“I’m sick of trying to please Maginnis. What’s the good? He never gives me a chance in London. I’m sick of being always on the road. I’m sick of everything.”
“It’s the heat,” said Lord Dawlish most injudiciously.
“It isn’t the heat. It’s you!”
“Me?”
His lordship choked. This unexpected frontal attack had taken him by surprise and caused him to swallow a chipped potato with less than his usual dexterity. He sipped water, and, when he could speak, spoke plaintively:
“What have I done?”
“It’s what you’ve not done. Why can’t you exert yourself and make some money?”
Lord Dawlish groaned a silent groan. By a devious route, but with unfailing precision, they had come homing back to the same old subject.
“We have been engaged for six months, and there seems about as much chance of our ever getting married as of—I can’t think of anything unlikely enough. We shall go on like this till we’re dead.”
“But, my dear girl!”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk to me as if you were my grandfather. What were you going to say?”
“Only that we can get married this afternoon, if you’ll say the word.”
“Oh, don’t let us go into all that again! I’m not going to marry on four hundred a year and spend the rest of my life in a poky little flat on the edge of London. Why can’t you make more money?”
“I did have a dash at it, you know. I waylaid old Bodger—Colonel Bodger, on the committee of the club, you know—and suggested over a whisky-and-soda that the management of Brown’s would be behaving like sportsmen if they bumped my salary up a bit, and the old boy nearly strangled himself trying to suck down Scotch and laugh at the same time. I give you my word he nearly expired on the smoking-room floor. When he came to he said that he wished I wouldn’t spring my good things on him so suddenly, as he had a weak heart. He said they were only paying me my present salary because they liked me so much. You know, it was decent of the old boy to say that.”
“What is the good of being liked by the men in your club if you won’t make any use of it?”
“How do you mean?”
“There are endless things you could do. You could have got Mr. Breitstein elected at Brown’s if you had liked. They wouldn’t have dreamed of blackballing anyone proposed by a popular man like you, and Mr. Breitstein asked you personally to use your influence—you told me so.”
“But, my dear girl—I mean, my darling—Breitstein! He’s the limit! He’s the worst bounder in London.”
“He’s also one of the richest men in London. He would have done anything for you. And you let him go! You insulted him!”
“Insulted him?”
“Didn’t you send him an admission ticket to the Zoo?”
“Oh, well, yes, I did do that. He thanked me and went the following Sunday. Amazing how these rich Johnnies love getting something for nothing. There was that old American I met down at Marvis Bay last year—”
“You threw away a wonderful chance of making all sorts of money. Why, a single tip from Mr. Breitstein would have made your fortune.”
“But, Claire, you know, there are some things—what I mean is, if they like me at Brown’s it’s awfully decent of them and all that, but I couldn’t take advantage of it to plant a fellow like Breitstein on them. It wouldn’t be playing the game.”
“Oh, nonsense!”
Lord Dawlish looked unhappy, but said nothing. This matter of Mr. Breitstein had been touched upon by Claire in previous conversations, and it was a subject for which he had little liking. Experience had taught him that none of the arguments which seemed so conclusive to him—to wit, that the financier had on two occasions only just escaped imprisonment for fraud, and, what was worse, made a noise, when he drank soup, like water running out of a bathtub—had the least effect upon her. The only thing to do when Mr. Breitstein came up in the course of chitchat over the festive board was to stay quiet until he blew over.
But today Claire was waging war with Maxims, not with squirrel guns. She was firing at random into the brown of his shortcomings, and if she missed one she was sure to hit another. And rashly he had himself directed her attention to a misdemeanor only second in importance to the Breitstein sin. He had reminded her of Mr. Ira Nutcombe.
“That old American you met at Marvis Bay,” said Claire, her memory flitting back to the remark which she had interrupted; “well, there’s another case. You could easily have got him to do something for you.”
“Claire, really!” said his goaded lordship protestingly. “How on earth? I only met the man on the links.”
“But you were very nice to him. You told me yourself that you spent hours helping him to get rid of his slice, whatever that is.”
“We happened to be the only two down there at the time, so I was as civil as I could manage. If you’re marooned at a Cornish seaside resort out of the season with a man, you can’t spend your time dodging him. And this man had a slice that fascinated me. I felt at the time that it was my mission in life to cure him, so I had a dash at it. But I don’t see how on the strength of that I could expect the old boy to adopt me. He probably forgot my existence after I had left.”
“You said you met him in London a month or two afterward, and he hadn’t forgotten you.”
“Well, yes, that’s true. He was walking up the Haymarket and I was walking down. I caught his eye, and he nodded and passed on. I don’t see how I could construe that into an invitation to go and sit on his lap and help myself out of his pockets.”
“You couldn’t expect him to go out of his
