Probably nothing else in the world could so soon have transformed Scarlett Trent from the Gold Coast buccaneer to the law-abiding tenant of a Surrey villa.Before her full,inquiring eyes and calm salute he found himself at once abashed and confused.He raised his hand to his head,only to find that he had come out without a hat,and he certainly appeared,as he stood there,to his worst possible advantage.
"Good morning,miss,"he stammered;"I'm afraid I startled you!"She winced a little at his address,but otherwise her manner was not ungracious.
"You did a little,"she admitted."Do you usually stride out of your windows like that,bareheaded and muttering to yourself?""I was in a beastly temper,"he admitted."If I had known who was outside -it would have been different."She looked into his face with some interest."What an odd thing!"she remarked."Why,I should have thought that to-day you would have been amiability itself.I read at breakfast-time that you had accomplished something more than ordinarily wonderful in the City and had made -I forget how many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
When I showed the sketch of your house to my chief,and told him that you were going to let me interview you to-day,I really thought that he would have raised my salary at once.""It's more luck than anything,"he said."I've stood next door to ruin twice.I may again,although I'm a millionaire to-day."She looked at him curiously -at his ugly tweed suit,his yellow boots,and up into the strong,forceful face with eyes set in deep hollows under his protruding brows,at the heavy jaws giving a certain coarseness to his expression,which his mouth and forehead,well-shaped though they were,could not altogether dispel.And at he same time he looked at her,slim,tall,and elegant,daintily clothed from her shapely shoes to her sailor hat,her brown hair,parted in the middle,escaping a little from its confinement to ripple about her forehead,and show more clearly the delicacy of her complexion.Trent was an ignorant man on many subjects,on others his taste seemed almost intuitively correct.He knew that this girl belonged to a class from which his descent and education had left him far apart,a class of which he knew nothing,and with whom he could claim no kinship.She too was realising it -her interest in him was,however,none the less deep.He was a type of those powers which to-day hold the world in their hands,make kingdoms tremble,and change the fate of nations.Perhaps he was all the more interesting to her because,by all the ordinary standards of criticism,he would fail to be ranked,in the jargon of her class,as a gentleman.He represented something in flesh and blood which had never seemed more than half real to her -power without education.She liked to consider herself -being a writer with ambitions who took herself seriously -a student of human nature.Here was a specimen worth impaling,an original being,a creature of a new type such as never had come within the region of her experience.It was worth while ignoring small idiosyncrasies which might offend,in order to annex him.Besides,from a journalistic point of view,the man was more than interesting -he was a veritable treasure.
"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 hell.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."Ishot 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.
