Take heed of still waters; they quick pass away.
Guy Oscard was sitting on the natural terrace in front of Durnovo's house at Msala, and Marie attended to his simple wants with that patient dignity which suggested the recollection of better times, and appealed strongly to the manhood of her fellow-servant Joseph.
Oscard was not good at the enunciation of those small amenities which are supposed to soothe the feelings of the temporarily debased. He vaguely felt that this woman was not accustomed to menial service, but he knew that any suggestion of sympathy was more than he could compass. So he merely spoke to her more gently than to the men, and perhaps she understood, despite her chocolate-coloured skin.
They had inaugurated a strange, unequal friendship during the three days that Oscard had been left alone at Msala. Joseph had been promoted to the command of a certain number of the porters, and his domestic duties were laid aside. Thus Marie was called upon to attend to Guy Oscard's daily wants.
“I think I'll take coffee,” he was saying to her in reply to a question. “Yes—coffee, please, Marie.”
He was smoking one of his big wooden pipes, staring straight in front of him with a placidity natural to his bulk.
The woman turned away with a little smile. She liked this big man with his halting tongue and quiet ways. She liked his awkward attempts to conciliate the coquette Xantippe—to extract a smile from the grave Nestorius, and she liked his manner towards herself. She liked the poised pipe and the jerky voice as he said, “Yes—coffee, please, Marie.”
Women do like these things—they seem to understand them and to attach some strange, subtle importance of their own to them. For which power some of us who have not the knack of turning a pretty phrase or throwing off an appropriate pleasantry may well be thankful.
Presently she returned, bringing the coffee on a rough tray, also a box of matches and Oscard's tobacco pouch. Noting this gratuitous attention to his comfort, he looked up with a little laugh.
“Er—thank you,” he said. “Very kind.”
He did not put his pipe back to his lips—keenly alive to the fact that the exigency of the moment demanded a little polite exchange of commonplace.
“Children gone to bed?” he asked anxiously.
She paused in her slow, deft arrangement of the little table.
“Yes,” she answered.
He nodded as if the news were eminently satisfactory. “Nestorius,” he said, adhering to Meredith's pleasantry, “is the jolliest little chap I have met for a long time.”
“Yes,” she answered softly. “Yes—but listen!”
He raised his head, listening as she did—both looking down the river into the gathering darkness.
“I hear the sound of paddles,” she said. “And you?”
“Not yet. My ears are not so sharp as yours.”
“I am accustomed to it,” the woman said, with some emotion in her voice which he did not understand then. “I am always listening.”
Oscard seemed to be struck with this description of herself. It was so very apt—so comprehensive. The woman's attitude before the world was the attitude of the listener for some distant sound.
She poured out his coffee, setting the cup at his elbow. “Now you will hear,” she said, standing upright with that untrammelled dignity of carriage which is found wherever African blood is in the veins. “They have just come round Broken Tree Bend. There are two boats.”
He listened, and after a moment heard the regular glug-glug of the paddles stealing over the waters of the still tropic river, covering a wonderful distance.
“Yes,” he said, “I hear. Mr. Meredith said he would be back to-night.”
She gave a strange, little low laugh—almost the laugh of a happy woman.
“He is like that, Mr. Meredith,” she said; “what he says he does”—in the pretty English of one who has learnt Spanish first.
“Yes, Marie—he is like that.”
She turned, in her strangely subdued way, and went into the house to prepare some supper for the new-comers.
It was not long before the sound of the paddles was quite distinct, and then—probably on turning a corner of the river and coming in sight of the lights of Msala—Jack Meredith's cheery shout came floating through the night. Oscard took his pipe from his lips and sent back an answer that echoed against the trees across the river. He walked down to the water's edge, where he was presently joined by Joseph with a lantern.
The two boats came on to the sloping shore with a grating sound, and by the light of the waving lantern Oscard saw Durnovo and Jack land from the same boat.
The three men walked up to the house together. Marie was at the door, and bowed her head gravely in answer to Jack's salutation. Durnovo nodded curtly and said nothing.
In the sitting-room, by the light of the paraffin lamp, the two Englishmen exchanged a long questioning glance, quite different from the quick interrogation of a woman's eyes. There was a smile on Jack Meredith's face.
“All ready to start to-morrow?” he inquired.
“Yes,” replied Oscard.
And that was all they could say. Durnovo never left them alone together that night. He watched their faces with keen, suspicious eyes. Behind the moustache his lips were pursed up in restless anxiety. But he saw nothing—learnt nothing. These two men were inscrutable.
At eleven o'clock the next morning the Simiacine seekers left their first unhappy camp at Msala. They had tasted of misfortune at the very beginning, but after the first reverse they returned to their work with that dogged determination which is a better spirit than the wild enthusiasm of departure, where friends shout and flags wave, and an artificial hopefulness throws in its jarring note.
They had left behind them with the artifice of civilisation that subtle handicap of a woman's presence; and the little flotilla of canoes that set sail from the terrace at Msala one morning in November, not so many years ago, was essentially masculine in its bearing. The four white men—quiet, self-contained, and intrepid—seemed to work together with a perfect unity, a oneness of thought and action which really lay in the brain of one of them. No man can define a true leader; for one is too autocratic and the next too easily led; one is too quick-tempered, another too reserved. It would almost seem that the ideal leader is that man who knows how to extract from the brains of his subordinates all that is best and strongest therein—who knows how to suppress his own individuality, and merge it for the time being into that of his fellow-worker—whose influence is from within and not from without.
The most successful Presidents of Republics have been those who are, or pretend to be, nonentities, content to be mere pegs, standing still and lifeless, for things to be hung upon. Jack Meredith was, or pretended to be, this. He never assumed the airs of a leader. He never was a leader. He merely smoothed things over, suggested here, laughed there, and seemed to stand by, indifferent all the while.
In less than a week they left the river, hauling their canoes up on the bank, and hiding them in the tangle of the virgin underwood. A depot of provisions, likewise hidden, was duly made, and the long, weary march began.
The daily routine of this need not be followed, for there were weeks of long monotony, varied only by a new difficulty, a fresh danger, or a deplorable accident. Twice the whole company had to lay aside the baggage and assume arms, when Guy Oscard proved himself to be a cool and daring leader. Not twice, but two hundred times, the ring of Joseph's unerring rifle sent some naked savage crawling into the brake to die, with a sudden wonder in his half-awakened brain. They could not afford to be merciful; their only safeguard was to pass through this country, leaving a track of blood and fire and dread behind them.
This, however, is no record of travel in Central Africa. There are many such to be had at any circulating library, written by abler and more fantastic pens. Some of us who have wandered in the darkest continent have looked in vain for things seen by former travellers—things which, as the saying is, are neither here nor there. Indeed, there is not much to see in a vast, boundless forest with little life and no variety—nothing but a deadly monotony of twilit tangle. There is nothing new under the sun—even immediately under it in Central Africa. The only novelty is the human heart—Central Man. That is never stale, and there are depths still unexplored, heights still unattained, warm rivers of love, cold streams of hatred, and vast plains where strange motives grow. These are our business.
We have not to deal so much with the finding of the Simiacine as with the finders, and of these the chief at this time was Jack Meredith. It seemed quite natural that one duty after another should devolve upon him, and he invariably had time to do them all, and leisure to comment pleasantly upon it. But his chief care was Victor Durnovo.
As soon as they entered the forest, two hundred miles above Msala, the half-breed was a changed man. The strange restlessness asserted itself again—the man was nervous, eager, sincere. His whole being was given up to this search; his whole heart and soul were enveloped in it. At first he worked steadily, like a mariner treading his way through known waters; but gradually his composure left him, and he became incapable of doing other work.
Jack Meredith was at his side always. By day he walked near him as he piloted the column through the trackless forest. At night he slept in the same tent, stretched across the doorway. Despite the enormous fatigue, he slept the light sleep of the townsman, and often he was awakened by Durnovo talking aloud, groaning, tossing on his narrow bed.
When they had been on the march for two months—piloted with marvellous instinct by Durnovo—Meredith made one or two changes in the organisation. The caravan naturally moved slowly, owing to the enormous amount of baggage to be carried, and this delay seemed to irritate Victor Durnovo to such an extent that at last it was obvious that the man would go mad unless this enormous tension could be relieved.
“For God's sake,” he would shout, “hurry those men on! We haven't done ten miles to-day. Another man down—damn him!”
And more than once he had to be dragged forcibly away from the fallen porter, whom he battered with both fists. Had he had his will, he would have allowed no time for meals, and only a few hours' halt for rest. Guy Oscard did not understand it. His denser nerves were incapable of comprehending the state of irritation and unreasoning restlessness into which the climate and excitement had brought Durnovo. But Meredith, in his finer organisation, understood the case better. He it was who soothingly explained the necessity for giving the men a longer rest. He alone could persuade Durnovo to lie down at night and cease his perpetual calculations. The man's hands were so unsteady that he could hardly take the sights necessary to determine their position in this sea-like waste. And to Jack alone did Victor Durnovo ever approach the precincts of mutual confidence.
“I can't help it, Meredith,” he said one day, with a scared look, after a particularly violent outburst of temper. “I don't know what it is. I sometimes think I am going mad.”
And soon after that the change was made.
An advance column, commanded by Meredith and Durnovo, was selected to push on to the Plateau, while Oscard and Joseph followed more leisurely with the baggage and the slower travellers.
One of the strangest journeys in the vast unwritten history of commercial advance was that made by the five men from the camp of the main expedition across the lower slopes of a mountain range—unmarked on any map, unnamed by any geographer—to the mysterious Simiacine Plateau. It almost seemed as if the wild, bloodshot eyes of their guide could pierce the density of the forest where Nature had held unchecked, untrimmed sway for countless generations. Victor Durnovo noted a thousand indications unseen by his four companions. The journey no longer partook of the nature of a carefully calculated progress across a country untrodden by a white man's foot; it was a wild rush in a straight line through unbroken forest fastness, guided by an instinct that was stronger than knowledge. And the only Englishman in the party—Jack Meredith—had to choose between madness and rest. He knew enough of the human brain to be convinced that the only possible relief to this tension was success.
Victor Durnovo would never know rest now until he reached the spot where the Simiacine should be. If the trees were there, growing, as he said, in solitary state and order, strangely suggestive of human handiwork, then Victor Durnovo was saved. If no such spot was found, madness and death could only follow.
To save his companion's reason, Meredith more than once drugged his food; but when the land began to rise beneath their feet in tentative, billow-like inequalities—the deposit of a glacial age—Durnovo refused to stop for the preparation of food. Eating dry biscuits and stringy tinned meat as they went along, the four men—three blacks and one white—followed in the footsteps of their mad pilot.
“We're getting to the mountains—we're getting to the mountains! We shall be there to-night! Think of that, Meredith—to-night!” he kept repeating with a sickening monotony. And all the while he stumbled on. The perspiration ran down his face in one continuous stream; at times he paused to wipe it from his eyes with the back of his hands, and as these were torn and bleeding, there were smears of blood across his cheeks.
The night fell; the moon rose, red and glorious, and the beasts of this untrodden forest paused in their search for meat to watch with wondering, fearless eyes that strange, unknown animal—man.
It was Durnovo who, climbing wildly, first saw the break in the trees ahead. He gave a muffled cry of delight, and in a few minutes they were all rushing, like men possessed, up a bare slope of broken shale.
Durnovo reached the summit first. A faint, pleasant odour was wafted into their faces. They stood on the edge of a vast table-land melting away in the yellow moonlight. Studded all over, like sheep in a meadow, were a number of little bushes, and no other vegetation.
Victor Durnovo stooped over one of these. He buried his face among the leaves of it, and suddenly he toppled over.
“Yes,” he cried as he fell, “it's Simiacine!”
And he turned over with a groan of satisfaction, and lay like a dead man.
Since all that I can ever do for theeIs to do nothing, may'st thou never see,Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me.
One morning, three months later, Guy Oscard drew up in line his flying column. He was going back to England with the first consignment of Simiacine. During the twelve weeks that lay behind there had been constant reference made to his little body of picked men, and the leader had selected with a grave deliberation that promised well.
The lost soldier that was in him was all astir in his veins as he reviewed his command in the cool air of early morning. The journey from Msala to the Plateau had occupied a busy two months. Oscard expected to reach Msala with his men in forty days. Piled up in neat square cases, such as could be carried in pairs by a man of ordinary strength, was the crop of Simiacine, roughly valued by Victor Durnovo at forty thousand pounds. Ten men could carry the whole of it, and the twenty cases set close together on the ground made a bed for Guy Oscard. Upon this improvised couch he gravely stretched his bulk every night all through the journey that followed.
Over the whole face of the sparsely vegetated table-land the dwarf bushes grew at intervals, each one in a little circle of its own, where no grass grew: for the dead leaves, falling, poisoned the earth. There were no leaves on the bushes now, for they had all been denuded, and the twisted branches stood out naked in the morning mist. Some of the bushes had been roughly pruned, to foster, if possible, a more bushy growth and a heavier crop of leaves near to the parent stem.
It was a strange landscape; and any passing traveller, knowing nothing of the Simiacine, must perforce have seen at once that these insignificant little trees were something quite apart in the vegetable kingdom. Each standing with its magic circle, no bird built its nest within the branches—no insect constructed its filmy home—no spider weaved its busy web from twig to twig.
Solitary, mournful, lifeless the Plateau which had nearly cost Victor Durnovo his life lay beneath the face of heaven, far above the surrounding country—the summit of an unnamed mountain—a land lying in the heart of a tropic country which was neither tropic, temperate, nor arctic. Fauna had it none, for it produced nothing that could sustain life. Flora it knew not, for the little trees, with their perennial fortune of brilliant brown-tinted leaves, monopolised vegetable life, and slew all comers. It seemed like some stray tract of another planet, where the condition of living things was different. There was a strange sense of having been thrown up—thrown up, as it were, into mid-heaven, there to hang for ever—neither this world nor the world to come. The silence of it all was such as would drive men mad if they came to think of it. It was the silence of the stars.
The men who had lived up here for three months did not look quite natural. There was a singular heaviness of the eyelids which all had noticed, though none had spoken of it. A craving for animal food, which could only be stayed by the consumption of abnormal quantities of meat, kept the hunters ever at work on the lower slopes of the mountain. Sleep was broken, and uncanny things happened in the night. Men said that they saw other men like trees, walking abroad with sightless eyes; and Joseph said, “Gammon, my festive darky—gammon!” but he, nevertheless, glanced somewhat uneasily towards his master whenever the natives said such things.
A clearing had been made on that part of the Plateau which was most accessible from below. The Simiacine trees had been ruthlessly cut away—even the roots were grubbed up and burnt—far away on the leeward side of the little kingdom. This was done because there arose at sunset a soft and pleasant odour from the bushes which seemed to affect the nerves, and even made the teeth chatter. It was, therefore, deemed wise that the camp should stand on bare ground.
It was on this ground, in front of the tents, that Guy Oscard drew up his quick-marching column before the sun had sprung up in its fantastic tropical way from the distant line of virgin forest. As he walked along the line, making a suggestion here, pulling on a shoulder-rope there, he looked staunch and strong as any man might wish to be. His face was burnt so brown that eyebrows and moustache stood out almost blonde, though in reality they were only brown. His eyes did not seem to be suffering from the heaviness noticeable in others; altogether, the climate and the mystic breath of the Simiacine grove did not appear to affect him as it did his companions. This was probably accounted for by the fact that, being chief of the hunters, most of his days had been passed on the lower slopes in search of game.
To him came presently Jack Meredith—the same gentle-mannered man, with an incongruously brown face and quick eyes seeing all. It is not, after all, the life that makes the man. There are gentle backwoodsmen, and ruffians among those who live in drawing-rooms.
“Well?” said Meredith, following the glance of his friend's eye as he surveyed his men.
Oscard took his pipe from his lips and looked gravely at him.
“Don't half like it, you know,” he said in a low voice; for Durnovo was talking with a head porter a few yards away.
“Don't half like what?—the flavour of that pipe? It looks a little strong.”
“No, leaving you here,” replied Oscard.
“Oh, that's all right, old chap! You can't take me with you, you know. I intended to stick to it when I came away from home, and I am not going to turn back now.”
Oscard gave a queer little upward jerk of the head, as if he had just collected further evidence in support of a theory which chronically surprised him. Then he turned away and looked down over the vast untrodden tract of Africa that lay beneath them. He kept his eyes fixed there, after the manner of a man who has no fluency in personal comment.
“You know,” he said jerkily, “I didn't think—I mean you're not the sort of chap I took you for. When I first saw you I thought you were a bit of a dandy and—all that. Not the sort of man for this work. I thought that the thing was bound to be a failure. I knew Durnovo, and had no faith in him. You've got a gentle way about you, and your clothes are so confoundedly neat. But—” Here he paused and pulled down the folds of his Norfolk jacket. “But I liked the way you shot that leopard the day we first met.”
“Beastly fluke,” put in Meredith, with his pleasant laugh.
Oscard contented himself with a denying shake of the head.
“Of course,” he continued, with obvious determination to get it all off his mind, “I know as well as you do that you are the chief of this concern—have been chief since we left Msala—and I never want to work under a better man.”
He put his pipe back between his lips and turned round with a contented smile, as much as to say, “There, that is the sort of man I am! When I want to say that sort of thing I can say it with the best of you.”
“We have pulled along very comfortably, haven't we?” said Meredith; “thanks to your angelic temper. And you'll deliver that packet of letters to the governor, won't you? I have sent them in one packet, addressed to him, as it is easier to carry. I will let you hear of us somehow within the next six months. Do not go and get married before I get home. I want to be your best man.”
Oscard laughed and gave the signal for the men to start, and the long caravan defiled before them. The porters nodded to Meredith with a great display of white teeth, while the head men, the captains of tens, stepped out of the ranks and shook hands. Before they had disappeared over the edge of the plateau, Joseph came forward to say good-bye to Oscard.
“And it is understood,” said the latter, “that I pay in to your account at Lloyd's Bank your share of the proceeds?”
Joseph grinned. “Yes, sir, if you please, presumin' it's a safe bank.”
“Safe as houses.”
“'Cos it's a tolerable big amount,” settling himself into his boots in the manner of a millionaire.
“Lot of money—about four hundred pounds! But you can trust me to see to it all right.”
“No fear, sir,” replied Joseph grandly. “I'm quite content, I'm sure, that you should have the—fingering o' the dibs.”
As he finished—somewhat lamely perhaps—his rounded periods, he looked very deliberately over Oscard's shoulder towards Durnovo, who was approaching them.
Meredith walked a little way down the slope with Oscard.
“Good-bye, old chap!” he said when the parting came. “Good luck, and all that. Hope you will find all right at home. By the way,” he shouted after him, “give my kind regards to the Gordons at Loango.”
And so the first consignment of Simiacine was sent from the Plateau to the coast.
Guy Oscard was one of those deceptive men who only do a few things, and do those few very well. In forty-three days he deposited the twenty precious cases in Gordon's godowns at Loango, and paid off the porters, of whom he had not lost one. These duties performed, he turned his steps towards the bungalow. He had refused Gordon's invitation to stay with him until the next day, when the coasting steamer was expected. To tell the truth, he was not very much prepossessed in Maurice's favour, and it was with a doubtful mind that he turned his steps towards the little house in the forest between Loango and the sea.
The room was the first surprise that awaited him, its youthful mistress the second. Guy Oscard was rather afraid of most women. He did not understand them, and probably he despised them. Men who are afraid or ignorant often do.
“And when did you leave them?” asked Jocelyn, after her visitor had explained who he was. He was rather taken aback by so much dainty refinement in remote Africa, and explained rather badly. But she helped him out by intimating that she knew all about him.
“I left them forty-four days ago,” he replied.
“And were they well?”
“She is very much interested,” reflected Oscard, upon whom her eagerness of manner had not been lost. “Surely, it cannot be that fellow Durnovo?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied with unconscious curtness.
“Mr. Durnovo cannot ever remain inland for long without feeling the effect of the climate.”
Guy Oscard, with the perspicacity of his sex, gobbled up the bait. “It IS Durnovo,” he reflected.
“Oh, he is all right,” he said; “wonderfully well, and so are the others—Joseph and Meredith. You know Meredith?”
Jocelyn was busy with a vase of flowers standing on the table at her elbow. One of the flowers had fallen half out, and she was replacing it—very carefully.
“Oh, yes,” she said, without ceasing her occupation, “we know Mr. Meredith.”
The visitor did not speak at once, and she looked up at him, over the flowers, with grave politeness.
“Meredith,” he said, “is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met.”
It was evident that this ordinarily taciturn man wanted to unburthen his mind. He was desirous of talking to some one of Jack Meredith; and perhaps Jocelyn reflected that she was as good a listener as he would find in Loango.
“Really,” she replied with a kindly interest. “How?”
He paused, not because he found it difficult to talk to this woman, but because he was thinking of something.
“I have read or heard somewhere of a steel gauntlet beneath a velvet glove.”
“Yes.”
“That describes Meredith. He is not the man I took him for. He is so wonderfully polite and gentle and pleasant. Not the qualities that make a good leader for an African exploring expedition—eh?”
Jocelyn gave a strange little laugh, which included, among other things, a subtle intimation that she rather liked Guy Oscard. Women do convey these small meanings sometimes, but one finds that they do not intend them to be acted upon.
“And he has kept well all the time?” she asked softly. “He did not look strong.”
“Oh, yes. He is much stronger than he looks.”
“And you—you have been all right?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Are you going back to—them?”
“No, I leave to-morrow morning early by the Portuguese boat. I am going home to be married.”
“Indeed! Then I suppose you will wash your hands of Africa for ever?”
“Not quite,” he replied. “I told Meredith that I would be prepared to go up to him in case of emergency, but not otherwise. I shall, of course, still be interested in the scheme. I take home the first consignment of Simiacine; we have been very successful, you know. I shall have to stay in London to sell that. I have a house there.”
“Are you to be married at once?” inquired Jocelyn, with that frank interest which makes it so much easier for a man to talk of his own affairs to a woman than to one of his own sex.
“As soon as I can arrange it,” he answered with a little laugh. “There is nothing to wait for. We are both orphans, and, fortunately, we are fairly well off.”
He was fumbling in his breast-pocket, and presently he rose, crossed the room, and handed her, quite without afterthought or self-consciousness, a photograph in a morocco case.
Explanation was unnecessary, and Jocelyn Gordon looked smilingly upon a smiling, bright young face.
“She is very pretty,” she said honestly.
Whereupon Guy Oscard grunted unintelligibly.
“Millicent,” he said after a little pause—“Millicent is her name.”
“Millicent?” repeated Jocelyn—“Millicent WHAT?”
“Millicent Chyne.”
Jocelyn folded the morocco case together and handed it back to him.
“She is very pretty,” she repeated slowly, as if her mind could only reproduce—it was incapable of creation.
Oscard looked puzzled. Having risen he did not sit down again, and presently he took his leave, feeling convinced that Jocelyn was about to faint.
When he was gone the girl sat wearily down.
“Millicent Chyne,” she whispered. “What is to be done?”
“Nothing,” she answered to herself after a while. “Nothing. It is not my business. I can do nothing.”
She sat there—alone, as she had been all her life—until the short tropical twilight fell over the forest. Quite suddenly she burst into tears.
“It IS my business,” she sobbed. “It is no good pretending otherwise; but I can do nothing.”
Who has lost all hope has also lost all fear.
Among others, it was a strange thing that Jocelyn felt no surprise at meeting the name of Millicent Chyne on the lips of another man. Women understand these things better than we do. They understand each other, and they seem to have a practical way of accepting human nature as it is which we never learn to apply to our fellowmen. They never bluster as we do, nor expect impossibilities from the frail.
Another somewhat singular residue left, as it were, in Jocelyn's mind when the storm of emotion had subsided was a certain indefinite tenderness for Millicent Chyne. She felt sure that Jack Meredith's feeling for her was that feeling vaguely called the right one, and, as such, unalterable. To this knowledge the subtle sympathy for Millicent was perhaps attributable. But navigation with pen and thought among the shoals and depths of a woman's heart is hazardous and uncertain.
Coupled with this—as only a woman could couple contradictions—was an unpardoning abhorrence for the deceit practised. But Jocelyn knew the world well enough to suspect that, if she were ever brought face to face with her meanness, Millicent would be able to bring about her own forgiveness. It is the knowledge of this lamentable fact that undermines the feminine sense of honour.
Lastly, there was a calm acceptance of the fact that Guy Oscard must and would inevitably go to the wall. There could be no comparison between the two men. Millicent Chyne could scarcely hesitate for a moment. That she herself must likewise suffer uncomplainingly, inevitably, seemed to be an equally natural consequence in Jocelyn Gordon's mind.
She could not go to Jack Meredith and say:
“This woman is deceiving you, but I love you, and my love is a nobler, grander thing than hers. It is no passing fancy of a giddy, dazzled girl, but the deep strong passion of a woman almost in the middle of her life. It is a love so complete, so sufficing, that I know I could make you forget this girl. I could so envelop you with love, so watch over you and care for you, and tend you and understand you, that you MUST be happy. I feel that I could make you happier than any other woman in the world could make you.”
Jocelyn Gordon could not do this; and all the advanced females in the world, all the blue stockings and divided skirts, all the wild women and those who pant for burdens other than children, will never bring it to pass that women can say such things.
And precisely because she could not say this, Jocelyn felt hot and sick at the very thought that Jack Meredith should learn aught of Millicent Chyne from her. Her own inner motive in divulging what she had learnt from Guy Oscard could never for a moment be hidden behind a wish, however sincere, to act for the happiness of two honourable gentlemen.
Jocelyn had no one to consult—no one to whom she could turn, in the maddening difficulty of her position, for advice or sympathy. She had to work it out by herself, steering through the quicksands by that compass that knows no deviation—the compass of her own honour and maidenly reserve.
Just because she was so sure of her own love she felt that she could never betray the falseness of Millicent Chyne. She felt somehow that Millicent's fall in Jack Meredith's estimation would drag down with it the whole of her sex, and consequently herself. She did not dare to betray Millicent, because the honour of her sex must be held up by an exaggerated honour in herself. Thus her love for Jack Meredith tied her hands, while she stood idly by to see him wreck his own life by what could only be a miserable union.
With the clear sight of the onlooker, Jocelyn Gordon now saw that, by Jack Meredith's own showing, Millicent was quite unworthy of him. But she also remembered words, silences, and hints which demonstrated with lamentable plainness the fact that he loved her. She was old enough and sufficiently experienced to avoid the futile speculation as to what had attracted this love. She knew that men marry women who in the estimation of onlooking relatives are unworthy of them, and live happily ever afterwards, without deeming it necessary to explain to those relatives how it comes about.
Now it happened that this woman—Jocelyn Gordon—was not one of those who gracefully betray themselves at the right moment and are immediately covered with a most becoming confusion. She was strong to hold to her purpose, to subdue herself, to keep silent. And this task she set herself, having thought it all carefully out in the little flower-scented verandah, so full of pathetic association. But it must be remembered that she in no wise seemed to see the pathos in her own life. She was unconscious of romance. It was all plain fact, and the plainest was her love for Jack Meredith.
Her daily life was in no perceptible way changed. Maurice Gordon saw no difference. She had never been an hilarious person. Now she went about her household, her kindnesses, and unobtrusive good works with a quieter mien; but, when occasion or social duty demanded, she seemed perhaps a little readier than before to talk of indifferent topics, to laugh at indifferent wit. Those who have ears to hear and eyes wherewith to see learn to distrust the laugh that is too ready, the sympathy that flows in too broad a stream. Happiness is self-absorbed.
Four months elapsed, and the excitement created in the small world of Western Africa by the first dazzling success of the Simiacine Expedition began to subside. The thing took its usual course. At first the experts disbelieved, and then they prophesied that it could not last. Finally, the active period of envy, hatred, and malice gave way to a sullen tolerance not unmixed with an indefinite grudge towards Fortune who had favoured the brave once more.
Maurice Gordon was in daily expectation of news from that far-off favoured spot they vaguely called the Plateau. And Jocelyn did not pretend to conceal from herself the hope that filled her whole being—the hope that Jack Meredith might bring the news in person.
Instead, came Victor Durnovo.
He came upon her one evening when she was walking slowly home from a mild tea-party at the house of a missionary. Hearing footsteps on the sandy soil, she turned, and found herself face to face with Durnovo.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, and her voice thrilled with some emotion which he did not understand. “Ah, it is you!”
“Yes,” he said, holding her hand a little longer than was necessary. “It is I.”
His journey from Msala through the more civilised reaches of the lower river, his voyage in the coasting boat, and his arrival at Loango, had partaken of the nature of a triumphal progress. Victor Durnovo was elated—like a girl in a new dress.
“I was coming along to see you,” he said, and there was a subtle offence in his tone.
She did not trouble to tell him that Maurice was away for ten days. She felt that he knew that. There was a certain truculence in his walk which annoyed her; but she was wonderingly conscious of the fact that she was no longer afraid of him. This feeling had as yet taken no definite shape. She did not know what she felt, but she knew that there was no fear in her mind.
“Have you been successful?” she asked, with a certain negative kindness of tone bred of this new self-confidence.
“I should think we had! Why, the lot that Oscard brought down was a fortune in itself. But you saw Oscard, of course. Did he stay at the bungalow?”
“No; he stayed at the hotel.”
“Did you like him?”
The question was accompanied by a momentary glance of the dark, jealous eyes.
“Yes, very much.”
“He is a nice fellow, first-rate fellow. Of course, he has his faults, but he and I got on splendidly. He's—engaged, you know.”
“So he told me.”
Durnovo glanced at her again searchingly, and looked relieved. He gave an awkward little laugh.
“And I understand,” he said, “that Meredith is in the same enviable position.”
“Indeed!”
Durnovo indulged in a meaning silence.
“When do you go back?” she asked carelessly.
“Almost at once,” in a tone that apologised for causing her necessary pain. “I must leave to-morrow or the next day. I do not like the idea of Meredith being left too long alone up there with a reduced number of men. Of course, I had to bring a pretty large escort. I brought down sixty thousand pounds worth of Simiacine.”
“Yes,” she said; “and you take all the men back to-morrow?”
He did not remember having stated for certain that he was leaving the next day.
“Or the day after,” he amended.
“Have you had any more sickness among the men?” she asked at once, in a tone of irony which made him wince.
“No,” he answered, “they have been quite all right.”
“What time do you start?” she asked. “There are letters for Mr. Meredith at the office. Maurice's head clerk will give them to you.”
She knew that these letters were from Millicent. She had actually had them in her hand. She had inhaled the faint, refined scent of the paper and envelopes.
“You will be careful that they are not lost, won't you?” she said, tearing at her own heart with a strange love of the pain. “They may be important.”
“Oh, I will deliver them sharp enough,” he answered. “I suppose I had better start to-morrow.”
“I should think so,” she replied quietly, with that gentle mendacity which can scarcely be grudged to women, because they are so poorly armed. “I should think so. You know what these men are. Every hour they have in Loango demoralises them more and more.”
They had reached the gate of the bungalow garden. She turned and held out her hand in an undeniable manner. He bade her good-bye and went his way, wondering vaguely what had happened to them both. The conversation had taken quite a different turn to what he had expected and intended. But somehow it had got beyond his control. He had looked forward to a very different ending to the interview. And now he found himself returning somewhat disconsolately to the wretched hotel in Loango—dismissed—sent back.
The next day he actually left the little West African coast town, turning his face northward with bad grace. Even at that distance, he feared Jack Meredith's half-veiled sarcasm. He knew that nothing could be hidden for long from the Englishman's suavely persistent inquiry and deduction. Besides, the natives were no longer safe. Meredith, with the quickness of a cultured linguist, had picked up enough of their language to understand them, while Joseph talked freely with them in that singular mixture of slang and vernacular which follows the redcoat all over the world. Durnovo had only been allowed to come down to the coast under a promise, gracefully veiled, but distinct enough, that he should only remain twenty-four hours in Loango.
Jocelyn avoided seeing him again. She was forced to forego the opportunity of hearing much that she wanted to learn because Durnovo, the source of the desired knowledge, was unsafe. But the relief from the suspense of the last few months was in itself a consolation. All seemed to be going on well at the Plateau. Danger is always discounted at sight; and Jocelyn felt comparatively easy respecting the present welfare of Jack Meredith, living as she did on the edge of danger.
Four days later she was riding through the native town of Loango, accompanied by a lady-friend, when she met Victor Durnovo. The sight of him gave her a distinct shock. She knew that he had left Loango three days before with all his men. There was no doubt about that. Moreover, his air was distinctly furtive—almost scared. It was evident that the chance meeting was as undesired by him as it was surprising to her.
“I thought you had left,” she said shortly, pulling up her horse with undeniable decision.
“Yes... but I have come back—for—for more men.”
She knew he was lying, and he felt that she knew.
“Indeed!” she said. “You are not a good starter.”
She turned her horse's head, nodded to her friend, bowed coldly to Durnovo, and trotted towards home. When she had reached the corner of the rambling, ill-paved street, she touched her horse. The animal responded. She broke into a gentle canter, which made the little children cease their play and stare. In the forest she applied the spurs, and beneath the whispering trees, over the silent sand, the girl galloped home as fast as her horse could lay legs to the ground.
Jocelyn Gordon was one of those women who rise slowly to the occasion, and the limit of their power seems at times to be only defined by the greatness of the need.