Trent rose up with flashing eyes. Da Souza shrank back from his outstretched hands. The two men stood facing one another. Da Souza was afraid, but the ugly look of determination remained upon his white face. Trent felt dimly that there was something which must be explained between them. There had been hints of this sort before from Da Souza. It was time the whole thing was cleared up. The lion was ready to throw aside the jackal.
“I give you thirty seconds,” he said, “to clear out. If you haven't come to your senses then, you'll be sorry for it.”
“Thirty seconds is not long enough,” Da Souza answered, “for me to tell you why I decline to go. Better listen to me quietly, my friend. It will be best for you. Afterwards you will admit it.”
“Go ahead,” Trent said, “I'm anxious to hear what you've got to say. Only look here! I'm a bit short-tempered this morning, and I shouldn't advise you to play with your words!”
“This is no play at all,” Da Souza remarked, with a sneer. “I ask you to remember, my friend, our first meeting.”
Trent nodded.
“Never likely to forget it,” he answered.
“I came down from Elmina to deal with you,” Da Souza continued. “I had made money trading in Ashanti for palm-oil and mahogany. I had money to invest—and you needed it. You had land, a concession to work gold-mines, and build a road to the coast. It was speculative, but we did business. I came with you to England. I found more money.”
“You made your fortune,” Trent said drily. “I had to have the money, and you ground a share out of me which is worth a quarter of a million to you!”
“Perhaps it is,” Da Souza answered, “perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. Perhaps, instead of being a millionaire, you yourself are a swindler and an adventurer!”
“If you don't speak out in half a moment,” Trent said in a low tone, “I'll twist the tongue out of your head.”
“I am speaking out,” Da Souza answered. “It is an ugly thing I have to say, but you must control yourself.”
The little black eyes were like the eyes of a snake. He was showing his teeth. He forgot to be afraid.
“You had a partner,” he said. “The concession was made out to him together with yourself.”
“He died,” Trent answered shortly. “I took over the lot by arrangement.”
“A very nice arrangement,” Da Souza drawled with a devilish smile. “He is old and weak. You were with him up at Bekwando where there are no white men—no one to watch you. You gave him brandy to drink—you watch the fever come, and you write on the concession if one should die all goes to the survivor. And you gave him brandy in the bush where the fever is, and—behold you return alone! When people know this they will say, 'Oh yes, it is the way millionaires are made.'”
He stopped, out of breath, for the veins were standing out upon his forehead, and he remembered what the English doctor at Cape Coast Castle had told him. So he was silent for a moment, wiping the perspiration away and struggling against the fear which was turning the blood to ice in his veins. For Trent's face was not pleasant to look upon.
“Anything else?”
Da Souza pulled himself together. “Yes,” he said; “what I have said is as nothing. It is scandalous, and it would make talk, but it is nothing. There is something else.”
“Well?”
“You had a partner whom you deserted.”
“It is a lie! I carried him on my back for twenty hours with a pack of yelling niggers behind. We were lost, and I myself was nigh upon a dead man. Who would have cumbered himself with a corpse? Curse you and your vile hints, you mongrel, you hanger-on, you scurrilous beast! Out, and spread your stories, before my fingers get on your throat! Out!”
Da Souza slunk away before the fire in Trent's eyes, but he had no idea of going. He stood in safety near the door, and as he leaned forward, speaking now in a hoarse whisper, he reminded Trent momentarily of one of those hideous fetish gods in the sacred grove at Bekwando.
“Your partner was no corpse when you left him,” he hissed out. “You were a fool and a bungler not to make sure of it. The natives from Bekwando found him and carried him bound to the King, and your English explorer, Captain Francis, rescued him. He's alive now!”
Trent stood for a moment like a man turned to stone. Alive! Monty alive! The impossibility of the thing came like a flash of relief to him. The man was surely on the threshold of death when he had left him, and the age of miracles was past.
“You're talking like a fool, Da Souza. Do you mean to take me in with an old woman's story like that?”
“There's no old woman's story about what I've told you,” Da Souza snarled. “The man's alive and I can prove it a dozen times over. You were a fool and a bungler.”
Trent thought of the night when he had crept back into the bush and had found no trace of Monty, and gradually there rose up before him a lurid possibility Da Souza's story was true. The very thought of it worked like madness in his brains. When he spoke he strove hard to steady his voice, and even to himself it sounded like the voice of one speaking a long way off.
“Supposing that this were true,” he said, “what is he doing all this time? Why does he not come and claim his share?”
Da Souza hesitated. He would have liked to have invented another reason, but it was not safe. The truth was best.
“He is half-witted and has lost his memory. He is working now at one of the Basle mission-places near Attra.”
“And why have you not told me this before?”
Da Souza shrugged his shoulders. “It was not necessary,” he said. “Our interests were the same, it was better for you not to know.”
“He remembers nothing, then?”
Da Souza hesitated. “Oom Sam,” he said, “my half-brother, keeps an eye on him. Sometimes he gets restless, he talks, but what matter? He has no money. Soon he must die. He is getting an old man!”
“I shall send for him,” Trent said slowly. “He shall have his share!”
It was the one fear which had kept Da Souza silent. The muscles of his face twitched, and his finger-nails were buried in the flesh of his fat, white hands. Side by side he had worked with Trent for years without being able to form any certain estimate of the man or his character. Many a time he had asked himself what Trent would do if he knew—only the fear of his complete ignorance of the man had kept him silent all these years. Now the crisis had come! He had spoken! It might mean ruin.
“Send for him?” Da Souza said. “Why? His memory has gone—save for occasional fits of passion in which he raves at you. What would people say?—that you tried to kill him with brandy, that the clause in the concession was a direct incentive for you to get rid of him, and you left him in the bush only a few miles from Buckomari to be seized by the natives. Besides, how can you pay him half? I know pretty well how you stand. On paper, beyond doubt you are a millionaire; but what if all claims were suddenly presented against you to be paid in sovereigns? I tell you this, my friend, Mr. Scarlett Trent, and I am a man of experience and I know. To-day in the City it is true that you could raise a million pounds in cash, but let me whisper a word, one little word, and you would be hard pressed to raise a thousand. It is true there is the Syndicate, that great scheme of yours yesterday from which you were so careful to exclude me—you are to get great monies from them in cash. Bah! don't you see that Monty's existence breaks up that Syndicate—smashes it into tiny atoms, for you have sold what was not yours to sell, and they do not pay for that, eh? They call it fraud!”
He paused, out of breath, and Trent remained silent; he knew very well that he was face to face with a great crisis. Of all things this was the most fatal which could have happened to him. Monty alive! He remembered the old man's passionate cry for life, for pleasure, to taste once more, for however short a time, the joys of wealth. Monty alive, penniless, half-witted, the servant of a few ill-paid missionaries, toiling all day for a living, perhaps fishing with the natives or digging, a slave still, without hope or understanding, with the end of his days well in view! Surely it were better to risk all things, to have him back at any cost? Then a thought more terrible yet than any rose up before him like a spectre, there was a sudden catch at his heart-strings, he was cold with fear. What would she think of the man who deserted his partner, an old man, while life was yet in him, and safety close at hand? Was it possible that he could ever escape the everlasting stigma of cowardice—ay, and before him in great red letters he saw written in the air that fatal clause in the agreement, to which she and all others would point with bitter scorn, indubitable, overwhelming evidence against him. He gasped for breath and walked restlessly up and down the room. Other thoughts came crowding in upon him. He was conscious of a new element in himself. The last few years had left their mark upon him. With the handling of great sums of money and the acquisition of wealth had grown something of the financier's fever. He had become a power, solidly and steadfastly he had hewn his way into a little circle whose fascination had begun to tell in his blood. Was he to fall without a struggle from amongst the high places, to be stripped of his wealth, shunned as a man who was morally, if not in fact, a murderer, to be looked upon with never-ending scorn by the woman whose picture for years had been a religion to him, and whose appearance only a few hours ago had been the most inspiring thing which had entered into his life? He looked across the lawn into the pine grove with steadfast eyes and knitted brows, and Da Souza watched him, ghastly and nervous. At least he must have time to decide!
“If you send for him,” Da Souza said slowly, “you will be absolutely ruined. It will be a triumph for those whom you have made jealous, who have measured their wits with yours and gone under. Oh! but the newspapers will enjoy it—that is very certain. Our latest millionaire, his rise and fall! Cannot you see it in the placards? And for what? To give wealth to an old man long past the enjoyment of it—ay, imbecile already! You will not be a madman, Trent?”
Trent winced perceptibly. Da Souza saw it and rejoiced. There was another awkward silence. Trent lit a cigar and puffed furiously at it.
“I will think it over, at least,” he said in a low tone. “Bring back your wife and daughter, and leave me alone for a while.”
“I knew,” Da Souza murmured, “that my friend would be reasonable.”
“And the young ladies?”
“Send them to—”
“I will send them back to where they came from,” Da Souza interrupted blandly.
It is probable that Mrs. Da Souza, excellent wife and mother though she had proved herself to be, had never admired her husband more than when, followed by the malevolent glances of Miss Montressor and her friend, she, with her daughter and Da Souza, re-entered the gates of the Lodge. The young ladies had announced their intention of sitting in the fly until they were allowed speech with their late host; to which he had replied that they were welcome to sit there until doomsday so long as they remained outside his gates. Mr. Da Souza lingered for a moment behind and laid his finger upon his nose.
“It ain't no use, my dears,” he whispered confidentially. “He's fairly got the hump. Between you and me he'd give a bit not to have us, but me and him being old friends—you see, we know a bit about one another.”
“Oh, that's it, is it?” Miss Montressor remarked, with a toss of her head. “Well, you and your wife and your little chit of a daughter are welcome to him so far as we are concerned, aren't they, Flossie?”
“Well, I should say so,” agreed the young lady, who rather affected Americanisms.
Da Souza stroked his little imperial, and winked solemnly.
“You are young ladies of spirit,” he declared. “Now—”
“Hiram!”
“I am coming, my dear,” he called over his shoulder. “One word more, my charming young friends! No. 7, Racket's Court, City, is my address. Look in sometime when you're that way, and we'll have a bit of lunch together, and just at present take my advice. Get back to London and write him from there. He is not in a good humour at present.”
“We are much obliged, Mr. Da Souza,” the young lady answered loftily. “As we have engagements in London this afternoon, we may as well go now—eh, Flossie?”
“Right along,” answered the young lady, “I'm with you, but as to writing Mr. Trent, you can tell him from me, Mr. Da Souza, that we want to have nothing more to do with him. A fellow that can treat ladies as he has treated us is no gentleman. You can tell him that. He's an ignorant, common fellow, and for my part I despise him.”
“Same here,” echoed Miss Montressor, heartily. “We ain't used to associate with such as him!”
“Hiram!”
Mr. Da Souza raised his hat and bowed; the ladies were tolerably gracious and the fly drove off. Whereupon Mr. Da Souza followed his wife and daughter along the drive and caught them up upon the doorstep. With mingled feelings of apprehension and elation he ushered them into the morning-room where Trent was standing looking out of the window with his hands behind him. At their entrance he did not at once turn round. Mr. Da Souza coughed apologetically.
“Here we are, my friend,” he remarked. “The ladies are anxious to wish you good morning.”
Trent faced them with a sudden gesture of impatience. He seemed on the point of an angry exclamation, when his eyes met Julie Da Souza's. He held his breath for a moment and was silent. Her face was scarlet with shame, and her lips were trembling. For her sake Trent restrained himself.
“Glad to see you back again, Julie,” he said, ignoring her mother's outstretched hand and beaming smile of welcome. “Going to be a hot day, I think. You must get out in the hay-field. Order what breakfast you please, Da Souza,” he continued on his way to the door; “you must be hungry—after such an early start!”
Mrs. Da Souza sat down heavily and rang the bell.
“He was a little cool,” she remarked, “but that was to be expected. Did you observe the notice he took of Julie? Dear child!”
Da Souza rubbed his hands and nodded meaningly. The girl, who, between the two, was miserable enough, sat down with a little sob. Her mother looked at her in amazement.
“My Julie,” she exclaimed, “my dear child! You see, Hiram, she is faint! She is overcome!”
The child, she was very little more, broke out at last in speech, passionately, yet with a miserable fore-knowledge of the ineffectiveness of anything she might say.
“It is horrible,” she cried, “it is maddening! Why do we do it? Are we paupers or adventurers? Oh! let me go away! I am ashamed to stay in this house!”
Her father, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and his legs far apart, looked at her in blank and speechless amazement; her mother, with more consideration but equal lack of sympathy, patted her gently on the back of her hand.
“Silly Julie,” she murmured, “what is there that is horrible, little one?”
The dark eyes blazed with scorn, the delicately curved lips shook.
“Why, the way we thrust ourselves upon this man is horrible!” she cried. “Can you not see that we are not welcome, that he wishes us gone?”
Da Souza smiled in a superior manner; the smile of a man who, if only he would, could explain all things. He patted his daughter on the head with a touch which was meant to be playful.
“My little one,” he said, “you are mistaken! Leave these matters to those who are older and wiser than you. It is but just now that my good friend said to me, 'Da Souza,' he say, 'I will not have you take your little daughter away!' Oh, we shall see! We shall see!”
Julie's tears crept through the fingers closely pressed over her eyes.
“I do not believe it,” she sobbed. “He has scarcely looked at me all the time, and I do not want him to. He despises us all—and I don't blame him. It is horrid!”
Mrs. Da Souza, with a smile which was meant to be arch, had something to say, but the arrival of breakfast broke up for a while the conversation. Her husband, whom Nature had blessed with a hearty appetite at all times, was this morning after his triumph almost disposed to be boisterous. He praised the cooking, chaffed the servants to their infinite disgust, and continually urged his wife and daughter to keep pace with him in his onslaught upon the various dishes which were placed before him. Before the meal was over Julie had escaped from the table crying softly. Mr. Da Souza's face darkened as he looked up at the sound of her movement, only to see her skirt vanishing through the door.
“Shall you have trouble with her, my dear?” he asked his wife anxiously.
That estimable lady shook her head with a placid smile. “Julie is so sensitive,” she muttered, “but she is not disobedient. When the time comes I can make her mind.”
“But the time has come!” Da Souza exclaimed. “It is here now, and Julie is sulky. She will have red eyes and she is not gay! She will not attract him. You must speak with her, my dear.”
“I will go now—this instant,” she answered, rising. “But, Hiram, there is one thing I would much like to know.”
“Ugh! You women! You are always like that! There is so much that you want to know!”
“Most women, Hiram—not me! Do I ever seek to know your secrets? But this time—yes, it would be wiser to tell me a little!”
“Well?”
“This Mr. Trent, he asked us here, but it is plain that our company is not pleasant to him. He does his best to get rid of us—he succeeds—he plans that we shall not return. You see him alone and all that is altered. His little scheme has been in vain. We remain! He does not look at our Julie. He speaks of marriage with contempt. Yet you say he will marry her—he, a millionaire! What does it mean, Hiram?”
“The man, he is in my power,” Da Souza says in a ponderous and stealthy whisper. “I know something.”
She rose and imprinted a solemn kiss upon his forehead. There was something sacramental about the deliberate caress.
“Hiram,” she said, “you are a wonderful man!”
Scarlett Trent spent the first part of the morning, to which he had been looking forward so eagerly, alone in his study with locked door to keep out all intruders. He had come face to face with the first serious check in his career, and it had been dealt him too by the one man whom, of all his associates, he disliked and despised. In the half-open drawer by his side was the barrel of a loaded revolver. He drew it out, laid it on the table before him, and regarded it with moody, fascinated eyes. If only it could be safely done, if only for one moment he could find himself face to face with Da Souza in Bekwando village, where human life was cheap and the slaying of a man an incident scarcely worth noting in the day's events! The thing was easy enough there—here it was too risky. He thrust the weapon back into the drawer with a sigh of regret, just as Da Souza himself appeared upon the scene.
“You sent for me, Trent,” the latter remarked timidly. “I am quite ready to answer any more questions.”
“Answer this one, then,” was the gruff reply. “In Buckomari village before we left for England I was robbed of a letter. I don't think I need ask you who was the thief.”
“Really, Trent—I—”
“Don't irritate me; I'm in an ill humour for anything of that sort. You stole it! I can see why now! Have you got it still?”
The Jew shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes.”
“Hand it over.”
Da Souza drew a large folding case from his pocket and after searching through it for several moments produced an envelope. The handwriting was shaky and irregular, and so faint that even in the strong, sweet light of the morning sunshine Trent had difficulty in reading it. He tore it open and drew out a half-sheet of coarse paper. It was a message from the man who for long he had counted dead.
“BEKWANDO.
“MY DEAR TRENT,-I have been drinking as usual! Some men see snakes, but I have seen death leering at me from the dark corners of this vile hut, and death is an evil thing to look at when one's life has been evil as mine has been. Never mind! I have sown and I must reap! But, my friend, a last word with you. I have a notion, and more than a notion, that I shall never pass back alive through these pestilential swamps. If you should arrive, as you doubtless will, here is a charge which I lay upon you. That agreement of ours is scarcely a fair one, is it, Trent? When I signed it, I wasn't quite myself. Never mind! I'll trust to you to do what's fair. If the thing turns out a great success, put some sort of a share at any rate to my credit and let my daughter have it. You will find her address from Messrs. Harris and Culsom, Solicitors, Lincoln's Inn Fields. You need only ask them for Monty's daughter and show them this letter. They will understand. I believe you to be a just man, Scarlett Trent, although I know you to be a hard one. Do then as I ask.
“MONTY.”
Da Souza had left the room quietly. Trent read the letter through twice and locked it up in his desk. Then he rose and lit a pipe, knocking out the ashes carefully and filling the bowl with dark but fragrant tobacco. Presently he rang the bell.
“Tell Mr. Da Souza I wish to see him here at once,” he told the servant, and, though the message was a trifle peremptory from a host to his guest, Da Souza promptly appeared, suave and cheerful.
“Shut the door,” Trent said shortly.
Da Souza obeyed with unabashed amiability. Trent watched him with something like disgust. Da Souza returning caught the look, and felt compelled to protest.
“My dear Trent,” he said, “I do not like the way you address me, or your manners towards me. You speak as though I were a servant. I do not like it all, and it is not fair. I am your guest, am I not?”
“You are my guest by your own invitation,” Trent answered roughly, “and if you don't like my manners you can turn out. I may have to endure you in the house till I have made up my mind how to get rid of you, but I want as little of your company as possible. Do you hear?”
Da Souza did hear it, and the worm turned. He sat down in the most comfortable easy-chair, and addressed Trent directly.
“My friend,” he said, “you are out of temper, and that is a bad thing. Now listen to me! You are in my power. I have only to go into the City to-morrow and breathe here and there a word about a certain old gentleman who shall be nameless, and you would be a ruined man in something less than an hour; added to this, my friend, you would most certainly be arrested for conspiracy and fraud. That Syndicate of yours was a very smart stroke of business, no doubt, and it was clever of you to keep me in ignorance of it, but as things have turned out now, that will be your condemnation. They will say, why did you keep me in ignorance of this move, and the answer—why, it is very clear! I knew you were selling what was not yours to sell!”
“I kept you away,” Trent said scornfully, “because I was dealing with men who would not have touched the thing if they had known that you were in it!”
“Who will believe it?” Da Souza asked, with a sneer. “They will say that it is but one more of the fairy tales of this wonderful Mr. Scarlett Trent.”
The breath came through Trent's lips with a little hiss and his eyes were flashing with a dull fire. But Da Souza held his ground. He had nerved himself up to this and he meant going through with it.
“You think I dare not breathe a word for my own sake,” he continued. “There is reason in that, but I have other monies. I am rich enough without my sixth share of that Bekwando Land and Mining Company which you and the Syndicate are going to bring out! But then, I am not a fool! I have no wish to throw away money. Now I propose to you therefore a friendly settlement. My daughter Julie is very charming. You admire her, I am sure. You shall marry her, and then we will all be one family. Our interests will be the same, and you may be sure that I shall look after them. Come! Is that not a friendly offer?”
For several minutes Trent smoked furiously, but he did not speak. At the end of that time he took the revolver once more from the drawer of his writing-table and fingered it.
“Da Souza,” he said, “if I had you just for five minutes at Bekwando we would talk together of black-mail, you and I, we would talk of marrying your daughter. We would talk then to some purpose—you hound! Get out of the room as fast as your legs will carry you. This revolver is loaded, and I'm not quite master of myself.”
Da Souza made off with amazing celerity. Trent drew a short, quick breath. There was a great deal of the wild beast left in him still. At that moment the desire to kill was hot in his blood. His eyes glared as he walked up and down the room. The years of civilisation seemed to have become as nothing. The veneer of the City speculator had fallen away. He was once more as he had been in those wilder days when men made their own laws, and a man's hold upon life was a slighter thing than his thirst for gold. As such, he found the atmosphere of the little room choking him, he drew open the French windows of his little study and strode out into the perfumed and sunlit morning. As such, he found himself face to face unexpectedly and without warning with the girl whom he had discovered sketching in the shrubbery the day before.
Probably nothing else in the world could so soon have transformed Scarlett Trent from the Gold Coast buccaneer to the law-abiding tenant of a Surrey villa. Before her full, inquiring eyes and calm salute he found himself at once abashed and confused. He raised his hand to his head, only to find that he had come out without a hat, and he certainly appeared, as he stood there, to his worst possible advantage.
“Good morning, miss,” he stammered; “I'm afraid I startled you!”
She winced a little at his address, but otherwise her manner was not ungracious.
“You did a little,” she admitted. “Do you usually stride out of your windows like that, bareheaded and muttering to yourself?”
“I was in a beastly temper,” he admitted. “If I had known who was outside—it would have been different.”
She looked into his face with some interest. “What an odd thing!” she remarked. “Why, I should have thought that to-day you would have been amiability itself. I read at breakfast-time that you had accomplished something more than ordinarily wonderful in the City and had made—I forget how many hundreds of thousands of pounds. When I showed the sketch of your house to my chief, and told him that you were going to let me interview you to-day, I really thought that he would have raised my salary at once.”
“It's more luck than anything,” he said. “I've stood next door to ruin twice. I may again, although I'm a millionaire to-day.”
She looked at him curiously—at his ugly tweed suit, his yellow boots, and up into the strong, forceful face with eyes set in deep hollows under his protruding brows, at the heavy jaws giving a certain coarseness to his expression, which his mouth and forehead, well-shaped though they were, could not altogether dispel. And at he same time he looked at her, slim, tall, and elegant, daintily clothed from her shapely shoes to her sailor hat, her brown hair, parted in the middle, escaping a little from its confinement to ripple about her forehead, and show more clearly the delicacy of her complexion. Trent was an ignorant man on many subjects, on others his taste seemed almost intuitively correct. He knew that this girl belonged to a class from which his descent and education had left him far apart, a class of which he knew nothing, and with whom he could claim no kinship. She too was realising it—her interest in him was, however, none the less deep. He was a type of those powers which to-day hold the world in their hands, make kingdoms tremble, and change the fate of nations. Perhaps he was all the more interesting to her because, by all the ordinary standards of criticism, he would fail to be ranked, in the jargon of her class, as a gentleman. He represented something in flesh and blood which had never seemed more than half real to her—power without education. She liked to consider herself—being a writer with ambitions who took herself seriously—a student of human nature. Here was a specimen worth impaling, an original being, a creature of a new type such as never had come within the region of her experience. It was worth while ignoring small idiosyncrasies which might offend, in order to annex him. Besides, from a journalistic point of view, the man was more than interesting—he was a veritable treasure.
“You are going to talk to me about Africa, are you not?” she reminded him. “Couldn't we sit in the shade somewhere. I got quite hot walking from the station.”
He led the way across the lawn, and they sat under a cedar-tree. He was awkward and ill at ease, but she had tact enough for both.
“I can't understand,” he began, “how people are interested in the stuff which gets into papers nowadays. If you want horrors though, I can supply you. For one man who succeeds over there, there are a dozen who find it a short cut down into hell. I can tell you if you like of my days of starvation.”
“Go on!”
Like many men who talk but seldom, he had the gift when he chose to speak of reproducing his experiences in vivid though unpolished language. He told her of the days when he had worked on the banks of the Congo with the coolies, a slave in everything but name, when the sun had burned the brains of men to madness, and the palm wine had turned them into howling devils. He told her of the natives of Bekwando, of the days they had spent amongst them in that squalid hut when their fate hung in the balance day by day, and every shout that went up from the warriors gathered round the house of the King was a cry of death. He spoke of their ultimate success, of the granting of the concession which had laid the foundation of his fortunes, and then of that terrible journey back through the bush, followed by the natives who had already repented of their action, and who dogged their footsteps hour after hour, waiting for them only to sleep or rest to seize upon them and haul them back to Bekwando, prisoners for the sacrifice.
“It was only our revolvers which kept them away,” he went on. “I shot eight or nine of them at different times when they came too close, and to hear them wailing over the bodies was one of the most hideous things you can imagine. Why, for months and months afterwards I couldn't sleep. I'd wake up in the night and fancy that I heard that cursed yelling outside my window—ay, even on the steamer at night-time if I was on deck before moonlight, I'd seem to hear it rising up out of the water. Ugh!”
She shuddered.
“But you both escaped?” she said.
There was a moment's silence. The shade of the cedar-tree was deep and cool, but it brought little relief to Trent. The perspiration stood out on his forehead in great beads, he breathed for a moment in little gasps as though stifled.
“No,” he answered; “my partner died within a mile or two of the Coast. He was very ill when we started, and I pretty well had to carry him the whole of the last day. I did my best for him. I did, indeed, but it was no good. I had to leave him. There was no use sacrificing oneself for a dead man.”
She inclined her head sympathetically.
“Was he an Englishman?” she asked.
He faced the question just as he had faced death years before leering at him, a few feet from the muzzle of his revolver.
“He was an Englishman. The only name we had ever heard him called by was 'Monty.' Some said he was a broken-down gentleman. I believe he was.”
She was unconscious of his passionate, breathless scrutiny, unconscious utterly of the great wave of relief which swept into his face as he realised that his words were without any special meaning to her.
“It was very sad indeed,” she said. “If he had lived, he would have shared with you, I suppose, in the concession?”
Trent nodded.
“Yes, we were equal partners. We had an arrangement by which, if one died, the survivor took the lot. I didn't want it though, I'd rather he had pulled through. I would indeed,” he repeated with nervous force.
“I am quite sure of that,” she answered. “And now tell me something about your career in the City after you came to England. Do you know, I have scarcely ever been in what you financiers call the City. In a way it must be interesting.”
“You wouldn't find it so,” he said. “It is not a place for such as you. It is a life of lies and gambling and deceit. There are times when I have hated it. I hate it now!”
She was unaffectedly surprised. What a speech for a millionaire of yesterday!
“I thought,” she said, “that for those who took part in it, it possessed a fascination stronger than anything else in the world.”
He shook his head.
“It is an ugly fascination,” he said. “You are in the swim, and you must hold your own. You gamble with other men, and when you win you chuckle. All the time you're whittling your conscience away—if ever you had any. You're never quite dishonest, and you're never quite honest. You come out on top, and afterwards you hate yourself. It's a dirty little life!”
“Well,” she remarked after a moment's pause, “you have surprised me very much. At any rate you are rich enough now to have no more to do with it.”
He kicked a fir cone savagely away.
“If I could,” he said, “I would shut up my office to-morrow, sell out, and live upon a farm. But I've got to keep what I've made. The more you succeed the more involved you become. It's a sort of slavery.”
“Have you no friends?” she asked.
“I have never,” he answered, “had a friend in my life.”
“You have guests at any rate!”
“I sent 'em away last night!”
“What, the young lady in blue?” she asked demurely.
“Yes, and the other one too. Packed them clean off, and they're not coming back either!”
“I am very pleased to hear it,” she remarked.
“There's a man and his wife and daughter here I can't get rid of quite so easily,” he went on gloomily, “but they've got to go!”
“They would be less objectionable to the people round here who might like to come and see you,” she remarked, “than two unattached young ladies.”
“May be,” he answered. “Yet I'd give a lot to be rid of them.”
He had risen to his feet and was standing with his back to the cedar-tree, looking away with fixed eyes to where the sunlight fell upon a distant hillside gorgeous with patches and streaks of yellow gorse and purple heather. Presently she noticed his abstraction and looked also through the gap in the trees.
“You have a beautiful view here,” she said. “You are fond of the country, are you not?”
“Very,” he answered.
“It is not every one,” she remarked, “who is able to appreciate it, especially when their lives have been spent as yours must have been.”
He looked at her curiously. “I wonder,” he said, “if you have any idea how my life has been spent.”
“You have given me,” she said, “a very fair idea about some part of it at any rate.”
He drew a long breath and looked down at her.
“I have given you no idea at all,” he said firmly. “I have told you a few incidents, that is all. You have talked to me as though I were an equal. Listen! you are probably the first lady with whom I have ever spoken. I do not want to deceive you. I never had a scrap of education. My father was a carpenter who drank himself to death, and my mother was a factory girl. I was in the workhouse when I was a boy. I have never been to school. I don't know how to talk properly, but I should be worse even than I am, if I had not had to mix up with a lot of men in the City who had been properly educated. I am utterly and miserably ignorant. I've got low tastes and lots of 'em. I was drunk a few nights ago—I've done most of the things men who are beasts do. There! Now, don't you want to run away?”
She shook her head and smiled up at him. She was immensely interested.
“If that is the worst,” she said gently, “I am not at all frightened. You know that it is my profession to write about men and women. I belong to a world of worn-out types, and to meet any one different is quite a luxury.”
“The worst!” A sudden fear sent an icy coldness shivering through his veins. His heart seemed to stop beating, his cheeks were blanched. The worst of him. He had not told her that he was a robber, that the foundation of his fortunes was a lie; that there lived a man who might bring all this great triumph of his shattered and crumbling about his ears. A passionate fear lest she might ever know of these things was born in his heart at that moment, never altogether to leave him.
The sound of a footstep close at hand made them both turn their heads. Along the winding path came Da Souza, with an ugly smirk upon his white face, smoking a cigar whose odour seemed to poison the air. Trent turned upon him with a look of thunder.
“What do you want here, Da Souza?” he asked fiercely.
Da Souza held up the palms of his hands.
“I was strolling about,” he said, “and I saw you through the trees. I did not know that you were so pleasantly engaged,” he added, with a wave of his hat to the girl, “or I would not have intruded.”
Trent kicked open the little iron gate which led into the garden beyond.
“Well, get out, and don't come here again,” he said shortly. “There's plenty of room for you to wander about and poison the air with those abominable cigars of yours without coming here.”
Da Souza replaced his hat upon his head. “The cigars, my friend, are excellent. We cannot all smoke the tobacco of a millionaire, can we, miss?”
The girl, who was making some notes in her book, continued her work without the slightest appearance of having heard him.
Da Souza snorted, but at that moment he felt a grip like iron upon his shoulder, and deemed retreat expedient.
“If you don't go without another word,” came a hot whisper in his ear, “I'll throw you into the horse-pond.”
He went swiftly, ungracious, scowling. Trent returned to the girl. She looked up at him and closed her book.
“You must change your friends,” she said gravely. “What a horrible man!”
“He is a beast,” Trent answered, “and go he shall. I would to Heaven that I had never seen him.”
She rose, slipped her note-book into her pocket, and drew on her gloves.
“I have taken up quite enough of your time,” she said. “I am so much obliged to you, Mr. Trent, for all you have told me. It has been most interesting.”
She held out her hand, and the touch of it sent his heart beating with a most unusual emotion. He was aghast at the idea of her imminent departure. He realised that, when she passed out of his gate, she passed into a world where she would be hopelessly lost to him, so he took his courage into his hands, and was very bold indeed.
“You have not told me your name,” he reminded her.
She laughed lightly.
“How very unprofessional of me! I ought to have given you a card! For all you know I may be an impostor, indulging an unpardonable curiosity. My name is Wendermott—Ernestine Wendermott.”
He repeated it after her.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am beginning to think of some more things which I might have told you.”
“Why, I should have to write a novel then to get them all in,” she said. “I am sure you have given me all the material I need here.”
“I am going,” he said abruptly, “to ask you something very strange and very presumptuous!”
She looked at him in surprise, scarcely understanding what he could mean.
“May I come and see you some time?”
The earnestness of his gaze and the intense anxiety of his tone almost disconcerted her. He was obviously very much in earnest, and she had found him far from uninteresting.
“By all means,” she answered pleasantly, “if you care to. I have a little flat in Culpole Street—No. 81. You must come and have tea with me one afternoon.”
“Thank you,” he said simply, with a sigh of immense relief.
He walked with her to the gate, and they talked about rhododendrons.
Then he watched her till she became a speck in the dusty road—she had refused a carriage, and he had had tact enough not to press any hospitality upon her.
“His little girl!” he murmured. “Monty's little girl!”