It is possible even in Loango to have a fling, but the carouser must be prepared to face, even in the midst of his revelry, the haunting thought that the exercise of the strictest economy in any other part of the world might be a preferable pastime.
During the three days following his arrival Victor Durnovo indulged, according to his lights, in the doubtful pleasure mentioned. He purchased at the best factory the best clothes obtainable; he lived like a fighting cock in the one so-called hotel—a house chiefly affected and supported by ship-captains. He spent freely of money that was not his, and imagined himself to be leading the life of a gentleman. He rode round on a hired horse to call on his friends, and on the afternoon of the sixth day he alighted from this quadruped at the gate of the Gordons’ bungalow.
He knew that Maurice Gordon had left that morning on one of his frequent visits to a neighbouring sub-factory. Nevertheless, he expressed surprise when the servant gave him the information.
“Miss Gordon,” he said, tapping his boot with a riding-whip: “is she in?”
“Yes, sir.”
A few minutes later Jocelyn came into the drawing-room, where he was waiting with a brazen face and a sinking heart. Somehow the very room had power to bring him down towards his own level. When he set eyes on Jocelyn, in her fair Saxon beauty, he regained aplomb.
She appeared to be rather glad to see him.
“I thought,” she said, “that you had gone back to the expedition?”
And Victor Durnovo’s boundless conceit substituted “feared” for “thought.”
“Not without coming to say goodbye,” he answered. “It is not likely.”
Just to demonstrate how fully he felt at ease, he took a chair without waiting for an invitation, and sat tapping his boot with his whip, looking her furtively up and down all the while with an appraising eye.
“And when do you go?” she asked, with a subtle change in her tone which did not penetrate his mental epidermis.
“I suppose in a few days now; but I’ll let you know all right, never fear.”
Victor Durnovo stretched out his legs and made himself quite at home; but Jocelyn did not sit down. On the contrary, she remained standing, persistently and significantly.
“Maurice gone away?” he inquired.
“Yes.”
“And left you all alone,” in a tone of light badinage, which fell rather flat, on stony ground.
“I am accustomed to being left,” she answered gravely.
“I don’t quite like it, you know.”
“You?”
She looked at him with a steady surprise which made him feel a trifle uncomfortable.
“Well, you know,” he was forced to explain, shuffling the while uneasily in his chair and dropping his whip, “one naturally takes an interest in one’s friends’ welfare. You and Maurice are the best friends I have in Loango. I often speak to Maurice about it. It isn’t as if there was an English garrison, or anything like that. I don’t trust these niggers a bit.”
“Perhaps you do not understand them?” suggested she gently.
She moved away from him as far as she could get. Every moment increased her repugnance for his presence.
“I don’t think Maurice would endorse that,” he said, with a conceited laugh.
She winced at the familiar mention of her brother’s name, which was probably intentional, and her old fear of this man came back with renewed force.
“I don’t think,” he went on, “that Maurice’s estimation of my humble self is quite so low as yours.”
She gave a nervous little laugh.
“Maurice has always spoken of you with gratitude,” she said.
“To deaf ears, eh? Yes, he has reason to be grateful, though perhaps I ought not to say it. I have put him into several very good things on the coast, and it is in my power to get him into this new scheme. It is a big thing; he would be a rich man in no time.”
He rose from his seat and deliberately crossed the room to the sofa where she had sat down, where he reclined, with one arm stretched out along the back of it towards her. In his other hand he held his riding-whip, with which he began to stroke the skirt of her dress, which reached along the floor almost to his feet.
“Would you like him to be in it?” he asked, with a meaning glance beneath his lashes. “It is a pity to throw away a good chance; his position is not so very secure, you know.”
She gave a strange little hunted glance round the room. She was wedged into a corner, and could not rise without incurring the risk of his saying something she did not wish to hear. Then she leant forward and deliberately withdrew her dress from the touch of his whip, which was in its way a subtle caress.
“Is he throwing away the chance?” she asked.
“No, but you are.”
Then she rose from her seat, and, standing in the middle of the room, faced him with a sudden gleam in her eyes.
“I do not see what it has to do with me,” she said; “I do not know anything about Maurice’s business arrangements, and very little about his business friends.”
“Then let me tell you, Jocelyn—well, then, Miss Gordon, if you prefer it—that you will know more about one of his business friends before you have finished with him. I’ve got Maurice more or less in my power now, and it rests with you—”
At this moment a shadow darkened the floor of the verandah, and an instant later Jack Meredith walked quietly in by the window.
“Enter, young man,” he said dramatically, “by window—centre.”
“I am sorry,” he went on in a different tone to Jocelyn, “to come in this unceremonious way, but the servant told me that you were in the verandah with Durnovo and—”
He turned towards the half-breed, pausing.
“And Durnovo
