Bantyre Fortune

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 994, 10 June 1930, Page 5

Bantyre Fortune

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PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL. ARRANGEMENT

V

FRANK PRICE

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS Chapter I and ll.—Mark Seymour .finds himself in an office where girls are busy typing. He gives one of them hist card, saying that he wishes to speak to Mr. Garfield. She disappears, returning in a few seconds to say that Mr. Garfield will see him. Mark passes into an inner room where a tall, cadaverous-looking man, seated at a desk, bids him come to the point at once. Mark says that a man who has been turned down has told him of a vacancy in that firm. Asked for his qualifications, he says that he has been educated at Eton and Oxford, and he can learn. Garfield interrupts to tell him he is not the kind of man they want. There are thousands of men such as he in London, looking for jobs. “The door is behind you/' finishes Garfield, and turns to his desk. Another door bursts open. A short, round-faced man announces: “She is coming. She is in a taxi now." Spying a stranger, he adds: “I thought you were alone." “I shall be in two seconds," Mr. Garfield replies. Mark reaches the street. A taxicab is drawn up to the kerb. A girl is in the act of paying the driver. Mark remembers the words spoken just before he left the room. Unconsciously he blocks the way, transfixed by her beauty. A lad on a bicycle swerves. To save her, he seizes the handle-bar and swings the machine aside. The boy dismounts and takes the bicycle away. She acknowledges that Mark has saved her from a nasty accident. Then she dis-c-overs that his left trouser is badly torn. He cannot go about in that plight. At her suggestion, he gets into the taxi she has just vacated. She asks l’or his address, and he hands her his card. CHAPTER 11. (Continued.) "If I could only hope there would be another time ” he was saying as he extracted a card and held it out; but the driver, seeing an opening in the traffic, slid, into it. The girl made a clutch at the card, their fingers met confusedly and the slip of pasteboard went fluttering to the ground. Mark thrust his head out at the window and looked back, but she was hidden from him by a jumble of vehicles. The cab rolled on and presently he got a glimpse of her head as she mounted the steps leading to the office of Henry M. Bantyne and Co. Then the cab - turned a corner and he threw himself back in the seat, wishing frantically that he knew if she had cared enough to recover his card or had left it where it fell. He closed his eyes, conjuring up

visions of her face and recalling the delicious thrills the mere consciousness of her personality had sent through him, abandoning himself to the witchery of her charm. Suddenly he shook himself and opened his eyes. They were immediately confronted by the dial of the taximeter. He must have been lost in dreams some time, for it already registered two shillings and was ticking merrily toward the next advance. “My aunt!’ - he exclaimed in horror. “I must get out of this!” He leaned forward to call to the driver, but caught sight of his mauveclad knee protruding through the rent in his trousers. A quick, apprehensive glance at the street showed the footpaths crowded by pedestrians and he sank back again with a groan. “I couldn’t walk through them with that infernal banner flapping in the breeze and every dirty-faced kid and giggling girl gaping at my pants!” he thought. He glared at the dial and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, brought out every coin they contained. “Four and sevenpence! We must have come half way by now. Anyhow, I’ll ride as far as I can and chance the consequences—whatever they may be! ” He settled hack, clutching the coins and watching the meter grimly. it ticked implacably and every now and then the figures changed with a cluck that sounded like a chuckle of triumphant malice. Two and sixpence: three shillings: three and sixpence. He looked out of the window. They were in less frequented ways now, but the driver was taking a course with which Mark was not familiar and he could not tell exactly where they were. Still, he thought, he could risk alighting here and was about to order the man to stop. “Cluck!’’ Four shillings were up! He scowled at the dial and could have sworn it grinned hack at him. The cab slipped round a corner and stopped. It had reached his destination. Mark sprang out. handed the driver four shillings and sixpence—though it left him only a penny in the world the training of years was too strong to let him risk the scorn of a cabman presented with his bare legal fare —and went up the unclean steps of the house before which they had stopped. A blowsy woman with soggy figure and flabby face was in the hall as he let himself in with a latchkey. "Ho!” she said. “Things must be lookin’ up when you come ’ome in a taxi, Mr. Seymour! You’ll be able to let me ’ave that three weeks’ rent you owe me! ” “Oh, certainly, Mrs. Moffat!” he answered hurriedly. “You’ll get that all right, hut not just now. I have something to attend to and will see you later.” Dodging past her, he ran up the linoleum-covered stairs, followed by a high-pitched torrent of complaint. On the second floor he entered a small, meanly-furnished room and, shutting the door, turned the key in the lock. Then he sat down on the untidy bed with his head in his hands and his silk-clad knee flauntiDg its mauve covering through his ruined trousers. “I’m fairly up against it now!” his thoughts ran. “Down to my last penny and my only pair of street bags dished! What the dickens am I to do?” He sa-t for a long time turning that question over and over in his mind without arriving at an answer. During more than six weeks all his efforts to find employment had failed as completely as the attempt of that afternoou. He realised at last that there was no place for such as he in in the English labour market. His education had fitted him admirably for the role for which Fate appeared to have cast him at birth —that of the rich son of a rich father whose path in life, so far. at any rate, as material things were concerned, was to be strewn with roses all the way; bur

when the crash came with his father's bankruptcy and death and he was thrown upon his own resources, he found he had not a single qualification for even the humblest kind of paid work. He sat pondering so long that night was drawing on and shadows were gathering in the corners of the sordid room when he stirred at last. His glance fell on his hands and he looked sardonically at tile white skin, the strong, flexible fingers and the carefully trimmed nails. Clenching his right fist he bent the arm, feeling the tensed muscles with the other hand. “Brain is a wash-out!” he muttered. “I shall have to try brawn! Those fellows I saw at the dock gates the other day—surely I’m as good as they! Half of them looked as if they couldn't swing a hundred-pound weight—poor, under-fed fellows with broken spirits and empty bellies! I am fit, anyhow!” He rose, filling his lungs with air, spreading out his arms, flexing them slowly to feel the muscles play. The movement stopped abruptly, a puzzled, startled expression came tover his face and he sank limply on the bed, panting for breath while his heart fluttered wildly. “What the dickens is this?” he gasped. “Something roared in my head like a thousand horse-power engine racing, and if I hadn’t sat down I should have hit the floor with a bump! Am I going to sicken for something, to put the tin lid on all the rest?” He clutched the soiled counterpane with both hands, holding himself rigidly erect. The swimming in his head cleared off and his heart-beats slowed down, hut now he was aware of one insistent, overpowering sensation—a dull, gnawing ache which seemed to have fastened bn his vitals. Suddenly he realised what was amiss. “It’s hunger!” he exclaimed, and there was horror in his voice. “No dinner yesterday, only a cup of tea and a slice of bread today. I’m starving! If something doesn’t turn up, what shall I be like tomorrow? . . Starving!” He shuddered. Memories of pinched faces he had seen almost unnoticed at the time, in the streets, rose before his eyes and melted into the picture of huddled forms passed at night on the Embankment. Great beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and the clutching grip of his fingers on the bed covering tightened. “Is that what is before me?” he ■whispered. “It would be better to end every thing at once!” The knawiug agony seized him again, and he muttered: “Food! I must get food, no matter how! It’s no wonder that poor famished devils, down and out, steal to stay their pangs when they know that others, no better than themselves are gorging all about them. They snatch a loaf and run, and find themselves in gaol for it. I’ll do better than that, though the end will be the same.” He rose, and opening the battered chest of drawers that stood behind the window', took out a dinner-jacket suit, with shirt, collar, tie and socks. “What a, fool I was to keep these!” he said with a. wry smile. “I couldn't bear not being able to make a decent show if I happened on someone 1 knew and w r as asked out. If I had another lounge suit instead, that boy's bicycle ■wouldn’t have knocked the bottom out of everything. But that would only have postponed the inevitable, and the end may as w-ell come now as any other time.” He stripped, showing a lithe, supple frame with perfectly-developed muscles rippling under silky skin, and caught up the cracked water jug. “Three laps round the washhaud basin and then the deluge!” he ex-

claimed. The water came out o£ the jug with a splash, and he took up his sponge. An hour later the head waiter of the famous Hotel Riche was bowing obsequiously before him as he entered the magnificent dining-room. CHAPTER lir. THE SKELETON AT THE FEAST Mark Seymour was a striking figure as he threaded his way across the crowded dining-room of the Hotel Riche on the heels of the head waiter, who was conducting him to a vacant table for two in a far corner. Nothing in his appearance suggested that his entire monetary resources consisted in the sum of one penny, and that only the recklessness of something nearly approaching to black despair was animating him. Many pairs of feminine eyes followed his progress with interest, and a sardonic smile twisted liis lips for an instant as the words of a stately motherly-looking lady reached him as she watched him pass: “What a nice looking boy! Isn’t he typically the man who will do things—the dreamer of wonderfuldreams which he will make come true?” Well, she was right in a way, however far she might be from guessing what that way was! For the last hour or so he had been indulging in the most wonderful dreams —of food in all its forms and manifestations! And now the dreams were to be made true in the shape of a meal for which every atom of his being ached. That was the purpose endowing him with the air of indomitable resolution which impressed the kindly lady: He was about to eat his fill once more! But always, behind these visions, there was another which persisted as a sort of undertone to all his thoughts. Dimly he seemed to be looking at the face of the girl he had met that afternoon. It was because of that meeting that he was in his present plight: but that was not the reflection memory of her roused. His regret was for no material loss, but for something far greater. Recalling her beauty, her vivid charm, the spell her gracious personality bad imposed on him, great surges of fierce rebellion against cruel circumstances would swell up within him. Only a few weeks ago he

might have sought her out and said all that clamoured for utterance when he had looked into her eyes; now, through no fault of his own, an impassable gulf yawned between them. She had suggested the possibility of having another opportunity of thanking him for what he had done! He smiled bitterly at the recollection as he glanced round upon the brilliant throng through whom he was weaving his way. What would they he thinking of him in a little while when, his wild impulse of defiance to the order of established things carried out to the full and the inevitable exposure accomplished, they were witnesses of his disgrace? What would she think if she could see him then ? And after? His act would have consequences, hut he did not let himself think of them. Yet he knew they must come and that if he ever met hex’ afterward he would not dare to speak to her; too probably he would be so changed that she would fail to recognise him. Here, tonight, with every circumstance of luxury about him, he was making his positively last appearance among people of his own class. Where would the next phase be set? Perhaps among those derelicts he had seen, himself as one of them He paused. The head waiter had reached the table for which he had been making and was pulling out a chair. Mark had an almost iri’esistible impulse to turn and fly from the room before he was irrevocably committed; but something prevented him. It was not only the craving for food which was still so strong on him; he could not have retired if he would. That buzzing was in his ears again and he had to catch hold of the chair to steady himself. And then her face swam before him, smiling, inviting, almost pleading with him to stay. He sank, on the chair and the vision cleared as though its purpose were accomplished. Once seated it was all he could do to refrain from ordering the instant production of food and leaving the choice of dishes to chance and the taste cl the waiter; but he conquered the unworthy impulse. Since this might he

the last cecent meal he would ever have it should be one to remember in whatever future was awaiting him. It should be no mere satisfaction <T carnal appetite but a thing of beauty, a poem; a ceremony and a sacrifice. He took the waiter into consultation, found him a man of sympathy ; id imagination, and sent him away be ing and full of reverence for one v, V was evidently an expert in the art of eating and untrammelled by any vulgar preoccupation with expense. Looking after the unsuspecting men, Mark’s conscience gave him a sudden jolt and his face went scarlet. “I forgot the waiter!” he thought with horror. “That fellow is au artist and I shall have to bilk him as well as the hotel! That will be awful!” He glanced toward the door by which he had entered with an impulse to fly; but a fat man in front of him was drinking a perfect-looking somt with musical honours, a shingled gill on his right was separating the fie-ii from the bones of a plump partridc ■ with shining ej’es; there was food all round him! He sat tight, teiling himself: "I'm in for it now! I'll see it through!” He browsed among the ho- » d’oeuvres, fretting his palate, hardly able to resist the louging to clear each dish at a gulp until he pushed th cm all away, recognising the absurdity of trying to put a keener edge on sin h an appetite as possessed him. ait ( glanced found the room to fill in tiro . He had purposely chosen the Riche for his adventure because the set he moved in before the crash in his fortunes rarely came to it. To his relief he did not see a single face he knew. The company, representing both fashion and wealth though it did. inter ested him not at all: but the sight of his waiter approaching with soup was another matter, and he watched him hungrily. As the man set his precious burden on the table a metallic voice with a curiously penetrating quality, sounding from behind and a little to his left, attracted Mark’s attention. (To be Continued Tomorrow. >