“Oh, no,” she said, with one of her swift blushes, and in a voice of frightened confusion. “That’s utterly absurd—even for you to think. But, dear Tony, I am quite content if, as I say, in your eyes—”
“In all eyes,” he said loudly and almost angrily, administering a sharp slap to the table with his open hand. “Why pretend—why try to spoil my rapture? Emmie, my dearest, don’t do it. My lovely priceless girl, it—it hurts me”; and there was real pain in his tone.
She vowed both to herself and to him that she would not do it again. His illusion was ecstasy to her. Why should she try to shatter it in the name of dull stupid truth? Rather pray to heaven that he might continue thus divinely deluded.
Miss Verinder, then, was happy as well as entranced. She averted her gaze from the cloud represented by that ominous date of September Fifteen. She refused to look at it in her diary at the hotel or to notice its advancing shadow out of doors. Four more weeks, three more weeks—and then the end. She would not think of it, she could not think of it. Does the busy little gnat as it moves with a whir of tiny wings in the sunlight brood on the ephemeral nature of its joy or feel premonitions of the darkness and the frost which will close its brief day?
She knew that his plans were finally settled—cut-and-dried, as he said himself—and that nothing would change them. He was going to the Argentine Republic with a cargo in which, as she soon learned, he owned the largest share; he hoped that this venture might prove exceedingly profitable; and, immediately on its completion, he intended to make some mysterious kind of excursion to his old friends, the Andes—“a picnic,” as he described it; “a little trip on spec”; “just a lark.” Then, after this, he would be off to Australia and its deserts again. One of those governments wanted him. Then, when he had finished the governmental job, he would turn once more to big work—the noble work that, as he had hinted to Mr. Verinder, requires solid cash behind it.
Speaking of the preliminary commercial venture, he touched on this point.
“Emmie, my grave little judge, you mustn’t think me sordid and grasping when I chatter about pots and pans, and gas about fleecing the honest Argentinos. If I’m keen—and I am desperately keen—to get money, it isn’t for myself—it’s for what I feel my life-work”; and he laughed gaily. “Look here, old lady, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. I’d stick at nothing to put myself in funds. The end justifies the means.” And he laughed again. “Don’t look frightened, you innocent angel. All I wish to imply is this: If Dyke is desired to find the South Pole on one of these long evenings—as Dyke intends to do, mark you, Emmeline of the dusky locks—well, he must have a bob or two in the bank.”
Immediately Miss Verinder offered him her own money, all of it, or as much of it as he felt he could make use of; but he told her that acceptance was quite impossible. He could never take a penny of her. Besides, as he explained, it was a duty of the public to support him, and he proposed to make them fulfil their duty. “If our little gamble turns up trumps, it may keep me going for two or three years. But the public must put up the stuff for the big thing. Emmie dear, I confess it’s a matter of pride with me. Dyke has done enough already to establish his title to public support. Why shouldn’t they back Dyke—as well as the other fellows? Ah, here we are. I shan’t keep you ten minutes here.”
They had been hurrying down a lane not far from Liverpool Street Station. Taking her by the elbow, he guided her through the doorway of a warehouse and up a narrow flight of stairs. The warehouse belonged to a Birmingham firm of gunmakers; and soon she was following Dyke and his business friends down more and more stairs, till she found herself in a cellar deep below the level of the roadway, where a shooting-gallery, perhaps twenty-five yards long, had been contrived for testing fire-arms. Dyke, very gay and jovial, chaffing black-coated managers or partners and slapping on the back a stout workman in an apron, selected from hundreds of rifles about a dozen, and took up position at the opening of the gallery. An assistant with black hands and oil-stained face began to load the weapons, and the man in the apron handed them one after another to Dyke. The whole cellar was well lit with electric light, which its whitewashed walls reflected harshly. One saw the vaulted entrance in front of Dyke, and a white target against a brown bank at the far-end.