Books: Uneasy Money
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P.G. Wodehouse >> Uneasy Money
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It was not the fact that he was in an equivocal position, staring
into a house which did not belong to him, with his feet on
somebody else's private soil, that caused Bill to act as he did.
It was the fact that at that moment he was not feeling equal to
conversation with anybody on any subject whatsoever. It did not
occur to him that his behaviour might strike a nervous stranger as
suspicious. All he aimed at was the swift removal of himself from
a spot infested by others of his species. He ran, and Mr
Pickering, having followed him with the eye of fear, went rather
shakily into the house, his brain whirling with professional
cracksmen and gas pipes and assaulted butlers, to relate his
adventure.
'A great, hulking, ruffianly sort of fellow glaring in at the
window,' said Mr Pickering. 'I shouted at him and he ran like a
rabbit.'
'Gee! Must have been one of the gang that's been working down
here,' said Roscoe Sherriff. 'There might be a quarter of a column
in that, properly worked, but I guess I'd better wait until he
actually does bust the place.'
'We must notify the police!'
'Notify the police, and have them butt in and stop the thing and
kill a good story!' There was honest amazement in the Press-agent's
voice. 'Let me tell you, it isn't so easy to get publicity
these days that you want to go out of your way to stop it!'
Mr Pickering was appalled. A dislike of this man, which had grown
less vivid since his scene with Claire, returned to him with
redoubled force.
'Why, we may all be murdered in our beds!' he cried.
'Front-page stuff!' said Roscoe Sherriff, with gleaming eyes. 'And
three columns at least. Fine!'
It might have consoled Lord Dawlish somewhat, as he lay awake
that night, to have known that the man who had taken Claire from
him--though at present he was not aware of such a man's
existence--also slept ill.
13
Lady Wetherby sat in her room, writing letters. The rest of the
household were variously employed. Roscoe Sherriff was prowling
about the house, brooding on campaigns of publicity. Dudley
Pickering was walking in the grounds with Claire. In a little
shack in the woods that adjoined the high-road, which he had
converted into a temporary studio, Lord Wetherby was working on a
picture which he proposed to call 'Innocence', a study of a small
Italian child he had discovered in Washington Square. Lady
Wetherby, who had been taken to see the picture, had suggested
'The Black Hand's Newest Recruit' as a better title than the one
selected by the artist.
It is a fact to be noted that of the entire household only Lady
Wetherby could fairly be described as happy. It took very little to
make Lady Wetherby happy. Fine weather, good food, and a complete
abstention from classical dancing--give her these and she asked no
more. She was, moreover, delighted at Claire's engagement. It
seemed to her, for she had no knowledge of the existence of Lord
Dawlish, a genuine manifestation of Love's Young Dream. She liked
Dudley Pickering and she was devoted to Claire. It made her happy
to think that it was she who had brought them together.
But of the other members of the party, Dudley Pickering was
unhappy because he feared that burglars were about to raid the
house; Roscoe Sherriff because he feared they were not; Claire
because, now that the news of the engagement was out, it seemed to
be everybody's aim to leave her alone with Mr Pickering, whose
undiluted society tended to pall. And Lord Wetherby was unhappy
because he found Eustace, the monkey, a perpetual strain upon his
artistic nerves. It was Eustace who had driven him to his shack in
the woods. He could have painted far more comfortably in the
house, but Eustace had developed a habit of stealing up to him and
plucking the leg of his trousers; and an artist simply cannot give
of his best with that sort of thing going on.
Lady Wetherby wrote on. She was not fond of letter-writing and she
had allowed her correspondence to accumulate; but she was
disposing of it in an energetic and conscientious way, when the
entrance of Wrench, the butler, interrupted her.
Wrench had been imported from England at the request of Lord
Wetherby, who had said that it soothed him and kept him from
feeling home-sick to see a butler about the place. Since then he
had been hanging to the establishment as it were by a hair. He
gave the impression of being always on the point of giving notice.
There were so many things connected with his position of which he
disapproved. He had made no official pronouncement of the matter,
but Lady Wetherby knew that he disapproved of her classical
dancing. His last position had been with the Dowager Duchess of
Waveney, the well-known political hostess, who--even had the
somewhat generous lines on which she was built not prevented the
possibility of such a thing--would have perished rather than dance
barefooted in a public restaurant. Wrench also disapproved of
America. That fact had been made plain immediately upon his
arrival in the country. He had given America one look, and then
his mind was made up--he disapproved of it.
'If you please, m'lady!'
Lady Wetherby turned. The butler was looking even more than
usually disapproving, and his disapproval had, so to speak,
crystallized, as if it had found some more concrete and definite
objective than either barefoot dancing or the United States.
'If you please, m'lady--the hape!'
It was Wrench's custom to speak of Eustace in a tone of restrained
disgust. He disapproved of Eustace. The Dowager Duchess of
Waveney, though she kept open house for members of Parliament,
would have drawn the line at monkeys.
'The hape is behaving very strange, m'lady,' said Wrench,
frostily.
It has been well said that in this world there is always
something. A moment before, Lady Wetherby had been feeling
completely contented, without a care on her horizon. It was
foolish of her to have expected such a state of things to last,
for what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of
which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin? Something
in the butler's manner, a sort of gloating gloom which he
radiated, told her that she had arrived at one of these corners
now.
'The hape is seated on the kitchen-sink, m'lady, throwing new-laid
eggs at the scullery-maid, and cook desired me to step up and ask
for instructions.'
'What!' Lady Wetherby rose in agitation. 'What's he doing that
for?' she asked, weakly.
A slight, dignified gesture was Wrench's only reply. It was not
his place to analyse the motives of monkeys.
'Throwing eggs!'
The sight of Lady Wetherby's distress melted the butler's stern
reserve. He unbent so far as to supply a clue.
'As I understand from cook, m'lady, the animal appears to have
taken umbrage at a lack of cordiality on the part of the cat. It
seems that the hape attempted to fondle the cat, but the latter
scratched him; being suspicious,' said Wrench, 'of his _bona
fides_.' He scrutinized the ceiling with a dull eye. 'Whereupon,'
he continued, 'he seized her tail and threw her with considerable
force. He then removed himself to the sink and began to hurl eggs
at the scullery-maid.'
Lady Wetherby's mental eye attempted to produce a picture of the
scene, but failed.
'I suppose I had better go down and see about it,' she said.
Wrench withdrew his gaze from the ceiling.
'I think it would be advisable, m'lady. The scullery-maid is
already in hysterics.'
Lady Wetherby led the way to the kitchen. She was wroth with
Eustace. This was just the sort of thing out of which Algie would
be able to make unlimited capital. It weakened her position with
Algie. There was only one thing to do--she must hush it up.
Her first glance, however, at the actual theatre of war gave her
the impression that matters had advanced beyond the hushing-up
stage. A yellow desolation brooded over the kitchen. It was not so
much a kitchen as an omelette. There were eggs everywhere, from
floor to ceiling. She crunched her way in on a carpet of oozing
shells.
Her entry was a signal for a renewal on a more impressive scale of
the uproar that she had heard while opening the door. The air was
full of voices. The cook was expressing herself in Norwegian, the
parlour-maid in what appeared to be Erse. On a chair in a corner
the scullery-maid sobbed and whooped. The odd-job man, who was a
baseball enthusiast, was speaking in terms of high praise of
Eustace's combined speed and control.
The only calm occupant of the room was Eustace himself, who,
either through a shortage of ammunition or through weariness of
the pitching-arm, had suspended active hostilities, and was now
looking down on the scene from a high shelf. There was a brooding
expression in his deep-set eyes. He massaged his right ear with
the sole of his left foot in a somewhat _distrait_ manner.
'Eustace!' cried Lady Wetherby, severely.
Eustace lowered his foot and gazed at her meditatively, then at
the odd-job man, then at the scullery-maid, whose voice rose high
above the din.
'I rather fancy, m'lady,' said Wrench, dispassionately, 'that the
animal is about to hurl a plate.'
It had escaped the notice of those present that the shelf on which
the rioter had taken refuge was within comfortable reach of the
dresser, but Eustace himself had not overlooked this important
strategic point. As the butler spoke, Eustace picked up a plate
and threw it at the scullery-maid, whom he seemed definitely to
have picked out as the most hostile of the allies. It was a fast
inshoot, and hit the wall just above her head.
''At-a-boy!' said the odd-job man, reverently.
Lady Wetherby turned on him with some violence. His detached
attitude was the most irritating of the many irritating aspects of
the situation. She paid this man a weekly wage to do odd jobs. The
capture of Eustace was essentially an odd job. Yet, instead of
doing it, he hung about with the air of one who has paid his
half-dollar and bought his bag of peanuts and has now nothing to
do but look on and enjoy himself.
'Why don't you catch him?' she cried.
The odd-job man came out of his trance. A sudden realization came
upon him that life was real and life was earnest, and that if he
did not wish to jeopardize a good situation he must bestir
himself. Everybody was looking at him expectantly. It seemed to be
definitely up to him. It was imperative that, whatever he did, he
should do it quickly. There was an apron hanging over the back of
a chair. More with the idea of doing something than because he
thought he would achieve anything definite thereby, he picked up
the apron and flung it at Eustace. Luck was with him. The apron
enveloped Eustace just as he was winding up for another inshoot
and was off his balance. He tripped and fell, clutched at the
apron to save himself, and came to the ground swathed in it,
giving the effect of an apron mysteriously endowed with life. The
triumphant odd-job man, pressing his advantage like a good
general, gathered up the ends, converted it into a rude bag, and
one more was added to the long list of the victories of the human
over the brute intelligence.
Everybody had a suggestion now. The cook advocated drowning. The
parlour-maid favoured the idea of hitting the prisoner with a
broom-handle. Wrench, eyeing the struggling apron disapprovingly,
mentioned that Mr Pickering had bought a revolver that morning.
'Put him in the coal-cellar,' said Lady Wetherby.
Wrench was more far-seeing.
'If I might offer the warning, m'lady,' said Wrench, 'not the
cellar. It is full of coal. It would be placing temptation in the
animal's way.'
The odd-job man endorsed this.
'Put him in the garage, then,' said Lady Wetherby.
The odd-job man departed, bearing his heaving bag at arm's length.
The cook and the parlour-maid addressed themselves to comforting
and healing the scullery-maid. Wrench went off to polish silver,
Lady Wetherby to resume her letters. The cat was the last of the
party to return to the normal. She came down from the chimney an
hour later covered with soot, demanding restoratives.
Lady Wetherby finished her letters. She cut them short, for
Eustace's insurgence had interfered with her flow of ideas. She
went into the drawing-room, where she found Roscoe Sherriff
strumming on the piano.
'Eustace has been raising Cain,' she said.
The Press-agent looked up hopefully. He had been wearing a rather
preoccupied air.
'How's that?' he asked.
'Throwing eggs and plates in the kitchen.'
The gleam of interest which had come into Roscoe Sherriff's face
died out.
'You couldn't get more than a fill-in at the bottom of a column on
that,' he said, regretfully. 'I'm a little disappointed in that
monk. I hoped he would pan out bigger. Well, I guess we've just
got to give him time. I have an idea that he'll set the house on
fire or do something with a punch like that one of these days. You
mustn't get discouraged. Why, that puma I made Valerie Devenish
keep looked like a perfect failure for four whole months. A child
could have played with it. Miss Devenish called me up on the
phone, I remember, and said she was darned if she was going to
spend the rest of her life maintaining an animal that might as
well be stuffed for all the liveliness it showed, and that she was
going right out to buy a white mouse instead. Fortunately, I
talked her round.
'A few weeks later she came round and thanked me with tears in her
eyes. The puma had suddenly struck real mid-season form. It clawed
the elevator-boy, bit a postman, held up the traffic for miles,
and was finally shot by a policeman. Why, for the next few days
there was nothing in the papers at all but Miss Devenish and her
puma. There was a war on at the time in Mexico or somewhere, and
we had it backed off the front page so far that it was over before
it could get back. So, you see, there's always hope. I've been
nursing the papers with bits about Eustace, so as to be ready for
the grand-stand play when it comes--and all we can do is to wait.
It's something if he's been throwing eggs. It shows he's waking
up.'
The door opened and Lord Wetherby entered. He looked fatigued. He
sank into a chair and sighed.
'I cannot get it,' he said. 'It eludes me.'
He lapsed into a sombre silence.
'What can't you get?' said Lady Wetherby, cautiously.
'The expression--the expression I want to get into the child's
eyes in my picture, "Innocence".'
'But you have got it.'
Lord Wetherby shook his head.
'Well, you had when I saw the picture,' persisted Lady Wetherby.
'This child you're painting has just joined the Black Hand. He
has been rushed in young over the heads of the waiting list
because his father had a pull. Naturally the kid wants to do
something to justify his election, and he wants to do it quick.
You have caught him at the moment when he sees an old gentleman
coming down the street and realizes that he has only got to sneak
up and stick his little knife--'
'My dear Polly, I welcome criticism, but this is more--'
Lady Wetherby stroked his coat-sleeve fondly.
'Never mind, Algie, I was only joking, precious. I thought the
picture was coming along fine when you showed it to me. I'll come
and take another look at it.'
Lord Wetherby shook his head.
'I should have a model. An artist cannot mirror Nature properly
without a model. I wish you would invite that child down here.'
'No, Algie, there are limits. I wouldn't have him within a mile
of the place.'
'Yet you keep Eustace.'
'Well, you made me engage Wrench. It's fifty-fifty. I wish you
wouldn't keep picking on Eustace, Algie dear. He does no harm. Mr
Sherriff and I were just saying how peaceable he is. He wouldn't
hurt--'
Claire came in.
'Polly,' she said, 'did you put that monkey of yours in the
garage? He's just bitten Dudley in the leg.'
Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.
'Now perhaps--'
'We went in just now to have a look at the car,' continued
Claire. 'Dudley wanted to show me the commutator on the exhaust-box
or the windscreen, or something, and he was just bending over
when Eustace jumped out from nowhere and pinned him. I'm afraid he
has taken it to heart rather.'
Roscoe Sherriff pondered.
'Is this worth half a column?' He shook his head. 'No, I'm afraid
not. The public doesn't know Pickering. If it had been Charlie
Chaplin or William J. Bryan, or someone on those lines, we could
have had the papers bringing out extras. You can visualize William
J. Bryan being bitten in the leg by a monkey. It hits you. But
Pickering! Eustace might just as well have bitten the leg of the
table!'
Lord Wetherby reasserted himself.
'Now that the animal has become a public menace--'
'He's nothing of the kind,' said Lady Wetherby. 'He's only a
little upset to-day.'
'Do you mean, Pauline, that even after this you will not get rid
of him?'
'Certainly not--poor dear!'
'Very well,' said Lord Wetherby, calmly. 'I give you warning that
if he attacks me I shall defend myself.'
He brooded. Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.
'What happened then? Did you shut the door of the garage?'
'Yes, but not until Eustace had got away. He slipped out like a
streak and disappeared. It was too dark to see which way he went.'
Dudley Pickering limped heavily into the room.
'I was just telling them about you and Eustace, Dudley.'
Mr Pickering nodded moodily. He was too full for words.
'I think Eustace must be mad,' said Claire.
Roscoe Sherriff uttered a cry of rapture.
'You've said it!' he exclaimed. 'I knew we should get action
sooner or later. It's the puma over again. Now we are all right.
Now I have something to work on. "Monkey Menaces Countryside."
"Long Island Summer Colony in Panic." "Mad Monkey Bites One--"'
A convulsive shudder galvanized Mr Pickering's portly frame.
'"Mad Monkey Terrorizes Long Island. One Dead!"' murmured Roscoe
Sherriff, wistfully. 'Do you feel a sort of shooting, Pickering--a
kind of burning sensation under the skin? Lady Wetherby, I guess
I'll be getting some of the papers on the phone. We've got a big
story.'
He hurried to the telephone, but it was some little time before he
could use it. Dudley Pickering was in possession, talking
earnestly to the local doctor.
14
It was Nutty Boyd's habit to retire immediately after dinner to
his bedroom. What he did there Elizabeth did not know. Sometimes
she pictured him reading, sometimes thinking. Neither supposition
was correct. Nutty never read. Newspapers bored him and books made
his head ache. And as for thinking, he had the wrong shape of
forehead. The nearest he ever got to meditation was a sort of
trance-like state, a kind of suspended animation in which his mind
drifted sluggishly like a log in a backwater. Nutty, it is
regrettable to say, went to his room after dinner for the purpose
of imbibing two or three surreptitious whiskies-and-sodas.
He behaved in this way, he told himself, purely in order to spare
Elizabeth anxiety. There had been in the past a fool of a doctor
who had prescribed total abstinence for Nutty, and Elizabeth knew
this. Therefore, Nutty held, to take the mildest of drinks with
her knowledge would have been to fill her with fears for his
safety. So he went to considerable inconvenience to keep the
matter from her notice, and thought rather highly of himself for
doing so.
It certainly was inconvenient--there was no doubt of that. It made
him feel like a cross between a hunted fawn and a burglar. But he
had to some extent diminished the possibility of surprise by
leaving his door open; and to-night he approached the cupboard
where he kept the materials for refreshment with a certain
confidence. He had left Elizabeth on the porch in a hammock,
apparently anchored for some time. Lord Dawlish was out in the
grounds somewhere. Presently he would come in and join Elizabeth
on the porch. The risk of interruption was negligible.
Nutty mixed himself a drink and settled down to brood bitterly, as
he often did, on the doctor who had made that disastrous
statement. Doctors were always saying things like that--sweeping
things which nervous people took too literally. It was true that
he had been in pretty bad shape at the moment when the words had
been spoken. It was just at the end of his Broadway career, when,
as he handsomely admitted, there was a certain amount of truth in
the opinion that his interior needed a vacation. But since then he
had been living in the country, breathing good air, taking things
easy. In these altered conditions and after this lapse of time it
was absurd to imagine that a moderate amount of alcohol could do
him any harm.
It hadn't done him any harm, that was the point. He had tested the
doctor's statement and found it incorrect. He had spent three
hectic days and nights in New York, and--after a reasonable
interval--had felt much the same as usual. And since then he had
imbibed each night, and nothing had happened. What it came to was
that the doctor was a chump and a blighter. Simply that and
nothing more.
Having come to this decision, Nutty mixed another drink. He went
to the head of the stairs and listened. He heard nothing. He
returned to his room.
Yes, that was it, the doctor was a chump. So far from doing him
any harm, these nightly potations brightened Nutty up, gave him
heart, and enabled him to endure life in this hole of a place. He
felt a certain scornful amusement. Doctors, he supposed, had to
get off that sort of talk to earn their money.
He reached out for the bottle, and as he grasped it his eye was
caught by something on the floor. A brown monkey with a long, grey
tail was sitting there staring at him.
There was one of those painful pauses. Nutty looked at the monkey
rather like an elongated Macbeth inspecting the ghost of Banquo.
The monkey looked at Nutty. The pause continued. Nutty shut his
eyes, counted ten slowly, and opened them.
The monkey was still there.
'Boo!' said Nutty, in an apprehensive undertone.
The monkey looked at him.
Nutty shut his eyes again. He would count sixty this time. A cold
fear had laid its clammy fingers on his heart. This was what that
doctor--not such a chump after all--must have meant!
Nutty began to count. There seemed to be a heavy lump inside him,
and his mouth was dry; but otherwise he felt all right. That was
the gruesome part of it--this dreadful thing had come upon him at
a moment when he could have sworn that he was sound as a bell. If
this had happened in the days when he ranged the Great White Way,
sucking up deleterious moisture like a cloud, it would have been
intelligible. But it had sneaked upon him like a thief in the
night; it had stolen unheralded into his life when he had
practically reformed. What was the good of practically reforming
if this sort of thing was going to happen to one?
'... Fifty-nine ... sixty.'
He opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, in precisely the
same attitude, as if it was sitting for its portrait. Panic surged
upon Nutty. He lost his head completely. He uttered a wild yell
and threw the bottle at the apparition.
Life had not been treating Eustace well that evening. He seemed to
have happened upon one of those days when everything goes wrong.
The cat had scratched him, the odd-job man had swathed him in an
apron, and now this stranger, in whom he had found at first a
pleasant restfulness, soothing after the recent scenes of violence
in which he had participated, did this to him. He dodged the
missile and clambered on to the top of the wardrobe. It was his
instinct in times of stress to seek the high spots. And then
Elizabeth hurried into the room.
Elizabeth had been lying in the hammock on the porch when her
brother's yell had broken forth. It was a lovely, calm, moonlight
night, and she had been revelling in the peace of it, when
suddenly this outcry from above had shot her out of her hammock
like an explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not what.
She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like an overwrought
giraffe.
'Whatever is the--?' she began; and then things began to impress
themselves on her senses.
The bottle which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had missed the
latter, but it had hit the wall, and was now lying in many pieces
on the floor, and the air was heavy with the scent of it. The
remains seemed to leer at her with a kind of furtive swagger,
after the manner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran
through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a mother to Nutty
than a sister, and now she would have liked to exercise the
maternal privilege of slapping him.
'Nutty!'
'I saw a monkey!' said her brother, hollowly. 'I was standing over
there and I saw a monkey! Of course, it wasn't there really. I
flung the bottle at it, and it seemed to climb on to that
wardrobe.'
'This wardrobe?'
'Yes.'
Elizabeth struck it a resounding blow with the palm of her hand,
and Eustace's face popped over the edge, peering down anxiously.
'I can see it now,' said Nutty. A sudden, faint hope came to him.
'Can you see it?' he asked.
Elizabeth did not speak for a moment. This was an unusual
situation, and she was wondering how to treat it. She was sorry
for Nutty, but Providence had sent this thing and it would be
foolish to reject it. She must look on herself in the light of a
doctor. It would be kinder to Nutty in the end. She had the
feminine aversion from the lie deliberate. Her ethics on the
_suggestio falsi_ were weak. She looked at Nutty questioningly.
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