At twelve o'clock, Jacob was in Regent Street, and at one o'clock, in
a new blue serge suit, shirt, collar and tie of the latest pattern, he
was dividing his time between admiring his reflection in the mirror
and waiting in the entrance hall of Simpson's. Dauncey's coming was,
in its way, pathetic. With a pessimism engendered by years of
misfortune, he had found it impossible to preserve throughout the
morning the exultation of those first few minutes with Jacob in the
railway carriage. He entered the restaurant and came towards his
friend with a feverish light in his eyes and a trembling of the lips
which the latter only too well understood.
"It's all right, old fellow," Jacob assured him emphatically. "Throw
in your hat with mine. Here's our table--two cocktails waiting, you
see, and a bottle of the best the place has--I tell you the old
gentleman in Threadneedle Street parted without a murmur. I'm simply
bursting with money--Steady, old chap!"
In the crowd of people waiting for their tables, they were little
noticed, these two--Dauncey struggling against the faintness, the
rising in his throat, the strange moisture in his eyes, Jacob talking
nonsense as hard as he could and affecting to disregard these unusual
conditions. Soon he had his friend safely seated opposite him, forced
him to drink his cocktail, gave cheerful orders to the waiter, and
produced a brand new pocketbook, which he laid upon the table.
"Richard," he announced, "there's a hundred pounds in that. Away with
it, pocketbook and all. Now put the soles of your feet firmly on the
ground and think what you're going to say to Nora when you get home.
You've stood up against some nasty knocks. Now just tell yourself that
they're all over. We'll take a feast home to-night. Waiter, open the
wine. By Jove, I've heard that pop for other fellows often enough, but
not one for myself for two years and more."
"Jacob," Dauncey faltered, "I can't say a word, but I'm all right. And
God bless you," he added, raising his glass and drinking. "God bless
you, Jacob! You're a pal."
After that, the thing was accepted as part of their lives, and they
talked reasonably.
"This afternoon," Jacob confided, "I am going to be measured for half
a dozen suits of clothes. I am going to prowl about Bond Street and
gratify the longings of a lifetime for variegated hosiery. At five
o'clock, Richard, I shall call for you at your office. By the bye, you
had better ask them how soon they can let you go."
"They won't worry about that," Dauncey answered, a little bitterly.
"Every Saturday for months has been a nightmare to me, for fear I'd
get the sack. They don't think I'm smart enough for my job there--not
smart enough even for three pounds a week!"
"Just let them know what you think about them, for a change," Jacob
enjoined. "Three pounds a week, indeed! Tell them you've accepted a
post at five hundred a year with a financier who needs your advice
with his investments. That'll give them something to think about!"
"It will!" Dauncey admitted, with a smile. "They'll think I've gone
mad."
"Let 'em think what they choose," Jacob insisted. "You come out of it
with your nose in the air and leave your office coat behind for the
errand boy. They'll always be worried to think that you must have been
a great deal smarter than they gave you credit for."
"I'll do my best," Dauncey promised.
"I shall call for you in my motor-car," Jacob continued; "we shall
make purchases on our way, and we shall return to Marlingden in state.
Thank heavens, Dick, for small ambitions! Just for the moment, I feel
that nothing could make me happier than to be driven down the village
street, pull up at the shops on the way home, and spend a few
five-pound notes where I've had to look twice at a shilling."
Dauncey smiled with the air of a man who sees more wonderful things.
"That's all very well in its way, old fellow," he admitted, "but
to appreciate this absolutely you ought to be married. I can think
of nothing but Nora's face when I tell her--when I show her the
pocketbook--when she begins to realise! Jacob, it's worth all the
misery of the last few years. It's worth--anything."
Jacob's face glowed with sympathy, but he made a brave attempt to
whistle under his breath a popular tune.
"Fact of it is, old chap," he said, as he gripped the bottle for
support and watched the bubbles rise in Dauncey's glass, "we are both
altogether too emotional."
* * * * *
Jacob's programme, for the remainder of the day, was carried out very
nearly as he had planned it. The car was hired without difficulty, and
the sensation created in the village shops by his arrival in it, his
lavish orders and prompt payment, was ample and gratifying. Mrs.
Harris alone seemed curiously unmoved when he confided to her the
story of this great change in his circumstances. She who had been all
kindness and sympathy in the days of his misfortune listened to the
story of his newly arrived wealth with a striking absence of
enthusiasm.
"You'll be giving up your rooms now, I suppose?" she observed with a
sigh. "Want to go and live in the West End of London, or some such
place."
Jacob extended his arm as far as possible around her ample waist.
"Mrs. Harris," he said, "no one else in the world could have looked
after me so well when I was poor. No one else shall look after me now
that I am rich. If I leave here, you and Harris must come too, but I
don't think that I shall--not altogether. There are the roses, you
see."
"And what's in that cardboard box?" she asked suspiciously.
"A black silk dress for you," Jacob replied. "You'll give me a kiss
when you see it."
"A black silk dress--for me?" Mrs. Harris faltered, her eyes agleam.
"I don't know what Harris will say!"
"There's a bicycle at the station for him," Jacob announced. "No more
two-mile trudges to work, eh?"
Mrs. Harris sat down suddenly and raised her apron to her eyes. Jacob
made his escape and crossed the road. It had seemed to him that he
must have exhausted the whole gamut of emotions during the day, but
there was still a moment's revelation for him when the pale, shy,
little woman whom he had known as his friend's wife came running out
to greet him with shining eyes and outstretched hands.
"Mr. Pratt!" she cried. "Is it all true?"
"It's all true, and more of it," he assured her. "Your man's set up
comfortably for life, and I am a starving millionaire. Anything to
eat?"
She laughed a little hysterically.
"Why, there's everything in the world to eat, and to drink, too, I
should think," she answered. "What they must have thought of you two
men in the shops, I can't imagine! Come into the dining-room, won't
you? Dick's opening some wine."
Then followed the second feast of the day, at which Jacob had to
pretend to be unconscious of the fact that his host and hostess were
alternately ecstatically happy and tremulously hysterical. They all
waited upon themselves and ate many things the names of which only
were familiar to them. Dauncey opened champagne as though he had been
used to it all his life. Jacob carved chickens with great skill, but
was a little puzzled as to the location of caviare in the meal and
more than a little generous with the _pate-de-foie-gras_. The
strawberries and real Devonshire cream were an immense success, and
Mrs. Dauncey's eyes grew round with pleasure at the sight of the boxes
of bonbons and chocolates. Afterwards the two men wandered out into
the garden, a quaint strip of uncultivated land, with wanton beds of
sweet-smelling flowers, and separated from the meadow beyond only by
an untrimmed and odoriferous hedge, wreathed in honeysuckle. Over
wonderful cigars, the like of which neither of them had ever smoked
before, they talked for a moment or two seriously.
"What are you really going to do with your money, Jacob?" Dauncey
asked. "And where do I come in? I do hope I am going to have a chance
of earning my salary."
Jacob was silent for a few moments. In the half light, a new sternness
seemed to have stolen into his face.
"Richard," he said, "you've seen men come out of a fight covered with
scars,--wounds that burn and remind them of their sufferings. Well,
I'm rather like that. I was never a very important person, you know,
but in the old days I was proud of my little business and my good
name. It hurt me like hell to go under. It was bad enough when people
were kind. Sometimes they weren't."
"I know," Dauncey murmured sympathetically.
"My scars are there," Jacob went on. "If I had such a thing, Dick, I
should say that they had burned their way into my soul. I haven't made
any plans. Don't think that I am going to embark upon any senseless
scheme of revenge--but if this promise of great wealth is fulfilled, I
have some sort of a fancy for using it as a scourge to cruelty, or for
giving the unfortunate a leg up where it's deserved. There are one or
two enterprises already shaping themselves in my mind, which might be
brought to a successful conclusion."
"Enterprises?" Dauncey repeated a little vaguely.
Jacob laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. There was a strange
light in his eyes.
"Dick," he said, "you'd think I was a commonplace sort of fellow
enough, wouldn't you? So I am, in a way, and yet I've got something
stirring in my blood of the fever which sent Sam out to the far west
of America, more for the sheer love of going than for any hope of
making a fortune. I've lived an everyday sort of life, but I've had
my dreams."
"We're not going around the world treasure hunting, or anything of
that sort, are we?" Dauncey asked anxiously.
"All the treasure hunting we shall do," Jacob replied, with a little
thrill in his tone, "will be on the London pavements. All the
adventures which the wildest buccaneers the world has ever known might
crave are to be found under the fogs of this wonderful city. We shan't
need to travel far in the body, Dick. A little office somewhere in the
West End, a little ground bait which I know about, and the sharks of
the world will come stealing around us. There are seven or eight
million people in London, Dick. A detective I once knew--kind of
thoughtful chap he was--once told me that on a moderate computation
there were twenty-five thousand of them who would commit murder
without hesitation if they could get their hand deep enough into their
neighbour's pocket."
"Talking through his hat," Dauncey muttered.
"That is what we shall find out. Only remember this, Richard. I am
convinced that I possess in some degree that sixth sense the French
criminologist talked about,--the sense for Adventure. I've had to keep
my nose to the grindstone, worse luck, but there have been times when
I've lifted my head and sniffed it in the air. In queer places, too!
In the dark, shadowy streets of old towns which I have visited as a
commercial traveller, selling goods by day and wandering out alone by
night into the backwaters. I've felt the thrill there, Dick, trying to
look through the curtained windows of some of those lonely houses.
I've been brushed by a stranger in Fleet Street and felt it; looked
into a woman's mysterious eyes as she turned around, with a latchkey
in her hand, before a house in Bloomsbury. We shan't need to wander
far away, Richard."
"Seems to me," the latter observed, "that I am to play Man Friday
to--"
He suddenly stood rigid. He gripped his friend's arm, his lips a
little parted. He was listening in a paroxysm of subdued joy. From out
of the sitting-room window came faint sounds of melody.
"It's Nora," he murmured ecstatically. "It's the first time for years!
She's singing!"
He moved involuntarily towards the house. Jacob filled his pipe and
strolled across the way, homewards.