human
He was, by nature, the ablest man I ever knew. Everything in the world interested him.
gpt
There lay the trouble, perhaps.
human
Nowhere else. All his will was with the wholesome thing, but his brain, his imagination were always hunting. He was the true adventurer at the start. That was it, Mostyn.
gpt
He found the forbidden thing more interesting than--the other?
human
Quite so. Unless a thing was really interesting, stood out, as it were, he had no use for it--nor for man nor woman.
gpt
Lady Folingsby, for instance.
human
Do you know, Mostyn, that even to-day, whenever she meets me, I can see one question in her eyes: 'Where is he?' Always, always that. He found life and people so interesting that he couldn't help but be interesting himself. Whatever he was, I never knew a woman speak ill of him. . . . Once a year there comes to me a letter from an artist girl in Paris, written in language that gets into my eyes. There is always the one refrain: 'He will return some day. Say to him that I do not forget.'
gpt
Whatever his faults, he was too big to be anything but kind to a woman, was Ted.
human
There wasn't a man but had a kind thought for him as he left, and there was rain in the eyes of more than one A.B. Well, from that day he disappeared, and no one has seen him since. God knows where he is; but I was thinking, as I looked out there to the setting sun, that his wild spirit would naturally turn to the South, for civilised places had no charm for him.
gpt
I never knew quite why he had to leave the Navy.
human
He opened fire on a French frigate off Tahiti which was boring holes in an opium smuggler.
gpt
Of course; and how like Ted it was--an instinct to side with the weakest.
human
Yes, coupled with the fact that the Frenchman's act was mere brutality, and had not sufficient motive or justification. So Ted pitched into him.
gpt
Did the smuggler fly the British flag?
human
No, the American; and it was only the intervention of the United States which prevented serious international trouble. Out of the affair came Ted a shipwreck.
gpt
Have you never got on his track?
human
Once I thought I had at Singapore, but nothing came of it. No doubt he changed his name. He never asked for, never got, the legacy my poor father left him.
gpt
What was it made you think you had come across him at Singapore?
human
Oh, certain significant things.
gpt
What was he doing?
human
Slave-dealing, and doing it successfully, under the noses of men-of-war of all nations.
gpt
But you decided it was not he after all?
human
I doubted. If Ted came to that, he would do it in a very big way. It would appeal to him on some grand scale, with real danger and, say, a few scores of thousands of pounds at stake--not unless.