Jacob's Ladder Part 19

"It's an offer I wouldn't make to every one, Pratt," he concluded.

"Just happens I'm rather at a loose end--had a nasty week at Newmarket. I might even get you a few days down at our place in Norfolk, if you know how to handle a gun."

"I'll consider it," Jacob promised once more. "You'll have to excuse me just now. I'm lunching with a young lady--Miss Bultiwell, in fact."

Lord Felixstowe picked up his hat.

"See you later, then," he concluded. "Old friend of yours, Miss Bultiwell, eh?"

"An acquaintance of some years' standing," Jacob admitted.

"Give her the straight tip," Lord Felixstowe advised earnestly. "Don't know what she's doing with that crew, anyhow. She seems a different sort of person altogether. Tell her to cut it out. By-by!"

Jacob found his luncheon companion cold but amiable. He waited until they were halfway through the meal, and then took his courage in both hands.

"Miss Bultiwell," he began, "I don't like your friends."

"Really?" she said. "I thought you were a great success with them."

"My popularity," he a.s.sured her drily, "is waning. I have annoyed Mr.

Mason by refusing to find the money for him to start a night club, Mr.

Hartwell by not buying some oil wells in Trinidad, and, in a lesser degree, Lord Felixstowe by not jumping at the chance of engaging him as my social mentor at a somewhat exorbitant salary."

"And Grace?"

"Lady Powers is dining with me on Sunday night," Jacob announced. "Her schemes seem to need a little further formulation."

Sybil bit her lip.

"You are very rude about my friends."

"I am not rude at all, and they are not your friends."

"Surely I know best about that?" she demanded haughtily.

"You do," he admitted, "and you know perfectly well that in your heart you agree with me and they are not your friends. Every one of them is more or less an adventurer, and how you found your way into such company I can't imagine."

"When did Grace ask you to take her out to dinner?" she enquired irrelevantly.

"Lady Powers has been kind enough to suggest it several times," he replied. "She thinks that it would give me confidence to dance in public."

"You have quite enough confidence," Sybil declared, with some asperity, "and as a matter of fact you dance too well to need any more lessons."

"Are you giving up teaching?" he asked.

"That depends."

"You really mean to continue your a.s.sociation with these people? Mind, I am speaking advisedly concerning them. Mason and Hartwell are both well-known about town. They are adventurers pure and simple and absolutely improper a.s.sociates for you."

"I can take care of myself," Sybil a.s.sured him indifferently.

"But you ought not to be seen with such a crowd," he objected.

"Why not? I haven't the slightest objection to being called an adventuress. I want to make money, and so far as money is concerned, I have no conscience. I am a hopelessly incompetent clerk or secretary, and I am keeping the chorus for a last resource."

"Why should you be an incompetent secretary?" he demanded.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I suppose I haven't the temperament for service. I was dismissed from my first two situations for what they called impertinence, and I had to leave the third because all three partners tried to kiss me. I didn't mind one," she went on reflectively, "but with all three it grew monotonous."

"Brutes!" Jacob exclaimed fiercely.

"Oh, no, they were quite nice about it," she declared. "It isn't that I mind being kissed particularly, but I hate it to come into the two pounds a week arrangement. Besides, there is another fatal objection to my being able to keep any post as a typist."

"What is it?" he asked.

"I simply cannot wear the clothes," she confessed.

He looked puzzled.

"I don't quite understand. You don't have to wear a uniform or anything."

She looked at him pityingly.

"Look at me," she directed. "Now what would you say if I walked into your office and asked for a post as typist at two or three pounds a week?"

"Take you on like a shot," he a.s.sured her enthusiastically.

"Don't be silly. I don't mean personally. I am looking upon you as a type. Well, supposing you did take me on, your wife would call down at the office in a few days, look at me and call you to one side. I can hear her whispering in your ear--'You must get rid of that girl.'"

"And just why?" he asked.

"I suppose you think that I am very plainly dressed?"

"You look very nice," he declared, glancing at her neat black and white check tailormade suit, the smart hat, and remembering his glimpse of her silk stockings and shapely black patent shoes as she had come down the stairs; "very nice indeed, but you are dressed quite plainly."

"The ignorance of men!" she sighed. "This costume I have on cost forty guineas and came from one of the best places in London. My hat cost twelve, and everything else I have on is in proportion. These are the last remnants of my glory. Well, when I went down to the city, I had to wear a blue serge costume I had bought ready-made, sort of hybrid stockings which I hated, a hat of the neat variety, which means no shape and no style, fabric gloves, and shoes from a ready-made shop. I felt, day by day, just as though I were trying to play a hopeless part in some private theatricals. I couldn't breathe. You see, I am not in the least a heroine. I want the things I've been used to, somehow or other."

"There is another alternative," Jacob ventured.

"You refer, I suppose, to marriage or its equivalent? As it happens, however, I have peculiar views about sacrificing my liberty. I would sooner give everything I have to a person I cared for than sell myself to a person whom I disliked. Isn't that your bill?"

Jacob's fingers trembled a little as he drew out a note and laid it upon the plate.

"I wonder why you dislike me so much," he speculated, as they waited for his change.

She contemplated him indifferently.