It would seem that Sir John divined these thoughts, for he presently spoke of them.

"Owing to an unfortunate difference of opinion with my son we have not been very communicative lately," he said, with that deliberation which he knew how to assume when he desired to be heard without interruption. "I am therefore almost entirely ignorant of your African affairs, but I imagine Jack owes more to your pluck and promptness than has yet transpired. I gathered as much from one or two conversations I had with Miss Gordon when she was in England. I am one of Miss Gordon's many admirers."

"And I am another," said Oscard frankly.

"Ah! Then you are happy enough to be the object of a reciprocal feeling which for myself I could scarcely expect. She spoke of you in no measured language. I gathered from her that if you had not acted with great promptitude the—er—happy event of to-morrow could not have taken place."

The old man paused, and Guy Oscard, who looked somewhat distressed and distinctly uncomfortable, could find no graceful way of changing the conversation.

"In a word," went on Sir John in a very severe tone, "I owe you a great debt. You saved my boy's life."

"Yes, but you see," argued Oscard, finding his tongue at last, "out there things like that don't count for so much."

"Oh—don't they?" There was the suggestion of a smile beneath Sir John's grim eyebrows.

"No," returned Oscard rather lamely, "it is a sort of thing that happens every day out there."

Sir John turned suddenly, and with the courtliness that was ever his he indulged in a rare exhibition of feeling. He laid his hand on Guy Oscard's stalwart knee.

"My dear Oscard," he said, and when he chose he could render his voice very soft and affectionate, "none of these arguments apply to me because I am not out there. I like you for trying to make little of your exploit. Such conduct is worthy of you—worthy of a gentleman; but you cannot disguise the fact that Jack owes his life to you and I owe you the same, which, between you and me I may mention, is more valuable to me than my own. I want you to remember always that I am your debtor, and if—if circumstances should ever seem to indicate that the feeling I have for you is anything but friendly and kind, do me the honour of disbelieving those indications—you understand?"

"Yes," replied Oscard untruthfully.

"Here we are at Lady Cantourne's," continued Sir John, "where, as it happens, I expect to meet Jack. Her ladyship is naturally interested in the affair of to-morrow, and has kindly undertaken to keep us up to date in our behaviour. You will come in with me?"

Oscard remembered afterwards that he was rather puzzled—that there was perhaps in his simple mind the faintest tinge of a suspicion. At the moment, however, there was no time to do anything but follow. The man had already rung the bell, and Lady Cantourne's butler was holding the door open. There was something in his attitude vaguely suggestive of expectation. He never took his eyes from Sir John Meredith's face, as if on the alert for an unspoken order.

Guy Oscard followed his companion into the hall, and the very scent of the house—for each house speaks to more senses than one—made his heart leap in his broad breast. It seemed as if Millicent's presence was in the very air. This was more than he could have hoped. He had not intended to call this afternoon, although the visit was only to have been postponed for twenty-four hours.

Sir John Meredith's face was a marvel to see. It was quite steady. He was upright and alert, with all the intrepidity of his mind up in arms. There was a light in his eyes—a gleam of light from other days, not yet burnt out.

He laid aside his gold-headed cane and threw back his shoulders.

"Is Mr. Meredith upstairs?" he said to the butler.

"Yes—sir."

The man moved towards the stairs.

"You need not come!" said Sir John, holding up his hand.

The butler stood aside and Sir John led the way up to the drawing-room.

At the door he paused for a moment. Guy Oscard was at his heels. Then he opened the door rather slowly, and motioned gracefully with his left hand to Oscard to pass in before him.

Oscard stepped forward. When he had crossed the threshold Sir John closed the door sharply behind him and turned to go downstairs.



CHAPTER XLI. A TROIS



Men serve women kneeling; when they get on their feet they go away.

Guy Oscard stood for a moment on the threshold. He heard the door close behind him, and he took two steps farther forward.

Jack Meredith and Millicent were at the fireplace. There was a heap of disordered paper and string upon the table, and a few wedding presents standing in the midst of their packing.

Millicent's pretty face was quite white. She looked from Meredith to Oscard with a sudden horror in her eyes. For the first time in her life she was at a loss—quite taken aback.

"Oh-h!" she whispered, and that was all.

The silence that followed was tense as if something in the atmosphere was about to snap; and in the midst of it the wheels of Sir John's retreating carriage came to the ears of the three persons in the drawing-room.

It was only for a moment, but in that moment the two men saw clearly. It was as if the veil from the girl's mind had fallen—leaving her thoughts confessed, bare before them. In the same instant they both saw—they both sped back in thought to their first meeting, to the hundred links of the chain that brought them to the present moment—they KNEW; and Millicent felt that they knew.

"Are YOU going to be married to-morrow?" asked Guy Oscard deliberately. He never was a man to whom a successful appeal for the slightest mitigation of justice could have been made. His dealings had ever been with men, from whom he had exacted as scrupulous an honour as he had given. He did not know that women are different—that honour is not their strong point.

Millicent did not answer. She looked to Meredith to answer for her; but Meredith was looking at Oscard, and in his lazy eyes there glowed the singular affection and admiration which he had bestowed long time before on this simple gentleman—his mental inferior.

"Are YOU going to be married to-morrow?" repeated Oscard, standing quite still, with a calmness that frightened her.

"Yes," she answered rather feebly.

She knew that she could explain it all. She could have explained it to either of them separately, but to both together, somehow it was difficult. Her mind was filled with clamouring arguments and explanations and plausible excuses; but she did not know which to select first. None of them seemed quite equal to this occasion. These men required something deeper, and stronger, and simpler than she had to offer them.

Moreover, she was paralysed by a feeling that was quite new to her—a horrid feeling that something had gone from her. She had lost her strongest, her single arm: her beauty. This seemed to have fallen from her. It seemed to count for nothing at this time. There is a time that comes as surely as death will come in the life of every beautiful woman—a time wherein she suddenly realises how trivial a thing her beauty is—how limited, how useless, how ineffectual!

Millicent Chyne made a little appealing movement towards Meredith, who relentlessly stepped back. It was the magic of the love that filled his heart for Oscard. Had she wronged any man in the world but Guy Oscard, that little movement—full of love and tenderness and sweet contrition—might have saved her. But it was Oscard's heart that she had broken; for broken they both knew it to be, and Jack Meredith stepped back from her touch as from pollution. His superficial, imagined love for her had been killed at a single blow. Her beauty was no more to him at that moment than the beauty of a picture.

"Oh, Jack!" she gasped; and had there been another woman in the room that woman would have known that Millicent loved him with the love that comes once only. But men are not very acute in such matters—they either read wrong or not at all.

"It is all a mistake," she said breathlessly, looking from one to the other.

"A most awkward mistake," suggested Meredith, with a cruel smile that made her wince.

"Mr. Oscard must have mistaken me altogether," the girl went on, volubly addressing herself to Meredith—she wanted nothing from Oscard. "I may have been silly, perhaps, or merely ignorant and blind. How was I to know that he meant what he said?"

"How, indeed?" agreed Meredith, with a grave bow.

"Besides, he has no business to come here bringing false accusations against me. He has no right—it is cruel and ungentlemanly. He cannot prove anything; he cannot say that I ever distinctly gave him to understand—er, anything—that I ever promised to be engaged or anything like that."

She turned upon Oscard, whose demeanour was stolid, almost dense. He looked very large and somewhat difficult to move.

"He has not attempted to do so yet," suggested Jack suavely, looking at his friend.

"I do not see that it is quite a question of proofs," said Oscard quietly, in a voice that did not sound like his at all. "We are not in a court of justice, where ladies like to settle these questions now. If we were I could challenge you to produce my letters. There is no doubt of my meaning in them."

"There are also my poor contributions to—your collection," chimed in Jack Meredith. "A comparison must have been interesting to you, by the same mail presumably, under the same postmark."

"I made no comparison," the girl cried defiantly. "There was no question of comparison."

She said it shamelessly, and it hurt Meredith more than it hurt Guy Oscard, for whom the sting was intended.

"Comparison or no comparison," said Jack Meredith quickly, with the keenness of a good fencer who has been touched, "there can be no doubt of the fact that you were engaged to us both at the same time. You told us both to go out and make a fortune wherewith to buy—your affections. One can only presume that the highest bidder—the owner of the largest fortune—was to be the happy man. Unfortunately we became partners, and—such was the power of your fascination—we made the fortune; but we share and share alike in that. We are equal, so far as the—price is concerned. The situation is interesting and rather—amusing. It is your turn to move. We await your further instructions in considerable suspense."

She stared at him with bloodless lips. She did not seem to understand what he was saying. At last she spoke, ignoring Guy Oscard's presence altogether.

"Considering that we are to be married to-morrow, I do not think that you should speak to me like that," she said with a strange, concentrated eagerness.

"Pardon me, we are not going to be married to-morrow."

Her brilliant teeth closed on her lower lip with a snap, and she stood looking at him, breathing so hard that the sound was almost a sob.

"What do you mean?" she whispered hoarsely.

He raised his shoulders in polite surprise at her dulness of comprehension.

"In the unfortunate circumstances in which you are placed," he explained, "it seems to me that the least one can do is to offer every assistance in one's power. Please consider me hors de concours. In a word—I scratch."

She gasped like a swimmer swimming for life. She was fighting for that which some deem dearer than life—namely, her love. For it is not only the good women who love, though these understand it best and see farther into it.

"Then you can never have cared for me," she cried. "All that you have told me," and her eyes flashed triumphantly across Oscard, "all that you promised and vowed was utterly false—if you turn against me at the first word of a man who was carried away by his own vanity into thinking things that he had no business to think."

If Guy Oscard was no great adept at wordy warfare, he was at all events strong in his reception of punishment. He stood upright and quiescent, betraying by neither sign nor movement that her words could hurt him.

"I beg to suggest again," said Jack composedly, "that Oscard has not yet brought any accusations against you. You have brought them all yourself."

"You are both cruel and cowardly," she exclaimed, suddenly descending to vituperation. "Two to one. Two men—GENTLEMEN—against one defenceless girl. Of course I am not able to argue with you. Of course you can get the best of me. It is so easy to be sarcastic."

"I do not imagine," retorted Jack, "that anything that we can say or do will have much permanent power of hurting you. For the last two years you have been engaged in an—intrigue, such as a thin-skinned or sensitive person would hardly of her own free will undertake. You may be able to explain it to yourself—no doubt you are—but to our more limited comprehensions it must remain inexplicable. We can only judge from appearances."

"And of course appearances go against me—they always do against a woman," she cried rather brokenly.

"You would have been wise to have taken that peculiarity into consideration sooner," replied Jack Meredith coldly. "I admit that I am puzzled; I cannot quite get at your motive. Presumably it is one of those—SWEET feminine inconsistencies which are so charming in books."

There was a little pause. Jack Meredith waited politely to hear if she had anything further to say. His clean-cut face was quite pallid; the suppressed anger in his eyes was perhaps more difficult to meet than open fury. The man who never forgets himself before a woman is likely to be an absolute master of women.

"I think," he added, "that there is nothing more to be said."

There was a dead silence. Millicent Chyne glanced towards Guy Oscard. He could have saved her yet—by a simple lie. Had he been an impossibly magnanimous man, such as one meets in books only, he could have explained that the mistake was all his, that she was quite right, that his own vanity had blinded him into a great and unwarranted presumption. But, unfortunately, he was only a human being—a man who was ready to give as full a measure as he exacted. The unfortunate mistake to which he clung was that the same sense of justice, the same code of honour, must serve for men and women alike. So Millicent Chyne looked in vain for that indulgence which is so inconsistently offered to women, merely because they are women—the indulgence which is sometimes given and sometimes withheld, according to the softness of the masculine heart and the beauty of the suppliant feminine form. Guy Oscard was quite sure of his own impressions. This girl had allowed him to begin loving her, had encouraged him to go on, had led him to believe that his love was returned. And in his simple ignorance of the world he did not see why these matters should be locked up in his own breast from a mistaken sense of chivalry to be accorded where no chivalry was due.

"No," he answered. "There is nothing more to be said."

Without looking towards her, Jack Meredith made a few steps towards the door—quietly, self-composedly, with that perfect savoir-faire of the social expert that made him different from other men. Millicent Chyne felt a sudden plebeian desire to scream. It was all so heartlessly well-bred. He turned on his heel with a little half-cynical bow.

"I leave my name with you," he said. "It is probable that you will be put to some inconvenience. I can only regret that this—denouement did not come some months ago. You are likely to suffer more than I, because I do not care what the world thinks of me. Therefore you may tell the world what you choose about me—that I drink, that I gamble, that I am lacking in—honour! Anything that suggests itself to you, in fact. You need not go away; I will do that."

She listened with compressed lips and heaving shoulders; and the bitterest drop in her cup was the knowledge that he despised her. During the last few minutes he had said and done nothing that lowered him in her estimation—that touched in any way her love for him. He had not lowered himself in any way, but he had suavely trodden her under foot. His last words—the inexorable intention of going away—sapped her last lingering hope. She could never regain even a tithe of his affection.

"I think," he went on, "that you will agree with me in thinking that Guy Oscard's name must be kept out of this entirely. I give you carte blanche except that."

With a slight inclination of the head he walked to the door. It was characteristic of him that although he walked slowly he never turned his head nor paused.

Oscard followed him with the patient apathy of the large and mystified.

And so they left her—amidst the disorder of the half-unpacked wedding presents—amidst the ruin of her own life. Perhaps, after all, she was not wholly bad. Few people are; they are only bad enough to be wholly unsatisfactory and quite incomprehensible. She must have known the risk she was running, and yet she could not stay her hand. She must have known long before that she loved Jack Meredith, and that she was playing fast and loose with the happiness of her whole life. She knew that hundreds of girls around her were doing the same, and, with all shame be it mentioned, not a few married women. But they seemed to be able to carry it through without accident or hindrance. And illogically, thoughtlessly, she blamed her own ill-fortune.

She stood looking blankly at the door which had closed behind three men—one old and two young—and perhaps she realised the fact that such creatures may be led blindly, helplessly, with a single hair, but that that hair may snap at any moment.

She was not thinking of Guy Oscard. Him she had never loved. He had only been one of her experiments, and by his very simplicity—above all, by his uncompromising honesty—he had outwitted her.

It was characteristic of her that at that moment she scarcely knew the weight of her own remorse. It sat lightly on her shoulders then, and it was only later on, when her beauty began to fade, when years came and brought no joy for the middle-aged unmarried woman, that she began to realise what it was that she had to carry through life with her. At that moment a thousand other thoughts filled her mind—such thoughts as one would expect to find there. How was the world to be deceived? The guests would have to be put off—the wedding countermanded—the presents returned. And the world—her world—would laugh in its sleeve. There lay the sting.



CHAPTER XLII. A STRONG FRIENDSHIP



Still must the man move sadlier for the dreams That mocked the boy.

"Where are you going?" asked Meredith, when they were in the street.

"Home."

They walked on a few paces together.

"May I come with you?" asked Meredith again.

"Certainly; I have a good deal to tell you."

They called a cab, and singularly enough they drove all the way to Russell Square without speaking. These two men had worked together for many months, and men who have a daily task in common usually learn to perform it without much interchange of observation. When one man gets to know the mind of another, conversation assumes a place of secondary importance. These two had been through more incidents together than usually fall to the lot of man—each knew how the other would act and think under given circumstances; each knew what the other was thinking now.

The house in Russell Square, the quiet house in the corner where the cabs do not pass, was lighted up and astir when they reached it. The old butler held open the door with a smile of welcome and a faint aroma of whisky. The luggage had been discreetly removed. Joseph had gone to Mr. Meredith's chambers. Guy Oscard led the way to the smoking-room at the back of the house—the room wherein the eccentric Oscard had written his great history—the room in which Victor Durnovo had first suggested the Simiacine scheme to the historian's son.

The two survivors of the originating trio passed into this room together, and closed the door behind them.

"The worst of one's own private tragedies is that they are usually only comedies in disguise," said Jack Meredith oracularly.

Guy Oscard grunted. He was looking for his pipe.

"If we heard this of any two fellows except ourselves we should think it an excellent joke," went on Meredith.

Oscard nodded. He lighted his pipe, and still he said nothing.

"Hang it!" exclaimed Jack Meredith, suddenly throwing himself back in his chair, "it is a good joke."

He laughed softly, and all the while his eyes, watchful, wise, anxious, were studying Guy Oscard's face.

"He is harder hit than I am," he was reflecting. "Poor old Oscard!"

The habit of self-suppression was so strong upon him—acquired as a mere social duty—that it was only natural for him to think less of himself than of the expediency of the moment. The social discipline is as powerful an agent as that military discipline that makes a man throw away his own life for the good of the many.

Oscard laughed, too, in a strangely staccato manner.

"It is rather a sudden change," observed Meredith; "and all brought about by your coming into that room at that particular moment—by accident."

"Not by accident," corrected Oscard, speaking at last. "I was brought there and pushed into the room."

"By whom?"

"By your father."

Jack Meredith sat upright. He drew his curved hand slowly down over his face—keen and delicate as was his mind—his eyes deep with thought.

"The Guv'nor," he said slowly. "The Guv'nor—by God!"

He reflected for some seconds.

"Tell me how he did it," he said curtly.

Oscard told him, rather incoherently, between the puffs. He did not attempt to make a story of it, but merely related the facts as they had happened to him. It is probable that to him the act was veiled which Jack saw quite distinctly.

"That is the sort of thing," was Meredith's comment when the story was finished, "that takes the conceit out of a fellow. I suppose I have more than my share. I suppose it is good for me to find that I am not so clever as I thought I was—that there are plenty of cleverer fellows about, and that one of them is an old man of seventy-nine. The worst of it is that he was right all along. He saw clearly where you and I were—damnably blind."

He rubbed his slim brown hands together, and looked across at his companion with a smile wherein the youthful self-confidence was less discernible than of yore. The smile faded as he looked at Oscard. He was thinking that he looked older and graver—more of a middle-aged man who has left something behind him in life—and the sight reminded him of the few grey hairs that were above his own temples.

"Come," he said more cheerfully, "tell me your news. Let us change the subject. Let us throw aside light dalliance and return to questions of money. More important—much more satisfactory. I suppose you have left Durnovo in charge? Has Joseph come home with you?"

"Yes, Joseph has come home with me. Durnovo is dead."

"Dead!"

Guy Oscard took his pipe from his lips.

"He died at Msala of the sleeping sickness. He was a bigger blackguard than we thought. He was a slave-dealer and a slave-owner. Those forty men we picked up at Msala were slaves belonging to him."

"Ach!" It was a strange exclamation, as if he had burnt his fingers. "Who knows of this?" he asked immediately. The expediency of the moment had presented itself to his mind again.

"Only ourselves," returned Oscard. "You, Joseph, and I."

"That is all right, and the sooner we forget that the better. It would be a dangerous story to tell."

"So I concluded," said Oscard, in his slow, thoughtful way. "Joseph swears he won't breathe a word of it."

Jack Meredith nodded. He looked rather pale beneath the light of the gas.

"Joseph is all right," he said. "Go on."

"It was Joseph who found it out," continued Oscard, "up at the Plateau. I paraded the whole crowd, told them what I had found out, and chucked up the whole concern in your name and mine. Next morning I abandoned the Plateau with such men as cared to come. Nearly half of them stayed with Durnovo. I thought it was in order that they might share in the Simiacine—I told them they could have the whole confounded lot of the stuff. But it was not that; they tricked Durnovo there. They wanted to get him to themselves. In going down the river we had an accident with two of the boats, which necessitated staying at Msala. While we were waiting there, one night after ten o'clock the poor devil came, alone, in a canoe. They had simply cut him in slices—a most beastly sight. I wake up sometimes even now dreaming of it, and I am not a fanciful sort of fellow. Joseph went into his room and was simply sick; I didn't know that you could be made sick by anything you saw. The sleeping sickness was on Durnovo then; he had brought it with him from the Plateau. He died before morning."

Oscard ceased speaking and returned to his pipe. Jack Meredith, looking haggard and worn, was leaning back in his chair.

"Poor devil!" he exclaimed. "There was always something tragic about Durnovo. I did hate that man, Oscard. I hated him and all his works."

"Well, he's gone to his account now."

"Yes, but that does not make him any better a man while he was alive. Don't let us cant about him now. The man was an unmitigated scoundrel—perhaps he deserved all he got."

"Perhaps he did. He was Marie's husband."

"The devil he was!"

Meredith fell into a long reverie. He was thinking of Jocelyn and her dislike for Durnovo, of the scene in the drawing-room of the bungalow at Loango; of a thousand incidents all connected with Jocelyn.

"How I hate that man!" he exclaimed at length. "Thank God—he is dead—because I should have killed him."

Guy Oscard looked at him with a slow pensive wonder. Perhaps he knew more than Jack Meredith knew himself of the thoughts that conceived those words—so out of place in that quiet room, from those suave and courtly lips.

All the emotions of his life seemed to be concentrated into this one day of Jack Meredith's existence. Oscard's presence was a comfort to him—the presence of a calm, strong man is better than many words.

"So this," he said, "is the end of the Simiacine. It did not look like a tragedy when we went into it."

"So far as I am concerned," replied Oscard, with quiet determination, "it certainly is the end of the Simiacine! I have had enough of it. I, for one, am not going to look for that Plateau again."

"Nor I. I suppose it will be started as a limited liability company by a German in six months. Some of the natives will leave landmarks as they come down so as to find their way back."

"I don't think so!"

"Why?"

Oscard took his pipe from his lips.

"When Durnovo came down to Msala," he explained, "he had the sleeping sickness on him. Where did he get it from?"

"By God!" ejaculated Jack Meredith, "I never thought of that. He got it up at the Plateau. He left it behind him. They have got it up there now."

"Not now—"

"What do you mean, Oscard?"

"Merely that all those fellows up there are dead. There is ninety thousand pounds worth of Simiacine packed ready for carrying to the coast, standing in a pile on the Plateau, and there are thirty-four dead men keeping watch over it."

"Is it as infectious as that?"

"When it first shows itself, infectious is not the word. It is nothing but a plague. Not one of those fellows can have escaped."

Jack Meredith sat forward and rubbed his two hands pensively over his knees.

"So," he said, "only you and I and Joseph know where the Simiacine Plateau is."

"That is so," answered Oscard.

"And Joseph won't go back?"

"Not if you were to give him that ninety thousand pounds worth of stuff."

"And you will not go back?"

"Not for nine hundred thousand pounds. There is a curse on that place."

"I believe there is," said Meredith.

And such was the end of the great Simiacine Scheme—the wonder of a few seasons. Some day, when the great Sahara is turned into an inland sea, when steamers shall ply where sand now flies before the desert wind, the Plateau may be found again. Some day, when Africa is cut from east to west by a railway line, some adventurous soul will scale the height of one of many mountains, one that seems no different from the rest and yet is held in awe by the phantom-haunted denizens of the gloomy forest, and there he will find a pyramid of wooden cases surrounded by bleached and scattered bones where vultures have fed.

In the meantime the precious drug will grow scarcer day by day, and the human race will be poorer by the loss of one of those half-matured discoveries which have more than once in the world's history been on the point of raising the animal called man to a higher, stronger, finer development of brain and muscle than we can conceive of under existing circumstances. Who can tell? Perhaps the strange solitary bush may be found growing elsewhere—in some other continent across the ocean. The ways of Nature are past comprehension, and no man can say who sows the seed that crops up in strange places. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and none can tell what germs it bears. It seems hardly credible that the Plateau, no bigger than a cricket field, far away in the waste land of Central Africa, can be the only spot on this planet where the magic leaf grows in sufficient profusion to supply suffering humanity with an alleviating drug, unrivalled—a strength-giving herb, unapproached in power. But as yet no other Simiacine has been found and the Plateau is lost.

And the end of it was two men who had gone to look for it two years before—young and hearty—returning from the search successful beyond their highest hopes, with a shadow in their eyes and grey upon their heads.

They sat for nearly two hours in that room in the quiet house in Russell Square, where the cabs do not pass; and their conversation was of money. They sat until they had closed the Simiacine account, never to be reopened. They discussed the question of renouncement, and, after due consideration, concluded that the gain was rightly theirs seeing that the risk had all been theirs. Slaves and slave-owner had both taken their cause to a Higher Court, where the defendant has no worry and the plaintiff is at rest. They were beyond the reach of money—beyond the glitter of gold—far from the cry of anguish. A fortune was set aside for Marie Durnovo, to be held in trust for the children of the man who had found the Simiacine Plateau; another was apportioned to Joseph.

"Seventy-seven thousand one hundred and four pounds for you," said Jack Meredith at length, laying aside his pen, "seventy-seven thousand one hundred and four pounds for me."

"And," he added, after a little pause, "it was not worth it."

Guy Oscard smoked his pipe and shook his head.

"Now," said Jack Meredith, "I must go. I must be out of London by to-morrow morning. I shall go abroad—America or somewhere."

He rose as he spoke, and Oscard made no attempt to restrain him.

They went out into the passage together. Oscard opened the door and followed his companion to the step.

"I suppose," said Meredith, "we shall meet some time—somewhere?"

"Yes."

They shook hands.

Jack Meredith went down the steps almost reluctantly. At the foot of the short flight he turned and looked up at the strong, peaceful form of his friend.

"What will you do?" he said.

"I shall go back to my big-game," replied Guy Oscard. "I am best at that. But I shall not go to Africa."



CHAPTER XLIII. A LONG DEBT



The life unlived, the deed undone, the tear Unshed.

"I rather expect—Lady Cantourne," said Sir John to his servants when he returned home, "any time between now and ten o'clock."

The butler, having a vivid recollection of an occasion when Lady Cantourne was shown into a drawing-room where there were no flowers, made his preparations accordingly. The flowers were set out with that masculine ignorance of such matters which brings a smile—not wholly of mirth—to a woman's face. The little-used drawing-room was brought under the notice of the housekeeper for that woman's touch which makes a drawing-room what it is. It was always ready—this room, though Sir John never sat in it. But for Lady Cantourne it was always more than ready.

Sir John went to the library and sat rather wearily down in the stiff-backed chair before the fire. He began by taking up the evening newspaper, but failed to find his eyeglasses, which had twisted up in some aggravating manner with his necktie. So he laid aside the journal and gave way to the weakness of looking into the fire.

Once or twice his head dropped forward rather suddenly, so that his clean-shaven chin touched his tie-pin, and this without a feeling of sleepiness warranting the relaxation of the spinal column. He sat up suddenly on each occasion and threw back his shoulders.

"Almost seems," he muttered once, "as if I were getting to be an old man."

After that he remembered nothing until the butler, coming in with the lamp, said that Lady Cantourne was in the drawing-room. The man busied himself with the curtains, carefully avoiding a glance in his master's direction. No one had ever found Sir John asleep in a chair during the hours that other people watch, and this faithful old servant was not going to begin to do so now.

"Ah," said Sir John, surreptitiously composing his collar and voluminous necktie, "thank you."

He rose and glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven. He had slept through the most miserable hour of Millicent Chyne's life.

At the head of the spacious staircase he paused in front of the mirror, half hidden behind exotics, and pressed down his wig behind either ear. Then he went into the drawing-room.

Lady Cantourne was standing impatiently on the hearthrug, and scarcely responded to his bow.

"Has Jack been here?" she asked.

"No."

She stamped a foot, still neat despite its long journey over a road that had never been very smooth. Her manner was that of a commander-in-chief, competent but unfortunate, in the midst of a great reverse.

"He has not been here this afternoon?"

"No," answered Sir John, closing the door behind him.

"And you have not heard anything from him?"

"Not a word. As you know, I am not fortunate enough to be fully in his confidence."

Lady Cantourne glanced round the room as if looking for some object upon which to fix her attention. It was a characteristic movement which he knew, although he had only seen it once or twice before. It indicated that if there was an end to Lady Cantourne's wit, she had almost reached that undesirable bourne.

"He has broken off his engagement," she said, looking her companion very straight in the face, "NOW—at the eleventh hour. Do you know anything about it?"

She came closer to him, looking up from her compact little five-feet-two with discerning eyes.

"John!" she exclaimed.

She came still nearer and laid her gloved hands upon his sleeve.

"John! you know something about this."

"I should like to know more," he said suavely. "I am afraid—Millicent will be inconvenienced."

Lady Cantourne looked keenly at him for a moment. Physically she almost stood on tip-toe, mentally she did it without disguise. Then she turned away and sat on a chair which had always been set apart for her.

"It is a question," she said gravely, "whether any one has a right to punish a woman so severely."

The corner of Sir John's mouth twitched.

"I would rather punish her than have Jack punished for the rest of his life."

"Et moi?" she snapped impatiently.

"Ah!" with a gesture learnt in some foreign court, "I can only ask your forgiveness. I can only remind you that she is not your daughter—if she were she would be a different woman—while he IS my son."

Lady Cantourne nodded as if to indicate that he need explain no more.

"How did you do it?" she asked quietly.

"I did not do it. I merely suggested to Guy Oscard that he should call on you. Millicent and her fiance—the other—were alone in the drawing-room when we arrived. Thinking that I might be de trop I withdrew, and left the young people to settle it among themselves, which they have apparently done! I am, like yourself, a great advocate for allowing young people to settle things among themselves. They are also welcome to their enjoyment of the consequences so far as I am concerned."

"But Millicent was never engaged to Guy Oscard."

"Did she tell you so?" asked Sir John, with a queer smile.

"Yes."

"And you believed her?"

"Of course—and you?"

Sir John smiled his courtliest smile.

"I always believe a lady," he answered, "before her face. Mr. Guy Oscard gave it out in Africa that he was engaged to be married, and he even declared that he was returning home to be married. Jack did the same in every respect. Unfortunately there was only one fond heart waiting for the couple of them at home. That is why I thought it expedient to give the young people an opportunity of settling it between themselves."

The smile left his worn old face. He moved uneasily and walked to the fireplace, where he stood with his unsteady hands moving idly, almost nervously, among the ornaments on the mantelpiece. He committed the rare discourtesy of almost turning his back upon a lady.

"I must ask you to believe," he said, looking anywhere but at her, "that I did not forget you in the matter. I may seem to have acted with an utter disregard for your feelings—"

He broke off suddenly, and, turning, he stood on the hearthrug with his feet apart, his hands clasped behind his back, his head slightly bowed.

"I drew on the reserve of an old friendship," he said. "You were kind enough to say the other day that you were indebted to me to some extent. You are indebted to me to a larger extent than you perhaps realise. You owe me fifty years of happiness—fifty years of a life that might have been happy had you decided differently when—when we were younger. I do not blame you now—I never have blamed you. But the debt is there—you know my life, you know almost every day of it—you cannot deny the debt. I drew upon that."

And the white-haired woman raised her hand.

"Don't," she said gently, "please don't say any more. I know all that your life has been, and why. You did quite right. What is a little trouble to me, a little passing inconvenience, the tattle of a few idle tongues, compared with what Jack's life is to you? I see now that I ought to have opposed it strongly instead of letting it take its course. You were right—you always have been right, John. There is a sort of consolation in the thought. I like it. I like to think that you were always right and that it was I who was wrong. It confirms my respect for you. We shall get over this somehow."

"The young lady," suggested Sir John, "will get over it after the manner of her kind. She will marry some one else, let us hope, before her wedding-dress goes out of fashion."

"Millicent will have to get over it as she may. Her feelings need scarcely be taken into consideration."

Lady Cantourne made a little movement towards the door. There was much to see to—much of that women's work which makes weddings the wild, confused ceremonies that they are.

"I am afraid," said Sir John, "that I never thought of taking them into consideration. As you know, I hardly considered yours. I hope I have not overdrawn that reserve."

He had crossed the room as he spoke to open the door for her. His fingers were on the handle, but he did not turn it, awaiting her answer. She did not look at him, but past him towards the shaded lamp with that desire to fix her attention upon some inanimate object which he knew of old.

"The reserve," she answered, "will stand more than that. It has accumulated—with compound interest. But I deny the debt of which you spoke just now. There is no debt. I have paid it, year by year, day by day. For each one of those fifty years of unhappiness I have paid a year—of regret."

He opened the door and she passed out into the brilliantly lighted passage and down the stairs, where the servants were waiting to open the door and help her to her carriage.

Sir John did not go downstairs with her.

Later on he dined in his usual solitary grandeur. He was as carefully dressed as ever. The discipline of his household—like the discipline under which he held himself—was unrelaxed.

"What wine is this?" he asked when he had tasted the port.

"Yellow seal, sir," replied the butler confidentially.

Sir John sipped again.

"It is a new bin," he said.

"Yes, sir. First bottle of the lower bin, sir."

Sir John nodded with an air of self-satisfaction. He was pleased to have proved to himself and to the "damned butler," who had caught him napping in the library, that he was still a young man in himself, with senses and taste unimpaired. But his hand was at the small of his back as he returned to the library.

He was not at all sure about Jack—did not know whether to expect him or not. Jack did not always do what one might have expected him to do under given circumstances. And Sir John rather liked him for it. Perhaps it was that small taint of heredity which is in blood, and makes it thicker than water.

"Nothing like blood, sir," he was in the habit of saying, "in horses, dogs, and men." And thereafter he usually threw back his shoulders.

The good blood that ran in his veins was astir to-night. The incidents of the day had aroused him from the peacefulness that lies under a weight of years (we have to lift the years one by one and lay them aside before we find it), and Sir John Meredith would have sat very upright in his chair were it not for that carping pain in his back.

He waited for an hour with his eyes almost continually on the clock, but Jack never came. Then he rang the bell.

"Coffee," he said. "I like punctuality, if you please."

"Thought Mr. Meredith might be expected, sir," murmured the butler humbly.

Sir John was reading the evening paper, or appearing to read it, although he had not his glasses.

"Oblige me by refraining from thought," he said urbanely.

So the coffee was brought, and Sir John consumed it in silent majesty. While he was pouring out his second cup—of a diminutive size—the bell rang. He set down the silver coffee-pot with a clatter, as if his nerves were not quite so good as they used to be. It was not Jack, but a note from him.

"MY DEAR FATHER,—Circumstances have necessitated the breaking off of my engagement at the last moment. To-morrow's ceremony will not take place. As the above-named circumstances were partly under your control, I need hardly offer an explanation. I leave town and probably England to-night.—I am, your affectionate son,

"JOHN MEREDITH."

There were no signs of haste or discomposure. The letter was neatly written in the somewhat large calligraphy, firm, bold, ornate, which Sir John had insisted on Jack's learning. The stationery bore a club crest. It was an eminently gentlemanly communication. Sir John read it and gravely tore it up, throwing it into the fire, where he watched it burn.

Nothing was farther from his mind than sentiment. He was not much given to sentiment, this hard-hearted old sire of an ancient stock. He never thought of the apocryphal day when he, being laid in his grave, should at last win the gratitude of his son.

"When I am dead and gone you may be sorry for it" were not the words that any man should hear from his lips.

More than once during their lives Lady Cantourne had said:

"You never change your mind, John," referring to one thing or another. And he had invariably answered:

"No, I am not the sort of man to change."

He had always known his own mind. When he had been in a position to rule he had done so with a rod of iron. His purpose had ever been inflexible. Jack had been the only person who had ever openly opposed his desire. In this, as in other matters, his indomitable will had carried the day, and in the moment of triumph it is only the weak who repine. Success should have no disappointment for the man who has striven for it if his will be strong.

Sir John rather liked the letter. It could only have been written by a son of his—admitting nothing, not even defeat. But he was disappointed. He had hoped that Jack would come—that some sort of a reconciliation would be patched up. And somehow the disappointment affected him physically. It attacked him in the back, and intensified the pain there. It made him feel weak and unlike himself. He rang the bell.

"Go round," he said to the butler, "to Dr. Damer, and ask him to call in during the evening if he has time."

The butler busied himself with the coffee tray, hesitating, desirous of gaining time.

"Anything wrong, sir? I hope you are not feeling ill," he said nervously.

"Ill, sir," cried Sir John. "D—n it, no; do I look ill? Just obey my orders if you please."



CHAPTER XLIV. MADE UP



My faith is large in Time, And that which shapes it to some perfect end.

"MY DEAR JACK,—At the risk of being considered an interfering old woman, I write to ask you whether you are not soon coming to England again. As you are aware, your father and I knew each other as children. We have known each other ever since—we are now almost the only survivors of our generation. My reason for troubling you with this communication is that during the last six months I have noticed a very painful change in your father. He is getting very old—he has no one but servants about him. You know his manner—it is difficult for any one to approach him, even for me. If you could come home—by accident—I think that you will never regret it in after life. I need not suggest discretion as to this letter. Your affectionate friend,

"CAROLINE CANTOURNE."

Jack Meredith read this letter in the coffee-room of the Hotel of the Four Seasons at Wiesbaden. It was a lovely morning—the sun shone down through the trees of the Friedrichstrasse upon that spotless pavement, of which the stricken wot; the fresh breeze came bowling down from the Taunus mountains all balsamic and invigorating—it picked up the odours of the Seringa and flowering currant in the Kurgarten, and threw itself in at the open window of the coffee-room of the Hotel of the Four Seasons.

Jack Meredith was restless. Such odours as are borne on the morning breeze are apt to make those men restless who have not all that they want. And is not their name legion? The morning breeze is to the strong the moonlight of the sentimental. That which makes one vaguely yearn incites the other to get up and take.

By the train leaving Wiesbaden for Cologne, "over Mainz," as the guide-book hath it, Jack Meredith left for England, in which country he had not set foot for fifteen months. Guy Oscard was in Cashmere; the Simiacine was almost forgotten as a nine days' wonder except by those who live by the ills of mankind. Millicent Chyne had degenerated into a restless society "hack." With great skill she had posed as a martyr. She had allowed it to be understood that she, having remained faithful to Jack Meredith through his time of adversity, had been heartlessly thrown over when fortune smiled upon him and there was a chance of his making a more brilliant match. With a chivalry which was not without a keen shaft of irony, father and son allowed this story to pass uncontradicted. Perhaps a few believed it; perhaps they had foreseen the future. It may have been that they knew that Millicent Chyne, surrounded by the halo of whatever story she might invent, would be treated with a certain careless nonchalance by the older men, with a respectful avoidance by the younger. Truly women have the deepest punishment for their sins here on earth; for sooner or later the time will come—after the brilliancy of the first triumph, after the less pure satisfaction of the skilled siren—the time will come when all that they want is an enduring, honest love. And it is written that an enduring love cannot, with the best will in the world, be bestowed on an unworthy object. If a woman wishes to be loved purely she must have a pure heart, and NO PAST, ready for the reception of that love. This is a sine qua non. The woman with a past has no future.

The short March day was closing in over London with that murky suggestion of hopelessness affected by metropolitan eventide when Jack Meredith presented himself at the door of his father's house.

In his reception by the servants there was a subtle suggestion of expectation which was not lost on his keen mind. There is no patience like that of expectation in an old heart. Jack Meredith felt vaguely that he had been expected thus, daily for many months past.

He was shown into the library, and the tall form standing there on the hearthrug had not the outline for which he had looked. The battle between old age and a stubborn will is long. But old age wins. It never raises the siege. It starves the garrison out. Sir John Meredith's head seemed to have shrunk. The wig did not fit at the back. His clothes, always bearing the suggestion of emptiness, seemed to hang on ancient-given lines as if the creases were well established. The clothes were old. The fateful doctrine of not-worth-while had set in.

Father and son shook hands, and Sir John walked feebly to the stiff-backed chair, where he sat down in shamefaced silence. He was ashamed of his infirmities. His was the instinct of the dog that goes away into some hidden corner to die.

"I am glad to see you," he said, using his two hands to push himself further back in his chair.

There was a little pause. The fire was getting low. It fell together with a feeble, crumbling sound.

"Shall I put some coals on?" asked Jack.

A simple question—if you will. But it was asked by the son in such a tone of quiet, filial submission, that a whole volume could not contain all that it said to the old man's proud, unbending heart.

"Yes, my boy, do."

And the last six years were wiped away like evil writing from a slate.

There was no explanation. These two men were not of those who explain themselves, and in the warmth of explanation say things which they do not fully mean. The opinions that each had held during the years they had left behind had perhaps been modified on both sides, but neither sought details of the modification. They knew each other now, and each respected the indomitable will of the other.

They inquired after each other's health. They spoke of events of a common interest. Trifles of everyday occurrence seemed to contain absorbing details. But it is the everyday occurrence that makes the life. It was the putting on of the coals that reconciled these two men.

"Let me see," said John, "you gave up your rooms before you left England, did you not?"

"Yes."

Jack drew forward his chair and put his feet out towards the fire. It was marvellous how thoroughly at home he seemed to be.

"Then," continued Sir John, "where is your luggage?"

"I left it at the club."

"Send along for it. Your room is—er, quite ready for you. I shall be glad if you will make use of it as long as you like. You will be free to come and go as if you were in your own house."

Jack nodded with a strange, twisted little smile, as if he were suffering from cramp in the legs. It was cramp—at the heart.

"Thanks," he said, "I should like nothing better. Shall I ring?"

"If you please."

Jack rang, and they waited in the fading daylight without speaking. At times Sir John moved his limbs, his hand on the arm of the chair and his feet on the hearth-rug, with the jerky, half-restless energy of the aged which is not pleasant to see.

When the servant came, it was Jack who gave the orders, and the butler listened to them with a sort of enthusiasm. When he had closed the door behind him he pulled down his waistcoat with a jerk, and as he walked downstairs he muttered "Thank 'eaven!" twice, and wiped away a tear from his bibulous eye.

"What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you?" inquired Sir John conversationally when the door was closed.

"I have been out to India—merely for the voyage. I went with Oscard, who is out there still, after big-game."

Sir John Meredith nodded.

"I like that man," he said, "he is tough. I like tough men. He wrote me a letter before he went away. It was the letter of—one gentleman to another. Is he going to spend the rest of his life 'after big-game'?"

Jack laughed.

"It seems rather like it. He is cut out for that sort of life. He is too big for narrow streets and cramped houses."

"And matrimony?"

"Yes—and matrimony."

Sir John was leaning forward in his chair, his two withered hands clasped on his knees.

"You know," he said slowly, blinking at the fire, "he cared for that girl—more than you did, my boy."

"Yes," answered Jack softly.

Sir John looked towards him, but he said nothing. His attitude was interrogatory. There were a thousand questions in the turn of his head, questions which one gentleman could not ask another.

Jack met his gaze. They were still wonderfully alike, these two men, though one was in his prime while the other was infirm. On each face there was the stamp of a long-drawn, silent pride; each was a type of those haughty conquerors who stepped, mail-clad, on our shore eight hundred years ago. Form and feature, mind and heart, had been handed down from father to son, as great types are.

"One may have the right feeling and bestow it by mistake on the wrong person," said Jack.

Sir John's fingers were at his lips.

"Yes," he said rather indistinctly, "while the right person is waiting for it."

Jack looked up sharply, as if he either had not heard or did not understand.

"While the right person is waiting for it," repeated Sir John deliberately.

"The right person—?"

"Jocelyn Gordon," exclaimed Sir John, "is the right person."

Jack shrugged his shoulders and leant back so that the firelight did not shine upon his face. "So I found out eighteen months ago," he said, "when it was too late."

"There is no such thing as too late for that," said Sir John in his great wisdom. "Even if you were both quite old it would not be too late. I have known it for longer than you. I found it out two years ago."

Jack looked across the room into the keen, worldly-wise old face.

"How?" he inquired.

"From her. I found it out the moment she mentioned your name. I conducted the conversation in such a manner that she had frequently to say it, and whenever your name crossed her lips she—gave herself away."

Jack shook his head with an incredulous smile.

"Moreover," continued Sir John, "I maintain that it is not too late."

There followed a silence; both men seemed to be wrapped in thought, the same thoughts with a difference of forty years of life in the method of thinking them.

"I could not go to her with a lame story like that," said Jack. "I told her all about Millicent."

"It is just a lame story like that that women understand," answered Sir John. "When I was younger I thought as you do. I thought that a man must needs bring a clean slate to the woman he asks to be his wife. It is only his hands that must be clean. Women see deeper into these mistakes of ours than we do; they see the good of them where we only see the wound to our vanity. Sometimes one would almost be inclined to think that they prefer a few mistakes in the past because it makes the present surer. Their romance is a different thing from ours—it is a better thing, deeper and less selfish. They can wipe the slate clean and never look at it again. And the best of them—rather like the task."

Jack made no reply. Sir John Meredith's chin was resting on his vast necktie. He was looking with failing eyes into the fire. He spoke like one who was sure of himself—confident in his slowly accumulated store of that knowledge which is not written in books.

"Will you oblige me?" he asked.

Jack moved in his chair, but he made no answer. Sir John did not indeed expect it. He knew his son too well.

"Will you," he continued, "go out to Africa and take your lame story to Jocelyn just as it is?"

There was a long silence. The old worn-out clock on the mantelpiece wheezed and struck six.

"Yes," answered Jack at length, "I will go."

Sir John nodded his head with a sigh of relief. All, indeed, comes to him who waits.

"I have seen a good deal of life," he said suddenly, arousing himself and sitting upright in the stiff-backed chair, "here and there in the world; and I have found that the happiest people are those who began by thinking that it was too late. The romance of youth is only fit to write about in books. It is too delicate a fabric for everyday use. It soon wears out or gets torn."

Jack did not seem to be listening.

"But," continued Sir John, "you must not waste time. If I may suggest it, you will do well to go at once."

"Yes," answered Jack, "I will go in a month or so. I should like to see you in a better state of health before I leave you."

Sir John pulled himself together. He threw back his shoulders and stiffened his neck.

"My health is excellent," he replied sturdily. "Of course I am beginning to feel my years a little, but one must expect to do that after—eh—er—sixty. C'est la vie."

He made a little movement of the hands.

"No," he went on, "the sooner you go the better."

"I do not like leaving you," persisted Jack.

Sir John laughed rather testily.

"That is rather absurd," he said; "I am accustomed to being left. I have always lived alone. You will do me a favour if you will go now and take your passage out to Africa."

"Now—this evening?"

"Yes—at once. These offices close about half-past six, I believe. You will just have time to do it before dinner."

Jack rose and went towards the door. He went slowly, almost reluctantly.

"Do not trouble about me," said Sir John, "I am accustomed to being left."

He repeated it when the door had closed behind his son.

The fire was low again. It was almost dying. The daylight was fading every moment. The cinders fell together with a crumbling sound, and a greyness crept into their glowing depths. The old man sitting there made no attempt to add fresh fuel.

"I am accustomed," he said, with a half-cynical smile, "to being left."



CHAPTER XLV. THE TELEGRAM



How could it end in any other way? You called me, and I came home to your heart.

"They tell me, sir, that Missis Marie—that is, Missis Durnovo—has gone back to her people at Sierra Leone."

Thus spoke Joseph to his master one afternoon in March, not so many years ago. They were on board the steamer Bogamayo, which good vessel was pounding down the West Coast of Africa at her best speed. The captain reckoned that he would be anchored at Loango by half-past seven or eight o'clock that evening. There were only seven passengers on board, and dinner had been ordered an hour earlier for the convenience of all concerned. Joseph was packing his master's clothes in the spacious cabin allotted to him. The owners of the steamer had thought it worth their while to make the finder of the Simiacine as comfortable as circumstances allowed. The noise of that great drug had directed towards the West Coast of Africa that floating scum of ne'er-do-welldom which is ever on the alert for some new land of promise.

"Who told you that?" asked Jack, drying his hands on a towel.

"One of the stewards, sir—a man that was laid up at Sierra Leone in the hospital."

Jack Meredith paused for a moment before going on deck. He looked out through the open porthole towards the blue shadow on the horizon which was Africa—a country that he had never seen three years before, and which had all along been destined to influence his whole life.

"It was the best thing she could do," he said. "It is to be hoped that she will be happy."

"Yes, sir, it is. She deserves it, if that goes for anything in the heavenly reckonin'. She's a fine woman—a good woman that, sir."

"Yes."

Joseph was folding a shirt very carefully.

"A bit dusky," he said, smoothing out the linen folds reflectively, "but I shouldn't have minded that if I had been a marryin' man, but—but I'm not."

He laid the shirt in the portmanteau and looked up. Jack Meredith had gone on deck.

While Maurice and Jocelyn Gordon were still at dinner that same evening, a messenger came announcing the arrival of the Bogamayo in the roads. This news had the effect of curtailing the meal. Maurice Gordon was liable to be called away at any moment thus by the arrival of a steamer. It was not long before he rose from the table and lighted a cigar preparatory to going down to his office, where the captain of the steamer was by this time probably awaiting him. It was a full moon, and the glorious golden light of the equatorial night shone through the high trees like a new dawn. Hardly a star was visible; even those of the southern hemisphere pale beside the southern moon.

Maurice Gordon crossed the open space of cultivated garden and plunged into the black shadow of the forest. His footsteps were inaudible. Suddenly he ran almost into the arms of a man.

"Who the devil is that?" he cried.

"Meredith," answered a voice.

"Meredith—Jack Meredith, is that you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm blowed!" exclaimed Maurice Gordon, shaking hands—"likewise glad. What brought you out here again?"

"Oh, pleasure!" replied Jack, with his face in the shade.

"Pleasure! you've come to the wrong place for that. However, I'll let you find out that for yourself. Go on to the bungalow; I'll be back in less than an hour. You'll find Jocelyn in the verandah."

When Maurice left her, Jocelyn went out into the verandah. It was the beginning of the hot season. At midday the sun on his journey northward no longer cast a shadow. Jocelyn could not go out in the daytime at this period of the year. For fresh air she had to rely upon a long, dreamy evening in the verandah.

She sat down in her usual chair, while the moonlight, red and glowing, made a pattern on the floor and on her white dress with the shadows of the creepers. The sea was very loud that night, rising and falling like the breath of some huge sleeping creature.

Jocelyn Gordon fell into a reverie. Life was very dull at Loango. There was too much time for thought and too little to think about. This girl only had the past, and her past was all comprised in a few months—the few months still known at Loango as the Simiacine year. She had lapsed into a bad habit of thinking that her life was over, that the daylight of it had waned, and that there was nothing left now but the grey remainder of the evening. She was wondering now why it had all come—why there had been any daylight at all. Above these thoughts she wondered why the feeling was still in her heart that Jack Meredith had not gone out of her life for ever. There was no reason why she should ever meet him again. He was, so far as she knew, married to Millicent Chyne more than a year ago, although she had never seen the announcement of the wedding. He had drifted into Loango and into her life by the merest accident, and now that the Simiacine Plateau had been finally abandoned there was no reason why any of the original finders should come to Loango again.

And the creepers were pushed aside by one who knew the method of their growth. A silver glory of moonlight fell on the verandah floor, and the man of whom she was thinking stood before her.

"You!" she exclaimed.

"Yes."

She rose, and they shook hands. They stood looking at each other for a few moments, and a thousand things that had never been said seemed to be understood between them.

"Why have you come?" she asked abruptly.

"To tell you a story."

She looked up with a sort of half smile, as if she suspected some pleasantry of which she had not yet detected the drift.

"A long story," he explained, "which has not even the merit of being amusing. Please sit down again."

She obeyed him.

The curtain of hanging leaves and flowers had fallen into place again; the shadowed tracery was on her dress and on the floor once more.

He stood in front of her and told her his story, as Sir John had suggested. He threw no romance into it—attempted no extenuation—but related the plain, simple facts of the last few years with the semi-cynical suggestion of humour that was sometimes his. And the cloak of pride that had fallen upon his shoulders made him hide much that was good, while he dragged forward his own shortcomings. She listened in silence. At times there hovered round her lips a smile. It usually came when he represented himself in a bad light, and there was a suggestion of superior wisdom in it, as if she knew something of which he was ignorant.

He was never humble. It was not a confession. It was not even an explanation, but only a story—a very lame story indeed—which gained nothing by the telling. And he was not the hero of it.

And all came about as wise old Sir John Meredith had predicted. It is not our business to record what Jocelyn said. Women—the best of them—have some things in their hearts which can only be said once to one person. Men cannot write them down; printers cannot print them.

The lame story was told to the end, and at the end it was accepted. When Sir John's name was mentioned—when the interview in the library of the great London house was briefly touched upon—Jack saw the flutter of a small lace pocket-handkerchief, and at no other time. The slate was wiped clean, and it almost seemed that Jocelyn preferred it thus with the scratches upon it where the writing had been.

Maurice Gordon did not come back in an hour. It was nearly ten o'clock before they heard his footstep on the gravel. By that time Jocelyn had heard the whole story. She had asked one or two questions which somehow cast a different light upon the narrative, and she had listened to the answers with a grave, judicial little smile—the smile of a judge whose verdict was pre-ordained, whose knowledge had nothing to gain from evidence.

Because she loved him she took his story and twisted it and turned it to a shape of her own liking. Those items which he had considered important she passed over as trifles; the trifles she magnified into the corner-stones upon which the edifice was built. She set the lame story upon its legs and it stood upright. She believed what he had never told; and much that he related she chose to discredit—because she loved him. She perceived motives where he assured her there were none; she recognised the force of circumstances where he took the blame to himself—because she loved him. She maintained that the past was good, that he could not have acted differently, that she would not have had it otherwise—because she loved him.

And who shall say that she was wrong?

Jack went out to meet Maurice Gordon when they heard his footsteps, and as they walked back to the house he told him. Gordon was quite honest about it.

"I hoped," he said, "when I ran against you in the wood, that that was why you had come back. Nothing could have given me greater happiness. Hang it, I AM glad, old chap!"

They sat far into the night arranging their lives. Jack was nervously anxious to get back to England. He could not rid his mind of the picture he had seen as he left his father's presence to go and take his passage to Africa—the picture of an old man sitting in a stiff-backed chair before a dying fire. Moreover, he was afraid of Africa; the Irritability of Africa had laid its hand upon him almost as soon as he had set his foot upon its shore. He was afraid of the climate for Jocelyn; he was afraid of it for himself. The happiness that comes late must be firmly held to; nothing must be forgotten to secure it, or else it may slip between the fingers at the last moment.

Those who have snatched happiness late in life can tell of a thousand details carefully attended to—a whole existence laid out in preparation for it, of health fostered, small pleasures relinquished, days carefully spent.

Jack Meredith was nervously apprehensive that his happiness might even now slip through his fingers. Truly, climatic influence is a strange and wonderful thing. It was Africa that had done this, and he was conscious of it. He remembered Victor Durnovo's strange outburst on their first meeting a few miles below Msala on the Ogowe river, and the remembrance only made him the more anxious that Jocelyn and he should turn their backs upon the accursed West Coast for ever.

Before they went to bed that night it was all arranged. Jack Meredith had carried his point. Maurice and Jocelyn were to sail with him to England by the first boat. Jocelyn and he compiled a telegram to be sent off first thing by a native boat to St. Paul de Loanda. It was addressed to Sir John Meredith, London, and signed "Meredith, Loango." The text of it was:

"I bring Jocelyn home by first boat."

. . .

And the last words, like the first, must be of an old man in London. We found him in the midst of a brilliant assembly; we leave him alone. We leave him lying stiffly on his solemn fourpost bed, with his keen, proud face turned fearlessly towards his Maker. His lips are still; they wear a smile which even in death is slightly cynical. On the table at his bedside lies a submarine telegram from Africa. It is unopened.

THE END