The evening had turned out so very differently from what he had expected that Durnovo was a little off his balance. Things were so sociable and pleasant in comparison with the habitual loneliness of his life. The fire crackled so cheerily, the moon shone down on the river so grandly, the subdued chatter of the boatmen imparted such a feeling of safety and comfort to the scene, that he gave way to that impulse of expansiveness which ever lurks in West Indian blood.
"I say," he said, "when you told me that you wanted to make money, were you in earnest?"
"In the deadliest earnest," replied Jack Meredith, in the half-mocking tone which he never wholly learnt to lay aside.
"Then I think I can put you in the way of it. Oh, I know it seems a bit premature--not known you long enough, and all that. But in this country we don"t hold much by the formalities. I like you. I liked the look of you when you got out of that boat--so d.a.m.ned cool and self-possessed.
You"re the right sort, Mr. Meredith."
"Possibly--for some things. For sitting about and smoking first-cla.s.s cigars and thinking second-cla.s.s thoughts I am exactly the right sort.
But for making money, for hard work and steady work, I am afraid, Mr.
Durnovo, that I am distinctly the wrong sort."
"Now you"re chaffing again. Do you always chaff?"
"Mostly; it lubricates things, doesn"t it?"
There was a little pause. Durnovo looked round as if to make sure that Joseph and the boatmen were out of earshot.
"Can you keep a secret?" he asked suddenly.
Jack Meredith turned and looked at the questioner with a smile. His hat had slipped to the back of his head, the light of the great yellow moon fell full upon his clean-cut, sphinx-like face. The eyes alone seemed living.
"Yes! I can do that."
He was only amused, and the words were spoken half-mockingly; but his face said more than his lips. It said that even in chaff this was no vain boast that he was uttering. Even before he had set foot on African soil he had been asked to keep so many secrets of a commercial nature.
So many had begun by imparting half a secret, to pa.s.s on in due course to the statement that only money was required, say, a thousand pounds.
And, in the meantime, twenty-five would be very useful, and, if not that, well, ten shillings. Jack Meredith had met all that before.
But there was something different about Durnovo. He was not suitably got up. Your bar-room prospective millionaire is usually a jolly fellow, quite prepared to quench any man"s thirst for liquor or information so long as credit and credulity will last. There was nothing jolly or sanguine about Durnovo. Beneath his broad-brimmed hat his dark eyes flashed in a fierce excitement. His hand was unsteady. He had allowed the excellent cigar to go out. The man was full of quinine and fever, in deadly earnest.
"I can see you"re a gentleman," he said; "I"ll trust you. I want a man to join me in making a fortune. I have got my hand on it at last. But I"m afraid of this country. I"m getting shaky; look at that hand. I"ve been looking for it too long. I take you into my confidence, the first comer, you"ll think. But there are not many men like you in this country, and I"m beastly afraid of dying. I"m in a d.a.m.ned funk. I want to get out of this for a bit, but I dare not leave until I set things going."
"Take your time," said Meredith, quietly and soothingly; "light that cigar again and lie down. There is no hurry."
Durnovo obeyed him meekly.
"Tell me," he said, "have you ever heard of Simiacine?"
"I cannot say that I have," replied Jack. "What is it for, brown boots or spasms?"
"It is a drug, the most expensive drug in the market. And they must have it, they cannot do without it, and they cannot find a subst.i.tute. It is the leaf of a shrub, and your hatful is worth a thousand pounds."
"Where is it to be found?" asked Jack Meredith. "I should like some--in a sack."
"Ah, you may laugh now, but you won"t when you hear all about it. The scientific chaps called it Simiacine, because of an old African legend which, like all those things, has a grain of truth in it. The legend is, that the monkeys first found out the properties of the leaf, and it is because they live on it that they are so strong. Do you know that a gorilla"s arm is not half so thick as yours, and yet he would take you and snap your backbone across his knee; he would bend a gun-barrel as you would bend a cane, merely by the turn of his wrist. That is Simiacine. He can hang on to a tree with one leg and tackle a leopard with his bare hands--that"s Simiacine. At home, in England and in Germany, they are only just beginning to find out its properties; it seems that it can bring a man back to life when he is more than half dead. There is no knowing what children that are brought up on it may turn out to be; it may double the power of the human brain--some think it will."
Jack Meredith was leaning forward, watching with a certain sense of fascination the wild, disease-stricken face, listening to the man"s breathless periods. It seemed that the fear of death, which had gotten hold of him, gave Victor Durnovo no time to pause for breath.
"Yes," said the Englishman, "yes, go on."
"There is practically no limit to the demand that there is for it. At present the only way of obtaining it is through the natives, and you know their manner of trading. They send a little packet down from the interior, and it very often takes two months and more to reach the buyer"s hands. The money is sent back the same way, and each man who fingers it keeps a little. The natives find the leaf in the forests by the aid of trained monkeys, and only in very small quant.i.ties. Do you follow me?"
"Yes, I follow you."
Victor Durnovo leant forward until his face was within three inches of Meredith, and the dark wild eyes flashed and glared into the Englishman"s steady glance.
"What," he hissed, "what if I know where Simiacine grows like a weed?
What if I could supply the world with Simiacine at my own price?
Eh--h--h! What of that, Mr. Meredith?"
He threw himself suddenly back and wiped his dripping face. There was a silence, the great African silence that drives educated men mad, and fills the imagination of the poor heathen with wild tales of devils and spirits.
Then Jack Meredith spoke, without moving.
"I"m your man," he said, "with a few more details."
Victor Durnovo was lying back at full length on the hard dry mud, his arms beneath his head. Without altering his position he gave the details, speaking slowly and much more quietly. It seemed as if he spoke the result of long pent-up thought.
"We shall want," he said, "two thousand pounds to start it. For we must have an armed force of our own. We have to penetrate through a cannibal country, of the fiercest devils in Africa. It is a plateau, a little plateau of two square miles, and the n.i.g.g.e.rs think that it is haunted by an evil spirit. When we get there we shall have to hold it by force of arms, and when we send the stuff down to the coast we must have an escort of picked men. The bushes grow up there as thick as gooseberry bushes in a garden at home. With a little cultivation they will yield twice as much as they do now. We shall want another partner. I know a man, a soldierly fellow full of fight, who knows the natives and the country. I will undertake to lead you there, but you will have to take great care of me. You will have to have me carried most of the way. I am weak, devilish weak, and I am afraid of dying; but I know the way there, and no other man can say as much! It is in my head here; it is not written down. It is only in my head, and no one can get it out of there."
"No," said Meredith, in his quiet, refined voice, "no, no one can get it out. Come, let us turn in. To-morrow I will go down the river with you.
I will turn back, and we can talk it over as we go downstream."
CHAPTER VIII. A RECRUIT
Said the Engine from the East, "They who work best talk the least."
It is not, of course, for a poor limited masculine mind to utter heresies regarding the great question of woman"s rights. But as things stand at present, as, in fact, the forenamed rights are to-day situated, women have not found comprehension of the dual life. The dual life is led solely by men, and until women have found out its full compa.s.s and meaning, they can never lead in the world. There is the public life and the private; and the men who are most successful in the former are the most exclusive in the latter. Women have only learned to lead one life; they must be all public or all private, there is no medium. Those who give up the private life for which Providence destined them, to a.s.sume the public existence to which their own conceit urges them, have their own reward. They taste all the bitterness of fame and never know its sweets, because the bitterness is public and the sweets are private.
Women cannot understand that part of a man"s life which brings him into daily contact with men whom he does not bring home to dinner. One woman does not know another without bringing her in to meals and showing her her new hat. It is merely a matter of custom. Men are in the habit of a.s.sociating in daily, almost hourly, intercourse with others who are never really their friends and are always held at a distance. It is useless attempting to explain it, for we are merely reprimanded for unfriendliness, stiffness, and stupid pride. Soit! Let it go. Some of us, perhaps, know our own business best. And there are, thank Heaven!
amidst a mult.i.tude of female doctors, female professors, female wranglers, a few female women left.
Jack Meredith knew quite well what he was about when he listened with a favourable ear to Durnovo"s scheme. He knew that this man was not a gentleman, but his own position was so a.s.sured that he could afford to a.s.sociate with any one. Here, again, men are safer. A woman is too delicate a social flower to be independent of environments. She takes the tone of her surroundings. It is, one notices, only the ladies who protest that the barmaid married in haste and repented of at leisure can raise herself to her husband"s level. The husband"s friends keep silence, and perhaps, like the mariner"s bird, they meditate all the more.
What Meredith proposed to do was to enter into a partnership with Victor Durnovo, and when the purpose of it was accomplished, to let each man go his way. Such partnerships are entered into every day. Men have carried through a brilliant campaign--a world-affecting scheme--side by side, working with one mind and one heart; and when the result has been attained they drop out of each other"s lives for ever. They are created so, for a very good purpose, no doubt. But sometimes Providence steps in and turns the little point of contact into the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. Providence, it seems--or let us call it Fate--was hovering over that lone African river, where two men, sitting in the stern of a native canoe, took it upon themselves to prearrange their lives.
A month later Victor Durnovo was in London. He left behind him in Africa Jack Meredith, whose capacities for organisation were developing very quickly.
There was plenty of work for each to do. In Africa Meredith had undertaken to get together men and boats, while Durnovo went home to Europe for a threefold purpose. Firstly, a visit to Europe was absolutely necessary for his health, shattered as it was by too long a sojourn in the fever-ridden river beds of the West Coast. Secondly, there were rifles, ammunition, and stores to be purchased and packed in suitable cases. And, lastly, he was to find and enlist the third man, "the soldierly fellow full of fight," who knew the natives and the country.
This, indeed, was his first care on reaching London, and before his eyes and brain were accustomed to the roar of the street life he took a cab to Russell Square, giving the number affixed to the door of a gloomy house in the least frequented corner of the stately quadrangle.
"Is Mr. Guy Oscard at home?" he inquired of the grave man-servant.