"You need not have made an enemy of him," said Jack, and he saved Maurice Gordon by speaking quickly--saved him from making a confession which could hardly have failed to alter both their lives.
"It will not be very difficult," he went on; "all she wants is your pa.s.sive resistance. She does not want you to help HIM--do you see? She can do the rest. Girls can manage these things better than we think, if they want to. The difficulty usually arises from the fact that they are not always quite sure that they do want to. Go and beg her pardon. It will be all right."
So Maurice Gordon went away also, leaving Jack Meredith alone in the drawing-room with his own thoughts.
CHAPTER x.x.xII. AN ENVOY
What we love perfectly For its own sake we love,...
... That which is best for it is best for us.
"Feel like gettin" up to breakfast, do you, sir?" said Joseph to his master a few days later. "Well, I am glad. Glad ain"t quite the word, though!"
And he proceeded to perform the duties attendant on his master"s wardrobe with a wise, deep-seated shake of the head. While setting the shaving necessaries in order on the dressing-table, he went further--he winked gravely at himself in the looking-gla.s.s.
"You"ve made wonderful progress the last few days, sir," he remarked. "I always told Missis Marie that it would do you a lot of good to have Mr.
Gordon to heart you up with his cheery ways--and Miss Gordon too, sir."
"Yes, but they would not have been much good without all your care before they came. I had turned the corner a week ago--I felt it myself."
Joseph grinned--an honest, open grin of self-satisfaction. He was not one of those persons who like their praise bestowed with subtlety.
"Wonderful!" he repeated to himself as he went to the well in the garden for his master"s bath-water. "Wonderful! but I don"t understand things--not bein" a marryin" man."
During the last few days Jack"s progress had been rapid enough even to satisfy Joseph. The doctor expressed himself fully rea.s.sured, and even spoke of returning no more. But he repeated his wish that Jack should leave for England without delay.
"He is quite strong enough to be moved now," he finished by saying.
"There is no reason for further delay."
"No," answered Jocelyn, to whom the order was spoken. "No--none. We will see that he goes by the next boat."
The doctor paused. He was a young man who took a strong--perhaps too strong--a personal interest in his patients. Jocelyn had walked with him as far as the gate, with only a parasol to protect her from the evening sun. They were old friends. The doctor"s wife was one of Jocelyn"s closest friends on the Coast.
"Do you know anything about Meredith"s future movements?" he asked.
"Does he intend to come out here again?"
"I could not tell you. I do not think they have settled yet. But I think that when he gets home he will probably stay there."
"Best thing he can do--best thing he can do. It will never do for him to risk getting another taste of malaria--tell him so, will you? Good-bye."
"Yes, I will tell him."
And Jocelyn Gordon walked slowly back to tell the man she loved that he must go away from her and never come back. The last few days had been days of complete happiness. There is no doubt that women have the power of enjoying the present to a greater degree than men. They can live in the bliss of the present moment with eyes continually averted from the curtain of the near future which falls across that bliss and cuts it off. Men allow the presence of the curtain to mar the present brightness.
These days had been happier for Jocelyn than for Jack, because she was conscious of the fulness of every moment, while he was merely rejoicing in comfort after hardship, in pleasant society after loneliness. Even with the knowledge that it could not last, that beyond the near future lay a whole lifetime of complete solitude and that greatest of all miseries, the desire of an obvious impossibility--even with this she was happier than he; because she loved him and she saw him daily getting stronger; because their relative positions brought out the best and the least romantic part of a woman"s love--the subtle maternity of it. There is a fine romance in carrying our lady"s kerchief in an inner pocket, but there is something higher and greater and much more durable in the darning of a sock; for within the handkerchief there is chiefly gratified vanity, while within the sock there is one of those small infantile boots which have but little meaning for us.
Jocelyn entered the drawing-room with a smile.
"He is very pleased," she said. "He does not seem to want to see you any more, and he told me to be inhospitable."
"As how?"
"He told me to turn you out. You are to leave by the next steamer."
He felt a sudden unaccountable pang of disappointment at her smiling eyes.
"This is no joking matter," he said half seriously. "Am I really as well as that?"
"Yes."
"The worst of it is that you seem rather pleased."
"I am--at the thought that you are so much better." She paused and turned quite away, busying herself with a pile of books and magazines.
"The other," she went on too indifferently, "was unfortunately to be foreseen. It is the necessary drawback."
He rose suddenly and walked to the window.
"The grim old necessary drawback," he said, without looking towards her.
There was a silence of some duration. Neither of them seemed to be able to find a method of breaking it without awkwardness. It was she who spoke at last.
"He also said," she observed in a practical way, "that you must not come out to Africa again."
He turned as if he had been stung.
"Did he make use of that particular word?" he asked.
"Which particular word?"
"Must."
Jocelyn had not foreseen the possibility that the doctor was merely repeating to her what he had told Jack on a previous visit.
"No," she answered. "I think he said "better not.""
"And you make it into "must.""
She laughed, with a sudden light-heartedness which remained unexplained.
"Because I know you both," she answered. "For him "better not" stands for "must." With you "better not" means "doesn"t matter.""
""Better not" is so weak that if one pits duty against it it collapses.
I cannot leave Oscard in the lurch, especially after his prompt action in coming to my relief."
"Yes," she replied guardedly. "I like Mr. Oscard"s way of doing things."