"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 ma.s.s 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, coa.r.s.e-fibred sort of person, lacking in the finer feelings, not to have pa.s.sed a sleepless night. There was something revolting in the thought that, in circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sage. 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.