FullReads

“You’re not well, you know,” said Mr. Windlebird.

“I’ve caught cold. We’ve been flying about all night–that French ass lost his bearings–and my suit is thin. Can you direct me to a hotel?”

“Hotel? Nonsense.” Mr. Windlebird spoke in the bluff, breezy voice which at many a stricken board-meeting had calmed frantic shareholders as if by magic. “You’re coming right into my house and up to bed this instant.”

It was not till he was between the sheets with a hot-water bottle at his toes and a huge breakfast inside him that Roland learned the name of his good Samaritan. When he did, his first impulse was to struggle out of bed and make his escape. Geoffrey Windlebird’s was a name which he had learned, in the course of his mercantile career, to hold in something approaching reverence as that of one of the mightiest business brains of the age.

To have to meet so eminent a man in the capacity of invalid, a nuisance about the house, was almost too much for Roland’s shrinking nature. The kindness of the Windlebirds–and there seemed to be nothing that they were not ready to do for him–distressed him beyond measure. To have a really great man like Geoffrey Windlebird sprawling genially over his bed, chatting away as if he were an ordinary friend, was almost horrible. Such condescension was too much.

Gradually, as he became convalescent, Roland found this feeling replaced by something more comfortable. They were such a genuine, simple, kindly couple, these Windlebirds, that he lost awe and retained only gratitude. He loved them both. He opened his heart to them. It was not long before he had told them the history of his career, skipping the earlier years and beginning with the entry of wealth into his life.

“It makes you feel funny,” he confided to Mr. Windlebird’s sympathetic ear, “suddenly coming into a pot of money like that. You don’t seem hardly able to realize it. I don’t know what to do with it.”

Mr. Windlebird smiled paternally.

“The advice of an older man who has had, if I may say so, some little experience of finance, might be useful to you there. Perhaps if you would allow me to recommend some sound investment—-“

Roland glowed with gratitude.

“There’s just one thing I’d like to do before I start putting my money into anything. It’s like this.”

He briefly related the story of his unfortunate affair with Muriel Coppin. Within an hour of his departure in the aeroplane, his conscience had begun to trouble him on this point. He felt that he had not acted well toward Muriel. True, he was practically certain that she didn’t care a bit about him and was in love with Albert, the silent mechanic, but there was just the chance that she was mourning over his loss; and, anyhow, his conscience was sore.

“I’d like to give her something,” he said. “How much do you think?”

Mr. Windlebird perpended.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send my own lawyer to her with–say, a thousand pounds–not a check, you understand, but one thousand golden sovereigns that he can show her–roll about on the table in front of her eyes. That’ll console her. It’s wonderful, the effect money in the raw has on people.”

“I’d rather make it two thousand,” said Roland. He had never really loved Muriel, and the idea of marrying her had been a nightmare to him; but he wanted to retreat with honor.

“Very well, make it two thousand, if you like. Tho I don’t quite know how old Harrison is going to carry all that money.”

As a matter of fact, old Harrison never had to try. On thinking it over, after he had cashed Roland’s check, Mr. Windlebird came to the conclusion that seven hundred pounds would be quite as much money as it would be good for Miss Coppin to have all at once.

Mr. Windlebird’s knowledge of human nature was not at fault. Muriel jumped at the money, and a letter in her handwriting informed Roland next morning that his slate was clean. His gratitude to Mr. Windlebird redoubled.