“I should like to give him some substantial token of my—gratitude.”
Sir John was nothing if not just.
“Thank you,” answered Jack quietly. He turned his head a little, and glanced, not at his father, but in his direction. “He will appreciate it, I know.”
“I should like to see him tomorrow.”
Jack winced, as if he had made a mistake.
“He is not in England,” he explained. “I left him behind me in Africa. He has gone back to the Simiacine Plateau.”
The old man’s face dropped rather piteously.
“I am sorry,” he said, with one of the sudden relapses into old age that Lady Cantourne dreaded. “I may not have a chance of seeing him to thank him personally. A good servant is so rare nowadays. These modern democrats seem to think that it is a nobler thing to be a bad servant than a good one. As if we were not all servants!”
He was thirsting for details. There were a thousand questions in his heart, but not one on his lips.
“Will you have the kindness to remember my desire,” he went on suavely, “when you are settling up with your man?”
“Thank you,” replied Jack; “I am much obliged to you.”
“And in the meantime as you are without a servant you may as well make use of mine. One of my men—Henry—who is too stupid to get into mischief—a great recommendation by the way—understands his business. I will ring and have him sent over to your rooms at once.”
He did so, and they sat in silence until the butler had come and gone.
“We have been very successful with the Simiacine—our scheme,” said Jack suddenly.
“Ah!”
“I have brought home a consignment valued at seventy thousand pounds.”
Sir John’s face never changed.
“And,” he asked, with veiled sarcasm, “do you carry out the—er—commercial part of the scheme?”
“I shall begin to arrange for the sale of the consignment tomorrow. I shall have no difficulty—at least, I anticipate none. Yes, I do the commercial part—as well as the other. I held the Plateau against two thousand natives for three months, with fifty-five men. But I do the commercial part as well.”
As he was looking into the fire still, Sir John stole a long comprehensive glance at his son’s face. His old eyes lighted up with pride and something else—possibly love. The clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven. Jack looked at it thoughtfully, then he rose.
“I must not keep you any longer,” he said, somewhat stiffly.
Sir John rose also.
“I dare say you are tired; you need rest. In some ways you look stronger, in others you look fagged and pulled down.”
“It is the result of my illness,” said Jack. “I am really quite strong.”
He paused, standing on the hearthrug, then suddenly he held out his hand.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night.”
Sir John allowed him to go to the door, to touch the handle, before he spoke.
“Then—” he said, and Jack paused. “Then we are no farther on?”
“In what way?”
“In respect to the matter over which we unfortunately disagreed before you went away?”
Jack turned, with his hand on the door.
“I have not changed my mind in any respect,” he said gently. “Perhaps you are inclined to take my altered circumstances into consideration—to modify your views.”
“I am getting rather old for modification,” answered Sir John suavely.
“And you see no reason for altering your decision?”
“None.”
“Then I am afraid we are no farther on.” He paused. “Good night,” he added gently, as he opened the door.
“Good night.”
XXXV
Engaged
Well, there’s the game. I throw the stakes.
Lady Cantourne was sitting alone in her drawing-room, and the expression of her usually bright and smiling face betokened considerable perturbation.
Truth to tell, there were not many things in life that had power to frighten her ladyship very much. Hers had been a prosperous life as prosperity is reckoned. She had married a rich man who had retained his riches while he lived and had left them to her when he died. And that was all the world knew of Lady Cantourne. Like the majority of us, she presented her character and not herself to her neighbours; and these held, as neighbours do, that the cheery, capable little woman of the world whom they met everywhere was Lady Cantourne. Circumstances alter us less than we think. If we are of a gay temperament—gay we shall be through all. If sombre, no happiness can drive that sombreness away. Lady Cantourne was meant for happiness and a joyous motherhood. She had had neither; but she went on being “meant” until the end—that is to say, she was still cheery and capable. She had thrown an open letter on the little table at her side—a letter from Jack Meredith announcing his return to England, and his natural desire to call and pay his respects in the course of the afternoon.
“So,” she had said before she laid the letter aside, “he is home again—and he means to carry it through?”
Then she had settled down to think, in her own comfortable chair (for if one may not be happy, comfort is at all events within the reach of some of us), and the troubled look had supervened.
Each of our lives is like a book with one strong character moving through its pages. The strong character in Lady Cantourne’s book had been Sir John Meredith. Her whole life seemed to have been spent on the outskirts of his—watching it. And what she had seen had not been conducive to her own happiness.
She knew that the note she had just received meant a great deal to Sir John Meredith. It meant that Jack had come home with the full intention of fulfilling his engagement to Millicent Chyne. At first she had rather resented Sir John’s outspoken objection to her niece as his son’s wife. But during the last months she had gradually come round to his way of thinking; not, perhaps, for the first time in her life. She had watched Millicent. She had studied her own
