Jacob lingered for a month in Monte Carlo. While he found little to
attract him in the gambling or the social side of the place, the
glorious climate, the perpetual sunshine, the fine air of La Turbie,
and a pleasing succession of golf victories helped him to pass the
time pleasantly. He spent a week at Cannes on the way back, making
wonderful progress in his tennis, and from there he hired a motor-car
and spent a fortnight at Aix. He reached London early in May, to find
Dauncey unchanged and his own affairs prosperous. During all this time
he had had no word of or from Sybil Bultiwell. He went almost directly
to his cottage at Marlingden, where he found Mrs. Harris eagerly
awaiting his arrival, and over the supper table, Dauncey and he and a
rejuvenated Nora talked over that evening when the two men had arrived
home in the motor-car, laden with strange packages and overflowing
with their marvellous news.
"Life has been so wonderful ever since," Nora murmured. "Dick looks
ten years younger, and I feel it. The children you can see for
yourself. I wonder," she went on a little timidly, as she realised
her host's peculiar aversion to expressed gratitude, "I wonder whether
you ever realise, Jacob, what it means to have taken two people from a
struggle which was becoming misery and to have made them utterly and
completely happy."...
Jacob thought of her words as he lingered for an hour in his little
sitting-room that night. His own memory travelled backwards. He
realised the joy which he had felt at paying his debts, the even
greater joy of saving the Daunceys from despair. He thought again of
the small pleasures which his affluence had brought, the sense of
complacency, almost of dignity, which it had engendered. There were
many men, he knew, who thought him the most fortunate amongst all
their acquaintance. And was he, he wondered? He looked across at the
light in the Daunceys' bedroom and saw it extinguished. He looked back
with a sigh to his empty room. He had read many books since the days
of his prosperity, but books had never meant very much to him. He
realised, in those moments of introspection, his weakness and his
failure. His inclinations were all intensely human. He loved kind
words, happy faces, flowers and children. He was one of those for whom
the joys and gaieties of the demimonde were a farce, to whom the
delights of the opposite sex could only present themselves in the form
of one person and in one manner. He was full of sentiments, full of
easily offended prejudices. Fate had placed in his hands the power to
command a life which might have been as varied as grand opera, and all
that he desired was the life which Dauncey had found and was living.
Upstairs were the Harrises, sleeping together in comfort and
happiness, the creatures of his bounty, his grateful and faithful
servants. And he knew well how both of those two across the way, whom
he envied, blessed his name. It was a happiness to think of them, and
yet an impersonal happiness. He longed humanly for the other and more
direct kind.
Dauncey found cause for some anxiety in Jacob's demeanour during the
course of the next few weeks.
"You know, Jacob," he said, "in one way I never saw you look so well
in your life. That bronze you got in the south of France is most
becoming, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you seem to have gained
poise lately, to have lost that slight self-consciousness with which
you looked out upon life just at first. And yet you don't look as I'd
like to see you. I haven't even heard you laugh as you used to."
Jacob nodded.
"I'm all right, Dick," he assured his friend. "Fact is, I think I am
suffering from a surfeit of good things. Everything in the world's
lying ready to my hands, and I don't quite know which way to turn."
"Did you hear anything of Miss Bultiwell while you were abroad?"
Dauncey asked a little abruptly.
"Not a word," Jacob replied. "Her last letter to me seemed to end
things pretty effectually."
Dauncey spoke words under his breath which were real and blasphemous.
"Can't you put her out of your thoughts, old chap?"
"I think I have, and yet the place where she was is empty. And, Dick,"
Jacob went on, "I don't know where or how to fill it. You see, I've
crowds of acquaintances, but no friends except you and Nora. One or
two rich city people ask me to their houses, and the whole of Bohemia,
I suppose, is open to me. I never see any women belonging to my city
friends who appeal in the least to my imagination, and there's
something wrong about the other world, so far as I am concerned. We
are not out for the same thing."
"I think I understand," Dauncey said quietly.
"I expect you do," Jacob continued. "You ought to, because you're
exactly where I want to be. I want a wife who is just good and sweet
and affectionate. She needn't be clever, she needn't be well-born, and
she need know no more about Society than I do. I want her just to make
a home and give me children. And, Dick, with all that million of mine
I don't know where to look for her."
"She'll come," Dauncey declared encouragingly. "She is sure to come.
You are young and you'll keep young. You live like a man, of course,
but it's a sober, self-respecting life. You've heaps of time. And
that reminds me. Could you join us in a little celebration to-night?
My wife has a cousin from the country staying with her, and I have
promised to take them out to dine and to a show."
"I have nothing to do," Jacob replied. "I shall be delighted."
It was a little too obvious. Nora's cousin from the country, a very
nice and estimable person in her way, was not equal to the occasion.
She wore her ill-fitting clothes without grace or confidence. She
giggled repeatedly, and her eyes seldom left Jacob's, as though all
the time she were bidding for his approval. She was just well enough
looking and no more, the sort of woman who would have looked almost
pretty on her wedding day, a little dowdy most of the time during the
next five years, and either a drudge or a nuisance afterwards,
according to her circumstances. Jacob was very polite and very glad
when the evening was over. His host wrung his hand as they parted.
"Not my fault, old chap," he whispered. "Nora would try it. She hadn't
seen Margaret for three or four years."
"That's all right, Dick," Jacob answered, with unconvincing
cheerfulness. "Very pleasant time."
Jacob had endured a cheap dinner at a popular restaurant and circle
seats at a music hall with uncomplaining good humour, but the evening,
if anything, had increased his depression. He wandered into one of
the clubs of which he was a member, only to find there was not a soul
there whom he had ever seen before in his life. He came out within
half an hour, but a spirit of unrest had seized him. Instead of going
up to his rooms, he wandered into the foyer of the great hotel, in the
private part of which his suite was situated, and watched the people
coming out from supper. Again, as he sat alone, he was conscious of
that feeling of isolation. Every man seemed to be accompanied by a
woman who for the moment, at any rate, was content to give her whole
attention to the task of entertaining her companion. There were little
parties, older people some of them, but always with that connecting
link of friendship and good-fellowship. Jacob sat grimly back in the
shadows and watched. Perhaps it would have been better, he thought, if
he had remained a poor traveller. He would have found some little,
hardly used, teashop waitress, or perhaps the daughter of one of his
customers, or a little shopgirl whom he had hustled in the Tube,--some
one whose life might have touched his and brought into it the genial
flavour of companionship. As it was--
"If it isn't Mr. Pratt!"
He started. One of the very smartest of the little crowd who flowed
around him had paused before his chair. He rose to his feet.
"Lady Powers!" he exclaimed.
"Ancient history," she confided. "I have been married weeks--it seems
ages. This is my husband--Mr. Frank Lloyd."
Jacob found himself shaking hands with a vacuous-looking youth who
turned away again almost immediately to speak to some acquaintances.
"You don't bear me any ill-will, Mr. Pratt?"
"None except that broken dinner engagement," he replied.
"I wrote to you," she reminded him. "I did not dare to come after the
way those others had behaved."
He sighed. "All the same I was disappointed."
She made a little grimace. Her husband was bidding farewell to his
friends. She leaned towards him confidentially.
"Perhaps if I had," she whispered, "there would have been no Mr. Frank
Lloyd."...
Back to his chair and solitude. Jacob made his way presently through
the darkened rooms and passages to his own apartments, where a servant
was waiting for him, the evening papers were laid out, whisky and soda
and sandwiches were on the sideboard. His valet relieved him of his
dresscoat and smoothed the smoking jacket around him.
"Anything more I can do for you to-night, sir?"
Jacob looked around the empty room, looked at his luxurious single
easy-chair, at all the resources of comfort provided for him, and
shook his head.
"Nothing, Richards," he answered shortly. "Good night!"
"Good night, sir!"
Jacob subsided into the easy-chair, filled his pipe mechanically, lit
and smoked it mechanically, knocked out the ashes when he had finished
it, turned out the lights and passed into his bedroom, undressed and
went to bed, still without any interest or thought for what he was
doing. When he found himself still awake in a couple of hours' time,
he took himself to task fiercely.
"This is liver," he muttered. "I shall now relax, take twelve deep
breaths, and sleep."
Which he did.