Books: Uneasy Money
P >>
P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15
And then Roscoe Sherriff came down, and Dudley Pickering, who for
days had been using all his resolution to struggle against the
siren, suddenly found that there was no siren to struggle against.
No sooner had the press agent appeared than Claire deserted him
shamelessly and absolutely. She walked with Roscoe Sherriff. Mr
Pickering experienced the discomfiting emotions of the man who
pushes violently against an abruptly-yielding door, or treads
heavily on the top stair where there is no top stair. He was
shaken, and the clamlike stolidity which he had assumed as
protection gave way.
Night had descended upon Brookport. Eustace, the monkey, was in
his little bed; Lord Wetherby in the smoking-room. It was Sunday,
the day of rest. Dinner was over, and the remainder of the party
were gathered in the drawing-room, with the exception of Mr
Pickering, who was smoking a cigar on the porch. A full moon
turned Long Island into a fairyland.
Gloom had settled upon Dudley Pickering and he smoked sadly. All
rather stout automobile manufacturers are sad when there is a full
moon. It makes them feel lonely. It stirs their hearts to thoughts
of love. Marriage loses its terrors for them, and they think
wistfully of hooking some fair woman up the back and buying her
hats. Such was the mood of Mr Pickering, when through the dimness
of the porch there appeared a white shape, moving softly toward
him.
'Is that you, Mr Pickering?'
Claire dropped into the seat beside him. From the drawing-room
came the soft tinkle of a piano. The sound blended harmoniously
with the quiet peace of the night. Mr Pickering let his cigar go
out and clutched the sides of his chair.
Oi'll--er--sing thee saw-ongs ov Arrabee,
Und--ah ta-ales of farrr Cash-mee-eere,
Wi-ild tales to che-eat thee ovasigh
Und charrrrm thee to-oo a tear-er.
Claire gave a little sigh.
'What a beautiful voice Mr Sherriff has!'
Dudley Pickering made no reply. He thought Roscoe Sherriff had a
beastly voice. He resented Roscoe Sherriff's voice. He objected to
Roscoe Sherriff's polluting this fair night with his cacophony.
'Don't you think so, Mr Pickering?'
'Uh-huh.'
'That doesn't sound very enthusiastic. Mr Pickering, I want you to
tell me something. Have I done anything to offend you?'
Mr Pickering started violently.
'Eh?'
'I have seen so little of you these last few days. A little while
ago we were always together, having such interesting talks. But
lately it has seemed to me that you have been avoiding me.'
A feeling of helplessness swept over Mr Pickering. He was vaguely
conscious of a sense of being treated unjustly, of there being a
flaw in Claire's words somewhere if he could only find it, but the
sudden attack had deprived him of the free and unfettered use of
his powers of reasoning. He gurgled wordlessly, and Claire went
on, her low, sad voice mingling with the moonlight in a manner
that caused thrills to run up and down his spine. He felt
paralyzed. Caution urged him to make some excuse and follow it
with a bolt to the drawing-room, but he was physically incapable
of taking the excellent advice. Sometimes when you are out in your
Pickering Gem or your Pickering Giant the car hesitates, falters,
and stops dead, and your chauffeur, having examined the carburettor,
turns to you and explains the phenomenon in these words: 'The
mixture is too rich.' So was it with Mr Pickering now. The moonlight
alone might not have held him; Claire's voice alone might not have
held him; but against the two combined he was powerless. The
mixture was too rich. He sat and breathed a little stertorously,
and there came to him that conviction that comes to all of us now
and then, that we are at a crisis of our careers and that the
moment through which we are living is a moment big with fate.
The voice in the drawing-room stopped. Having sung songs of Araby
and tales of far Cashmere, Mr Roscoe Sherriff was refreshing
himself with a comic paper. But Lady Wetherby, seated at the
piano, still touched the keys softly, and the sound increased the
richness of the mixture which choked Dudley Pickering's spiritual
carburettor. It is not fair that a rather stout manufacturer
should be called upon to sit in the moonlight while a beautiful
girl, to the accompaniment of soft music, reproaches him with
having avoided her.
'I should be so sorry, Mr Pickering, if I had done anything to
make a difference between us--'
'Eh?' said Mr Pickering.
'I have so few real friends over here.'
Claire's voice trembled.
'I--I get a little lonely, a little homesick sometimes--'
She paused, musing, and a spasm of pity rent the bosom beneath
Dudley Pickering's ample shirt. There was a buzzing in his ears
and a lump choked his throat.
'Of course, I am loving the life here. I think America's
wonderful, and nobody could be kinder than Lady Wetherby. But--I
miss my home. It's the first time I have been away for so long. I
feel very far away sometimes. There are only three of us at home:
my mother, myself, and my little brother--little Percy.'
Her voice trembled again as she spoke the last two words, and it
was possibly this that caused Mr Pickering to visualize Percy as a
sort of little Lord Fauntleroy, his favourite character in English
literature. He had a vision of a small, delicate, wistful child
pining away for his absent sister. Consumptive probably. Or
curvature of the spine.
He found Claire's hand in his. He supposed dully he must have
reached out for it. Soft and warm it lay there, while the universe
paused breathlessly. And then from the semi-darkness beside him
there came the sound of a stifled sob, and his fingers closed as
if someone had touched a button.
'We have always been such chums. He is only ten--such a dear boy!
He must be missing me--'
She stopped, and simultaneously Dudley Pickering began to speak.
There is this to be said for your shy, cautious man, that on the
rare occasions when he does tap the vein of eloquence that vein
becomes a geyser. It was as if after years of silence and
monosyllables Dudley Pickering was endeavouring to restore the
average.
He began by touching on his alleged neglect and avoidance of
Claire. He called himself names and more names. He plumbed the
depth of repentance and remorse. Proceeding from this, he
eulogized her courage, the pluck with which she presented a
smiling face to the world while tortured inwardly by separation
from her little brother Percy. He then turned to his own feelings.
But there are some things which the historian should hold sacred,
some things which he should look on as proscribed material for his
pen, and the actual words of a stout manufacturer of automobiles
proposing marriage in the moonlight fall into this class. It is
enough to say that Dudley Pickering was definite. He left no room
for doubt as to his meaning.
'Dudley!'
She was in his arms. He was embracing her. She was his--the latest
model, self-starting, with limousine body and all the newest. No,
no, his mind was wandering. She was his, this divine girl, this
queen among women, this--
From the drawing-room Roscoe Sherriff's voice floated out in
unconscious comment--
Good-bye, boys!
I'm going to be married to-morrow.
Good-bye, boys!
I'm going from sunshine to sorrow.
No more sitting up till broad daylight.
Did a momentary chill cool the intensity of Dudley Pickering's
ardour? If so he overcame it instantly. He despised Roscoe
Sherriff. He flattered himself that he had shown Roscoe Sherriff
pretty well who was who and what was what.
They would have a wonderful wedding--dozens of clergymen, scores
of organs playing 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,' platoons of
bridesmaids, wagonloads of cake. And then they would go back to
Detroit and live happy ever after. And it might be that in time to
come there would be given to them little runabouts.
I'm going to a life
Of misery and strife,
So good-bye, boys!
Hang Roscoe Sherriff! What did he know about it! Confound him!
Dudley Pickering turned a deaf ear to the song and wallowed in his
happiness.
Claire walked slowly down the moonlit drive. She had removed
herself from her Dudley's embraces, for she wished to be alone, to
think. The engagement had been announced. All that part of it was
over--Dudley's stammering speech, the unrestrained delight of
Polly Wetherby, the facetious rendering of 'The Wedding Glide' on
the piano by Roscoe Sherriff, and it now remained for her to try
to discover a way of conveying the news to Bill.
It had just struck her that, though she knew that Bill was in
America, she had not his address.
What was she to do? She must tell him. Otherwise it might quite
easily happen that they might meet in New York when she returned
there. She pictured the scene. She saw herself walking with Dudley
Pickering. Along came Bill. 'Claire, darling!' ... Heavens, what
would Dudley think? It would be too awful! She couldn't explain.
No, somehow or other, even if she put detectives on his trail, she
must find him, and be off with the old love now that she was on
with the new.
She reached the gate and leaned over it. And as she did so someone
in the shadow of a tall tree spoke her name. A man came into the
light, and she saw that it was Lord Dawlish.
11
Lord Dawlish had gone for a moonlight walk that night because,
like Claire, he wished to be alone to think. He had fallen with a
pleasant ease and smoothness into the rather curious life lived at
Elizabeth Boyd's bee-farm. A liking for picnics had lingered in
him from boyhood, and existence at Flack's was one prolonged
picnic. He found that he had a natural aptitude for the more
muscular domestic duties, and his energy in this direction
enchanted Nutty, who before his advent had had a monopoly of these
tasks.
Nor was this the only aspect of the situation that pleased Nutty.
When he had invited Bill to the farm he had had a vague hope that
good might come of it, but he had never dreamed that things would
turn out as well as they promised to do, or that such a warm and
immediate friendship would spring up between his sister and the
man who had diverted the family fortune into his own pocket. Bill
and Elizabeth were getting on splendidly. They were together all
the time--walking, golfing, attending to the numerous needs of the
bees, or sitting on the porch. Nutty's imagination began to run
away with him. He seemed to smell the scent of orange-blossoms, to
hear the joyous pealing of church bells--in fact, with the
difference that it was not his own wedding that he was anticipating,
he had begun to take very much the same view of the future that was
about to come to Dudley Pickering.
Elizabeth would have been startled and embarrassed if she could
have read his thoughts, for they might have suggested to her that
she was becoming a great deal fonder of Bill than the shortness of
their acquaintance warranted. But though she did not fail to
observe the strangeness of her brother's manner, she traced it to
another source than the real one. Nutty had a habit of starting
back and removing himself when, entering the porch, he perceived
that Bill and his sister were already seated there. His own
impression on such occasions was that he was behaving with
consummate tact. Elizabeth supposed that he had had some sort of a
spasm.
Lord Dawlish, if he had been able to diagnose correctly the almost
paternal attitude which had become his host's normal manner these
days, would have been equally embarrassed but less startled, for
conscience had already suggested to him from time to time that he
had been guilty of a feeling toward Elizabeth warmer than any
feeling that should come to an engaged man. Lying in bed at the
end of his first week at the farm, he reviewed the progress of his
friendship with her, and was amazed at the rapidity with which it
had grown.
He could not conceal it from himself--Elizabeth appealed to him.
Being built on a large scale himself, he had always been attracted
by small women. There was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness
about Elizabeth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable,
so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having a hard time.
And then their minds seemed to blend so remarkably. There were no
odd corners to be smoothed away. Never in his life had he felt so
supremely at his ease with one of the opposite sex. He loved
Claire--he drove that fact home almost angrily to himself--but he
was forced to admit that he had always been aware of something in
the nature of a barrier between them. Claire was querulous at
times, and always a little too apt to take offence. He had never
been able to talk to her with that easy freedom that Elizabeth
invited. Talking to Elizabeth was like talking to an attractive
version of oneself. It was a thing to be done with perfect
confidence, without any of that apprehension which Claire inspired
lest the next remark might prove the spark to cause an explosion.
But Claire was the girl he loved--there must be no mistake about
that.
He came to the conclusion that the key to the situation was the
fact that Elizabeth was American. He had read so much of the
American girl, her unaffectedness, her genius for easy comradeship.
Well, this must be what the writer fellows meant. He had happened
upon one of those delightful friendships without any suspicion of
sex in them of which the American girl had the monopoly. Yes, that
must be it. It was a comforting explanation. It accounted for his
feeling at a loose end whenever he was away from Elizabeth for as
much as half an hour. It accounted for the fact that they understood
each other so well. It accounted for everything so satisfactorily
that he was able to get to sleep that night after all.
But next morning--for his conscience was one of those persistent
consciences--he began to have doubts again. Nothing clings like a
suspicion in the mind of a conscientious young man that he has
been allowing his heart to stray from its proper anchorage.
Could it be that he was behaving badly toward Claire? The thought
was unpleasant, but he could not get rid of it. He extracted
Claire's photograph from his suit-case and gazed solemnly upon it.
At first he was shocked to find that it only succeeded in
convincing him that Elizabeth was quite the most attractive girl
he ever had met. The photographer had given Claire rather a severe
look. He had told her to moisten the lips with the tip of the
tongue and assume a pleasant smile, with the result that she
seemed to glare. She had a rather markedly aggressive look,
queenly perhaps, but not very comfortable.
But there is no species of self-hypnotism equal to that of a man
who gazes persistently at a photograph with the preconceived idea
that he is in love with the original of it. Little by little Bill
found that the old feeling began to return. He persevered. By the
end of a quarter of an hour he had almost succeeded in capturing
anew that first fine careless rapture which, six months ago, had
caused him to propose to Claire and walk on air when she accepted
him.
He continued the treatment throughout the day, and by dinner-time
had arranged everything with his conscience in the most satisfactory
manner possible. He loved Claire with a passionate fervour; he
liked Elizabeth very much indeed. He submitted this diagnosis to
conscience, and conscience graciously approved and accepted it.
It was Sunday that day. That helped. There is nothing like Sunday
in a foreign country for helping a man to sentimental thoughts of
the girl he has left behind him elsewhere. And the fact that there
was a full moon clinched it. Bill was enabled to go for an
after-dinner stroll in a condition of almost painful loyalty to Claire.
From time to time, as he walked along the road, he took out the
photograph and did some more gazing. The last occasion on which he
did this was just as he emerged from the shadow of a large tree
that stood by the roadside, and a gush of rich emotion rewarded
him.
'Claire!' he murmured.
An exclamation at his elbow caused him to look up. There, leaning
over a gate, the light of the moon falling on her beautiful face,
stood Claire herself!
12
In trying interviews, as in sprint races, the start is everything.
It was the fact that she recovered more quickly from her
astonishment that enabled Claire to dominate her scene with Bill.
She had the advantage of having a less complicated astonishment to
recover from, for, though it was a shock to see him there when she
had imagined that he was in New York, it was not nearly such a
shock as it was to him to see her here when he had imagined that
she was in England. She had adjusted her brain to the situation
while he was still gaping.
'Well, Bill?'
This speech in itself should have been enough to warn Lord Dawlish
of impending doom. As far as love, affection, and tenderness are
concerned, a girl might just as well hit a man with an axe as say
'Well, Bill?' to him when they have met unexpectedly in the
moonlight after long separation. But Lord Dawlish was too shattered
by surprise to be capable of observing _nuances_. If his love had
ever waned or faltered, as conscience had suggested earlier in the
day, it was at full blast now.
'Claire!' he cried.
He was moving to take her in his arms, but she drew back.
'No, really, Bill!' she said; and this time it did filter through
into his disordered mind that all was not well. A man who is a
good deal dazed at the moment may fail to appreciate a remark like
'Well, Bill?' but for a girl to draw back and say, 'No, really,
Bill!' in a tone not exactly of loathing, but certainly of pained
aversion, is a deliberately unfriendly act. The three short words,
taken in conjunction with the movement, brought him up with as
sharp a turn as if she had punched him in the eye.
'Claire! What's the matter?'
She looked at him steadily. She looked at him with a sort of
queenly woodenness, as if he were behind a camera with a velvet
bag over his head and had just told her to moisten the lips with
the tip of the tongue. Her aspect staggered Lord Dawlish. A
cursory inspection of his conscience showed nothing but purity and
whiteness, but he must have done something, or she would not be
staring at him like this.
'I don't understand!' was the only remark that occurred to him.
'Are you sure?'
'What do you mean?'
'I was at Reigelheimer's Restaurant--Ah!'
The sudden start which Lord Dawlish had given at the opening words
of her sentence justified the concluding word. Innocent as his
behaviour had been that night at Reigelheimer's, he had been glad
at the time that he had not been observed. It now appeared that he
had been observed, and it seemed to him that Long Island suddenly
flung itself into a whirling dance. He heard Claire speaking a
long way off: 'I was there with Lady Wetherby. It was she who
invited me to come to America. I went to the restaurant to see her
dance--and I saw you!'
With a supreme effort Bill succeeded in calming down the excited
landscape. He willed the trees to stop dancing, and they came
reluctantly to a standstill. The world ceased to swim and flicker.
'Let me explain,' he said.
The moment he had said the words he wished he could recall them.
Their substance was right enough; it was the sound of them that
was wrong. They sounded like a line from a farce, where the erring
husband has been caught by the masterful wife. They were
ridiculous. Worse than being merely ridiculous, they created an
atmosphere of guilt and evasion.
'Explain! How can you explain? It is impossible to explain. I saw
you with my own eyes making an exhibition of yourself with a
horrible creature in salmon-pink. I'm not asking you who she is.
I'm not questioning you about your relations with her at all. I
don't care who she was. The mere fact that you were at a public
restaurant with a person of that kind is enough. No doubt you
think I am making a great deal of fuss about a very ordinary
thing. You consider that it is a man's privilege to do these
things, if he can do them without being found out. But it ended
everything so far as I am concerned. Am I unreasonable? I don't
think so. You steal off to America, thinking I am in England, and
behave like this. How could you do that if you really loved me?
It's the deceit of it that hurts me.'
Lord Dawlish drew in a few breaths of pure Long Island air, but he
did not speak. He felt helpless. If he were to be allowed to
withdraw into the privacy of the study and wrap a cold, wet towel
about his forehead and buckle down to it, he knew that he could
draft an excellent and satisfactory explanation of his presence at
Reigelheimer's with the Good Sport. But to do it on the spur of
the moment like this was beyond him.
Claire was speaking again. She had paused for a while after her
recent speech, in order to think of something else to say; and
during this pause had come to her mind certain excerpts from one
of those admirable articles on love, by Luella Delia Philpotts,
which do so much to boost the reading public of the United States
into the higher planes. She had read it that afternoon in the
Sunday paper, and it came back to her now.
'I may be hypersensitive,' she said, dropping her voice from the
accusatory register to the lower tones of pathos, 'but I have such
high ideals of love. There can be no true love where there is not
perfect trust. Trust is to love what--'
She paused again. She could not remember just what Luella Delia
Philpotts had said trust was to love. It was something extremely
neat, but it had slipped her memory.
'A woman has the right to expect the man she is about to marry to
regard their troth as a sacred obligation that shall keep him as
pure as a young knight who has dedicated himself to the quest of
the Holy Grail. And I find you in a public restaurant, dancing
with a creature with yellow hair, upsetting waiters, and
staggering about with pats of butter all over you.'
Here a sense of injustice stung Lord Dawlish. It was true that
after his regrettable collision with Heinrich, the waiter, he had
discovered butter upon his person, but it was only one pat. Claire
had spoken as if he had been festooned with butter.
'I am not angry with you, only disappointed. What has happened has
shown me that you do not really love me, not as I think of love.
Oh, I know that when we are together you think you do, but absence
is the test. Absence is the acid-test of love that separates the
base metal from the true. After what has happened, we can't go on
with our engagement. It would be farcical. I could never feel that
way toward you again. We shall always be friends, I hope. But as
for love--love is not a machine. It cannot be shattered and put
together again.'
She turned and began to walk up the drive. Hanging over the top of
the gate like a wet sock, Lord Dawlish watched her go. The
interview was over, and he could not think of one single thing to
say. Her white dress made a patch of light in the shadows. She
moved slowly, as if weighed down by sad thoughts, like one who, as
Luella Delia Philpotts beautifully puts it, paces with measured
step behind the coffin of a murdered heart. The bend of the drive
hid her from his sight.
About twenty minutes later Dudley Pickering, smoking sentimentally
in the darkness hard by the porch, received a shock. He was musing
tenderly on his Claire, who was assisting him in the process by
singing in the drawing-room, when he was aware of a figure, the
sinister figure of a man who, pressed against the netting of the
porch, stared into the lighted room beyond.
Dudley Pickering's first impulse was to stride briskly up to the
intruder, tap him on the shoulder, and ask him what the devil he
wanted; but a second look showed him that the other was built on
too ample a scale to make this advisable. He was a large,
fit-looking intruder.
Mr Pickering was alarmed. There had been the usual epidemic of
burglaries that season. Houses had been broken into, valuable
possessions removed. In one case a negro butler had been struck
over the head with a gas-pipe and given a headache. In these
circumstances, it was unpleasant to find burly strangers looking
in at windows.
'Hi!' cried Mr Pickering.
The intruder leaped a foot. It had not occurred to Lord Dawlish,
when in an access of wistful yearning he had decided to sneak up
to the house in order to increase his anguish by one last glimpse
of Claire, that other members of the household might be out in the
grounds. He was just thinking sorrowfully, as he listened to the
music, how like his own position was to that of the hero of
Tennyson's _Maud_--a poem to which he was greatly addicted,
when Mr Pickering's 'Hi!' came out of nowhere and hit him like a
torpedo.
He turned in agitation. Mr Pickering having prudently elected to
stay in the shadows, there was no one to be seen. It was as if the
voice of conscience had shouted 'Hi!' at him. He was just
wondering if he had imagined the whole thing, when he perceived
the red glow of a cigar and beyond it a shadowy form.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15