Bill was staggered. These were strange words. He had never thought
much of himself. He had always looked on himself as rather a
chump--well-meaning, perhaps, but an awful ass. It seemed
incredible that any one--and Elizabeth of all people--could look
on him as splendid.
And yet the very fact that she had said it gave it a plausible
sort of sound. It shook his convictions. Splendid! Was he? By
Jove, perhaps he was, what? Rum idea, but it grew on a chap.
Filled with a novel feeling of exaltation, he kissed Elizabeth
eleven times in rapid succession.
He felt devilish fit. He would have liked to run a mile or two and
jump a few gates. He wished five or six starving beggars would
come along; it would be pleasant to give the poor blighters money.
It was too much to expect at that time of night, of course, but it
would be rather jolly if Jess Willard would roll up and try to
pick a quarrel. He would show him something. He felt grand and
strong and full of beans. What a ripping thing life was when you
came to think of it.
'This,' he said, 'is perfectly extraordinary!' And time stood
still.
A sense of something incongruous jarred upon Bill. Something
seemed to be interfering with the supreme romance of that golden
moment. It baffled him at first. Then he realized that he was
still holding Eustace by the tail.
Dudley Pickering had watched these proceedings--as well as the
fact that it was extremely dark and that he was endeavouring to
hide a portly form behind a slender bush would permit him--with a
sense of bewilderment. A comic artist drawing Mr Pickering at that
moment would no doubt have placed above his head one of those
large marks of interrogation which lend vigour and snap to modern
comic art. Certainly such a mark of interrogation would have
summed up his feelings exactly. Of what was taking place he had
not the remotest notion. All he knew was that for some inexplicable
reason his quarry had come to a halt and seemed to have settled down
for an indefinite stay. Voices came to him in an indistinguishable
murmur, intensely irritating to a conscientious tracker. One of
Fenimore Cooper's Indians--notably Chingachgook, if, which seemed
incredible, that was really the man's name--would have crept up
without a sound and heard what was being said and got in on the
ground floor of whatever plot was being hatched. But experience
had taught Mr Pickering that, superior as he was to Chingachgook
and his friends in many ways, as a creeper he was not in their class.
He weighed thirty or forty pounds more than a first-class creeper
should. Besides, creeping is like golf. You can't take it up in the
middle forties and expect to compete with those who have been at it
from infancy.
He had resigned himself to an all-night vigil behind the bush,
when to his great delight he perceived that things had begun to
move again. There was a rustling of feet in the undergrowth, and
he could just see two indistinct forms making their way among the
bushes. He came out of his hiding place and followed stealthily,
or as stealthily as the fact that he had not even taken a
correspondence course in creeping allowed. And profiting by
earlier mistakes, he did succeed in making far less noise than
before. In place of his former somewhat elephantine method of
progression he adopted a species of shuffle which had excellent
results, for it enabled him to brush twigs away instead of
stepping flatfootedly on them. The new method was slow, but it had
no other disadvantages.
Because it was slow, Mr Pickering was obliged to follow his prey
almost entirely by ear. It was easy at first, for they seemed to
be hurrying on regardless of noise. Then unexpectedly the sounds
of their passage ceased.
He halted. In his boyish way the first thing he thought was that
it was an ambush. He had a vision of that large man suspecting his
presence and lying in wait for him with a revolver. This was not a
comforting thought. Of course, if a man is going to fire a
revolver at you it makes little difference whether he is a giant
or a pygmy, but Mr Pickering was in no frame of mind for nice
reasoning. It was the thought of Bill's physique which kept him
standing there irresolute.
What would Chingachgook--assuming, for purposes of argument, that
any sane godfather could really have given a helpless child a name
like that--have done? He would, Mr Pickering considered, after
giving the matter his earnest attention, have made a _detour_
and outflanked the enemy. An excellent solution of the difficulty.
Mr Pickering turned to the left and began to advance circuitously,
with the result that, before he knew what he was doing, he came
out into a clearing and understood the meaning of the sudden
silence which had perplexed him. Footsteps made no sound on this
mossy turf.
He knew where he was now; the clearing was familiar. This was
where Lord Wetherby's shack-studio stood; and there it was, right
in front of him, black and clear in the moonlight. And the two
dark figures were going into it.
Mr Pickering retreated into the shelter of the bushes and mused
upon this thing. It seemed to him that for centuries he had been
doing nothing but retreat into bushes for this purpose. His
perplexity had returned. He could imagine no reason why burglars
should want to visit Lord Wetherby's studio. He had taken it for
granted, when he had tracked them to the clearing, that they were
on their way to the house, which was quite close to the shack,
separated from it only by a thin belt of trees and a lawn.
They had certainly gone in. He had seen them with his own eyes--first
the man, then very close behind him, apparently holding to his coat,
the girl. But why?
Creep up and watch them? Would Chingachgook have taken a risk like
that? Hardly, unless insured with some good company. Then what? He
was still undecided when he perceived the objects of his attention
emerging. He backed a little farther into the bushes.
They stood for an instant, listening apparently. The man no longer
carried the sack. They exchanged a few inaudible words. Then they
crossed the clearing and entered the wood a few yards to his
right. He could hear the crackling of their footsteps diminishing
in the direction of the road.
A devouring curiosity seized upon Mr Pickering. He wanted, more
than he had wanted almost anything before in his life, to find out
what the dickens they had been up to in there. He listened. The
footsteps were no longer audible. He ran across the clearing and
into the shack. It was then that he discovered that he had no
matches.
This needless infliction, coming upon him at the crisis of an
adventurous night, infuriated Mr Pickering. He swore softly. He
groped round the walls for an electric-light switch, but the shack
had no electric-light switch. When there was need to illuminate it
an oil lamp performed the duty. This occurred to Mr Pickering
after he had been round the place three times, and he ceased to
grope for a switch and began to seek for a match-box. He was still
seeking it when he was frozen in his tracks by the sound of
footsteps, muffled but by their nearness audible, just outside the
door. He pulled out his pistol, which he had replaced in his
pocket, backed against the wall, and stood there prepared to sell
his life dearly.
The door opened.
One reads of desperate experiences ageing people in a single
night. His present predicament aged Mr Pickering in a single
minute. In the brief interval of time between the opening of the
door and the moment when a voice outside began to speak he became
a full thirty years older. His boyish ardour slipped from him, and
he was once more the Dudley Pickering whom the world knew, the
staid and respectable middle-aged man of affairs, who would have
given a million dollars not to have got himself mixed up in this
deplorable business.
And then the voice spoke.
'I'll light the lamp,' it said; and with an overpowering feeling
of relief Mr Pickering recognized it as Lord Wetherby's. A moment
later the temperamental peer's dapper figure became visible in
silhouette against a background of pale light.
'Ah-hum!' said Mr Pickering.
The effect on Lord Wetherby was remarkable. To hear some one clear
his throat at the back of a dark room, where there should
rightfully be no throat to be cleared, would cause even your man
of stolid habit a passing thrill. The thing got right in among
Lord Wetherby's highly sensitive ganglions like an earthquake. He
uttered a strangled cry, then dashed out and slammed the door
behind him.
'There's someone in there!'
Lady Wetherby's tranquil voice made itself heard.
'Nonsense; who could be in there?'
'I heard him, I tell you. He growled at me!'
It seemed to Mr Pickering that the time had come to relieve the
mental distress which he was causing his host. He raised his
voice.
'It's all right!' he called.
'There!' said Lord Wetherby.
'Who's that?' asked Lady Wetherby, through the door.
'It's all right. It's me--Pickering.'
The door was opened a few inches by a cautious hand.
'Is that you, Pickering?'
'Yes. It's all right.'
'Don't keep saying it's all right,' said Lord Wetherby, irritably.
'It isn't all right. What do you mean by hiding in the dark and
popping out and barking at a man? You made me bite my tongue. I've
never had such a shock in my life.'
Mr Pickering left his lair and came out into the open. Lord
Wetherby was looking aggrieved, Lady Wetherby peacefully
inquisitive. For the first time Mr Pickering discovered that
Claire was present. She was standing behind Lady Wetherby with a
floating white something over her head, looking very beautiful.
'For the love of Mike!' said Lady Wetherby.
Mr Pickering became aware that he was still holding the revolver.
'Oh, ah!' he said, and pocketed the weapon.
'Barking at people!' muttered Lord Wetherby in a querulous
undertone.
'What on earth are you doing, Dudley?' said Claire.
There was a note in her voice which both puzzled and pained Mr
Pickering, a note that seemed to suggest that she found herself in
imperfect sympathy with him. Her expression deepened the
suggestion. It was a cold expression, unfriendly, as if it was not
so keen a pleasure to Claire to look at him as it should be for a
girl to look at the man whom she is engaged to marry. He had
noticed the same note in her voice and the same hostile look in
her eye earlier in the evening. He had found her alone, reading a
letter which, as the stamp on the envelope showed, had come from
England. She had seemed so upset that he had asked her if it
contained bad news, and she had replied in the negative with so
much irritation that he had desisted from inquiries. But his own
idea was that she had had bad news from home. Mr Pickering still
clung to his early impression that her little brother Percy was
consumptive, and he thought the child must have taken a turn for
the worse. It was odd that she should have looked and spoken like
that then, and it was odd that she should look and speak like that
now. He had been vaguely disturbed then and he was vaguely
disturbed now. He had the feeling that all was not well.
'Yes,' said Lady Wetherby. 'What on earth are you doing, Dudley?'
'Popping out!' grumbled Lord Wetherby.
'We came here to see Algie's picture, which has got something
wrong with its eyes apparently, and we find you hiding in the dark
with a gun. What's the idea?'
'It's a long story,' said Mr Pickering.
'We have the night before us,' said Lady Wetherby.
'You remember The Man--the fellow I found looking in at the
window, The Man who said he knew Claire?'
'You've got that man on the brain, Dudley. What's he been doing to
you now?'
'I tracked him here.'
'Tracked him? Where from?'
'From that bee-farm place where he's living. He and that girl you
spoke of went into these woods. I thought they were making for the
house, but they went into the shack.'
'What did they do then?' asked Lady Wetherby.
'They came out again.'
'Why?'
'That's what I was trying to find out.'
Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.
'By Jove!' There was apprehension in his voice, but mingled with
it a certain pleased surprise. 'Perhaps they were after my
picture. I'll light the lamp. Good Lord, picture
thieves--Romneys--missing Gainsboroughs--' His voice trailed off
as he found the lamp and lit it. Relief and disappointment were
nicely blended in his next words: 'No, it's still there.'
The soft light of the lamp filled the studio.
'Well, that's a comfort,' said Lady Wetherby, sauntering in. 'We
couldn't afford to lose--Oh!'
Lord Wetherby spun round as her scream burst upon his already
tortured nerve centres. Lady Wetherby was kneeling on the floor.
Claire hurried in.
'What is it, Polly?'
Lady Wetherby rose to her feet, and pointed. Her face had lost its
look of patient amusement. It was hard and set. She eyed Mr
Pickering in a menacing way.
'Look!'
Claire followed her finger.
'Good gracious! It's Eustace!'
'Shot!'
She was looking intently at Mr Pickering. 'Well, Dudley,' she
said, coldly, 'what about it?'
Mr Pickering found that they were all looking at him--Lady
Wetherby with glittering eyes, Claire with cool scorn, Lord
Wetherby with a horror which he seemed to have achieved with
something of an effort.
'Well!' said Claire.
'What about it, Dudley?' said Lady Wetherby.
'I must say, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby, 'much as I disliked
the animal, it's a bit thick!'
Mr Pickering recoiled from their accusing gaze.
'Good heavens! Do you think I did it?'
In the midst of his anguish there flashed across his mind the
recollection of having seen just this sort of situation in a
moving picture, and of having thought it far-fetched.
Lady Wetherby's good-tempered mouth, far from good-tempered now,
curled in a devastating sneer. She was looking at him as Claire,
in the old days when they had toured England together in road
companies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant landladies.
The landladies, without exception, had wilted beneath that gaze,
and Mr Pickering wilted now.
'But--but--but--' was all he could contrive to say.
'Why should we think you did it?' said Lady Wetherby, bitterly.
'You had a grudge against the poor brute for biting you. We find
you hiding here with a pistol and a story about burglars which an
infant couldn't swallow. I suppose you thought that, if you
planted the poor creature's body here, it would be up to Algie to
get rid of it, and that if he were found with it I should think
that it was he who had killed the animal.'
The look of horror which Lord Wetherby had managed to assume
became genuine at these words. The gratitude which he had been
feeling towards Mr Pickering for having removed one of the chief
trials of his existence vanished.
'Great Scot!' he cried. 'So that was the game, was it?'
Mr Pickering struggled for speech. This was a nightmare.
'But I didn't! I didn't! I didn't! I tell you I hadn't the
remotest notion the creature was there.'
'Oh, come, Pickering!' said Lord Wetherby. 'Come, come, come!'
Mr Pickering found that his accusers were ebbing away. Lady
Wetherby had gone. Claire had gone. Only Lord Wetherby remained,
looking at him like a pained groom. He dashed from the place and
followed his hostess, speaking incoherently of burglars,
outhouses, and misunderstandings. He even mentioned Chingachgook.
But Lady Wetherby would not listen. Nobody would listen.
He found Lord Wetherby at his side, evidently prepared to go
deeper into the subject. Lord Wetherby was looking now like a
groom whose favourite horse has kicked him in the stomach.
'Wouldn't have thought it of you, Pickering,' said Lord Wetherby.
Mr Pickering found no words. 'Wouldn't, honestly. Low trick!'
'But I tell you--'
'Devilish low trick!' repeated Lord Wetherby, with a shake of the
head. 'Laws of hospitality--eaten our bread and salt, what!--all
that sort of thing--kill valuable monkey--not done, you know--low,
very low!'
And he followed his wife, now in full retreat, with scorn and
repulsion written in her very walk.
'Mr Pickering!'
It was Claire. She stood there, holding something towards him,
something that glittered in the moonlight. Her voice was hard, and
the expression on her face suggested that in her estimation he was
a particularly low-grade worm, one of the submerged tenth of the
worm world.
'Eh?' said Mr Pickering, dazedly.
He looked at what she had in her hand, but it conveyed nothing to
his overwrought mind.
'Take it!'
'Eh?'
Claire stamped.
'Very well,' she said.
She flung something on the ground before him--a small, sparkling
object. Then she swept away, his eyes following her, and was lost
in the darkness of the trees. Mechanically Mr Pickering stooped to
pick up what she had let fall. He recognized it now. It was her
engagement ring.
19
Bill leaned his back against the gate that separated the grounds of
the bee-farm from the high road and mused pleasantly. He was alone.
Elizabeth was walking up the drive on her way to the house to tell
the news to Nutty. James, the cat, who had come down from the roof
of the outhouse, was sharpening his claws on a neighbouring tree.
After the whirl of excitement that had been his portion for the past
few hours, the peace of it all appealed strongly to Bill. It suited
the mood of quiet happiness which was upon him.
Quietly happy, that was how he felt now that it was all over. The
white heat of emotion had subsided to a gentle glow of contentment
conducive to thought. He thought tenderly of Elizabeth. She had
turned to wave her hand before going into the house, and he was
still smiling fatuously. Wonderful girl! Lucky chap he was! Rum,
the way they had come together! Talk about Fate, what?
He stooped to tickle James, who had finished stropping his claws
and was now enjoying a friction massage against his leg, and began
to brood on the inscrutable way of Fate.
Rum thing, Fate! Most extraordinary!
Suppose he had never gone down to Marvis Bay that time. He had
wavered between half a dozen places; it was pure chance that he
had chosen Marvis Bay. If he hadn't he would never have met old
Nutcombe. Probably old Nutcombe had wavered between half a dozen
places too. If they hadn't both happened to choose Marvis Bay they
would never have met. And if they hadn't been the only visitors
there they might never have got to know each other. And if old
Nutcombe hadn't happened to slice his approach shots he would
never have put him under an obligation. Queer old buster, old
Nutcombe, leaving a fellow he hardly knew from Adam a cool million
quid just because he cured him of slicing.
It was at this point in his meditations that it suddenly occurred to
Bill that he had not yet given a thought to what was immeasurably
the most important of any of the things that ought to be occupying
his mind just now. What was he to do about this Lord Dawlish
business?
Life at Brookport had so accustomed him to being plain Bill
Chalmers that it had absolutely slipped his mind that he was
really Lord Dawlish, the one man in the world whom Elizabeth
looked on as an enemy. What on earth was he to do about that? Tell
her? But if he told her, wouldn't she chuck him on the spot?
This was awful. The dreamy sense of well-being left him. He
straightened himself to face this problem, ignoring the hint of
James, who was weaving circles about his legs expectant of more
tickling. A man cannot spend his time tickling cats when he has to
concentrate on a dilemma of this kind.
Suppose he didn't tell her? How would that work out? Was a marriage
legal if the cove who was being married went through it under a
false name? He seemed to remember seeing a melodrama in his boyhood
the plot of which turned on that very point. Yes, it began to come
back to him. An unpleasant bargee with a black moustache had said,
'This woman is not your wife!' and caused the dickens of a lot of
unpleasantness; but there in its usual slipshod way memory failed.
Had subsequent events proved the bargee right or wrong? It was a
question for a lawyer to decide. Jerry Nichols would know. Well,
there was plenty of time, thank goodness, to send Jerry Nichols a
cable, asking for his professional opinion, and to get the straight
tip long before the wedding day arrived.
Laying this part of it aside for the moment, and assuming that the
thing could be worked, what about the money? Like a chump, he had
told Elizabeth on the first day of his visit that he hadn't any
money except what he made out of his job as secretary of the club.
He couldn't suddenly spring five million dollars on her and
pretend that he had forgotten all about it till then.
Of course, he could invent an imaginary uncle or something, and
massacre him during the honeymoon. Something in that. He pictured
the thing in his mind. Breakfast: Elizabeth doling out the
scrambled eggs. 'What's the matter, Bill? Why did you exclaim like
that? Is there some bad news in the letter you are reading?'
'Oh, it's nothing--only my Uncle John's died and left me five
million dollars.'
The scene worked out so well that his mind became a little above
itself. It suggested developments of serpentine craftiness. Why
not get Jerry Nichols to write him a letter about his Uncle John
and the five millions? Jerry liked doing that sort of thing. He
would do it like a shot, and chuck in a lot of legal words to make
it sound right. It began to be clear to Bill that any move he
took--except full confession, at which he jibbed--was going to
involve Jerry Nichols as an ally; and this discovery had a
soothing effect on him. It made him feel that the responsibility
had been shifted. He couldn't do anything till he had consulted
Jerry, so there was no use in worrying. And, being one of those
rare persons who can cease worrying instantly when they have
convinced themselves that it is useless, he dismissed the entire
problem from his mind and returned to the more congenial
occupation of thinking of Elizabeth.
It was a peculiar feature of his position that he found himself
unable to think of Elizabeth without thinking of Claire. He tried
to, but failed. Every virtue in Elizabeth seemed to call up the
recollection of a corresponding defect in Claire. It became almost
mathematical. Elizabeth was so straight on the level they called
it over here. Claire was a corkscrew among women. Elizabeth was
sunny and cheerful. Querulousness was Claire's besetting sin.
Elizabeth was such a pal. Claire had never been that. The effect
that Claire had always had on him was to deepen the conviction,
which never really left him, that he was a bit of an ass.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, bucked him up and made him feel as
if he really amounted to something.
How different they were! Their very voices--Elizabeth had a sort
of quiet, soothing, pleasant voice, the kind of voice that somehow
suggested that she thought a lot of a chap without her having to
say it in so many words. Whereas Claire's voice--he had noticed it
right from the beginning--Claire's voice--
While he was trying to make clear to himself just what it was
about Claire's voice that he had not liked he was granted the
opportunity of analysing by means of direct observation its
failure to meet his vocal ideals, for at this moment it spoke
behind him.
'Bill!'
She was standing in the road, her head still covered with that
white, filmy something which had commended itself to Mr Pickering's
eyes. She was looking at him in a way that seemed somehow to strike
a note of appeal. She conveyed an atmosphere of softness and
repentance, a general suggestion of prodigal daughters revisiting
old homesteads.
'We seem always to be meeting at gates, don't we?' she said, with
a faint smile.
It was a deprecating smile, wistful.
'Bill!' she said again, and stopped. She laid her left hand
lightly on the gate. Bill had a sort of impression that there was
some meaning behind this action; that, if he were less of a chump
than Nature had made him, he would at this point receive some sort
of a revelation. But, being as Nature had made him, he did not get
it.
He was one of those men to whom a girl's left hand is simply a
girl's left hand, irrespective of whether it wears rings on its
third finger or not.
This having become evident to Claire after a moment of silence,
she withdrew her hand in rather a disappointed way and prepared to
attack the situation from another angle.
'Bill, I've come to say something to you.'
Bill was looking at her curiously. He could not have believed
that, even after what had happened, he could face her with such
complete detachment; that she could so extraordinarily not matter.
He felt no resentment toward her. It was simply that she had gone
out of his life.
'Bill, I've been a fool.'
He made no reply to this for he could think of no reply that was
sufficiently polite. 'Yes?' sounded as if he meant to say that
that was just what he had expected. 'Really?' had a sarcastic
ring. He fell back on facial expression, to imply that he was
interested and that she might tell all.
Claire looked away down the road and began to speak in a low,
quick voice:
'I've been a fool all along. I lost you through being a fool. When
I saw you dancing with that girl in the restaurant I didn't stop
to think. I was angry. I was jealous. I ought to have trusted you,
but--Oh, well, I was a fool.'
'My dear girl, you had a perfect right--'
'I hadn't. I was an idiot. Bill, I've come to ask you if you can't
forgive me.'
'I wish you wouldn't talk like that--there's nothing to forgive.'
The look which Claire gave him in answer to this was meek and
affectionate, but inwardly she was wishing that she could bang his
head against the gate. His slowness was maddening. Long before
this he should have leaped into the road in order to fold her in
his arms. Her voice shook with the effort she had to make to keep
it from sharpness.
'I mean, is it too late? I mean, can you really forgive me? Oh,
Bill'--she stopped herself by the fraction of a second from adding
'you idiot'--'can't we be the same again to each other? Can't
we--pretend all this has never happened?'
Exasperating as Bill's wooden failure to play the scene in the
spirit in which her imagination had conceived it was to Claire,
several excuses may be offered for him: He had opened the evening
with a shattering blow at his faith in woman. He had walked twenty
miles at a rapid pace. He had heard shots and found a corpse, and
carried the latter by the tail across country. Finally, he had had
the stunning shock of discovering that Elizabeth Boyd loved him.
He was not himself. He found a difficulty in concentrating. With
the result that, in answer to this appeal from a beautiful girl
whom he had once imagined that he loved, all he could find to say
was: 'How do you mean?'
Claire, never an adept at patience, just succeeded in swallowing
the remark that sprang into her mind. It was incredible to her
that a man could exist who had so little intuition. She had not
anticipated the necessity of being compelled to put the substance
of her meaning in so many blunt words, but it seemed that only so
could she make him understand.
'I mean, can't we be engaged again, Bill?'
Bill's overtaxed brain turned one convulsive hand-spring, and came
to rest with a sense of having dislocated itself. This was too
much. This was not right. No fellow at the end of a hard evening
ought to have to grapple with this sort of thing. What on earth
did she mean, springing questions like that on him? How could they
be engaged? She was going to marry someone else, and so was he.
Something of these thoughts he managed to put into words:
'But you're engaged to--'
'I've broken my engagement with Mr Pickering.'
'Great Scot! When?'
'To-night. I found out his true character. He is cruel and
treacherous. Something happened--it may sound nothing to you, but
it gave me an insight into what he really was. Polly Wetherby had
a little monkey, and just because it bit Mr Pickering he shot it.'
'Pickering!'
'Yes. He wasn't the sort of man I should have expected to do a
mean, cruel thing like that. It sickened me. I gave him back his
ring then and there. Oh, what a relief it was! What a fool I was
ever to have got engaged to such a man.'
Bill was puzzled. He was one of those simple men who take their
fellows on trust, but who, if once that trust is shattered, can
never recover it. Like most simple men, he was tenacious of ideas
when he got them, and the belief that Claire was playing fast and
loose was not lightly to be removed from his mind. He had found
her out during his self-communion that night, and he could never
believe her again. He had the feeling that there was something
behind what she was saying. He could not put his finger on the
clue, but that there was a clue he was certain.
'I only got engaged to him out of pique. I was angry with you,
and--Well, that's how it happened.'
Still Bill could not believe. It was plausible. It sounded true.
And yet some instinct told him that it was not true. And while he
waited, perplexed, Claire made a false step.
The thing had been so close to the top of her mind ever since she
had come to the knowledge of it that it had been hard for her to
keep it down. Now she could keep it down no longer.
'How wonderful about old Mr Nutcombe, Bill!' she said.
A vast relief rolled over Bill. Despite his instinct, he had been
wavering. But now he understood. He had found the clue.
'You got my letter, then?'
'Yes; it was forwarded on from the theatre. I got it to-night.'
Too late she realized what she had said and the construction that
an intelligent man would put on it. Then she reflected that Bill
was not an intelligent man. She shot a swift glance at him. To all
appearances he had suspected nothing.
'It went all over the place,' she hurried on. 'The people at the
Portsmouth theatre sent it to the London office, who sent it home,
and mother mailed it on to me.'
'I see.'
There was a silence. Claire drew a step nearer.
'Bill!' she said softly.
Bill shut his eyes. The moment had come which he had dreaded. Not
even the thought that she was crooked, that she had been playing
with him, could make it any better. She was a woman and he was a
man. That was all that mattered, and nothing could alter it.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's impossible.'
Claire stared at him in amazement. She had not been prepared for
this. He met her eyes, but every nerve in his body was protesting.
'Bill!'
'I'm sorry.
'But, Bill!'
He set his teeth. It was just as bad as he had thought it would
be.
'But, Bill, I've explained. I've told you how--'
'I know.'
Claire's eyes opened wide.
'I thought you loved me.' She came closer. She pulled at his
sleeve. Her voice took on a note of soft raillery. 'Don't be
absurd, Bill! You mustn't behave like a sulky schoolboy. It isn't
like you, this. You surely don't want me to humble myself more
than I have done.' She gave a little laugh. 'Why, Bill, I'm
proposing to you! I know I've treated you badly, but I've
explained why. You must be just enough to see that it wasn't
altogether my fault. I'm only human. And if I made a mistake I've
done all I can do to undo it. I--'
'Claire, listen: I'm engaged!'
She fell back. For the first time the sense of defeat came to her.
She had anticipated many things. She had looked for difficulties.
But she had not expected this. A feeling of cold fury surged over
her at the way fate had tricked her. She had gambled recklessly on
her power of fascination, and she had lost.
Mr Pickering, at that moment brooding in solitude in the smoking-room
of Lady Wetherby's house, would have been relieved could he have
known how wistfully she was thinking of him.
'You're engaged?'
'Yes.'
'Well!' She forced another laugh. 'How very--rapid of you! To
whom?'
'To Elizabeth Boyd.'
'I'm afraid I'm very ignorant, but who is Elizabeth Boyd? The
ornate lady you were dancing with at the restaurant?'
'No!'
'Who then?'
'She is old Ira Nutcombe's niece. The money ought to have been
left to her. That was why I came over to America, to see if I
could do anything for her.'
'And you're going to marry her? How very romantic--and convenient!
What an excellent arrangement for her. Which of you suggested it?'
Bill drew in a deep breath. All this was, he supposed,
unavoidable, but it was not pleasant.
Claire suddenly abandoned her pose of cool amusement. The fire
behind it blazed through.
'You fool!' she cried passionately. 'Are you blind? Can't you see
that this girl is simply after your money? A child could see it.'
Bill looked at her steadily.
'You're quite wrong. She doesn't know who I am.'
'Doesn't know who you are? What do you mean? She must know by this
time that her uncle left his money to you.'
'But she doesn't know that I am Lord Dawlish. I came to America
under another name. She knows me as Chalmers.'
Claire was silent for a moment.
'How did you get to know her?' she asked, more quietly.
'I met her brother by chance in New York.'
'By chance!'
'Quite by chance. A man I knew in England lent me his rooms in New
York. He happened to be a friend of Boyd's. Boyd came to call on
him one night, and found me.'
'Odd! Had your mutual friend been away from New York long?'
'Some months.'
'And in all that time Mr Boyd had not discovered that he had left.
They must have been great friends! What happened then?'
'Boyd invited me down here.'
'Down here?'
'They live in this house.'
'Is Miss Boyd the girl who keeps the bee-farm?'
'She is.'
Claire's eyes suddenly lit up. She began to speak in a louder
voice:
'Bill, you're an infant, a perfect infant! Of course, she's after
your money. Do you really imagine for one instant that this
Elizabeth Boyd of yours and her brother don't know as well as I do
that you are really Lord Dawlish? I always thought you had a
trustful nature! You tell me the brother met you by chance.
Chance! And invited you down here. I bet he did! He knew his
business! And now you're going to marry the girl so that they will
get the money after all! Splendid! Oh, Bill, you're a wonderful,
wonderful creature! Your innocence is touching.'
She swung round.
'Good night,' she called over her shoulder.
He could hear her laughing as she went down the road.
20
In the smoking-room of Lady Wetherby's house, chewing the dead
stump of a once imposing cigar, Dudley Pickering sat alone with
his thoughts. He had been alone for half an hour now. Once Lord
Wetherby had looked in, to withdraw at once coldly, with the
expression of a groom who has found loathsome things in the
harness-room. Roscoe Sherriff, good, easy man, who could never
dislike people, no matter what they had done, had come for a while
to bear him company; but Mr Pickering's society was not for the
time being entertaining. He had answered with grunts the
Press-agent's kindly attempts at conversation, and the latter
had withdrawn to seek a more congenial audience. And now Mr
Pickering was alone, talking things over with his subconscious
self.
A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for
the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden
away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery
of a miserable hour. Mr Pickering's rare interviews with his
subconscious self had happened until now almost entirely in the
small hours of the night, when it had popped out to remind him, as
he lay sleepless, that all flesh was grass and that he was not
getting any younger. To-night, such had been the shock of the
evening's events, it came to him at a time which was usually his
happiest--the time that lay between dinner and bed. Mr Pickering
at that point of the day was generally feeling his best. But to-night
was different from the other nights of his life.
One may picture Subconscious Self as a withered, cynical,
malicious person standing before Mr Pickering and regarding him
with an evil smile. There has been a pause, and now Subconscious
Self speaks again:
'You will have to leave to-morrow. Couldn't possibly stop on after
what's happened. Now you see what comes of behaving like a boy.'
Mr Pickering writhed.
'Made a pretty considerable fool of yourself, didn't you, with
your revolvers and your hidings and your trailings? Too old for
that sort of thing, you know. You're getting on. Probably have a
touch of lumbago to-morrow. You must remember you aren't a
youngster. Got to take care of yourself. Next time you feel an
impulse to hide in shrubberies and take moonlight walks through
damp woods, perhaps you will listen to me.'
Mr Pickering relit the stump of his cigar defiantly and smoked in
long gulps for a while. He was trying to persuade himself that all
this was untrue, but it was not easy. The cigar became uncomfortably
hot, and he threw it away. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and
produced a diamond ring, at which he looked pensively.
'A pretty thing, is it not?' said Subconscious Self.
Mr Pickering sighed. That moment when Claire had thrown the ring
at his feet and swept out of his life like an offended queen had
been the culminating blow of a night of blows, the knock-out
following on a series of minor punches. Subconscious Self seized
the opportunity to become offensive again.
'You've lost her, all through your own silly fault,' it said. 'How
on earth you can have been such a perfect fool beats me. Running
round with a gun like a boy of fourteen! Well, it's done now and
it can't be mended. Countermand the order for cake, send a wire
putting off the wedding, dismiss the bridesmaids, tell the
organist he can stop practising "The Voice that Breathed O'er
Eden"--no wedding-bells for you! For Dudley Damfool Pickering,
Esquire, the lonely hearth for evermore! Little feet pattering
about the house? Not on your life! Childish voices sticking up the
old man for half a dollar to buy candy? No, sir! Not for D.
Bonehead Pickering, the amateur trailing arbutus!'
Subconscious Self may have had an undesirable way of expressing
itself, but there was no denying the truth of what it said. Its
words carried conviction. Mr Pickering replaced the ring in his
pocket, and, burying his head in his hands, groaned in bitterness
of spirit.
He had lost her. He must face the fact. She had thrown him over.
Never now would she sit at his table, the brightest jewel of
Detroit's glittering social life. She would have made a stir in
Detroit. Now that city would never know her. Not that he was
worrying much about Detroit. He was worrying about himself. How
could he ever live without her?
This mood of black depression endured for a while, and then Mr
Pickering suddenly became aware that Subconscious Self was
sneering at him. 'You're a wonder!' said Subconscious Self.
'What do you mean?'
'Why, trying to make yourself think that at the bottom of your
heart you aren't tickled to death that this has happened. You know
perfectly well that you're tremendously relieved that you haven't
got to marry the girl after all. You can fool everybody else, but
you can't fool me. You're delighted, man, delighted!' The mere
suggestion revolted Mr Pickering. He was on the point of indignant
denial, when quite abruptly there came home to him the suspicion
that the statement was not so preposterous after all. It seemed
incredible and indecent that such a thing should be, but he could
not deny, now that it was put to him point-blank in this way, that
a certain sense of relief was beginning to mingle itself with his
gloom. It was shocking to realize, but--yes, he actually was
feeling as if he had escaped from something which he had dreaded.
Half an hour ago there had been no suspicion of such an emotion
among the many which had occupied his attention, but now he
perceived it clearly. Half an hour ago he had felt like Lucifer
hurled from heaven. Now, though how that train of thought had
started he could not have said, he was distinctly conscious of the
silver lining. Subconscious Self began to drive the thing home.
'Be honest with yourself,' it said. 'You aren't often. No man is.
Look at the matter absolutely fairly. You know perfectly well that
the mere idea of marriage has always scared you. You hate making
yourself conspicuous in public. Think what it would be like,
standing up there in front of all the world and getting married.
And then--afterwards! Why on earth do you think that you would
have been happy with this girl? What do you know about her except
that she is a beauty? I grant you she's that, but are you aware of
the infinitesimal part looks play in married life? My dear chap,
better is it for a man that he marry a sympathetic gargoyle than a
Venus with a streak of hardness in her. You know--and you would
admit it if you were honest with yourself--that this girl is hard.
She's got a chilled-steel soul.
'If you wanted to marry some one--and there's no earthly reason
why you should, for your life's perfectly full and happy with your
work--this is the last girl you ought to marry. You're a middle-aged
man. You're set. You like life to jog along at a peaceful walk.
This girl wants it to be a fox-trot. You've got habits which
you have had for a dozen years. I ask you, is she the sort of girl
to be content to be a stepmother to a middle-aged man's habits? Of
course, if you were really in love with her, if she were your
mate, and all that sort of thing, you would take a pleasure in
making yourself over to suit her requirements. But you aren't in
love with her. You are simply caught by her looks. I tell you, you
ought to look on that moment when she gave you back your ring as
the luckiest moment of your life. You ought to make a sort of
anniversary of it. You ought to endow a hospital or something out
of pure gratitude. I don't know how long you're going to live--if
you act like a grown-up man instead of a boy and keep out of woods
and shrubberies at night you may live for ever--but you will never
have a greater bit of luck than the one that happened to you
to-night.'
Mr Pickering was convinced. His spirits soared. Marriage! What was
marriage? Slavery, not to be endured by your man of spirit. Look
at all the unhappy marriages you saw everywhere. Besides, you had
only to recall some of the novels and plays of recent years to get
the right angle on marriage. According to the novelists and
playwrights, shrewd fellows who knew what was what, if you talked
to your wife about your business she said you had no soul; if you
didn't, she said you didn't think enough of her to let her share
your life. If you gave her expensive presents and an unlimited
credit account, she complained that you looked on her as a mere
doll; and if you didn't, she called you a screw. That was
marriage. If it didn't get you with the left jab, it landed on you
with the right upper-cut. None of that sort of thing for Dudley
Pickering.
'You're absolutely right,' he said, enthusiastically. 'Funny I
never looked at it that way before.'
Somebody was turning the door-handle. He hoped it was Roscoe
Sherriff. He had been rather dull the last time Sherriff had
looked in. He would be quite different now. He would be gay and
sparkling. He remembered two good stories he would like to tell
Sherriff.
The door opened and Claire came in. There was a silence. She stood
looking at him in a way that puzzled Mr Pickering. If it had not
been for her attitude at their last meeting and the manner in
which she had broken that last meeting up, he would have said that
her look seemed somehow to strike a note of appeal. There was
something soft and repentant about her. She suggested, it seemed
to Mr Pickering, the prodigal daughter revisiting the old
homestead.
'Dudley!'
She smiled a faint smile, a wistful, deprecating smile. She was
looking lovelier than ever. Her face glowed with a wonderful
colour and her eyes were very bright. Mr Pickering met her gaze,
and strange things began to happen to his mind, that mind which a
moment before had thought so clearly and established so definite a
point of view.
What a gelatine-backboned thing is man, who prides himself on his
clear reason and becomes as wet blotting-paper at one glance from
bright eyes! A moment before Mr Pickering had thought out the
whole subject of woman and marriage in a few bold flashes of his
capable brain, and thanked Providence that he was not as those men
who take unto themselves wives to their undoing. Now in an instant
he had lost that iron outlook. Reason was temporarily out of
business. He was slipping.
'Dudley!'
For a space Subconscious Self thrust itself forward.
'Look out! Be careful!' it warned.
Mr Pickering ignored it. He was watching, fascinated, the glow on
Claire's face, her shining eyes.
'Dudley, I want to speak to you.'
'Tell her you can only be seen by appointment! Escape! Bolt!'
Mr Pickering did not bolt. Claire came towards him, still smiling
that pathetic smile. A thrill permeated Mr Pickering's entire one
hundred and ninety-seven pounds, trickling down his spine like hot
water and coming out at the soles of his feet. He had forgotten
now that he had ever sneered at marriage. It seemed to him now
that there was nothing in life to be compared with that beatific
state, and that bachelors were mere wild asses of the desert.
Claire came and sat down on the arm of his chair. He moved
convulsively, but he stayed where he was.
'Fool!' said Subconscious Self.
Claire took hold of his hand and patted it. He quivered, but
remained.
'Ass!' hissed Subconscious Self.
Claire stopped patting his hand and began to stroke it. Mr
Pickering breathed heavily.
'Dudley, dear,' said Claire, softly, 'I've been an awful fool, and
I'm dreadful, dreadful sorry, and you're going to be the nicest,
kindest, sweetest man on earth and tell me you've forgiven me.
Aren't you?'
Mr Pickering's lips moved silently. Claire kissed the thinning
summit of his head. There was a pause.
'Where is it?' she asked.
Mr Pickering started.
'Eh?'
'Where is it? Where did you put it? The ring, silly!'
Mr Pickering became aware that Subconscious Self was addressing
him. The occasion was tense, and Subconscious Self did not mince
its words.
'You poor, maudlin, sentimental, doddering chunk of imbecility,'
it said; 'are there no limits to your insanity? After all I said
to you just now, are you deliberately going to start the old
idiocy all over again?'
'She's so beautiful!' pleaded Mr Pickering. 'Look at her eyes!'
'Ass! Don't you remember what I said about beauty?'
'Yes, I know, but--'
'She's as hard as nails.'
'I'm sure you're wrong.'
'I'm not wrong.'
'But she loves me.'
'Forget it!'
Claire jogged his shoulders.
'Dudley, dear, what are you sitting there dreaming for? Where did
you put the ring?'
Mr Pickering fumbled for it, located it, produced it. Claire
examined it fondly.
'Did she throw it at him and nearly break his heart!' she said.
'Bolt!' urged Subconscious Self. 'Fly! Go to Japan!'
Mr Pickering did not go to Japan. He was staring worshippingly at
Claire. With rapturous gaze he noted the grey glory of her eyes,
the delicate curve of her cheek, the grace of her neck. He had no
time to listen to pessimistic warnings from any Gloomy Gus of a
Subconscious Self. He was ashamed that he had ever even for a
moment allowed himself to be persuaded that Claire was not all
that was perfect. No more doubts and hesitations for Dudley
Pickering. He was under the influence.
'There!' said Claire, and slipped the ring on her finger.
She kissed the top of his head once more.
'So there we are!' she said.
'There we are!' gurgled the infatuated Dudley.
'Happy now?'
'Ur-r!'
'Then kiss me.'
Mr Pickering kissed her.
'Dudley, darling,' said Claire, 'we're going to be awfully,
awfully happy, aren't we?'
'You bet we are!' said Mr Pickering.
Subconscious Self said nothing, being beyond speech.
21
For some minutes after Claire had left him Bill remained where he
was, motionless. He felt physically incapable of moving. All the
strength that was in him he was using to throw off the insidious
poison of her parting speech, and it became plainer to him with
each succeeding moment that he would have need of strength.
It is part of the general irony of things that in life's crises a
man's good qualities are often the ones that help him least, if
indeed they do not actually turn treacherously and fight against
him. It was so with Bill. Modesty, if one may trust to the verdict
of the mass of mankind, is a good quality. It sweetens the soul
and makes for a kindly understanding of one's fellows. But
arrogance would have served Bill better now. It was his fatal
habit of self-depreciation that was making Claire's words so
specious as he stood there trying to cast them from his mind. Who
was he, after all, that he should imagine that he had won on his
personal merits a girl like Elizabeth Boyd?
He had the not very common type of mind that perceives the merit
in others more readily than their faults, and in himself the
faults more readily than the merit. Time and the society of a
great number of men of different ranks and natures had rid him of
the outer symbol of this type of mind, which is shyness, but it
had left him still unconvinced that he amounted to anything very
much as an individual.
This was the thought that met him every time he tried to persuade
himself that what Claire had said was ridiculous, the mere parting
shaft of an angry woman. With this thought as an ally her words
took on a plausibility hard to withstand. Plausible! That was the
devil of it. By no effort could he blind himself to the fact that
they were that. In the light of Claire's insinuations what had
seemed coincidences took on a more sinister character. It had
seemed to him an odd and lucky chance that Nutty Boyd should have
come to the rooms which he was occupying that night, seeking a
companion. Had it been chance? Even at the time he had thought it
strange that, on the strength of a single evening spent together,
Nutty should have invited a total stranger to make an indefinite
visit to his home. Had there been design behind the invitation?
Bill began to walk slowly to the house. He felt tired and unhappy.
He meant to go to bed and try to sleep away these wretched doubts
and questionings. Daylight would bring relief.
As he reached the open front door he caught the sound of voices,
and paused for an instant, almost unconsciously, to place them.
They came from one of the rooms upstairs. It was Nutty speaking
now, and it was impossible for Bill not to hear what he said, for
Nutty had abandoned his customary drawl in favour of a high,
excited tone.
'Of course, you hate him and all that,' said Nutty; 'but after all
you will be getting five million dollars that ought to have come
to--'
That was all that Bill heard, for he had stumbled across the hall
and was in his room, sitting on the bed and staring into the
darkness with burning eyes. The door banged behind him.
So it was true!
There came a knock at the door. It was repeated. The handle
turned.
'Is that you, Bill?'
It was Elizabeth's voice. He could just see her, framed in the
doorway.
'Bill!'
His throat was dry. He swallowed, and found that he could speak.
'Yes?'
'Did you just come in?'
'Yes.'
'Then--you heard?'
'Yes.'
There was a long silence. Then the door closed gently and he heard
her go upstairs.
22
When Bill woke next morning it was ten o'clock; and his first
emotion, on a day that was to be crowded with emotions of various
kinds, was one of shame. The desire to do the fitting thing is
innate in man, and it struck Bill, as he hurried through his
toilet, that he must be a shallow, coarse-fibred sort of person,
lacking in the finer feelings, not to have passed a sleepless
night. There was something revolting in the thought that, in
circumstances which would have made sleep an impossibility for
most men, he had slept like a log. He did not do himself the
justice to recollect that he had had a singularly strenuous day,
and that it is Nature's business, which she performs quietly and
unromantically, to send sleep to tired men regardless of their
private feelings; and it was in a mood of dissatisfaction with the
quality of his soul that he left his room.
He had a general feeling that he was not much of a chap and that
when he died--which he trusted would be shortly--the world would
be well rid of him. He felt humble and depressed and hopeless.
Elizabeth met him in the passage. At the age of eleven or
thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle
difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to
achieve somewhere in the later seventies. Except for a pallor
strange to her face and a drawn look about her eyes, there was
nothing to show that all was not for the best with Elizabeth in a
best of all possible worlds. If she did not look jaunty, she at
least looked composed. She greeted Bill with a smile.
'I didn't wake you. I thought I would let you sleep on.'
The words had the effect of lending an additional clarity and
firmness of outline to the picture of himself which Bill had
already drawn in his mind--of a soulless creature sunk in hoggish
slumber.
'We've had breakfast. Nutty has gone for a walk. Isn't he
wonderful nowadays? I've kept your breakfast warm for you.'
Bill protested. He might be capable of sleep, but he was not going
to sink to food.
'Not for me, thanks,' he said, hollowly.
'Come along.'
'Honestly--'
'Come along.'
He followed her meekly. How grimly practical women were! They let
nothing interfere with the essentials of life. It seemed all
wrong. Nevertheless, he breakfasted well and gratefully, Elizabeth
watching him in silence across the table.
'Finished?'
'Yes, thanks.'
She hesitated for a moment.
'Well, Bill, I've slept on it. Things are in rather a muddle,
aren't they? I think I had better begin by explaining what led up
to those words you heard Nutty say last night. Won't you smoke?'
'No, thanks.'
'You'll feel better if you do.'
'I couldn't.'
A bee had flown in through the open window. She followed it with
her eye as it blundered about the room. It flew out again into the
sunshine. She turned to Bill again.
'They were supposed to be words of consolation,' she said.
Bill said nothing.
'Nutty, you see, has his own peculiar way of looking at things,
and it didn't occur to him that I might have promised to marry you
because I loved you. He took it for granted that I had done it to
save the Boyd home. He has been very anxious from the first that I
should marry you. I think that that must have been why he asked
you down here. He found out in New York, you know, who you were.
Someone you met at supper recognized you, and told Nutty. So, as
far as that is concerned, the girl you were speaking to at the
gate last night was right.'