Uneasy Money Part 19

Nutty mixed himself a drink and settled down to brood bitterly, as he often did, on the doctor who had made that disastrous statement. Doctors were always saying things like that-sweeping things which nervous people took too literally. It was true that he had been in pretty bad shape at the moment when the words had been spoken. It was just at the end of his Broadway career, when, as he handsomely admitted, there was a certain amount of truth in the opinion that his interior needed a vacation. But since then he had been living in the country, breathing good air, taking things easy. In these altered conditions and after this lapse of time it was absurd to imagine that a moderate amount of alcohol could do him any harm.

It hadn't done him any harm, that was the point. He had tested the doctor's statement and found it incorrect. He had spent three hectic days and nights in New York, and-after a reasonable interval-had felt much the same as usual. And since then he had imbibed each night, and nothing had happened. What it came to was that the doctor was a chump and a blighter. Simply that and nothing more.

Having come to this decision, Nutty mixed another drink. He went to the head of the stairs and listened. He heard nothing. He returned to his room.

Yes, that was it, the doctor was a chump. So far from doing him any harm, these nightly potations brightened Nutty up, gave him heart, and enabled him to endure life in this hole of a place. He felt a certain scornful amus.e.m.e.nt. Doctors, he supposed, had to get off that sort of talk to earn their money.

He reached out for the bottle, and as he grasped it his eye was caught by something on the floor. A brown monkey with a long, grey tail was sitting there staring at him.

There was one of those painful pauses. Nutty looked at the monkey rather like an elongated Macbeth inspecting the ghost of Banquo. The monkey looked at Nutty. The pause continued. Nutty shut his eyes, counted ten slowly, and opened them.

The monkey was still there.

'Boo!' said Nutty, in an apprehensive undertone.

The monkey looked at him.

Nutty shut his eyes again. He would count sixty this time. A cold fear had laid its clammy fingers on his heart. This was what that doctor-not such a chump after all-must have meant!

Nutty began to count. There seemed to be a heavy lump inside him, and his mouth was dry; but otherwise he felt all right. That was the gruesome part of it-this dreadful thing had come upon him at a moment when he could have sworn that he was sound as a bell. If this had happened in the days when he ranged the Great White Way, sucking up deleterious moisture like a cloud, it would have been intelligible. But it had sneaked upon him like a thief in the night; it had stolen unheralded into his life when he had practically reformed. What was the good of practically reforming if this sort of thing was going to happen to one?

'... Fifty-nine ... sixty.'

He opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, in precisely the same att.i.tude, as if it was sitting for its portrait. Panic surged upon Nutty. He lost his head completely. He uttered a wild yell and threw the bottle at the apparition.

Life had not been treating Eustace well that evening. He seemed to have happened upon one of those days when everything goes wrong. The cat had scratched him, the odd-job man had swathed him in an ap.r.o.n, and now this stranger, in whom he had found at first a pleasant restfulness, soothing after the recent scenes of violence in which he had partic.i.p.ated, did this to him. He dodged the missile and clambered on to the top of the wardrobe. It was his instinct in times of stress to seek the high spots. And then Elizabeth hurried into the room.

Elizabeth had been lying in the hammock on the porch when her brother's yell had broken forth. It was a lovely, calm, moonlight night, and she had been revelling in the peace of it, when suddenly this outcry from above had shot her out of her hammock like an explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not what. She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like an overwrought giraffe.

'Whatever is the-?' she began; and then things began to impress themselves on her senses.

The bottle which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had missed the latter, but it had hit the wall, and was now lying in many pieces on the floor, and the air was heavy with the scent of it. The remains seemed to leer at her with a kind of furtive swagger, after the manner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a mother to Nutty than a sister, and now she would have liked to exercise the maternal privilege of slapping him.

'Nutty!'

'I saw a monkey!' said her brother, hollowly. 'I was standing over there and I saw a monkey! Of course, it wasn't there really. I flung the bottle at it, and it seemed to climb on to that wardrobe.'

'This wardrobe?'

'Yes.'

Elizabeth struck it a resounding blow with the palm of her hand, and Eustace's face popped over the edge, peering down anxiously.

'I can see it now,' said Nutty. A sudden, faint hope came to him.

'Can you see it?' he asked.

Elizabeth did not speak for a moment. This was an unusual situation, and she was wondering how to treat it. She was sorry for Nutty, but Providence had sent this thing and it would be foolish to reject it. She must look on herself in the light of a doctor. It would be kinder to Nutty in the end. She had the feminine aversion from the lie deliberate. Her ethics on the suggestio falsi were weak. She looked at Nutty questioningly.

'See it?' she said.

'Don't you see a monkey on the top of the wardrobe?' said Nutty, becoming more definite.

'There's a sort of bit of wood sticking out-'

Nutty sighed.

'No, not that. You didn't see it. I don't think you would.'

He spoke so dejectedly that for a moment Elizabeth weakened, but only for an instant.

'Tell me all about this, Nutty,' she said.

Nutty was beyond the desire for evasion and concealment. His one wish was to tell. He told all.

'But, Nutty, how silly of you!'

'Yes.'

'After what the doctor said.'

'I know.'

'You remember his telling you-'

'I know. Never again!'

'What do you mean?'

'I quit. I'm going to give it up.'

Elizabeth embraced him maternally.

'That's a good child!' she said. 'You really promise?'

'I don't have to promise, I'm just going to do it.'

Elizabeth compromised with her conscience by becoming soothing.

'You know, this isn't so very serious, Nutty, darling. I mean, it's just a warning.'

'It's warned me all right.'

'You will be perfectly all right if-'

Nutty interrupted her.

'You're sure you can't see anything?'

'See what?'