Before they came back, the dusk had grown to darkness, and they had
redynamited half the estate.
During all of which time Mr. Spillikins sat with Norah on the piazza.
He talked and she listened. He told her, for instance, all about his
terrific experiences in the oil business, and about his exciting career
at college; or presently they went indoors and Norah played the piano
and Mr. Spillikins sat and smoked and listened. In such a house as the
Newberry's, where dynamite and the greater explosives were everyday
matters, a little thing like the use of tobacco in the drawing-room
didn't count. As for the music, "Go right ahead," said Mr. Spillikins;
"I'm not musical, but I don't mind music a bit."
In the daytime they played tennis. There was a court at one end of the
lawn beneath the trees, all chequered with sunlight and mingled shadow;
very beautiful, Norah thought, though Mr. Spillikins explained that the
spotted light put him off his game. In fact, it was owing entirely to
this bad light that Mr. Spillikins's fast drives, wonderful though they
were, somehow never got inside the service court.
Norah, of course, thought Mr. Spillikins a wonderful player. She was
glad--in fact, it suited them both--when he beat her six to nothing.
She didn't know and didn't care that there was no one else in the world
that Mr. Spillikins could beat like that. Once he even said to her.
"By Gad! you don't play half a bad game, you know. I think you know,
with practice you'd come on quite a lot."
After that the games were understood to be more or less in the form of
lessons, which put Mr. Spillikins on a pedestal of superiority, and
allowed any bad strokes on his part to be viewed as a form of
indulgence.
Also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, it was Norah's part to
pick up the balls at the net and throw them back to Mr. Spillikins. He
let her do this, not from rudeness, for it wasn't in him, but because
in such a primeval place as Castel Casteggio the natural primitive
relation of the sexes is bound to reassert itself.
But of love Mr. Spillikins never thought. He had viewed it so eagerly
and so often from a distance that when it stood here modestly at his
very elbow he did not recognize its presence. His mind had been
fashioned, as it were, to connect love with something stunning and
sensational, with Easter hats and harem skirts and the luxurious
consciousness of the unattainable.
Even at that, there is no knowing what might have happened. Tennis, in
the chequered light of sun and shadow cast by summer leaves, is a
dangerous game. There came a day when they were standing one each side
of the net and Mr. Spillikins was explaining to Norah the proper way to
hold a racquet so as to be able to give those magnificent backhand
sweeps of his, by which he generally drove the ball halfway to the
lake; and explaining this involved putting his hand right over Norah's
on the handle of the racquet, so that for just half a second her hand
was clasped tight in his; and if that half-second had been lengthened
out into a whole second it is quite possible that what was already
subconscious in his mind would have broken its way triumphantly to the
surface, and Norah's hand would have stayed in his--how willingly--!
for the rest of their two lives.
But just at that moment Mr. Spillikins looked up, and he said in quite
an altered tone.
"By Jove! who's that awfully good-looking woman getting out of the
motor?"
And their hands unclasped. Norah looked over towards the house and said:
"Why, it's Mrs. Everleigh. I thought she wasn't coming for another
week."
"I say," said Mr. Spillikins, straining his short sight to the
uttermost, "what perfectly wonderful golden hair, eh?" "Why, it's--"
Norah began, and then she stopped. It didn't seem right to explain that
Mrs. Everleigh's hair was dyed. "And who's that tall chap standing
beside her?" said Mr. Spillikins.
"I think it's Captain Cormorant, but I don't think he's going to stay.
He's only brought her up in the motor from town." "By Jove, how good of
him!" said Spillikins; and this sentiment in regard to Captain
Cormorant, though he didn't know it, was to become a keynote of his
existence.
"I didn't know she was coming so soon," said Norah, and there was
weariness already in her heart. Certainly she didn't know it; still
less did she know, or anyone else, that the reason of Mrs. Everleigh's
coming was because Mr. Spillikins was there. She came with a set
purpose, and she sent Captain Cormorant directly back in the motor
because she didn't want him on the premises.
"Oughtn't we to go up to the house?" said Norah.
"All right," said Mr. Spillikins with great alacrity, "let's go."
* * * * *
Now as this story began with the information that Mrs. Everleigh is at
present Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, there is no need to pursue in detail
the stages of Mr. Spillikins's wooing. Its course was swift and happy.
Mr. Spillikins, having seen the back of Mrs. Everleigh's head, had
decided instantly that she was the most beautiful woman in the world;
and that impression is not easily corrected in the half-light of a
shaded drawing-room; nor across a dinner-table lighted only with
candles with deep red shades; nor even in the daytime through a veil.
In any case, it is only fair to state that if Mrs. Everleigh was not
and is not a singularly beautiful woman, Mr. Spillikins still doesn't
know it. And in point of attraction the homage of such experts as
Captain Cormorant and Lieutenant Hawk speaks for itself.
So the course of Mr. Spillikins's love, for love it must have been, ran
swiftly to its goal. Each stage of it was duly marked by his comments
to Norah.
"She _is_ a splendid woman," he said, "so sympathetic. She always seems
to know just what one's going to say."
So she did, for she was making him say it.
"By Jove!" he said a day later, "Mrs. Everleigh's an awfully fine
woman, isn't she? I was telling her about my having been in the oil
business for a little while, and she thinks that I'd really be awfully
good in money things. She said she wished she had me to manage her
money for her."
This also was quite true, except that Mrs. Everleigh had not made it
quite clear that the management of her money was of the form generally
known as deficit financing. In fact, her money was, very crudely
stated, nonexistent, and it needed a lot of management.
A day or two later Mr. Spillikins was saying, "I think Mrs. Everleigh
must have had great sorrow, don't you? Yesterday she was showing me a
photograph of her little boy--she has a little boy you know--"
"Yes, I know," said Norah. She didn't add that she knew that Mrs.
Everleigh had four.
"--and she was saying how awfully rough it is having him always away
from her at Dr. Something's academy where he is."
And very soon after that Mr. Spillikins was saying, with quite a quaver
in his voice,
"By Jove! yes, I'm awfully lucky; I never thought for a moment that
she'd have me, you know--a woman like her, with so much attention and
everything. I can't imagine what she sees in me."
Which was just as well.
And then Mr. Spillikins checked himself, for he noticed--this was on
the verandah in the morning--that Norah had a hat and jacket on and
that the motor was rolling towards the door.
"I say," he said, "are you going away?"
"Yes, didn't you know?" Norah said. "I thought you heard them speaking
of it at dinner last night. I have to go home; father's alone, you
know."
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins; "we shan't have any more
tennis."
"Goodbye," said Norah, and as she said it and put out her hand there
were tears brimming up into her eyes. But Mr. Spillikins, being short
of sight, didn't see them.
"Goodbye," he said.
Then as the motor carried her away he stood for a moment in a sort of
reverie. Perhaps certain things that might have been rose unformed and
inarticulate before his mind. And then, a voice called from the
drawing-room within, in a measured and assured tone,
"Peter, darling, where are you?"
"Coming," cried Mr. Spillikins, and he came.
* * * * *
On the second day of the engagement Mrs. Everleigh showed to Peter a
little photograph in a brooch.
"This is Gib, my second little boy," she said.
Mr. Spillikins started to say, "I didn't know--" and then checked
himself and said, "By Gad! what a fine-looking little chap, eh? I'm
awfully fond of boys."
"Dear little fellow, isn't he?" said Mrs. Everleigh. "He's really
rather taller than that now, because this picture was taken a little
while ago."
And the next day she said, "This is Willie, my third boy," and on the
day after that she said, "This is Sib, my youngest boy; I'm sure you'll
love him."
"I'm sure I shall," said Mr. Spillikins. He loved him already for being
the youngest.
* * * * *
And so in the fulness of time--nor was it so very full either, in fact,
only about five weeks--Peter Spillikins and Mrs. Everleigh were married
in St. Asaph's Church on Plutoria Avenue. And the wedding was one of
the most beautiful and sumptuous of the weddings of the September
season. There were flowers, and bridesmaids in long veils, and tall
ushers in frock-coats, and awnings at the church door, and strings of
motors with wedding-favours on imported chauffeurs, and all that goes
to invest marriage on Plutoria Avenue with its peculiar sacredness. The
face of the young rector, Mr. Fareforth Furlong, wore the added
saintliness that springs from a five-hundred dollar fee. The whole town
was there, or at least everybody that was anybody; and if there was one
person absent, one who sat by herself in the darkened drawing-room of a
dull little house on a shabby street, who knew or cared?
So after the ceremony the happy couple--for were they not so?--left for
New York. There they spent their honeymoon. They had thought of
going--it was Mr. Spillikins's idea--to the coast of Maine. But Mrs.
Everleigh-Spillikins said that New York was much nicer, so restful,
whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of Maine is frightfully noisy.
Moreover, it so happened that before the Everleigh-Spillikinses had
been more than four or five days in New York the ship of Captain
Cormorant dropped anchor in the Hudson; and when the anchor of that
ship was once down it generally stayed there. So the captain was able
to take the Everleigh-Spillikinses about in New York, and to give a tea
for Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins on the deck of his vessel so that she
might meet the officers, and another tea in a private room of a
restaurant on Fifth Avenue so that she might meet no one but himself.
And at this tea Captain Cormorant said, among other things, "Did he
kick up rough at all when you told him about the money?"
And Mrs. Everleigh, now Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, said, "Not he! I
think he is actually pleased to know that I haven't any. Do you know,
Arthur, he's really an awfully good fellow," and as she said it she
moved her hand away from under Captain Cormorant's on the tea-table.
"I say," said the Captain, "don't get sentimental over him."
* * * * *
So that is how it is that the Everleigh-Spillikinses came to reside on
Plutoria Avenue in a beautiful stone house, with a billiard-room in an
extension on the second floor. Through the windows of it one can almost
hear the click of the billiard balls, and a voice saying, "Hold on,
father, you had your shot."