Said the Engine from the East,
“They who work best talk the least.”
It is not, of course, for a poor limited masculine mind to utter
heresies regarding the great question of woman's rights. But as things
stand at present, as, in fact, the forenamed rights are to-day situated,
women have not found comprehension of the dual life. The dual life is
led solely by men, and until women have found out its full compass and
meaning, they can never lead in the world. There is the public life and
the private; and the men who are most successful in the former are the
most exclusive in the latter. Women have only learned to lead one life;
they must be all public or all private, there is no medium. Those who
give up the private life for which Providence destined them, to assume
the public existence to which their own conceit urges them, have their
own reward. They taste all the bitterness of fame and never know its
sweets, because the bitterness is public and the sweets are private.
Women cannot understand that part of a man's life which brings him into
daily contact with men whom he does not bring home to dinner. One woman
does not know another without bringing her in to meals and showing her
her new hat. It is merely a matter of custom. Men are in the habit of
associating in daily, almost hourly, intercourse with others who are
never really their friends and are always held at a distance. It is
useless attempting to explain it, for we are merely reprimanded for
unfriendliness, stiffness, and stupid pride. Soit! Let it go. Some of
us, perhaps, know our own business best. And there are, thank Heaven!
amidst a multitude of female doctors, female professors, female
wranglers, a few female women left.
Jack Meredith knew quite well what he was about when he listened with
a favourable ear to Durnovo's scheme. He knew that this man was not a
gentleman, but his own position was so assured that he could afford
to associate with any one. Here, again, men are safer. A woman is too
delicate a social flower to be independent of environments. She takes
the tone of her surroundings. It is, one notices, only the ladies who
protest that the barmaid married in haste and repented of at leisure
can raise herself to her husband's level. The husband's friends keep
silence, and perhaps, like the mariner's bird, they meditate all the
more.
What Meredith proposed to do was to enter into a partnership with Victor
Durnovo, and when the purpose of it was accomplished, to let each man go
his way. Such partnerships are entered into every day. Men have carried
through a brilliant campaign--a world-affecting scheme--side by side,
working with one mind and one heart; and when the result has been
attained they drop out of each other's lives for ever. They are created
so, for a very good purpose, no doubt. But sometimes Providence steps in
and turns the little point of contact into the leaven that leaveneth the
whole lump. Providence, it seems--or let us call it Fate--was hovering
over that lone African river, where two men, sitting in the stern of a
native canoe, took it upon themselves to prearrange their lives.
A month later Victor Durnovo was in London. He left behind him in Africa
Jack Meredith, whose capacities for organisation were developing very
quickly.
There was plenty of work for each to do. In Africa Meredith had
undertaken to get together men and boats, while Durnovo went home
to Europe for a threefold purpose. Firstly, a visit to Europe was
absolutely necessary for his health, shattered as it was by too long
a sojourn in the fever-ridden river beds of the West Coast. Secondly,
there were rifles, ammunition, and stores to be purchased and packed in
suitable cases. And, lastly, he was to find and enlist the third man,
“the soldierly fellow full of fight,” who knew the natives and the
country.
This, indeed, was his first care on reaching London, and before his eyes
and brain were accustomed to the roar of the street life he took a cab
to Russell Square, giving the number affixed to the door of a gloomy
house in the least frequented corner of the stately quadrangle.
“Is Mr. Guy Oscard at home?” he inquired of the grave man-servant.
“He is, sir,” replied the butler, stepping aside.
Victor Durnovo thought that a momentary hesitation on the part of the
butler was caused by a very natural and proper feeling of admiration for
the new clothes and hat which he had purchased out of the money advanced
by Jack Meredith for the outfit of the expedition. In reality the man
was waiting for the visitor to throw away his cigar before crossing the
threshold. But he waited in vain, and Durnovo stood, cigar in mouth, in
the dining-room until Guy Oscard came to him.
At first Oscard did not recognise him, and conveyed this fact by a
distant bow and an expectant silence.
“You do not seem to recognise me,” said Durnovo with a laugh, which
lasted until the servant had closed the door. “Victor Durnovo!”
“Oh--yes--how are you?”
Oscard came forward and shook hands. His manner was not exactly
effusive. The truth was that their acquaintanceship in Africa had been
of the slightest, dating from some trivial services which Durnovo had
been able and very eager to render to the sportsman.
“I'm all right, thanks,” replied Durnovo. “I only landed at Liverpool
yesterday. I'm home on business. I'm buying rifles and stores.”
Guy Oscard's honest face lighted up at once--the curse of Ishmael was on
him in its full force. He was destined to be a wanderer on God's earth,
and all things appertaining to the wild life of the forests were music
in his ears.
Durnovo was no mean diplomatist. He had learnt to know man, within a
white or coloured skin. The effect of his words was patent to him.
“You remember the Simiacine?” he said abruptly.
“Yes.”
“I've found it.”
“The devil you have! Sit down.”
Durnovo took the chair indicated.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “I've got it. I've laid my hand on it at last. I've
always been on its track. That has been my little game all the time. I
did not tell you when we met out there, because I was afraid I should
never find it, and because I wanted to keep quiet about it.”
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. You have, perhaps, met him.”
“No,” answered Oscard; “but I have heard his name, and I have met Sir
John--the father--once or twice.”
“He is out there,” went on Durnovo, “getting things together quietly. I
have come home to buy rifles, ammunition, and stores.”
He paused, watching the eager, simple face.
“We want to know,” he said quietly, “if you will organise and lead the
fighting men.”
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; but they made England, my masters. Let us remember that
they made England.
“Then there is to be fighting?”
“Yes,” said Durnovo, “there will be fighting. We must fight our way
there, and we must hold it when we get there. But so far as the world is
concerned, we are only a private expedition exploring the source of the
Ogowe.”
“The Ogowe?” and again Guy Oscard's eyes lighted up.
“Yes, I do not mind telling you that much. To begin with, I trust you;
secondly, no one could get there without me to lead the way.”
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. Among men of a fairer skin the taint that was
in Victor Durnovo's blood became more apparent--the shadow on his
finger-nails, the deep olive of his neck against the snowy collar, and
the blue tint in the white of his eyes.
But none of these things militated against him in Oscard's mind. They
only made him fitter for the work he had undertaken.
“How long will it take?” asked Guy.
Durnovo tugged at his strange, curtain-like moustache. His mouth was
hidden; it was quite impossible to divine his thoughts.
“Three months to get there,” he answered at length. “One month to pick
the leaf, and then you can bring the first crop down to the coast and
home, while Meredith and I stay on at the plateau.”
“I could be home again in eight months?”
“Certainly! We thought that you might work the sale of the stuff in
London, and in a couple of years or so, when the thing is in swing,
Meredith will come home. We can safely leave the cultivation in native
hands when once we have established ourselves up there, and made
ourselves respected among the tribes.”
A significance in his tone made Guy Oscard look up inquiringly.
“How?”
“You know my way with the natives,” answered Durnovo with a cruel smile.
“It is the only way. There are no laws in Central Africa except the laws
of necessity.”
Oscard was nothing if not outspoken.
“I do not like your way with the natives,” he said, with a pleasant
smile.
“That is because you do not know them. But in this affair you are to
be the leader of the fighting column. You will, of course, have carte
blanche.”
Oscard nodded.
“I suppose,” he said, after a pause, “that there is the question of
money?”
“Yes; Meredith and I have talked that over. The plan we fixed upon was
that you and he each put a thousand pounds into it; I put five hundred.
For the first two years we share the profits equally. After that we must
come to some fresh arrangement, should you or Meredith wish to give up
an active part in the affair. I presume you would not object to coming
up at the end of a year, with a handy squad of men to bring down the
crop under escort?”
“No,” replied Oscard, after a moment's reflection. “I should probably be
able to do that.”
“I reckon,” continued the other, “that the journey down could be
accomplished in two months, and each time you do the trip you will
reduce your time.”
“Yes.”
“Of course,” Durnovo went on, with the details which he knew were music
in Oscard's ears, “of course we shall be a clumsy party going up.
We shall have heavy loads of provisions, ammunition, and seeds for
cultivating the land up there.”
“Yes,” replied Guy Oscard absently. In his ears there rang already the
steady plash of the paddle, the weird melancholy song of the boatmen,
the music of the wind amidst the forest trees.
Durnovo rose briskly.
“Then,” he said, “you will join us? I may telegraph out to Meredith that
you will join us?”
“Yes,” replied Oscard simply. “You may do that.”
“There is no time to be lost,” Durnovo went on. “Every moment wasted
adds to the risk of our being superseded. I sail for Loango in a
fortnight; will you come with me?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I take a passage for you?”
“Yes.”
Durnovo held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Shall I always find you here when I want you?”
“Yes--stay, though! I shall be going away for a few days. Come to-morrow
to luncheon, and we will settle the preliminaries.”
“Right--one o'clock?”
“One o'clock.”
When Durnovo had gone Guy sat down and wrote to Lady Cantourne accepting
her invitation to spend a few days at Cantourne Place, on the Solent. He
explained that his visit would be in the nature of a farewell, as he was
about to leave for Africa for a little big-game hunting.