They fall upon our work which must be done.
“They was just in time,” said Joseph pleasantly to Marie that same evening, when Jack Meredith had been made comfortable for the night, and there was time to spare for supper.
“Ah!” replied the woman, who was busy with the supper-table.
Joseph glanced at her keenly. The exclamation not only displayed a due interest, but contained many questions. He stretched out his legs and wagged his head sapiently.
“And no mistake!” he said. “They timed it almost to the minute. We had sort of beaten them back for the time bein'. Mr. Meredith had woke up sudden, as I told you, and came into the thick of the melee, as we say in the service. Then we heard the firin' in the distance and the 'splat' of Mr. Oscard's Express rifle. I just turns, like this 'ere, my head over me shoulder, quite confidential, and I says, 'Good Lord, I thank yer.' I'm no hand at tracts and Bible-readin's, but I'm not such a blamed fool, Mistress Marie, as to think that this 'ere rum-go of a world made itself. No, not quite. So I just put in a word, quiet-like, to the Creator.”
Marie was setting before him such luxuries as she could command. She nodded encouragingly.
“Go on,” she said. “Tell me!”
“Cheddar cheese,” he said parenthetically, with an appreciative sniff. “Hav'n't seen a bit o' that for a long time! Well, then, up comes Mr. Oscard as cool as a cowcumber, and Mr. Meredith he gives a sort of little laugh and says, 'Open that gate.' Quite quiet, yer know. No high falutin' and potry and that. A few minutes before he had been fightin' and cussin' and shoutin', just like any Johnny in the ranks. Then he calms down and wipes the blood off'n his hand on the side of his pants, and says, 'Open that gate.' That's a nice piece of butter you've got there, mistress. Lord! it's strange I never missed all them things.”
“Bring your chair to the table,” said Marie, “and begin. You are hungry—yes?”
“Hungry ain't quite the word.”
“You will have some mutton—yes? And Mr. Durnovo, where was he?”
Joseph bent over his plate, with elbows well out, wielding his knife and fork with a more obvious sense of enjoyment than usually obtains in the politer circles.
“Mr. Durnovo,” he said, with one quick glance towards her. “Oh, he was just behind Mr. Oscard. And he follows 'im, and we all shake hands just as if we was meeting in the Row, except that most of our hands was a bit grimy and sticky-like with blood and grease off'n the cartridges.”
“And,” said Marie, in an indirectly interrogative way, as she helped him to a piece of sweet potato, “you were glad to see them, Mr. Oscard and Mr. Durnovo—yes?”
“Glad ain't quite the word,” replied Joseph, with his mouth full.
“And they were not hurt or—ill?”
“Oh, no!” returned Joseph, with another quick glance. “They were all right. But I don't like sitting here and eatin' while you don't take bit or sup yourself. Won't you chip in, Mistress Marie? Come now, do.”
With her deep, patient smile she obeyed him, eating little and carelessly, like a woman in some distress.
“When will they come down to Loango?” she asked suddenly, without looking at him.
“Ah! that I can't tell you. We left quite in a hurry, as one may say, with nothin' arranged. Truth is I think we all feared that the guv'nor had got his route. He looked very like peggin' out, and that's the truth. Howsomever, I hope for the best now.”
Marie said nothing, merely contenting herself with attending to his wants, which were numerous and frequent.
“That God-forsaken place, Msala,” said Joseph presently, “has been rather crumpled up by the enemy.”
“They have destroyed it—yes?”
“That is so. You're right, they 'ave destroyed it.”
Marie gave a quick little sigh—one of those sighs which the worldly-wise recognise at once.
“You don't seem over-pleased,” said Joseph.
“I was very happy there,” she answered.
Joseph leant back in his chair, fingering reflectively his beer-glass.
“I'm afraid, mistress,” he said half-shyly, “that your life can't have been a very happy one. There's some folk that is like that—through no fault of their own, too, so far as our mortal vision, so to speak, can reckon it up.”
“I have my troubles, like other people,” she answered softly.
Joseph inclined his head to one side and collected his breadcrumbs thoughtfully.
“Always seems to me,” he said, “that your married life can't have been so happy-like as—well, as one might say, you deserved, missis. But then you've got them clever little kids. I DO like them little kids wonderful. Not bein' a marrying man myself, I don't know much of such matters. But I've always understood that little 'uns—especially cunning little souls like yours—go a long way towards makin' up a woman's happiness.”
“Yes,” she murmured, with her slow smile.
“Been dead long—their pa?”
“He is not dead.”
“Oh—beg pardon.”
And Joseph drowned a very proper confusion in bitter beer.
“He has only ceased to care about me—or his children,” explained Marie.
Joseph shook his head; but whether denial of such a possibility was intended, or an expression of sympathy, he did not explain.
“I hope,” he said, with a somewhat laboured change of manner, “that the little ones are in good health.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Joseph pushed back his chair with considerable vigour, and passed the back of his hand convivially across his moustache.
“A square meal I call that,” he said, with a pleasant laugh, “and I thank you kindly.”
With a tact which is sometimes found wanting inside a better coat than he possessed, Joseph never again referred to that part of Marie's life which seemed to hang like a shadow over her being. Instead, he set himself the task of driving away the dull sense of care which was hers, and he succeeded so well that Jack Meredith, lying between sleep and death in his bedroom, sometimes heard a new strange laugh.
By daybreak next morning Joseph was at sea again, steaming south in a coasting-boat towards St. Paul de Loanda. He sent off a telegram to Maurice Gordon in England, announcing the success of the Relief Expedition, and then proceeded to secure the entire services of a medical man. With this youthful disciple of AEsculapius he returned forthwith to Loango and settled down with characteristic energy to nurse his master.
Meredith's progress was lamentably slow, but still it was progress, and in the right direction. The doctor, who was wise in the strange maladies of the West Coast, stayed for two days, and promised to return once a week. He left full instructions, and particularly impressed upon the two nurses the fact that the recovery would necessarily be so slow that their unpractised eyes could hardly expect to trace its progress.
It is just possible that Meredith could at this time have had no better nurse than Joseph. There was a military discipline about the man's method which was worth more than much feminine persuasion.
“Beef tea, sir,” he would announce with a face of wood, for the sixth time in one day.
“What, again? No, hang it! I can't.”
“Them's my orders, sir,” was Joseph's invariable reply, and he was usually in a position to produce documentary confirmation of his statement. The two men—master and servant—had grown so accustomed to the military discipline of a besieged garrison that it did not seem to occur to them to question the doctor's orders.
Nestorius—small, stout, and silent—was a frequenter of the sick-room, by desire of the invalid. After laboriously toiling up the shallow stairs—a work entailing huge effort of limbs and chin—he would stump gravely into the room without any form of salutation. There are some great minds above such trifles. His examination of the patient was a matter of some minutes. Then he would say, “Bad case,” with the peculiar mechanical diction that was his—the words that Meredith had taught him on the evening of his arrival. After making his diagnosis Nestorius usually proceeded to entertain the patient with a display of his treasures for the time being. These were not in themselves of great value: sundry pebbles, a trouser-button, two shells, and a glass stopper, formed, as it were, the basis of his collection, which was increased or diminished according to circumstances. Some of these he named; others were exhibited with a single adjective, uttered curtly, as between men who required no great tale of words wherewith to understand each other. A few were considered to be of sufficient value and importance to tell their own story and make their way in the world thereupon. He held these out with a face of grave and contemplative patronage.
“Never, Nestorius,” Meredith would say gravely, “in the course of a long and varied experience, have I seen a Worcester-sauce stopper of such transcendent beauty.”
Sometimes Nestorius clambered on to the bed, when the mosquito-curtains were up, and rested from his labours—a small curled-up form, looking very comfortable. And then, when his mother's soft voice called him, he was wont to gather up his belongings and take his departure. On the threshold he always paused, finger in mouth, to utter a valedictory “Bad case” before making his way downstairs with a shadowy, mystic smile.
Kind neighbours called, and well-meaning but mistaken dissenting missionaries left religious works of a morbid nature, eminently suitable to the sick-bed; but Joseph, Marie, and Nestorius were the only three who had free access to the quiet room.
And all the while the rain fell—night and day, morning, noon, and evening—as if the flood-gates had been left open by mistake.
“Sloobrious, no doubt,” said Joseph, “but blamed depressing.”
And he shook his head at the lowering sky with a tolerant smile, which was his way of taking Providence to task.
“Do y' know what I would like, missis?” he asked briskly of Marie one evening.
“No.”
“Well, I'd like to clap my eyes on Miss Gordon, just a stepping in at that open door—that's what we want. That sawbones feller is right when he says the progress will be slow. Slow! Slow ain't quite the word. No more ain't progress the word—that's my opinion. He just lies on that bed, and the most he can do is to skylark a bit with Nestorius. He don't take no interest in nothin', least of all in his victuals—and a man's in a bad way when he takes no interest in his victuals. Yes, I'll take another pancake, thankin' you kindly. You've got a rare light hand for pancakes. Rare—rare ain't quite the word.”
“But what could Miss Gordon do?” asked Marie.
“Well, she could kinder interest him in things—don't you see? Him and I we ain't got much in common—except his clothes and that confounded beef-tea and slushin's. And then there's Mr. Gordon. He's a good hearty sort, he is. Comes galamphin' into the room, kickin' a couple of footstools and upsettin' things promiscuous. It cheers a invalid up, that sort o' thing.”
Marie laughed in an awkward, unwonted way.
“But it do, missis,” pursued Joseph, “wonderful; and I can't do it myself. I tried the other day, and master only thought I'd been drinkin'.”
“You are impatient,” said Marie. “He is better, I know. I can see it. You see it yourself—yes?”
“A bit—just a bit. But he wants some one of his own station in life, without offence, Mistress Marie. Some one as will talk with him about books and evenin' parties and things. And—” he paused reflectively, “and Miss Gordon would do that.”
There was a little silence, during which another pancake met its fate.
“You know,” said Joseph, with sudden confidence, “he's goin' to marry a young lady at home, in London; a young lady of fashion, as they say—one of them that's got one smile for men and another for women. Not his sort, as I should have thought myself, knowin' him as I do.”
“Then why does he marry her?” asked Marie.
“Ah!” Joseph rose, and stretched out his arms with a freedom from restraint learnt in the barrack-room. “There you're asking me more than I can tell you. I suppose—it's the old story—I suppose he thinks that she is his sort.”