Books: Uneasy Money
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P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
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'What's the time?'
Elizabeth glanced at her watch.
'Half-past nine.'
'About now,' said Nutty, sepulchrally, 'the blighter is ringing
for his man to prepare his bally bath and lay out his gold-leaf
underwear. After that he will drive down to the bank and draw some
of our money.'
The day passed wearily for Elizabeth. Nutty having the air of one
who is still engaged in picking up the pieces, she had not the
heart to ask him to play his customary part in the household
duties, so she washed the dishes and made the beds herself. After
that she attended to the bees. After that she cooked lunch.
Nutty was not chatty at lunch. Having observed 'About now the
blighter is cursing the waiter for bringing the wrong brand of
champagne,' he relapsed into a silence which he did not again
break.
Elizabeth was busy again in the afternoon. At four o'clock,
feeling tired out, she went to her room to lie down until the next
of her cycle of domestic duties should come round.
It was late when she came downstairs, for she had fallen asleep.
The sun had gone down. Bees were winging their way heavily back to
the hives with their honey. She went out into the grounds to try
to find Nutty. There had been no signs of him in the house. There
were no signs of him about the grounds. It was not like him to
have taken a walk, but it seemed the only possibility. She went
back to the house to wait. Eight o'clock came, and nine, and it
was then the truth dawned upon her--Nutty had escaped. He had
slipped away and gone up to New York.
6
Lord Dawlish sat in the New York flat which had been lent him by
his friend Gates. The hour was half-past ten in the evening; the
day, the second day after the exodus of Nutty Boyd from the farm.
Before him on the table lay a letter. He was smoking pensively.
Lord Dawlish had found New York enjoyable, but a trifle fatiguing.
There was much to be seen in the city, and he had made the mistake
of trying to see it all at once. It had been his intention, when
he came home after dinner that night, to try to restore the
balance of things by going to bed early. He had sat up longer than
he had intended, because he had been thinking about this letter.
Immediately upon his arrival in America, Bill had sought out a
lawyer and instructed him to write to Elizabeth Boyd, offering her
one-half of the late Ira Nutcombe's money. He had had time during
the voyage to think the whole matter over, and this seemed to him
the only possible course. He could not keep it all. He would feel
like the despoiler of the widow and the orphan. Nor would it be
fair to Claire to give it all up. If he halved the legacy
everybody would be satisfied.
That at least had been his view until Elizabeth's reply had
arrived. It was this reply that lay on the table--a brief, formal
note, setting forth Miss Boyd's absolute refusal to accept any
portion of the money. This was a development which Bill had not
foreseen, and he was feeling baffled. What was the next step? He
had smoked many pipes in the endeavour to find an answer to this
problem, and was lighting another when the door-bell rang.
He opened the door and found himself confronting an extraordinarily
tall and thin young man in evening-dress.
Lord Dawlish was a little startled. He had taken it for granted,
when the bell rang, that his visitor was Tom, the liftman from
downstairs, a friendly soul who hailed from London and had been
dropping in at intervals during the past two days to acquire the
latest news from his native land. He stared at this changeling
inquiringly. The solution of the mystery came with the stranger's
first words--
'Is Gates in?'
He spoke eagerly, as if Gates were extremely necessary to his
well-being. It distressed Lord Dawlish to disappoint him, but
there was nothing else to be done.
'Gates is in London,' he said.
'What! When did he go there?'
'About four months ago.'
'May I come in a minute?'
'Yes, rather, do.'
He led the way into the sitting-room. The stranger gave abruptly
in the middle, as if he were being folded up by some invisible
agency, and in this attitude sank into a chair, where he lay back
looking at Bill over his knees, like a sorrowful sheep peering
over a sharp-pointed fence.
'You're from England, aren't you?'
'Yes.'
'Been in New York long?'
'Only a couple of days.'
The stranger folded himself up another foot or so until his knees
were higher than his head, and lit a cigarette.
'The curse of New York,' he said, mournfully, 'is the way
everything changes in it. You can't take your eyes off it for a
minute. The population's always shifting. It's like a railway
station. You go away for a bit and come back and try to find your
old pals, and they're all gone: Ike's in Arizona, Mike's in a
sanatorium, Spike's in jail, and nobody seems to know where the
rest of them have got to. I came up from the country two days ago,
expecting to find the old gang along Broadway the same as ever,
and I'm dashed if I've been able to put my hands on one of them!
Not a single, solitary one of them! And it's only six months since
I was here last.'
Lord Dawlish made sympathetic noises.
'Of course,' proceeded the other, 'the time of year may have
something to do with it. Living down in the country you lose count
of time, and I forgot that it was July, when people go out of the
city. I guess that must be what happened. I used to know all sorts
of fellows, actors and fellows like that, and they're all away
somewhere. I tell you,' he said, with pathos, 'I never knew I
could be so infernally lonesome as I have been these last two
days. If I had known what a rotten time I was going to have I
would never have left Brookport.'
'Brookport!'
'It's a place down on Long Island.'
Bill was not by nature a plotter, but the mere fact of travelling
under an assumed name had developed a streak of wariness in him.
He checked himself just as he was about to ask his companion if he
happened to know a Miss Elizabeth Boyd, who also lived at
Brookport. It occurred to him that the question would invite a
counter-question as to his own knowledge of Miss Boyd, and he knew
that he would not be able to invent a satisfactory answer to that
offhand.
'This evening,' said the thin young man, resuming his dirge, 'I
was sweating my brain to try to think of somebody I could hunt up
in this ghastly, deserted city. It isn't so easy, you know, to
think of fellows' names and addresses. I can get the names all
right, but unless the fellow's in the telephone-book, I'm done.
Well, I was trying to think of some of my pals who might still be
around the place, and I remembered Gates. Remembered his address,
too, by a miracle. You're a pal of his, of course?'
'Yes, I knew him in London.'
'Oh, I see. And when you came over here he lent you his flat? By
the way, I didn't get your name?'
'My name's Chalmers.'
'Well, as I say, I remembered Gates and came down here to look him
up. We used to have a lot of good times together a year ago. And
now he's gone too!'
'Did you want to see him about anything important?'
'Well, it's important to me. I wanted him to come out to supper.
You see, it's this way: I'm giving supper to-night to a girl who's
in that show at the Forty-ninth Street Theatre, a Miss Leonard,
and she insists on bringing a pal. She says the pal is a good
sport, which sounds all right--' Bill admitted that it sounded all
right. 'But it makes the party three. And of all the infernal
things a party of three is the ghastliest.'
Having delivered himself of this undeniable truth the stranger
slid a little farther into his chair and paused. 'Look here, what
are you doing to-night?' he said.
'I was thinking of going to bed.'
'Going to bed!' The stranger's voice was shocked, as if he had
heard blasphemy. 'Going to bed at half-past ten in New York! My
dear chap, what you want is a bit of supper. Why don't you come
along?'
Amiability was, perhaps, the leading quality of Lord Dawlish's
character. He did not want to have to dress and go out to supper,
but there was something almost pleading in the eyes that looked at
him between the sharply-pointed knees.
'It's awfully good of you--' He hesitated.
'Not a bit; I wish you would. You would be a life-saver.'
Bill felt that he was in for it. He got up.
'You will?' said the other. 'Good boy! You go and get into some
clothes and come along. I'm sorry, what did you say your name
was?'
'Chalmers.'
'Mine's Boyd--Nutcombe Boyd.'
'Boyd!' cried Bill.
Nutty took his astonishment, which was too great to be concealed,
as a compliment. He chuckled.
'I thought you would know the name if you were a pal of Gates's. I
expect he's always talking about me. You see, I was pretty well
known in this old place before I had to leave it.'
Bill walked down the long passage to his bedroom with no trace of
the sleepiness which had been weighing on him five minutes before.
He was galvanized by a superstitious thrill. It was fate,
Elizabeth Boyd's brother turning up like this and making friendly
overtures right on top of that letter from her. This astonishing
thing could not have been better arranged if he had planned it
himself. From what little he had seen of Nutty he gathered that
the latter was not hard to make friends with. It would be a simple
task to cultivate his acquaintance. And having done so, he could
renew negotiations with Elizabeth. The desire to rid himself of
half the legacy had become a fixed idea with Bill. He had the
impression that he could not really feel clean again until he had
made matters square with his conscience in this respect. He felt
that he was probably a fool to take that view of the thing, but
that was the way he was built and there was no getting away from
it.
This irruption of Nutty Boyd into his life was an omen. It meant
that all was not yet over. He was conscious of a mild surprise
that he had ever intended to go to bed. He felt now as if he never
wanted to go to bed again. He felt exhilarated.
In these days one cannot say that a supper-party is actually given
in any one place. Supping in New York has become a peripatetic
pastime. The supper-party arranged by Nutty Boyd was scheduled to
start at Reigelheimer's on Forty-second Street, and it was there
that the revellers assembled.
Nutty and Bill had been there a few minutes when Miss Daisy
Leonard arrived with her friend. And from that moment Bill was
never himself again.
The Good Sport was, so to speak, an outsize in Good Sports. She
loomed up behind the small and demure Miss Leonard like a liner
towed by a tug. She was big, blonde, skittish, and exuberant; she
wore a dress like the sunset of a fine summer evening, and she
effervesced with spacious good will to all men. She was one of
those girls who splash into public places like stones into quiet
pools. Her form was large, her eyes were large, her teeth were
large, and her voice was large. She overwhelmed Bill. She hit his
astounded consciousness like a shell. She gave him a buzzing in
the ears. She was not so much a Good Sport as some kind of an
explosion.
He was still reeling from the spiritual impact with this female
tidal wave when he became aware, as one who, coming out of a
swoon, hears voices faintly, that he was being addressed by Miss
Leonard. To turn from Miss Leonard's friend to Miss Leonard
herself was like hearing the falling of gentle rain after a
thunderstorm. For a moment he revelled in the sense of being
soothed; then, as he realized what she was saying, he started
violently. Miss Leonard was looking at him curiously.
'I beg your pardon?' said Bill.
'I'm sure I've met you before, Mr Chalmers.'
'Er--really?'
'But I can't think where.'
'I'm sure,' said the Good Sport, languishingly, like a sentimental
siege-gun, 'that if I had ever met Mr Chalmers before I shouldn't
have forgotten him.'
'You're English, aren't you?' asked Miss Leonard.
'Yes.'
The Good Sport said she was crazy about Englishmen.
'I thought so from your voice.'
The Good Sport said that she was crazy about the English accent.
'It must have been in London that I met you. I was in the revue at
the Alhambra last year.'
'By George, I wish I had seen you!' interjected the infatuated
Nutty.
The Good Sport said that she was crazy about London.
'I seem to remember,' went on Miss Leonard, 'meeting you out at
supper. Do you know a man named Delaney in the Coldstream Guards?'
Bill would have liked to deny all knowledge of Delaney, though the
latter was one of his best friends, but his natural honesty
prevented him.
'I'm sure I met you at a supper he gave at Oddy's one Friday
night. We all went on to Covent Garden. Don't you remember?'
'Talking of supper,' broke in Nutty, earning Bill's hearty
gratitude thereby, 'where's the dashed head-waiter? I want to find
my table.'
He surveyed the restaurant with a melancholy eye.
'Everything changed!' He spoke sadly, as Ulysses might have done
when his boat put in at Ithaca. 'Every darned thing different
since I was here last. New waiter, head-waiter I never saw before
in my life, different-coloured carpet--'
'Cheer up, Nutty, old thing!' said Miss Leonard. 'You'll feel
better when you've had something to eat. I hope you had the sense
to tip the head-waiter, or there won't be any table. Funny how
these places go up and down in New York. A year ago the whole
management would turn out and kiss you if you looked like spending
a couple of dollars here. Now it costs the earth to get in at
all.'
'Why's that?' asked Nutty.
'Lady Pauline Wetherby, of course. Didn't you know this was where
she danced?'
'Never heard of her,' said Nutty, in a sort of ecstasy of wistful
gloom. 'That will show you how long I've been away. Who is she?'
Miss Leonard invoked the name of Mike.
'Don't you ever get the papers in your village, Nutty?'
'I never read the papers. I don't suppose I've read a paper for
years. I can't stand 'em. Who is Lady Pauline Wetherby?'
'She does Greek dances--at least, I suppose they're Greek. They
all are nowadays, unless they're Russian. She's an English
peeress.'
Miss Leonard's friend said she was crazy about these picturesque
old English families; and they went in to supper.
* * * * *
Looking back on the evening later and reviewing its leading
features, Lord Dawlish came to the conclusion that he never
completely recovered from the first shock of the Good Sport. He
was conscious all the time of a dream-like feeling, as if he were
watching himself from somewhere outside himself. From some
conning-tower in this fourth dimension he perceived himself eating
broiled lobster and drinking champagne and heard himself bearing
an adequate part in the conversation; but his movements were
largely automatic.
Time passed. It seemed to Lord Dawlish, watching from without,
that things were livening up. He seemed to perceive a quickening
of the _tempo_ of the revels, an added abandon. Nutty was
getting quite bright. He had the air of one who recalls the good
old days, of one who in familiar scenes re-enacts the joys of his
vanished youth. The chastened melancholy induced by many months of
fetching of pails of water, of scrubbing floors with a mop, and of
jumping like a firecracker to avoid excited bees had been purged
from him by the lights and the music and the wine. He was telling
a long anecdote, laughing at it, throwing a crust of bread at an
adjacent waiter, and refilling his glass at the same time. It is
not easy to do all these things simultaneously, and the fact that
Nutty did them with notable success was proof that he was picking
up.
Miss Daisy Leonard was still demure, but as she had just slipped a
piece of ice down the back of Nutty's neck one may assume that she
was feeling at her ease and had overcome any diffidence or shyness
which might have interfered with her complete enjoyment of the
festivities. As for the Good Sport, she was larger, blonder, and
more exuberant than ever and she was addressing someone as 'Bill'.
Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of the evening, as it
advanced, was the change it wrought in Lord Dawlish's attitude
toward this same Good Sport. He was not conscious of the beginning
of the change; he awoke to the realization of it suddenly. At the
beginning of supper his views on her had been definite and clear.
When they had first been introduced to each other he had had a
stunned feeling that this sort of thing ought not to be allowed at
large, and his battered brain had instinctively recalled that line
of Tennyson: 'The curse is come upon me.' But now, warmed with
food and drink and smoking an excellent cigar, he found that a
gentler, more charitable mood had descended upon him.
He argued with himself in extenuation of the girl's peculiar
idiosyncrasies. Was it, he asked himself, altogether her fault
that she was so massive and spoke as if she were addressing an
open-air meeting in a strong gale? Perhaps it was hereditary.
Perhaps her father had been a circus giant and her mother the
strong woman of the troupe. And for the unrestraint of her manner
defective training in early girlhood would account. He began to
regard her with a quiet, kindly commiseration, which in its turn
changed into a sort of brotherly affection. He discovered that he
liked her. He liked her very much. She was so big and jolly and
robust, and spoke in such a clear, full voice. He was glad that
she was patting his hand. He was glad that he had asked her to
call him Bill.
People were dancing now. It has been claimed by patriots that
American dyspeptics lead the world. This supremacy, though partly
due, no doubt, to vast supplies of pie absorbed in youth, may be
attributed to a certain extent also to the national habit of
dancing during meals. Lord Dawlish had that sturdy reverence for
his interior organism which is the birthright of every Briton. And
at the beginning of supper he had resolved that nothing should
induce him to court disaster in this fashion. But as the time went
on he began to waver.
The situation was awkward. Nutty and Miss Leonard were repeatedly
leaving the table to tread the measure, and on these occasions the
Good Sport's wistfulness was a haunting reproach. Nor was the
spectacle of Nutty in action without its effect on Bill's
resolution. Nutty dancing was a sight to stir the most stolid.
Bill wavered. The music had started again now, one of those
twentieth-century eruptions of sound that begin like a train going
through a tunnel and continue like audible electric shocks, that
set the feet tapping beneath the table and the spine thrilling
with an unaccustomed exhilaration. Every drop of blood in his body
cried to him 'Dance!' He could resist no longer.
'Shall we?' he said.
Bill should not have danced. He was an estimable young man,
honest, amiable, with high ideals. He had played an excellent game
of football at the university; his golf handicap was plus two; and
he was no mean performer with the gloves. But we all of us have
our limitations, and Bill had his. He was not a good dancer. He
was energetic, but he required more elbow room than the ordinary
dancing floor provides. As a dancer, in fact, he closely resembled
a Newfoundland puppy trying to run across a field.
It takes a good deal to daunt the New York dancing man, but the
invasion of the floor by Bill and the Good Sport undoubtedly
caused a profound and even painful sensation. Linked together they
formed a living projectile which might well have intimidated the
bravest. Nutty was their first victim. They caught him in
mid-step--one of those fancy steps which he was just beginning to
exhume from the cobwebbed recesses of his memory--and swept him
away. After which they descended resistlessly upon a stout
gentleman of middle age, chiefly conspicuous for the glittering
diamonds which he wore and the stoical manner in which he danced
to and fro on one spot of not more than a few inches in size in
the exact centre of the room. He had apparently staked out a claim
to this small spot, a claim which the other dancers had decided to
respect; but Bill and the Good Sport, coming up from behind, had
him two yards away from it at the first impact. Then, scattering
apologies broadcast like a medieval monarch distributing largesse,
Bill whirled his partner round by sheer muscular force and began
what he intended to be a movement toward the farther corner,
skirting the edge of the floor. It was his simple belief that
there was more safety there than in the middle.
He had not reckoned with Heinrich Joerg. Indeed, he was not aware
of Heinrich Joerg's existence. Yet fate was shortly to bring them
together, with far-reaching results. Heinrich Joerg had left the
Fatherland a good many years before with the prudent purpose of
escaping military service. After various vicissitudes in the land
of his adoption--which it would be extremely interesting to
relate, but which must wait for a more favourable opportunity--he
had secured a useful and not ill-recompensed situation as one of
the staff of Reigelheimer's Restaurant. He was, in point of fact,
a waiter, and he comes into the story at this point bearing a tray
full of glasses, knives, forks, and pats of butter on little
plates. He was setting a table for some new arrivals, and in order
to obtain more scope for that task he had left the crowded aisle
beyond the table and come round to the edge of the dancing-floor.
He should not have come out on to the dancing-floor. In another
moment he was admitting that himself. For just as he was lowering
his tray and bending over the table in the pursuance of his
professional duties, along came Bill at his customary high rate
of speed, propelling his partner before him, and for the first
time since he left home Heinrich was conscious of a regret that he
had done so. There are worse things than military service!
It was the table that saved Bill. He clutched at it and it
supported him. He was thus enabled to keep the Good Sport from
falling and to assist Heinrich to rise from the morass of glasses,
knives, and pats of butter in which he was wallowing. Then, the
dance having been abandoned by mutual consent, he helped his now
somewhat hysterical partner back to their table.
Remorse came upon Bill. He was sorry that he had danced; sorry
that he had upset Heinrich; sorry that he had subjected the Good
Sport's nervous system to such a strain; sorry that so much glass
had been broken and so many pats of butter bruised beyond repair.
But of one thing, even in that moment of bleak regrets, he was
distinctly glad, and that was that all these things had taken
place three thousand miles away from Claire Fenwick. He had not
been appearing at his best, and he was glad that Claire had not
seen him.
As he sat and smoked the remains of his cigar, while renewing his
apologies and explanations to his partner and soothing the ruffled
Nutty with well-chosen condolences, he wondered idly what Claire
was doing at that moment.
Claire at that moment, having been an astonished eye-witness of
the whole performance, was resuming her seat at a table at the
other end of the room.
7
There were two reasons why Lord Dawlish was unaware of Claire
Fenwick's presence at Reigelheimer's Restaurant: Reigelheimer's is
situated in a basement below a ten-storey building, and in order
to prevent this edifice from falling into his patrons' soup the
proprietor had been obliged to shore up his ceiling with massive
pillars. One of these protruded itself between the table which
Nutty had secured for his supper-party and the table at which
Claire was sitting with her friend, Lady Wetherby, and her steamer
acquaintance, Mr Dudley Pickering. That was why Bill had not seen
Claire from where he sat; and the reason that he had not seen her
when he left his seat and began to dance was that he was not one
of your dancers who glance airily about them. When Bill danced he
danced.
He would have been stunned with amazement if he had known that
Claire was at Reigelheimer's that night. And yet it would have
been remarkable, seeing that she was the guest of Lady Wetherby,
if she had not been there. When you have travelled three thousand
miles to enjoy the hospitality of a friend who does near-Greek
dances at a popular restaurant, the least you can do is to go to
the restaurant and watch her step. Claire had arrived with Polly
Wetherby and Mr Dudley Pickering at about the time when Nutty, his
gloom melting rapidly, was instructing the waiter to open the
second bottle.
Of Claire's movements between the time when she secured her ticket
at the steamship offices at Southampton and the moment when she
entered Reigelheimer's Restaurant it is not necessary to give a
detailed record. She had had the usual experiences of the ocean
voyager. She had fed, read, and gone to bed. The only notable
event in her trip had been her intimacy with Mr Dudley Pickering.
Dudley Pickering was a middle-aged Middle Westerner, who by thrift
and industry had amassed a considerable fortune out of automobiles.
Everybody spoke well of Dudley Pickering. The papers spoke well of
him, Bradstreet spoke well of him, and he spoke well of himself. On
board the liner he had poured the saga of his life into Claire's
attentive ears, and there was a gentle sweetness in her manner which
encouraged Mr Pickering mightily, for he had fallen in love with
Claire on sight.
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