"MAURICE GORDON."

"Here," said Meredith to his servant, "you may as well read it for yourself."

He handed the letter to Joseph and leant back with a strange rapidity of movement on the sofa. As he lay there with his eyes closed he looked remarkably like a dead man.

While Joseph was reading the letter the sound of bare feet on the cocoa-leaf matting made him turn round.

A small, rotund white figure of a child, clad in a cotton garment, stood in the doorway, finger in mouth, gazing gravely at the two occupants of the room.

"Nestorius!" exclaimed Joseph, "by all that's holy! Well, I AM glad to see you, my son. Where's Mammy, eh?"

Nestorius turned gravely round and pointed a small dusky finger in the direction of the servants' quarters. Then he replaced the finger between his lips and came slowly forward to examine Meredith, who had opened his eyes.

"Well, stout Nestorius. This is a bad case, is it not?" said the sick man.

"Bad case," repeated Nestorius mechanically.

At that moment Marie came into the room, dignified, gentle, self-possessed.

"Ah, missis," said Joseph, "I'm glad to see you. You're wanted badly, and that's the truth. Mr. Meredith's not at all well."

Marie bowed gravely. She went to Meredith's side, and looked at him with a smile that was at once critical and encouraging. Nestorius holding on to her skirts looked up to her face, and seeing the smile, smiled too. He went further. He turned and smiled at Joseph as if to make things pleasant all round.

Marie stooped over the sofa and her clever dusky fingers moved to the cushions.

"You will be better in bed," she said; "I will get Mr. Gordon's room made ready for you—yes?"

There are occasions when the mere presence of a woman supplies a distinct want. She need not be clever, or very capable; she need have no great learning or experience. She merely has to be a woman—the more womanly the better. There are times when a man may actually be afraid for the want of a woman, but that is usually for the want of one particular woman. There may be a distinct sense of fear—a fear of life and its possibilities—which is nothing else than a want—the want of a certain voice, the desire to be touched by a certain hand, the carping necessity (which takes the physical form of a pressure deep down in the throat) for the sympathy of that one person whose presence is different from the presence of other people. And failing that particular woman another can, in a certain degree, by her mere womanliness, stay the pressure of the want.

This was what Marie did for Jack Meredith, by coming into the room and bending over him and touching his cushions with a sort of deftness and savoir-faire. He did not define his feelings—he was too weak for that; but he had been conscious, for the first time in his life, of a distinct sense of fear when he read Maurice Gordon's letter. Of course he had thought of the possibility of death many times during the last five weeks; but he had no intention of dying. He set the fact plainly before himself that with care he might recover, but that at any moment some symptom could declare itself which would mean death.

Both he and Joseph had, without making mention of it to each other, counted entirely on finding the Gordons at home. It was more than a disappointment—very much more for Jack Meredith. But in real life we do not analyse our feelings as do men in books—more especially books of the mawko-religious tenor written by ladies. Jack Meredith only knew that he felt suddenly afraid of dying when he read Maurice Gordon's letter, and that when the half-caste woman came into the room and gently asserted her claim, as it were, to supreme authority in this situation, the fear seemed to be allayed.

Joseph, with something bright glistening in his keen, quick eyes, stood watching his face as if for a verdict.

"You are tired," she said, "after your long journey."

Then she turned to Joseph with that soft, natural way which seems to run through the negro blood, however much it may be diluted.

"Help Mr. Meredith," she said, "to Mr. Gordon's room. I will go at once and see that the bed is prepared."



CHAPTER XXVIII. A SLOW RECOVERY



We dare not let our tears flow, lest, in truth, They fall upon our work which must be done.

"They was just in time," said Joseph pleasantly to Marie that same evening, when Jack Meredith had been made comfortable for the night, and there was time to spare for supper.

"Ah!" replied the woman, who was busy with the supper-table.

Joseph glanced at her keenly. The exclamation not only displayed a due interest, but contained many questions. He stretched out his legs and wagged his head sapiently.

"And no mistake!" he said. "They timed it almost to the minute. We had sort of beaten them back for the time bein'. Mr. Meredith had woke up sudden, as I told you, and came into the thick of the melee, as we say in the service. Then we heard the firin' in the distance and the 'splat' of Mr. Oscard's Express rifle. I just turns, like this 'ere, my head over me shoulder, quite confidential, and I says, 'Good Lord, I thank yer.' I'm no hand at tracts and Bible-readin's, but I'm not such a blamed fool, Mistress Marie, as to think that this 'ere rum-go of a world made itself. No, not quite. So I just put in a word, quiet-like, to the Creator."

Marie was setting before him such luxuries as she could command. She nodded encouragingly.

"Go on," she said. "Tell me!"

"Cheddar cheese," he said parenthetically, with an appreciative sniff. "Hav'n't seen a bit o' that for a long time! Well, then, up comes Mr. Oscard as cool as a cowcumber, and Mr. Meredith he gives a sort of little laugh and says, 'Open that gate.' Quite quiet, yer know. No high falutin' and potry and that. A few minutes before he had been fightin' and cussin' and shoutin', just like any Johnny in the ranks. Then he calms down and wipes the blood off'n his hand on the side of his pants, and says, 'Open that gate.' That's a nice piece of butter you've got there, mistress. Lord! it's strange I never missed all them things."

"Bring your chair to the table," said Marie, "and begin. You are hungry—yes?"

"Hungry ain't quite the word."

"You will have some mutton—yes? And Mr. Durnovo, where was he?"

Joseph bent over his plate, with elbows well out, wielding his knife and fork with a more obvious sense of enjoyment than usually obtains in the politer circles.

"Mr. Durnovo," he said, with one quick glance towards her. "Oh, he was just behind Mr. Oscard. And he follows 'im, and we all shake hands just as if we was meeting in the Row, except that most of our hands was a bit grimy and sticky-like with blood and grease off'n the cartridges."

"And," said Marie, in an indirectly interrogative way, as she helped him to a piece of sweet potato, "you were glad to see them, Mr. Oscard and Mr. Durnovo—yes?"

"Glad ain't quite the word," replied Joseph, with his mouth full.

"And they were not hurt or—ill?"

"Oh, no!" returned Joseph, with another quick glance. "They were all right. But I don't like sitting here and eatin' while you don't take bit or sup yourself. Won't you chip in, Mistress Marie? Come now, do."

With her deep, patient smile she obeyed him, eating little and carelessly, like a woman in some distress.

"When will they come down to Loango?" she asked suddenly, without looking at him.

"Ah! that I can't tell you. We left quite in a hurry, as one may say, with nothin' arranged. Truth is I think we all feared that the guv'nor had got his route. He looked very like peggin' out, and that's the truth. Howsomever, I hope for the best now."

Marie said nothing, merely contenting herself with attending to his wants, which were numerous and frequent.

"That God-forsaken place, Msala," said Joseph presently, "has been rather crumpled up by the enemy."

"They have destroyed it—yes?"

"That is so. You're right, they 'ave destroyed it."

Marie gave a quick little sigh—one of those sighs which the worldly-wise recognise at once.

"You don't seem over-pleased," said Joseph.

"I was very happy there," she answered.

Joseph leant back in his chair, fingering reflectively his beer-glass.

"I'm afraid, mistress," he said half-shyly, "that your life can't have been a very happy one. There's some folk that is like that—through no fault of their own, too, so far as our mortal vision, so to speak, can reckon it up."

"I have my troubles, like other people," she answered softly.

Joseph inclined his head to one side and collected his breadcrumbs thoughtfully.

"Always seems to me," he said, "that your married life can't have been so happy-like as—well, as one might say, you deserved, missis. But then you've got them clever little kids. I DO like them little kids wonderful. Not bein' a marrying man myself, I don't know much of such matters. But I've always understood that little 'uns—especially cunning little souls like yours—go a long way towards makin' up a woman's happiness."

"Yes," she murmured, with her slow smile.

"Been dead long—their pa?"

"He is not dead."

"Oh—beg pardon."

And Joseph drowned a very proper confusion in bitter beer.

"He has only ceased to care about me—or his children," explained Marie.

Joseph shook his head; but whether denial of such a possibility was intended, or an expression of sympathy, he did not explain.

"I hope," he said, with a somewhat laboured change of manner, "that the little ones are in good health."

"Yes, thank you."

Joseph pushed back his chair with considerable vigour, and passed the back of his hand convivially across his moustache.

"A square meal I call that," he said, with a pleasant laugh, "and I thank you kindly."

With a tact which is sometimes found wanting inside a better coat than he possessed, Joseph never again referred to that part of Marie's life which seemed to hang like a shadow over her being. Instead, he set himself the task of driving away the dull sense of care which was hers, and he succeeded so well that Jack Meredith, lying between sleep and death in his bedroom, sometimes heard a new strange laugh.

By daybreak next morning Joseph was at sea again, steaming south in a coasting-boat towards St. Paul de Loanda. He sent off a telegram to Maurice Gordon in England, announcing the success of the Relief Expedition, and then proceeded to secure the entire services of a medical man. With this youthful disciple of AEsculapius he returned forthwith to Loango and settled down with characteristic energy to nurse his master.

Meredith's progress was lamentably slow, but still it was progress, and in the right direction. The doctor, who was wise in the strange maladies of the West Coast, stayed for two days, and promised to return once a week. He left full instructions, and particularly impressed upon the two nurses the fact that the recovery would necessarily be so slow that their unpractised eyes could hardly expect to trace its progress.

It is just possible that Meredith could at this time have had no better nurse than Joseph. There was a military discipline about the man's method which was worth more than much feminine persuasion.

"Beef tea, sir," he would announce with a face of wood, for the sixth time in one day.

"What, again? No, hang it! I can't."

"Them's my orders, sir," was Joseph's invariable reply, and he was usually in a position to produce documentary confirmation of his statement. The two men—master and servant—had grown so accustomed to the military discipline of a besieged garrison that it did not seem to occur to them to question the doctor's orders.

Nestorius—small, stout, and silent—was a frequenter of the sick-room, by desire of the invalid. After laboriously toiling up the shallow stairs—a work entailing huge effort of limbs and chin—he would stump gravely into the room without any form of salutation. There are some great minds above such trifles. His examination of the patient was a matter of some minutes. Then he would say, "Bad case," with the peculiar mechanical diction that was his—the words that Meredith had taught him on the evening of his arrival. After making his diagnosis Nestorius usually proceeded to entertain the patient with a display of his treasures for the time being. These were not in themselves of great value: sundry pebbles, a trouser-button, two shells, and a glass stopper, formed, as it were, the basis of his collection, which was increased or diminished according to circumstances. Some of these he named; others were exhibited with a single adjective, uttered curtly, as between men who required no great tale of words wherewith to understand each other. A few were considered to be of sufficient value and importance to tell their own story and make their way in the world thereupon. He held these out with a face of grave and contemplative patronage.

"Never, Nestorius," Meredith would say gravely, "in the course of a long and varied experience, have I seen a Worcester-sauce stopper of such transcendent beauty."

Sometimes Nestorius clambered on to the bed, when the mosquito-curtains were up, and rested from his labours—a small curled-up form, looking very comfortable. And then, when his mother's soft voice called him, he was wont to gather up his belongings and take his departure. On the threshold he always paused, finger in mouth, to utter a valedictory "Bad case" before making his way downstairs with a shadowy, mystic smile.

Kind neighbours called, and well-meaning but mistaken dissenting missionaries left religious works of a morbid nature, eminently suitable to the sick-bed; but Joseph, Marie, and Nestorius were the only three who had free access to the quiet room.

And all the while the rain fell—night and day, morning, noon, and evening—as if the flood-gates had been left open by mistake.

"Sloobrious, no doubt," said Joseph, "but blamed depressing."

And he shook his head at the lowering sky with a tolerant smile, which was his way of taking Providence to task.

"Do y' know what I would like, missis?" he asked briskly of Marie one evening.

"No."

"Well, I'd like to clap my eyes on Miss Gordon, just a stepping in at that open door—that's what we want. That sawbones feller is right when he says the progress will be slow. Slow! Slow ain't quite the word. No more ain't progress the word—that's my opinion. He just lies on that bed, and the most he can do is to skylark a bit with Nestorius. He don't take no interest in nothin', least of all in his victuals—and a man's in a bad way when he takes no interest in his victuals. Yes, I'll take another pancake, thankin' you kindly. You've got a rare light hand for pancakes. Rare—rare ain't quite the word."

"But what could Miss Gordon do?" asked Marie.

"Well, she could kinder interest him in things—don't you see? Him and I we ain't got much in common—except his clothes and that confounded beef-tea and slushin's. And then there's Mr. Gordon. He's a good hearty sort, he is. Comes galamphin' into the room, kickin' a couple of footstools and upsettin' things promiscuous. It cheers a invalid up, that sort o' thing."

Marie laughed in an awkward, unwonted way.

"But it do, missis," pursued Joseph, "wonderful; and I can't do it myself. I tried the other day, and master only thought I'd been drinkin'."

"You are impatient," said Marie. "He is better, I know. I can see it. You see it yourself—yes?"

"A bit—just a bit. But he wants some one of his own station in life, without offence, Mistress Marie. Some one as will talk with him about books and evenin' parties and things. And—" he paused reflectively, "and Miss Gordon would do that."

There was a little silence, during which another pancake met its fate.

"You know," said Joseph, with sudden confidence, "he's goin' to marry a young lady at home, in London; a young lady of fashion, as they say—one of them that's got one smile for men and another for women. Not his sort, as I should have thought myself, knowin' him as I do."

"Then why does he marry her?" asked Marie.

"Ah!" Joseph rose, and stretched out his arms with a freedom from restraint learnt in the barrack-room. "There you're asking me more than I can tell you. I suppose—it's the old story—I suppose he thinks that she is his sort."



CHAPTER XXIX. A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE



The pride that prompts the bitter jest.

A space had with some difficulty been cleared at the upper end of an aristocratic London drawing-room, and with considerable enthusiasm Miss Fitzmannering pranced into the middle of it. Miss Fitzmannering had kindly allowed herself to be persuaded to do "only a few steps" of her celebrated skirt-dance. Miss Eline Fitzmannering officiated at the piano, and later on, while they were brushing their hair, they quarrelled because she took the time too quickly.

The aristocratic assembly looked on with mixed feelings, and faces suitable to the same. The girls who could not skirt-dance yawned behind their fans—gauze preferred, because the Fitzmannerings could see through gauze if they could not see through anything else. The gifted products of fashionable Brighton schools, who could in their own way make exhibitions of themselves also, wondered who on earth had taught Miss Fitzmannering; and the servants at the door felt ashamed of themselves without knowing why.

Miss Fitzmannering had practised that skirt-dance—those few steps—religiously for the last month. She had been taught those same contortions by a young lady in THE profession, whom even Billy Fitzmannering raised his eyebrows at. And every one knows that Billy is not particular. The performance was not graceful, and the gentlemen present, who knew more about dancing—skirt or otherwise—than they cared to admit, pursed up the corners of their mouths and looked straight in front of them—afraid to meet the eye of some person or persons undefined.

But the best face there was that of Sir John Meredith. He was not bored, as were many of his juniors—at least, he did not look it. He was neither shocked nor disgusted, as apparently were some of his contemporaries—at least, his face betrayed neither of those emotions. He was keenly interested—suavely attentive. He followed each spasmodic movement with imperturbably pleasant eyes.

"My dear young lady," he said, with one of his courtliest bows, when at last Miss Fitzmannering had had enough of it, "you have given us a great treat—you have, indeed."

"A most unique performance," he continued, turning gravely to Lady Cantourne, by whose side he had been standing; and, strange to say, her ladyship made a reproving little movement of the lips, and tapped his elbow surreptitiously, as if he were misbehaving himself.

He offered his arm with a murmur of refreshments, and she accepted.

"Well," he said, when they were alone, or nearly so, "do you not admit that it was a most unique performance?"

"Hush!" replied the lady, either because she was a woman or because she was a woman of the world. "The poor girl cannot help it. She is forced into it by the exigencies of society, and her mother. It is not entirely her fault."

"It will be entirely my fault," replied Sir John, "if I see her do it again."

"It does not matter about a man," said Lady Cantourne, after a little pause; "but a woman cannot afford to make a fool of herself. She ought never to run the risk of being laughed at. And yet I am told that they teach that elegant accomplishment at fashionable schools."

"Which proves that the schoolmistress is a knave as well as—the other thing."

They passed down the long room together—a pattern, to the younger generation, of politeness and mutual respect. And that which one or other did not see was not worth comprehension.

"Who," asked Sir John, when they had passed into the other room, "who is the tall fair girl who was sitting near the fireplace?"

He did not seem to think it necessary to ask Lady Cantourne whether she had noticed the object of his curiosity.

"I was just wondering," replied Lady Cantourne, stirring her tea comfortably. "I will find out. She interests me. She is different from the rest."

"And she does not let it be seen—that is what I like," said Sir John. "The great secret of success in the world is to be different from other people and conceal the fact." He stood his full height, and looked round with blinking, cynical eyes. "They are all very like each other, and they fail to conceal that."

"I dislike a person," said Lady Cantourne in her tolerant way, "who looks out of place anywhere. That girl would never look so."

Sir John was still looking round, seeing all that there was to be seen, and much that was not intended for that purpose.

"Some of them," he said, "will look self-conscious in heaven."

"I hope so," said Lady Cantourne quietly; "that is the least one may expect."

"I trust that there will be no skirt—" Sir John broke off suddenly, with a quick smile. "I was about to be profane," he said, taking her cup. "But I know you do not like it."

She looked up at him with a wan little smile. She was wondering whether he remembered as well as she did that half an ordinary lifetime lay between that moment and the occasion when she reproved his profanity.

"Come," she said, rising, "take me back to the drawing-room, and I will make somebody introduce me to the girl."

Jocelyn Gordon, sitting near the fire, talking to a white-moustached explorer, and listening good-naturedly to a graphic account of travels which had been put in the background by more recent wanderers, was somewhat astounded when the hostess came up to her a few minutes later, and introduced a stout little lady, with twinkling, kindly eyes, by the name of Lady Cantourne. She had heard vaguely of Lady Cantourne as a society leader of the old school, but had no clue to this obviously intentional introduction.

"You are wondering," said Lady Cantourne, when she had sent the explorer on his travels elsewhere in order that she might have his seat—"you are wondering why I asked to know you."

She looked into the girl's face with bright, searching eyes.

"I am afraid I was," admitted Jocelyn.

"I have two reasons: one vulgar—the other sentimental. The vulgar reason was curiosity. I like to know people whose appearance prepossesses me. I am an old woman—no, you need not shake your head, my dear! not with me—I am almost a very old woman, but not quite; and all my life I have trusted in appearances. And," she paused, studying the lace of her fan, "I suppose I have not made more mistakes than other people. I have always made a point of trying to get to know people whose appearance I like. That is my vulgar reason. You do not mind my saying so—do you?"

Jocelyn laughed with slightly heightened colour, which Lady Cantourne noted with an appreciative little nod.

"My other reason is that, years ago at school, I knew a girl who was very like you. I loved her intensely—for a short time—as girls do at school, you know. Her name was Treseaton—the Honourable Julia Treseaton."

"My mother!" said Jocelyn eagerly.

"I thought so. I did not think so at first, but when you spoke I was certain of it. She had a way with her lips. I am afraid she is dead."

"Yes; she died nearly twenty-five years ago in Africa."

"Africa—whereabouts in Africa?"

Then suddenly Jocelyn remembered where she had heard Lady Cantourne's name. It had only been mentioned to her once. And this was the aunt with whom Millicent Chyne lived. This cheery little lady knew Jack Meredith and Guy Oscard; and Millicent Chyne's daily life was part of her existence.

"The West Coast," she answered vaguely. She wanted time to think—to arrange things in her mind. She was afraid of the mention of Jack's name in the presence of this woman of the world. She did not mind Maurice or Guy Oscard—but it was different with a woman. She could hardly have said a better thing, because it took Lady Cantourne some seconds to work out in her mind where the West Coast of Africa was.

"That is the unhealthy coast, is it not?" asked her ladyship.

"Yes."

Jocelyn hardly heard the question. She was looking round with a sudden, breathless eagerness. It was probable that Millicent Chyne was in the rooms; and she never doubted that she would know her face.

"And I suppose you know that part of the world very well?" said Lady Cantourne, who had detected a change in her companion's manner.

"Oh yes."

"Have you ever heard of a place called Loango?"

"Oh yes. I live there."

"Indeed, how very interesting! I am very much interested in Loango just now, I must tell you. But I did not know that anybody lived there."

"No one does by choice," explained Jocelyn. "My father was a judge on the Coast, and since his death my brother Maurice has held an appointment at Loango. We are obliged to live there for eight months in the twelve."

She knew it was coming. But, as chance would have it, it was easier than she could have hoped. For some reason Lady Cantourne looked straight in front of her when she asked the question.

"Then you have, no doubt, met a friend of mine—Mr. Meredith? Indeed, two friends; for I understand that Guy Oscard is associated with him in this wonderful discovery."

"Oh yes," replied Jocelyn, with a carefully modulated interest, "I have met them both. Mr. Oscard lunched with us shortly before we left Africa."

"Ah, that was when he disappeared so suddenly. We never got quite to the base of that affair. He left at a moment's notice on receipt of a telegram or something, only leaving a short and somewhat vague note for my—for us. He wrote from Africa, I believe, but I never heard the details. I imagine Jack Meredith was in some difficulty. But it is a wonderful scheme this, is it not? They are certain to make a fortune, I understand."

"So people say," replied Jocelyn. It was a choice to tell all—to tell as much as she herself knew—or nothing. So she told nothing. She could not say that she had been forced by a sudden breakdown of her brother's health to leave Loango while Jack Meredith's fate was still wrapped in doubt. She could not tell Lady Cantourne that all her world was in Africa—that she was counting the days until she could go back thither. She could not lift for a second the veil that hid the aching, restless anxiety in her heart, the life-absorbing desire to know whether Guy Oscard had reached the Plateau in time. Her heart was so sore that she could not even speak of Jack Meredith's danger.

"How strange," said Lady Cantourne, "to think that you are actually living in Loango, and that you are the last person who has spoken to Jack Meredith! There are two people in this house to-night who would like to ask you questions from now till morning, but neither of them will do it. Did you see me go through the room just now with a tall gentleman—rather old."

"Yes," answered Jocelyn.

"That was Sir John Meredith, Jack's father," said Lady Cantourne in a lowered voice. "They have quarrelled, you know. People say that Sir John does not care—that he is heartless, and all that sort of thing. The world never says the other sort of thing, one finds. But—but I think I know to the contrary. He feels it very deeply. He would give worlds to hear some news of Jack; but he won't ask it, you know."

"Yes," said Jocelyn, "I understand."

She saw what was coming, and she desired it intensely, while still feeling afraid—as if they were walking on some sacred ground and might at any moment make a false step.

"I should like Sir John to meet you," said Lady Cantourne pleasantly. "Will you come to tea some afternoon? Strange to say, he asked who you were not half an hour ago. It almost seems like instinct, does it not? I do not believe in mystic things about spirits and souls going out to each other, and all that nonsense; but I believe in instinct. Will you come to-morrow? You are here to-night with Mrs. Sander, are you not? I know her. She will let you come alone. Five o'clock. You will see my niece Millicent. She is engaged to be married to Jack Meredith, you know. That is why they quarrelled—the father and son. You will find a little difficulty with her too. She is a difficult girl. But I dare say you will manage to tell her what she wants to know."

"Yes," said Jocelyn quietly—almost too quietly, "I shall manage."

Lady Cantourne rose, and so did Jocelyn.

"You know," she said, looking up into the girl's face, "it is a good action. That is why I ask you to do it. It is not often that one has the opportunity of doing a good action to which even one's dearest friend cannot attribute an ulterior motive. Who is that man over there?"

"That is my brother."

"I should like to know him; but do not bring him to-morrow. We women are better alone—you understand?"

With a confidential little nod the good lady went away to attend to other affairs; possibly to carry through some more good actions of a safe nature.

It was plain to Jocelyn that Maurice was looking for some one. He had just come, and was making his way through the crowd. Presently she managed to touch his elbow.

"Oh, there you are!" he exclaimed; "I want you. Come out of this room."

He offered her his arm, and together they made their way out of the crowded room into a smaller apartment where an amateur reciter was hovering disconsolately awaiting an audience.

"Here," said Maurice, when they were alone, "I have just had this telegram."

He handed her the thin, white submarine telegraph-form with its streaks of adhesive text.

"Relief entirely successful. Meredith Joseph returned Loango. Meredith bad health."

Jocelyn drew a deep breath.

"So that's all right—eh?" said Maurice heartily.

"Yes," answered Jocelyn, "that is all right."



CHAPTER XXX. OLD BIRDS



Angels call it heavenly joy; Infernal tortures the devils say; And men? They call it—Love.

"By the way, dear," said Lady Cantourne to her niece the next afternoon, "I have asked a Miss Gordon to come to tea this afternoon. I met her last night at the Fitzmannerings. She lives in Loango and knows Jack. I thought you might like to know her. She is exceptionally ladylike and rather pretty."

And straightway Miss Millicent Chyne went upstairs to put on her best dress.

We men cannot expect to understand these small matters—these exigencies, as it were, of female life. But we may be permitted to note feebly en passant through existence that there are occasions when women put on their best clothes without the desire to please. And, while Millicent Chyne was actually attiring herself, Jocelyn Gordon, in another house not so far away, was busy with that beautiful hair of hers, patting here, drawing out there, pinning, poking, pressing with all the cunning that her fingers possessed.

When they met a little later in Lady Cantourne's uncompromisingly solid and old-fashioned drawing-room, one may be certain that nothing was lost.

"My aunt tells me," began Millicent at once, with that degage treatment of certain topics hitherto held sacred which obtains among young folks to-day, "that you know Loango."

"Oh yes—I live there."

"And you know Mr. Meredith?"

"Yes, and Mr. Oscard also."

There was a little pause, while two politely smiling pairs of eyes probed each other.

"She knows something—how much?" was behind one pair of eyes.

"She cannot find out—I am not afraid of her," behind the other.

And Lady Cantourne, the proverbial looker-on, slowly rubbed her white hands one over the other.

"Ah, yes," said Millicent unblushingly—that was her strong point, blushing in the right place, but not in the wrong—"Mr. Oscard is associated with Mr. Meredith, is he not, in this hare-brained scheme?"

"I believe they are together in it—the Simiacine, you mean?" said Jocelyn.

"What else could she mean?" reflected the looker-on.

"Yes—the Simiacine. Such a singular name, is it not? I always say they will ruin themselves suddenly. People always do, don't they? But what do you think of it? I SHOULD like to know."

"I think they certainly will make a fortune," replied Jocelyn—and she noted the light in Millicent's eyes with a sudden feeling of dislike—"unless the risks prove too great and they are forced to abandon it."

"What risks?" asked Millicent, quite forgetting to modulate her voice.

"Well, of course, the Ogowe river is most horribly unhealthy, and there are other risks. The natives in the plains surrounding the Simiacine Plateau are antagonistic. Indeed, the Plateau was surrounded and quite besieged when we left Africa."

It may have hurt Millicent, but it hurt Jocelyn more—for the smile had left her hearer's face. She was off her guard, as she had been once before when Sir John was near, and Millicent's face betrayed something which Jocelyn saw at once with a sick heart—something that Sir John knew from the morning when he had seen Millicent open two letters—something that Lady Cantourne had known all along.

"And was Mr. Meredith on the Plateau when it was besieged?" asked Millicent, with a drawn, crooked smile.

"Yes," answered Jocelyn. She could not help seizing the poor little satisfaction of this punishment; but she felt all the while that it was nothing to the punishment she was bearing, and would bear all her life. There are few more contradictory things than the heart of a woman who really loves. For one man it is very tender; for the rest of the world it is the hardest heart on earth if it is called upon to defend the object of its love or the love itself.

"But," cried Millicent, "of course something was done. They could never leave Mr. Meredith unprotected."

"Yes," answered Jocelyn quietly, "Mr. Oscard went up and rescued him. My brother heard yesterday that the relief had been effected."

Millicent smiled again in her light-hearted way.

"That is all right," she said. "What a good thing we did not know! Just think, auntie dear, what a lot of anxiety we have been spared!"

"In the height of the season, too!" said Jocelyn.

"Ye—es," replied Millicent, rather doubtfully.

Lady Cantourne was puzzled. There was something going on which she did not understand. Within the sound of the pleasant conversation there was the cliquetis of the foil; behind the polite smile there was the gleam of steel. She was rather relieved to turn at this moment and see Sir John Meredith entering the room with his usual courtly bow. He always entered her drawing-room like that. Ah! that little secret of a mutual respect. Some people who are young now will wish, before they have grown old, that they had known it.

He shook hands with Lady Cantourne and with Millicent. Then he stood with a deferential half-bow, waiting for the introduction to the girl who was young enough to be his daughter—almost to be his granddaughter. There was something pathetic and yet proud in this old man's uncompromising adherence to the lessons of his youth.

"Sir John Meredith—Miss Gordon."

The beginning—the thin end of the wedge, as the homely saying has it—the end which we introduce almost every day of our lives, little suspecting to what it may broaden out.

"I had the pleasure of seeing you last night," said Sir John at once, "at Lady Fitzmannering's evening party, or 'At Home,' I believe we call them nowadays. Some of the guests read the invitation too much au pied de la lettre for my taste. They were so much at home that I, fearing to intrude, left rather early."

"I believe the skirt-dancing frightened you away, Sir John," said Millicent merrily.

"Even old birds, my dear young lady, may sometimes be alarmed by a scarecrow."

"I missed you quite early in the evening," put in Lady Cantourne, sternly refusing to laugh. She had not had an opportunity of seeing him since her conversation with Jocelyn, and the dangers of the situation were fully appreciated by such an experienced woman of the world.

"They began to clear the upper end of the room," he explained, "and I assisted them in the most practical manner in my power."

He was beginning to wonder why he had been invited—nay, almost commanded—to come, by an imperious little note. And of late, whenever Sir John began to wonder he began also to feel old. His fingers strayed towards his unsteady lips as if he were about to make one of those little movements of senile helplessness to which he sometimes gave way.

For a moment Lady Cantourne hesitated between two strokes of social diplomacy—but only for a moment. She had heard the bell ring, and trusted that at the other end of the wire there might be one of those fatuous young men who nibbled at that wire like foolish fish round a gilt spoon-bait. Her ladyship decided to carry on the social farce a few minutes longer, instead of offering the explanation which all were awaiting.

"We women," she said, "were not so easily deterred from our social duties."

At this moment the door opened, and there entered a complex odour of hairwash and perfumery—a collar which must have been nearly related to a cuff, and a pair of tight patent-leather boots, all attached to and somewhat overpowering a young man.

"Ah, my dear Mr. Grubb," said Lady Cantourne, "how good of you to call so soon! You will have some tea. Millicent, give Mr. Grubb some tea."

"Not too strong," added Sir John, apparently to himself, under the cover of Mr. Grubb's somewhat scrappy greeting.

Then Lady Cantourne went to the conservatory and left Sir John and Jocelyn at the end of the long room together. There is nothing like a woman's instinct. Jocelyn spoke at once.

"Lady Cantourne," she said, "kindly asked me to meet you to-day on purpose. I live at Loango; I know your son, Mr. Meredith, and we thought you might like to hear about him and about Loango."

She knew that with a man like Sir John any indirect approach to the subject would be courting failure. His veiled old eyes suddenly lighted up, and he turned to glance over his shoulder.

"Yes," he said, with a strange hesitation, "yes—you are kind. Of course I am interested. I wonder," he went on, with a sudden change of manner, "I wonder how much you know?"

His unsteady hand was resting on her gloved fingers, and he blinked at it as if wondering how it got there.

Jocelyn did not seem to notice.

"I know," she answered, "that you have had a difference of opinion—but no one else knows. You must not think that Mr. Meredith has spoken of his private affairs to any one else. The circumstances were exceptional, and Mr. Meredith thought that it was due to me to give me an explanation."

Sir John looked a little puzzled, and Jocelyn went on rather hastily to explain

"My brother and Mr. Meredith were at Eton together. They met somewhere up the Coast, and my brother asked Mr. Meredith to come and stay. It happened that Maurice was away when Mr. Meredith arrived, and I did not know who he was, so he explained."

"I see," said Sir John. "And you and your brother have been kind to my boy."

Somehow he seemed to have forgotten to be cynical. He had never known what it is to have a daughter, and she was ignorant of the pleasant everyday amenities of a father's love. As there is undoubtedly such a thing as love at first sight, so must there be sympathy at first sight. For Jocelyn it was comprehensible—nay, it was most natural. This was Jack's father. In his manner, in everything about him, there were suggestions of Jack. This seemed to be a creature hewn, as it were, from the same material, moulded on the same lines, with slightly divergent tools. And for him—who can tell? The love that was in her heart may have reached out to meet almost as great a love locked up in his proud soul. It may have shown itself to him, openly, fearlessly, recklessly, as love sometimes does when it is strong and pure.

He had carefully selected a seat within the shadow of the curtains; but Jocelyn saw quite suddenly that he was an older man than she had taken him to be the evening before. She saw through the deception of the piteous wig—the whole art that strove to conceal the sure decay of the body, despite the desperate effort of a mind still fresh and vigorous.

"And I dare say," he said, with a somewhat lame attempt at cynicism, "that you have heard no good of me?"

But Jocelyn would have none of that. She was no child to be abashed by sarcasm, but a woman, completed and perfected by her love.

"Excuse me," she said sharply; "but that is not the truth, and you know it. You know as well as I do that your son would never say a word against you."

Sir John looked hastily round. Lady Cantourne had come into the room and was talking to the two young people: Millicent was glancing uneasily over Mr. Grubb's brainless cranium towards them. Sir John's stiff, unsteady fingers fumbled for a moment round his lips.

"Yes," he said, "I was wrong."

"He has always spoken of you with the greatest love and respect," said Jocelyn; "more than that, with admiration. But he very rarely spoke of you at all, which I think means more."

Sir John blinked, and suddenly pulled himself together with a backward jerk of the arms which was habitual with him. It almost seemed as if he said to himself, as he squared his shoulders, "Come, no giving way to old age!"

"Has his health been good?" he asked, rather formally.

"I believe so, until quite lately. My brother heard yesterday by telegram that he was at Loango in broken health," replied Jocelyn.

Sir John was looking at her keenly—his hard blue eyes like steel between the lashless lids.

"You disquiet me," he said. "I have a sort of feeling that you have bad news to tell me."

"No," she answered, "not exactly. But it seems to me that no one realises what he is doing out in Africa—what risks he is running."

"Tell me," he said, drawing in his chair. "I will not interrupt you. Tell me all you know from beginning to end. I am naturally—somewhat interested."

So Jocelyn told him. And what she said was only a recapitulation of facts known to such as have followed these pages to this point. But the story did not sound quite the same as that related to Millicent. It was fuller, and there were certain details touched upon lightly which had before been emphasised—details of dangers run and risks incurred. Also was it listened to in a different spirit, without shallow comment, with a deeper insight. Suddenly he broke into the narrative. He saw—keen old worldling that he was—a discrepancy.

"But," he said, "there was no one in Loango connected with the scheme who"—he paused, touching her sleeve with a bony finger—"who sent the telegram home to young Oscard—the telegram calling him out to Jack's relief?"

"Oh," she explained lightly, "I did. My brother was away, so there was no one else to do it, you see!"

"Yes—I see."

And perhaps he did.

Lady Cantourne helped them skilfully. But there came a time when Millicent would stand it no longer, and the amiable Grubb wriggled out of the room, crushed by a too obvious dismissal.

Sir John rose at once, and when Millicent reached them they were talking of the previous evening's entertainment.

Sir John took his leave. He bowed over Jocelyn's hand, and Millicent, watching them keenly, could see nothing—no gleam of a mutual understanding in the politely smiling eyes.

"Perhaps," he said, "I may have the pleasure of meeting you again?"

"I am afraid it is doubtful," she answered, with something that sounded singularly like exultation in her voice. "We are going back to Africa almost at once."

And she, also, took her leave of Lady Cantourne.



CHAPTER XXXI. SEED-TIME



What Fate does, let Fate answer for.

One afternoon Joseph had his wish. Moreover he had it given to him even as he desired, which does not usually happen. We are given a part, or the whole, so distorted that we fail to recognise it.

Joseph looked up from his work and saw Jocelyn coming into the bungalow garden.

He went out to meet her, putting on his coat as he went.

"How is Mr. Meredith?" she asked at once. Her eyes were very bright, and there was a sort of breathlessness in her manner which Joseph did not understand.

"He is a bit better, miss, thank you kindly. But he don't make the progress I should like. It's the weakness that follows the malarial attack that the doctor has to fight against."

"Where is he?" asked Jocelyn.

"Well, miss, at the moment he is in the drawing-room. We bring him down there for the change of air in the afternoon. Likely as not, he's asleep."

And presently Jack Meredith, lying comfortably somnolent on the outskirts of life, heard light footsteps, but hardly heeded them. He knew that some one came into the room and stood silently by his couch for some seconds. He lazily unclosed his eyelids for a moment, not in order to see who was there, but with a view of intimating that he was not asleep. But he was not wholly conscious. To men accustomed to an active, energetic life, a long illness is nothing but a period of complete rest. In his more active moments Jack Meredith sometimes thought that this rest of his was extending into a dangerously long period, but he was too weak to feel anxiety about anything.

Jocelyn moved away and busied herself noiselessly with one or two of those small duties of the sick-room which women see and men ignore. But she could not keep away. She came back and stood over him with a silent sense of possession which made that moment one of the happiest of her life. She remembered it in after years, and the complex feelings of utter happiness and complete misery that filled it.

At last a fluttering moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his eyes—uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a sudden life.

"Ah!" he said, "you—you at last!"

He took her hand in both of his. He was weakened by illness and a great fatigue. Perhaps he was off his guard, or only half awake.

"I never should have got better if you had not come," he said. Then, suddenly, he seemed to recall himself, and rose with an effort from his recumbent position.

"I do not know," he said, with a return of his old half-humorous manner, "whether to thank you first for your hospitality or to beg your pardon for making such unscrupulous use of it."

She was looking at him closely as he stood before her, and all her knowledge of human ills as explored on the West Coast of Africa, all her experience, all her powers of observation, were on the alert. He did not look very ill. The brown of a year's sunburn such as he had gone through on the summit of an equatorial mountain where there was but little atmosphere between earth and sun, does not bleach off in a couple of months. Physically regarded, he was stronger, broader, heavier-limbed, more robust, than when she had last seen him—but her knowledge went deeper than complexion, or the passing effort of a strong will.

"Sit down," she said quietly. "You are not strong enough to stand about."

He obeyed her with a little laugh.

"You do not know," he said, "how pleasant it is to see you—fresh and English-looking. It is like a tonic. Where is Maurice?"

"He will be here soon," she replied; "he is attending to the landing of the stores. We shall soon make you strong and well; for we have come laden with cases of delicacies for your special delectation. Your father chose them himself at Fortnum and Mason's."

He winced at the mention of his father's name, and drew in his legs in a peculiar, decisive way.

"Then you knew I was ill?" he said, almost suspiciously.

"Yes, Joseph telegraphed."

"To whom?" sharply.

"To Maurice."

Jack Meredith nodded his head. It was perhaps just as well that the communicative Joseph was not there at that moment.

"We did not expect you for another ten days," said Meredith after a little pause, as if anxious to change the subject. "Marie said that your brother's leave was not up until the week after next."

Jocelyn turned away, apparently to close the window. She hesitated. She could not tell him what had brought them back sooner—what had demanded of Maurice Gordon the sacrifice of ten days of his holiday.

"We do not always take our full term," she said vaguely.

And he never saw it. The vanity of man is a strange thing. It makes him see intentions that were never conceived; and without vanity to guide his perception man is as blind a creature as walks upon this earth.

"However," he said, as if to prove his own density, "I am selfishly very glad that you had to come back sooner. Not only on account of the delicacies—I must ask you to believe that. Did my eye brighten at the mention of Fortnum and Mason? I am afraid it did."

She laughed softly. She did not pause to think that it was to be her daily task to tend him and help to make him stronger in order that he might go away without delay. She only knew that every moment of the next few weeks was going to be full of a greater happiness than she had ever tasted. As we get deeper into the slough of life most of us learn to be thankful that the future is hidden—some of us recognise the wisdom and the mercy which decree that even the present be only partly revealed.

"As a matter of fact," she said lightly, "I suppose that you loathe all food?"

"Loathe it," he replied. He was still looking at her, as if in enjoyment of the Englishness and freshness of which he had spoken. "Simply loathe it. All Joseph's tact and patience are required to make me eat even eleven meals in the day. He would like thirteen."

At this moment Maurice came in—Maurice—hearty, eager, full of life. He blustered in almost as Joseph had prophesied, kicking the furniture, throwing his own vitality into the atmosphere. Jocelyn knew that he liked Jack Meredith—and she knew more. She knew, namely, that Maurice Gordon was a different man when Jack Meredith was in Loango. From Meredith's presence he seemed to gather a sense of security and comfort even as she did—a sense which in herself she understood (for women analyse love), but which in her brother puzzled her.

"Well, old chap," said Maurice, "glad to see you. I AM glad to see you. Thank Heaven you were bowled over by that confounded malaria, for otherwise we should have missed you."

"That is one way of looking at it," answered Meredith. But he did not go so far as to say that it was a way which had not previously suggested itself to him.

"Of course it is. The best way, I take it. Well—how do you feel? Come, you don't look so bad."

"Oh—much better, thanks. I have got on splendidly the last week, and better still the last five minutes! The worst of it is that I shall be getting well too soon and shall have to be off."

"Home?" inquired Maurice significantly.

Jocelyn moved uneasily.

"Yes, home."

"We don't often hear people say that they are sorry to leave Loango," said Maurice.

"I will oblige you whenever you are taken with the desire," answered Jack lightly; "Loango has been a very good friend to me. But I am afraid there is no choice. The doctor speaks very plain words about it. Besides, I am bound to go home."

"To sell the Simiacine?" inquired Maurice.

"Yes."

"Have you the second crop with you?"

"Yes."

"And the trees have improved under cultivation?"

"Yes," answered Jack rather wonderingly. "You seem to know a lot about it."

"Of course I do," replied Maurice boisterously.

"From Durnovo?"

"Yes; he even offered to take me into partnership."

Jack turned on him in a flash.

"Did he indeed? On what conditions?"

And then, when it was too late, Maurice saw his mistake. It was not the first time that the exuberance of his nature had got him into a difficulty.

"Oh, I don't know," he replied vaguely. "It's a long story. I'll tell you about it some day."

Jack would have left it there for the moment. Maurice Gordon had made his meaning quite clear by glancing significantly towards his sister. Her presence, he intimated, debarred further explanation.

But Jocelyn would not have it thus. She shrewdly suspected the nature of the bargain proposed by Durnovo, and a sudden desire possessed her to have it all out—to drag this skeleton forth and flaunt it in Jack Meredith's face. The shame of it all would have a certain sweetness behind its bitterness; because, forsooth, Jack Meredith alone was to witness the shame. She did not pause to define the feeling that rose suddenly in her heart. She did not know that it was merely the pride of her love—the desire that Jack Meredith, though he would never love her, should know once for all that such a man as Victor Durnovo could be nothing but repugnant to her.

"If you mean," she said, "that you cannot tell Mr. Meredith because I am here, you need not hesitate on that account."

Maurice laughed awkwardly, and muttered something about matters of business. He was not good at this sort of thing. Besides, there was the initial handicapping knowledge that Jocelyn was so much cleverer than himself.

"Whether it is a matter of business or not," she cried with glittering eyes, "I want you to tell Mr. Meredith now. He has a right to know. Tell him upon what condition Mr. Durnovo proposed to admit you into the Simiacine."

Maurice still hesitated, bewildered, at a loss—as men are when a seemingly secure secret is suddenly discovered to the world. He would still have tried to fend it off; but Jack Meredith, with his keener perception, saw that Jocelyn was determined—that further delay would only make the matter worse.

"If your sister wants it," he said, "you had better tell me. I am not the sort of man to act rashly—on the impulse of the moment."

Still Maurice tried to find some means of evasion.

"Then," cried Jocelyn, with flaming cheeks, "I will tell you. You were to be admitted into the Simiacine scheme by Mr. Durnovo if you could persuade or force me to marry him."

None of them had foreseen this. It had come about so strangely, and yet so easily, in the midst of their first greeting.

"Yes," admitted Maurice, "that was it."

"And what answer did you give?" asked Jocelyn.

"Oh, I told him to go and hang himself—or words to that effect," was the reply, delivered with a deprecating laugh.

"Was that your final answer?" pursued Jocelyn, inexorable. Her persistence surprised Jack. Perhaps it surprised herself.

"Yes, I think so."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, he cut up rough and threatened to make things disagreeable; so I think I said that it was no good his asking me to do anything in the matter, as I didn't know your feelings."

"Well, you can tell him," cried Jocelyn hotly, "that never, under any circumstances whatever, would I dream even of the possibility of marrying him."

And the two men were alone.

Maurice Gordon gazed blankly at the closed door.

"How was I to know she'd take it like that?" he asked helplessly.

And for once the polished gentleman of the world forgot himself—carried away by a sudden unreasoning anger which surprised him almost as much as it did Maurice Gordon.

"Why, you damned fool," said Jack, "any idiot would have known that she would take it like that. How could she do otherwise? You, her brother, ought to know that to a girl like Miss Gordon the idea of marrying such a low brute as Durnovo could only be repugnant. Durnovo—why, he is not good enough to sweep the floor that she has stood upon! He's not fit to speak to her; and you go on letting him come to the house, sickening her with his beastly attentions! You're not capable of looking after a lady! I would have kicked Durnovo through that very window myself, only"—he paused, recalling himself with a little laugh—"only it was not my business."

Maurice Gordon sat down forlornly. He tapped his boot with his cane.

"Oh, it's very well for you," he answered; "but I'm not a free agent. I can't afford to make an enemy of Durnovo."

"You need not have made an enemy of him," said Jack, and he saved Maurice Gordon by speaking quickly—saved him from making a confession which could hardly have failed to alter both their lives.

"It will not be very difficult," he went on; "all she wants is your passive resistance. She does not want you to help HIM—do you see? She can do the rest. Girls can manage these things better than we think, if they want to. The difficulty usually arises from the fact that they are not always quite sure that they do want to. Go and beg her pardon. It will be all right."

So Maurice Gordon went away also, leaving Jack Meredith alone in the drawing-room with his own thoughts.



CHAPTER XXXII. AN ENVOY



What we love perfectly For 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.



CHAPTER XXXIII. DARK DEALING



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.



CHAPTER XXXIV. AMONG THORNS



We shut our hearts up nowadays, Like some old music-box that plays Unfashionable 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.