Some large answer you shall hear.
In a dimly-lighted room in the bungalow at Loango two women had been astir all night. Now, as dawn approached, one of them, worn out with watching, wearied with that blessed fatigue of anxiety which dulls the senses, had laid her down on the curtain-covered bed to sleep.
While Marie slept Jocelyn Gordon walked softly backwards and forwards with Nestorius in her arms. Nestorius was probably dying. He lay in the Englishwoman's gentle arms—a little brown bundle of flexile limbs and cotton night-shirt. It was terribly hot. All day the rain had been pending; all night it had held off until the whole earth seemed to pulsate with the desire for relief. Jocelyn kept moving, so that the changing air wafted over the little bare limbs might allay the fever. She was in evening dress, having, indeed, been called from the drawing-room by Marie; and the child's woolly black head was pressed against her breast as if to seek relief from the inward pressure on the awakening brain.
A missionary possessing some small knowledge of medicine had been with them until midnight, and, having done his best, had gone away, leaving the child to the two women. Maurice had been in twice, clumsily, on tiptoe, to look with ill-concealed awe at the child, and to whisper hopes to Marie which displayed a ludicrous, if lamentable, ignorance of what he was talking about.
“Little chap's better,” he said; “I'm sure of it. See, Marie, his eyes are brighter. Devilish hot, though, isn't he—poor little soul?”
Then he stood about, awkwardly sympathetic.
“Anything I can do for you, Jocelyn?” he asked, and then departed, only too pleased to get away from the impending calamity.
Marie was not emotional. She seemed to have left all emotion behind, in some other phase of her life which was shut off from the present by a thick curtain. She was patient and calm, but she was not so clever with the child as was Jocelyn. Perhaps her greater experience acted as a handicap in her execution of those small offices to the sick which may be rendered useless at any moment. Perhaps she knew that Nestorius was wanted elsewhere. Or it may only have been that Jocelyn was able to soothe him sooner, because there is an unwritten law that those who love us best are not always the best nurses for us.
When, at last, sleep came to the child, it was in Jocelyn's arms that he lay with that utter abandonment of pose which makes a sleeping infant and a sleeping kitten more graceful than any living thing. Marie leant over Nestorius until her dusky cheek almost touched Jocelyn's fair English one.
“He is asleep,” she whispered.
And her great dark eyes probed Jocelyn's face as if wondering whether her arms, bearing that burden, told her that this was the last sleep.
Jocelyn nodded gravely, and continued the gentle swaying motion affected by women under such circumstances.
Nestorius continued to sleep, and at last Marie, overcome by sleep herself, lay down on her bed.
Thus it came about that the dawn found Jocelyn moving softly in the room, with Nestorius asleep in her arms. A pink light came creeping through the trees, presently turning to a golden yellow, and, behold! it was light. It was a little cooler, for the sea-breeze had set in. The cool air from the surface of the water was rushing inland to supply the place of the heated atmosphere rising towards the sun. With the breeze came the increased murmur of the distant surf. The dull continuous sound seemed to live amidst the summits of the trees far above the low-built house. It rose and fell with a long-drawn, rhythmic swing. Already the sounds of life were mingling with it—the low of a cow—the crowing of the cocks—the hum of the noisier daylight insect-life.
Jocelyn moved to the window, and her heart suddenly leapt to her throat.
On the brown turf in front of the house were two men, stretched side by side, as if other hands had laid them there, dead. One man was much bigger than the other. He was of exceptional stature. Jocelyn recognised them almost immediately—Guy Oscard and Joseph. They had arrived during the night, and, not wishing to disturb the sleeping household, had lain them down in the front garden to sleep with a quiet conscience beneath the stars. The action was so startlingly characteristic, so suggestive of the primeval, simple man whom Oscard represented as one born out of time, that Jocelyn laughed suddenly.
While she was still at the window, Marie rose and came to her side. Nestorius was still sleeping. Following the direction of her mistress's eyes, Marie saw the two men. Joseph was sleeping on his face, after the manner of Thomas Atkins all the world over. Guy Oscard lay on his side, with his head on his arm.
“That is so like Mr. Oscard,” said Marie, with her patient smile, “so like—so like. It could be no other man—to do a thing like that.”
Jocelyn gave Nestorius back to his mother, and the two women stood for a moment looking out at the sleepers, little knowing what the advent of these two men brought with it for one of them. Then the Englishwoman went to change her dress, awaking her brother as she passed his room.
It was not long before Maurice Gordon had hospitably awakened the travellers and brought them in to change their torn and ragged clothes for something more presentable. It would appear that Nestorius was not particular. He did not mind dying on the kitchen table if need be. His mother deposited him on this table on a pillow, while she prepared the breakfast with that patient resignation which seemed to emanate from having tasted of the worst that the world has to give.
Joseph was ready the first, and he promptly repaired to the kitchen, where he set to work to help Marie, with his customary energy.
It was Marie who first perceived a difference in Nestorius. His dusky little face was shining with a sudden, weakening perspiration, his limbs lay lifelessly, with a lack of their usual comfortable-looking grace.
“Go!” she said quickly. “Fetch Miss Gordon!”
Jocelyn came, and Maurice and Guy Oscard; for they had been together in the dining-room when Joseph delivered Marie's message.
Nestorius was wide awake now. When he saw Oscard his small face suddenly expanded into a brilliant grin.
“Bad case!” he said.
It was rather startling, until Marie spoke.
“He thinks you are Mr. Meredith,” she said. “Mr. Meredith taught him to say 'Bad case!'”
Nestorius looked from one to the other with gravely speculative eyes, which presently closed.
“He is dying—yes!” said the mother, looking at Jocelyn.
Oscard knew more of this matter than any of them. He went forward and leant over the table. Marie removed a piece of salted bacon that was lying on the table near to the pillow. With the unconsciousness of long habit she swept some crumbs away with her apron. Oscard was trying to find the pulse in the tiny wrist, but there was not much to find.
“I am afraid he is very ill,” he said.
At this moment the kettle boiled over, and Marie had to turn away to attend to her duties.
When she came back Oscard was looking, not at Nestorius, but at her.
“We spent four days at Msala,” he said, in a tone that meant that he had more to tell her.
“Yes?”
“The place is in ruins, as you know.”
She nodded with a peculiar little twist of the lips as if he were hurting her.
“And I am afraid I have some bad news for you. Victor Durnovo, your master—”
“Yes—tell quickly!”
“He is dead. We buried him at Msala. He died in my arms.”
At this moment Joseph gave a little gasp and turned away to the window, where he stood with his broad back turned towards them. Maurice Gordon, as white as death, was leaning against the table. He quite forgot himself. His lips were apart, his jaw had dropped; he was hanging breathlessly on Guy Oscard's next word.
“He died of the sleeping sickness,” said Oscard. “We had come down to Msala before him—Joseph and I. I broke up the partnership, and we left him in possession of the Simiacine Plateau. But his men turned against him. For some reason his authority over them failed. He was obliged to make a dash for Msala, and he reached it, but the sickness was upon him.”
Maurice Gordon drew a sharp sigh of relief which was almost a sob. Marie was standing with her two hands on the pillow where Nestorius lay. Her deep eyes were fixed on the Englishman's sunburnt, strongly gentle face.
“Did he send a message for me—yes?” she said softly.
“No,” answered Oscard. “He—there was no time.”
Joseph at the window had turned half round.
“He was my husband,” said Marie in her clear, deep tones; “the father of this little one, which you call Nestorius.”
Oscard bowed his head without surprise. Jocelyn was standing still as a statue, with her hand on the dying infant's cheek. No one dared to look at her.
“It is all right,” said Marie bluntly. “We were married at Sierra Leone by the English chaplain. My father, who is dead, kept a hotel at Sierra Leone, and he knew the ways of the—half-castes. He said that the Protestant Church at Sierra Leone was good enough for him, and we were married there. And then Victor brought me away from my people to this place and to Msala. Then he got tired of me—he cared no more. He said I was ugly.”
She pronounced it “ogly,” and seemed to think that the story finished there. At all events, she added nothing to it. But Joseph thought fit to contribute a post scriptum.
“You'd better tell 'em, mistress,” he said, “that he tried to starve yer and them kids—that he wanted to leave yer at Msala to be massacred by the tribes, only Mr. Oscard sent yer down 'ere. You'd better tell 'em that.”
“No,” she replied, with a faint smile. “No, because he was my husband.”
Guy Oscard was looking very hard at Joseph, and, catching his eye, made a little gesture commanding silence. He did not want him to say too much.
Joseph turned away again to the window, and stood thus, apart, till the end.
“I have no doubt,” said Oscard to Marie, “that he would have sent some message to you had he been able; but he was very ill—he was dying—when he reached Msala. It was wonderful that he got there at all. We did what we could for him, but it was hopeless.”
Marie raised her shoulders with her pathetic gesture of resignation.
“The sleeping sickness,” she said, “what will you? There is no remedy. He always said he would die of that. He feared it.”
In the greater sorrow she seemed to have forgotten her child, who was staring open-eyed at the ceiling. The two others—the boy and girl—were playing on the doorstep with some unconsidered trifles from the dust-heap—after the manner of children all the world over.
“He was not a good man,” said Marie, turning to Jocelyn, as if she alone of all present would understand. “He was not a good husband, but—” she shrugged her shoulders with one of her patient, shadowy smiles—“it makes so little difference—yes?”
Jocelyn said nothing. None of them had aught to say to her. For each in that room could lay a separate sin at Victor Durnovo's door. He was gone beyond the reach of human justice to the Higher Court where the Extenuating Circumstance is fully understood. The generosity of that silence was infectious, and they told her nothing. Had they spoken she would perforce have believed them; but then, as she herself said, it would have made “so little difference.” So Victor Durnovo leaves these pages, and all we can do is to remember the writing on the ground. Who amongst us dares to withhold the Extenuating Circumstance? Who is ready to leave this world without that crutch to lean upon? Given a mixed blood—evil black with evil white and what can the result be but evil? Given the climate of Western Africa and the mental irritation thereof, added to a lack of education and the natural vice inherent in man, and you have—Victor Durnovo.
Nestorius—the shameless—stretched out his little bare limbs and turned half over on his side. He looked from one face to the other with the grave wonder that was his. He had never been taken much notice of. His short walks in life had been very near the ground, where trifles look very large, and from whence those larger stumbling-blocks which occupy our attention are quite invisible. He had been the third—the solitary third child who usually makes his own interest in life, and is left by or leaves the rest of his family.
It was not quite clear to him why he was the centre of so much attention. His mind did not run to the comprehension of the fact that he was the wearer of borrowed plumes—the sable plumes of King Death.
He had always wanted to get on to the kitchen table—there was much there that interested him, and supplied him with food for thought. He had risked his life on more than one occasion in attempts to scale that height with the assistance of a saucepan that turned over and poured culinary delicacies on his toes, or perhaps a sleeping cat that got up and walked away much annoyed. And now that he was at last at this dizzy height he was sorry to find that he was too tired to crawl about and explore the vast possibilities of it. He was rather too tired to convey his forefinger to his mouth, and was forced to work out mental problems without that aid to thought.
Presently his eyes fell on Guy Oscard's face, and again his own small features expanded into a smile.
“Bad case!” he said, and, turning over, he nestled down into the pillow, and he had the answer to the many questions that puzzled his small brain.