"Leaving you homeless!"
"As you say, homeless--temporarily. But, fortunately,--I have been amazingly lucky all through; it really does seem as if you cannot keep a good man down--fortunately my friend had a friend who was janitor at a place on East Forty-First Street, and by a miracle of luck the only apartment in the building was empty. It is an office-building, but, like some of these places, it has one small bachelor"s apartment on the top floor."
"And you are the small bachelor?"
"Precisely. My friend explained matters to his friend--a few financial details were satisfactorily arranged--and here I am, perfectly happy with the cosiest little place in the world, rent free. I am even better off than I was before, as a matter of fact, for my new ally"s wife is an excellent cook, and I have been enabled to give one or two very pleasant dinners at my new home. It lends verisimilitude to the thing if you can entertain a little. If you are never in when people call, they begin to wonder. I am giving dinner to your friend Pilkington and Mrs Peagrim there tonight. Homey, delightful, and infinitely cheaper than a restaurant."
"And what will you do when the real owner of the place walks in in the middle of dinner?"
"Out of the question. The janitor informs me that he left for England some weeks ago, intending to make a stay of several months."
"Well, you certainly think of everything."
"Whatever success I may have achieved," replied Uncle Chris, with the dignity of a Captain of Industry confiding in an interviewer, "I attribute to always thinking of everything."
Jill gurgled with laughter. There was that about her uncle which always acted on her moral sense like an opiate, lulling it to sleep and preventing it from rising up and becoming critical. If he had stolen a watch and chain, he would somehow have succeeded in convincing her that he had acted for the best under the dictates of a benevolent altruism.
"What success _have_ you achieved?" she asked, interested. "When you left me, you were on your way to find a fortune. Did you find it?"
"I have not actually placed my hands upon it yet," admitted Uncle Chris. "But it is hovering in the air all round me. I can hear the beating of the wings of the dollar-bills as they flutter to and fro, almost within reach. Sooner or later I shall grab them. I never forget, my dear, that I have a task before me,--to restore to you the money of which I deprived you. Some day--be sure--I shall do it. Some day you will receive a letter from me, containing a large sum--five thousand--ten thousand--twenty thousand--whatever it may be, with the simple words "First Instalment"." He repeated the phrase, as if it pleased him. "First Instalment!"
Jill hugged his arm. She was in the mood in which she used to listen to him ages ago telling her fairy stories.
"Go on!" she cried. "Go on! It"s wonderful! Once upon a time Uncle Chris was walking along Fifth Avenue, when he happened to meet a poor old woman gathering sticks for firewood. She looked so old and tired that he was sorry for her, so he gave her ten cents which he had borrowed from the janitor, and suddenly she turned into a beautiful girl and said "I am a fairy! In return for your kindness I grant you three wishes!" And Uncle Chris thought for a moment, and said, "I want twenty thousand dollars to send to Jill!" And the fairy said, "It shall be attended to. And the next article?""
"It is all very well to joke," protested Uncle Chris, pained by this flippancy, "but let me tell you that I shall not require magic a.s.sistance to become a rich man. Do you realize that at houses like Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim"s I am meeting men all the time who have only to say one little word to make me a millionaire? They are fat, gray men with fishy eyes and large waistcoats, and they sit smoking cigars and brooding on what they are going to do to the market next day. If I were a mind-reader I could have made a dozen fortunes by now. I sat opposite that old pirate, Bruce Bishop, for over an hour the very day before he and his gang sent Consolidated Pea-Nuts down twenty points!
If I had known what was in the wind, I doubt if I could have restrained myself from choking his intentions out of the fellow.
Well, what I am trying to point out is that one of these days one of these old oysters will have a fleeting moment of human pity and disgorge some tip on which I can act. It is that reflection that keeps me so constantly at Mrs Peagrim"s house." Uncle Chris shivered slightly. "A fearsome woman, my dear! Weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and as skittish as a young lamb in springtime! She makes me dance with her!" Uncle Chris" lips quivered in a spasm of pain, and he was silent for a moment. "Thank heaven I was once a footballer!"
he said reverently.
"But what do you live on?" asked Jill. "I know you are going to be a millionaire next Tuesday week, but how are you getting along in the meantime?"
Uncle Chris coughed.
"Well, as regards actual living expenses, I have managed by a shrewd business stroke to acquire a small but sufficient income. I live in a boarding-house--true--but I contrive to keep the wolf away from its door,--which, by the by, badly needs a lick of paint. Have you ever heard of Nervino?"
"I don"t think so. It sounds like a patent medicine."
"It is a patent medicine." Uncle Chris stopped and looked anxiously at her. "Jill, you"re looking pale, my dear."
"Am I? We had rather a tiring rehearsal."
"Are you sure," said Uncle Chris seriously, "that it is only that?
Are you sure that your vitality has not become generally lowered by the fierce rush of metropolitan life? Are you aware of the things that can happen to you if you allow the red corpuscles of your blood to become devitalised? I had a friend ..."
"Stop! You"re scaring me to death!"
Uncle Chris gave his mustache a satisfied twirl. "Just what I meant to do, my dear. And, when I had scared you sufficiently--you wouldn"t wait for the story of my consumptive friend! Pity! It"s one of my best!--I should have mentioned that I had been having much the same trouble myself until lately, but the other day I happened to try Nervino, the great specific ... I was giving you an ill.u.s.tration of myself in action, my dear. I went to these Nervino people--happened to see one of their posters and got the idea in a flash--I went to them and said, "Here am I, a presentable man of persuasive manners and a large acquaintance among the leaders of New York Society. What would it be worth to you to have me hint from time to time at dinner parties and so forth that Nervino is the rich man"s panacea?" I put the thing lucidly to them. I said, "No doubt you have a thousand agents in the city, but have you one who does not look like an agent and won"t talk like an agent? Have you one who is inside the houses of the wealthy, at their very dinner-tables, instead of being on the front step, trying to hold the door open with his foot? That is the point you have to consider." They saw the idea at once. We arranged terms--not as generous as I could wish, perhaps, but quite ample. I receive a tolerably satisfactory salary each week, and in return I spread the good word about Nervino in the gilded palaces of the rich.
Those are the people to go for, Jill. They have been so busy wrenching money away from the widow and the orphan that they haven"t had time to look after their health. You catch one of them after dinner, just as he is wondering if he was really wise in taking two helpings of the lobster Newburg, and he is clay in your hands. I draw my chair up to his and become sympathetic and say that I had precisely the same trouble myself until recently and mention a dear old friend of mine who died of indigestion, and gradually lead the conversation round to Nervino. I don"t force it on them. I don"t even ask them to try it. I merely point to myself, rosy with health, and say that I owe everything to it, and the thing is done. They thank me profusely and scribble the name down on their shirt-cuffs. And there your are! I don"t suppose," said Uncle Chris philosophically, "that the stuff can do them any actual harm."
They had come to the corner of Forty-first Street. Uncle Chris felt in his pocket and produced a key.
"If you want to go and take a look at my little nest, you can let yourself in. It"s on the twenty-second floor. Don"t fail to go out on the roof and look at the view. It"s worth seeing. It will give you some idea of the size of the city. A wonderful, amazing city, my dear, full of people who need Nervino. I shall go on and drop in at the club for half an hour. They have given me a fortnight"s card at the Avenue. Capital place. Here"s the key."
Jill turned down Forty-first Street, and came to a mammoth structure of steel and stone which dwarfed the modest brown houses beside it into nothingness. It was curious to think of a private apartment nestling on the summit of this mountain. She went in, and the elevator shot her giddily upwards to the twenty-second floor. She found herself facing a short flight of stone steps, ending in a door.
She mounted the steps, tried the key, and, turning it, entered a hall-way. Proceeding down the pa.s.sage, she reached a sitting-room.
It was a small room, but furnished with a solid comfort which soothed her. For the first time since she had arrived in New York, she had the sense of being miles away from the noise and bustle of the city.
There was a complete and restful silence. She was alone in a nest of books and deep chairs, on which a large grandfather-clock looked down with that wide-faced benevolence peculiar to its kind. So peaceful was this eyrie, perched high up above the clamor and rattle of civilization, that every nerve in her body seemed to relax in a delicious content. It was like being in Peter Pan"s house in the tree-tops.
2.
Jill possessed in an unusual degree that instinct for exploration which is implanted in most of us. She was frankly inquisitive, and could never be two minutes in a strange room without making a tour of it and examining its books, pictures, and photographs. Almost at once she began to prowl.
The mantelpiece was her first objective. She always made for other people"s mantelpieces, for there, more than anywhere else, is the character of a proprietor revealed. This mantelpiece was sprinkled with photographs, large, small, framed and unframed. In the center of it, standing all alone and looking curiously out of place among its large neighbors, was a little snapshot.
It was dark by the mantelpiece. Jill took the photograph, to the window, where the fading light could fall on it. Why, she could not have said, but the thing interested her. There was mystery about it.
It seemed in itself so insignificant to have the place of honor.
The snapshot had evidently been taken by an amateur, but it was one of those lucky successes which happen at rare intervals to amateur photographers to encourage them to proceed with their hobby. It showed a small girl in a white dress cut short above slim, black legs, standing in the porch of an old house, one hand swinging a sunbonnet, the other patting an Irish terrier which had planted its front paws against her waist and was looking up into her face with that grave melancholy characteristic of Irish terriers. The sunlight was evidently strong, for the child"s face was puckered in a twisted though engaging grin. Jill"s first thought was "What a jolly kid!"
And then, with a leaping of the heart that seemed to send something big and choking into her throat, she saw that it was a photograph of herself.
With a swooping hound memory raced hack over the years. She could feel the hot sun on her face, hear the anxious voice of Freddie Rooke--then fourteen and for the first time the owner of a camera--imploring her to stand just like that because he wouldn"t be half a minute only some rotten thing had stuck or something. Then the sharp click, the doubtful a.s.surance of Freddie that he thought it was all right if he hadn"t forgotten to shift the film (in which case she might expect to appear in combination with a cow which he had snapped on his way to the house), and the relieved disappearance of Pat, the terrier, who didn"t understand photography. How many years ago had that been? She could not remember. But Freddie had grown to long-legged manhood, she to an age of discretion and full-length frocks, Pat had died, the old house was inhabited by strangers ...
and here was the silent record of that sun-lit afternoon, three thousand miles away from the English garden in which it had come into existence.
The shadows deepened. The top of the great building swayed gently, causing the pendulum of the grandfather-clock to knock against the sides of its wooden case. Jill started. The noise, coming after the dead silence, frightened her till she realized what it was. She had a nervous feeling of not being alone. It was as if the shadows held goblins that peered out at the intruder. She darted to the mantelpiece and replaced the photograph. She felt like some heroine of a fairy-story meddling with the contents of the giant"s castle.
Soon there would come the sound of a great footstep, thud--thud ...
_Thud._
Jill"s heart gave another leap. She was perfectly sure she had heard a sound. It had been just like the banging of a door. She braced herself, listening, every muscle tense. And then, cleaving the stillness, came a voice from down the pa.s.sage--
"Just see them Pullman porters, Dolled up with scented waters Bought with their dimes and quarters!
See, here they come! Here they come!"
For an instant Jill could not have said whether she was relieved or more frightened than ever. True, that numbing sense of the uncanny had ceased to grip her, for Reason told her that spectres do not sing rag-time songs. On the other hand, owners of apartments do, and she would almost as readily have faced a spectre as the owner of this apartment. Dizzily, she wandered how in the world she was to explain her presence. Suppose he turned out to be some awful, choleric person who would listen to no explanations.
"Oh, see those starched-up collars!
Hark how their captain hollers "Keep time! Keep time!"
It"s worth a thousand dollars To see those tip-collectors ..."
Very near now. Almost at the door.
"Those upper-berth inspectors, Those Pullman porters on parade!"
A dim, shapeless figure in the black of the doorway, scrabbling of fingers on the wall.
"Where are you, dammit?" said the voice, apparently addressing the electric-light switch.