A Knight on Wheels Part 55

"Will I try?" echoed Miss Jennings wonderingly. "Isn't it a little late in the day?"

"Well--would you try?"

"Would I?" Miss Jennings's voice suddenly broke. "What's the use of my trying?" she demanded tearfully. "Bob's on the other side of the world now--taken up with another girl as likely as not. What's the good of asking me what I would do when I can't do it?"

She was crying in earnest now.

"Supposing--just supposing--" began Philip.

"Oh, stop your supposing!" the girl blazed out pa.s.sionately. "Don't you see I can't bear it? I want him! I'm frightened of everything, and I want Bob! And it's too late!"

"Stay exactly where you are for about five minutes," commanded Philip.

And he disappeared in the darkness.

A few minutes later Bath-Steward Brand was incurring the risk of ignominious expulsion from the service of the merchant marine by trespa.s.sing upon a portion of the deck strictly reserved for pa.s.sengers.

Philip went to bed.

Philip, leaning over the forward rail of the boatdeck and surveying the silhouette of New York, rising like a row of irregular teeth upon the distant horizon, talked to himself in order to keep his spirits up.

"Theophilus, my lad,"--he liked to call himself by that name, because Peggy had sometimes used it,--"so far, your scheme of fresh friends and pastures new has turned out a fizzle. You took this trip in order to see new faces and make new friends, and generally put the past behind you.

The net result is that you have not made a single new acquaintance.

Instead, you have devoted your entire energies to interfering in the affairs of a second-cla.s.s lady pa.s.senger and a bath-steward, neither of whom can be described under any circ.u.mstances as a new friend. You must make a real effort when you land."

But Fate was against him. He descended to the saloon, and having there satisfied an Immigration official, sitting behind a pile of papers, that he was neither a pauper, a lunatic, nor an anarchist, could read and write, and was not suffering from any disease of the eyeball, he purchased one of the newspapers which the pilot had brought on board in the early morning, and retired to a sunny corner to occupy himself, after a week's abstention, in getting abreast of the news of the day. He unfolded the crackling sheet.

It was his first introduction to that stupendous organ of private opinion, the American newspaper.... When he had recovered his breath, and the shouting scarelines had focussed themselves into some sort of proportion, he worked methodically through the entire journal, discovering ultimately, to his relief, that nothing very dreadful had happened after all. He had almost finished, when his eye fell upon a small paragraph at the foot of a column, with its headlines set in comparatively modest type.

CUPID GETS BUSY IN THE STUDIO

WELL-KNOWN BRITISH PAINTERS WED

LOVE COMES LATE IN LIFE TO MONTAGU FALCONER a.s.sOCIATE OF BRITISH ACADEMY AND JEAN LESLIE FAMOUS WOMAN MINIATURIST

_We cull the following from the London "Times":_

_Falconer-Leslie. At St. Peter's, Eaton Square, on the 4th inst., Montagu Falconer, A.R.A., to Jean Leslie, only daughter of the late General Sir Ian Leslie, V.C., of Inverdurie, Invernesshire._

A quarter of a column followed, expatiating upon the fact that the wedding took place very quietly at ten o'clock in the morning, and that reporters had met with a discouraging reception from the bridegroom.

Then came a list of Montagu's best-known pictures. But Philip did not read it. He threw the paper down on deck, and started to his feet.

The Bosphorus had come to a standstill at the opening of her berth, waiting for the tugs to turn her in. Protruding from the next opening was the forepart of a monster liner, from whose four funnels smoke was spouting.

Philip enquired of a pa.s.sing quartermaster:--

"What ship is that, please?"

"The Caspian, sir. Our record-breaker!" said the man, with proper pride.

"She sails for Liverpool at noon."

Half an hour later Philip found himself and his belongings dumped upon the Continent of America. A minion of the rapacious but efficient ring of buccaneers which controls the entire transport system of the United States confronted him.

"Where shall I express your baggage?" he enquired.

"You can put it on board the Caspian," replied Philip.

"Gee!" remarked the expressman admiringly.

"Some hustler, ain't you?"

"I am," said Philip--"this trip! Get busy!"

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF THEOPHILUS

"PRETTY hot stuff this port of yours, old son--what?"

"Take some more," grunted Philip.

"Thank you. That _was_ the situation I was endeavouring to lead up to,"

said Timothy, and helped himself.

"It's a blessing to see your honest but homely features once again," he continued, lifting his gla.s.s, "especially when you signalise your return by replenishing the wine-cellar. Chin-chin, old thing!"

Philip, sitting on one chair with his feet on another and smoking a briar pipe, grunted again. Timothy rose, and lit a cigarette with a live coal from the fire. (Matches were never a conspicuous feature of a bachelor establishment, however well regulated.) As he did so, his eye was caught by a pair of tall and hideous vases,--of the kind which is usually given away at cooperative stores to customers who have been rash enough to acc.u.mulate a certain number of coupons,--standing one at each end of the mantelpiece.

"Oh, my dear old Theophilus," moaned the aesthetic Timothy, "do you mean to say you have resurrected the Bulgarian Atrocities?"

The ornaments in question had been a Christmas present from Mrs. Grice.

("I bought 'em just before closing-time at a Sale of Work what my married sister in the Wandsworth Road was interested in, sir," she had explained. "A Sale of Work in aid of the Bulgarian Atrocities, it was. I said to Grice at the time that they would brighten up your room something wonderful. There they are, sir, with our respectful Christmas wishes--one from Grice and one from me. Oh, thank you sir!") Hence their name.

"Yes," said Philip; "Mrs. Grice got them out of the cupboard as soon as I returned, and they were duly washed and put up this morning. I was hoping she had forgotten about them; but they will have to stay there now. We mustn't offend the old lady. You are a tremendous swell to-night, Tim. Going out?"

"Yes," said Tim importantly, "I am." He produced a pair of white gloves and began to try them on, surveying Philip's aged dinner-jacket and black tie with tolerant indulgence.

"I must now pull myself together," he announced, turning to survey an appallingly tight white waistcoat with immense satisfaction in the gla.s.s over the mantelpiece, "and pa.s.s along quietly."

"You needn't go yet," said Philip, filling another pipe.

"Despite your frenzied entreaties, old son," replied Timothy, "I simply must. There is going to be dirty work at the crossroads to-night," he added mysteriously.