Jack Meredith

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I respect you too much to suspect any foolish notions of love in a cottage.”
Jack Meredith made no reply. He was entirely dependent upon his father.
“Of course,” said Sir John, “when I die you will be a baronet, and there will be enough to live on like a gentleman. You had better tell Miss Chyne that. She may not know it. Girls are so innocent. But I am not dead yet, and I shall take especial care to live some time.”
“In order to prevent my marriage?” suggested Jack. He was still smiling, and somehow Sir John felt a little uneasy. He did not understand that smile. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To him came presently Jack Meredith—the same gentle-mannered man, with an incongruously brown face and quick eyes seeing all. It is not, after all, the life that makes the man. There are gentle backwoodsmen, and ruffians among those who live in drawing-rooms.
“Well?” said Meredith, following the glance of his friend's eye as he surveyed his men.
Oscard took his pipe from his lips and looked gravely at him.
“Don't half like it, you know,” he said in a low voice; for Durnovo was talking with a head porter a few yards away.
“Don't half like what?—the flavour of that pipe? ”

“ 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. ”

“ This sportsman was Jack Meredith, and it was evident that he was bringing to bear upon the matter in hand that intelligence and keenness of perception which had made him a person of some prominence in other scenes where Nature has a less assured place.
It would appear that he was not so much at home in the tangle of an African forest as in the crooked paths of London society; for his clothes were torn in more than one place; a mosquito, done to sudden death, adhered sanguinarily to the side of his aristocratic nose, while heat and mental distress had drawn damp stripes down his countenance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ We complain not; but we do deplore. Fortune on Jack has turned her back! You might know it, if only by my regard for the nice distinctions of language. The fact is, I’ve spent my money. A mercurial temperament makes quicksilver of any amount of cash. Mine uncle died ere I had wooed the maiden, Pleasure, and transformed her into the hag, Experience!”
The hand of Mr. Raikes fell against his thigh with theatrical impressiveness.
“But how,” said Evan—“it’s the oddest thing in the world our meeting like this—how did you come here?”
“You thought me cut out for an actor—didn’t you?” asked Jack. ”

“ He seemed to be specially constructed to live in narrow, hampered places. He was above six feet; but, being of slight build, he moved with a certain languidness which saved him from that unwieldiness usually associated with large men in a drawing-room.
Such was Jack Meredith, one of the best known figures in London society. He had hitherto succeeded in moving through the mazes of that coterie, as he now moved through this room, without jarring against any one.
CHAPTER II. OVER THE OLD GROUND A man who never makes mistakes never makes anything else either. ”

“ Andrew re-commenced his jests of yesterday with Jack. The latter bore them patiently, as one who had endured worse.
“She has rejected me!” he whispered to Evan. “Talk of ingratitude of women! Ten minutes ago I met her. She perked her eyebrows at me!—tried to run away. ‘Miss Wheedle!’ I said. ‘If you please, I’d rather not,’ says she. To cut it short, the sacrifice I made to her was the cause. It’s all over the house. She gave the most excruciating hint. Those low-born females are so horribly indelicate. ”

“ Glad to befriend poor Jack, Evan gave the needful assurances, and was requested to go and fetch him forthwith. When he left the room, Rose marched out silently beside him.
'Will you ride over with me, Rose?' he said, though scarcely anxious that she should see Mr. Raikes immediately.
The singular sharpness of her refusal astonished him none the less.
'Thank you, no; I would rather not.'
A lover is ever ready to suspect that water has been thrown on the fire that burns for him in the bosom of his darling. ”

“ But Joseph did not answer. He stepped backwards into the tent and brought two rifles. There was no need of answer; for this came in the sound of many voices, the clang and clatter of varied arms.
“Here they come, sir,” said the soldier-servant—respectful, mindful of his place even at this moment.
Jack Meredith merely sat down behind the little table where his breakfast stood untouched. He leant his elbow on the table and watched the approach of the disorderly band of blacks. Some ran, some hung back, but all were armed. ”

“ Without claiming the virtue of a greater generosity for the sex, one may, perhaps, assume that men learn by experience the danger of despising any man. The girl with the good figure is sometimes—nay, often—found blooming alone in her superiority, while the despised competitor is a happy mother of children. And all this to explain that Jack Meredith felt drawn towards his great hulking companion by something that was not a mere respect of mind for matter. ”

“ I will see to them. Difficulties are not without a certain advantage. They keep one on the alert.”
“Your father,” said the girl. “Sir John—he will object.”
Jack Meredith reflected for a moment, lazily, with that leisureliness which gave a sense of repose to his presence.
“Possibly,” he admitted gravely.
“He dislikes me,” said the girl. “He is one of my failures.”
“I did not know you had any. Have you tried? I cannot quite admit the possibility of failure.”
Millicent Chyne smiled. He had emphasised the last remark with lover-like glance and tone. She was young enough ”

“ The human heart has a singular way of seeing farther than its astute friend and coadjutor, the brain. It sometimes refuses to be filled with glee, when outward circumstances most distinctly demand that state. And at other times, when outward things are strong, not to say opaque, the heart is joyful, and we know not why.
Jack Meredith knew that he was the luckiest man in London. He was rich, in good health, and he was engaged to be married to Millicent Chyne, the acknowledged belle of his circle. ”

“ The other merely remarked: “Oh! that is the language of the son of a gentleman.”
Jack’s evident pugnacity behind his insolence, astonished Evan, as the youth was not famed for bravery at school; but this is what dignity and ale do for us in the world.
The tumult of irony, abuse, and retort, went on despite the efforts of Drummond and the chairman. It was strange; for at farmer Broadmead’s end of the table, friendship had grown maudlin: two were seen in a drowsy embrace, with crossed pipes; and others were vowing deep amity, and offering to fight the man that might desire it. ”

“ There is something in the spring of human muscles unlike any other motive power; the power of thought may be felt even on the pole of a litter, and one thing that modern invention can never equal is the comfort of being carried on the human shoulder. The slow swinging movement came to be a part of Jack Meredith's life—indeed, life itself seemed to be nothing but a huge journey thus peacefully accomplished. ”

“ She was quite an old woman—an Englishwoman—and as she placed the lamps upon the table she scrutinised the guest after the manner of a privileged servitor. When she had departed Jack Meredith continued his narrative with a sort of deliberation which was explained later on.
“And,” he said, “that is why I came to Africa—that is why I want to make money. I do not mind confessing to a low greed of gain, because I think I have the best motive that a man can have for wanting to make money.” ”

“ Guy Oscard was looking out of the window across to the dull houses and chimneys that formed his horizon, and in his eyes there was the longing for a vaster horizon, a larger life.
“I have got a partner,” continued Durnovo, “a good man—Jack Meredith, son of Sir John Meredith. ”

“ The Almighty speaks very plainly sometimes and in some places—nowhere more plainly than on the West Coast of Africa, which land He evidently wants for the black man. We of the fairer skin have Australia now; we are taking America, we are dominant in Asia; but somehow we don't get on in Africa. The Umpire is there, and He insists on fair play.
“This is not cheery,” Jack Meredith observed to his servant as they found themselves deposited on the beach within a stone's-throw of the French factory. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Mr. Raikes was politely requested to “tune his pipe.”
With a gloomy curiosity as to the results of Jack’s adventurous undertaking, and a touch of anger at the three, whose bearing throughout had displeased him, Evan regarded his friend. He, too, had drunk, and upon emptiness. Bright ale had mounted to his brain. A hero should be held as sacred as the Grand Llama: so let no more be said than that he drank still, nor marked the replenishing of his glass. ”