Part 24 (1/2)

AS BETWEEN GENTLEMEN

”Between gentlemen,” said Wallie Hine. ”Yes, between gentlemen.”

He was quoting from a letter which he held in his hand, as he sat at the breakfast table, and, in his agitation, he had quoted aloud. Garratt Skinner looked up from his plate and said:

”Can I help you, Wallie?”

Hine flushed red and stammered out: ”No, thank you. I must run up to town this morning--that's all.”

”Sylvia will drive you into Weymouth in the dog-cart after breakfast,”

said Garratt Skinner, and he made no further reference to the journey.

But he glared at the handwriting of the letter, and then with some perplexity at Walter Hine. ”You will be back this evening, I suppose?”

”Rather,” said Walter Hine, with a smile across the table at Sylvia; but his agitation got the better of his gallantry, and as she drove him into Weymouth, he spoke as piteously as a child appealing for protection. ”I don't want to go one little bit, Miss Sylvia. But between gentlemen. Yes, I mustn't forget that. Between gentlemen.” He clung to the phrase, finding some comfort in its reiteration.

”You have given me your promise,” said Sylvia. ”There will be no cards, no bets.”

Walter Hine laughed bitterly.

”I shan't break it. I have had my lesson. By Jove, I have.”

Walter Hine traveled to Waterloo and drove straight to the office of Mr. Jarvice.

”I owe some money,” he began, bleating the words out the moment he was ushered into the inner office.

Mr. Jarvice grinned.

”This interview is concluded,” he said. ”There's the door.”

”I owe it to a friend, Captain Barstow,” Hine continued, in desperation.

”A thousand pounds. He has written for it. He says that debts of honor between gentlemen--” But he got no further, for Mr. Jarvice broke in upon his faltering explanations with a snarl of contempt.

”Barstow! You poor little innocent. I have something else to do with my money than to pour it into Barstow's pockets. I know the man. Send him to me to-morrow, and I'll talk to him--as between gentlemen.”

Walter Hine flushed. He had grown accustomed to deference and flatteries in the household of Garratt Skinner. The unceremonious scorn of Mr.

Jarvice stung his vanity, and vanity was the one strong element of his character. He was in the mind hotly to defend Captain Barstow from Mr.

Jarvice's insinuations, but he refrained.

”Then Barstow will know that I draw my allowance from you, and not from my grandfather,” he stammered. There was the trouble for Walter Hine.

If Barstow knew, Garratt Skinner would come to know. There would be an end to the deference and the flatteries. He would no longer be able to pose as the favorite of the great millionaire, Joseph Hine. He would sink in Sylvia's eyes. At the cost of any humiliation that downfall must be avoided.

His words, however, had an immediate effect upon Mr. Jarvice, though for quite other reasons.

”Why, that's true,” said Mr. Jarvice, slowly, and in a voice suddenly grown smooth. ”Yes, yes, we don't want to mix up my name in the affair at all. Sit down, Mr. Hine, and take a cigar. The box is at your elbow.

Young men of spirit must have some extra license allowed to them for the sake of the promise of their riper years. I was forgetting that. No, we don't want my name to appear at all, do we?”

Publicity had no charms for Mr. Jarvice. Indeed, on more than one occasion he had found it quite a hindrance to the development of his little plans. To go his own quiet way, unheralded by the press and unacclaimed of men--that was the modest ambition of Mr. Jarvice.