Books: Uneasy Money
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P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
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'Oh, no!'
'It's no use sitting there saying "Oh, no!" I can see you at it.
The fact is, you're such an infernally good chap that something of
this sort was bound to happen to you sooner or later. I think
making you his heir was the only sensible thing old Nutcombe ever
did. In his place I'd have done the same.'
'But he didn't even seem decently grateful at the time.'
'Probably not. He was a queer old bird. He had a most almighty row
with the governor in this office only a month or two ago about
absolutely nothing. They disagreed about something trivial, and
old Nutcombe stalked out and never came in again. That's the sort
of old bird he was.'
'Was he sane, do you think?'
'Absolutely, for legal purposes. We have three opinions from leading
doctors--collected by him in case of accidents, I suppose--each of
which declares him perfectly sound from the collar upward. But a
man can be pretty far gone, you know, without being legally insane,
and old Nutcombe--well, suppose we call him whimsical. He seems to
have zigzagged between the normal and the eccentric.
'His only surviving relatives appear to be a nephew and a niece.
The nephew dropped out of the running two years ago when his aunt,
old Nutcombe's wife, who had divorced old Nutcombe, left him her
money. This seems to have soured the old boy on the nephew, for in
the first of his wills that I've seen--you remember I told you I
had seen three--he leaves the niece the pile and the nephew only
gets twenty pounds. Well, so far there's nothing very eccentric
about old Nutcombe's proceedings. But wait!
'Six months after he had made that will he came in here and made
another. This left twenty pounds to the nephew as before, but
nothing at all to the niece. Why, I don't know. There was nothing
in the will about her having done anything to offend him during
those six months, none of those nasty slams you see in wills about
"I bequeath to my only son John one shilling and sixpence. Now
perhaps he's sorry he married the cook." As far as I can make out
he changed his will just as he did when he left the money to you,
purely through some passing whim. Anyway, he did change it. He
left the pile to support the movement those people are running for
getting the Jews back to Palestine.
'He didn't seem, on second thoughts, to feel that this was quite
such a brainy scheme as he had at first, and it wasn't long before
he came trotting back to tear up this second will and switch back
to the first one--the one leaving the money to the niece. That
restoration to sanity lasted till about a month ago, when he broke
loose once more and paid his final visit here to will you the
contents of his stocking. This morning I see he's dead after a
short illness, so you collect. Congratulations!'
Lord Dawlish had listened to this speech in perfect silence. He now
rose and began to pace the room. He looked warm and uncomfortable.
His demeanour, in fact, was by no means the accepted demeanour of
the lucky heir.
'This is awful!' he said. 'Good Lord, Jerry, it's frightful!'
'Awful!--being left a million pounds?'
'Yes, like this. I feel like a bally thief.'
'Why on earth?'
'If it hadn't been for me this girl--what's her name?'
'Her name is Boyd--Elizabeth Boyd.'
'She would have had the whole million if it hadn't been for me.
Have you told her yet?'
'She's in America. I was writing her a letter just before you came
in--informal, you know, to put her out of her misery. If I had
waited for the governor to let her know in the usual course of red
tape we should never have got anywhere. Also one to the nephew,
telling him about his twenty pounds. I believe in humane treatment
on these occasions. The governor would write them a legal letter
with so many "hereinbefores" in it that they would get the idea
that they had been left the whole pile. I just send a cheery line
saying "It's no good, old top. Abandon hope," and they know just
where they are. Simple and considerate.'
A glance at Bill's face moved him to further speech.
'I don't see why you should worry, Bill. How, by any stretch of
the imagination, can you make out that you are to blame for this
Boyd girl's misfortune? It looks to me as if these eccentric wills
of old Nutcombe's came in cycles, as it were. Just as he was due
for another outbreak he happened to meet you. It's a moral
certainty that if he hadn't met you he would have left all his
money to a Home for Superannuated Caddies or a Fund for Supplying
the Deserving Poor with Niblicks. Why should you blame yourself?'
'I don't blame myself. It isn't exactly that. But--but, well, what
would you feel like in my place?'
'A two-year-old.'
'Wouldn't you do anything?'
'I certainly would. By my halidom, I would! I would spend that
money with a vim and speed that would make your respected
ancestor, the Beau, look like a village miser.'
'You wouldn't--er--pop over to America and see whether something
couldn't be arranged?'
'What!'
'I mean--suppose you were popping in any case. Suppose you had
happened to buy a ticket for New York on to-morrow's boat,
wouldn't you try to get in touch with this girl when you got to
America, and see if you couldn't--er--fix up something?'
Jerry Nichols looked at him in honest consternation. He had always
known that old Bill was a dear old ass, but he had never dreamed
that he was such an infernal old ass as this.
'You aren't thinking of doing that?' he gasped.
'Well, you see, it's a funny coincidence, but I was going to
America, anyhow, to-morrow. I don't see why I shouldn't try to fix
up something with this girl.'
'What do you mean--fix up something? You don't suggest that you
should give the money up, do you?'
'I don't know. Not exactly that, perhaps. How would it be if I
gave her half, what? Anyway, I should like to find out about her,
see if she's hard up, and so on. I should like to nose round, you
know, and--er--and so forth, don't you know. Where did you say the
girl lived?'
'I didn't say, and I'm not sure that I shall. Honestly, Bill, you
mustn't be so quixotic.'
'There's no harm in my nosing round, is there? Be a good chap and
give me the address.'
'Well'--with misgivings--'Brookport, Long Island.'
'Thanks.'
'Bill, are you really going to make a fool of yourself?'
'Not a bit of it, old chap. I'm just going to--er--'
'To nose round?'
'To nose round,' said Bill.
Jerry Nichols accompanied his friend to the door, and once more
peace reigned in the offices of Nichols, Nichols, Nichols, and
Nichols.
The time of a man who has at a moment's notice decided to leave
his native land for a sojourn on foreign soil is necessarily taken
up with a variety of occupations; and it was not till the
following afternoon, on the boat at Liverpool, that Bill had
leisure to write to Claire, giving her the news of what had
befallen him. He had booked his ticket by a Liverpool boat in
preference to one that sailed from Southampton because he had not
been sure how Claire would take the news of his sudden decision to
leave for America. There was the chance that she might ridicule or
condemn the scheme, and he preferred to get away without seeing
her. Now that he had received this astounding piece of news from
Jerry Nichols he was relieved that he had acted in this way.
Whatever Claire might have thought of the original scheme, there
was no doubt at all what she would think of his plan of seeking
out Elizabeth Boyd with a view to dividing the legacy with her.
He was guarded in his letter. He mentioned no definite figures. He
wrote that Ira Nutcombe of whom they had spoken so often had most
surprisingly left him in his will a large sum of money, and eased
his conscience by telling himself that half of a million pounds
undeniably was a large sum of money.
The addressing of the letter called for thought. She would have
left Southampton with the rest of the company before it could
arrive. Where was it that she said they were going next week?
Portsmouth, that was it. He addressed the letter Care of The Girl
and the Artist Company, to the King's Theatre, Portsmouth.
5
The village of Brookport, Long Island, is a summer place. It
lives, like the mosquitoes that infest it, entirely on its summer
visitors. At the time of the death of Mr Ira Nutcombe, the only
all-the-year-round inhabitants were the butcher, the grocer, the
chemist, the other customary fauna of villages, and Miss Elizabeth
Boyd, who rented the ramshackle farm known locally as Flack's and
eked out a precarious livelihood by keeping bees.
If you take down your _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Volume III,
AUS to BIS, you will find that bees are a 'large and natural
family of the zoological order Hymenoptera, characterized by the
plumose form of many of their hairs, by the large size of the
basal segment of the foot ... and by the development of a "tongue"
for sucking liquid food,' the last of which peculiarities, it is
interesting to note, they shared with Claude Nutcombe Boyd,
Elizabeth's brother, who for quite a long time--till his money ran
out--had made liquid food almost his sole means of sustenance.
These things, however, are by the way. We are not such snobs as to
think better or worse of a bee because it can claim kinship with
the _Hymenoptera_ family, nor so ill-bred as to chaff it for
having large feet. The really interesting passage in the article
occurs later, where it says: 'The bee industry prospers greatly in
America.'
This is one of those broad statements that invite challenge.
Elizabeth Boyd would have challenged it. She had not prospered
greatly. With considerable trouble she contrived to pay her way,
and that was all.
Again referring to the 'Encyclopaedia,' we find the words: 'Before
undertaking the management of a modern apiary, the beekeeper
should possess a certain amount of aptitude for the pursuit.' This
was possibly the trouble with Elizabeth's venture, considered from
a commercial point of view. She loved bees, but she was not an
expert on them. She had started her apiary with a small capital, a
book of practical hints, and a second-hand queen, principally
because she was in need of some occupation that would enable her
to live in the country. It was the unfortunate condition of Claude
Nutcombe which made life in the country a necessity. At that time
he was spending the remains of the money left him by his aunt, and
Elizabeth had hardly settled down at Brookport and got her venture
under way when she found herself obliged to provide for Nutty a
combination of home and sanatorium. It had been the poor lad's
mistaken view that he could drink up all the alcoholic liquor in
America.
It is a curious law of Nature that the most undeserving brothers
always have the best sisters. Thrifty, plodding young men, who get
up early, and do it now, and catch the employer's eye, and save
half their salaries, have sisters who never speak civilly to them
except when they want to borrow money. To the Claude Nutcombes of
the world are vouchsafed the Elizabeths.
The great aim of Elizabeth's life was to make a new man of Nutty.
It was her hope that the quiet life and soothing air of Brookport,
with--unless you counted the money-in-the-slot musical box at the
store--its absence of the fiercer excitements, might in time pull
him together and unscramble his disordered nervous system. She
liked to listen of a morning to the sound of Nutty busy in the
next room with a broom and a dustpan, for in the simple lexicon of
Flack's there was no such word as 'help'. The privy purse would
not run to a maid. Elizabeth did the cooking and Claude Nutcombe
the housework.
Several days after Claire Fenwick and Lord Dawlish, by different
routes, had sailed from England, Elizabeth Boyd sat up in bed and
shook her mane of hair from her eyes, yawning. Outside her window
the birds were singing, and a shaft of sunlight intruded itself
beneath the blind. But what definitely convinced her that it was
time to get up was the plaintive note of James, the cat,
patrolling the roof of the porch. An animal of regular habits,
James always called for breakfast at eight-thirty sharp.
Elizabeth got out of bed, wrapped her small body in a pink kimono,
thrust her small feet into a pair of blue slippers, yawned again,
and went downstairs. Having taken last night's milk from the ice-box,
she went to the back door, and, having filled James's saucer,
stood on the grass beside it, sniffing the morning air.
Elizabeth Boyd was twenty-one, but standing there with her hair
tumbling about her shoulders she might have been taken by a
not-too-close observer for a child. It was only when you saw her eyes
and the resolute tilt of the chin that you realized that she was a
young woman very well able to take care of herself in a difficult
world. Her hair was very fair, her eyes brown and very bright, and
the contrast was extraordinarily piquant. They were valiant eyes,
full of spirit; eyes, also, that saw the humour of things. And her
mouth was the mouth of one who laughs easily. Her chin, small like
the rest of her, was strong; and in the way she held herself there
was a boyish jauntiness. She looked--and was--a capable little
person.
She stood besides James like a sentinel, watching over him as he
breakfasted. There was a puppy belonging to one of the neighbours
who sometimes lumbered over and stole James's milk, disposing of
it in greedy gulps while its rightful proprietor looked on with
piteous helplessness. Elizabeth was fond of the puppy, but her
sense of justice was keen and she was there to check this
brigandage.
It was a perfect day, cloudless and still. There was peace in the
air. James, having finished his milk, began to wash himself. A
squirrel climbed cautiously down from a linden tree. From the
orchard came the murmur of many bees.
Aesthetically Elizabeth was fond of still, cloudless days, but
experience had taught her to suspect them. As was the custom in
that locality, the water supply depended on a rickety windwheel.
It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and
turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of
the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle
the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so
utter as that of a waterless tap.
'Confound it!' said Elizabeth.
She passed through the dining-room to the foot of the stairs.
'Nutty!'
There was no reply.
'Nutty, my precious lamb!'
Upstairs in the room next to her own a long, spare form began to
uncurl itself in bed; a face with a receding chin and a small
forehead raised itself reluctantly from the pillow, and Claude
Nutcombe Boyd signalized the fact that he was awake by scowling at
the morning sun and uttering an aggrieved groan.
Alas, poor Nutty! This was he whom but yesterday Broadway had
known as the Speed Kid, on whom head-waiters had smiled and lesser
waiters fawned; whose snake-like form had nestled in so many a
front-row orchestra stall.
Where were his lobster Newburgs now, his cold quarts that were
wont to set the table in a roar?
Nutty Boyd conformed as nearly as a human being may to Euclid's
definition of a straight line. He was length without breadth. From
boyhood's early day he had sprouted like a weed, till now in the
middle twenties he gave startled strangers the conviction that it
only required a sharp gust of wind to snap him in half. Lying in
bed, he looked more like a length of hose-pipe than anything else.
While he was unwinding himself the door opened and Elizabeth came
into the room.
'Good morning, Nutty!'
'What's the time?' asked her brother, hollowly.
'Getting on towards nine. It's a lovely day. The birds are
singing, the bees are buzzing, summer's in the air. It's one of
those beautiful, shiny, heavenly, gorgeous days.'
A look of suspicion came into Nutty's eyes. Elizabeth was not
often as lyrical as this.
'There's a catch somewhere,' he said.
'Well, as a matter of fact,' said Elizabeth, carelessly, 'the
water's off again.'
'Confound it!'
'I said that. I'm afraid we aren't a very original family.'
'What a ghastly place this is! Why can't you see old Flack and
make him mend that infernal wheel?'
'I'm going to pounce on him and have another try directly I see
him. Meanwhile, darling Nutty, will you get some clothes on and go
round to the Smiths and ask them to lend us a pailful?'
'Oh, gosh, it's over a mile!'
'No, no, not more than three-quarters.'
'Lugging a pail that weighs a ton! The last time I went there
their dog bit me.'
'I expect that was because you slunk in all doubled up, and he got
suspicious. You should hold your head up and throw your chest out
and stride up as if you were a military friend of the family.'
Self-pity lent Nutty eloquence.
'For Heaven's sake! You drag me out of bed at some awful hour of
the morning when a rational person would just be turning in; you
send me across country to fetch pailfuls of water when I'm feeling
like a corpse; and on top of that you expect me to behave like a
drum-major!'
'Dearest, you can wriggle on your tummy, if you like, so long as
you get the fluid. We must have water. I can't fetch it. I'm a
delicately-nurtured female.'
'We ought to have a man to do these ghastly jobs.'
'But we can't afford one. Just at present all I ask is to be able
to pay expenses. And, as a matter of fact, you ought to be very
thankful that you have got--'
'A roof over my head? I know. You needn't keep rubbing it in.'
Elizabeth flushed.
'I wasn't going to say that at all. What a pig you are sometimes,
Nutty. As if I wasn't only too glad to have you here. What I was
going to say was that you ought to be very thankful that you have
got to draw water and hew wood--'
A look of absolute alarm came into Nutty's pallid face.
'You don't mean to say that you want some wood chopped?'
'I was speaking figuratively. I meant hustle about and work in the
open air. The sort of life you are leading now is what millionaires
pay hundreds of dollars for at these physical-culture places. It
has been the making of you.'
'I don't feel made.'
'Your nerves are ever so much better.'
'They aren't.'
Elizabeth looked at him in alarm.
'Oh, Nutty, you haven't been--seeing anything again, have you?'
'Not seeing, dreaming. I've been dreaming about monkeys. Why
should I dream about monkeys if my nerves were all right?'
'I often dream about all sorts of queer things.'
'Have you ever dreamed that you were being chased up Broadway by a
chimpanzee in evening dress?'
'Never mind, dear, you'll be quite all right again when you have
been living this life down here a little longer.'
Nutty glared balefully at the ceiling.
'What's that darned thing up there on the ceiling? It looks like a
hornet. How on earth do these things get into the house?'
'We ought to have nettings. I am going to pounce on Mr Flack about
that too.'
'Thank goodness this isn't going to last much longer. It's nearly
two weeks since Uncle Ira died. We ought to be hearing from the
lawyers any day now. There might be a letter this morning.'
'Do you think he has left us his money?'
'Do I? Why, what else could he do with it? We are his only
surviving relatives, aren't we? I've had to go through life with a
ghastly name like Nutcombe as a compliment to him, haven't I? I
wrote to him regularly at Christmas and on his birthday, didn't I?
Well, then! I have a feeling there will be a letter from the
lawyers to-day. I wish you would get dressed and go down to the
post-office while I'm fetching that infernal water. I can't think
why the fools haven't cabled. You would have supposed they would
have thought of that.'
Elizabeth returned to her room to dress. She was conscious of a
feeling that nothing was quite perfect in this world. It would be
nice to have a great deal of money, for she had a scheme in her
mind which called for a large capital; but she was sorry that it
could come to her only through the death of her uncle, of whom,
despite his somewhat forbidding personality, she had always been
fond. She was also sorry that a large sum of money was coming to
Nutty at that particular point in his career, just when there
seemed the hope that the simple life might pull him together. She
knew Nutty too well not to be able to forecast his probable
behaviour under the influence of a sudden restoration of wealth.
While these thoughts were passing through her mind she happened to
glance out of the window. Nutty was shambling through the garden
with his pail, a bowed, shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth
watched, he dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a
while. From her knowledge of bees ('It is needful to remember that
bees resent outside interference and will resolutely defend
themselves,' _Encyc. Brit._, Vol. III, AUS to BIS) Elizabeth
deduced that one of her little pets was annoying him. This episode
concluded, Nutty resumed his pail and the journey, and at this
moment there appeared over the hedge the face of Mr John Prescott,
a neighbour. Mr Prescott, who had dismounted from a bicycle,
called to Nutty and waved something in the air. To a stranger the
performance would have been obscure, but Elizabeth understood it.
Mr Prescott was intimating that he had been down to the post-office
for his own letters and, as was his neighbourly custom on these
occasions, had brought back also letters for Flack's.
Nutty foregathered with Mr Prescott and took the letters from him.
Mr Prescott disappeared. Nutty selected one of the letters and
opened it. Then, having stood perfectly still for some moments, he
suddenly turned and began to run towards the house.
The mere fact that her brother, whose usual mode of progression
was a languid saunter, should be actually running, was enough to
tell Elizabeth that the letter which Nutty had read was from the
London lawyers. No other communication could have galvanized him
into such energy. Whether the contents of the letter were good or
bad it was impossible at that distance to say. But when she
reached the open air, just as Nutty charged up, she saw by his
face that it was anguish not joy that had spurred him on. He was
gasping and he bubbled unintelligible words. His little eyes
gleamed wildly.
'Nutty, darling, what is it?' cried Elizabeth, every maternal
instinct in her aroused.
He was thrusting a sheet of paper at her, a sheet of paper that
bore the superscription of Nichols, Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols,
with a London address.
'Uncle Ira--' Nutty choked. 'Twenty pounds! He's left me twenty
pounds, and all the rest to a--to a man named Dawlish!'
In silence Elizabeth took the letter. It was even as he had said.
A few moments before Elizabeth had been regretting the imminent
descent of wealth upon her brother. Now she was inconsistent
enough to boil with rage at the shattering blow which had befallen
him. That she, too, had lost her inheritance hardly occurred to
her. Her thoughts were all for Nutty. It did not need the sight of
him, gasping and gurgling before her, to tell her how overwhelming
was his disappointment.
It was useless to be angry with the deceased Mr Nutcombe. He was
too shadowy a mark. Besides, he was dead. The whole current of her
wrath turned upon the supplanter, this Lord Dawlish. She pictured
him as a crafty adventurer, a wretched fortune-hunter. For some
reason or other she imagined him a sinister person with a black
moustache, a face thin and hawk-like, and unpleasant eyes. That
was the sort of man who would be likely to fasten his talons into
poor Uncle Ira.
She had never hated any one in her life before, but as she stood
there at that moment she felt that she loathed and detested
William Lord Dawlish--unhappy, well-meaning Bill, who only a few
hours back had set foot on American soil in his desire to nose
round and see if something couldn't be arranged.
Nutty fetched the water. Life is like that. There is nothing
clean-cut about it, no sense of form. Instead of being permitted
to concentrate his attention on his tragedy Nutty had to trudge
three-quarters of a mile, conciliate a bull-terrier, and trudge
back again carrying a heavy pail. It was as if one of the heroes
of Greek drama, in the middle of his big scene, had been asked to
run round the corner to a provision store.
The exercise did not act as a restorative. The blow had been too
sudden, too overwhelming. Nutty's reason--such as it was--tottered
on its throne. Who was Lord Dawlish? What had he done to
ingratiate himself with Uncle Ira? By what insidious means, with
what devilish cunning, had he wormed his way into the old man's
favour? These were the questions that vexed Nutty's mind when he
was able to think at all coherently.
Back at the farm Elizabeth cooked breakfast and awaited her
brother's return with a sinking heart. She was a soft-hearted
girl, easily distressed by the sight of suffering; and she was
aware that Nutty was scarcely of the type that masks its woes
behind a brave and cheerful smile. Her heart bled for Nutty.
There was a weary step outside. Nutty entered, slopping water. One
glance at his face was enough to tell Elizabeth that she had
formed a too conservative estimate of his probable gloom. Without
a word he coiled his long form in a chair. There was silence in
the stricken house.
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