What Fate does, let Fate answer for.
One afternoon Joseph had his wish. Moreover he had it given to him even
as he desired, which does not usually happen. We are given a part, or
the whole, so distorted that we fail to recognise it.
Joseph looked up from his work and saw Jocelyn coming into the bungalow
garden.
He went out to meet her, putting on his coat as he went.
“How is Mr. Meredith?” she asked at once. Her eyes were very bright, and
there was a sort of breathlessness in her manner which Joseph did not
understand.
“He is a bit better, miss, thank you kindly. But he don't make the
progress I should like. It's the weakness that follows the malarial
attack that the doctor has to fight against.”
“Where is he?” asked Jocelyn.
“Well, miss, at the moment he is in the drawing-room. We bring him
down there for the change of air in the afternoon. Likely as not, he's
asleep.”
And presently Jack Meredith, lying comfortably somnolent on the
outskirts of life, heard light footsteps, but hardly heeded them. He
knew that some one came into the room and stood silently by his couch
for some seconds. He lazily unclosed his eyelids for a moment, not in
order to see who was there, but with a view of intimating that he was
not asleep. But he was not wholly conscious. To men accustomed to
an active, energetic life, a long illness is nothing but a period
of complete rest. In his more active moments Jack Meredith sometimes
thought that this rest of his was extending into a dangerously long
period, but he was too weak to feel anxiety about anything.
Jocelyn moved away and busied herself noiselessly with one or two of
those small duties of the sick-room which women see and men ignore. But
she could not keep away. She came back and stood over him with a silent
sense of possession which made that moment one of the happiest of her
life. She remembered it in after years, and the complex feelings of
utter happiness and complete misery that filled it.
At last a fluttering moth gave the excuse her heart longed for, and
her fingers rested for a moment, light as the moth itself, on his
hair. There was something in the touch which made him open his
eyes--uncomprehending at first, and then filled with a sudden life.
“Ah!” he said, “you--you at last!”
He took her hand in both of his. He was weakened by illness and a great
fatigue. Perhaps he was off his guard, or only half awake.
“I never should have got better if you had not come,” he said. Then,
suddenly, he seemed to recall himself, and rose with an effort from his
recumbent position.
“I do not know,” he said, with a return of his old half-humorous manner,
“whether to thank you first for your hospitality or to beg your pardon
for making such unscrupulous use of it.”
She was looking at him closely as he stood before her, and all her
knowledge of human ills as explored on the West Coast of Africa, all her
experience, all her powers of observation, were on the alert. He did not
look very ill. The brown of a year's sunburn such as he had gone through
on the summit of an equatorial mountain where there was but little
atmosphere between earth and sun, does not bleach off in a couple of
months. Physically regarded, he was stronger, broader, heavier-limbed,
more robust, than when she had last seen him--but her knowledge went
deeper than complexion, or the passing effort of a strong will.
“Sit down,” she said quietly. “You are not strong enough to stand
about.”
He obeyed her with a little laugh.
“You do not know,” he said, “how pleasant it is to see you--fresh and
English-looking. It is like a tonic. Where is Maurice?”
“He will be here soon,” she replied; “he is attending to the landing
of the stores. We shall soon make you strong and well; for we have come
laden with cases of delicacies for your special delectation. Your father
chose them himself at Fortnum and Mason's.”
He winced at the mention of his father's name, and drew in his legs in a
peculiar, decisive way.
“Then you knew I was ill?” he said, almost suspiciously.
“Yes, Joseph telegraphed.”
“To whom?” sharply.
“To Maurice.”
Jack Meredith nodded his head. It was perhaps just as well that the
communicative Joseph was not there at that moment.
“We did not expect you for another ten days,” said Meredith after a
little pause, as if anxious to change the subject. “Marie said that your
brother's leave was not up until the week after next.”
Jocelyn turned away, apparently to close the window. She hesitated. She
could not tell him what had brought them back sooner--what had demanded
of Maurice Gordon the sacrifice of ten days of his holiday.
“We do not always take our full term,” she said vaguely.
And he never saw it. The vanity of man is a strange thing. It makes him
see intentions that were never conceived; and without vanity to guide
his perception man is as blind a creature as walks upon this earth.
“However,” he said, as if to prove his own density, “I am selfishly
very glad that you had to come back sooner. Not only on account of the
delicacies--I must ask you to believe that. Did my eye brighten at the
mention of Fortnum and Mason? I am afraid it did.”
She laughed softly. She did not pause to think that it was to be her
daily task to tend him and help to make him stronger in order that he
might go away without delay. She only knew that every moment of the next
few weeks was going to be full of a greater happiness than she had ever
tasted. As we get deeper into the slough of life most of us learn to be
thankful that the future is hidden--some of us recognise the wisdom and
the mercy which decree that even the present be only partly revealed.
“As a matter of fact,” she said lightly, “I suppose that you loathe all
food?”
“Loathe it,” he replied. He was still looking at her, as if in enjoyment
of the Englishness and freshness of which he had spoken. “Simply loathe
it. All Joseph's tact and patience are required to make me eat even
eleven meals in the day. He would like thirteen.”
At this moment Maurice came in--Maurice--hearty, eager, full of life.
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.
“Well, old chap,” said Maurice, “glad to see you. I AM glad to see
you. Thank Heaven you were bowled over by that confounded malaria, for
otherwise we should have missed you.”
“That is one way of looking at it,” answered Meredith. But he did not
go so far as to say that it was a way which had not previously suggested
itself to him.
“Of course it is. The best way, I take it. Well--how do you feel? Come,
you don't look so bad.”
“Oh--much better, thanks. I have got on splendidly the last week, and
better still the last five minutes! The worst of it is that I shall be
getting well too soon and shall have to be off.”
“Home?” inquired Maurice significantly.
Jocelyn moved uneasily.
“Yes, home.”
“We don't often hear people say that they are sorry to leave Loango,”
said Maurice.
“_I_ will oblige you whenever you are taken with the desire,” answered
Jack lightly; “Loango has been a very good friend to me. But I am
afraid there is no choice. The doctor speaks very plain words about it.
Besides, I am bound to go home.”
“To sell the Simiacine?” inquired Maurice.
“Yes.”
“Have you the second crop with you?”
“Yes.”
“And the trees have improved under cultivation?”
“Yes,” answered Jack rather wonderingly. “You seem to know a lot about
it.”
“Of course I do,” replied Maurice boisterously.
“From Durnovo?”
“Yes; he even offered to take me into partnership.”
Jack turned on him in a flash.
“Did he indeed? On what conditions?”
And then, when it was too late, Maurice saw his mistake. It was not
the first time that the exuberance of his nature had got him into a
difficulty.
“Oh, I don't know,” he replied vaguely. “It's a long story. I'll tell
you about it some day.”
Jack would have left it there for the moment. Maurice Gordon had made
his meaning quite clear by glancing significantly towards his sister.
Her presence, he intimated, debarred further explanation.
But Jocelyn would not have it thus. She shrewdly suspected the nature
of the bargain proposed by Durnovo, and a sudden desire possessed her
to have it all out--to drag this skeleton forth and flaunt it in Jack
Meredith's face. The shame of it all would have a certain sweetness
behind its bitterness; because, forsooth, Jack Meredith alone was to
witness the shame. She did not pause to define the feeling that rose
suddenly in her heart. She did not know that it was merely the pride of
her love--the desire that Jack Meredith, though he would never love
her, should know once for all that such a man as Victor Durnovo could be
nothing but repugnant to her.
“If you mean,” she said, “that you cannot tell Mr. Meredith because I am
here, you need not hesitate on that account.”
Maurice laughed awkwardly, and muttered something about matters of
business. He was not good at this sort of thing. Besides, there was the
initial handicapping knowledge that Jocelyn was so much cleverer than
himself.
“Whether it is a matter of business or not,” she cried with glittering
eyes, “I want you to tell Mr. Meredith now. He has a right to know.
Tell him upon what condition Mr. 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.”
Still Maurice tried to find some means of evasion.
“Then,” cried Jocelyn, with flaming cheeks, “_I_ will tell you. You were
to be admitted into the Simiacine scheme by Mr. Durnovo if you could
persuade or force me to marry him.”
None of them had foreseen this. It had come about so strangely, and yet
so easily, in the midst of their first greeting.
“Yes,” admitted Maurice, “that was it.”
“And what answer did you give?” asked Jocelyn.
“Oh, I told him to go and hang himself--or words to that effect,” was
the reply, delivered with a deprecating laugh.
“Was that your final answer?” pursued Jocelyn, inexorable. Her
persistence surprised Jack. Perhaps it surprised herself.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, he cut up rough and threatened to make things disagreeable; so
I think I said that it was no good his asking me to do anything in the
matter, as I didn't know your feelings.”
“Well, you can tell him,” cried Jocelyn hotly, “that never, under
any circumstances whatever, would I dream even of the possibility of
marrying him.”
And the two men were alone.
Maurice Gordon gazed blankly at the closed door.
“How was I to know she'd take it like that?” he asked helplessly.
And for once the polished gentleman of the world forgot himself--carried
away by a sudden unreasoning anger which surprised him almost as much as
it did Maurice Gordon.
“Why, you damned fool,” said Jack, “any idiot would have known that she
would take it like that. How could she do otherwise? You, her brother,
ought to know that to a girl like Miss Gordon the idea of marrying such
a low brute as Durnovo could only be repugnant. Durnovo--why, he is not
good enough to sweep the floor that she has stood upon! He's not fit to
speak to her; and you go on letting him come to the house, sickening her
with his beastly attentions! You're not capable of looking after a lady!
I would have kicked Durnovo through that very window myself, only”--he
paused, recalling himself with a little laugh--“only it was not my
business.”
Maurice Gordon sat down forlornly. He tapped his boot with his cane.
“Oh, it's very well for you,” he answered; “but I'm not a free agent.
_I_ can't afford to make an enemy of Durnovo.”
“You need not have made an enemy of him,” said Jack, and he saved
Maurice Gordon by speaking quickly--saved him from making a confession
which could hardly have failed to alter both their lives.
“It will not be very difficult,” he went on; “all she wants is your
passive resistance. She does not want you to help HIM--do you see? She
can do the rest. Girls can manage these things better than we think, if
they want to. The difficulty usually arises from the fact that they are
not always quite sure that they do want to. Go and beg her pardon. It
will be all right.”
So Maurice Gordon went away also, leaving Jack Meredith alone in the
drawing-room with his own thoughts.