate loves to bring together for her own strange
purposes. What these purposes are none of us can tell. Some hold that
Fate is wise. She is not so yet, but she cannot fail to acquire wisdom
some day, because she experiments so industriously. She is ever
bringing about new combinations, and one can only trust that she, the
experimenter, is as keenly disappointed in the result as are we, the
experimented.

To Jack Meredith Victor Durnovo conveyed the impression of little
surprise and a slight local interest. He was a man who was not quite a
gentleman; but for himself Jack did not give great heed to this. He had
associated with many such; for, as has been previously intimated, he
had moved in London society, where there are many men who are not quite
gentlemen. The difference of a good coat and that veiled insolence which
passes in some circles for the ease of good breeding had no weight with
the keen son of Sir John Meredith, and Victor Durnovo fared no worse in
his companion's estimation because he wore a rough coat and gave small
attention to his manners. He attracted and held Jack's attention by a
certain open-air manliness which was in keeping with the situation and
with his life. Sportsmen, explorers and wanderers were not new to Jack;
for nowadays one may never know what manner of man is inside a faultless
dress-suit. It is an age of disappearing, via Charing Cross station in
a first-class carriage, to a life of backwooding, living from hand to
mouth, starving in desert, prairie, pampas or Arctic wild, with, all the
while, a big balance at Cox's. And most of us come back again and put on
the dress-suit and the white tie with a certain sense of restfulness and
comfort.

Jack Meredith had known many such. He had, in a small way, done the same
himself. But he had never met one of the men who do not go home--who
possess no dress-coat and no use for it--whose business it is to go
about with a rifle in one hand and their life in the other--who risk
their lives because it is their trade and not their pleasure.

Durnovo could not understand the new-comer at all. He saw at once that
this was one of those British aristocrats who do strange things in a
very strange way. In a degree Meredith reminded him of Maurice Gordon,
the man whose letter of introduction was at that moment serving to
light the camp fire. But it was Maurice Gordon without that semi-sensual
weakness of purpose which made him the boon companion of Tom, Dick, or
Harry, provided that one of those was only with him long enough. There
was a vast depth of reserve--of indefinable possibilities, which puzzled
Durnovo, and in some subtle way inspired fear.

In that part of Africa which lies within touch of the Equator, life is
essentially a struggle. There is hunger about, and where hunger is the
emotions will be found also. Now Jack Meredith was a past-master in the
concealment of these, and, as such, came to Victor Durnovo in the guise
of a new creation. He had lived the latter and the larger part of his
life among men who said, in action if not in words, I am hungry, or I am
thirsty; I want this, or I want that; and if you are not strong enough
to keep it, I will take it from you.

This man was different; and Victor Durnovo did not know--could not find
out--WHAT he wanted.

He had at first been inclined to laugh at him. What struck him most
forcibly was Joseph, the servant. The idea of a man swaggering up an
African river with a European man-servant was so preposterous that it
could only be met with ridicule; but the thing seemed so natural to Jack
Meredith, he accepted the servitude of Joseph so much as a matter of
course, that after a time Durnovo accepted him also as part and parcel
of Meredith.

Moreover, he immediately began to realise the benefit of being waited
upon by an intelligent European, for Joseph took off his coat, turned
up his sleeves, and proceeded to cook such a dinner as Durnovo had not
tasted for many months. There was wine also, and afterwards a cigar of
such quality as appealed strongly to Durnovo's West Indian palate.

The night settled down over the land while they sat there, and before
them the great yellow equatorial moon rose slowly over the trees. With
the darkness came a greater silence, for the myriad insect life
was still. This great silence of Central Africa is wonderfully
characteristic. The country is made for silence, the natives are created
to steal, spirit-ridden, devil-haunted, through vast tracks of lifeless
forest, where nature is oppressive in her grandeur. Here man is put into
his right place--a puny, insignificant, helpless being in a world that
is too large for him.

“So,” said Durnovo, returning to the subject which had never really left
his thoughts, “you have come out here for pleasure?”

“Not exactly. I came chiefly to make money, partly to dispel some of
the illusions of my youth, and I am getting on very well. Picture-book
illusions they were. The man who drew the pictures had never seen
Africa.”

“This is no country for illusions. Things go naked here--damned naked.”

“And only language is adorned?”

Durnovo laughed. He had to be alert to keep up with Jack Meredith--to
understand his speech; and he rather liked the necessity, which was a
change after the tropic indolence in which he had moved.

“Swearing, you mean,” he replied. “Hope you don't mind it?”

“Not a bit. Do it myself.”

At this moment Joseph, the servant, brought coffee served up in tin
cups.

“First-class dinner,” said Durnovo. “The best dinner I have had for
years. Clever chap, your man!”

The last remark was made as much for the servant's edification as for
the master's, and it was accompanied by an inviting smile directed
towards Joseph. Of this the man took no notice whatever. He came from
a world where masters and masters' guests know their place and keep it,
even after a good dinner.

The evening had turned out so very differently from what he had expected
that Durnovo was a little off his balance. Things were so sociable and
pleasant in comparison with the habitual loneliness of his life. The
fire crackled so cheerily, the moon shone down on the river so grandly,
the subdued chatter of the boatmen imparted such a feeling of safety and
comfort to the scene, that he gave way to that impulse of expansiveness
which ever lurks in West Indian blood.

“I say,” he said, “when you told me that you wanted to make money, were
you in earnest?”

“In the deadliest earnest,” replied Jack Meredith, in the half-mocking
tone which he never wholly learnt to lay aside.

“Then I think I can put you in the way of it. Oh, I know it seems a bit
premature--not known you long enough, and all that. But in this country
we don't hold much by the formalities. I like you. I liked the look of
you when you got out of that boat--so damned cool and self-possessed.
You're the right sort, Mr. Meredith.”

“Possibly--for some things. For sitting about and smoking first-class
cigars and thinking second-class thoughts I am exactly the right sort.
But for making money, for hard work and steady work, I am afraid, Mr.
Durnovo, that I am distinctly the wrong sort.”

“Now you're chaffing again. Do you always chaff?”

“Mostly; it lubricates things, doesn't it?”

There was a little pause. Durnovo looked round as if to make sure that
Joseph and the boatmen were out of earshot.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked suddenly.

Jack Meredith turned and looked at the questioner with a smile. His hat
had slipped to the back of his head, the light of the great yellow moon
fell full upon his clean-cut, sphinx-like face. The eyes alone seemed
living.

“Yes! I can do that.”

He was only amused, and the words were spoken half-mockingly; but his
face said more than his lips. It said that even in chaff this was no
vain boast that he was uttering. Even before he had set foot on African
soil he had been asked to keep so many secrets of a commercial nature.
So many had begun by imparting half a secret, to pass on in due course
to the statement that only money was required, say, a thousand pounds.
And, in the meantime, twenty-five would be very useful, and, if not
that, well, ten shillings. Jack Meredith had met all that before.

But there was something different about Durnovo. He was not suitably
got up. Your bar-room prospective millionaire is usually a jolly fellow,
quite prepared to quench any man's thirst for liquor or information
so long as credit and credulity will last. There was nothing jolly or
sanguine about Durnovo. Beneath his broad-brimmed hat his dark eyes
flashed in a fierce excitement. His hand was unsteady. He had allowed
the excellent cigar to go out. The man was full of quinine and fever, in
deadly earnest.

“I can see you're a gentleman,” he said; “I'll trust you. I want a man
to join me in making a fortune. I have got my hand on it at last. But
I'm afraid of this country. I'm getting shaky; look at that hand. I've
been looking for it too long. I take you into my confidence, the
first comer, you'll think. But there are not many men like you in this
country, and I'm beastly afraid of dying. I'm in a damned funk. I want
to get out of this for a bit, but I dare not leave until I set things
going.”

“Take your time,” said Meredith, quietly and soothingly; “light that
cigar again and lie down. There is no hurry.”

Durnovo obeyed him meekly.

“Tell me,” he said, “have you ever heard of Simiacine?”

“I cannot say that I have,” replied Jack. “What is it for, brown boots
or spasms?”

“It is a drug, the most expensive drug in the market. And they must have
it, they cannot do without it, and they cannot find a substitute. It is
the leaf of a shrub, and your hatful is worth a thousand pounds.”

“Where is it to be found?” asked Jack Meredith. “I should like some--in
a sack.”

“Ah, you may laugh now, but you won't when you hear all about it. The
scientific chaps called it Simiacine, because of an old African legend
which, like all those things, has a grain of truth in it. The legend is,
that the monkeys first found out the properties of the leaf, and it
is because they live on it that they are so strong. Do you know that a
gorilla's arm is not half so thick as yours, and yet he would take you
and snap your backbone across his knee; he would bend a gun-barrel
as you would bend a cane, merely by the turn of his wrist. That is
Simiacine. He can hang on to a tree with one leg and tackle a leopard
with his bare hands--that's Simiacine. At home, in England and in
Germany, they are only just beginning to find out its properties; it
seems that it can bring a man back to life when he is more than half
dead. There is no knowing what children that are brought up on it may
turn out to be; it may double the power of the human brain--some think
it will.”

Jack Meredith was leaning forward, watching with a certain sense of
fascination the wild, disease-stricken face, listening to the man's
breathless periods. It seemed that the fear of death, which had gotten
hold of him, gave Victor Durnovo no time to pause for breath.

“Yes,” said the Englishman, “yes, go on.”

“There is practically no limit to the demand that there is for it. At
present the only way of obtaining it is through the natives, and you
know their manner of trading. They send a little packet down from the
interior, and it very often takes two months and more to reach the
buyer's hands. The money is sent back the same way, and each man who
fingers it keeps a little. The natives find the leaf in the forests by
the aid of trained monkeys, and only in very small quantities. Do you
follow me?”

“Yes, I follow you.”

Victor Durnovo leant forward until his face was within three inches
of Meredith, and the dark wild eyes flashed and glared into the
Englishman's steady glance.

“What,” he hissed, “what if I know where Simiacine grows like a weed?
What if I could supply the world with Simiacine at my own price?
Eh--h--h! What of that, Mr. Meredith?”

He threw himself suddenly back and wiped his dripping face. There was
a silence, the great African silence that drives educated men mad, and
fills the imagination of the poor heathen with wild tales of devils and
spirits.

Then Jack Meredith spoke, without moving.

“I'm your man,” he said, “with a few more details.”

Victor Durnovo was lying back at full length on the hard dry mud,
his arms beneath his head. Without altering his position he gave the
details, speaking slowly and much more quietly. It seemed as if he spoke
the result of long pent-up thought.

“We shall want,” he said, “two thousand pounds to start it. For we must
have an armed force of our own. We have to penetrate through a cannibal
country, of the fiercest devils in Africa. It is a plateau, a little
plateau of two square miles, and the niggers think that it is haunted by
an evil spirit. When we get there we shall have to hold it by force
of arms, and when we send the stuff down to the coast we must have an
escort of picked men. The bushes grow up there as thick as gooseberry
bushes in a garden at home. With a little cultivation they will yield
twice as much as they do now. We shall want another partner. I know a
man, a soldierly fellow full of fight, who knows the natives and the
country. I will undertake to lead you there, but you will have to take
great care of me. You will have to have me carried most of the way. I am
weak, devilish weak, and I am afraid of dying; but I know the way there,
and no other man can say as much! It is in my head here; it is not
written down. It is only in my head, and no one can get it out of
there.”

“No,” said Meredith, in his quiet, refined voice, “no, no one can get it
out. Come, let us turn in. To-morrow I will go down the river with you.
I will turn back, and we can talk it over as we go downstream.”



CHAPTER VIII. A RECRUIT



     Said the Engine from the East,
     “They who work best talk the least.”

It is not, of course, for a poor limited masculine mind to utter
heresies regarding the great question of woman's rights. But as things
stand at present, as, in fact, the forenamed rights are to-day situated,
women have not found comprehension of the dual life. The dual life is
led solely by men, and until women have found out its full compass and
meaning, they can never lead in the world. There is the public life and
the private; and the men who are most successful in the former are the
most exclusive in the latter. Women have only learned to lead one life;
they must be all public or all private, there is no medium. Those who
give up the private life for which Providence destined them, to assume
the public existence to which their own conceit urges them, have their
own reward. They taste all the bitterness of fame and never know its
sweets, because the bitterness is public and the sweets are private.

Women cannot understand that part of a man's life which brings him into
daily contact with men whom he does not bring home to dinner. One woman
does not know another without bringing her in to meals and showing her
her new hat. It is merely a matter of custom. Men are in the habit of
associating in daily, almost hourly, intercourse with others who are
never really their friends and are always held at a distance. It is
useless attempting to explain it, for we are merely reprimanded for
unfriendliness, stiffness, and stupid pride. Soit! Let it go. Some of
us, perhaps, know our own business best. And there are, thank Heaven!
amidst a multitude of female doctors, female professors, female
wranglers, a few female women left.

Jack Meredith knew quite well what he was about when he listened with
a favourable ear to Durnovo's scheme. He knew that this man was not a
gentleman, but his own position was so assured that he could afford
to associate with any one. Here, again, men are safer. A woman is too
delicate a social flower to be independent of environments. She takes
the tone of her surroundings. It is, one notices, only the ladies who
protest that the barmaid married in haste and repented of at leisure
can raise herself to her husband's level. The husband's friends keep
silence, and perhaps, like the mariner's bird, they meditate all the
more.

What Meredith proposed to do was to enter into a partnership with Victor
Durnovo, and when the purpose of it was accomplished, to let each man go
his way. Such partnerships are entered into every day. Men have carried
through a brilliant campaign--a world-affecting scheme--side by side,
working with one mind and one heart; and when the result has been
attained they drop out of each other's lives for ever. They are created
so, for a very good purpose, no doubt. But sometimes Providence steps in
and turns the little point of contact into the leaven that leaveneth the
whole lump. Providence, it seems--or let us call it Fate--was hovering
over that lone African river, where two men, sitting in the stern of a
native canoe, took it upon themselves to prearrange their lives.

A month later Victor Durnovo was in London. He left behind him in Africa
Jack Meredith, whose capacities for organisation were developing very
quickly.

There was plenty of work for each to do. In Africa Meredith had
undertaken to get together men and boats, while Durnovo went home
to Europe for a threefold purpose. Firstly, a visit to Europe was
absolutely necessary for his health, shattered as it was by too long
a sojourn in the fever-ridden river beds of the West Coast. Secondly,
there were rifles, ammunition, and stores to be purchased and packed in
suitable cases. And, lastly, he was to find and enlist the third man,
“the soldierly fellow full of fight,” who knew the natives and the
country.

This, indeed, was his first care on reaching London, and before his eyes
and brain were accustomed to the roar of the street life he took a cab
to Russell Square, giving the number affixed to the door of a gloomy
house in the least frequented corner of the stately quadrangle.

“Is Mr. Guy Oscard at home?” he inquired of the grave man-servant.

“He is, sir,” replied the butler, stepping aside.

Victor Durnovo thought that a momentary hesitation on the part of the
butler was caused by a very natural and proper feeling of admiration for
the new clothes and hat which he had purchased out of the money advanced
by Jack Meredith for the outfit of the expedition. In reality the man
was waiting for the visitor to throw away his cigar before crossing the
threshold. But he waited in vain, and Durnovo stood, cigar in mouth, in
the dining-room until Guy Oscard came to him.

At first Oscard did not recognise him, and conveyed this fact by a
distant bow and an expectant silence.

“You do not seem to recognise me,” said Durnovo with a laugh, which
lasted until the servant had closed the door. “Victor Durnovo!”

“Oh--yes--how are you?”

Oscard came forward and shook hands. His manner was not exactly
effusive. The truth was that their acquaintanceship in Africa had been
of the slightest, dating from some trivial services which Durnovo had
been able and very eager to render to the sportsman.

“I'm all right, thanks,” replied Durnovo. “I only landed at Liverpool
yesterday. I'm home on business. I'm buying rifles and stores.”

Guy Oscard's honest face lighted up at once--the curse of Ishmael was on
him in its full force. He was destined to be a wanderer on God's earth,
and all things appertaining to the wild life of the forests were music
in his ears.

Durnovo was no mean diplomatist. He had learnt to know man, within a
white or coloured skin. The effect of his words was patent to him.

“You remember the Simiacine?” he said abruptly.

“Yes.”

“I've found it.”

“The devil you have! Sit down.”

Durnovo took the chair indicated.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “I've got it. I've laid my hand on it at last. I've
always been on its track. That has been my little game all the time. I
did not tell you when we met out there, because I was afraid I should
never find it, and because I wanted to keep quiet about it.”

Guy Oscard was looking out of the window across to the dull houses and
chimneys that formed his horizon, and in his eyes there was the longing
for a vaster horizon, a larger life.

“I have got a partner,” continued Durnovo, “a good man--Jack Meredith,
son of Sir John Meredith. You have, perhaps, met him.”

“No,” answered Oscard; “but I have heard his name, and I have met Sir
John--the father--once or twice.”

“He is out there,” went on Durnovo, “getting things together quietly. I
have come home to buy rifles, ammunition, and stores.”

He paused, watching the eager, simple face.

“We want to know,” he said quietly, “if you will organise and lead the
fighting men.”

Guy Oscard drew a deep breath. There are some Englishmen left, thank
Heaven! who love fighting for its own sake, and not only for the gain of
it. Such men as this lived in the old days of chivalry, at which modern
puny carpet-knights make bold to laugh, while inwardly thanking their
stars that they live in the peaceful age of the policeman. Such men as
this ran their thick simple heads against many a windmill, couched lance
over many a far-fetched insult, and swung a sword in honour of many a
worthless maid; but they made England, my masters. Let us remember that
they made England.

“Then there is to be fighting?”

“Yes,” said Durnovo, “there will be fighting. We must fight our way
there, and we must hold it when we get there. But so far as the world is
concerned, we are only a private expedition exploring the source of the
Ogowe.”

“The Ogowe?” and again Guy Oscard's eyes lighted up.

“Yes, I do not mind telling you that much. To begin with, I trust you;
secondly, no one could get there without me to lead the way.”

Guy Oscard looked at him with some admiration, and that sympathy which
exists between the sons of Ishmael. Durnovo looked quite fit for the
task he set himself. He had regained his strength on the voyage, and
with returning muscular force his moral tone was higher, his influence
over men greater. Amidst the pallid sons of the pavement among whom
Guy Oscard had moved of late, this African traveller was a man apart--a
being much more after his own heart. The brown of the man's face and
hands appealed to him--the dark flashing eyes, the energetic carriage
of head and shoulders. Among men of a fairer skin the taint that was
in Victor Durnovo's blood became more apparent--the shadow on his
finger-nails, the deep olive of his neck against the snowy collar, and
the blue tint in the white of his eyes.

But none of these things militated against him in Oscard's mind. They
only made him fitter for the work he had undertaken.

“How long will it take?” asked Guy.

Durnovo tugged at his strange, curtain-like moustache. His mouth was
hidden; it was quite impossible to divine his thoughts.

“Three months to get there,” he answered at length. “One month to pick
the leaf, and then you can bring the first crop down to the coast and
home, while Meredith and I stay on at the plateau.”

“I could be home again in eight months?”

“Certainly! We thought that you might work the sale of the stuff in
London, and in a couple of years or so, when the thing is in swing,
Meredith will come home. We can safely leave the cultivation in native
hands when once we have established ourselves up there, and made
ourselves respected among the tribes.”

A significance in his tone made Guy Oscard look up inquiringly.

“How?”

“You know my way with the natives,” answered Durnovo with a cruel smile.
“It is the only way. There are no laws in Central Africa except the laws
of necessity.”

Oscard was nothing if not outspoken.

“I do not like your way with the natives,” he said, with a pleasant
smile.

“That is because you do not know them. But in this affair you are to
be the leader of the fighting column. You will, of course, have carte
blanche.”

Oscard nodded.

“I suppose,” he said, after a pause, “that there is the question of
money?”

“Yes; Meredith and I have talked that over. The plan we fixed upon was
that you and he each put a thousand pounds into it; I put five hundred.
For the first two years we share the profits equally. After that we must
come to some fresh arrangement, should you or Meredith wish to give up
an active part in the affair. I presume you would not object to coming
up at the end of a year, with a handy squad of men to bring down the
crop under escort?”

“No,” replied Oscard, after a moment's reflection. “I should probably be
able to do that.”

“I reckon,” continued the other, “that the journey down could be
accomplished in two months, and each time you do the trip you will
reduce your time.”

“Yes.”

“Of course,” Durnovo went on, with the details which he knew were music
in Oscard's ears, “of course we shall be a clumsy party going up.
We shall have heavy loads of provisions, ammunition, and seeds for
cultivating the land up there.”

“Yes,” replied Guy Oscard absently. In his ears there rang already the
steady plash of the paddle, the weird melancholy song of the boatmen,
the music of the wind amidst the forest trees.

Durnovo rose briskly.

“Then,” he said, “you will join us? I may telegraph out to Meredith that
you will join us?”

“Yes,” replied Oscard simply. “You may do that.”

“There is no time to be lost,” Durnovo went on. “Every moment wasted
adds to the risk of our being superseded. I sail for Loango in a
fortnight; will you come with me?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I take a passage for you?”

“Yes.”

Durnovo held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Shall I always find you here when I want you?”

“Yes--stay, though! I shall be going away for a few days. Come to-morrow
to luncheon, and we will settle the preliminaries.”

“Right--one o'clock?”

“One o'clock.”

When Durnovo had gone Guy sat down and wrote to Lady Cantourne accepting
her invitation to spend a few days at Cantourne Place, on the Solent. He
explained that his visit would be in the nature of a farewell, as he was
about to leave for Africa for a little big-game hunting.



CHAPTER IX. TO PASS THE TIME



     Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.

“Your energy, my dear lady, is not the least of many attributes.”

Lady Cantourne looked up from her writing-desk with her brightest smile.
Sir John Meredith was standing by the open window, leaning against the
jamb thereof with a grace that had lost its youthful repose. He was
looking out, across a sloping lawn, over the Solent, and for that
purpose he had caused himself to be clad in a suit of blue serge. He
looked the veteran yachtsman to perfection--he could look anything in
its season--but he did his yachting from the shore--by preference from
the drawing-room window.

“One must keep up with the times, John,” replied the lady, daintily
dipping her quill.

“And 'the times' fills its house from roof to cellar with people who
behave as if they were in a hotel. Some of them--say number five on
the first floor, number eleven on the second, or some of the atticated
relatives--announce at breakfast that they will not be home to lunch.
Another says he cannot possibly return to dinner at half-past seven, and
so on. 'The times' expects a great deal for its money, and does not even
allow one to keep the small change of civility.”

Lady Cantourne was blotting vigorously.

“I admit,” she answered, “that the reaction is rather strong; reactions
are always stronger than they intend to be. In our early days the
formalities were made too much of; now they are--”

“Made into a social hash,” he suggested, when she paused for a word,
“where the prevailing flavour is the common onion of commerce! Now, I'll
wager any sum that that is an invitation to some one you do not care a
screw about.”

“It is. But, Sir John, the hash must be kept moving; cold hash is not
palatable. I will tell you at once, I am inviting young Semoor to fill
the vacancy caused by Mr. Oscard's departure.”

“Ah! Mr. Oscard proposes depriving us of his--society.”

“He leaves to-morrow. He only came to say good-bye.”

“He moves on--to some other hostelry?”

“No! He is going to--”

She paused, so that Sir John was forced to turn in courteous inquiry and
look her in the face.

“Africa!” she added sharply, never taking her bright eyes from his face.

She saw the twitching of the aged lips before his hand got there to hide
them. She saw his eyes fall before her steady gaze, and she pitied him
while she admired his uncompromising pride.

“Indeed!” he said. “I have reason to believe,” he added, turning to the
window again, “that there is a great future before that country; all the
intellect of Great Britain seems to be converging in its direction.”

Since his departure Jack's name had never been mentioned, even between
these two whose friendship dated back a generation. Once or twice Sir
John had made a subtle passing reference to him, such as perhaps no
other woman but Lady Cantourne could have understood; but Africa was,
so to speak, blotted out of Sir John Meredith's map of the world. It was
there that he kept his skeleton--the son who had been his greatest pride
and his deepest humiliation--his highest hope in life--almost the only
failure of his career.

He stood there by the window, looking out with that well-bred interest
in details of sport and pastime which was part of his creed. He braved
it out even before the woman who had been a better friend to him than
his dead wife. Not even to her would he confess that any event of
existence could reach him through the impenetrable mask he wore before
the world. Not even she must know that aught in his life could breathe
of failure or disappointment. As it is given to the best of women
to want to take their sorrows to another, so the strongest men
instinctively deny their desire for sympathy.

Lady Cantourne, pretending to select another sheet of note-paper,
glanced at him with a pathetic little smile. Although they had never
been anything to each other, these two people had passed through many
of the trials to which humanity is heir almost side by side. But neither
had ever broken down. Each acted as a sort of mental tonic on the other.
They had tacitly agreed, years before, to laugh at most things. She saw,
more distinctly than any, the singular emptiness of his clothes, as if
the man was shrinking, and she knew that the emptiness was of the heart.

Sir John Meredith had taught his son that Self and Self alone reigns in
the world. He had taught him that the thing called Love, with a capital
L, is nearly all Self, and that it finally dies in the arms of Self. He
had told him that a father's love, or a son's, or a mother's, is merely
a matter of convenience, and vanishes when Self asserts itself.

Upon this principle they were both acting now, with a strikingly
suggestive similarity of method. Neither was willing to admit to the
world in general, and to the other in particular, that a cynical theory
could possibly be erroneous.

“I am sorry that our young friend is going to leave us,” said Sir John,
taking up and unfolding the morning paper. “He is honest and candid, if
he is nothing else.”

This meant that Guy Oscard's admiration for Millicent Chyne had never
been concealed for a moment, and Lady Cantourne knew it.

“He interests me,” went on the old aristocrat, studying the newspaper;
and his hearer knew the inner significance of the remark.

At times she was secretly ashamed of her niece, but that esprit de corps
which binds women together prompted her always to defend Millicent. The
only defence at the moment was silence, and an assumed density which did
not deceive Sir John--even she could not do that.

In the meantime Miss Millicent Chyne was walking on the sea-wall at the
end of the garden with Guy Oscard. One of the necessary acquirements of
a modern educational outfit is the power of looking perfectly at home
in a score of different costumes during the year, and, needless to say,
Miss Chyne was finished in this art. The manner in which she wore her
sailor-hat, her blue serge, and her neat brown shoes conveyed to
the onlooker, and especially the male of that species (we cannot
in conscience call them observers), the impression that she was a
yachtswoman born and bred. Her delicate complexion was enhanced by the
faintest suspicion of sunburn and a few exceedingly becoming freckles.
There was a freedom in her movements which had not been observable in
London drawing-rooms. This was Diana-like and in perfect keeping with
the dainty sailor outfit; moreover, nine men out of ten would fail to
attribute the difference to sundry cunning strings within the London
skirt.

“It is sad,” Millicent was saying, “to think that we shall have no more
chances of sailing. The wind has quite dropped, that horrid tide is
running, and--this is your last day.”

She ended with a little laugh, knowing full well that there was little
sentiment in the big man by her side.

“Really,” she went on, “I think I should be able to manage a boat in
time, don't you think so? Please encourage me. I am sure I have tried to
learn.”

But he remained persistently grave. She did not like that gravity;
she had met it before in the course of her experiments. One of the
grievances harboured by Miss Millicent Chyne against the opposite sex
was that they could not settle down into a harmless, honest flirtation.
Of course, this could be nothing but a flirtation of the lightest and
most evanescent description. She was engaged to Jack Meredith--poor
Jack, who was working for her, ever so hard, somewhere near the
Equator--and if Guy Oscard did not know this he had only himself to
blame. There were plenty of people ready to tell him. He had only to
ask.

Millicent Chyne, like Guy, was hampered at the outset of life by
theories upon it. Experience, the fashionable novel, and modern cynicism
had taught her to expect little from human nature--a dangerous lesson,
for it eases responsibility, and responsibility is the Ten Commandments
rolled into a compact whole, suitable for the pocket.

She expected of no man--not even of Jack--that perfect faithfulness in
every word and thought which is read of in books. And it is one of the
theories of the day that what one does not expect one is not called upon
to give. Jack, she reflected, was too much a man of the world to expect
her to sit and mope alone. She was apparently incapable of seeing the
difference between that pastime and sitting on the sea-wall behind a
large flowering currant-tree with a man who did not pretend to hide the
fact that he was in love with her. Some women are thus.

“I do not know if you have learnt much,” he answered. “But I have.”

“What have you learnt?” she asked in a low voice, half-fascinated by the
danger into which she knew that she was running.

“That I love you,” he answered, standing squarely in front of her,
and announcing the fact with a deliberate honesty which was rather
startling. “I was not sure of it before, so I stayed away from you for
three weeks; but now I know for certain.”

“Oh, you mustn't say that!”

She rose hastily and turned away from him. There was in her heart a
sudden feeling of regret. It was the feeling that the keenest sportsman
sometimes has when some majestic monarch of the forest falls before his
merciless rifle--a sudden passing desire that it might be undone.

“Why not?” he asked. He was desperately in earnest, and that which
made him a good sportsman--an unmatched big-game hunter, calm and
self-possessed in any strait--gave him a strange deliberation now, which
Millicent Chyne could not understand. “Why not?”

“I do not know--because you mustn't.”

And in her heart she wanted him to say it again.

“I am not ashamed of it,” he said, “and I do not see why I should not
say it to you--or to any one else, so far as that goes.”

“No, never!” she cried, really frightened. “To me it does not matter so
much. But to no one else--no, never! Aunt Marian must not know it--nor
Sir John.”

“I cannot see that it is any business of Sir John's. Of course, Lady
Cantourne would have liked you to marry a title; but if you cared for me
she would be ready to listen to reason.”

In which judgment of the good lady he was no doubt right--especially if
reason spoke with the voice of three thousand pounds per annum.

“Do you care for me?” he asked, coming a little closer.

There was a whole world of gratified vanity and ungratified curiosity
for her in the presence of this strong man at her elbow. It was one
of the supreme triumphs of her life, because he was different from the
rest. He was for her what his first tiger had been for him. The danger
that he might come still nearer had for her a sense of keen pleasure.
She was thoroughly enjoying herself, and the nearest approach that men
can experience to the joy that was hers is the joy of battle.

“I cannot answer that--not now.”

And the little half-shrinking glance over her shoulder was a low-minded,
unmaidenly invitation. But he was in earnest, and he was, above all, a
gentleman. He stood his ground a yard away from her.

“Then when,” he asked--“when will you answer me?”

She stood with her back turned towards him, looking out over the smooth
waters of the Solent, where one or two yachts and a heavy black schooner
were creeping up on the tide before the morning breeze. She drummed
reflectively with her fingers on the low stone wall. Beneath them a few
gulls whirled and screamed over a shoal of little fish. One of the birds
had a singular cry, as if it were laughing to itself.

“You said just now,” Millicent answered at length, “that you were not
sure yourself--not at first--and therefore you cannot expect me to know
all at once.”

“You would know at once,” he argued gravely, “if it was going to be no.
If you do not say no now, I can only think that it may be yes some
day. And”--he came closer--he took the hand that hung at her
side--conveniently near--“and I don't want you to say no now. Don't say
no! I will wait as long as you like for yes. Millicent, I would rather
go on waiting, and thinking that it is going to be yes, even if it is no
after all.”

She said nothing, but she left her hand in his.

“May I go on thinking that it will be yes until I come back?”

“I cannot prevent your thinking, can I?” she whispered, with a tender
look in her eyes.

“And may I write to you?”

She shook her head.

“Well--I--I--Now and then,” he pleaded. “Not often. Just to remind you
of my existence.”

She gave a little laugh, which he liked exceedingly, and remembered
afterwards.

“If you like,” she answered.

At this moment Lady Cantourne's voice was heard in the distance, calling
them.

“There!” exclaimed Millicent. “We must go at once. And no one--no one,
mind--must know of this.”

“No one shall know of it,” he answered.



CHAPTER X. LOANGO



     Faithful and hopeful, wise in charity,
     Strong in grave peace, in pity circumspect.

Those who for their sins have been to Loango will scarcely care to have
its beauties recalled to memory. And to such as have not yet visited the
spot one can only earnestly recommend a careful avoidance.

Suffice it to say, therefore, that there is such a place, and the
curious may find it marked in larger type than it deserves on the map of
Africa, on the West Coast of that country, and within an inch or so of
the Equator.

Loango has a bar, and outside of that mysterious and somewhat suggestive
nautical hindrance the coasting steamers anchor, while the smaller local
fry find harbour nearer to the land. The passenger is not recommended
to go ashore--indeed, many difficulties are placed in his way, and he
usually stays on board while the steamer receives or discharges a scanty
cargo, rolling ceaselessly in the Atlantic swell. The roar of the surf
may be heard, and at times some weird cry or song. There is nothing to
tempt even the most adventurous through that surf. A moderately large
white building attracts the eye, and usually brings upon itself a
contemptuous stare, for it seems to be the town of Loango, marked so
bravely on the map. As a matter of fact the town is five miles inland,
and the white building is only a factory or trading establishment.

Loango is the reverse of cheerful. To begin with, it is usually raining
there. The roar of the surf--than which there are few sadder sounds on
earth--fills the atmosphere with a never-ceasing melancholy. The country
is overwooded; the tropical vegetation, the huge tangled African trees,
stand almost in the surf; and inland the red serrated hills mount
guard in gloomy array. For Europeans this country is accursed. From
the mysterious forest-land there creeps down a subtle, tainted air that
poisons the white man's blood, and either strikes him down in a fever
or terrifies him by strange unknown symptoms and sudden disfiguring
disease. The Almighty speaks very plainly sometimes and in some
places--nowhere more plainly than on the West Coast of Africa, which
land He evidently wants for the black man. We of the fairer skin have
Australia now; we are taking America, we are dominant in Asia; but
somehow we don't get on in Africa. The Umpire is there, and He insists
on fair play.

“This is not cheery,” Jack Meredith observed to his servant as they
found themselves deposited on the beach within a stone's-throw of the
French factory.

“No, sir, not cheery, sir,” replied Joseph. He was very busy attending
to the landing of their personal effects, and had only time to be
respectful. It was Joseph's way to do only one thing at a time, on the
principle, no doubt, that enough for the moment is the evil thereof. His
manner implied that, when those coloured gentlemen had got the baggage
safely conveyed out of the boats on to the beach, it would be time
enough to think about Loango.

Moreover, Joseph was in his way rather a dauntless person. He held
that there were few difficulties which he and his master, each in his
respective capacity, were unable to meet. This African mode of life was
certainly not one for which he had bargained when taking service; but he
rather enjoyed it than otherwise, and he was consoled by the reflection
that what was good enough for his master was good enough for him.
Beneath the impenetrable mask of a dignified servitude he knew that
this was “all along of that Chyne girl,” and rightly conjectured that it
would not last for ever. He had an immense respect for Sir John, whom he
tersely described as a “game one,” but his knowledge of the world went
towards the supposition that headstrong age would finally bow before
headstrong youth. He did not, however, devote much consideration to
these matters, being a young man although an old soldier, and taking a
lively interest in the present.

It had been arranged by letter that Jack Meredith should put up, as his
host expressed it, at the small bungalow occupied by Maurice Gordon and
his sister. Gordon was the local head of a large trading association
somewhat after the style of the old East India Company, and his duties
partook more of the glory of a governor than of the routine of a trader.

Of Maurice Gordon's past Meredith knew nothing beyond the fact that they
were schoolfellows strangely brought together again on the deck of a
coasting steamer. Maurice Gordon was not a reserved person, and it was
rather from a lack of opportunity than from an excess of caution that he
allowed his new-found friend to go up the Ogowe river, knowing so little
of himself, Maurice Gordon, of Loango.

There were plenty of willing guides and porters on the beach; for in
this part of Africa there is no such thing as continued and methodical
labour. The entire population considers the lilies of the field to
obvious purpose.

Joseph presently organised a considerable portion of this population
into a procession, headed triumphantly by an old white-woolled negro
whose son cleaned Maurice Gordon's boots. This man Joseph selected--not
without one or two jokes of a somewhat personal nature--as a fitting
guide to the Gordons' house. As they neared the little settlement on
the outskirts of the black town where the mission and other European
residences are situated, the veteran guide sent on couriers to announce
the arrival of the great gentleman, who had for body-servant the father
of laughter.

On finally reaching the bungalow Meredith was pleasantly surprised. It
was pretty and homelike--surrounded by a garden wherein grew a strange
profusion of homely English vegetables and tropical flowers.

Joseph happened to be in front, and, as he neared the verandah, he
suddenly stopped at the salute; moreover, he began to wonder in which
trunk he had packed his master's dress-clothes.

An English lady was coming out of the drawing-room window to meet the
travellers--a lady whose presence diffused that sense of refinement and
peace into the atmosphere which has done as much towards the expansion
of our piecemeal empire as ever did the strong right arm of Thomas
Atkins. It is because--sooner or later--these ladies come with us that
we have learnt to mingle peace with war--to make friends of whilom
enemies.

She nodded in answer to the servant's salutation, and passed on to greet
the master.

“My brother has been called away suddenly,” she said. “One of his
sub-agents has been getting into trouble with the natives. Of course you
are Mr. Meredith?”

“I am,” replied Jack, taking the hand she held out; it was a small white
hand--small without being frail or diaphanous. “And you are Miss Gordon,
I suppose? I am sorry Gordon is away, but no doubt we shall be able to
find somewhere to put up.”

“You need not do that,” she said quietly. “This is Africa, you know. You
can quite well stay with us, although Maurice is away until to-morrow.”

“Sure?” he asked.

“Quite!” she answered.

She was tall and fair, with a certain stateliness of carriage which
harmonised wonderfully with a thoughtful and pale face. She was not
exactly pretty, but gracious and womanly, with honest blue eyes that
looked on men and women alike. She was probably twenty-eight years of
age; her manner was that of a woman rather than of a girl--of one who
was in life and not on the outskirts.

“We rather pride ourselves,” she said, leading the way into the
drawing-room, “upon having the best house in Loango. You will, I think,
be more comfortable here than anywhere.”

She turned and looked at him with a slow, grave smile. She was noticing
that, of the men who had been in this drawing-room, none had seemed so
entirely at his ease as this one.

“I must ask you to believe that I was thinking of your comfort and not
of my own.”

“Yes, I know you were,” she answered. “Our circle is rather limited,
as you will find, and very few of the neighbours have time to think of
their houses. Most of them are missionaries, and they are so busy; they
have a large field, you see.”

“Very--and a weedy one, I should think.”

He was looking round, noting with well-trained glance the thousand
little indescribable touches that make a charming room. He knew his
ground. He knew the date and the meaning of every little ornament--the
title and the writer of each book--the very material with which the
chairs were covered; and he knew that all was good--all arranged with
that art which is the difference between ignorance and knowledge.

“I see you have all the new books.”

“Yes, we have books and magazines; but, of course, we live quite out of
the world.”

She paused, leaving the conversation with him, as in the hands of one
who knew his business.

“I,” he said, filling up the pause, “have hitherto lived in the
world--right in it. There is a lot of dust and commotion; the dust gets
into people's eyes and blinds them; the commotion wears them out; and
perhaps, after all, Loango is better!”

He spoke with the easy independence of the man of the world, accustomed
to feel his way in strange places--not heeding what opinion he might
raise--what criticism he might brave. He was glancing round him all the
while, noting things, and wondering for whose benefit this pretty
room had been evolved in the heart of a savage country. Perhaps he had
assimilated erroneous notions of womankind in the world of which
he spoke; perhaps he had never met any of those women whose natural
refinement urges them to surround themselves, even in solitude, with
pretty things, and prompts them to dress as neatly and becomingly as
their circumstances allow for the edification of no man.

“I never abuse Loango,” she answered; “such abuse is apt to recoil. To
call a place dull is often a confession of dulness.”

He laughed--still in that somewhat unnatural manner, as if desirous
of filling up time. He had spent the latter years of his life in doing
nothing else. The man's method was so different to what Jocelyn Gordon
had met with in Loango, where men were all in deadly earnest, pursuing
souls or wealth, that it struck her forcibly, and she remembered it long
after Meredith had forgotten its use.

“I have no idea,” she continued, “how the place strikes the passing
traveller; he usually passes by on the other side; but I am afraid there
is nothing to arouse the smallest interest.”

“But, Miss Gordon, I am not the passing traveller.”

She looked up with a sudden interest.

“Indeed! I understood from Maurice that you were travelling down the
coast without any particular object.”

“I have an object--estimable, if not quite original.”

“Yes?”

“I want to make some money. I have never made any yet, so there is a
certain novelty in the thought which is pleasant.”

She smiled with the faintest suspicion of incredulity.

“I know what you are thinking,” he said; “that I am too neat and
tidy--too namby-pamby to do anything in this country. That my boots are
too narrow in the toe, my hair too short and my face too clean. I cannot
help it. It is the fault of the individual you saw outside--Joseph. He
insists on a strict observance of the social duties.”

“We are rougher here,” she answered.

“I left England,” he explained, “in rather a hurry. I had no time to
buy uncomfortable boots, or anything like that. I know it was wrong.
The ordinary young man of society who goes morally to the dogs and
physically to the colonies always has an outfit. His friends buy him
an outfit, and certain enterprising haberdashers make a study of such
things. I came as I am.”

While he was speaking she had been watching him--studying him more
closely than she had hitherto been able to do.

“I have heard of a Sir John Meredith,” she said suddenly.

“My father.”

He paused, drawing in his legs, and apparently studying the neat brown
boots of which there had been question.

“Should you meet him again,” he went on, “it would not be advisable
to mention my name. He might not care to hear it. We have had a slight
difference of opinion. With me it is different. I am always glad to hear
about him. I have an immense respect for him.”

She listened gravely, with a sympathy that did not attempt to express
itself in words. On such a short acquaintance she had not learnt to
expect a certain lightness of conversational touch which he always
assumed when speaking of himself, as if his own thoughts and feelings
were matters for ridicule.

“Of course,” he went on, “I was in the wrong. I know that. But it
sometimes happens that a man is not in a position to admit that he is
in the wrong--when, for instance, another person would suffer by such an
admission.”

“Yes,” answered Jocelyn; “I understand.”

At this moment a servant came in with lamps and proceeded to close the
windows. She was quite an old woman--an Englishwoman--and as she placed
the lamps upon the table she scrutinised the guest after the manner of
a privileged servitor. When she had departed Jack Meredith continued his
narrative with a sort of deliberation which was explained later on.

“And,” he said, “that is why I came to Africa--that is why I want to
make money. I do not mind confessing to a low greed of gain, because
I think I have the best motive that a man can have for wanting to make
money.”

He said this meaningly, and watched her face all the while.

“A motive which any lady ought to approve of.”

She smiled sympathetically.

“I approve and I admire your spirit.”

She rose as she spoke, and moved towards a side table, where two lighted
candles had been placed.

“My motive for talking so barefacedly about myself,” he said, as they
moved towards the door together, “was to let you know exactly who I am
and why I am here. It was only due to you on accepting your hospitality.
I might have been a criminal or an escaped embezzler. There were two on
board the steamer coming out, and several other shady characters.”

“Yes,” said the girl; “I saw your motive.”

They were now in the hall, and the aged servant was waiting to show him
his room.



CHAPTER XI. A COMPACT



     Drifting, slow drifting down a wizard stream.

“No one knows,” Victor Durnovo was in the habit of saying, “what is
going on in the middle of Africa.”

And on this principle he acted.

“Ten miles above the camping-ground where we first met,” he had told
Meredith, “you will find a village where I have my headquarters. There
is quite a respectable house there, with--a--a woman to look after your
wants. When you have fixed things up at Loango, and have arranged
for the dhows to meet my steamer, take up all your men to this
village--Msala is the name--and send the boats back. Wait there till we
come.”

In due time the telegram came, via St. Paul de Loanda, announcing the
fact that Oscard had agreed to join the expedition, and that Durnovo and
he might be expected at Msala in one month from that time. It was not
without a vague feeling of regret that Jack Meredith read this telegram.
To be at Msala in a month with forty men and a vast load of provisions
meant leaving Loango almost at once. And, strange though it may seem,
he had become somewhat attached to the dreary West African town. The
singular cosmopolitan society was entirely new to him; the life, taken
as a life, almost unique. He knew that he had not outstayed his welcome.
Maurice Gordon had taken care to assure him of that in his boisterous,
hearty manner, savouring more of Harrow than of Eton, every morning at
breakfast.

“Confound Durnovo!” he cried, when the telegram had been read aloud.
“Confound him, with his energy and his business-like habits! That means
that you will have to leave us before long; and somehow it has got to
be quite natural to see you come lounging in ten minutes late for most
things, with an apology for Jocelyn, but none for me. We shall miss you,
old chap.”

“Yes,” added Jocelyn, “we shall.”

She was busy with the cups, and spoke rather indifferently.

“So you've got Oscard?” continued Maurice. “I imagine he is a good
man--tip-top shot and all that. I've never met him, but I have heard of
him.”

“He is a gentleman, at all events,” said Meredith quietly; “I know
that.”

Jocelyn was looking at him between the hibiscus flowers decorating the
table.

“Is Mr. Durnovo going to be leader of the expedition?” she inquired
casually, after a few moments' silence; and Jack, looking up with a
queer smile, met her glance for a moment.

“No,” he answered.

Maurice Gordon's hearty laugh interrupted.

“Ha, ha!” he cried. “I wonder where the dickens you men are going to?”

“Up the Ogowe river,” replied Jack.

“No doubt. But what for? There is something mysterious about that river.
Durnovo keeps his poor relations there, or something of that kind.”

“We are not going to look for them.”

“I suppose,” said Maurice, helping himself to marmalade, “that he has
dropped upon some large deposit of ivory; that will turn out to be the
solution of the mystery. It is the solution of most mysteries in this
country. I wish I could solve the mysteries of ways and means and drop
upon a large deposit of ivory, or spice, or precious stones. We should
soon be out of this country, should we not, old girl?”

“I do not think we have much to complain of,” answered Jocelyn.

“No; you never do. Moreover, I do not suppose you would do so if you had
the excuse.”

“Oh yes, I should, if I thought it would do any good.”

“Ah!” put in Meredith. “There speaks Philosophy--jam, please.”

“Or Resignation--that is strawberry and this is black currant.”

“Thanks, black currant. No--Philosophy. Resignation is the most
loathsome of the virtues.”

“I can't say I care for any of them very much,” put in Maurice.

“No; I thought you seemed to shun them,” said Jack, like a flash.

“Sharp! very sharp! Jocelyn, do you know what we called him at
school?--the French nail; he was so very long and thin and sharp! I
might add polished and strong, but we were not so polite in those
days. Poor old Jack! he gave as good as he got. But I must be off--the
commerce of Western Africa awaits me. You'll be round at the office
presently, I suppose, Jack?”

“Yes; I have an appointment there with a coloured person who is a liar
by nature and a cook by trade.”

Maurice Gordon usually went off like this--at a moment's notice. He
was one of those loud-speaking, quick-actioned men, who often get a
reputation for energy and capacity without fully deserving it.

Jack, of a more meditative habit, rarely followed his host with the same
obvious haste. He finished his breakfast calmly, and then asked Jocelyn
whether she was coming out on to the verandah. It was a habit they had
unconsciously dropped into. The verandah was a very important feature
of the house, thickly overhung as it was with palms, bananas, and other
tropical verdure. Africa is the land of creepers, and all around
this verandah, over the trellis-work, around the supports, hanging in
festoons from the roof, were a thousand different creeping flowers. The
legend of the house--for, as in India, almost every bungalow on the West
Coast has its tale--was that one of the early missionaries had built
it, and, to beguile the long months of the rainy season, had carefully
collected these creepers to beautify the place against the arrival
of his young wife. She never came. A telegram stopped her. A snake
interrupted his labour of love.

Jack took a seat at once, and began to search for his cigar-case in the
pocket of his jacket. In this land of flies and moths men need not ask
permission before they smoke. Jocelyn did not sit down at once. She went
to the front of the verandah and watched her brother mount his horse.
She was a year older than Maurice Gordon, and exercised a larger
influence over his life than either of them suspected.

Presently he rode past the verandah, waving his hand cheerily. He was
one of those large, hearty Englishmen who seem to be all appetite and
laughter--men who may be said to be manly, and beyond that nothing.
Their manliness is so overpowering that it swallows up many other
qualities which are not out of place in men, such as tact and
thoughtfulness, and PERHAPS intellectuality and the power to take some
interest in those gentler things that interest women.

When Jocelyn came to the back of the verandah she was thinking about her
brother Maurice, and it never suggested itself to her that she should
not speak her thoughts to Meredith, whom she had not seen until three
weeks ago. She had never spoken of Maurice behind his back to any man
before.

“Does it ever strike you,” she said, “that Maurice is the sort of man to
be led astray by evil influence?”

“Yes; or to be led straight by a good influence, such as yours.”

He did not meet her thoughtful gaze. He was apparently watching the
retreating form of the horse through the tangle of flower and leaf and
tendril.

“I am afraid,” said the girl, “that my influence is not of much
account.”

“Do you really believe that?” asked Meredith, turning upon her with a
half-cynical smile.

“Yes,” she answered simply.

Before speaking again he took a pull at his cigar.

“Your influence,” he said, “appears to me to be the making of Maurice
Gordon. I frequently see serious flaws in the policy of Providence; but
I suppose there is wisdom in making the strongest influence that which
is unconscious of its power.”

“I am glad you think I have some power over him,” said Jocelyn; “but,
at the same time, it makes me uneasy, because it only confirms my
conviction that he is very easily led. And suppose my influence--such as
it is--was withdrawn? Suppose that I were to die, or, what appears to be
more likely, suppose that he should marry?”

“Then let us hope that he will marry the right person. People sometimes
do, you know.”

She smiled with a strange little flicker of the eyelids. They had grown
wonderfully accustomed to each other during the last three weeks. Here,
it would appear, was one of those friendships between man and woman that
occasionally set the world agog with curiosity and scepticism. But there
seemed to be no doubt about it. He was over thirty, she verging on that
prosaic age. Both had lived and moved in the world; to both life was an
open book, and they had probably discovered, as most of us do, that the
larger number of the leaves are blank. He had almost told her that he
was engaged to be married, and she had quite understood. There could
not possibly be any misapprehension; there was no room for one of those
little mistakes about which people write novels and fondly hope that
some youthful reader may be carried away by a very faint resemblance
to that which they hold to be life. Moreover, at thirty, one leaves the
first romance of youth behind.

There was something in her smile that suggested that she did not quite
believe in his cynicism.

“Also,” she said gravely, “some stronger influence might appear--an
influence which I could not counteract.”

Jack Meredith turned in his long chair and looked at her searchingly.

“I have a vague idea,” he said, “that you are thinking of Durnovo.”

“I am,” she admitted, with some surprise. “I wonder how you knew? I am
afraid of him.”

“I can reassure you on that score,” said Meredith. “For the next two
years or so Durnovo will be in daily intercourse with me. He will be
under my immediate eye. I did not anticipate much pleasure from his
society. But now I do.”

“Why?” she asked, rather mystified.

“Because I shall have the daily satisfaction of knowing that I am
relieving you of an anxiety.”

“It is very kind of you to put it in that way,” said Jocelyn. “But
I should not like you to sacrifice yourself to what may be a foolish
prejudice on my part.”

“It is not a foolish prejudice. Durnovo is not a gentleman either by
birth or inclination. He is not fit to associate with you.”

To this Jocelyn answered nothing. Victor Durnovo was one of her
brother's closest friends--a friend of his own choosing.

“Miss Gordon,” said Jack Meredith suddenly, with a gravity that was
rare, “will you do me a favour?”

“I think I should like to.”

“You admit that you are afraid of Durnovo now: if at any time you have
reason to be more afraid, will you make use of me? Will you write or
come to me and ask my help?”

“Thank you,” she said hesitatingly.

“You see,” he went on, in a lighter tone, “I am not afraid of Durnovo. I
have met Durnovos before. You may have observed that my locks no longer
resemble the raven's wing. There is a little grey--just here--above the
temple. I am getting on in life, and I know how to deal with Durnovos.”

“Thank you,” said the girl, with a little sigh of relief. “The feeling
that I have some one to turn to will be a great relief. You see how I am
placed here. The missionaries are very kind and well-meaning, but
there are some things which they do not quite understand. They may be
gentlemen--some of them are; but they are not men of the world. I have
no definite thought or fear, and very good persons, one finds, are
occasionally a little dense. Unless things are very definite, they do
not understand.”

“On the other hand,” pursued Jack, in the same reflective tone, as if
taking up her thought, “persons who are not good have a perception of
the indefinite. I did not think of it in that light before.”

Jocelyn Gordon laughed softly, without attempting to meet his lighter
vein.

“Do you know,” she said, after a little silence, “that I was actually
thinking of warning you against Mr. Durnovo? Now I stand aghast at my
own presumption.”

“It was kind of you to give the matter any thought whatever.”

He rose and threw away the end of his cigar. Joseph was already before
the door, leading the horse which Maurice Gordon had placed at his
visitor's disposal.

“I will lay the warning to heart,” he said, standing in front of Jocelyn
and looking down at her as she lay back in the deep basket-chair. She
was simply dressed in white--as was her wont, for it must be remembered
that they were beneath the Equator--a fair English maiden, whose
thoughts were hidden behind a certain gracious, impenetrable reserve.
“I will lay it to heart, although you have not uttered it. But I have
always known with what sort of man I was dealing. We serve each other's
purpose, that is all; and he knows that as well as I do.”

“I am glad Mr. Oscard is going with you,” she answered guardedly.

He waited a moment. It seemed as if she had not done speaking--as if
there was another thought near the surface. But she did not give voice
to it, and he turned away. The sound of the horse's feet on the gravel
did not arouse her from the reverie into which she had fallen; and long
after it had died away, leaving only the hum of insect life and the
distant ceaseless song of the surf, Jocelyn Gordon sat apparently
watching the dancing shadows on the floor as the creepers waved in the
breeze.



CHAPTER XII. A MEETING



     No one can be more wise than destiny.

The short equatorial twilight was drawing to an end, and all Nature
stood in silence, while Night crept up to claim the land where her reign
is more autocratic than elsewhere on earth. There is a black night above
the trees, and a blacker beneath. In an hour it would be dark, and,
in the meantime, the lowering clouds were tinged with a pink glow
that filtered through from above. There was rain coming, and probably
thunder. Moreover, the trees seemed to know it, for there was a limpness
in their attitude as if they were tucking their heads into their
shoulders in anticipation of the worst. The insects were certainly
possessed of a premonition. They had crept away.

It was distinctly an unlikely evening for the sportsman. The stillness
was so complete that the faintest rustle could be heard at a great
distance. Moreover, it was the sort of evening when Nature herself seems
to be glancing over her shoulder with timorous restlessness.

Nevertheless, a sportsman was abroad. He was creeping up the right-hand
bank of a stream, his only chance lying in the noise of the waters,
which might serve to deaden the sound of broken twig or rustling leaf.

This sportsman was Jack Meredith, and it was evident that he was
bringing to bear upon the matter in hand that intelligence and keenness
of perception which had made him a person of some prominence in other
scenes where Nature has a less assured place.

It would appear that he was not so much at home in the tangle of an
African forest as in the crooked paths of London society; for his
clothes were torn in more than one place; a mosquito, done to sudden
death, adhered sanguinarily to the side of his aristocratic nose, while
heat and mental distress had drawn damp stripes down his countenance.
His hands were scratched and inclined to bleed, and one leg had
apparently been in a morass. Added to these physical drawbacks there was
no visible sign of success, which was probably the worst part of Jack
Meredith's plight.

Since sunset he had been crawling, scrambling, stumbling up the bank
of this stream in relentless pursuit of some large animal which
persistently kept hidden in the tangle across the bed of the river. The
strange part of it was that when he stopped to peep through the
branches the animal stopped too, and he found no way of discovering its
whereabouts. More than once they remained thus for nearly five minutes,
peering at each other through the heavy leafage. It was distinctly
unpleasant, for Meredith felt that the animal was not afraid of him,
and did not fully understand the situation. The respective positions of
hunter and hunted were imperfectly defined. He had hitherto confined his
attentions to such game as showed a sporting readiness to run away, and
there was a striking novelty in this unseen beast of the forest, fresh,
as it were, from the hands of its Creator, that entered into the fun of
the thing from a totally mistaken standpoint.

Once Meredith was able to decide approximately the whereabouts of his
prey by the momentary shaking of a twig. He raised his rifle and covered
that twig steadily; his forefinger played tentatively on the trigger;
but on second thoughts he refrained. He was keenly conscious of the fact
that the beast was doing its work with skill superior to his own. In
comparison to his, its movements were almost noiseless. Jack Meredith
was too clever a man to be conceited in the wrong place, which is
the habit of fools. He recognised very plainly that he was not
distinguishing himself in this new field of glory; he was not yet an
accomplished big-game hunter.

Twice he raised his rifle with the intention of firing at random into
the underwood on the remote chance of bringing his enemy into the open.
But the fascination of this duel of cunning was too strong, and he crept
onwards with bated breath.

It was terrifically hot, and all the while Night was stalking westward
on the summits of the trees with stealthy tread.

While absorbed in the intricacies of pursuit--while anathematising
tendrils and condemning thorns to summary judgment--Jack Meredith was
not losing sight of his chance of getting back to the little village
of Msala. He knew that he had only to follow the course of the stream
downwards, retracing his steps until a junction with the Ogowe river was
effected. In the meantime his lips were parted breathlessly, and there
was a light in the quiet eyes which might have startled some of his
well-bred friends could they have seen it.

At last he came to an open space made by a slip of the land into the
bed of the river. When Jack Meredith came to this he stepped out of the
thicket and stood in the open, awaiting the approach of his stealthy
prey. The sound of its footfall was just perceptible, slowly diminishing
the distance that divided them. Then the trees were parted, and a tall,
fair man stepped forward on to the opposite bank.

Jack Meredith bowed gravely, and the other sportsman, seeing the
absurdity of the situation, burst into hearty laughter. In a moment or
two he had leapt from rock to rock and come to Meredith.

“It seems,” he said, “that we have been wasting a considerable amount of
time.”

“I very nearly wasted powder and shot,” replied Jack, significantly
indicating his rifle.

“I saw you twice, and raised my rifle; your breeches are just the colour
of a young doe. Are you Meredith? My name is Oscard.”

“Ah! Yes, I am Meredith. I am glad to see you.”

They shook hands. There was a twinkle in Jack Meredith's eyes, but
Oscard was quite grave. His sense of humour was not very keen, and he
was before all things a sportsman.

“I left the canoes a mile below Msala, and landed to shoot a deer we
saw drinking, but I never saw him. Then I heard you, and I have been
stalking you ever since.”

“But I never expected you so soon; you were not due till--look!” Jack
whispered suddenly.

Oscard turned on his heel, and the next instant their two rifles rang
out through the forest stillness in one sharp crack. Across the stream,
ten yards behind the spot where Oscard had emerged from the bush, a
leopard sprang into the air, five feet from the ground, with head thrown
back, and paws clawing at the thinness of space with grand free sweeps.
The beast fell with a thud, and lay still--dead.

The two men clambered across the rocks again, side by side. While they
stood over the prostrate form of the leopard--beautiful, incomparably
graceful and sleek even in death--Guy Oscard stole a sidelong glance at
his companion. He was a modest man, and yet he knew that he was reckoned
among the big-game hunters of the age. This man had fired as quickly as
himself, and there were two small trickling holes in the animal's head.

While he was being quietly scrutinised Jack Meredith stooped down, and,
taking the leopard beneath the shoulders, lifted it bodily back from the
pool of blood.

“Pity to spoil the skin,” he explained, as he put a fresh cartridge into
his rifle.

Oscard nodded in an approving way. He knew the weight of a full-grown
male leopard, all muscle and bone, and he was one of those old-fashioned
persons mentioned in the Scriptures as taking a delight in a man's
legs--or his arms, so long as they were strong.

“I suppose,” he said quietly, “we had better skin him here.”

As he spoke he drew a long hunting-knife, and, slashing down a bunch
of the maidenhair fern that grew like nettles around them, he wiped the
blood gently, almost affectionately, from the leopard's cat-like face.

There was about these two men a strict attention to the matter in hand,
a mutual and common respect for all things pertaining to sport, a quiet
sense of settling down without delay to the regulation of necessary
detail that promised well for any future interest they might have in
common.

So these highly-educated young gentlemen turned up their sleeves and
steeped themselves to the elbow in gore. Moreover, they did it with a
certain technical skill and a distinct sense of enjoyment. Truly, the
modern English gentleman is a strange being. There is nothing his soul
takes so much delight in as the process of getting hot and very
dirty, and, if convenient, somewhat sanguinary. You cannot educate the
manliness out of him, try as you will; and for such blessings let us in
all humbleness give thanks to Heaven.

This was the bringing together of Jack Meredith and Guy Oscard--two
men who loved the same woman. They knelt side by side, and Jack
Meredith--the older man, the accomplished, gifted gentleman of the
world, who stood second to none in that varied knowledge required
nowadays of the successful societarian--Jack Meredith, be it noted,
humbly dragged the skin away from the body while Guy Oscard cut the
clinging integuments with a delicate touch and finished skill.

They laid the skin out on the trampled maidenhair, and contemplated it
with silent satisfaction. In the course of their inspection they both
arrived at the head at the same moment. The two holes in the hide, just
above the eyes, came under their notice at the same moment, and they
turned and smiled gravely at each other, thinking the same thought--the
sort of thought that Englishmen rarely put into intelligible English.

“I'm glad we did that,” said Guy Oscard at length, suddenly. “Whatever
comes of this expedition of ours--if we fight like hell, as we probably
shall, before it is finished--if we hate each other ever afterwards,
that skin ought to remind us that we are much of a muchness.”

It might have been put into better English; it might almost have sounded
like poetry had Guy Oscard been possessed of the poetic soul. But this,
fortunately, was not his; and all that might have been said was left to
the imagination of Meredith. What he really felt was that there need
be no rivalry, and that he for one had no thought of such; that in the
quest which they were about to undertake there need be no question of
first and last; that they were merely two men, good or bad, competent or
incompetent, but through all equal.

Neither of them suspected that the friendship thus strangely inaugurated
at the rifle's mouth was to run through a longer period than the few
months required to reach the plateau--that it was, in fact, to extend
through that long expedition over a strange country that we call Life,
and that it was to stand the greatest test that friendship has to meet
with here on earth.

It was almost dark when at last they turned to go, Jack Meredith
carrying the skin over his shoulder and leading the way. There was no
opportunity for conversation, as their progress was necessarily very
difficult. Only by the prattle of the stream were they able to make sure
of keeping in the right direction. Each had a thousand questions to
ask the other. They were total strangers; but it is not, one finds, by
conversation that men get to know each other. A common danger, a common
pleasure, a common pursuit--these are the touches of Nature by which men
are drawn together into the kinship of mutual esteem.

Once they gained the banks of the Ogowe their progress was quicker, and
by nine o'clock they reached the camp at Msala. Victor Durnovo was still
at work superintending the discharge of the baggage and stores from
the large trading-canoes. They heard the shouting and chattering before
coming in sight of the camp, and one voice raised angrily above the
others.

“Is that Durnovo's voice?” asked Meredith.

“Yes,” answered his companion curtly.

It was a new voice which Meredith had not heard before. When they
shouted to announce their arrival it was suddenly hushed, and presently
Durnovo came forward to greet them.

Meredith hardly knew him, he was so much stronger and healthier in
appearance. Durnovo shook hands heartily.

“No need to introduce you two,” he said, looking from one to the other.

“No; after one mistake we discovered each other's identity in the
forest,” answered Meredith.

Durnovo smiled; but there was something behind the smile. He did not
seem to approve of their meeting without his intervention.



CHAPTER XIII. IN BLACK AND WHITE



     A little lurking secret of the blood,
     A little serpent secret rankling keen.

The three men walked up towards the house together. It was a fair-sized
house, with a heavy thatched roof that overhung the walls like the crown
of a mushroom. The walls were only mud, and the thatching was nothing
else than banana leaves; but there was evidence of European taste in the
garden surrounding the structure, and in the glazed windows and wooden
door.

As they approached the open doorway three little children, clad in very
little more than their native modesty, ran gleefully out, and proceeded
to engage seats on Jack Meredith's boots, looking upon him as a mere
public conveyance. They took hardly any notice of him, but chattered and
quarrelled among themselves, sometimes in baby English, sometimes in a
dialect unknown to Oscard and Meredith.

“These,” said the latter, when they were seated, and clinging with their
little dusky arms round his legs, “are the very rummest little kids I
ever came across.”

Durnovo gave an impatient laugh, and went on towards the house. But Guy
Oscard stopped, and walked more slowly beside Meredith as he laboured
along heavy footed.

“They are the jolliest little souls imaginable,” continued Jack
Meredith. “There,” he said to them when they had reached the doorstep,
“run away to your mother--very fine ride--no! no more to-night! I'm
aweary--you understand--aweary!”

“Aweary--awe-e-e-ary!” repeated the little things, standing before him
in infantile nude rotundity, looking up with bright eyes.

“Aweary--that is it. Good night, Epaminondas--good night, Xantippe! Give
ye good hap, most stout Nestorius!”

He stooped and gravely shook hands with each one in turn, and, after
forcing a like ceremonial upon Guy Oscard, they reluctantly withdrew.

“They have not joined us, I suppose?” said Oscard, as he followed his
companion into the house.

“Not yet. They live in this place. Nestorius, I understand, takes care
of his mother, who, in her turn, takes care of this house. He is one and
a half.”

Guy Oscard seemed to have inherited the mind inquisitive from his
learned father. He asked another question later on.

“Who is that woman?” he said during dinner, with a little nod towards
the doorway, through which the object of his curiosity had passed with
some plates.

“That is the mother of the stout Nestorius,” answered Jack--“Durnovo's
housekeeper.”

He spoke quietly, looking straight in front of him; and Joseph, who was
drawing a cork at the back of the room, was watching his face.

There was a little pause, during which Durnovo drank slowly. Then Guy
Oscard spoke again.

“If she cooked the dinner,” he said, “she knows her business.”

“Yes,” answered Durnovo, “she is a good cook--if she is nothing else.”

It did not sound as if further inquiries would be welcome, and so the
subject was dropped with a silent tribute to the culinary powers of
Durnovo's housekeeper at the Msala Station.

The woman had only appeared for a moment, bringing in some dishes
for Joseph--a tall, stately woman, with great dark eyes, in which the
patience of motherhood had succeeded to the soft fire of West Indian
love and youth. She had the graceful, slow carriage of the Creole,
although her skin was darker than that of those dangerous sirens. That
Spanish blood ran in her veins could be seen by the intelligence of her
eyes; for there is an intelligence in Spanish eyes which stand apart.
In the men it seems to refer to the past or the future, for their
incorrigible leisureliness prevents the present rendering of a full
justice to their powers. In the women it belongs essentially to the
present; for there is no time like the present for love and other
things.

“They call me,” she had said to Jack Meredith, in her soft, mumbled
English, a fortnight earlier, “they call me Marie.”

The children he had named after his own phantasy, and when she had once
seen him with them there was a notable change in her manner. Her eyes
rested on him with a sort of wondering attention, and when she cooked
his meals or touched anything that was his there was something in her
attitude that denoted a special care.

Joseph called her “Missis,” with a sort of friendliness in his voice,
which never rose to badinage nor descended to familiarity.

“Seems to me, missis,” he said, on the third evening after the arrival
of the advance column, “that the guv'nor takes uncommon kindly to them
little 'uns of yours.”

They were washing up together after dinner in that part of the garden
which was used for a scullery, and Joseph was enjoying a post-prandial
pipe.

“Yes,” she said simply, following the direction of Joseph's glance. Jack
Meredith was engaged in teaching Epaminondas the intellectual game of
bowls with a rounded pebble and a beer-bottle. Nestorius, whose person
seemed more distended than usual, stood gravely by, engaged in dental
endeavours on a cork, while Xantippe joined noisily in the game. Their
lack of dress was essentially native to the country, while their mother
affected a simple European style of costume.

“And,” added Joseph, on politeness bent, “it don't surprise me. I'm
wonderfully fond of the little nig--nippers already. I am--straight.”

The truth was that the position of this grave and still comely woman was
ambiguous. Neither Joseph nor his master called her by the name she had
offered for their use. Joseph compromised by the universal and elastic
“Missis”; his master simply avoided all names.

Ambiguity is one of those intangible nothings that get into the
atmosphere and have a trick of remaining there. Marie seemed in some
subtle way to pervade the atmosphere of Msala. It would seem that Guy
Oscard, in his thick-headed way, was conscious of this mystery in the
air; for he had not been two hours in Msala before he asked “Who is that
woman?” and received the reply which has been recorded.

After dinner they passed out on to the little terrace overlooking
the river, and it was here that the great Simiacine scheme was pieced
together. It was here beneath the vast palm trees that stood like
two beacons towering over the surrounding forest, that three men
deliberately staked their own lives and the lives of others against a
fortune. Nature has a strange way of hiding her gifts. Many of the most
precious have lain unheeded for hundreds of years in barren plains, on
inaccessible mountains, or beneath the wave, while others are thrown at
the feet of savages who know no use for them.

The man who had found the Simiacine was eager, restless, full of
suspicion. To the others the scheme obviously presented itself in
a different light. Jack Meredith was dilettante, light-hearted, and
unsatisfactory. It was impossible to arouse any enthusiasm in him--to
make him take it seriously. Guy Oscard was gravely indifferent. He
wanted to get rid of a certain space of time, and the African forest,
containing as it did the only excitement that his large heart knew, was
as good a place as any. The Simiacine was, in his mind, relegated to
a distant place behind weeks of sport and adventure such as his soul
loved. He scarcely took Victor Durnovo au pied de la lettre. Perhaps he
knew too much about him for that. Certain it is that neither of the
two realised at that moment the importance of the step that they were
taking.

“You men,” said Durnovo eagerly, “don't seem to take the thing
seriously.”

“I,” answered Meredith, “intend at all events to take the profits very
seriously. When they begin to come in, J. Meredith will be at the
above address, and trusts by a careful attention to business to merit a
continuance of your kind patronage.”

Durnovo laughed somewhat nervously. Oscard did not seem to hear.

“It is all very well for you,” said the half-caste in a lower voice.
“You have not so much at stake. It is likely that the happiness of my
whole life depends upon this venture.”

A curious smile passed across Jack Meredith's face. Without turning his
head, he glanced sideways into Durnovo's face through the gloom. But he
said nothing, and it was Oscard who broke the silence by saying simply:

“The same may possibly apply to me.”

There was a little pause, during which he lighted his pipe.

“To a certain extent,” he said in emendation. “Of course, my real
object, as you no doubt know, is to get away from England until my
father's death has been forgotten. My own conscience is quite clear,
but--”

Jack Meredith drew in his legs and leant forward.

“But,” he said, interrupting, and yet not interrupting--“but the public
mind is an unclean sink. Everything that goes into it comes out tainted.
Therefore it is best only to let the public mind have the scourings, as
it were, of one's existence. If they get anything better--anything more
important--it is better to skedaddle until it has run through and been
swept away by a flow of social garbage.”

Guy Oscard grunted with his pipe between his teeth, after the manner of
the stoic American-Indian--a grunt that seemed to say, “My pale-faced
brother has spoken well; he expresses my feelings.” Then he gave further
vent to the deliberate expansiveness which was his.

“What I cannot stand,” he said, “are the nudges and the nods and the
surreptitious glances of the silly women who think that one cannot see
them looking. I hate being pointed out.”

“Together with the latest skirt-dancing girl, and the last female
society-detective, with the blushing honours of the witness-box thick
upon her,” suggested Jack Meredith.

“Yes,” muttered Guy. He turned with a sort of simple wonder, and looked
at Meredith curiously. He had never been understood so quickly before.
He had never met man or woman possessing in so marked a degree that
subtle power of going right inside the mind of another and feeling the
things that are there--the greatest power of all--the power that rules
the world; and it is only called Sympathy.

“Well,” said the voice of Durnovo through the darkness, “I don't mind
admitting that all I want is the money. I want to get out of this
confounded country; but I don't want to leave till I have made a
fortune.”

The subtle influence that Meredith wielded seemed to have reached him
too, warming into expansiveness his hot Spanish blood. His voice was
full of confidence.

“Very right and proper,” said Meredith. “Got a grudge against the
country; make the country pay for it in cash.”

“That's what I intend to do; and it shall pay heavily. Then, when I've
got the money, I'll know what to do with it. I know where to look, and I
do not think that I shall look in vain.”

Guy Oscard shuffled uneasily in his camp-chair. He had an Englishman's
horror of putting into speech those things which we all think, while
only Frenchmen and Italians say them. The Spaniards are not so bad, and
Victor Durnovo had enough of their blood in him to say no more.

It did not seem to occur to any of them that the only person whose
individuality was still veiled happened to be Jack Meredith. He alone
had said nothing, had imparted no confidence. He it was who spake first,
after a proper period of silence. He was too much of an adept to betray
haste, and thus admit his debt of mutual confidence.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that we have all the technicalities arranged
now. So far as the working of the expedition is concerned, we know our
places, and the difficulties will be met as they present themselves. But
there is one thing which I think we should set in order now. I have been
thinking about it while I have been waiting here alone.”

The glow of Victor Durnovo's cigar died away as if in his attention he
was forgetting to smoke; but he said nothing.

“It seems to me,” Jack went on, “that before we leave here we should
draw up and sign a sort of deed of partnership. Of course, we trust each
other perfectly--there is no question of that. But life is an uncertain
thing, as some earlier philosopher said before me; and one never knows
what may happen. I have drawn up a paper in triplicate. If you have a
match, I will read it to you.”

Oscard produced a match, and, striking it on his boot, sheltered it with
the hollow of his hand, while Jack read:

“We, the undersigned, hereby enter into partnership to search for and
sell, to our mutual profit, the herb known as Simiacine, the profits
to be divided into three equal portions, after the deduction of
one-hundredth part to be handed to the servant, Joseph Atkinson. Any
further expenses that may be incurred to be borne in the same proportion
as the original expense of fitting out the expedition, namely,
two-fifths to be paid by Guy Cravener Oscard, two-fifths by John
Meredith, one-fifth by Victor Durnovo.

“The sum of fifty pounds per month to be paid to Victor Durnovo,
wherewith he may pay the thirty special men taken from his estate and
headquarters at Msala to cultivate the Simiacine, and such corn and
vegetables as may be required for the sustenance of the expedition;
these men to act as porters until the plateau be reached.

“The opinion of two of the three leaders against one to be accepted
unconditionally in all questions where controversy may arise. In case of
death each of us undertakes hereby to hand over to the executors of the
dead partner or partners such moneys as shall belong to him or them.”

At this juncture there was a little pause while Guy Oscard lighted a
second match.

“And,” continued Jack, “we hereby undertake severally, on oath, to hold
the whereabouts of the Simiacine a strict secret, which secret may
not be revealed by any one of us to whomsoever it may be without the
sanction, in writing, of the other two partners.”

“There,” concluded Jack Meredith, “I am rather pleased with that
literary production: it is forcible and yet devoid of violence. I feel
that in me the commerce of the century has lost an ornament. Moreover, I
am ready to swear to the terms of the agreement.”

There was a little pause. Guy Oscard took his pipe from his mouth, and
while he knocked the ashes out against the leg of his chair he mumbled,
“I swear to hold that agreement.”

Victor Durnovo took off his hat with a sweep and a flourish, and,
raising his bared brow to the stars, he said, “I swear to hold to that
agreement. If I fail, may God strike me dead!”



CHAPTER XIV. PANIC-STRICKEN



     Is this reason?  Is this humanity?  Alas! it is man.

The next morning Jack Meredith was awakened by his servant Joseph before
it was fully light. It would appear as if Joseph had taken no means of
awakening him, for Meredith awoke quite quietly to find Joseph standing
by his bed.

“Holloa!” exclaimed the master, fully awake at once, as townsmen are.

Joseph stood at attention by the bedside.

“Woke you before yer time, sir,” he said. “There's something wrong among
these 'ere darkie fellers, sir.”

“Wrong! what do you mean?”

Meredith was already lacing his shoes.

“Not rebellion?” he said curtly, looking towards his firearms.

“No, sir, not that. It's some mortual sickness. I don't know what it is.
I've been up half the night with them. It's spreading, too.”

“Sickness! what does it seem like? Just give me that jacket. Not that
sleeping sickness?”

“No, sir. It's not that. Missis Marie was telling me about that--awful
scourge that, sir. No, the poor chaps are wide-awake enough. Groanin',
and off their heads too, mostly.”

“Have you called Mr. Oscard?”

“No, sir.”

“Call him and Mr. Durnovo.”

“Met Mr. Durnovo, sir, goin' out as I came in.”

In a few moments Jack joined Durnovo and Oscard, who were talking
together on the terrace in front of the house. Guy Oscard was still
in his pyjamas, which he had tucked into top-boots. He also wore
a sun-helmet, which added a finish to his costume. They got quite
accustomed to this get-up during the next three days, for he never had
time to change it; and, somehow, it ceased to be humorous long before
the end of that time.

“Oh, it's nothing,” Durnovo was saying, with a singular eagerness. “I
know these chaps. They have been paid in advance. They are probably
shamming, and if they are not they are only suffering from the effects
of a farewell glorification. They want to delay our start. That is their
little game. It will give them a better chance of deserting.”

“At any rate, we had better go and see them,” suggested Jack.

“No, don't!” cried Durnovo eagerly, detaining him with both hands.
“Take my advice, and don't. Just have breakfast in the ordinary way and
pretend there is nothing wrong. Then afterwards you can lounge casually
into the camp.”

“All right,” said Jack, rather unwillingly.

“It has been of some use--this scare,” said Durnovo, turning and looking
towards the river. “It has reminded me of something. We have not nearly
enough quinine. I will just take a quick canoe, and run down to Loango
to fetch some.”

He turned quite away from them, and stooped to attach the lace of his
boot.

“I can travel night and day, and be back here in three days,” he added.
“In the meantime you can be getting on with the loading of the canoes,
and we will start as soon as I get back.”

He stood upright and looked around with weatherwise, furtive eyes.

“Seems to me,” he said, “there's thunder coming. I think I had better be
off at once.”

In the course of his inspection of the lowering clouds which hung,
black as ink, just above the trees, his eyes lighted on Joseph,
standing within the door of the cottage, watching him with a singular
half-suppressed smile.

“Yes,” he said hurriedly, “I will start at once. I can eat some sort of
a breakfast when we are under way.”

He looked beneath his lashes quickly from Jack to Guy and back again.
Their silent acquiescence was not quite satisfactory. Then he called
his own men, and spoke to them in a tongue unknown to the Englishmen.
He hurried forward their preparations with a feverish irritability which
made Jack Meredith think of the first time he had ever seen Durnovo--a
few miles farther down the river--all palpitating and trembling with
climatic nervousness. His face was quite yellow, and there was a line
drawn diagonally from the nostrils down each cheek, to lose itself
ultimately in the heavy black moustache.

Before he stepped into his canoe the thunder was rumbling in the
distance, and the air was still as death. Breathing was an effort; the
inhaled air did not satisfy the lungs, and seemed powerless to expand
them.

Overhead the clouds, of a blue-black intensity, seemed almost to touch
the trees; the river was of ink. The rowers said nothing, but they
lingered on the bank and watched Durnovo's face anxiously. When he took
his seat in the canoe they looked protestingly up to the sky. Durnovo
said something to them rapidly, and they laid their paddles to the
water.

Scarcely had the boat disappeared in the bend of the river before the
rain broke. It came with the rush of an express train--the trees bending
before the squall like reeds. The face of the river was tormented into
a white fury by the drops which splashed up again a foot in height. The
lashing of the water on the bare backs of the negroes was distinctly
audible to Victor Durnovo.

Then the black clouds split up like a rent cloth, and showed behind
them, not Heaven, but the living fire of Hell. The thunder crashed out
in sharp reports like file-firing at a review. With one accord the men
ceased rowing and crouched down in the canoe.

Durnovo shouted to them, his face livid with fury. But for some moments
his voice was quite lost. The lightning ran over the face of the river
like will-o'-the-wisps; the whole heaven was streaked continuously with
it.

Suddenly the negroes leaped to their paddles and rowed with bent back,
and wild staring eyes, as if possessed. They were covered by the muzzle
of Durnovo's revolver.

Behind the evil-looking barrel of blue steel, the half-caste's dripping
face looked forth, peering into the terrific storm. There was no
question of fending off such torrents of rain, nor did he attempt
it. Indeed, he seemed to court its downfall. He held out his arms and
stretched forth his legs, giving free play to the water which ran off
him in a continual stream, washing his thin khaki clothing on his limbs.
He raised his face to the sky, and let the water beat upon his brow and
hair.

The roar of the thunder, which could be FELT, so great was the vibration
of the laden air, seemed to have no fear for him. The lightning, ever
shooting athwart the sky, made him blink as if dazzled, but he looked
upon it without emotion.

He knew that behind him he had left a greater danger than this, and he
stretched out his limbs to the cleansing torrent with an exulting relief
to be washed from the dread infection. Small-pox had laid its hand on
the camp at Msala: and from the curse of it Victor Durnovo was flying
in a mad chattering panic through all the anger of the tropic elements,
holding death over his half-stunned crew, not daring to look behind him
or pause in his coward's flight.

It is still said on the Ogowe river that no man travels like Victor
Durnovo. Certain it is that, in twenty-seven hours from the time that
he left Msala on the morning of the great storm, he presented himself
before Maurice Gordon in his office at the factory at Loango.

“Ah!” cried Gordon, hardly noticing the washed-out, harassed appearance
of the visitor; “here you are again. I heard that the great expedition
had started.”

“So it has, but I have come back to get one or two things we have
forgotten. Got any sherry handy?”

“Of course,” replied Gordon, with perfect adhesion to the truth.

He laid aside his pen and, turning in his chair, drew a decanter from a
small cupboard which stood on the ground at his side.

“Here you are,” he continued, pouring out a full glass with practised,
but slightly unsteady, hand.

Durnovo drank the wine at one gulp and set the glass down.

“Ah!” he said, “that does a chap good.”

“Does it now?” exclaimed Maurice Gordon with mock surprise. “Well, I'll
just try.”

The manner in which he emptied his glass was quite different, with a
long, slow drawing-out of the enjoyment, full of significance for the
initiated.

“Will you be at home to-night?” asked Durnovo, gently pushing aside
the hospitable decanter. “I have got a lot of work to do to-day, but I
should like to run in and see you this evening.”

“Yes, come and dine.”

Durnovo shook his head and looked down at his wrinkled and draggled
clothing.

“No, I can't do that, old man. Not in this trim.”

“Bosh? What matter? Jocelyn doesn't mind.”

“No, but I do.”

It was obvious that he wanted to accept the invitation, although the
objection he raised was probably honest. For that taint in the blood
that cometh from the subtle tar-brush brings with it a vanity that has
its equal in no white man's heart.

“Well, I'll lend you a black coat! Seven o'clock sharp!”

Durnovo hurried away with a gleam of excitement in his dark eyes.

Maurice Gordon did not resume his work at once. He sat for some time
idly drumming with his fingers on the desk.

“If I can only get her to be civil to him,” he reflected aloud, “I'll
get into this business yet.”

At seven o'clock Durnovo appeared at the Gordons' house. He had managed
to borrow a dress-suit, and wore an orchid in his buttonhole. It was
probably the first time that Jocelyn had seen him in this garb of
civilisation, which is at the same time the most becoming and the
most trying variety of costume left to sensible men in these days. A
dress-suit finds a man out sooner than anything except speech.

Jocelyn was civil in her reception--more so, indeed, than Maurice Gordon
had hoped for. She seemed almost glad to see Durnovo, and evinced quite
a kindly interest in his movements. Durnovo attributed this to the
dress-suit, while Maurice concluded that his obvious hints, thrown out
before dinner, had fallen on fruitful ground.

At dinner Victor Durnovo was quite charmed with the interest that
Jocelyn took in the expedition, of which, he gave it to be understood,
he was the chief. So also was Maurice, because Durnovo's evident
admiration of Jocelyn somewhat overcame his natural secrecy of
character.

“You'll hear of me, Miss Gordon, never fear, before three months are
past,” said Durnovo, in reply to a vague suggestion that his absence
might extend to several months. “I am not the sort of man to come to
grief by a foolish mistake or any unnecessary risk.”

To which sentiment two men at Msala bore generous testimony later on.

The simple dinner was almost at an end, and it was at this time that
Jocelyn Gordon began once more to dislike Durnovo. At first she had felt
drawn towards him. Although he wore the dress-clothes rather awkwardly,
there was something in his manner which reminded her vaguely of a
gentleman. It was not that he was exactly gentlemanly, but there was the
reflection of good breeding in his bearing. Dark-skinned people, be it
noted, have usually the imitative faculty. As the dinner and the wine
warmed his heart, so by degrees he drew on his old self like a glove. He
grew bolder and less guarded. His opinion of himself rose momentarily,
and with it a certain gleam in his eyes increased as they rested on
Jocelyn.

It was not long before she noted this, and quite suddenly her ancient
dislike of the man was up in arms with a new intensity gathered she knew
not whence.

“And,” said Maurice, when Jocelyn had left them, “I suppose you'll be a
millionaire in about six months?”

He gently pushed the wine towards him at the same time. Durnovo had
not slept for forty hours. The excitement of his escape from the
plague-ridden camp had scarcely subsided. The glitter of the silver on
the table, the shaded candles, the subtle sensuality of refinement and
daintiness appealed to his hot-blooded nature. He was a little off his
feet perhaps. He took the decanter and put it to the worst use he could
have selected.

“Not so soon as that,” he said; “but in time--in time.”

“Lucky beggar!” muttered Maurice Gordon, with a little sigh.

“I don't mind telling you,” said Durnovo, with a sudden confidence
begotten of Madeira, “that it's Simiacine--that's what it is. I can't
tell you more.”

“Simiacine,” repeated Gordon, fingering the stem of his wine-glass and
looking at him keenly between the candle-shades. “Yes. You've always
been on its track, haven't you?”

“In six months your go-downs will be full of it--my Simiacine, my
Simiacine.”

“By God, I wish I had a hand in it.”

Maurice Gordon pushed the decanter again--gently, almost
surreptitiously.

“And so you may, some day. You help me and I'll help you--that is my
ticket. Reciprocity--reciprocity, my dear Maurice.”

“Yes, but how?”

“Can't tell you now, but I will in good time--in my own time. Come,
let's join the ladies--eh? haha!”

But at this moment the servant brought in coffee, saying in his master's
ear that Miss Jocelyn had gone to bed with a slight headache.



CHAPTER XV. A CONFIDENCE



                                      The spirits
     Of coming things stride on before their issues.

There is nothing that brings men so close to each other as a common
grievance or a common danger. Men who find pleasure in the same game
or the same pursuit are drawn together by a common taste; but in the
indulgence of it there is sure to arise, sooner or later, a spirit of
competition. Now, this spirit, which is in most human affairs, is a new
bond of union when men are fighting side by side against a common foe.

During the three days that followed Durnovo's departure from Msala, Jack
Meredith and Oscard learnt to know each other. These three days were as
severe a test as could well be found; for courage, humanity, tenderness,
loyalty, were by turns called forth by circumstance. Smallpox rages in
Africa as it rages nowhere else in these days. The natives fight it
or bow before it as before an ancient and deeply dreaded foe. It was
nothing new to them, and it would have been easy enough for Jack and
Oscard to prove to their own satisfaction that the presence of three
white men at Msala was a danger to themselves and no advantage to the
natives. It would have been very simple to abandon the river station,
leaving there such men as were stricken down to care for each other. But
such a thought never seemed to suggest itself.

The camp was moved across the river, where all who seemed strong and
healthy were placed under canvas, awaiting further developments.

The infected were carried to a special camp set apart and guarded, and
this work was executed almost entirely by the three Englishmen, aided by
a few natives who had had the disease.

For three days these men went about with their lives literally in
their hands, tending the sick, cheering the despondent, frightening
the cowards into some semblance of self-respect and dignity. And during
these three days, wherein they never took an organised meal or three
consecutive hours of rest, Joseph, Meredith, and Oscard rose together to
that height of manhood where master and servant, educated man and common
soldier, stand equal before their Maker.

Owing to the promptness with which measures had been taken for isolating
the affected, the terrible sickness did not spread. In all eleven men
were stricken, and of these ten died within three days. The eleventh
recovered, but eventually remained at Msala.

It was only on the evening of the third day that Jack and Guy found time
to talk of the future. They had never left Durnovo's house, and on this
third day they found time to dine together.

“Do you think,” Oscard asked bluntly, when they were left alone to
smoke, “that Durnovo knew what was the matter?”

“I am afraid that I have not the slightest doubt of it,” replied Jack
lightly.

“And bolted?” suggested Oscard.

“And bolted.”

Guy Oscard gave a contemptuous little laugh, which had a deeper insult
in it than he could have put into words.

“And what is to be done?” he inquired.

“Nothing. People in books would mount on a very high pinnacle of
virtue and cast off Mr. Durnovo and all his works; but it is much
more practical to make what use we can of him. That is a worldly-wise,
nineteenth-century way of looking at it; we cannot do without him.”

The contemplativeness of nicotine was upon Guy Oscard.

“Umph!” he grunted. “It is rather disgusting,” he said, after a pause;
“I hate dealing with cowards.”

“And I with fools. For everyday use, give me a coward by preference.”

“Yes, there is something in that. Still, I'd throw up the whole thing
if--”

“So would I,” said Jack, turning sharply in his chair, “if--”

Oscard laughed curtly and waited.

“If,” continued Jack, “I could. But I am more or less bound to go on
now. Such chances as this do not turn up every day; I cannot afford to
let it go by. Truth is, I told--some one who shall be nameless--that
I would make money to keep her in that state of life wherein her
godfathers, etc., have placed her; and make that money I must.”

“That is about my position too,” said Guy Oscard, somewhat indistinctly,
owing to the fact that he habitually smoked a thick-stemmed pipe.

“Is it? I'm glad of that. It gives us something in common to work for.”

“Yes.” Guy paused, and made a huge effort, finally conquering that
taciturnity which was almost an affliction to him. “The reason I gave
the other night to you and that chap Durnovo was honest enough, but I
have another. I want to lie low for a few months, but I also want to
make money. I'm as good as engaged to be married, and I find that I am
not so well off as I thought I was. People told me that I should have
three thousand a year when the governor died, but I find that people
know less of my affairs than I thought.”

“They invariably do,” put in Jack encouragingly.

“It is barely two thousand, and--and she has been brought up to
something better than that.”

“Um! they mostly are. Mine has been brought up to something better than
that too. That is the worst of it.”

Jack Meredith leant back in his folding chair, and gazed practically up
into the heavens.

“Of course,” Guy went on, doggedly expansive now that he had once
plunged, “two thousand a year sounds pretty good, and it is not bad
to start upon. But there is no chance of its increasing; in fact, the
lawyer fellows say it may diminish. I know of no other way to make
money--had no sort of training for it. I'm not of a commercial turn
of mind. Fellows go into the City and brew beer or float companies,
whatever that may be.”

“It means they sink other people's funds,” explained Jack.

“Yes, I suppose it does. The guv'nor, y' know, never taught me how to
make a livelihood; wouldn't let me be a soldier; sent me to college, and
all that; wanted me to be a litterateur. Now I'm not literary.”

“No, I shouldn't think you were.”

“Remains Africa. I am not a clever chap, like you, Meredith.”

“For which you may thank a gracious Providence,” interposed Jack. “Chaps
like me are what some people call 'fools' in their uncouth way.”

“But I know a little about Africa, and I know something about Durnovo.
That man has got a mania, and it is called Simiacine. He is quite
straight upon that point, whatever he may be upon others. He knows
this country, and he is not making any mistake about the Simiacine,
whatever--”

“His powers of sick-nursing may be,” suggested Jack.

“Yes, that's it. We'll put it that way if you like.”

“Thanks, I do prefer it. Any fool could call a spade a spade. The
natural ambition would be to find something more flowery and yet equally
descriptive.”

Guy Oscard subsided into a monosyllabic sound.

“I believe implicitly in this scheme,” he went on, after a pause. “It is
a certain fact that the men who can supply pure Simiacine have only to
name their price for it. They will make a fortune, and I believe that
Durnovo knows where it is growing in quantities.”

“I cannot see how it would pay him to deceive us in the matter. That
is the best way of looking at it,” murmured Jack reflectively. “When I
first met him, the man thought he was dying, and for the time I really
believe that he was honest. Some men are honest when they feel unwell.
There was so little doubt in my mind that I went into the thing at
once.”

“If you will go on with it I will stand by you,” said Oscard shortly.

“All right; I think we two together are as good as any half-bred sharper
on this coast, to put it gracefully.”

Jack Meredith lighted a fresh cigarette, and leant back with the
somewhat exaggerated grace of movement which was in reality partly
attributable to natural litheness. For some time they smoked in silence,
subject to the influence of the dreamy tropic night. Across the river
some belated bird was calling continuously and cautiously for its mate.
At times the splashing movements of a crocodile broke the smooth silence
of the water. Overhead the air was luminous with that night-glow which
never speaks to the senses in latitudes above the teens.

There is something in man's nature that inclines him
sympathetically--almost respectfully--towards a mental inferior.
Moreover, the feeling, whatever it may be, is rarely, if ever, found in
women. A man does not openly triumph in victory, as do women. One sees
an easy victor--at lawn tennis, for instance--go to his vanquished foe,
wiping vigorously a brow that is scarcely damp, and explaining more
or less lamely how it came about. But the same rarely happens in the
“ladies' singles.” What, to quote another instance, is more profound
than the contempt bestowed by the girl with the good figure upon her
who has no figure at all? Without claiming the virtue of a greater
generosity for the sex, one may, perhaps, assume that men learn by
experience the danger of despising any man. The girl with the
good figure is sometimes--nay, often--found blooming alone in her
superiority, while the despised competitor is a happy mother of
children. And all this to explain that Jack Meredith felt drawn towards
his great hulking companion by something that was not a mere respect of
mind for matter.

As love is inexplicable, so is friendship. No man can explain why David
held Jonathan in such high esteem. Between men it would appear that
admiration is no part of friendship. And such as have the patience to
follow the lives of the two Englishmen thus brought together by a series
of chances will perhaps be able to discover in this record of a great
scheme the reason why Jack Meredith, the brilliant, the gifted, should
bestow upon Guy Oscard such a wealth of love and esteem as he never
received in return.

During the silence Jack was apparently meditating over the debt of
confidence which he still owed to his companion; for he spoke first, and
spoke seriously, about himself, which was somewhat against his habit.

“I daresay you have heard,” he said, “that I had a--a disagreement with
my father.”

“Yes. Heard something about it,” replied Oscard, in a tone which seemed
to imply that the “something” was quite sufficient for his requirements.

“It was about my engagement,” Jack went on deliberately. “I do not know
how it was, but they did not hit it off together. She was too honest to
throw herself at his head, I suppose; for I imagine a pretty girl can
usually do what she likes with an old man if she takes the trouble.”

“Not with him, I think. Seemed to be rather down on girls in general,”
 said Oscard coolly.

“Then you know him?”

“Yes, a little. I have met him once or twice, out, you know. I don't
suppose he would know me again if he saw me.”

Which last remark does not redound to the credit of Guy's powers of
observation.

They paused. It is wonderful how near we may stand to the brink and
look far away beyond the chasm. Years afterwards they remembered this
conversation, and it is possible that Jack Meredith wondered then what
instinct it was that made him change the direction of their thoughts.

“If it is agreeable to you,” he said, “I think it would be wise for me
to go down to Loango, and gently intimate to Durnovo that we should be
glad of his services.”

“Certainly.”

“He cannot be buying quinine all this time, you know. He said he would
travel night and day.”

Oscard nodded gravely.

“How will you put it?” he asked.

“I thought I would simply say that his non-arrival caused us some
anxiety, and that I had come down to see if anything was wrong.”

Jack rose and threw away the end of his cigarette. It was quite late,
and across the river the gleam of the moonlight on fixed bayonets told
that only the sentries were astir.

“And what about the small-pox?” pursued Oscard, more with the desire to
learn than to amend.

“Don't think I shall say anything about that. The man wants careful
handling.”

“You will have to tell him that we have got it under.”

“Yes, I'll do that. Good-night, old fellow; I shall be off by daylight.”

By seven o'clock the next morning the canoe was ready, with its swarthy
rowers in their places. The two Englishmen breakfasted together, and
then walked down to the landing-stage side by side.

It was raining steadily, and the atmosphere had that singular feeling
of total relaxation and limpness which is only to be felt in the
rain-ridden districts of Central Africa.

“Take care of yourself,” said Oscard gruffly as Jack stepped into the
canoe.

“All right.”

“And bring back Durnovo with you.”

Jack Meredith looked up with a vague smile.

“That man,” he said lightly, “is going to the Plateau if I have to drag
him there by the scruff of the neck.”

And he believed that he was thinking of the expedition only.



CHAPTER XVI. WAR



     Who, when they slash and cut to pieces,
     Do so with civilest addresses.

There is no power so subtle and so strong as that of association. We
have learnt to associate mustard with beef, and therefore mustard shall
be eaten with beef until the day when the lion shall lie down with the
lamb.

Miss Millicent Chyne became aware, as the year advanced towards the
sere and yellow leaf, that in opposing her wayward will in single
combat against a simple little association in the public mind she was
undertaking a somewhat herculean task.

Society--itself an association--is the slave of a word, and society had
acquired the habit of coupling the names of Sir John Meredith and
Lady Cantourne. They belonged to the same generation; they had similar
tastes; they were both of some considerable power in the world of
leisured pleasure; and, lastly, they amused each other. The result is
not far to seek. Wherever the one was invited, the other was considered
to be in demand; and Millicent found herself face to face with a huge
difficulty.

Sir John was distinctly in the way. He had a keener eye than the
majority of young men, and occasionally exercised the old man's
privilege of saying outright things which, despite theory, are better
left unsaid. Moreover, the situation was ill-defined, and an ill-defined
situation does not improve in the keeping. Sir John said sharp
things--too sharp even for Millicent--and, in addition to the original
grudge begotten of his quarrel with Jack and its result, the girl
nourished an ever-present feeling of resentment at a persistency in
misunderstanding her of which she shrewdly suspected the existence.

Perhaps the worst of it was that Sir John never said anything which
could be construed into direct disapproval. He merely indicated, in
passing, the possession of a keen eyesight coupled with the embarrassing
faculty of adding together correctly two small numerals.

When, therefore, Millicent allowed herself to be assisted from the
carriage at the door of a large midland country house by an eager and
lively little French baron of her acquaintance, she was disgusted
but not surprised to see a well-known figure leaning gracefully on a
billiard-cue in the hall.

“I wish I could think that this pleasure was mutual,” said Sir John with
his courtliest smile, as he bowed over Millicent's hand.

“It might be,” with a coquettish glance.

“If--?”

“If I were not afraid of you.”

Sir John turned, smiling, to greet Lady Cantourne. He did not appear to
have heard, but in reality the remark had made a distinct impression
on him. It signalised a new departure--the attack at a fresh quarter.
Millicent had tried most methods--and she possessed many--hitherto
in vain. She had attempted to coax him with a filial playfulness of
demeanour, to dazzle him by a brilliancy which had that effect upon the
majority of men in her train, to win him by respectful affection; but
the result had been failure. She was now bringing her last reserve up
to the front; and there are few things more dangerous, even to an old
campaigner, than a confession of fear from the lips of a pretty girl.

Sir John Meredith gave himself a little jerk--a throw back of the
shoulders which was habitual--which might have been a tribute either to
Millicent behind, or to Lady Cantourne in front.

The pleasantest part of existence in a large country house full of
visitors is the facility with which one may avoid those among the guests
for whom one has no sympathy. Millicent managed very well to avoid Sir
John Meredith. The baron was her slave--at least he said so--and she
easily kept him at her beck and call during the first evening.

It would seem that that strange hollow energy of old age had laid its
hand upon Sir John Meredith, for he was the first to appear in the
breakfast-room the next morning. He went straight to the sideboard where
the letters and newspapers lay in an orderly heap. It is a question
whether he had not come down early on purpose to look for a letter.
Perhaps he could not stay in his bed with the knowledge that the postman
had called. He was possibly afraid to ask his old servant to go down and
fetch his letters.

His bent and knotted hands fumbled among the correspondence, and
suddenly his twitching lips were still. A strange stillness indeed
overcame his whole face, turning it to stone. The letter was there; it
had come, but it was not addressed to him.

Sir John Meredith took up the missive; he looked at the back, turned
it, and examined the handwriting of his own son. There was a whole
volume--filled with pride, and love, and unquenchable resolve--written
on his face. He threw the letter down among its fellows, and his hand
went fumbling weakly at his lips. He gazed, blinking his lashless lids,
at the heap of letters, and the corner of another envelope presently
arrested his attention. It was of the same paper, of the same shape and
hue, as that addressed to Miss Chyne. Sir John drew a deep breath, and
reached out his hand. The letter had come at last. At last, thank God!
And how weakly ready he was to grasp at the olive branch held out to him
across a continent!

He took the letter; he made a step with it towards the door, seeking
solitude; then, as an afterthought, he looked at the superscription.
It was addressed to the same person, Miss Chyne, but in a different
handwriting--the handwriting of a man well educated but little used to
wielding the pen.

“The other,” mumbled Sir John. “The other man, by God!”

And, with a smile that sat singularly on his withered face, he took up
a newspaper and went towards the fireplace, where he sat stiffly in an
armchair, taking an enormous interest in the morning's news. He read a
single piece of news three times over, and a fourth time in a whisper,
so as to rivet his attention upon it. He would not admit that he was
worsted--would not humble his pride even before the ornaments on the
mantelpiece.

Before Millicent came down, looking very fresh and pretty in her tweed
dress, the butler had sorted the letters. There were only two upon her
plate--the twin envelopes addressed by different hands. Sir John was
talking with a certain laboured lightness to Lady Cantourne, when that
lady's niece came into the room. He was watching keenly. There was a
certain amount of interest in the question of those two envelopes, a

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