“And now,” she said, rising, “you really must take me to Lady Tresham! They will think that I am lost.”
“Are you still at your rooms?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Yes, only I'm having them spring-cleaned for a few days. I am staying at Tresham House.”
“May I come and see you there?”
The man's quiet pertinacity kindled a sort of indignation in her. The sudden weakness in her defences was unbearable.
“I think not,” she answered shortly. “You don't know Lady Tresham, and they might not approve. Lady Tresham is rather old-fashioned.”
“Oh, Lady Tresham is all right,” he answered. “I suppose I shall see you to-night if you are staying there. They have asked me to dinner!”
She was taken aback and showed it. Again he had the advantage. He did not tell her that on his return he had found scores of invitations from people he had never heard of before.
“You are by way of going into society, then,” she answered insolently.
“I don't think I've made any particular efforts,” he answered.
“Money,” she murmured, “is an everlasting force!”
“The people of your world,” he answered, with a flash of contempt, “are the people who find it so.”
She was silent then, and Trent was far from being discouraged by her momentary irritability. He was crossing the lawn now by her side, carrying himself well, with a new confidence in his air and bearing which she did not fail to take note of. The sunlight, the music, and the pleasant air of excitement were all in his veins. He was full of the strong joy of living. And then, in the midst of it all, came a dull, crashing blow. It was as though all his castles in the air had come toppling about his ears, the blue sky had turned to stony grey and the sweet waltz music had become a dirge. Always a keen watcher of men's faces, he had glanced for a second time at a gaunt, sallow man who wore a loose check suit and a grey Homburg hat. The eyes of the two men met. Then the blood had turned to ice in Trent's veins and the ground had heaved beneath his feet. It was the one terrible chance which Fate had held against him, and she had played the card.
Considering the nature and suddenness of the blow which had fallen upon him, Trent's recovery was marvellous. The two men had come face to face upon the short turf, involuntarily each had come to a standstill. Ernestine looked from one to the other a little bewildered.
“I should like a word with you, Trent,” Captain Francis said quietly.
Trent nodded.
“In five minutes,” he said, “I will return here—on the other side of the band-stand, say.”
Francis nodded and stood aside. Trent and Ernestine continued their progress towards the stand.
“Your friend,” Ernestine remarked, “seemed to come upon you like a modern Banquo!”
Trent, who did not understand the allusion, was for once discreet.
“He is a man with whom I had dealings abroad,” he said, “I did not expect him to turn up here.”
“In West Africa?” she asked quickly.
Trent smiled enigmatically.
“There are many foreign countries besides Africa,” he said, “and I've been in most of them. This is box No. 13, then. I shall see you this evening.”
She nodded, and Trent was free again. He did not make his way at once to the band-stand. Instead he entered the small refreshment-room at the base of the building and called for a glass of brandy. He drank it slowly, his eyes fixed upon the long row of bottles ranged upon the shelf opposite to him, he himself carried back upon a long wave of thoughts to a little West African station where the moist heat rose in fever mists and where an endless stream of men passed backward and forward to their tasks with wan, weary faces and slowly dragging limbs. What a cursed chance which had brought him once more face to face with the one weak spot in his life, the one chapter which, had he the power, he would most willingly seal for ever! From outside came the ringing of a bell, the hoarse shouting of many voices in the ring, through the open door a vision of fluttering waves of colour, lace parasols and picture hats, little trills of feminine laughter, the soft rustling of muslins and silks. A few moments ago it had all seemed so delightful to him—and now there lay a hideous blot upon the day.
It seemed to him when he left the little bar that he had been there for hours, as a matter of fact barely five minutes had passed since he had left Ernestine. He stood for a moment on the edge of the walk, dazzled by the sunlight, then he stepped on to the grass and made his way through the throng. The air was full of soft, gay music, and the skirts and flounces of the women brushed against him at every step. Laughter and excitement were the order of the day. Trent, with his suddenly pallid face and unseeing eyes, seemed a little out of place in such a scene of pleasure. Francis, who was smoking a cigar, looked up as he approached and made room for him upon the seat.
“I did not expect to see you in England quite so soon, Captain Francis,” Trent said.
“I did not expect,” Francis answered, “ever to be in England again. I am told that my recovery was a miracle. I am also told that I owe my Life to you!”
Trent shrugged his shoulders.
“I would have done as much for any of my people,” he said, “and you don't owe me any thanks. To be frank with you, I hoped you'd die.”
“You could easily have made sure of it,” Francis answered.
“It wasn't my way,” Trent answered shortly. “Now what do you want with me?”
Francis turned towards him with a curious mixture of expressions in his face.
“Look here,” he said, “I want to believe in you! You saved my life and I'm not over-anxious to do you a mischief. But you must tell me what you have done with Vill—Monty.”
“Don't you know where he is?” Trent asked quickly.
“I? Certainly not! How should I?”
“Perhaps not,” Trent said, “but here's the truth. When I got back to Attra Monty had disappeared—ran away to England, and as yet I've heard never a word of him. I'd meant to do the square thing by him and bring him back myself. Instead of that he gave us all the slip, but unless he's a lot different to what he was last time I saw him, he's not fit to be about alone.”
“I heard that he had left,” Francis said, “from Mr. Walsh.”
“He either came quite alone,” Trent said, “in which case it is odd that nothing has been heard of him, or Da Souza has got hold of him.”
“Oom Sam's brother?”
Trent nodded.
“And his interest?” Francis asked.
“Well, he is a large shareholder in the Company,” Trent said. “Of course he could upset us all if he liked. I should say that Da Souza would try all he could to keep him in the background until he had disposed of his shares.”
“And how does your stock hold?”
“I don't know,” Trent said. “I only landed yesterday. I'm pretty certain though that there's no market for the whole of Da Souza's holding.”
“He has a large interest, then?”
“A very large one,” Trent answered drily.
“I should like,” Francis said, “to understand this matter properly. As a matter of fact I suppose that Monty is entitled to half the purchase-money you received for the Company.”
Trent assented.
“It isn't that I grudge him that,” he said, “although, with the other financial enterprises I have gone into, I don't know how I should raise half a million of money to pay him off. But don't you see my sale of the charter to the Company is itself, Monty being alive, an illegal act. The title will be wrong, and the whole affair might drift into Chancery, just when a vigorous policy is required to make the venture a success. If Monty were here and in his right mind, I think we could come to terms, but, when I saw him last at any rate, he was quite incapable, and he might become a tool to anything. The Bears might get hold of him and ruin us all. In short, it's a beastly mess!”
Francis looked at him keenly.
“What do you expect me to do?” he asked.
“I have no right to expect anything,” Trent said. “However, I saved your life and you may consider yourself therefore under some obligation to me. I will tell you then what I would have you do. In the first place, I know no more where he is than you do. He may be in England or he may not. I shall go to Da Souza, who probably knows. You can come with me if you like. I don't want to rob the man of a penny. He shall have all he is entitled to—only I do want to arrange terms with him quietly, and not have the thing talked about. It's as much for the others' sake as my own. The men who came into my Syndicate trusted me, and I don't want them left.”
Francis took a little silver case from his pocket, lit a cigarette, and smoked for a moment or two thoughtfully.
“It is possible,” he said at last, “that you are an honest man. On the other hand you must admit that the balance of probability from my point of view is on the other side. Let us travel backwards a little way—to my first meeting with you. I witnessed the granting of this concession to you by the King of Bekwando. According to its wording you were virtually Monty's heir, and Monty was lying drunk, in a climate where strong waters and death walk hand-in-hand. You leave him in the bush, proclaim his death, and take sole possession. I find him alive, do the best I can for him, and here the first act ends. Then what afterwards? I hear of you as an empire-maker and a millionaire. Nevertheless, Monty was alive and you knew he was alive, but when I reach Attra he has been spirited away! I want to know where! You say you don't know. It may be true, but it doesn't sound like it.”
Trent's under-lip was twitching, a sure sign of the tempest within, but he kept himself under restraint and said never a word.
Francis continued, “Now I do not wish to be your enemy, Scarlett Trent, or to do you an ill turn, but this is my word to you. Produce Monty within a week and open reasonable negotiations for treating him fairly, and I will keep silent. But if you can't produce him at the end of that time I must go to his relations and lay all these things before them.”
Trent rose slowly to his feet.
“Give me your address,” he said, “I will do what I can.”
Francis tore a leaf from his pocket-book and wrote a few words upon it.
“That will find me at any time,” he said. “One moment, Trent. When I saw you first you were with—a lady.”
“Well!”
“I have been away from England so long,” Francis continued slowly, “that my memory has suffered. Yet that lady's face was somehow familiar. May I ask her name?”
“Miss Ernestine Wendermott,” Trent answered slowly.
Francis threw away his cigarette and lit another.
“Thank you,” he said.
Da Souza's office was neither furnished nor located with the idea of impressing casual visitors. It was in a back-street off an alley, and although within a stone's throw of Lothbury its immediate surroundings were not exhilarating. A blank wall faced it, a green-grocer's shop shared with a wonderful, cellar-like public-house the honour of its more immediate environment. Trent, whose first visit it was, looked about him with surprise mingled with some disgust.
He pushed open the swing door and found himself face to face with Da Souza's one clerk—a youth of unkempt appearance, shabbily but flashily dressed, with sallow complexion and eyes set close together. He was engaged at that particular moment in polishing a large diamond pin upon the sleeve of his coat, which operation he suspended to gaze with much astonishment at this unlooked-for visitor. Trent had come straight from Ascot, straight indeed from his interview with Francis, and was still wearing his racing-glasses.
“I wish to see Mr. Da Souza,” Trent said. “Is he in?”
“I believe so, sir,” the boy answered. “What name?”
“Trent! Mr. Scarlett Trent!”
The door of an inner office opened, and Da Souza, sleek and curled, presented himself. He showed all his white teeth in the smile with which he welcomed his visitor. The light of battle was in his small, keen eyes, in his cringing bow, his mock humility.
“I am most honoured, Mr. Trent, sir,” he declared. “Welcome back to England. When did you return?”
“Yesterday,” Trent said shortly.
“And you have come,” Da Souza continued, “fresh from the triumphs of the race-course. It is so, I trust?”
“I have come straight from Ascot,” Trent replied, “but my horse was beaten if that is what you mean. I did not come here to talk about racing though. I want a word with you in private.”
“With much pleasure, sir,” Da Souza answered, throwing open with a little flourish the door of his sanctum. “Will you step in? This way! The chair is dusty. Permit me!”
Trent threw a swift glance around the room in which he found himself. It was barely furnished, and a window, thick with dust, looked out on the dingy back-wall of a bank or some public building. The floor was uncovered, the walls were hung with yellow maps of gold-mines all in the West African district. Da Souza himself, spick and span, with glossy boots and a flower in his buttonhole, was certainly the least shabby thing in the room.
“You know very well,” Trent said, “what I have come about. Of course you'll pretend you don't, so to save time I'll tell you. What have you done with Monty?”
Da Souza spread outwards the palms of his hands. He spoke with well-affected impatience.
“Monty! always Monty! What do I want with him? It is you who should look after him, not I.”
Trent turned quietly round and locked the door. Da Souza would have called out, but a paroxysm of fear had seized him. His fat, white face was pallid, and his knees were shaking. Trent's hand fell upon his shoulder, and Da Souza felt as though the claws of a trap had gripped him.
“If you call out I'll throttle you,” Trent said. “Now listen. Francis is in England and, unless Monty is produced, will tell the whole story. I shall do the best I can for all of us, but I'm not going to have Monty done to death. Come, let's have the truth.”
Da Souza was grey now with a fear greater even than a physical one. He had been so near wealth. Was he to lose everything?
“Mr. Trent,” he whispered, “my dear friend, have reason. Monty, I tell you, is only half alive, he hangs on, but it is a mere thread of life. Leave it all to me! To-morrow he shall be dead!—oh, quite naturally. There shall be no risk! Trent, Trent!”
His cry ended in a gurgle, for Trent's hand was on his throat.
“Listen, you miserable hound,” he whispered. “Take me to him this moment, or I'll shake the life out of you. Did you ever know me go back from my word?”
Da Souza took up his hat with an ugly oath and yielded. The two men left the office together.
“Listen!”
The two women sat in silence, waiting for some repetition of the sound. This time there was certainly no possibility of any mistake. From the room above their heads came the feeble, quavering sobbing of an old man. Julie threw down her book and sprang up.
“Mother, I cannot bear it any longer,” she cried. “I know where the key is, and I am going into that room.”
Mrs. Da Souza's portly frame quivered with excitement.
“My child,” she pleaded, “don't Julie, do remember! Your father will know, and then—oh, I shall be frightened to death!”
“It is nothing to do with you, mother,” the girl said, “I am going.”
Mrs. Da Souza produced a capacious pocket-handkerchief, reeking with scent, and dabbed her eyes with it. From the days when she too had been like Julie, slim and pretty, she had been every hour in dread of her husband. Long ago her spirit had been broken and her independence subdued. To her friend and confidants no word save of pride and love for her husband had ever passed her lips, yet now as she watched her daughter she was conscious of a wild, passionate wish that her fate at least might be a different one. And while she mopped her eyes and looked backward, Julie disappeared.
Even Julie, as she ascended the stairs with the key of the locked room in her hand, was conscious of unusual tremors. If her position with regard to her father was not the absolute condition of serfdom into which her mother had been ground down, she was at least afraid of him, and she remembered the strict commands he had laid upon them all. The room was not to be open save by himself. All cries and entreaties were to be disregarded, every one was to behave as though that room did not exist. They had borne it already for days, the heart-stirring moans, the faint, despairing cries of the prisoner, and she could bear it no longer. She had a tender little heart, and from the first it had been moved by the appearance of the pitiful old man, leaning so heavily upon her father's arm, as they had come up the garden walk together. She made up her mind to satisfy herself at least that his isolation was of his own choice. So she went boldly up the stairs and thrust the key into the lock. A moment's hesitation, then she threw it open.
Her first impulse, when she had looked into the face of the man who stumbled up in fear at her entrance, was to then and there abandon her enterprise—for Monty just then was not a pleasant sight to look upon. The room was foul with the odour of spirits and tobacco smoke. Monty himself was unkempt and unwashed, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had fallen half across the table with the gesture of a drunken man. At the sight of him her pity died away. After all, then, the sobbing they had heard was the maudlin crying of a drunken man. Yet he was very old, and there was something about the childish, breathless fear with which he was regarding her which made her hesitate. She lingered instead, and finding him tongue-tied, spoke to him.
“We heard you talking to yourself downstairs,” she said, “and we were afraid that you might be in pain.”
“Ah,” he muttered, “That is all, then! There is no one behind you—no one who wants me!”
“There is no one in the house,” she assured him, “save my mother and myself.”
He drew a little breath which ended in a sob. “You see,” he said vaguely, “I sit up here hour by hour, and I think that I fancy things. Only a little while ago I fancied that I heard Mr. Walsh's voice, and he wanted the mission-box, the wooden box with the cross, you know. I keep on thinking I hear him. Stupid, isn't it?”
He smiled weakly, and his bony fingers stole round the tumbler which stood by his side. She shook her head at him smiling, and crossed over to him. She was not afraid any more.
“I wouldn't drink if I were you,” she said, “it can't be good for you, I'm sure!”
“Good,” he answered slowly, “it's poison—rank poison.”
“If I were you,” she said, “I would put all this stuff away and go for a nice walk. It would do you much more good.”
He shook his head.
“I daren't,” he whispered. “They're looking for me now. I must hide—hide all the time!”
“Who are looking for you?” she asked.
“Don't you know? Mr. Walsh and his wife! They have come over after me!”
“Why?”
“Didn't you know,” he muttered, “that I am a thief?”
She shook her head.
“No, I certainly didn't. I'm very sorry!”
He nodded his head vigorously a great many times.
“Won't you tell me about it?” she asked. “Was it anything very bad?”
“I don't know,” he said. “It's so hard to remember! It is something like this! I seem to have lived for such a long time, and when I look back I can remember things that happened a very long time ago, but then there seems a gap, and everything is all misty, and it makes my head ache dreadfully to try and remember,” he moaned.
“Then don't try,” she said kindly. “I'll read to you for a little time if you like, and you shall sit quite quiet.”
He seemed not to have heard her. He continued presently—
“Once before I died, it was all I wanted. Just to have heard her speak, to have seen my little girl grown into a woman, and the sea was always there, and Oom Sam would always come with that cursed rum. Then one day came Trent and talked of money and spoke of England, and when he went away it rang for ever in my ears, and at night I heard her calling for me across the sea. So I stole out, and the great steamer was lying there with red fires at her funnel, and I was mad. She was crying for me across the sea, so I took the money!”
She patted his hand gently. There was a lump in her throat, and her eyes were wet.
“Was it your daughter you wanted so much to see?” she asked softly.
“My daughter! My little girl,” he answered! “And I heard her calling to me with her mother's voice across the sea. So I took the money.”
“No one would blame you very much for that, I am sure,” she said cheerfully. “You are frightening yourself needlessly. I will speak to Father, and he shall help you.”
He held up his hand.
“He is hiding me,” he whispered. “It is through him I knew that they were after me. I don't mind for myself, but she might get to know, and I have brought disgrace enough upon her. Listen!”
There were footsteps upon the stairs. He clung to her in an agony of terror.
“They are coming!” he cried. “Hide me! Oh, hide me!”
But she too was almost equally terrified, for she had recognised her father's tread. The door was thrown open and De Souza entered, followed by Scarlett Trent.
The old man and the girl were equally terrified, both without cause. Da Souza forgot for a moment to be angry at his daughter's disobedience; and was quick to see that her presence there was all to his advantage. Monty, as white as death, was stricken dumb to see Trent. He sank back gasping into a chair. Trent came up to him with outstretched hands and with a look of keen pity in his hard face.
“Monty, old chap,” he said, “what on earth are you scared at? Don't you know I'm glad to see you! Didn't I come to Attra to get you back to England? Shake hands, partner. I've got lots of money for you and good news.”
Monty's hand was limp and cold, his eyes were glazed and expressionless. Trent looked at the half-empty bottle by his side and turned savagely to Da Souza.
“You blackguard!” he said in a low tone, “you wanted to kill him, did you? Don't you know that to shut him up here and ply him with brandy is as much murder as though you stood with a knife at his throat?”
“He goes mad without something to drink,” Da Souza muttered.
“He'll go mad fast enough with a bottle of brandy within reach, and you know it,” Trent answered fiercely. “I am going to take him away from here.”
Da Souza was no longer cringing. He shrugged his shoulders and thrust his fat little hands into his trousers pockets.
“Very well,” he said darkly, “you go your own way. You won't take my advice. I've been a City man all my life, and I know a thing or two. You bring Monty to the general meeting of the Bekwando Company and explain his position, and I tell you, you'll have the whole market toppling about your ears. No concern of mine, of course. I have got rid of a few of my shares, and I'll work a few more off before the crash. But what about you? What about Scarlett Trent, the millionaire?”
“I can afford to lose a bit,” Trent answered quietly, “I'm not afraid.”
Da Souza laughed a little hysterically.
“You think you're a financial genius, I suppose,” he said, “because you've brought a few things off. Why, you don't know the A B C of the thing. I tell you this, my friend. A Company like the Bekwando Company is very much like a woman's reputation, drop a hint or two, start just a bit of talk, and I tell you the flames'll soon do the work.”
Trent turned his back upon him.
“Monty,” he said, “you aren't afraid to come with me?”
Monty looked at him, perplexed and troubled.
“You've nothing to be afraid of,” Trent continued. “As to the money at Mr. Walsh's house, I settled that all up with him before I left Attra. It belonged to you really, for I'd left more than that for you.”
“There is no one, then,” Monty asked in a slow, painful whisper, “who will put me in prison?”
“I give you my word, Monty,” Trent declared, “that there is not a single soul who has any idea of the sort.”
“You see, it isn't that I mind,” Monty continued in a low, quivering voice, “but there's my little girl! My real name might come out, and I wouldn't have her know what I've been for anything.”
“She shall not know,” Trent said, “I'll promise you'll be perfectly safe with me.”
Monty rose up weakly. His knees were shaking, and he was in a pitiful state. He cast a sidelong glance at the brandy bottle by his side, and his hand stole out towards it. But Trent stopped him gently but firmly.
“Not now, Monty,” he said, “you've had enough of that!”
The man's hand dropped to his side. He looked into Trent's face, and the years seemed to fade away into a mist.
“You were always a hard man, Scarlett Trent,” he said. “You were always hard on me!”
“Maybe so,” Trent answered, “yet you'd have died in D.T. before now but for me! I kept you from it as far as I could. I'm going to keep you from it now!”
Monty turned a woebegone face around the little room.
“I don't know,” he said; “I'm comfortable here, and I'm too old, Trent, to live your life. I'd begin again, Trent, I would indeed, if I were ten years younger. It's too late now! I couldn't live a day without something to keep up my strength!”
“He's quite right, Trent,” Da Souza put in hastily. “He's too old to start afresh now. He's comfortable here and well looked after; make him an allowance, or give him a good lump sum in lieu of all claims. I'll draw it out; you'll sign it, won't you, Monty? Be reasonable, Trent! It's the best course for all of us!”
But Trent shook his head. “I have made up my mind,” he said. “He must come with me. Monty, there is the little girl!
“Too late,” Monty moaned; “look at me!”
“But if you could leave her a fortune, make her magnificent presents?”
Monty wavered then. His dull eyes shone once more!
“If I could do that,” he murmured.
“I pledge my word that you shall,” Trent answered. Monty rose up.
“I am ready,” he said simply. “Let us start at once.”
Da Souza planted himself in front of them.
“You defy me!” he said. “You will not trust him with me or take my advice. Very well, my friend! Now listen! You want to ruin me! Well, if I go, the Bekwando Company shall go too, you understand! Ruin for me shall mean ruin for Mr. Scarlett Trent—ah, ruin and disgrace. It shall mean imprisonment if I can bring it about, and I have friends! Don't you know that you are guilty of fraud? You sold what wasn't yours and put the money in your pocket! You left your partner to rot in a fever swamp, or to be done to death by those filthy blacks. The law will call that swindling! You will find yourself in the dock, my friend, in the prisoners' dock, I say! Come, how do you like that, Mr. Scarlett Trent? If you leave this room with him, you are a ruined man. I shall see to it.”
Trent swung him out of the way—a single contemptuous turn of the wrist, and Da Souza reeled against the mantelpiece. He held out his hand to Monty and they left the room together.
“From a conversational point of view,” Lady Tresham remarked, “our guest to-night seems scarcely likely to distinguish himself.”
Ernestine looked over her fan across the drawing-room.
“I have never seen such an alteration in a man,” she said, “in so short a time. This morning he amazed me. He knew the right people and did the right things—carried himself too like a man who is sure of himself. To-night he is simply a booby.”
“Perhaps it is his evening clothes,” Lady Tresham remarked, “they take some getting used to, I believe.”
“This morning,” Ernestine said, “he had passed that stage altogether. This is, I suppose, a relapse! Such a nuisance for you!”
Lady Tresham rose and smiled sweetly at the man who was taking her in.
“Well, he is to be your charge, so I hope you may find him more amusing than he looks,” she answered.
It was an early dinner, to be followed by a visit to a popular theatre. A few hours ago Trent was looking forward to his evening with the keenest pleasure—now he was dazed—he could not readjust his point of view to the new conditions. He knew very well that it was his wealth, and his wealth only, which had brought him as an equal amongst these people, all, so far as education and social breeding was concerned, of so entirely a different sphere. He looked around the table. What would they say if they knew? He would be thrust out as an interloper. Opposite to him was a Peer who was even then engaged in threading the meshes of the Bankruptcy Court, what did they care for that?—not a whit! He was of their order though he was a beggar. But as regards himself, he was fully conscious of the difference. The measure of his wealth was the measure of his standing amongst them. Without it he would be thrust forth—he could make no claim to association with them. The thought filled him with a slow, bitter anger. He sent away his soup untasted, and he could not find heart to speak to the girl who had been the will-o'-the-wisp leading him into this evil plight.
Presently she addressed him.
“Mr. Trent!”
He turned round and looked at her.
“Is it necessary for me to remind you, I wonder,” she said, “that it is usual to address a few remarks—quite as a matter of form, you know—to the woman whom you bring in to dinner?”
He eyed her dispassionately.
“I am not used to making conversation,” he said. “Is there anything in the world which I could talk about likely to interest you?”
She took a salted almond from a silver dish by his side and smiled sweetly upon him. “Dear me!” she said, “how fierce! Don't attempt it if you feel like that, please! What have you been doing since I saw you last?—losing your money or your temper, or both?”
He looked at her with a curiously grim smile.
“If I lost the former,” he said, “I should very soon cease to be a person of interest, or of any account at all, amongst your friends.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You do not strike one,” she remarked, “as the sort of person likely to lose a fortune on the race-course.”
“You are quite right,” he answered, “I think that I won money. A couple of thousand at least.”
“Two thousand pounds!” She actually sighed, and lost her appetite for the oyster patty with which she had been trifling. Trent looked around the table.
“At the same time,” he continued in a lower key, “I'll make a confession to you, Miss Wendermott, I wouldn't care to make to any one else here. I've been pretty lucky as you know, made money fast—piled it up in fact. To-day, for the first time, I have come face to face with the possibility of a reverse.”
“Is this a new character?” she murmured. “Are you becoming faint-hearted?”
“It is no ordinary reverse,” he said slowly. “It is collapse—everything!”
“O—oh!”
She looked at him attentively. Her own heart was beating. If he had not been engrossed by his care lest any one might over-hear their conversation, he would have been astonished at the change in her face.
“You are talking in enigmas surely,” she said. “Nothing of that sort could possibly happen to you. They tell me that the Bekwando Land shares are priceless, and that you must make millions.”
“This afternoon,” he said, raising his glass to his lips and draining it, “I think that I must have dozed upon the lawn at Ascot. I sat there for some time, back amongst the trees, and I think that I must have fallen to sleep. There was a whisper in my ears and I saw myself stripped of everything. How was it? I forget now! A concession repudiated, a bank failure, a big slump—what does it matter? The money was gone, and I was simply myself again, Scarlett Trent, a labourer, penniless and of no account.”
“It must have been an odd sensation,” she said thoughtfully.
“I will tell you what it made me realise,” he said. “I am drifting into a dangerous position. I am linking myself to a little world to whom, personally, I am as nothing and less than nothing. I am tolerated for my belongings! If by any chance I were to lose these, what would become of me?”
“You are a man,” she said, looking at him earnestly; “you have the nerve and wits of a man, what you have done before you might do again.”
“In the meantime I should be ostracised.”
“By a good many people, no doubt.”
He held his peace for a time, and ate and drank what was set before him. He was conscious that his was scarcely a dinner-table manner. He was too eager, too deeply in earnest. People opposite were looking at them, Ernestine talked to her vis-a-vis. It was some time before he spoke again, when he did he took up the thread of their conversation where he had left it.
“By the majority, of course,” he said. “I have wondered sometimes whether there might be any one who would be different.”
“I should be sorry,” she said demurely.
“Sorry, yes; so would the tradespeople who had had my money and the men who call themselves my friends and forget that they are my debtors.”
“You are cynical.”
“I cannot help it,” he answered. “It is my dream. To-day, you know, I have stood face to face with evil things.”
“Do you know,” she said, “I should never have called you a dreamer, a man likely to fancy things. I wonder if anything has really happened to make you talk like this?”
He flashed a quick glance at her underneath his heavy brows. Nothing in her face betrayed any more than the most ordinary interest in what he was saying. Yet somehow, from that moment, he had uneasy doubts concerning her, whether there might be by any chance some reason for the tolerance and the interest with which she had regarded him from the first. The mere suspicion of it was a shock to him. He relapsed once more into a state of nervous silence. Ernestine yawned, and her hostess threw more than one pitying glance towards her.
Afterwards the whole party adjourned to the theatre, altogether in an informal manner. Some of the guests had carriages waiting, others went down in hansoms. Ernestine was rather late in coming downstairs and found Trent waiting for her in the hall. She was wearing a wonderful black satin opera cloak with pale green lining, her maid had touched up her hair and wound a string of pearls around her neck. He watched her as she came slowly down the stairs, buttoning her gloves, and looking at him with eyebrows faintly raised to see him waiting there alone. After all, what folly! Was it likely that wealth, however great, could ever make him of her world, could ever bring him in reality one degree nearer to her? That night he had lost all confidence. He told himself that it was the rankest presumption to even think of her.
“The others,” he said, “have gone on. Lady Tresham left word that I was to take you.”
She glanced at the old-fashioned clock which stood in the corner of the hall.
“How ridiculous to have hurried so!” she said. “One might surely be comfortable here instead of waiting at the theatre.”
She walked towards the door with him. His own little night-brougham was waiting there, and she stepped into it.
“I am surprised at Lady Tresham,” she said, smiling. “I really don't think that I am at all properly chaperoned. This comes, I suppose, from having acquired a character for independence.”
Her gown seemed to fill the carriage—a little sea of frothy lace and muslin. He hesitated on the pavement.
“Shall I ride outside?” he suggested. “I don't want to crush you.”
She gathered up her skirt at once and made room for him. He directed the driver and stepped in beside her.
“I hope,” she said, “that your cigarette restored your spirits. You are not going to be as dull all the evening as you were at dinner, are you?”
He sighed a little wistfully. “I'd like to talk to you,” he said simply, “but somehow to-night... you know it was much easier when you were a journalist from the 'Hour'.”
“Well, that is what I am now,” she said, laughing. “Only I can't get away from all my old friends at once. The day after to-morrow I shall be back at work.”
“Do you mean it?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course I do! You don't suppose I find this sort of thing particularly amusing, do you? Hasn't it ever occurred to you that there must be a terrible sameness about people who have been brought up amongst exactly the same surroundings and taught to regard life from exactly the same point of view?”
“But you belong to them—you have their instincts.”
“I may belong to them in some ways, but you know that I am a revolted daughter. Haven't I proved it? Haven't I gone out into the world, to the horror of all my relatives, for the sole purpose of getting a firmer grip of life? And yet, do you know, Mr. Trent, I believe that to-night you have forgotten that. You have remembered my present character only, and, in despair of interesting a fashionable young lady, you have not talked to me at all, and I have been very dull.”
“It is quite true,” he assented. “All around us they were talking of things of which I knew nothing, and you were one of them.”
“How foolish! You could have talked to me about Fred and the road-making in Africa and I should have been more interested than in anything they could have said to me.”
They were passing a brilliantly-lit corner, and the light flashed upon his strong, set face with its heavy eyebrows and firm lips. He leaned back and laughed hoarsely. Was it her fancy, she wondered, or did he seem not wholly at his ease.
“Haven't I told you a good deal? I should have thought that Fred and I between us had told you all about Africa that you would care to hear.”
She shook her head. What she said next sounded to him, in a certain sense, enigmatic.
“There is a good deal left for you to tell me,” she said. “Some day I shall hope to know everything.”
He met her gaze without flinching.
“Some day,” he said, “I hope you will.”