Jacob's Ladder
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There were rounds of applause. Every one stood up and held out their glasses towards him, and Jacob was forced back again into this very real world of men and women made comfortable in their daily lives by his efforts. He said his few words of thanks simply but gracefully and, in accordance with the programme of the day, they trooped out afterwards to the lawn in front of the freshly plastered clubhouse and drank their coffee at small round tables, looking down the course, discussing the various holes, and making matches for the next Saturday afternoon and Sunday. A girl at the adjoining table leaned over and asked him a question.
“Do you know what has become of the Bultiwells, Mr. Pratt?” she enquired.
“Mrs. Bultiwell, I believe, went to stay with some relatives in Devonshire,” he replied. “The last I heard of Miss Bultiwell was that she had taken a position as governess somewhere near Belgrave Square.”
“A governess!” his questioner repeated. “Fancy her not being married! Don’t you think she’s awfully pretty, Mr. Pratt?”
“I do,” Jacob agreed.
“And so good at tennis, too,” the girl continued. “I wish she’d come back.”
“Quite a tragical story, her father’s death,” a man at the same table observed. “I don’t know whether you ever heard about it, Mr. Pratt. He was a leather merchant in a very large way in the city, but got into difficulties somehow. His one hope was that a friend who had a lot of money would come into partnership with him. It seems that the friend not only refused to do so when the moment came, but was rather rough on poor old Bultiwell about the way he had been conducting his business – so much so that he blew out his brains in the office, an hour or so after their interview.”
“How brutal of the friend!” the girl observed. “He might have let him down gently. You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you, Mr. Pratt?”
Jacob opened his lips to tell the truth, but closed them again. After all, why should he say a single word to mar the pervading impression of good-heartedness and happiness? The man was so anxious to improve his acquaintance with Jacob; the girl, who had moved her chair as though unconsciously a little closer to his, even more so. He met the smiling question in her eyes a little gravely but with no lack of friendliness.
“One never knows quite what one would do under certain circumstances,” he said. “If Mr. Bultiwell, for instance, had tried to deceive his friend and had been found out, I imagine it is only fair that he should have heard the truth.”
“He must have been told it in a cruel way, though, or he would never have committed suicide,” the girl persisted. “I am quite sure that you couldn’t do anything in a cruel way, Mr. Pratt.”
“I am going to be cruel to myself, at any rate,” Jacob replied, “and go over and start those foursomes.”
Jacob rose to his feet. The girl’s look of disappointment was so ingenuous that he turned back to her.
“Won’t you come with me, Miss Haslem?” he invited.
She sprang up and walked gladly by his side, chattering away as they stood on a slight eminence overlooking the first tee, using all the simple and justifiable weapons in her little armoury of charms to win a smile and a little notice, perhaps even a later thought from the great man of the day whose wealth alone made him seem almost like a hero of romance. She was a pleasant-faced girl, with clear brown eyes and masses of hair brushed back from her forehead and left unhandicapped by any headgear to dazzle the eye of the beholder. Her blouse was cut a little low, but the writer of the young ladies’ journal, who had sent her the pattern, had assured her that it was no lower than fashion permitted. Her white skirt was a little short, and her stockings were very nearly silk. She was twenty-two years old, fairly modest, moderately truthful, respectably brought up, but she was the eldest of four, and she would have fallen at Jacob’s feet and kissed the ground beneath them for a sign of his favour. Jacob, with the echoes of that tragic story still in his ears, wondered, as he stood with his hands behind his back, whether in those few minutes, when he had taken his meed of revenge, he had indeed raised up a ghost which was to follow him through life. More than anything in the world, what he wanted besides the good-fellowship of other men was the love and companionship of a wife. Was his to be the dream of Tantalus? Here, young womanhood of his own class, eager, sufficiently comely, stood striving to weave the spell of her sex upon him, with a lack of success which was almost pitiable. It was the selective instinct with which he was cursed. Something had even gone from the sad pleasure with which he used to be able to conjure up pictures of Sybil. It was almost as though the thought of her had ceased to attract him, and with the passing of the spell which she had laid upon him had come a passion as strong as ever for her sex, coupled with hopeless and glacial indifference to its human interpretesses. The girl began to feel the strain of a monosyllabic listener, but she had the courage of a heroine. She clutched her companion’s arm as her father topped his drive from the first tee. As though by accident, her fingers remained on Jacob’s coat sleeve.
“Poor dad!” she sighed. “Did you see him miss his drive? He’ll be so disappointed. He used to play quite well, but that wretched City – he doesn’t seem to be able to shake it off, nowadays. I wonder why it’s so difficult, Mr. Pratt,” she added, raising her eyes artlessly to his, “for some people to make money?”
“We haven’t all the same luck,” Jacob observed.
“Dad rushes home on Saturdays so tired,” she went on, “and then wonders why he plays golf so badly, wonders why mother isn’t always cheerful, and why we girls can’t dress on twopence a week. Why, stockings alone,” – she lifted her foot from the ground, gazed pensively at it for a moment and then suddenly returned it. Her ankle was certainly shapely, and the brevity of her skirts and a slight breeze permitted a just appreciation of a good many inches of mysterious white hose. “But of course you don’t know anything about the price of women’s clothes,” she broke in with a laugh. “I hope you don’t mind my hair looking a perfect mop. I never can keep it tidy out of doors, and I hate a hat.”
Jacob patiently did his best.
“I like to see girls without their hats when they have hair as pretty as yours,” he assured her, “and some day or other you must play me a round of golf for a dozen pairs of stockings.”
“Wouldn’t I just love to!” she exclaimed with joy. “Now or any other old time! I warn you that I should cheat, though. The vision of a dozen pairs of stockings melting into thin air because of your wonderful play would be too harrowing. – What on earth is that?”
Jacob, too, was listening with an air of suddenly awakened interest. Up the hill came a black speck, emitting from behind a cloud of smoke and punctuating its progress with the customary series of explosions.
“I do wish I had a two-seater,” the girl sighed.
“I rather believe it’s some one for me,” Jacob said, stepping eagerly forward.
The girl remained by his side. Felix brought the car to the side of the road which wound its way across the common, shook the dust from his clothes and waved his hand joyously to Jacob.
“Forty-seven minutes, my revered chief!” he exclaimed, as he approached, waving a missive in his hand. “See what it is to have some one amongst your bodyguard who can perform miracles!”
“What have you brought?” Jacob asked.
“A cable! Dauncey thought I had better bring it down.”
Jacob read it, and read it over again. It was a dispatch from New York, handed in that morning:
Regret to say your brother seriously ill. Should be deeply grateful if you would expedite your proposed visit. Am urgently in need of advice and help. Please come Saturday’s steamer if possible.
Sydney Morse, Secretary.Jacob folded up the dispatch and placed it in his breast pocket. Then he suddenly remembered the girl.
“Felix,” he said, “let me present you to Miss Haslem. Lord Felixstowe – Miss Haslem.”
The two young people exchanged the customary greetings. The girl began to apologise for her hair. Her cup of happiness was very nearly filled. And then Jacob dashed it to the ground.
“I want you to take me back to town as soon as you’ve had a drink,” he intervened, addressing the young man. “We sail for America to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Felixstowe carefully concluded the enfolding of Jacob’s outstretched form in an enormous rug, placed a tumbler of soda water and some dry biscuits within easy reach of him, and stepped back to inspect his handiwork.
“A bit drawn about the gills, old top,” he remarked sympathetically. “How are you feeling now?”
“Better,” Jacob murmured weakly. “And kindly remember that I am your employer, and don’t call me ‘old top.’”
“Sorry,” was the cheerful reply. “One has to drop into this sort of thing by degrees. I’ve a kind of naturally affectionate disposition, you know, when I’m with a pal.”
“Get your typewriter and practise,” Jacob directed. “I’ll try and give you a letter.”
“So to the daily toil,” the young man chanted, as he turned away. “I’ve got the little beauty in the saloon.”
Jacob groaned and closed his eyes, for the motion of the steamer, two days out of Liverpool for New York, still awoke revolutionary symptoms in his interior. Presently Felixstowe returned, carrying a small typewriter. He arranged himself in the adjoining chair, drew up his knees, took out the typewriter from its case, and, with his pipe in the corner of his mouth, sat waiting.
“Ready,” he announced.
“Oh, damn!” Jacob groaned. “Write a letter to yourself.”
“I’ll write a line to you,” the young man suggested soothingly.
He attacked his task very much as a child trying to spell out “The Bluebells of Scotland” on a piano with one finger. In a few minutes, with an air of pride, he drew out the sheet and passed it to his companion. Jacob stretched out a feeble hand and read listlessly.
Dear Mr. Pratt,
I believe that a couple of dry Martini cocktails would do us both good.
Faithfully yours,Felixstowe.Sec. (Very sec!)A weak smile parted Jacob’s lips and he grunted assent. Felixstowe exchanged cabalistic signs with the deck steward, and in due course the latter appeared with a couple of glasses filled with frosted amber liquid. Jacob hesitated for a moment doubtfully.
“Try mental suggestion,” the young man advised, looking lovingly at his glass. “Put it where the cat can’t get it and say to yourself, ‘This is going to do me good.’ Cheerio!”
Two empty glasses were replaced upon the tray. Jacob raised himself a little in his chair.
“I believe I feel better already,” he announced.
“Won’t know yourself in an hour’s time,” his companion assured him. “I shall give you a pint of champagne and a sandwich at twelve o’clock, and you’ll be taking me on at shuffleboard after lunch. Hullo, another wireless!”
“Read it for me,” Jacob directed.
The young man tore open the envelope and read out the message:
Brother’s condition unchanged. Your presence urgently needed. Will meet New York. Morse, Secretary.
“Poor old Sam!” Jacob murmured.
“He’ll pull through, if he’s got your constitution,” Felixstowe observed cheerfully. “I’ve never seen you under the weather yet.”
“That’s because I take care of myself,” Jacob said a little severely.
“Great Cæsar’s ghost! Hi!”
The young secretary was sitting bolt upright in his chair. A man and a woman, passing along the deck, turned in surprise at the challenge. The surprise speedily became amazement, and the amazement universal.
“Sybil Bultiwell!” Jacob gasped, forgetting all about his seasickness.
“Maurice Penhaven!” Felixstowe exclaimed. “What in the name of thunder are you two doing here together?”
Sybil, being a woman, was the first to recover herself. She laughed softly.
“We do seem to come across one another in strange places and under strange conditions, don’t we?” she said to Jacob. “This, perhaps, is the strangest of all. I am on my honeymoon.”
“Married?” Jacob gasped, throwing off his rugs and sitting upright. “But I was going to – you were – oh, damn!”
She made a little grimace and drew him to one side.
“I can guess what is in your mind, Mr. Pratt,” she said, “and I want to have a perfectly clear understanding with you. Tell me now, did I ever give you the slightest encouragement? Did I ever give you the faintest reason to hope that I should ever, under any circumstances, be willing to marry you?”
“I can’t say that you did,” Jacob admitted sadly, gripping at the rail against which they were standing. “I never left off hoping, though.”
“Now that I have become unexpectedly a very happy woman,” Sybil went on, with a new softness in her tone, “I will confess that I was perhaps unreasonable so far as regards your treatment of my father.”
“Thank God for that, anyhow!” Jacob muttered.
“There were times,” Sybil went on reflectively, “when I very nearly admired you.”
“For example?”
“When you opened the door of the house in Russell Square for me and calmly took back your notes which I had been to fetch. That was one time, at any rate. But I never had the slightest feeling of affection for you, or the slightest intention of marrying you, however long you waited. Now I am going to tell you something else, if I may.”
“Go on, please,” Jacob begged, in a melancholy tone.
“I do not think that you have ever been really in love with me. You are rather a sentimental person, and you were in love with a girl in a white gown who walked with you in a rose garden one wonderful evening, and was very kind to you simply to atone for other people’s rudeness. It wasn’t you I was being kind to at all. It was simply a sensitive guest who had been a little hurt.”
“I see,” he sighed.
“I had no idea,” she went on reflectively, “that you were likely to misunderstand. It was one of my father’s weaknesses that he sometimes forgot himself and did not sufficiently consider people’s feelings. He was rude to you that night, and I was ashamed and did my best to atone. I had no idea that you were going to take it all so seriously. But I want you, Mr. Pratt,” she went on earnestly, “to remember this. It was no real person with whom you walked in the garden that night. It was no real person the recollection of whom you have chosen to keep in your heart all this time, and with whom you have fancied yourself in love. It was just a creature of your own fancy. You are such a kind-hearted person really, and you ought to be happy. Can’t you untwine all those sentimental fancies of yours and find some really nice, human girl with whom to bedeck them? There are so many women in the world, Jacob Pratt, who would like to have you for a husband, apart from your money.”
“If it weren’t for the money – ” Jacob began sadly.
She interrupted him with a little peal of laughter.
“Faithless!” she exclaimed. “I can see that you have some one in your mind already. Don’t think too much about your wealth. I am a very ordinary sort of girl, you know, and it didn’t make any difference to me. Maurice hasn’t as many hundreds a year as you have thousands, but I am quite content. Your money may make marriage more possible with a girl who has been extravagantly brought up, but that needn’t prevent her really caring for you. So please cheer up, Mr. Jacob Pratt, and let us all be friends.”
They turned back towards the others. The explanation between Lord Felixstowe and his sister’s quondam fiancé had been delayed by the intervention of the Captain, who had paused on his daily promenade to say a few words. Felixstowe was just then, however, undertaking his obvious duty.
“Seems to me, young fellow,” he said, addressing Penhaven, “that a few words of explanation are due between us two.”
“You needn’t come the heavy brother,” the latter replied. “Your sister and I broke our engagement mutually, some time ago. I can assure you, and she will tell you the same, that her feelings towards me have changed far more completely even than mine towards her.”
“Well, I’m jiggered!” Lord Felixstowe exclaimed.
“Where did you and Captain Penhaven meet?” Jacob asked miserably.
“I used to go in, as you know, and play Lady Mary’s accompaniments,” Sybil explained. “Captain Penhaven was often there and used to take me home sometimes. From my own observation,” she went on, “I can confirm what Maurice has just said about the relations between Lady Mary and himself. For some reason or other she became absolutely indifferent to him about that time.”
“So, according to you two, nobody’s got a grievance,” Felixstowe observed. “If my new employer’s satisfied – well, I suppose that’s an end of it.”
“Your what?” Sybil demanded.
The young man waved his hand genially towards Jacob.
“He’s taken me on as secretary,” he announced. “First job, trip out to America to visit sick brother and look after business complications. We’ve dealt with weighty affairs already this morning.”
“What’s become of your Mr. Dauncey, then?” Sybil enquired.
“I have made him secretary of the Cropstone Wood Estates Company,” Jacob told her. “He has my affairs to look after as well while I am away.”
A sound familiar to the nautical ears of Lord Felixstowe reached them from the bows of the ship.
“Sun’s over the yardarm,” he announced. “How are you feeling now, old – Mr. Pratt?”
“You order,” Jacob replied.
It was a moderately cheerful little party who drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Afterwards, however, Jacob passed a day of curiously tangled sensations. The summons to New York had been too peremptory for him to delay even an hour, but he had sent a note to Miss Bultiwell at the address in Belgrave Square, asking for a few minutes’ interview before he left. Naturally he had received no answer. Now he was face to face with absolute and accomplished failure in one of the fixed purposes of his life. He was an obstinate person, used to success, – so used to it, in fact, that the present situation left him dazed. His first determination, when success had smiled upon him, had been to marry Sybil Bultiwell. He had never flinched from that purpose. He had even, in his heart, considered himself engaged. Any thoughts which might have come to him of any other woman he had pushed away as a species of infidelity. And now there wasn’t any Sybil Bultiwell. She was married and out of his reach. He felt that the proper thing for him to do was to go down to his cabin and nurse his broken heart; instead of which he drank champagne for dinner, found a few kindred spirits who liked a mild game of poker, and went to bed whistling at two o’clock in the morning. His young companion, who had won a fiver and was in a most beatific state, came and sat on his bunk whilst he undressed.
“Jacob, my well-beloved,” he said, “you are taking this little setback like a hero.”
“What setback?” Jacob asked.
“Little affair of Miss Bultiwell,” Felixstowe replied, gazing admiringly at Jacob’s well-suspended silk socks. “Mary told me all about it.”
Jacob sighed heavily.
“Nasty knock for me,” he admitted, with a curiously unconvincing note of gloom in his tone.
“And Mary, poor old girl, is in the same boat,” Felixstowe went on reflectively. “Still, she never cared much for Maurice … led him an awful dance, the last few months. And you were head over heels in love with Miss Bultiwell, weren’t you?”
“I adored her,” Jacob declared, taking a long gulp of the whisky and soda which he had brought in for a nightcap. “Worshipped her,” he added, finishing it with much satisfaction.
Felixstowe sighed sympathetically.
“Rotten luck for you, having ’em on board, honeymooning,” he observed. “Never mind, keep a stiff upper lip, old thing. Let me know if I can butt in any time on the right side. You’ll perhaps stay in your stateroom to-morrow?”
“Not I!” was the hasty reply. “I shall face it out.”
“Hero!” his companion murmured. “Don’t you brood over this thing, Jacob. Close your eyes and try and count sheep, or something of that sort. Call me in if you get very melancholy during the night, and I’ll read to you.”
“You needn’t worry,” Jacob assured him. “I have an iron will. And don’t be so long in the bath to-morrow morning.”
“Tap three times on the door,” the young man enjoined, “and I will remember that it is my master’s voice.”
CHAPTER XXV
They steamed slowly past the Statue of Liberty, early in the afternoon a few days later. Jacob and his young companion were leaning over the rail, watching the great, tangled city slowly define itself through a shroud of mist.
“One good thing about this voyage,” the latter remarked sympathetically, “it’s taken your mind off yourself – made you forget your troubles, in a kind of way.”
“You mean about poor Sam?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking about your brother,” Felixstowe confessed. “I was thinking of the other little affair. Of course, it’s been rather a bad egg for you, so to speak, having her pop up every minute or two, but there’s something about life on one of these great liners – I don’t know what it is, but you seem to be able to shove all sorts of things out of your mind, eh?”
Jacob felt for a moment rather ashamed of himself. It was not like him to be inconstant in anything, and he would not for a moment admit that what he had regarded as the passion of his life had been merely a fantasy. At the same time, he could not ignore the fact that during the last few days he had been conscious of a sense of freedom which was altogether pleasant.
“I have conquered that,” he declared proudly. “For me it is finished. You must have observed my indifference at dinner last night. I find myself able to converse with her now without the slightest emotion.”
“Fine!” was the enthusiastic rejoinder. “You must have a will of iron. Those things do pull you about a bit, though. I remember an affair of my own with little Kitty Bond – second from the left in the front row of the Gaiety, you know. For three days she was simply dropping sugarplums down my throat, never took her eyes off me all through the show, welcome at any hour to the flat, though mother was in the country visiting the parson uncle – all the usual sort of slush, you know. And then one day some one told her about dad and figured out what my income was likely to be. Little Johnny in the rubber market it was. I shall never forget the night Kitty introduced me and then went off to supper with him in his coupé. Fairly gave me the pip.”
“I beg,” Jacob said with dignity, “that you will not compare your calf love for a picture-postcard young lady with what might easily have been a great passion.”
Felixstowe tapped a cigarette upon the rail and lit it.
“It took me more than three days to get over it, at any rate,” he remarked pointedly.
A grave-looking, clean-shaven young man, very neatly dressed and wearing thin, gold-rimmed spectacles, met them as they stepped off the steamer.
“Mr. Jacob Pratt, I am sure?” he said. “My name is Morse – Sydney H. Morse. I am your brother’s secretary.”
“How is Sam?” Jacob enquired eagerly.
“He is in precisely the same condition of coma,” the secretary replied. “The physician says that he may remain so for days.”
“Shall I be able to see him?”
“Doctor Bardolf will discuss that with you, Mr. Pratt. In the meantime, one of your brother’s servants is here to see after all the luggage and pass it through the Customs, if you will hand him the list. I have a car here for you and – and – ”
“My secretary,” Jacob indicated. “Mr. Sydney Morse – Lord Felixstowe.”
The former, startled for a moment out of his gravity, solemnly shook hands.
“Glad to meet you, Lord Felixstowe,” he said impressively. “Welcome to New York.”
“I am very glad to be here,” Felixstowe observed, as he returned the other’s salute in friendly fashion. “Gay little hamlet, what?”
“It’s a city full of interest, sir,” the other affirmed.
“You’ll have to show me around. I bet you know the ropes. The pick of the world’s fluff on its home soil, eh?”
The New Yorker looked a little staggered and edged his way towards Jacob.
“Here is the car, Mr. Pratt,” he announced, opening the door of a very handsome limousine.
“Where are you taking us?” Jacob enquired.