“Mind,” continued Durnovo reassuringly, “I don’t say I would use them unless I suspected that you were acting in opposition to my wishes.”
Gordon said nothing. His heart was throbbing uncomfortably—it seemed to be in his throat.
“I would not bring forward those arguments except as a last resource,” went on Victor Durnovo, with the deliberate cruelty of a tyrant. “I would first point out the advantages; a fourth share in the Simiacine scheme would make you a rich man—above suspicion—independent of the gossip of the marketplace.”
Maurice Gordon winced visibly, and his eyes wavered as if he were about to give way to panic.
“You could retire and go home to England—to a cooler climate. This country might get too hot for your constitution—see?”
Durnovo came back into the centre of the room and stood by the writing-table. His attitude was that of a man holding a whip over a cowering dog.
He took up his hat and riding-whip with a satisfied little laugh, as if the dog had cringingly done his bidding.
“Besides,” he said, with a certain defiance of manner, “I may succeed without any of that—eh?”
“Yes,” Gordon was obliged to admit with a gulp, as if he were swallowing his pride, and he knew that in saying the word he was degrading his sister—throwing her at this man’s feet as the price of his honour.
With a half-contemptuous nod Victor Durnovo turned, and went away to keep his appointment with Meredith.
XX
Brought to the Scratch
Take heed of still waters; the quick pass away.
Guy Oscard was sitting on the natural terrace in front of Durnovo’s house at Msala, and Marie attended to his simple wants with that patient dignity which suggested the recollection of better times, and appealed strongly to the manhood of her fellow-servant Joseph.
Oscard was not good at the enunciation of those small amenities which are supposed to soothe the feelings of the temporarily debased. He vaguely felt that this woman was not accustomed to menial service, but he knew that any suggestion of sympathy was more than he could compass. So he merely spoke to her more gently than to the men, and perhaps she understood, despite her chocolate-coloured skin.
They had inaugurated a strange, unequal friendship during the three days that Oscard had been left alone at Msala. Joseph had been promoted to the command of a certain number of the porters, and his domestic duties were laid aside. Thus Marie was called upon to attend to Guy Oscard’s daily wants.
“I think I’ll take coffee,” he was saying to her in reply to a question. “Yes—coffee, please, Marie.”
He was smoking one of his big wooden pipes, staring straight in front of him with a placidity natural to his bulk.
The woman turned away with a little smile. She liked this big man with his halting tongue and quiet ways. She liked his awkward attempts to conciliate the coquette Xantippe—to extract a smile from the grave Nestorius, and she liked his manner towards herself. She liked the poised pipe and the jerky voice as he said, “Yes—coffee, please, Marie.”
Women do like these things—they seem to understand them and to attach some strange, subtle importance of their own to them. For which power some of us who have not the knack of turning a pretty phrase or throwing off an appropriate pleasantry may well be thankful.
Presently she returned, bringing the coffee on a rough tray, also a box of matches and Oscard’s tobacco pouch. Noting this gratuitous attention to his comfort, he looked up with a little laugh.
“Er—thank you,” he said. “Very kind.”
He did not put his pipe back to his lips—keenly alive to the fact that the exigency of the moment demanded a little polite exchange of commonplace.
“Children gone to bed?” he asked anxiously.
She paused in her slow, deft arrangement of the little table.
“Yes,” she answered.
He nodded as if the news were eminently satisfactory. “Nestorius,” he said, adhering to Meredith’s pleasantry, “is the jolliest little chap I have met for a long time.”
“Yes,” she answered softly. “Yes—but listen!”
He raised his head, listening as she did—both looking down the river into the gathering darkness.
“I hear the sound of paddles,” she said. “And you?”
“Not yet. My ears are not so sharp as yours.”
“I am accustomed to it,” the woman said, with some emotion in her voice which he did not understand then. “I am always listening.”
Oscard seemed to be struck with this description of herself. It was so very apt—so comprehensive. The woman’s attitude before the world was the attitude of the listener for some distant sound.
She poured out his coffee, setting the cup at his elbow. “Now you will hear,” she said, standing upright with that untrammelled dignity of carriage which is found wherever African blood is in the veins. “They have just come round Broken Tree Bend. There are two boats.”
He listened, and after a moment heard the regular glug-glug of the paddles stealing over the waters of the still tropic river, covering a wonderful distance.
“Yes,” he said, “I hear. Mr. Meredith said he would be back tonight.”
She gave a strange, little low laugh—almost the laugh of a happy woman.
“He is like that, Mr. Meredith,” she said; “what he says he does”—in the pretty English of one who has learnt Spanish first.
“Yes, Marie—he is like that.”
She turned, in her strangely subdued way, and went into the house to prepare some supper for the newcomers.
It was not long before the sound of the paddles was quite distinct, and then—probably on turning a corner of the river and coming in sight of the lights of Msala—Jack Meredith’s cheery shout came floating through the night. Oscard took his pipe from his lips and sent back an answer that echoed against the trees across the river. He walked down to the water’s edge, where he was presently joined by Joseph with a lantern.
The two boats came on to the sloping shore with a grating sound, and by the light of the waving lantern Oscard saw Durnovo and Jack
