'It doesn't matter who she was. It's what she said that matters.
She said that we knew you were Lord Dawlish.'
'Did you know?'
'Nutty told me two or three days ago.' Her voice shook and a flush
came into her face. 'You probably won't believe it, but the news
made absolutely no difference to me one way or the other. I had
always imagined Lord Dawlish as a treacherous, adventurer sort of
man, because I couldn't see how a man who was not like that could
have persuaded Uncle Ira to leave him his money. But after knowing
you even for this short time, I knew you were quite the opposite of
that, and I remembered that the first thing you had done on coming
into the money had been to offer me half, so the information that
you were the Lord Dawlish whom I had been hating did not affect me.
And the fact that you were rich and I was poor did not affect me
either. I loved you, and that was all I cared about. If all this had
not happened everything would have been all right. But, you see,
nine-tenths of what that girl said to you was so perfectly true that
it is humanly impossible for you not to believe the other tenth,
which wasn't. And then, to clinch it, you hear Nutty consoling me.
That brings me back to Nutty.'
'I--'
'Let me tell you about Nutty first. I said that he had always been
anxious that I should marry you. Something happened last night to
increase his anxiety. I have often wondered how he managed to get
enough money to enable him to spend three days in New York, and
last night he told me. He came in just after I had got back to the
house after leaving you and that girl, and he was very scared. It
seems that when the letter from the London lawyer came telling him
that he had been left a hundred dollars, he got the idea of
raising money on the strength of it. You know Nutty by this time,
so you won't be surprised at the way he went about it. He borrowed
a hundred dollars from the man at the chemist's on the security of
that letter, and then--I suppose it seemed so easy that it struck
him as a pity to let the opportunity slip--he did the same thing
with four other tradesmen. Nutty's so odd that I don't know even
now whether it ever occurred to him that he was obtaining money
under false pretences; but the poor tradesmen hadn't any doubt
about it at all. They compared notes and found what had happened,
and last night, while we were in the woods, one of them came here
and called Nutty a good many names and threatened him with
imprisonment.
'You can imagine how delighted Nutty was when I came in and told
him that I was engaged to you. In his curious way, he took it for
granted that I had heard about his financial operations, and was
doing it entirely for his sake, to get him out of his fix. And
while I was trying to put him right on that point he began to
console me. You see, Nutty looks on you as the enemy of the
family, and it didn't strike him that it was possible that I
didn't look on you in that light too. So, after being delighted
for a while, he very sweetly thought that he ought to cheer me up
and point out some of the compensations of marriage with you.
And--Well, that was what you heard. There you have the full
explanation. You can't possibly believe it.'
She broke off and began to drum her fingers on the table. And as
she did so there came to Bill a sudden relief from all the doubts
and black thoughts that had tortured him. Elizabeth was straight.
Whatever appearances might seem to suggest, nothing could convince
him that she was playing an underhand game. It was as if something
evil had gone out of him. He felt lighter, cleaner. He could
breathe.
'I do believe it,' he said. 'I believe every word you say.'
She shook her head.
'You can't in the face of the evidence.'
'I believe it.'
'No. You may persuade yourself for the moment that you do, but
after a while you will have to go by the evidence. You won't be
able to help yourself. You haven't realized what a crushing thing
evidence is. You have to go by it against your will. You see,
evidence is the only guide. You don't know that I am speaking the
truth; you just feel it. You're trusting your heart and not your
head. The head must win in the end. You might go on believing for
a time, but sooner or later you would be bound to begin to doubt
and worry and torment yourself. You couldn't fight against the
evidence, when once your instinct--or whatever it is that tells
you that I am speaking the truth--had begun to weaken. And it
would weaken. Think what it would have to be fighting all the
time. Think of the case your intelligence would be making out, day
after day, till it crushed you. It's impossible that you could
keep yourself from docketing the evidence and arranging it and
absorbing it. Think! Consider what you know are actual facts!
Nutty invites you down here, knowing that you are Lord Dawlish.
All you know about my attitude towards Lord Dawlish is what I told
you on the first morning of your visit. I told you I hated him.
Yet, knowing you are Lord Dawlish, I become engaged to you.
Directly afterwards you hear Nutty consoling me as if I were
marrying you against my will. Isn't that an absolutely fair
statement of what has happened? How could you go on believing me
with all that against you?'
'I know you're straight. You couldn't do anything crooked.'
'The evidence proves that I did.'
'I don't care.'
'Not now.'
'Never.'
She shook her head.
'It's dear of you, Bill, but you're promising an impossibility.
And just because it's impossible, and because I love you too much
to face what would be bound to happen, I'm going to send you
away.'
'Send me away!'
'Yes. It's going to hurt. You don't know how it's going to hurt,
Bill; but it's the only thing to do. I love you too much to live
with you for the rest of my life wondering all the time whether
you still believed or whether the weight of the evidence had
crushed out that tiny little spark of intuition which is all that
makes you believe me now. You could never know the truth for
certain, you see--that's the horror of it; and sometimes you would
be able to make yourself believe, but more often, in spite of all
you could do, you would doubt. It would poison both our lives.
Little things would happen, insignificant in themselves, which
would become tremendously important just because they added a
little bit more to the doubt which you would never be able to get
rid of.
'When we had quarrels--which we should, as we are both human--they
wouldn't be over and done with in an hour. They would stick in
your mind and rankle, because, you see, they might be proofs that
I didn't really love you. And then when I seemed happy with you,
you would wonder if I was acting. I know all this sounds morbid
and exaggerated, but it isn't. What have you got to go on, as
regards me? What do you really know of me? If something like this
had happened after we had been married half a dozen years and
really knew each other, we could laugh at it. But we are
strangers. We came together and loved each other because there was
something in each of us which attracted the other. We took that
little something as a foundation and built on it. But what has
happened has knocked away our poor little foundation. That's all.
We don't really know anything at all about each other for certain.
It's just guesswork.'
She broke off and looked at the clock.
'I had better be packing if you're to catch the train.'
He gave a rueful laugh.
'You're throwing me out!'
'Yes, I am. I want you to go while I am strong enough to let you
go.'
'If you really feel like that, why send me away?'
'How do you know I really feel like that? How do you know that I
am not pretending to feel like that as part of a carefully-prepared
plan?'
He made an impatient gesture.
'Yes, I know,' she said. 'You think I am going out of my way to
manufacture unnecessary complications. I'm not; I'm simply looking
ahead. If I were trying to trap you for the sake of your money,
could I play a stronger card than by seeming anxious to give you
up? If I were to give in now, sooner or later that suspicion would
come to you. You would drive it away. You might drive it away a
hundred times. But you couldn't kill it. In the end it would beat
you.'
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
'I can't argue.'
'Nor can I. I can only put very badly things which I know are
true. Come and pack.'
'I'll do it. Don't you bother.'
'Nonsense! No man knows how to pack properly.'
He followed her to his room, pulled out his suitcase, the symbol
of the end of all things, watched her as she flitted about, the
sun shining on her hair as she passed and repassed the window. She
was picking things up, folding them, packing them. Bill looked on
with an aching sense of desolation. It was all so friendly, so
intimate, so exactly as it would have been if she were his wife.
It seemed to him needlessly cruel that she should be playing on
this note of domesticity at the moment when she was barring for
ever the door between him and happiness. He rebelled helplessly
against the attitude she had taken. He had not thought it all out,
as she had done. It was folly, insanity, ruining their two lives
like this for a scruple.
Once again he was to encounter that practical strain in the
feminine mind which jars upon a man in trouble. She was holding
something in her hand and looking at it with concern.
'Why didn't you tell me?' she said. 'Your socks are in an awful
state, poor boy!'
He had the feeling of having been hit by something. A man has not
a woman's gift of being able to transfer his mind at will from
sorrow to socks.
'Like sieves!' She sighed. A troubled frown wrinkled her forehead.
'Men are so helpless! Oh, dear, I'm sure you don't pay any
attention to anything important. I don't believe you ever bother
your head about keeping warm in winter and not getting your feet
wet. And now I shan't be able to look after you!'
Bill's voice broke. He felt himself trembling.
'Elizabeth!'
She was kneeling on the floor, her head bent over the suitcase.
She looked up and met his eyes.
'It's no use, Bill, dear. I must. It's the only way.'
The sense of the nearness of the end broke down the numbness
which held him.
'Elizabeth! It's so utterly absurd. It's just--chucking everything
away!'
She was silent for a moment.
'Bill, dear, I haven't said anything about it before but don't you
see that there's my side to be considered too? I only showed you
that you could never possibly know that I loved you. How am I to
know that you really love me?'
He had moved a step towards her. He drew back, chilled.
'I can't do more than tell you,' he said.
'You can't. And there you have put in two words just what I've
been trying to make clear all the time. Don't you see that that's
the terrible thing about life, that nobody can do more than tell
anybody anything? Life's nothing but words, words, words; and how
are we to know when words are true? How am I to know that you
didn't ask me to marry you out of sheer pity and an exaggerated
sense of justice?'
He stared at her.
'That,' he said, 'is absolutely ridiculous!'
'Why? Look at it as I should look at it later on, when whatever it
is inside me that tell me it's ridiculous now had died. Just at
this moment, while we're talking here, there's something stronger
than reason which tells me you really do love me. But can't you
understand that that won't last? It's like a candle burning on a
rock with the tide coming up all round it. It's burning brightly
enough now, and we can see the truth by the light of it. But the
tide will put it out, and then we shall have nothing left to see
by. There's a great black sea of suspicion and doubt creeping up
to swamp the little spark of intuition inside us.
'I will tell you what would happen to me if I didn't send you
away. Remember I heard what that girl was saying last night.
Remember that you hated the thought of depriving me of Uncle Ira's
money so much that your first act was to try to get me to accept
half of it. The quixotic thing is the first that it occurs to you
to do, because you're like that, because you're the straightest,
whitest man I've ever known or shall know. Could anything be more
likely, looking at it as I should later on, than that you should
have hit on the idea of marrying me as the only way of undoing the
wrong you thought you had done me? I've been foolish about
obligations all my life. I've a sort of morbid pride that hates
the thought of owing anything to anybody, of getting anything that
I have not earned. By and by, if I were to marry you, a little
rotten speck of doubt would begin to eat its way farther and
farther into me. It would be the same with you. We should react on
each other. We should be watching each other, testing each other,
trying each other out all the time. It would be horrible,
horrible!'
He started to speak; then, borne down by the hopelessness of it,
stopped. Elizabeth stood up. They did not look at each other. He
strapped the suitcase and picked it up. The end of all things was
at hand.
'Better to end it all cleanly, Bill,' she said, in a low voice.
'It will hurt less.'
He did not speak.
'I'll come down to the gate with you.'
They walked in silence down the drive. The air was heavy with the torpor
of late summer. The sun beat down on them, turning her hair to burnished
gold. They reached the gate.
'Good-bye, Bill, dear.'
He took her hand dully.
'Good-bye,' he said.
Elizabeth stood at the gate, watching. He swung down the road with
long strides. At the bend he turned and for a moment stood there,
as if waiting for her to make some sign. Then he fell into his
stride again and was gone. Elizabeth leaned on the gate. Her face
was twisted, and she clutched the warm wood as if it gave her
strength.
The grounds were very empty. The spirit of loneliness brooded on
them. Elizabeth walked slowly back to the house. Nutty was coming
towards her from the orchard.
'Halloa!' said Nutty.
He was cheerful and debonair. His little eyes were alight with
contentment. He hummed a tune.
'Where's Dawlish?' he said.
'He has gone.'
Nutty's tune failed in the middle of a bar. Something in his
sister's voice startled him. The glow of contentment gave way to a
look of alarm.
'Gone? How do you mean--gone? You don't mean--gone?'
'Yes.'
'Gone away?'
'Gone away.'
They had reached the house before he spoke again.
'You don't mean--gone away?'
'Yes.'
'Do you mean--gone away?'
'Yes.'
'You aren't going to marry him?'
'No.'
The world stood still. The noise of the crickets and all the
little sounds of summer smote on Nutty's ear in one discordant
shriek.
'Oh, gosh!' he exclaimed, faintly, and collapsed on the front
steps like a jelly-fish.
23
The spectacle of Nutty in his anguish did not touch Elizabeth.
Normally a kind-hearted girl, she was not in the least sorry for
him. She had even taken a bitter pleasure and found a momentary
relief in loosing the thunderbolt which had smitten him down. Even
if it has to manufacture it, misery loves company. She watched
Nutty with a cold and uninterested eye as he opened his mouth
feebly, shut it again and reopened it; and then when it became
apparent that these manoeuvres were about to result in speech, she
left him and walked quickly down the drive again. She had the
feeling that if Nutty were to begin to ask her questions--and he
had the aspect of one who is about to ask a thousand--she would
break down. She wanted solitude and movement, so she left Nutty
sitting and started for the gate. Presently she would go and do
things among the beehives; and after that, if that brought no
solace, she would go in and turn the house upside down and get
dusty and tired. Anything to occupy herself.
Reaction had set in. She had known it would come, and had made
ready to fight against it, but she had underestimated the strength
of the enemy. It seemed to her, in those first minutes, that she
had done a mad thing; that all those arguments which she had used
were far-fetched and ridiculous. It was useless to tell herself
that she had thought the whole thing out clearly and had taken the
only course that could have been taken. With Bill's departure the
power to face the situation steadily had left her. All she could
think of was that she loved him and that she had sent him away.
Why had he listened to her? Why hadn't he taken her in his arms
and told her not to be a little fool? Why did men ever listen to
women? If he had really loved her, would he have gone away? She
tormented herself with this last question for a while. She was
still tormenting herself with it when a melancholy voice broke in
on her meditations.
'I can't believe it,' said the voice. She turned, to perceive
Nutty drooping beside her. 'I simply can't believe it!'
Elizabeth clenched her teeth. She was not in the mood for Nutty.
'It will gradually sink in,' she said, unsympathetically.
'Did you really send him away?'
'I did.'
'But what on earth for?'
'Because it was the only thing to do.'
A light shone on Nutty's darkness.
'Oh, I say, did he hear what I said last night?'
'He did hear what you said last night.'
Nutty's mouth opened slowly.
'Oh!'
Elizabeth said nothing.
'But you could have explained that.'
'How?'
'Oh, I don't know--somehow or other.' He appeared to think. 'But
you said it was you who sent him away.'
'I did.'
'Well, this beats me!'
Elizabeth's strained patience reached the limit.
'Nutty, please!' she said. 'Don't let's talk about it. It's all
over now.'
'Yes, but--'
'Nutty, don't! I can't stand it. I'm raw all over. I'm hating
myself. Please don't make it worse.'
Nutty looked at her face, and decided not to make it worse. But
his anguish demanded some outlet. He found it in soliloquy.
'Just like this for the rest of our lives!' he murmured, taking in
the farm-grounds and all that in them stood with one glassy stare
of misery. 'Nothing but ghastly bees and sweeping floors and
fetching water till we die of old age! That is, if those blighters
don't put me in jail for getting that money out of them. How was I
to know that it was obtaining money under false pretences? It
simply seemed to me a darned good way of collecting a few dollars.
I don't see how I'm ever going to pay them back, so I suppose it's
prison for me all right.'
Elizabeth had been trying not to listen to him, but without
success.
'I'll look after that, Nutty. I have a little money saved up,
enough to pay off what you owe. I was saving it for something
else, but never mind.'
'Awfully good of you,' said Nutty, but his voice sounded almost
disappointed. He was in the frame of mind which resents alleviation
of its gloom. He would have preferred at that moment to be allowed to
round off the picture of the future which he was constructing in his
mind with a reel or two showing himself brooding in a cell. After
all, what difference did it make to a man of spacious tastes whether
he languished for the rest of his life in a jail or on a farm in the
country? Jail, indeed, was almost preferable. You knew where you were
when you were in prison. They didn't spring things on you. Whereas
life on a farm was nothing but one long succession of things sprung
on you. Now that Lord Dawlish had gone, he supposed that Elizabeth
would make him help her with the bees again. At this thought he
groaned aloud. When he contemplated a lifetime at Flack's, a lifetime
of bee-dodging and carpet-beating and water-lugging, and reflected
that, but for a few innocent words--words spoken, mark you, in a pure
spirit of kindliness and brotherly love with the object of putting a
bit of optimistic pep into sister!--he might have been in a position
to touch a millionaire brother-in-law for the needful whenever he
felt disposed, the iron entered into Nutty's soul. A rotten, rotten
world!
Nutty had the sort of mind that moves in circles. After contemplating
for a time the rottenness of the world, he came back to the point
from which he had started.
'I can't understand it,' he said. 'I can't believe it.'
He kicked a small pebble that lay convenient to his foot.
'You say you sent him away. If he had legged it on his own
account, because of what he heard me say, I could understand that.
But why should you--'
It became evident to Elizabeth that, until some explanation of
this point was offered to him, Nutty would drift about in her
vicinity, moaning and shuffling his feet indefinitely.
'I sent him away because I loved him,' she said, 'and because,
after what had happened, he could never be certain that I loved
him. Can you understand that?'
'No,' said Nutty, frankly, 'I'm darned if I can! It sounds loony
to me.'
'You can't see that it wouldn't have been fair to him to marry
him?'
'No.'
The doubts which she was trying to crush increased the violence of
their attack. It was not that she respected Nutty's judgement in
itself. It was that his view of what she had done chimed in so
neatly with her own. She longed for someone to tell her that she
had done right: someone who would bring back that feeling of
certainty which she had had during her talk with Bill. And in
these circumstances Nutty's attitude had more weight than on its
merits it deserved. She wished she could cry. She had a feeling
that if she once did that the right outlook would come back to
her.
Nutty, meanwhile, had found another pebble and was kicking it
sombrely. He was beginning to perceive something of the intricate
and unfathomable workings of the feminine mind. He had always
looked on Elizabeth as an ordinary good fellow, a girl whose mind
worked in a more or less understandable way. She was not one of
those hysterical women you read about in the works of the
novelists; she was just a regular girl. And yet now, at the one
moment of her life when everything depended on her acting
sensibly, she had behaved in a way that made his head swim when he
thought of it. What it amounted to was that you simply couldn't
understand women.
Into this tangle of silent sorrow came a hooting automobile. It
drew up at the gate and a man jumped out.
24
The man who had alighted from the automobile was young and
cheerful. He wore a flannel suit of a gay blue and a straw hat
with a coloured ribbon, and he looked upon a world which, his
manner seemed to indicate, had been constructed according to his
own specifications through a single eyeglass. When he spoke it
became plain that his nationality was English.
Nutty regarded his beaming countenance with a lowering hostility.
The indecency of anyone being cheerful at such a time struck him
forcibly. He would have liked mankind to have preserved till
further notice a hushed gloom. He glared at the young man.
Elizabeth, such was her absorption in her thoughts, was not even
aware of his presence till he spoke to her.
'I beg your pardon, is this Flack's?'
She looked up and met that sunny eyeglass.
'This is Flack's,' she said.
'Thank you,' said the young man.
The automobile, a stout, silent man at the helm, throbbed in the
nervous way automobiles have when standing still, suggesting
somehow that it were best to talk quick, as they can give you only
a few minutes before dashing on to keep some other appointment.
Either this or a natural volatility lent a breezy rapidity to the
visitor's speech. He looked at Elizabeth across the gate, which it
had not occurred to her to open, as if she were just what he had
expected her to be and a delight to his eyes, and burst into
speech.
'My name's Nichols--J. Nichols. I expect you remember getting a
letter from me a week or two ago?'
The name struck Elizabeth as familiar. But he had gone on to
identify himself before she could place it in her mind.
'Lawyer, don't you know. Wrote you a letter telling you that your
Uncle Ira Nutcombe had left all his money to Lord Dawlish.'
'Oh, yes,' said Elizabeth, and was about to invite him to pass the
barrier, when he began to speak again.
'You know, I want to explain that letter. Wrote it on a sudden
impulse, don't you know. The more I have to do with the law, the
more it seems to hit me that a lawyer oughtn't to act on impulse.
At the moment, you see, it seemed to me the decent thing to do--put
you out of your misery, and so forth--stop your entertaining
hopes never to be realized, what? and all that sort of thing. You
see, it was like this: Bill--I mean Lord Dawlish--is a great pal
of mine, a dear old chap. You ought to know him. Well, being in
the know, you understand, through your uncle having deposited the
will with us, I gave Bill the tip directly I heard of Mr
Nutcombe's death. I sent him a telephone message to come to the
office, and I said: "Bill, old man, this old buster"--I beg your
pardon, this old gentleman--"has left you all his money." Quite
informal, don't you know, and at the same time, in the same
informal spirit, I wrote you the letter.' He dammed the torrent
for a moment. 'By the way, of course you are Miss Elizabeth Boyd,
what?'
'Yes.'
The young man seemed relieved.
'I'm glad of that,' he said. 'Funny if you hadn't been. You'd have
wondered what on earth I was talking about.'
In spite of her identity, this was precisely what Elizabeth was
doing. Her mind, still under a cloud, had been unable to
understand one word of Mr Nichols's discourse. Judging from his
appearance, which was that of a bewildered hosepipe or a snake
whose brain is being momentarily overtaxed, Nutty was in the same
difficulty. He had joined the group at the gate, abandoning the
pebble which he had been kicking in the background, and was now
leaning on the top bar, a picture of silent perplexity.
'You see, the trouble is,' resumed the young man, 'my governor,
who's the head of the firm, is all for doing things according to
precedent. He loves red tape--wears it wrapped round him in winter
instead of flannel. He's all for doing things in the proper legal
way, which, as I dare say you know, takes months. And, meanwhile,
everybody's wondering what's happening and who has got the money,
and so on and so forth. I thought I would skip all that and let
you know right away exactly where you stood, so I wrote you that
letter. I don't think my temperament's quite suited to the law,
don't you know, and if he ever hears that I wrote you that letter
I have a notion that the governor will think so too. So I came
over here to ask you, if you don't mind, not to mention it when
you get in touch with the governor. I frankly admit that that
letter, written with the best intentions, was a bloomer.'
With which manly admission the young man paused, and allowed the
rays of his eyeglass to play upon Elizabeth in silence. Elizabeth
tried to piece together what little she understood of his
monologue.
'You mean that you want me not to tell your father that I got a
letter from you?'
'Exactly that. And thanks very much for not saying "without
prejudice," or anything of that kind. The governor would have.'
'But I don't understand. Why should you think that I should ever
mention anything to your father?'
'Might slip out, you know, without your meaning it.'
'But when? I shall never meet your father.'
'You might quite easily. He might want to see you about the
money.'
'The money?'
The eyebrow above the eyeglass rose, surprised.
'Haven't you had a letter from the governor?'
'No.'
The young man made a despairing gesture.
'I took it for granted that it had come on the same boat that I
did. There you have the governor's methods! Couldn't want a better
example. I suppose some legal formality or other has cropped up
and laid him a stymie, and he's waiting to get round it. You
really mean he hasn't written?
'Why, dash it,' said the young man, as one to whom all is
revealed, 'then you can't have understood a word of what I've been
saying!'
For the first time Elizabeth found herself capable of smiling. She
liked this incoherent young man.
'I haven't,' she said.
'You don't know about the will?'
'Only what you told me in your letter.'
'Well, I'm hanged! Tell me--I hadn't the honour of knowing him
personally--was the late Mr Nutcombe's whole life as eccentric as
his will-making? It seems to me--'
Nutty spoke.
'Uncle Ira's middle name,' he said, 'was Bloomingdale. That,' he
proceeded, bitterly, 'is the frightful injustice of it all. I had
to suffer from it right along, and all I get, when it comes to a
finish, is a miserable hundred dollars. Uncle Ira insisted on
father and mother calling me Nutcombe; and whenever he got a new
craze I was always the one he worked it off on. You remember the
time he became a vegetarian, Elizabeth? Gosh!' Nutty brooded
coldly on the past. 'You remember the time he had it all worked
out that the end of the world was to come at five in the morning
one February? Made me stop up all night with him, reading Marcus
Aurelius! And the steam-heat turned off at twelve-thirty! I could
tell you a dozen things just as bad as that. He always picked on
me. And now I've gone through it all he leaves me a hundred
dollars!'
Mr Nichols nodded sympathetically.
'I should have imagined that he was rather like that. You know, of
course, why he made that will I wrote to you about, leaving all
his money to Bill Dawlish? Simply because Bill, who met him
golfing at a place in Cornwall in the off season, cured him of
slicing his approach-shots! I give you my word that was the only
reason. I'm sorry for old Bill, poor old chap. Such a good sort!'
'He's all right,' said Nutty. 'But why you should be sorry for him
gets past me. A fellow who gets five million--'
'But he doesn't, don't you see?'
'How do you mean?'
'Why, this other will puts him out of the running.'
'Which other will?'
'Why, the one I'm telling you about.'
He looked from one to the other, apparently astonished at their
slowness of understanding. Then an idea occurred to him.
'Why, now that I think of it, I never told you, did I? Yes, your
uncle made another will at the very last moment, leaving all he
possessed to Miss Boyd.'
The dead silence in which his words were received stimulated him
to further speech. It occurred to him that, after that letter of
his, perhaps these people were wary about believing anything he
said.
'It's absolutely true. It's the real, stable information this
time. I had it direct from the governor, who was there when he
made the will. He and the governor had had a row about something,
you know, and they made it up during those last days, and--Well,
apparently your uncle thought he had better celebrate it somehow,
so he made a new will. From what little I know of him, that was
the way he celebrated most things. I took it for granted the
governor would have written to you by this time. I expect you'll
hear by the next mail. You see, what brought me over was the idea
that when he wrote you might possibly take it into your heads to
mention having heard from me. You don't know my governor. If he
found out I had done that I should never hear the last of it. So I
said to him: "Gov'nor, I'm feeling a bit jaded. Been working too
hard, or something. I'll take a week or so off, if you can spare
me." He didn't object, so I whizzed over. Well, of course, I'm
awfully sorry for old Bill, but I congratulate you, Miss Boyd.'
'What's the time?' said Elizabeth.
Mr Nichols was surprised. He could not detect the connexion of
ideas.
'It's about five to eleven,' he said, consulting his watch.
The next moment he was even more surprised, for Elizabeth, making
nothing of the barrier of the gate, had rushed past him and was
even now climbing into his automobile.
'Take me to the station, at once,' she was crying to the stout,
silent man, whom not even these surprising happenings had shaken
from his attitude of well-fed detachment.
The stout man, ceasing to be silent, became interrogative.
'Uh?'
'Take me to the station. I must catch the eleven o'clock train.'
The stout man was not a rapid thinker. He enveloped her in a
stodgy gaze. It was only too plain to Elizabeth that he was a man
who liked to digest one idea slowly before going on to absorb the
next. Jerry Nichols had told him to drive to Flack's. He had
driven to Flack's. Here he was at Flack's. Now this young woman
was telling him to drive to the station. It was a new idea, and he
bent himself to the Fletcherizing of it.
'I'll give you ten dollars if you get me there by eleven,' shouted
Elizabeth.
The car started as if it were some living thing that had had a
sharp instrument jabbed into it. Once or twice in his life it had
happened to the stout man to encounter an idea which he could
swallow at a gulp. This was one of them.
Mr Nichols, following the car with a wondering eye, found that
Nutty was addressing him.
'Is this really true?' said Nutty.
'Absolute gospel.'
A wild cry, a piercing whoop of pure joy, broke the summer
stillness.
'Come and have a drink, old man!' babbled Nutty. 'This wants
celebrating!' His face fell. 'Oh, I was forgetting! I'm on the
wagon.'
'On the wagon?'
'Sworn off, you know. I'm never going to touch another drop as
long as I live. I began to see things--monkeys!'
'I had a pal,' said Mr Nichols, sympathetically, 'who used to see
kangaroos.'
Nutty seized him by the arm, hospitable though handicapped.
'Come and have a bit of bread and butter, or a slice of cake or
something, and a glass of water. I want to tell you a lot more
about Uncle Ira, and I want to hear all about your end of it. Gee,
what a day!'
'"The maddest, merriest of all the glad New Year,"' assented Mr
Nichols. 'A slice of that old 'eighty-seven cake. Just the thing!'
25
Bill made his way along the swaying train to the smoking-car,
which was almost empty. It had come upon him overwhelmingly that
he needed tobacco. He was in the mood when a man must either smoke
or give up altogether the struggle with Fate. He lit his pipe, and
looked out of the window at Long Island racing past him. It was
only a blur to him.
The conductor was asking for tickets. Bill showed his mechanically,
and the conductor passed on. Then he settled down once more to his
thoughts. He could not think coherently yet. His walk to the station
had been like a walk in a dream. He was conscious of a great, dull
pain that weighed on his mind, smothering it. The trees and houses
still moved past him in the same indistinguishable blur.
He became aware that the conductor was standing beside him, saying
something about a ticket. He produced his once more, but this did
not seem to satisfy the conductor. To get rid of the man, who was
becoming a nuisance, he gave him his whole attention, as far as
that smothering weight would allow him to give his whole attention
to anything, and found that the man was saying strange things. He
thought that he could not have heard him correctly.
'What?' he said.
'Lady back there told me to collect her fare from you,' repeated
the conductor. 'Said you would pay.'
Bill blinked. Either there was some mistake or trouble had turned
his brain. He pushed himself together with a supreme effort.
'A lady said I would pay her fare?'
'Yes.'
'But--but why?' demanded Bill, feebly.
The conductor seemed unwilling to go into first causes.
'Search me!' he replied.
'Pay her fare!'
'Told me to collect it off the gentleman in the grey suit in the
smoking-car. You're the only one that's got a grey suit.'
'There's some mistake.'
'Not mine.'
'What does she look like?'
The conductor delved in his mind for adjectives.
'Small,' he said, collecting them slowly. 'Brown eyes--'
He desisted from his cataloguing at this point, for, with a loud
exclamation, Bill had dashed away.
Two cars farther back he had dropped into the seat by Elizabeth
and was gurgling wordlessly. A massive lady, who had entered the
train at East Moriches in company with three children and a cat in
a basket, eyed him with a curiosity that she made no attempt to
conceal. Two girls in a neighbouring seat leaned forward eagerly
to hear all. This was because one of them had told the other that
Elizabeth was Mary Pickford. Her companion was sceptical, but
nevertheless obviously impressed.
'My God!' said Bill.
The massive lady told the three children sharply to look at their
picture-book.
'Well, I'm hanged!'
The mother of three said that if her offspring did not go right
along to the end of the car and look at the pretty trees trouble
must infallibly ensue.
'Elizabeth!' At the sound of the name the two girls leaned back,
taking no further interest in the proceedings.
'What are you doing here?'
Elizabeth smiled, a shaky but encouraging smile.
'I came after you, Bill.'
'You've got no hat!'
'I was in too much of a hurry to get one, and I gave all my money
to the man who drove the car. That's why I had to ask you to pay
my fare. You see, I'm not too proud to use your money after all.'
'Then--'
'Tickets please. One seventy-nine.'
It was the indefatigable conductor, sensible of his duty to the
company and resolved that nothing should stand in the way of its
performance. Bill gave him five dollars and told him to keep the
change. The conductor saw eye to eye with him in this.
'Bill! You gave him--' She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
'Well, it's lucky you're going to marry a rich girl.'
A look of the utmost determination overspread Bill's face.
'I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to marry you.
Now that I've got you again I'm not going to let you go. You can
use all the arguments you like, but it won't matter. I was a fool
ever to listen. If you try the same sort of thing again I'm just
going to pick you up and carry you off. I've been thinking it over
since I left you. My mind has been working absolutely clearly.
I've gone into the whole thing. It's perfect rot to take the
attitude you did. We know we love each other, and I'm not going to
listen to any talk about time making us doubt it. Time will only
make us love each other all the more.'
'Why, Bill, this is eloquence.'
'I feel eloquent.'
The stout lady ceased to listen. They had lowered their voices and
she was hard of hearing. She consoled herself by taking up her
copy of Gingery Stories and burying herself in the hectic
adventures of a young millionaire and an artist's model.
Elizabeth caught a fleeting glimpse of the cover.
'I bet there's a story in there of a man named Harold who was too
proud to marry a girl, though he loved her, because she was rich
and he wasn't. You wouldn't be so silly as that, Bill, would you?'
'It's the other way about with me.'
'No, it's not. Bill, do you know a man named Nichols?'
'Nichols?'
'J. Nichols. He said he knew you. He said he had told you about
Uncle Ira leaving you his money.'
'Jerry Nichols! How on earth--Oh, I remember. He wrote to you,
didn't he?'
'He did. And this morning, just after you had left, he called.'
'Jerry Nichols called?'
'To tell me that Uncle Ira had made another will before he died,
leaving the money to me.'
Their eyes met.
'So I stole his car and caught the train,' said Elizabeth, simply.
Bill was recovering slowly from the news.
'But--this makes rather a difference, you know,' he said.
'In what way?'
'Well, what I mean to say is, you've got five million dollars and
I've got two thousand a year, don't you know, and so--'
Elizabeth tapped him on the knee.
'Bill, do you see what this is in my hand?'
'Eh? What?'
'It's a pin. And I'm going to dig it right into you wherever I
think it will hurt most, unless you stop being Harold at once.
I'll tell you exactly what you've got to do, and you needn't think
you're going to do anything else. When we get to New York, I first
borrow the money from you to buy a hat, and then we walk to the
City Hall, where you go to the window marked "Marriage Licences",
and buy one. It will cost you one dollar. You will give your
correct name and age and you will hear mine. It will come as a
shock to you to know that my second name is something awful! I've
kept it concealed all my life. After we've done that we shall go
to the only church that anybody could possibly be married in. It's
on Twenty-ninth Street, just round the corner from Fifth Avenue.
It's got a fountain playing in front of it, and it's a little bit
of heaven dumped right down in the middle of New York. And after
that--well, we might start looking about for that farm we've
talked of. We can get a good farm for five million dollars, and
leave something over to be doled out--cautiously--to Nutty.
'And then all we have to do is to live happily ever after.'
Something small and soft slipped itself into his hand, just as it
had done ages and ages ago in Lady Wetherby's wood.
It stimulated Bill's conscience to one last remonstrance.
'But, I say, you know--'
'Well?'
'This business of the money, you know. What I mean to say is--Ow!'
He broke off, as a sharp pain manifested itself in the fleshy part
of his leg. Elizabeth was looking at him reprovingly, her weapon
poised for another onslaught.
'I told you!' she said.
'All right, I won't do it again.'
'That's a good child. Bill, listen. Come closer and tell me all
sorts of nice things about myself till we get to Jamaica, and then
I'll tell you what I think of you. We've just passed Islip, so
you've plenty of time.'