“That is the mother of the stout Nestorius,” answered Jack—“Durnovo’s housekeeper.”
He spoke quietly, looking straight in front of him; and Joseph, who was drawing a cork at the back of the room, was watching his face.
There was a little pause, during which Durnovo drank slowly. Then Guy Oscard spoke again.
“If she cooked the dinner,” he said, “she knows her business.”
“Yes,” answered Durnovo, “she is a good cook—if she is nothing else.”
It did not sound as if further inquiries would be welcome, and so the subject was dropped with a silent tribute to the culinary powers of Durnovo’s housekeeper at the Msala Station.
The woman had only appeared for a moment, bringing in some dishes for Joseph—a tall, stately woman, with great dark eyes, in which the patience of motherhood had succeeded to the soft fire of West Indian love and youth. She had the graceful, slow carriage of the Creole, although her skin was darker than that of those dangerous sirens. That Spanish blood ran in her veins could be seen by the intelligence of her eyes; for there is an intelligence in Spanish eyes which stand apart. In the men it seems to refer to the past or the future, for their incorrigible leisureliness prevents the present rendering of a full justice to their powers. In the women it belongs essentially to the present; for there is no time like the present for love and other things.
“They call me,” she had said to Jack Meredith, in her soft, mumbled English, a fortnight earlier, “they call me Marie.”
The children he had named after his own fantasy, and when she had once seen him with them there was a notable change in her manner. Her eyes rested on him with a sort of wondering attention, and when she cooked his meals or touched anything that was his there was something in her attitude that denoted a special care.
Joseph called her “Missis,” with a sort of friendliness in his voice, which never rose to badinage nor descended to familiarity.
“Seems to me, missis,” he said, on the third evening after the arrival of the advance column, “that the guv’nor takes uncommon kindly to them little ’uns of yours.”
They were washing up together after dinner in that part of the garden which was used for a scullery, and Joseph was enjoying a postprandial pipe.
“Yes,” she said simply, following the direction of Joseph’s glance. Jack Meredith was engaged in teaching Epaminondas the intellectual game of bowls with a rounded pebble and a beer-bottle. Nestorius, whose person seemed more distended than usual, stood gravely by, engaged in dental endeavours on a cork, while Xantippe joined noisily in the game. Their lack of dress was essentially native to the country, while their mother affected a simple European style of costume.
“And,” added Joseph, on politeness bent, “it don’t surprise me. I’m wonderfully fond of the little nig—nippers already. I am—straight.”
The truth was that the position of this grave and still comely woman was ambiguous. Neither Joseph nor his master called her by the name she had offered for their use. Joseph compromised by the universal and elastic “Missis”; his master simply avoided all names.
Ambiguity is one of those intangible nothings that get into the atmosphere and have a trick of remaining there. Marie seemed in some subtle way to pervade the atmosphere of Msala. It would seem that Guy Oscard, in his thickheaded way, was conscious of this mystery in the air; for he had not been two hours in Msala before he asked “Who is that woman?” and received the reply which has been recorded.
After dinner they passed out on to the little terrace overlooking the river, and it was here that the great Simiacine scheme was pieced together. It was here beneath the vast palm trees that stood like two beacons towering over the surrounding forest, that three men deliberately staked their own lives and the lives of others against a fortune. Nature has a strange way of hiding her gifts. Many of the most precious have lain unheeded for hundreds of years in barren plains, on inaccessible mountains, or beneath the wave, while others are thrown at the feet of savages who know no use for them.
The man who had found the Simiacine was eager, restless, full of suspicion. To the others the scheme obviously presented itself in a different light. Jack Meredith was dilettante, lighthearted, and unsatisfactory. It was impossible to arouse any enthusiasm in him—to make him take it seriously. Guy Oscard was gravely indifferent. He wanted to get rid of a certain space of time, and the African forest, containing as it did the only excitement that his large heart knew, was as good a place as any. The Simiacine was, in his mind, relegated to a distant place behind weeks of sport and adventure such as his soul loved. He scarcely took Victor Durnovo au pied de la lettre. Perhaps he knew too much about him for that. Certain it is that neither of the two realised at that moment the importance of the step that they were taking.
“You men,” said Durnovo eagerly, “don’t seem to take the thing seriously.”
“I,” answered Meredith, “intend at all events to take the profits very seriously. When they begin to come in, J. Meredith will be at the above address, and trusts by a careful attention to business to merit a continuance of your kind patronage.”
Durnovo laughed somewhat nervously. Oscard did not seem to hear.
“It is all very well for you,” said the half-caste in a lower voice. “You have not so much at stake. It is likely that the happiness of my whole life depends upon this venture.”
A curious smile passed across Jack Meredith’s face. Without turning his head, he glanced sideways into Durnovo’s face through the gloom. But he said nothing, and it was Oscard who broke the silence by saying simply:
“The same may possibly apply to me.”
There was a little
