He
attracted and held Jack's attention by a certain open-air manliness
which was in keeping with the situation and with his life.
Sportsmen, explorers and wanderers were not new to Jack; for
nowadays one may never know what manner of man is inside a faultless
dress-suit. It is an age of disappearing, via Charing Cross station
in a first-class carriage, to a life of backwooding, living from
hand to mouth, starving in desert, prairie, pampas or Arctic wild,
with, all the while, a big balance at Cox's. And most of us come
back again and put on the dress-suit and the white tie with a
certain sense of restfulness and comfort.
Jack Meredith had known many such. He had, in a small way, done the
same himself. But he had never met one of the men who do not go
home--who possess no dress-coat and no use for it--whose business it
is to go about with a rifle in one hand and their life in the other-
-who risk their lives because it is their trade and not their
pleasure.
Durnovo could not understand the new-comer at all. He saw at once
that this was one of those British aristocrats who do strange things
in a very strange way. In a degree Meredith reminded him of Maurice
Gordon, the man whose letter of introduction was at that moment
serving to light the camp fire. But it was Maurice Gordon without
that semi-sensual weakness of purpose which made him the boon
companion of Tom, Dick, or Harry, provided that one of those was
only with him long enough.
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