Kitabı oku: «Jacob's Ladder», sayfa 14
CHAPTER XXVIII
Jacob and Lord Felixstowe stood side by side on the deck of a homeward-bound steamer, a few weeks later, watching the pilot come out from Plymouth Harbour.
“Some trip,” the latter remarked, with a reminiscent sigh. “I feel as though I’d had the beano of my life.”
“You scored it up against me, all right,” Jacob acknowledged. “Those fellows might easily have got away with my hundred thousand pounds. I’m not at all sure that I ought not to settle an annuity on you.”
“Nothing doing,” was the prompt reply. “Believe me, Jacob, old dear, mine is one of those peculiar intelligences which thrive best in a state of penury. Give me an absolutely assured income and my talents would rust. I should no longer be equal to measuring my wits against the Morses of the world.”
Jacob smiled.
“I think you gave that young man the surprise of his life.”
“I’m not at all sure that I didn’t play it a trifle low down on Mr. Sydney Morse,” Felixstowe reflected. “He was a very credulous simpleton, for all his cunning. The stage setting of his scheme was wonderful and the details perfect, but he lacked the insight of a great crook. On the whole I am glad that your brother let the bunch off lightly.”
“Samuel is almost fatally good-natured,” his brother remarked. “I have never known him to stay angry for long with any one.”
“But what a prince! What a pasha!” Felixstowe declared enthusiastically. “He decked me out at Tiffany’s till I feel like a walking jeweller’s shop in the evening. And what a send-off! The old country’s going to seem a bit flat, Jacob. I feel as though I were coming back to the rustic life.”
“It’s something to have any sort of life to come back to,” Jacob sighed.
The young man glanced at his companion with thoughtful eyes.
“Got the pip, old bean?” he enquired, with gentle sympathy.
Jacob shook his head.
“Slight attack of the blues, I suppose,” he confessed, his eyes travelling over the deep green of the fields and the dark woods beyond the harbour. “Homecoming always seems a bit flat for a lonely man. I suppose Dick Dauncey will be the only human being who cares sixpence whether I turn up again or not.”
“What did you have for luncheon?” Felixstowe asked anxiously.
“Whereas you,” Jacob went on, —
“That reminds me,” his companion interrupted, “I told Mary to bring the little car down for me, if there was nothing much doing in town. I wonder whether she’s here.”
“Good heavens!” Jacob exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that you have asked your sister to drive that crazy old tin kettle of yours all the way down from London?”
“It’s a damned nice little car, properly handled,” its owner objected stiffly. “I’ll lay odds that if Mary started we shall see her on the dock.”
Notwithstanding his avowed disapproval, Jacob’s interest in the landing perceptibly increased, and much of his depression had passed away when they recognised Lady Mary amongst the little crowd waiting on the dock. She was looking very smart and pretty in her simple motoring clothes, and Jacob realised, even as they shook hands, why his interest in the ladies of New York had lacked spontaneity. She chattered to them gaily enough as they stood waiting for their luggage, but Jacob fancied that there was a shade of reserve in her manner.
“I couldn’t wait till you got to London to hear all about it,” she declared. “I must have the whole story.”
“At dinner time,” Jacob suggested. “Only you must promise that you won’t laugh too much at the poor guileless Britisher who would probably have been sharked of a hundred thousand pounds in New York, but for Felix.”
The girl’s eyes danced with pleasure.
“You really mean that he was useful?”
“I can assure you – ”
“Chuck that,” the young man interrupted gruffly. “Non-stop run down, I suppose, Mary?”
His sister looked a little dubious.
“I had to stop a few times for repairs,” she admitted, “and two policemen told me I should be summoned for making that awful noise.”
“A wonderful engine,” Felixstowe declared, “but it needs a master hand.”
“It needs a silencer more than anything,” Jacob commented.
“Are you going to ride up with us in the dickey to-morrow?” Lady Mary asked.
“I am not,” Jacob replied firmly. “I have wired for my own car.”
“Race you up for a tenner, old bean,” Felixstowe suggested promptly.
“I wouldn’t imperil Lady Mary’s existence,” Jacob replied, – “that is, unless she rode with me.”
“No fear,” the young man scoffed. “Mary would never desert the old tin kettle, as you call it.”
“I rather like the smoothness of a Rolls-Royce,” she murmured.
Over dinner that evening, their adventures in New York were recounted at length. It was not until her brother had wandered out to get some cigarettes, however, that Lady Mary referred to the subject which all three seemed to have been avoiding.
“It must have been rather a shock to you, I am afraid, to meet Captain and Mrs. Penhaven on the steamer,” she remarked sympathetically.
“I thought it was going to be,” he admitted. “It didn’t turn out that way.”
“Are you very broken-hearted?”
“Are you?”
“I didn’t give myself the chance,” she replied, “When I found that things were going wrong between Maurice and me, I just told him so.”
“But you did care for him very much, didn’t you?” he ventured.
She considered the matter indifferently.
“I suppose I did once, in a way,” she decided. “He was rather a dear, but a very obvious person in many respects. I always felt I knew exactly what he was going to do or say, and that does get so irritating. I am perfectly certain that we should have led a cat-and-dog life if we had married.”
Jacob looked across the little round table. For the first time during the evening, Lady Mary’s eyes met his. They were amazingly blue, and Jacob lost his head.
“As for me, I am a faithless brute,” he confessed. “I used to think there couldn’t be any other girl in the world except Sybil. But I changed. I was glad when I found that she was married.”
“Did you change because of another girl?” Lady Mary asked softly.
“Yes,” Jacob faltered.
“Then why don’t you tell the other girl so?”
“Lady Mary – ” he began.
“Jacob,” she murmured, “come and tell me quickly, or Jack will be back with those cigarettes.”
Which is where the real and most wonderful adventure of Jacob Pratt’s life commenced.
