What we love perfectlyFor its own sake we love,...... That which is best for it is best for us.
“Feel like gettin' up to breakfast, do you, sir?” said Joseph to his master a few days later. “Well, I am glad. Glad ain't quite the word, though!”
And he proceeded to perform the duties attendant on his master's wardrobe with a wise, deep-seated shake of the head. While setting the shaving necessaries in order on the dressing-table, he went further—he winked gravely at himself in the looking-glass.
“You've made wonderful progress the last few days, sir,” he remarked. “I always told Missis Marie that it would do you a lot of good to have Mr. Gordon to heart you up with his cheery ways—and Miss Gordon too, sir.”
“Yes, but they would not have been much good without all your care before they came. I had turned the corner a week ago—I felt it myself.”
Joseph grinned—an honest, open grin of self-satisfaction. He was not one of those persons who like their praise bestowed with subtlety.
“Wonderful!” he repeated to himself as he went to the well in the garden for his master's bath-water. “Wonderful! but I don't understand things—not bein' a marryin' man.”
During the last few days Jack's progress had been rapid enough even to satisfy Joseph. The doctor expressed himself fully reassured, and even spoke of returning no more. But he repeated his wish that Jack should leave for England without delay.
“He is quite strong enough to be moved now,” he finished by saying. “There is no reason for further delay.”
“No,” answered Jocelyn, to whom the order was spoken. “No—none. We will see that he goes by the next boat.”
The doctor paused. He was a young man who took a strong—perhaps too strong—a personal interest in his patients. Jocelyn had walked with him as far as the gate, with only a parasol to protect her from the evening sun. They were old friends. The doctor's wife was one of Jocelyn's closest friends on the Coast.
“Do you know anything about Meredith's future movements?” he asked. “Does he intend to come out here again?”
“I could not tell you. I do not think they have settled yet. But I think that when he gets home he will probably stay there.”
“Best thing he can do—best thing he can do. It will never do for him to risk getting another taste of malaria—tell him so, will you? Good-bye.”
“Yes, I will tell him.”
And Jocelyn Gordon walked slowly back to tell the man she loved that he must go away from her and never come back. The last few days had been days of complete happiness. There is no doubt that women have the power of enjoying the present to a greater degree than men. They can live in the bliss of the present moment with eyes continually averted from the curtain of the near future which falls across that bliss and cuts it off. Men allow the presence of the curtain to mar the present brightness.
These days had been happier for Jocelyn than for Jack, because she was conscious of the fulness of every moment, while he was merely rejoicing in comfort after hardship, in pleasant society after loneliness. Even with the knowledge that it could not last, that beyond the near future lay a whole lifetime of complete solitude and that greatest of all miseries, the desire of an obvious impossibility—even with this she was happier than he; because she loved him and she saw him daily getting stronger; because their relative positions brought out the best and the least romantic part of a woman's love—the subtle maternity of it. There is a fine romance in carrying our lady's kerchief in an inner pocket, but there is something higher and greater and much more durable in the darning of a sock; for within the handkerchief there is chiefly gratified vanity, while within the sock there is one of those small infantile boots which have but little meaning for us.
Jocelyn entered the drawing-room with a smile.
“He is very pleased,” she said. “He does not seem to want to see you any more, and he told me to be inhospitable.”
“As how?”
“He told me to turn you out. You are to leave by the next steamer.”
He felt a sudden unaccountable pang of disappointment at her smiling eyes.
“This is no joking matter,” he said half seriously. “Am I really as well as that?”
“Yes.”
“The worst of it is that you seem rather pleased.”
“I am—at the thought that you are so much better.” She paused and turned quite away, busying herself with a pile of books and magazines. “The other,” she went on too indifferently, “was unfortunately to be foreseen. It is the necessary drawback.”
He rose suddenly and walked to the window.
“The grim old necessary drawback,” he said, without looking towards her.
There was a silence of some duration. Neither of them seemed to be able to find a method of breaking it without awkwardness. It was she who spoke at last.
“He also said,” she observed in a practical way, “that you must not come out to Africa again.”
He turned as if he had been stung.
“Did he make use of that particular word?” he asked.
“Which particular word?”
“Must.”
Jocelyn had not foreseen the possibility that the doctor was merely repeating to her what he had told Jack on a previous visit.
“No,” she answered. “I think he said 'better not.'”
“And you make it into 'must.'”
She laughed, with a sudden light-heartedness which remained unexplained.
“Because I know you both,” she answered. “For him 'better not' stands for 'must.' With you 'better not' means 'doesn't matter.'”
“'Better not' is so weak that if one pits duty against it it collapses. I cannot leave Oscard in the lurch, especially after his prompt action in coming to my relief.”
“Yes,” she replied guardedly. “I like Mr. Oscard's way of doing things.”
The matter of the telegram summoning Oscard had not yet been explained. She did not want to explain it at that moment; indeed, she hoped that the explanation would never be needed.
“However,” she added, “you will see when you get home.”
He laughed.
“The least pleasant part of it is,” he said, “your evident desire to see the last of me. Could you not disguise that a little—just for the sake of my feelings?”
“Book your passage by the next boat and I will promptly descend to the lowest depths of despair,” she replied lightly.
He shrugged his shoulders with a short laugh.
“This is hospitality indeed,” he said, moving towards the door.
Then suddenly he turned and looked at her gravely.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you are doing this for a purpose. You said that you met my father—”
“Your father is not the man to ask any one's assistance in his own domestic affairs, and anything I attempted to do could only be looked upon as the most unwarrantable interference.”
“Yes,” said Meredith seriously. “I beg your pardon. You are right.”
He went to his own room and summoned Joseph.
“When is the next boat home?” he asked.
“Boat on Thursday, sir.”
Meredith nodded. After a little pause he pointed to a chair.
“Just sit down,” he said. “I want to talk over this Simiacine business with you.”
Joseph squared his shoulders, and sat down with a face indicative of the gravest attention. Sitting thus he was no longer a servant, but a partner in the Simiacine. He even indulged in a sidelong jerk of the head, as if requesting the attention of some absent friend in a humble sphere of life to this glorious state of affairs.
“You know,” said Meredith, “Mr. Durnovo is more or less a blackguard.”
Joseph drew in his feet, having previously hitched his trousers up at the knees.
“Yes, sir,” he said, glancing up. “A blackguard—a damned blackguard,” he added unofficially under his breath.
“He wants continual watching and a special treatment. He requires someone constantly at his heels.”
“Yes, sir,” admitted Joseph, with some fervour.
“Now I am ordered home by the doctor,” went on Meredith. “I must go by the next boat, but I don't like to go and leave Mr. Oscard in the lurch, with no one to fall back upon but Durnovo—you understand.”
Joseph's face had assumed the habitual look of servitude—he was no longer a partner, but a mere retainer, with a half-comic resignation in his eyes.
“Yes, sir,” scratching the back of his neck. “I am afraid I understand. You want me to go back to that Platter—that God-forsaken Platter, as I may say.”
“Yes,” said Meredith. “That is about it. I would go myself—”
“God bless you! I know you would!” burst in Joseph. “You'd go like winkin'. There's no one knows that better nor me, sir; and what I says is—like master, like man. Game, sir—game it is! I'll go. I'm not the man to turn my back on a pal—a—a partner, sir, so to speak.”
“You see,” said Meredith, with the deep insight into men that made command so easy to him—“you see there is no one else. There is not another man in Africa who could do it.”
“That's true, sir.”
“And I think that Mr. Oscard will be looking for you.”
“And he won't need to look long, sir. But I should like to see you safe on board the boat. Then I'm ready to go.”
“Right. We can both leave by Thursday's boat, and we'll get the captain to drop you and your men at Lopez. We can get things ready by then, I think.”
“Easy, sir.”
The question thus settled, there seemed to be no necessity to prolong the interview. But Joseph did not move. Meredith waited patiently.
“I'll go up, sir, to the Platter,” said the servant at length, “and I'll place myself under Mr. Oscard's orders; but before I go I want to give you notice of resignation. I resigns my partnership in this 'ere Simiacine at six months from to-day. It's a bit too hot, sir, that's the truth. It's all very well for gentlemen like yourself and Mr. Oscard, with fortunes and fine houses, and, as sayin' goes, a wife apiece waiting for you at home—it's all very well for you to go about in this blamed country, with yer life in yer hand, and not a tight grip at that. But for a poor soldier-man like myself, what has smelt the regulation powder all 'is life and hasn't got nothing to love and no gal waiting for him at home—well, it isn't good enough. That's what I say, sir, with respects.”
He added the last two words by way of apology for having banged a very solid fist on the table. Meredith smiled.
“So you've had enough of it?” he said.
“Enough ain't quite the word, sir. Why, I'm wore to a shadow with the trouble and anxiety of getting you down here.”
“Fairly substantial shadow,” commented Meredith.
“May be, sir. But I've had enough of moneymakin'. It's too dear at the price. And if you'll let an old servant speak his mind it ain't fit for you, this 'ere kind of work. It's good enough for black-scum and for chocolate-birds like Durnovo; but this country's not built for honest white men—least of all for born and bred gentlemen.”
“Yes—that's all very well in theory, Joseph, and I'm much obliged to you for thinking of me. But you must remember that we live in an age where money sanctifies everything. Your hands can't get dirty if there is money inside them.”
Joseph laughed aloud.
“Ah, that's your way of speaking, sir, that's all. And I'm glad to hear it. You have not spoken like that for two months and more.”
“No—it is only my experience of the world.”
“Well, sir, talkin' of experience, I've had about enough, as I tell you, and I beg to place my resignation in your hands. I shall do the same by Mr. Oscard if I reach that Platter, God willin', as the sayin' is.”
“All right, Joseph.”
Still there was something left to say. Joseph paused and scratched the back of his neck pensively with one finger.
“Will you be writin' to Mr. Oscard, sir, for me to take?”
“Yes.”
“Then I should be obliged if you would mention the fact that I would rather not be left alone with that blackguard Durnovo, either up at the Platter or travelling down. That man's got on my nerves, sir; and I'm mortal afraid of doing him a injury. He's got a long neck—you've noticed that, perhaps. There was a little Gourkha man up in Cabul taught me a trick—it's as easy as killing a chicken—but you want a man wi' a long neck—just such a neck as Durnovo's.”
“But what harm has the man done you,” asked Meredith, “that you think so affectionately of his neck?”
“No harm, sir, but we're just like two cats on a wall, watchin' each other and hating each other like blue poison. There's more villainy at that man's back than you think for—mark my words.”
Joseph moved towards the door.
“Do you KNOW anything about him—anything shady?” cried Meredith after him.
“No, sir. I don't KNOW anything. But I suspects a whole box full. One of these days I'll find him out, and if I catch him fair there'll be a rough and tumble. It'll be a pretty fight, sir, for them that's sittin' in the front row.”
Joseph rubbed his hands slowly together and departed, leaving his master to begin a long letter to Guy Oscard.
And at the other end of the passage, in her room with the door locked, Jocelyn Gordon was sitting, hard-eyed, motionless. She had probably saved the life of Jack Meredith, and in doing so had only succeeded in sending him away from her.
Only an honest man doing his duty.
When Jack Meredith said that there was not another man in Africa who could make his way from Loango to the Simiacine Plateau he spoke no more than the truth. There were only four men in all the world who knew the way, and two of them were isolated on the summit of a lost mountain in the interior. Meredith himself was unfit for the journey. There remained Joseph.
True, there were several natives who had made the journey, but they were as dumb and driven animals, fighting as they were told, carrying what they were given to carry, walking as many miles as they were considered able to walk. They hired themselves out like animals, and as the beasts of the field they did their work—patiently, without intelligence. Half of them did not know where they were going—what they were doing; the other half did not care. So much work, so much wage, was their terse creed. They neither noted their surroundings nor measured distance. At the end of their journey they settled down to a life of ease and leisure, which was to last until necessity drove them to work again. Such is the African. Many of them came from distant countries, a few were Zanzibaris, and went home made men.
If any doubt the inability of such men to steer a course through the wood, let him remember that three months' growth in an African forest will obliterate the track left by the passage of an army. If any hold that men are not created so dense and unambitious as has just been represented, let him look nearer home in our own merchant service. The able-bodied seaman goes to sea all his life, but he never gets any nearer navigating the ship—and he a white man.
In coming down to Loango, Joseph had had the recently-made track of Oscard's rescuing party to guide him day by day. He knew that this was now completely overgrown. The Simiacine Plateau was once more lost to all human knowledge.
And up there—alone amidst the clouds—Guy Oscard was, as he himself tersely put it, “sticking to it.” He had stuck to it to such good effect that the supply of fresh young Simiacine was daily increasing in bulk. Again, Victor Durnovo seemed to have regained his better self. He was like a full-blooded horse—tractable enough if kept hard at work. He was a different man up on the Plateau to what he was down at Loango. There are some men who deteriorate in the wilds, while others are better, stronger, finer creatures away from the luxury of civilisation and the softening influence of female society. Of these latter was Victor Durnovo.
Of one thing Guy Oscard soon became aware, namely, that no one could make the men work as could Durnovo. He had merely to walk to the door of his tent to make every picker on the little Plateau bend over his tree with renewed attention. And while above all was eagerness and hurry, below, in the valley, this man's name insured peace.
The trees were now beginning to show the good result of pruning and a regular irrigation. Never had the leaves been so vigorous, never had the Simiacine trees borne such a bushy, luxuriant growth since the dim dark days of the Flood.
Oscard relapsed into his old hunting ways. Day after day he tranquilly shouldered his rifle, and alone, or followed by one attendant only, he disappeared into the forest, only to emerge therefrom at sunset. What he saw there he never spoke of. Sure it was that he must have seen strange things, for no prying white man had set foot in these wilds before him; no book has ever been written of that country that lies around the Simiacine Plateau.
He was not the man to worry himself over uncertainties. He had an enormous faith in the natural toughness of an Englishman, and while he crawled breathlessly in the track of the forest monsters he hardly gave a thought to Jack Meredith. Meredith, he argued to himself, had always risen to the occasion: why should he not rise to this? He was not the sort of man to die from want of staying power, which, after all, is the cause of more deaths than we dream of. And when he had recovered he would either return or send back Joseph with a letter containing those suggestions of his which were really orders.
Of Millicent Chyne he thought more often, with a certain tranquil sense of a good time to come. In her also he placed a perfect faith. A poet has found out that, if one places faith in a man, it is probable that the man will rise to trustworthiness—of woman he says nothing. But of these things Guy Oscard knew little. He went his own tranquilly strong way, content to buy his own experience.
He was thinking of Millicent Chyne one misty morning while he walked slowly backwards and forwards before his tent. His knowledge of the country told him that the mist was nothing but the night's accumulation of moisture round the summit of the mountain—that down in the valleys it was clear, and that half an hour's sunshine would disperse all. He was waiting for this result when he heard a rifle-shot far away in the haze beneath him; and he knew that it was Joseph—probably making one of those marvellous long shots of his which roused a sudden sigh of envy in the heart of this mighty hunter whenever he witnessed them.
Oscard immediately went to his tent and came out with his short-barrelled, evil-looking rifle on his arm. He fired both barrels in quick succession and waited, standing gravely on the edge of the Plateau. After a short silence two answering reports rose up through the mist to his straining ears.
He turned and found Victor Durnovo standing at his side.
“What is that?” asked the half-breed.
“It must be Joseph,” answered Guy, “or Meredith. It can be nobody else.”
“Let us hope that it is Meredith,” said Durnovo with a forced laugh, “but I doubt it.”
Oscard looked down in his sallow, powerful face. He was not quick at such things, but at that moment he felt strangely certain that Victor Durnovo was hoping that Meredith was dead.
“I hope it isn't,” he answered, and without another word he strode away down the little pathway from the summit into the clouds, loading his rifle as he went.
Durnovo and his men, working among the Simiacine bushes, heard from time to time a signal shot as the two Englishmen groped their way towards each other through the everlasting night of the African forest.
It was midday before the new-comers were espied making their way painfully up the slope, and Joseph's welcome was not so much in Durnovo's handshake, in Guy Oscard's silent approval, as in the row of grinning, good-natured black faces behind Durnovo's back.
That night laughter was heard in the men's camp for the first time for many weeks—nay, several months. According to the account that Joseph gave to his dusky admirers, he had been on terms of the closest familiarity with the wives, and families of all who had such at Loango or on the Coast. He knew the mother of one, had met the sweetheart of another, and confessed that it was only due to the fact that he was not “a marryin' man” that he had not stayed at Loango for the rest of his life. It was somewhat singular that he had nothing but good news to give.
Durnovo heard the clatter of tongues, and Guy Oscard, smoking his contemplative pipe in a camp-chair before his hut door, noticed that the sound did not seem very welcome.
Joseph's arrival with ten new men seemed to give a fresh zest to the work, and the carefully-packed cases of Simiacine began to fill Oscard's tent to some inconvenience. Thus things went on for two tranquil weeks.
“First,” Oscard had said, “let us get the crop in and then we can arrange what is to be done about the future.”
So the crop received due attention; but the two leaders of the men—he who led by fear and he who commanded by love—were watching each other.
One evening, when the work was done, Oscard's meditations were disturbed by the sound of angry voices behind the native camp. He turned naturally towards Durnovo's tent, and saw that he was absent. The voices rose and fell: there was a singular accompanying roar of sound which Oscard never remembered having heard before. It was the protesting voice of a mass of men—and there is no sound like it—none so disquieting. Oscard listened attentively, and suddenly he was thrown up on his feet by a pistol-shot.
At the same moment Joseph emerged from behind the tents, dragging some one by the collar. The victim of Joseph's violence was off his feet, but still struggling and kicking.
Guy Oscard saw the flash of a second shot, apparently within a few inches of Joseph's face; but he came on, dragging the man with him, whom from his clothing Oscard saw to be Durnovo.
Joseph was spitting out wadding and burnt powder.
“Shoot ME, would yer—yer damned skulking chocolate-bird? I'll teach you! I'll twist that brown neck of yours.”
He shook him as a terrier shakes a rat, and seemed to shake things off him—among others a revolver which described a circle in the air and fell heavily on the ground, where the concussion discharged a cartridge.
“'Ere, sir,” cried Joseph, literally throwing Durnovo down on the ground at Oscard's feet, “that man has just shot one o' them poor niggers, so 'elp me God!”
Durnovo rose slowly to his feet, as if the shaking had disturbed his faculties.
“And the man hadn't done 'im no harm at all. He's got a grudge against him. I've seen that this last week and more. It's a man as was kinder fond o' me, and we understood each other's lingo. That's it—he was afraid of my 'earing things that mightn't be wholesome for me to know. The man hadn't done no harm. And Durnovo comes up and begins abusing 'im, and then he strikes 'im, and then he out with his revolver and shoots 'im down.”
Durnovo gave an ugly laugh. He had readjusted his disordered dress and was brushing the dirt from his knees.
“Oh, don't make a fool of yourself,” he said in a hissing voice; “you don't understand these natives at all. The man raised his hand to me. He would have killed me if he had had the chance. Shooting was the only thing left to do. You can only hold these men by fear. They expect it.”
“Of course they expect it,” shouted Joseph in his face; “of course they expect it, Mr. Durnovo.”
“Why?”
“Because they're SLAVES. Think I don't know that?”
He turned to Oscard.
“This man, Mr. Oscard,” he said, “is a slave-owner. Them forty that joined at Msala was slaves. He's shot two of 'em now; this is his second. And what does he care?—they're his slaves. Oh! shame on yer!” turning again to Durnovo; “I wonder God lets yer stand there. I can only think that He doesn't want to dirty His hand by strikin' yer down.”
Oscard had taken his pipe from his lips. He looked bigger, somehow, than ever. His brown face was turning to an ashen colour, and there was a dull, steel-like gleam in his blue eyes. The terrible, slow-kindling anger of this Northerner made Durnovo catch his breath. It was so different from the sudden passion of his own countrymen.
“Is this true?” he asked.
“It's a lie, of course,” answered Durnovo, with a shrug of the shoulders. He moved away as if he were going to his tent, but Oscard's arm reached out. His large brown hand fell heavily on the half-breed's shoulder.
“Stay,” he said; “we are going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Good,” muttered Joseph, rubbing his hands slowly together; “this is prime.”
“Go on,” said Oscard to him.
“Where's the wages you and Mr. Meredith has paid him for those forty men?” pursued Joseph. “Where's the advance you made him for those men at Msala? Not one ha'penny of it have they fingered. And why? Cos they're slaves! Fifteen months at fifty pounds—let them as can reckon tot it up for theirselves. That's his first swindle—and there's others, sir! Oh, there's more behind. That man's just a stinkin' hotbed o' crime. But this 'ere slave-owning is enough to settle his hash, I take it.”
“Let us have these men here—we will hear what they have to say,” said Oscard in the same dull tone that frightened Victor Durnovo.
“Not you!” he went on, laying his hand on Durnovo's shoulder again; “Joseph will fetch them, thank you.”
So the forty—or the thirty-seven survivors, for one had died on the journey up and two had been murdered—were brought. They were peaceful, timorous men, whose manhood seemed to have been crushed out of them; and slowly, word by word, their grim story was got out of them. Joseph knew a little of their language, and one of the head fighting men knew a little more, and spoke a dialect known to Oscard. They were slaves they said at once, but only on Oscard's promise that Durnovo should not be allowed to shoot them. They had been brought from the north by a victorious chief, who in turn had handed them over to Victor Durnovo in payment of an outstanding debt for ammunition supplied.
The great African moon rose into the heavens and shone her yellow light upon this group of men. Overhead all was peace: on earth there was no peace. And yet it was one of Heaven's laws that Victor Durnovo had broken.
Guy Oscard went patiently through to the end of it. He found out all that there was to find; and he found out something which surprised him. No one seemed to be horror-struck. The free men stood stolidly looking on, as did the slaves. And this was Africa—the heart of Africa, where, as Victor Durnovo said, no one knows what is going on. Oscard knew that he could apply no law to Victor Durnovo except the great law of humanity. There was nothing to be done, for one individual may not execute the laws of humanity. All were assembled before him—the whole of the great Simiacine Expedition except the leader, whose influence lay over one and all only second to his presence.
“I leave this place at sunrise to-morrow,” said Guy Oscard to them all. “I never want to see it again. I will not touch one penny of the money that has been made. I speak for Mr. Meredith and myself—”
“Likewise me—damn it!” put in Joseph.
“I speak as Mr. Meredith himself would have spoken. There is the Simiacine—you can have it. I won't touch it. And now who is going with me—who leaves with me to-morrow morning?”
He moved away from Durnovo.
“And who stays with me?” cried the half-breed, “to share and share alike in the Simiacine?”
Joseph followed Oscard, and with him a certain number of the blacks, but some stayed. Some went over to Durnovo and stood beside him. The slaves spoke among themselves, and then they all went over to Durnovo.
So that which the placid moon shone down upon was the break-up of the great Simiacine scheme. Victor Durnovo had not come off so badly. He had the larger half of the men by his side. He had all the finest crop the trees had yielded—but he had yet to reckon with high Heaven.
We shut our hearts up nowadays,Like some old music-box that playsUnfashionable airs.
Sir John Meredith was sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair by his library fire. In his young days men did not loll in deep chairs, with their knees higher than their heads. There were no such chairs in this library, just as there was no afternoon tea except for ladies. Sir John Meredith was distressed to observe a great many signs of the degeneration of manhood, which he attributed to the indulgence in afternoon tea. Sir John had lately noticed another degeneration, namely, in the quality of the London gas. So serious was this falling off that he had taken to a lamp in the evening, which lamp stood on the table at his elbow.
Some months earlier—that is to say, about six months after Jack's departure—Sir John had called casually upon an optician. He stood upright by the counter, and frowned down on a mild-looking man who wore the strongest spectacles made, as if in advertisement of his own wares.
“They tell me,” he said, “that you opticians make glasses now which are calculated to save the sight in old age.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the optician, with wriggling white fingers. “We make a special study of that. We endeavour to save the sight—to store it up, as it were, in—a middle life, for use in old age. You see, sir, the pupil of the eye—”
Sir John held up a warning hand.
“The pupil of the eye is your business, as I understand from the sign above your shop—at all events, it is not mine,” he said. “Just give me some glasses to suit my sight, and don't worry me with the pupil of the eye.”
He turned towards the door, threw back his shoulders, and waited.
“Spectacles, sir?” inquired the man meekly.
“Spectacles, sir!” cried Sir John. “No, sir. Spectacles be damned! I want a pair of eyeglasses.”
And these eyeglasses were affixed to the bridge of Sir John Meredith's nose, as he sat stiffly in the straight-backed chair.
He was reading a scientific book which society had been pleased to read, mark, and learn, without inwardly digesting, as is the way of society with books. Sir John read a good deal—he had read more lately, perhaps, since entertainments and evening parties had fallen off so lamentably—and he made a point of keeping up with the mental progress of the age.
His eyebrows were drawn down, as if the process of storing up eyesight for his old age was somewhat laborious. At times he turned and glanced over his shoulder impatiently at the lamp.
The room was very still in its solid old-fashioned luxury. Although it was June a small wood fire burned in the grate, and the hiss of a piece of damp bark was the only sound within the four walls. From without, through the thick curtains, came at intervals the rumble of distant wheels. But it was just between times, and the fashionable world was at its dinner. Sir John had finished his, not because he dined earlier than the rest of the world—he could not have done that—but because a man dining by himself, with a butler and a footman to wait upon him, does not take very long over his meals.
He was in full evening dress, of course, built up by his tailor, bewigged, perfumed, and cunningly aided by toilet-table deceptions.
At times his weary old eyes wandered from the printed page to the smouldering fire, where a whole volume seemed to be written—it took so long to read. Then he would pull himself together, glance at the lamp, readjust the eyeglasses, and plunge resolutely into the book. He did not always read scientific books. He had a taste for travel and adventure—the Arctic regions, Asia, Siberia, and Africa—but Africa was all locked away in a lower drawer of the writing-table. He did not care for the servants to meddle with his books, he told himself. He did not tell anybody that he did not care to let the servants see him reading his books of travel in Africa.
There was nothing dismal or lonely about this old man sitting in evening dress in a high-backed chair, stiffly reading a scientific book of the modern, cheap science tenor—not written for scientists, but to step in when the brain is weary of novels and afraid of communing with itself. Oh, no! A gentleman need never be dull. He has his necessary occupations. If he is a man of intellect he need never be idle. It is an occupation to keep up with the times.
Sometimes after dinner, while drinking his perfectly made black coffee, Sir John would idly turn over the invitation cards on the mantelpiece—the carriage was always in readiness—but of late the invitations had not proved very tempting. There was no doubt that society was not what it used to be. The summer was not what it used to be, either. The evenings were so confoundedly cold. So he often stayed at home and read a book.
He paused in the midst of a scientific definition and looked up with listening eyes. He had got into the way of listening to the passing wheels. Lady Cantourne sometimes called for him on her way to a festivity, but it was not that.
The wheels he heard had stopped—perhaps it was Lady Cantourne. But he did not think so. She drove behind a pair, and this was not a pair. It was wonderful how well he could detect the difference, considering the age of his ears.
A few minutes later the butler silently threw open the door, and Jack stood in the threshold. Sir John Meredith's son had been given back to him from the gates of death.
The son, like the father, was in immaculate evening dress. There was a very subtle cynicism in the thought of turning aside on such a return as this to dress—to tie a careful white tie and brush imperceptibly ruffled hair.
There was a little pause, and the two tall men stood, half-bowing with a marvellous similarity of attitude, gazing steadily into each other's eyes. And one cannot help wondering whether it was a mere accident that Jack Meredith stood motionless on the threshold until his father said:
“Come in.”
“Graves,” he continued to the butler, with that pride of keeping up before all the world which was his, “bring up coffee. You will take coffee?” to his son while they shook hands.
“Thanks, yes.”
The butler closed the door behind him. Sir John was holding on to the back of his high chair in rather a constrained way—almost as if he were suffering pain. They looked at each other again, and there was a resemblance in the very manner of raising the eyelid. There was a stronger resemblance in the grim waiting silence which neither of them would break.
At last Jack spoke, approaching the fire and looking into it.
“You must excuse my taking you by surprise at this—unusual hour.” He turned; saw the lamp, the book, and the eyeglasses—more especially the eyeglasses, which seemed to break the train of his thoughts. “I only landed at Liverpool this afternoon,” he went on, with hopeless politeness. “I did not trouble you with a telegram, knowing that you object to them.”
The old man bowed gravely.
“I am always glad to see you,” he said suavely. “Will you not sit down?”
And they had begun wrong. It is probable that neither of them had intended this. Both had probably dreamed of a very different meeting. But both alike had counted without that stubborn pride which will rise up at the wrong time and in the wrong place—the pride which Jack Meredith had inherited by blood and teaching from his father.
“I suppose you have dined,” said Sir John, when they were seated, “or may I offer you something?”
“Thanks, I dined on the way up—in a twilit refreshment-room, with one waiter and a number of attendant black-beetles.”
Things were going worse and worse.
Sir John smiled, and he was still smiling when the man brought in coffee.
“Yes,” he said conversationally, “for speed combined with discomfort I suppose we can hold up heads against any country. Seeing that you are dressed, I supposed that you had dined in town.”
“No. I drove straight to my rooms, and kept the cab while I dressed.”
What an important matter this dressing seemed to be! And there were fifteen months behind it—fifteen months which had aged one of them and sobered the other.
Jack was sitting forward in his chair with his immaculate dress-shoes on the fender—his knees apart, his elbows resting on them, his eyes still fixed on the fire. Sir John looked keenly at him beneath his frowning, lashless lids. He saw the few grey hairs over Jack's ears, the suggested wrinkles, the drawn lines about his mouth.
“You have been ill?” he said.
Joseph's letter was locked away in the top drawer of his writing-table.
“Yes, I had rather a bad time—a serious illness. My man nursed me through it, however, with marked success; and—the Gordons, with whom I was staying, were very kind.”
“I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Gordon.”
Jack's face was steady—suavely impenetrable.
Sir John moved a little, and set his empty cup upon the table.
“A charming girl,” he added.
“Yes.”
There was a little pause.
“You are fortunate in that man of yours,” Sir John said. “A first-class man.”
“Yes—he saved my life.”
Sir John blinked, and for the first time his fingers went to his mouth, as if his lips had suddenly got beyond his control.
“If I may suggest it,” he said rather indistinctly, “I think it would be well if we signified our appreciation of his devotion in some substantial way. We might well do something between us.”
He paused and threw back his shoulders.
“I should like to give him some substantial token of my—gratitude.”
Sir John was nothing if not just.
“Thank you,” answered Jack quietly. He turned his head a little, and glanced, not at his father, but in his direction. “He will appreciate it, I know.”
“I should like to see him to-morrow.”
Jack winced, as if he had made a mistake.
“He is not in England,” he explained. “I left him behind me in Africa. He has gone back to the Simiacine Plateau.”
The old man's face dropped rather piteously.
“I am sorry,” he said, with one of the sudden relapses into old age that Lady Cantourne dreaded. “I may not have a chance of seeing him to thank him personally. A good servant is so rare nowadays. These modern democrats seem to think that it is a nobler thing to be a bad servant than a good one. As if we were not all servants!”
He was thirsting for details. There were a thousand questions in his heart, but not one on his lips.
“Will you have the kindness to remember my desire,” he went on suavely, “when you are settling up with your man?”
“Thank you,” replied Jack; “I am much obliged to you.”
“And in the meantime as you are without a servant you may as well make use of mine. One of my men—Henry—who is too stupid to get into mischief—a great recommendation by the way—understands his business. I will ring and have him sent over to your rooms at once.”
He did so, and they sat in silence until the butler had come and gone.
“We have been very successful with the Simiacine—our scheme,” said Jack suddenly.
“Ah!”
“I have brought home a consignment valued at seventy thousand pounds.”
Sir John's face never changed.
“And,” he asked, with veiled sarcasm, “do you carry out the—er—commercial part of the scheme?”
“I shall begin to arrange for the sale of the consignment to-morrow. I shall have no difficulty—at least, I anticipate none. Yes, I do the commercial part—as well as the other. I held the Plateau against two thousand natives for three months, with fifty-five men. But I do the commercial part as well.”
As he was looking into the fire still, Sir John stole a long comprehensive glance at his son's face. His old eyes lighted up with pride and something else—possibly love. The clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven. Jack looked at it thoughtfully, then he rose.
“I must not keep you any longer,” he said, somewhat stiffly.
Sir John rose also.
“I dare say you are tired; you need rest. In some ways you look stronger, in others you look fagged and pulled down.”
“It is the result of my illness,” said Jack. “I am really quite strong.”
He paused, standing on the hearthrug, then suddenly he held out his hand.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night.”
Sir John allowed him to go to the door, to touch the handle, before he spoke.
“Then—” he said, and Jack paused. “Then we are no farther on?”
“In what way?”
“In respect to the matter over which we unfortunately disagreed before you went away?”
Jack turned, with his hand on the door.
“I have not changed my mind in any respect,” he said gently. “Perhaps you are inclined to take my altered circumstances into consideration—to modify your views.”
“I am getting rather old for modification,” answered Sir John suavely.
“And you see no reason for altering your decision?”
“None.”
“Then I am afraid we are no farther on.” He paused. “Good-night,” he added gently, as he opened the door.
“Good-night.”