Books: Uneasy Money
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P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
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'I know you're straight. You couldn't do anything crooked.'
'The evidence proves that I did.'
'I don't care.'
'Not now.'
'Never.'
She shook her head.
'It's dear of you, Bill, but you're promising an impossibility.
And just because it's impossible, and because I love you too much
to face what would be bound to happen, I'm going to send you
away.'
'Send me away!'
'Yes. It's going to hurt. You don't know how it's going to hurt,
Bill; but it's the only thing to do. I love you too much to live
with you for the rest of my life wondering all the time whether
you still believed or whether the weight of the evidence had
crushed out that tiny little spark of intuition which is all that
makes you believe me now. You could never know the truth for
certain, you see--that's the horror of it; and sometimes you would
be able to make yourself believe, but more often, in spite of all
you could do, you would doubt. It would poison both our lives.
Little things would happen, insignificant in themselves, which
would become tremendously important just because they added a
little bit more to the doubt which you would never be able to get
rid of.
'When we had quarrels--which we should, as we are both human--they
wouldn't be over and done with in an hour. They would stick in
your mind and rankle, because, you see, they might be proofs that
I didn't really love you. And then when I seemed happy with you,
you would wonder if I was acting. I know all this sounds morbid
and exaggerated, but it isn't. What have you got to go on, as
regards me? What do you really know of me? If something like this
had happened after we had been married half a dozen years and
really knew each other, we could laugh at it. But we are
strangers. We came together and loved each other because there was
something in each of us which attracted the other. We took that
little something as a foundation and built on it. But what has
happened has knocked away our poor little foundation. That's all.
We don't really know anything at all about each other for certain.
It's just guesswork.'
She broke off and looked at the clock.
'I had better be packing if you're to catch the train.'
He gave a rueful laugh.
'You're throwing me out!'
'Yes, I am. I want you to go while I am strong enough to let you
go.'
'If you really feel like that, why send me away?'
'How do you know I really feel like that? How do you know that I
am not pretending to feel like that as part of a carefully-prepared
plan?'
He made an impatient gesture.
'Yes, I know,' she said. 'You think I am going out of my way to
manufacture unnecessary complications. I'm not; I'm simply looking
ahead. If I were trying to trap you for the sake of your money,
could I play a stronger card than by seeming anxious to give you
up? If I were to give in now, sooner or later that suspicion would
come to you. You would drive it away. You might drive it away a
hundred times. But you couldn't kill it. In the end it would beat
you.'
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
'I can't argue.'
'Nor can I. I can only put very badly things which I know are
true. Come and pack.'
'I'll do it. Don't you bother.'
'Nonsense! No man knows how to pack properly.'
He followed her to his room, pulled out his suitcase, the symbol
of the end of all things, watched her as she flitted about, the
sun shining on her hair as she passed and repassed the window. She
was picking things up, folding them, packing them. Bill looked on
with an aching sense of desolation. It was all so friendly, so
intimate, so exactly as it would have been if she were his wife.
It seemed to him needlessly cruel that she should be playing on
this note of domesticity at the moment when she was barring for
ever the door between him and happiness. He rebelled helplessly
against the attitude she had taken. He had not thought it all out,
as she had done. It was folly, insanity, ruining their two lives
like this for a scruple.
Once again he was to encounter that practical strain in the
feminine mind which jars upon a man in trouble. She was holding
something in her hand and looking at it with concern.
'Why didn't you tell me?' she said. 'Your socks are in an awful
state, poor boy!'
He had the feeling of having been hit by something. A man has not
a woman's gift of being able to transfer his mind at will from
sorrow to socks.
'Like sieves!' She sighed. A troubled frown wrinkled her forehead.
'Men are so helpless! Oh, dear, I'm sure you don't pay any
attention to anything important. I don't believe you ever bother
your head about keeping warm in winter and not getting your feet
wet. And now I shan't be able to look after you!'
Bill's voice broke. He felt himself trembling.
'Elizabeth!'
She was kneeling on the floor, her head bent over the suitcase.
She looked up and met his eyes.
'It's no use, Bill, dear. I must. It's the only way.'
The sense of the nearness of the end broke down the numbness
which held him.
'Elizabeth! It's so utterly absurd. It's just--chucking everything
away!'
She was silent for a moment.
'Bill, dear, I haven't said anything about it before but don't you
see that there's my side to be considered too? I only showed you
that you could never possibly know that I loved you. How am I to
know that you really love me?'
He had moved a step towards her. He drew back, chilled.
'I can't do more than tell you,' he said.
'You can't. And there you have put in two words just what I've
been trying to make clear all the time. Don't you see that that's
the terrible thing about life, that nobody can do more than tell
anybody anything? Life's nothing but words, words, words; and how
are we to know when words are true? How am I to know that you
didn't ask me to marry you out of sheer pity and an exaggerated
sense of justice?'
He stared at her.
'That,' he said, 'is absolutely ridiculous!'
'Why? Look at it as I should look at it later on, when whatever it
is inside me that tell me it's ridiculous now had died. Just at
this moment, while we're talking here, there's something stronger
than reason which tells me you really do love me. But can't you
understand that that won't last? It's like a candle burning on a
rock with the tide coming up all round it. It's burning brightly
enough now, and we can see the truth by the light of it. But the
tide will put it out, and then we shall have nothing left to see
by. There's a great black sea of suspicion and doubt creeping up
to swamp the little spark of intuition inside us.
'I will tell you what would happen to me if I didn't send you
away. Remember I heard what that girl was saying last night.
Remember that you hated the thought of depriving me of Uncle Ira's
money so much that your first act was to try to get me to accept
half of it. The quixotic thing is the first that it occurs to you
to do, because you're like that, because you're the straightest,
whitest man I've ever known or shall know. Could anything be more
likely, looking at it as I should later on, than that you should
have hit on the idea of marrying me as the only way of undoing the
wrong you thought you had done me? I've been foolish about
obligations all my life. I've a sort of morbid pride that hates
the thought of owing anything to anybody, of getting anything that
I have not earned. By and by, if I were to marry you, a little
rotten speck of doubt would begin to eat its way farther and
farther into me. It would be the same with you. We should react on
each other. We should be watching each other, testing each other,
trying each other out all the time. It would be horrible,
horrible!'
He started to speak; then, borne down by the hopelessness of it,
stopped. Elizabeth stood up. They did not look at each other. He
strapped the suitcase and picked it up. The end of all things was
at hand.
'Better to end it all cleanly, Bill,' she said, in a low voice.
'It will hurt less.'
He did not speak.
'I'll come down to the gate with you.'
They walked in silence down the drive. The air was heavy with
contentment. He hummed a tune.
'Good-bye, Bill, dear.'
He took her hand dully.
'Good-bye,' he said.
Elizabeth stood at the gate, watching. He swung down the road with
long strides. At the bend he turned and for a moment stood there,
as if waiting for her to make some sign. Then he fell into his
stride again and was gone. Elizabeth leaned on the gate. Her face
was twisted, and she clutched the warm wood as if it gave her
strength.
The grounds were very empty. The spirit of loneliness brooded on
them. Elizabeth walked slowly back to the house. Nutty was coming
towards her from the orchard.
'Halloa!' said Nutty.
He was cheerful and debonair. His little eyes were alight with
contentment. He hummed a tune.
'Where's Dawlish?' he said.
'He has gone.'
Nutty's tune failed in the middle of a bar. Something in his
sister's voice startled him. The glow of contentment gave way to a
look of alarm.
'Gone? How do you mean--gone? You don't mean--gone?'
'Yes.'
'Gone away?'
'Gone away.'
They had reached the house before he spoke again.
'You don't mean--gone away?'
'Yes.'
'Do you mean--gone away?'
'Yes.'
'You aren't going to marry him?'
'No.'
The world stood still. The noise of the crickets and all the
little sounds of summer smote on Nutty's ear in one discordant
shriek.
'Oh, gosh!' he exclaimed, faintly, and collapsed on the front
steps like a jelly-fish.
23
The spectacle of Nutty in his anguish did not touch Elizabeth.
Normally a kind-hearted girl, she was not in the least sorry for
him. She had even taken a bitter pleasure and found a momentary
relief in loosing the thunderbolt which had smitten him down. Even
if it has to manufacture it, misery loves company. She watched
Nutty with a cold and uninterested eye as he opened his mouth
feebly, shut it again and reopened it; and then when it became
apparent that these manoeuvres were about to result in speech, she
left him and walked quickly down the drive again. She had the
feeling that if Nutty were to begin to ask her questions--and he
had the aspect of one who is about to ask a thousand--she would
break down. She wanted solitude and movement, so she left Nutty
sitting and started for the gate. Presently she would go and do
things among the beehives; and after that, if that brought no
solace, she would go in and turn the house upside down and get
dusty and tired. Anything to occupy herself.
Reaction had set in. She had known it would come, and had made
ready to fight against it, but she had underestimated the strength
of the enemy. It seemed to her, in those first minutes, that she
had done a mad thing; that all those arguments which she had used
were far-fetched and ridiculous. It was useless to tell herself
that she had thought the whole thing out clearly and had taken the
only course that could have been taken. With Bill's departure the
power to face the situation steadily had left her. All she could
think of was that she loved him and that she had sent him away.
Why had he listened to her? Why hadn't he taken her in his arms
and told her not to be a little fool? Why did men ever listen to
women? If he had really loved her, would he have gone away? She
tormented herself with this last question for a while. She was
still tormenting herself with it when a melancholy voice broke in
on her meditations.
'I can't believe it,' said the voice. She turned, to perceive
Nutty drooping beside her. 'I simply can't believe it!'
Elizabeth clenched her teeth. She was not in the mood for Nutty.
'It will gradually sink in,' she said, unsympathetically.
'Did you really send him away?'
'I did.'
'But what on earth for?'
'Because it was the only thing to do.'
A light shone on Nutty's darkness.
'Oh, I say, did he hear what I said last night?'
'He did hear what you said last night.'
Nutty's mouth opened slowly.
'Oh!'
Elizabeth said nothing.
'But you could have explained that.'
'How?'
'Oh, I don't know--somehow or other.' He appeared to think. 'But
you said it was you who sent him away.'
'I did.'
'Well, this beats me!'
Elizabeth's strained patience reached the limit.
'Nutty, please!' she said. 'Don't let's talk about it. It's all
over now.'
'Yes, but--'
'Nutty, don't! I can't stand it. I'm raw all over. I'm hating
myself. Please don't make it worse.'
Nutty looked at her face, and decided not to make it worse. But
his anguish demanded some outlet. He found it in soliloquy.
'Just like this for the rest of our lives!' he murmured, taking in
the farm-grounds and all that in them stood with one glassy stare
of misery. 'Nothing but ghastly bees and sweeping floors and
fetching water till we die of old age! That is, if those blighters
don't put me in jail for getting that money out of them. How was I
to know that it was obtaining money under false pretences? It
simply seemed to me a darned good way of collecting a few dollars.
I don't see how I'm ever going to pay them back, so I suppose it's
prison for me all right.'
Elizabeth had been trying not to listen to him, but without
success.
'I'll look after that, Nutty. I have a little money saved up,
enough to pay off what you owe. I was saving it for something
else, but never mind.'
'Awfully good of you,' said Nutty, but his voice sounded almost
disappointed. He was in the frame of mind which resents alleviation
of its gloom. He would have preferred at that moment to be allowed to
round off the picture of the future which he was constructing in his
mind with a reel or two showing himself brooding in a cell. After
all, what difference did it make to a man of spacious tastes whether
he languished for the rest of his life in a jail or on a farm in the
country? Jail, indeed, was almost preferable. You knew where you were
when you were in prison. They didn't spring things on you. Whereas
life on a farm was nothing but one long succession of things sprung
on you. Now that Lord Dawlish had gone, he supposed that Elizabeth
would make him help her with the bees again. At this thought he
groaned aloud. When he contemplated a lifetime at Flack's, a lifetime
of bee-dodging and carpet-beating and water-lugging, and reflected
that, but for a few innocent words--words spoken, mark you, in a pure
spirit of kindliness and brotherly love with the object of putting a
bit of optimistic pep into sister!--he might have been in a position
to touch a millionaire brother-in-law for the needful whenever he
felt disposed, the iron entered into Nutty's soul. A rotten, rotten
world!
Nutty had the sort of mind that moves in circles. After contemplating
for a time the rottenness of the world, he came back to the point
from which he had started.
'I can't understand it,' he said. 'I can't believe it.'
He kicked a small pebble that lay convenient to his foot.
'You say you sent him away. If he had legged it on his own
account, because of what he heard me say, I could understand that.
But why should you--'
It became evident to Elizabeth that, until some explanation of
this point was offered to him, Nutty would drift about in her
vicinity, moaning and shuffling his feet indefinitely.
'I sent him away because I loved him,' she said, 'and because,
after what had happened, he could never be certain that I loved
him. Can you understand that?'
'No,' said Nutty, frankly, 'I'm darned if I can! It sounds loony
to me.'
'You can't see that it wouldn't have been fair to him to marry
him?'
'No.'
The doubts which she was trying to crush increased the violence of
their attack. It was not that she respected Nutty's judgement in
itself. It was that his view of what she had done chimed in so
neatly with her own. She longed for someone to tell her that she
had done right: someone who would bring back that feeling of
certainty which she had had during her talk with Bill. And in
these circumstances Nutty's attitude had more weight than on its
merits it deserved. She wished she could cry. She had a feeling
that if she once did that the right outlook would come back to
her.
Nutty, meanwhile, had found another pebble and was kicking it
sombrely. He was beginning to perceive something of the intricate
and unfathomable workings of the feminine mind. He had always
looked on Elizabeth as an ordinary good fellow, a girl whose mind
worked in a more or less understandable way. She was not one of
those hysterical women you read about in the works of the
novelists; she was just a regular girl. And yet now, at the one
moment of her life when everything depended on her acting
sensibly, she had behaved in a way that made his head swim when he
thought of it. What it amounted to was that you simply couldn't
understand women.
Into this tangle of silent sorrow came a hooting automobile. It
drew up at the gate and a man jumped out.
24
The man who had alighted from the automobile was young and
cheerful. He wore a flannel suit of a gay blue and a straw hat
with a coloured ribbon, and he looked upon a world which, his
manner seemed to indicate, had been constructed according to his
own specifications through a single eyeglass. When he spoke it
became plain that his nationality was English.
Nutty regarded his beaming countenance with a lowering hostility.
The indecency of anyone being cheerful at such a time struck him
forcibly. He would have liked mankind to have preserved till
further notice a hushed gloom. He glared at the young man.
Elizabeth, such was her absorption in her thoughts, was not even
aware of his presence till he spoke to her.
'I beg your pardon, is this Flack's?'
She looked up and met that sunny eyeglass.
'This is Flack's,' she said.
'Thank you,' said the young man.
The automobile, a stout, silent man at the helm, throbbed in the
nervous way automobiles have when standing still, suggesting
somehow that it were best to talk quick, as they can give you only
a few minutes before dashing on to keep some other appointment.
Either this or a natural volatility lent a breezy rapidity to the
visitor's speech. He looked at Elizabeth across the gate, which it
had not occurred to her to open, as if she were just what he had
expected her to be and a delight to his eyes, and burst into
speech.
'My name's Nichols--J. Nichols. I expect you remember getting a
letter from me a week or two ago?'
The name struck Elizabeth as familiar. But he had gone on to
identify himself before she could place it in her mind.
'Lawyer, don't you know. Wrote you a letter telling you that your
Uncle Ira Nutcombe had left all his money to Lord Dawlish.'
'Oh, yes,' said Elizabeth, and was about to invite him to pass the
barrier, when he began to speak again.
'You know, I want to explain that letter. Wrote it on a sudden
impulse, don't you know. The more I have to do with the law, the
more it seems to hit me that a lawyer oughtn't to act on impulse.
At the moment, you see, it seemed to me the decent thing to do--put
you out of your misery, and so forth--stop your entertaining
hopes never to be realized, what? and all that sort of thing. You
see, it was like this: Bill--I mean Lord Dawlish--is a great pal
of mine, a dear old chap. You ought to know him. Well, being in
the know, you understand, through your uncle having deposited the
will with us, I gave Bill the tip directly I heard of Mr
Nutcombe's death. I sent him a telephone message to come to the
office, and I said: "Bill, old man, this old buster"--I beg your
pardon, this old gentleman--"has left you all his money." Quite
informal, don't you know, and at the same time, in the same
informal spirit, I wrote you the letter.' He dammed the torrent
for a moment. 'By the way, of course you are Miss Elizabeth Boyd,
what?'
'Yes.'
The young man seemed relieved.
'I'm glad of that,' he said. 'Funny if you hadn't been. You'd have
wondered what on earth I was talking about.'
In spite of her identity, this was precisely what Elizabeth was
doing. Her mind, still under a cloud, had been unable to
understand one word of Mr Nichols's discourse. Judging from his
appearance, which was that of a bewildered hosepipe or a snake
whose brain is being momentarily overtaxed, Nutty was in the same
difficulty. He had joined the group at the gate, abandoning the
pebble which he had been kicking in the background, and was now
leaning on the top bar, a picture of silent perplexity.
'You see, the trouble is,' resumed the young man, 'my governor,
who's the head of the firm, is all for doing things according to
precedent. He loves red tape--wears it wrapped round him in winter
instead of flannel. He's all for doing things in the proper legal
way, which, as I dare say you know, takes months. And, meanwhile,
everybody's wondering what's happening and who has got the money,
and so on and so forth. I thought I would skip all that and let
you know right away exactly where you stood, so I wrote you that
letter. I don't think my temperament's quite suited to the law,
don't you know, and if he ever hears that I wrote you that letter
I have a notion that the governor will think so too. So I came
over here to ask you, if you don't mind, not to mention it when
you get in touch with the governor. I frankly admit that that
letter, written with the best intentions, was a bloomer.'
With which manly admission the young man paused, and allowed the
rays of his eyeglass to play upon Elizabeth in silence. Elizabeth
tried to piece together what little she understood of his
monologue.
'You mean that you want me not to tell your father that I got a
letter from you?'
'Exactly that. And thanks very much for not saying "without
prejudice," or anything of that kind. The governor would have.'
'But I don't understand. Why should you think that I should ever
mention anything to your father?'
'Might slip out, you know, without your meaning it.'
'But when? I shall never meet your father.'
'You might quite easily. He might want to see you about the
money.'
'The money?'
The eyebrow above the eyeglass rose, surprised.
'Haven't you had a letter from the governor?'
'No.'
The young man made a despairing gesture.
'I took it for granted that it had come on the same boat that I
did. There you have the governor's methods! Couldn't want a better
example. I suppose some legal formality or other has cropped up
and laid him a stymie, and he's waiting to get round it. You
really mean he hasn't written?
'Why, dash it,' said the young man, as one to whom all is
revealed, 'then you can't have understood a word of what I've been
saying!'
For the first time Elizabeth found herself capable of smiling. She
liked this incoherent young man.
'I haven't,' she said.
'You don't know about the will?'
'Only what you told me in your letter.'
'Well, I'm hanged! Tell me--I hadn't the honour of knowing him
personally--was the late Mr Nutcombe's whole life as eccentric as
his will-making? It seems to me--'
Nutty spoke.
'Uncle Ira's middle name,' he said, 'was Bloomingdale. That,' he
proceeded, bitterly, 'is the frightful injustice of it all. I had
to suffer from it right along, and all I get, when it comes to a
finish, is a miserable hundred dollars. Uncle Ira insisted on
father and mother calling me Nutcombe; and whenever he got a new
craze I was always the one he worked it off on. You remember the
time he became a vegetarian, Elizabeth? Gosh!' Nutty brooded
coldly on the past. 'You remember the time he had it all worked
out that the end of the world was to come at five in the morning
one February? Made me stop up all night with him, reading Marcus
Aurelius! And the steam-heat turned off at twelve-thirty! I could
tell you a dozen things just as bad as that. He always picked on
me. And now I've gone through it all he leaves me a hundred
dollars!'
Mr Nichols nodded sympathetically.
'I should have imagined that he was rather like that. You know, of
course, why he made that will I wrote to you about, leaving all
his money to Bill Dawlish? Simply because Bill, who met him
golfing at a place in Cornwall in the off season, cured him of
slicing his approach-shots! I give you my word that was the only
reason. I'm sorry for old Bill, poor old chap. Such a good sort!'
'He's all right,' said Nutty. 'But why you should be sorry for him
gets past me. A fellow who gets five million--'
'But he doesn't, don't you see?'
'How do you mean?'
'Why, this other will puts him out of the running.'
'Which other will?'
'Why, the one I'm telling you about.'
He looked from one to the other, apparently astonished at their
slowness of understanding. Then an idea occurred to him.
'Why, now that I think of it, I never told you, did I? Yes, your
uncle made another will at the very last moment, leaving all he
possessed to Miss Boyd.'
The dead silence in which his words were received stimulated him
to further speech. It occurred to him that, after that letter of
his, perhaps these people were wary about believing anything he
said.
'It's absolutely true. It's the real, stable information this
time. I had it direct from the governor, who was there when he
made the will. He and the governor had had a row about something,
you know, and they made it up during those last days, and--Well,
apparently your uncle thought he had better celebrate it somehow,
so he made a new will. From what little I know of him, that was
the way he celebrated most things. I took it for granted the
governor would have written to you by this time. I expect you'll
hear by the next mail. You see, what brought me over was the idea
that when he wrote you might possibly take it into your heads to
mention having heard from me. You don't know my governor. If he
found out I had done that I should never hear the last of it. So I
said to him: "Gov'nor, I'm feeling a bit jaded. Been working too
hard, or something. I'll take a week or so off, if you can spare
me." He didn't object, so I whizzed over. Well, of course, I'm
awfully sorry for old Bill, but I congratulate you, Miss Boyd.'
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