An old man,with his face turned to the sea,was making a weary attempt at digging upon a small potato patch.The blaze of the tropical sun had become lost an hour or so before in a strange,grey mist,rising not from the sea,but from the swamps which lay here and there -brilliant,verdant patches of poison and pestilence.
With the mist came a moist,sticky heat,the air was fetid.Trent wiped the perspiration from his forehead and breathed hard.This was an evil moment for him.
Monty turned round at the sound of his approaching footsteps.The two men stood face to face.Trent looked eagerly for some sign of recognition -none came.
"Don't you know me?"Trent said huskily."I'm Scarlett Trent -we went up to Bekwando together,you know.I thought you were dead,Monty,or I wouldn't have left you.""Eh!What!"Monty mumbled for a moment or two and was silent.A look of dull disappointment struggled with the vacuity of his face.Trent noticed that his hands were shaking pitifully and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Try and think,Monty,"he went on,drawing a step nearer to him.
"Don't you remember what a beastly time we had up in the bush -how they kept us day after day in that villainous hut because it was a fetish week,and how after we had got the concessions those confounded niggers followed us!They meant our lives,Monty,and I don't know how you escaped!Come!make an effort and pull yourself together.We're rich men now,both of us.You must come back to England and help me spend a bit."Monty had recovered a little his power of speech.He leaned over his spade and smiled benignly at his visitor.
"There was a Trentham in the Guards,"he said slowly,"the Honourable George Trentham,you know,one of poor Abercrombie's sons,but Ithought he was dead.You must dine with me one night at the Travellers'!I've given up eating myself,but I'm always thirsty."He looked anxiously away towards the town and began to mumble.Trent was in despair.Presently he began again.
"I used to belong to the Guards,-always dined there till Jacques left.Afterwards the cooking was beastly,and -I can't quite remember where I went then.You see -I think I must be getting old.
I don't remember things.Between you and me,"he sidled a little closer to Trent,"I think I must have got into a bit of a scrape of some sort -I feel as though there was a blank somewhere...."Again he became unintelligible.Trent was silent for several minutes.He could not understand that strained,anxious look which crept into Monty's face every time he faced the town.Then he made his last effort.
"Monty,do you remember this?"
Zealously guarded,yet a little worn at the edges and faded,he drew the picture from its case and held it before the old man's blinking eyes.There was a moment of suspense,then a sharp,breathless cry which ended in a wail.
"Take it away,"Monty moaned."I lost it long ago.I don't want to see it!I don't want to think.""I have come,"Trent said,with an unaccustomed gentleness in his tone,"to make you think.I want you to remember that that is a picture of your daughter.You are rich now and there is no reason why you should not come back to her.Don't you understand,Monty?"It was a grey,white face,shrivelled and pinched,weak eyes without depth,a vapid smile in which there was no meaning.Trent,carried away for a moment by an impulse of pity,felt only disappointment at the hopelessness of his task.He would have been honestly glad to have taken the Monty whom he had known back to England,but not this man!For already that brief flash of awakened life seemed to have died away.Monty's head was wagging feebly and he was casting continually little,furtive glances towards the town.
"Please go away,"he said."I don't know you and you give me a pain in my head.Don't you know what it is to feel a buzz,buzz,buzzing inside?I can't remember things.It's no use trying.""Monty,why do you look so often that way?"Trent said quietly.
"Is some one coming out from the town to see you?"Monty threw a quick glance at him and Trent sighed.For the glance was full of cunning,the low cunning of the lunatic criminal.
"No one,no one,"he said hastily."Who should come to see me?
I'm only poor Monty.Poor old Monty's got no friends.Go away and let me dig."Trent walked a few paces apart,and passed out of the garden to a low,shelving bank and looked downward where a sea of glass rippled on to the broad,firm sands.What a picture of desolation!The grey,hot mist,the whitewashed cabin,the long,ugly potato patch,the weird,pathetic figure of that old man from whose brain the light of life had surely passed for ever.And yet Trent was puzzled.
Monty's furtive glance inland,his half-frightened,half-cunning denial of any anticipated visit suggested that there was some one else who was interested in his existence,and some one too with whom he shared a secret.Trent lit a cigar and sat down upon the sandy turf.Monty resumed his digging.Trent watched him through the leaves of a stunted tree,underneath which he had thrown himself.
