“He’s taken me on as secretary,” he announced. “First job, trip out to America to visit sick brother and look after business complications. We’ve dealt with weighty affairs already this morning.”
“What’s become of your Mr. Dauncey, then?” Sybil enquired.
“I have made him secretary of the Cropstone Wood Estates Company,” Jacob told her. “He has my affairs to look after as well while I am away.”
A sound familiar to the nautical ears of Lord Felixstowe reached them from the bows of the ship.
“Sun’s over the yardarm,” he announced. “How are you feeling now, old—Mr. Pratt?”
“You order,” Jacob replied.
It was a moderately cheerful little party who drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Afterwards, however, Jacob passed a day of curiously tangled sensations. The summons to New York had been too peremptory for him to delay even an hour, but he had sent a note to Miss Bultiwell at the address in Belgrave Square, asking for a few minutes’ interview before he left. Naturally he had received no answer. Now he was face to face with absolute and accomplished failure in one of the fixed purposes of his life. He was an obstinate person, used to success,—so used to it, in fact, that the present situation left him dazed. His first determination, when success had smiled upon him, had been to marry Sybil Bultiwell. He had never flinched from that purpose. He had even, in his heart, considered himself engaged. Any thoughts which might have come to him of any other woman he had pushed away as a species of infidelity. And now there wasn’t any Sybil Bultiwell. She was married and out of his reach. He felt that the proper thing for him to do was to go down to his cabin and nurse his broken heart; instead of which he drank champagne for dinner, found a few kindred spirits who liked a mild game of poker, and went to bed whistling at two o’clock in the morning. His young companion, who had won a fiver and was in a most beatific state, came and sat on his bunk whilst he undressed.
“Jacob, my well-beloved,” he said, “you are taking this little setback like a hero.”
“What setback?” Jacob asked.
“Little affair of Miss Bultiwell,” Felixstowe replied, gazing admiringly at Jacob’s well-suspended silk socks. “Mary told me all about it.”