Uneasy Money, P. G. Wodehouse [icecream ebook reader .txt] 📗

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