UNCLE CHRIS BORROWS A FLAT
I
Uncle Chris walked breezily into the room, flicking a jaunty glove. He
stopped short on seeing that Mr. Pilkington was not alone.
"Oh, I beg your pardon! I understood...." He peered at Jill
uncertainly. Mr. Pilkington affected a dim, artistic lighting-system
in his studio, and people who entered from the great outdoors
generally had to take time to accustom their eyes to it. "If you're
engaged...."
"Er--allow me.... Miss Mariner.... Major Selby."
"Hullo, Uncle Chris!" said Jill.
"God bless my soul!" ejaculated that startled gentleman adventurer,
and collapsed on to a settee as if his legs had been mown from under
him.
"I've been looking for you all over New York," said Jill.
Mr. Pilkington found himself unequal to the intellectual pressure of
the conversation.
"Uncle Chris?" he said with a note of feeble enquiry in his voice.
"Major Selby is my uncle."
"Are you sure?" said Mr. Pilkington. "I mean...."
Not being able to ascertain, after a moment's self-examination, what
he did mean, he relapsed into silence.
"Whatever are you doing here?" asked Uncle Chris.
"I've been having tea with Mr. Pilkington."
"But ... but why Mr. Pilkington?"
"Well, he invited me."
"But how do you know him?"
"We met at the theatre."
"Theatre?"
Otis Pilkington recovered his power of speech.
"Miss Mariner is rehearsing with a little play in which I am
interested," he explained.
Uncle Chris half rose from the settee. He blinked twice in rapid
succession. Jill had never seen him so shaken from his customary
poise.
"Don't tell me you have gone on the stage, Jill!"
"I have. I'm in the chorus...."
"Ensemble," corrected Mr. Pilkington softly.
"I'm in the ensemble of a piece called 'The Rose of America.' We've
been rehearsing for ever so long."
Uncle Chris digested this information in silence for a moment He
pulled at his short moustache.
"Why, of course!" he said at length. Jill, who knew him so well, could
tell by the restored ring of cheeriness in his tone that he was
himself again. He had dealt with this situation in his mind and was
prepared to cope with it. The surmise was confirmed the next instant
when he rose and stationed himself in front of the fire. Mr.
Pilkington detested steam-heat and had scoured the city till he had
found a studio apartment with an open fireplace. Uncle Chris spread
his legs and expanded his chest. "Of course," he said. "I remember now
that you told me in your letter that you were thinking of going on the
stage. My niece," explained Uncle Chris to the attentive Mr.
Pilkington, "came over from England on a later boat. I was not
expecting her for some weeks. Hence my surprise at meeting her here.
Of course. You told me that you intended to go on the stage, and I
strongly recommended you to begin at the bottom of the ladder and
learn the ground-work thoroughly before you attempted higher flights."
"Oh, that was it?" said Mr. Pilkington. He had been wondering.
"There is no finer training," resumed Uncle Chris, completely at his
ease once more, "than the chorus. How many of the best-known actresses
in America began in that way! Dozens. Dozens. If I were giving advice
to any young girl with theatrical aspirations, I should say 'Begin in
the chorus!' On the other hand," he proceeded, turning to Mr.
Pilkington, "I think it would be just as well if you would not mention
the fact of my niece being in that position to Mrs. Waddesleigh
Peagrim. She might not understand."
"Exactly," assented Mr. Pilkington.
"The term 'chorus'...."
"I dislike it intensely myself."
"It suggests...."
"Precisely."
Uncle Chris inflated his chest again, well satisfied.
"Capital!" he said. "Well, I only dropped in to remind you, my boy,
that you and your aunt are dining with me to-night. I was afraid a
busy man like you might forget."
"I was looking forward to it," said Mr. Pilkington, charmed at the
description.
"You remember the address? Nine East Forty-first Street. I have moved,
you remember."
"So that was why I couldn't find you at the other place," said Jill.
"The man at the door said he had never heard of you."
"Stupid idiot!" said Uncle Chris testily. "These New York hall-porters
are recruited entirely from homes for the feeble-minded. I suppose he
was a new man. Well, Pilkington, my boy, I shall expect you at seven
o'clock. Good-bye till then. Come, Jill."
"Good-bye, Mr. Pilkington," said Jill.
"Good-bye for the present, Miss Mariner," said Mr. Pilkington, bending
down to take her hand. The tortoise-shell spectacles shot a last soft
beam at her.
As the front door closed behind them, Uncle Chris heaved a sigh of
relief.
"Whew! I think I handled that little contretemps with diplomacy! A
certain amount of diplomacy, I think!"
"If you mean," said Jill severely, "that you told some disgraceful
fibs...."
"Fibs, my dear--or shall we say, artistic mouldings of the unshapely
clay of truth--are the ... how shall I put it?... Well, anyway, they
come in dashed handy. It would never have done for Mrs. Peagrim to
have found out that you were in the chorus. If she discovered that my
niece was in the chorus, she would infallibly suspect me of being an
adventurer. And while," said Uncle Chris meditatively, "of course I
_am_, it is nice to have one's little secrets. The good lady has had a
rooted distaste for girls in that perfectly honourable but maligned
profession ever since our long young friend back there was sued for
breach of promise by a member of a touring company in his second year
at college. We all have our prejudices. That is hers. However, I
think, we may rely on our friend to say nothing about the matter....
But why did you do it? My dear child, whatever induced you to take
such a step?"
Jill laughed.
"That's practically what Mr. Miller said to me when we were rehearsing
one of the dances this afternoon, only he put it differently." She
linked her arm in his. "What else could I do? I was alone in New York
with the remains of that twenty dollars you sent me and no more in
sight."
"But why didn't you stay down at Brookport with your Uncle Elmer?"
"Have you ever seen my Uncle Elmer?"
"No. Curiously enough, I never have."
"If you had, you wouldn't ask. Brookport! Ugh! I left when they tried
to get me to understudy the hired man, who had resigned."
"What!"
"Yes, they got tired of supporting me in the state to which I was
accustomed--I don't blame them!--so they began to find ways of making
me useful about the home. I didn't mind reading to Aunt Julia, and I
could just stand taking Tibby for walks. But, when it came to
shoveling snow, I softly and silently vanished away."
"But I can't understand all this. I suggested to your
uncle--diplomatically--that you had large private means."
"I know you did. And he spent all his time showing me over houses and
telling me I could have them for a hundred thousand dollars cash
down." Jill bubbled. "You should have seen his face when I told him
that twenty dollars was all I had in the world!"
"You didn't tell him that!"
"I did."
Uncle Chris shook his head, like an indulgent father disappointed in a
favourite child.
"You're a dear girl, Jill, but really you do seem totally lacking
in ... how shall I put it?--finesse. Your mother was just the same. A
sweet woman, but with no diplomacy, no notion of _handling_ a
situation. I remember her as a child giving me away hopelessly on one
occasion after we had been at the jam-cupboard. She did not mean any
harm, but she was constitutionally incapable of a tactful negative at
the right time." Uncle Chris brooded for a moment on the past. "Oh,
well, it's a very fine trait, no doubt, though inconvenient. I don't
blame you for leaving Brookport if you weren't happy there. But I wish
you had consulted me before going on the stage."
"Shall I strike this man?" asked Jill of the world at large. "How
could I consult you? My darling, precious uncle, don't you realize
that you had vanished into thin air, leaving me penniless? I had to do
something. And, now that we are on the subject, perhaps you will
explain your movements. Why did you write to me from that place on
Fifty-seventh Street if you weren't there?"
Uncle Chris cleared his throat.
"In a sense ... when I wrote ... I _was_ there."
"I suppose that means something, but it's beyond me. I'm not nearly as
intelligent as you think, Uncle Chris, so you'll have to explain."
"Well, it was this way, my dear. I was in a peculiar position you must
remember. I had made a number of wealthy friends on the boat and it is
possible that--unwittingly--I gave them the impression that I was as
comfortably off as themselves. At any rate, that is the impression they
gathered, and it hardly seemed expedient to correct it. For it is a
deplorable trait in the character of the majority of rich people that they
only--er--expand--they only show the best and most companionable side of
themselves to those whom they imagine to be as wealthy as they are. Well,
of course, while one was on the boat, the fact that I was sailing under
what a purist might have termed false colours did not matter. The problem
was how to keep up the--er--innocent deception after we had reached New
York. A woman like Mrs. Waddesleigh Peagrim--a ghastly creature, my dear,
all front teeth and exuberance, but richer than the Sub-Treasury--looks
askance at a man, however agreeable, if he endeavours to cement a
friendship begun on board ship from a cheap boarding-house on Amsterdam
Avenue. It was imperative that I should find something in the nature of
what I might call a suitable base of operations. Fortune played into my
hands. One of the first men I met in New York was an old soldier-servant
of mine, to whom I had been able to do some kindnesses in the old days. In
fact--it shows how bread cast upon the waters returns to us after many
days--it was with the assistance of a small loan from me that he was
enabled to emigrate to America. Well, I met this man, and, after a short
conversation, he revealed the fact that he was the hall-porter at that
apartment-house which you visited, the one on Fifty-Seventh Street. At
this time of the year, I knew, many wealthy people go south, to Florida
and the Carolinas, and it occurred to me that there might be a vacant
apartment in his building. There was. I took it."
"But how on earth could you afford to pay for an apartment in a place
like that?"
Uncle Chris coughed.
"I didn't say I paid for it. I said I took it. That is, as one might
say, the point of my story. My old friend, grateful for favours
received and wishing to do me a good turn, consented to become my
accomplice in another--er--innocent deception. I gave my friends the
address and telephone number of the apartment-house, living the while
myself in surroundings of a somewhat humbler and less expensive
character. I called every morning for letters. If anybody rang me up
on the telephone, the admirable man answered in the capacity of my
servant, took a message, and relayed it on to me at my boarding-house.
If anybody called, he merely said that I was out. There wasn't a flaw
in the whole scheme, my dear, and its chief merit was its beautiful
simplicity."
"Then what made you give it up? Conscience?"
"Conscience never made me give up _anything_," said Uncle Chris
firmly. "No, there were a hundred chances to one against anything
going wrong, and it was the hundredth that happened. When you have
been in New York longer, you will realize that one peculiarity of the
place is that the working-classes are in a constant state of flux. On
Monday you meet a plumber. Ah! you say, a plumber! Capital! On the
following Thursday you meet him again, and he is a car-conductor. Next
week he will be squirting soda in a drug-store. It's the fault of
these dashed magazines, with their advertisements of correspondence
courses--Are You Earning All You Should?--Write To Us and Learn
Chicken-Farming By Mail.... It puts wrong ideas into the fellows'
heads. It unsettles them. It was so in this case. Everything was going
swimmingly, when my man suddenly conceived the idea that destiny had
intended him for a chauffeur-gardener, and he threw up his position!"
"Leaving you homeless!"
"As you say, homeless--temporarily. But, fortunately--I have been
amazingly lucky all through; it really does seem as if you cannot keep
a good man down--fortunately my friend had a friend who was janitor at
a place on East Forty-first Street, and by a miracle of luck the only
apartment in the building was empty. It is an office-building, but,
like some of these places, it has one small bachelor's apartment on
the top floor."
"And you are the small bachelor?"
"Precisely. My friend explained matters to his friend--a few financial
details were satisfactorily arranged--and here I am, perfectly happy
with the cosiest little place in the world, rent free. I am even
better off than I was before, as a matter of fact, for my new ally's
wife is an excellent cook, and I have been enabled to give one or two
very pleasant dinners at my new home. It lends verisimilitude to the
thing if you can entertain a little. If you are never in when people
call, they begin to wonder. I am giving dinner to your friend
Pilkington and Mrs. Peagrim there to-night. Homey, delightful, and
infinitely cheaper than a restaurant."
"And what will you do when the real owner of the place walks in in the
middle of dinner?"
"Out of the question. The janitor informs me that he left for England
some weeks ago, intending to make a stay of several months."
"Well, you certainly think of everything."
"Whatever success I may have achieved," replied Uncle Chris, with the
dignity of a Captain of Industry confiding in an interviewer, "I
attribute to always thinking of everything."
Jill gurgled with laughter. There was that about her uncle which
always acted on her moral sense like an opiate, lulling it to sleep
and preventing it from rising up and becoming critical. If he had
stolen a watch and chain, he would somehow have succeeded in
convincing her that he had acted for the best under the dictates of a
benevolent altruism.
"What success _have_ you achieved?" she asked, interested. "When you
left me, you were on your way to find a fortune. Did you find it?"
"I have not actually placed my hands on it yet," admitted Uncle Chris.
"But it is hovering in the air all round me. I can hear the beating of
the wings of the dollar-bills as they flutter to and fro, almost
within reach. Sooner or later I shall grab them. I never forget, my
dear, that I have a task before me--to restore to you the money of
which I deprived you. Some day--be sure--I shall do it. Some day you
will receive a letter from me, containing a large sum--five
thousand--ten thousand--twenty thousand--whatever it may be, with the
simple words 'First Instalment.'" He repeated the phrase, as if it
pleased him. "First Instalment!"
Jill hugged his arm. She was in the mood in which she used to listen
to him ages ago telling her fairy stories.
"Go on!" she cried. "Go on! It's wonderful! Once upon a time Uncle
Chris was walking along Fifth Avenue, when he happened to meet a poor
old woman gathering sticks for firewood. She looked so old and tired
that he was sorry for her, so he gave her ten cents which he had
borrowed from the janitor, and suddenly she turned into a beautiful
girl and said 'I am a fairy! In return for your kindness I grant you
three wishes!' And Uncle Chris thought for a moment, and said, 'I want
twenty thousand dollars to send to Jill!' And the fairy said, 'It
shall be attended to. And the next article?'"
"It is all very well to joke," protested Uncle Chris, pained by this
flippancy, "but let me tell you that I shall not require magic
assistance to become a rich man. Do you realize that at houses like
Mrs. Waddesleigh Peagrim's I am meeting men all the time who have only
to say one little word to make me a millionaire? They are fat, grey
men with fishy eyes and large waistcoats, and they sit smoking cigars
and brooding on what they are going to do to the market next day. If I
were a mind-reader I could have made a dozen fortunes by now. I sat
opposite that old pirate, Bruce Bishop, for over an hour the very day
before he and his gang sent Consolidated Pea-Nuts down twenty points!
If I had known what was in the wind, I doubt if I could have
restrained myself from choking his intentions out of the fellow. Well,
what I am trying to point out is that one of these days one of these
old oysters will have a fleeting moment of human pity and disgorge
some tip on which I can act. It is that reflection that keeps me so
constantly at Mrs. Peagrim's house." Uncle Chris shivered slightly. "A
fearsome woman, my dear! Weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and as
skittish as a young lamb in springtime! She makes me dance with her!"
Uncle Chris' lips quivered in a spasm of pain, and he was silent for a
moment. "Thank Heaven I was once a footballer!" he said reverently.
"But what do you live on?" asked Jill. "I know you are going to be a
millionaire next Tuesday week, but how are you getting along in the
meantime?"
Uncle Chris coughed.
"Well, as regards actual living expenses, I have managed by a shrewd
business stroke to acquire a small but sufficient income. I live in a
boarding-house--true--but I contrive to keep the wolf away from its
door--which, by the by, badly needs a lick of paint. Have you ever
heard of Nervino?"
"I don't think so. It sounds like a patent medicine."
"It _is_ a patent medicine." Uncle Chris stopped and looked anxiously
at her. "Jill, you're looking pale, my dear."
"Am I? We had rather a tiring rehearsal."
"Are you sure," said Uncle Chris seriously, "that it is only that? Are
you sure that your vitality has not become generally lowered by the
fierce rush of Metropolitan life? Are you aware of the things that can
happen to you if you allow the red corpuscles of your blood to become
devitalised? I had a friend...."
"Stop! You're scaring me to death!"
Uncle Chris gave his moustache a satisfied twirl.
"Just what I meant to do, my dear. And, when I had scared you
sufficiently--you wouldn't wait for the story of my consumptive
friend. Pity! It's one of my best!--I should have mentioned that I had
been having much the same trouble myself until lately, but the other
day I happened to try Nervino, the great specific.... I was giving you
an illustration of myself in action, my dear. I went to these Nervino
people--happened to see one of their posters and got the idea in a
flash--I went to them and said, 'Here am I, a presentable man of
persuasive manners and a large acquaintance among the leaders of New
York Society. What would it be worth to you to have me hint from time
to time at dinner parties and so forth that Nervino is the rich man's
panacea?' I put the thing lucidly to them. I said, 'No doubt you have
a thousand agents in the city, but have you one who does not look like
an agent and won't talk like an agent? Have you one who is inside the
houses of the wealthy, at their very dinner-tables, instead of being
on the front step, trying to hold the door open with his foot? That is
the point you have to consider.' They saw the idea at once. We
arranged terms--not as generous as I could wish, perhaps, but quite
ample. I receive a tolerably satisfactory salary each week, and in
return I spread the good word about Nervino in the gilded palaces of
the rich. Those are the people to go for, Jill. They have been so
busy wrenching money away from the widow and the orphan that they
haven't had time to look after their health. You catch one of them
after dinner, just as he is wondering if he was really wise in taking
two helpings of the lobster Newburg, and he is clay in your hands. I
draw my chair up to his and become sympathetic and say that I had
precisely the same trouble myself until recently, and mention a dear
old friend of mine who died of indigestion, and gradually lead the
conversation round to Nervino. I don't force it on them. I don't even
ask them, to try it. I merely point to myself, rosy with health, and
say that I owe everything to it, and the thing is done. They thank me
profusely and scribble the name down on their shirt-cuffs. And there
you are! I don't suppose," said Uncle Chris philosophically, "that the
stuff can do them any actual harm."
They had come to the corner of Forty-first Street. Uncle Chris felt in
his pocket and produced a key.
"If you want to go and take a look at my little nest, you can let
yourself in. It's on the twenty-second floor. Don't fail to go out on
the roof and look at the view. It's worth seeing. It will give you
some idea of the size of the city. A wonderful, amazing city, my dear,
full of people who need Nervino. I shall go on and drop in at the club
for half an hour. They have given me a fortnight's card at the Avenue.
Capital place. Here's the key."
Jill turned down Forty-first Street, and came to a mammoth structure
of steel and stone which dwarfed the modest brown houses beside it
into nothingness. It was curious to think of a private flat nestling
on the summit of this mountain. She went in, and the lift shot her
giddily upwards to the twenty-second floor. She found herself facing a
short flight of stone steps, ending in a door. She mounted the steps,
tried the key, and, turning it, entered a hall-way. Proceeding down
the passage, she reached a sitting-room.
It was a small room, but furnished with a solid comfort which soothed
her. For the first time since she had arrived in New York, she had the
sense of being miles away from the noise and bustle of the city. There
was a complete and restful silence. She was alone in a nest of books
and deep chairs, on which a large grandfather-clock looked down with
that wide-faced benevolence peculiar to its kind. So peaceful was
this eyrie, perched high up above the clamour and rattle of
civilization, that every nerve in her body seemed to relax in a
delicious content. It was like being in Peter Pan's house in the
tree-tops.
II
Jill possessed in an unusual degree that instinct for exploration
which is implanted in most of us. She was frankly inquisitive, and
could never be two minutes in a strange room without making a tour of
it and examining its books, pictures, and photographs. Almost at once
she began to prowl.
The mantelpiece was her first objective. She always made for other
people's mantelpieces, for there, more than anywhere else, is the
character of a proprietor revealed. This mantelpiece was sprinkled
with photographs, large, small, framed and unframed. In the centre of
it, standing all alone and looking curiously out of place among its
large neighbours, was a little snapshot.
It was dark by the mantelpiece. Jill took the photograph to the
window, where the fading light could fall on it. Why, she could not
have said, but the thing interested her. There was mystery about it.
It seemed in itself so insignificant to have the place of honour.
The snapshot had evidently been taken by an amateur, but it was one of
those lucky successes which happen at rare intervals to amateur
photographers to encourage them to proceed with their hobby. It showed
a small girl in a white dress cut short above slim, black legs,
standing in the porch of an old house, one hand swinging a sun-bonnet,
the other patting an Irish terrier which had planted its front paws
against her waist and was looking up into her face with that grave
melancholy characteristic of Irish terriers. The sunlight was
evidently strong, for the child's face was puckered in a twisted
though engaging grin. Jill's first thought was "What a jolly kid!" And
then, with a leaping of the heart that seemed to send something big
and choking into her throat, she saw that it was a photograph of
herself.
With a swooping bound memory raced back over the years. She could feel
the hot sun on her face, hear the anxious voice of Freddie Rooke--then
fourteen and for the first time the owner of a camera--imploring her
to stand just like that because he wouldn't be half a minute only some
rotten thing had stuck or something. Then the sharp click, the
doubtful assurance of Freddie that he thought it was all right if he
hadn't forgotten to shift the film (in which case she might expect to
appear in combination with a cow which he had snapped on his way to
the house), and the relieved disappearance of Pat, the terrier, who
didn't understand photography. How many years ago had that been? She
could not remember. But Freddie had grown to long-legged manhood, she
to an age of discretion and full-length frocks, Pat had died, the old
house was inhabited by strangers ... and here was the silent record of
that sun-lit afternoon, three thousand miles away from the English
garden in which it had come into existence.
The shadows deepened. The top of the great building swayed gently,
causing the pendulum of the grandfather-clock to knock against the
sides of its wooden case. Jill started. The noise, coming after the
dead silence, frightened her till she realized what it was. She had a
nervous feeling of not being alone. It was as if the shadows held
goblins that peered out at the intruder. She darted to the mantelpiece
and replaced the photograph. She felt like some heroine of a
fairy-story meddling with the contents of the giant's castle. Soon
there would come the sound of a great footstep thud--thud....
_Thud._
Jill's heart gave another leap. She was perfectly sure she had heard a
sound. It had been just like the banging of a door. She braced
herself, listening, every muscle tense. And then, cleaving the
stillness, came a voice from down the passage--
"Just see them Pullman porters,
Dolled up with scented waters
Bought with their dimes and quarters!
See, here they come! Here they come!"
For an instant Jill could not have said whether she was relieved or
more frightened than ever. True, that numbing sense of the uncanny had
ceased to grip her, for Reason told her that spectres do not sing
rag-time songs. On the other hand, owners of apartments do, and she
would almost as readily have faced a spectre as the owner of this
apartment. Dizzily, she wondered how in the world she was to explain
her presence. Suppose he turned out to be some awful-choleric person
who would listen to no explanations.
"Oh, see those starched-up collars!
Hark how their captain hollers
'Keep time! Keep time!'
It's worth a thousand dollars
To see those tip-collectors...."
Very near now. Almost at the door.
"Those upper-berth inspectors,
Those Pullman porters on parade!"
A dim, shapeless figure in the black of the doorway. The scrabbling of
fingers on the wall.
"Where are you, dammit?" said the voice, apparently addressing the
electric-light switch.
Jill shrank back, desperate fingers pressing deep into the back of an
arm-chair. Light flashed from the wall at her side. And there, in the
doorway, stood Wally Mason in his shirt-sleeves.