Jacob's Ladder Part 22

"I accept," she murmured.

Jacob handed her into the car. She moved her skirts instinctively to make room for him by her side. He closed the door.

"The lady will direct you," he told his chauffeur, stepping back.

She leaned out of the window and gave an address to the man. Then she turned to Jacob. She was very pale but her eyes were ablaze.

"I just want to tell you," she said, "that from the bottom of my heart I hate and detest you."

The car glided away, and Jacob walked across the Square towards a taxicab stand.

CHAPTER XIV

Jacob, on the following morning, received a pencilled epistle from Sybil which brought him little satisfaction. There was no orthodox commencement, and it was written on sheets of paper torn apparently from a block:

I have been asking myself, on my way into exile--where I am going to stay with some pestilential relatives in Devons.h.i.+re--exactly why I dislike you more and more every time we come into contact with one another, and I have come to the conclusion that it is because in our controversies you are nearly always right and I am nearly always wrong. I suppose, as a matter of fact, I haven't the slightest reason in harbouring ill-will against you for refusing to put your money into the business which my father had allowed to become derelict. I am quite sure that you gave me good advice when you told me to keep away from those men who tried to rob you. In short, you are always right and I am always wrong, and I hate you all the more for it.

I shall not return to London for at least a good many months. During that time I do beg that you will sit down and forget all about me. Have an affair with Grace, if you like, flirt with any one you want to, or, better still, get married. But I tell you honestly that it absolutely irritates and angers me to be made conscious of your--shall I call it devotion? There is something antagonistic between us. I don't know what it is, but I do know that I shall never change. And I beg you, therefore, to do as I ask you--forget that such a person exists.

You may think that because I have admitted as much as I have admitted, that it has changed my feelings towards you.

It has not. It never could. I am boiling over with pa.s.sion at the present moment when I think how you treated our plot with contempt and walked out of it with the air of a conqueror. I am going to bury myself in Devons.h.i.+re, partly because I have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, but partly so that I may not have the misfortune to see anything more of you. By the time we meet again, if ever we do, I hope that you will be cured.

Sybil Bultiwell.

Jacob read the letter twice, until every phrase and syllable seemed burned into his memory. Then he tore it into small pieces, gave Dauncey a power of attorney, and started for Monte Carlo. He lingered a little on the way there, exploring the country round Hyeres and Costebelle. Almost the first person he met at Monte Carlo was Lord Felixstowe. He was coming out of Ciro's bar, his shoulders a little hunched, a cigarette dropping from his lips. He would have pa.s.sed Jacob, if the latter had not accosted him.

"Forgotten me, Lord Felixstowe?"

His young lords.h.i.+p recognised Jacob and cheered up.

"Oil in the wilderness, manna in the desert!" he exclaimed. "A man with a banking account! Come right in, and Henry shall mix you a morning tot that will make you feel as pink as the sunrise."

"I'll try this wonderful drink," Jacob consented, "but I don't need it. By the bye, were you to have had your share of that five thousand pounds?"

"Just one degree too thick that was for me," the young man confided, after he had given mysterious orders to his white-linened friend behind the bar. "I am not putting on frills, mind. I was willing to come in on any scheme to induce you to part with a bit, but I didn't fancy the medieval touch and the black gentleman. Gad, you're a little terror, though, Pratt! I'd have given something to have seen you knock those two about! I went to visit Mason in hospital. You couldn't see his face for bandages."...

On Jacob's proposition, they strolled out on to the terrace.

"Are you going into the Rooms this morning?" he enquired.

Lord Felixstowe shook his head gloomily.

"They've skinned me," he confessed. "I got a fifty-pound note from an old aunt, to bring her out as far as Bordighera. She don't speak the lingo, and I am rather a nut at it. I landed her, all right, day before yesterday, dropped off here on my way home, and lost the lot."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"Borrow a pony from you, old top," was the prompt reply.

Jacob counted out the notes, which the young man received with enthusiasm.

"I like a chap who parts like a sportsman," he declared. "Now I wonder if there is anything I can do for you. Would you like me to look you up about dinner time at your hotel? If you are alone, I dare say I could find you a pal or two."

"Come and dine with me, by all means," Jacob invited, "but I have a few acquaintances here, and if I want any more no doubt I shall be able to pick them up."

The young man looked at his watch.

"I have an appointment at table number five and a louis to go on number fourteen, in a few minutes," he declared. "So long."

Jacob took out his card for the Rooms and the Sporting Club, lunched leisurely with an acquaintance whom he had met on the train coming down, made a few purchases, gambled mildly, with some success, and had just changed and descended for his c.o.c.ktail before dinner at the Paris when Felixstowe strolled in. He smote Jacob on the back and ordered delectable drinks.

"Your money has the right touch, old bean," he declared. "It's the sort that worms its way to glory. I can a.s.sure you my little bit went through the croupier's hands like water. Yours--G.o.d bless you, old dear! We'll drink fizz to-night. To think that if I hadn't met you I might have been trying the _vin ordinaire_ on my way back!"

"Do I gather that you won?" Jacob asked.

"Thirteen hundred of the best, my pocket Croesus," was the jubilant reply. "To-morrow you shall have your pony back--not to-night. Your money brings me luck, Jacob. It's the stuff I've been looking for."

They made their way into the dining-room, where Felixstowe was greeted by many acquaintances. A bewildering confection in black and white claimed his attention. He rejoined Jacob a moment later with a proposition.

"Couple of little fairies there who'd like to hitch on, Jacob," he suggested. "Betty Tomlinson's one, little girl I used to know at the Gaiety. Got a flat in Paris now. The other little thing is an American in the same line of business."

Jacob shook his head.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd rather not."

"The hand that pays the reckoning rules the roost," Felixstowe paraphrased cheerfully. "Wait till I hand 'em the mit. Tell Louis to put a magnum on the ice."

"Look here, young fellow," Jacob observed, when his young friend made his joyous return, "just how old are you?"

"Twenty-four," Lord Felixstowe confided. "And if it's the wine you are thinking about, don't you worry. We've got it in our blood and we thrive on it. We doubled this little allowance each, the night after we won the regimental polo cup, and I made a hundred and seven against Yorks.h.i.+re the following day. You should see the governor--a sallow, lean-looking man, without an ounce of colour. He'd drink you under the table before he'd begun to hiccough.... You're not much of a lad for the fillies, what?"

"I find the variety here a little exotic," Jacob confessed.

"You like the homemade article, eh? Not sure that you ain't right.

Gad, I'm glad I met you!"

Jacob, who might have been dining alone, reciprocated the sentiment as they solemnly toasted one another.

"Look here, old thing," the young man insisted, "we're pals. You've crossed the Rubicon, so to speak--tipped up the ready at the right moment and started me on the road to fortune. We'll drop the 'Mr.' and the 'Lord'-ing. Felix and Jacob, eh? Good! My love, Jacob. Come along with me into the Rooms and see me touch up those Johnnies to-night."

Jacob shook his head.

"I prefer the Club," he said, "and if you take my advice, you'll put a thousand in your pocketbook and have a flutter with the three hundred."

"Jacob," the young man declared, "I feel to-night as though Jove had looked down from Olympus and winked the other eye at me. You get me? I feel in luck, steeped in the magic of it; couldn't do wrong, couldn't pick a loser if I tried. Seven times in eleven spins of the wheel number fourteen came up this afternoon, and to-night I can see number twenty-nine just the same way. Number five table, Jacob, that I'm going to hit. The croupier who'll be on at ten o'clock has a sort of double squint. I'll send him to the vaults, sure as this Pommery is about the best tipple I ever drank.... Aren't you going to have a flutter yourself?"