"Get it into your thick head. I shall never be better. That's not on the cards."
"Nonsense," I said. "People are finding cures for things all the time. Doctors are gloomy brutes. They give people up for dead and then the people laugh and cock a snook at them and live for another fifty years."
"I admire your optimism, Mike, but my malady isn't one of that kind. They take you to hospital and give you a change of blood and back you come again with a little lee-way of life, a little span of time gained. And so on, getting weaker each time."
"You are very brave," said Ellie.
"Oh no, I'm not brave. When a thing is certain there's nothing to be brave about. All you can do is to find your consolation."
"Building houses?"
"No, not that. You've less vitality all the time, you see, and therefore building houses becomes more difficult, not easier. The strength keeps giving out. No. But there are consolations. Sometimes very queer ones."
"I don't understand you," I said.
"No, you wouldn't, Mike. I don't know really that Ellie would. She might." He went on, speaking not so much to us as to himself. "Two things run together, side by side. Weakness and strength. The weakness of fading vitality and the strength of frustrated power. It doesn't matter, you see, what you do now! You're going to die anyway. So you can do anything you choose. There's nothing to deter you, there's nothing to hold you back. I could walk through the streets of Athens shooting down every man or woman whose face I didn't like. Think of that."
"The police could arrest you just the same," I pointed out.
"Of course they could. But what could they do? At the most take my life. Well my life's going to be taken by a greater power than the law in a very short time. What else could they do? Send me to prison for twenty - thirty years? That's rather ironical, isn't it, there aren't twenty or thirty years for me to serve. Six months - one year - eighteen months at the utmost. There's nothing anyone can do to me. So in the span that's left to me I am king. I can do what I like. Sometimes it's a very heady thought. Only - only, you see, there's not much temptation because there's nothing particularly exotic or lawless that I want to do."
After we had left him, as we were driving back to Athens, Ellie said to me,
"He's an odd person. Sometimes you know, I feel frightened of him."
"Frightened, of Rudolf Santonix - why?"
"Because he isn't like other people and because he has a - I don't know, a ruthlessness and an arrogance about him somewhere. And I think that he was trying to tell us, really, that knowing he's going to die soon has increased his arrogance. Supposing," said Ellie, looking at me in an animated way, with almost a rapt and emotional expression on her face, "supposing he built us our lovely castle, our lovely house on the cliff's edge there in the pines, supposing we were coming to live in it. There he was on the doorstep and he welcomed us in and then -"
"Well, Ellie?"
"Then, supposing he came in after us, he slowly closed the doorway behind us and sacrificed us there on the threshold. Cut our throats or something."
"You frighten me, Ellie. The things you think of!"
"The trouble with you and me, Mike, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen."
"Don't think of sacrifices in connection with Gipsy's Acre."
"It's the name, I suppose, and the curse upon it."
"There isn't any curse," I shouted. "It's all nonsense. Forget it."
That was in Greece.
Chapter 10
It was, I think, the day after that. We were in Athens.
Suddenly, on the steps of the Acropolis Ellie ran into people that she knew. They had come ashore from one of the Hellenic cruises. A woman of about thirty-five detached herself from the group and rushed along the steps to Ellie exclaiming, "Why, I never did. It's really you, Ellie Guteman? Well, what are you doing here? I'd no idea. Are you on a cruise?"
"No," said Ellie, "just staying here."
"My, but it's lovely to see you. How's Cora, is she here?"
"No, Cora is at Salzburg I believe."
"Well, well." The woman was looking at me and Ellie said quietly, "Let me introduce - Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Bennington."
"How d'you do. How long are you here for?"
"I'm leaving tomorrow," said Ellie.
"Oh dear! My, I'll lose my party if I don't go, and I just don't want to miss a word of the lecture and the descriptions. They do hustle one a bit, you know. I'm just dead beat at the end of the day. Any chance of meeting you for a drink?"
"Not today," said Ellie, "we're going on an excursion."
Mrs. Bennington rushed off to rejoin her party. Ellie, who had been going with me up the steps of the Acropolis, turned round and moved down again.
"That rather settles things, doesn't it," she said to me.
"What does it settle?"
Ellie did not answer for a minute or two and then she said with a sigh, "I must write tonight."
"Write to whom?"
"Oh, to Nora, and to Uncle Frank, I suppose, and Uncle Andrew."
"Who's Uncle Andrew? He's a new one."
"Andrew Lippincott. Not really an uncle. He's my principal guardian or trustee or whatever you call it. He's a lawyer - a very well known one."
"What are you going to say?"
"I'm going to tell them I'm married. I couldn't say suddenly to Nora Bennington 'Let me introduce my husband'. There would have been frightful shrieks and exclamations and 'I never heard you were married. Tell me all about it, darling' etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It's only fair that my stepmother and Uncle Frank and Uncle Andrew should be the first to know." She sighed. "Oh well, we've had a lovely time up to now."
"What will they say or do?" I asked.
"Make a fuss, I expect," said Ellie, in her placid way. "It doesn't matter if they do and they'll have sense enough to know that. We'll have to have a meeting, I expect. We could go to New York. Would you like that?" She looked at me inquiringly.
"No," I said, "I shouldn't like it in the least."
"Then they'll come to London probably, or some of them will. I don't know if you'd like that any better."
"I shouldn't like any of it. I want to be with you and see our house going up brick by brick as soon as Santonix gets there."
"So we can," said Ellie. "After all, meetings with the family won't take long. Possibly just one big splendid row would do. Get it over in one. Either we fly over there or they fly over here."
"I thought you said your stepmother was at Salzburg."
"Oh, I just said that. It sounded odd to say I didn't know where she was. Yes," said Ellie with a sigh, "we'll go home and meet them all. Mike, I hope you won't mind too much."
"Mind what - your family?"
"Yes. You won't mind if they're nasty to you."
"I suppose it's the price I have to pay for marrying you," I said. "I'll bear it."
"There's your mother," said Ellie thoughtfully.
"For heaven's sake, Ellie, you're not going to try and arrange a meeting between your stepmother in her frills and her furbelows and my mother from her back street. What do you think they'd ever have to say to each other?"
"If Cora was my own mother they might have quite a lot to say to each other," said Ellie. "I wish you wouldn't be so obsessed with class distinctions, Mike!"
"Me!" I said incredulously. "What's your American phrase - I come from the wrong side of the tracks, don't I?"
"You don't want to write it on a placard and pin it on yourself."
"I' don't know the right clothes to wear," I said bitterly. "I don't know the right way to talk about things and I don't know anything really about pictures or art or music. I'm only just learning who to tip and how much to give."
"Don't you think, Mike, that that makes it all much more exciting for you? I think so."
"Anyway," I said, "you're not to drag my mother into your family party."
"I wasn't proposing to drag anyone into anything, but I think, Mike, I ought to go and see your mother when we go back to England."
"No," I said explosively.
She looked at me rather startled.
"Why not, Mike, though. I mean, apart from anything else, I mean it's just very rude not to. Have you told her you're married?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
I didn't answer.
"Wouldn't the simplest way be to tell her you're married and take me to see her when we get back to England?"
"No," I said again. It was not so explosive this time but it was still fairly well underlined.
"You don't want me to meet her," said Ellie, slowly.
I didn't, of course. I suppose it was obvious enough but the last thing I could do was to explain. I didn't see how could explain.
"It wouldn't be the right thing to do," I said slowly. "You must see that. I'm sure it would lead to trouble."
"You think she wouldn't like me?"
"Nobody could help liking you, but it wouldn't - oh I don't know how to put it. But she might be upset and confused. After all, well, I mean I've married out of my station. That's the old-fashioned term. She wouldn't like that."
Ellie shook her head slowly.
"Does anybody really think like that nowadays?"
"Of course they do. They do in your country too."
"Yes," she said, "in a way that's true but - if anyone makes good there -"
"You mean if a man makes a lot of money."
"Well, not only money."
"Yes," I said, "it's money. If a man makes a lot of money he's admired and looked up to and it doesn't matter where he was born."
"Well, that's the same everywhere," said Ellie.
"Please, Ellie," I said. "Please don't go and see my mother."
"I still think it's unkind."
"No it isn't. Can't you let me know what's best for my own mother? She'd be upset. I tell you she would."
"But you must tell her you've got married."
"All right," I said. "I'll do that."
It occurred to me it would be easier to write to my mother from abroad. That evening when Ellie was writing to Uncle Andrew and Uncle Frank and her stepmother Cora van Stuyvesant, I, too, was writing my own letter. It was quite short.
"Dear Mum," I wrote. "I ought to have told you before but I felt a bit awkward. I got married three weeks ago. It was all rather sudden. She's a very pretty girl and very sweet. She's got a lot of money which makes things a bit awkward sometimes. We're going to build ourselves a house somewhere in the country. Just at present we're travelling around Europe. All the best, Yours, Mike."
The results of our evening's correspondence were somewhat varied. My mother let a week elapse before she sent a letter remarkably typical of her.
"Dear Mike. I was glad to get your letter. I hope you'll be very happy. Your affectionate mother."
As Ellie had prophesied, there was far more fuss on her side. We'd stirred up a regular hornet's nest of trouble. We were beset by reporters who wanted news of our romantic marriage, there were articles in the papers about the Guteman heiress and her romantic elopement, there were letters from bankers and lawyers. And finally official meetings were arranged. We met Santonix on the site of Gipsy's Acre and we looked at the plans there and discussed things, and then having seen things under way we came to London, took a suite at Claridge's and prepared as they say in old world books, to receive cavalry.
The first to arrive was Mr. Andrew P. Lippincott. He was an elderly man, dry and precise in appearance. He was long and lean with suave and courteous manners. He was a Bostonian and from his voice I wouldn't have known he was an American. By arrangement through the telephone he called upon us in our suite at 2 o'clock. Ellie was nervous, I could tell, although she concealed it very well.
Mr. Lippincott kissed Ellie and extended a hand and a pleasant smile to me.
"Well, Ellie my dear, you are looking very well. Blooming, I might say."
"How are you, Uncle Andrew? How did you come. Did you fly?"
"No, I had a very pleasant trip across on the Queen Mary. And this is your husband?"
"This is Mike, yes."
I played up, or thought I did.
"How are you, sir?" I said.
Then I asked him if he'd have a drink, which he refused pleasantly. He sat down in an upright chair with gilt arms to it and looked, still smiling, from Ellie to me.
"Well," he said, "you young people have been giving us shocks. All very romantic, eh?"
"I'm sorry," said Ellie, "I really am sorry."
"Are you?" said Mr. Lippincott, rather dryly.
"I thought it was the best way," said Ellie.
"I am not altogether of your opinion there, my dear."
"Uncle Andrew," Ellie said, "you know perfectly well that if I'd done it any other way there would have been the most frightful fuss."
"Why should there have been such a frightful fuss?"
"You know what they'd have been like," said Ellie.
"You too," she added accusingly. She added "I've had two letters from Cora. One yesterday and one this morning."
"You must discount a certain amount of agitation, my dear. It's only natural under the circumstances, don't you think?"
