A Prince of Sinners | Page 7

the ash from his
cigarette and smiled whimsically.
"My dear fellow," he said, "I haven't the least idea why I came to see
you this evening."
Brooks felt that he had a right to be puzzled, and he looked it. But his
visitor was so evidently a gentleman and a person of account, that the
obvious rejoinder did not occur to him. He merely waited with uplifted
eyebrows.
"Not the least idea," his visitor repeated, still smiling. "But at the same
time I fancy that before I leave you I shall find myself explaining, or
endeavouring to explain, not why I am here, but why I have not visited

you before. What do you think of that?"
"I find it," Brooks answered, "enigmatic but interesting."
"Exactly. Well, I hate talking, so my explanation will not be a tedious
one. Your name is Kingston Brooks."
"Yes."
"Your mother's name was Dorothy Kenneir. She was, before her
marriage, the matron of a home in the East End of London, and a lady
devoted to philanthropic work. Your father was a police-court
missionary."
Brooks was leaning a little forward in his chair. These things were true
enough. Who was his visitor?
"Your father, through over-devotion to the philanthropic works in
which he was engaged, lost his reason temporarily, and on his partial
recovery I understand that the doctors considered him still to be
mentally in a very weak state. They ordered him a sea voyage. He left
England on the Corinthia fifteen years ago, and I believe that you heard
nothing more of him until you received the news of his death--probably
ten years back."
"Yes! Ten years ago.
"Your mother, I think, lived for only a few months after your father left
England. You found a guardian in Mr. Ascough of Lincoln's Inn Fields.
There my knowledge of your history ceases.
"How do you know these things?" Brooks asked.
"I was with your father when he died. It was I who wrote to you and
sent his effects to England."
"You were there--in Canada?"
"Yes. I had a dwelling within a dozen miles of where your father had

built his hut by the side of the great lake. He was the only other
Englishman within a hundred miles. So I was with him often."
"It is wonderful--after all these years," Brooks exclaimed. "You were
there for sport, of course?"
"For sport!" his visitor repeated in a colourless tone.
"But my father--what led him there? Why did he cut himself off from
every one, send no word home, creep away into that lone country to die
by himself? It is horrible to think of."
"Your father was not a communicative man. He spoke of his illness. I
always considered him as a person mentally shattered. He spent his
days alone, looking out across the lake or wandering in the woods. He
had no companions, of course, but there were always animals around
him. He had the look of a man who had suffered."
"He was to have gone to Australia," Brooks said. "It was from there
that we expected news from him. I cannot see what possible reason he
had for changing his plans. There was no mystery about his life in
London. It was one splendid record of self-denial and devotion to what
he thought his duty."
"From what he told me," his vis-a-vis continued, handing again his
cigarette-case, and looking steadily into the fire, "he seems to have left
England with the secret determination never to return. But why I do not
know. One thing is certain. His mental state was not altogether healthy.
His desire for solitude was almost a passion. Towards the end, however,
his mind was clear enough. He told me about your mother and you, and
he handed me all the papers, which I subsequently sent to London. He
spoke of no trouble, and his transition was quite peaceful."
"It was a cruel ending," Brooks said, quietly. "There were people in
London whom he had befriended who would have worked their
passage out and faced any hardships to be with him. And my mother,
notwithstanding his desertion, believed in him to the last."

There was a moment's intense silence. This visitor who had come so
strangely was to all appearance a man not easily to be moved. Yet
Brooks fancied that the long white fingers were trembling, and that the
strange quiet of his features was one of intense self-repression. His tone
when he spoke again, however, was clear, and almost indifferent.
"I feel," he said, "that it would have been only decently courteous of
me to have sought you out before, although I have, as you see, nothing
whatever to add to the communications I sent you. But I have not been
a very long time in England, and