A Man's Man Part 45

"You see?" said Hughie calmly, taking the book back. "One hundred pounds sterling! A poor exchange for five thousand, Mr. Haliburton!"

"Where is the money?" said Haliburton thickly.

"That I can't tell you. But you will see by the book and this duly endorsed cheque,"--he picked a pink slip out of the dispatch-box,--"that the sum of thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred pounds--the amount he had put in a few days before, less one hundred--was drawn out of the bank, in a lump, by my uncle himself the day before he sailed. Why he did it, I can't imagine. He must have changed his plans suddenly. All I know is that he has put me in a very tight place as a trustee, and you in a much tighter one as a suitor, Mr. Haliburton!"

He took the cheque from the hands of the demoralized Haliburton, and closed the dispatch-box.

There was a long silence. At length Hughie said:--

"I presume I may take it that you now desire to withdraw from this engagement?"

"You may!" said Mr. Haliburton emphatically. He was too deeply chagrined to play his part any longer.

Hughie surveyed him critically.

"You're a direct rascal, Spratt," he said; "you are no more hypocritical than you need be. But you're a rascal for all that. Well, I won't keep you. Good afternoon!"

But Mr. Haliburton's quick-moving brain had been taking in the altered situation, with its strong and weak points so far as he himself was concerned. He had not lived by his wits twenty years for nothing.

"I suppose," he observed, reseating himself on the corner of the writing-table, "it would be indiscreet to inquire from what source the young lady, with a capital of one hundred pounds sterling, is at present deriving an income of apparently three or four hundred a year?"

"Not only indiscreet, but positively unhealthy," said Hughie, turning a dusky red. His fingers were curling and uncurling.

Mr. Haliburton directed upon him what can only be described as a depredatory eye.

"Don't you think, Mr. Marrable," he said, "that it would be a good thing to--_square_ me? I could do with that five thousand. This is a censorious world, you know; and scandalous little yarns are apt to get about when a young lady accepts--_Hrrrumph!_"

It was the last straw. Hughie's iron restraint snapped at last. Both his and Mr. Haliburton's impressions of the next few moments were distinctly blurred, but at the end of that period Hughie, breathing heavily and feeling as if he had just won a valuable prize in a consolation race, found himself facing Jimmy Marrable, who had entered the door just as Love (as represented by Mr. Haliburton) flew out of the window.

"Hallo, Hughie!"

"Hallo, Uncle Jimmy! Half a mo'!"

Mr. Haliburton, seated dizzily in a rose-bed in the garden, heard Hughie's step returning to the French window above his head. A walking-stick suddenly speared itself in the soil beside him, and a pair of gloves and a Homburg hat pattered delicately down upon his upturned countenance; while Hughie's voice intimated that there was a swift and well-cushioned train back to town at six-twenty.

Then, closing the window and leaving Mr. Haliburton to extract himself tenderly from his bed of roses, cursing feebly the while and ruminating bitterly upon the unreliability of proverbial expressions, Hughie turned to the room again. It had just occurred to him that in the heat of the moment he had been a trifle cavalier in his reception of a relative whom he had not seen for ten years, and who he imagined had been dead for four.

Half an hour later Jimmy Marrable enquired:--

"Would it be too much to ask whom you were throwing out of the window when I came in?"

"Friend of Joey's," said Hughie briefly. "And now, Uncle Jimmy," he added, with clouding brow,--the joy of battle was overpast, and the horizon was dark with the wings of all kinds of chickens coming home to roost,--"I should like to inform you that you and your financial methods have put me in a devil of a hole. I want an explanation."

"Right. Fire away!"

"Well, when I took on the job bequeathed to me by you of administering Joan's affairs, I discovered that instead of being an heiress, the child was practically penniless. For some idiotic reason best known to yourself, you no sooner put money into the bank for her than you dragged it all out again. Consequently I discovered that I was booked to manage the affairs of a girl whom everybody thought to be the possessor of pots of money, but whose entire capital"--he picked up the pa.s.s-book--"amounted in reality to one hundred pounds sterling."

"Correct!" said Jimmy Marrable. "Proceed!"

"If," continued Hughie in an even and businesslike tone, "Joan had been prepared to marry me, the money wouldn't have mattered, as she could have had mine. Unfortunately that event did not occur."

"Did she know she hadn't any money when you asked her to marry you?"

enquired Jimmy Marrable.

"No."

"And did she go on refusing you after you had informed her she was a pauper?"

Hughie had seen this question coming from afar. He turned a delicate carmine. His uncle surveyed him, and nodded comprehendingly.

"Quite so!" he said. "Quite so! You never told her."

"No," said Hughie, "I hadn't the heart. It seemed like--like trying to coerce her into marrying me. No, I just let her imagine that she had a tidy little fortune invested, and that she could live on the interest--three hundred a year. I--I found that sum for her, and she took it all right. After all, she was a woman, and women will swallow almost anything you tell them about money matters. If they jib at all, all you have to do is to surround yourself with a cloud of technicalities, and they cave in at once. I think Joey was a _little_ surprised at not getting more, for she had thought herself a bit of an heiress; but she never said a word. In fact, she was so kind about it that I saw she was convinced I had made a mess of things somewhere, and must be protected accordingly. She put it all down to my usual incompetence, I suppose,--as far as I can see, she considers me a born fool,--and accepted the situation loyally."

"She would do that," said Jimmy Marrable.

"Well," continued Hughie, "Joan was all right, but everybody else was the devil. An awful girl friend of hers, called Harbord--"

"I know--twelve per cent!" gurgled Jimmy Marrable.

"Yes. Well, she came and gave me beans to begin with. Then young Lance began to suspect me,--he never could stand me at any price,--and he came and raised Cain one day at a luncheon party I was giving--but, by the way, that's all right now; Lance has come round completely. Even the Leroys couldn't conceal their conviction that I had made a bungle somewhere--an honest bungle, of course, but a bungle. And finally an unutterable sweep called Haliburton came along. I knew something of him--so much, in fact, that it never occurred to me that there was anything to fear from him. But he got the master-grip on me when every one else had failed. Joey--our Joey--fell in love with him and promised to marry him!"

"I have heard nothing of this. What sort of fellow is he?" enquired Jimmy Marrable.

"Much the same type, I should say, as the late lamented Gaymer, senior."

"Are you sure--about her falling in love?" continued Jimmy Marrable, in a puzzled voice.

"Looks like it," said Hughie. "I was away yesterday, and got back early this morning. I found a note from Joey on my dressing-table, saying that Haliburton had proposed to her, and that she was sending him along to me to ask for my consent. She wouldn't have gone as far as that if she didn't--if she didn't"--His voice shook. "It was a pill for me, Uncle Jimmy!"

"What did you do?" said Jimmy Marrable.

"I did this. I knew quite well that if Joey--loved him"--the words came from between his clenched teeth--"she would stick to him, blackguard or not. She's that sort."

"She is. Well?"

"I came to the conclusion that if there was to be a rupture of the engagement it must come from him."

"You made him break it off?"

"Yes."

"How? By throwing him out of the window?"

"No. That would have been no good if he was really after her money. I simply told him the truth--the whole truth--about her bank balance, and so on. That did it. He backed out all right."

Jimmy Marrable rubbed his hands.