With Edged Tools Part 51

The wheels he heard had stopped--perhaps it was Lady Cantourne. But he did not think so. She drove behind a pair, and this was not a pair. It was wonderful how well he could detect the difference, considering the age of his ears.

A few minutes later the butler silently threw open the door, and Jack stood in the threshold. Sir John Meredith's son had been given back to him from the gates of death.

The son, like the father, was in immaculate evening dress. There was a very subtle cynicism in the thought of turning aside on such a return as this to dress--to tie a careful white tie and brush imperceptibly ruffled hair.

There was a little pause, and the two tall men stood, half-bowing with a marvellous similarity of att.i.tude, gazing steadily into each other's eyes. And one cannot help wondering whether it was a mere accident that Jack Meredith stood motionless on the threshold until his father said:

"Come in."

"Graves," he continued to the butler, with that pride of keeping up before all the world which was his, "bring up coffee. You will take coffee?" to his son while they shook hands.

"Thanks, yes."

The butler closed the door behind him. Sir John was holding on to the back of his high chair in rather a constrained way--almost as if he were suffering pain. They looked at each other again, and there was a resemblance in the very manner of raising the eyelid. There was a stronger resemblance in the grim waiting silence which neither of them would break.

At last Jack spoke, approaching the fire and looking into it.

"You must excuse my taking you by surprise at this--unusual hour." He turned; saw the lamp, the book, and the eyegla.s.ses--more especially the eyegla.s.ses, which seemed to break the train of his thoughts. "I only landed at Liverpool this afternoon," he went on, with hopeless politeness. "I did not trouble you with a telegram, knowing that you object to them."

The old man bowed gravely.

"I am always glad to see you," he said suavely. "Will you not sit down?"

And they had begun wrong. It is probable that neither of them had intended this. Both had probably dreamed of a very different meeting.

But both alike had counted without that stubborn pride which will rise up at the wrong time and in the wrong place--the pride which Jack Meredith had inherited by blood and teaching from his father.

"I suppose you have dined," said Sir John, when they were seated, "or may I offer you something?"

"Thanks, I dined on the way up--in a twilit refreshment-room, with one waiter and a number of attendant black-beetles."

Things were going worse and worse.

Sir John smiled, and he was still smiling when the man brought in coffee.

"Yes," he said conversationally, "for speed combined with discomfort I suppose we can hold up heads against any country. Seeing that you are dressed, I supposed that you had dined in town."

"No. I drove straight to my rooms, and kept the cab while I dressed."

What an important matter this dressing seemed to be! And there were fifteen months behind it--fifteen months which had aged one of them and sobered the other.

Jack was sitting forward in his chair with his immaculate dress-shoes on the fender--his knees apart, his elbows resting on them, his eyes still fixed on the fire. Sir John looked keenly at him beneath his frowning, lashless lids. He saw the few grey hairs over Jack's ears, the suggested wrinkles, the drawn lines about his mouth.

"You have been ill?" he said.

Joseph's letter was locked away in the top drawer of his writing-table.

"Yes, I had rather a bad time--a serious illness. My man nursed me through it, however, with marked success; and--the Gordons, with whom I was staying, were very kind."

"I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Gordon."

Jack's face was steady--suavely impenetrable.

Sir John moved a little, and set his empty cup upon the table.

"A charming girl," he added.

"Yes."

There was a little pause.

"You are fortunate in that man of yours," Sir John said. "A first-cla.s.s man."

"Yes--he saved my life."

Sir John blinked, and for the first time his fingers went to his mouth, as if his lips had suddenly got beyond his control.

"If I may suggest it," he said rather indistinctly, "I think it would be well if we signified our appreciation of his devotion in some substantial way. We might well do something between us."

He paused and threw back his shoulders.

"I should like to give him some substantial token of my--grat.i.tude."

Sir John was nothing if not just.

"Thank you," answered Jack quietly. He turned his head a little, and glanced, not at his father, but in his direction. "He will appreciate it, I know."

"I should like to see him to-morrow."

Jack winced, as if he had made a mistake.

"He is not in England," he explained. "I left him behind me in Africa.

He has gone back to the Simiacine Plateau."

The old man's face dropped rather piteously.

"I am sorry," he said, with one of the sudden relapses into old age that Lady Cantourne dreaded. "I may not have a chance of seeing him to thank him personally. A good servant is so rare nowadays. These modern democrats seem to think that it is a n.o.bler thing to be a bad servant than a good one. As if we were not all servants!"

He was thirsting for details. There were a thousand questions in his heart, but not one on his lips.

"Will you have the kindness to remember my desire," he went on suavely, "when you are settling up with your man?"

"Thank you," replied Jack; "I am much obliged to you."

"And in the meantime as you are without a servant you may as well make use of mine. One of my men--Henry--who is too stupid to get into mischief--a great recommendation by the way--understands his business. I will ring and have him sent over to your rooms at once."

He did so, and they sat in silence until the butler had come and gone.

"We have been very successful with the Simiacine--our scheme," said Jack suddenly.