Books: Uneasy Money
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P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
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Mr Pickering became aware that he was still holding the revolver.
'Oh, ah!' he said, and pocketed the weapon.
'Barking at people!' muttered Lord Wetherby in a querulous
undertone.
'What on earth are you doing, Dudley?' said Claire.
There was a note in her voice which both puzzled and pained Mr
Pickering, a note that seemed to suggest that she found herself in
imperfect sympathy with him. Her expression deepened the
suggestion. It was a cold expression, unfriendly, as if it was not
so keen a pleasure to Claire to look at him as it should be for a
girl to look at the man whom she is engaged to marry. He had
noticed the same note in her voice and the same hostile look in
her eye earlier in the evening. He had found her alone, reading a
letter which, as the stamp on the envelope showed, had come from
England. She had seemed so upset that he had asked her if it
contained bad news, and she had replied in the negative with so
much irritation that he had desisted from inquiries. But his own
idea was that she had had bad news from home. Mr Pickering still
clung to his early impression that her little brother Percy was
consumptive, and he thought the child must have taken a turn for
the worse. It was odd that she should have looked and spoken like
that then, and it was odd that she should look and speak like that
now. He had been vaguely disturbed then and he was vaguely
disturbed now. He had the feeling that all was not well.
'Yes,' said Lady Wetherby. 'What on earth are you doing, Dudley?'
'Popping out!' grumbled Lord Wetherby.
'We came here to see Algie's picture, which has got something
wrong with its eyes apparently, and we find you hiding in the dark
with a gun. What's the idea?'
'It's a long story,' said Mr Pickering.
'We have the night before us,' said Lady Wetherby.
'You remember The Man--the fellow I found looking in at the
window, The Man who said he knew Claire?'
'You've got that man on the brain, Dudley. What's he been doing to
you now?'
'I tracked him here.'
'Tracked him? Where from?'
'From that bee-farm place where he's living. He and that girl you
spoke of went into these woods. I thought they were making for the
house, but they went into the shack.'
'What did they do then?' asked Lady Wetherby
'They came out again.'
'Why?'
'That's what I was trying to find out.'
Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.
'By Jove!' There was apprehension in his voice, but mingled with
it a certain pleased surprise. 'Perhaps they were after my
picture. I'll light the lamp. Good Lord, picture thieves--Romneys
--missing Gainsboroughs--' His voice trailed off as he found the
lamp and lit it. Relief and disappointment were nicely blended in
his next words: 'No, it's still there.'
The soft light of the lamp filled the studio.
'Well, that's a comfort,' said Lady Wetherby, sauntering in. 'We
couldn't afford to lose--Oh!'
Lord Wetherby spun round as her scream burst upon his already
tortured nerve centres. Lady Wetherby was kneeling on the floor.
Claire hurried in.
'What is it, Polly?'
Lady Wetherby rose to her feet, and pointed. Her face had lost its
look of patient amusement. It was hard and set. She eyed Mr
Pickering in a menacing way.
'Look!'
Claire followed her finger.
'Good gracious! It's Eustace!'
'Shot!'
She was looking intently at Mr Pickering. 'Well, Dudley,' she
said, coldly, 'what about it?'
Mr Pickering found that they were all looking at him--Lady
Wetherby with glittering eyes, Claire with cool scorn, Lord
Wetherby with a horror which he seemed to have achieved with
something of an effort.
'Well!' said Claire.
'What about it, Dudley?' said Lady Wetherby.
'I must say, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby, 'much as I disliked
the animal, it's a bit thick!'
Mr Pickering recoiled from their accusing gaze.
'Good heavens! Do you think I did it?'
In the midst of his anguish there flashed across his mind the
recollection of having seen just this sort of situation in a
moving picture, and of having thought it far-fetched.
Lady Wetherby's good-tempered mouth, far from good-tempered now,
curled in a devastating sneer. She was looking at him as Claire,
in the old days when they had toured England together in road
companies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant landladies.
The landladies, without exception, had wilted beneath that gaze,
and Mr Pickering wilted now.
'But--but--but--' was all he could contrive to say.
'Why should we think you did it?' said Lady Wetherby, bitterly.
'You had a grudge against the poor brute for biting you. We find
you hiding here with a pistol and a story about burglars which an
infant couldn't swallow. I suppose you thought that, if you
planted the poor creature's body here, it would be up to Algie to
get rid of it, and that if he were found with it I should think
that it was he who had killed the animal.'
The look of horror which Lord Wetherby had managed to assume
became genuine at these words. The gratitude which he had been
feeling towards Mr Pickering for having removed one of the chief
trials of his existence vanished.
'Great Scot!' he cried. 'So that was the game, was it?'
Mr Pickering struggled for speech. This was a nightmare.
'But I didn't! I didn't! I didn't! I tell you I hadn't the
remotest notion the creature was there.'
'Oh, come, Pickering!' said Lord Wetherby. 'Come, come, come!'
Mr Pickering found that his accusers were ebbing away. Lady
Wetherby had gone. Claire had gone. Only Lord Wetherby remained,
looking at him like a pained groom. He dashed from the place and
followed his hostess, speaking incoherently of burglars,
outhouses, and misunderstandings. He even mentioned Chingachgook.
But Lady Wetherby would not listen. Nobody would listen.
He found Lord Wetherby at his side, evidently prepared to go
deeper into the subject. Lord Wetherby was looking now like a
groom whose favourite horse has kicked him in the stomach.
'Wouldn't have thought it of you, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby.
Mr Pickering found no words. 'Wouldn't, honestly. Low trick!'
'But I tell you--'
'Devilish low trick!' repeated Lord Wetherby, with a shake of the
head. 'Laws of hospitality--eaten our bread and salt, what!--all
that sort of thing--kill valuable monkey--not done, you know--low,
very low!'
And he followed his wife, now in full retreat, with scorn and
repulsion written in her very walk.
'Mr Pickering!'
It was Claire. She stood there, holding something towards him,
something that glittered in the moonlight. Her voice was hard, and
the expression on her face suggested that in her estimation he was
a particularly low-grade worm, one of the submerged tenth of the
worm world.
'Eh?' said Mr Pickering, dazedly.
He looked at what she had in her hand, but it conveyed nothing to
his overwrought mind.
'Take it!'
'Eh?'
Claire stamped.
'Very well,' she said.
She flung something on the ground before him--a small, sparkling
object. Then she swept away, his eyes following her, and was lost
in the darkness of the trees. Mechanically Mr Pickering stooped to
pick up what she had let fall. He recognized it now. It was her
engagement ring.
19
Bill leaned his back against the gate that separated the grounds of
the bee-farm from the high road and mused pleasantly. He was alone.
Elizabeth was walking up the drive on her way to the house to tell
the news to Nutty. James, the cat, who had come down from the roof
of the outhouse, was sharpening his claws on a neighbouring tree.
After the whirl of excitement that had been his portion for the past
few hours, the peace of it all appealed strongly to Bill. It suited
the mood of quiet happiness which was upon him.
Quietly happy, that was how he felt now that it was all over. The
white heat of emotion had subsided to a gentle glow of contentment
conducive to thought. He thought tenderly of Elizabeth. She had
turned to wave her hand before going into the house, and he was
still smiling fatuously. Wonderful girl! Lucky chap he was! Rum,
the way they had come together! Talk about Fate, what?
He stooped to tickle James, who had finished stropping his claws
and was now enjoying a friction massage against his leg, and began
to brood on the inscrutable way of Fate.
Rum thing, Fate! Most extraordinary!
Suppose he had never gone down to Marvis Bay that time. He had
wavered between half a dozen places; it was pure chance that he
had chosen Marvis Bay. If he hadn't he would never have met old
Nutcombe. Probably old Nutcombe had wavered between half a dozen
places too. If they hadn't both happened to choose Marvis Bay they
would never have met. And if they hadn't been the only visitors
there they might never have got to know each other. And if old
Nutcombe hadn't happened to slice his approach shots he would
never have put him under an obligation. Queer old buster, old
Nutcombe, leaving a fellow he hardly knew from Adam a cool million
quid just because he cured him of slicing.
It was at this point in his meditations that it suddenly occurred to
Bill that he had not yet given a thought to what was immeasurably
the most important of any of the things that ought to be occupying
his mind just now. What was he to do about this Lord Dawlish
business?
Life at Brookport had so accustomed him to being plain Bill
Chalmers that it had absolutely slipped his mind that he was
really Lord Dawlish, the one man in the world whom Elizabeth
looked on as an enemy. What on earth was he to do about that? Tell
her? But if he told her, wouldn't she chuck him on the spot?
This was awful. The dreamy sense of well-being left him. He
straightened himself to face this problem, ignoring the hint of
James, who was weaving circles about his legs expectant of more
tickling. A man cannot spend his time tickling cats when he has to
concentrate on a dilemma of this kind.
Suppose he didn't tell her? How would that work out? Was a marriage
legal if the cove who was being married went through it under a
false name? He seemed to remember seeing a melodrama in his boyhood
the plot of which turned on that very point. Yes, it began to come
back to him. An unpleasant bargee with a black moustache had said,
'This woman is not your wife!' and caused the dickens of a lot of
unpleasantness; but there in its usual slipshod way memory failed.
Had subsequent events proved the bargee right or wrong? It was a
question for a lawyer to decide. Jerry Nichols would know. Well,
there was plenty of time, thank goodness, to send Jerry Nichols a
cable, asking for his professional opinion, and to get the straight
tip long before the wedding day arrived.
Laying this part of it aside for the moment, and assuming that the
thing could be worked, what about the money? Like a chump, he had
told Elizabeth on the first day of his visit that he hadn't any
money except what he made out of his job as secretary of the club.
He couldn't suddenly spring five million dollars on her and
pretend that he had forgotten all about it till then.
Of course, he could invent an imaginary uncle or something, and
massacre him during the honeymoon. Something in that. He pictured
the thing in his mind. Breakfast: Elizabeth doling out the
scrambled eggs. 'What's the matter, Bill? Why did you exclaim like
that? Is there some bad news in the letter you are reading?'
'Oh, it's nothing--only my Uncle John's died and left me five
million dollars.'
The scene worked out so well that his mind became a little above
itself. It suggested developments of serpentine craftiness. Why
not get Jerry Nichols to write him a letter about his Uncle John
and the five millions? Jerry liked doing that sort of thing. He
would do it like a shot, and chuck in a lot of legal words to make
it sound right. It began to be clear to Bill that any move he
took--except full confession, at which he jibbed--was going to
involve Jerry Nichols as an ally; and this discovery had a
soothing effect on him. It made him feel that the responsibility
had been shifted. He couldn't do anything till he had consulted
Jerry, so there was no use in worrying. And, being one of those
rare persons who can cease worrying instantly when they have
convinced themselves that it is useless, he dismissed the entire
problem from his mind and returned to the more congenial
occupation of thinking of Elizabeth.
It was a peculiar feature of his position that he found himself
unable to think of Elizabeth without thinking of Claire. He tried
to, but failed. Every virtue in Elizabeth seemed to call up the
recollection of a corresponding defect in Claire It became almost
mathematical. Elizabeth was so straight on the level they called
it over here. Claire was a corkscrew among women. Elizabeth was
sunny and cheerful. Querulousness was Claire's besetting sin.
Elizabeth was such a pal. Claire had never been that. The effect
that Claire had always had on him was to deepen the conviction,
which never really left him, that he was a bit of an ass.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, bucked him up and made him feel as
if he really amounted to something.
How different they were! Their very voices--Elizabeth had a sort
of quiet, soothing, pleasant voice, the kind of voice that somehow
suggested that she thought a lot of a chap without her having to
say it in so many words. Whereas Claire's voice--he had noticed it
right from the beginning--Claire's voice--
While he was trying to make clear to himself just what it was
about Claire's voice that he had not liked he was granted the
opportunity of analysing by means of direct observation its
failure to meet his vocal ideals, for at this moment it spoke
behind him.
'Bill!'
She was standing in the road, her head still covered with that
white, filmy something which had commended itself to Mr Pickering's
eyes. She was looking at him in a way that seemed somehow to strike
a note of appeal. She conveyed an atmosphere of softness and
repentance, a general suggestion of prodigal daughters revisiting
old homesteads.
'We seem always to be meeting at gates, don't we?' she said, with
a faint smile.
It was a deprecating smile, wistful.
'Bill!' she said again, and stopped. She laid her left hand
lightly on the gate. Bill had a sort of impression that there was
some meaning behind this action; that, if he were less of a chump
than Nature had made him, he would at this point receive some sort
of a revelation. But, being as Nature had made him, he did not get
it.
He was one of those men to whom a girl's left hand is simply a
girl's left hand, irrespective of whether it wears rings on its
third finger or not.
This having become evident to Claire after a moment of silence,
she withdrew her hand in rather a disappointed way and prepared to
attack the situation from another angle.
'Bill, I've come to say something to you.'
Bill was looking at her curiously. He could not have believed
that, even after what had happened, he could face her with such
complete detachment; that she could so extraordinarily not matter.
He felt no resentment toward her. It was simply that she had gone
out of his life.
'Bill, I've been a fool.'
He made no reply to this for he could think of no reply that was
sufficiently polite. 'Yes?' sounded as if he meant to say that
that was just what he had expected. 'Really?' had a sarcastic
ring. He fell back on facial expression, to imply that he was
interested and that she might tell all.
Claire looked away down the road and began to speak in a low,
quick voice:
'I've been a fool all along. I lost you through being a fool. When
I saw you dancing with that girl in the restaurant I didn't stop
to think. I was angry. I was jealous. I ought to have trusted you,
but--Oh, well, I was a fool.'
'My dear girl, you had a perfect right--'
'I hadn't. I was an idiot. Bill, I've come to ask you if you can't
forgive me.'
'I wish you wouldn't talk like that--there's nothing to forgive.'
The look which Claire gave him in answer to this was meek and
affectionate, but inwardly she was wishing that she could bang his
head against the gate. His slowness was maddening. Long before
this he should have leaped into the road in order to fold her in
his arms. Her voice shook with the effort she had to make to keep
it from sharpness.
'I mean, is it too late? I mean, can you really forgive me? Oh,
Bill'--she stopped herself by the fraction of a second from adding
'you idiot'--'can't we be the same again to each other? Can't
we--pretend all this has never happened?'
Exasperating as Bill's wooden failure to play the scene in the
spirit in which her imagination had conceived it was to Claire,
several excuses may be offered for him: He had opened the evening
with a shattering blow at his faith in woman. He had walked twenty
miles at a rapid pace. He had heard shots and found a corpse, and
carried the latter by the tail across country. Finally, he had had
the stunning shock of discovering that Elizabeth Boyd loved him.
He was not himself. He found a difficulty in concentrating. With
the result that, in answer to this appeal from a beautiful girl
whom he had once imagined that he loved, all he could find to say
was: 'How do you mean?'
Claire, never an adept at patience, just succeeded in swallowing
the remark that sprang into her mind. It was incredible to her
that a man could exist who had so little intuition. She had not
anticipated the necessity of being compelled to put the substance
of her meaning in so many blunt words, but it seemed that only so
could she make him understand.
'I mean, can't we be engaged again, Bill?'
Bill's overtaxed brain turned one convulsive hand-spring, and came
to rest with a sense of having dislocated itself. This was too
much. This was not right. No fellow at the end of a hard evening
ought to have to grapple with this sort of thing. What on earth
did she mean, springing questions like that on him? How could they
be engaged? She was going to marry someone else, and so was he.
Something of these thoughts he managed to put into words:
'But you're engaged to--'
'I've broken my engagement with Mr Pickering.'
'Great Scot! When?'
'To-night. I found out his true character. He is cruel and
treacherous. Something happened--it may sound nothing to you, but
it gave me an insight into what he really was. Polly Wetherby had
a little monkey, and just because it bit Mr Pickering he shot it.'
'Pickering!'
'Yes. He wasn't the sort of man I should have expected to do a
mean, cruel thing like that. It sickened me. I gave him back his
ring then and there. Oh, what a relief it was! What a fool I was
ever to have got engaged to such a man.'
Bill was puzzled. He was one of those simple men who take their
fellows on trust, but who, if once that trust is shattered, can
never recover it. Like most simple men, he was tenacious of ideas
when he got them, and the belief that Claire was playing fast and
loose was not lightly to be removed from his mind. He had found
her out during his self-communion that night, and he could never
believe her again. He had the feeling that there was something
behind what she was saying. He could not put his finger on the
clue, but that there was a clue he was certain.
'I only got engaged to him out of pique. I was angry with you,
and--Well, that's how it happened.'
Still Bill could not believe. It was plausible. It sounded true.
And yet some instinct told him that it was not true. And while he
waited, perplexed, Claire made a false step.
The thing had been so close to the top of her mind ever since she
had come to the knowledge of it that it had been hard for her to
keep it down. Now she could keep it down no longer.
'How wonderful about old Mr Nutcombe, Bill!' she said.
A vast relief rolled over Bill. Despite his instinct, he had been
wavering. But now he understood. He had found the clue.
'You got my letter, then?'
'Yes; it was forwarded on from the theatre. I got it to-night.'
Too late she realized what she had said and the construction that
an intelligent man would put on it. Then she reflected that Bill
was not an intelligent man. She shot a swift glance at him. To all
appearances he had suspected nothing.
'It went all over the place,' she hurried on. 'The people at the
Portsmouth theatre sent it to the London office, who sent it home,
and mother mailed it on to me.'
'I see.'
There was a silence. Claire drew a step nearer.
'Bill!' she said softly.
Bill shut his eyes. The moment had come which he had dreaded. Not
even the thought that she was crooked, that she had been playing
with him, could make it any better. She was a woman and he was a
man. That was all that mattered, and nothing could alter it.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's impossible.'
Claire stared at him in amazement. She had not been prepared for
this. He met her eyes, but every nerve in his body was protesting.
'Bill!'
'I'm sorry.
'But, Bill!'
He set his teeth. It was just as bad as he had thought it would
be.
'But, Bill, I've explained. I've told you how--'
'I know.'
Claire's eyes opened wide.
'I thought you loved me.' She came closer. She pulled at his
sleeve. Her voice took on a note of soft raillery. 'Don't be
absurd, Bill! You mustn't behave like a sulky schoolboy. It isn't
like you, this. You surely don't want me to humble myself more
than I have done.' She gave a little laugh. 'Why, Bill, I'm
proposing to you! I know I've treated you badly, but I've
explained why. You must be just enough to see that it wasn't
altogether my fault. I'm only human. And if I made a mistake I've
done all I can do to undo it. I--'
'Claire, listen: I'm engaged!'
She fell back. For the first time the sense of defeat came to her.
She had anticipated many things. She had looked for difficulties.
But she had not expected this. A feeling of cold fury surged over
her at the way fate had tricked her. She had gambled recklessly on
her power of fascination, and she had lost.
Mr Pickering, at that moment brooding in solitude in the smoking-room
of Lady Wetherby's house, would have been relieved could he have
known how wistfully she was thinking of him.
'You're engaged?'
'Yes.'
'Well!' She forced another laugh. 'How very--rapid of you! To
whom?'
'To Elizabeth Boyd.'
'I'm afraid I'm very ignorant, but who is Elizabeth Boyd? The
ornate lady you were dancing with at the restaurant?'
'No!'
'Who then?'
'She is old Ira Nutcombe's niece. The money ought to have been
left to her. That was why I came over to America, to see if I
could do anything for her.'
'And you're going to marry her? How very romantic--and convenient!
What an excellent arrangement for her. Which of you suggested it?'
Bill drew in a deep breath. All this was, he supposed,
unavoidable, but it was not pleasant.
Claire suddenly abandoned her pose of cool amusement. The fire
behind it blazed through.
'You fool!' she cried passionately. 'Are you blind? Can't you see
that this girl is simply after your money? A child could see it.'
Bill looked at her steadily.
'You're quite wrong. She doesn't know who I am.'
'Doesn't know who you are? What do you mean? She must know by this
time that her uncle left his money to you.'
'But she doesn't know that I am Lord Dawlish. I came to America
under another name. She knows me as Chalmers.'
Claire was silent for a moment.
'How did you get to know her?' she asked, more quietly.
'I met her brother by chance in New York.'
'By chance!'
'Quite by chance. A man I knew in England lent me his rooms in New
York. He happened to be a friend of Boyd's. Boyd came to call on
him one night, and found me.'
'Odd! Had your mutual friend been away from New York long?'
'Some months.'
'And in all that time Mr Boyd had not discovered that he had left.
They must have been great friends! What happened then?'
'Boyd invited me down here.'
'Down here?'
'They live in this house.'
'Is Miss Boyd the girl who keeps the bee-farm?'
'She is.'
Claire's eyes suddenly lit up. She began to speak in a louder
voice:
'Bill, you're an infant, a perfect infant! Of course, she's after
your money. Do you really imagine for one instant that this
Elizabeth Boyd of yours and her brother don't know as well as I do
that you are really Lord Dawlish? I always thought you had a
trustful nature! You tell me the brother met you by chance.
Chance! And invited you down here. I bet he did! He knew his
business! And now you're going to marry the girl so that they will
get the money after all! Splendid! Oh, Bill, you're a wonderful,
wonderful creature! Your innocence is touching.'
She swung round.
'Good night,' she called over her shoulder.
He could hear her laughing as she went down the road.
20
In the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby's house, chewing the dead
stump of a once imposing cigar, Dudley Pickering sat alone with
his thoughts. He had been alone for half an hour now. Once Lord
Wetherby had looked in, to withdraw at once coldly, with the
expression of a groom who has found loathsome things in the
harness-room. Roscoe Sherriff, good, easy man, who could never
dislike people, no matter what they had done, had come for a while
to bear him company; but Mr Pickering's society was not for the
time being entertaining. He had answered with grunts the
Press-agent's kindly attempts at conversation, and the latter
Had withdrawn to seek a more congenial audience. And now Mr
Pickering was alone, talking things over with his subconscious
self.
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