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JACOB'S LADDER
by
E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
With Frontispiece by F. Vaux Wilson
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1921
Copyright, 1921,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published February, 1921
The Colonial Press
C. H. Simonds Co., Boston, U. S. A.
[Illustration: "I AM OBLIGED TO YOU ALL FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY
COMPANY FOR SO LONG." FRONTISPIECE. _See page 17._]
JACOB'S LADDER
PROLOGUE
Seated at breakfast on that memorable July morning, Jacob Pratt
presented all the appearance of a disconsolate man. His little country
sitting-room was as neat and tidy as the capable hands of the
inimitable Mrs. Harris could make it. His coffee was hot and his eggs
were perfectly boiled. Through the open windows stretched a little
vista of the many rows of standard roses which had been the joy of his
life. Yet blank misery dwelt in the soul of this erstwhile cheerful
little man, and the spirit of degradation hung like a gloomy pall over
his thoughts and being. Only the day before he had filed his petition
in bankruptcy.
The usual morning programme was carried out, only, alas! in different
fashion. Five and twenty minutes before the departure of the train,
Mrs. Harris--but not the Mrs. Harris of customary days--presented
herself, bearing his hat and stick. Her cheerful smile had departed.
There were traces of something very much like tears in her eyes. She
carried a small article in her hand, which she spent most of the time
trying to conceal behind her apron.
"You'll be home at the usual time, sir?" she asked.
"So far as I know, Mrs. Harris," was the listless reply.
His landlady looked at the practically undisturbed breakfast table and
gathered strength of purpose.
"Me and Harris, sir," she declared, "we offers our respects and we
hopes nothing ain't going to be changed here."
"You are very good--both of you," Jacob said, with a weak smile. "For
the present I don't think that I could live cheaper anywhere else,
nor, I am sure, as comfortably. I have had quite a decent situation
offered me. The only thing is I may be away a little more."
"That's good news, sir, anyway," the woman replied heartily. "I mean
to say," she added, "it's good news about your staying on here. And me
and Harris," she went on, "having no children, so to speak, and you
having paid liberal and regular for the last four years, we seem to
have a bit of money we've no use for," she added, producing at last
that bulging purse, "and we thought maybe you might do us the
honour--"
Jacob took her by the shoulders and shook her.
"For God's sake, don't, Mrs. Harris!" he broke in. "If I want it, I'll
come to you. And--God bless you!"
Whereupon he picked up his hat and stick, stepped through the open
French window, cut a rose for his buttonhole as usual, and started on
his purgatorial walk, making a tremendous effort to look as though
nothing had happened.
That walk, alas! surpassed his worst imaginings. Jacob Pratt was a
sensitive little man, notwithstanding his rotund body, his fresh
complexion and humorous mouth; and all the way from his modest abode
to the railway station, he was a prey to fancies which were in some
cases, without a doubt, founded upon fact. Mr. Gregson, the manager of
the International Stores, at the passing of his discredited customer
had certainly retreated from his position on the threshold of his
shop, usual at that hour of the morning, and disclosed a morbid but
absorbing interest in a tub of margarine. The greengrocer's wife had
looked at him reproachfully from behind a heap of cooking apples, and
her response to his diffident greeting was accompanied by a sorrowful
wag of the head. The newspaper boy at the entrance to the station had
extended his _Express_ almost doubtfully and had clutched with
significant caution at the copper coin tendered in exchange for it.
The station master had answered his "Good morning" without troubling
to turn his head, and the ticket collector had yawned as he moved
away from the barrier. Each one of these incidents, trifling though
they were in themselves, had been like pinpricks of humiliation to the
little man whose geniality had been almost a byword.
The worst trial of all, however, arrived when Jacob entered the
carriage in which he had been accustomed, for six days out of seven,
to make his journey to the city. As usual, it was occupied by two men,
strangers to him commercially, but with whom he had developed a very
pleasant acquaintance; Mr. Stephen Pedlar, the well-known accountant
to the trade in which Jacob was interested; Mr. Lionel Groome, whose
life was spent in a strenuous endeavour to combine the two avocations
of man of fashion and liquid glue manufacturer; and--Mr. Edward
Bultiwell, of Bultiwell and Sons, Bermondsey, his former condescending
patron and occasional host, now, alas! his largest creditor. The
porter, being for the first time unaccountably absent, Jacob was
compelled to open the door for himself, thereby rendering his nervous
entrance more self-conscious than ever. He found himself confronted
and encircled by a solid wall of newspapers, stumbled over an
outstretched foot, relapsed into the vacant place and looked
helplessly around him. A kind word just then might not have helped the
lump in Jacob's throat, but it would certainly have brought a fortune
in later life to any one who had uttered it.
"Good morning, gentlemen," the newcomer ventured.
There was a muttered response from either side of him,--none from the
august figure in the opposite corner. Jacob fingered with tentative
wistfulness the very choice rose which he was wearing in his
buttonhole. Perhaps he ought not to have plucked and worn it. Perhaps
it ought not to have opened its soft, sweet petals for an owner who
was dwelling in the Valley of Impecunious Disgrace. Perhaps he ought
to have ended there and then the good-natured rivalry of years and
offered the cherished blossom to his silent creditor in the corner,
in place of the very inferior specimen which adorned the lapel of
the great man's coat. Even in that moment of humiliation, Jacob felt
a little thrill of triumph at the thought of Mr. Bultiwell's three
gardeners. It took more than gardeners to grow such a rose as he
was wearing. He liked to fancy that it took personal care, personal
sympathy, personal love. The sweetest and rarest flowers must have
their special atmosphere.
Quite suddenly Mr. Edward Bultiwell laid down his _Times_ and glared
across at Jacob. He was a large man, with an ugly red face, a neck
which hung over his collar in rolls, and a resonant voice. Directly
he began to speak, Jacob began to shiver.
"Pratt," he said, "am I to understand that the greeting which you
offered to the occupants of this carriage, when you entered, was
intended to include me?"
"I--I certainly meant it to," was the tremulous reply.
"Then let me beg that such a liberty be not repeated," Mr. Bultiwell
continued brutally. "I look upon a man who has compounded with his
creditors as a person temporarily, at any rate, outside the pale
of converse with his fellows on--er--equal terms. I look upon your
presence in a first-class carriage, wearing a floral adornment,"
Mr. Bultiwell added, with a jealous glance at the very beautiful
rose, "which is, to say the least of it, conspicuous, as--er--an
impertinence to those who have had the misfortune to suffer from
your insolvency."
The healthy colour faded from Jacob's cheeks. He had the air of one
stricken by a lash--dazed for the moment and bewildered.
"My rose cost me nothing," he faltered, "and my season ticket doesn't
expire till next month. I must go up to the City. My help is
needed--with the books."
Mr. Bultiwell shook his paper preparatory to disappearing behind it.
"Your presence here may be considered a matter of taste," he fired
off, as a parting shot. "I call it damned bad taste!"
Mr. Jacob Pratt sat like a hurt thing till the train stopped at the
next station. Then he stumbled out on to the platform, and, making
his way through an unaccountable mist, he climbed somehow or other
into a third-class carriage. Richard Dauncey, the melancholy man who
lived in the cottage opposite to his, looked up at the newcomer's
entrance, and, for the first time within his recollection, Jacob saw
him smile.
"Good morning, Mr. Pratt," the former said, with a strenuous attempt
at cordiality. "If you'll excuse my saying so, that's the finest rose
I've ever seen in my life."
Richard Dauncey made his fortune by that speech--and Jacob had to
swallow very hard and look very fixedly out of the window.
CHAPTER I
Precisely two years later, Jacob Pratt sat once more in his cottage
sitting-room, contemplating the remains of a barely tasted breakfast.
Before him, read for the fiftieth time, were the wonderful letters, in
his brain a most amazing confusion, in his heart an almost hysterical
joy. Presently Mrs. Harris brought in his hat and stick.
"You'll excuse my mentioning it, sir," she said, looking at the former
a little disparagingly, "but, brush though I may, there's no doing
much with this hat of yours. The nap's fair gone. Maybe you haven't
noticed it, sir, but, with the summer coming on, a straw hat--"
"I'll buy a straw hat to-day, Mrs. Harris," Jacob promised.
"And you'll be home at the usual time for your supper, sir?"
"I--I expect so. I am not quite sure, Mrs. Harris. I shall be home
sometime during the day, all right."
Mrs. Harris shook her head at the sight of the untasted egg.
"You'll excuse my saying so, sir," she pronounced severely, "but
there's no good work done on an empty stomach. Times is hard, as we
all know, but eggs is cheap."
"Mrs. Harris," Jacob reminded her, "it is two years since I left one
of your eggs. I left it then because I was miserable. I am leaving
it this morning because--I have had good news. I can't eat. Later
on--later on, Mrs. Harris."
"And a bit of good news is what you deserve, sir," the latter
declared, lingering while he cut his accustomed rose with fingers
which trembled strangely.
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Harris," he said. "When I come back
to-night, I'll tell you all about it."
Once more, then, two years almost to a day after Mr. Edward Bultiwell,
of the great firm of Bultiwell and Sons, had laid down his newspaper
and spoken his mind, Jacob was on his way to the station, again
wearing a choice rose in his buttonhole. He had found no occasion to
change his lodgings, for he had been an economical man who took great
care of his possessions even in the days of his prosperity, and his
moderate salary as traveller for a Bermondsey firm of merchants
brought him in quite enough for his simple needs. He had to some
extent lived down his disgrace. The manager of the International
Stores nodded to him now, a trifle condescendingly, yet with tacit
acknowledgement of the fact that in domestic affairs Jacob was a man
of principle who always paid his way. The greengrocer's wife passed
the time of day when not too preoccupied, and the newspaper boy no
longer clutched for his penny. Jacob generally met the melancholy man
at the corner of the avenue and walked to the station with him. And he
still grew roses and worshipped them.
On the way to the station, on this particular morning, he amazed his
friend.
"Richard," he said, "I shall not travel to the City with you to-day.
At least I shall not start with you. I shall change carriages at
Wendley, as I did once before."
"The devil!" Richard exclaimed.
They were passing the plate-glass window of a new emporium, and Jacob
paused to glance furtively at his reflection. He was an exceedingly
neat man, and his care for his clothes and person had survived two
years of impecuniosity. Nevertheless, although he passed muster well
enough to the casual observer, there were indications in his attire of
the inevitable conflict between a desire for adornment and the lack of
means to indulge it. His too often pressed trousers were thin at the
seams; his linen, though clean, was frayed; there were cracks in his
vigorously polished shoes. He looked at himself, and he was suddenly
conscious of a most amazing thrill. One of the cherished desires of
his life loomed up before him. Even Savile Row was not an
impossibility.
At the station he puzzled the booking clerk by presenting himself at
the window and demanding a first single to Liverpool Street.
The youth handed him the piece of pasteboard with a wondering glance.
"Your season ain't up yet, Mr. Pratt."
"It is not," Jacob acquiesced, "but this morning I desire to travel to
town first-class."
Whilst he waited for the train, Jacob read again the wonderful
letters, folded them up, and was ready, with an air of anticipation,
when the little train with its reversed engine came puffing around the
curve and brought its few antiquated and smoke-encrusted carriages
to a standstill. Everything went as he had hoped. In that familiar
first-class carriage, into which he stepped with beating heart, sat
Mr. Bultiwell in the farthest corner, with his two satellites, Stephen
Pedlar, the accountant, and Lionel Groome. They all stared at him in
blank bewilderment as he entered. Mr. Bultiwell, emerging from behind
the _Times_, sat with his mouth open and a black frown upon his
forehead.
"Good morning, all," Jacob remarked affably, as he sprawled in his
place and put his legs up on the opposite seat.
He might have dropped a bombshell amongst them with less effect. Every
newspaper was lowered, and every one stared at this bold intruder.
Then they turned to Mr. Bultiwell. It seemed fittest that he should
deal with the matter. Unfortunately, he, too, seemed temporarily
bereft of words.
"I seem to have startled you all a bit, what?" Jacob continued, with
the air of one thoroughly enjoying the sensation he had produced.
"I've got my ticket all right. Here you are," he went on, producing
it,--"first-class to Liverpool Street. Thought I'd like to have a look
at you all once more. Sorry to see you're not looking quite your old
self, Mr. Bultiwell. Nasty things, these bad debts, eh? Three last
week, I noticed. You'll have to be careful down Bristol way. Things
there are pretty dicky."
"It would be more becoming on your part, sir," Mr. Bultiwell
pronounced furiously, "if you were to hold your tongue about bad
debts."
Jacob snapped his fingers.
"I don't owe any man a farthing," he declared.
"An undischarged bankrupt--"
"Sold again," Jacob interrupted amiably. "Got my discharge last week."
Mr. Bultiwell found his tongue at the same time that he lost his
temper.
"So that's the reason you're butting in here amongst gentlemen whom
you've lost the right to associate with!" he exclaimed. "You think
because you're whitewashed by the courts you can count yourself an
honest man again, eh? You think that because--"
"Wrong--all wrong," Jacob interrupted once more, with ever-increasing
geniality. "You'll have to guess again."
Mr. Groome--the very superior Mr. Groome, who had married a relative
of Mr. Bultiwell's, and who occasionally wore an eyeglass and was seen
in the West End--intervened with gentle sarcasm.
"Mr. Pratt has perhaps come to tell us that it is his intention to
celebrate the granting of his discharge by paying his debts in full."
Jacob glanced at the speaker with the air of one moved to admiration.
"Mr. Groome, sir," he pronounced, "you are a wizard! You must have
seen right through into the breast pocket of my coat. Allow me to read
you a couple of letters."
He produced these amazing documents, leisurely unfolding the first.
There was no question of newspapers now.
"You will remember," he said, "that I came to grief because I stood
bondsman to my brother, who was out prospecting for oil lands in
America. 'Disgraceful speculation' Mr. Bultiwell called it, I think.
Well, this letter is from Sam:"
Ritz-Carlton Hotel,
New York.
My dear Jacob,
I cabled you this morning to prepare for good news, so don't
get heart failure when you receive this letter. We've struck
it rich, as I always told you we should. I sold the worse
half of our holdings in Arizona for four million dollars last
week, and Lord knows what we'll get for the rest. I've cabled
you a hundred thousand pounds, to be going on with, to the
Bank of England.
Sorry you've had such a rough time, old chap, but you're on
velvet for the rest of your life. Have a bottle with your
best pal when you get this, and drink my health.
Cheerio!
Sam.
P. S. I should say, roughly speaking, that your share of
the rest of the land will work out at something like five
million dollars. I hope you'll chuck your humdrum life now
and come out into the world of adventure.
"It's a fairy tale!" Mr. Groome gasped.
"Let me see the letter," the accountant implored.
Mr. Bultiwell only breathed hard.
"The other communication," Jacob continued, unfolding a stiff sheet of
paper, "is from the Bank of England, and it is what you might call
short and sweet:"
Dear Sir,
We beg to inform you that we have to-day received a credit
on your behalf, from our New York branch, amounting to one
hundred thousand pounds sterling, which sum we hold at your
disposal.
Faithfully yours,
BANK OF ENGLAND.
p. p. J. Woodridge Smith.
"One hundred thousand pounds! God bless my soul!" Mr. Bultiwell
gasped.
"I shall be at your office, Mr. Pedlar," Jacob announced, folding up
the letters, "at eleven o'clock."
"It is your intention, I presume," the accountant enquired, "to pay
your debts in full?"
"Certainly," Jacob replied. "I thought I had made that clear."
"A very laudable proceeding," Mr. Pedlar murmured approvingly.
The train was beginning to slacken speed. Jacob rose to his feet.
"I am changing carriages here," he remarked. "I am obliged to you all
for putting up with my company for so long."
Mr. Bultiwell cleared his throat. There was noticeable in his tone
some return of his former pomposity.
"Under the present circumstances, Mr. Pratt," he said, "I see no
reason why you should leave us. I should like to hear more about your
wonderful good fortune and to discuss with you your plans for the
future. If you are occupied now, perhaps this evening at home. My
roses are worth looking at."
Jacob smiled in a peculiar fashion.
"I have a friend waiting for me in the third-class portion of the
train," he replied. "Until eleven o'clock, Mr. Pedlar."