The shock changed his mood. Gloom still obsessed him, but blended now with remorse. He began to look at the matter from Claire’s viewpoint, and his pity switched from himself to her. In the first place, the poor girl had rather a rotten time. Could she be blamed for wanting him to make money? No. Yet whenever she made suggestions as to how the thing was to be done, he snubbed her by saying -noblesse oblige-. Naturally a refined and sensitive young girl objected to having things like -noblesse oblige- said to her. Where was the sense in saying -noblesse oblige?- Such a confoundedly silly thing to say. Only a perfect ass would spend his time rushing about the place saying -noblesse oblige- to people.
‘By Jove!’ Lord Dawlish stopped in his stride. He disentangled himself from a pedestrian who had rammed him on the back. ‘I’ll do it!’
He hailed a passing taxi and directed the driver to make for the Pen and Ink Club.
The decision at which Bill had arrived with such dramatic suddenness in the middle of Piccadilly was the same at which some centuries earlier Columbus had arrived in the privacy of his home.
‘Hang it!’ said Bill to himself in the cab, ‘I’ll go to America!’ The exact words probably which Columbus had used, talking the thing over with his wife.
Bill’s knowledge of the great republic across the sea was at this period of his life a little sketchy. He knew that there had been unpleasantness between England and the United States in seventeen-something and again in eighteen-something, but that things had eventually been straightened out by Miss Edna May and her fellow missionaries of the Belle of New York Company, since which time there had been no more trouble. Of American cocktails he had a fair working knowledge, and he appreciated ragtime. But of the other great American institutions he was completely ignorant.
He was on his way now to see Gates. Gates was a comparatively recent addition to his list of friends, a New York newspaperman who had come to England a few months before to act as his paper’s London correspondent. He was generally to be found at the Pen and Ink Club, an institution affiliated with the New York Players, of which he was a member.
Gates was in. He had just finished lunch.
‘What’s the trouble, Bill?’ he inquired, when he had deposited his lordship in a corner of the reading-room, which he had selected because silence was compulsory there, thus rendering it possible for two men to hear each other speak. ‘What brings you charging in here looking like the Soul’s Awakening?’
‘I’ve had an idea, old man.’
‘Proceed. Continue.’
‘Oh! Well, you remember what you were saying about America?’
‘What was I saying about America?’
‘The other day, don’t you remember? What a lot of money there was to be made there and so forth.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m going there.’
‘To America?’
‘Yes.’
‘To make money?’
‘Rather.’
Gates nodded–sadly, it seemed to Bill. He was rather a melancholy young man, with a long face not unlike a pessimistic horse.
‘Gosh!’ he said.
Bill felt a little damped. By no mental juggling could he construe ‘Gosh!’ into an expression of enthusiastic approbation.
Gates looked at Bill curiously. ‘What’s the idea?’ he said. ‘I could have understood it if you had told me that you were going to New York for pleasure, instructing your man Willoughby to see that the trunks were jolly well packed and wiring to the skipper of your yacht to meet you at Liverpool. But you seem to have sordid motives. You talk about making money. What do you want with more money?’
‘Why, I’m devilish hard up.’
‘Tenantry a bit slack with the rent?’ said Gates sympathetically.
Bill laughed.
‘My dear chap, I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. How much money do you think I’ve got? Four hundred pounds a year, and no prospect of ever making more unless I sweat for it.’
‘What! I always thought you were rolling in money.’
‘What gave you that idea?’
‘You have a prosperous look. It’s a funny thing about England. I’ve known you four months, and I know men who know you; but I’ve never heard a word about your finances. In New York we all wear labels, stating our incomes and prospects in clear lettering. Well, if it’s like that it’s different, of course. There certainly is more money to be made in America than here. I don’t quite see what you think you’re going to do when you get there, but that’s up to you.