Ernestine was a delightful hostess, she loved situations, and her social tact was illimitable. In a few minutes Trent was seated in a comfortable and solid chair with a little round table by his side, drinking tea and eating buttered scones, and if not altogether at his ease very nearly so. Opposite him was Davenant, dying to escape yet constrained to be agreeable, and animated too with a keen, distasteful curiosity to watch Ernestine's methods. And Ernestine herself chatted all the time, diffused good fellowship and tea—she made an atmosphere which had a nameless fascination for the man who had come to middle-age without knowing what a home meant. Davenant studied him and became thoughtful. He took note of the massive features, the iron jaw, the eyes as bright as steel, and his thoughtfulness became anxiety. Ernestine too was strong, but this man was a rock. What would happen if she carried out her purpose, fooled, betrayed him, led him perhaps to ruin? Some day her passion would leap up, she would tell him, they would be face to face, injured man and taunting woman. Davenant had an ugly vision as he sat there. He saw the man's eyes catch fire, the muscles of his face twitch, he saw Ernestine shrink back, white with terror and the man followed her.
“Cecil! Aren't you well? you're looking positively ghastly!”
He pulled himself together—it had been a very realistic little interlude.
“Bad headache!” he said, smiling. “By the by, I must go!”
“If you ever did such a thing as work,” she remarked, “I should say that you had been doing too much. As it is, I suppose you have been sitting up too late. Goodbye. I am so glad that you were here to meet Mr. Trent. Mr. Davenant is my cousin, you know,” she continued, turning to her visitor, “and he is almost the only one of my family who has not cast me off utterly.”
Davenant made his adieux with a heavy heart. He hated the hypocrisy with which he hoped for Scarlett Trent's better acquaintance and the latter's bluff acceptance of an invitation to look him up at his club. He walked out into the street cursing his mad offer to her and the whole business. But Ernestine was very well satisfied.
She led Trent to talk about Africa again, and he plunged into the subject without reserve. He told her stories and experiences with a certain graphic and picturesque force which stamped him as the possessor of an imaginative power and command of words for which she would scarcely have given him credit. She had the unusual gift of making the best of all those with whom she came in contact. Trent felt that he was interesting her, and gained confidence in himself.
All the time she was making a social estimate of him. He was not by any means impossible. On the contrary there was no reason why he should not become a success. That he was interested in her was already obvious, but that had become her intention. The task began to seem almost easy as she sat and listened to him.
Then he gave her a start. Quietly and without any warning he changed the subject into one which was fraught with embarrassment for her. At his first words the colour faded from her cheeks.
“I've been pretty lucky since I got back. Things have gone my way a bit and the only disappointment I've had worth speaking of has been in connection with a matter right outside money. I've been trying to find the daughter of that old partner of mine—I told you about her—and I can't.”
She changed her seat a little. There was no need for her to affect any interest in what he was saying. She listened to every word intently.
“Monty,” he said reflectingly, “was a good old sort in a way, and I had an idea, somehow, that his daughter would turn out something like the man himself, and at heart Monty was all right. I didn't know who she was or her name—Monty was always precious close, but I had the address of a firm of lawyers who knew all about her. I called there the other day and saw an old chap who questioned and cross-questioned me until I wasn't sure whether I was on my head or my heels, and, after all, he told me to call again this afternoon for her address. I told him of course that Monty died a pauper and he'd no share of our concession to will away, but I'd done so well that I thought I'd like to make over a trifle to her—in fact I'd put away 10,000 pounds worth of Bekwando shares for her. I called this afternoon, and do you know, Miss Wendermott, the young lady declined to have anything to say to me—wouldn't let me know who she was that I might have gone and talked this over in a friendly way with her. Didn't want money, didn't want to hear about her father!”
“You must have been disappointed.”
“I'll admit it,” he replied. “I was; I'd come to think pretty well of Monty although he was a loose fish and I'd a sort of fancy for seeing his daughter.”
She took up a screen as though to shield the fire from her face. Would the man's eyes never cease questioning her—could it be that he suspected? Surely that was impossible!
“Why have you never tried to find her before?” she asked.
“That's a natural question enough,” he admitted. “Well, first, I only came across a letter Monty wrote with the address of those lawyers a few days ago, and, secondly, the Bekwando Mine and Land Company has only just boomed, and you see that made me feel that I'd like to give a lift up to any one belonging to poor old Monty I could find. I've a mind to go on with the thing myself and find out somehow who this young lady is!”
“Who were the lawyers?”
“Cuthbert and Cuthbert.”
“They are most respectable people,” she said. “I know Mr. Cuthbert and their standing is very high. If Mr. Cuthbert told you that the young lady wished to remain unknown to you, I am quite sure that you may believe him.”
“That's all right,” Trent said, “but here's what puzzles me. The girl may be small enough and mean enough to decline to have anything to say to me because her father was a bad lot, and she doesn't want to be reminded of him, but for that very reason can you imagine her virtually refusing a large sum of money? I told old Cuthbert all about it. There was 10,000 pounds worth of shares waiting for her and no need for any fuss. Can you understand that?”
“It seems very odd,” she said. “Perhaps the girl objects to being given money. It is a large sum to take as a present from a stranger.”
“If she is that sort of girl,” he said decidedly, “she would at least want to meet and talk with the man who saw the last of her father. No, there's something else in it, and I think that I ought to find her. Don't you?”
She hesitated.
“I'm afraid I can't advise you,” she said; “only if she has taken so much pains to remain unknown, I am not sure—I think that if I were you I would assume that she has good reason for it.”
“I can see no good reason,” he said, “and there is a mystery behind it which I fancy would be better cleared up. Some day I will tell you more about it.”
Evidently Ernestine was weary of the subject, for she suddenly changed it. She led him on to talk of other things. When at last he glanced at the clock he was horrified to see how long he had stayed.
“You'll remember, I hope, Miss Wendermott,” he said, “that this is the first afternoon call I've ever paid. I've no idea how long I ought to have stayed, but certainly not two hours.”
“The time has passed quickly,” she said, smiling upon him, so that his momentary discomfort passed away. “I have been very interested in the stories of your past, Mr. Trent, but do you know I am quite as much interested, more so even, in your future.”
“Tell me what you mean,” he asked.
“You have so much before you, so many possibilities. There is so much that you may gain, so much that you may miss.”
He looked puzzled.
“I have a lot of money,” he said. “That's all! I haven't any friends nor any education worth speaking of. I don't see quite where the possibilities come in.”
She crossed the room and came over close to his side, resting her arm upon the mantelpiece. She was still wearing her walking-dress, prim and straight in its folds about her tall, graceful figure, and her hair, save for the slight waviness about the forehead, was plainly dressed. There were none of the cheap arts about her to which Trent had become accustomed in women who sought to attract. Yet, as she stood looking down at him, a faint smile, half humorous, half satirical, playing about the corners of her shapely mouth, he felt his heart beat faster than ever it had done in any African jungle. It was the nervous and emotional side of the man to which she appealed. He felt unlike himself, undergoing a new phase of development. There was something stirring within him which he could not understand.
“You haven't any friends,” she said softly, “nor any education, but you are a millionaire! That is quite sufficient. You are a veritable Caesar with undiscovered worlds before you.”
“I wish I knew what you meant,” he said, with some hesitation.
She laughed softly.
“Don't you understand,” she said, “that you are the fashion? Last year it was Indian Potentates, the year before it was actors, this year it is millionaires. You have only to announce yourself and you may take any place you choose in society. You have arrived at the most auspicious moment. I can assure you that before many months are past you will know more people than ever you have spoken to in your life before—men whose names have been household words to you and nothing else will be calling you 'old chap' and wanting to sell you horses, and women, who last week would look at you through lorgnettes as though you were a denizen of some unknown world, will be lavishing upon you their choicest smiles and whispering in your ear their 'not at home' afternoon. Oh, it's lucky I'm able to prepare you a little for it, or you would be taken quite by storm.”
He was unmoved. He looked at her with a grim tightening of the lips.
“I want to ask you this,” he said. “What should I be the better for it all? What use have I for friends who only gather round me because I am rich? Shouldn't I be better off to have nothing to do with them, to live my own life, and make my own pleasures?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“These people,” she said, “of whom I have been speaking are masters of the situation. You can't enjoy money alone! You want to race, hunt, entertain, shoot, join in the revels of country houses! You must be one of them or you can enjoy nothing.”
Monty's words were ringing back in his ears. After all, pleasures could be bought—but happiness!
“And you,” he said, “you too think that these things you have mentioned are the things most to be desired in life?”
A certain restraint crept into her manner.
“Yes,” she answered simply.
“I have been told,” he said, “that you have given up these things to live your life differently. That you choose to be a worker. You have rich relations—you could be rich yourself!”
She looked him steadily in the face.
“You are wrong,” she said, “I have no money. I have not chosen a profession willingly—only because I am poor!”
“Ah!”
The monosyllable was mysterious to her. But for the wild improbability of the thing she would have wondered whether indeed he knew her secret. She brushed the idea away. It was impossible.
“At least,” he said, “you belong to these people.”
“Yes,” she answered, “I am one of the poor young women of society.”
“And you would like,” he continued, “to be one of the rich ones—to take your place amongst them on equal terms. That is what you are looking forward to in life!”
She laughed gaily.
“Of course I am! If there was the least little chance of it I should be delighted. You mustn't think that I'm different from other girls in that respect because I'm more independent. In this country there's only one way of enjoying life thoroughly, and that you will find out for yourself very soon.”
He rose and held out his hand.
“Thank you very much,” he said, “for letting me come. May I—”
“You may come,” she said quietly, “as often as you like.”
“Mr. Scarlett Trent, the Gold King, left for Africa on Thursday last on the Dunottar Castle, to pay a brief visit to his wonderful possessions there before the great Bekwando Mining and Exploration Company is offered to the public. Mr. Trent is already a millionaire, and should he succeed in floating the Company on the basis of the Prospectus, he will be a multi-millionaire, and certainly one of the richest of Englishmen. During his absence workmen are to be kept going night and day at his wonderful palace in Park Lane, which he hopes to find ready for occupation on his return. Mr. Trent's long list of financial successes are too well known to be given here, but who will grudge wealth to a man who is capable of spending it in such a lordly fashion? We wish Mr. Trent a safe voyage and a speedy return.”
The paper slipped from his fingers and he looked thoughtfully out seaward. It was only one paragraph of many, and the tone of all was the same. Ernestine's words had come true—he was already a man of note. A few months had changed his life in the most amazing way—when he looked back upon it now it was with a sense of unreality—surely all these things which had happened were part of a chimerical dream. It was barely possible for him to believe that it was he, Scarlett Trent, who had developed day by day into what he was at that moment. For the man was changed in a hundred ways. His grey flannel clothes was cut by the Saville Row tailor of the moment, his hands and hair, his manner of speech and carriage were all altered. He recalled the men he had met, the clubs he had joined, his stud of horses at Newmarket, the country-houses at which he had visited. His most clear impression of the whole thing was how easy everything had been made for him. His oddness of speech, his gaucheries, his ignorances and nervousness had all been so lightly treated that they had been brushed away almost insensibly. He had been able to do so little that was wrong—his mistakes were ignored or admired as originality, and yet in some delicate way the right thing had been made clear to him. Ernestine had stood by his side, always laughing at this swift fulfilment of her prophecy, always encouraging him, always enigmatic. Yet at the thought of her a vague sense of trouble crept into his heart. He took a worn photograph from his pocket and looked at it long and searchingly, and when he put it away he sighed. It made no difference of course, but he would rather have found her like that, the child with sweet, trustful eyes and a laughing mouth. Was there no life at all, then, outside this little vortex into which at her bidding he had plunged? Would she never have been content with anything else? He looked across the placid, blue sea to where the sun gleamed like silver on a white sail, and sighed again. He must make himself what she would have him. There was no life for him without her.
The captain came up for his morning chat and some of the passengers, who eyed him with obvious respect, lingered for a moment about his chair on their promenade. Trent lit a cigar and presently began to stroll up and down himself. The salt sea-air was a wonderful tonic to him after the nervous life of the last few months. He found his spirits rapidly rising. This voyage had been undertaken in obedience to a sudden but overpowering impulse. It had come to him one night that he must know for himself how much truth there was in Da Souza's story. He could not live with the thought that a thunderbolt was ever in the skies, that at any moment his life might lie wrecked about him. He was going out by one steamer and back by the next, the impending issue of his great Company afforded all the excuse that was necessary. If Da Souza's story was true—well, there were many things which might be done, short of a complete disclosure. Monty might be satisfied, if plenty of money were forthcoming, to abandon his partnership and release the situation from its otherwise endless complications. Trent smoked his cigar placidly and, taking off his cap bared his head to the sweeping sea-wind, which seemed laden with life and buoyancy. Suddenly as he swung round by the companion-way he found himself confronted by a newcomer who came staggering out from the gangway. There was a moment's recoil and a sharp exclamation. Trent stood quite still and a heavy frown darkened his face.
“Da Souza!” he exclaimed. “How on earth came you on board?”
Da Souza's face was yellower than ever and he wore an ulster buttoned up to his chin. Yet there was a flash of malice in his eyes as he answered—
“I came by late tender at Southampton,” he said.
“It cost me a special from London and the agents told me I couldn't do it, but here I am, you see!”
“And a poor-looking object you are,” Trent said contemptuously. “If you've life enough in you to talk, be so good as to tell me what the devil you mean by following me like this!”
“I came,” Da Souza answered, “in both our interests—chiefly in my own!”
“I can believe that,” Trent answered shortly, “now speak up. Tell me what you want.”
Da Souza groaned and sank down upon a vacant deck-chair.
“I will sit down,” he said, “I am not well! The sea disagrees with me horribly. Well, well, you want to know why I came here! I can answer that question by another. What are you doing here? Why are you going to Africa?”
“I am going,” Trent said, “to see how much truth there was in that story you told me. I am going to see old Monty if he is alive.”
Da Souza groaned.
“It is cruel madness,” he said, “and you are such an obstinate man! Oh dear! oh dear!”
“I prefer,” Trent said, “a crisis now, to ruin in the future. Besides, I have the remnants of a conscience.”
“You will ruin yourself, and you will ruin me,” Da Souza moaned. “How am I to have a quarter share if Monty is to come in for half, and how are you to repay him all that you would owe on a partnership account? You couldn't do it, Trent. I've heard of your four-in-hand, and your yacht, and your racers, and that beautiful house in Park Lane. I tell you that to part with half your fortune would ruin you, and the Bekwando Company could never be floated.”
“I don't anticipate parting with half,” Trent said coolly. “Monty hasn't long to live—and he ought not to be hard to make terms with.”
Da Souza beat his hands upon the handles of his deck-chair.
“But why go near him at all? He thinks that you are dead. He has no idea that you are in England. Why should he know? Why do you risk ruin like this?”
“There are three reasons,” Trent answered. “First, he may find his way to England and upset the applecart; secondly, I've only the shreds of a conscience, but I can't leave a man whom I'm robbing of a fortune in a state of semi-slavery, as I daresay he is, and the third reason is perhaps the strongest of all; but I'm not going to tell it you.”
Da Souza blinked his little eyes and looked up with a cunning smile.
“Your first reason,” he said, “is a poor sort of one. Do you suppose I don't have him looked after a bit?—no chance of his getting hack to England, I can tell you. As for the second, he's only half-witted, and if he was better off he wouldn't know it.”
“Even if I gave way to you in this,” Trent answered, “the third reason is strong enough.”
Da Souza's face was gloomy. “I know it's no use trying to move you,” he said, “but you're on a silly, dangerous, wild goose-chase.”
“And what about yourself?” Trent asked. “I imagine you have some other purpose in taking this voyage than just to argue with me.”
“I am going to see,” Da Souza said, “that you do as little mischief as possible.”
Trent walked the length of the deck and back. “Da Souza,” he said, stopping in front of him, “you're a fool to take this voyage. You know me well enough to be perfectly assured that nothing you could say would ever influence me. There's more behind it. You've a game of your own to play over there. Now listen! If I catch you interfering with me in any way, we shall meet on more equal terms than when you laughed at my revolver at Walton Lodge! I never was over-scrupulous in those old days, Da Souza, you know that, and I have a fancy that when I find myself on African soil again I may find something of the old man in me yet. So look out, my friend, I've no mind to be trifled with, and, mark me—if harm comes to that old man, it will be your life for his, as I'm a living man. You were afraid of me once, Da Souza. I haven't changed so much as you may think, and the Gold Coast isn't exactly the centre of civilisation. There! I've said my say. The less I see of you now till we land, the better I shall be pleased.”
He walked away and was challenged by the Doctor to a game of shuffleboard. Da Souza remained in his chair, his eyes blinking as though with the sun, and his hands gripping nervously the sides of his chair.
After six weeks' incessant throbbing the great engines were still, and the Dunottar Castle lay at anchor a mile or two from the African coast and off the town of Attra. The heat, which in motion had been hard enough to bear, was positively stifling now. The sun burned down upon the glassy sea and the white deck till the varnish on the rails cracked and blistered, and the sweat streamed like water from the faces of the labouring seamen. Below at the ship's side half a dozen surf boats were waiting, manned by Kru boys, who alone seemed perfectly comfortable, and cheerful as usual. All around were preparations for landing—boxes were being hauled up from the hold, and people were going about in reach of small parcels and deck-chairs and missing acquaintances. Trent, in white linen clothes and puggaree, was leaning over the railing, gazing towards the town, when Da Souza came up to him—
“Last morning, Mr. Trent!”
Trent glanced round and nodded.
“Are you disembarking here?” he asked.
Da Souza admitted the fact. “My brother will meet me,” he said. “He is very afraid of the surf-boats, or he would have come out to the steamer. You remember him?”
“Yes, I remember him,” Trent answered. “He was not the sort of person one forgets.”
“He is a very rough diamond,” Da Souza said apologetically. “He has lived here so long that he has become almost half a native.”
“And the other half a thief,” Trent muttered.
Da Souza was not in the least offended.
“I am afraid,” he admitted, “that his morals are not up to the Threadneedle Street pitch, eh, Mr. Trent? But he has made quite a great deal of money. Oh, quite a sum I can assure you. He sends me some over to invest!”
“Well, if he's carrying on the same old game,” Trent remarked, “he ought to be coining it! By the by, of course he knows exactly where Monty is?”
“It is what I was about to say,” Da Souza assented, with a vigorous nod of the head. “Now, my dear Mr. Trent, I know that you will have your way. It is no use my trying to dissuade you, so listen. You shall waste no time in searching for Monty. My brother will tell you exactly where he is.”
Trent hesitated. He would have preferred to have nothing at all to do with Da Souza, and the very thought of Oom Sam made him shudder. On the other hand, time was valuable to him and he might waste weeks looking for the man whom Oom Sam could tell him at once where to find. On the whole, it was better to accept Da Souza's offer.
“Very well, Da Souza,” he said, “I have no time to spare in this country and the sooner I get back to England the better for all of us. If your brother knows where Monty is, so much the better for both of us. We will land together and meet him.”
Already the disembarking had commenced. Da Souza and Trent took their places side by side on the broad, flat-bottomed boat, and soon they were off shorewards and the familiar song of the Kru boys as they bent over their oars greeted their ears. The excitement of the last few strokes was barely over before they sprang upon the beach and were surrounded by a little crowd, on the outskirts of whom was Oom Sam. Trent was seized upon by an Englishman who was representing the Bekwando Land and Mining Investment Company and, before he could regain Da Souza, a few rapid sentences had passed between the latter and his brother in Portuguese. Oom Sam advanced to Trent hat in hand—
“Welcome back to Attra, senor?”
Trent nodded curtly.
“Place isn't much changed,” he remarked.
“It is very slowly here,” Oom Sam said, “that progress is made! The climate is too horrible. It makes dead sheep of men.”
“You seem to hang on pretty well,” Trent remarked carelessly. “Been up country lately?”
“I was trading with the King of Bekwando a month ago,” Oom Sam answered.
“Palm-oil and mahogany for vile rum I suppose,” Trent said.
The man extended his hands and shrugged his shoulders. The old gesture.
“They will have it,” he said. “Shall we go to the hotel, Senor Trent, and rest?”
Trent nodded, and the three men scrambled up the beach, across an open space, and gained the shelter of a broad balcony, shielded by a striped awning which surrounded the plain white stone hotel. A Kru boy welcomed them with beaming face and fetched them drinks upon a Brummagem tray. Trent turned to the Englishman who had followed them up.
“To-morrow,” he said, “I shall see you about the contracts. My first business is a private matter with these gentlemen. Will you come up here and breakfast with me?”
The Englishman, a surveyor from a London office, assented with enthusiasm.
“I can't offer to put you up,” he said gloomily. “Living out here's beastly. See you in the morning, then.”
He strolled away, fanning himself. Trent lit a long cigar.
“I understand,” he said turning to Oom Sam, “that old Monty is alive still. If so, it's little short of a miracle, for I left him with scarcely a gasp in his body, and I was nearly done myself.
“It was,” Oom Sam said, “veree wonderful. The natives who were chasing you, they found him and then the Englishman whom you met in Bekwando on his way inland, he rescued him. You see that little white house with a flagstaff yonder?”
He pointed to a little one-storey building about a mile away along the coast. Trent nodded.
“That is,” Oom Sam said, “a station of the Basle Mission and old Monty is there. You can go and see him any time you like, but he will not know you.”
“Is he as far gone as that?” Trent asked slowly.
“His mind,” Oom Sam said, “is gone. One little flickering spark of life goes on. A day! a week! who can tell how long?”
“Has he a doctor?” Trent asked.
“The missionary, he is a medical man,” Oom Sam explained. “Yet he is long past the art of medicine.”
It seemed to Trent, turning at that moment to relight his cigar, that a look of subtle intelligence was flashed from one to the other of the brothers. He paused with the match in his fingers, puzzled, suspicious, anxious. So there was some scheme hatched already between these precious pair! It was time indeed that he had come.
“There was something else I wanted to ask,” he said a moment or two later. “What about the man Francis. Has he been heard of lately?”
Oom Sam shook his head.
“Ten months ago,” he answered, “a trader from Lulabulu reported having passed him on his way to the interior. He spoke of visiting Sugbaroo, another country beyond. If he ventured there, he will surely never return.”
Trent set down his glass without a word, and called to some Kru boys in the square who carried litters.
“I am going,” he said, “to find Monty.”
An old man, with his face turned to the sea, was making a weary attempt at digging upon a small potato patch. The blaze of the tropical sun had become lost an hour or so before in a strange, grey mist, rising not from the sea, but from the swamps which lay here and there—brilliant, verdant patches of poison and pestilence. With the mist came a moist, sticky heat, the air was fetid. Trent wiped the perspiration from his forehead and breathed hard. This was an evil moment for him.
Monty turned round at the sound of his approaching footsteps. The two men stood face to face. Trent looked eagerly for some sign of recognition—none came.
“Don't you know me?” Trent said huskily. “I'm Scarlett Trent—we went up to Bekwando together, you know. I thought you were dead, Monty, or I wouldn't have left you.”
“Eh! What!”
Monty mumbled for a moment or two and was silent. A look of dull disappointment struggled with the vacuity of his face. Trent noticed that his hands were shaking pitifully and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Try and think, Monty,” he went on, drawing a step nearer to him. “Don't you remember what a beastly time we had up in the bush—how they kept us day after day in that villainous hut because it was a fetish week, and how after we had got the concessions those confounded niggers followed us! They meant our lives, Monty, and I don't know how you escaped! Come! make an effort and pull yourself together. We're rich men now, both of us. You must come back to England and help me spend a bit.”
Monty had recovered a little his power of speech. He leaned over his spade and smiled benignly at his visitor.
“There was a Trentham in the Guards,” he said slowly, “the Honourable George Trentham, you know, one of poor Abercrombie's sons, but I thought he was dead. You must dine with me one night at the Travellers'! I've given up eating myself, but I'm always thirsty.”
He looked anxiously away towards the town and began to mumble. Trent was in despair. Presently he began again.
“I used to belong to the Guards,—always dined there till Jacques left. Afterwards the cooking was beastly, and—I can't quite remember where I went then. You see—I think I must be getting old. I don't remember things. Between you and me,” he sidled a little closer to Trent, “I think I must have got into a bit of a scrape of some sort—I feel as though there was a blank somewhere....”
Again he became unintelligible. Trent was silent for several minutes. He could not understand that strained, anxious look which crept into Monty's face every time he faced the town. Then he made his last effort.
“Monty, do you remember this?”
Zealously guarded, yet a little worn at the edges and faded, he drew the picture from its case and held it before the old man's blinking eyes. There was a moment of suspense, then a sharp, breathless cry which ended in a wail.
“Take it away,” Monty moaned. “I lost it long ago. I don't want to see it! I don't want to think.”
“I have come,” Trent said, with an unaccustomed gentleness in his tone, “to make you think. I want you to remember that that is a picture of your daughter. You are rich now and there is no reason why you should not come back to her. Don't you understand, Monty?”
It was a grey, white face, shrivelled and pinched, weak eyes without depth, a vapid smile in which there was no meaning. Trent, carried away for a moment by an impulse of pity, felt only disappointment at the hopelessness of his task. He would have been honestly glad to have taken the Monty whom he had known back to England, but not this man! For already that brief flash of awakened life seemed to have died away. Monty's head was wagging feebly and he was casting continually little, furtive glances towards the town.
“Please go away,” he said. “I don't know you and you give me a pain in my head. Don't you know what it is to feel a buzz, buzz, buzzing inside? I can't remember things. It's no use trying.”
“Monty, why do you look so often that way?” Trent said quietly. “Is some one coming out from the town to see you?”
Monty threw a quick glance at him and Trent sighed. For the glance was full of cunning, the low cunning of the lunatic criminal.
“No one, no one,” he said hastily. “Who should come to see me? I'm only poor Monty. Poor old Monty's got no friends. Go away and let me dig.”
Trent walked a few paces apart, and passed out of the garden to a low, shelving bank and looked downward where a sea of glass rippled on to the broad, firm sands. What a picture of desolation! The grey, hot mist, the whitewashed cabin, the long, ugly potato patch, the weird, pathetic figure of that old man from whose brain the light of life had surely passed for ever. And yet Trent was puzzled. Monty's furtive glance inland, his half-frightened, half-cunning denial of any anticipated visit suggested that there was some one else who was interested in his existence, and some one too with whom he shared a secret. Trent lit a cigar and sat down upon the sandy turf. Monty resumed his digging. Trent watched him through the leaves of a stunted tree, underneath which he had thrown himself.
For an hour or more nothing happened. Trent smoked, and Monty, who had apparently forgotten all about his visitor, plodded away amongst the potato furrows, with every now and then a long, searching look towards the town. Then there came a black speck stealing across the broad rice-field and up the steep hill, a speck which in time took to itself the semblance of a man, a Kru boy, naked as he was born save for a ragged loin-cloth, and clutching something in his hand. He was invisible to Trent until he was close at hand; it was Monty whose changed attitude and deportment indicated the approach of something interesting. He had relinquished his digging and, after a long, stealthy glance towards the house, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. His behaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic. He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from his lips. It was something like this which he had been expecting.
The Kru boy drew nearer and nearer. Finally he stood upright on the rank, coarse grass and grinned at Monty, whose lean hands were outstretched towards him. He fumbled for a moment in his loin-cloth. Then he drew out a long bottle and handed it up. Trent stepped out as Monty's nervous fingers were fumbling with the cork. He made a grab at the boy who glided off like an eel. Instantly he whipped out a revolver and covered him.
“Come here,” he cried.
The boy shook his head. “No understand.”
“Who sent you here with that filthy stuff?” he asked sternly. “You'd best answer me.”
The Kru boy, shrinking away from the dark muzzle of that motionless revolver, was spellbound with fear. He shook his head.
“No understand.”
There was a flash of light, a puff of smoke, a loud report. The Kru boy fell forward upon his face howling with fear. Monty ran off towards the house mumbling to himself.
“The next time,” Trent said coolly, “I shall fire at you instead of at the tree. Remember I have lived out here and I know all about you and your kind. You can understand me very well if you choose, and you've just got to. Who sends you here with that vile stuff?”
“Massa, I tell! Massa Oom Sam, he send me!”
“And what is the stuff?”
“Hamburgh gin, massa! very good liquor! Please, massa, point him pistol the other way.”
Trent took up the flask, smelt its contents and threw it away with a little exclamation of disgust.
“How often have you been coming here on this errand?” he asked sternly.
“Most every day, massa—when him Mr. Price away.”
Trent nodded.
“Very good,” he said. “Now listen to me. If ever I catch you round here again or anywhere else on such an errand, I'll shoot you like a dog. Now be off.”
The boy bounded away with a broad grin of relief. Trent walked up to the house and asked for the missionary's wife. She came to him soon, in what was called the parlour. A frail, anaemic-looking woman with tired eyes and weary expression.
“I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Price,” Trent said, plunging at once into his subject, “but I want to speak to you about this old man, Monty. You've had him some time now, haven't you?”
“About four years,” she answered. “Captain Francis left him with my husband; I believe he found him in one of the villages inland, a prisoner.”
Trent nodded.
“He left you a little money with him, I believe.”
The woman smiled faintly.
“It was very little,” she said, “but such as it is, we have never touched it. He eats scarcely anything and we consider that the little work he has done has about paid us for keeping him.”
“Did you know,” Trent asked bluntly, “that he had been a drunkard?”
“Captain Francis hinted as much,” the woman answered. “That was one reason why he wanted to leave him with us. He knew that we did not allow anything in the house.”
“It was a pity,” Trent said, “that you could not have watched him a little more out of it. Why, his brain is sodden with drink now!”
The woman was obviously honest in her amazement. “How can that be?” she exclaimed. “He has absolutely no money and he never goes off our land.”
“He has no need,” Trent answered bitterly. “There are men in Attra who want him dead, and they have been doing their best to hurry him off. I caught a Kru boy bringing him gin this afternoon. Evidently it has been a regular thing.”
“I am very sorry indeed to hear this,” the woman said, “and I am sure my husband will be too. He will feel that, in a certain measure, he has betrayed Captain Francis's trust. At the same time we neither of us had any idea that anything of this sort was to be feared, or we would have kept watch.”
“You cannot be blamed,” Trent said. “I am satisfied that you knew nothing about it. Now I am going to let you into a secret. Monty is a rich man if he had his rights, and I want to help him to them. I shall take him back to England with me, but I can't leave for a week or so. If you can keep him till then and have some one to watch him day and night, I'll give your husband a hundred pounds for your work here, and build you a church. It's all right! Don't look as though I were mad. I'm a very rich man, that's all, and I shan't miss the money, but I want to feel that Monty is safe till I can start back to England. Will you undertake this?”
“Yes,” the woman answered promptly, “we will. We'll do our honest best.”
Trent laid a bank-note upon the table.
“Just to show I'm in earnest,” he remarked, rising. “I shall be up-country for about a month. Look after the old chap well and you'll never regret it.”
Trent went thoughtfully back to the town. He had committed himself now to a definite course of action. He had made up his mind to take Monty back with him to England and face the consequences.