With Edged Tools

Sir John Meredith was sitting slightly behind Lady Cantourne, leaning towards her with a somewhat stiffened replica of his former grace. But he was not looking at her--and she k...

Miss Millicent Chyne was vaguely conscious of success--and such a consciousness is apt to make the best of us a trifle elated. It was certainly one of the best balls of the seas...

Having been taught to take all the chances and changes of life with a well-bred calmness of demeanour, Jack Meredith turned the teaching against the instructor. He pursued the c...

Thomas Oscard had written the finest history of an extinct people that had ever been penned; and it has been decreed that he who writes a fine history or paints a fine picture c...

“And what do you intend to do with yourself?” asked Lady Cantourne when she had poured out tea. “You surely do not intend to mope in that dismal house in Russell Square?”

“Curse this country! Curse it--curse it!” The man spoke aloud, but there was no one near to hear. He shook his skinny yellow fist out over the broad river that crept greasily do...

Such was the meeting of Victor Durnovo and Jack Meredith. Two men with absolutely nothing in common--no taste, no past, no kinship--nothing but the future. Such men as Fate love...

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 forena...

Lady Cantourne looked up from her writing-desk with her brightest smile. Sir John Meredith was standing by the open window, leaning against the jamb thereof with a grace that ha...

Those who for their sins have been to Loango will scarcely care to have its beauties recalled to memory. And to such as have not yet visited the spot one can only earnestly reco...

“Ten miles above the camping-ground where we first met,” he had told Meredith, “you will find a village where I have my headquarters. There is quite a respectable house there, w...

The short equatorial twilight was drawing to an end, and all Nature stood in silence, while Night crept up to claim the land where her reign is more autocratic than elsewhere on...

The three men walked up towards the house together. It was a fair-sized house, with a heavy thatched roof that overhung the walls like the crown of a mushroom. The walls were on...

The next morning Jack Meredith was awakened by his servant Joseph before it was fully light. It would appear as if Joseph had taken no means of awakening him, for Meredith awoke...

There is nothing that brings men so close to each other as a common grievance or a common danger. Men who find pleasure in the same game or the same pursuit are drawn together b...

There is no power so subtle and so strong as that of association. We have learnt to associate mustard with beef, and therefore mustard shall be eaten with beef until the day whe...

Victor Durnovo lingered on at Loango. He elaborated and detailed to all interested, and to some whom it did not concern, many excuses for his delay in returning to his expeditio...

“Why did Mr. Durnovo come back?” she repeated; for Jack did not seem to have heard the question. He was drawing forward a cane chair with the leisurely debonnair grace that was...

One of the peculiarities of Africa yet to be explained is the almost supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. Across the whole breadth of this darkest continent a mere b...

Guy Oscard was sitting on the natural terrace in front of Durnovo's house at Msala, and Marie attended to his simple wants with that patient dignity which suggested the recollec...

One morning, three months later, Guy Oscard drew up in line his flying column. He was going back to England with the first consignment of Simiacine. During the twelve weeks that...

Among others, it was a strange thing that Jocelyn felt no surprise at meeting the name of Millicent Chyne on the lips of another man. Women understand these things better than w...

In a few moments a man emerged from a shed of banana-leaves. He was a scraggy man--very lightly clad--and a violent squint handicapped him seriously in the matter of first impre...

Despite his assertion to Lady Cantourne, Guy Oscard stayed on in the gloomy house in Russell Square. He had naturally gone thither on his return from Africa, and during the mont...

Jocelyn had not conveyed to her brother by word or hint the accusation brought against him by Victor Durnovo. But when he returned home it almost seemed as if he were conscious...

“About as bad as they can be, sir. That's how things is.” Joseph set down his master's breakfast on the rough table that stood in front of his tent and looked at Jack Meredith.

Then he made his way forward to walk by the side of his master's litter and encourage the carriers with that mixture of light badinage and heavy swearing which composed his meth...

“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.

A space had with some difficulty been cleared at the upper end of an aristocratic London drawing-room, and with considerable enthusiasm Miss Fitzmannering pranced into the middl...

“By the way, dear,” said Lady Cantourne to her niece the next afternoon, “I have asked a Miss Gordon to come to tea this afternoon. I met her last night at the Fitzmannerings. S...

One afternoon Joseph had his wish. Moreover he had it given to him even as he desired, which does not usually happen. We are given a part, or the whole, so distorted that we fai...

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 dress...

When Jack Meredith said that there was not another man in Africa who could make his way from Loango to the Simiacine Plateau he spoke no more than the truth. There were only fou...

Sir John Meredith was sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair by his library fire. In his young days men did not loll in deep chairs, with their knees higher than their heads...

Truth to tell, there were not many things in life that had power to frighten her ladyship very much. Hers had been a prosperous life as prosperity is reckoned. She had married a...

“MY DEAR SIR JOHN,--It is useless my pretending to ignore your views respecting Jack's marriage to Millicent; and I therefore take up my pen with regret to inform you that the t...

For one or two days after the public announcement of her engagement, Millicent was not quite free from care. She rather dreaded the posts. It was not that she feared one letter...

There are some places in the world where a curse seems to brood in the atmosphere. Msala was one of these. Perhaps these places are accursed by the deeds that have been done the...

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 fat...

As through an opera runs the rhythm of one dominant air, so through men's lives there rings a dominant note, soft in youth, strong in manhood, and soft again in old age. But it...

Jack Meredith and Millicent were at the fireplace. There was a heap of disordered paper and string upon the table, and a few wedding presents standing in the midst of their pack...

They called a cab, and singularly enough they drove all the way to Russell Square without speaking. These two men had worked together for many months, and men who have a daily t...

The butler, having a vivid recollection of an occasion when Lady Cantourne was shown into a drawing-room where there were no flowers, made his preparations accordingly. The flow...

“MY DEAR JACK,--At the risk of being considered an interfering old woman, I write to ask you whether you are not soon coming to England again. As you are aware, your father and...

Thus spoke Joseph to his master one afternoon in March, not so many years ago. They were on board the steamer Bogamayo, which good vessel was pounding down the West Coast of Afr...