“What an absolutely corking idea!”
Jerry smirked modestly at the approbation, but returned instantly to his gloom.
“You get me now? What am I to say to her? She’ll be sore!”
“The problem,” Jimmy had begun, “is one which, as you suggest, presents certain–” when there was a knock at the door and the head of the boarding-house’s maid-of-all-work popped in.
“Mr. Bayliss, is Mr. Mitchell–? Oh, say, Mr. Mitchell, there’s a lady down below wants to see you. Says her name’s Chester.”
Jerry looked at Jimmy appealingly.
“What’ll I do?”
“Do nothing,” said Jimmy, rising and reaching for his shoes. “I’ll go down and see her. I can explain for you.”
“It’s mighty good of you.”
“It will be a pleasure. Rely on me.”
Ann, who had returned from her drive shortly after the Ogden disaster and had instantly proceeded to the boarding-house, had been shown into the parlour. Jimmy found her staring in a rapt way at a statuette of the Infant Samuel which stood near a bowl of wax fruit on the mantelpiece. She was feeling aggrieved with Fate and extremely angry with Jerry Mitchell, and she turned at the sound of the opening door with a militant expression in her eyes, which changed to one of astonishment on perceiving who it was that had come in.
“Mr. Bayliss!”
“Good evening, Miss Chester. We, so to speak, meet again. I have come as an intermediary. To be brief, Jerry Mitchell daren’t face you, so I offered to come down instead.”
“But how–but why are you here?”
“I live here.” He followed her gaze. It rested on a picture of cows in a field. “Late American school,” he said. “Attributed to the landlady’s niece, a graduate of the Wissahickon, Pa. Correspondence School of Pictorial Art. Said to be genuine.”
“You -live- here?” repeated Ann. She had been brought up all her life among the carefully thought out effects of eminent interior decorators, and the room seemed more dreadful to her than it actually was. “What an awful room!”
“Awful? You must be overlooking the piano. Can’t you see the handsome plush cover from where you are standing? Move a little to the southeast and shade your eyes. We get music here of an evening–when we don’t see it coming and sidestep.”
“Why in the name of goodness do you live here, Mr. Bayliss?”
“Because, Miss Chester, I am infernally hard up! Because the Bayliss bank-roll has been stricken with a wasting sickness.”
Ann was looking at him incredulously.
“But–but–then, did you really mean all that at lunch the other day? I thought you were joking. I took it for granted that you could get work whenever you wanted to or you wouldn’t have made fun of it like that! Can’t you really find anything to do?”
“Plenty to do. But I’m not paid for it. I walk a great number of blocks and jump into a great number of cars and dive into elevators and dive out again and open doors and say ‘Good morning’ when people tell me they haven’t a job for me. My days are quite full, but my pocket-book isn’t!”
Ann had forgotten all about her errand in her sympathy.
“I’m so sorry. Why, it’s terrible! I should have thought you could have found -something-.”
“I thought the same till the employers of New York in a body told me I couldn’t. Men of widely differing views on religion, politics, and a hundred other points, they were unanimous on that. The nearest I came to being a financial Titan was when I landed a job in a store on Broadway, demonstrating a patent collar-clip at ten dollars a week. For awhile all Nature seemed to be shouting ‘Ten per! Ten per!’ than which there are few sweeter words in the language. But I was fired half-way through the second day, and Nature changed her act.”
“But why?”
“It wasn’t my fault. Just Fate. This contrivance was called Klipstone’s Kute Kollar-Klip, and it was supposed to make it easy for you to fasten your tie. My job was to stand in the window in my shirt-sleeves, gnashing my teeth and registering baffled rage when I tried the old, obsolete method and beaming on the multitude when I used the Klip. Unfortunately I got the cards mixed. I beamed when I tried the old, obsolete method and nearly burst myself with baffled fury just after I had exhibited the card bearing the words ‘I will now try Klipstone’s Kute Klip.’ I couldn’t think what the vast crowd outside the window was laughing at till the boss, who chanced to pause on the outskirts of the gathering on his way back from lunch, was good enough to tell me. Nothing that I could say would convince him that I was not being intentionally humorous. I was sorry to lose the job, though it did make me feel like a goldfish. But talking of being fired brings us back to Jerry Mitchell.”