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.
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.
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.