“I do mean it,” replied Jocelyn quietly. There is no hatred so complete, so merciless, as the hatred of a woman for one who has wronged the man she loves. At such times women do not pause to give fair play. They make no allowance.
Jocelyn Gordon found a sort of fearful joy in the anger of this self-contained Englishman. It was an unfathomed mine of possible punishment over which she could in thought hold Victor Durnovo.
“Nothing,” she went on, “could be too mean—nothing could be mean enough—to mete out to him in payment of his own treachery and cowardice.”
She went to a drawer in her writing-table and took from it an almanac.
“The letter you have in your hand,” she said, “was handed to Mr. Durnovo exactly a month ago by the woman at Msala. From that time to this he has done nothing. He has simply abandoned Mr. Meredith.”
“He is in Loango?” inquired Oscard, with a premonitory sense of enjoyment in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Does he know that you have sent for me?”
“No,” replied Jocelyn.
Guy Oscard smiled.
“I think I will go and look for him,” he said.
At dusk that same evening there was a singular incident in the barroom of the only hotel in Loango.
Victor Durnovo was there, surrounded by a few friends of antecedents and blood similar to his own. They were having a convivial time of it, and the consumption of whisky was greater than might be deemed discreet in such a climate as that of Loango.
Durnovo was in the act of raising his glass to his lips when the open doorway was darkened, and Guy Oscard stood before him. The half-breed’s jaw dropped; the glass was set down again rather unsteadily on the zinc-covered counter.
“I want you,” said Oscard.
There was a little pause, an ominous silence, and Victor Durnovo slowly followed Oscard out of the room, leaving that ominous silence behind.
“I leave for Msala tonight,” said Oscard, when they were outside, “and you are coming with me.”
“I’ll see you damned first!” replied Durnovo, with a courage born of Irish whisky.
Guy Oscard said nothing, but he stretched out his right hand suddenly. His fingers closed in the collar of Victor Durnovo’s coat, and that parti-coloured scion of two races found himself feebly trotting through the one street of Loango.
“Le’ go!” he gasped.
But the hand at his neck neither relinquished nor contracted. When they reached the beach the embarkation of the little army was going forward under Maurice Gordon’s supervision. Victor looked at Gordon. He reflected over the trump card held in his hand, but he was too skilful to play it then.
XXV
To the Rescue
I must mix myself with action lest I wither by despair.
Jocelyn had not conveyed to her brother by word or hint the accusation brought against him by Victor Durnovo. But when he returned home it almost seemed as if he were conscious of the knowledge that was hers. She thought she detected a subtle difference in his manner towards herself—something apologetic and humble. This was really the result of Victor Durnovo’s threat made in the office of the factory long before.
Maurice Gordon was not the sort of man to carry through the burden of a half-discovered secret. It needs a special temperament for this—one that is able to inspire fear in whomsoever it may be necessary to hold in check—a temperament with sufficient self-reliance and strength to play an open game steadily through to the end. Since Durnovo’s plainspoken threat had been uttered Gordon had thought of little else, and it was well known that Jocelyn’s influence was all that prevented him from taking hopelessly to drink. When away from her at the sub-factories it is to be feared that he gave way to the temptation. There is nothing so wearing as a constant suspense, a never-resting fear; and if a man knows that both may be relieved by a slight overindulgence he must be a strong man indeed if he can turn aside.
Gordon betrayed himself to Jocelyn in a thousand little ways. He consulted her wishes, deferred to her opinion, and sought her advice in a way which never had been his hitherto; and while both were conscious of this difference, both were alike afraid of seeking to explain it.
Jocelyn knew that her repulse of Victor Durnovo was only a temporary advantage; the position could not remain long undecided. Victor Durnovo would have to be met sooner or later. Each day increased the strength of her conviction that her brother was in the power of this man. Whether he had really allowed himself to be dragged into the horrors of even a slight connection with the slave-trade she could not tell; but she knew the world well enough to recognise the fact that Durnovo had only to make the accusation for it to be believed by the million sensation-mongers who are always on the alert for some new horror. She knew that should Durnovo breathe a word of this in the right quarter—that is to say, into the eager journalistic ear—there would hardly be a civilised country in the world where Maurice Gordon of Loango could dwell under his own name. She felt that they were all living on a slumbering volcano. It was one of those rare cases where human life seems no longer sacred; and this refined, educated, gentle English lady found herself face to face with the fact that Victor Durnovo’s life would be cheap at the price of her own.
At this moment Providence, with the wisdom of which we sometimes catch a glimpse, laid another trouble upon her shoulders. While she was half distracted with the thought of her brother’s danger, the news was put into her hand by the grinning Nâla that Jack Meredith—the man she openly in her own heart loved—was in an even greater strait.
Here, at all events, was a peril that could be
