"Every one, dear moon-of-my-delight--the probables, the possibles, the highly unlikelies, and the impossibles. Never an echo to the minstrel"s wooing song. No, my dear, we have got to take to the boats this time.
Unless, of course, some one possessed at one and the same time of twenty thousand pounds and a very confiding nature happens to drop from the clouds."
As he spoke, an aeroplane came sailing over the tops of the trees beyond the tennis-lawn. Gracefully as a bird it settled on the smooth turf, not twenty yards from where he was seated.
Roland Bleke stepped stiffly out onto the tennis-lawn. His progress rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted.
He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin"s brother Frank.
So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr.
Windlebird"s approach until that pleasant, portly man"s shadow fell on the turf before him.
"Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?"
Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird, keen student of the ill.u.s.trated press, had recognized Roland by his photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards" walk from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of the more salient points in Roland"s history. It was when Mr. Windlebird heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up and took notice.
"Lead me to him," he said simply.
Roland sneezed.
"Doe accident, thag you," he replied miserably. "Somethig"s gone wrong with the worgs, but it"s nothing serious, worse luck."
M. Feriaud, having by this time adjusted the defect in his engine, rose to his feet, and bowed.
"Excuse if we come down on your lawn. But not long do we trespa.s.s. See, _mon ami_," he said radiantly to Roland, "all now O. K. We go on."
"No," said Roland decidedly.
"No? What you mean--no?"
A shade of alarm fell on M. Feriaud"s weather-beaten features. The eminent bird-man did not wish to part from Roland. Toward Roland he felt like a brother, for Roland had notions about payment for little aeroplane rides which bordered upon the princely.
"But you say--take me to France with you----"
"I know. But it"s all off. I"m not feeling well."
"But it"s all wrong." M. Feriaud gesticulated to drive home his point.
"You give me one hundred pounds to take you away from Lexingham. Good.
It is here." He slapped his breast pocket. "But the other two hundred pounds which also you promise me to pay me when I place you safe in France, where is that, my friend?"
"I will give you two hundred and fifty," said Roland earnestly, "to leave me here, and go right away, and never let me see your beastly machine again."
A smile of brotherly forgiveness lit up M. Feriaud"s face. The generous Gallic nature a.s.serted itself. He held out his arms affectionately to Roland.
"Ah, now you talk. Now you say something," he cried in his impetuous way. "Embrace me. You are all right."
Roland heaved a sigh of relief when, five minutes later, the aeroplane disappeared over the brow of the hill. Then he began to sneeze again.
"You"re not well, you know," said Mr. Windlebird.
"I"ve caught cold. We"ve been flying about all night--that French a.s.s lost his bearings--and my suit is thin. Can you direct me to a hotel?"
"Hotel? Nonsense." Mr. Windlebird spoke in the bluff, breezy voice which at many a stricken board-meeting had calmed frantic shareholders as if by magic. "You"re coming right into my house and up to bed this instant."
It was not till he was between the sheets with a hot-water bottle at his toes and a huge breakfast inside him that Roland learned the name of his good Samaritan. When he did, his first impulse was to struggle out of bed and make his escape. Geoffrey Windlebird"s was a name which he had learned, in the course of his mercantile career, to hold in something approaching reverence as that of one of the mightiest business brains of the age.
To have to meet so eminent a man in the capacity of invalid, a nuisance about the house, was almost too much for Roland"s shrinking nature. The kindness of the Windlebirds--and there seemed to be nothing that they were not ready to do for him--distressed him beyond measure. To have a really great man like Geoffrey Windlebird sprawling genially over his bed, chatting away as if he were an ordinary friend, was almost horrible. Such condescension was too much.
Gradually, as he became convalescent, Roland found this feeling replaced by something more comfortable. They were such a genuine, simple, kindly couple, these Windlebirds, that he lost awe and retained only grat.i.tude.
He loved them both. He opened his heart to them. It was not long before he had told them the history of his career, skipping the earlier years and beginning with the entry of wealth into his life.
"It makes you feel funny," he confided to Mr. Windlebird"s sympathetic ear, "suddenly coming into a pot of money like that. You don"t seem hardly able to realize it. I don"t know what to do with it."
Mr. Windlebird smiled paternally.
"The advice of an older man who has had, if I may say so, some little experience of finance, might be useful to you there. Perhaps if you would allow me to recommend some sound investment----"
Roland glowed with grat.i.tude.
"There"s just one thing I"d like to do before I start putting my money into anything. It"s like this."
He briefly related the story of his unfortunate affair with Muriel Coppin. Within an hour of his departure in the aeroplane, his conscience had begun to trouble him on this point. He felt that he had not acted well toward Muriel. True, he was practically certain that she didn"t care a bit about him and was in love with Albert, the silent mechanic, but there was just the chance that she was mourning over his loss; and, anyhow, his conscience was sore.
"I"d like to give her something," he said. "How much do you think?"
Mr. Windlebird perpended.
"I"ll tell you what I"ll do. I"ll send my own lawyer to her with--say, a thousand pounds--not a check, you understand, but one thousand golden sovereigns that he can show her--roll about on the table in front of her eyes. That"ll console her. It"s wonderful, the effect money in the raw has on people."
"I"d rather make it two thousand," said Roland. He had never really loved Muriel, and the idea of marrying her had been a nightmare to him; but he wanted to retreat with honor.
"Very well, make it two thousand, if you like. Tho I don"t quite know how old Harrison is going to carry all that money."
As a matter of fact, old Harrison never had to try. On thinking it over, after he had cashed Roland"s check, Mr. Windlebird came to the conclusion that seven hundred pounds would be quite as much money as it would be good for Miss Coppin to have all at once.
Mr. Windlebird"s knowledge of human nature was not at fault. Muriel jumped at the money, and a letter in her handwriting informed Roland next morning that his slate was clean. His grat.i.tude to Mr. Windlebird redoubled.
"And now," said Mr. Windlebird genially, "we can talk about that money of yours, and the best way of investing it. What you want is something which, without being in any way what is called speculative, nevertheless returns a fair and reasonable amount of interest. What you want is something sound, something solid, yet something with a bit of a kick to it, something which can"t go down and may go soaring like a rocket."
Roland quietly announced that was just what he did want, and lit another cigar.
"Now, look here, Bleke, my boy, as a general rule I don"t give tips--But I"ve taken a great fancy to you, Bleke, and I"m going to break my rule.
Put your money--" he sank his voice to a compelling whisper, "put every penny you can afford into Wildcat Reefs."
He leaned back with the benign air of the Alchemist who has just imparted to a favorite disciple the recently discovered secret of the philosopher"s stone.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Windlebird," said Roland gratefully. "I will."