Take heed of still waters.
Despite his assertion to Lady Cantourne, Guy Oscard stayed on in the
gloomy house in Russell Square. He had naturally gone thither on his
return from Africa, and during the months that followed he did not find
time to think much of his own affairs. Millicent Chyne occupied all his
thoughts--all his waking moments. It is marvellous how busily employed
an active-minded young lady can keep a man.
In the ill-lighted study rendered famous by the great history which had
emanated in the manuscript therefrom, Guy Oscard had interviewed sundry
great commercial experts, and a cheque for forty-eight thousand pounds
had been handed to him across the table polished bright by his father's
studious elbow. The Simiacine was sold, and the first portion of
it spent went to buy a diamond aigrette for the dainty head of Miss
Millicent Chyne.
Guy Oscard was in the midst of the London season. His wealth and a
certain restricted renown had soon made him popular. He had only to
choose his society, and the selection was not difficult. Wherever
Millicent Chyne went he went also, and to the lady's credit it must be
recorded that no one beyond herself and Guy Oscard had hitherto noticed
this fact. Millicent was nothing if not discreet. It was more or less
generally known that she was engaged to Jack Meredith, who, although
absent on some vaguely romantic quest of a fortune, was not yet
forgotten. No word, however, was popularly whispered connecting her name
with that of any other swain nearer home. Miss Chyne was too much of a
woman of the world to allow that. But, in the meantime, she rather liked
diamond aigrettes and the suppressed devotion of Guy Oscard.
It was the evening of a great ball, and Guy Oscard, having received
his orders and instructions, was dining alone in Russell Square, when a
telegram was handed to him. He opened it and spread the thin paper out
upon the table-cloth. A word from that far, wild country, which seemed
so much fitter a background to his simple bulk and strength than the
cramped ways of London society--a message from the very heart of the
dark continent--to him:
“Meredith surrounded and in danger Durnovo false come at once Jocelyn
Gordon.”
Guy Oscard pushed back his chair and rose at once, as if there were
somebody waiting in the hall to see him.
“I do not want any more dinner,” he said, “I am going to Africa. Come
and help me to pack my things.”
He studied Bradshaw and wrote a note to Millicent Chyne. To her he said
the same as he had said to the butler, “I am going to Africa.”
There was something refreshingly direct and simple about this man. He
did not enter into long explanations. He simply bore on in the line
he had marked out. He rose from the table and never looked back. His
attitude seemed to say, “I am going to Africa; kindly get out of my
way.”
At three minutes to nine--that is to say, in one hour and a half--Guy
Oscard took his seat in the Plymouth express. He had ascertained that
a Madeira boat was timed to sail from Dartmouth at eight o'clock that
evening. He was preceded by a telegram to Lloyd's agent at Plymouth:
“Have fastest craft available, steam up ready to put to sea to catch the
Banyan African steamer four o'clock to-morrow morning. Expense not to be
considered.”
As the train crept out into the night, the butler of the gloomy house
in Russell Square, who had finished the port, and was beginning to feel
resigned, received a second shock. This came in the form of a carriage
and pair, followed by a ring at the bell.
The man opened the door, and his fellow servitor of an eccentric class
and generation stepped back on the door-step to let a young lady pass
into the hall.
“Mr. Oscard?” she said curtly.
“Left 'ome, miss,” replied the butler, stiffly conscious of walnut-peel
on his waistcoat.
“How long ago?”
“A matter of half an hour, miss.”
Millicent Chyne, whose face was drawn and white, moved farther into the
hall. Seeing the dining-room door ajar, she passed into that stately
apartment, followed by the butler.
“Mr. Oscard sent me this note,” she said, showing a crumpled
paper, “saying that he was leaving for Africa to-night. He gives no
explanation. Why has he gone to Africa?”
“He received a telegram while he was at dinner, miss,” replied the
butler, whose knowledge of the world indicated the approach of at least
a sovereign. “He rose and threw down his napkin, miss. 'I'm goin' to
Africa,' he says. 'Come and help me pack.'”
“Did you see the telegram--by any chance?” asked Miss Chyne.
“Well, miss, I didn't rightly read it.”
Millicent had given way to a sudden panic on the receipt of Guy's note.
A telegram calling him to Africa--calling with a voice which he obeyed
with such alacrity that he had not paused to finish his dinner--could
only mean that some disaster had happened--some disaster to Jack
Meredith. And quite suddenly Millicent Chyne's world was emptied of all
else but Jack Meredith. For a moment she forgot herself. She ran to the
room where Lady Cantourne was affixing the family jewelry on her dress,
and, showing the letter, said breathlessly that she must see Guy Oscard
at once. Lady Cantourne, wise woman of the world that she was, said
nothing. She merely finished her toilet, and, when the carriage was
ready, they drove round by Russell Square.
“Who was it from?” asked Millicent.
“From a person named Gordon, miss.”
“And what did it say?”
“Well, miss, as I said before, I did not rightly see. But it seems that
it said, 'Come at once.' I saw that.”
“And what else? Be quick, please.”
“I think there was mention of somebody bein' surrounded, miss. Some name
like Denver, I think. No! Wait a bit; it wasn't that; it was somebody
else.”
Finishing off the port had also meant beginning it, and the worthy
butler's mind was not particularly clear.
“Was there any mention of Mr. Oscard's partner, Mr.--eh--Meredith?”
asked Millicent, glancing at the clock.
“Yes, miss, there was that name, but I don't rightly remember in what
connection.”
“It didn't say that he--” Millicent paused and drew in her breath with a
jerk--“was dead, or anything like that?”
“Oh, no, miss.”
“Thank you. I--am sorry we missed Mr. Oscard.”
She turned and went back to Lady Cantourne, who was sitting in the
carriage. And while she was dancing the second extra with the first
comer at four o'clock the next morning, Guy Oscard was racing out of
Plymouth Sound into the teeth of a fine, driving rain. On the bridge
of the trembling tug-boat, by Oscard's side, stood a keen-eyed Channel
pilot, who knew the tracks of the steamers up and down Channel as a
gamekeeper knows the hare-tracks across a stubble-field. Moreover,
the tug-boat caught the big steamer pounding down into the grey of
the Atlantic Ocean, and in due time Guy Oscard landed on the beach at
Loango.
He had the telegram still in his pocket, and he went, not to Maurice
Gordon's office, but to the bungalow.
Jocelyn greeted him with a little inarticulate cry of joy.
“I did not think that you could possibly be here so soon,” she said.
“What news have you?” he asked, without pausing to explain. He was
one of those men who are silenced by an unlimited capacity for prompt
action.
“That,” she replied, handing him the note written by Jack Meredith to
Marie at Msala.
Guy Oscard read it carefully.
“Dated seven weeks last Monday--nearly two months ago,” he muttered,
half to himself.
He raised his head and looked out of the window. There were lines of
anxiety round his eyes. Jocelyn never took her glance from his face.
“Nearly two months ago,” he repeated.
“But you will go?” she said--and something in her voice startled him.
“Of course I will go,” he replied. He looked down into her face with
a vague question in his quiet eyes; and who knows what he saw there?
Perhaps she was off her guard. Perhaps she read this man aright and did
not care.
With a certain slow hesitation he laid his hand on her arm. There was
something almost paternal in his manner which was in keeping with his
stature.
“Moreover,” he went on, “I will get there in time. I have an immense
respect for Meredith. If he said that he could hold out for four months,
I should say that he could hold out for six. There is no one like
Meredith, once he makes up his mind to take things seriously.”
It was not very well done, and she probably saw through it. She probably
knew that he was as anxious as she was herself. But his very presence
was full of comfort. It somehow brought a change to the moral
atmosphere--a sense of purposeful direct simplicity which was new to the
West African Coast.
“I will send over to the factory for Maurice,” said the girl. “He has
been hard at work getting together your men. If your telegram had not
come he was going up to the Plateau himself.”
Oscard looked slightly surprised. That did not sound like Maurice
Gordon.
“I believe you are almost capable of going yourself,” said the big man
with a slow smile.
“If I had been a man I should have been half-way there by this time.”
“Where is Durnovo?” he asked suddenly.
“I believe he is in Loango. He has not been to this house for more
than a fortnight; but Maurice has heard that he is still somewhere in
Loango.”
Jocelyn paused. There was an expression on Guy Oscard's face which she
rather liked, while it alarmed her.
“It is not likely,” she went on, “that he will come here. I--I rather
lost my temper with him, and said things which I imagine hurt his
feelings.”
Oscard nodded gravely.
“I'm rather afraid of doing that myself,” he said; “only it will not be
his feelings.”
“I do not think,” she replied, “that it would be at all expedient to
say or do anything at present. He must go with you to the Plateau.
Afterwards--perhaps.”
Oscard laughed quietly.
“Ah,” he said, “that sounds like one of Meredith's propositions. But he
does not mean it any more than you do.”
“I do mean it,” replied Jocelyn quietly. There is no hatred so complete,
so merciless, as the hatred of a woman for one who has wronged the man
she loves. At such times women do not pause to give fair play. They make
no allowance.
Jocelyn Gordon found a sort of fearful joy in the anger of this
self-contained Englishman. It was an unfathomed mine of possible
punishment over which she could in thought hold Victor Durnovo.
“Nothing,” she went on, “could be too mean--nothing could be mean
enough--to mete out to him in payment of his own treachery and
cowardice.”
She went to a drawer in her writing-table and took from it an almanac.
“The letter you have in your hand,” she said, “was handed to Mr. Durnovo
exactly a month ago by the woman at Msala. From that time to this he has
done nothing. He has simply abandoned Mr. Meredith.”
“He is in Loango?” inquired Oscard, with a premonitory sense of
enjoyment in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Does he know that you have sent for me?”
“No,” replied Jocelyn.
Guy Oscard smiled.
“I think I will go and look for him,” he said.
At dusk that same evening there was a singular incident in the bar-room
of the only hotel in Loango.
Victor Durnovo was there, surrounded by a few friends of antecedents and
blood similar to his own. They were having a convivial time of it, and
the consumption of whisky was greater than might be deemed discreet in
such a climate as that of Loango.
Durnovo was in the act of raising his glass to his lips when the open
doorway was darkened, and Guy Oscard stood before him. The half-breed's
jaw dropped; the glass was set down again rather unsteadily on the
zinc-covered counter.
“I want you,” said Oscard.
There was a little pause, an ominous silence, and Victor Durnovo slowly
followed Oscard out of the room, leaving that ominous silence behind.
“I leave for Msala to-night,” said Oscard, when they were outside, “and
you are coming with me.”
“I'll see you damned first!” replied Durnovo, with a courage born of
Irish whisky.
Guy Oscard said nothing, but he stretched out his right hand suddenly.
His fingers closed in the collar of Victor Durnovo's coat, and that
parti-coloured scion of two races found himself feebly trotting through
the one street of Loango.
“Le' go!” he gasped.
But the hand at his neck neither relinquished nor contracted. When they
reached the beach the embarkation of the little army was going forward
under Maurice Gordon's supervision. Victor looked at Gordon. He
reflected over the trump card held in his hand, but he was too skilful
to play it then.