A Millionaire of Yesterday | Page 5

gingerly in the thick, brown palm of his companion.
Then he glanced stealthily over his shoulder and his eyes gleamed.
"I think, if you will allow me, Trent, I will just moisten my lips - no
more - with some of that excellent brandy."
Trent caught his arm and held it firmly.
"No, you don't," he said, shaking his head. "That's the last bottle, and
we've got the journey back. We'll keep that, in case of fever."
A struggle went on in the face of the man whose hot breath fell upon
Trent's cheek. It was the usual thing - the disappointment of the baffled
drunkard - a little more terrible in his case perhaps because of the
remnants of refinement still to be traced in his well-shaped features.
His weak eyes for once were eloquent, but with the eloquence of
cupidity and unwholesome craving, his lean cheeks twitched and his
hands shook.

"Just a drop, Trent!" he pleaded. "I'm not feeling well, indeed I'm not!
The odours here are so foul. A liqueur-glassful will do me all the good
in the world."
"You won't get it, Monty, so it's no use whining," Trent said bluntly.
"I've given way to you too much already. Buck up, man! We're on the
threshold of fortune and we need all our wits about us."
"Of fortune - fortune!" Monty's head dropped upon his chest, his
nostrils dilated, he seemed to fall into a state of stupor. Trent watched
him half curiously, half contemptuously.
"You're terribly keen on money-making for an old 'un," he remarked,
after a somewhat lengthy pause. "What do you want to do with it?"
"To do with it!" The old man raised his head. "To do with it!" The
gleam of reawakened desire lit up his face. He sat for a moment
thinking. Then he laughed softly.
"I will tell you, Master Scarlett Trent," he said, "I will tell you why I
crave for wealth. You are a young and an ignorant man. Amongst other
things you do not know what money will buy. You have your coarse
pleasures I do not doubt, which seem sweet to you! Beyond them -
what? A tasteless and barbaric display, a vulgar generosity, an ignorant
and purposeless prodigality. Bah! How different it is with those who
know! There are many things, my young friend, which I learned in my
younger days, and amongst them was the knowledge of how to spend
money. How to spend it, you understand! It is an art, believe me! I
mastered it, and, until the end came, it was magnificent. In London and
Paris to-day to have wealth and to know how to spend it is to be the
equal of princes! The salons of the beautiful fly open before you, great
men will clamour for your friendship, all the sweetest triumphs which
love and sport can offer are yours. You stalk amongst a world of
pygmies a veritable giant, the adored of women, the envied of men!
You may be old - it matters not; ugly - you will be fooled into
reckoning yourself an Adonis. Nobility is great, art is great, genius is
great, but the key to the pleasure storehouse of the world is a key of
gold - of gold!"

He broke off with a little gasp. He held his throat and looked
imploringly towards the bottle. Trent shook his head stonily. There was
something pitiful in the man's talk, in that odd mixture of bitter
cynicism and passionate earnestness, but there was also something
fascinating. As regards the brandy, however, Trent was adamant.
"Not a drop," he declared. "What a fool you are to want it, Monty!
You're a wreck already. You want to pull through, don't you? Leave the
filthy stuff alone. You'll not live a month to enjoy your coin if we get
it!"
"Live!" Monty straightened himself out. A tremor went through all his
frame.
"Live!" he repeated, with fierce contempt; "you are making the
common mistake of the whole ignorant herd. You are measuring life by
its length, when its depth alone is of any import. I want no more than a
year or two at the most, and I promise you, Mr. Scarlett Trent, my most
estimable young companion, that, during that year, I will live more than
you in your whole lifetime. I will drink deep of pleasures which you
know nothing of, I will be steeped in joys which you will never reach
more nearly than the man who watches a change in the skies or a sunset
across the ocean! To you, with boundless wealth, there will be depths
of happiness which you will never probe, joys which, if you have the
wit to see them at all, will be no more than a mirage to you."