"Good gracious! It"s Eustace!"
"Shot!"
She was looking intently at Mr Pickering. "Well, Dudley," she said, coldly, "what about it?"
Mr Pickering found that they were all looking at him-Lady Wetherby with glittering eyes, Claire with cool scorn, Lord Wetherby with a horror which he seemed to have achieved with something of an effort.
"Well!" said Claire.
"What about it, Dudley?" said Lady Wetherby.
"I must say, Pickering," said Lord Wetherby, "much as I disliked the animal, it"s a bit thick!"
Mr Pickering recoiled from their accusing gaze.
"Good heavens! Do you think I did it?"
In the midst of his anguish there flashed across his mind the recollection of having seen just this sort of situation in a moving picture, and of having thought it far-fetched.
Lady Wetherby"s good-tempered mouth, far from good-tempered now, curled in a devastating sneer. She was looking at him as Claire, in the old days when they had toured England together in road companies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant landladies. The landladies, without exception, had wilted beneath that gaze, and Mr Pickering wilted now.
"But-but-but-" was all he could contrive to say.
"Why should we think you did it?" said Lady Wetherby, bitterly. "You had a grudge against the poor brute for biting you. We find you hiding here with a pistol and a story about burglars which an infant couldn"t swallow. I suppose you thought that, if you planted the poor creature"s body here, it would be up to Algie to get rid of it, and that if he were found with it I should think that it was he who had killed the animal."
The look of horror which Lord Wetherby had managed to a.s.sume became genuine at these words. The grat.i.tude which he had been feeling towards Mr Pickering for having removed one of the chief trials of his existence vanished.
"Great Scot!" he cried. "So that was the game, was it?"
Mr Pickering struggled for speech. This was a nightmare.
"But I didn"t! I didn"t! I didn"t! I tell you I hadn"t the remotest notion the creature was there."
"Oh, come, Pickering!" said Lord Wetherby. "Come, come, come!"
Mr Pickering found that his accusers were ebbing away. Lady Wetherby had gone. Claire had gone. Only Lord Wetherby remained, looking at him like a pained groom. He dashed from the place and followed his hostess, speaking incoherently of burglars, outhouses, and misunderstandings. He even mentioned Chingachgook. But Lady Wetherby would not listen. n.o.body would listen.
He found Lord Wetherby at his side, evidently prepared to go deeper into the subject. Lord Wetherby was looking now like a groom whose favourite horse has kicked him in the stomach.
"Wouldn"t have thought it of you, Pickering," said Lord Wetherby.
Mr Pickering found no words. "Wouldn"t, honestly. Low trick!"
"But I tell you-"
"Devilish low trick!" repeated Lord Wetherby, with a shake of the head. "Laws of hospitality-eaten our bread and salt, what!-all that sort of thing-kill valuable monkey-not done, you know-low, very low!"
And he followed his wife, now in full retreat, with scorn and repulsion written in her very walk.
"Mr Pickering!"
It was Claire. She stood there, holding something towards him, something that glittered in the moonlight. Her voice was hard, and the expression on her face suggested that in her estimation he was a particularly low-grade worm, one of the submerged tenth of the worm world.
"Eh?" said Mr Pickering, dazedly.
He looked at what she had in her hand, but it conveyed nothing to his overwrought mind.
"Take it!"
"Eh?"
Claire stamped.
"Very well," she said.
She flung something on the ground before him-a small, sparkling object. Then she swept away, his eyes following her, and was lost in the darkness of the trees. Mechanically Mr Pickering stooped to pick up what she had let fall. He recognized it now. It was her engagement ring.
19
Bill leaned his back against the gate that separated the grounds of the bee-farm from the high road and mused pleasantly. He was alone. Elizabeth was walking up the drive on her way to the house to tell the news to Nutty. James, the cat, who had come down from the roof of the outhouse, was sharpening his claws on a neighbouring tree. After the whirl of excitement that had been his portion for the past few hours, the peace of it all appealed strongly to Bill. It suited the mood of quiet happiness which was upon him.
Quietly happy, that was how he felt now that it was all over. The white heat of emotion had subsided to a gentle glow of contentment conducive to thought. He thought tenderly of Elizabeth. She had turned to wave her hand before going into the house, and he was still smiling fatuously. Wonderful girl! Lucky chap he was! Rum, the way they had come together! Talk about Fate, what?
He stooped to tickle James, who had finished stropping his claws and was now enjoying a friction ma.s.sage against his leg, and began to brood on the inscrutable way of Fate.
Rum thing, Fate! Most extraordinary!
Suppose he had never gone down to Marvis Bay that time. He had wavered between half a dozen places; it was pure chance that he had chosen Marvis Bay. If he hadn"t he would never have met old Nutcombe. Probably old Nutcombe had wavered between half a dozen places too. If they hadn"t both happened to choose Marvis Bay they would never have met. And if they hadn"t been the only visitors there they might never have got to know each other. And if old Nutcombe hadn"t happened to slice his approach shots he would never have put him under an obligation. Queer old buster, old Nutcombe, leaving a fellow he hardly knew from Adam a cool million quid just because he cured him of slicing.
It was at this point in his meditations that it suddenly occurred to Bill that he had not yet given a thought to what was immeasurably the most important of any of the things that ought to be occupying his mind just now. What was he to do about this Lord Dawlish business?
Life at Brookport had so accustomed him to being plain Bill Chalmers that it had absolutely slipped his mind that he was really Lord Dawlish, the one man in the world whom Elizabeth looked on as an enemy. What on earth was he to do about that? Tell her? But if he told her, wouldn"t she chuck him on the spot?
This was awful. The dreamy sense of well-being left him. He straightened himself to face this problem, ignoring the hint of James, who was weaving circles about his legs expectant of more tickling. A man cannot spend his time tickling cats when he has to concentrate on a dilemma of this kind.
Suppose he didn"t tell her? How would that work out? Was a marriage legal if the cove who was being married went through it under a false name? He seemed to remember seeing a melodrama in his boyhood the plot of which turned on that very point. Yes, it began to come back to him. An unpleasant bargee with a black moustache had said, "This woman is not your wife!" and caused the d.i.c.kens of a lot of unpleasantness; but there in its usual slipshod way memory failed. Had subsequent events proved the bargee right or wrong? It was a question for a lawyer to decide. Jerry Nichols would know. Well, there was plenty of time, thank goodness, to send Jerry Nichols a cable, asking for his professional opinion, and to get the straight tip long before the wedding day arrived.
Laying this part of it aside for the moment, and a.s.suming that the thing could be worked, what about the money? Like a chump, he had told Elizabeth on the first day of his visit that he hadn"t any money except what he made out of his job as secretary of the club. He couldn"t suddenly spring five million dollars on her and pretend that he had forgotten all about it till then.
Of course, he could invent an imaginary uncle or something, and ma.s.sacre him during the honeymoon. Something in that. He pictured the thing in his mind. Breakfast: Elizabeth doling out the scrambled eggs. "What"s the matter, Bill? Why did you exclaim like that? Is there some bad news in the letter you are reading?"
"Oh, it"s nothing-only my Uncle John"s died and left me five million dollars."
The scene worked out so well that his mind became a little above itself. It suggested developments of serpentine craftiness. Why not get Jerry Nichols to write him a letter about his Uncle John and the five millions? Jerry liked doing that sort of thing. He would do it like a shot, and chuck in a lot of legal words to make it sound right. It began to be clear to Bill that any move he took-except full confession, at which he jibbed-was going to involve Jerry Nichols as an ally; and this discovery had a soothing effect on him. It made him feel that the responsibility had been shifted. He couldn"t do anything till he had consulted Jerry, so there was no use in worrying. And, being one of those rare persons who can cease worrying instantly when they have convinced themselves that it is useless, he dismissed the entire problem from his mind and returned to the more congenial occupation of thinking of Elizabeth.
It was a peculiar feature of his position that he found himself unable to think of Elizabeth without thinking of Claire. He tried to, but failed. Every virtue in Elizabeth seemed to call up the recollection of a corresponding defect in Claire It became almost mathematical. Elizabeth was so straight on the level they called it over here. Claire was a corkscrew among women. Elizabeth was sunny and cheerful. Querulousness was Claire"s besetting sin. Elizabeth was such a pal. Claire had never been that. The effect that Claire had always had on him was to deepen the conviction, which never really left him, that he was a bit of an a.s.s. Elizabeth, on the other hand, bucked him up and made him feel as if he really amounted to something.
How different they were! Their very voices-Elizabeth had a sort of quiet, soothing, pleasant voice, the kind of voice that somehow suggested that she thought a lot of a chap without her having to say it in so many words. Whereas Claire"s voice-he had noticed it right from the beginning-Claire"s voice-
While he was trying to make clear to himself just what it was about Claire"s voice that he had not liked he was granted the opportunity of a.n.a.lysing by means of direct observation its failure to meet his vocal ideals, for at this moment it spoke behind him.