“Ernestine,” he said gravely, “I am going to speak to you about your
father!”
She looked up at him in swift surprise.
“Is it necessary?”
“I think so,” he answered. “You won't like what I'm going to tell you!
You'll think you've been badly treated. So you have! I pledged my word,
in a weak hour, with the others. To-day I'm going to break it. I think
it best.”
“Well?”
“You've been deceived! You were told always that your father had died in
prison. He didn't.”
“What!”
Her sharp cry rang out strangely into the little room. Already he could
see signs of the coming storm, and the task which lay before him seemed
more hateful than ever.
“Listen,” he said. “I must tell you some things which you know in order
to explain others which you do not know. Your father was a younger son
born of extravagant parents, virtually penniless and without the least
capacity for earning money. I don't blame him--who could? I couldn't
earn money myself. If I hadn't got it I daresay that I should go to the
bad as he did.”
The girl's lips tightened, and she drew a little breath through her
teeth. Davenant hesitated.
“You know all about that company affair. Of course they made your father
the butt of the whole thing, although he was little more than a tool. He
was sent to prison for seven years. You were only a child then and your
mother was dead. Well, when the seven years were up, your relations
and mine too, Ernestine, concocted what I have always considered an
ill-begotten and a miserably selfish plot. Your father, unfortunately,
yielded to them, for your sake. You were told that he had died in
prison. He did not. He lived through his seven years there, and when he
came out did so in another name and went abroad on the morning of the
day of his liberation.”
“Good God!” she cried. “And now!”
“He is dead,” Davenant answered hastily, “but only just lately. Wait
a minute. You are going to be furiously angry. I know it, and I don't
blame you. Only listen for a moment. The scheme was hatched up between
my father and your two uncles. I have always hated it and always
protested against it. Remember that and be fair to me. This is how they
reasoned. Your father's health, they said, was ruined, and if he lives
the seven years what is there left for him when he comes out? He was a
man, as you know, of aristocratic and fastidious tastes. He would have
the best of everything--society, clubs, sport. Now all these were barred
against him. If he had reappeared he could not have shown his face in
Pall Mall, or on the racecourses, and every moment of his life would be
full of humiliations and bitterness. Virtually then, for such a man as
he was, life in England was over. Then there was you. You were a pretty
child and the Earl had no children. If your father was dead the story
would be forgotten, you would marry brilliantly and an ugly page in the
family history would be blotted out. That was how they looked at it--it
was how they put it to your father.”
“He consented?”
“Yes, he consented! He saw the wisdom of it for your sake, for the sake
of the family, even for his own sake. The Earl settled an income upon
him and he left England secretly on the morning of his release. We had
the news of his death only a week or two ago.”
She stood up, her eyes blazing, her hands clenched together.
“I thank God,” she said “that I have found the courage to break away
from those people and take a little of my life into my own hands. You
can tell them this if you will, Cecil,--my uncle Lord Davenant, your
mother, and whoever had a say in this miserable affair. Tell them from
me that I know the truth and that they are a pack of cowardly, unnatural
old women. Tell them that so long as I live I will never willingly
speak to one of them again.
“I was afraid you'd take it like that,” he remarked dolefully.
“Take it like that!” she repeated in fierce scorn. “How else could a
woman hear such news? How else do you suppose she could feel to be told
that she had been hoodwinked, and kept from her duty and a man's heart
very likely broken, to save the respectability of a worn-out old family.
Oh, how could they have dared to do it? How could they have dared to do
it?”
“It was a beastly mistake,” he admitted.
A whirlwind of scorn seemed to sweep over her. She could keep still no
longer. She walked up and down the little room. Her hands were clenched,
her eyes flashing.
“To tell me that he was dead--to let him live out the rest of his poor
life in exile and alone! Did they think that I didn't care? Cecil,” she
exclaimed, suddenly turning and facing him, “I always loved my father!
You may think that I was too young to remember him--I wasn't, I loved
him always. When I grew up and they told me of his disgrace I was
bitterly sorry, for I loved his memory--but it made no difference.
And all the time it was a weak, silly lie! They let him come out, poor
father, without a friend to speak to him and they hustled him out of the
country. And I, whose place was there with him, never knew!”
“You were only a child, Ernestine. It was twelve years ago.”
“Child! I may have been only a child, but I should have been old enough
to know where my place was. Thank God I have done with these people and
their disgusting shibboleth of respectability.”
“You are a little violent,” he remarked.
“Pshaw!” She flashed a look of scorn upon him. “You don't understand!
How should you, you are of their kidney--you're only half a man.
Thank God that my mother was of the people! I'd have died to have gone
smirking through life with a brick for a heart and milk and water in my
veins! Of all the stupid pieces of brutality I ever heard of, this is
the most callous and the most heartbreaking.”
“It was a great mistake,” he said, “but I believe they did it for the
best.”
She sat down with a little gesture of despair.
“I really think you'd better go away, Cecil,” she said. “You exasperate
me too horribly. I shall strike you or throw something at you soon. Did
it for the best! What a miserable whine! Poor dear old dad, to think
that they should have done this thing.”
She buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed for the second time
since her childhood. Davenant was wise enough to attempt no sort of
consolation. He leaned a little forward and hid his own face with the
palm of his hand. When at last she looked up her face had cleared and
her tone was less bitter. It would have gone very hard with the Earl of
Eastchester, however, if he had called to see his niece just then.
“Well,” she said, “I want to know now why, after keeping silent all this
time, you thought it best to tell me the truth this afternoon?”
“Because,” he answered, “you told me that you had just been to see
Scarlett Trent!”
“And what on earth had that to do with it?”
“Because Scarlett Trent was with your father when he died. They were on
an excursion somewhere up in the bush--the very excursion that laid the
foundation of Trent's fortune.”
“Go on,” she cried. “Tell me all that you know! this is wonderful!”
“Well, I am glad to tell you this at any rate,” he said. “I always liked
your father and I saw him off when he left England, and have written to
him often since. I believe I was his only correspondent in this country,
except his solicitors. He had a very adventurous and, I am afraid, not a
very happy time. He never wrote cheerfully, and he mortgaged the greater
part of his income. I don't blame him for anything he did. A man needs
some responsibility, or some one dependent upon him to keep straight. To
be frank with you, I don't think he did.”
“Poor dad,” she murmured, “of course he didn't! I know I'd have gone to
the devil as fast as I could if I'd been treated like it!”
“Well, he drifted about from place to place and at last he got to the
Gold Coast. Here I half lost sight of him, and his few letters were more
bitter and despairing than ever. The last I had told me that he was just
off on an expedition into the interior with another Englishman.
They were to visit a native King and try to obtain from him certain
concessions, including the right to work a wonderful gold-mine somewhere
near the village of Bekwando.”
“Why, the great Bekwando Land Company!” she cried. “It is the one
Scarlett Trent has just formed a syndicate to work.”
Davenant nodded.
“Yes. It was a terrible risk they were running,” he said, “for the
people were savage and the climate deadly. He wrote cheerfully for him,
though. He had a partner, he said, who was strong and determined, and
they had presents, to get which he had mortgaged the last penny of his
income. It was a desperate enterprise perhaps, but it suited him, and
he went on to tell me this, Ernestine. If he succeeded and he became
wealthy, he was returning to England just for a sight of you. He was
so changed, he said, that no one in the world would recognise him. Poor
fellow! It was the last line I had from him.”
“And you are sure,” Ernestine said slowly, “that Scarlett Trent was his
partner?”
“Absolutely. Trent's own story clinches the matter. The prospectus of
the mine quotes the concession as having been granted to him by the King
of Bekwando in the same month as your father wrote to me.”
“And what news,” she asked, “have you had since?”
“Only this letter--I will read it to you--from one of the missionaries
of the Basle Society. I heard nothing for so long that I made inquiries,
and this is the result.”
Ernestine took it and read it out steadily.
“FORTNRENIG.
“DEAR Sir,--In reply to your letter and inquiry, respecting the
whereabouts of a Mr. Richard Grey, the matter was placed in my hands by
the agent of Messrs. Castle, and I have personally visited Buckomari, the
village at which he was last heard of. It seems that in February, 18--he
started on an expedition to Bekwando in the interior with an Englishman
by the name of Trent, with a view to buying land from a native King,
or obtaining the concession to work the valuable gold-mines of that
country. The expedition seems to have been successful, but Trent
returned alone and reported that his companion had been attacked by
bush-fever on the way back and had died in a few hours.
“I regret very much having to send you such sad and scanty news in
return for your handsome donation to our funds. I have made every
inquiry, but cannot trace any personal effects or letter. Mr. Grey, I
find, was known out here altogether by the nickname of Monty.
“I deeply regret the pain which this letter will doubtless cause you, and
trusting that you may seek and receive consolation where alone it may be
found,
“I am,
“Yours most sincerely,
“Chas. ADDISON.”
Ernestine read the letter carefully through, and instead of handing it
back to Davenant, put it into her pocket when she rose up. “Cecil,” she
said, “I want you to leave me at once! You may come back to-morrow at
the same time. I am going to think this out quietly.”
He took up his hat. “There is one thing more, Ernestine,” he said
slowly. “Enclosed in the letter from the missionary at Attra was another
and a shorter note, which, in accordance with his request, I burnt as
soon as I read it. I believe the man was honest when he told me that
for hours he had hesitated whether to send me those few lines or not.
Eventually he decided to do so, but he appealed to my honour to destroy
the note as soon as I had read it.”
“Well!”
“He thought it his duty to let me know that there had been rumours as
to how your father met his death. Trent, it seems, had the reputation of
being a reckless and daring man, and, according to some agreement which
they had, he profited enormously by your father's death. There seems to
have been no really definite ground for the rumour except that the body
was not found where Trent said that he had died. Apart from that,
life is held cheap out there, and although your father was in delicate
health, his death under such conditions could not fail to be suspicious.
I hope I haven't said too much. I've tried to put it to you exactly as
it was put to me!”
“Thank you,” Ernestine said, “I think I understand.”