Buch lesen: «Jacob's Ladder»

PROLOGUE

Seated at breakfast on that memorable July morning, Jacob Pratt presented all the appearance of a disconsolate man. His little country sitting-room was as neat and tidy as the capable hands of the inimitable Mrs. Harris could make it. His coffee was hot and his eggs were perfectly boiled. Through the open windows stretched a little vista of the many rows of standard roses which had been the joy of his life. Yet blank misery dwelt in the soul of this erstwhile cheerful little man, and the spirit of degradation hung like a gloomy pall over his thoughts and being. Only the day before he had filed his petition in bankruptcy.

The usual morning programme was carried out, only, alas! in different fashion. Five and twenty minutes before the departure of the train, Mrs. Harris – but not the Mrs. Harris of customary days – presented herself, bearing his hat and stick. Her cheerful smile had departed. There were traces of something very much like tears in her eyes. She carried a small article in her hand, which she spent most of the time trying to conceal behind her apron.

“You’ll be home at the usual time, sir?” she asked.

“So far as I know, Mrs. Harris,” was the listless reply.

His landlady looked at the practically undisturbed breakfast table and gathered strength of purpose.

“Me and Harris, sir,” she declared, “we offers our respects and we hopes nothing ain’t going to be changed here.”

“You are very good – both of you,” Jacob said, with a weak smile. “For the present I don’t think that I could live cheaper anywhere else, nor, I am sure, as comfortably. I have had quite a decent situation offered me. The only thing is I may be away a little more.”

“That’s good news, sir, anyway,” the woman replied heartily. “I mean to say,” she added, “it’s good news about your staying on here. And me and Harris,” she went on, “having no children, so to speak, and you having paid liberal and regular for the last four years, we seem to have a bit of money we’ve no use for,” she added, producing at last that bulging purse, “and we thought maybe you might do us the honour – ”

Jacob took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“For God’s sake, don’t, Mrs. Harris!” he broke in. “If I want it, I’ll come to you. And – God bless you!”

Whereupon he picked up his hat and stick, stepped through the open French window, cut a rose for his buttonhole as usual, and started on his purgatorial walk, making a tremendous effort to look as though nothing had happened.

That walk, alas! surpassed his worst imaginings. Jacob Pratt was a sensitive little man, notwithstanding his rotund body, his fresh complexion and humorous mouth; and all the way from his modest abode to the railway station, he was a prey to fancies which were in some cases, without a doubt, founded upon fact. Mr. Gregson, the manager of the International Stores, at the passing of his discredited customer had certainly retreated from his position on the threshold of his shop, usual at that hour of the morning, and disclosed a morbid but absorbing interest in a tub of margarine. The greengrocer’s wife had looked at him reproachfully from behind a heap of cooking apples, and her response to his diffident greeting was accompanied by a sorrowful wag of the head. The newspaper boy at the entrance to the station had extended his Express almost doubtfully and had clutched with significant caution at the copper coin tendered in exchange for it. The station master had answered his “Good morning” without troubling to turn his head, and the ticket collector had yawned as he moved away from the barrier. Each one of these incidents, trifling though they were in themselves, had been like pinpricks of humiliation to the little man whose geniality had been almost a byword.

The worst trial of all, however, arrived when Jacob entered the carriage in which he had been accustomed, for six days out of seven, to make his journey to the city. As usual, it was occupied by two men, strangers to him commercially, but with whom he had developed a very pleasant acquaintance; Mr. Stephen Pedlar, the well-known accountant to the trade in which Jacob was interested; Mr. Lionel Groome, whose life was spent in a strenuous endeavour to combine the two avocations of man of fashion and liquid glue manufacturer; and – Mr. Edward Bultiwell, of Bultiwell and Sons, Bermondsey, his former condescending patron and occasional host, now, alas! his largest creditor. The porter, being for the first time unaccountably absent, Jacob was compelled to open the door for himself, thereby rendering his nervous entrance more self-conscious than ever. He found himself confronted and encircled by a solid wall of newspapers, stumbled over an outstretched foot, relapsed into the vacant place and looked helplessly around him. A kind word just then might not have helped the lump in Jacob’s throat, but it would certainly have brought a fortune in later life to any one who had uttered it.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” the newcomer ventured.

There was a muttered response from either side of him, – none from the august figure in the opposite corner. Jacob fingered with tentative wistfulness the very choice rose which he was wearing in his buttonhole. Perhaps he ought not to have plucked and worn it. Perhaps it ought not to have opened its soft, sweet petals for an owner who was dwelling in the Valley of Impecunious Disgrace. Perhaps he ought to have ended there and then the good-natured rivalry of years and offered the cherished blossom to his silent creditor in the corner, in place of the very inferior specimen which adorned the lapel of the great man’s coat. Even in that moment of humiliation, Jacob felt a little thrill of triumph at the thought of Mr. Bultiwell’s three gardeners. It took more than gardeners to grow such a rose as he was wearing. He liked to fancy that it took personal care, personal sympathy, personal love. The sweetest and rarest flowers must have their special atmosphere.

Quite suddenly Mr. Edward Bultiwell laid down his Times and glared across at Jacob. He was a large man, with an ugly red face, a neck which hung over his collar in rolls, and a resonant voice. Directly he began to speak, Jacob began to shiver.

“Pratt,” he said, “am I to understand that the greeting which you offered to the occupants of this carriage, when you entered, was intended to include me?”

“I – I certainly meant it to,” was the tremulous reply.

“Then let me beg that such a liberty be not repeated,” Mr. Bultiwell continued brutally. “I look upon a man who has compounded with his creditors as a person temporarily, at any rate, outside the pale of converse with his fellows on – er – equal terms. I look upon your presence in a first-class carriage, wearing a floral adornment,” Mr. Bultiwell added, with a jealous glance at the very beautiful rose, “which is, to say the least of it, conspicuous, as – er – an impertinence to those who have had the misfortune to suffer from your insolvency.”

The healthy colour faded from Jacob’s cheeks. He had the air of one stricken by a lash – dazed for the moment and bewildered.

“My rose cost me nothing,” he faltered, “and my season ticket doesn’t expire till next month. I must go up to the City. My help is needed – with the books.”

Mr. Bultiwell shook his paper preparatory to disappearing behind it.

“Your presence here may be considered a matter of taste,” he fired off, as a parting shot. “I call it damned bad taste!”

Mr. Jacob Pratt sat like a hurt thing till the train stopped at the next station. Then he stumbled out on to the platform, and, making his way through an unaccountable mist, he climbed somehow or other into a third-class carriage. Richard Dauncey, the melancholy man who lived in the cottage opposite to his, looked up at the newcomer’s entrance, and, for the first time within his recollection, Jacob saw him smile.

“Good morning, Mr. Pratt,” the former said, with a strenuous attempt at cordiality. “If you’ll excuse my saying so, that’s the finest rose I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Richard Dauncey made his fortune by that speech – and Jacob had to swallow very hard and look very fixedly out of the window.

CHAPTER I

Precisely two years later, Jacob Pratt sat once more in his cottage sitting-room, contemplating the remains of a barely tasted breakfast. Before him, read for the fiftieth time, were the wonderful letters, in his brain a most amazing confusion, in his heart an almost hysterical joy. Presently Mrs. Harris brought in his hat and stick.

“You’ll excuse my mentioning it, sir,” she said, looking at the former a little disparagingly, “but, brush though I may, there’s no doing much with this hat of yours. The nap’s fair gone. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, sir, but, with the summer coming on, a straw hat – ”

“I’ll buy a straw hat to-day, Mrs. Harris,” Jacob promised.

“And you’ll be home at the usual time for your supper, sir?”

“I – I expect so. I am not quite sure, Mrs. Harris. I shall be home sometime during the day, all right.”

Mrs. Harris shook her head at the sight of the untasted egg.

“You’ll excuse my saying so, sir,” she pronounced severely, “but there’s no good work done on an empty stomach. Times is hard, as we all know, but eggs is cheap.”

“Mrs. Harris,” Jacob reminded her, “it is two years since I left one of your eggs. I left it then because I was miserable. I am leaving it this morning because – I have had good news. I can’t eat. Later on – later on, Mrs. Harris.”

“And a bit of good news is what you deserve, sir,” the latter declared, lingering while he cut his accustomed rose with fingers which trembled strangely.

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Harris,” he said. “When I come back to-night, I’ll tell you all about it.”

Once more, then, two years almost to a day after Mr. Edward Bultiwell, of the great firm of Bultiwell and Sons, had laid down his newspaper and spoken his mind, Jacob was on his way to the station, again wearing a choice rose in his buttonhole. He had found no occasion to change his lodgings, for he had been an economical man who took great care of his possessions even in the days of his prosperity, and his moderate salary as traveller for a Bermondsey firm of merchants brought him in quite enough for his simple needs. He had to some extent lived down his disgrace. The manager of the International Stores nodded to him now, a trifle condescendingly, yet with tacit acknowledgement of the fact that in domestic affairs Jacob was a man of principle who always paid his way. The greengrocer’s wife passed the time of day when not too preoccupied, and the newspaper boy no longer clutched for his penny. Jacob generally met the melancholy man at the corner of the avenue and walked to the station with him. And he still grew roses and worshipped them.

On the way to the station, on this particular morning, he amazed his friend.

“Richard,” he said, “I shall not travel to the City with you to-day. At least I shall not start with you. I shall change carriages at Wendley, as I did once before.”

“The devil!” Richard exclaimed.

They were passing the plate-glass window of a new emporium, and Jacob paused to glance furtively at his reflection. He was an exceedingly neat man, and his care for his clothes and person had survived two years of impecuniosity. Nevertheless, although he passed muster well enough to the casual observer, there were indications in his attire of the inevitable conflict between a desire for adornment and the lack of means to indulge it. His too often pressed trousers were thin at the seams; his linen, though clean, was frayed; there were cracks in his vigorously polished shoes. He looked at himself, and he was suddenly conscious of a most amazing thrill. One of the cherished desires of his life loomed up before him. Even Savile Row was not an impossibility.

At the station he puzzled the booking clerk by presenting himself at the window and demanding a first single to Liverpool Street.

The youth handed him the piece of pasteboard with a wondering glance.

“Your season ain’t up yet, Mr. Pratt.”

“It is not,” Jacob acquiesced, “but this morning I desire to travel to town first-class.”

Whilst he waited for the train, Jacob read again the wonderful letters, folded them up, and was ready, with an air of anticipation, when the little train with its reversed engine came puffing around the curve and brought its few antiquated and smoke-encrusted carriages to a standstill. Everything went as he had hoped. In that familiar first-class carriage, into which he stepped with beating heart, sat Mr. Bultiwell in the farthest corner, with his two satellites, Stephen Pedlar, the accountant, and Lionel Groome. They all stared at him in blank bewilderment as he entered. Mr. Bultiwell, emerging from behind the Times, sat with his mouth open and a black frown upon his forehead.

“Good morning, all,” Jacob remarked affably, as he sprawled in his place and put his legs up on the opposite seat.

He might have dropped a bombshell amongst them with less effect. Every newspaper was lowered, and every one stared at this bold intruder. Then they turned to Mr. Bultiwell. It seemed fittest that he should deal with the matter. Unfortunately, he, too, seemed temporarily bereft of words.

“I seem to have startled you all a bit, what?” Jacob continued, with the air of one thoroughly enjoying the sensation he had produced. “I’ve got my ticket all right. Here you are,” he went on, producing it, – “first-class to Liverpool Street. Thought I’d like to have a look at you all once more. Sorry to see you’re not looking quite your old self, Mr. Bultiwell. Nasty things, these bad debts, eh? Three last week, I noticed. You’ll have to be careful down Bristol way. Things there are pretty dicky.”

“It would be more becoming on your part, sir,” Mr. Bultiwell pronounced furiously, “if you were to hold your tongue about bad debts.”

Jacob snapped his fingers.

“I don’t owe any man a farthing,” he declared.

“An undischarged bankrupt – ”

“Sold again,” Jacob interrupted amiably. “Got my discharge last week.”

Mr. Bultiwell found his tongue at the same time that he lost his temper.

“So that’s the reason you’re butting in here amongst gentlemen whom you’ve lost the right to associate with!” he exclaimed. “You think because you’re whitewashed by the courts you can count yourself an honest man again, eh? You think that because – ”

“Wrong – all wrong,” Jacob interrupted once more, with ever-increasing geniality. “You’ll have to guess again.”

Mr. Groome – the very superior Mr. Groome, who had married a relative of Mr. Bultiwell’s, and who occasionally wore an eyeglass and was seen in the West End – intervened with gentle sarcasm.

“Mr. Pratt has perhaps come to tell us that it is his intention to celebrate the granting of his discharge by paying his debts in full.”

Jacob glanced at the speaker with the air of one moved to admiration.

“Mr. Groome, sir,” he pronounced, “you are a wizard! You must have seen right through into the breast pocket of my coat. Allow me to read you a couple of letters.”

He produced these amazing documents, leisurely unfolding the first. There was no question of newspapers now.

“You will remember,” he said, “that I came to grief because I stood bondsman to my brother, who was out prospecting for oil lands in America. ‘Disgraceful speculation’ Mr. Bultiwell called it, I think. Well, this letter is from Sam:”

Ritz-Carlton Hotel,

New York.

My dear Jacob,

I cabled you this morning to prepare for good news, so don’t get heart failure when you receive this letter. We’ve struck it rich, as I always told you we should. I sold the worse half of our holdings in Arizona for four million dollars last week, and Lord knows what we’ll get for the rest. I’ve cabled you a hundred thousand pounds, to be going on with, to the Bank of England.

Sorry you’ve had such a rough time, old chap, but you’re on velvet for the rest of your life. Have a bottle with your best pal when you get this, and drink my health.

Cheerio!

Sam.

P. S. I should say, roughly speaking, that your share of the rest of the land will work out at something like five million dollars. I hope you’ll chuck your humdrum life now and come out into the world of adventure.

“It’s a fairy tale!” Mr. Groome gasped.

“Let me see the letter,” the accountant implored.

Mr. Bultiwell only breathed hard.

“The other communication,” Jacob continued, unfolding a stiff sheet of paper, “is from the Bank of England, and it is what you might call short and sweet:”

Dear Sir,

We beg to inform you that we have to-day received a credit on your behalf, from our New York branch, amounting to one hundred thousand pounds sterling, which sum we hold at your disposal.

Faithfully yours,

BANK OF ENGLAND.

p. p. J. Woodridge Smith.

“One hundred thousand pounds! God bless my soul!” Mr. Bultiwell gasped.

“I shall be at your office, Mr. Pedlar,” Jacob announced, folding up the letters, “at eleven o’clock.”

“It is your intention, I presume,” the accountant enquired, “to pay your debts in full?”

“Certainly,” Jacob replied. “I thought I had made that clear.”

“A very laudable proceeding,” Mr. Pedlar murmured approvingly.

The train was beginning to slacken speed. Jacob rose to his feet.

“I am changing carriages here,” he remarked. “I am obliged to you all for putting up with my company for so long.”

Mr. Bultiwell cleared his throat. There was noticeable in his tone some return of his former pomposity.

“Under the present circumstances, Mr. Pratt,” he said, “I see no reason why you should leave us. I should like to hear more about your wonderful good fortune and to discuss with you your plans for the future. If you are occupied now, perhaps this evening at home. My roses are worth looking at.”

Jacob smiled in a peculiar fashion.

“I have a friend waiting for me in the third-class portion of the train,” he replied. “Until eleven o’clock, Mr. Pedlar.”

CHAPTER II

The melancholy man was seated in his favourite corner, gazing out at the landscape. He scarcely looked up as Jacob entered. It chanced that they were alone.

“Richard Dauncey,” Jacob said impressively, as soon as the train had started again, “you once sat in that corner and smiled at me when I got in. I think you also wished me good morning and admired my rose.”

“It was two years ago,” Dauncey assented.

“Did you ever hear of a man,” Jacob went on, “who made his fortune with a smile? Of course not. You are probably the first. Look at me steadfastly. This is to be a heart-to-heart talk. Why do you go about looking as though you were the most miserable creature on God’s earth?”

Richard Dauncey sighed.

“You needn’t rub it in. My appearance is against me in business and in every way. I can’t help it. I have troubles.”

“They are at an end,” Jacob declared. “Don’t jump out of the window or do anything ridiculous, my friend, but sit still and listen. You have been starving with a wife and two children on three pounds a week. Your salary from to-day is ten pounds a week, with expenses.”

Dauncey shook his head.

“You are not well this morning, man.”

Jacob produced the letters and handed them over to his friend, who read them with many exclamations of wonder. When he returned them, there was a little flush in his face.

“I congratulate you, Jacob,” he said heartily. “You are one of those men who have the knack of keeping a stiff upper lip, but I know what you have suffered.”

“Congratulate yourself, too, old chap,” Jacob enjoined, holding out his hand. “Exactly what I am going to do in the future I haven’t quite made up my mind, but this I do know – we start a fresh life from lunch-time to-day, you and I. You can call yourself my secretary, for want of a better description, until we settle down. Your screw will be ten pounds a week, and if you refuse the hundred pounds I am going to offer you at our luncheon table at Simpson’s to-day, I shall knock you down.”

Dauncey apologised shamefacedly, a few minutes later, for a brief period of rare weakness.

“It’s the wife, old chap,” he explained, as they drew near the terminus. “You see, I married a little above my station, but there was never any money, and the two kids came and there didn’t seem enough to clothe them properly, or feed them properly, or put even a trifle by in case anything should happen to me. Life’s been pretty hard, Jacob, and I can’t make friends. Or rather I never have been able to until you came along.”

They shook hands once more, a queer but very human proceeding in those overwrought moments.

“Just you walk to the office this morning,” Jacob said, “with your head in the air, and keep on telling yourself there’s no mistake about it. You’re going home to-night with a hundred pounds in bank notes in your pocket, with a bottle of wine under one arm, and a brown paper parcel as big as you can carry under the other. You’re out of the wood, young fellow, and you be thankful for the rest of your life that you found the way to smile one morning. So long till one o’clock at Simpson’s,” he added, as they stepped out on to the platform. “Hi, taxi!”

Mr. Bultiwell came hurrying along, with a good deal less than his usual dignity. He was not one of those men who were intended by nature to proceed at any other than a leisurely pace.

“Pratt,” he called out, “wait a minute. We’ll share that taxi, eh?”

Jacob glanced over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he answered, “I’m not going your way.”

Soon after the opening of that august establishment, Jacob, not without some trepidation, visited the Bank of England. At half-past ten, he strolled into the warehouse of Messrs. Smith and Joyce, leather merchants, Bermondsey Street, the firm for which he had been working during the last two years. Mr. Smith frowned at him from behind a stack of leather.

“You’re late this morning, Pratt,” he growled. “I thought perhaps you had gone over to see that man at Tottenham.”

“The man at Tottenham,” Jacob remarked equably, “can go to hell.”

Mr. Smith was a short, thin man with a cynical expression, a bloodless face and a loveless heart. He opened his mouth a little, a habit of his when surprised.

“I suppose it is too early in the morning to suggest that you have been drinking,” he said.

“You are right,” Jacob acknowledged. “A little later in the day I shall be able to satisfy everybody in that respect.”

Mr. Smith came out from behind the stack of leather. He was wearing a linen smock over his clothes and paper protectors over his cuffs.

“I don’t think you’re quite yourself this morning, Pratt,” he observed acidly.

“I am not,” Jacob answered. “I have had good news.”

Mr. Smith was a farseeing man, with a brain which worked quickly. He remembered in a moment the cause of Jacob’s failure. Oil might be found at any time!

“I am very glad to hear it, Pratt,” he said. “Would you like to come into the office and have a little chat?”

Jacob looked his employer squarely in the face.

“Never so long as I live,” he replied. “Just the few words I want to say to you, Mr. Smith, can be said here. You gave me a job when I was down and out. You gave it to me not out of pity but because you knew I was a damned good traveller. I’ve trudged the streets for you, ridden in tram-cars, ’buses and tubes, sold your leather honestly and carefully for two years. I’ve doubled your turnover; I’ve introduced you to the soundest connection you ever had on your books. Each Christmas a clerk in the counting house has handed me an extra sovereign – to buy sweets with, I suppose! You’ve never raised my salary, you’ve never uttered a word of thanks. I’ve brought you in three of the biggest contracts you ever had in your life, and you accepted them with grudging satisfaction, pretended they didn’t pay you, forgot that I knew what you gave for every ton of your leather that passed through my hands. You’ve been a cold, calculating and selfish employer. You’ll never be a rich man because you haven’t the imagination, and you’ll never be a poor one because you’re too stingy. And now you can go on with your rotten little business and find another traveller, for I’ve finished with you.”

“You can’t leave without a week’s notice,” Mr. Smith snapped.

“Sue me, then,” Jacob retorted, as he turned away. “Put me in the County Court. I shall have the best part of a million to pay the damage with. Good morning to you, Mr. Smith, and I thank Providence that never again in this life have I got to cross the threshold of your warehouse!”

Jacob passed out into the street, whistling lightly. He was beginning to feel himself.

Half an hour later, seated in the most comfortable easy chair of Mr. Pedlar’s private office, a sanctum into which he had never before been asked to penetrate, Jacob discussed the flavour of a fine Havana cigar and issued his instructions for the payment of his debts in full. Mr. Stephen Pedlar, a suave, shrewd man of much versatility, congratulated himself that he had, at all times during his connection with Jacob, treated this erstwhile insignificant defaulter with the courtesy which at least had cost him nothing.

“Most interesting position, yours, Pratt,” the man of figures declared, loitering a little over the final details. “I should like to talk it over with you sometime. What about a little lunch up in the West End to-day?”

Jacob shook his head.

“I am lunching with a friend,” he said. “Thank you very much, all the same.”

“Some other time, then,” Mr. Pedlar continued. “Have you made any plans at all for the future?”

“None as yet worth speaking of.”

“You are a young man,” the accountant continued. “You must have occupation. If the advice of a man of the world is worth having, count me at your disposal.”

“I am very much obliged,” Jacob acknowledged.

“I can be considered wholly impartial,” Mr. Pedlar went on, “because I have no direct interest in whatever you may choose to do with your money, but my advice to you, Mr. Pratt, would be to buy a partnership in one of the leading firms engaged in the industry with which you have been associated.”

“I see,” Jacob reflected. “Go into business again on a larger scale?”

“Exactly,” the accountant assented, “only, go into an established business, with a partner, where you are not too much tied down. You’ll want to enjoy yourself and see a little of the world now. A bungalow down the river for the summer, eh? A Rolls-Royce, of course, and a month or so on the Riviera in the winter. Plenty of ways of getting something out of life, Mr. Pratt, if only one has the means.”

Jacob drew a deep sigh and murmured something noncommittal.

“My advice to you,” his mentor continued, “would be to enjoy yourself, get value for your money, but – don’t give up work altogether. With the capital at your command, you could secure an interest in one of the leading firms in the trade.”

“Were you thinking of any one in particular?” Jacob asked quietly.

Mr. Pedlar hesitated.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Pratt,” he admitted candidly, “I was. I know of a firm at the present moment, one of the oldest and most respected in the trade – I might almost say the most prominent firm – who would be disposed to admit into partnership a person of your standing and capital.”

“You don’t, by any chance, mean Bultiwell’s?”

The accountant’s manner became more earnest. He had the air of one who releases a great secret.

“Don’t mention it, Pratt, whatever you do,” he begged. “Mr. Bultiwell would probably be besieged by applications from people who would be quite useless to him.”

“I shall not tell a soul,” Jacob promised.

“You see,” his companion went on, watching the ash of his cigar for a moment, “the Mortimers and the Craigs have both come to an end so far as regards participation in the business. Colonel Craig was killed playing polo in India, and had no sons, and old Mortimer, too, had only one son, who went into the diplomatic service. That leaves Mr. Bultiwell the sole representative of the firm, and though he has, as you know, a great dislike for new associations, it is certainly too much responsibility for one man.”

“The Mortimer and Craig interests have had to be paid out, I suppose?” Jacob enquired.

“To a certain extent, yes,” Mr. Pedlar admitted. “That is where the opportunity for new capital comes in.”

“I have made no plans yet,” Jacob declared, rising to take his leave. “If you like to place the figures before me within the course of the next week or so, and the suggested terms, I might consider the matter – that is, if I decide to go into business at all.”

“I can’t conceive a more comfortable position for a young man with your knowledge of the trade,” Mr. Pedlar said, as he wished his guest good morning. “You shall have all the figures placed before you. Good morning, and once more my heartiest congratulations, Mr. Pratt.”