Since all that I can ever do for thee
Is to do nothing, may'st thou never see,
Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me.
One morning, three months later, Guy Oscard drew up in line his flying
column. He was going back to England with the first consignment of
Simiacine. During the twelve weeks that lay behind there had been
constant reference made to his little body of picked men, and the leader
had selected with a grave deliberation that promised well.
The lost soldier that was in him was all astir in his veins as he
reviewed his command in the cool air of early morning. The journey from
Msala to the Plateau had occupied a busy two months. Oscard expected to
reach Msala with his men in forty days. Piled up in neat square cases,
such as could be carried in pairs by a man of ordinary strength, was the
crop of Simiacine, roughly valued by Victor Durnovo at forty thousand
pounds. Ten men could carry the whole of it, and the twenty cases
set close together on the ground made a bed for Guy Oscard. Upon this
improvised couch he gravely stretched his bulk every night all through
the journey that followed.
Over the whole face of the sparsely vegetated table-land the dwarf
bushes grew at intervals, each one in a little circle of its own, where
no grass grew: for the dead leaves, falling, poisoned the earth. There
were no leaves on the bushes now, for they had all been denuded, and the
twisted branches stood out naked in the morning mist. Some of the bushes
had been roughly pruned, to foster, if possible, a more bushy growth and
a heavier crop of leaves near to the parent stem.
It was a strange landscape; and any passing traveller, knowing
nothing of the Simiacine, must perforce have seen at once that these
insignificant little trees were something quite apart in the vegetable
kingdom. Each standing with its magic circle, no bird built its nest
within the branches--no insect constructed its filmy home--no spider
weaved its busy web from twig to twig.
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. It seemed like some stray tract of another planet,
where the condition of living things was different. There was a strange
sense of having been thrown up--thrown up, as it were, into mid-heaven,
there to hang for ever--neither this world nor the world to come. The
silence of it all was such as would drive men mad if they came to think
of it. It was the silence of the stars.
The men who had lived up here for three months did not look quite
natural. There was a singular heaviness of the eyelids which all had
noticed, though none had spoken of it. A craving for animal food, which
could only be stayed by the consumption of abnormal quantities of meat,
kept the hunters ever at work on the lower slopes of the mountain. Sleep
was broken, and uncanny things happened in the night. Men said that they
saw other men like trees, walking abroad with sightless eyes; and Joseph
said, “Gammon, my festive darky--gammon!” but he, nevertheless, glanced
somewhat uneasily towards his master whenever the natives said such
things.
A clearing had been made on that part of the Plateau which was most
accessible from below. The Simiacine trees had been ruthlessly cut
away--even the roots were grubbed up and burnt--far away on the leeward
side of the little kingdom. This was done because there arose at sunset
a soft and pleasant odour from the bushes which seemed to affect the
nerves, and even made the teeth chatter. It was, therefore, deemed wise
that the camp should stand on bare ground.
It was on this ground, in front of the tents, that Guy Oscard drew up
his quick-marching column before the sun had sprung up in its fantastic
tropical way from the distant line of virgin forest. As he walked along
the line, making a suggestion here, pulling on a shoulder-rope there,
he looked staunch and strong as any man might wish to be. His face was
burnt so brown that eyebrows and moustache stood out almost blonde,
though in reality they were only brown. His eyes did not seem to be
suffering from the heaviness noticeable in others; altogether, the
climate and the mystic breath of the Simiacine grove did not appear to
affect him as it did his companions. This was probably accounted for
by the fact that, being chief of the hunters, most of his days had been
passed on the lower slopes in search of game.
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? It looks a little
strong.”
“No, leaving you here,” replied Oscard.
“Oh, that's all right, old chap! You can't take me with you, you know.
I intended to stick to it when I came away from home, and I am not going
to turn back now.”
Oscard gave a queer little upward jerk of the head, as if he had just
collected further evidence in support of a theory which chronically
surprised him. Then he turned away and looked down over the vast
untrodden tract of Africa that lay beneath them. He kept his eyes fixed
there, after the manner of a man who has no fluency in personal comment.
“You know,” he said jerkily, “I didn't think--I mean you're not the sort
of chap I took you for. When I first saw you I thought you were a bit of
a dandy and--all that. Not the sort of man for this work. I thought that
the thing was bound to be a failure. I knew Durnovo, and had no faith
in him. You've got a gentle way about you, and your clothes are so
confoundedly neat. But--” Here he paused and pulled down the folds of
his Norfolk jacket. “But I liked the way you shot that leopard the day
we first met.”
“Beastly fluke,” put in Meredith, with his pleasant laugh.
Oscard contented himself with a denying shake of the head.
“Of course,” he continued, with obvious determination to get it all
off his mind, “I know as well as you do that you are the chief of this
concern--have been chief since we left Msala--and I never want to work
under a better man.”
He put his pipe back between his lips and turned round with a contented
smile, as much as to say, “There, that is the sort of man I am! When I
want to say that sort of thing I can say it with the best of you.”
“We have pulled along very comfortably, haven't we?” said Meredith;
“thanks to your angelic temper. And you'll deliver that packet of
letters to the governor, won't you? I have sent them in one packet,
addressed to him, as it is easier to carry. I will let you hear of us
somehow within the next six months. Do not go and get married before I
get home. I want to be your best man.”
Oscard laughed and gave the signal for the men to start, and the long
caravan defiled before them. The porters nodded to Meredith with a
great display of white teeth, while the head men, the captains of tens,
stepped out of the ranks and shook hands. Before they had disappeared
over the edge of the plateau, Joseph came forward to say good-bye to
Oscard.
“And it is understood,” said the latter, “that I pay in to your account
at Lloyd's Bank your share of the proceeds?”
Joseph grinned. “Yes, sir, if you please, presumin' it's a safe bank.”
“Safe as houses.”
“'Cos it's a tolerable big amount,” settling himself into his boots in
the manner of a millionaire.
“Lot of money--about four hundred pounds! But you can trust me to see to
it all right.”
“No fear, sir,” replied Joseph grandly. “I'm quite content, I'm sure,
that you should have the--fingering o' the dibs.”
As he finished--somewhat lamely perhaps--his rounded periods, he looked
very deliberately over Oscard's shoulder towards Durnovo, who was
approaching them.
Meredith walked a little way down the slope with Oscard.
“Good-bye, old chap!” he said when the parting came. “Good luck, and
all that. Hope you will find all right at home. By the way,” he shouted
after him, “give my kind regards to the Gordons at Loango.”
And so the first consignment of Simiacine was sent from the Plateau to
the coast.
Guy Oscard was one of those deceptive men who only do a few things,
and do those few very well. In forty-three days he deposited the twenty
precious cases in Gordon's godowns at Loango, and paid off the porters,
of whom he had not lost one. These duties performed, he turned his steps
towards the bungalow. He had refused Gordon's invitation to stay with
him until the next day, when the coasting steamer was expected. To tell
the truth, he was not very much prepossessed in Maurice's favour, and
it was with a doubtful mind that he turned his steps towards the little
house in the forest between Loango and the sea.
The room was the first surprise that awaited him, its youthful mistress
the second. Guy Oscard was rather afraid of most women. He did not
understand them, and probably he despised them. Men who are afraid or
ignorant often do.
“And when did you leave them?” asked Jocelyn, after her visitor had
explained who he was. He was rather taken aback by so much dainty
refinement in remote Africa, and explained rather badly. But she helped
him out by intimating that she knew all about him.
“I left them forty-four days ago,” he replied.
“And were they well?”
“She is very much interested,” reflected Oscard, upon whom her eagerness
of manner had not been lost. “Surely, it cannot be that fellow Durnovo?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied with unconscious curtness.
“Mr. Durnovo cannot ever remain inland for long without feeling the
effect of the climate.”
Guy Oscard, with the perspicacity of his sex, gobbled up the bait. “It
IS Durnovo,” he reflected.
“Oh, he is all right,” he said; “wonderfully well, and so are the
others--Joseph and Meredith. You know Meredith?”
Jocelyn was busy with a vase of flowers standing on the table at her
elbow. One of the flowers had fallen half out, and she was replacing
it--very carefully.
“Oh, yes,” she said, without ceasing her occupation, “we know Mr.
Meredith.”
The visitor did not speak at once, and she looked up at him, over the
flowers, with grave politeness.
“Meredith,” he said, “is one of the most remarkable men I have ever
met.”
It was evident that this ordinarily taciturn man wanted to unburthen
his mind. He was desirous of talking to some one of Jack Meredith; and
perhaps Jocelyn reflected that she was as good a listener as he would
find in Loango.
“Really,” she replied with a kindly interest. “How?”
He paused, not because he found it difficult to talk to this woman, but
because he was thinking of something.
“I have read or heard somewhere of a steel gauntlet beneath a velvet
glove.”
“Yes.”
“That describes Meredith. He is not the man I took him for. He is so
wonderfully polite and gentle and pleasant. Not the qualities that make
a good leader for an African exploring expedition--eh?”
Jocelyn gave a strange little laugh, which included, among other things,
a subtle intimation that she rather liked Guy Oscard. Women do convey
these small meanings sometimes, but one finds that they do not intend
them to be acted upon.
“And he has kept well all the time?” she asked softly. “He did not look
strong.”
“Oh, yes. He is much stronger than he looks.”
“And you--you have been all right?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Are you going back to--them?”
“No, I leave to-morrow morning early by the Portuguese boat. I am going
home to be married.”
“Indeed! Then I suppose you will wash your hands of Africa for ever?”
“Not quite,” he replied. “I told Meredith that I would be prepared to go
up to him in case of emergency, but not otherwise. I shall, of course,
still be interested in the scheme. I take home the first consignment of
Simiacine; we have been very successful, you know. I shall have to stay
in London to sell that. I have a house there.”
“Are you to be married at once?” inquired Jocelyn, with that frank
interest which makes it so much easier for a man to talk of his own
affairs to a woman than to one of his own sex.
“As soon as I can arrange it,” he answered with a little laugh. “There
is nothing to wait for. We are both orphans, and, fortunately, we are
fairly well off.”
He was fumbling in his breast-pocket, and presently he rose, crossed the
room, and handed her, quite without afterthought or self-consciousness,
a photograph in a morocco case.
Explanation was unnecessary, and Jocelyn Gordon looked smilingly upon a
smiling, bright young face.
“She is very pretty,” she said honestly.
Whereupon Guy Oscard grunted unintelligibly.
“Millicent,” he said after a little pause--“Millicent is her name.”
“Millicent?” repeated Jocelyn--“Millicent WHAT?”
“Millicent Chyne.”
Jocelyn folded the morocco case together and handed it back to him.
“She is very pretty,” she repeated slowly, as if her mind could only
reproduce--it was incapable of creation.
Oscard looked puzzled. Having risen he did not sit down again, and
presently he took his leave, feeling convinced that Jocelyn was about to
faint.
When he was gone the girl sat wearily down.
“Millicent Chyne,” she whispered. “What is to be done?”
“Nothing,” she answered to herself after a while. “Nothing. It is not my
business. I can do nothing.”
She sat there--alone, as she had been all her life--until the short
tropical twilight fell over the forest. Quite suddenly she burst into
tears.
“It IS my business,” she sobbed. “It is no good pretending otherwise;
but I can do nothing.”