3
Daylight brought no comforting answer to the question. Breakfast failed
to manufacture an easy mind. Sally got off the train, at the Grand
Central station in a state of remorseful concern. She declined the offer
of Mr. Carmyle to drive her to the boarding-house, and started to walk
there, hoping that the crisp morning air would effect a cure.
She wondered now how she could ever have looked with approval on her
rash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling had
possessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them.
She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothing
more nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man,
obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assisted
through life by his relatives, and she had deliberately egged him on to
wreck his prospects. She blushed hotly as she remembered that mad
wireless she had sent him from the boat.
Miserable Ginger! She pictured him, his little stock of money gone,
wandering foot-sore about London, seeking in vain for work; forcing
himself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps by
haughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark waters
of the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing to the parapet
and...
"Ugh!" said Sally.
She had arrived at the door of the boarding-house, and Mrs. Meecher was
regarding her with welcoming eyes, little knowing that to all practical
intents and purposes she had slain in his prime a red-headed young man
of amiable manners and--when not ill-advised by meddling, muddling
females--of excellent behaviour.
Mrs. Meecher was friendly and garrulous. Variety, the journal which,
next to the dog Toto, was the thing she loved best in the world, had
informed her on the Friday morning that Mr. Foster's play had got over
big in Detroit, and that Miss Doland had made every kind of hit. It was
not often that the old alumni of the boarding-house forced their way
after this fashion into the Hall of Fame, and, according to Mrs.
Meecher, the establishment was ringing with the news. That blue ribbon
round Toto's neck was worn in honour of the triumph. There was also,
though you could not see it, a chicken dinner in Toto's interior, by way
of further celebration.
And was it true that Mr. Fillmore had bought the piece? A great man, was
Mrs. Meecher's verdict. Mr. Faucitt had always said so...
"Oh, how is Mr. Faucitt?" Sally asked, reproaching herself for having
allowed the pressure of other matters to drive all thoughts of her late
patient from her mind.
"He's gone," said Mrs. Meecher with such relish that to Sally, in her
morbid condition, the words had only one meaning. She turned white and
clutched at the banisters.
"Gone!"
"To England," added Mrs. Meecher. Sally was vastly relieved.
"Oh, I thought you meant..."
"Oh no, not that." Mrs. Meecher sighed, for she had been a little
disappointed in the old gentleman, who started out as such a promising
invalid, only to fall away into the dullness of robust health once more.
"He's well enough. I never seen anybody better. You'd think," said Mrs.
Meecher, bearing bearing up with difficulty under her grievance, "you'd
think this here new Spanish influenza was a sort of a tonic or somep'n,
the way he looks now. Of course," she added, trying to find
justification for a respected lodger, "he's had good news. His brother's
dead."
"What!"
"Not, I don't mean, that that was good news, far from it, though, come
to think of it, all flesh is as grass and we all got to be prepared for
somep'n of the sort breaking loose...but it seems this here new brother of
his--I didn't know he'd a brother, and I don't suppose you knew he had a
brother. Men are secretive, ain't they!--this brother of his has left
him a parcel of money, and Mr. Faucitt he had to get on the Wednesday
boat quick as he could and go right over to the other side to look after
things. Wind up the estate, I believe they call it. Left in a awful
hurry, he did. Sent his love to you and said he'd write. Funny him
having a brother, now, wasn't it? Not," said Mrs. Meecher, at heart a
reasonable woman, "that folks don't have brothers. I got two myself, one
in Portland, Oregon, and the other goodness knows where he is. But what
I'm trying to say..."
Sally disengaged herself, and went up to her room. For a brief while
the excitement which comes of hearing good news about those of whom we
are fond acted as a stimulant, and she felt almost cheerful. Dear old
Mr. Faucitt. She was sorry for his brother, of course, though she had
never had the pleasure of his acquaintance and had only just heard that
he had ever existed; but it was nice to think that her old friend's
remaining years would be years of affluence.
Presently, however, she found her thoughts wandering back into their
melancholy groove. She threw herself wearily on the bed. She was tired
after her bad night.
But she could not sleep. Remorse kept her awake. Besides, she could
hear Mrs. Meecher prowling disturbingly about the house, apparently in
search of someone, her progress indicated by creaking boards and the
strenuous yapping of Toto.
Sally turned restlessly, and, having turned remained for a long instant
transfixed and rigid. She had seen something, and what she had seen was
enough to surprise any girl in the privacy of her bedroom. From
underneath the bed there peeped coyly forth an undeniably masculine shoe
and six inches of a grey trouser-leg.
Sally bounded to the floor. She was a girl of courage, and she meant to
probe this matter thoroughly.
"What are you doing under my bed?"
The question was a reasonable one, and evidently seemed to the intruder
to deserve an answer. There was a muffled sneeze, and he began to crawl
out.
The shoe came first. Then the legs. Then a sturdy body in a dusty
coat. And finally there flashed on Sally's fascinated gaze a head of so
nearly the maximum redness that it could only belong to one person in
the world.
"Ginger!"
Mr. Lancelot Kemp, on all fours, blinked up at her.
"Oh, hullo!" he said.
