CHAPTER IV.
It was a little after midnight when he thrust a loose pile of manuscript impatiently from him and strode to the door.
“Shut up, you old ass!” he commanded.
Robert had been barking in his own deep-toned fashion for the last half hour.
“What is it? Who dares?”
The dog trotted to the end of the veranda, and sat with ears pricked and eyes fastened on the flight of steps leading to the beach road below.
Two lights pierced the darkness at the bottom of them, and voices floated upward on the still night air.
“Sorry, old man; can't manage 'em. Legs simply—crumple. There, what did I tell you?”
The voice died away into a peevish wail.
“Damn these steps!” exploded another that Sprague recognized as his landlord's. “They're the curse of the place. Over our side we'd have an elevator, or an endless carpet, or”
“Then, my dear Walker, install one. Queenscliff is yours, and the fullness thereof. Install one, and earn the ever-lasting gratitude of your tenants. Illuminating idea! Funicular railway—penny a trip—unsurpassed view of Sydney's world-famed harbor—picturesque glimpses of Walker's Forest! I present it free, gratis!”
“Thanks; but it doesn't help us any at the present juncture. Do you want to sit there all night, or will you try again?”
There were the indistinct sounds of heavy breathing, a fall, and a muttered oath.
“Can I help?”
Sprague, in pyjamas and with bare feet, stood looking down on the two men, still clasped in each other's arms. They looked up simultaneously. In the semidarkness he could see only that they were in evening dress and decidedly drunk. Behind them loomed the dim outline of a large touring car.
The stouter of the two men disentangled himself, and rose heavily to his feet.
“Ah, Mr. Sprague!” he said.
“Good evening, Mr. Walker.”
The land agent flicked the sandstone dust from his trousers, and tried hard to appear sober, the success of his efforts indicating long practice.
“This gentleman,” he said, with a pronounced American accent, indicating his companion with a plump, be-ringed hand and a comprehensive wink, “suffers from periodical paralysis of the hind legs, and if you'll give me a hand to get him up the steps I'll be obliged.”
The little gentleman referred to sat on the third step of the flight, gazing abstractedly up the beach road, where the motor car's headlight cut a clean, white slice out of the night. With his immaculate evening dress, neat gray mustache, and air of detached contemplation, he might have been sitting in the front row of the stalls at the Empire:
Sprague sternly repressed a desire to laugh, and descended the remaining steps to his side
“He's not very heavy,” suggested the land agent, as if referring to a sack of flour; but something in the other's attitude forbade approach.
“Why, sure!” agreed his companion, apparently to the empty air. “Mr. Bettington, this is Mr. Sprague, a—er—tenant of mine.”
The little gentleman seemed suddenly imbued with life. He turned to Sprague with a rare smile, and held out a thin, well-shaped hand.
“How d'you do?” he said, with an apprehensive glance up the steps. “It's very good of you. The spirit is willing, Mr. Sprague, but the flesh weak; my legs refuse their appointed task. Mr. Walker, with the best intentions, has succeeded in throwing me on my nose.” He pointed to an abrasion wherefrom the blood was slowly trickling onto his shirt front. “What is your method of overcoming the difficulty?”
His accent was unadulterated Pall-mallese, and fell on Sprague's ears like music of bygone days.
“I think,” he said, “the best thing will be for me to carry you bodily—if you don't mind.”
“I'm in your hands entirely,” agreed the little gentleman, “physically as well as virtually,” he added as Sprague hoisted him onto his back and commenced the ascent. “I can't think what Bagnall can be doing; he never failed me before”
“Perhaps Christmas has something to do with it,” Sprague suggested.
“Christmas!” The little gentleman wriggled. “You don't say this is Christmas Day?”
“It was,” Sprague corrected; “but by now I should think it's Boxing Morning—if there is such a thing.”
“Good Lord!” murmured his burden, and lapsed into a silence that lasted the remainder of the ascent.
At the top of the steps they waited for Mr. Walker, who at last emerged, breathless, but triumphant.
“Dead easy!” he gasped. “It's all in the knees, Bettington. Keep 'em stanch, and you'll get there every time. Over our side”
But the little gentleman, goaded to desperation by the other's achievement, had struggled to his feet, and was making an eccentric progress along the cliff path. Sprague hurried to his side, and was just in time to prevent his headlong collapse into a tree bush. For a moment he stood rigid against the supporting arms, and fixed an accusing eye on the Southern Cross.
“Confound my legs!” he breathed.
“I think you had better let me take you the rest of the way,” said Sprague. And the quaint procession passed on along the path and up a narrow avenue to the door of the white house on the cliff's summit.
With a hurried good night, Sprague turned to go, but the little gentleman detained him with a gesture.
“Come in for a few minutes,” said. “You must be exhausted.”
Sprague mutely indicated his state of dishabille.
“Nobody but ourselves, I assure you,” urged the other; and a moment later they entered a spacious room where a lamp burned low on the table.
After turning it up, their host sank into a deep leather chair with a relieved sigh.
“You must excuse me, gentlemen,” he said. “My legs—Walker, you know where the things are.”
“The things” proved to be a spirit tantalus, a siphon of soda water, and a box of cigars. Everything about the place suggested wealth and refinement gone to seed. The curtains, the carpets, the upholstery of the chairs were all dingy to a degree; but they had all been good—even now were tasteful—and against the wall stood a Jacobean sideboard that Sprague longed to fondle. It was a room unique in the colonies, and he was glad that he had come. His host, too, interested him more than a little, for here in the yellow lamplight Sprague had a better opportunity for studying his face. It was that of a degenerate patrician, refined, sensitive, puffed, and slightly mottled, the eyes blurred, the forehead coursed with swollen veins. His gaze was fastened dreamily on the end of the table, where a meal had been laid for one—a cold chicken and a plum pudding that Sprague instantly recognized as emanating from the Ocean Kiosk.
“It's too bad!” he murmured. “Walker, why didn't you tell me it was Christmas Day? Look at that!”
The land agent paused with his finger on the siphon handle, and his eyes fastened on the eloquent pudding.
“Meg made it,” continued Mr. Bettington accusingly. “I happen to know, because I put half a sovereign into it, and the least we can do is to eat it. Perhaps you will be good enough to help us, Mr. Sprague?”
“I should be delighted,” said that gentleman; and simultaneously with the announcement a muffled laugh issued from a curtained doorway at the end of the room.
“I knew you'd say that!” cried the girl, bursting into the room. Her hair hung loose about the shoulders of her blue kimono, and a white nightdress peeped above and below it. She perched herself on the arm of her father's chair, her glance flinging a laughing challenge at the assembled company.
The land agent raised his glass, and leered at her over its brim. Sprague disliked the man for his own particular reasons, but at that moment he could have kicked him. Mr. Bettington tried to rise, and, failing, contented himself with turning in his chair.
“Meg, isn't this a trifle—er—unusual?” he demanded weakly.
“Of course it is,” she responded, with alacrity; “so is Christmas. Where have you been all last night and to-day—and, oh, dad, what have you done to your nose?” She stroked it gingerly with a little finger.
Mr. Bettington sought refuge in formalities:
“Meg, this is Mr. Sprague, a neighbor of ours. Mr. Sprague—my daughter.”
In striped blue-and-pink pyjamas, Sprague rose and gravely bowed. The girl gave vent to a little gurgle of merriment.
“How do you do?” she said. “You did it very nicely, but I'm going to give it all away. Come, we'll all confess!” She clapped her hands at the notion, and assumed an attitude of mock penitence. “Mr. Sprague and I spent Christmas Day in bathing suits down at the cove, and had afternoon tea at the Haven—and you needn't eat the plum pudding, because I didn't make it; Robert ate the one I made, and I forgot to take out the half sovereign—there! It's your turn, dad.”
Mr. Bettington looked helplessly about him, and the land agent threw himself into the breach.
“Shop, Meg,” he said, with a cumbersome attempt at levity; “nothing but shop. Can't sidetrack Walker's Forest, you know;; it's got to grow even on Christmas Day.”
“Then it oughtn't to,” snapped the girl. “I hate Walker's Forest!”
Her father's delicate hand rested on her arm, and the fingers contracted ever so slightly, but Sprague saw it. The land agent drained his glass, and smiled complacently.
“Maybe now,” he said; “but you'll think more of it by and by, won't she, Mr. Sprague?”
“I'm afraid I don't quite follow,” said Sprague. “I didn't know there was a forest anywhere about here.”
Mr. Walker laughed good-humoredly.
“It's our pet name for it,” he explained. “Notice boards—that's my forest—'For sale. Apply F. J. Walker.' Land, Mr. Sprague, land There's nothing like Queenscliff land; they're beginning to tumble to that. When I came here it was a howling wilderness. I plant my forest, and now they're beginning to clear and build.”
“I see,” said Sprague.
“And now they're only half awake,” continued the land agent, warming to his subject. “Why, over our side we'd have had a city on Queenscliff by this. Australia's another England—she wants our enterprise—hustle—git—boost!”
“And possibly burst,” laughed Sprague.
The other paused in the full flight of rhetoric. His beady eyes narrowed perceptibly as he leaned over the table and tapped it with a stocky forefinger.
“Young man,” he said impressively, “if you want to make money—sure and quick—right here is the place to do it, and now is the time.”
“I don't doubt it,” said Sprague; but there was a disappointing lack of enthusiasm in his tone that seemed to jar on his hearer.
“It doesn't interest you,” he asserted, with a hint of truculence.
Sprague looked into his face. It was not beautiful. Perspiration oozed from it, and the remains of the last whisky and soda trickled down one side of its chin.
“Since you put it that way,” he replied, “I must confess it doesn't.”
“And why? I'm a curious man, Mr. Sprague; I like to know these things; they're part of my business.”
“Well, you see, the interest would be there if, as you suggested, I wanted to make money; but I don't.”
The land agent favored Sprague with the scrutiny a visitor to the zoölogical gardens might bring to bear on an entirely new breed of biped; then he relaxed his attitude and selected a fresh cigar.
“Lucky man!” he sighed. “You remind me of the actor who, when his landlady asked him for money, wanted to know if it was an herb.”
“Exactly,” said Sprague; “I have a sneaking regard for that actor.”
Mr. Walker contemplated the burning end of his cigar with a whimsical smile, while his host, who had shown visible signs of unrest throughout the conversation, fell to curling his mustache feverishly. The girl sat motionless on the arm of the chair, chin on hand, listening intently.
“I've met a few who pretended to despise money,” said the land agent slowly, “but they usually came off their perch at the finish. There's no getting away from it—money talks all lingoes all the time
“Yes, a jargon of its own,” Sprague admitted.
The other laughed. This laugh, the spasmodic upheaval of his gelatinous body, was part of his stock in trade and cost him little effort.
“Gee, but you're refreshing, Mr. Sprague!” he chuckled. “I like to hear you talk, but”—he drew a heavy gold watch from his pocket—“it's half after one—time for good little boys and girls to be in bed.”
He struggled from his chair and crossed the room.
“Good night, my dear,” he said; and, to Sprague's utter astonishment, kissed the girl on the lips.
The action was sudden and peculiarly revolting. Sprague was conscious of a wave of relief as he noticed the girl's embarrassment; she at least resented it; then why—“I'm engaged, you know.” The simple announcement, laughingly uttered down on the beach, recurred to him. Was it possible? This laughter-loving child of the sun and sea, and—Walker! The thing was ludicrous—unthinkable!
“Good night, Mr. Sprague,” Mr. Bettington's thin voice broke in on his fervid reflections like a cold douche. “I hope we shall see more of you in future.”
“Give my love to Robert,” the girl added at the door; and Sprague found himself following the land agent down the avenue.