What we love perfectly
For its own sake we love,...
... That which is best for it is best for us.
“Feel like gettin' up to breakfast, do you, sir?” said Joseph to his
master a few days later. “Well, I am glad. Glad ain't quite the word,
though!”
And he proceeded to perform the duties attendant on his master's
wardrobe with a wise, deep-seated shake of the head. While setting the
shaving necessaries in order on the dressing-table, he went further--he
winked gravely at himself in the looking-glass.
“You've made wonderful progress the last few days, sir,” he remarked. “I
always told Missis Marie that it would do you a lot of good to have Mr.
Gordon to heart you up with his cheery ways--and Miss Gordon too, sir.”
“Yes, but they would not have been much good without all your care
before they came. I had turned the corner a week ago--I felt it myself.”
Joseph grinned--an honest, open grin of self-satisfaction. He was not
one of those persons who like their praise bestowed with subtlety.
“Wonderful!” he repeated to himself as he went to the well in the
garden for his master's bath-water. “Wonderful! but I don't understand
things--not bein' a marryin' man.”
During the last few days Jack's progress had been rapid enough even to
satisfy Joseph. The doctor expressed himself fully reassured, and even
spoke of returning no more. But he repeated his wish that Jack should
leave for England without delay.
“He is quite strong enough to be moved now,” he finished by saying.
“There is no reason for further delay.”
“No,” answered Jocelyn, to whom the order was spoken. “No--none. We will
see that he goes by the next boat.”
The doctor paused. He was a young man who took a strong--perhaps too
strong--a personal interest in his patients. Jocelyn had walked with him
as far as the gate, with only a parasol to protect her from the evening
sun. They were old friends. The doctor's wife was one of Jocelyn's
closest friends on the Coast.
“Do you know anything about Meredith's future movements?” he asked.
“Does he intend to come out here again?”
“I could not tell you. I do not think they have settled yet. But I think
that when he gets home he will probably stay there.”
“Best thing he can do--best thing he can do. It will never do for him to
risk getting another taste of malaria--tell him so, will you? Good-bye.”
“Yes, I will tell him.”
And Jocelyn Gordon walked slowly back to tell the man she loved that he
must go away from her and never come back. The last few days had been
days of complete happiness. There is no doubt that women have the power
of enjoying the present to a greater degree than men. They can live in
the bliss of the present moment with eyes continually averted from the
curtain of the near future which falls across that bliss and cuts
it off. Men allow the presence of the curtain to mar the present
brightness.
These days had been happier for Jocelyn than for Jack, because she was
conscious of the fulness of every moment, while he was merely rejoicing
in comfort after hardship, in pleasant society after loneliness. Even
with the knowledge that it could not last, that beyond the near future
lay a whole lifetime of complete solitude and that greatest of all
miseries, the desire of an obvious impossibility--even with this she
was happier than he; because she loved him and she saw him daily getting
stronger; because their relative positions brought out the best and the
least romantic part of a woman's love--the subtle maternity of it. There
is a fine romance in carrying our lady's kerchief in an inner pocket,
but there is something higher and greater and much more durable in
the darning of a sock; for within the handkerchief there is chiefly
gratified vanity, while within the sock there is one of those small
infantile boots which have but little meaning for us.
Jocelyn entered the drawing-room with a smile.
“He is very pleased,” she said. “He does not seem to want to see you any
more, and he told me to be inhospitable.”
“As how?”
“He told me to turn you out. You are to leave by the next steamer.”
He felt a sudden unaccountable pang of disappointment at her smiling
eyes.
“This is no joking matter,” he said half seriously. “Am I really as well
as that?”
“Yes.”
“The worst of it is that you seem rather pleased.”
“I am--at the thought that you are so much better.” She paused and
turned quite away, busying herself with a pile of books and magazines.
“The other,” she went on too indifferently, “was unfortunately to be
foreseen. It is the necessary drawback.”
He rose suddenly and walked to the window.
“The grim old necessary drawback,” he said, without looking towards her.
There was a silence of some duration. Neither of them seemed to be able
to find a method of breaking it without awkwardness. It was she who
spoke at last.
“He also said,” she observed in a practical way, “that you must not come
out to Africa again.”
He turned as if he had been stung.
“Did he make use of that particular word?” he asked.
“Which particular word?”
“Must.”
Jocelyn had not foreseen the possibility that the doctor was merely
repeating to her what he had told Jack on a previous visit.
“No,” she answered. “I think he said 'better not.'”
“And you make it into 'must.'”
She laughed, with a sudden light-heartedness which remained unexplained.
“Because I know you both,” she answered. “For him 'better not' stands
for 'must.' With you 'better not' means 'doesn't matter.'”
“'Better not' is so weak that if one pits duty against it it collapses.
I cannot leave Oscard in the lurch, especially after his prompt action
in coming to my relief.”
“Yes,” she replied guardedly. “I like Mr. Oscard's way of doing things.”
The matter of the telegram summoning Oscard had not yet been explained.
She did not want to explain it at that moment; indeed, she hoped that
the explanation would never be needed.
“However,” she added, “you will see when you get home.”
He laughed.
“The least pleasant part of it is,” he said, “your evident desire to see
the last of me. Could you not disguise that a little--just for the sake
of my feelings?”
“Book your passage by the next boat and I will promptly descend to the
lowest depths of despair,” she replied lightly.
He shrugged his shoulders with a short laugh.
“This is hospitality indeed,” he said, moving towards the door.
Then suddenly he turned and looked at her gravely.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you are doing this for a purpose. You
said that you met my father--”
“Your father is not the man to ask any one's assistance in his own
domestic affairs, and anything I attempted to do could only be looked
upon as the most unwarrantable interference.”
“Yes,” said Meredith seriously. “I beg your pardon. You are right.”
He went to his own room and summoned Joseph.
“When is the next boat home?” he asked.
“Boat on Thursday, sir.”
Meredith nodded. After a little pause he pointed to a chair.
“Just sit down,” he said. “I want to talk over this Simiacine business
with you.”
Joseph squared his shoulders, and sat down with a face indicative of
the gravest attention. Sitting thus he was no longer a servant, but a
partner in the Simiacine. He even indulged in a sidelong jerk of the
head, as if requesting the attention of some absent friend in a humble
sphere of life to this glorious state of affairs.
“You know,” said Meredith, “Mr. Durnovo is more or less a blackguard.”
Joseph drew in his feet, having previously hitched his trousers up at
the knees.
“Yes, sir,” he said, glancing up. “A blackguard--a damned blackguard,”
he added unofficially under his breath.
“He wants continual watching and a special treatment. He requires
someone constantly at his heels.”
“Yes, sir,” admitted Joseph, with some fervour.
“Now I am ordered home by the doctor,” went on Meredith. “I must go by
the next boat, but I don't like to go and leave Mr. Oscard in the lurch,
with no one to fall back upon but Durnovo--you understand.”
Joseph's face had assumed the habitual look of servitude--he was no
longer a partner, but a mere retainer, with a half-comic resignation in
his eyes.
“Yes, sir,” scratching the back of his neck. “I am afraid I understand.
You want me to go back to that Platter--that God-forsaken Platter, as I
may say.”
“Yes,” said Meredith. “That is about it. I would go myself--”
“God bless you! I know you would!” burst in Joseph. “You'd go like
winkin'. There's no one knows that better nor me, sir; and what I says
is--like master, like man. Game, sir--game it is! I'll go. I'm not the
man to turn my back on a pal--a--a partner, sir, so to speak.”
“You see,” said Meredith, with the deep insight into men that made
command so easy to him--“you see there is no one else. There is not
another man in Africa who could do it.”
“That's true, sir.”
“And I think that Mr. Oscard will be looking for you.”
“And he won't need to look long, sir. But I should like to see you safe
on board the boat. Then I'm ready to go.”
“Right. We can both leave by Thursday's boat, and we'll get the captain
to drop you and your men at Lopez. We can get things ready by then, I
think.”
“Easy, sir.”
The question thus settled, there seemed to be no necessity to prolong
the interview. But Joseph did not move. Meredith waited patiently.
“I'll go up, sir, to the Platter,” said the servant at length, “and I'll
place myself under Mr. Oscard's orders; but before I go I want to
give you notice of resignation. I resigns my partnership in this 'ere
Simiacine at six months from to-day. It's a bit too hot, sir, that's the
truth. It's all very well for gentlemen like yourself and Mr. Oscard,
with fortunes and fine houses, and, as sayin' goes, a wife apiece
waiting for you at home--it's all very well for you to go about in this
blamed country, with yer life in yer hand, and not a tight grip at that.
But for a poor soldier-man like myself, what has smelt the regulation
powder all 'is life and hasn't got nothing to love and no gal waiting
for him at home--well, it isn't good enough. That's what I say, sir,
with respects.”
He added the last two words by way of apology for having banged a very
solid fist on the table. Meredith smiled.
“So you've had enough of it?” he said.
“Enough ain't quite the word, sir. Why, I'm wore to a shadow with the
trouble and anxiety of getting you down here.”
“Fairly substantial shadow,” commented Meredith.
“May be, sir. But I've had enough of moneymakin'. It's too dear at the
price. And if you'll let an old servant speak his mind it ain't fit for
you, this 'ere kind of work. It's good enough for black-scum and for
chocolate-birds like Durnovo; but this country's not built for honest
white men--least of all for born and bred gentlemen.”
“Yes--that's all very well in theory, Joseph, and I'm much obliged to
you for thinking of me. But you must remember that we live in an age
where money sanctifies everything. Your hands can't get dirty if there
is money inside them.”
Joseph laughed aloud.
“Ah, that's your way of speaking, sir, that's all. And I'm glad to hear
it. You have not spoken like that for two months and more.”
“No--it is only my experience of the world.”
“Well, sir, talkin' of experience, I've had about enough, as I tell you,
and I beg to place my resignation in your hands. I shall do the same by
Mr. Oscard if I reach that Platter, God willin', as the sayin' is.”
“All right, Joseph.”
Still there was something left to say. Joseph paused and scratched the
back of his neck pensively with one finger.
“Will you be writin' to Mr. Oscard, sir, for me to take?”
“Yes.”
“Then I should be obliged if you would mention the fact that I would
rather not be left alone with that blackguard Durnovo, either up at the
Platter or travelling down. That man's got on my nerves, sir; and
I'm mortal afraid of doing him a injury. He's got a long neck--you've
noticed that, perhaps. There was a little Gourkha man up in Cabul taught
me a trick--it's as easy as killing a chicken--but you want a man wi' a
long neck--just such a neck as Durnovo's.”
“But what harm has the man done you,” asked Meredith, “that you think so
affectionately of his neck?”
“No harm, sir, but we're just like two cats on a wall, watchin' each
other and hating each other like blue poison. There's more villainy at
that man's back than you think for--mark my words.”
Joseph moved towards the door.
“Do you KNOW anything about him--anything shady?” cried Meredith after
him.
“No, sir. I don't KNOW anything. But I suspects a whole box full. One
of these days I'll find him out, and if I catch him fair there'll be a
rough and tumble. It'll be a pretty fight, sir, for them that's sittin'
in the front row.”
Joseph rubbed his hands slowly together and departed, leaving his master
to begin a long letter to Guy Oscard.
And at the other end of the passage, in her room with the door locked,
Jocelyn Gordon was sitting, hard-eyed, motionless. She had probably
saved the life of Jack Meredith, and in doing so had only succeeded in
sending him away from her.