Jacob's Ladder

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

“Quite a tragical story, her father’s death,” a man at the same table observed. “I don’t know whether you ever heard about it, Mr. Pratt. He was a leather merchant in a very large way in the city, but got into difficulties somehow. His one hope was that a friend who had a lot of money would come into partnership with him. It seems that the friend not only refused to do so when the moment came, but was rather rough on poor old Bultiwell about the way he had been conducting his business—so much so that he blew out his brains in the office, an hour or so after their interview.”

“How brutal of the friend!” the girl observed. “He might have let him down gently. You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you, Mr. Pratt?”

Jacob opened his lips to tell the truth, but closed them again. After all, why should he say a single word to mar the pervading impression of good-heartedness and happiness? The man was so anxious to improve his acquaintance with Jacob; the girl, who had moved her chair as though unconsciously a little closer to his, even more so. He met the smiling question in her eyes a little gravely but with no lack of friendliness.

“One never knows quite what one would do under certain circumstances,” he said. “If Mr. Bultiwell, for instance, had tried to deceive his friend and had been found out, I imagine it is only fair that he should have heard the truth.”

“He must have been told it in a cruel way, though, or he would never have committed suicide,” the girl persisted. “I am quite sure that you couldn’t do anything in a cruel way, Mr. Pratt.”

“I am going to be cruel to myself, at any rate,” Jacob replied, “and go over and start those foursomes.”

Jacob rose to his feet. The girl’s look of disappointment was so ingenuous that he turned back to her.

“Won’t you come with me, Miss Haslem?” he invited.

She sprang up and walked gladly by his side, chattering away as they stood on a slight eminence overlooking the first tee, using all the simple and justifiable weapons in her little armoury of charms to win a smile and a little notice, perhaps even a later thought from the great man of the day whose wealth alone made him seem almost like a hero of romance. She was a pleasant-faced girl, with clear brown eyes and masses of hair brushed back from her forehead and left unhandicapped by any headgear to dazzle the eye of the beholder. Her blouse was cut a little low, but the writer of the young ladies’ journal, who had sent her the pattern, had assured her that it was no lower than fashion permitted. Her white skirt was a little short, and her stockings were very nearly silk. She was twenty-two years old, fairly modest, moderately truthful, respectably brought up, but she was the eldest of four, and she would have fallen at Jacob’s feet and kissed the ground beneath them for a sign of his favour. Jacob, with the echoes of that tragic story still in his ears, wondered, as he stood with his hands behind his back, whether in those few minutes, when he had taken his meed of revenge, he had indeed raised up a ghost which was to follow him through life. More than anything in the world, what he wanted besides the good-fellowship of other men was the love and companionship of a wife. Was his to be the dream of Tantalus? Here, young womanhood of his own class, eager, sufficiently comely, stood striving to weave the spell of her sex upon him, with a lack of success which was almost pitiable. It was the selective instinct with which he was cursed. Something had even gone from the sad pleasure with which he used to be able to conjure up pictures of Sybil. It was almost as though the thought of her had ceased to attract him, and with the passing of the spell which she had laid upon him had come a passion as strong as ever for her sex, coupled with hopeless and glacial indifference to its human interpretesses. The girl began to feel the strain of a monosyllabic listener, but she had the courage of a heroine. She clutched her companion’s arm as her father topped his drive from the first tee. As though by accident, her fingers remained on Jacob’s coat sleeve.

“Poor dad!” she sighed. “Did you see him miss his drive? He’ll be so disappointed. He used to play quite well, but that wretched City—he doesn’t seem to be able to shake it off, nowadays. I wonder why it’s so difficult, Mr. Pratt,” she added, raising her eyes artlessly to his, “for some people to make money?”