But against such that will not fight.
On nearing the bungalow, Jocelyn turned aside into the forest where a little colony of huts nestled in a hollow of the sand-dunes.
“Nala,” she cried, “the paddle-maker. Ask him to come to me.”
She spoke in the dialect of the coast to some women who sat together before one of the huts.
“Nala—yes,” they answered. And they raised their strident voices.
In a few moments a man emerged from a shed of banana-leaves. He was a scraggy man—very lightly clad—and a violent squint handicapped him seriously in the matter of first impressions. When he saw Jocelyn he dropped his burden of wood and ran towards her. The African negro does not cringe. He is a proud man in his way. If he is properly handled, he is not only trustworthy—he is something stronger. Nala grinned as he ran towards Jocelyn.
“Nala,” she said, “will you go a journey for me?”
“I will go at once.”
“I came to you,” said Jocelyn, “because I know that you are an intelligent man and a great traveller.”
“I have travelled much,” he answered, “when I was younger.”
“Before you were married?” said the English girl. “Before little Nala came?”
The man grinned.
He looked back over his shoulder towards one of the huts, where a scraggy infant with a violent squint lay on its diaphragm on the sand.
“Where do you wish me to go?” asked the proud father.
“To Msala on the Ogowe river.”
“I know the Ogowe. I have been at Msala,” with the grave nod of a great traveller.
“When can you leave?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Now.”
Jocelyn had her purse in her hand.
“You can hire a dhow,” she said; “and on the river you may have as many rowers as you like. You must go very quickly to Msala. There you must ask about the Englishman's Expedition. You have heard of it?”
“Yes: the Englishman, Durnovo, and the soldier who laughs.”
“Yes. Some of the men are at Msala now. They were going up-country to join the other Englishman far away—near the mountains. They have stopped at Msala. Find out why they have not gone on, and come back very quickly to tell me. You understand, Nala?”
“Yes.”
“And I can trust you?”
“Yes: because you cured the little one when he had an evil spirit. Yes, you can trust me.”
She gave him money and rode on home. Before she reached the bungalow the paddle-maker passed her at a trot, going towards the sea.
She waited for three days, and then Victor Durnovo came again. Maurice was still away. There was an awful sense of impending danger in the very air in the loneliness of her position. Yet she was not afraid of Durnovo. She had left that fear behind. She went to the drawing-room to see him, full of resolution.
“I could not go away,” he said, after relinquishing her hand, “without coming to see you.”
Jocelyn said nothing. The scared look which she had last seen in his face was no longer there; but the eyes were full of lies.
“Jocelyn,” the man went on, “I suppose you know that I love you? It must have been plain to you for a long time.”
“No,” she answered, with a little catch in her breath. “No, it has not. And I am sorry to hear it now.”
“Why?” he asked, with a dull gleam which could not be dignified by the name of love.
“Because it can only lead to trouble.”
Victor Durnovo was standing with his back to the window, while Jocelyn, in the full light of the afternoon, stood before him. He looked her slowly up and down with a glance of approval which alarmed and disquieted her.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
“No!”
His black moustache was pushed forward by some motion of the hidden lips.
“Why?”
“Do you want the real reason?” asked Jocelyn.
Victor Durnovo paused for a moment.
“Yes,” he said.
“Because I not only do not care for you, but I despise and distrust you.”
“You are candid,” he said, with an unpleasant little laugh.
“Yes.”
He moved a little to one side and drew a chair towards him, half-leaning, half-sitting on the back of it.
“Then,” he said, “I will be candid with you. I intend you to marry me; I have intended it for a long time. I am not going down on my knees to ask you to do it: that is not my way. But, if you drive me to it, I will make your brother Maurice go down on his knees and beg you to marry me.”
“I don't think you will do that,” answered the girl steadily. “Whatever your power over Maurice may be, it is not strong enough for that; you overrate it.”
“You think so?” he sneered.
“I am sure of it.”
Durnovo glanced hastily round the room in order to make sure that they were not overheard.
“Suppose,” he said, in a low, hissing voice, “that I possess knowledge that I have only to mention to one or two people to make this place too hot for Maurice Gordon. If he escaped the fury of the natives, it would be difficult to know where he could go to. England would be too hot for him. They wouldn't have him there; I could see to that. He would be a ruined man—an outcast—execrated by all the civilised world.”
He was watching her face all the while. He saw the colour leave even her lips, but they were steady and firm. A strange wonder crept into his heart. This woman never flinched. There was some reserved strength within herself upon which she was now drawing. His dealings had all been with half-castes—with impure blood and doubtful descendants of a mixed ancestry. He had never fairly roused a pure-bred English man or woman, and suddenly he began to feel out of his depth.
“What is your knowledge?” asked Jocelyn in a coldly measured voice.
“I think you had better not ask that; you will be sorry afterwards. I would rather that you thought quietly over what I have told you. Perhaps, on second thoughts, you will see your way to give me some—slight hope. I should really advise it.”
“I did not ask your advice. What is your knowledge?”
“You will have it?” he hissed.
“Yes.”
He leant forward, craning his neck, pushing his yellow face and hungering black eyes close into hers.
“Then, if you will have it, your brother—Maurice Gordon—is a slave-owner.”
She drew back as she might have done from some unclean animal. She knew that he was telling the truth. There might be extenuating circumstances. The real truth might have quite a different sound, spoken in different words; but there was enough of the truth in it, as Victor Durnovo placed it before her, to condemn Maurice before the world.
“Now will you marry me?” he sneered.
“No!”
Quick as thought she had seen the only loophole—the only possible way of meeting this terrible accusation.
He laughed; but there was a faint jangle of uneasiness in his laughter.
“Indeed!”
“Supposing,” said Jocelyn, “for one moment that there was a grain of truth in your fabrication, who would believe you? Who on this coast would take your word against the word of an English gentleman? Even if the whole story were true, which it is not, could you prove it? You are a liar, as well as a coward and a traitor! Do you think that the very servants in the stable would believe you? Do you think that the incident of the small-pox at Msala is forgotten? Do you think that all Loango, even to the boatmen on the beach, ignores the fact that you are here in Loango now because you are afraid to go through a savage country to the Simiacine Plateau as you are pledged to do? You were afraid of the small-pox once; there is something else that you are afraid of now. I do not know what it is, but I will find out. Coward! Go! Leave the house at once, before I call in the stable-boys to turn you out, and never dare to speak to me again!”
Victor Durnovo recoiled before her, conscious all the while that she had never been so beautiful as at that moment. But she was something far above him—a different creation altogether. He never knew what drove him from that room. It was the fear of something that he did not understand.
He heard her close the window after him as he walked away beneath the trees.
She stood watching him—proud, cold, terrible in her womanly anger. Then she turned, and suddenly sank down upon the sofa, sobbing.
But fortune decreed that she should have neither time to weep nor think. She heard the approaching footsteps of her old servant, and when the door was opened Jocelyn Gordon was reading a book, with her back turned towards the window.
“That man Nala, miss, the paddle-maker, wants to see you.”
“Tell him to go round to the verandah.”
Jocelyn went out by the open window, and presently Nala came grinning towards her. He was evidently very much pleased with himself—held himself erect, and squinted more violently than usual.
“I have been to Msala,” he said, with considerable dignity of manner.
“Yes, and what news have you?”
Nala squatted down on the chunam floor, and proceeded to unfold a leaf. The operation took some time. Within the outer covering there was a second envelope of paper, likewise secured by a string. Finally, the man produced a small note, which showed signs of having been read more than once. This he handed to Jocelyn with an absurd air of importance.
She opened the paper and read:
“To MARIE AT MSALA,—Send at once to Mr. Durnovo, informing him that the tribes have risen and are rapidly surrounding the Plateau. He must return here at once with as large an armed force as he can raise. But the most important consideration is time. He must not wait for men from elsewhere, but must pick up as many as he can in Loango and on the way up to Msala. I reckon that we can hold out for four months without outside assistance, but after that period we shall be forced to surrender or to try and cut our way through WITHOUT the Simiacine. With a larger force we could beat back the tribes, and establish our hold on the Plateau by force of arms. This must be forwarded to Mr. Durnovo at once, wherever he is. The letter is in duplicate, sent by two good messengers, who go by different routes.
“JOHN MEREDITH.”
When Jocelyn looked up, dry-lipped, breathless, Nala was standing before her, beaming with self-importance.
“Who gave you this?”
“Marie at Msala.”
“Who is she?”
“Oh—Mr. Durnovo's woman at Msala. She keeps his house.”
“But this letter is for Mr. Durnovo,” cried Jocelyn, whose fear made her unreasonably angry. “Why has he not had it?”
Nala came nearer, with upraised forefinger and explanatory palm.
“Marie tell me,” he said, “that Mr. Meredith send two letters. Marie give Mr. Durnovo one. This—other letter.”
There was a strange glitter in the girl's blue eyes—something steely and unpleasant.
“You are sure of that? You are quite sure that Mr. Durnovo has had a letter like this?” she asked slowly and carefully, so that there could be no mistake.
“That is true,” answered the man.
“Have you any more news from Msala?”
Nala looked slightly hurt. He evidently thought that he had brought as much news as one man could be expected to carry.
“Marie has heard,” he said, “that there is much fighting up in the country.”
“She has heard no particulars—nothing more than that?”
“No: nothing.”
Jocelyn Gordon rose to this occasion also.
“Can you go,” she said, after a moment's thought, “to St. Paul de Loanda for me?”
The man laughed.
“Yes,” he answered simply.
“At once—now?”
“Oh, yes,” with a sigh.
Already Jocelyn was writing something on a sheet of paper.
“Take this,” she said, “to the telegraph office at St. Paul de Loanda, and send it off at once. Here is money. You understand? I will pay you when you bring back the receipt. If you have been very quick, I will pay you well.”
That same evening a second messenger started northward after Maurice Gordon with a letter telling him to come back at once to Loango.