"This is what happened to my brother. He was unconscious for a very long time and his head was fearfully mangled. When he came out of ether he said very distinctly. "Oh Bingo, how rottenly clumsy of you.""
"Who was Bingo?" Trent asked.
"At the time n.o.body knew. Arthur"s uniform was torn off in the explosion and his regiment unknown."
"He could have told them," Trent a.s.serted.
She shook her head.
"You are mistaken. He could not tell them. They thought he was, what"s the word, malingering. They thought he wanted to be sent back and get out of the fighting. Then he complained of the dreadful noise. By degrees they found that he did not even know of the war. They thought of course he was pretending. My father heard of the wound and although he had disowned him he had him brought to our house in Grosvenor Place. We had specialists, those new sorts of doctors who don"t depend on medicines. Arthur thought he was still at Harrow eight years or more ago. Then I remembered a boy who shared a study with him there, a boy who had stayed here, a son of Sir Willoughby Hosken who has a place near Penzance. Bingo was somewhere in the Struma valley with his battery and in answer to a letter said that the only act of clumsiness he could call to mind was when he accidentally hit Arthur with an Indian club in the gym at school.
"One of the doctors went over to Harrow and found Arthur had been hit like this and was in the infirmary for three days. Mr. Trent, it was after that accident he altered entirely."
"I"ve heard of such cases," Trent said quickly. "Pressure of some sort on the brain they call it. There was quite an epidemic of such incidents in America a few years ago. It was supposed to be a cure for bad boys.
Then you think--"
"I know," she said emphatically. "He is now exactly as he was when he was a boy, gentle, thoughtful and clean. Our specialists saw the army surgeons and they supposed that in dressing his dreadful wounds they removed the portions of depressed bone and so made this extraordinary cure. They say the war has proved this sort of thing again and again."
The news which spelled salvation to Anthony Trent seemed too tremendous to believe. There was no miracle about it. It was a simple fact demonstrated by surgery and accepted now by the laity. The years in which Arthur Grenvil had sown wild oats and disrupted friendships and relationships was wiped from his consciousness. Trent now understood the half diffident, almost shy manner so inexplicable in a man of the type William Smith had been.
"My father thinks," the girl went on, "that as he will have to find out some of the things he did it will be as well to prepare him for it and shield him against consequences."
"Consequences?" he hazarded.
"I"m afraid," she said gravely, "that it will not be easy. His creditors for example have learned that my father has forgiven him and they are coming down on him. Fortunately my father can afford to pay but there is always the dread of some adventurer turning up and letting us into some dreadful secrets."
"Men like me," he asked.
"You know I didn"t mean that," she said. "I think it most wonderful that you are here, because you will be able to tell him something about the good part of his life you know. He is always hoping that his memory will come back but the doctors say it won"t." She hesitated a little. "Poor Arthur is very much depressed at times. Could you try and remember as much about him as possible?"
"Surely," said Anthony Trent. "As it happens I met a man out there who knew him well and said he was a good soldier."
"I wish my father could know that," she said. "I"m going to ask you to luncheon tomorrow and to meet a man whose life Arthur saved would cheer him enormously. We shall be alone." She frowned. "I"d forgotten Mr.
Castoon who is probably furious at being kept waiting. I promised him I"d be back in two cigarettes time. I was going to drive in to Camelford but I don"t think I will. I feel almost that I want to cry." She held out her hand impulsively. "Forgive me for what I thought about you and come to luncheon at one tomorrow."
"You don"t know how I"d like to," he said wistfully, "but you have forgotten about my past; and I had no such excuse as your brother."
"You are exaggerating it," she said more brightly. "Anyhow it"s all over."
Exaggerating! And even were it all over, which he doubted, a blacker past remained than ever she dreamed of.
"I don"t want Mr. Castoon to see that I"ve got tears in my eyes. Please tell him to wait a little longer while I talk to Mrs. Ba.s.sett. _Au revoir._"
Anthony Trent watched her go and then sighed. And he told himself that had he met her ten years before he would have had the strength to win a fortune honestly and not take the lower road.
He went outside to where Rudolph Castoon was sitting in the phaeton. The two horses were champing at their bits, a little groom at their heads trying to soothe their high tempers. He approached the financier with no personal feeling of any sort. In the beginning he expected to admire the man as he did all such forceful characters. He often suspected there was more kinship between him and the ruthless financier type that Castoon represented than the world comprehended.
Rudolph Castoon looked at him sourly.
"Well?" he snapped.
Anthony Trent looked at him and knew instantly that he would always share the hate he saw in the capitalist"s face. For a moment he was at a loss to understand the reason. Then he saw that it was jealousy, furious, dynamic jealousy. Lady Daphne had come to see Mrs. Ba.s.sett.
Instead Castoon found she had come to see a younger and better looking man. Trent did not fall into the error of underrating Castoon. In the event of a contest of any kind between them he would walk warily. But he never expected to see the man again and his peremptory way of speaking angered him.
"Well?" Castoon demanded again.
"Thank you," said Trent urbanely, "I find the air of these moorlands of great benefit to me. Formerly I slept poorly but now I sleep as soon as my head touches the pillow. And my appet.i.te is better. I eat three eggs for breakfast every morning. Do you sleep well?"
"I did not come here to sleep," Castoon frowned.
"But if you are here for long you must," Trent said pleasantly.
"I am not in the least interested in your health or how many eggs you can eat for breakfast." Castoon"s manner was frankly rude. "I want to know where Lady Daphne Grenvil is."
"She said she had forgotten you," Trent answered, "she also said you would probably be furious at being kept waiting."
"I am," Castoon a.s.serted. "Would it be too much to ask the reason?"
"I expected you to," Trent said affably. The time he took to select a cigarette from his case and the meticulous manner in which he lighted it added to the other man"s ill temper just as Anthony Trent intended it should.
"If you are quite finished, sir," Castoon cried, "I should be glad to hear."
"As an American," Trent began airily, "I like the old family servant tradition. Lady Daphne is talking over her childhood days with Mrs.
Ba.s.sett. My mother was from the Southern states and I suppose I inherit a liking for that sort of thing."
"Will you come to the point, sir?" Castoon exclaimed.
"I thought I told you that Lady Daphne was talking over nursery reminisences with an old servant."
"She may be doing that now, but what was she doing before? I"ll tell you; she was talking to you. Do you deny it?"
"My dear man," Trent cried in apparent surprise, "Deny it? I boast about it! It is the only thing I hope will be printed in my obituary notices."
"I"m not sure I should be desolated at reading your obituary notices,"
Castoon said keeping his temper back. He could say no more for Lady Daphne came hurrying along the hydrangea-bordered path to the gate.
"I"m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Castoon," she cried.
"I can forget everything now that you are here," he returned gallantly, "even the humour of this young man whose name I don"t know."
"Mr. Anthony Trent of New York," she told him. "You"ll meet him at luncheon tomorrow."
"That will make it a very pleasant function," the financier said grimly.
He could say no more because the horses reared impatiently and for a moment there was danger.
"That off horse nearly came over backward," Castoon said when the team had settled down a little and the farm was a half mile behind.
"But it didn"t," Lady Daphne said calmly, "so why worry?"