CHAPTER XXXVII
THE UNEXPECTED WINDFALL
Georgina, already considerably mystified by Brixey’s strange proceedings, and wondering why he had conducted her to a retired nook in a dimly lighted corridor, wherein, thanks to screens and curtains, they were completely shut off from the gaze of mortal eye, turned on him with a glance of astonishment.
"Why do you ask that, Mr. Brixey?" she exclaimed. "To me—how could it belong to me?"
"Oh rot!" retorted Brixey. "Don’t let’s stand on ceremony. I mean, don’t let’s quibble about terms, you know. I feel this is a great occasion.
"There are all sorts of momentous events in the atmosphere. You and I, we’re momentous events, or personalities, or—or something! Perhaps I'm not quite clear!"
"Anything but!" said Georgina decisively.
Brixey made a desperate endeavour.
"Look here!" he said. "Let's try to be—I mean, let me try to be. You’ve been with these people ever since Sunday night, and when I came in just now, I saw, you were all in the thick of revelations.
"Has it come out that Mrs. Byfield was never legally married to Martin Byfield? That’s what I want to know. I’m on pins and needles to know it!"
"Then it has not come out!" answered Georgina with even more decision. "What has come out, undoubtedly, is that she was never legally married to that man Cradock Melsome. Therefore, she was legally carried to my uncle Martin."
"Fact?" asked Brixey.
"That’s what she brought that old clergyman here for," replied Georgina.
"Then the Byfield money, most of which I’ve just rescued from a couple of impudent thieves, is really hers and Fanshawe's!" demanded Brixey.
"I don’t think I'm wrong in saying—precisely so!" answered Georgina.
Brixey heaved a deep sign—unmistakably a sigh of immense relief.
"Hooray!" he said! "Delighted to hear it! Best news I've heard for a week."
Georgina turned a little in her seat and looked steadily at him.
"Why?" she exclaimed. "What on earth have you got to do with it? Or, rather, what on earth has it got to do with you? Aren't you a bit queer, Mr. Brixey?"
"I am a queer lot!" assented Brixey. "Odd, perhaps—I always was. But, the fact is, I—I wanted to speak to you."
"You are doing," remarked Georgina.
"To you—you!" continued Brixey, emphasising the personal pronoun. "That’s why I asked what I did just now. You see, I—the fact is, I have strong views on things in general."
"Yes?" remarked Georgina.
"On most things," asserted Brixey. "I—you must understand that I am by no means conventional. I neither do nor say things that other people say or do, usually!"
"For instance?" suggested Georgina.
"Yes, quite right," said Brixey. "I—you see, I have very queer ideas about—marriage!"
Georgina turned the full inquiry of her eyes on him.
"Yes!" declared Brixey. "Always had—at least, I mean, always since I arrived at years of discretion, you know."
"I hope," observed Georgina, looking thoughtfully at a corner of the convenient alcove, "I hope they aren’t very queer!"
"Well perhaps not particularly so," said Brixey "But they're mine! You see, I always felt that I could never marry a girl, you know, who had a lot of money—couldn't do it!"
"No?" remarked Georgina demurely. "You are, indeed, different from most young men, Mr. Brixey."
"Well, it's a fact!" assented Brixey. "Human nature—we're poor things. Now, can you think of anything more awful than the spectacle of a wife with, say, a hundred thousand pounds, and a husband with five pounds a week? Dreadful!"
"It depends how you look at it," remarked Georgina. "Some men who haven’t five shillings a week would be very thankful to get a wife who possessed a hundred thousand pounds!"
"Not men!" exclaimed Brixey. "Don’t call 'em men! They aren’t men, that sort! Call 'em parasites, leeches—anything but men. A man," he continued, "should be the rock on which the family's built! Those are my ideas."
"Yes?" replied Georgina, somewhat timidly.
"It’s not a week since we met—first," observed Brixey. "isn't that queer?"
"Is it?" asked Georgina.
"Seems so." asserted Brixey. "More like—like a long time, somehow. You came into my room at the Sentinel, didn't you?"
"Can't you remember?" inquired Georgina.
"Remember everything!" protested Brixey. "Then we travelled down to Selchester together. I say look here!"
"Well?" said Georgina.
"Now that this confounded business is wound up," said Brixey, "I've the best part of a longish holiday before me. What do you say if I finish it up at Selchester? I can, you know."
"Would you really like to?" asked Georgina, still more timidly.
"Rather!" exclaimed Brixey. He looked out of his eye-corners at his companion and ventured to take her hand. "So that you and I could see a bit more of each other, eh?"
Georgina looked hard at the corner of the alcove, but she made no attempt to withdraw the hand which Brixey had possessed himself of. And Brixey proceeded to press it gently.
"In time, you see," he murmured ingratiatingly, "you might come to—to think of me a bit. You see, I"
Georgina suddenly withdrew his hand and started aside.
"There's Fanshawe," she whispered.
Brixey looked out into the corridor and saw Fanshawe Byfield hurrying along, piloted by a waiter towards the room in which the conclave still sat.
He was evidently in great haste, and he carried a packet of papers in his hand, and was altogether so engrossed that he looked neither right nor left. And as he disappeared Brixey repossessed himself of Georgina's fingers.
"What do you say?" he whispered. "Am I to come back to Selchester? Come now, say the word!"
Georgina hesitated and blushed, and Brixey drew her her hand nearer.
"Do you really want to?" she said at last.
"Ever since I first met you!" asserted Brixey. "Sure case!"
Georgina looked down.
"To be sure," she remarked, "I have no money. That's just what you want, isn't it?"
"I’ve plenty!" declared Brixey. "Hang money! But, as it happens, I'm pretty well off in that way, quite apart from my profession. Say I'm to come!"
Georgina waited a full moment.
"I'm awfully in love with you!" whispered Brixey. "By George, it's a fact! Don't you believe it?"
"Ye-es!" admitted Georgina. "I do, if you say so. But"
"I say," he murmured. "No more skirting round the subject! Look here. Are you going to marry me? And soon?"
Georgina took half a minute to consider, during which Brixey exercised a material pressure on her.
"I wouldn't mind if you're quite certain," she admitted at last. "Though, really, it's all so"
At that moment there came the sound of a violently opened door of hurrying feet, and of Fanshawe's voice, loudly demanding his cousin and Brixey. Those two drew apart and appeared in the corridor, to find Fanshawe gazing in all directions.
"Here, you two!" he called, as he caught sight of them. "Where on earth were you? Come here! I've some news for you, Georgie! By Jove! you never heard such news! Come on!"
He forced them into the room which they had recently quitted, and into the presence of those they had left there, who all gazed at Georgina in a way which betokened something. Georgina's blushes deepened.
"What is it, Fanshawe?" she asked. "What’s happened?"
Fanshawe was swelling with importance. He assumed a sort of heavy-father attitude at the head of the table, from which he picked up a thick packet, the seals of which had recently been broken.
"Georgie!" he said solemnly, "you know that you sent me down to that said deposit place this morning, acting on instructions from the mater? It turns out that my father, some time before his death, placed this packet in a safe which he rented at that place, and left instructions to my mother that I was to fetch it in person on my twenty-first birthday.
"I have carried out those instructions," continued Fanshawe, increasing in youthful solemnity. "Here is the packet! It is endorsed, Georgie, in my father's handwriting. He says this—'I wish my son Fanshawe to make a present of what is here enclosed to his cousin Georgina on the day on which he comes of age.' See?
"So now, Georgie, your cousin Fanshawe, in accordance with his fathers wish, hands this over to you, and—in short, my dear girl, here you are, and jolly glad I am, you know, and—the fact is, it's a little matter of ten thousand pounds."
Therewith Fanshawe pushed a bulky packet into the hands of the astonished Georgina, who, becoming pale and red by turns, stared from Fanshawe to the smiling and nodding faces of the others and shot a queer glance at Brixey.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, and Brixey knew that the exclamation was meant for none but himself. "I—must I take it?"
Brixey shot in a rapid order which penetrated to Georgina's consciousness long before the chorus of congratulatory protestations struck it.
"You may!" he whispered. "Yes, certainly—now!"
THE END