Pelham Wodehouse - Uneasy Money

'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.

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.