Читать книгу The Remittance Man - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 7

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"Take you for a walk. Hum—I don't know so much about that!" said Jack Reay, eyeing his sister with a somewhat discontented expression across the breakfast table.

"And why not, you scamp?" demanded the Major, putting down the newspaper behind which he had been entrenched. "You ought to feel only too honored that Marion wishes to accompany you!"

"That's all right," grumbled the boy; "I don't object to taking Marion about, though she is a girl, but remember my holiday is almost up, and I have to go back to school in less than a fortnight. Besides, I've taken her out three days running now—and this morning I did want to go fishing outside the bar."

"You young cub!" growled the Major. "I'm ashamed of you! Never mind, Marion, my dear, I have to visit the mill, but I'll hurry back and then we shall go for a drive."

"Oh no, dad," cried Marion. "I know that your business is important, and you must not neglect it on my account. I shall stroll into town and lunch with Lena Best instead."

"As you please, my love," replied the Major. "Jack deserves a flogging," he added angrily.

Jack looked at Marion with a sheepish smile. "You may come fishing with me if you're game to go outside the heads in an open boat," he said.

"Isn't it rather dangerous?"

"Dangerous—this weather!" sneered Jack.

"I should like to, if dad will permit," said Marion.

Major Reay glanced doubtfully at his son. "Who else is going with you?" he demanded.

"Jan Digby."

"Jan Digby!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "you make too much of that fellow, my boy. You seem to spend half your time with him."

"Well, dad, and what's the matter with him?"

"He is a loafer."

"He is nothing of the kind," retorted Jack, with what seemed to Marion unnecessary warmth. "He doesn't work because he can't get anything to do here, and he can't get away because he hasn't a penny."

"He is a gambler," said the Major sternly.

Jack squared his shoulders, and his eyes flashed. "It's not like you, dad, to condemn a chap on hearsay," he cried indignantly. "You call him a gambler because he lost his money to Mannix and Raymond and that crew. But I know all about it. It was they who proposed cards, not he; and as they were his guests he had to play, and they fleeced him in one sitting. He had never played poker in his life before. I call them a pack of 'take-downs,' that's what I do. And they are worse—for they have been back-biting him and taking away his character ever since—just to excuse themselves."

The Major lifted his shaggy eyebrows, in astonishment. "If that is true," he remarked, "Mannix and Raymond should be ashamed of themselves—but——" and he shrugged his shoulders. "The fellow can't be much good, whatever you may think my boy, for he is a remittance man. Mr. Best told me, so I know it to be true."

"I don't know anything about that," said Jack; "but I do know this much—not a fellow in Ballina can touch him in anything. He played for Lismore against us when they had a man hurt, and he knocked up a hundred and thirty runs not out, against our best bowlers here, and never gave a single chance. He can catch fish a dozen to my one, and I'm no slouch; and as for shooting, why he can knock Jacky Wintons on the wing every time, fifty yards off."

"You don't mean to say he shoots those dear little birds!" cried Marion.

"Oh, rats!" said Jack, wagging his head disgustedly; "he's not a girl."

"Well, well," said the Major, rising, "he has a champion in you, my boy, at all events."

"Another thing," said Jack hastily, "he's a gentleman in his talk. You know, dad, what the fellows here are. When they are together, they can't say a dozen words without bringing in an oath '——'. Well, I've never heard Jan Digby say so much as '——' all the time I've known him."

Major Reay paused at the door, and turning, earnestly regarded the excited and hot-faced boy. "How dare you use such an expression before your sister!" he said sternly. "Apologise to her at once sir."

"I beg your pardon, sis," murmured Jack.

"Granted," said Marion, smiling.

"I'm surprised at you, sir," growled the Major. "If you give me occasion to speak to you on the subject again, I'll make you bitterly repent it."

To Marion's surprise, she saw her brother, whose hot temper seldom remained under control upon rebuke, bite his lips.

"I've apologised, dad," he muttered reproachfully. "I only said that to give an instance—and anyway, I'm sorry."

The Major's brow cleared like magic. "Spoken like a gentleman!" he said. "Give me your hand, Jack."

The boy laughed happily, and darting forward, pressed the Major's hand. Next second he slipped behind his father and set his back against the door. "Caught!" he cried. "Major Reay, you are my prisoner!"

"Now then, you rascal," growled the old gentleman, swinging quickly round, "no practical jokes with me. Let me pass, sir."

"Not much, you don't move a step without a ransom, dad!"

The Major looked at his handsome son with a frown which he tried to render fierce, but it melted into a smile as he met Jack's laughing eyes. "You'll be the ruin of me yet, you scamp!" he growled. "How much do you want?" and he put his hand into his pocket.

"It's not money this time, dad," said Jack, his expression becoming on instant grave and serious. "I want you to do me a favor."

"What is it?"

"Promise first," pleaded the boy.

The Major smiled. "If I can do what you wish, I shall," he said.

"Dear old dad," cried the boy, seizing and squeezing his father's hand. "I knew you would. I want you to give Jan Digby a chance, dad. Find him a billet."

"Eh! What!" the Major frowned and started back.

"Most anything would do," cried Jack, with breathless rapidity. "He's awfully clever, a university man, I think, but he's not a bit proud where work is concerned. He said to me only the other day that labor, however lowly, so long as it is honest, ennobles the hand that it encrusts and scarifies, those were his very words. You could easily give him a billet, dad, he's starving, really he is, just starving. He gets nothing to eat but the fish he catches, nothing, and he doesn't catch many. Why, the day Marion came home he had no luck, and no breakfast; think of that."

"Jack!" exclaimed Marion suddenly, "are you not exaggerating? One could not live long on an exclusive diet of fish."

The boy gave his sister an angry look. "He sells a few sometimes to the navvies on the breakwater," he growled, "and he buys bread with the money, but I know he hasn't tasted a crumb now for four days. There are very few fish inside the bar, except those that follow the steamers in, and he can't go out as he has no boat."

"How do you know that he has not tasted bread for four days?" demanded the Major.

"Because I go to his cabin every day, and I see everything he gets," replied the boy.

"Then if that is the case, how comes it that you have allowed him to starve in such a fashion? I keep you well supplied with pocket money. It strikes me that you must be a very mean boy, Jack."

Jack flushed crimson. "It strikes you wrongly, then," he cried savagely. "He never would accept a cent from me or let me lend him either. I bought some fish from him once or twice, pretending we wanted it up at the house, but he soon dropped down to that, and he won't sell me any more now."

The Major looked astonished. "Oh! that sort of a man," he said, and appeared to reflect. Presently, however, his lips twisted in a cynical smile. "I wonder," he muttered musingly. "Hum—Jack is very young! Ha! Ha! I see, I see!"

"What do you see?" demanded Jack.

The Major regarded the boy with an inscrutable smile. "More than you, my son; and it is just as well, perhaps, that it is so," he replied.

"You promised, dad," urged Jack.

"True, and I'll keep my promise. Let me see, Barnes tells me that he wants another stoker for the launch. If your friend, Jan Digby, is honest in his desire to obtain work, tell him to call and see me here at ten sharp, to-morrow morning."

"Oh, dad!" cried the boy despairingly. "Can't you do better than that? A stoker! and Jan is a gentleman!"

The Major raised his hand. "Labor, however lowly, so long as it is honest, ennobles the hand that it encrusts and scarifies," he repeated slowly. "His very words, according to yourself. Now, my boy, let me pass, I have work to do."

Jack fell hack at once, but as the door closed behind his father he faced Marion with a scowl of rage and disappointment. "He is a prejudiced, bigoted, narrow-minded old beast!" he declared, with vicious emphasis.

"You are a wicked boy to say such things," cried Marion, her eyes ablaze. "Father is perfectly right, and I thoroughly agree with him in distrusting your paragon."

"Charity—thy name is Woman!" sneered Jack, repeating a speech that his friend had used in his hearing on a former occasion.

"You little boy!" said Marion with great indignation.

"You girl! Yah!" cried Jack, his rage mastering him. "I despise you!"

Marion smiled suddenly, and laid her hand upon the boy's arm. "You are quite right, Jack," she said contritely. "I was contemptible to call you that, and it's not true, either; you are a splendid big fellow."

Jack was disarmed at once, but his wounded dignity forbade him to unbend.

"You needn't have apologised," he answered stiffly. "You couldn't help it, I suppose. Good morning."

"Where are you going?"

"To meet Jan Digby and go fishing."

"But I am going with you."

"What!" he cried with elaborate astonishment. "Surely you would not go out in a boat with a remittance man, a chap you think it right to distrust?"

"You will be there," said Marion very sweetly. "With you for a protector—I fear not one!"

"Yah!" was Jack's boorish comment.

"I'll have to change my frock, but I'll not keep you five minutes," she said, with a bright smile. "You smoke a cigarette, and before it is finished I shall be down. Now then, Jack, not another word; you have been quite unkind enough to me for one day."

"I was only going to tell you to put on old things," he called out to her in grumbling tones as she vanished. "Like a woman," he muttered when left to himself, "always trying to put a fellow in the wrong."

Strolling out on to the verandah he lighted a cigarette and puffed clouds of smoke between himself and the landscape, musing aloud the while with the superb, but unconscious, cynicism of a boy of seventeen.

"Women," he growled, "what they were made for licks me. You never know when you've got 'em, and when you have got 'em they're not worth the worry they give you getting 'em. Marion's better than a lot, though she does scream like mad when you fire a gun, but they are all poor creatures, anyway!"