Chapter IX:
Miss Lucretia Montcrief
MISS LUCRETIA'S aristocratic rule and patronizing manner tended to draw the couple closer, rather than the monopoly of Eva's attention; for to the latter's chagrin, Lucretia let it be plainly understood from the first that she preferred the arms of Yanga when she desired repose, and Eva and Oliver only when she cared to satisfy the appetite or to be amused.
Eva had a large-sized photo taken of Lucretia when she reached her first birthday. She wrote upon the same "to Grandpapa, from Lucretia Montcrief, Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa." She mailed this to the Earl of Dubley and repeated this each succeeding year.
If her countenance expressed a little wistful sadness when the home mails failed to bear an acknowledgment of the receipt of the photograph, no one noticed it, and she carried her secret with the hope that some day the Earl would relent.
After a year or two Oliver began the study of mineralogy and thought seriously of the interior trip. That the Earl had not relented caused him a bit of unhappiness as Lucretia grew older.
Thus the Montcriefs lived an uneventful life in their colonial home. One afternoon, as luck would have it, as Oliver was about to leave the front yard of the store, the fancy barbed head fellow of the platinum deal five years before, approached him again. Oliver soon recognized the hair cut and stopped to greet him. "Hello plaits, so you are back at last."
"My name be Fahn, Sar," the evil genius grinningly replied. "Me bringee some fine rock dis time, see you wanna bayee."
Oliver examined the stones which he took from the same bag. He discovered among the white diamonds three rare stones of pink and a dozen or more rubies.
Oliver determined then to make the trip at once. Perhaps had Oliver stopped to figure the length of time Fahn had taken to return, he would not so easily have been deceived and made to believe that he could reach the mines and return in a year's time. But such is fate. He acted in this as in everything, and began the preparations of his interior trip.
When he showed the stone to Eva and told her of his determination, Eva only reminded him of his promise and added, "Oliver, Lucretia will be five years old next week; won't you write a letter to your father asking his forgiveness with Lucretia's photograph enclosed? I don't think that you should leave for the interior without his blessings." Was that a foreboding which she felt?
"All right, little one, I shall write Dad by the same mail that I write Harold. I am writing Mr. Servier for a year's leave of absence. I am sure that it will be granted, for I have remained upon the field these five years. Eva, I feel like an exile and had hoped that Harold could have managed Dad; but it seems that I am really disinherited, so that you see, my dear, we will have to make our own fortunes and return to our country very shortly."
Had Oliver followed Eva's wishes and written the letter to the Earl immediately, all might have ended well; but he allowed the rush of the preparations to crowd the letter to the last moment.