"Are you sure?"
"Mm-mm."
"By gad!"
Nutty was wide awake now and full of inquiries; but his companion unfortunately was asleep, and he could not put them to her. A gentleman cannot prod a lady-and his guest, at that-in the ribs in order to wake her up and ask her questions. Nutty sat back and gave himself up to feverish thought.
He could think of no reason why Lord Dawlish should have come to America calling himself William Chalmers, but that was no reason why he should not have done so. And Daisy Leonard, who all along had remembered meeting him in London, had identified him.
Nutty was convinced. Arriving finally at Miss Leonard"s hotel, he woke her up and saw her in at the door; then, telling the man to drive to the lodgings of his new friend, he urged his mind to rapid thought. He had decided as a first step in the following up of this matter to invite Bill down to Elizabeth"s farm, and the thought occurred to him that this had better be done to-night, for he knew by experience that on the morning after these little jaunts he was seldom in the mood to seek people out and invite them to go anywhere.
All the way to the flat he continued to think, and it was wonderful what possibilities there seemed to be in this little scheme of courting the society of the man who had robbed him of his inheritance. He had worked on Bill"s feelings so successfully as to elicit a loan of a million dollars, and was just proceeding to marry him to Elizabeth, when the cab stopped with the sudden sharpness peculiar to New York cabs, and he woke up, to find himself at his destination.
Bill was in bed when the bell rang, and received his late host in his pyjamas, wondering, as he did so, whether this was the New York custom, to foregather again after a party had been broken up, and chat till breakfast. But Nutty, it seemed, had come with a motive, not from a desire for more conversation.
"Sorry to disturb you, old man," said Nutty. "I looked in to tell you that I was going down to the country to-morrow. I wondered whether you would care to come and spend a day or two with us."
Bill was delighted. This was better than he had hoped for.
"Rather!" he said. "Thanks awfully!"
"There are plenty of trains in the afternoon," said Nutty. "I don"t suppose either of us will feel like getting up early. I"ll call for you here at half-past six, and we"ll have an early dinner and catch the seven-fifteen, shall we? We live very simply, you know. You won"t mind that?"
"My dear chap!"
"That"s all right, then," said Nutty, closing the door. "Good night."
9
Elizabeth entered Nutty"s room and, seating herself on the bed, surveyed him with a bright, quiet eye that drilled holes in her brother"s uneasy conscience. This was her second visit to him that morning. She had come an hour ago, bearing breakfast on a tray, and had departed without saying a word. It was this uncanny silence of hers even more than the effects-which still lingered-of his revels in the metropolis that had interfered with Nutty"s enjoyment of the morning meal. Never a hearty breakfaster, he had found himself under the influence of her wordless disapproval physically unable to consume the fried egg that confronted him. He had given it one look; then, endorsing the opinion which he had once heard a character in a play utter in somewhat similar circ.u.mstances-that there was nothing on earth so homely as an egg-he had covered it with a handkerchief and tried to pull himself round with hot tea. He was now smoking a sad cigarette and waiting for the blow to fall.
Her silence had puzzled him. Though he had tried to give her no opportunity of getting him alone on the previous evening when he had arrived at the farm with Lord Dawlish, he had fully expected that she would have broken in upon him with abuse and recrimination in the middle of the night. Yet she had not done this, nor had she spoken to him when bringing him his breakfast. These things found their explanation in Elizabeth"s character, with which Nutty, though he had known her so long, was but imperfectly acquainted. Elizabeth had never been angrier with her brother, but an innate goodness of heart had prevented her falling upon him before he had had rest and refreshment.
She wanted to ma.s.sacre him, but at the same time she told herself that the poor dear must be feeling very, very ill, and should have a reasonable respite before the slaughter commenced.
It was plain that in her opinion this respite had now lasted long enough. She looked over her shoulder to make sure that she had closed the door, then leaned a little forward and spoke.
"Now, Nutty!"
The wretched youth attempted bl.u.s.ter.
"What do you mean-"Now, Nutty"? What"s the use of looking at a fellow like that and saying "Now, Nutty"? Where"s the sense-"
His voice trailed off. He was not a very intelligent young man, but even he could see that his was not a position where righteous indignation could be a.s.sumed with any solid chance of success. As a subst.i.tute he tried pathos.
"Oo-oo, my head does ache!"
"I wish it would burst," said his sister, unkindly.
"That"s a nice thing to say to a fellow!"
"I"m sorry. I wouldn"t have said it-"
"Oh, well!"
"Only I couldn"t think of anything worse."
It began to seem to Nutty that pathos was a bit of a failure too. As a last resort he fell back on silence. He wriggled as far down as he could beneath the sheets and breathed in a soft and wounded sort of way. Elizabeth took up the conversation.
"Nutty," she said, "I"ve struggled for years against the conviction that you were a perfect idiot. I"ve forced myself, against my better judgement, to try to look on you as sane, but now I give in. I can"t believe you are responsible for your actions. Don"t imagine that I am going to heap you with reproaches because you sneaked off to New York. I"m not even going to tell you what I thought of you for not sending me a telegram, letting me know where you were. I can understand all that. You were disappointed because Uncle Ira had not left you his money, and I suppose that was your way of working it off. If you had just run away and come back again with a headache, I"d have treated you like the Prodigal Son. But there are some things which are too much, and bringing a perfect stranger back with you for an indefinite period is one of them. I"m not saying anything against Mr Chalmers personally. I haven"t had time to find out much about him, except that he"s an Englishman; but he looks respectable. Which, as he"s a friend of yours, is more or less of a miracle."
She raised her eyebrows as a faint moan of protest came from beneath the sheets.
"You surely," she said, "aren"t going to suggest at this hour of the day, Nutty, that your friends aren"t the most horrible set of pests outside a prison? Not that it"s likely after all these months that they are outside a prison. You know perfectly well that while you were running round New York you collected the most pernicious bunch of rogues that ever fastened their talons into a silly child who ought never to have been allowed out without his nurse." After which complicated insult Elizabeth paused for breath, and there was silence for a s.p.a.ce.
"Well, as I was saying, I know nothing against this Mr Chalmers. Probably his finger-prints are in the Rogues" Gallery, and he is better known to the police as Jack the Blood, or something, but he hasn"t shown that side of him yet. My point is that, whoever he is, I do not want him or anybody else coming and taking up his abode here while I have to be cook and housemaid too. I object to having a stranger on the premises spying out the nakedness of the land. I am sensitive about my honest poverty. So, darling Nutty, my precious Nutty, you poor boneheaded muddler, will you kindly think up at your earliest convenience some plan for politely ejecting this Mr Chalmers of yours from our humble home?-because if you don"t, I"m going to have a nervous breakdown."
And, completely restored to good humour by her own eloquence, Elizabeth burst out laughing. It was a trait in her character which she had often lamented, that she could not succeed in keeping angry with anyone for more than a few minutes on end. Sooner or later some happy selection of a phrase of abuse would tickle her sense of humour, or the appearance of her victim would become too funny not to be laughed at. On the present occasion it was the ridiculous spectacle of Nutty cowering beneath the bedclothes that caused her wrath to evaporate. She made a weak attempt to recover it. She glared at Nutty, who at the sound of her laughter had emerged from under the clothes like a worm after a thunderstorm.
"I mean it," she said. "It really is too bad of you! You might have had some sense and a little consideration. Ask yourself if we are in a position here to entertain visitors. Well, I"m going to make myself very unpopular with this Mr Chalmers of yours. By this evening he will be regarding me with utter loathing, for I am about to persecute him."
"What do you mean?" asked Nutty, alarmed.
"I am going to begin by asking him to help me open one of the hives."
"For goodness" sake!"
"After that I shall-with his a.s.sistance-transfer some honey. And after that-well, I don"t suppose he will be alive by then. If he is, I shall make him wash the dishes for me. The least he can do, after swooping down on us like this, is to make himself useful."
A cry of protest broke from the appalled Nutty, but Elizabeth did not hear it. She had left the room and was on her way downstairs.
Lord Dawlish was smoking an after-breakfast cigar in the grounds. It was a beautiful day, and a peaceful happiness had come upon him. He told himself that he had made progress. He was under the same roof as the girl he had deprived of her inheritance, and it should be simple to establish such friendly relations as would enable him to reveal his ident.i.ty and ask her to reconsider her refusal to relieve him of a just share of her uncle"s money. He had seen Elizabeth for only a short time on the previous night, but he had taken an immediate liking to her. There was something about the American girl, he reflected, which seemed to put a man at his ease, a charm and directness all her own. Yes, he liked Elizabeth, and he liked this dwelling-place of hers. He was quite willing to stay on here indefinitely.
Nature had done well by Flack"s. The house itself was more pleasing to the eye than most of the houses in those parts, owing to the black and white paint which decorated it and an unconventional flattening and rounding of the roof. Nature, too, had made so many improvements that the general effect was unusually delightful.
Bill perceived Elizabeth coming toward him from the house. He threw away his cigar and went to meet her. Seen by daylight, she was more attractive than ever. She looked so small and neat and wholesome, so extremely unlike Miss Daisy Leonard"s friend. And such was the reaction from what might be termed his later Reigelheimer"s mood that if he had been asked to define feminine charm in a few words, he would have replied without hesitation that it was the quality of being as different as possible in every way from the Good Sport. Elizabeth fulfilled this qualification. She was not only small and neat, but she had a soft voice to which it was a joy to listen.
"I was just admiring your place," he said.
"Its appearance is the best part of it," said Elizabeth. "It is a deceptive place. The bay looks beautiful, but you can"t bathe in it because of the jellyfish. The woods are lovely, but you daren"t go near them because of the ticks."
"Ticks?"
"They jump on you and suck your blood," said Elizabeth, carelessly. "And the nights are gorgeous, but you have to stay indoors after dusk because of the mosquitoes." She paused to mark the effect of these horrors on her visitor. "And then, of course," she went on, as he showed no signs of flying to the house to pack his bag and catch the next train, "the bees are always stinging you. I hope you are not afraid of bees, Mr Chalmers?"
"Rather not. Jolly little chaps!"
A gleam appeared in Elizabeth"s eye.