CHAPTER SEVEN
1.
In the lives of each one of us, as we look back and review them in
retrospect, there are certain desert wastes from which memory winces
like some tired traveller faced with a dreary stretch of road. Even
from the security of later happiness we cannot contemplate them
without a shudder. Time robs our sorrows of their sharp vividness,
but the horror of those blank, gray days never wholly passes. It
remains for ever at the back of our consciousness to remind us that,
though we may have struggled through it to the heights, there is an
abyss. We may dwell, like the Pilgrim, on the Delectable Mountains,
but we never forget the Slough of Despond. Years afterwards, Jill
could not bring herself to think of that brief but age-long period
which lay between the evening when she read Derek's letter and the
morning when, with the wet sea-wind in her face and the cry of the
wheeling sea-gulls in her ears, she stood on the deck of the liner
that was taking her to the land where she could begin a new life. It
brooded behind her like a great, dank cloud, shutting out the
sunshine.
The conditions of modern life are singularly inimical to swift and
dramatic action when we wish to escape from surroundings that have
become intolerable. In the old days, your hero would leap on his
charger and ride out into the sunset. Now, he is compelled to remain
for a week or so to settle his affairs,--especially if he is an Uncle
Chris--and has got those affairs into such a tangle that hardened
lawyers knit their brows at the sight of them. It took one of the
most competent firms in the metropolis four days to produce some sort
of order in the confusion resulting from Major Selby's financial
operations; and during those days Jill existed in a state of being
which could be defined as living only in that she breathed and ate
and comported herself outwardly like a girl and not a ghost.
Boards announcing that the house was for sale appeared against the
railings through which Jane the parlormaid conducted her daily
conversations with the tradesmen. Strangers roamed the rooms eyeing
and appraising the furniture. Uncle Chris, on whom disaster had had a
quickening and vivifying effect, was everywhere at once, an
impressive figure of energy. One may be wronging Uncle Chris, but to
the eye of the casual observer he seemed in these days of trial to be
having the time of his life.
Jill varied the monotony of sitting in her room--which was the only
place in the house where one might be sure of not encountering a
furniture-broker's man with a note-book and pencil--by taking long
walks. She avoided as far as possible the small area which had once
made up the whole of London for her, but even so she was not always
successful in escaping from old acquaintances. Once, cutting through
Lennox Gardens on her way to that vast, desolate King's Road which
stretches its length out into regions unknown to those whose London
is the West End, she happened upon Freddie Rooke, who had been paying
a call in his best hat and a pair of white spats which would have cut
his friend Henry to the quick. It was not an enjoyable meeting.
Freddie, keenly alive to the awkwardness of the situation, was
scarlet and incoherent; and Jill, who desired nothing less than to
talk with one so intimately connected in her mind with all that she
had lost, was scarcely more collected. They parted without regret.
The only satisfaction that came to Jill from the encounter was the
knowledge that Derek was still out of town. He had wired for his
things, said Freddie and had retreated further north. Freddie, it
seemed, had been informed of the broken engagement by Lady Underhill
in an interview which appeared to have left a lasting impression on
his mind. Of Jill's monetary difficulties he had heard nothing.
After this meeting, Jill felt a slight diminution of the oppression
which weighed upon her. She could not have borne to have come
unexpectedly upon Derek, and, now that there was no danger of that,
she found life a little easier. The days passed somehow, and finally
there came the morning when, accompanied by Uncle Chris--voluble and
explanatory about the details of what he called "getting everything
settled"--she rode in a taxi to take the train for Southampton. Her
last impression of London was of rows upon rows of mean houses, of
cats wandering in back-yards among groves of home-washed
underclothing, and a smoky grayness which gave way, as the train
raced on, to the clearer gray of the suburbs and the good green and
brown of the open country.
Then the bustle and confusion of the liner; the calm monotony of the
journey, when one came on deck each morning to find the vessel so
manifestly in the same spot where it had been the morning before that
it was impossible to realize how many hundred miles of ocean had
really been placed behind one; and finally the Ambrose Channel
lightship and the great bulk of New York rising into the sky like a
city of fairyland, heartening yet sinister, at once a welcome and a
menace.
"There you are, my dear!" said Uncle Chris indulgently, as though it
were a toy he had made for her with his own hands. "New York!"
They were standing on the boat-deck, leaning over the rail. Jill
caught her breath. For the first time since disaster had come upon
her she was conscious of a rising of her spirits. It is impossible to
behold the huge buildings which fringe the harbor of New York without
a sense of expectancy and excitement. There had remained in Jill's
mind from childhood memories a vague picture of what she now saw, but
it had been feeble and inadequate. The sight of this towering city
seemed somehow to blot out everything that had gone before. The
feeling of starting afresh was strong upon her.
Uncle Chris, the old traveller, was not emotionally affected. He
smoked placidly and talked in a wholly earthy strain of grape-fruit
and buckwheat cakes.
It was now, also for the first time, that Uncle Chris touched upon
future prospects in a practical manner. On the voyage he had been
eloquent but sketchy. With the land of promise within biscuit-throw
and the tugs bustling about the great liner's skirts like little dogs
about their mistress, he descended to details.
"I shall get a room somewhere," said Uncle Chris, "and start looking
about me. I wonder if the old Holland House is still there. I fancy I
heard they'd pulled it down. Capital place. I had a steak there in
the year . . . But I expect they've pulled it down. But I shall find
somewhere to go. I'll write and tell you my address directly I've got
one."
Jill removed her gaze from the sky-line with a start.
"Write to me?"
"Didn't I tell you about that?" said Uncle Chris cheerily,--avoiding
her eye, however, for he had realized all along that it might be a
little bit awkward breaking the news. "I've arranged that you shall
go and stay for the time being down at Brookport--on Long Island, you
know--over in that direction--with your Uncle Elmer. Daresay you've
forgotten you have an Uncle Elmer, eh?" he went on quickly, as Jill
was about to speak. "Your father's brother. Used to be in business,
but retired some years ago and goes in for amateur farming. Corn
and--and corn," said Uncle Chris. "All that sort of thing. You'll
like him. Capital chap! Never met him myself, but always heard," said
Uncle Chris, who had never to his recollection heard any comments
upon Mr Elmer Mariner whatever, "that he was a splendid fellow.
Directly we decided to sail, I cabled to him, and got an answer
saying that he would be delighted to put you up. You'll be quite
happy there."
Jill listened to this programme with dismay. New York was calling to
her, and Brookport held out no attractions at all. She looked down
over the side at the tugs puffing their way through the broken blocks
of ice that reminded her of a cocoanut candy familiar to her
childhood.
"But I want to be with you," she protested.
"Impossible, my dear, for the present. I shall be very busy, very
busy indeed for some weeks, until I have found my feet. Really, you
would be in the way. He--er--travels the fastest who travels alone! I
must be in a position to go anywhere and do anything at a moment's
notice. But always remember, my dear," said Uncle Chris, patting her
shoulder affectionately, "that I shall be working for you. I have
treated you very badly, but I intend to make up for it. I shall not
forget that whatever money I may make will really belong to you." He
looked at her benignly, like a monarch of finance who has ear-marked
a million or two for the benefit of a deserving charity. "You shall
have it all, Jill."
He had so much the air of having conferred a substantial benefit upon
her that Jill felt obliged to thank him. Uncle Chris had always been
able to make people grateful for the phantom gold which he showered
upon them. He was as lavish a man with the money he was going to get
next week as ever borrowed a five-pound note to see him through till
Saturday.
"What are you going to do, Uncle Chris?" asked Jill curiously. Apart
from a nebulous idea that he intended to saunter through the city
picking dollar-bills off the sidewalk, she had no inkling of his
plans.
Uncle Chris toyed with his short mustache. He was not quite equal to
a direct answer on the spur of the moment. He had a faith in his
star. Something would turn up. Something always had turned up in the
old days, and doubtless, with the march of civilization,
opportunities had multiplied. Somewhere behind those tall buildings
the Goddess of Luck awaited him, her hands full of gifts, but
precisely what those gifts would be he was not in a position to say.
"I shall--ah--how shall I put it--?"
"Look round?" suggested Jill.
"Precisely," said Uncle Chris gratefully. "Look round. I daresay you
have noticed that I have gone out of my way during the voyage to make
myself agreeable to our fellow-travellers? I had an object.
Acquaintances begun on shipboard will often ripen into useful
friendships ashore. When I was a young man I never neglected the
opportunities which an ocean voyage affords. The offer of a book
here, a steamer-rug there, a word of encouragement to a chatty bore
in the smoke-room--these are small things, but they may lead to much.
One meets influential people on a liner. You wouldn't think it to
look at him, but that man with the eye-glasses and the thin nose I
was talking to just now is one of the richest men in Milwaukee!"
"But it's not much good having rich friends in Milwaukee when you are
in New York!"
"Exactly. There you have put your finger on the very point I have
been trying to make. It will probably be necessary for me to travel.
And for that I must be alone. I must be a mobile force. I should
dearly like to keep you with me, but you can see for yourself that
for the moment you would be an encumbrance. Later on, no doubt, when
my affairs are more settled . . ."
"Oh, I understand. I'm resigned. But, oh dear! it's going to be very
dull down at Brookport."
"Nonsense, nonsense! It's a delightful spot."
"Have you been there?"
"No! But of course everybody knows Brookport! Healthy, invigorating
. . . Sure to be! The very name . . . You'll be as happy as the days
are long!"
"And how long the days will be!"
"Come, come! You mustn't look on the dark side!"
"Is there another?" Jill laughed. "You are an old hum-bug, Uncle
Chris. You know perfectly well what you're condemning me to! I expect
Brookport will be like a sort of Southend in winter. Oh, well, I'll
be brave. But do hurry and make a fortune, because I want to come to
New York."
"My dear," said Uncle Chris solemnly, "if there is a dollar lying
loose in this city, rest assured that I shall have it! And, if it's
not loose, I will detach it with the greatest possible speed. You
have only known me in my decadence, an idle and unprofitable London
clubman. I can assure you that, lurking beneath the surface, there is
a business acumen given to few men . . ."
"Oh, if you are going to talk poetry," said Jill, "I'll leave you.
Anyhow, I ought to be getting below and putting my things together.
Subject for a historical picture,--The Belle of Brookport collecting
a few simple necessaries before entering upon the conquest of
America."
