Jill was thinking of Derek, too. Panic had fled, and a curious exhilaration had seized upon her. If Derek wanted her now, it would be because his love was the strongest thing in the world. She would come to him like the beggar-maid to Cophetua.
Uncle Chris broke the silence with a cough. At the sound of it, Jill smiled again. She knew it for what it was, a sign that he was himself again.
“Tell me, Uncle Chris,” she said, “just how bad is it? When you said everything was gone, did you really mean everything, or were you being melodramatic? Exactly how do we stand?”
“It’s dashed hard to say, my dear. I expect we shall find there are a few hundreds left. Enough to see you through till you get married. After that it won’t matter.” Uncle Chris flicked a particle of dust off his coat-sleeve. Jill could not help feeling that the action was symbolical of his attitude towards life. He flicked away life’s problems with just the same airy carelessness. “You mustn’t worry about me, my dear. I shall be all right. I have made my way in the world before, and I can do it again. I shall go to America and try my luck there. Amazing how many opportunities there are in America. Really, as far as I am concerned, this is the best thing that could have happened. I have been getting abominably lazy. If I had gone on living my present life for another year or two, why, dash it! I honestly believe I should have succumbed to some sort of senile decay. Positively I should have got fatty degeneration of the brain! This will be the making of me.”
Jill sat down on the lounge and laughed till there were tears in her eyes. Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was certainly making it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving of censure, from the standpoint of the sterner morality, he made amends. If he brought the whole world crashing in chaos about one’s ears, at least he helped one to smile among the ruins.
“Did you ever read ‘Candide’, Uncle Chris?”
“‘Candide’?” Uncle Chris shook his head. He was not a great reader, except of the sporting press.
“It’s a book by Voltaire. There’s a character in it called Doctor Pangloss, who thought that everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”