“I am accustomed,” he said, with a half-cynical smile, “to being left.”
XLV
The Telegram
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart.
“They tell me, sir, that Missis Marie—that is, Missis Durnovo—has gone back to her people at Sierra Leone.”
Thus spoke Joseph to his master one afternoon in March, not so many years ago. They were on board the steamer Bogamayo, which good vessel was pounding down the West Coast of Africa at her best speed. The captain reckoned that he would be anchored at Loango by half-past seven or eight o’clock that evening. There were only seven passengers on board, and dinner had been ordered an hour earlier for the convenience of all concerned. Joseph was packing his master’s clothes in the spacious cabin allotted to him. The owners of the steamer had thought it worth their while to make the finder of the Simiacine as comfortable as circumstances allowed. The noise of that great drug had directed towards the West Coast of Africa that floating scum of ne’er-do-welldom which is ever on the alert for some new land of promise.
“Who told you that?” asked Jack, drying his hands on a towel.
“One of the stewards, sir—a man that was laid up at Sierra Leone in the hospital.”
Jack Meredith paused for a moment before going on deck. He looked out through the open porthole towards the blue shadow on the horizon which was Africa—a country that he had never seen three years before, and which had all along been destined to influence his whole life.
“It was the best thing she could do,” he said. “It is to be hoped that she will be happy.”
“Yes, sir, it is. She deserves it, if that goes for anything in the heavenly reckonin’. She’s a fine woman—a good woman that, sir.”
“Yes.”
Joseph was folding a shirt very carefully.
“A bit dusky,” he said, smoothing out the linen folds reflectively, “but I shouldn’t have minded that if I had been a marryin’ man, but—but I’m not.”
He laid the shirt in the portmanteau and looked up. Jack Meredith had gone on deck.
While Maurice and Jocelyn Gordon were still at dinner that same evening, a messenger came announcing the arrival of the Bogamayo in the roads. This news had the effect of curtailing the meal. Maurice Gordon was liable to be called away at any moment thus by the arrival of a steamer. It was not long before he rose from the table and lighted a cigar preparatory to going down to his office, where the captain of the steamer was by this time probably awaiting him. It was a full moon, and the glorious golden light of the equatorial night shone through the high trees like a new dawn. Hardly a star was visible; even those of the southern hemisphere pale beside the southern moon.
Maurice Gordon crossed the open space of cultivated garden and plunged into the black shadow of the forest. His footsteps were inaudible. Suddenly he ran almost into the arms of a man.
“Who the devil is that?” he cried.
“Meredith,” answered a voice.
“Meredith—Jack Meredith, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m blowed!” exclaimed Maurice Gordon, shaking hands—“likewise glad. What brought you out here again?”
“Oh, pleasure!” replied Jack, with his face in the shade.
“Pleasure! you’ve come to the wrong place for that. However, I’ll let you find out that for yourself. Go on to the bungalow; I’ll be back in less than an hour. You’ll find Jocelyn in the verandah.”
When Maurice left her, Jocelyn went out into the verandah. It was the beginning of the hot season. At midday the sun on his journey northward no longer cast a shadow. Jocelyn could not go out in the daytime at this period of the year. For fresh air she had to rely upon a long, dreamy evening in the verandah.
She sat down in her usual chair, while the moonlight, red and glowing, made a pattern on the floor and on her white dress with the shadows of the creepers. The sea was very loud that night, rising and falling like the breath of some huge sleeping creature.
Jocelyn Gordon fell into a reverie. Life was very dull at Loango. There was too much time for thought and too little to think about. This girl only had the past, and her past was all comprised in a few months—the few months still known at Loango as the Simiacine year. She had lapsed into a bad habit of thinking that her life was over, that the daylight of it had waned, and that there was nothing left now but the grey remainder of the evening. She was wondering now why it had all come—why there had been any daylight at all. Above these thoughts she wondered why the feeling was still in her heart that Jack Meredith had not gone out of her life forever. There was no reason why she should ever meet him again. He was, so far as she knew, married to Millicent Chyne more than a year ago, although she had never seen the announcement of the wedding. He had drifted into Loango and into her life by the merest accident, and now that the Simiacine Plateau had been finally abandoned there was no reason why any of the original finders should come to Loango again.
And the creepers were pushed aside by one who knew the method of their growth. A silver glory of moonlight fell on the verandah floor, and the man of whom she was thinking stood before her.
“You!” she exclaimed.
“Yes.”
She rose, and they shook hands. They stood looking at each other for a few moments, and a thousand things that had never been said seemed to be understood between them.
“Why have you come?” she asked abruptly.
“To tell you a story.”
She looked up with a sort of half smile, as if she
