A Millionaire of Yesterday Part 16

"You are going to talk to me about Africa, are you not?" she reminded him. "Couldn't we sit in the shade somewhere. I got quite hot walking from the station."

He led the way across the lawn, and they sat under a cedar-tree. He was awkward and ill at ease, but she had tact enough for both.

"I can't understand," he began, "how people are interested in the stuff which gets into papers nowadays. If you want horrors though, I can supply you. For one man who succeeds over there, there are a dozen who find it a short cut down into h.e.l.l. I can tell you if you like of my days of starvation."

"Go on!"

Like many men who talk but seldom, he had the gift when he chose to speak of reproducing his experiences in vivid though unpolished language. He told her of the days when he had worked on the banks of the Congo with the coolies, a slave in everything but name, when the sun had burned the brains of men to madness, and the palm wine had turned them into howling devils. He told her of the natives of Bekwando, of the days they had spent amongst them in that squalid hut when their fate hung in the balance day by day, and every shout that went up from the warriors gathered round the house of the King was a cry of death. He spoke of their ultimate success, of the granting of the concession which had laid the foundation of his fortunes, and then of that terrible journey back through the bush, followed by the natives who had already repented of their action, and who dogged their footsteps hour after hour, waiting for them only to sleep or rest to seize upon them and haul them back to Bekwando, prisoners for the sacrifice.

"It was only our revolvers which kept them away," he went on. "I shot eight or nine of them at different times when they came too close, and to hear them wailing over the bodies was one of the most hideous things you can imagine. Why, for months and months afterwards I couldn't sleep.

I'd wake up in the night and fancy that I heard that cursed yelling outside my window--ay, even on the steamer at night-time if I was on deck before moonlight, I'd seem to hear it rising up out of the water.

Ugh!"

She shuddered.

"But you both escaped?" she said.

There was a moment's silence. The shade of the cedar-tree was deep and cool, but it brought little relief to Trent. The perspiration stood out on his forehead in great beads, he breathed for a moment in little gasps as though stifled.

"No," he answered; "my partner died within a mile or two of the Coast.

He was very ill when we started, and I pretty well had to carry him the whole of the last day. I did my best for him. I did, indeed, but it was no good. I had to leave him. There was no use sacrificing oneself for a dead man."

She inclined her head sympathetically.

"Was he an Englishman?" she asked.

He faced the question just as he had faced death years before leering at him, a few feet from the muzzle of his revolver.

"He was an Englishman. The only name we had ever heard him called by was 'Monty.' Some said he was a broken-down gentleman. I believe he was."

She was unconscious of his pa.s.sionate, breathless scrutiny, unconscious utterly of the great wave of relief which swept into his face as he realised that his words were without any special meaning to her.

"It was very sad indeed," she said. "If he had lived, he would have shared with you, I suppose, in the concession?"

Trent nodded.

"Yes, we were equal partners. We had an arrangement by which, if one died, the survivor took the lot. I didn't want it though, I'd rather he had pulled through. I would indeed," he repeated with nervous force.

"I am quite sure of that," she answered. "And now tell me something about your career in the City after you came to England. Do you know, I have scarcely ever been in what you financiers call the City. In a way it must be interesting."

"You wouldn't find it so," he said. "It is not a place for such as you.

It is a life of lies and gambling and deceit. There are times when I have hated it. I hate it now!"

She was unaffectedly surprised. What a speech for a millionaire of yesterday!

"I thought," she said, "that for those who took part in it, it possessed a fascination stronger than anything else in the world."

He shook his head.

"It is an ugly fascination," he said. "You are in the swim, and you must hold your own. You gamble with other men, and when you win you chuckle.

All the time you're whittling your conscience away--if ever you had any.

You're never quite dishonest, and you're never quite honest. You come out on top, and afterwards you hate yourself. It's a dirty little life!"

"Well," she remarked after a moment's pause, "you have surprised me very much. At any rate you are rich enough now to have no more to do with it."

He kicked a fir cone savagely away.

"If I could," he said, "I would shut up my office to-morrow, sell out, and live upon a farm. But I've got to keep what I've made. The more you succeed the more involved you become. It's a sort of slavery."

"Have you no friends?" she asked.

"I have never," he answered, "had a friend in my life."

"You have guests at any rate!"

"I sent 'em away last night!"

"What, the young lady in blue?" she asked demurely.

"Yes, and the other one too. Packed them clean off, and they're not coming back either!"

"I am very pleased to hear it," she remarked.

"There's a man and his wife and daughter here I can't get rid of quite so easily," he went on gloomily, "but they've got to go!"

"They would be less objectionable to the people round here who might like to come and see you," she remarked, "than two unattached young ladies."

"May be," he answered. "Yet I'd give a lot to be rid of them."

He had risen to his feet and was standing with his back to the cedar-tree, looking away with fixed eyes to where the sunlight fell upon a distant hillside gorgeous with patches and streaks of yellow gorse and purple heather. Presently she noticed his abstraction and looked also through the gap in the trees.

"You have a beautiful view here," she said. "You are fond of the country, are you not?"

"Very," he answered.

"It is not every one," she remarked, "who is able to appreciate it, especially when their lives have been spent as yours must have been."

He looked at her curiously. "I wonder," he said, "if you have any idea how my life has been spent."

"You have given me," she said, "a very fair idea about some part of it at any rate."

He drew a long breath and looked down at her.

"I have given you no idea at all," he said firmly. "I have told you a few incidents, that is all. You have talked to me as though I were an equal. Listen! you are probably the first lady with whom I have ever spoken. I do not want to deceive you. I never had a sc.r.a.p of education.

My father was a carpenter who drank himself to death, and my mother was a factory girl. I was in the workhouse when I was a boy. I have never been to school. I don't know how to talk properly, but I should be worse even than I am, if I had not had to mix up with a lot of men in the City who had been properly educated. I am utterly and miserably ignorant.

I've got low tastes and lots of 'em. I was drunk a few nights ago--I've done most of the things men who are beasts do. There! Now, don't you want to run away?"

She shook her head and smiled up at him. She was immensely interested.