Dear Ginger,--Leaving here to-day. In disgrace. Hard, cold looks from the family. Strained silences. Uncle Donald far from chummy. You can guess what has happened. I might have seen it coming. I can see now that it was in the air all along.
Fillmore knows nothing about it. He left just before it happened.
I shall see him very soon, for I have decided to come back and stop running away from things any longer. It"s cowardly to skulk about over here. Besides, I"m feeling so much better that I believe I can face the ghosts. Anyway, I"m going to try. See you almost as soon as you get this.
I shall mail this in London, and I suppose it will come over by the same boat as me. It"s hardly worth writing, really, of course, but I have sneaked up to my room to wait till the motor arrives to take me to the station, and it"s something to do. I can hear m.u.f.fled voices. The Family talking me over, probably. Saying they never really liked me all along.
Oh, well!
Yours moving in an orderly manner to the exit,
Sally.
CHAPTER XIII. STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF A SPARRING-PARTNER
1
Sally"s emotions, as she sat in her apartment on the morning of her return to New York, resembled somewhat those of a swimmer who, after wavering on a raw morning at the brink of a chill pool, nerves himself to the plunge. She was aching, but she knew that she had done well. If she wanted happiness, she must fight for it, and for all these months she had been shirking the fight. She had done with wavering on the brink, and here she was, in mid-stream, ready for whatever might befall.
It hurt, this coming to grips. She had expected it to hurt. But it was a pain that stimulated, not a dull melancholy that smothered. She felt alive and defiant.
She had finished unpacking and tidying up. The next move was certainly to go and see Ginger. She had suddenly become aware that she wanted very badly to see Ginger. His stolid friendliness would be a support and a prop. She wished now that she had sent him a cable, so that he could have met her at the dock. It had been rather terrible at the dock.
The echoing customs sheds had sapped her valour and she felt alone and forlorn.
She looked at her watch, and was surprised to find how early it was. She could catch him at the office and make him take her out to lunch. She put on her hat and went out.
The restless hand of change, always active in New York, had not spared the outer office of the Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. in the months of her absence. She was greeted on her arrival by an entirely new and original stripling in the place of the one with whom at her last visit she had established such cordial relations. Like his predecessor he was generously pimpled, but there the resemblance stopped. He was a grim boy, and his manner was stern and suspicious. He peered narrowly at Sally for a moment as if he had caught her in the act of purloining the office blotting-paper, then, with no little acerbity, desired her to state her business.
"I want Mr. Kemp," said Sally.
The office-boy scratched his cheek dourly with a ruler. No one would have guessed, so austere was his aspect, that a moment before her entrance he had been trying to balance it on his chin, juggling the while with a pair of paper-weights. For, impervious as he seemed to human weaknesses, it was this lad"s ambition one day to go into vaudeville.
"What name?" he said, coldly.
"Nicholas," said Sally. "I am Mr. Nicholas" sister."
On a previous occasion when she had made this announcement, disastrous results had ensued; but to-day it went well. It seemed to hit the office-boy like a bullet. He started convulsively, opened his mouth, and dropped the ruler. In the interval of stooping and recovering it he was able to pull himself together. He had not been curious about Sally"s name. What he had wished was to have the name of the person for whom she was asking repeated. He now perceived that he had had a bit of luck.
A wearying period of disappointment in the matter of keeping the paper-weights circulating while balancing the ruler, had left him peevish, and it had been his intention to work off his ill-humour on the young visitor. The discovery that it was the boss"s sister who was taking up his time, suggested the advisability of a radical change of tactics. He had stooped with a frown: he returned to the perpendicular with a smile that was positively winning. It was like the sun suddenly bursting through a London fog.
"Will you take a seat, lady?" he said, with polished courtesy even unbending so far as to reach out and dust one with the sleeve of his coat. He added that the morning was a fine one.
"Thank you," said Sally. "Will you tell him I"m here."
"Mr. Nicholas is out, miss," said the office-boy, with gentlemanly regret. "He"s back in New York, but he"s gone out."
"I don"t want Mr. Nicholas. I want Mr. Kemp."
"Mr. Kemp?"
"Yes, Mr. Kemp."
Sorrow at his inability to oblige shone from every hill-top on the boy"s face.
"Don"t know of anyone of that name around here," he said, apologetically.
"But surely..." Sally broke off suddenly. A grim foreboding had come to her. "How long have you been here?" she asked.
"All day, ma"am," said the office-boy, with the manner of a Casablanca.
"I mean, how long have you been employed here?"
"Just over a month, miss."
"Hasn"t Mr. Kemp been in the office all that time?"
"Name"s new to me, lady. Does he look like anything? I meanter say, what"s he look like?"
"He has very red hair."
"Never seen him in here," said the office-boy. The truth shone coldly on Sally. She blamed herself for ever having gone away, and told herself that she might have known what would happen. Left to his own resources, the unhappy Ginger had once more made a hash of it. And this hash must have been a more notable and outstanding hash than any of his previous efforts, for, surely, Fillmore would not lightly have dismissed one who had come to him under her special protection.
"Where is Mr. Nicholas?" she asked. It seemed to her that Fillmore was the only possible source of information. "Did you say he was out?"
"Really out, miss," said the office-boy, with engaging candour. "He went off to White Plains in his automobile half-an-hour ago."
"White Plains? What for?"
The pimpled stripling had now given himself up wholeheartedly to social chit-chat. Usually he liked his time to himself and resented the intrusion of the outer world, for he who had chosen jugglery for his walk in life must neglect no opportunity of practising: but so favourable was the impression which Sally had made on his plastic mind that he was delighted to converse with her as long as she wished.
"I guess what"s happened is, he"s gone up to take a look at Bugs Butler," he said.
"Whose butler?" said Sally mystified.
The office-boy smiled a tolerant smile. Though an admirer of the s.e.x, he was aware that women were seldom hep to the really important things in life. He did not blame them. That was the way they were constructed, and one simply had to accept it.
"Bugs Butler is training up at White Plains, miss."
"Who is Bugs Butler?"
Something of his former bleakness of aspect returned to the office-boy.
Sally"s question had opened up a subject on which he felt deeply.
"Ah!" he replied, losing his air of respectful deference as he approached the topic. "Who is he! That"s what they"re all saying, all the wise guys. Who has Bugs Butler ever licked?"
"I don"t know," said Sally, for he had fixed her with a penetrating gaze and seemed to be pausing for a reply.