Halidon went to the Mananas, and for two years the journals brought me incidental reports of the work he was accomplishing. He certainly had found a job to his hand: official words of commendation rang through the country, and there were lengthy newspaper leaders on the efficiency with which our representative was prosecuting his task in that lost corner of our colonies. Then one day a brief paragraph announced his death--"one of the last victims of the pestilence he had so successfully combated."
That evening, at my club, I heard men talking of him. One said: "What's the use of a fellow wasting himself on a lot of savages?" and another wiseacre opined: "Oh, he went off because there was friction at home. A fellow like that, who knew the East, would have got through all right if he'd taken the proper precautions. I saw him before he left, and I never saw a man look less as if he wanted to live."
I turned on the last speaker, and my voice made him drop his lighted cigar on his complacent knuckles.
"I never knew a man," I exclaimed, "who had better reasons for wanting to live!"
A handsome youth mused: "Yes, his wife is very beautiful--but it doesn't follow--"
And then some one nudged him, for they knew I was Halidon's friend.
In Trust Page 3
