Pelham Wodehouse - Uneasy Money

'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!'

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.'