lawn. His progress rather resembled that of a landsman getting out of an open boat in which he has spent a long and perilous night at sea. He was feeling more wretched than he had ever felt in his life. He had a severe cold. He had a splitting headache. His hands and feet were frozen. His eyes smarted. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He hated cheerful M. Feriaud, who had hopped out and was now busy tinkering the engine, a gay Provencal air upon his lips, as he had rarely hated any one, even Muriel Coppin’s brother Frank.
So absorbed was he in his troubles that he was not aware of Mr. Windlebird’s approach until that pleasant, portly man’s shadow fell on the turf before him.
“Not had an accident, I hope, Mr. Bleke?”
Roland was too far gone in misery to speculate as to how this genial stranger came to know his name. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Windlebird, keen student of the illustrated press, had recognized Roland by his photograph in the Daily Mirror. In the course of the twenty yards’ walk from house to tennis-lawn she had put her husband into possession of the more salient points in Roland’s history. It was when Mr. Windlebird heard that Roland had forty thousand pounds in the bank that he sat up and took notice.
“Lead me to him,” he said simply.
Roland sneezed.
“Doe accident, thag you,” he replied miserably. “Somethig’s gone wrong with the worgs, but it’s nothing serious, worse luck.”
M. Feriaud, having by this time adjusted the defect in his engine, rose to his feet, and bowed.
“Excuse if we come down on your lawn. But not long do we trespass. See,
“No,” said Roland decidedly.
“No? What you mean—no?”
A shade of alarm fell on M. Feriaud’s weather-beaten features. The eminent bird-man did not wish to part from Roland. Toward Roland he felt like a brother, for Roland had notions about payment for little aeroplane rides which bordered upon the princely.
“But you say—take me to France with you–-“
“I know. But it’s all off. I’m not feeling well.”
“But it’s all wrong.” M. Feriaud gesticulated to drive home his point. “You give me one hundred pounds to take you away from Lexingham. Good. It is here.” He slapped his breast pocket. “But the other two hundred pounds which also you promise me to pay me when I place you safe in France, where is that, my friend?”
“I will give you two hundred and fifty,” said Roland earnestly, “to leave me here, and go right away, and never let me see your beastly machine again.”
A smile of brotherly forgiveness lit up M. Feriaud’s face. The generous Gallic nature asserted itself. He held out his arms affectionately to Roland.
“Ah, now you talk. Now you say something,” he cried in his impetuous way. “Embrace me. You are all right.”
Roland heaved a sigh of relief when, five minutes later, the aeroplane disappeared over the brow of the hill. Then he began to sneeze again.
“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.
