Scarcely a word passed between the two men until they found themselves
in the smoking-room of Trent's house. A servant noiselessly arranged
decanters and cigars upon the sideboard, and, in response to an
impatient movement of Trent's, withdrew. Francis lit a cigarette. Trent,
contrary to his custom, did not smoke. He walked to the door and softly
locked it. Then he returned and stood looking down at his companion.
“Francis,” he said, “you have been my enemy since the day I saw you
first in Bekwando village.”
“Scarcely that,” Francis objected. “I have distrusted you since then if
you like.”
“Call it what you like,” Trent answered. “Only to-night you have served
me a scurvy trick. You were a guest at my table and you gave me not the
slightest warning. On the contrary, this morning you offered me a week's
respite.”
“The story I told,” Francis answered, “could have had no significance to
them.”
“I don't know whether you are trying to deceive me or not,” Trent said,
“only if you do not know, let me tell you--Miss Wendermott is that old
man's daughter!”
The man's start was real. There was no doubt about that. “And she knew?”
“She knew that he had been in Africa, but she believed that he had
died there. What she believes at this moment I cannot tell. Your story
evidently moved her. She will probably try to find out from you the
truth.”
Francis nodded.
“She has asked me to call upon her to-morrow.”
“Exactly. Now, forgive my troubling you with personal details, but
you've got to understand. I mean Miss Wendermott to be my wife.”
Francis sat up in his chair genuinely surprised. Something like a scowl
was on his dark, sallow face.
“Your wife!” he exclaimed, “aren't you joking, Trent?”
“I am not,” Trent answered sharply. “From the moment I saw her that has
been my fixed intention. Every one thinks of me as simply a speculator
with the money fever in my veins. Perhaps that was true once. It isn't
now! I must be rich to give her the position she deserves. That's all I
care for money.”'
“I am very much interested,” Francis said slowly, “to hear of your
intentions. Hasn't it occurred to you, however, that your behaviour
toward Miss Wendermott's father will take a great deal of explanation?”
“If there is no interference,” Trent said, “I can do it. There is
mystery on her part too, for I offered a large reward and news of him
through my solicitor, and she actually refused to reply. She has refused
any money accruing to her through her father, or to be brought into
contact with any one who could tell her about him.”
“The fact,” Francis remarked drily, “is scarcely to her credit. Monty
may have been disreputable enough, I've no doubt he was; but his
going away and staying there all these years was a piece of noble
unselfishness.”
“Monty has been hardly used in some ways,” Trent said. “I've done my
best by him, though.”
“That,” Francis said coldly, “is a matter of opinion.”
“I know very well,” Trent answered, “what yours is. You are welcome to
it. You can blackguard me all round London if you like in a week--but I
want a week's grace.”
“Why should I grant it you?”
Trent shrugged his shoulders.
“I won't threaten,” he said, “and I won't offer to bribe you, but I've
got to have that week's grace. We're both men, Francis, who've been
accustomed to our own way, I think. I want to know on what terms you'll
grant it me.”
Francis knocked the ash off his cigarette and rose slowly to his feet.
“You want to know,” he repeated meditatively, “on what terms I'll hold
my tongue for a week. Well, here's my answer! On no terms at all!”
“You don't mean that,” Trent said quietly.
“We shall see,” Francis answered grimly. “I'll be frank with you, Trent.
When we came in here you called me your enemy. Well, in a sense you were
right. I distrusted and disliked you from the moment I first met you
in Bekwando village with poor old Monty for a partner, and read the
agreement you had drawn up and the clause about the death of either
making the survivor sole legatee. In a regular fever swamp Monty was
drinking poison like water--and you were watching. That may have seemed
all right to you. To me it was very much like murder. It was my mistrust
of you which made me send men after you both through the bush, and,
sure enough, they found poor Monty abandoned, left to die while you had
hastened off to claim your booty. After that I had adventures enough
of my own for a bit and I lost sight of you until I came across you and
your gang road-making, and I am bound to admit that you saved my life.
That's neither here nor there. I asked about Monty and you told me some
plausible tale. I went to the place you spoke of--to find him of course
spirited away. We have met again in England, Scarlett Trent, and I
have asked once more for Monty. Once more I am met with evasions. This
morning I granted you a week--now I take back my word. I am going to
make public what I know to-morrow morning.”
“Since this morning, then,” Trent said, “your ill-will toward me has
increased.”
“Quite true,” Francis answered. “We are playing with the cards upon
the table, so I will be frank with you. What you told me about your
intentions towards Miss Wendermott makes me determined to strike at
once!”
“You yourself, I fancy,” Trent said quietly, “admired her?”
“More than any woman I have ever met,” Francis answered promptly, “and I
consider your attitude towards her grossly presumptuous.”
Trent stood quite still for a moment--then he unlocked the door.
“You had better go, Francis,” he said quietly. “I have a defence
prepared but I will reserve it. And listen, when I locked that door it
was with a purpose. I had no mind to let you leave as you are leaving.
Never mind. You can go--only be quick.”
Francis paused upon the threshold. “You understand,” he said
significantly.
“I understand,” Trent answered.
* * * * *
An hour passed, and Trent still remained in the chair before his
writing-table, his head upon his hand, his eyes fixed upon vacancy.
Afterwards he always thought of that hour as one of the bitterest of
his life. A strong and self-reliant man, he had all his life ignored
companionship, had been well content to live without friends,
self-contained and self-sufficient. To-night the spectre of a great
loneliness sat silently by his side! His heart was sore, his pride had
been bitterly touched, the desire and the whole fabric of his life was
in imminent and serious danger.
The man who had left him was an enemy and a prejudiced man, but Trent
knew that he was honest. He was the first human being to whom he had
ever betrayed the solitary ambition of his life, and his scornful words
seemed still to bite the air. If--he was right! Why not? Trent looked
with keen, merciless eyes through his past, and saw never a thing there
to make him glad. He had started life a workman, with a few ambitions
all of a material nature--he had lived the life of a cold, scheming
money-getter, absolutely selfish, negatively moral, doing little evil
perhaps, but less good. There was nothing in his life to make him worthy
of a woman's love, most surely there was nothing which could ever make
it possible that such a woman as Ernestine Wendermott should ever
care for him. All the wealth of Africa could never make him anything
different from what he was. And yet, as he sat and realised this, he
knew that he was writing down his life a failure. For, beside his desire
for her, there were no other things he cared for in life. Already he was
weary of financial warfare--the City life had palled upon him. He looked
around the magnificent room in the mansion which his agents had bought
and furnished for him. He looked at the pile of letters waiting for him
upon his desk, little square envelopes many of them, but all telling the
same tale, all tributes to his great success, and the mockery of it all
smote hard upon the walls of his fortitude. Lower and lower his head
drooped until it was buried in his folded arms--and the hour which
followed he always reckoned the bitterest of his life.