"Yes, I have been sleeping in these clothes, and I wish you wouldn't look at me as if I were a kind of freak."
"But you are."
"Aunt Lora, I have not come to you for sym-"
"Bless the boy, don't tell me all the things you have not come to me for. What have you come for? In the first place, why are you in England at all? Have you come to try and get Sybil to go home?"
"I have not. If Sybil is to return home, she must do so of her own free will. I shall not attempt to persuade her. I am here because, on the declaration of war, I was obliged to leave Paris, where I was spending a vacation. When I reached Southampton and tried to get a boat back to New York I found it impossible. My traveller's cheques and my letter of credit were valueless, and I was without a penny. I had lost all my luggage. I set out to walk to you because you were the only person who could tell me where Professor Tupper-Smith lived."
"Professor Tupper-Smith?"
"Certainly. Professor Tupper-Smith. The English bore you planted on me when he visited New York last year."
Hailey spoke bitterly. Over the unconscious head of this same Professor Tupper-Smith there had raged one of the most serious of the battles which had shattered his domestic peace. The professor was a well-known English writer on sociology, who had come to New York with a letter of introduction to Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter, wishing to house him more comfortably than he was being housed at his hotel, had taken him to Sybil. Hailey was out of town at the time, and the thing had been done in his absence. He and Sybil had had one of their first quarrels about it. In the end the professor had stayed on, and incidentally nearly driven Hailey mad.
Now, if a man had nearly driven you mad in New York, bursting with your meat the while, the least he can do, when you call on him, destitute, in England, is to honour your note-of-hand for a few hundred dollars.
That was how Hailey had argued, and that was what had driven him to his aunt. She knew the location of this human El Dorado; he did not.
"Why do you want to see Professor Tupper-Smith?"
Hailey kicked the hard road in his emotion.
"I want to ask him for his photograph. That's all. Of course, I entertain no idea of getting him to lend me money so that I can get back to New York. As he is the only man I know in England, naturally that had not occurred to me."
Mrs. Porter was a grim woman, sparing with her smiles, but at these words she laughed heartily.
"Why, of course! Do you know, Hailey, I think I must be getting stupid. I never realized till now what a complete fix you were in."
"Will you tell me that man's address?"
"No. At least, not for a long time. But I'll do something else. I'll give you a job."
"What do you mean?"
"Hailey, you always were an undisciplined child. I often told your father so-when we were on speaking terms. Rich men's sons are always like that. I was saying to Sybil only yesterday that what you needed was discipline. Discipline and honest work! They may make something of you yet. My odd-job man left me yesterday-you shall take his place. You know what an odd-job man is, I presume? For instance"-she looked past him-"he washes the dog. I see that Mike is rolling again. He cannot understand that we don't like it. You had better catch him and wash him at once, Hailey. Take care he does not bite you. Irish terriers are quick-tempered.'
"Aunt Lora, do you imagine for a moment that I am going to-"
"You won't find out where Professor Tupper-Smith lives if you don't."
Hailey's unshaven jaw fell. There was a silence broken only by the pleased snortings of Mike.
"Aunt Lora, if it is your wish to humiliate me-"
"Don't be absurd, child. Humiliate you, indeed! You talk as if you were a prince of the blood. I am doing you a great kindness. This will be the making of you. You have been spoiled since you were a boy. You treated Sybil as if you were a Sultan. You were a mass of conceit. A month or two of this will-"
"A month or two!"
"Or three," said Mrs. Porter. "Well, make up your mind quickly. You have a perfectly free choice. If you prefer to go on tramping through England, by all means do so."
A minute later Mike, busy with his bird, felt his collar grasped. He gazed up into a set, scrubby-bearded face. It was the face of a man with a hidden sorrow.
"Under the tap in the stable-yard is the best place," said Mrs. Porter.
Of the two principals in the ablutions of Mike, the bather and the bathed, it would have been hard for an impartial spectator to have said which looked the unhappier. Mike's views on total immersion were peculiar. To plunge into any river, pond, or other sheet of water was one of his chief pleasures. In a tub, with soap playing a part in the proceedings, he became a tortured martyr.
Nor did Hailey approach the operation in a more rollicking spirit. He had never washed a dog before. When his dog in New York required washing, some underling below-stairs did it. The thought crossed his mind, as he wrought upon Mike, that whatever that underling's wages were, they were not enough.
He was concentrating tensely upon his task when Sybil entered the yard.
Sybil was in the grip of a number of emotions. When Mrs. Porter had informed her of Hailey's miraculous appearance, joy had predominated. When she learned of his misfortunes, it had been succeeded by pity. Then the curious fact came home to her that, though Hailey was apparently there, he had not yet appeared before her. And when this mystery was explained by the information that he was washing the dog in the stable-yard, her astonishment grew. Finally, when she had grasped the whole position of affairs a great dismay came upon her. She knew Hailey so well-his pride, his sensitive fastidiousness, his aloofness from all that was rough and undignified in the world. This was terrible. She pleaded with Mrs. Porter, but Mrs. Porter remained resolute.
Then she sped to the stable-yard, to witness the horror for herself.
Hailey looked up. Silence reigned in the stable-yard. Hailey looked at Sybil. Sybil stood there without a word. Mike shivered miserably, as one on the brink of the tomb.
"Well?" said Hailey, at length.
"Oh, Hailey!"
"Well?"
"Oh, Hailey, it is nice seeing you again!"
" Isit?"
Sybil's mouth quivered, and her eyes grew large and plaintive. Hailey did not soften. Sybil, he reminded himself, was in Mrs. Porter's camp, and it was Mrs. Porter who had inflicted this beast of a dog on him.
He removed Mike from the tub and enveloped him in the towel.
"Hailey, dear, don't be cross."
"Cross?"
It is difficult for a man conscious of a four days' beard and perhaps a quarter of an inch of English soil on all the exposed parts of his person to raise his eyes with chilly dignity, but Hailey did it. He did it twice.
"Cross?"
"I begged Aunt Lora not to-"
"Not to what?"
"Not to-to make you do this. I begged her to ask you to-to stay with us."
"I am staying with you."
"I mean as a guest."
A third time Hailey raised those dusty eyebrows.
"Do you imagine for a moment that I would accept my aunt's hospitality?"
There was a pause.
Hailey released Mike, who shot out of the yard like a torpedo.
"Why did you come to England, Hailey?"
"I was on a vacation in France, and had to leave."
"You didn't come to-to see me?"
"No."
"Hailey, you don't seem very fond of me."
Hailey picked up the towel and folded it.
"If Aunt Lora tells you where Mr. Tupper-Smith lives, I suppose you will go back to New York again?"
"If Mr. Tupper-Smith will lend me the money, I shall go by the first boat."
He lifted the tub with an air of finality, and emptied it down the drain. Sybil paused irresolutely for a moment, then walked slowly away.
The days which followed did nothing to relieve Hailey's depression. Indeed, they deepened it. He had not imagined that he could ever feel sorrier for himself than he had felt by bedtime that first night, but he discovered that he had merely, so to speak, scratched the surface of gloom.