talked reasonably.
“This afternoon,” Jacob confided, “I am going to be measured for half a dozen suits of clothes. I am going to prowl about Bond Street and gratify the longings of a lifetime for variegated hosiery. At five o’clock, Richard, I shall call for you at your office. By the bye, you had better ask them how soon they can let you go.”
“They won’t worry about that,” Dauncey answered, a little bitterly. “Every Saturday for months has been a nightmare to me, for fear I’d get the sack. They don’t think I’m smart enough for my job there—not smart enough even for three pounds a week!”
“Just let them know what you think about them, for a change,” Jacob enjoined. “Three pounds a week, indeed! Tell them you’ve accepted a post at five hundred a year with a financier who needs your advice with his investments. That’ll give them something to think about!”
“It will!” Dauncey admitted, with a smile. “They’ll think I’ve gone mad.”
“Let ’em think what they choose,” Jacob insisted. “You come out of it with your nose in the air and leave your office coat behind for the errand boy. They’ll always be worried to think that you must have been a great deal smarter than they gave you credit for.”
“I’ll do my best,” Dauncey promised.
“I shall call for you in my motor-car,” Jacob continued; “we shall make purchases on our way, and we shall return to Marlingden in state. Thank heavens, Dick, for small ambitions! Just for the moment, I feel that nothing could make me happier than to be driven down the village street, pull up at the shops on the way home, and spend a few five-pound notes where I’ve had to look twice at a shilling.”
Dauncey smiled with the air of a man who sees more wonderful things.
“That’s all very well in its way, old fellow,” he admitted, “but to appreciate this absolutely you ought to be married. I can think of nothing but Nora’s face when I tell her—when I show her the pocketbook—when she begins to realise! Jacob, it’s worth all the misery of the last few years. It’s worth—anything.”
Jacob’s face glowed with sympathy, but he made a brave attempt to whistle under his breath a popular tune.
“Fact of it is, old chap,” he said, as he gripped the bottle for support and watched the bubbles rise in Dauncey’s glass, “we are both altogether too emotional.”
Jacob’s programme, for the remainder of the day, was carried out very nearly as he had planned it. The car was hired without difficulty, and the sensation created in the village shops by his arrival in it, his lavish orders and prompt payment, was ample and gratifying. Mrs. Harris alone seemed curiously unmoved when he confided to her the story of this great change in his circumstances. She who had been all kindness and sympathy in the days of his misfortune listened to the story of his newly arrived wealth with a striking absence of enthusiasm.
“You’ll be giving up your rooms now, I suppose?” she observed with a sigh. “Want to go and live in the West End of London, or some such place.”
Jacob extended his arm as far as possible around her ample waist.
“Mrs. Harris,” he said, “no one else in the world could have looked after me so well when I was poor. No one else shall look after me now that I am rich. If I leave here, you and Harris must come too, but I don’t think that I shall—not altogether. There are the roses, you see.”
“And what’s in that cardboard box?” she asked suspiciously.
“A black silk dress for you,” Jacob replied. “You’ll give me a kiss when you see it.”
“A black silk dress—for me?” Mrs. Harris faltered, her eyes agleam. “I don’t know what Harris will say!”
“There’s a bicycle at the station for him,” Jacob announced. “No more two-mile trudges to work, eh?”
Mrs. Harris sat down suddenly and raised her apron to her eyes. Jacob made his escape and crossed the road. It had seemed to him that he must have exhausted the whole gamut of emotions during the day, but there was still a moment’s revelation for him when the pale, shy, little woman whom he had known as his friend’s wife came running out to greet him with shining eyes and outstretched hands.
“Mr. Pratt!” she cried. “Is it all true?”
“It’s all true, and more of it,” he assured her. “Your man’s set up comfortably for life, and I am a starving millionaire. Anything to eat?”
She laughed a little hysterically.
“Why, there’s everything in the world to eat, and to drink, too, I should think,” she answered. “What they must have thought of you two men in the shops, I can’t imagine! Come into the dining-room, won’t you? Dick’s opening some wine.”
Then followed the second feast of the day, at which Jacob had to pretend to be unconscious of the fact that his host and hostess were alternately ecstatically happy and tremulously hysterical. They all waited upon themselves and ate many things the names of which only were familiar to them. Dauncey opened champagne as though he had been used to it all his life. Jacob carved chickens with great skill, but was a little puzzled as to the location of caviare in the meal and more than a little generous with the pâté-de-foie-gras. The strawberries and real Devonshire cream were an immense success, and Mrs. Dauncey’s eyes grew round with pleasure at the sight of the boxes of bonbons and chocolates. Afterwards the two men wandered out into the garden, a quaint strip of uncultivated land, with wanton beds of sweet-smelling flowers, and separated from the meadow beyond only by an untrimmed and odoriferous hedge, wreathed in honeysuckle. Over wonderful cigars, the like of which neither of them had ever smoked before, they talked for a moment or two seriously.
“What are you really going to do with your money, Jacob?” Dauncey asked. “And where do I come in? I do hope I am going to have a chance of earning my salary.”
Jacob was silent for a few moments. In the half light, a new sternness seemed to have stolen into his face.
“Richard,” he said, “you’ve seen men come out of a fight covered with scars,—wounds that burn and remind them of their sufferings. Well, I’m rather like that. I was never a very important person, you know, but in the old days I was proud of my little business and my good name. It hurt me like hell to go under. It was bad enough when people were kind. Sometimes they weren’t.”
“I know,” Dauncey murmured sympathetically.
“My scars are there,” Jacob went on. “If I had such a thing, Dick, I should say that they had burned their way into my soul. I haven’t made any plans. Don’t think that I am going to embark upon any senseless scheme of revenge—but if this promise of great wealth is fulfilled, I have some sort of a fancy for using it as a scourge to cruelty, or for giving the unfortunate a leg up where it’s deserved. There are one or two enterprises already shaping themselves in my mind, which might be brought to a successful conclusion.”
“Enterprises?” Dauncey repeated a little vaguely.
Jacob laid his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. There was a strange light in his eyes.
“Dick,” he said, “you’d think I was a commonplace sort of fellow
