“It is. But, Sir John, the hash must be kept moving; cold hash is not palatable. I will tell you at once, I am inviting young Semoor to fill the vacancy caused by Mr. Oscard’s departure.”
“Ah! Mr. Oscard proposes depriving us of his—society.”
“He leaves tomorrow. He only came to say goodbye.”
“He moves on—to some other hostelry?”
“No! He is going to—”
She paused, so that Sir John was forced to turn in courteous inquiry and look her in the face.
“Africa!” she added sharply, never taking her bright eyes from his face.
She saw the twitching of the aged lips before his hand got there to hide them. She saw his eyes fall before her steady gaze, and she pitied him while she admired his uncompromising pride.
“Indeed!” he said. “I have reason to believe,” he added, turning to the window again, “that there is a great future before that country; all the intellect of Great Britain seems to be converging in its direction.”
Since his departure Jack’s name had never been mentioned, even between these two whose friendship dated back a generation. Once or twice Sir John had made a subtle passing reference to him, such as perhaps no other woman but Lady Cantourne could have understood; but Africa was, so to speak, blotted out of Sir John Meredith’s map of the world. It was there that he kept his skeleton—the son who had been his greatest pride and his deepest humiliation—his highest hope in life—almost the only failure of his career.
He stood there by the window, looking out with that well-bred interest in details of sport and pastime which was part of his creed. He braved it out even before the woman who had been a better friend to him than his dead wife. Not even to her would he confess that any event of existence could reach him through the impenetrable mask he wore before the world. Not even she must know that aught in his life could breathe of failure or disappointment. As it is given to the best of women to want to take their sorrows to another, so the strongest men instinctively deny their desire for sympathy.
Lady Cantourne, pretending to select another sheet of notepaper, glanced at him with a pathetic little smile. Although they had never been anything to each other, these two people had passed through many of the trials to which humanity is heir almost side by side. But neither had ever broken down. Each acted as a sort of mental tonic on the other. They had tacitly agreed, years before, to laugh at most things. She saw, more distinctly than any, the singular emptiness of his clothes, as if the man was shrinking, and she knew that the emptiness was of the heart.
Sir John Meredith had taught his son that Self and Self alone reigns in the world. He had taught him that the thing called Love, with a capital L, is nearly all Self, and that it finally dies in the arms of Self. He had told him that a father’s love, or a son’s, or a mother’s, is merely a matter of convenience, and vanishes when Self asserts itself.
Upon this principle they were both acting now, with a strikingly suggestive similarity of method. Neither was willing to admit to the world in general, and to the other in particular, that a cynical theory could possibly be erroneous.
“I am sorry that our young friend is going to leave us,” said Sir John, taking up and unfolding the morning paper. “He is honest and candid, if he is nothing else.”
This meant that Guy Oscard’s admiration for Millicent Chyne had never been concealed for a moment, and Lady Cantourne knew it.
“He interests me,” went on the old aristocrat, studying the newspaper; and his hearer knew the inner significance of the remark.
At times she was secretly ashamed of her niece, but that esprit de corps which binds women together prompted her always to defend Millicent. The only defence at the moment was silence, and an assumed density which did not deceive Sir John—even she could not do that.
In the meantime Miss Millicent Chyne was walking on the seawall at the end of the garden with Guy Oscard. One of the necessary acquirements of a modern educational outfit is the power of looking perfectly at home in a score of different costumes during the year, and, needless to say, Miss Chyne was finished in this art. The manner in which she wore her sailor-hat, her blue serge, and her neat brown shoes conveyed to the onlooker, and especially the male of that species (we cannot in conscience call them observers), the impression that she was a yachtswoman born and bred. Her delicate complexion was enhanced by the faintest suspicion of sunburn and a few exceedingly becoming freckles. There was a freedom in her movements which had not been observable in London drawing-rooms. This was Diana-like and in perfect keeping with the dainty sailor outfit; moreover, nine men out of ten would fail to attribute the difference to sundry cunning strings within the London skirt.
“It is sad,” Millicent was saying, “to think that we shall have no more chances of sailing. The wind has quite dropped, that horrid tide is running, and—this is your last day.”
She ended with a little laugh, knowing full well that there was little sentiment in the big man by her side.
“Really,” she went on, “I think I should be able to manage a boat in time, don’t you think so? Please encourage me. I am sure I have tried to learn.”
But he remained persistently grave. She did not like that gravity; she had met it before in the course of her experiments. One of the grievances harboured by Miss Millicent Chyne against the opposite sex was that they could not settle down into a harmless, honest flirtation. Of course, this could be nothing but a flirtation of the lightest and most evanescent description. She was engaged to Jack Meredith—poor Jack, who was working
