“Would you care for a lightly boiled egg, sir? The Colonel generally has one if he’s awake.”
“No, thank you,” said Adam. He felt a thousand times better for his rest. When Nina and he were married, he thought, they would often come down there for the day after a really serious party. For the first time he noticed an obese liver and white spaniel, which was waking up, too, on the hearthrug.
“Please not to give her muffins,” said Mrs. Florin, “it’s the one thing she’s not supposed to have, and the Colonel will give them to her. He loves that dog,” she added with a burst of confidence. “Takes her to the pictures with him of an evening. Not that she can appreciate them really like a human can.”
Adam gave her—the spaniel, not Mrs. Florin—a gentle prod with his foot and a lump of sugar. She licked his shoe with evident cordiality. Adam was not above feeling flattered by friendliness in dogs.
He had finished his tea and was filling his pipe when Colonel Blount came into the library.
“Who the devil are you?” said his host.
“Adam Symes,” said Adam.
“Never heard of you. How did you get in? Who gave you tea? What do you want?”
“You asked me to luncheon,” said Adam. “I came about being married to Nina.”
“My dear boy, of course. How absurd of me. I’ve such a bad memory for names. It comes of seeing so few people. How are you?”
They shook hands again.
“So you’re the young man who’s engaged to Nina,” said the Colonel, eyeing him for the first time in the way prospective sons-in-laws are supposed to be eyed. “Now what in the world do you want to get married for? I shouldn’t, you know, really I shouldn’t. Are you rich?”
“No, not at present, I’m afraid, that’s rather what I wanted to talk about.”
“How much money have you got?”
“Well, sir, actually at the moment I haven’t got any at all.”
“When did you last have any?”
“I had a thousand pounds last night, but I gave it all to a drunk Major.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Well, I hoped he’d put it on Indian Runner for the November Handicap.”
“Never heard of the horse. Didn’t he?”
“I don’t think he can have.”
“When will you next have some money?”
“When I’ve written some books.”
“How many books?”
“Twelve.”
“How much will you have then?”
“Probably fifty pounds advance on my thirteenth book.”
“And how long will it take you to write twelve books?”
“About a year.”
“How long would it take most people?”
“About twenty years. Of course, put like that I do see that it sounds rather hopeless … but, you see, Nina and I hoped that you, that is, that perhaps for the next year until I get my twelve books written, that you might help us …”
“How could I help you? I’ve never written a book in my life.”
“No, we thought you might give us some money.”
“You thought that, did you?”
“Yes, that’s what we thought …”
Colonel Blount looked at him gravely for some time. Then he said, “I think that an admirable idea. I don’t see any reason at all why I shouldn’t. How much do you want?”
“That’s really terribly good of you, sir … Well, you know, just enough to live on quietly for a bit. I hardly know …”
“Well, would a thousand pounds be any help?”
“Yes, it would indeed. We shall both be terribly grateful.”
“Not at all, my dear boy. Not at all. What did you say your name was?”
“Adam Symes.”
Colonel Blount went to the table and wrote out a cheque. “There you are,” he said. “Now don’t go giving that away to another drunk major.”
“Really, sir! I don’t know how to thank you. Nina …”
“Not another word. Now I expect that you will want to be off to London again. We’ll send Mrs. Florin across to the Rectory and make the Rector drive you to the station. Useful having a neighbour with a motor car. They charge fivepence on the buses from here to Aylesbury. Robbers.”
It does not befall many young men to be given a thousand pounds by a complete stranger twice on successive evenings. Adam laughed aloud in the Rector’s car as they drove to the station. The Rector, who had been in the middle of writing a sermon and resented with daily increasing feeling Colonel Blount’s neighbourly appropriation of his car and himself, kept his eyes fixed on the streaming windscreen, pretending not to notice. Adam laughed all the way to Aylesbury, sitting and holding his knees and shaking all over. The Rector could hardly bring himself to say good night when they parted in the station yard.
There was half an hour to wait for a train and the leaking roof and wet railway lines had a sobering effect on Adam. He bought an evening paper. On the front page was an exquisitely funny photograph of Miss Runcible in Hawaiian costume tumbling down the steps of No. 10 Downing Street. The Government had fallen that afternoon, he read, being defeated on a motion rising from the answer to a question about the treatment of Miss Runcible by Customs House officers. It was generally held in Parliamentary circles that the deciding factor in this reverse had been the revolt of the Liberals and the Nonconformist members at the revelations of the life that was led at No. 10, Downing Street, during Sir James Brown’s tenancy. The Evening Mail had a leading article, which drew a fine analogy between Public and Domestic Purity, between sobriety in the family and in the State.
There was another small paragraph which interested Adam.
Tragedy in West-End Hotel.
The death occurred early this morning at a private hotel in Dover Street of Miss Florence Ducane, described as being of independent means, following an accident in which Miss Ducane fell from
