“Dick,” he rejoined, “we haven’t yet had time to gain much experience in the world of high finance, but here’s one little truism which you can take to heart. It’s easier to get the best of a rogue than of a jay. The jay as a rule knows he’s a jay, and is terrified all the time lest other people should find it out. The rogue believes that he’s cleverer than he is, and that other people are bigger fools than they are… Shall we – ”

“By all means,” Dauncey acquiesced, reaching promptly for his hat.

CHAPTER X

Houses sprang up like mushrooms on the Cropstone Wood Estate, and rents were soon at a premium. Mr. Littleham’s activities were transferred, by arrangement with Jacob, to a builder of more conservative type, and the Estate speedily became one of the show places of the neighbourhood. It combined the conveniences of a suburb with the advantages of a garden city. The special motor-omnibuses, run by the Company, connected the place with the railway. The telephone company were induced to open an exchange, and the Cropstone tradespeople, speedily abandoning their attitude of benevolent indifference, tumbled over themselves in their anxiety to obtain the orders of the neighbourhood. Jacob somewhat surreptitiously furnished a room for himself over the offices of the company and, soon after the coming of Mrs. Bultiwell and her daughter, paid a visit to the place. In fear and trembling he stole out, after an early dinner on the night of his arrival, and, seated on a hummock at the top of the ridge, looked down at the little colony.

It was not long before the expected happened. A girl in a white gown appeared in the garden immediately below him, singing softly to herself and wielding a watering can. Presently she saw Jacob and paused in her task. Jacob raised his hat and she came slowly towards him. His heart thumped against his ribs. He thought of “Maud” and other sentimental poems, where the heroine was scornful and of high degree, and the lover very much her slave. Sybil Bultiwell’s expression was certainly not encouraging.

“You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Pratt,” she began coldly, “that you are coming to live out here yourself?”

“No idea of it,” Jacob hastened to explain, as he sprang to his feet. “I have just furnished a room over the office, so as to spend a night or two here, now and then, and see that everything is going on all right. A new enterprise like this needs a watchful eye. No intention of making a nuisance of myself, I can promise you, Miss Bultiwell.”

In her relief she forgot that the watering can was half full. Jacob stepped quickly backwards, glancing a little disconsolately at his bespattered trousers.

“I am exceedingly sorry, Mr. Pratt,” she apologised, biting her lip.

“No consequence at all,” he assured her. “My fault entirely. By the bye, I hope you are quite comfortable. No complaints?”

“None whatever,” she conceded a little grudgingly.

“Water supply all right?”

“Quite.”

“And the lighting?”

“Excellent. In fact,” the girl went on bitterly, “the place is a perfect Paradise for paupers and people who have to earn their own living.”

“There is no need for you to do that,” he ventured.

She looked at him in most disconcerting fashion. All the pleasant lights which lurked sometimes in her blue eyes seemed transformed into a hard stare. Her eyebrows were drawn together in an ominous frown. Her chin was uplifted.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

Jacob hesitated, floundered and was lost. Not a word of all the eloquence which was stored up in his heart could pass his lips. He who had already made a start, and later on was to hold his own in the world of unexpected happenings, shrank like a coward from the mute antagonism in the girl’s eyes.

“You know,” he faltered.

“The only alternative I am aware of to earning my own living,” she said quietly, “is charity. Were you proposing to offer me a share of your wonderful fortune?”

“Only if I myself were attached to it,” he answered, with a spark of courage.

She turned and looked at him.

“I am afraid,” she said, “that you are inclined to take advantage of your position, Mr. Pratt.”

“I want to say nothing to worry or annoy you,” he assured her. “It is only an accident that I am interested in this estate. I am not your benefactor. You pay your rent and you are quite independent.”

“If I felt that it were otherwise,” she replied, “we should not be here.”

“I am sure of it,” he declared. “I am only taking the privilege of every man who is honest, in telling the truth to the girl whom he prefers to any one else in the world.”

“You are an ardent lover, Mr. Pratt,” she scoffed.

“If I don’t say any more,” he retorted, “it is because you paralyse me. You won’t let me speak.”

“And I don’t intend to,” she answered coldly. “If you wish to retain any measure of my friendship at all, you will keep your personal feelings with regard to me to yourself.”

Jacob for a moment cursed life, cursed himself, his nervousness, and the whole situation. A little breeze came stealing down the hillside, bringing with it an odour of new-mown hay, of honeysuckle and wild roses from the flower-wreathed hedges. The girl lifted her head and her expression softened.

“It is a wonderful country, this,” she admitted. “You are to be congratulated upon having discovered it, Mr. Pratt. We ought to consider ourselves very fortunate, my mother and I, in having such a pleasant home.”

“It isn’t half good enough for you,” he declared bluntly.

She treated him to one of her sudden vagaries. All the discontent seemed to fade in a moment from her face. Her eyes laughed into his, her mouth softened into a most attractive curve.

“Some day,” she said, as she turned away, “I may find my palace, but I don’t think that you will be the landlord, Mr. Pratt. – Bother!”

Her ill-temper suddenly returned. A tall, elderly lady had issued from the house and was leaning over the gate. She was of a severe type of countenance, and Jacob remembered with a shiver her demeanour on his visit to the Manor House in the days of the Bultiwell prosperity. She welcomed him now, however, with a most gracious smile, and beckoned him to advance.

“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Pratt,” she said, as they shook hands. “I have not had an opportunity of congratulating you upon your access to fortune.”

“Very good of you, I’m sure,” Jacob murmured.

“We,” Mrs. Bultiwell continued, “are progressing, as you perceive, in the opposite direction. I suppose it is an idea of mine, but I feel all the time as though I were living in a sort of glorified almshouse.”

“It must seem very small to you after the Manor,” Jacob replied politely, “but the feeling you have spoken of is entirely misplaced. The Estate is conducted as a business enterprise, and will, without doubt, show a profit.”

“You are, I believe,” Mrs. Bultiwell said, “connected with the Estate?”

Jacob admitted the fact. Sybil, who had recommenced her watering, drew a little closer.

“There are a few things,” Mrs. Bultiwell observed, “to which I think the attention of the manager should be drawn. In the first place, the garden. It all requires digging up.”

“Surely that is a matter for the tenants,” Sybil intervened.

“Nothing of the sort,” Jacob pronounced. “It is a very careless omission on the part of the owners. I will give orders concerning it to-morrow.”

Mrs. Bultiwell inclined her head approvingly. Having once tasted blood, she was unwilling to let her victim go.

“If you will step inside for a moment, Mr. Pratt,” she went on, “there are one or two little things I should like to point out to you. The cupboard in Sybil’s room – ”

“Mother,” Sybil protested, “Mr. Pratt has nothing to do with these matters.”

“On the contrary,” Jacob replied mildly, “I am just the person who has to do with them. You are paying a very good rent, Mrs. Bultiwell, and any little thing the Estate can do to make you more comfortable – ”

“Come this way, Mr. Pratt,” Mrs. Bultiwell interrupted firmly…

Sybil was still watering the garden when he came out. She waited until he had exchanged cordial farewells with Mrs. Bultiwell, and then summoned him to her. Mrs. Bultiwell was still standing on the threshold, smiling at them, so she was compelled to moderate her anger.

“What have you been doing in there with mother?” she demanded.

“There were one or two little things my clerk of the works has neglected,” he answered. “I promised to see to them, that’s all.”

“You know perfectly well that we arranged for the house as it was.”

“I don’t look upon it in that way,” he said. “There are certain omissions – ”

“Oh, be quiet!” she interrupted angrily. “And the garden, I suppose, should all have been prepared for us?”

“Certainly it should have been all dug up,” he declared, “and not only that little bit where you have your roses.”

“Of course,” she answered sarcastically, “and asparagus beds made, I suppose, and standard roses planted!”

“I think, Miss Bultiwell,” he ventured, “that you might allow me the privilege of having the place made as attractive as possible for you.”

She glanced back towards the house. Mrs. Bultiwell, well pleased with herself, was still lingering. Sybil conducted their visitor firmly towards the gate.

“Mr. Pratt,” she said, “I will try and not visit these things upon you; but answer me this question. Have you given my mother any indication whatever of your – your ridiculous feelings towards me?”

“Your mother gave me no opportunity,” he replied. “She was too busy talking about the house.”

“Thank goodness for that, anyhow! Please understand, Mr. Pratt, that so far as I am concerned you are not a welcome visitor here at any time, but if ever you should see my mother, and you should give her the least idea of what you are always trying to tell me, you will make life a perfect purgatory for me. I dislike you now more than any one I know. I should simply hate you then. You understand?”

“I understand,” he answered. “You want me, in short, to join in a sort of alliance against myself?”

“Put it any way you like,” she said coldly.

“I am a perfectly harmless person,” he declared, “who has never wronged you in thought or deed. It is my misfortune that I have a certain feeling for you which I honestly don’t think you deserve.”

She dropped the watering can and her eyes blazed at him.

“Not deserve?” she repeated.

“No!” he replied, trembling but standing his ground firmly. “Every nice girl has a feeling of some sort for the man who is idiot enough to be in love with her. I am just telling you this to let you know that I can see your faults just as much as the things in you which – which I worship. And good night!”…

Jacob sat out on the hillside until late, smoking stolidly and dreaming. Inside the little white-plastered house below, from which the lights were beginning to steal out, Sybil was busy preparing supper and waiting upon her highly-pleased and triumphant parent. Later, she too sat in the garden and watched the moon come up from behind the dark belt of woodland which sheltered the reservoir. Perhaps she dreamed of her prince to come, as the lonely man on the hillside was dreaming of the things which she typified to him.

CHAPTER XI

Jacob sought distraction in the golfing resorts of England and the Continent, tried mountaineering in Switzerland, at which he had some success, and finally, with the entire Dauncey ménage, took a small moor near the sea in Scotland, and in the extreme well-being of physical content found a species of happiness which sufficed well enough for the time. It was early winter before he settled down in London again, with the firm determination of neither writing to nor making any enquiries concerning Sybil. Chance, however, brought him in touch with her before many days were passed.

“Who is the smartly dressed, sunburnt little Johnny who is staring at you so, Miss Bultiwell?” asked her vis-à-vis at a luncheon party at the Savoy one day. “His face seems familiar to me, but I can’t place him. I’m sure I’ve been told something interesting about him, somewhere or other.”

“That,” Sybil replied coldly, glancing across the room towards a small table against the wall, at which Jacob and Dauncey were seated, “is Mr. Jacob Pratt.”

Mason, one of the mysteries of smarter Bohemian life, a young man of irreproachable appearance, a frequenter of the best restaurants, with a large acquaintance amongst the racing and theatrical world but with no known means of subsistence, showed marked interest in the announcement.

“Not Jacob Pratt, the oil millionaire?” he exclaimed.

She nodded.

“His money comes to him, I believe, from some oil springs in the western States of America,” she acquiesced. “His brother is a successful prospector.”

The young man leaned across the table.

“Did you hear that, Joe?” he enquired.

Joe Hartwell, a smooth-shaven, stalwart young American, with fleshy cheeks and unusually small eyes, assented vigorously.

“Mighty interesting,” was his thoughtful comment. “A millionaire, Lady Powers.”

Grace Powers, an attractive looking young lady, who had made meteoric appearances upon the musical comedy stage and in the divorce court, and was now lamenting the decease of her last husband – a youthful baronet whom she had married while yet a minor – gazed across at Jacob with frank interest.

“What a dear person!” she exclaimed. “He looks as though he had come out of a bandbox. I think he is perfectly sweet. What a lucky girl you are to know him, Sybil!”

“You all seem to have taken such a fancy to him that you had better divide him up amongst you,” Sybil suggested coldly. “I detest him.”

“Please introduce me,” Grace Powers begged, – “that is, if you are sure you don’t want him yourself.”

“And me,” Mason echoed.

“Can’t I be in this?” the third man, young Lord Felixstowe, suggested, leaning forward and dropping the eyeglass through which he had been staring at Jacob. “Seems to me I am as likely to land the fish as any of you.”

Sybil thoroughly disliked the conversation and did not hesitate to disclose her feelings.

“Mr. Pratt is only an acquaintance of mine,” she declared, “and I do not wish to speak to him. If he has the temerity to accost me, I will introduce you all – not unless. It will serve him right then.”

Mason looked at her reprovingly.

“My dear Miss Bultiwell,” he said, “in the tortuous course of life, our daily life, an unpleasant action must sometimes be faced. If you remember, barely an hour ago, over our cocktails, we declared for a life of adventure. We paid tribute to the principle that the unworthy wealthy must support the worthy pauper. We are all worthy paupers.”

Grace Powers laughed softly.

“I don’t know about the worthiness,” she murmured, “but you should see my dressmaker’s bill!”

“Useless, dear lady,” Mason sighed. “We five are, alas! all in the same box. We must look outside for relief. Since I have studied your friend’s physiognomy, Miss Bultiwell, I am convinced that an acquaintance with him is necessary to our future welfare. I can see philanthropy written all over his engaging countenance.”

“Mr. Pratt isn’t a fool,” Sybil observed drily.

“Neither are we fools,” Mason rejoined. “Besides,” he went on, “you must remember that in any little exchange of wits which might take place between Mr. Pratt and ourselves, the conditions are scarcely equal. We have nothing to lose and he has everything. He has money – a very great deal of money – and we are paupers.”

“There are other things to be lost besides money,” Sybil reminded him.

“I guess not,” Hartwell intervened, with real fervour, – “nothing else that counts, anyway.”

They watched Jacob longingly as he left the restaurant, – personable, self-possessed, and with the crudities of his too immaculate toilet subdued by experience. His almost wistful glance towards Sybil met with an unexpected reward. She bowed, if not with cordiality, at any rate without any desire to evade him. For a single moment he hesitated, as though about to stop, and the faces of her friends seemed to sharpen, as though the prey were already thrown to them. Perhaps it was instinct which induced him to reconsider his idea. At any rate he passed out, and Dauncey pressed his arm as they emerged into the street.

“I have never been favourably impressed with Miss Bultiwell,” the latter observed, “but I like the look of her friends still less.”

“Sharks,” Jacob murmured gloomily, “sharks, every one of them, and it wouldn’t be the faintest use in the world my telling her so.”

The opportunity, at any rate, came a few days later, when Jacob found amongst his letters one which he read and reread with varying sensations. It was in Sybil’s handwriting and dated from Number 100, Russell Square.

Dear Mr. Pratt,

If you are smitten with the new craze and are thinking of having dancing lessons, will you patronise my little endeavour? Lady Powers, who was with me at the Milan the other day, and I, have a class at this address every Thursday, and give private lessons any day by appointment. Perhaps you would like to telephone – 1324, Museum. I shall be there any morning after eleven o’clock.

Sincerely yours,
Sybil Bultiwell.

P.S. I dare say you have heard that my mother has gone to make a long stay with a sister at Torquay, and I have let our Cropstone Wood house at quite a nice profit. I am staying for a few weeks with Lady Powers, who was at school with me.

Jacob summoned Dauncey and put the letter into his hand.

“Read this, my astute friend, and comment,” he invited.

Dauncey read and reread it before passing it back.

“The young lady,” he observed, “is becoming amenable. She is also, I should imagine, hankering after the fleshpots. A month or two of typing has perhaps had its effect.”

“Any other criticism?”

Dauncey shook his head.

“It seems to me an ordinary communication enough,” he confessed.

“I suppose you are right,” Jacob admitted thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am getting suspicious. It must have been seeing Miss Bultiwell with that hateful crowd.”

“You think that the dancing class is a blind?”

Jacob glanced back at the letter and frowned.

“I don’t think Miss Bultiwell would stoop to anything in the nature of a conspiracy, but those two men, Hartwell and Mason, are out and out wrong ’uns, and it is several months since any one tried to rob me.”

“You’ll go, all the same,” Dauncey observed, with a smile.

Jacob leaned over to the telephone.

“Museum 1324,” he demanded.

At half-past four that afternoon, Jacob rang the bell at a large and apparently empty house in Russell Square. The door was opened after a brief delay by a woman who appeared to be a caretaker and who invited him to ascend to the next floor. Jacob did so, and, pushing open a door which was standing ajar, found himself in a large apartment with a polished oak floor, two or three lounges by the wall, a gramophone, and a young lady whom he recognised as Sybil’s companion at the Milan.

“Mr. Pratt,” she greeted him sweetly. “I am so glad to know you.”

Jacob shook hands and murmured something appropriate.

“Sybil will be here in a few minutes,” the young lady continued. “You are going to have a lesson, aren’t you?”

“I believe so,” Jacob answered. “I hope you won’t find me very stupid.”

She smiled up into his face.

“You don’t look as though you would be. I am Sybil’s partner, Grace Powers. I saw you at the Milan the other day, didn’t I? Are you in a great hurry to start, or would you like to sit and talk for a few minutes?”

Jacob accepted the chair to which she pointed, and a cigarette.

“You find it tiring giving these lessons?” he enquired politely.

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I have just had such a stupid boy. He will never learn anything, and he is such a nuisance.”

“I hope you won’t have to find fault with me,” Jacob observed.

She smiled.

“Not in the same way, at any rate.”

“A timid dancer?” Jacob queried.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“We won’t discuss him,” she said. “He bores me. He is one of those persistent young men who make love to you in monosyllables and expect success as a matter of course.”

“In how many syllables,” Jacob began —

She interrupted him with a little grimace.

“You know perfectly well you will never want to make love to me,” she said. “You are in love with Sybil Bultiwell, aren’t you?”

“Did she tell you so?”

The girl shook her head.

“I just guessed it from the way you looked at her. And I expect you are one of those picturesque survivals, too, who can only love one woman at a time. Aren’t you, Mr. Pratt?”

“I don’t know what I am capable of yet,” Jacob confessed. “You see, my career as a philanderer has only just begun. I had to work hard until about a year ago.”

“I have heard all about your wonderful fortune,” she said, looking at him with veneration. “It gives you a sort of halo, you know. We all speak of you as a kind of Monte Cristo. It’s a queer thing, isn’t it, the fascination of wealth?”

“I haven’t noticed that it’s done me much good up till now, so far as regards the things we were discussing,” Jacob replied, a little sadly.

“Then that must be because you are very unresponsive,” she said softly, rising to her feet and coming and standing before him. “Would you care – to dance?”

“Hadn’t I better set the gramophone going first?” Jacob suggested, with blatant lack of intuition.

She drew back a little, laughed softly, and put on a record herself. Then she held out her arms.

“Come, then, my anxious pupil,” she invited. “What do you most wish to learn, and have you any idea of the steps?”

Jacob confessed to some acquaintance with modern dancing and a knowledge at least of the steps. They danced a fox trot, and at its conclusion she shook her head at him.

“I know all about you now, Mr. Pratt,” she said. “You are an absolute fraud. You dance as well as I do.”

“But I need practice badly,” he assured her anxiously.

“I suppose – it’s really Sybil?” she asked ruefully, looking him in the eyes with a queer little smile at the corners of her lips.

“I’m afraid so,” he admitted. “You won’t give me away, will you?”

“How can I give you away?” she asked. “Your behavior has been perfect – of its sort.”

“I mean about the dancing,” he explained. “If Miss Bultiwell thinks I know as much about it as I do – ”

“I understand,” she interrupted. “I won’t say a word. Shall we try a hesitation?”

Here Jacob found a little instruction useful, but he was a born dancer and very soon gave his instructress complete satisfaction. Just as they had finished, Sybil came in. She greeted Jacob politely, but with none of her partner’s cordiality.

“I am sorry to be late, Mr. Pratt,” she said. “I hope that Grace has been looking after you.”

“Admirably,” he replied.

“I suppose you thought I was quite mad when you got my note,” she went on, walking to the mantelpiece and drawing off her gloves.

“Not at all,” he assured her. “I was very glad to get it. Very kind of you to give me the chance of polishing up my dancing.”

“Try a fox trot with him, Sybil,” Grace suggested. “I think he is going to be quite good.”

Jacob was as clumsy as he dared be, but he was naturally very light on his feet, and, with an unusually correct ear for music, he found blunders difficult. They danced to the end without conversation.

“I do not think,” Sybil said, a little coldly, “that you will need many lessons.”

“On the contrary,” he replied, “I feel that I shall need a great many. I am rather out of breath. May I have a rest?”

“There will be another pupil very shortly,” she warned him.

“Never mind,” he answered. “You can give me a longer time to-morrow.”

She turned towards him with upraised eyebrows.

“To-morrow? Surely you are not thinking of coming every day?”

“Why not? I get so little exercise in London, and wherever one goes, nowadays, there is dancing.”

“But you don’t need the lessons.”

“I need the exercise, and indeed I am much worse than you think I am. That happened to be a very decent tune.”

“Don’t discourage a pupil,” Grace intervened. “We can fit him in every day, if he wants to come. We charge an awful lot though, Mr. Pratt.”

“You ought to,” Jacob replied. “You teach so exceptionally well. May I pay for a few lessons in advance, please,” he asked, producing his pocketbook; “say a dozen?”

“It’s a guinea a time,” Grace told him. “Don’t be rash.”

Jacob laid the money upon the desk, and Sybil wrote out a formal receipt.

“I think you are very foolish,” she said, “and if you take my advice you will come once a week.”

“And if you take mine,” Grace declared, leaning over his shoulder and laughing, “you’ll come every day. We might go bankrupt, and then you’d lose your money.”

“I shall come as often as I am allowed,” Jacob assured her.

“Oh, you can come when you like,” Sybil remarked carelessly. “If I am not here, Grace can give you a lesson. You will find it a most informal place,” she went on, listening to footsteps on the stairs. “People drop in and have a dance whenever they feel like it. I am glad you are not an absolute beginner. It is sometimes embarrassing for them.”

The door opened and Hartwell entered, followed by Mason. Sybil introduced them. Both were exceedingly cordial.

“Heard of you out in New York, Mr. Pratt,” the former remarked, as he shook hands. “I only just missed meeting your brother. He got well ahead of our prospectors, out West.”

“My brother has been very fortunate,” Jacob replied.

“I guess he is one of the brightest men who ever came over to the States from this country,” Hartwell declared. “Knows all about oil, too.”

“Not too much gossip,” Sybil interposed. “Mr. Pratt, you are here to learn dancing. So are you, Mr. Hartwell. Please try a hesitation with me, and, Grace, you take Mr. Pratt.”

“Sybil is very foolish,” Grace whispered to Jacob, as they swayed up and down the room. “Mr. Hartwell is perfectly hopeless, and you dance beautifully.”

“It is you,” Jacob told her, “who are inspiring.”

She looked into his eyes.

“I believe you are going to improve,” she said hopefully.