23
The spectacle of Nutty in his anguish did not touch Elizabeth.Normally a kind-hearted girl, she was not in the least sorry forhim. She had even taken a bitter pleasure and found a momentaryrelief in loosing the thunderbolt which had smitten him down. Evenif it has to manufacture it, misery loves company. She watchedNutty with a cold and uninterested eye as he opened his mouthfeebly, shut it again and reopened it; and then when it becameapparent that these manoeuvres were about to result in speech, sheleft him and walked quickly down the drive again. She had thefeeling that if Nutty were to begin to ask her questions--and hehad the aspect of one who is about to ask a thousand--she wouldbreak down. She wanted solitude and movement, so she left Nuttysitting and started for the gate. Presently she would go and dothings among the beehives; and after that, if that brought nosolace, she would go in and turn the house upside down and getdusty and tired. Anything to occupy herself.
Reaction had set in. She had known it would come, and had madeready to fight against it, but she had underestimated the strengthof the enemy. It seemed to her, in those first minutes, that shehad done a mad thing; that all those arguments which she had usedwere far-fetched and ridiculous. It was useless to tell herselfthat she had thought the whole thing out clearly and had taken theonly course that could have been taken. With Bill's departure thepower to face the situation steadily had left her. All she couldthink of was that she loved him and that she had sent him away.
Why had he listened to her? Why hadn't he taken her in his armsand told her not to be a little fool? Why did men ever listen towomen? If he had really loved her, would he have gone away? Shetormented herself with this last question for a while. She wasstill tormenting herself with it when a melancholy voice broke inon her meditations.
'I can't believe it,' said the voice. She turned, to perceiveNutty drooping beside her. 'I simply can't believe it!'
Elizabeth clenched her teeth. She was not in the mood for Nutty.
'It will gradually sink in,' she said, unsympathetically.
'Did you really send him away?'
'I did.'
'But what on earth for?'
'Because it was the only thing to do.'
A light shone on Nutty's darkness.
'Oh, I say, did he hear what I said last night?'
'He did hear what you said last night.'
Nutty's mouth opened slowly.
'Oh!'
Elizabeth said nothing.
'But you could have explained that.'
'How?'
'Oh, I don't know--somehow or other.' He appeared to think. 'Butyou said it was you who sent him away.'
'I did.'
'Well, this beats me!'
Elizabeth's strained patience reached the limit.
'Nutty, please!' she said. 'Don't let's talk about it. It's allover now.'
'Yes, but--'
'Nutty, don't! I can't stand it. I'm raw all over. I'm hatingmyself. Please don't make it worse.'
Nutty looked at her face, and decided not to make it worse. Buthis anguish demanded some outlet. He found it in soliloquy.
'Just like this for the rest of our lives!' he murmured, taking inthe farm-grounds and all that in them stood with one glassy stareof misery. 'Nothing but ghastly bees and sweeping floors andfetching water till we die of old age! That is, if those blightersdon't put me in jail for getting that money out of them. How was Ito know that it was obtaining money under false pretences? Itsimply seemed to me a darned good way of collecting a few dollars.I don't see how I'm ever going to pay them back, so I suppose it'sprison for me all right.'
Elizabeth had been trying not to listen to him, but withoutsuccess.
'I'll look after that, Nutty. I have a little money saved up,enough to pay off what you owe. I was saving it for somethingelse, but never mind.'
'Awfully good of you,' said Nutty, but his voice sounded almostdisappointed. He was in the frame of mind which resents alleviationof its gloom. He would have preferred at that moment to be allowed toround off the picture of the future which he was constructing in hismind with a reel or two showing himself brooding in a cell. Afterall, what difference did it make to a man of spacious tastes whetherhe languished for the rest of his life in a jail or on a farm in thecountry? Jail, indeed, was almost preferable. You knew where you werewhen you were in prison. They didn't spring things on you. Whereaslife on a farm was nothing but one long succession of things sprungon you. Now that Lord Dawlish had gone, he supposed that Elizabethwould make him help her with the bees again. At this thought hegroaned aloud. When he contemplated a lifetime at Flack's, a lifetimeof bee-dodging and carpet-beating and water-lugging, and reflectedthat, but for a few innocent words--words spoken, mark you, in a purespirit of kindliness and brotherly love with the object of putting abit of optimistic pep into sister!--he might have been in a positionto touch a millionaire brother-in-law for the needful whenever hefelt disposed, the iron entered into Nutty's soul. A rotten, rottenworld!
Nutty had the sort of mind that moves in circles. After contemplatingfor a time the rottenness of the world, he came back to the pointfrom which he had started.
'I can't understand it,' he said. 'I can't believe it.'
He kicked a small pebble that lay convenient to his foot.
'You say you sent him away. If he had legged it on his ownaccount, because of what he heard me say, I could understand that.But why should you--'
It became evident to Elizabeth that, until some explanation ofthis point was offered to him, Nutty would drift about in hervicinity, moaning and shuffling his feet indefinitely.
'I sent him away because I loved him,' she said, 'and because,after what had happened, he could never be certain that I lovedhim. Can you understand that?'
'No,' said Nutty, frankly, 'I'm darned if I can! It sounds loonyto me.'
'You can't see that it wouldn't have been fair to him to marryhim?'
'No.'
The doubts which she was trying to crush increased the violence oftheir attack. It was not that she respected Nutty's judgement initself. It was that his view of what she had done chimed in soneatly with her own. She longed for someone to tell her that shehad done right: someone who would bring back that feeling ofcertainty which she had had during her talk with Bill. And inthese circumstances Nutty's attitude had more weight than on itsmerits it deserved. She wished she could cry. She had a feelingthat if she once did that the right outlook would come back toher.
Nutty, meanwhile, had found another pebble and was kicking itsombrely. He was beginning to perceive something of the intricateand unfathomable workings of the feminine mind. He had alwayslooked on Elizabeth as an ordinary good fellow, a girl whose mindworked in a more or less understandable way. She was not one ofthose hysterical women you read about in the works of thenovelists; she was just a regular girl. And yet now, at the onemoment of her life when everything depended on her actingsensibly, she had behaved in a way that made his head swim when hethought of it. What it amounted to was that you simply couldn'tunderstand women.
Into this tangle of silent sorrow came a hooting automobile. Itdrew up at the gate and a man jumped out.