With Edged Tools Part 8

"I met him again the other day at Loango. He is an old Etonian like myself."

This conveyed nothing to Durnovo, who belonged to a different world, whose education was, like other things about him, an unknown quant.i.ty.

"My name," continued the tall man, "is Meredith--John Meredith--sometimes called Jack."

They were walking up the bank towards the dusky and uninviting tent.

"And the other fellow?" inquired Durnovo, with a backward jerk of the head.

"Oh--he is my servant."

Durnovo raised his eyebrows in somewhat contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt, and proceeded to open the letter which Meredith had handed him.

"Not many fellows," he said, "on this coast can afford to keep a European servant."

Jack Meredith bowed, and ignored the irony.

"But," he said courteously, "I suppose you find these coloured chaps just as good when they have once got into your ways?"

"Oh yes," muttered Durnovo. He was reading the letter. "Maurice Gordon,"

he continued, "says you are travelling for pleasure--just looking about you. What do you think of it?"

He indicated the dismal prospect with a harsh laugh.

"A bit suggestive of h.e.l.l," he went on, "eh? How does it strike you?"

"Finer timber, I should think," suggested Jack Meredith, and Durnovo laughed more pleasantly.

"The truth is," he explained, "that it strikes one as a bit absurd that any man should travel up here for pleasure. If you take my advice you will come down-stream again with me to-morrow."

He evidently distrusted him; and the sidelong, furtive glance suggested vaguely that Victor Durnovo had something farther up this river which he wished to keep concealed.

"I understand," answered Meredith, with a half-suppressed yawn, "that the country gets finer farther up--more mountainous--less suggestive of--h.e.l.l."

The proprietors of very dark eyes would do well to remember that it is dangerous to glance furtively to one side or the other. The attention of dark eyes is more easily felt than the glances of grey or blue orbs.

Jack Meredith's suspicions were aroused by the suspicious manner of his interlocutor.

"There is no white man knows this river as I do, and I do not recommend it. Look at me--on the verge of jaundice--look at this wound on my arm; it began with a scratch and has never healed. All that comes from a month up this cursed river. Take my advice, try somewhere else."

"I certainly shall," replied Meredith. "We will discuss it after dinner.

My chap is a first-rate cook. Have you got anything to add to the menu?"

"Not a thing. I've been living on plantains and dried elephant-meat for the last fortnight."

"Doesn't sound nourishing. Well, we are pretty well provided, so perhaps you will give me the pleasure of your company to dinner? Come as you are: no ceremony. I think I will wash though. It is as well to keep up these old customs."

With a pleasant smile he went towards the tent which had just been erected. Joseph was very busy, and his admonishing voice was heard at times.

"Here, Johnny, hammer in that peg. Now, old cups and saucers, stop that grinning and fetch me some water. None of your frogs and creepy crawly thing this time, my blonde beauty, but clean water, comprenny?"

With these and similar lightsome turns of speech was Joseph in the habit of keeping his men up to the mark. The method was eminently successful.

His coloured compeers crowded round him "all of a grin," as he himself described it, and eager to do his slightest behest. From the throne to the back-kitchen the secret of success is the art of managing men--and women.

CHAPTER VII. THE SECRET OF THE SIMIACINE

Surtout, Messieurs, pas de zele.

Such was the meeting of Victor Durnovo and Jack Meredith. Two men with absolutely nothing in common--no taste, no past, no kinship--nothing but the future. Such men as Fate loves to bring together for her own strange purposes. What these purposes are none of us can tell. Some hold that Fate is wise. She is not so yet, but she cannot fail to acquire wisdom some day, because she experiments so industriously. She is ever bringing about new combinations, and one can only trust that she, the experimenter, is as keenly disappointed in the result as are we, the experimented.

To Jack Meredith Victor Durnovo conveyed the impression of little surprise and a slight local interest. He was a man who was not quite a gentleman; but for himself Jack did not give great heed to this. He had a.s.sociated with many such; for, as has been previously intimated, he had moved in London society, where there are many men who are not quite gentlemen. The difference of a good coat and that veiled insolence which pa.s.ses in some circles for the ease of good breeding had no weight with the keen son of Sir John Meredith, and Victor Durnovo fared no worse in his companion's estimation because he wore a rough coat and gave small attention to his manners. He attracted and held Jack's attention by a certain open-air manliness which was in keeping with the situation and with his life. Sportsmen, explorers and wanderers were not new to Jack; for nowadays one may never know what manner of man is inside a faultless dress-suit. It is an age of disappearing, via Charing Cross station in a first-cla.s.s carriage, to a life of backwooding, living from hand to mouth, starving in desert, prairie, pampas or Arctic wild, with, all the while, a big balance at c.o.x's. And most of us come back again and put on the dress-suit and the white tie with a certain sense of restfulness and comfort.

Jack Meredith had known many such. He had, in a small way, done the same himself. But he had never met one of the men who do not go home--who possess no dress-coat and no use for it--whose business it is to go about with a rifle in one hand and their life in the other--who risk their lives because it is their trade and not their pleasure.

Durnovo could not understand the new-comer at all. He saw at once that this was one of those British aristocrats who do strange things in a very strange way. In a degree Meredith reminded him of Maurice Gordon, the man whose letter of introduction was at that moment serving to light the camp fire. But it was Maurice Gordon without that semi-sensual weakness of purpose which made him the boon companion of Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry, provided that one of those was only with him long enough. There was a vast depth of reserve--of indefinable possibilities, which puzzled Durnovo, and in some subtle way inspired fear.

In that part of Africa which lies within touch of the Equator, life is essentially a struggle. There is hunger about, and where hunger is the emotions will be found also. Now Jack Meredith was a past-master in the concealment of these, and, as such, came to Victor Durnovo in the guise of a new creation. He had lived the latter and the larger part of his life among men who said, in action if not in words, I am hungry, or I am thirsty; I want this, or I want that; and if you are not strong enough to keep it, I will take it from you.

This man was different; and Victor Durnovo did not know--could not find out--WHAT he wanted.

He had at first been inclined to laugh at him. What struck him most forcibly was Joseph, the servant. The idea of a man swaggering up an African river with a European man-servant was so preposterous that it could only be met with ridicule; but the thing seemed so natural to Jack Meredith, he accepted the servitude of Joseph so much as a matter of course, that after a time Durnovo accepted him also as part and parcel of Meredith.

Moreover, he immediately began to realise the benefit of being waited upon by an intelligent European, for Joseph took off his coat, turned up his sleeves, and proceeded to cook such a dinner as Durnovo had not tasted for many months. There was wine also, and afterwards a cigar of such quality as appealed strongly to Durnovo's West Indian palate.

The night settled down over the land while they sat there, and before them the great yellow equatorial moon rose slowly over the trees. With the darkness came a greater silence, for the myriad insect life was still. This great silence of Central Africa is wonderfully characteristic. The country is made for silence, the natives are created to steal, spirit-ridden, devil-haunted, through vast tracks of lifeless forest, where nature is oppressive in her grandeur. Here man is put into his right place--a puny, insignificant, helpless being in a world that is too large for him.

"So," said Durnovo, returning to the subject which had never really left his thoughts, "you have come out here for pleasure?"

"Not exactly. I came chiefly to make money, partly to dispel some of the illusions of my youth, and I am getting on very well. Picture-book illusions they were. The man who drew the pictures had never seen Africa."

"This is no country for illusions. Things go naked here--d.a.m.ned naked."

"And only language is adorned?"

Durnovo laughed. He had to be alert to keep up with Jack Meredith--to understand his speech; and he rather liked the necessity, which was a change after the tropic indolence in which he had moved.

"Swearing, you mean," he replied. "Hope you don't mind it?"

"Not a bit. Do it myself."

At this moment Joseph, the servant, brought coffee served up in tin cups.

"First-cla.s.s dinner," said Durnovo. "The best dinner I have had for years. Clever chap, your man!"

The last remark was made as much for the servant's edification as for the master's, and it was accompanied by an inviting smile directed towards Joseph. Of this the man took no notice whatever. He came from a world where masters and masters' guests know their place and keep it, even after a good dinner.