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By the way, Stanninghame, you're the sort a fellow can tell anything to; you don't start a lot of cheap blatant chaff as some chappies do when you want them to talk sound sense." There was a great deal underlying the remark, also the tone.
The suggestion that Holmes should accompany the expedition was not received with enthusiasm by Hazon, neither did it meet with immediate and decisive repudiation. Characteristically, Hazon proceeded to argue out the matter pro and con. "He doesn't know the real nature of our business, Stanninghame? no, of course not. Thinks it's only a shooting trip? good.
Some there were who ardently wished that Johannesburg itself had gone thither, before they had heard of its unlucky and delusive existence, and among this daily increasing number might now be reckoned Laurence Stanninghame. He, infected with the gambler's fever of speculation, had not thought it worth while to "hedge"; it was to be all or nothing. And now, as things turned out, it was nothing.
Was there no method of taking him with them for a month or two's shoot in the bush-veldt, and sending him back by some returning expedition before the serious part of the undertaking was entered upon? He decided to sound Hazon upon the matter, yet of this resolve he said nothing now to Holmes. The latter broke the silence. "By Jove, Stanninghame, I envy you!" he said.
The other stared for a moment, then, as though he were bringing it out with an effort, he burst forth: "Oh, well, hang it all, Stanninghame, I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. The fact is I've I've got the chuck." Laurence laughed inwardly. He understood. "Why, I thought you were bringing it on all right," he said.
"Look now, Mr. Stanninghame, I'm going to take you to task," she went on. "Why won't you ever help us in getting up anything?" "But I do help you." "You do? Why, there was that concert the other night you refused when you were asked to take part in it." "But I did take part in it as audience. You must have an audience, you know. It's essential to the performance."
Who knew what latent capacities for being made an ass of might not develop themselves within him. He felt really alarmed. Let it not be supposed that any scruple on the ground of conventionality, obligation, what not, entered into his misgivings. For Laurence Stanninghame had been clean disillusioned all along the line. He hadn't the shred of an illusion left.
Laurence Stanninghame, gazing upon her, realized with a dull, dead ache at the heart, that all his self-boasted strength was but the veriest weakness. And now he had come to say farewell. "I can hardly realize that we shall not see each other again," Lilith said, after a transparently feeble attempt or two on the part of both of them to talk on indifferent subjects. "When do you expect to return?
Just now she was extolling the superabundant virtues of somebody else's husband, with a tone and meaning which were intended to convey to Laurence Stanninghame that she wished to Heaven one-twentieth part of them was vested in hers. He was accustomed to being thus talked at. He ought to be, seeing he had known about thirteen years of it, on and off.
"Look at your type of success, your self-made man, swelling out of his white waistcoat in snug self-complacency, your pattern British merchant, your millionaire financier, what is he but a slave-dealer, a slave-driver, a blood-sucker. What has become of your little all, swamped in those precious Rand companies, Stanninghame?
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