Mrs. Bultiwell inclined her head approvingly. Having once tasted blood, she was unwilling to let her victim go.
“If you will step inside for a moment, Mr. Pratt,” she went on, “there are one or two little things I should like to point out to you. The cupboard in Sybil’s room – ”
“Mother,” Sybil protested, “Mr. Pratt has nothing to do with these matters.”
“On the contrary,” Jacob replied mildly, “I am just the person who has to do with them. You are paying a very good rent, Mrs. Bultiwell, and any little thing the Estate can do to make you more comfortable – ”
“Come this way, Mr. Pratt,” Mrs. Bultiwell interrupted firmly…
Sybil was still watering the garden when he came out. She waited until he had exchanged cordial farewells with Mrs. Bultiwell, and then summoned him to her. Mrs. Bultiwell was still standing on the threshold, smiling at them, so she was compelled to moderate her anger.
“What have you been doing in there with mother?” she demanded.
“There were one or two little things my clerk of the works has neglected,” he answered. “I promised to see to them, that’s all.”
“You know perfectly well that we arranged for the house as it was.”
“I don’t look upon it in that way,” he said. “There are certain omissions – ”
“Oh, be quiet!” she interrupted angrily. “And the garden, I suppose, should all have been prepared for us?”
“Certainly it should have been all dug up,” he declared, “and not only that little bit where you have your roses.”
“Of course,” she answered sarcastically, “and asparagus beds made, I suppose, and standard roses planted!”
“I think, Miss Bultiwell,” he ventured, “that you might allow me the privilege of having the place made as attractive as possible for you.”
She glanced back towards the house. Mrs. Bultiwell, well pleased with herself, was still lingering. Sybil conducted their visitor firmly towards the gate.
“Mr. Pratt,” she said, “I will try and not visit these things upon you; but answer me this question. Have you given my mother any indication whatever of your – your ridiculous feelings towards me?”
“Your mother gave me no opportunity,” he replied. “She was too busy talking about the house.”
“Thank goodness for that, anyhow! Please understand, Mr. Pratt, that so far as I am concerned you are not a welcome visitor here at any time, but if ever you should see my mother, and you should give her the least idea of what you are always trying to tell me, you will make life a perfect purgatory for me. I dislike you now more than any one I know. I should simply hate you then. You understand?”
“I understand,” he answered. “You want me, in short, to join in a sort of alliance against myself?”
“Put it any way you like,” she said coldly.
“I am a perfectly harmless person,” he declared, “who has never wronged you in thought or deed. It is my misfortune that I have a certain feeling for you which I honestly don’t think you deserve.”
She dropped the watering can and her eyes blazed at him.
“Not deserve?” she repeated.
“No!” he replied, trembling but standing his ground firmly. “Every nice girl has a feeling of some sort for the man who is idiot enough to be in love with her. I am just telling you this to let you know that I can see your faults just as much as the things in you which – which I worship. And good night!”…
Jacob sat out on the hillside until late, smoking stolidly and dreaming. Inside the little white-plastered house below, from which the lights were beginning to steal out, Sybil was busy preparing supper and waiting upon her highly-pleased and triumphant parent. Later, she too sat in the garden and watched the moon come up from behind the dark belt of woodland which sheltered the reservoir. Perhaps she dreamed of her prince to come, as the lonely man on the hillside was dreaming of the things which she typified to him.
CHAPTER XI
Jacob sought distraction in the golfing resorts of England and the Continent, tried mountaineering in Switzerland, at which he had some success, and finally, with the entire Dauncey ménage, took a small moor near the sea in Scotland, and in the extreme well-being of physical content found a species of happiness which sufficed well enough for the time. It was early winter before he settled down in London again, with the firm determination of neither writing to nor making any enquiries concerning Sybil. Chance, however, brought him in touch with her before many days were passed.
“Who is the smartly dressed, sunburnt little Johnny who is staring at you so, Miss Bultiwell?” asked her vis-à-vis at a luncheon party at the Savoy one day. “His face seems familiar to me, but I can’t place him. I’m sure I’ve been told something interesting about him, somewhere or other.”
“That,” Sybil replied coldly, glancing across the room towards a small table against the wall, at which Jacob and Dauncey were seated, “is Mr. Jacob Pratt.”
Mason, one of the mysteries of smarter Bohemian life, a young man of irreproachable appearance, a frequenter of the best restaurants, with a large acquaintance amongst the racing and theatrical world but with no known means of subsistence, showed marked interest in the announcement.
“Not Jacob Pratt, the oil millionaire?” he exclaimed.
She nodded.
“His money comes to him, I believe, from some oil springs in the western States of America,” she acquiesced. “His brother is a successful prospector.”
The young man leaned across the table.
“Did you hear that, Joe?” he enquired.
Joe Hartwell, a smooth-shaven, stalwart young American, with fleshy cheeks and unusually small eyes, assented vigorously.
“Mighty interesting,” was his thoughtful comment. “A millionaire, Lady Powers.”
Grace Powers, an attractive looking young lady, who had made meteoric appearances upon the musical comedy stage and in the divorce court, and was now lamenting the decease of her last husband – a youthful baronet whom she had married while yet a minor – gazed across at Jacob with frank interest.
“What a dear person!” she exclaimed. “He looks as though he had come out of a bandbox. I think he is perfectly sweet. What a lucky girl you are to know him, Sybil!”
“You all seem to have taken such a fancy to him that you had better divide him up amongst you,” Sybil suggested coldly. “I detest him.”
“Please introduce me,” Grace Powers begged, – “that is, if you are sure you don’t want him yourself.”
“And me,” Mason echoed.
“Can’t I be in this?” the third man, young Lord Felixstowe, suggested, leaning forward and dropping the eyeglass through which he had been staring at Jacob. “Seems to me I am as likely to land the fish as any of you.”
Sybil thoroughly disliked the conversation and did not hesitate to disclose her feelings.
“Mr. Pratt is only an acquaintance of mine,” she declared, “and I do not wish to speak to him. If he has the temerity to accost me, I will introduce you all – not unless. It will serve him right then.”
Mason looked at her reprovingly.
“My dear Miss Bultiwell,” he said, “in the tortuous course of life, our daily life, an unpleasant action must sometimes be faced. If you remember, barely an hour ago, over our cocktails, we declared for a life of adventure. We paid tribute to the principle that the unworthy wealthy must support the worthy pauper. We are all worthy paupers.”
Grace Powers laughed softly.
“I don’t know about the worthiness,” she murmured, “but you should see my dressmaker’s bill!”
“Useless, dear lady,” Mason sighed. “We five are, alas! all in the same box. We must look outside for relief. Since I have studied your friend’s physiognomy, Miss Bultiwell, I am convinced that an acquaintance with him is necessary to our future welfare. I can see philanthropy written all over his engaging countenance.”
“Mr. Pratt isn’t a fool,” Sybil observed drily.
“Neither are we fools,” Mason rejoined. “Besides,” he went on, “you must remember that in any little exchange of wits which might take place between Mr. Pratt and ourselves, the conditions are scarcely equal. We have nothing to lose and he has everything. He has money – a very great deal of money – and we are paupers.”
“There are other things to be lost besides money,” Sybil reminded him.
“I guess not,” Hartwell intervened, with real fervour, – “nothing else that counts, anyway.”
They watched Jacob longingly as he left the restaurant, – personable, self-possessed, and with the crudities of his too immaculate toilet subdued by experience. His almost wistful glance towards Sybil met with an unexpected reward. She bowed, if not with cordiality, at any rate without any desire to evade him. For a single moment he hesitated, as though about to stop, and the faces of her friends seemed to sharpen, as though the prey were already thrown to them. Perhaps it was instinct which induced him to reconsider his idea. At any rate he passed out, and Dauncey pressed his arm as they emerged into the street.
“I have never been favourably impressed with Miss Bultiwell,” the latter observed, “but I like the look of her friends still less.”
“Sharks,” Jacob murmured gloomily, “sharks, every one of them, and it wouldn’t be the faintest use in the world my telling her so.”
The opportunity, at any rate, came a few days later, when Jacob found amongst his letters one which he read and reread with varying sensations. It was in Sybil’s handwriting and dated from Number 100, Russell Square.
Dear Mr. Pratt,
If you are smitten with the new craze and are thinking of having dancing lessons, will you patronise my little endeavour? Lady Powers, who was with me at the Milan the other day, and I, have a class at this address every Thursday, and give private lessons any day by appointment. Perhaps you would like to telephone – 1324, Museum. I shall be there any morning after eleven o’clock.
Sincerely yours,Sybil Bultiwell.P.S. I dare say you have heard that my mother has gone to make a long stay with a sister at Torquay, and I have let our Cropstone Wood house at quite a nice profit. I am staying for a few weeks with Lady Powers, who was at school with me.
Jacob summoned Dauncey and put the letter into his hand.
“Read this, my astute friend, and comment,” he invited.
Dauncey read and reread it before passing it back.
“The young lady,” he observed, “is becoming amenable. She is also, I should imagine, hankering after the fleshpots. A month or two of typing has perhaps had its effect.”
“Any other criticism?”
Dauncey shook his head.
“It seems to me an ordinary communication enough,” he confessed.
“I suppose you are right,” Jacob admitted thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am getting suspicious. It must have been seeing Miss Bultiwell with that hateful crowd.”
“You think that the dancing class is a blind?”
Jacob glanced back at the letter and frowned.
“I don’t think Miss Bultiwell would stoop to anything in the nature of a conspiracy, but those two men, Hartwell and Mason, are out and out wrong ’uns, and it is several months since any one tried to rob me.”
“You’ll go, all the same,” Dauncey observed, with a smile.
Jacob leaned over to the telephone.
“Museum 1324,” he demanded.
At half-past four that afternoon, Jacob rang the bell at a large and apparently empty house in Russell Square. The door was opened after a brief delay by a woman who appeared to be a caretaker and who invited him to ascend to the next floor. Jacob did so, and, pushing open a door which was standing ajar, found himself in a large apartment with a polished oak floor, two or three lounges by the wall, a gramophone, and a young lady whom he recognised as Sybil’s companion at the Milan.
“Mr. Pratt,” she greeted him sweetly. “I am so glad to know you.”
Jacob shook hands and murmured something appropriate.
“Sybil will be here in a few minutes,” the young lady continued. “You are going to have a lesson, aren’t you?”
“I believe so,” Jacob answered. “I hope you won’t find me very stupid.”
She smiled up into his face.
“You don’t look as though you would be. I am Sybil’s partner, Grace Powers. I saw you at the Milan the other day, didn’t I? Are you in a great hurry to start, or would you like to sit and talk for a few minutes?”
Jacob accepted the chair to which she pointed, and a cigarette.
“You find it tiring giving these lessons?” he enquired politely.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I have just had such a stupid boy. He will never learn anything, and he is such a nuisance.”
“I hope you won’t have to find fault with me,” Jacob observed.
She smiled.
“Not in the same way, at any rate.”
“A timid dancer?” Jacob queried.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“We won’t discuss him,” she said. “He bores me. He is one of those persistent young men who make love to you in monosyllables and expect success as a matter of course.”
“In how many syllables,” Jacob began —
She interrupted him with a little grimace.
“You know perfectly well you will never want to make love to me,” she said. “You are in love with Sybil Bultiwell, aren’t you?”
“Did she tell you so?”
The girl shook her head.
“I just guessed it from the way you looked at her. And I expect you are one of those picturesque survivals, too, who can only love one woman at a time. Aren’t you, Mr. Pratt?”
“I don’t know what I am capable of yet,” Jacob confessed. “You see, my career as a philanderer has only just begun. I had to work hard until about a year ago.”
“I have heard all about your wonderful fortune,” she said, looking at him with veneration. “It gives you a sort of halo, you know. We all speak of you as a kind of Monte Cristo. It’s a queer thing, isn’t it, the fascination of wealth?”
“I haven’t noticed that it’s done me much good up till now, so far as regards the things we were discussing,” Jacob replied, a little sadly.
“Then that must be because you are very unresponsive,” she said softly, rising to her feet and coming and standing before him. “Would you care – to dance?”
“Hadn’t I better set the gramophone going first?” Jacob suggested, with blatant lack of intuition.
She drew back a little, laughed softly, and put on a record herself. Then she held out her arms.
“Come, then, my anxious pupil,” she invited. “What do you most wish to learn, and have you any idea of the steps?”
Jacob confessed to some acquaintance with modern dancing and a knowledge at least of the steps. They danced a fox trot, and at its conclusion she shook her head at him.
“I know all about you now, Mr. Pratt,” she said. “You are an absolute fraud. You dance as well as I do.”
“But I need practice badly,” he assured her anxiously.
“I suppose – it’s really Sybil?” she asked ruefully, looking him in the eyes with a queer little smile at the corners of her lips.
“I’m afraid so,” he admitted. “You won’t give me away, will you?”
“How can I give you away?” she asked. “Your behavior has been perfect – of its sort.”
“I mean about the dancing,” he explained. “If Miss Bultiwell thinks I know as much about it as I do – ”
“I understand,” she interrupted. “I won’t say a word. Shall we try a hesitation?”
Here Jacob found a little instruction useful, but he was a born dancer and very soon gave his instructress complete satisfaction. Just as they had finished, Sybil came in. She greeted Jacob politely, but with none of her partner’s cordiality.
“I am sorry to be late, Mr. Pratt,” she said. “I hope that Grace has been looking after you.”
“Admirably,” he replied.
“I suppose you thought I was quite mad when you got my note,” she went on, walking to the mantelpiece and drawing off her gloves.
“Not at all,” he assured her. “I was very glad to get it. Very kind of you to give me the chance of polishing up my dancing.”
“Try a fox trot with him, Sybil,” Grace suggested. “I think he is going to be quite good.”
Jacob was as clumsy as he dared be, but he was naturally very light on his feet, and, with an unusually correct ear for music, he found blunders difficult. They danced to the end without conversation.
“I do not think,” Sybil said, a little coldly, “that you will need many lessons.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, “I feel that I shall need a great many. I am rather out of breath. May I have a rest?”
“There will be another pupil very shortly,” she warned him.
“Never mind,” he answered. “You can give me a longer time to-morrow.”
She turned towards him with upraised eyebrows.
“To-morrow? Surely you are not thinking of coming every day?”
“Why not? I get so little exercise in London, and wherever one goes, nowadays, there is dancing.”
“But you don’t need the lessons.”
“I need the exercise, and indeed I am much worse than you think I am. That happened to be a very decent tune.”
“Don’t discourage a pupil,” Grace intervened. “We can fit him in every day, if he wants to come. We charge an awful lot though, Mr. Pratt.”
“You ought to,” Jacob replied. “You teach so exceptionally well. May I pay for a few lessons in advance, please,” he asked, producing his pocketbook; “say a dozen?”
“It’s a guinea a time,” Grace told him. “Don’t be rash.”
Jacob laid the money upon the desk, and Sybil wrote out a formal receipt.
“I think you are very foolish,” she said, “and if you take my advice you will come once a week.”
“And if you take mine,” Grace declared, leaning over his shoulder and laughing, “you’ll come every day. We might go bankrupt, and then you’d lose your money.”
“I shall come as often as I am allowed,” Jacob assured her.
“Oh, you can come when you like,” Sybil remarked carelessly. “If I am not here, Grace can give you a lesson. You will find it a most informal place,” she went on, listening to footsteps on the stairs. “People drop in and have a dance whenever they feel like it. I am glad you are not an absolute beginner. It is sometimes embarrassing for them.”
The door opened and Hartwell entered, followed by Mason. Sybil introduced them. Both were exceedingly cordial.
“Heard of you out in New York, Mr. Pratt,” the former remarked, as he shook hands. “I only just missed meeting your brother. He got well ahead of our prospectors, out West.”
“My brother has been very fortunate,” Jacob replied.
“I guess he is one of the brightest men who ever came over to the States from this country,” Hartwell declared. “Knows all about oil, too.”
“Not too much gossip,” Sybil interposed. “Mr. Pratt, you are here to learn dancing. So are you, Mr. Hartwell. Please try a hesitation with me, and, Grace, you take Mr. Pratt.”
“Sybil is very foolish,” Grace whispered to Jacob, as they swayed up and down the room. “Mr. Hartwell is perfectly hopeless, and you dance beautifully.”
“It is you,” Jacob told her, “who are inspiring.”
She looked into his eyes.
“I believe you are going to improve,” she said hopefully.
CHAPTER XII
Dauncey accepted his chief’s invitation, one morning about a week later, when things were slack, to sit in his room and have a chat.
“How goes the dancing?” he enquired, stretching out his hand for a cigarette.
“Interesting developments may shortly be expected,” Jacob replied reflectively. “Up to the present, only two of the party have declared themselves. Mr. Mason has made propositions to me with regard to finding the money for starting a night club, and Mr. Hartwell has offered me a share in some oil springs in Trinidad.”
“A certain lack of imagination about Hartwell’s offer,” Dauncey commented.
“On the contrary, I thought it rather subtle,” Jacob observed. “You see, I am supposed to know all about oil, although I really know no more about it than the man in the moon. And there certainly is oil in Trinidad.”
“What about the others?”
“Lady Powers,” Jacob confessed, “has shown a flattering desire for my escort to dinner; in fact, I am afraid I am committed to next Sunday night. It appears that she is in some slight financial trouble and requires the advice of a man of the world.”
“Hm!” Dauncey ejaculated. “What does Miss Bultiwell say to that?”
“I don’t think she knows,” Jacob admitted, “but I am afraid she wouldn’t care if she did. Grace Powers pretends to want to be very secretive about it, but I fancy that’s only to spare my feelings.”
“Any other members of the gang?” Dauncey enquired.
“There’s that young sprig of fashion, Lord Felixstowe,” Jacob replied. “I haven’t heard from him yet. He is rather a nice boy. And there is Miss Bultiwell herself.”
“Have you had any conversation with her?”
“She is lunching with me to-day. I expect I shall get into trouble about it, but I am going to speak to her plainly about her friends.”
“How did she get mixed up with such a crew?”
“She was at school with Grace Powers,” Jacob answered, “but I don’t know how they came together again. She will either tell me this morning – or she won’t.”
“And Lord Felixstowe?”
There was a knock at the door. The office boy brought in a card. Jacob glanced at it and smiled.
“His turn appears to have arrived,” he said. “You can show Lord Felixstowe in.”
Dauncey departed, and the visitor entered and proceeded to make himself at home. Notwithstanding a slightly receding chin and a somewhat weedy frame, he was a personable being, and Jacob stifled a sigh of envy as he realised that he would never be able to wear a Guards’ tie with his lounge suit. The young man accepted a cigarette. His attitude was distinctly friendly.
“Thought I’d look you up, old thing,” he said. “Not much chance of a powwow at Russell Square. As soon as you and I get a word together, that chap Hartwell comes butting in, or else Phil Mason has a bundle of prospectuses to show you. What-ho the giddy night club! What-ho the Trinidad Oil Wells!”
Jacob coughed.
“There is one thing about Russell Square which puzzles me,” he confided, “and that is, except for the people you have mentioned, I seem to be the only pupil.”
Lord Felixstowe smiled knowingly.
“They’ve got a few old crooks come later in the day,” he said. “The reason you don’t meet any one else there is because they like to keep you to themselves.”
“I can’t see what they gain by that,” Jacob confessed, a little mystified.
The young lordling assumed the patient air of one having to deal with a person of inferior intelligence.
“Come, come,” he remonstrated, “you must know that they’re trying to milk you for a bit. Hasn’t Mason suggested your financing his night club?”
“Some sort of a proposition was made,” Jacob acknowledged. “I declined.”
“And Hartwell? Has he mentioned some oil wells in Trinidad?”
“He has,” Jacob admitted. “I happen to be doing rather well in oils in another direction.”
“You haven’t turned up early one day and found Grace in tears with a dressmaker’s bill on her knee, have you?”
“That, I presume, is to arrive. Lady Powers is dining with me next Sunday.”
“Mind your P’s and Q’s, then,” the young philosopher advised. “She’s a fly little hussy. You see, Pratt, I know the world a bit. Seems to me I might be rather useful to you – in fact that’s why I came here this morning.”
“It is very kind of you,” Jacob said. “In what way, may I ask?”
“You see,” Lord Felixstowe proceeded, hitching up his trousers and drawing his chair a little nearer, “I know the ropes, Pratt, and you don’t. You’re a very decent fellow who’s made a pot of money, and naturally, just at first, you don’t know where you are. You want to get on, eh, to know the right sort of people, go to the right sort of places, be seen about with the right sort? Between ourselves, old thing, Hartwell and Mason aren’t the right sort. Suits me to pick their brains a bit, now and then, when the oof’s coming along slowly, but then I can do what I like – you can’t.”
“Let me have your concrete proposition, Lord Felixstowe,” Jacob suggested, with a faint smile at the corner of his lips.
“Righto! Tell you what I’m prepared to do. I’ll pal you up, take you to lunch and dinner at the smart places, take you to the Opera right nights, and the mater shall ask you to dine once in Belgrave Square and send you cards for her big shows. Then the governor shall ask you to lunch at his club one day, and if there’s anything doing, you tumble, there are a couple of his clubs I think he could put you up for. You’ll be seen about with me. People will ask who you are. I shall lay it on thick, of course, about the millions, and before you know where you are, old bean, you’ll be hobnobbing with all the dukes and duchesses of the land.”
