The Adventures of Sally Part 43

"He's worried stiff about it."

"Well, give him my love, and tell him not to be so silly."

Mrs. Fillmore crossed the room and kissed Sally impulsively.

"You're an angel," she said. "I wish there were more like you. But I guess they've lost the pattern. Well, I'll go back and tell Fillmore that. It'll relieve him."

The door closed, and Sally sat down with her chin in her hands to think.

3

Mr. Isadore Abrahams, the founder and proprietor of that deservedly popular dancing resort poetically named "The Flower Garden," leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh and laid down the knife and fork with which he had been a.s.sailing a plateful of succulent goulash. He was dining, as was his admirable custom, in the bosom of his family at his residence at Far Rockaway. Across the table, his wife, Rebecca, beamed at him over her comfortable plinth of chins, and round the table his children, David, Jacob, Morris and Saide, would have beamed at him if they had not been too busy at the moment ingurgitating goulash.

A genial, honest, domestic man was Mr. Abrahams, a credit to the community.

"Mother," he said.

"Pa?" said Mrs. Abrahams.

"Knew there was something I'd meant to tell you," said Mr. Abrahams, absently chasing a piece of bread round his plate with a stout finger.

"You remember that girl I told you about some time back--girl working at the Garden--girl called Nicholas, who came into a bit of money and threw up her job..."

"I remember. You liked her. Jakie, dear, don't gobble."

"Ain't gobbling," said Master Abrahams.

"Everybody liked her," said Mr. Abrahams. "The nicest girl I ever hired, and I don't hire none but nice girls, because the Garden's a nice place, and I like to run it nice. I wouldn't give you a nickel for any of your tough joints where you get nothing but low-lifes and scare away all the real folks. Everybody liked Sally Nicholas. Always pleasant and always smiling, and never anything but the lady. It was a treat to have her around. Well, what do you think?"

"Dead?" inquired Mrs. Abrahams, apprehensively. The story had sounded to her as though it were heading that way. "Wipe your mouth, Jakie dear."

"No, not dead," said Mr. Abrahams, conscious for the first time that the remainder of his narrative might be considered by a critic something of an anti-climax and lacking in drama. "But she was in to see me this afternoon and wants her job back."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Abrahams, rather tonelessly. An ardent supporter of the local motion-picture palace, she had hoped for a slightly more gingery denouement, something with a bit more punch.

"Yes, but don't it show you?" continued Mr. Abrahams, gallantly trying to work up the interest. "There's this girl, goes out of my place not more'n a year ago, with a good bank-roll in her pocket, and here she is, back again, all of it spent. Don't it show you what a tragedy life is, if you see what I mean, and how careful one ought to be about money?

It's what I call a human doc.u.ment. Goodness knows how she's been and gone and spent it all. I'd never have thought she was the sort of girl to go gadding around. Always seemed to me to be kind of sensible."

"What's gadding, Pop?" asked Master Jakie, the goulash having ceased to chain his interest.

"Well, she wanted her job back and I gave it to her, and glad to get her back again. There's cla.s.s to that girl. She's the sort of girl I want in the place. Don't seem quite to have so much get-up in her as she used to... seems kind of quieted down... but she's got cla.s.s, and I'm glad she's back. I hope she'll stay. But don't it show you?"

"Ah!" said Mrs. Abrahams, with more enthusiasm than before. It had not worked out such a bad story after all. In its essentials it was not unlike the film she had seen the previous evening--Gloria Gooch in "A Girl against the World."

"Pop!" said Master Abrahams.

"Yes, Jakie?"

"When I'm grown up, I won't never lose no money. I'll put it in the bank and save it."

The slight depression caused by the contemplation of Sally's troubles left Mr. Abrahams as mist melts beneath a sunbeam.

"That's a good boy, Jakie," he said.

He felt in his waistcoat pocket, found a dime, put it back again, and bent forward and patted Master Abrahams on the head.

CHAPTER XV. UNCLE DONALD SPEAKS HIS MIND

There is in certain men--and Bruce Carmyle was one of them--a quality of resilience, a st.u.r.dy refusal to acknowledge defeat, which aids them as effectively in affairs of the heart as in encounters of a sterner and more practical kind. As a wooer, Bruce Carmyle resembled that durable type of pugilist who can only give of his best after he has received at least one substantial wallop on some tender spot. Although Sally had refused his offer of marriage quite definitely at Monk's Crofton, it had never occurred to him to consider the episode closed. All his life he had been accustomed to getting what he wanted, and he meant to get it now.

He was quite sure that he wanted Sally. There had been moments when he had been conscious of certain doubts, but in the smart of temporary defeat these had vanished. That streak of Bohemianism in her which from time to time since their first meeting had jarred upon his orderly mind was forgotten; and all that Mr. Carmyle could remember was the brightness of her eyes, the jaunty lift of her chin, and the gallant trimness of her. Her gay prettiness seemed to flick at him like a whip in the darkness of wakeful nights, las.h.i.+ng him to pursuit. And quietly and methodically, like a respectable wolf settling on the trail of a Red Riding Hood, he prepared to pursue. Delicacy and imagination might have kept him back, but in these qualities he had never been strong. One cannot have everything.

His preparations for departure, though he did his best to make them swiftly and secretly, did not escape the notice of the Family. In many English families there seems to exist a system of inter-communication and news-distribution like that of those savage tribes in Africa who pa.s.s the latest item of news and interest from point to point over miles of intervening jungle by some telepathic method never properly explained. On his last night in London, there entered to Bruce Carmyle at his apartment in South Audley Street, the Family's chosen representative, the man to whom the Family pointed with pride--Uncle Donald, in the flesh.

There were two hundred and forty pounds of the flesh Uncle Donald was in, and the chair in which he deposited it creaked beneath its burden.

Once, at Monk's Crofton, Sally had spoiled a whole morning for her brother Fillmore, by indicating Uncle Donald as the exact image of what he would be when he grew up. A superst.i.tion, cherished from early schooldays, that he had a weak heart had caused the Family's managing director to abstain from every form of exercise for nearly fifty years; and, as he combined with a distaste for exercise one of the three heartiest appet.i.tes in the south-western postal division of London, Uncle Donald, at sixty-two, was not a man one would willingly have lounging in one's armchairs. Bruce Carmyle's customary respectfulness was tinged with something approaching dislike as he looked at him.

Uncle Donald's walrus moustache heaved gently upon his laboured breath, like seaweed on a ground-swell. There had been stairs to climb.

"What's this? What's this?" he contrived to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e at last. "You packing?"

"Yes," said Mr. Carmyle, shortly. For the first time in his life he was conscious of that sensation of furtive guilt which was habitual with his cousin Ginger when in the presence of this large, mackerel-eyed man.

"You going away?"

"Yes."

"Where you going?"

"America."

"When you going?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Why you going?"

This dialogue has been set down as though it had been as brisk and snappy as any cross-talk between vaudeville comedians, but in reality Uncle Donald's peculiar methods of conversation had stretched it over a period of nearly three minutes: for after each reply and before each question he had puffed and sighed and inhaled his moustache with such painful deliberation that his companion's nerves were finding it difficult to bear up under the strain.

"You're going after that girl," said Uncle Donald, accusingly.

Bruce Carmyle flushed darkly. And it is interesting to record that at this moment there flitted through his mind the thought that Ginger's behaviour at Bleke's Coffee House, on a certain notable occasion, had not been so utterly inexcusable as he had supposed. There was no doubt that the Family's Chosen One could be trying.