With the darkness had come a wind from the sea, and the boy crept
outside in his flannels and planter's hat and threw himself down in a
cane chair with a little murmur of relief. Below him burned the white
lights of the town, a little noisier than usual to-night, for out in
the bay a steamer was lying-to, and there had been a few passengers and
cargo to land. The boy had had a hard day's work, or he would have been
in the town himself to watch for arrivals and wait for the mail. He
closed his eyes, half asleep, for the sun had been hot and the murmurs
of the sea below was almost like a lullaby. As he lay there a man's
voice from the path reached him. He sprang up, listening intently. It
must have been fancy--and yet! He leaned over the wooden balcony. The
figure of a man loomed out through the darkness, came nearer, became
distinct. Fred recognised him with a glad shout.
“Trent!” he cried. “Scarlett Trent, by all that's amazing!”
Trent held out his hand quickly. Somehow the glad young voice, quivering
with excitement, touched his heart in an unexpected and unusual manner.
It was pleasant to be welcomed like this--to feel that one person in the
world at least was glad of his coming. For Trent was a sorely stricken
man and the flavour of life had gone from him. Many a time he had looked
over the steamer's side during that long, lonely voyage and gazed almost
wishfully into the sea, in whose embrace was rest. It seemed to him
that he had been a gambler playing for great stakes, and the turn of the
wheel had gone against him.
“Fred!”
They stood with hands locked together, the boy breathless with surprise.
Then he saw that something was wrong.
“What is it, Trent?” he asked quickly. “Have we gone smash after all, or
have you been ill?”
Trent shook his head and smiled gravely.
“Neither,” he said. “The Company is booming, I believe. Civilised ways
didn't agree with me, I'm afraid. That's all! I've come back to have a
month or two's hard work--the best physic in the world.”
“I am delighted to see you,” Fred said heartily. “Everything's going
A1 here, and they've built me this little bungalow, only got in it last
week--stunning, isn't it? But--just fancy your being here again so soon!
Are your traps coming up?”
“I haven't many,” Trent answered. “They're on the way. Have you got room
for me?”
“Room for you!” the boy repeated scornfully. “Why, I'm all alone here.
It's the only thing against the place, being a bit lonely. Room for you!
I should think there is! Here, Dick! Dinner at once, and some wine!”
Trent was taken to see his room, the boy talking all the time, and later
on dinner was served and the boy did the honours, chaffing and talking
lightly. But later on when they sat outside, smoking furiously to keep
off the mosquitoes and watching the fireflies dart in and out amongst
the trees, the boy was silent. Then he leaned over and laid his hand on
Trent's arm.
“Tell me all about it--do,” he begged.
Trent was startled, touched, and suddenly filled with a desire for
sympathy such as he had never before in his life experienced. He
hesitated, but it was only for a moment.
“I never thought to tell any one,” he said slowly, “I think I'd like
to!”
And he did. He told his whole story. He did not spare himself. He spoke
of the days of his earlier partnership with Monty, and he admitted the
apparent brutality of his treatment of him on more than one occasion.
He spoke of Ernestine too--of his strange fancy for the photograph
of Monty's little girl, a fancy which later on when he met her became
almost immediately the dominant passion of his life. Then he spoke of
the coming of Francis, of the awakening of Ernestine's suspicions,
and of that desperate moment when he risked everything on her faith in
him--and lost. There was little else to tell and afterwards there was
a silence. But presently the boy's hand fell upon his arm almost
caressingly and he leaned over through the darkness.
“Women are such idiots,” the boy declared, with all the vigour and
certainty of long experience. “If only Aunt Ernestine had known you half
as well as I do, she would have been quite content to have trusted you
and to have believed that what you did was for the best. But I say,
Trent, you ought to have waited for it. After she had seen her father
and talked with him she must have understood you better. I shall write
to her.”
But Trent shook his head.
“No,” he said sternly, “it is too late now. That moment taught me all I
wanted to know. It was her love I wanted, Fred, and--that--no use hoping
for that, or she would have trusted me. After all I was half a madman
ever to have expected it--a rough, coarse chap like me, with only a
smattering of polite ways! It was madness! Some day I shall get over it!
We'll chuck work for a bit, soon, Fred, and go for some lions. That'll
give us something to think about at any rate.”
But the lions which Trent might have shot lived in peace, for on the
morrow he was restless and ill, and within a week the deadly fever of
the place had him in its clutches. The boy nursed him and the German
doctor came up from Attra and, when he learnt who his patient was, took
up his quarters in the place. But for all his care and the boy's nursing
things went badly with Scarlett Trent.
To him ended for a while all measure of days--time became one long
night, full of strange, tormenting flashes of thought, passing like red
fire before his burning eyes. Sometimes it was Monty crying to him from
the bush, sometimes the yelling of those savages at Bekwando seemed to
fill the air, sometimes Ernestine was there, listening to his passionate
pleading with cold, set face. In the dead of night he saw her and the
still silence was broken by his hoarse, passionate cries, which they
strove in vain to check. And when at last he lay white and still with
exhaustion, the doctor looked at the boy and softly shook his head. He
had very little hope.
Trent grew worse. In those rare flashes of semi-consciousness which
sometimes come to the fever-stricken, he reckoned himself a dying man
and contemplated the end of all things without enthusiasm and without
regret. The one and only failure of his life had eaten like canker into
his heart. It was death he craved for in the hot, burning nights, and
death came and sat, a grisly shadow, at his pillow. The doctor and the
boy did their best, but it was not they who saved him.
There came a night when he raved, and the sound of a woman's name rang
out from the open windows of the little bungalow, rang out through the
drawn mosquito netting amongst the palm-trees, across the surf-topped
sea to the great steamer which lay in the bay. Perhaps she heard
it--perhaps after all it was a fancy. Only, in the midst of his fever,
a hand as soft as velvet and as cool as the night sea-wind touched his
forehead, and a voice sounded in his ears so sweetly that the blood
burned no longer in his veins, so sweetly that he lay back upon his
pillow like a man under the influence of a strong narcotic and slept.
Then the doctor smiled and the boy sobbed.
“I came,” she said softly, “because it was the only atonement I could
make. I ought to have trusted you. Do you know, even my father told me
that.”
“I have made mistakes,” he said, “and of course behaved badly to him.”
“Now that everything has been explained,” she said, “I scarcely see what
else you could have done. At least you saved him from Da Souza when his
death would have made you a freer man. He is looking forward to seeing
you, you must make haste and get strong.”
“For his sake,” he murmured.
She leaned over and caressed him lightly. “For mine, dear.”