Henry Seton Merriman

“ She gave a little nod of comprehension, as if he had raised a curtain for her to see into his life—into the far perspective of it, reaching back into the dim distance of fifty years before. For our lives do reach back into the lives of our fathers and grandfathers; the beginnings made there come down into our daily existence, shaping our thought and action. That which stood between Sir John Meredith and his son was not so much the present personality of Millicent Chyne as the past shadows of a disappointed life, an unloved wife and an unsympathetic mother. ”

“ Such was the meeting of Victor Durnovo and Jack Meredith. Two men with absolutely nothing in common—no taste, no past, no kinship—nothing but the future. Such men as Fate loves to bring together for her own strange purposes. What these purposes are none of us can tell. Some hold that Fate is wise. She is not so yet, but she cannot fail to acquire wisdom some day, because she experiments so industriously. She is ever bringing about new combinations, and one can only trust that she, the experimenter, is as keenly disappointed in the result as are we, the experimented. ”

“ It was all plain fact, and the plainest was her love for Jack Meredith.
Her daily life was in no perceptible way changed. Maurice Gordon saw no difference. She had never been an hilarious person. Now she went about her household, her kindnesses, and unobtrusive good works with a quieter mien; but, when occasion or social duty demanded, she seemed perhaps a little readier than before to talk of indifferent topics, to laugh at indifferent wit. Those who have ears to hear and eyes wherewith to see learn to distrust the laugh that is too ready, the sympathy that flows in too broad a stream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The pleasures of society, the social amenities of aristocratic life, seemed to have vanished suddenly into thin air, and only love was left. She had always known that Jack Meredith was superior in a thousand ways to all her admirers. More gentlemanly, more truthful, honester, nobler, more worthy of love. Beyond that, he was cleverer, despite a certain laziness of disposition—more brilliant and more amusing. He had always been to a great extent the chosen one; and yet it was with a certain surprise and sense of unreality that she found what she had drifted into. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There could be no comparison between the two men. Millicent Chyne could scarcely hesitate for a moment. That she herself must likewise suffer uncomplainingly, inevitably, seemed to be an equally natural consequence in Jocelyn Gordon's mind.
She could not go to Jack Meredith and say:
“This woman is deceiving you, but I love you, and my love is a nobler, grander thing than hers. It is no passing fancy of a giddy, dazzled girl, but the deep strong passion of a woman almost in the middle of her life. It is a love so complete, so sufficing, that I know I could make you forget this girl. ”

“ Whether he had really allowed himself to be dragged into the horrors of even a slight connection with the slave-trade she could not tell; but she knew the world well enough to recognise the fact that Durnovo had only to make the accusation for it to be believed by the million sensation-mongers who are always on the alert for some new horror. She knew that should Durnovo breathe a word of this in the right quarter—that is to say, into the eager journalistic ear—there would hardly be a civilised country in the world where Maurice Gordon of Loango could dwell under his own name. ”

“ Guy Oscard looked at him with some admiration, and that sympathy which exists between the sons of Ishmael. Durnovo looked quite fit for the task he set himself. He had regained his strength on the voyage, and with returning muscular force his moral tone was higher, his influence over men greater. Amidst the pallid sons of the pavement among whom Guy Oscard had moved of late, this African traveller was a man apart—a being much more after his own heart. The brown of the man's face and hands appealed to him—the dark flashing eyes, the energetic carriage of head and shoulders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Guy Oscard drew a deep breath. There are some Englishmen left, thank Heaven! who love fighting for its own sake, and not only for the gain of it. Such men as this lived in the old days of chivalry, at which modern puny carpet-knights make bold to laugh, while inwardly thanking their stars that they live in the peaceful age of the policeman. Such men as this ran their thick simple heads against many a windmill, couched lance over many a far-fetched insult, and swung a sword in honour of many a worthless maid ”

“ Africa is the land of creepers, and all around this verandah, over the trellis-work, around the supports, hanging in festoons from the roof, were a thousand different creeping flowers. The legend of the house—for, as in India, almost every bungalow on the West Coast has its tale—was that one of the early missionaries had built it, and, to beguile the long months of the rainy season, had carefully collected these creepers to beautify the place against the arrival of his young wife. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the last forty-eight hours Guy Oscard had made the decision that life without Millicent Chyne would not be worth having, and in the hush of the great house he was pondering over this new feature in his existence. Like all deliberate men, he was placidly sanguine. Something in the life of savage sport that he had led had no doubt taught him to rely upon his own nerve and capacity more than do most men. It is the indoor atmosphere that contains the germ of pessimism. ”

“ Sir John Meredith had taught his son that Self and Self alone reigns in the world. He had taught him that the thing called Love, with a capital L, is nearly all Self, and that it finally dies in the arms of Self. He had told him that a father's love, or a son's, or a mother's, is merely a matter of convenience, and vanishes when Self asserts itself. ”

“ She expected of no man—not even of Jack—that perfect faithfulness in every word and thought which is read of in books. And it is one of the theories of the day that what one does not expect one is not called upon to give. Jack, she reflected, was too much a man of the world to expect her to sit and mope alone. She was apparently incapable of seeing the difference between that pastime and sitting on the sea-wall behind a large flowering currant-tree with a man who did not pretend to hide the fact that he was in love with her. Some women are thus. ”

“ Solitary, mournful, lifeless the Plateau which had nearly cost Victor Durnovo his life lay beneath the face of heaven, far above the surrounding country—the summit of an unnamed mountain—a land lying in the heart of a tropic country which was neither tropic, temperate, nor arctic. Fauna had it none, for it produced nothing that could sustain life. Flora it knew not, for the little trees, with their perennial fortune of brilliant brown-tinted leaves, monopolised vegetable life, and slew all comers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After dinner they passed out on to the little terrace overlooking the river, and it was here that the great Simiacine scheme was pieced together. It was here beneath the vast palm trees that stood like two beacons towering over the surrounding forest, that three men deliberately staked their own lives and the lives of others against a fortune. Nature has a strange way of hiding her gifts. Many of the most precious have lain unheeded for hundreds of years in barren plains, on inaccessible mountains, or beneath the wave, while others are thrown at the feet of savages who know no use for them. ”

“ There is nothing that brings men so close to each other as a common grievance or a common danger. Men who find pleasure in the same game or the same pursuit are drawn together by a common taste; but in the indulgence of it there is sure to arise, sooner or later, a spirit of competition. Now, this spirit, which is in most human affairs, is a new bond of union when men are fighting side by side against a common foe.
During the three days that followed Durnovo's departure from Msala, Jack Meredith and Oscard learnt to know each other. ”

“ The roar of the surf—than which there are few sadder sounds on earth—fills the atmosphere with a never-ceasing melancholy. The country is overwooded; the tropical vegetation, the huge tangled African trees, stand almost in the surf; and inland the red serrated hills mount guard in gloomy array. For Europeans this country is accursed. From the mysterious forest-land there creeps down a subtle, tainted air that poisons the white man's blood, and either strikes him down in a fever or terrifies him by strange unknown symptoms and sudden disfiguring disease. ”

“ There was in his mind one of the greatest happinesses of life—the sense of something satisfactorily accomplished—the peacefulness that comes when the necessity for effort is past and left behind—that lying down to rest which must surely be something like Death in its kindest form.
The awe inspired by Victor Durnovo's name went before the little caravan like a moral convoy and cleared their path. Thus guarded by the name of a man whom he hated, Jack Meredith was enabled to pass through a savage country literally cast upon a bed of sickness. ”

“ With the clear sight of the onlooker, Jocelyn Gordon now saw that, by Jack Meredith's own showing, Millicent was quite unworthy of him. But she also remembered words, silences, and hints which demonstrated with lamentable plainness the fact that he loved her. She was old enough and sufficiently experienced to avoid the futile speculation as to what had attracted this love. She knew that men marry women who in the estimation of onlooking relatives are unworthy of them, and live happily ever afterwards, without deeming it necessary to explain to those relatives how it comes about. ”

“ Having been taught to take all the chances and changes of life with a well-bred calmness of demeanour, Jack Meredith turned the teaching against the instructor. He pursued the course of his social duties without appearing to devote so much as a thought to the quarrel which had taken place in the conservatory. His smile was as ready as ever, his sight as keen where an elderly lady looked hungry, his laughter as near the surface as society demands. It is probable that Sir John suffered more, though he betrayed nothing. ”

“ 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 shook him gently at first, but as the dread somnolence crept on he shook harder, until the mutilated inhuman head rolled upon the shoulders.
“It's a sin to let that man live,” exclaimed Joseph, turning away in horror.
“It's a sin to let ANY man die,” replied Oscard, and with his great strength he shook Durnovo like a garment.
And so Victor Durnovo died. His stained soul left his body in Guy Oscard's hands, and the big Englishman shook the corpse, trying to awake it from that sleep which knows no earthly waking. ”

“ There was something in the man's clear-cut face—something beyond aristocratic repose—as he looked down into her eyes—something which Sir John Meredith might perhaps have liked to see there. To all men comes, soon or late, the moment wherein their lives are suddenly thrust into their own hands to shape or spoil, to make or mar. It seemed that where a clever man had failed, this light-hearted girl was about to succeed. Two small clinging hands on Jack Meredith's breast had apparently wrought more than all Sir John's care and foresight. ”

“ They may be gentlemen—some of them are; but they are not men of the world. I have no definite thought or fear, and very good persons, one finds, are occasionally a little dense. Unless things are very definite, they do not understand.”
“On the other hand,” pursued Jack, in the same reflective tone, as if taking up her thought, “persons who are not good have a perception of the indefinite. I did not think of it in that light before.”
Jocelyn Gordon laughed softly, without attempting to meet his lighter vein. ”