Jack Compton's Luck

‘Off to Wembley tomorrow afternoon, I gather, with Richard Chancellor’s party,’ he finished. ‘I shall be taking the motor along, too, and will have the pleasure of meeting you all there.’

After that, Lacey’s evening was a dull one. She wondered a little why Jack had not come to say farewell to them in person, but decided that he probably had his reasons. She was not wrong. Jack could see quite plainly that he was something of a red rag to a bull where Aunt Sue was concerned and that it would be better not to inflict himself on her overmuch—particularly since, against all the odds, he was going to spend the whole of the next afternoon with her and Lacey.

Early the following morning Jack was speculating about what, from his limited wardrobe, he ought to wear for the expedition to Wembley when the lodging housemaid came to tell him that he was wanted on the telephone.

It was Will. After a few short enquiries as to what Jack was up to, Will said, ‘I was under the impression that you would be coming home yesterday. Have your plans altered?’

‘Well, that was my original intention, but something came up.’

The something, of course, was Lacey, but Jack felt that he could scarcely ramble on about that on the telephone and, besides, Will might not think it a sufficiently good explanation for his having postponed his return. ‘Is there any particular reason why you want me back?’ he added, because he thought Will sounded harassed.

‘Actually, yes. I could do with you here as soon as possible. I don’t wish to discuss the matter over the phone, but if you could manage to return tomorrow I should be exceedingly grateful.’

‘Oh, I can easily arrange that. I have a final visit to the lawyers this morning. This afternoon I am making up one of Richard Chancellor’s party on a visit to the Wembley Exhibition.’

‘Now, I do envy you that, and Robbie will, too. I feel a cur for asking you to cut your London visit short since you seem to be seeing life a little, but needs must. Give my best regards to Richard. I haven’t seen him since before the war. I hear that he’s done well for himself.’

There was something wistful in Will’s voice. Unlike George, all his hopes for the future had been dashed by the War.

‘I’ll try to find Robbie a souvenir. Give him my love.’

He put the phone back on the wall, wondering what it was that had made Will, who rarely used the telephone, ring him. Well, he would find out soon enough tomorrow. Today, though, was to be devoted to the law and to Wembley.

Fortunately for Jack, and the others, the weather was good that afternoon and the company was better—even Aunt Sue was being civil to him. She had, rather sensibly, decided that to oppose Jack’s interest in Lacey so decisively was merely encouraging her headstrong niece to go on seeing him. If she said nothing, this squib of an affair might burn itself out.

Richard, whose party it nominally was, apologised for not accompanying them—something important had come up, he said, and his cousin George would take over as host.

The British Empire Exhibition was the official name for the jamboree they were attending—George Chancellor’s description of it. ‘It’s the twentieth century’s version of the Great Exhibition of 1851,’ he explained cheerfully to his hearers.

There were, among other exciting things, an Ashanti village, a collection of animals from South Africa, native dancing and something else, not perhaps strictly part of the Empire, but allied to its glory: a replica of Tutankhamen’s tomb, which included a superb gold life-size figure of the boy Pharaoh himself.

Jack and Lacey stood before it in wonderment. Lacey said, ‘It makes me feel humble to think that all those years ago human beings could create something so beautiful. What have we to show which is equally fine?’

‘A motor car,’ suggested Jack, not quite seriously, ‘or an aeroplane? The Pharaohs weren’t up to them.’ But he knew what she meant, and they both appreciated the awe which Howard Carter must have felt when he rolled back the linen shroud which had covered the effigy and, after three thousand years, revealed to himself, and ultimately to the world, one of the glories of the long-dead past.

George Chancellor, and the others of the party, also stood, awed, before the golden and blue marvel. Finally, when they moved away, he murmured, ‘I know the emphasis of this exhibition is really on trade, and as a civil service flunkey I ought to appreciate that, but, to me, this beats everything.’

His hearers nodded. If, for Jack, the emphasis of their expedition was on Lacey, as well as the wonders of the Exhibition itself—for who knew when he might meet her again?—to see Tutankhamen’s effigy was an experience also never to be forgotten. After that the Palace of Industry and even the Burmese pagodas, beautiful though they were, took second place.

Somehow, in the crowds, Lacey and Jack managed to escape from the others, avoiding Aunt Sue’s vigilant eye, and seat themselves not far from where the Battle of Zeebrugge was being re-enacted.

‘I now know what the sentimental novelists mean when they have their hero and heroine say, “Alone at last”,’ remarked Lacey.

‘I second that with some enthusiasm,’ Jack replied, ‘if being lost among such a crowd could be called being alone.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Lacey told him a little severely. ‘I like George and the others, but I feel so confined when I am always one of a large party.’

‘Of course, and I feel the same.’

Jack was busily admiring Lacey’s perfect profile and wishing that he dare kiss her on the cheek. Supposing, however, Aunt Sue popped up from nowhere—whatever would she say? For the first time he envied the anonymous young people who fervently embraced one another while lying on the grass in London’s many parks. Here he was, imprisoned by convention, unable to offer his newly found beloved a chaste kiss while sitting upright!

He could, however, take her hand and stroke it gently. This had the strongest effect on both of them—of which, of course, they could take no advantage.

‘I have to go home tomorrow,’ Jack told her. ‘I can’t imagine when we shall next have a chance to meet.’

Lacey, who had just decided to stroke Jack’s hand for a change, murmured, ‘So soon. Do you realise how short a time we have known one another?’

‘Yes. Odd, isn’t it? I have known some pretty girls for years and have never had the slightest inclination to feel for them what I have begun to feel for you.’

There, it was out. He had said it—and damn the consequences. She, and certainly Aunt Sue, might dub him fortune hunter, but he—and he hoped Lacey—knew that was not true. Had he been a real hunter, roving the plains in the distant long ago, even before Tutankhamen, he would have thrown her over his shoulder and run off with her to some convenient cave!

Which was an impossible dream. They were trapped in the twentieth century in a society which, outwardly at least, imposed the strictest standards on the behaviour of young unmarried people.

‘We could write to one another,’ suggested Lacey, who was feeling a little desperate herself. During their walk around the Exhibition she had discovered that Jack had a fund of knowledge—not academic, unlike her own, but that of a man of intelligence who had read widely. He had spoken of his time in Palestine, and of the problems of the Jews and Arabs there, with sympathy and understanding.

Now she was to lose him to a succession of young men, many of whom were little more intelligent than Bertie Wooster!

‘Would you?’ exclaimed Jack. ‘Would you really?’ He was beginning to believe that Lacey was as entranced by him as he was by her. Of course, nothing could come of it. After all, it was highly unlikely that one of America’s richest heiresses would be allowed to marry poverty-stricken Jack Compton. Aunt Sue’s would not be the only voice raised against it. He was scarcely in the same league as the Amherst heir.

On the other hand, he might as well follow the old Roman motto, Carpe diem, or ‘seize the day’ in plain English, and make hay while the sun shines, as another old saying had it! Such an odd mishmash of ancient advice as he was giving himself made him laugh internally since it was proof positive of the excited state he had been in since he had first seen Lacey dancing the Charleston only one short week ago.

‘Of course. You must give me your address immediately. I can’t be asking you for it in Aunt Sue’s hearing.’ Lacey rummaged in her large handbag and produced a gold propelling pencil and a small notebook, which she opened at the first blank page she found.

‘It’s an easy one to remember,’ Jack told her, writing it down. ‘Compton Place, Sussex, would probably find us, but to be quite safe, I’ll put the long one down.’

He handed the little book back to her. ‘And now we’ve enjoyed the cultural and economic delights of Wembley, how about visiting the Amusement Park and having a go on the Scenic Ride on the roller coaster, or switch-back railway, before we try to find the others?’

‘What could be better?’ exclaimed Lacey enthusiastically. ‘I went on one at Coney Island when I was a little girl. I was frightened to death and screamed all the way down—and up! Promise to hold my hand if I’m frightened again.’

‘Oh, I promise to hold your hand even if you’re not frightened,’ Jack told her gravely.

So they wandered off to the Amusement Park to engage in an activity of which Aunt Sue would undoubtedly deplore! Lacey did scream, but with pleasure, not fear, this time and hung on to Jack after a fashion which made him feel both manly and protective—as well as hopelessly roused.

He took the opportunity to stroke her head gently when she buried it in his chest—which had the effect of rousing him further. He could not stop himself from kissing her neck when she let go of him on one of the less exciting parts of the run—and that did nothing for his composure either.

By the flush on Lacey’s face when she finally sat up and straightened herself, Jack could tell that she had been enjoying his petting of her nearly as much as he had. On the final run in, she murmured to him, ‘Oh, I did like that,’ though whether she was referring to the ride itself or his attentions to her during it he was still not quite sure.

Lacey, however, was quite sure. Oh, she had been stroked and kissed by a man before, but it had never had the powerful affect on her which Jack’s gentle loving had caused. She was experienced enough to know what the shivers of delight which had overcome her during the ride truly meant. They meant that she was ready, nay, needed, more than he had just offered her.

And what did that tell her of her true feelings for him?

She didn’t go quite so far as to say that she wanted to go round again, although had Jack invited her to she would immediately have agreed.

Instead, regretfully, she looked at her watch and exclaimed, ‘We really ought to try to find our party, we’ve almost reached the time when we agreed to return home.’

‘True,’ said Jack, ‘but not before I do this.’ He had already decided that there was safety in numbers and that since he and Lacey were suitably anonymous, lost in a crowd which neither knew nor cared what they did, it would be quite safe to give her a real kiss, not the soft ones he had offered her on their ride. So he saluted her not chastely on the cheek, but nearly chastely on the lips, almost in passing as it were, needing no passionate embrace.

Lacey made no attempt to stop him and it was he who broke away first. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but I have spent the whole afternoon wanting to do that. If you didn’t like it, I promise not to do it again.’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ she riposted briskly. ‘I liked it very much. In fact, I wouldn’t object if you did it again—more slowly this time.’

‘In that case,’ said Jack, ‘I will try to oblige you.’

What was preventing him from being a little more urgent with her was that he was hanging on to his self-control by a thread. If Lacey had been surprised by the strength of her reactions to him, Jack was equally surprised by the depths of passion which he was plumbing while he was simply squiring Lacey round an Amusement Park!

This time the kiss was both long and slow. Lacey had her back to the wall of one of the booths, her arms around his neck, and was standing on tiptoe so that she could enjoy as much of him as possible.

The kiss went on and on and became more and more passionate. His wicked tongue parted her lips and danced with hers and when Jack, for very self-preservation, pulled away from her, her swollen face and lips told him that she was as roused as he was.

For a moment, they stared at one another, lost not only to the crowd, but to themselves, almost unable to speak since time and place had disappeared too. When speech returned to them, it was Lacey who spoke first.

‘Much though I am enjoying myself,’ she murmured breathlessly, ‘and would love to prolong it, we really ought to behave ourselves and join the others. Aunt Sue will be thinking that I’ve been kidnapped by White Slavers and that you have been left for dead somewhere.’

‘True,’ said Jack again, slowly returning to the realities of the everyday world, if being in an Amusement Park at the Exhibition could be called the real world! ‘George told us all that if we became lost we should return to the main entrance by five o’clock and I calculate that we have just about time to do that.’

They found most of the party there, waiting for them and several others who had been playing hookey, as Lacey called it when they were on the way back.

Aunt Sue hissed at her, ‘Wherever have you been? Peregrine wanted to escort you, but you were nowhere to be found. He was particularly interested in the Trade Pavilion.’

‘Well, I was particularly interested in the Amusement Park,’ returned Lacey naughtily, ‘so Jack took me there.’

‘He would,’ her aunt hissed again, meaningfully this time.

‘Well, he could scarcely make improper advances to me on the roller coaster when we were clinging on to our seats for dear life, so you needn’t have worried, Aunt. I was quite safe. I’m sorry to have disappointed Peregrine, but he should have made his wants known to me, not you.’

She did not add that off the roller coaster had been the place for advances from Jack, but since they could not be called improper, they were hardly relevant.

‘On the carpet, were you?’ whispered Jack to her when he had manoeuvred them both into the back seat of the Chancellors’ Rolls. He knew an angry Aunt Sue when he saw her.

It was Lacey’s turn to hiss. ‘Ssh, Jack. I didn’t believe all those stories of your wild youth when we first met, but now—’ and she rolled her eyes theatrically, ‘I am beginning to find out why you were nicknamed Fighting Jack.’

‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it, my girl.’ Jack was determined to enjoy himself in the short time he had left with her since she was equally determined to join him in having fun. Tomorrow it would be home and duty and the grinding task of trying to keep the Comptons solvent. To say nothing of finding out what was so obviously worrying his brother.

The day was not yet quite over, though. Richard, who had proved to be Lacey’s much older half-brother, met Cousin George’s party in the entrance hall of his Park Lane home where he had arranged for a late tea to be served to them. He was leaving to keep yet another appointment, he said, and apologised for not being able to entertain them in person.

‘Sorry I couldn’t go with you this afternoon,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘Duty and all that. George, here, being a civil servant, can call his pleasure, duty, but a simple business chap like myself hasn’t that option—as you can now see.’

Simple, he called himself—simple, he certainly wasn’t, Jack thought. Lacey introduced him to Jack, although Jack thought that he had almost certainly met Richard years ago, before the war.

‘Fighting Jack, isn’t it?’ he remarked cordially. ‘We met at Ascot in ‘13, I think. Squiring young Miss, were you? Come to dinner tonight as a thank-you, you deserve it.’ This was all said with the greatest good humour.

Jack accepted the invitation to dinner, even though he had packed his evening wear before he had left for the lawyers that morning and would now have to unpack it. It would give him yet another chance to meet Lacey and take a last memory of her home to Sussex.

‘Though I don’t think that I really deserve a thank you,’ he ended, ‘it was a most enjoyable afternoon.’

Lacey murmured, her eyes twinkling mischief, ‘I think that Jack enjoyed himself on the roller coaster as much as I did.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ smiled Richard, looking knowing.

Later that evening, before the guests arrived for dinner, he remarked to Lacey, to Aunt Sue’s annoyance, ‘Young Compton’s better than your average escort. He had a good war and gave up a promising career in the Army in order to try to improve the family fortunes. His brother Will is a helpless cripple—war wounds, of course. The other brother was killed at Passchendaele.’

‘I know,’ Lacey said simply. ‘He’s not at all like his cousin Rupert or any of the other young men I have met over here. He takes life seriously.’

One thing she had already privately decided: that London season or no London season, she would be off to Sussex as soon as decently possible!

Chapter Three

‘I hope that you didn’t rush home for my sake,’ said Will anxiously.

Jack’s answer was robust. He always did his elder brother the honour of speaking to him as though he were still the hearty athlete he had once been and not a man paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. ‘I came home for mine. I’ve too damned much to do here without wasting my time in London.’

‘Did you meet anyone interesting?’

‘Cousin Rupert—who is apparently in hock to the money-lenders. He always was a bit of an ass. Richard Chancellor—he asked to be remembered to you. The Chancellors are now even more enormously rich than ever, I gather, with interests in oil in the States. Oh, and Darcey, his cousin. A more sensible chap than our cousin Rupert from the sound of it. Rupert was behaving very badly, up one minute, down the next.’

He deliberately didn’t mention Lacey. If nothing came of their sudden romance then, so far as Will was concerned, what the heart doesn’t know, the heart can’t grieve. Good God, that was yet another ghastly saying of his old nurse’s which had popped into his head after many years’ absence! He was so busy lamenting its reappearance that he only just heard Will’s next question.

‘No interesting young women, then?’

‘Come, come, Will, by interesting do you mean, beautiful, glamorous or rich?’

‘All three rolled into one gorgeous package would be useful,’ sighed Will, ‘but rare, one supposes. You must admit that if you found one and married her all our money troubles would be over.’

Lacey Chancellor certainly fitted that bill, was Jack’s inward and clichéd response, but fortune hunting was not his game, and so he told Will.

This brought on another attack of sighing from his brother. Jack thought that Will looked frailer than ever. He was leaning back in his chair, a blanket over his knees and a scarf round his neck even though the day was a warm one.

They were seated on the terrace which looked out over the neglected park where a few sheep were grazing. The folly at the end looked more broken down than he had remembered it, while the state of the ha-ha was even more disastrous. On the whole, though, it was probably better to be sitting in the open rather than in the house whose every room reminded the brothers of the splendour which had vanished and which was beginning to look increasingly unlikely to be restored.

‘I’m not in the market for fortune hunting.’ Jack was short.

‘Pity,’ sighed Will. ‘I had the local bank manager round the other day about our account there. He was surprised to find you in London.’

‘Was he, indeed? I suppose that we ought to be grateful that rather than summon us brusquely to his parlour he still cares to visit us. What did he have to say?’

‘That we ought to sell some more land to help our finances and improve our living conditions.’

Jack frowned. ‘I don’t like the thought of selling any more land. We have little enough left to farm profitably as it is. Besides, our main account is at Coutts, as he knows.’

‘I don’t exactly like the thought of selling it myself,’ admitted Will, ‘but do I have the right to tie you to this sinking ship? Things might yet take a turn for the worse. You’ve sacrificed enough already—and to what end?’

Jack tried to reassure him. ‘That we are not quite in such a desperate state as we were when the war was over. A little more than a hundred years ago we were in a similar predicament when young Sir Jack inherited and pulled us round again.’

Will was sighing again and looking worried. Jack wondered why. ‘It was easier for him,’ he said ruefully. ‘Now we live in an age which sees something wrong with inherited land and titles. Consequently the kind of deference which young Jack almost certainly received, and which helped us to survive and prosper until the damned War came along, has almost disappeared.’

‘You mean that bank managers didn’t descend on us with ultimatums—or should it be ultimata?—we sent for them at our leisure.’

‘Something like that,’ said Will.

‘Is this why you wished me to come home as soon as possible?’

‘Not quite. There is something else, just as worrying. In fact, to be honest, much more so. It’s my fault as well.’

He looked away from Jack, his fingers plucking at his blanket. When he spoke his voice was low and ashamed.

‘I did a damned foolish thing before you came back from Palestine. I had a lot of debts of honour incurred in my Army days. I contacted a London money-lender and took out a loan to enable me to pay them—and some other, larger ones, which I had run up by unsuccessfully gambling on the Stock Exchange in an effort to mend matters.’

He paused. Jack stared at him. ‘Come on, Will, that’s not the end. Finish what you have begun. What did you use for security?’

‘Compton Place—and the remaining lands. What else was there?’ He stopped again.

Aghast, Jack exclaimed, ‘Why did you never tell me of this? Did our solicitors know? Did our former land agent, old Baines?’

Will shook his head. ‘Not the solicitors. At first I conducted most of the business through Baines. As you know, he died just after you took over here.’

‘And without saying a word to me about this.’ Jack was grim. ‘I take it that you paid interest to this shark—how did you do that?’

Will looked away. ‘He wasn’t really a shark. To begin with I paid him out the money cousin Alfred left me. The interest wasn’t exorbitant. He didn’t want to ruin me. He said that in the long run he would make more money that way. I used some of young Robbie’s inheritance from his maternal grandfather after I had adopted him. His mother, as you know, couldn’t wait to hand him over to us once she remarried. Said her husband didn’t want another man’s brat.’

‘And now Robbie’s money has gone as well?’

There was a quiet desperation in Jack’s voice since Will, despite his brave words earlier, had behaved as badly as Sir Jack’s predecessor, another William. Worse. Not only had he gambled a fortune away, he had also pillaged Robbie’s inheritance, and then he had said nothing of this to the brother who was trying to rescue him until he had been compelled to.

Will hung his head. ‘That’s not the end of the problem. The money-lender died recently and his son had no interest in running the business. He sold my loan to Bernard Montague, who is a different cup of tea altogether. He has recently been combing Sussex for a suitable mansion—he wants to become a country squire, of all things. He’s one of those financiers who did well out of the War and have filled Parliament, I’m told.