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The Little Warrior

by P. G. Wodehouse · English · Gutenberg #6837 · 670,258 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Little Warrior

Author: P. G. Wodehouse


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6837]
                Most recently updated: September 14, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6837

Credits: Jim Tinsley


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE WARRIOR ***




The Little Warrior

by P. G. Wodehouse


Contents

 CHAPTER ONE
 CHAPTER TWO
 CHAPTER THREE
 CHAPTER FOUR
 CHAPTER FIVE
 CHAPTER SIX
 CHAPTER SEVEN
 CHAPTER EIGHT
 CHAPTER NINE
 CHAPTER TEN
 CHAPTER ELEVEN
 CHAPTER TWELVE
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
 CHAPTER NINETEEN
 CHAPTER TWENTY
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE




CHAPTER ONE


§ 1.

Freddie Rooke gazed coldly at the breakfast-table. Through a gleaming
eye-glass he inspected the revolting object which Parker, his faithful
man, had placed on a plate before him.

“Parker!” His voice had a ring of pain.

“Sir?”

“What’s this?”

“Poached egg, sir.”

Freddie averted his eyes with a silent shudder.

“It looks just like an old aunt of mine,” he said. “Remove it!”

He got up, and, wrapping his dressing-gown about his long legs, took up
a stand in front of the fireplace. From this position he surveyed the
room, his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his calves pressing the
club-fender. It was a cheerful oasis in a chill and foggy world, a
typical London bachelor’s breakfast-room. The walls were a restful
gray, and the table, set for two, a comfortable arrangement in white
and silver.

“Eggs, Parker,” said Freddie solemnly, “are the acid test!”

“Yes, sir?”

“If, on the morning after, you can tackle a poached egg, you are all
right. If not, not. And don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

“No, sir.”

Freddie pressed the palm of his hand to his brow, and sighed.

“It would seem, then, that I must have revelled a trifle
whole-heartedly last night. I was possibly a little blotto. Not
whiffled, perhaps, but indisputably blotto. Did I make much noise
coming in?”

“No, sir. You were very quiet.”

“Ah! A dashed bad sign!”

Freddie moved to the table, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“The cream-jug is to your right, sir,” said the helpful Parker.

“Let it remain there. Café noir for me this morning. As noir as it can
jolly well stick!” Freddie retired to the fireplace and sipped
delicately. “As far as I can remember, it was Ronny Devereux’ birthday
or something …”

“Mr Martyn’s, I think you said, sir.”

“That’s right. Algy Martyn’s birthday, and Ronny and I were the guests.
It all comes back to me. I wanted Derek to roll along and join the
festivities—he’s never met Ronny—but he gave it a miss. Quite right! A
chap in his position has responsibilities. Member of Parliament and all
that. Besides,” said Freddie earnestly, driving home the point with a
wave of his spoon, “he’s engaged to be married. You must remember that,
Parker!”

“I will endeavor to, sir.”

“Sometimes,” said Freddie dreamily, “I wish I were engaged to be
married. Sometimes I wish I had some sweet girl to watch over me and …
No, I don’t, by Jove! It would give me the utter pip! Is Sir Derek up
yet, Parker?”

“Getting up, sir.”

“See that everything is all right, will you? I mean as regards the
foodstuffs and what not. I want him to make a good breakfast. He’s got
to meet his mother this morning at Charing Cross. She’s legging it back
from the Riviera.”

“Indeed, sir?”

Freddie shook his head.

“You wouldn’t speak in that light, careless tone if you knew her! Well,
you’ll see her tonight. She’s coming here to dinner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miss Mariner will be here, too. A foursome. Tell Mrs Parker to pull up
her socks and give us something pretty ripe. Soup, fish, all that sort
of thing. _She_ knows. And let’s have a stoup of malvoisie from the
oldest bin. This is a special occasion!”

“Her ladyship will be meeting Miss Mariner for the first time, sir?”

“You’ve put your finger on it! Absolutely the first time on this or any
stage! We must all rally round and make the thing a success.”

“I am sure Mrs Parker will strain every nerve, sir.” Parker moved to
the door, carrying the rejected egg, and stepped aside to allow a tall,
well-built man of about thirty to enter. “Good morning, Sir Derek.”

“Morning, Parker.”

Parker slid softly from the room. Derek Underhill sat down at the
table. He was a strikingly handsome man, with a strong, forceful face,
dark, lean and cleanly shaven. He was one of those men whom a stranger
would instinctively pick out of a crowd as worthy of note. His only
defect was that his heavy eyebrows gave him at times an expression
which was a little forbidding. Women, however, had never been repelled
by it. He was very popular with women, not quite so popular with
men—always excepting Freddie Rooke, who worshipped him. They had been
at school together, though Freddie was the younger by several years.

“Finished, Freddie?” asked Derek.

Freddie smiled wanly,

“We are not breakfasting this morning,” he replied. “The spirit was
willing, but the jolly old flesh would have none of it. To be perfectly
frank, the Last of the Rookes has a bit of a head.”

“Ass!” said Derek.

“A bit of sympathy,” said Freddie, pained, “would not be out of place.
We are far from well. Some person unknown has put a threshing-machine
inside the old bean and substituted a piece of brown paper for our
tongue. Things look dark and yellow and wobbly!”

“You shouldn’t have overdone it last night.”

“It was Algy Martyn’s birthday,” pleaded Freddie.

“If I were an ass like Algy Martyn,” said Derek, “I wouldn’t go about
advertising the fact that I’d been born. I’d hush it up!”

He helped himself to a plentiful portion of kedgeree, Freddie watching
him with repulsion mingled with envy. When he began to eat, the
spectacle became too poignant for the sufferer, and he wandered to the
window.

“What a beast of a day!”

It was an appalling day. January, that grim month, was treating London
with its usual severity. Early in the morning a bank of fog had rolled
up off the river, and was deepening from pearly white to a lurid brown.
It pressed on the window-pane like a blanket, leaving dark, damp
rivulets on the glass.

“Awful!” said Derek.

“Your mater’s train will be late.”

“Yes. Damned nuisance. It’s bad enough meeting trains in any case,
without having to hang about a draughty station for an hour.”

“And it’s sure, I should imagine,” went on Freddie, pursuing his train
of thought, “to make the dear old thing pretty tolerably ratty, if she
has one of those slow journeys.” He pottered back to the fireplace, and
rubbed his shoulders reflectively against the mantelpiece. “I take it
that you wrote to her about Jill?”

“Of course. That’s why she’s coming over, I suppose. By the way, you
got those seats for that theatre tonight?”

“Yes. Three together and one somewhere on the outskirts. If it’s all
the same to you, old thing, I’ll have the one on the outskirts.”

Derek, who had finished his kedgeree and was now making himself a blot
on Freddie’s horizon with toast and marmalade, laughed.

“What a rabbit you are, Freddie! Why on earth are you so afraid of
mother?”

Freddie looked at him as a timid young squire might have gazed upon St.
George when the latter set out to do battle with the dragon. He was of
the amiable type which makes heroes of its friends. In the old days
when he had fagged for him at Winchester he had thought Derek the most
wonderful person in the world, and this view he still retained. Indeed,
subsequent events had strengthened it. Derek had done the most amazing
things since leaving school. He had had a brilliant career at Oxford,
and now, in the House of Commons, was already looked upon by the
leaders of his party as one to be watched and encouraged. He played
polo superlatively well, and was a fine shot. But of all his gifts and
qualities the one that extorted Freddie’s admiration in its intensest
form was his lion-like courage as exemplified by his behavior in the
present crisis. There he sat, placidly eating toast and marmalade,
while the boat-train containing Lady Underhill already sped on its way
from Dover to London. It was like Drake playing bowls with the Spanish
Armada in sight.

“I wish I had your nerve!” he said, awed. “What I should be feeling, if
I were in your place and had to meet your mater after telling her that
I was engaged to marry a girl she had never seen, I don’t know. I’d
rather face a wounded tiger!”

“Idiot!” said Derek placidly.

“Not,” pursued Freddie, “that I mean to say anything in the least
derogatory and so forth to your jolly old mater, if you understand me,
but the fact remains she scares me pallid! Always has, ever since the
first time I went to stay at your place when I was a kid. I can still
remember catching her eye the morning I happened by pure chance to bung
an apple through her bedroom window, meaning to let a cat on the sill
below have it in the short ribs. She was at least thirty feet away,
but, by Jove, it stopped me like a bullet!”

“Push the bell, old man, will you? I want some more toast.”

Freddie did as he was requested with growing admiration.

“The condemned man made an excellent breakfast,” he murmured. “More
toast, Parker,” he added, as that admirable servitor opened the door.
“Gallant! That’s what I call it. Gallant!”

Derek tilted his chair back.

“Mother is sure to like Jill when she sees her,” he said.

“_When_ she sees her! Ah! But the trouble is, young feller-me-lad, that
she _hasn’t_ seen her! That’s the weak spot in your case, old
companion! A month ago she didn’t know of Jill’s existence. Now, you
know and I know that Jill is one of the best and brightest. As far as
we are concerned, everything in the good old garden is lovely. Why,
dash it, Jill and I were children together. Sported side by side on the
green, and what not. I remember Jill, when she was twelve, turning the
garden-hose on me and knocking about seventy-five per cent off the
market value of my best Sunday suit. That sort of thing forms a bond,
you know, and I’ve always felt that she was a corker. But your mater’s
got to discover it for herself. It’s a dashed pity, by Jove, that Jill
hasn’t a father or a mother or something of that species to rally round
just now. They would form a gang. There’s nothing like a gang! But
she’s only got that old uncle of hers. A rummy bird! Met him?”

“Several times. I like him.”

“Oh, he’s a genial old buck all right. A very bonhomous lad. But you
hear some pretty queer stories about him if you get among people who
knew him in the old days. Even now I’m not so dashed sure I should care
to play cards with him. Young Threepwood was telling me only the other
day that the old boy took thirty quid off him at picquet as clean as a
whistle. And Jimmy Monroe, who’s on the Stock Exchange, says he’s
frightfully busy these times buying margins or whatever it is chappies
do down in the City. Margins. That’s the word. Jimmy made me buy some
myself on a thing called Amalgamated Dyes. I don’t understand the
procedure exactly, but Jimmy says it’s a sound egg and will do me a bit
of good. What was I talking about? Oh, yes, old Selby. There’s no doubt
he’s quite a sportsman. But till you’ve got Jill well established, you
know, I shouldn’t enlarge on him too much with the mater.”

“On the contrary,” said Derek. “I shall mention him at the first
opportunity. He knew my father out in India.”

“Did he, by Jove! Oh, well, that makes a difference.”

Parker entered with the toast, and Derek resumed his breakfast.

“It may be a little bit awkward,” he said, “at first, meeting mother.
But everything will be all right after five minutes.”

“Absolutely! But, oh, boy! that first five minutes!” Freddie gazed
portentously through his eye-glass. Then he seemed to be undergoing
some internal struggle, for he gulped once or twice. “That first five
minutes!” he said, and paused again. A moment’s silent self-communion,
and he went on with a rush. “I say, listen. Shall I come along, too?”

“Come along?”

“To the station. With you.”

“What on earth for?”

“To see you through the opening stages. Break the ice and all that sort
of thing. Nothing like collecting a gang, you know. Moments when a
feller needs a friend and so forth. Say the word, and I’ll buzz along
and lend my moral support.”

Derek’s heavy eyebrows closed together in an offended frown, and seemed
to darken his whole face. This unsolicited offer of assistance hurt his
dignity. He showed a touch of the petulance which came now and then
when he was annoyed, to suggest that he might not possess so strong a
character as his exterior indicated.

“It’s very kind of you,” he began stiffly.

Freddie nodded. He was acutely conscious of this himself.

“Some fellows,” he observed, “would say ‘Not at all!’ I suppose. But
not the Last of the Rookes! For, honestly, old man, between ourselves,
I don’t mind admitting that this _is_ the bravest deed of the year, and
I’m dashed if I would do it for anyone else.”

“It’s very good of you, Freddie …”

“That’s all right. I’m a Boy Scout, and this is my act of kindness for
today.”

Derek got up from the table.

“Of course you mustn’t come,” he said. “We can’t form a sort of
debating society to discuss Jill on the platform at Charing Cross.”

“Oh, I would just hang around in the offing, shoving in an occasional
tactful word.”

“Nonsense!”

“The wheeze would simply be to …”

“It’s impossible.”

“Oh, very well,” said Freddie, damped. “Just as you say, of course. But
there’s nothing like a gang, old man, nothing like a gang!”

§ 2.

Derek Underhill threw down the stump of his cigar, and grunted
irritably. Inside Charing Cross Station business was proceeding as
usual. Porters wheeling baggage-trucks moved to and fro like
Juggernauts. Belated trains clanked in, glad to get home, while others,
less fortunate, crept reluctantly out through the blackness and
disappeared into an inferno of detonating fog-signals. For outside the
fog still held. The air was cold and raw and tasted coppery. In the
street traffic moved at a funeral pace, to the accompaniment of hoarse
cries and occasional crashes. Once the sun had worked its way through
the murk and had hung in the sky like a great red orange, but now all
was darkness and discomfort again, blended with that odd suggestion of
mystery and romance which is a London fog’s only redeeming quality.

It seemed to Derek that he had been patrolling the platform for a
life-time, but he resumed his sentinel duty. The fact that the
boat-train, being already forty-five minutes overdue, might arrive at
any moment made it imperative that he remain where he was instead of
sitting, as he would much have preferred to sit, in one of the
waiting-rooms. It would be a disaster if his mother should get out of
the train and not find him there to meet her. That was just the sort of
thing which would infuriate her; and her mood, after a Channel crossing
and a dreary journey by rail, would be sufficiently dangerous as it
was.

The fog and the waiting had had their effect upon Derek. The resolute
front he had exhibited to Freddie at the breakfast-table had melted
since his arrival at the station, and he was feeling nervous at the
prospect of the meeting that lay before him. Calm as he had appeared to
the eye of Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the recesses
of his heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men—and Derek
Underhill was one of them—who never wholly emerge from the nursery.
They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence
and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their
lives. As a boy, Derek had always been firmly controlled by his mother,
and the sway of her aggressive personality had endured through manhood.
Lady Underhill was a born ruler, dominating most of the people with
whom life brought her in contact. Distant cousins quaked at her name,
while among the male portion of her nearer relatives she was generally
alluded to as The Family Curse.

Now that his meeting with her might occur at any moment, Derek shrank
from it. It was not likely to be a pleasant one. The mere fact that
Lady Underhill was coming to London at all made that improbable. When a
man writes to inform his mother, who is wintering on the Riviera, that
he has become engaged to be married, the natural course for her to
pursue, if she approves of the step, is to wire her congratulations and
good wishes. When for these she substitutes a curt announcement that
she is returning immediately, a certain lack of complaisance seems to
be indicated.

Would his mother approve of Jill? That was the question which he had
been asking himself over and over again as he paced the platform in the
disheartening fog. Nothing had been said, nothing had even been hinted,
but he was perfectly aware that his marriage was a matter regarding
which Lady Underhill had always assumed that she was to be consulted,
even if she did not, as he suspected, claim the right to dictate. And
he had become engaged quite suddenly, without a word to her until it
was all over and settled.

That, as Freddie had pointed out, was the confoundedly awkward part of
it. His engagement had been so sudden. Jill had swept into his life
like a comet. His mother knew nothing of her. A month ago he had known
nothing of her himself. It would, he perceived, as far as the
benevolent approval of Lady Underhill was concerned, have been an
altogether different matter had his choice fallen upon one of those
damsels whose characters, personality, and ancestry she knew. Daughters
of solid and useful men; sisters of rising young politicians like
himself; nieces of Burke’s peerage; he could have introduced without
embarrassment one of these in the role of bride-elect. But Jill … Oh,
well, when once his mother had met Jill, everything was sure to be all
right. Nobody could resist Jill. It would be like resisting the
sunshine.

Somewhat comforted by this reflection, Derek turned to begin one more
walk along the platform, and stopped in mid-stride, raging. Beaming
over the collar of a plaid greatcoat, all helpfulness and devotion,
Freddie Rooke was advancing towards him, the friend that sticketh
closer than a brother. Like some loving dog, who, ordered home, sneaks
softly on through alleys and by-ways, peeping round corners and
crouching behind lamp-posts, the faithful Freddie had followed him
after all. And with him, to add the last touch to Derek’s discomfiture,
were those two inseparable allies of his, Ronny Devereux and Algy
Martyn.

“Well, old thing,” said Freddie, patting Derek encouragingly on the
shoulder, “here we are after all! I know you told me not to roll round
and so forth, but I knew you didn’t mean it. I thought it over after
you had left, and decided it would be a rotten trick not to cluster
about you in your hour of need. I hope you don’t mind Ronny and Algy
breezing along, too. The fact is, I was in the deuce of a funk—your
jolly old mater always rather paralyzes my nerve-centers, you know—so I
roped them in. Met ’em in Piccadilly, groping about for the club, and
conscripted ’em both, they very decently consenting. We all toddled off
and had a pick-me-up at that chemist chappie’s at the top of the
Hay-market, and now we’re feeling full of beans and buck, ready for
anything. I’ve explained the whole thing to them, and they’re with you
to the death! Collect a gang, dear boy, collect a gang! That’s the
motto. There’s nothing like it!”

“Nothing!” said Ronny.

“Absolutely nothing!” said Algy.

“We’ll just see you through the opening stages,” said Freddie, “and
then leg it. We’ll keep the conversation general, you know.”

“Stop it getting into painful channels,” said Ronny.

“Steer it clear,” said Algy, “of the touchy topic.”

“That’s the wheeze,” said Freddie. “We’ll … Oh, golly! There’s the
train coming in now!” His voice quavered, for not even the comforting
presence of his two allies could altogether sustain him in this ordeal.
But he pulled himself together with a manful effort. “Stick it, old
beans!” he said doughtily. “Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of the party!”

“We’re here!” said Ronny Devereux.

“On the spot!” said Algy Martyn.

§ 3.

The boat-train slid into the station. Bells rang, engines blew off
steam, porters shouted, baggage-trucks rattled over the platform. The
train began to give up its contents, now in ones and twos, now in a
steady stream. Most of the travellers seemed limp and exhausted, and
were pale with the pallor that comes of a choppy Channel crossing.
Almost the only exception to the general condition of collapse was the
eagle-faced lady in the brown ulster, who had taken up her stand in the
middle of the platform and was haranguing a subdued little maid in a
voice that cut the gloomy air like a steel knife. Like the other
travellers, she was pale, but she bore up resolutely. No one could have
told from Lady Underhill’s demeanor that the solid platform seemed to
heave beneath her feet like a deck.

“Have you got a porter, Ferris? Where is he, then? Ah! Have you got all
the bags? My jewel-case? The suit-case? The small brown bag? The rugs?
Where are the rugs?

“Yes, I can see them, my good girl. There is no need to brandish them
in my face. Keep the jewel-case and give the rest of the things to the
porter, and take him to look after the trunks. You remember which they
are? The steamer trunk, the other trunk, the black box … Very well.
Then make haste. And, when you’ve got them all together, tell the
porter to find you a four-wheeler. The small things will go inside.
Drive to the Savoy and ask for my suite. If they make any difficulty,
tell them that I engaged the rooms yesterday by telegraph from Mentone.
Do you understand?”

“Yes, m’lady.”

“Then go along. Oh, and give the porter sixpence. Sixpence is ample.”

“Yes, m’lady.”

The little maid, grasping the jewel-case, trotted off beside the now
pessimistic porter, who had started on this job under the impression
that there was at least a bob’s-worth in it. The remark about the
sixpence had jarred the porter’s faith in his species.

Derek approached, acutely conscious of Freddie, Ronny, and Algy, who
were skirmishing about his flank. He had enough to worry him without
them. He had listened with growing apprehension to the catalogue of his
mother’s possessions. Plainly this was no flying visit. You do not pop
over to London for a day or two with a steamer trunk, another trunk, a
black box, a suit-case, and a small brown bag. Lady Underhill had
evidently come prepared to stay; and the fact seemed to presage
trouble.

“Well, mother! So there you are at last!”

“Well, Derek!”

Derek kissed his mother. Freddie, Ronny, and Algy shuffled closer, like
leopards. Freddie, with the expression of one who leads a forlorn hope,
moved his Adam’s apple briskly up and down several times, and spoke.

“How do you do, Lady Underhill?”

“How do you do, Mr Rooke?”

Lady Underhill bowed stiffly and without pleasure. She was not fond of
the Last of the Rookes. She supposed the Almighty had had some wise
purpose in creating Freddie, but it had always been inscrutable to her.

“Like you,” mumbled Freddie, “to meet my friends. Lady Underhill. Mr
Devereux.”

“Charmed,” said Ronny affably.

“Mr Martyn.”

“Delighted,” said Algy with old-world courtesy.

Lady Underhill regarded this mob-scene with an eye of ice.

“How do you do?” she said. “Have you come to meet somebody?”

“I-er-we-er-why-er—” This woman always made Freddie feel as if he were
being disembowelled by some clumsy amateur. He wished that he had
defied the dictates of his better nature and remained in his snug rooms
at the Albany, allowing Derek to go through this business by himself.
“I-er-we-er-came to meet _you_, don’t you know!”

“Indeed! That was very kind of you!”

“Oh, not at all.”

“Thought we’d welcome you back to the old homestead,” said Ronny,
beaming.

“What could be sweeter?” said Algy. He produced a cigar-case, and
extracted a formidable torpedo-shaped Havana. He was feeling
delightfully at his ease, and couldn’t understand why Freddie had made
such a fuss about meeting this nice old lady. “Don’t mind if I smoke,
do you? Air’s a bit raw today. Gets into the lungs.”

Derek chafed impotently. These unsought allies were making a difficult
situation a thousand times worse. A more acute observer than young Mr
Martyn, he noted the tight lines about his mother’s mouth and knew them
for the danger-signal they were. Endeavoring to distract her with light
conversation, he selected a subject which was a little unfortunate.

“What sort of crossing did you have, mother?”

Lady Underhill winced. A current of air had sent the perfume of Algy’s
cigar playing about her nostrils. She closed her eyes, and her face
turned a shade paler. Freddie, observing this, felt quite sorry for the
poor old thing. She was a pest and a pot of poison, of course, but all
the same, he reflected charitably, it was a shame that she should look
so green about the gills. He came to the conclusion that she must be
hungry. The thing to do was to take her mind off it till she could be
conducted to a restaurant and dumped down in front of a bowl of soup.

“Bit choppy, I suppose, what?” he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and
down Lady Underhill’s nervous system like an electric needle. “I was
afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read the
forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a bit, eh?”

Lady Underhill uttered a faint moan. Freddie noticed that she was
looking deucedly chippy, even chippier than a moment ago.

“It’s an extraordinary thing about that Channel crossing,” said Algy
Martyn meditatively, as he puffed a refreshing cloud. “I’ve known
fellows who could travel quite happily everywhere else in the
world—round the Horn in sailing-ships and all that sort of thing—yield
up their immortal soul crossing the Channel! Absolutely yield up their
immortal soul! Don’t know why. Rummy, but there it is!”

“I’m like that myself,” assented Ronny Devereux. “That dashed trip from
Calais gets me every time. Bowls me right over. I go aboard, stoked to
the eyebrows with seasick remedies, swearing that this time I’ll fool
’em, but down I go ten minutes after we’ve started and the next thing I
know is somebody saying, ‘Well, well! So this is Dover!’”

“It’s exactly the same with me,” said Freddie, delighted with the
smooth, easy way the conversation was flowing. “Whether it’s the hot,
greasy smell of the engines …”

“It’s not the engines,” contended Ronny Devereux.

“Stands to reason it can’t be. I rather like the smell of engines. This
station is reeking with the smell of engine-grease, and I can drink it
in and enjoy it.” He sniffed luxuriantly. “It’s something else.”

“Ronny’s right,” said Algy cordially. “It isn’t the engines. It’s the
way the boat heaves up and down and up and down and up and down …” He
shifted his cigar to his left hand in order to give with his right a
spirited illustration of a Channel steamer going up and down and up and
down and up and down. Lady Underhill, who had opened her eyes, had an
excellent view of the performance, and closed her eyes again quickly.

“Be quiet!” she snapped.

“I was only saying …”

“Be quiet!”

“Oh, rather!”

Lady Underhill wrestled with herself. She was a woman of great
will-power and accustomed to triumph over the weaknesses of the flesh.
After awhile her eyes opened. She had forced herself, against the
evidence of her senses, to recognize that this was a platform on which
she stood and not a deck.

There was a pause. Algy, damped, was temporarily out of action, and his
friends had for the moment nothing to remark.

“I’m afraid you had a trying journey, mother,” said Derek. “The train
was very late.”

“Now, _train_-sickness,” said Algy, coming to the surface again, “is a
thing lots of people suffer from. Never could understand it myself.”

“I’ve never had a touch of train-sickness,” said Ronny.

“Oh, I have,” said Freddie. “I’ve often felt rotten on a train. I get
floating spots in front of my eyes and a sort of heaving sensation, and
everything kind of goes black …”

“Mr Rooke!”

“Eh?”

“I should be greatly obliged if you would keep these confidences for
the ear of your medical adviser.”

“Freddie,” intervened Derek hastily, “my mother’s rather tired. Do you
think you could be going ahead and getting a taxi?”

“My dear old chap, of course! Get you one in a second. Come along,
Algy. Pick up the old waukeesis, Ronny.”

And Freddie, accompanied by his henchmen, ambled off, well pleased with
himself. He had, he felt, helped to break the ice for Derek and had
seen him safely through those awkward opening stages. Now he could
totter off with a light heart and get a bite of lunch.

Lady Underhill’s eyes glittered. They were small, keen, black eyes,
unlike Derek’s, which were large and brown. In their other features the
two were obviously mother and son. Each had the same long upper lip,
the same thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family
characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most
of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to
drive their way through life like a wedge.

“A little more,” she said tensely, “and I should have struck those
unspeakable young men with my umbrella. One of the things I have never
been able to understand, Derek, is why you should have selected that
imbecile Rooke as your closest friend.”

Derek smiled tolerantly.

“It was more a case of him selecting _me_. But Freddie is quite a good
fellow really. He’s a man you’ve got to know.”

“_I_ have not got to know him, and I thank heaven for it!”

“He’s a very good-natured fellow. It was decent of him to put me up at
the Albany while our house was let. By the way, he has some seats for
the first night of a new piece this evening. He suggested that we might
all dine at the Albany and go on to the theatre.” He hesitated a
moment. “Jill will be there,” he said, and felt easier now that her
name had at last come into the talk. “She’s longing to meet you.”

“Then why didn’t she meet me?”

“Here, do you mean? At the station? Well, I—I wanted you to see her for
the first time in pleasanter surroundings.”

“Oh!” said Lady Underhill shortly.

It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much by
being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and
impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us. If Jill had been permitted
by her wary fiancé to come with him to the station to meet his mother,
it is certain that much trouble would have been avoided. True, Lady
Underhill would probably have been rude to her in the opening stages of
the interview, but she would not have been alarmed and suspicious; or,
rather, the vague suspicion which she had been feeling would not have
solidified, as it did now, into definite certainty of the worst. All
that Derek had effected by his careful diplomacy had been to convince
his mother that he considered his bride-elect something to be broken
gently to her.

She stopped and faced him.

“Who is she?” she demanded. “Who is this girl?”

Derek flushed.

“I thought I made everything clear in my letter.”

“You made nothing clear at all.”

“By your leave!” chanted a porter behind them, and a baggage-truck
clove them apart.

“We can’t talk in a crowded station,” said Derek irritably. “Let me get
you to the taxi and take you to the hotel. … What do you want to know
about Jill?”

“Everything. Where does she come from? Who are her people? I don’t know
any Mariners.”

“I haven’t cross-examined her,” said Derek stiffly. “But I do know that
her parents are dead. Her father was an American.”

“American!”

“Americans frequently have daughters, I believe.”

“There is nothing to be gained by losing your temper,” said Lady
Underhill with steely calm.

“There is nothing to be gained, as far as I can see, by all this talk,”
retorted Derek. He wondered vexedly why his mother always had this
power of making him lose control of himself. He hated to lose control
of himself. It upset him, and blurred that vision which he liked to
have of himself as a calm, important man superior to ordinary
weaknesses. “Jill and I are engaged, and there is an end of it.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Lady Underhill, and was driven away by another
baggage-truck. “You know perfectly well,” she resumed, returning to the
attack, “that your marriage is a matter of the greatest concern to me
and to the whole of the family.”

“Listen, mother!” Derek’s long wait on the draughty platform had
generated an irritability which overcame the deep-seated awe of his
mother which was the result of years of defeat in battles of the will.
“Let me tell you in a few words all that I know of Jill, and then we’ll
drop the subject. In the first place, she is a lady. Secondly, she has
plenty of money …”

“The Underhills do not need to marry for money.”

“I am not marrying for money!”

“Well, go on.”

“I have already described to you in my letter—very inadequately, but I
did my best—what she looks like. Her sweetness, her loveableness, all
the subtle things about her which go to make her what she is, you will
have to judge for yourself.”

“I intend to!”

“Well, that’s all, then. She lives with her uncle, a Major Selby …”

“Major Selby? What regiment?”

“I didn’t ask him,” snapped the goaded Derek. “And, in the name of
heaven, what does it matter?”

“Not the Guards?”

“I tell you I don’t know.”

“Probably a line regiment,” said Lady Underhill with an indescribable
sniff.

“Possibly. What then?” He paused, to play his trump card. “If you are
worrying about Major Selby’s social standing, I may as well tell you
that he used to know father.”

“What! When? Where?”

“Years ago. In India, when father was at Simla.”

“Selby? Selby? Not Christopher Selby?”

“Oh, you remember him?”

“I certainly remember him! Not that he and I ever met, but your father
often spoke of him.”

Derek was relieved. It was abominable that this sort of thing should
matter, but one had to face facts, and, as far as his mother was
concerned, it did. The fact that Jill’s uncle had known his dead father
would make all the difference to Lady Underhill.

“Christopher Selby!” said Lady Underhill reflectively. “Yes! I have
often heard your father speak of him. He was the man who gave your
father an I.O.U. to pay a card debt, and redeemed it with a check which
was returned by the bank!”

“What!”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I will repeat it, if you wish.”

“There must have been some mistake.”

“Only the one your father made when he trusted the man.”

“It must have been some other fellow.”

“Of course!” said Lady Underhill satirically. “No doubt your father
knew hundreds of Christopher Selbys!”

Derek bit his lip.

“Well, after all,” he said doggedly, “whether it’s true or not …”

“I see no reason why your father should not have spoken the truth.”

“All right. We’ll say it is true, then. But what does it matter? I am
marrying Jill, not her uncle.”

“Nevertheless, it would be pleasanter if her only living relative were
not a swindler!… Tell me, where and how did you meet this girl?”

“I should be glad if you would not refer to her as ‘this girl.’ The
name, if you have forgotten it, is Mariner.”

“Well, where did you meet Miss Mariner?”

“At Prince’s.”

“Restaurant?”

“Skating-rink,” said Derek impatiently. “Just after you left for
Mentone. Freddie Rooke introduced me.”

“Oh, your intellectual friend Mr Rooke knows her?”

“They were children together. Her people lived next to the Rookes in
Worcestershire.”

“I thought you said she was an American.”

“I said her father was. He settled in England. Jill hasn’t been in
America since she was eight or nine.”

“The fact,” said Lady Underhill, “that the girl is a friend of Mr Rooke
is no great recommendation.”

Derek kicked angrily at a box of matches which someone had thrown down
on the platform.

“I wonder if you could possibly get it into your head, mother, that I
want to marry Jill, not engage her as an under-housemaid. I don’t
consider that she requires recommendations, as you call them. However,
don’t you think the most sensible thing is for you to wait till you
meet her at dinner tonight, and then you can form your own opinion? I’m
beginning to get a little bored with this futile discussion.”

“As you seem quite unable to talk on the subject of this girl without
becoming rude,” said Lady Underhill, “I agree with you. Let us hope
that my first impression will be a favorable one. Experience has taught
me that first impressions are everything.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Derek, “for I fell in love with Jill the
very first moment I saw her!”

§ 4.

Parker stepped back, and surveyed with modest pride the dinner-table to
which he had been putting the finishing touches. It was an artistic job
and a credit to him.

“That’s that!” said Parker, satisfied.

He went to the window and looked out. The fog which had lasted well
into the evening, had vanished now, and the clear night was bright with
stars. A distant murmur of traffic came from the direction of
Piccadilly.

As he stood there, the front-door bell rang, and continued to ring in
little spurts of sound. If character can be deduced from bell-ringing,
as nowadays it apparently can be from every other form of human
activity, one might have hazarded the guess that whoever was on the
other side of the door was determined, impetuous, and energetic.

“Parker!”

Freddie Rooke pushed a tousled head, which had yet to be brushed into
the smooth sleekness that made it a delight to the public eye, out of a
room down the passage.

“Sir?”

“Somebody ringing.”

“I heard, sir. I was about to answer the bell.”

“If it’s Lady Underhill, tell her I’ll be in in a minute.”

“I fancy it is Miss Mariner, sir. I think I recognise her touch.”

He made his way down the passage to the front-door, and opened it. A
girl was standing outside. She wore a long gray fur coat, and a filmy
gray hood covered her hair. As Parker opened the door, she scampered in
like a gray kitten.

“Brrh! It’s cold!” she exclaimed. “Hullo, Parker!”

“Good evening, miss.”

“Am I the last or the first or what?”

Parker moved to help her with her cloak.

“Sir Derek and her ladyship have not yet arrived, miss. Sir Derek went
to bring her ladyship from the Savoy Hotel. Mr Rooke is dressing in his
bedroom and will be ready very shortly.”

The girl had slipped out of the fur coat, and Parker cast a swift
glance of approval at her. He had the valet’s unerring eye for a
thoroughbred, and Jill Mariner was manifestly that. It showed in her
walk, in every move of her small, active body, in the way she looked at
you, in the way she talked to you, in the little tilt of her resolute
chin. Her hair was pale gold, and had the brightness of coloring of a
child’s. Her face glowed, and her gray eyes sparkled. She looked very
much alive.

It was this aliveness of hers that was her chief charm. Her eyes were
good and her mouth, with its small, even teeth, attractive, but she
would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes
doubted if she were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained
entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had
laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up again,
had endeavored subsequently to explain her attraction (to a bosom
friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club smoking-room) in
these words: “I don’t know what it is about her, old man, but she
somehow makes a feller feel she’s so damned _interested_ in a chap, if
you know what I mean.” And, though not generally credited in his circle
with any great acuteness, there is no doubt that the speaker had
achieved something approaching a true analysis of Jill’s fascination
for his sex. She was interested in everything Life presented to her
notice, from a Coronation to a stray cat. She was vivid. She had
sympathy. She listened to you as though you really mattered. It takes a
man of tough fibre to resist these qualities. Women, on the other hand,
especially of the Lady Underhill type, can resist them without an
effort.

“Go and stir him up,” said Jill, alluding to the absent Mr Rooke. “Tell
him to come and talk to me. Where’s the nearest fire? I want to get
right over it and huddle.”

“The fire’s burning nicely in the sitting-room, miss.”

Jill hurried into the sitting-room, and increased her hold on Parker’s
esteem by exclaiming rapturously at the sight that greeted her. Parker
had expended time and trouble over the sitting-room. There was no dust,
no untidiness. The pictures all hung straight; the cushions were smooth
and unrumpled; and a fire of exactly the right dimensions burned
cheerfully in the grate, flickering cosily on the small piano by the
couch, on the deep leather arm-chairs which Freddie had brought with
him from Oxford, that home of comfortable chairs, and on the
photographs that studded the walls. In the center of the mantelpiece,
the place of honor, was the photograph of herself which she had given
Derek a week ago.

“You’re simply wonderful, Parker! I don’t see how you manage to make a
room so cosy!” Jill sat down on the club-fender that guarded the
fireplace, and held her hands over the blaze. “I can’t understand why
men ever marry. Fancy having to give up all this!”

“I am gratified that you appreciate it, miss. I did my best to make it
comfortable for you. I fancy I hear Mr Rooke coming now.”

“I hope the others won’t be long. I’m starving. Has Mrs Parker got
something very good for dinner?”

“She has strained every nerve, miss.”

“Then I’m sure it’s worth waiting for. Hullo, Freddie.”

Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his
tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in
the glass in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes they
stay right, sometimes they wiggle up sideways. Life is full of these
anxieties.

“I shouldn’t touch it,” said Jill. “It looks beautiful, and, if I may
say so in confidence, is having a most disturbing effect on my
emotional nature. I’m not at all sure I shall be able to resist it
right through the evening. It isn’t fair of you to try to alienate the
affections of an engaged young person like this.”

Freddie squinted down, and became calmer.

“Hullo, Jill, old thing. Nobody here yet?”

“Well, I’m here,—the petite figure seated on the fender. But perhaps I
don’t count.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, you know.”

“I should hope not, when I’ve bought a special new dress just to
fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one
did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?”

Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded
her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical term
is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other
sex.

“Topping!” he said spaciously. “No other word for it! All wool and a
yard wide! Precisely as mother makes it! You look like a thingummy.”

“How splendid! All my life I’ve wanted to look like a thingummy, but
somehow I’ve never been able to manage it.”

“A wood-nymph!” exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery.

“Wood-nymphs didn’t wear creations.”

“Well, you know what I mean!” He looked at her with honest admiration.
“Dash it, Jill, you know, there’s something about you! You’re—what’s
the word?—you’ve got such small bones!”

“Ugh! I suppose it’s a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It makes
me feel like a skeleton.”

“I mean to say, you’re—you’re dainty!”

“That’s much better.”

“You look as if you weighed about an ounce and a half! You look like a
bit of thistledown! You’re a little fairy princess, dash it!”

“Freddie! This is eloquence!” Jill raised her left hand, and twiddled a
ringed finger ostentatiously. “Er—you _do_ realize that I’m bespoke,
don’t you, and that my heart, alas, is another’s? Because you sound as
if you were going to propose.”

Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-glass.
Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an
earnest, paternal gaze.

“That reminds me,” he said. “I wanted to have, a bit of a talk with you
about that—being engaged and all that sort of thing. I’m glad I got you
alone before the Curse arrived.”

“Curse? Do you mean Derek’s mother? That sounds cheerful and
encouraging.”

“Well, she is, you know,” said Freddie earnestly. “She’s a bird! It
would be idle to deny it. She always puts the fear of God into me. I
never know what to say to her.”

“Why don’t you try asking her riddles?”

“It’s no joking matter,” persisted Freddie, his amiable face overcast.
“Wait till you meet her! You should have seen her at the station this
morning. You don’t know what you’re up against!”

“You make my flesh creep, Freddie. What am I up against?”

Freddie poked the fire scientifically, and assisted it with coal.

“It’s this way,” he said. “Of course, dear old Derek’s the finest chap
in the world.”

“I know that,” said Jill softly. She patted Freddie’s hand with a
little gesture of gratitude. Freddie’s devotion to Derek was a thing
that always touched her. She looked thoughtfully into the fire, and her
eyes seemed to glow in sympathy with the glowing coals. “There’s nobody
like him!”

“But,” continued Freddie, “he always has been frightfully under his
mother’s thumb, you know.”

Jill was conscious of a little flicker of irritation.

“Don’t be absurd, Freddie. How could a man like Derek be under
anybody’s thumb?”

“Well, you know what I mean!”

“I don’t in the least know what you mean.”

“I mean, it would be rather rotten if his mother set him against you.”

Jill clenched her teeth. The quick temper which always lurked so very
little beneath the surface of her cheerfulness was stirred. She felt
suddenly chilled and miserable. She tried to tell herself that Freddie
was just an amiable blunderer who spoke without sense or reason, but it
was no use. She could not rid herself of a feeling of foreboding and
discomfort. It had been the one jarring note in the sweet melody of her
love-story, this apprehension of Derek’s regarding his mother. The
Derek she loved was a strong man, with a strong man’s contempt for
other people’s criticism; and there had been something ignoble and
fussy in his attitude regarding Lady Underhill. She had tried to feel
that the flaw in her idol did not exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a
man who admired Derek with all his hero-worshipping nature, pointing it
out independently. She was annoyed, and she expended her annoyance, as
women will do, upon the innocent bystander.

“Do you remember the time I turned the hose on you, Freddie,” she said,
rising from the fender, “years ago, when we were children, when you and
that awful Mason boy—what was his name? Wally Mason—teased me?” She
looked at the unhappy Freddie with a hostile eye. It was his blundering
words that had spoiled everything. “I’ve forgotten what it was all
about, but I know that you and Wally infuriated me and I turned the
garden hose on you and soaked you both to the skin. Well, all I want to
point out is that, if you go on talking nonsense about Derek and his
mother and me, I shall ask Parker to bring me a jug of water, and I
shall empty it over you! Set him against me! You talk as if love were a
thing any third party could come along and turn off with a tap! Do you
suppose that, when two people love each other as Derek and I do, that
it can possibly matter in the least what anybody else thinks or says,
even if it is his mother? I haven’t got a mother, but suppose Uncle
Chris came and warned me against Derek …”

Her anger suddenly left her as quickly as it had come. That was always
the way with Jill. One moment later she would be raging; the next,
something would tickle her sense of humor and restore her instantly to
cheerfulness. And the thought of dear, lazy old Uncle Chris taking the
trouble to warn anybody against anything except the wrong brand of wine
or an inferior make of cigar conjured up a picture before which wrath
melted away. She chuckled, and Freddie, who had been wilting on the
fender, perked up.

“You’re an extraordinary girl, Jill! One never knows when you’re going
to get the wind up.”

“Isn’t it enough to make me get the wind up, as you call it, when you
say absurd things like that?”

“I meant well, old girl!”

“That’s the trouble with you. You always do mean well. You go about the
world meaning well till people fly to put themselves under police
protection. Besides, what on earth could Lady Underhill find to object
to in me? I’ve plenty of money, and I’m one of the most charming and
attractive of Society belles. You needn’t take my word for that, and I
don’t suppose you’ve noticed it, but that’s what Mr Gossip in the
_Morning Mirror_ called me when he was writing about my getting engaged
to Derek. My maid showed me the clipping. There was quite a long
paragraph, with a picture of me that looked like a Zulu chieftainess
taken in a coal-cellar during a bad fog. Well, after that, what could
anyone say against me? I’m a perfect prize! I expect Lady Underhill
screamed with joy when she heard the news and went singing all over her
Riviera villa.”

“Yes,” said Freddie dubiously. “Yes, yes, oh, quite so, rather!”

Jill looked at him sternly.

“Freddie, you’re concealing something from me! You _don’t_ think I’m a
charming and attractive Society belle! Tell me why not and I’ll show
you where you are wrong. Is it my face you object to, or my manners, or
my figure? There was a young bride of Antigua, who said to her mate,
‘What a pig you are!’ Said he, ‘Oh, my queen, is it manners you mean,
or do you allude to my fig-u-ar?’ Isn’t my figuar all right, Freddie?”

“Oh, _I_ think you’re topping.”

“But for some reason you’re afraid that Derek’s mother won’t think so.
Why won’t Lady Underhill agree with Mr Gossip?”

Freddie hesitated.

“Speak up!”

“Well, it’s like this. Remember I’ve known the old devil …”

“Freddie Rooke! Where do you pick up such expressions? Not from me!”

“Well, that’s how I always think of her! I say I’ve known her ever
since I used to go and stop at their place when I was at school, and I
know exactly the sort of things that put her back up. She’s a
what-d’you-call-it.”

“I see no harm in that. Why shouldn’t the dear old lady be a
what-d’you-call-it? She must do _something_ in her spare time.”

“I mean to say, one of the old school, don’t you know. And you’re so
dashed impulsive, old girl. You know you are! You are always saying
things that come into your head.”

“You can’t say a thing unless it comes into your head.”

“You know what I mean,” Freddie went on earnestly, not to be diverted
from his theme. “You say rummy things and you do rummy things. What I
mean to say is, you’re impulsive.”

“What have I ever done that the sternest critic could call rummy?”

“Well, I’ve seen you with my own eyes stop in the middle of Bond Street
and help a lot of fellows shove along a cart that had got stuck. Mind
you, I’m not blaming you for it …”

“I should hope not. The poor old horse was trying all he knew to get
going, and he couldn’t quite make it. Naturally, I helped.”

“Oh, I know. Very decent and all that, but I doubt if Lady Underhill
would have thought a lot of it. And you’re so dashed chummy with the
lower orders.”

“Don’t be a snob, Freddie.”

“I’m not a snob,” protested Freddie, wounded. “When I’m alone with
Parker—for instance—I’m as chatty as dammit. But I don’t ask waiters in
public restaurants how their lumbago is.”

“Have you ever had lumbago?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a very painful thing, and waiters get it just as badly as
dukes. Worse, I should think, because they’re always bending and
stooping and carrying things. Naturally one feels sorry for them.”

“But how do you ever find out that a waiter has _got_ lumbago?”

“I ask him; of course.”

“Well, for goodness sake,” said Freddie, “if you feel the impulse to do
that sort of thing tonight, try and restrain it. I mean to say, if
you’re curious to know anything about Parker’s chilblains, for
instance, don’t enquire after them while he’s handing Lady Underhill
the potatoes! She wouldn’t like it.”

Jill uttered an exclamation.

“I knew there was something! Being so cold and wanting to rush in and
crouch over a fire put it clean out of my head. He must be thinking me
a perfect beast!” She ran to the door. “Parker! Parker!”

Parker appeared from nowhere.

“Yes, miss?”

“I’m so sorry I forgot to ask before. How are your chilblains?”

“A good deal better, miss, thank you.”

“Did you try the stuff I recommended?”

“Yes, miss. It did them a world of good.”

“Splendid!”

Jill went back into the sitting-room.

“It’s all right,” she said reassuringly. “They’re better.”

She wandered restlessly about the room, looking at the photographs.

“What a lot of girls you seem to know, Freddie. Are these all the ones
you’ve loved and lost?” She sat down at the piano and touched the keys.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half hour. “I wish to goodness
they would arrive,” she said.

“They’ll be here pretty soon, I expect.”

“It’s rather awful,” said Jill, “to think of Lady Underhill racing all
the way from Mentone to Paris and from Paris to Calais and from Calais
to Dover and from Dover to London simply to inspect me. You can’t
wonder I’m nervous, Freddie.”

The eye-glass dropped from Freddie’s eye.

“Are _you_ nervous?” he asked, astonished.

“Of course I’m nervous. Wouldn’t you be in my place?”

“Well, I should never have thought it.”

“Why do you suppose I’ve been talking such a lot? Why do you imagine I
snapped your poor, innocent head off just now? I’m terrified inside,
terrified!”

“You don’t look it, by Jove!”

“No, I’m trying to be a little warrior. That’s what Uncle Chris always
used to call me. It started the day when he took me to have a tooth
out, when I was ten. ‘Be a little warrior, Jill!’ he kept saying—‘Be a
little warrior!’ And I was.” She looked at the clock. “But I shan’t be
if they don’t get here soon. The suspense is awful.” She strummed the
keys. “Suppose she _doesn’t_ like me, Freddie! You see how you’ve
scared me.”

“I didn’t say she wouldn’t. I only said you’d got to watch out a bit.”

“Something tells me she won’t. My nerve is oozing out of me.” Jill
shook her head impatiently. “It’s all so vulgar! I thought this sort of
thing only happened in the comic papers and in music-hall songs. Why,
it’s just like that song somebody used to sing.” She laughed. “Do you
remember? I don’t know how the verse went, but …

John took me round to see his mother,
                    his mother,
                    his mother!
And when he’d introduced us to each other,
    She sized up everything that I had on.
She put me through a cross-examination:
I fairly boiled with aggravation:
    Then she shook her head,
    Looked at me and said:
        ‘Poor John! Poor John!’


“Chorus, Freddie! Let’s cheer ourselves up! We need it!”

‘John took me round to see his mother … !


“His mo-o-o-other!” croaked Freddie. Curiously enough, this ballad was
one of Freddie’s favorites. He had rendered it with a good deal of
success on three separate occasions at village entertainments down in
Worcestershire, and he rather flattered himself that he could get about
as much out of it as the next man. He proceeded to abet Jill heartily
with gruff sounds which he was under the impression constituted what is
known in musical circles as “singing seconds.”

“His mo-o-o-other!” he growled with frightful scorn.

“And when she’d introduced us to each other …”

“O-o-o-other!”

“She sized up everything that I had on!”

“Pom-pom-pom!”

“She put me through a cross-examination …”

Jill had thrown her head back, and was singing jubilantly at the top of
her voice. The appositeness of the song had cheered her up. It seemed
somehow to make her forebodings rather ridiculous, to reduce them to
absurdity, to turn into farce the gathering tragedy which had been
weighing upon her nerves.

“Then she shook her head,
Looked at me and said:
        ‘Poor John!’…”


“Jill,” said a voice at the door. “I want you to meet my mother!”

“Poo-oo-oor John!” bleated the hapless Freddie, unable to check
himself.

“Dinner,” said Parker the valet, appearing at the door and breaking a
silence that seemed to fill the room like a tangible presence, “is
served!”




CHAPTER TWO


§ 1.

The front-door closed softly behind the theatre-party. Dinner was over,
and Parker had just been assisting the expedition out of the place.
Sensitive to atmosphere, he had found his share in the dinner a little
trying. It had been a strained meal, and what he liked was a clatter of
conversation and everybody having a good time and enjoying themselves.

“Ellen!” called Parker, as he proceeded down the passage to the empty
dining-room. “Ellen!”

Mrs Parker appeared out of the kitchen, wiping her hands. Her work for
the evening, like her husband’s, was over. Presently what is
technically called a “useful girl” would come in to wash the dishes,
leaving the evening free for social intercourse. Mrs Parker had done
well by her patrons that night, and now she wanted a quiet chat with
Parker over a glass of Freddie Rooke’s port.

“Have they gone, Horace?” she asked, following him into the
dining-room.

Parker selected a cigar from Freddie’s humidor, crackled it against his
ear, smelt it, clipped off the end, and lit it. He took the decanter
and filled his wife’s glass, then mixed himself a whisky-and-soda.

“Happy days!” said Parker. “Yes, they’ve gone!”

“I didn’t see her ladyship.”

“You didn’t miss much! A nasty, dangerous specimen, _she_ is! ‘Always
merry and bright’, I don’t think. I wish you’d have had my job of
waiting on ’em, Ellen, and me been the one to stay in the kitchen safe
out of it all. That’s all I say! It’s no treat to _me_ to ‘and the
dishes when the atmosphere’s what you might call electric. I didn’t
envy them that vol-au-vent of yours, Ellen, good as it smelt. Better a
dinner of ’erbs where love is than a stalled ox and ’atred therewith,”
said Parker, helping himself to a walnut.

“Did they have words?”

Parker shook his head impatiently.

“That sort don’t have words, Ellen. They just sit and goggle.”

“How did her ladyship seem to hit it off with Miss Mariner, Horace?”

Parker uttered a dry laugh.

“Ever seen a couple of strange dogs watching each other sort of wary?
That was them! Not that Miss Mariner wasn’t all that was pleasant and
nice-spoken. She’s all right, Miss Mariner is. She’s a little queen! It
wasn’t her fault the dinner you’d took so much trouble over was more
like an evening in the Morgue than a Christian dinner-party. She tried
to help things along best she could. But what with Sir Derek chewing
his lip ’alf the time and his mother acting about as matey as a
pennorth of ice-cream, she didn’t have a chance. As for the
guv’nor,—well, I wish you could have seen him, that’s all. You know,
Ellen, sometimes I’m not altogether easy in my mind about the guv’nor’s
mental balance. He knows how to buy cigars, and you tell me his port is
good—I never touch it myself—but sometimes he seems to me to go right
off his onion. Just sat there, he did, all through dinner, looking as
if he expected the good food to rise up and bite him in the face, and
jumping nervous when I spoke to him. It’s not my fault,” said Parker,
aggrieved. “_I_ can’t give gentlemen warning before I ask ’em if
they’ll have sherry or hock. I can’t ring a bell or toot a horn to show
’em I’m coming. It’s my place to bend over and whisper in their ear,
and they’ve no right to leap about in their seats and make me spill
good wine. (You’ll see the spot close by where you’re sitting, Ellen.
Jogged my wrist, he did!) I’d like to know why people in the spear of
life which these people are in can’t behave themselves rational, same
as we do. When we were walking out and I took you to have tea with my
mother, it was one of the pleasantest meals I ever ate. Talk about
’armony! It was a love-feast!”

“Your ma and I took to each other right from the start, Horace,” said
Mrs Parker softly—“That’s the difference.”

“Well, any woman with any sense would take to Miss Mariner. If I told
you how near I came to spilling the sauce-boat accidentally over that
old fossil’s head, you’d be surprised, Ellen. She just sat there
brooding like an old eagle. If you ask my opinion, Miss Mariner’s a
long sight too good for her precious son!”

“Oh, but Horace! Sir Derek’s a baronet!”

“What of it? Kind ’earts are more than coronets and simple faith than
Norman blood, aren’t they?”

“You’re talking Socialism, Horace.”

“No, I’m not. I’m talking sense. I don’t know who Miss Mariner’s
parents may have been—I never enquired—but anyone can see she’s a lady
born and bred. But do you suppose the path of true love is going to run
smooth, for all that? Not it! She’s got a ’ard time ahead of her, that
poor girl.”

“Horace!” Mrs Parker’s gentle heart was wrung. The situation hinted at
by her husband was no new one—indeed, it formed the basis of at least
fifty per cent of the stories in the True Heart Novelette Series, of
which she was a determined reader—but it had never failed to touch her.
“Do you think her ladyship means to come between them and wreck their
romance?”

“I think she means to have a jolly good try.”

“But Sir Derek has his own money, hasn’t he? I mean, it’s not like when
Sir Courtenay Travers fell in love with the milk-maid and was dependent
on his mother, the Countess, for everything. Sir Derek can afford to do
what he pleases, can’t he?”

Parker shook his head tolerantly. The excellence of the cigar and the
soothing qualities of the whisky-and-soda had worked upon him, and he
was feeling less ruffled.

“You don’t understand these things,” he said. “Women like her ladyship
can talk a man into anything and out of anything. I wouldn’t care, only
you can see the poor girl is mad over the feller. What she finds
attractive in him, I can’t say, but that’s her own affair.”

“He’s very handsome, Horace, with those flashing eyes and that stern
mouth,” argued Mrs Parker.

Parker sniffed.

“Have it your own way,” he said. “It’s no treat to _me_ to see his eyes
flash, and if he’d put that stern mouth of his to some better use than
advising the guv’nor to lock up the cigars and trouser the key, I’d be
better pleased. If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” said Parker, “it’s
not to be trusted!” He lifted his cigar and looked at it censoriously.
“I thought so! Burning all down one side. They will do that if you
light ’em careless. Oh, well,” he continued, rising and going to the
humidor, “there’s plenty more where that came from. Out of evil cometh
good,” said Parker philosophically. “If the guv’nor hadn’t been in such
a overwrought state tonight, he’d have remembered not to leave the key
in the key-hole. Help yourself to another glass of port, Ellen, and
let’s enjoy ourselves!”

§ 2.

When one considers how full of his own troubles, how weighed down with
the problems of his own existence the average playgoer generally is
when he enters a theatre, it is remarkable that dramatists ever find it
possible to divert and entertain whole audiences for a space of several
hours. As regards at least three of those who had assembled to witness
its opening performance, the author of “Tried by Fire,” at the
Leicester Theater, undoubtedly had his work cut out for him.

It has perhaps been sufficiently indicated by the remarks of Parker,
the valet, that the little dinner at Freddie Rooke’s had not been an
unqualified success. Searching the records for an adequately gloomy
parallel to the taxi-cab journey to the theatre which followed it, one
can only think of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. And yet even that was
probably not conducted in dead silence. There must have been moments
when Murat got off a good thing or Ney said something worth hearing
about the weather.

The only member of the party who was even remotely happy was, curiously
enough, Freddie Rooke. Originally Freddie had obtained three tickets
for “Tried by Fire.” The unexpected arrival of Lady Underhill had
obliged him to buy a fourth, separated by several rows from the other
three. This, as he had told Derek at breakfast, was the seat he
proposed to occupy himself.

It consoles the philosopher in this hard world to reflect that, even if
man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards, it is still possible
for small things to make him happy. The thought of being several rows
away from Lady Underhill had restored Freddie’s equanimity like a
tonic. It thrilled him like the strains of some grand, sweet anthem all
the way to the theatre. If Freddie Rooke had been asked at that moment
to define happiness in a few words, he would have replied that it
consisted in being several rows away from Lady Underhill.

The theatre was nearly full when Freddie’s party arrived. The Leicester
Theatre had been rented for the season by the newest theatrical knight,
Sir Chester Portwood, who had a large following; and, whatever might be
the fate of the play in the final issue, it would do at least one
night’s business. The stalls were ablaze with jewelry and crackling
with starched shirt-fronts; and expensive scents pervaded the air,
putting up a stiff battle with the plebeian peppermint that emanated
from the pit. The boxes were filled, and up in the gallery grim-faced
patrons of the drama, who had paid their shillings at the door and
intended to get a shilling’s-worth of entertainment in return, sat and
waited stolidly for the curtain to rise.

First nights at the theatre always excited Jill. The depression induced
by absorbing nourishment and endeavouring to make conversation in the
presence of Lady Underhill left her. The worst, she told herself, had
happened. She had met Derek’s mother, and Derek’s mother plainly
disliked her. Well, that, as Parker would have said, was that. Now she
just wanted to enjoy herself. She loved the theatre. The stir, the buzz
of conversation, the warmth and life of it, all touched a chord in her
which made depression impossible.

The lights shot up beyond the curtain. The house-lights dimmed.
Conversation ceased. The curtain rose. Jill wriggled herself
comfortably into her seat, and slipped her hand into Derek’s. She felt
a glow of happiness as it closed over hers. All, she told herself, was
right with the world.

All, that is to say, except the drama which was unfolding on the stage.
It was one of those plays which start wrong and never recover. By the
end of the first ten minutes there had spread through the theatre that
uneasy feeling which comes over the audience at an opening performance
when it realises that it is going to be bored. A sort of lethargy had
gripped the stalls. The dress-circle was coughing. Up in the gallery
there was grim silence.

Sir Chester Portwood was an actor-manager who had made his reputation
in light comedy of the tea-cup school. His numerous admirers attended a
first night at his theatre in a mood of comfortable anticipation,
assured of something pleasant and frothy with a good deal of bright
dialogue and not too much plot. Tonight he seemed to have fallen a
victim to that spirit of ambition which intermittently attacks
actor-managers of his class, expressing itself in an attempt to prove
that, having established themselves securely as light comedians, they
can, like the lady reciter, turn right around and be serious. The one
thing which the London public felt that it was safe from in a Portwood
play was heaviness, and “Tried by Fire” was grievously heavy. It was a
poetic drama, and the audience, though loth to do anybody an injustice,
was beginning to suspect that it was written in blank verse.

The acting did nothing to dispel the growing uneasiness. Sir Chester
himself, apparently oppressed by the weightiness of the occasion and
the responsibility of offering an unfamiliar brand of goods to his
public, had dropped his customary debonair method of delivering lines
and was mouthing his speeches. It was good gargling, but bad elocution.
And, for some reason best known to himself, he had entrusted the role
of the heroine to a doll-like damsel with a lisp, of whom the audience
disapproved sternly from her initial entrance.

It was about half-way through the first act that Jill, whose attention
had begun to wander, heard a soft groan at her side. The seats which
Freddie Rooke had bought were at the extreme end of the seventh row.
There was only one other seat in the row, and, as Derek had placed his
mother on his left and was sitting between her and Jill, the latter had
this seat on her right. It had been empty at the rise of the curtain,
but in the past few minutes a man had slipped silently into it. The
darkness prevented Jill from seeing his face, but it was plain that he
was suffering, and her sympathy went out to him. His opinion of the
play so obviously coincided with her own.

Presently the first act ended, and the lights went up. There was a
spatter of insincere applause from the stalls, echoed in the
dress-circle. It grew fainter in the upper circle, and did not reach
the gallery at all.

“Well?” said Jill to Derek. “What do you think of it?”

“Too awful for words,” said Derek sternly.

He leaned forward to join in the conversation which had started between
Lady Underhill and some friends she had discovered in the seats in
front; and Jill, turning, became aware that the man on her right was
looking at her intently. He was a big man with rough, wiry hair and a
humorous mouth. His age appeared to be somewhere in the middle
twenties. Jill, in the brief moment in which their eyes met, decided
that he was ugly, but with an ugliness that was rather attractive. He
reminded her of one of those large, loose, shaggy dogs that break
things in drawing-rooms but make admirable companions for the open
road. She had a feeling that he would look better in tweeds in a field
than in evening dress in a theatre. He had nice eyes. She could not
distinguish their color, but they were frank and friendly.

All this Jill noted with her customary quickness, and then she looked
away. For an instant she had had an odd feeling that somewhere she had
met this man or somebody very like him before, but the impression
vanished. She also had the impression that he was still looking at her,
but she gazed demurely in front of her and did not attempt to verify
the suspicion.

Between them, as they sat side by side, there inserted itself suddenly
the pinkly remorseful face of Freddie Rooke. Freddie, having skirmished
warily in the aisle until it was clear that Lady Underhill’s attention
was engaged elsewhere, had occupied a seat in the row behind which had
been left vacant temporarily by an owner who liked refreshment between
the acts. Freddie was feeling deeply ashamed of himself. He felt that
he had perpetrated a bloomer of no slight magnitude.

“I’m awfully sorry about this,” he said penitently. “I mean, roping you
in to listen to this frightful tosh! When I think I might have got
seats just as well for any one of half a dozen topping musical
comedies, I feel like kicking myself with some vim. But, honestly, how
was I to know? I never dreamed we were going to be let in for anything
of this sort. Portwood’s plays are usually so dashed bright and snappy
and all that. Can’t think what he was doing, putting on a thing like
this. Why, it’s blue round the edges!”

The man on Jill’s right laughed sharply.

“Perhaps,” he said, “the chump who wrote the piece got away from the
asylum long enough to put up the money to produce it.”

If there is one thing that startles the well-bred Londoner and throws
him off his balance, it is to be addressed unexpectedly by a stranger.
Freddie’s sense of decency was revolted. A voice from the tomb could
hardly have shaken him more. All the traditions to which he had been
brought up had gone to solidify his belief that this was one of things
which didn’t happen. Absolutely it wasn’t done. During an earthquake or
a shipwreck and possibly on the Day of Judgment, yes. But only then. At
other times, unless they wanted a match or the time or something,
chappies did not speak to fellows to whom they had not been introduced.
He was far too amiable to snub the man, but to go on with this
degrading scene was out of the question. There was nothing for it but
flight.

“Oh, ah, yes,” he mumbled. “Well,” he added to Jill, “I suppose I may
as well be toddling back. See you later and so forth.”

And with a faint ‘Good-bye-ee!’ Freddie removed himself, thoroughly
unnerved.

Jill looked out of the corner of her eye at Derek. He was still
occupied with the people in front. She turned to the man on her right.
She was not the slave to etiquette that Freddie was. She was much too
interested in life to refrain from speaking to strangers.

“You shocked him!” she said, dimpling.

“Yes. It broke Freddie all up, didn’t it!”

It was Jill’s turn to be startled. She looked at him in astonishment.

“Freddie?”

“That _was_ Freddie Rooke, wasn’t it? Surely I wasn’t mistaken?”

“But—do you know him? He didn’t seem to know you.”

“These are life’s tragedies. He has forgotten me. My boyhood friend!”

“Oh, you were at school with him?”

“No. Freddie went to Winchester, if I remember. I was at Haileybury.
Our acquaintance was confined to the holidays. My people lived near his
people in Worcestershire.”

“Worcestershire!” Jill leaned forward excitedly. “But _I_ used to live
near Freddie in Worcestershire myself when I was small. I knew him
there when he was a boy. We must have met!”

“We met all right.”

Jill wrinkled her forehead. That odd familiar look was in his eyes
again. But memory failed to respond. She shook her head.

“I don’t remember you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. Perhaps the recollection would have been painful.”

“How do you mean, painful?”

“Well, looking back, I can see that I must have been a very unpleasant
child. I have always thought it greatly to the credit of my parents
that they let me grow up. It would have been so easy to have dropped
something heavy on me out of a window. They must have been tempted a
hundred times, but they refrained. Yes, I was a great pest around the
home. My only redeeming point was the way I worshipped _you_!”

“What!”

“Oh, yes. You probably didn’t notice it at the time, for I had a
curious way of expressing my adoration. But you remain the brightest
memory of a checkered youth.”

Jill searched his face with grave eyes, then shook her head again.
“Nothing stirs?” asked the man sympathetically.

“It’s too maddening! Why does one forget things?” She reflected. “You
aren’t Bobby Morrison?”

“I am not. What is more, I never was!”

Jill dived into the past once more and emerged with another
possibility.

“Or Charlie—Charlie what was it?—Charlie Field?”

“You wound me! Have you forgotten that Charlie Field wore velvet Lord
Fauntleroy suits and long golden curls? My past is not smirched with
anything like that.”

“Would I remember your name if you told me?”

“I don’t know. I’ve forgotten yours. Your surname, that is. Of course I
remember that your Christian name was Jill. It has always seemed to me
the prettiest monosyllable in the language.” He looked at her
thoughtfully. “It’s odd how little you’ve altered in looks. Freddie’s
just the same, too, only larger. And he didn’t wear an eye-glass in
those days, though I can see he was bound to later on. And yet I’ve
changed so much that you can’t place me. It shows what a wearing life I
must have led. I feel like Rip van Winkle. Old and withered. But that
may be just the result of watching this play.”

“It is pretty terrible, isn’t it?”

“Worse than that. Looking at it dispassionately, I find it the extreme,
ragged, outermost edge of the limit. Freddie had the correct
description of it. He’s a great critic.”

“I really do think it’s the worst thing I have ever seen.”

“I don’t know what plays you have seen, but I feel you’re right.”

“Perhaps the second act’s better,” said Jill optimistically.

“It’s worse. I know that sounds like boasting, but it’s true. I feel
like getting up and making a public apology.”

“But … Oh!”

Jill turned scarlet. A monstrous suspicion had swept over her.

“The only trouble is,” went on her companion, “that the audience would
undoubtedly lynch me. And, though it seems improbable just at the
present moment, it may be that life holds some happiness for me that’s
worth waiting for. Anyway I’d rather not be torn limb from limb. A
messy finish! I can just see them rending me asunder in a spasm of
perfectly justifiable fury. ‘She loves me!’ Off comes a leg. ‘She loves
me not!’ Off comes an arm. No, I think on the whole I’ll lie low.
Besides, why should I care? Let ’em suffer. It’s their own fault. They
_would_ come!”

Jill had been trying to interrupt the harangue. She was greatly
concerned.

“Did you _write_ the play?”

The man nodded.

“You are quite right to speak in that horrified tone. But, between
ourselves and on the understanding that you don’t get up and denounce
me, I did.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“Not half so sorry as I am, believe me!”

“I mean, I wouldn’t have said …”

“Never mind. You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know.” The lights
began to go down. He rose. “Well, they’re off again. Perhaps you will
excuse me? I don’t feel quite equal to assisting any longer at the
wake. If you want something to occupy your mind during the next act,
try to remember my name.”

He slid from his seat and disappeared. Jill clutched at Derek.

“Oh, Derek, it’s too awful. I’ve just been talking to the man who wrote
this play, and I told him it was the worst thing I had ever seen!”

“Did you?” Derek snorted. “Well, it’s about time somebody told him!” A
thought seemed to strike him. “Why, who is he? I didn’t know you knew
him.”

“I don’t. I don’t even know his name.”

“His name, according to the programme, is John Grant. Never heard of
him before. Jill, I wish you would not talk to people you don’t know,”
said Derek with a note of annoyance in his voice. “You can never tell
who they are.”

“But …”

“Especially with my mother here. You must be more careful.”

The curtain rose. Jill saw the stage mistily. From childhood up, she
had never been able to cure herself of an unfortunate sensitiveness
when sharply spoken to by those she loved. A rebuking world she could
face with a stout heart, but there had always been just one or two
people whose lightest word of censure could crush her. Her father had
always had that effect upon her, and now Derek had taken his place.

But if there had only been time to explain … Derek could not object to
her chatting with a friend of her childhood, even if she had completely
forgotten him and did not remember his name even now. John Grant?
Memory failed to produce any juvenile John Grant for her inspection.

Puzzling over this problem, Jill missed much of the beginning of the
second act. Hers was a detachment which the rest of the audience would
gladly have shared. For the poetic drama, after a bad start, was now
plunging into worse depths of dulness. The coughing had become almost
continuous. The stalls, supported by the presence of large droves of
Sir Chester’s personal friends, were struggling gallantly to maintain a
semblance of interest, but the pit and gallery had plainly given up
hope. The critic of a weekly paper of small circulation, who had been
shoved up in the upper circle, grimly jotted down the phrase
“apathetically received” on his programme. He had come to the theatre
that night in an aggrieved mood, for managers usually put him in the
dress-circle. He got out his pencil again. Another phrase had occurred
to him, admirable for the opening of his article. “At the Leicester
Theatre,” he wrote, “where Sir Chester Portwood presented ‘Tried by
Fire,’ dulness reigned supreme. …”

But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over. However
uninteresting its early stages may have been, that night was to be as
animated and exciting as any audience could desire,—a night to be
looked back to and talked about. For just as the critic of _London
Gossip_ wrote those damning words on his programme, guiding his pencil
uncertainly in the dark, a curious yet familiar odor stole over the
house.

The stalls got it first, and sniffed. It rose to the dress-circle, and
the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent gallery.
And, suddenly, coming to life with a single-minded abruptness, the
gallery ceased to be silent.

“Fire!”

Sir Chester Portwood, ploughing his way through a long speech, stopped
and looked apprehensively over his shoulder. The girl with the lisp,
who had been listening in a perfunctory manner to the long speech,
screamed loudly. The voice of an unseen stage-hand called thunderously
to an invisible “Bill” to cummere quick. And from the scenery on the
prompt side there curled lazily across the stage a black wisp of smoke.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

“Just,” said a voice at Jill’s elbow, “what the play needed!” The
mysterious author was back in his seat again.




CHAPTER THREE


§ 1.

In these days when the authorities who watch over the welfare of the
community have taken the trouble to reiterate encouragingly in printed
notices that a full house can be emptied in three minutes and that all
an audience has to do in an emergency is to walk, not run, to the
nearest exit, fire in the theatre has lost a good deal of its old-time
terror. Yet it would be paltering with the truth to say that the
audience which had assembled to witness the opening performance of the
new play at the Leicester was entirely at its ease. The asbestos
curtain was already on its way down, which should have been reassuring:
but then asbestos curtains never look the part. To the lay eye they
seem just the sort of thing that will blaze quickest. Moreover, it had
not yet occurred to the man at the switchboard to turn up the
house-lights, and the darkness was disconcerting.

Portions of the house were taking the thing better than other portions.
Up in the gallery a vast activity was going on. The clatter of feet
almost drowned the shouting. A moment before it would have seemed
incredible that anything could have made the occupants of the gallery
animated, but the instinct of self-preservation had put new life into
them.

The stalls had not yet entirely lost their self-control. Alarm was in
the air, but for the moment they hung on the razor-edge between panic
and dignity. Panic urged them to do something sudden and energetic:
dignity counselled them to wait. They, like the occupants of the
gallery, greatly desired to be outside, but it was bad form to rush and
jostle. The men were assisting the women into their cloaks, assuring
them the while that it was “all right” and that they must not be
frightened. But another curl of smoke had crept out just before the
asbestos curtain completed its descent, and their words lacked the ring
of conviction. The movement towards the exits had not yet become a
stampede, but already those with seats nearest the stage had begun to
feel that the more fortunate individuals near the doors were infernally
slow in removing themselves.

Suddenly, as if by mutual inspiration, the composure of the stalls
began to slip. Looking from above, one could have seen a sort of
shudder run through the crowd. It was the effect of every member of
that crowd starting to move a little more quickly.

A hand grasped Jill’s arm. It was a comforting hand, the hand of a man
who had not lost his head. A pleasant voice backed up its message of
reassurance.

“It’s no good getting into that mob. You might get hurt. There’s no
danger: the play isn’t going on.”

Jill was shaken: but she had the fighting spirit and hated to show that
she was shaken. Panic was knocking at the door of her soul, but dignity
refused to be dislodged.

“All the same,” she said, smiling a difficult smile, “it would be nice
to get out, wouldn’t it?”

“I was just going to suggest something of that very sort,” said the man
beside her. “The same thought occurred to me. We can stroll out quite
comfortably by our own private route. Come along.”

Jill looked over her shoulder. Derek and Lady Underhill were merged
into the mass of refugees. She could not see them. For an instant a
little spasm of pique stung her at the thought that Derek had deserted
her. She groped her way after her companion, and presently they came by
way of a lower box to the iron pass-door leading to the stage.

As it opened, smoke blew through, and the smell of burning was
formidable. Jill recoiled involuntarily.

“It’s all right,” said her companion. “It smells worse than it really
is. And, anyway, this is the quickest way out.”

They passed through onto the stage, and found themselves in a world of
noise and confusion compared with which the auditorium which they had
left had been a peaceful place. Smoke was everywhere. A stage-hand,
carrying a bucket, lurched past them, bellowing. From somewhere out of
sight on the other side of the stage there came a sound of chopping.
Jill’s companion moved quickly to the switchboard, groped, found a
handle, and turned it. In the narrow space between the corner of the
proscenium and the edge of the asbestos curtain lights flashed up: and
simultaneously there came a sudden diminution of the noise from the
body of the house. The stalls, snatched from the intimidating spell of
the darkness and able to see each other’s faces, discovered that they
had been behaving indecorously and checked their struggling, a little
ashamed of themselves. The relief would be only momentary, but, while
it lasted, it postponed panic.

“Go straight across the stage,” Jill heard her companion say, “out
along the passage and turn to the right, and you’ll be at the
stage-door. I think, as there seems no one else around to do it, I’d
better go out and say a few soothing words to the customers. Otherwise
they’ll be biting holes in each other.”

He squeezed through the narrow opening in front of the curtain.

“Ladies and gentlemen!”

Jill remained where she was, leaning with one hand against the
switchboard. She made no attempt to follow the directions he had given
her. She was aware of a sense of comradeship, of being with this man in
this adventure. If he stayed, she must stay. To go now through the
safety of the stage-door would be abominable desertion. She listened,
and found that she could hear plainly in spite of the noise. The smoke
was worse than ever, and hurt her eyes, so that the figures of the
theatre-firemen, hurrying to and fro, seemed like Brocken specters. She
slipped a corner of her cloak across her mouth, and was able to breathe
more easily.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you that there is absolutely no danger.
I am a stranger to you, so there is no reason why you should take my
word, but fortunately I can give you solid proof. If there were any
danger, _I_ wouldn’t be here. All that has happened is that the warmth
of your reception of the play has set a piece of scenery alight. …”

A crimson-faced stage-hand, carrying an axe in blackened hands, roared
in Jill’s ear.

“Gerroutofit!”

Jill looked at him, puzzled.

“’Op it!” shouted the stage-hand. He cast his axe down with a clatter.
“Can’t you see the place is afire?”

“But—but I’m waiting for …” Jill pointed to where her ally was still
addressing an audience that seemed reluctant to stop and listen to him.

The stage-hand squinted out round the edge of the curtain.

“If he’s a friend of yours, miss, kindly get ’im to cheese it and get a
move on. We’re clearing out. There’s nothing we can do. It’s got too
much of an ’old. In about another two ticks the roof’s going to drop on
us.”

Jill’s friend came squeezing back through the opening.

“Hullo! Still here?” He blinked approvingly at her through the smoke.
“You’re a little soldier! Well, Augustus, what’s on your mind?” The
simple question seemed to take the stage-hand aback.

“Wot’s on my mind? I’ll tell you wot’s on my blinking mind …”

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. I’ve got it! The place is on fire!”

The stage-hand expectorated disgustedly. Flippancy at such a moment
offended his sensibilities.

“We’re ’opping it,” he said.

“Great minds think alike! _We_ are hopping it, too.”

“You’d better! And damn quick!”

“And, as you suggest, damn quick! You think of everything!”

Jill followed him across the stage. Her heart was beating violently.
There was not only smoke now, but heat. Across the stage little scarlet
flames were shooting, and something large and hard, unseen through the
smoke, fell with a crash. The air was heavy with the smell of burning
paint.

“Where’s Sir Portwood Chester?” enquired her companion of the
stage-hand, who hurried beside them.

“’Opped it!” replied the other briefly, and coughed raspingly as he
swallowed smoke.

“Strange,” said the man in Jill’s ear, as he pulled her along. “This
way. Stick to me. Strange how the drama anticipates life! At the end of
act two there was a scene where Sir Chester had to creep sombrely out
into the night, and now he’s gone and done it! Ah!”

They had stumbled through a doorway and were out in a narrow passage,
where the air, though tainted, was comparatively fresh. Jill drew a
deep breath. Her companion turned to the stage-hand and felt in his
pocket.

“Here, Rollo!” A coin changed hands. “Go and get a drink. You need it
after all this.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it. You’ve saved our lives. Suppose you hadn’t come up
and told us, and we had never noticed there was a fire! Charred bones,
believed to be those of a man and a woman, were found in the ruined
edifice!”

He turned to Jill. “Here’s the stage-door. Shall we creep sombrely out
into the night?”

The guardian of the stage-door was standing in the entrance of his
little hutch, plainly perplexed. He was a slow thinker and a man whose
life was ruled by routine: and the events of the evening had left him
uncertain how to act.

“Wot’s all this about a fire?” he demanded.

Jill’s friend stopped.

“A fire?” He looked at Jill. “Did _you_ hear anything about a fire?”

“They all come bustin’ past ’ere yelling there’s a fire,” persisted the
door-man.

“By George! Now I come to think of it, you’re perfectly right! There
_is_ a fire! If you wait here a little longer, you’ll get it in the
small of the back. Take the advice of an old friend who means you well
and vanish. In the inspired words of the lad we’ve just parted from,
’op it!”

The stage-door man turned this over in his mind for a space.

“But I’m supposed to stay ’ere till eleven-thirty and lock up!” he
said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. Stay ’ere till eleven-thirty and
lock up! And it ain’t but ten-forty-five now.”

“I see the difficulty,” said Jill’s companion thoughtfully. “It’s what
you might call an _impasse_. French! Well, Casabianca, I’m afraid I
don’t see how to help you. It’s a matter for your own conscience. I
don’t want to lure you from the burning deck: on the other hand, if you
stick on here, you’ll most certainly be fried on both sides … But, tell
me. You spoke about locking up something at eleven-thirty. What are you
supposed to lock up?”

“Why, the theatre.”

“Then that’s all right. By eleven-thirty there won’t _be_ a theatre. If
I were you, I should leave quietly and unostentatiously now. Tomorrow,
if you wish it, and if they’ve cooled off sufficiently, you can come
and sit on the ruins. Good night!”

§ 2.

Outside, the air was cold and crisp. Jill drew her warm cloak closer.
Round the corner there was noise and shouting. Fire-engines had
arrived. Jill’s companion lit a cigarette.

“Do you wish to stop and see the conflagration?” he asked.

Jill shivered. She was more shaken than she had realized.

“I’ve seen all the conflagration I want.”

“Same here. Well, it’s been an exciting evening. Started slow, I admit,
but warmed up later! What I seem to need at the moment is a restorative
stroll along the Embankment. Do you know, Sir Portwood Chester didn’t
like the title of my play. He said ‘Tried by Fire’ was too
melodramatic. Well, he can’t say now it wasn’t appropriate.”

They made their way towards the river, avoiding the street which was
blocked by the crowds and the fire-engines. As they crossed the Strand,
the man looked back. A red glow was in the sky.

“A great blaze!” he said. “What you might call—in fact what the papers
_will_ call—a holocaust. Quite a treat for the populace.”

“Do you think they will be able to put it out?”

“Not a chance. It’s got too much of a hold. It’s a pity you hadn’t that
garden-hose of yours with you, isn’t it!”

Jill stopped, wide-eyed.

“Garden-hose?”

“Don’t you remember the garden-hose? I do! I can feel that clammy
feeling of the water trickling down my back now!”

Memory, always a laggard by the wayside that redeems itself by an
eleventh-hour rush, raced back to Jill. The Embankment turned to a
sunlit garden, and the January night to a July day. She stared at him.
He was looking at her with a whimsical smile. It was a smile which,
pleasant today, had seemed mocking and hostile on that afternoon years
ago. She had always felt then that he was laughing at her, and at the
age of twelve she had resented laughter at her expense.

“You surely can’t be Wally Mason!”

“I was wondering when you would remember.”

“But the programme called you something else,—John something.”

“That was a cunning disguise. Wally Mason is the only genuine and
official name. And, by Jove! I’ve just remembered yours. It was
Mariner. By the way,”—he paused for an almost imperceptible instant—“is
it still?”




CHAPTER FOUR


§ 1.

Jill was hardly aware that he had asked her a question. She was
suffering that momentary sense of unreality which comes to us when the
years roll away and we are thrown abruptly back into the days of our
childhood. The logical side of her mind was quite aware that there was
nothing remarkable in the fact that Wally Mason, who had been to her
all these years a boy in an Eton suit, should now present himself as a
grown man. But for all that the transformation had something of the
effect of a conjuring-trick. It was not only the alteration in his
appearance that startled her: it was the amazing change in his
personality. Wally Mason had been the _bete noire_ of her childhood.
She had never failed to look back at the episode of the garden-hose
with the feeling that she had acted well, that—however she might have
strayed in those early days from the straight and narrow path—in that
one particular crisis she had done the right thing. And now she had
taken an instant liking for him. Easily as she made friends, she had
seldom before felt so immediately drawn to a strange man. Gone was the
ancient hostility, and in its place a soothing sense of comradeship.
The direct effect of this was to make Jill feel suddenly old. It was as
if some link that joined her to her childhood had been snapped.

She glanced down the Embankment. Close by, to the left, Waterloo Bridge
loomed up, dark and massive against the steel-gray sky, A tram-car,
full of home-bound travellers, clattered past over rails that shone
with the peculiarly frostbitten gleam that seems to herald snow. Across
the river, everything was dark and mysterious, except for an occasional
lamp-post and the dim illumination of the wharves. It was a depressing
prospect, and the thought crossed her mind that to the derelicts whose
nightly resting-place was a seat on the Embankment the view must seem
even bleaker than it did to herself. She gave a little shiver. Somehow
this sudden severance from the old days had brought with it a
forlornness. She seemed to be standing alone in a changed world.

“Cold?” said Wally Mason.

“A little.”

“Let’s walk.”

They moved westwards. Cleopatra’s Needle shot up beside them, a
pointing finger. Down on the silent river below, coffin-like row-boats
lay moored to the wall. Through a break in the trees the clock over the
Houses of Parliament shone for an instant as if suspended in the sky,
then vanished as the trees closed in. A distant barge in the direction
of Battersea wailed and was still. It had a mournful and foreboding
sound. Jill shivered again. It annoyed her that she could not shake off
this quite uncalled-for melancholy, but it withstood every effort. Why
she should have felt that a chapter, a pleasant chapter, in the book of
her life had been closed, she could not have said, but the feeling
lingered.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” said Wally Mason, breaking a silence that
had lasted several minutes, “but you seem to me to be freezing in your
tracks. Ever since I came to London I’ve had a habit of heading for the
Embankment in times of mental stress, but perhaps the middle of winter
is not quite the moment for communing with the night. The Savoy is
handy, if we stop walking away from it. I think we might celebrate this
reunion with a little supper, don’t you?”

Jill’s depression disappeared magically. Her mercurial temperament
asserted itself.

“Lights!” she said. “Music!”

“And food! To an ethereal person like you that remark may seem gross,
but I had no dinner.”

“You poor dear! Why not?”

“Just nervousness.”

“Why, of course.” The interlude of the fire had caused her to forget
his private and personal connection with the night’s events. Her mind
went back to something he had said in the theatre. “Wally—” She
stopped, a little embarrassed. “I suppose I ought to call you Mr Mason,
but I’ve always thought of you …”

“Wally, if you please, Jill. It’s not as though we were strangers. I
haven’t my book of etiquette with me, but I fancy that about eleven
gallons of cold water down the neck constitutes an introduction. What
were you going to say?”

“It was what you said to Freddie about putting up money. Did you
really?”

“Put up the money for that ghastly play? I did. Every cent. It was the
only way to get it put on.”

“But why … ? I forget what I was going to say!”

“Why did I want it put on? Well, it does seem odd, but I give you my
honest word that until tonight I thought the darned thing a
masterpiece. I’ve been writing musical comedies for the last few years,
and after you’ve done that for a while your soul rises up within you
and says, ‘Come, come, my lad! You can do better than this!’ That’s
what mine said, and I believed it. Subsequent events have proved that
Sidney the Soul was pulling my leg!”

“But—then you’ve lost a great deal of money?”

“The hoarded wealth, if you don’t mind my being melodramatic for a
moment, of a lifetime. And no honest old servitor who dangled me on his
knee as a baby to come along and offer me his savings! They don’t make
servitors like that in America, worse luck. There is a Swedish lady who
looks after my simple needs back there, but instinct tells me that, if
I were to approach her on the subject of loosening up for the benefit
of the young master, she would call a cop. Still, I’ve gained
experience, which they say is just as good as cash, and I’ve enough
money left to pay the check, at any rate, so come along.”


In the supper-room of the Savoy Hotel there was, as anticipated, food
and light and music. It was still early, and the theatres had not yet
emptied themselves, so that the big room was as yet but half full.
Wally Mason had found a table in the corner, and proceeded to order
with the concentration of a hungry man.

“Forgive my dwelling so tensely on the bill-of-fare,” he said, when the
waiter had gone. “You don’t know what it means to one in my condition
to have to choose between poulet en casserole and kidneys a la maitre
d’hotel. A man’s cross-roads!”

Jill smiled happily across the table at him. She could hardly believe
that this old friend with whom she had gone through the perils of the
night and with whom she was now about to feast was the sinister figure
that had cast a shadow on her childhood. He looked positively incapable
of pulling a little girl’s hair—as no doubt he was.

“You always were greedy,” she commented. “Just before I turned the hose
on you, I remember you had made yourself thoroughly disliked by
pocketing a piece of my birthday-cake.”

“Do you remember that?” His eyes lit up and he smiled back at her. He
had an ingratiating smile. His mouth was rather wide, and it seemed to
stretch right across his face. He reminded Jill more than ever of a
big, friendly dog. “I can feel it now,—all squashy in my pocket,
inextricably mingled with a catapult, a couple of marbles, a box of
matches, and some string. I was quite the human general store in those
days. Which reminds me that we have been some time settling down to an
exchange of our childhood reminiscences, haven’t we?”

“I’ve been trying to realise that you are Wally Mason. You have altered
so.”

“For the better?”

“Very much for the better! You were a horrid little brute. You used to
terrify me. I never knew when you were going to bound out at me from
behind a tree or something. I remember your chasing me for miles,
shrieking at the top of your voice!”

“Sheer embarrassment! I told you just now how I used to worship you. If
I shrieked a little, it was merely because I was shy. I did it to hide
my devotion.”

“You certainly succeeded. I never even suspected it.”

Wally sighed.

“How like life! I never told my love, but let concealment like a worm
i’ the bud …”

“Talking of worms, you once put one down my back!”

“No, no,” said Wally in a shocked voice. “Not that! I was boisterous,
perhaps, but surely always the gentleman.”

“You did! In the shrubbery. There had been a thunderstorm and …”

“I remember the incident now. A mere misunderstanding. I had done with
the worm, and thought you might be glad to have it.”

“You were always doing things like that. Once you held me over the pond
and threatened to drop me into the water—in the winter! Just before
Christmas. It was a particularly mean thing to do, because I couldn’t
even kick your shins for fear you would let me fall. Luckily Uncle
Chris came up and made you stop.”

“You considered that a fortunate occurrence, did you?” said Wally.
“Well, perhaps from your point of view it may have been. I saw the
thing from a different angle. Your uncle had a whangee with him, and
the episode remains photographically lined on the tablets of my mind
when a yesterday has faded from its page. My friends sometimes wonder
what I mean when I say that my old wound troubles me in frosty weather.
By the way, how is your uncle?”

“Oh, he’s very well. Just as lazy as ever. He’s away at present, down
at Brighton.”

“He didn’t strike me as lazy,” said Wally thoughtfully. “Dynamic would
express it better. But perhaps I happened to encounter him in a moment
of energy.”

“He doesn’t look a day older than he did then.”

“I’m afraid I don’t recall his appearance very distinctly. On the only
occasion on which we ever really foregathered—hobnobbed, so to speak—he
was behind me most of the time. Ah!” The waiter had returned with a
loaded tray. “The food! Forgive me if I seem a little distrait for a
moment or two. There is man’s work before me!”

“And later on, I suppose, you would like a chop or something to take
away in your pocket?”

“I will think it over. Possibly a little soup. My needs are very simple
these days.”

Jill watched him with a growing sense of satisfaction. There was
something boyishly engaging about this man. She felt at home with him.
He affected her in much the same way as did Freddie Rooke. He was a
definite addition to the things that went to make her happy.

She liked him particularly for being such a good loser. She had always
been a good loser herself, and the quality was one which she admired.
It was nice of him to dismiss from his conversation—and apparently from
his thoughts—that night’s fiasco and all that it must have cost him.
She wondered how much he had lost. Certainly something very
substantial. Yet it seemed to trouble him not at all. Jill considered
his behavior gallant, and her heart warmed to him. This was how a man
ought to take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Wally sighed contentedly, and leaned back in his chair.

“An unpleasant exhibition!” he said apologetically. “But unavoidable.
And, anyway, I take it that you would prefer to have me well-fed and
happy about the place than swooning on the floor with starvation. A
wonderful thing, food! I am now ready to converse intelligently on any
subject you care to suggest. I have eaten rose-leaves and am no more a
golden ass, so to speak! What shall we talk about?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

Wally beamed.

“There is no nobler topic! But what aspect of myself do you wish me to
touch on? My thoughts, my tastes, my amusements, my career, or what? I
can talk about myself for hours. My friends in New York often complain
about it bitterly.”

“New York?” said Jill. “Oh then you live in America?”

“Yes. I only came over here to see that darned false alarm of a play of
mine put on.”

“Why didn’t you put it on in New York?”

“Too many of the lads of the village know me over there. This was a new
departure, you see. What the critics in those parts expect from me is
something entitled ‘Wow! Wow!’ or ‘The Girl from Yonkers’. It would
have unsettled their minds to find me breaking out in poetic drama.
They are men of coarse fibre and ribald mind and they would have been
very funny about it. I thought it wiser to come over here among
strangers, little thinking that I should sit in the next seat to
somebody I had known all my life.”

“But when did you go to America? And why?”

“I think it must have been four—five—well, quite a number of years
after the hose episode. Probably you didn’t observe that I wasn’t still
around, but we crept silently out of the neighborhood round about that
time and went to live in London.” His tone lost its lightness
momentarily. “My father died, you know, and that sort of broke things
up. He didn’t leave any too much money, either. Apparently we had been
living on rather too expansive a scale during the time I knew you. At
any rate, I was more or less up against it until your father got me a
job in an office in New York.”

“My father!”

“Yes. It was wonderfully good of him to bother about me. I didn’t
suppose he would have known me by sight, and even if he had remembered
me, I shouldn’t have imagined that the memory would have been a
pleasant one. But he couldn’t have taken more trouble if I had been a
blood-relation.”

“That was just like father,” said Jill softly.

“He was a prince.”

“But you aren’t in the office now?”

“No. I found I had a knack of writing verses and things, and I wrote a
few vaudeville songs. Then I came across a man named Bevan at a
music-publisher’s. He was just starting to write music, and we got
together and turned out some vaudeville sketches, and then a manager
sent for us to fix up a show that was dying on the road and we had the
good luck to turn it into a success, and after that it was pretty good
going. Managers are just like sheep. They know nothing whatever about
the show business themselves, and they come flocking after anybody who
looks as if he could turn out the right stuff. They never think any one
any good except the fellow who had the last hit. So, while your luck
lasts, you have to keep them off with a stick. Then you have a couple
of failures, and they skip off after somebody else, till you have
another success, and then they all come skipping back again, bleating
plaintively. George Bevan got married the other day—you probably read
about it—he married Lord Marshmoreton’s daughter. Lucky devil!”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“You were faithful to my memory?” said Jill with a smile.

“I was.”

“It can’t last,” said Jill, shaking her head. “One of these days you’ll
meet some lovely American girl and then you’ll put a worm down her back
or pull her hair or whatever it is you do when you want to show your
devotion, and … What are you looking at? Is something interesting going
on behind me?”

He had been looking past her out into the room.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Only there’s a statuesque old lady about two
tables back of you who has been staring at you, with intervals for
refreshment, for the last five minutes. You seem to fascinate her.”

“An old lady?”

“Yes. With a glare! She looks like Dunsany’s Bird of the Difficult Eye.
Count ten and turn carelessly round. There, at that table. Almost
behind you.”

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Jill.

She turned quickly round again.

“What’s the matter? Do you know her? Somebody you don’t want to meet?”

“It’s Lady Underhill! And Derek’s with her!”

Wally had been lifting his glass. He put it down rather suddenly.

“Derek?” he said.

“Derek Underhill. The man I’m engaged to marry.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Oh!” said Wally thoughtfully. “The man you’re engaged to marry? Yes, I
see!”

He raised his glass again, and drank its contents quickly.

§ 2.

Jill looked at her companion anxiously. Recent events had caused her
completely to forget the existence of Lady Underhill. She was always so
intensely interested in what she happened to be doing at the moment
that she often suffered these temporary lapses of memory. It occurred
to her now,—too late, as usual,—that the Savoy Hotel was the last place
in London where she should have come to supper with Wally. It was the
hotel where Lady Underhill was staying. She frowned. Life had suddenly
ceased to be careless and happy, and had become a problem-ridden thing,
full of perplexity and misunderstandings.

“What shall I do?”

Wally Mason started at the sound of her voice. He appeared to be deep
in thoughts of his own.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What shall I do?”

“I shouldn’t be worried.”

“Derek will be awfully cross.”

Wally’s good-humored mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.

“Why?” he said. “There’s nothing wrong in your having supper with an
old friend.”

“N-no,” said Jill doubtfully. “But …”

“Derek Underhill,” said Wally reflectively. “Is that Sir Derek
Underhill, whose name one’s always seeing in the papers?”

“Derek is in the papers a lot. He’s an M.P. and all sorts of things.”

“Good-looking fellow. Ah, here’s the coffee.”

“I don’t want any, thanks.”

“Nonsense. Why spoil your meal because of this? Do you smoke?”

“No, thanks.”

“Given it up, eh? Daresay you’re wise. Stunts the growth and increases
the expenses.”

“Given it up?”

“Don’t you remember sharing one of your father’s cigars with me behind
the haystack in the meadow? We cut it in half. I finished my half, but
I fancy about three puffs were enough for you. Those were happy days!”

“That one wasn’t! Of course I remember it now. I don’t suppose I shall
ever forget it.”

“The thing was my fault, as usual. I recollect I dared you.”

“Yes. I always took a dare.”

“Do you still?”

“What do you mean?”

Wally knocked the ash off his cigarette.

“Well,” he said slowly, “suppose I were to dare you to get up and walk
over to that table and look your fiancé in the eye and say, ‘Stop
scowling at my back hair! I’ve a perfect right to be supping with an
old friend!’—would you do it?”

“Is he?” said Jill, startled.

“Scowling? Can’t you feel it on the back of your head?” He drew
thoughtfully at his cigarette. “If I were you I should stop that sort
of thing at the source. It’s a habit that can’t be discouraged in a
husband too early. Scowling is the civilized man’s substitute for
wife-beating.”

Jill moved uncomfortably in her chair. Her quick temper resented his
tone. There was a hostility, a hardly veiled contempt in his voice
which stung her. Derek was sacred. Whoever criticized him, presumed.
Wally, a few minutes before a friend and an agreeable companion, seemed
to her to have changed. He was once more the boy whom she had disliked
in the old days. There was a gleam in her eyes which should have warned
him, but he went on.

“I should imagine that this Derek of yours is not one of our leading
sunbeams. Well, I suppose he could hardly be, if that’s his mother and
there is anything in heredity.”

“Please don’t criticize Derek,” said Jill coldly.

“I was only saying …”

“Never mind. I don’t like it.”

A slow flush crept over Wally’s face. He made no reply, and there fell
between them a silence that was like a shadow. Jill sipped her coffee
miserably. She was regretting that little spurt of temper. She wished
she could have recalled the words. Not that it was the actual words
that had torn asunder this gossamer thing, the friendship which they
had begun to weave like some fragile web: it was her manner, the manner
of the princess rebuking an underling. She knew that, if she had struck
him, she could not have offended Wally more deeply. There are some men
whose ebullient natures enable them to rise unscathed from the worst
snub. Wally, her intuition told her, was not that kind of man.

There was only one way of mending the matter. In these clashes of human
temperaments, these sudden storms that spring up out of a clear sky, it
is possible sometimes to repair the damage, if the psychological moment
is resolutely seized, by talking rapidly and with detachment on neutral
topics. Words have made the rift, and words alone can bridge it. But
neither Jill nor her companion could find words, and the silence
lengthened grimly. When Wally spoke, it was in the level tones of a
polite stranger.

“Your friends have gone.”

His voice was the voice in which, when she went on railway journeys,
fellow-travellers in the carriage enquired of Jill if she would prefer
the window up or down. It had the effect of killing her regrets and
feeding her resentment. She was a girl who never refused a challenge,
and she set herself to be as frigidly polite and aloof as he.

“Really?” she said. “When did they leave?”

“A moment ago.” The lights gave the warning flicker that announces the
arrival of the hour of closing. In the momentary darkness they both
rose. Wally scrawled his name across the check which the waiter had
insinuated upon his attention. “I suppose we had better be moving?”

They crossed the room in silence. Everybody was moving in the same
direction. The broad stairway leading to the lobby was crowded with
chattering supper-parties. The lights had gone up again.

At the cloak-room Wally stopped.

“I see Underhill waiting up there,” he said casually, “To take you
home, I suppose. Shall we say good-night? I’m staying in the hotel.”

Jill glanced towards the head of the stairs. Derek was there. He was
alone. Lady Underhill presumably had gone up to her room in the
elevator.

Wally was holding out his hand. His face was stolid, and his eyes
avoided hers.

“Good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said Jill.

She felt curiously embarrassed. At this last moment hostility had
weakened, and she was conscious of a desire to make amends. She and
this man had been through much together that night, much that was
perilous and much that was pleasant. A sudden feeling of remorse came
over her.

“You’ll come and see us, won’t you?” she said a little wistfully. “I’m
sure my uncle would like to meet you again.”

“It’s very good of you,” said Wally, “but I’m afraid I shall be going
back to America at any moment now.”

Pique, that ally of the devil, regained its slipping grip upon Jill.

“Oh? I’m sorry,” she said indifferently. “Well, goodbye, then.”

“Good-bye.”

“I hope you have a pleasant voyage.”

“Thanks.”

He turned into the cloak-room, and Jill went up the stairs to join
Derek. She felt angry and depressed, full of a sense of the futility of
things. People flashed into one’s life and out again. Where was the
sense of it?

§ 3.

Derek had been scowling, and Derek still scowled. His eyebrows were
formidable, and his mouth smiled no welcome at Jill as she approached
him. The evening, portions of which Jill had found so enjoyable, had
contained no pleasant portions for Derek. Looking back over a lifetime
whose events had been almost uniformly agreeable, he told himself that
he could not recall another day which had gone so completely awry. It
had started with the fog. He hated fog. Then had come that meeting with
his mother at Charing Cross, which had been enough to upset him by
itself. After that, rising to a crescendo of unpleasantness, the day
had provided that appalling situation at the Albany, the recollection
of which still made him tingle; and there had followed the silent
dinner, the boredom of the early part of the play, the fire at the
theatre, the undignified scramble for the exits, and now this discovery
of the girl whom he was engaged to marry supping at the Savoy with a
fellow he didn’t remember ever having seen in his life. All these
things combined to induce in Derek a mood bordering on ferocity. His
birth and income, combining to make him one of the spoiled children of
the world, had fitted him ill for such a series of catastrophes.

Breeding counts. Had he belonged to a lower order of society, Derek
would probably have seized Jill by the throat and started to choke her.
Being what he was, he merely received her with frozen silence and led
her out to the waiting taxi-cab. It was only when the cab had started
on its journey that he found relief in speech.

“Well,” he said, mastering with difficulty an inclination to raise his
voice to a shout, “perhaps you will kindly explain?”

Jill had sunk back against the cushions of the cab. The touch of his
body against hers always gave her a thrill, half pleasurable, half
frightening. She had never met anybody who affected her in this way as
Derek did. She moved a little closer, and felt for his hand. But, as
she touched it, it retreated—coldly. Her heart sank. It was like being
cut in public by somebody very dignified.

“Derek, darling!” Her lips trembled. Others had seen this side of Derek
Underhill frequently, for he was a man who believed in keeping the
world in its place, but she never. To her he had always been the
perfect gracious knight. A little too perfect, perhaps, a trifle too
gracious, possibly, but she had been too deeply in love to notice that.
“Don’t be cross!”

The English language is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in
moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The
adjective “cross” as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed
his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as though
Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been asked if he
were piqued.

“Cross!”

The cab rolled on. Lights from lamp-posts flashed in at the windows. It
was a pale, anxious little face that they lit up when they shone upon
Jill.

“I can’t understand you,” said Derek at last. Jill noticed that he had
not yet addressed her by her name. He was speaking straight out in
front of him as if he were soliloquizing. “I simply cannot understand
you. After what happened before dinner tonight, for you to cap
everything by going off alone to supper at a restaurant, where half the
people in the room must have known you, with a man …”

“You don’t understand!”

“Exactly! I said I did not understand.” The feeling of having scored a
point made Derek feel a little better. “I admit it. Your behavior is
incomprehensible. Where did you meet this fellow?”

“I met him at the theatre. He was the author of the play.”

“The man you told me you had been talking to? The fellow who scraped
acquaintance with you between the acts?”

“But I found out he was an old friend. I mean, I knew him when I was a
child.”

“You didn’t tell me that,”

“I only found it out later.”

“After he had invited you to supper! It’s maddening!” cried Derek, the
sense of his wrongs surging back over him. “What do you suppose my
mother thought? She asked me who the man with you was. I had to say I
didn’t know! What do you suppose she thought?”

It is to be doubted whether anything else in the world could have
restored the fighting spirit to Jill’s cowering soul at that moment:
but the reference to Lady Underhill achieved this miracle. That deep
mutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sight
had sprung up between the two at the instant of their meeting. The
circumstances of that meeting had caused it to take root and grow. To
Jill Derek’s mother was by this time not so much a fellow human being
whom she disliked as a something, a sort of force, that made for her
unhappiness. She was a menace and a loathing.

“If your mother had asked me that question,” she retorted with spirit
“I should have told her that he was the man who got me safely out of
the theatre after you …” She checked herself. She did not want to say
the unforgiveable thing. “You see,” she said, more quietly, “you had
disappeared. …”

“My mother is an old woman,” said Derek stiffly. “Naturally I had to
look after her. I called to you to follow.”

“Oh, I understand. I’m simply trying to explain what happened. I was
there all alone, and Wally Mason …”

“Wally!” Derek uttered a short laugh, almost a bark. “It got to
Christian names, eh?”

Jill set her teeth.

“I told you I knew him as a child. I always called him Wally then.”

“I beg your pardon. I had forgotten.”

“He got me out through the pass-door onto the stage and through the
stage-door.”

Derek was feeling cheated. He had the uncomfortable sensation that
comes to men who grandly contemplate mountains and … see them dwindle
to mole-hills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in
explanation nothing so out-of-the-way after all. He seized upon the
single point in Jill’s behavior that still constituted a grievance.

“There was no need for you to go to supper with the man!” Jove-like
wrath had ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous grumble.
“You should have gone straight home. You must have known how anxious I
would be about you.”

“Well, really, Derek, dear! You didn’t seem so very anxious! You were
having supper yourself quite cosily.”

The human mind is curiously constituted. It is worthy of record that,
despite his mother’s obvious disapproval of his engagement, despite all
the occurrences of this dreadful day, it was not till she made this
remark that Derek Underhill first admitted to himself that, intoxicate
his senses as she might, there was a possibility that Jill Mariner was
not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and went more quickly than
breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been. There are men who
fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword. Derek was one of
these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity is their most
precious possession, he winced from an edged tongue.

“My mother was greatly upset,” he replied coldly. “I thought a cup of
soup would do her good. And, as for being anxious about you, I
telephoned to your home to ask if you had come in.”

“And when,” thought Jill, “they told you I hadn’t, you went off to
supper!”

She did not speak the words. If she had an edged tongue, she had also
the control of it. She had no wish to wound Derek. Whole-hearted in
everything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might be
specks upon her idol—that its feet might be clay she could never
believe—but they mattered nothing. She loved him.

“I’m so sorry, dear,” she said. “So awfully sorry! I’ve been a bad
girl, haven’t I?”

She felt for his hand again, and this time he allowed it to remain
stiffly in her grasp. It was like being grudgingly recognized by
somebody very dignified who had his doubts about you but reserved
judgment.

The cab drew up at the door of the house in Ovington Square which
Jill’s Uncle Christopher had settled upon as a suitable address for a
gentleman of his standing. (“In a sense, my dear child I admit, it is
Brompton Road, but it opens into Lennox Gardens, which makes it to all
intents and purposes Sloane Street”) Jill put up her face to be kissed,
like a penitent child.

“I’ll never be naughty again!”

For a flickering instant Derek hesitated. The drive, long as it was,
had been too short wholly to restore his equanimity. Then the sense of
her nearness, her sweetness, the faint perfume of her hair, and her
eyes, shining softly in the darkness so close to his own, overcame him.
He crushed her to him.

Jill disappeared into the house with a happy laugh. It had been a
terrible day, but it had ended well.

“The Albany,” said Derek to the cabman.

He leaned back against the cushions. His senses were in a whirl. The
cab rolled on. Presently his exalted mood vanished as quickly as it had
come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jill present. He
was not a man of strong imagination, and the stimulus of her waned when
she was not with him. Long before the cab reached the Albany the frown
was back on his face.

§ 4.

Arriving at the Albany, he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in a
deep arm-chair. His slippered feet were on the mantelpiece, and he was
restoring his wasted tissues with a strong whisky-and-soda. One of the
cigars which Parker, the valet, had stamped with the seal of his
approval was in the corner of his mouth. _The Sporting Times_, with a
perusal of which he had been soothing his fluttered nerves, had fallen
on the floor beside the chair. He had finished reading, and was now
gazing peacefully at the ceiling, his mind a perfect blank. There was
nothing the matter with Freddie.

“Hullo, old thing,” he observed as Derek entered. “So you buzzed out of
the fiery furnace all right? I was wondering how you had got along. How
are you feeling? I’m not the man I was! These things get the old system
all stirred up! I’ll do anything in reason to oblige and help things
along and all that, but to be called on at a moment’s notice to play
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rolled into one, without rehearsal or
make-up, is a bit too thick! No, young feller-me-lad! If theatre-fires
are going to be the fashion this season, the Last of the Rookes will
sit quietly at home and play solitaire. Mix yourself a drink of
something, old man, or something of that kind. By the way, your jolly
old mater. All right? Not even singed? Fine! Make a long arm and gather
in a cigar.”

And Freddie, having exerted himself to play the host in a suitable
manner, wedged himself more firmly into his chair and blew a cloud of
smoke.

Derek sat down. He lit a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. From
the mantelpiece Jill’s photograph smiled down, but he did not look at
it. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie had had
a trying evening. What he wanted just now was merry prattle, and his
friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removed his
feet from the mantelpiece, and wriggled himself sideways, so that he
could see Derek’s face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from his
admiration for Derek, he was a warm-hearted young man, and sympathized
with affliction when it presented itself to his notice.

“Something on your mind, old bean?” he enquired delicately.

Derek did not answer for a moment. Then he reflected that, little as he
esteemed the other’s mentality, he and Freddie had known each other a
long time, and that it would be a relief to confide in some one. And
Freddie, moreover, was an old friend of Jill and the man who had
introduced him to her.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m listening, old top,” said Freddie. “Release the film.”

Derek drew at his cigar, and watched the smoke as it curled to the
ceiling.

“It’s about Jill.”

Freddie signified his interest by wriggling still further sideways.

“Jill, eh?”

“Freddie, she’s so damned impulsive!”

Freddie nearly rolled out of his chair. This, he took it, was what
writing-chappies called a coincidence.

“Rummy you should say that,” he ejaculated. “I was telling her exactly
the same thing myself only this evening.” He hesitated. “I fancy I can
see what you’re driving at, old thing. The watchword is ‘What ho, the
mater!’ yes, no? You’ve begun to get a sort of idea that if Jill
doesn’t watch her step, she’s apt to sink pretty low in the betting,
what? I know exactly what you mean! You and I know all right that
Jill’s a topper. But one can see that to your mater she might seem a
bit different. I mean to say, your jolly old mater only judging by
first impressions, and the meeting not having come off quite as
scheduled … I say, old man,” he broke off, “fearfully sorry and all
that about that business. You know what I mean! Wouldn’t have had it
happen for the world. I take it the mater was a trifle peeved? Not to
say perturbed and chagrined? I seemed to notice at dinner.”

“She was furious, of course. She did not refer to the matter when we
were alone together, but there was no need to. I knew what she was
thinking.”

Derek threw away his cigar. Freddie noted this evidence of an
overwrought soul—the thing was only a quarter smoked, and it was a
dashed good brand, mark you—with concern.

“The whole thing,” he conceded, “was a bit unfortunate.”

Derek began to pace the room.

“Freddie!”

“On the spot, old man!”

“Something’s got to be done!”

“Absolutely!” Freddie nodded solemnly. He had taken this matter greatly
to heart. Derek was his best friend, and he had always been extremely
fond of him. It hurt him to see things going wrong. “I’ll tell you
what, old bean. Let me handle this binge for you.”

“You?”

“Me! The Final Rooke!” He jumped up, and leaned against the
mantelpiece. “I’m the lad to do it. I’ve known Jill for years. She’ll
listen to me. I’ll talk to her like a Dutch uncle and make her
understand the general scheme of things. I’ll take her out to tea
tomorrow and slang her in no uncertain voice! Leave the whole thing to
me, laddie!”

Derek considered.

“It might do some good,” he said.

“Good?” said Freddie. “It’s _it_, dear boy! It’s a wheeze! You toddle
off to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll fix the whole thing for you!”




CHAPTER FIVE


§ 1.

There are streets in London into which the sun seems never to
penetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to be
supposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well on
note-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it.
The majority, however, are in the mean neighborhoods of the great
railway termini, and appear to offer no compensation whatever. They are
lean, furtive streets, gray as the January sky with a sort of arrested
decay. They smell of cabbage and are much prowled over by vagrom cats.
At night they are empty and dark, and a stillness broods on them,
broken only by the cracked tingle of an occasional piano playing one of
the easier hymns, a form of music to which the dwellers in the dingy
houses are greatly addicted. By day they achieve a certain animation
through the intermittent appearance of women in aprons, who shake rugs
out of the front doors or, emerging from areas, go down to the
public-house on the corner with jugs to fetch the supper-beer. In
almost every ground-floor window there is a card announcing that
furnished lodgings may be had within. You will find these streets by
the score if you leave the main thoroughfares and take a short cut on
your way to Euston, to Paddington, or to Waterloo. But the dingiest and
deadliest and most depressing lie round about Victoria. And Daubeny
Street, Pimlico, is one of the worst of them all.

On the afternoon following the events recorded, a girl was dressing in
the ground-floor room of Number Nine, Daubeny Street. A tray bearing
the remains of a late breakfast stood on the rickety table beside a
bowl of wax flowers. From beneath the table peered the green cover of a
copy of _Variety_. A gray parrot in a cage by the window cracked seed
and looked out into the room with a satirical eye. He had seen all this
so many times before,—Nelly Bryant arraying herself in her smartest
clothes to go out and besiege agents in their offices off the Strand.
It happened every day. In an hour or two she would come back as usual,
say “Oh, Gee!” in a tired sort of voice, and then Bill the parrot’s day
proper would begin. He was a bird who liked the sound of his own voice,
and he never got the chance of a really sustained conversation till
Nelly returned in the evening.

“Who cares?” said Bill, and cracked another seed.

If rooms are an indication of the characters of their occupants, Nelly
Bryant came well out of the test of her surroundings. Nothing can make
a London furnished room much less horrible than it intends to be, but
Nelly had done her best. The furniture, what there was of it, was of
that lodging-house kind which resembles nothing else in the world. But
a few little touches here and there, a few instinctively tasteful
alterations in the general scheme of things, had given the room almost
a cosy air. Later on, with the gas lit, it would achieve something
approaching homeiness. Nelly, like many another nomad, had taught
herself to accomplish a good deal with poor material. On the road in
America, she had sometimes made even a bedroom in a small hotel
tolerably comfortable, than which there is no greater achievement.
Oddly, considering her life, she had a genius for domesticity.

Today, not for the first time, Nelly was feeling unhappy. The face that
looked back at her out of the mirror at which she was arranging her
most becoming hat was weary. It was only a moderately pretty face, but
loneliness and underfeeding had given it a wistful expression that had
charm. Unfortunately, it was not the sort of charm which made a great
appeal to the stout, whisky-nourished men who sat behind paper-littered
tables, smoking cigars, in the rooms marked “Private” in the offices of
theatrical agents. Nelly had been out of a “shop” now for many
weeks,—ever since, in fact, “Follow the Girl” had finished its long ran
at the Regal Theatre.

“Follow the Girl,” an American musical comedy, had come over from New
York with an American company, of which Nelly had been a humble unit,
and, after playing a year in London and some weeks in the number one
towns, had returned to New York. It did not cheer Nelly up in the long
evenings in Daubeny Street to reflect that, if she had wished, she
could have gone home with the rest of the company. A mad impulse had
seized her to try her luck in London, and here she was now, marooned.

“Who cares?” said Bill.

For a bird who enjoyed talking he was a little limited in his remarks
and apt to repeat himself.

“I do, you poor fish!” said Nelly, completing her maneuvers with the
hat and turning to the cage. “It’s all right for you—you have a swell
time with nothing to do but sit there and eat seed—but how do you
suppose I enjoy tramping around, looking for work and never finding
any?”

She picked up her gloves. “Oh, well!” she said. “Wish me luck!”

“Good-bye, boy!” said the parrot, clinging to the bars.

Nelly thrust a finger into the cage and scratched his head.

“Anxious to get rid of me, aren’t you? Well, so long.”

“Good-bye, boy!”

“All right, I’m going. Be good!”

“Woof-woof-woof!” barked Bill the parrot, not committing himself to any
promises.

For some moments after Nelly had gone he remained hunched on his perch,
contemplating the infinite. Then he sauntered along to the seed-box and
took some more light nourishment. He always liked to spread his meals
out, to make them last longer. A drink of water to wash the food down,
and he returned to the middle of the cage, where he proceeded to
conduct a few intimate researches with his beak under his left wing.
After which he mewed like a cat, and relapsed into silent meditation
once more. He closed his eyes and pondered on his favorite problem—Why
was he a parrot? This was always good for an hour or so, and it was
three o’clock before he had come to his customary decision that he
didn’t know. Then, exhausted by brain-work and feeling a trifle hipped
by the silence of the room, he looked about him for some way of jazzing
existence up a little. It occurred to him that if he barked again it
might help.

“Woof-woof-woof!”

Good as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. It was not real
excitement. Something rather more dashing seemed to him to be
indicated. He hammered for a moment or two on the floor of his cage,
ate a mouthful of the newspaper there, and stood with his head on one
side, chewing thoughtfully. It didn’t taste as good as usual. He
suspected Nelly of having changed his _Daily Mail_ for the _Daily
Express_ or something. He swallowed the piece of paper, and was struck
by the thought that a little climbing exercise might be what his soul
demanded. (You hang on by your beak and claws and work your way up to
the roof. It sounds tame, but it’s something to do.) He tried it. And,
as he gripped the door of the cage, it swung open. Bill the parrot now
perceived that this was going to be one of those days. He had not had a
bit of luck like this for months.

For awhile he sat regarding the open door. Unless excited by outside
influences, he never did anything in a hurry. Then proceeding
cautiously, he passed out into the room. He had been out there before,
but always chaperoned by Nelly. This was something quite different. It
was an adventure. He hopped onto the window-sill. There was a ball of
yellow wool there, but he had lunched and could eat nothing. He cast
around in his mind for something to occupy him, and perceived suddenly
that the world was larger than he had supposed. Apparently there was a
lot of it outside the room. How long this had been going on, he did not
know, but obviously it was a thing to be investigated. The window was
open at the bottom, and just outside the window were what he took to be
the bars of another and larger cage. As a matter of fact they were the
railings which afforded a modest protection to Number Nine. They ran
the length of the house, and were much used by small boys as a means of
rattling sticks. One of these stick-rattlers passed as Bill stood there
looking down. The noise startled him for a moment, then he seemed to
come to the conclusion that this sort of thing was to be expected if
you went out into the great world and that a parrot who intended to see
life must not allow himself to be deterred by trifles. He crooned a
little, and finally, stepping in a stately way over the window-sill,
with his toes turned in at right angles, caught at the top of the
railing with his beak, and proceeded to lower himself. Arrived at the
level of the street, he stood looking out.

A dog trotted up, spied him, and came to sniff.

“Good-bye, boy!” said Bill chattily.

The dog was taken aback. Hitherto, in his limited experience, birds had
been birds and men men. Here was a blend of the two. What was to be
done about it? He barked tentatively, then, finding that nothing
disastrous ensued, pushed his nose between two of the bars and barked
again. Any one who knew Bill could have told him that he was asking for
it, and he got it. Bill leaned forward and nipped his nose. The dog
started back with a howl of agony. He was learning something new every
minute.

“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill sardonically.

He perceived trousered legs, four of them, and, cocking his eye
upwards, saw that two men of the lower orders stood before him. They
were gazing down at him in the stolid manner peculiar to the
proletariat of London in the presence of the unusual. For some minutes
they stood drinking him in, then one of them gave judgment.

“It’s a parrot!” He removed a pipe from his mouth and pointed with the
stem. “A perishin’ parrot, that is, Erb.”

“Ah!” said Erb, a man of few words.

“A parrot,” proceeded the other. He was seeing clearer into the matter
every moment. “That’s a parrot, that is, Erb. My brother Joe’s wife’s
sister ’ad one of ’em. Come from abroad, _they_ do. My brother Joe’s
wife’s sister ’ad one of ’em. Red-’aired gel she was. Married a feller
down at the Docks. _She_ ’ad one of ’em. Parrots they’re called.”

He bent down for a closer inspection, and inserted a finger through the
railings. Erb abandoned his customary taciturnity and spoke words of
warning.

“Tike care ’e don’t sting yer, ’Enry!”

Henry seemed wounded.

“Woddyer mean sting me? I know all abart parrots, I do. My brother
Joe’s wife’s sister ’ad one of ’em. They don’t ’urt yer, not if you’re
kind to ’em. You know yer pals when you see ’em, don’t yer, mate?” he
went on, addressing Bill, who was contemplating the finger with one
half-closed eye.

“Good-bye, boy,” said the parrot, evading the point.

“Jear that?” cried Henry delightedly. “Goo’-bye, boy!’ ’Uman they are!”

“’E’ll ’ave a piece out of yer finger,” warned Erb, the suspicious.

“Wot, ’im!” Henry’s voice was indignant. He seemed to think that his
reputation as an expert on parrots had been challenged. “’E wouldn’t
’ave no piece out of my finger.”

“Bet yer a narf-pint ’e would ’ave a piece out of yer finger,”
persisted the skeptic.

“No blinkin’ parrot’s goin’ to ’ave no piece of no finger of mine! My
brother Joe’s wife’s sister’s parrot never ’ad no piece out of no
finger of mine!” He extended the finger further and waggled it
enticingly beneath Bill’s beak. “Cheerio, matey!” he said winningly.
“Polly want a nut?”

Whether it was mere indolence or whether the advertised docility of
that other parrot belonging to Henry’s brother’s wife’s sister had
caused him to realize that there was a certain standard of good conduct
for his species one cannot say: but for awhile Bill merely contemplated
temptation with a detached eye.

“See!” said Henry.

“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill.

“_Wow-Wow-Wow!_” yapped the dog, suddenly returning to the scene and
going on with the argument at the point where he had left off.

The effect on Bill was catastrophic. Ever a high-strung bird, he lost
completely the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere and the
better order of parrot. His nerves were shocked, and, as always under
such conditions, his impulse was to bite blindly. He bit, and Henry—one
feels sorry for Henry: he was a well-meaning man—leaped back with a
loud howl.

“That’ll be ’arf a pint,” said Erb, always the business man.

There was a lull in the rapid action. The dog, mumbling softly to
himself, had moved away again and was watching affairs from the edge of
the sidewalk. Erb, having won his point, was silent once more. Henry
sucked his finger. Bill, having met the world squarely and shown it
what was what, stood where he was, whistling nonchalantly.

Henry removed his finger from his mouth. “Lend me the loan of that
stick of yours, Erb,” he said tensely.

Erb silently yielded up the stout stick which was his inseparable
companion. Henry, a vastly different man from the genial saunterer of a
moment ago, poked wildly through the railings. Bill, panic-stricken now
and wishing for nothing better than to be back in his cosy cage,
shrieked loudly for help. And Freddie Rooke, running the corner with
Jill, stopped dead and turned pale.

“Good God!” said Freddie.

§ 2.

In pursuance of his overnight promise to Derek, Freddie Rooke had got
in touch with Jill through the medium of the telephone immediately
after breakfast, and had arranged to call at Ovington Square in the
afternoon. Arrived there, he found Jill with a telegram in her hand.
Her Uncle Christopher, who had been enjoying a breath of sea-air down
at Brighton, was returning by an afternoon train, and Jill had
suggested that Freddie should accompany her to Victoria, pick up Uncle
Chris, and escort him home. Freddie, whose idea had been a
_tête-à-tête_ involving a brotherly lecture on impetuosity, had
demurred but had given way in the end; and they had set out to walk to
Victoria together. Their way had lain through Daubeny Street, and they
turned the corner just as the brutal onslaught on the innocent Henry
had occurred. Bill’s shrieks, which were of an appalling timbre,
brought them to a halt.

“What is it?” cried Jill.

“It sounds like a murder!”

“Nonsense!”

“I don’t know, you know this is the sort of street chappies are
murdering people in all the time.”

They caught sight of the group in front of them, and were reassured.
Nobody could possibly be looking so aloof and distrait as Erb, if there
were a murder going on.

“It’s a bird!”

“It’s a jolly old parrot. See it? Just inside the railings.”

A red-hot wave of rage swept over Jill. Whatever her defects,—and
already this story has shown her far from perfect,—she had the
excellent quality of loving animals and blazing into fury when she saw
them ill-treated. At least three draymen were going about London with
burning ears as the result of what she had said to them on discovering
them abusing their patient horses. Zoologically, Bill the parrot was
not an animal, but he counted as one with Jill, and she sped down
Daubeny Street to his rescue,—Freddie, spatted and hatted and trousered
as became the man of fashion, following disconsolately, ruefully aware
that he did not look his best sprinting like that. But Jill was cutting
out a warm pace, and he held his hat on with one neatly-gloved hand and
did what he could to keep up.

Jill reached the scene of battle, and, stopping, eyed Henry with a
baleful glare. We, who have seen Henry in his calmer moments and know
him for the good fellow he was, are aware that he was more sinned
against than sinning. If there is any spirit of justice in us, we are
pro-Henry. In his encounter with Bill the parrot, Henry undoubtedly had
right on his side. His friendly overtures, made in the best spirit of
kindliness, had been repulsed. He had been severely bitten. And he had
lost half a pint of beer to Erb. As impartial judges we have no other
course before us than to wish Henry luck and bid him go to it. But
Jill, who had not seen the opening stages of the affair, thought far
otherwise. She merely saw in Henry a great brute of a man poking at a
defenceless bird with a stick.

She turned to Freddie, who had come up at a gallop and was wondering
why the deuce this sort of thing happened to him out of a city of six
millions.

“Make him stop, Freddie!”

“Oh, I say you know, what!”

“Can’t you see he’s hurting the poor thing? Make him leave off! Brute!”
she added to Henry (for whom one’s heart bleeds), as he jabbed once
again at his adversary.

Freddie stepped reluctantly up to Henry, and tapped him on the
shoulder. Freddie was one of those men who have a rooted idea that a
conversation of this sort can only be begun by a tap on the shoulder.

“Look here, you know, you can’t do this sort of thing, you know!” said
Freddie.

Henry raised a scarlet face.

“’Oo are _you?_” he demanded.

This attack from the rear, coming on top of his other troubles, tried
his restraint sorely.

“Well—” Freddie hesitated. It seemed silly to offer the fellow one of
his cards. “Well, as a matter of fact, my name’s Rooke …”

“And who,” pursued Henry, “arsked _you_ to come shoving your ugly mug
in ’ere?”

“Well, if you put it that way …”

“’E comes messing abart,” said Henry complainingly, addressing the
universe, “and interfering in what don’t concern ’im and mucking around
and interfering and messing abart. … Why,” he broke off in a sudden
burst of eloquence, “I could eat two of you for a relish wiv me tea,
even if you ’_ave_ got white spats!”

Here Erb, who had contributed nothing to the conversation, remarked
“Ah!” and expectorated on the sidewalk. The point, one gathers, seemed
to Erb well taken. A neat thrust, was Erb’s verdict.

“Just because you’ve got white spats,” proceeded Henry, on whose
sensitive mind these adjuncts of the costume of the well-dressed man
about town seemed to have made a deep and unfavorable impression, “you
think you can come mucking around and messing abart and interfering and
mucking around. This bird’s bit me in the finger, and ’ere’s the
finger, if you don’t believe me—and I’m going to twist ’is ruddy neck,
if all the perishers with white spats in London come messing abart and
mucking around, so you take them white spats of yours ’ome and give ’em
to the old woman to cook for your Sunday dinner!”

And Henry, having cleansed his stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
which weighs upon the heart, shoved the stick energetically once more
through the railings.

Jill darted forward. Always a girl who believed that, if you want a
thing well done, you must do it yourself, she had applied to Freddie
for assistance merely as a matter of form. All the time she had felt
that Freddie was a broken reed, and such he had proved himself.
Freddie’s policy in this affair was obviously to rely on the magic of
speech, and any magic his speech might have had was manifestly offset
by the fact that he was wearing white spats and that Henry, apparently,
belonged to some sort of league or society which had for its main
object the discouragement of white spats. It was plainly no good
leaving the conduct of the campaign to Freddie. Whatever was to be done
must be done by herself. She seized the stick and wrenched it out of
Henry’s hand.

“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill the parrot.

No dispassionate auditor could have failed to detect the nasty ring of
sarcasm. It stung Henry. He was not normally a man who believed in
violence to the gentler sex outside a clump on the head of his missus
when the occasion seemed to demand it: but now he threw away the
guiding principles of a lifetime and turned on Jill like a tiger.

“Gimme that stick!”

“Get back!”

“Here, I say, you know!” said Freddie.

Henry, now thoroughly overwrought, made a rush at Jill: and Jill, who
had a straight eye, hit him accurately on the side of the head.

“Goo!” said Henry, and sat down.

And then, from behind Jill, a voice spoke.

“What’s all this?”

A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty space.

“This won’t do!” said the policeman.

Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech.
“She ’it ’im!”

The policeman looked at Jill. He was an officer of many years’
experience in the Force, and time had dulled in him that respect for
good clothes which he had brought with him from
Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days of his novitiate. Jill was
well-dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffrage disturbances,
the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even bitten by ladies of
an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure
and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven
Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the
peace. His gaze, as it fell upon Jill, red-handed as it were with the
stick still in her grasp, was stern.

“Your name, please, and address, miss?” he said.

A girl in blue with a big hat had come up, and was standing staring
open-mouthed at the group. At the sight of her Bill the parrot uttered
a shriek of welcome. Nelly Bryant had returned, and everything would
now be all right again.

“Mariner,” said Jill, pale and bright-eyed. “I live at Number
Twenty-two, Ovington Square.”

“And yours, sir?”

“Mine? Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Rooke, you know. F. L. Rooke.
I live at the Albany and all that sort of thing.”

The policeman made an entry in his note-book. “Officer,” cried Jill,
“this man was trying to kill that parrot and I stopped him. …”

“Can’t help that, miss. You ’adn’t no right to hit a man with a stick.
You’ll ’ave to come along.”

“But, I say, you know!” Freddie was appalled. This sort of thing had
happened to him before, but only on Boat-Race Night at the Empire,
where it was expected of a chappie. “I mean to say!”

“And you too, sir. You’re both in it.”

“But …”

“Oh, come along, Freddie,” said Jill quietly. “It’s perfectly absurd,
but it’s no use making a fuss.”

“That,” said the policeman cordially, “is the right spirit!”.

§ 3.

Lady Underhill paused for breath. She had been talking long and
vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke’s apartment at
the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been
expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All
through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that
Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to
her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to
her future daughter-in-law. But today she had spoken her mind with all
the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself with a
flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been growing within
her since that first meeting in this same room. She had talked rapidly,
for she was talking against time. The Town Council of the principal
city in Derek’s constituency in the north of England had decided that
tomorrow morning should witness the laying of the foundation stone of
their new Town Hall, and Derek as the sitting member was to preside at
the celebration. Already Parker had been dispatched to telephone for a
cab to take him to the station, and at any moment their conversation
might be interrupted. So Lady Underhill made the most of what little
time she had.

Derek had listened gloomily, scarcely rousing himself to reply. His
mother would have been gratified, could she have known how powerfully
her arguments were working on him. That little imp of doubt which had
vexed him in the cab as he drove home from Ovington Square had not died
in the night. It had grown and waxed more formidable. And, now, aided
by this ally from without, it had become a colossus, straddling his
soul. Derek looked frequently at the clock, and cursed the unknown
cabman whose delay was prolonging the scene. Something told him that
only flight could serve him now. He never had been able to withstand
his mother in one of her militant moods. She seemed to numb his
faculties. Other members of his family had also noted this quality in
Lady Underhill, and had commented on it bitterly in the smoking-rooms
of distant country-houses at the hour when men meet to drink the final
whisky-and-soda and unburden their souls.

Lady Underhill, having said all she had to say, recovered her breath
and began to say it again. Frequent iteration was one of her strongest
weapons. As her brother Edwin, who was fond of homely imagery, had
often observed, she could talk the hind-leg off a donkey.

“You must be mad, Derek, to dream of handicapping yourself at this
vital stage of your career with a wife who not only will not be a help
to you, but must actually be a ruinous handicap. I am not blaming you
for imagining yourself in love in the first place, though I really
should have thought that a man of your strength and character would …
However, as I say, I am not blaming you for that. Superficially, no
doubt, this girl might be called attractive. I do not admire the type
myself, but I suppose she has that quality—in my time we should have
called it boldness—which seems to appeal to the young men of today. I
could imagine her fascinating a weak-minded imbecile like your friend
Mr Rooke. But that you … Still, there is no need to go into that. What
I am trying to point out is that in your position, with a career like
yours in front of you,—it’s quite certain that in a year or two you
will be offered some really big and responsible position—you would be
insane to tie yourself to a girl who seems to have been allowed to run
perfectly wild, whose uncle is a swindler …”

“She can’t be blamed for her uncle.”

“… Who sups alone with strange men in public restaurants. …”

“I explained that.”

“You may have explained it. You certainly did not excuse it or make it
a whit less outrageous. You cannot pretend that you really imagine that
an engaged girl is behaving with perfect correctness when she allows a
man she has only just met to take her to supper at the Savoy, even if
she did know him slightly years and years ago. It is very idyllic to
suppose that a childhood acquaintance excuses every breach of decorum,
but I was brought up to believe otherwise. I don’t wish to be vulgar,
but what it amounts to is that this girl was having supper—supper! In
my days girls were in bed at supper-time!—with a strange man who picked
her up at a theatre!”

Derek shifted uneasily. There was a part of his mind which called upon
him to rise up and challenge the outrageous phrase and demand that it
be taken back. But he remained silent. The imp-colossus was too strong
for him. She is quite right, said the imp. That is an unpleasant but
accurate description of what happened. He looked at the clock again,
and wished for the hundredth time that the cab would come. Jill’s
photograph smiled at him from beside the clock. He looked away, for,
when he found his eyes upon it, he had an odd sensation of baseness, as
if he were playing some one false who loved and trusted him.

“If you were an ordinary man like hundreds of the idle young men one
meets in London, I would have nothing to say. I dislike the girl
intensely, but I would not interfere in what would be your own private
business. No doubt there are plenty of sets in society where it matters
very little what sort of a woman a man marries. But if you have a
career, especially in politics, you know as well as I do that a
suitable wife means everything. You are a public figure even now. In a
few years you will be a very big public figure. That means that your
wife will have every eye upon her. And what will she be? A minx!” said
Lady Underhill viciously.

Once more Derek stirred uneasily, and once more he remained silent. A
gleam came into Lady Underhill’s black eyes. All her life she had been
a fighter, and experience had taught her to perceive when she was
winning. She blessed the dilatory cabman.

“Well, I am not going to say any more,” she said, getting up and
buttoning her glove. “I will leave you to think it over. All I will say
is that, though I only met her yesterday, I can assure you that I am
quite confident that this girl is just the sort of harum-scarum,
so-called ‘modern’ girl who is sure some day to involve herself in a
really serious scandal. I don’t want her to be in a position to drag
you into it as well. Yes, Parker, what is it? Is Sir Derek’s cab here?”

The lantern-jawed Parker had entered softly, and was standing
deferentially in the doorway. There was no emotion on his face beyond
the vague sadness which a sense of what was correct made him always
wear like a sort of mask when in the presence of those of superior
station.

“The cab will be at the door very shortly, m’lady. If you please, Sir
Derek, a policeman has come with a message.”

“A policeman?”

“With a message from Mr Rooke.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have had a few words of conversation with the constable, sir,” said
Parker sadly, “and I understand from him that Mr Rooke and Miss Mariner
have been arrested.”

“Arrested! What are you talking about?”

“Mr Rooke desired the officer to ask you to be good enough to step
round and bail them out!”

The gleam in Lady Underhill’s eye became a flame, but she controlled
her voice.

“Why were Miss Mariner and Mr Rooke arrested, Parker?”

“As far as I can gather, m’lady, Miss Mariner struck a man in the
street with a stick, and they took both her and Rooke to the Chelsea
Police Station.”

Lady Underhill glanced at Derek, who was looking into the fire.

“This is a little awkward, Derek,” she said suavely. “If you go to the
police-station, you will miss your train.”

“I fancy, m’lady, it would be sufficient if Sir Derek were to dispatch
me with a check for ten pounds.”

“Very well. Tell the policeman to wait a moment.”

“Very good, m’lady.”

Derek roused himself with an effort. His face was drawn and gloomy. He
sat down at the writing-table, and took out his check-book. There was
silence for a moment, broken only by the scratching of the pen. Parker
took the check and left the room.

“Now, perhaps,” said Lady Underhill, “you will admit that I was right!”
She spoke in almost an awed voice, for this occurrence at just this
moment seemed to her very like a direct answer to prayer. “You can’t
hesitate now! You must free yourself from this detestable
entanglement!”

Derek rose without speaking. He took his coat and hat from where they
lay on a chair.

“Derek! You will! Say you will!”

Derek put on his coat.

“Derek!”

“For heaven’s sake, leave me alone, mother. I want to think.”

“Very well. I will leave you to think it over, then.” Lady Underhill
moved to the door. At the door she paused for a moment, and seemed
about to speak again, but her mouth closed resolutely. She was a shrewd
woman, and knew that the art of life is to know when to stop talking.
What words have accomplished, too many words can undo.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, mother.”

“I’ll see you when you get back?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m not certain when I shall return. I may go
away for a bit.”

The door closed behind Lady Underhill. Derek sat down again at the
writing-table. He wrote a few words on a sheet of paper, then tore it
up. His eye travelled to the mantelpiece. Jill’s photograph smiled
happily down at him. He turned back to the writing-table, took out a
fresh piece of paper, thought for a few moments, and began to write
again.

The door opened softly.

“The cab is at the door, Sir Derek,” said Parker.

Derek addressed an envelope, and got up.

“All right. Thanks. Oh, Parker, stop at a district-messenger office on
your way to the police-station, and have this sent off at once.”

“Very good, Sir Derek,” said Parker.

Derek’s eyes turned once more to the mantelpiece. He stood looking for
an instant, then walked quickly out of the room.




CHAPTER SIX


§ 1.

A taxi-cab stopped at the door of number twenty-two Ovington Square.
Freddie Rooke emerged, followed by Jill. While Freddie paid the driver,
Jill sniffed the afternoon air happily. It had turned into a delightful
day. A westerly breeze, springing up in the morning, had sent the
thermometer up with a run and broken the cold spell which had been
gripping London. It was one of those afternoons which intrude on the
bleakness of winter with a false but none the less agreeable intimation
that Spring is on its way. The sidewalks were wet underfoot, and the
gutters ran with thawed snow. The sun shone exhilaratingly from a sky
the color of a hedge-sparrow’s egg.

“Doesn’t everything smell lovely, Freddie,” said Jill, “after our
prison-life!”

“Topping!”

“Fancy getting out so quickly! Whenever I’m arrested, I must always
make a point of having a rich man with me. I shall never tease you
about that fifty-pound note again.”

“Fifty-pound note?”

“It certainly came in handy today!”

She was opening the door with her latch-key, and missed the sudden
sagging of Freddie’s jaw, the sudden clutch at his breast-pocket, and
the look of horror and anguish that started into his eyes. Freddie was
appalled. Finding himself at the police-station penniless with the
exception of a little loose change, he had sent that message to Derek,
imploring assistance, as the only alternative to spending the night in
a cell, with Jill in another. He had realized that there was a risk of
Derek taking the matter hardly, and he had not wanted to get Jill into
trouble, but there seemed nothing else to do. If they remained where
they were overnight, the thing would get into the papers, and that
would be a thousand times worse. And if he applied for aid to Ronny
Devereux or Algy Martyn or anybody like that all London would know
about it next day. So Freddie, with misgivings, had sent the message to
Derek, and now Jill’s words had reminded him that there was no need to
have done so. Years ago he had read somewhere or heard somewhere about
some chappie who always buzzed around with a sizeable banknote stitched
into his clothes, and the scheme had seemed to him ripe to a degree.
You never knew when you might find yourself short of cash and faced by
an immediate call for the ready. He had followed the chappie’s example.
And now, when the crisis had arrived, he had forgotten—absolutely
forgotten!—that he had the dashed thing on his person at all.

He followed Jill into the house, groaning in spirit, but thankful that
she had taken it for granted that he had secured their release in the
manner indicated. He did not propose to disillusion her. It would be
time enough to take the blame when the blame came along. Probably old
Derek would simply be amused and laugh at the whole bally affair like a
sportsman. Freddie cheered up considerably at the thought.

Jill was talking to the parlormaid whose head had popped up over the
banisters flanking the stairs that led to the kitchen.

“Major Selby hasn’t arrived yet, miss.”

“That’s odd. I suppose he must have taken a later train.”

“There’s a lady in the drawing-room, miss, waiting to see him. She
didn’t give any name. She said she would wait till the major came.
She’s been waiting a goodish while.”

“All right, Jane. Thanks. Will you bring up tea.”

They walked down the hall. The drawing-room was on the ground floor, a
long, dim room that would have looked like a converted studio but for
the absence of bright light. A girl was sitting at the far end by the
fireplace. She rose: as they entered.

“How do you do?” said Jill. “I’m afraid my uncle has not come back yet
…”

“Say!” cried the visitor. “You _did_ get out quick!”

Jill was surprised. She had no recollection of ever having seen the
other before. Her visitor was a rather pretty girl, with a sort of
jaunty way of carrying herself which made a piquant contrast to her
tired eyes and wistful face. Jill took an immediate liking to her. She
looked so forlorn and pathetic.

“My name’s Nelly Bryant,” said the girl. “That parrot belongs to me.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I heard you say to the cop that you lived here, so I came along to
tell your folks what had happened, so that they could do something. The
maid said that your uncle was expected any minute, so I waited.”

“That was awfully good of you.”

“Dashed good,” said Freddie.

“Oh, no! Honest, I don’t know how to thank you for what you did. You
don’t know what a pal Bill is to me. It would have broken me all up if
that plug-ugly had killed him.”

“But what a shame you had to wait so long.”

“I liked it.”

Nelly Bryant looked about the room wistfully. This was the sort of room
she sometimes dreamed about. She loved its subdued light and the pulpy
cushions on the sofa.

“You’ll have some tea before you go, won’t you?” said Jill, switching
on the lights.

“It’s very kind of you.”

“Why, hullo!” said Freddie. “By Jove! I say! We’ve met before, what?”

“Why, so we have!”

“That lunch at Oddy’s that young Threepwood gave, what?”

“I wonder you remember.”

“Oh, I remember. Quite a time ago, eh? Miss Bryant was in that show,
‘Follow the Girl,’ Jill, at the Regal.”

“Oh, yes. I remember you took me to see it.”

“Dashed odd meeting again like this!” said Freddie. “Really rummy!”

Jane, the parlormaid, entering with tea, interrupted his comments.

“You’re American, then?” said Jill, interested. “The whole company came
from New York, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“I’m half American myself, you know. I used to live in New York when I
was very small, but I’ve almost forgotten what it was like. I remember
a sort of over-head railway that made an awful noise …”

“The Elevated!” murmured Nelly devoutly. A wave of homesickness seemed
to choke her for a moment.

“And the air. Like champagne. And a very blue sky.”

“Yes,” said Nelly in a small voice.

“I shouldn’t half mind popping over New York for a bit,” said Freddie,
unconscious of the agony he was inflicting. “I’ve met some very sound
sportsmen who came from there. You don’t know a fellow named
Williamson, do you?”

“I don’t believe I do.”

“Or Oakes?”

“No.”

“That’s rummy! Oakes has lived in New York for years.”

“So have about seven million other people,” interposed Jill. “Don’t be
silly, Freddie. How would you like somebody to ask of you if you knew a
man named Jenkins in London?”

“I _do_ know a man named Jenkins in London,” replied Freddie
triumphantly.

Jill poured out a cup of tea for her visitor, and looked at the clock.

“I wonder where Uncle Chris has got to,” she said. “He ought to be here
by now. I hope he hasn’t got into any mischief among the wild
stock-brokers down at Brighton.”

Freddie laid down his cup on the table and uttered a loud snort.

“Oh, Freddie, darling!” said Jill remorsefully. “I forgot!
Stock-brokers are a painful subject, aren’t they!” She turned to Nelly.
“There’s been an awful slump on the Stock Exchange today, and he
got—what was the word, Freddie?”

“Nipped!” said Freddie with gloom.

“Nipped!”

“Nipped like the dickens!”

“Nipped like the dickens!” Jill smiled at Nelly. “He had forgotten all
about it in the excitement of being a jailbird, and I went and reminded
him.”

Freddie sought sympathy from Nelly.

“A silly ass at the club named Jimmy Monroe told me to take a flutter
in some rotten thing called Amalgamated Dyes. You know how it is, when
you’re feeling devilish fit and cheery and all that after dinner, and
somebody sidles up to you and slips his little hand in yours and tells
you to do some fool thing. You’re so dashed nappy you simply say
‘Right-ho, old bird! Make it so!’ That’s the way I got had!”

Jill laughed unfeelingly.

“It will do you good, Freddie. It’ll stir you up and prevent you being
so silly again. Besides, you know you’ll hardly notice it. You’ve much
too much money as it is.”

“It’s not the money. It’s the principle of the thing. I hate looking a
frightful chump.”

“Well, you needn’t tell anybody. We’ll keep it a secret. In fact, we’ll
start at once, for I hear Uncle Chris outside. Let us dissemble. We are
observed!… Hullo, Uncle Chris!”

She ran down the room, as the door opened, and kissed the tall,
soldierly man who entered.

“Well, Jill, my dear.”

“How late you are. I was expecting you hours ago.”

“I had to call on my broker.”

“Hush! Hush!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing. … We’ve got visitors. You know Freddie Rooke, of
course?”

“How are you, Freddie, my boy?”

“Cheerio!” said Freddie. “Pretty fit?”

“And Miss Bryant,” said Jill.

“How do you do?” said Uncle Chris in the bluff, genial way which, in
his younger days, had charmed many a five-pound note out of the pockets
of his fellow-men and many a soft glance out of the eyes of their
sisters, their cousins, and their aunts.

“Come and have some tea,” said Jill. “You’re just in time.”

Nelly had subsided shyly into the depths of her big armchair. Somehow
she felt a better and a more important girl since Uncle Chris had
addressed her. Most people felt like that after encountering Jill’s
Uncle Christopher. Uncle Chris had a manner. It was not precisely
condescending, and yet it was not the manner of an equal. He treated
you as an equal, true, but all the time you were conscious of the fact
that it was extraordinarily good of him to do so. Uncle Chris affected
the rank and file of his fellow-men much as a genial knight of the
Middle Ages would have affected a scurvy knave or varlet if he had cast
aside social distinctions for awhile and hobnobbed with the latter in a
tavern. He never patronized, but the mere fact that he abstained from
patronizing seemed somehow impressive.

To this impressiveness his appearance contributed largely. He was a
fine, upstanding man, who looked less than his forty-nine years in
spite of an ominous thinning of the hair which he tended and brushed so
carefully. He had a firm chin, a mouth that smiled often and pleasantly
beneath the closely-clipped moustache, and very bright blue eyes which
met yours in a clear, frank, honest gaze. Though he had served in his
youth in India, he had none of the Anglo-Indian’s sun-scorched
sallowness. His complexion was fresh and sanguine. He looked as if he
had just stepped out of a cold tub,—a misleading impression, for Uncle
Chris detested cold water and always took his morning bath as hot as he
could get it.

It was his clothes, however, which, even more than his appearance,
fascinated the populace. There is only one tailor in London, as
distinguished from the ambitious mechanics who make coats and trousers,
and Uncle Chris was his best customer. Similarly, London is full of
young fellows trying to get along by the manufacture of foot-wear, but
there is only one boot-maker in the true meaning of the word,—the one
who supplied Uncle Chris. And, as for hats, while it is no doubt a fact
that you can get at plenty of London shops some sort of covering for
your head which will keep it warm, the only hatter—using the term in
its deeper sense—is the man who enjoyed the patronage of Major
Christopher Selby. From foot to head, in short, from furthest South to
extremest North, Uncle Chris was perfect. He was an ornament to his
surroundings. The Metropolis looked better for him. One seems to
picture London as a mother with a horde of untidy children, children
with made-up ties, children with wrinkled coats and baggy trouser-legs,
sighing to herself as she beheld them, then cheering up and murmuring
with a touch of restored complacency, “Ah, well, I still have Uncle
Chris!”

“Miss Bryant is American, Uncle Chris,” said Jill.

Uncle Chris spread his shapely legs before the fire, and glanced down
kindly at Nelly.

“Indeed?” He took a cup of tea and stirred it. “I was in America as a
young man.”

“Whereabouts?” asked Nelly eagerly.

“Oh, here and there and everywhere. I travelled considerably.”

“That’s how it is with me,” said Nelly, overcoming her diffidence as
she warmed to the favorite topic. “I guess I know most every town in
every State, from New York to the last one-night stand. It’s a great
old country, isn’t it?”

“It is!” said Uncle Chris. “I shall be returning there very shortly.”
He paused meditatively. “Very shortly indeed.”

Nelly bit her lip. It seemed to be her fate today to meet people who
were going to America.

“When did you decide to do that?” asked Jill.

She had been looking at him, puzzled. Years of association with Uncle
Chris had enabled her to read his moods quickly, and she was sure that
there was something on his mind. It was not likely that the others had
noticed it, for his manner was as genial and urbane as ever. But
something about him, a look in his eyes that came and went, an
occasional quick twitching of his mouth, told her that all was not
well. She was a little troubled, but not greatly. Uncle Chris was not
the sort of man to whom grave tragedies happened. It was probably some
mere trifle which she could smooth out for him in five minutes, once
they were alone together. She reached out and patted his sleeve
affectionately. She was fonder of Uncle Chris than of anyone in the
world except Derek.

“The thought,” said Uncle Chris, “came to me this morning, as I read my
morning paper while breakfasting. It has grown and developed during the
day. At this moment you might almost call it an obsession. I am very
fond of America. I spent several happy years there. On that occasion, I
set sail for the land of promise, I admit, somewhat reluctantly. Of my
own free will I might never have made the expedition. But the general
sentiment seemed so strongly in favor of my doing so that I yielded to
what I might call a public demand. The willing hands for my nearest and
dearest were behind me, pushing, and I did not resist them. I have
never regretted it. America is a part of every young man’s education.
You ought to go there, Freddie.”

“Rummily enough,” said Freddie, “I was saying just before you came in
that I had half a mind to pop over. Only it’s rather a bally fag,
starting. Getting your luggage packed and all that sort of thing.”

Nelly, whose luggage consisted of one small trunk, heaved a silent
sigh. Mingling with the idle rich carried its penalties.

“America,” said Uncle Chris, “taught me poker, for which I can never be
sufficiently grateful. Also an exotic pastime styled Craps,—or,
alternatively, ‘rolling the bones’—which in those days was a very
present help in time of trouble. At Craps, I fear, my hand in late
years had lost much of its cunning. I have had little opportunity of
practising. But as a young man I was no mean exponent of the art. Let
me see,” said Uncle Chris meditatively. “What was the precise ritual?
Ah! I have it, ‘Come, little seven!’”

“‘Come, eleven!’” exclaimed Nelly excitedly.

“‘Baby …’ I feel convinced that in some manner the word baby entered
into it.”

“‘Baby needs new shoes!’”

“‘Baby needs new shoes!’ Precisely!”

“It sounds to me,” said Freddie, “dashed silly.”

“Oh, no!” cried Nelly reproachfully.

“Well, what I mean to say is, there’s no sense in it, don’t you know.”

“It is a noble pursuit,” said Uncle Chris firmly. “Worthy of the great
nation that has produced it. No doubt, when I return to America, I
shall have opportunities of recovering my lost skill.”

“You aren’t returning to America,” said Jill. “You’re going to stay
safe at home like a good little uncle. I’m not going to have you
running wild all over the world at your age.”

“Age?” declaimed Uncle Chris. “What is my age? At the present moment I
feel in the neighborhood of twenty-one, and Ambition is tapping me on
the shoulder and whispering ‘Young man, go West!’ The years are
slipping away from me, my dear Jill,—slipping so quickly that in a few
minutes you will be wondering why my nurse does not come to fetch me.
The wanderlust is upon me. I gaze around me at all this prosperity in
which I am lapped,” said Uncle Chris, eyeing the arm-chair severely,
“all this comfort and luxury which swaddles me, and I feel staggered. I
want activity. I want to be braced!”

“You would hate it,” said Jill composedly. “You know you’re the laziest
old darling in the world.”

“Exactly what I am endeavoring to point out. I am lazy. Or, I was till
this morning.”

“Something very extraordinary must have happened this morning. I can
see that.”

“I wallowed in gross comfort. I was what Shakespeare calls a ‘fat and
greasy citizen’!”

“Please, Uncle Chris!” protested Jill. “Not while I’m eating buttered
toast!”

“But now I am myself again.”

“That’s splendid.”

“I have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,” chanted Uncle Chris,
“and the thresh of the deep-sea rain. I have heard the song—How long!
how long! Pull out on the trail again!”

“He can also recite ‘Gunga Din,’” said Jill to Nelly. “I really must
apologize for all this. He’s usually as good as gold.”

“I believe I know how he feels,” said Nelly softly.

“Of course you do. You and I, Miss Bryant, are of the gipsies of the
world. We are not vegetables like young Rooke here.”

“Eh, what?” said the vegetable, waking from a reverie. He had been
watching Nelly’s face. Its wistfulness attracted him.

“We are only happy,” proceeded Uncle Chris, “when we are wandering.”

“You should see Uncle Chris wander to his club in the morning,” said
Jill. “He trudges off in a taxi, singing wild gipsy songs, absolutely
defying fatigue.”

“That,” said Uncle Chris, “is a perfectly justified slur. I shudder at
the depths to which prosperity has caused me to sink.” He expanded his
chest. “I shall be a different man in America. America would make a
different man of you, Freddie.”

“I’m all right, thanks!” said that easily satisfied young man.

Uncle Chris turned to Nelly, pointing dramatically.

“Young woman, go West! Return to your bracing home, and leave this
enervating London! You …”

Nelly got up abruptly. She could endure no more.

“I believe I’ll have to be going now,” she said. “Bill misses me if I’m
away long. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for what you did.”

“It was awfully kind of you to come round,” said Jill.

“Good-bye, Major Selby.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr Rooke.”

Freddie awoke from another reverie.

“Eh? Oh, I say, half a jiffy. I think I may as well be toddling along
myself. About time I was getting back to dress for dinner and all that.
See you home, may I, and then I’ll get a taxi at Victoria. Toodle-oo,
everybody.”


Freddie escorted Nelly through the hall and opened the front door for
her. The night was cool and cloudy, and there was still in the air that
odd, rejuvenating suggestion of Spring. A wet fragrance came from the
dripping trees.

“Topping evening!” said Freddie conversationally.

“Yes.”

They walked through the square in silence. Freddie shot an appreciative
glance at his companion. Freddie, as he would have admitted frankly,
was not much of a lad for the modern girl. The modern girl, he
considered, was too dashed rowdy and exuberant for a chappie of
peaceful tastes. Now, this girl, on the other hand, had all the
earmarks of being something of a topper. She had a soft voice. Rummy
accent and all that, but nevertheless a soft and pleasing voice. She
was mild and unaggressive, and these were qualities which Freddie
esteemed. Freddie, though this was a thing he would not have admitted,
was afraid of girls, the sort of girls he had to take down to dinner
and dance with and so forth. They were too dashed clever, and always
seemed to be waiting for a chance to score off a fellow. This one was
not like that. Not a bit. She was gentle and quiet and what not.

It was at this point that it came home to him how remarkably quiet she
was. She had not said a word for the last five minutes. He was just
about to break the silence, when, as they passed under a street lamp,
he perceived that she was crying,—crying very softly to herself, like a
child in the dark.

“Good God!” said Freddie, appalled. There were two things in life with
which he felt totally unable to cope,—crying girls and dog-fights. The
glimpse he had caught of Nelly’s face froze him into a speechlessness
which lasted until they reached Daubeny Street and stopped at her door.

“Good-bye,” said Nelly.

“Good-bye-ee!” said Freddie mechanically. “That’s to say, I mean to
say, half a second!” he added quickly. He faced her nervously, with one
hand on the grimy railings. This wanted looking into. When it came to
girls trickling to and fro in the public streets, weeping, well, it was
pretty rotten and something had to be done about it. “What’s up?” he
demanded.

“It’s nothing. Good-bye.”

“But, my dear old soul,” said Freddie, clutching the railing for moral
support, “it _is_ something. It must be! You might not think it, to
look at me, but I’m really rather a dashed shrewd chap, and I can _see_
there’s something up. Why not give me the jolly old scenario and see if
we can’t do something?”

Nelly moved as if to turn to the door, then stopped. She was thoroughly
ashamed of herself.

“I’m a fool!”

“No, no!”

“Yes, I am. I don’t often act this way, but, oh, gee! hearing you all
talking like that about going to America, just as if it was the easiest
thing in the world, only you couldn’t be bothered to do it, kind of got
me going. And to think I could be there right now if I wasn’t a
bonehead!”

“A bonehead?”

“A simp. I’m all right as far up as the string of near-pearls, but
above that I’m reinforced concrete.”

Freddie groped for her meaning.

“Do you mean you’ve made a bloomer of some kind?”

“I pulled the worst kind of bone. I stopped on in London when the rest
of the company went back home, and now I’ve got to stick.”

“Rush of jolly old professional engagement, what?”

Nelly laughed bitterly.

“You’re a bad guesser. No, they haven’t started to fight over me yet.
I’m at liberty, as they say in the Era.”

“But, my dear old thing,” said Freddie earnestly, “if you’ve got
nothing to keep you in England, why not pop back to America? I mean to
say, home-sickness is the most dashed blighted thing in the world.
There’s nothing gives one the pip to such an extent. Why, dash it, I
remember staying with an old aunt of mine up in Scotland the year
before last and not being able to get away for three weeks or so, and I
raved—absolutely gibbered—for a sight of the merry old metrop.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the night, thinking I was back at the Albany,
and, by Jove, when I found I wasn’t I howled like a dog! You take my
tip, old soul, and pop back on the next boat.”

“Which line?”

“How do you mean, which line? Oh, I see, you mean which line? Well …
well … I’ve never been on any of them, so it’s rather hard to say. But
I hear the Cunard well spoken of, and then again some chappies swear by
the White Star. But I should imagine you can’t go far wrong, whichever
you pick. They’re all pretty ripe, I fancy.”

“Which of them is giving free trips? That’s the point.”

“Eh? Oh!” Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep
consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost
forgotten that there existed a class which had not as much money as
himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat. It
was a purely disinterested sympathy. The fact that Nelly was a girl and
in many respects a dashed pretty girl did not affect him. What mattered
was that she was hard up. The thought hurt Freddie like a blow. He
hated the idea of anyone being hard up.

“I say!” he said. “Are you broke?”

Nelly laughed.

“Am I! If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn’t even have the hole in the
middle.”

Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the
streets, to whom he gave shillings, he had not met anyone for years who
had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who frequently
claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny, but the bally
penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned out to be a
couple of thousand pounds for a new car.

“Good God!” he said.

There was a pause. Then, with a sudden impulse, he began to fumble in
his breast-pocket. Rummy how things worked out for the best, however
scaly they might seem at the moment. Only an hour or so ago he had been
kicking himself for not having remembered that fifty-pound note, tacked
onto the lining of his coat, when it would have come in handy at the
police-station. He now saw that Providence had had the matter well in
hand. If he had remembered it and coughed it up to the constabulary
then, he wouldn’t have had it now. And he needed it now. A mood of
quixotic generosity had surged upon him. With swift fingers he jerked
the note free from its moorings and displayed it like a conjurer
exhibiting a rabbit.

“My dear old thing,” he said, “I can’t stand it! I absolutely cannot
stick it at any price! I really must insist on your trousering this.
Positively!”

Nelly Bryant gazed at the note with wide eyes. She was stunned. She
took it limply, and looked at it under the dim light of the gas-lamp
over the door.

“I couldn’t!” she cried.

“Oh, but really! You must!”

“But this is a fifty-pound!”

“Absolutely! It will take you back to New York, what? You asked which
line was giving free trips. The Freddie Rooke Line, by Jove, sailings
every Wednesday and Saturday! I mean, what!”

“But I can’t take two hundred and fifty dollars from you!”

“Oh, rather. Of course you can.”

There was another pause.

“You’ll think—” Nelly’s pale face flushed. “You’ll think I told you all
about myself just—just because I wanted to …”

“To make a touch? Absolutely not! Kid yourself of the jolly old
superstition entirely. You see before you, old thing, a chappie who
knows more about borrowing money than any man in London. I mean to say,
I’ve had my ear bitten more often than anyone, I should think. There
are sixty-four ways of making a touch—I’ve had them all worked on me by
divers blighters here and there—and I can tell any of them with my eyes
shut. I know you weren’t dreaming of any such thing.”

The note crackled musically in Nelly’s hand.

“I don’t know what to say!”

“That’s all right.”

“I don’t see why … Gee! I wish I could tell you what I think of you!”

Freddie laughed amusedly.

“Do you know,” he said, “that’s exactly what the beaks—the masters, you
know,—used to say to me at school.”

“Are you sure you can spare it?”

“Oh, rather.”

Nelly’s eyes shone in the light of the lamp.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before. I don’t know how …”

Freddie shuffled nervously. Being thanked always made him feel pretty
rotten.

“Well, I think I’ll be popping,” he said. “Got to get back and dress
and all that. Awfully glad to have seen you, and all that sort of rot.”

Nelly unlocked the door with her latchkey, and stood on the step.

“I’ll buy a fur-wrap,” she said, half to herself.

“Great wheeze! I should!”

“And some nuts for Bill!”

“Bill?”

“The parrot.”

“Oh, the jolly old parrot! Rather! Well, cheerio!”

“Good-bye … You’ve been awfully good to me.”

“Oh, no,” said Freddie uncomfortably. “Any time you’re passing … !”

“Awfully good … Well, good-bye.”

“Toodle-oo!”

“Maybe we’ll meet again some day.”

“I hope so. Absolutely!”

There was a little scurry of feet. Something warm and soft pressed for
an instant against Freddie’s cheek, and, as he stumbled back, Nelly
Bryant skipped up the steps and vanished through the door.

“Good God!”

Freddie felt his cheek. He was aware of an odd mixture of embarrassment
and exhilaration.

From the area below a slight cough sounded. Freddie turned sharply. A
maid in a soiled cap, worn coquettishly over one ear, was gazing
intently up through the railings. Their eyes met. Freddie turned a warm
pink. It seemed to him that the maid had the air of one about to
giggle.

“Damn!” said Freddie softly, and hurried off down the street. He
wondered whether he had made a frightful ass of himself, spraying
bank-notes all over the place like that to comparative strangers. Then
a vision came to him of Nelly’s eyes as they had looked at him in the
lamp-light, and he decided—no, absolutely not. Rummy as the gadget
might appear, it had been the right thing to do. It was a binge of
which he thoroughly approved. A good egg!

§ 2.

Jill, when Freddie and Nelly left the room, had seated herself on a low
stool, and sat, looking thoughtfully into the fire. She was wondering
if she had been mistaken in supposing that Uncle Chris was worried
about something. This restlessness of his, this desire for movement,
was strange in him. Hitherto he had been like a dear old cosy cat,
revelling in the comfort which he had just denounced so eloquently. She
watched him as he took up his favorite stand in front of the fire.

“Nice girl,” said Uncle Chris. “Who was she?”

“Somebody Freddie met,” said Jill diplomatically. There was no need to
worry Uncle Chris with details of the afternoon’s happenings.

“Very nice girl.” Uncle Chris took out his cigar-case. “No need to ask
if I may, thank goodness.” He lit a cigar. “Do you remember, Jill,
years ago, when you were quite small, how I used to blow smoke in your
face?”

Jill smiled.

“Of course I do. You said that you were training me for marriage. You
said that there were no happy marriages except where the wife didn’t
mind the smell of tobacco. Well, it’s lucky, as a matter of fact, for
Derek smokes all the time.”

Uncle Chris took up his favorite stand against the fireplace.

“You’re very fond of Derek, aren’t you, Jill?”

“Of course I am. You are, too, aren’t you?”

“Fine chap. Very fine chap. Plenty of money, too. It’s a great relief,”
said Uncle Chris, puffing vigorously. “A thundering relief.” He looked
over Jill’s head down the room. “It’s fine to think of you happily
married, dear, with everything in the world that you want.”

Uncle Chris’ gaze wandered down to where Jill sat. A slight mist
affected his eyesight. Jill had provided a solution for the great
problem of his life. Marriage had always appalled him, but there was
this to be said for it, that married people had daughters. He had
always wanted a daughter, a smart girl he could take out and be proud
of; and fate had given him Jill at precisely the right age. A child
would have bored Uncle Chris—he was fond of children, but they made the
deuce of a noise and regarded jam as an external ornament—but a
delightful little girl of fourteen was different. Jill and he had been
very close to each other since her mother had died, a year after the
death of her father, and had left her in his charge. He had watched her
grow up with a joy that had a touch of bewilderment in it—she seemed to
grow so quickly—and had been fonder and prouder of her at every stage
of her tumultuous career.

“You’re a dear,” said Jill. She stroked the trouser-leg that was
nearest. “How _do_ you manage to get such a wonderful crease? You
really are a credit to me!”

There was a momentary silence. A shade of embarrassment made itself
noticeable in Uncle Chris’ frank gaze. He gave a little cough, and
pulled at his mustache.

“I wish I were, my dear,” he said soberly. “I wish I were. I’m afraid
I’m a poor sort of fellow, Jill.”

Jill looked up.

“What do you mean?”

“A poor sort of fellow,” repeated Uncle Chris. “Your mother was foolish
to trust you to me. Your father had more sense. He always said I was a
wrong’un.”

Jill got up quickly. She was certain now that she had been right, and
that there was something on her uncle’s mind.

“What’s the matter, Uncle Chris? Something’s happened. What is it?”

Uncle Chris turned to knock the ash off his cigar. The movement gave
him time to collect himself for what lay before him. He had one of
those rare volatile natures which can ignore the blows of fate so long
as their effects are not brought home by visible evidence of disaster.
He lived in the moment, and, though matters had been as bad at
breakfast-time as they were now, it was not till now, when he
confronted Jill, that he had found his cheerfulness affected by them.
He was a man who hated ordeals, and one faced him now. Until this
moment he had been able to detach his mind from a state of affairs
which would have weighed unceasingly upon another man. His mind was a
telephone which he could cut off at will, when the voice of Trouble
wished to speak. The time would arrive, he had been aware, when he
would have to pay attention to that voice, but so far he had refused to
listen. Now it could be evaded no longer.

“Jill.”

“Yes?”

Uncle Chris paused again, searching for the best means of saying what
had to be said.

“Jill, I don’t know if you understand about these things, but there was
what is called a slump on the Stock Exchange this morning. In other
words …”

Jill laughed.

“Of course I know all about that,” she said. “Poor Freddie wouldn’t
talk about anything else till I made him. He was terribly blue when he
got here this afternoon. He said he had got ‘nipped’ in Amalgamated
Dyes. He had lost about two hundred pounds, and was furious with a
friend of his who had told him to buy margins.”

Uncle Chris cleared his throat.

“Jill, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. I bought Amalgamated Dyes,
too.” He worried his mustache. “I lost heavily, very heavily.”

“How naughty of you! You know you oughtn’t to gamble.”

“Jill, you must be brave. I—I—well, the fact is—it’s no good beating
about the bush—I lost everything! Everything!”

“Everything?”

“Everything! It’s all gone! All fooled away. It’s a terrible business.
This house will have to go.”

“But—but doesn’t the house belong to me?”

“I was your trustee, dear.” Uncle Chris smoked furiously. “Thank heaven
you’re going to marry a rich man!”

Jill stood looking at him, perplexed. Money, as money, had never
entered into her life. There were things one wanted, which had to be
paid for with money, but Uncle Chris had always looked after that. She
had taken them for granted.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

And then suddenly she realized that she did, and a great wave of pity
for Uncle Chris flooded over her. He was such an old dear. It must be
horrible for him to have to stand there, telling her all this. She felt
no sense of injury, only the discomfort of having to witness the
humiliation of her oldest friend. Uncle Chris was bound up inextricably
with everything in her life that was pleasant. She could remember him,
looking exactly the same, only with a thicker and wavier crop of hair,
playing with her patiently and unwearied for hours in the hot sun, a
cheerful martyr. She could remember sitting up with him when she came
home from her first grown-up dance, drinking cocoa and talking and
talking and talking till the birds outside sang the sun high up into
the sky and it was breakfast-time. She could remember theatres with
him, and jolly little suppers afterwards; expeditions into the country,
with lunches at queer old inns; days on the river, days at Hurlingham,
days at Lords’, days at the Academy. He had always been the same,
always cheerful, always kind. He was Uncle Chris, and he would always
be Uncle Chris, whatever he had done or whatever he might do. She
slipped her arm in his and gave it a squeeze.

“Poor old thing!” she said.

Uncle Chris had been looking straight out before him with those fine
blue eyes of his. There had been just a touch of sternness in his
attitude. A stranger, coming into the room at that moment, would have
said that here was a girl trying to coax her blunt, straightforward,
military father into some course of action of which his honest nature
disapproved. He might have been posing for a statue of Rectitude. As
Jill spoke, he seemed to cave in.

“Poor old thing?” he repeated limply.

“Of course you are! And stop trying to look dignified and tragic!
Because it doesn’t suit you. You’re much too well dressed.”

“But, my dear, you don’t understand! You haven’t realized!”

“Yes, I do. Yes, I have!”

“I’ve spent all your money—_your_ money!”

“I know! What does it matter?”

“What does it matter! Jill, don’t you hate me?”

“As if anyone could hate an old darling like you!”

Uncle Chris threw away his cigar, and put his arms round Jill. For a
moment a dreadful fear came to her that he was going to cry. She prayed
that he wouldn’t cry. It would be too awful. It would be a memory of
which she could never rid herself. She felt as though he were someone
extraordinarily young and unable to look after himself, someone she
must soothe and protect.

“Jill,” said Uncle Chris, choking, “you’re—you’re—you’re a little
warrior!”

Jill kissed him, and moved away. She busied herself with some flowers,
her back turned. The tension had been relieved, and she wanted to give
him time to recover his poise. She knew him well enough to be sure
that, sooner or later, the resiliency of his nature would assert
itself. He could never remain long in the depths.

The silence had the effect of making her think more clearly than in the
first rush of pity she had been able to do. She was able now to review
the matter as it affected herself. It had not been easy to grasp, the
blunt fact that she was penniless, that all this comfort which
surrounded her was no longer her own. For an instant a kind of panic
seized her. There was a bleakness about the situation which made one
gasp. It was like icy water dashed in the face. Realization had almost
the physical pain of life returning to a numbed limb. Her hands shook
as she arranged the flowers, and she had to bite her lip to keep
herself from crying out.

She fought panic eye to eye, and beat it down. Uncle Chris, swiftly
recovering by the fireplace, never knew that the fight had taken place.
He was feeling quite jovial again now that the unpleasant business of
breaking the news was over, and was looking on the world with the eye
of a debonair gentleman-adventurer. As far as he was concerned, he told
himself, this was the best thing that could have happened. He had been
growing old and sluggish in prosperity. He needed a fillip. The wits by
which he had once lived so merrily had been getting blunt in their easy
retirement. He welcomed the opportunity of matching them once more
against the world. He was remorseful as regarded Jill, but the optimist
in him, never crushed for long, told him that Jill would be all right.
She would step from the sinking ship to the safe refuge of Derek
Underhill’s wealth and position, while he went out to seek a new life.
Uncle Chris’ blue eyes gleamed with a new fire as he pictured himself
in this new life. He felt like a hunter setting out on a

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