The Little Warrior

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 hunting expedition. There
were always adventures and the spoils of war for the man with brains to find
them and gather them in. But it was a mercy that Jill had Derek. …

Jill was thinking of Derek, too. Panic had fled, and a curious exhilaration had
seized upon her. If Derek wanted her now, it would be because his love was the
strongest thing in the world. She would come to him like the beggar-maid to
Cophetua.

Uncle Chris broke the silence with a cough. At the sound of it, Jill smiled
again. She knew it for what it was, a sign that he was himself again.

“Tell me, Uncle Chris,” she said, “just how bad is it? When
you said everything was gone, did you really mean everything, or were you being
melodramatic? Exactly how do we stand?”

“It’s dashed hard to say, my dear. I expect we shall find there are
a few hundreds left. Enough to see you through till you get married. After that
it won’t matter.” Uncle Chris flicked a particle of dust off his
coat-sleeve. Jill could not help feeling that the action was symbolical of his
attitude towards life. He flicked away life’s problems with just the same
airy carelessness. “You mustn’t worry about me, my dear. I shall be
all right. I have made my way in the world before, and I can do it again. I
shall go to America and try my luck there. Amazing how many opportunities there
are in America. Really, as far as I am concerned, this is the best thing that
could have happened. I have been getting abominably lazy. If I had gone on
living my present life for another year or two, why, dash it! I honestly
believe I should have succumbed to some sort of senile decay. Positively I
should have got fatty degeneration of the brain! This will be the making of
me.”

Jill sat down on the lounge and laughed till there were tears in her eyes.
Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was certainly making
it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving of censure, from the
standpoint of the sterner morality, he made amends. If he brought the whole
world crashing in chaos about one’s ears, at least he helped one to smile
among the ruins.

“Did you ever read ‘Candide’, Uncle Chris?”

“‘Candide’?” Uncle Chris shook his head. He was not a
great reader, except of the sporting press.

“It’s a book by Voltaire. There’s a character in it called
Doctor Pangloss, who thought that everything was for the best in this best of
all possible worlds.”

Uncle Chris felt a touch of embarrassment. It occurred to him that he had been
betrayed by his mercurial temperament into an attitude which, considering the
circumstances, was perhaps a trifle too jubilant. He gave his mustache a pull,
and reverted to the minor key.

“Oh, you mustn’t think that I don’t appreciate the terrible,
the criminal thing I have done! I blame myself,” said Uncle Chris
cordially, flicking another speck of dust off his sleeve. “I blame myself
bitterly. Your mother ought never to have made me your trustee, my dear. But
she always believed in me, in spite of everything, and this is how I have
repaid her.” He blew his nose to cover a not unmanly emotion. “I
wasn’t fitted for the position. Never become a trustee, Jill. It’s
the devil, is trust money. However much you argue with yourself, you
can’t—dash it, you simply can’t believe that it’s not
your own, to do as you like with. There it sits, smiling at you, crying
‘Spend me! Spend me!’ and you find yourself
dipping—dipping—till one day there’s nothing left to dip
for—only a far-off rustling—the ghosts of dead bank-notes.
That’s how it was with me. The process was almost automatic. I hardly
knew it was going on. Here a little—there a little. It was like snow
melting on a mountain-top. And one morning—all gone!” Uncle Chris
drove the point home with a gesture. “I did what I could. When I found
that there were only a few hundreds left, for your sake I took a chance. All
heart and no head! There you have Christopher Selby in a nutshell! A man at the
club—a fool named—I’ve forgotten his damn
name—recommended Amalgamated Dyestuffs as a speculation. Monroe, that was
his name, Jimmy Monroe. He talked about the future of British Dyes now that
Germany was out of the race, and … well, the long and short of it was
that I took his advice and bought on margin. Bought like the devil. And this
morning Amalgamated Dyestuffs went all to blazes. There you have the whole
story!”

“And now,” said Jill, “comes the sequel!”

“The sequel?” said Uncle Chris breezily. “Happiness, my dear,
happiness! Wedding bells and—and all that sort of thing!” He
straddled the hearth-rug manfully, and swelled his chest out. He would permit
no pessimism on this occasion of rejoicing. “You don’t suppose that
the fact of your having lost your money—that is to say—er—of
my having lost your money—will affect a splendid young fellow like
Derek Underhill? I know him better than to think that! I’ve always liked
him. He’s a man you can trust! Besides,” he added reflectively,
“there’s no need to tell him! Till after the wedding, I mean. It
won’t be hard to keep up appearances here for a month or so.”

“Of course I must tell him!”

“You think it wise?”

“I don’t know about it being wise. It’s the only thing to do.
I must see him tonight. Oh, I forgot. He was going away this afternoon for a
day or two.”

“Capital! It will give you time to think it over.”

“I don’t want to think it over. There’s nothing to think
about.”

“Of course, yes, of course. Quite so.”

“I shall write him a letter.”

“Write, eh?”

“It’s easier to put what one wants to say in a letter.”

“Letters,” began Uncle Chris, and stopped as the door opened. Jane
the parlormaid entered, carrying a salver. “For me?” asked Uncle
Chris.

“For Miss Jill, sir.”

Jill took the note off the salver.

“It’s from Derek.”

“There’s a messenger-boy waiting, miss,” said Jane. “He
wasn’t told if there was an answer.”

“If the note is from Derek,” said Uncle Chris, “it’s
not likely to want an answer. You said he left town today.”

Jill opened the envelope.

“Is there an answer, miss?” asked Jane, after what she considered a
suitable interval. She spoke tenderly. She was a great admirer of Derek, and
considered it a pretty action on his part to send notes like this when he was
compelled to leave London.

“Any answer, Jill?”

Jill seemed to rouse herself. She had turned oddly pale.

“No, no answer, Jane.”

“Thank you, miss,” said Jane, and went off to tell cook that in her
opinion Jill was lacking in heart. “It might have been a bill instead of
a love-letter,” said Jane to the cook with indignation, “the way
she read it. I like people to have a little feeling!”

Jill sat turning the letter over and over in her fingers. Her face was very
white. There seemed to be a big, heavy, leaden something inside her. A cold
hand clutched her throat. Uncle Chris, who at first had noticed nothing
untoward, now began to find the silence sinister.

“No bad news, I hope, dear?”

Jill turned the letter between her fingers.

“Jill, is it bad news?”

“Derek has broken off the engagement,” said Jill in a dull voice.
She let the note fall to the floor, and sat with her chin in her hands.

“What!” Uncle Chris leaped from the hearth-rug, as though the fire
had suddenly scorched him. “What did you say?”

“He’s broken it off.”

“The hound!” cried Uncle Chris. “The blackguard!
The—the—I never liked that man! I never trusted him!” He
fumed for a moment. “But—but—it isn’t possible. How can
he have heard about what’s happened? He couldn’t know.
It’s—it’s—it isn’t possible!”

“He doesn’t know. It has nothing to do with that.”

“But …” Uncle Chris stooped to where the note lay.
“May I … ?”

“Yes, you can read it if you like.”

Uncle Chris produced a pair of reading-glasses, and glared through them at the
sheet of paper as though it were some loathsome insect.

“The hound! The cad! If I were a younger man,” shouted Uncle Chris,
smiting the letter violently, “if I were … Jill! My dear little
Jill!”

He plunged down on his knees beside her, as she buried her face in her hands
and began to sob.

“My little girl! Damn that man! My dear little girl! The cad! The devil!
My own darling little girl! I’ll thrash him within an inch of his
life!”

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes. Jill got up. Her face was
wet and quivering, but her mouth had set in a brave line.

“Jill, dear!”

She let his hand close over hers.

“Everything’s happening all at once this afternoon, Uncle Chris,
isn’t it!” She smiled a twisted smile. “You look so funny!
Your hair’s all rumpled, and your glasses are over on one side!”

Uncle Chris breathed heavily through his nose.

“When I meet that man …” he began portentously.

“Oh, what’s the good of bothering! It’s not worth it!
Nothing’s worth it!” Jill stopped, and faced him, her hands
clenched. “Let’s get away! Let’s get right away! I want to
get right away, Uncle Chris! Take me away! Anywhere! Take me to America with
you! I must get away!”

Uncle Chris raised his right hand, and shook it. His reading-glasses, hanging
from his left ear, bobbed drunkenly.

“We’ll sail by the next boat! The very next boat, dammit!
I’ll take care of you, dear. I’ve been a blackguard to you, my
little girl. I’ve robbed you, and swindled you. But I’ll make up
for it, by George! I’ll make up for it! I’ll give you a new home,
as good as this, if I die for it. There’s nothing I won’t do!
Nothing! By Jove!” shouted Uncle Chris, raising his voice in a red-hot
frenzy of emotion, “I’ll work! Yes, by Gad, if it comes right down
to it, I’ll work!”

He brought his fist down with a crash on the table where Derek’s flowers
stood in their bowl. The bowl leaped in the air and tumbled over, scattering
the flowers on the floor.

CHAPTER SEVEN

§ 1.

In the lives of each one of us, as we look back and review them in retrospect,
there are certain desert wastes from which memory winces like some tired
traveller faced with a dreary stretch of road. Even from the security of later
happiness we cannot contemplate them without a shudder. Time robs our sorrows
of their sharp vividness, but the horror of those blank, gray days never wholly
passes. It remains for ever at the back of our consciousness to remind us that,
though we may have struggled through it to the heights, there is an abyss. We
may dwell, like the Pilgrim, on the Delectable Mountains, but we never forget
the Slough of Despond. Years afterwards, Jill could not bring herself to think
of that brief but age-long period which lay between the evening when she read
Derek’s letter and the morning when, with the wet sea-wind in her face
and the cry of the wheeling sea-gulls in her ears, she stood on the deck of the
liner that was taking her to the land where she could begin a new life. It
brooded behind her like a great, dank cloud, shutting out the sunshine.

The conditions of modern life are singularly inimical to swift and dramatic
action when we wish to escape from surroundings that have become intolerable.
In the old days, your hero would leap on his charger and ride out into the
sunset. Now, he is compelled to remain for a week or so to settle his
affairs,—especially if he is an Uncle Chris—and has got those
affairs into such a tangle that hardened lawyers knit their brows at the sight
of them. It took one of the most competent firms in the metropolis four days to
produce some sort of order in the confusion resulting from Major Selby’s
financial operations; and during those days Jill existed in a state of being
which could be defined as living only in that she breathed and ate and
comported herself outwardly like a girl and not a ghost.

Boards announcing that the house was for sale appeared against the railings
through which Jane the parlormaid conducted her daily conversations with the
tradesmen. Strangers roamed the rooms eyeing and appraising the furniture.
Uncle Chris, on whom disaster had had a quickening and vivifying effect, was
everywhere at once, an impressive figure of energy. One may be wronging Uncle
Chris, but to the eye of the casual observer he seemed in these days of trial
to be having the time of his life.

Jill varied the monotony of sitting in her room—which was the only place
in the house where one might be sure of not encountering a
furniture-broker’s man with a note-book and pencil—by taking long
walks. She avoided as far as possible the small area which had once made up the
whole of London for her, but even so she was not always successful in escaping
from old acquaintances. Once, cutting through Lennox Gardens on her way to that
vast, desolate King’s Road which stretches its length out into regions
unknown to those whose London is the West End, she happened upon Freddie Rooke,
who had been paying a call in his best hat and a pair of white spats which
would have cut his friend Henry to the quick. It was not an enjoyable meeting.
Freddie, keenly alive to the awkwardness of the situation, was scarlet and
incoherent; and Jill, who desired nothing less than to talk with one so
intimately connected in her mind with all that she had lost, was scarcely more
collected. They parted without regret. The only satisfaction that came to Jill
from the encounter was the knowledge that Derek was still out of town. He had
wired for his things, said Freddie and had retreated further north. Freddie, it
seemed, had been informed of the broken engagement by Lady Underhill in an
interview which appeared to have left a lasting impression on his mind. Of
Jill’s monetary difficulties he had heard nothing.

After this meeting, Jill felt a slight diminution of the oppression which
weighed upon her. She could not have borne to have come unexpectedly upon
Derek, and, now that there was no danger of that, she found life a little
easier. The days passed somehow, and finally there came the morning when,
accompanied by Uncle Chris—voluble and explanatory about the details of
what he called “getting everything settled”—she rode in a
taxi to take the train for Southampton. Her last impression of London was of
rows upon rows of mean houses, of cats wandering in back-yards among groves of
home-washed underclothing, and a smoky grayness which gave way, as the train
raced on, to the clearer gray of the suburbs and the good green and brown of
the open country.

Then the bustle and confusion of the liner; the calm monotony of the journey,
when one came on deck each morning to find the vessel so manifestly in the same
spot where it had been the morning before that it was impossible to realize how
many hundred miles of ocean had really been placed behind one; and finally the
Ambrose Channel lightship and the great bulk of New York rising into the sky
like a city of fairyland, heartening yet sinister, at once a welcome and a
menace.

“There you are, my dear!” said Uncle Chris indulgently, as though
it were a toy he had made for her with his own hands. “New York!”

They were standing on the boat-deck, leaning over the rail. Jill caught her
breath. For the first time since disaster had come upon her she was conscious
of a rising of her spirits. It is impossible to behold the huge buildings which
fringe the harbor of New York without a sense of expectancy and excitement.
There had remained in Jill’s mind from childhood memories a vague picture
of what she now saw, but it had been feeble and inadequate. The sight of this
towering city seemed somehow to blot out everything that had gone before. The
feeling of starting afresh was strong upon her.

Uncle Chris, the old traveller, was not emotionally affected. He smoked
placidly and talked in a wholly earthy strain of grape-fruit and buckwheat
cakes.

It was now, also for the first time, that Uncle Chris touched upon future
prospects in a practical manner. On the voyage he had been eloquent but
sketchy. With the land of promise within biscuit-throw and the tugs bustling
about the great liner’s skirts like little dogs about their mistress, he
descended to details.

“I shall get a room somewhere,” said Uncle Chris, “and start
looking about me. I wonder if the old Holland House is still there. I fancy I
heard they’d pulled it down. Capital place. I had a steak there in the
year … But I expect they’ve pulled it down. But I shall find
somewhere to go. I’ll write and tell you my address directly I’ve
got one.”

Jill removed her gaze from the sky-line with a start.

“Write to me?”

“Didn’t I tell you about that?” said Uncle Chris
cheerily,—avoiding her eye, however, for he had realized all along that
it might be a little bit awkward breaking the news. “I’ve arranged
that you shall go and stay for the time being down at Brookport—on Long
Island, you know—over in that direction—with your Uncle Elmer.
Daresay you’ve forgotten you have an Uncle Elmer, eh?” he went on
quickly, as Jill was about to speak. “Your father’s brother. Used
to be in business, but retired some years ago and goes in for amateur farming.
Corn and—and corn,” said Uncle Chris. “All that sort of
thing. You’ll like him. Capital chap! Never met him myself, but always
heard,” said Uncle Chris, who had never to his recollection heard any
comments upon Mr Elmer Mariner whatever, “that he was a splendid fellow.
Directly we decided to sail, I cabled to him, and got an answer saying that he
would be delighted to put you up. You’ll be quite happy there.”

Jill listened to this programme with dismay. New York was calling to her, and
Brookport held out no attractions at all. She looked down over the side at the
tugs puffing their way through the broken blocks of ice that reminded her of a
cocoanut candy familiar to her childhood.

“But I want to be with you,” she protested.

“Impossible, my dear, for the present. I shall be very busy, very busy
indeed for some weeks, until I have found my feet. Really, you would be in the
way. He—er—travels the fastest who travels alone! I must be in a
position to go anywhere and do anything at a moment’s notice. But always
remember, my dear,” said Uncle Chris, patting her shoulder
affectionately, “that I shall be working for you. I have treated you very
badly, but I intend to make up for it. I shall not forget that whatever money I
may make will really belong to you.” He looked at her benignly, like a
monarch of finance who has ear-marked a million or two for the benefit of a
deserving charity. “You shall have it all, Jill.”

He had so much the air of having conferred a substantial benefit upon her that
Jill felt obliged to thank him. Uncle Chris had always been able to make people
grateful for the phantom gold which he showered upon them. He was as lavish a
man with the money he was going to get next week as ever borrowed a five-pound
note to see him through till Saturday.

“What are you going to do, Uncle Chris?” asked Jill curiously.
Apart from a nebulous idea that he intended to saunter through the city picking
dollar-bills off the sidewalk, she had no inkling of his plans.

Uncle Chris toyed with his short mustache. He was not quite equal to a direct
answer on the spur of the moment. He had a faith in his star. Something would
turn up. Something always had turned up in the old days, and doubtless, with
the march of civilization, opportunities had multiplied. Somewhere behind those
tall buildings the Goddess of Luck awaited him, her hands full of gifts, but
precisely what those gifts would be he was not in a position to say.

“I shall—ah—how shall I put it—?”

“Look round?” suggested Jill.

“Precisely,” said Uncle Chris gratefully. “Look round. I
daresay you have noticed that I have gone out of my way during the voyage to
make myself agreeable to our fellow-travellers? I had an object. Acquaintances
begun on shipboard will often ripen into useful friendships ashore. When I was
a young man I never neglected the opportunities which an ocean voyage affords.
The offer of a book here, a steamer-rug there, a word of encouragement to a
chatty bore in the smoke-room—these are small things, but they may lead
to much. One meets influential people on a liner. You wouldn’t think it
to look at him, but that man with the eye-glasses and the thin nose I was
talking to just now is one of the richest men in Milwaukee!”

“But it’s not much good having rich friends in Milwaukee when you
are in New York!”

“Exactly. There you have put your finger on the very point I have been
trying to make. It will probably be necessary for me to travel. And for that I
must be alone. I must be a mobile force. I should dearly like to keep you with
me, but you can see for yourself that for the moment you would be an
encumbrance. Later on, no doubt, when my affairs are more settled
…”

“Oh, I understand. I’m resigned. But, oh dear! it’s going to
be very dull down at Brookport.”

“Nonsense, nonsense! It’s a delightful spot.”

“Have you been there?”

“No! But of course everybody knows Brookport! Healthy, invigorating
… Sure to be! The very name … You’ll be as happy as the
days are long!”

“And how long the days will be!”

“Come, come! You mustn’t look on the dark side!”

“Is there another?” Jill laughed. “You are an old hum-bug,
Uncle Chris. You know perfectly well what you’re condemning me to! I
expect Brookport will be like a sort of Southend in winter. Oh, well,
I’ll be brave. But do hurry and make a fortune, because I want to come to
New York.”

“My dear,” said Uncle Chris solemnly, “if there is a dollar
lying loose in this city, rest assured that I shall have it! And, if it’s
not loose, I will detach it with the greatest possible speed. You have only
known me in my decadence, an idle and unprofitable London clubman. I can assure
you that, lurking beneath the surface, there is a business acumen given to few
men …”

“Oh, if you are going to talk poetry,” said Jill, “I’ll
leave you. Anyhow, I ought to be getting below and putting my things together.
Subject for a historical picture,—The Belle of Brookport collecting a few
simple necessaries before entering upon the conquest of America.”

§ 2.

If Jill’s vision of Brookport as a wintery Southend was not entirely
fulfilled, neither was Uncle Chris’ picture of it as an earthly paradise.
At the right time of the year, like most of the summer resorts on the south
shore of Long Island, it is not without its attractions; but January is not the
month which most people would choose for living in it. It presented itself to
Jill on first acquaintance in the aspect of a wind-swept railroad station,
dumped down far away from human habitation in the middle of a stretch of flat
and ragged country that reminded her a little of parts of Surrey. The station
was just a shed on a foundation of planks which lay flush with the rails. From
this shed, as the train clanked in, there emerged a tall, shambling man in a
weather-beaten overcoat. He had a clean-shaven, wrinkled face, and he looked
doubtfully at Jill with small eyes. Something in his expression reminded Jill
of her father, as a bad caricature of a public man will recall the original,
she introduced herself.

“If you’re Uncle Elmer,” she said, “I’m
Jill.”

The man held out a long hand. He did not smile. He was as bleak as the east
wind that swept the platform.

“Glad to meet you again,” he said in a melancholy voice. It was
news to Jill that they had met before. She wondered where. Her uncle supplied
the information. “Last time I saw you, you were a kiddy in short frocks,
running around and shouting to beat the band.” He looked up and down the
platform. “I never heard a child make so much noise!”

“I’m quite quiet now,” said Jill encouragingly. The
recollection of her infant revelry seemed to her to be distressing her
relative.

It appeared, however, that it was not only this that was on his mind.

“If you want to drive home,” he said, “we’ll have to
phone to the Durham House for a hack.” He brooded awhile, Jill remaining
silent at his side, loath to break in upon whatever secret sorrow he was
wrestling with. “That would be a dollar,” he went on.
“They’re robbers in these parts! A dollar! And it’s not over
a mile and a half. Are you fond of walking?”

Jill was a bright girl, and could take a hint.

“I love walking,” she said. She might have added that she preferred
to do it on a day when the wind was not blowing quite so keenly from the East,
but her uncle’s obvious excitement at the prospect of cheating the
rapacity of the sharks at the Durham House restrained her. Her independent soul
had not quite adjusted itself to the prospect of living on the bounty of her
fellows, relatives though they were, and she was desirous of imposing as light
a burden upon them as possible. “But how about my trunk?”

“The expressman will bring that up. Fifty cents!” said Uncle Elmer
in a crushed way. The high cost of entertaining seemed to be afflicting this
man deeply.

“Oh, yes,” said Jill. She could not see how this particular
expenditure was to be avoided. Anxious as she was to make herself pleasant, she
declined to consider carrying the trunk to their destination. “Shall we
start, then?”

Mr Mariner led the way out into the ice-covered road. The wind welcomed them
like a boisterous dog. For some minutes they proceeded in silence.

“Your aunt will be glad to see you,” said Mr Mariner at last in the
voice with which one announces the death of a dear friend.

“It’s awfully kind of you to have me to stay with you,” said
Jill. It is a human tendency to think, when crises occur, in terms of
melodrama, and unconsciously she had begun to regard herself somewhat in the
light of a heroine driven out into the world from the old home, with no roof to
shelter her head. The promptitude with which these good people, who, though
relatives, were after all complete strangers, had offered her a resting-place
touched her. “I hope I shan’t be in the way.”

“Major Selby was speaking to me on the telephone just now,” said Mr
Mariner, “and he said that you might be thinking of settling down in
Brookport. I’ve some nice little places round here which you might like
to look at. Rent or buy. It’s cheaper to buy. Brookport’s a growing
place. It’s getting known as a summer resort. There’s a bungalow
down on the shore I’d like to show you tomorrow. Stands in a nice large
plot of ground, and if you bought it for twelve thousand you’d be getting
a bargain.”

Jill was too astonished to speak. Plainly Uncle Chris had made no mention of
the change in her fortunes, and this man looked on her as a girl of wealth. She
could only think how typical this was of Uncle Chris. There was a sort of
boyish impishness about him. She could see him at the telephone, suave and
important. He would have hung up the receiver with a complacent smirk,
thoroughly satisfied that he had done her an excellent turn.

“I put all my money into real estate when I came to live here,”
went on Mr Mariner. “I believe in the place. It’s growing all the
time.”

They had come to the outskirts of a straggling village. The lights in the
windows gave a welcome suggestion of warmth, for darkness had fallen swiftly
during their walk and the chill of the wind had become more biting. There was a
smell of salt in the air now, and once or twice Jill had caught the low booming
of waves on some distant beach. This was the Atlantic pounding the sandy shore
of Fire Island. Brookport itself lay inside, on the lagoon called the Great
South Bay.

“This is Brookport,” said Mr Mariner. “That’s
Haydock’s grocery store there by the post-office. He charges sixty cents
a pound for bacon, and I can get the same bacon by walking into Patchogue for
fifty-seven!” He brooded awhile on the greed of man, as exemplified by
the pirates of Brookport. “The very same bacon!” he said.

“How far is Patchogue?” asked Jill, feeling that some comment was
required of her.

“Four miles,” said Mr Mariner.

They passed through the village, bearing to the right, and found themselves in
a road bordered by large gardens in which stood big, dark houses. The spectacle
of these stimulated Mr Mariner to something approaching eloquence. He quoted
the price paid for each, the price asked, the price offered, the price that had
been paid five years ago. The recital carried them on for another mile, in the
course of which the houses became smaller and more scattered, and finally, when
the country had become bare and desolate again, they turned down a narrow lane
and came to a tall, gaunt house standing by itself in a field.

“This is Sandringham,” said Mr Mariner.

“What!” said Jill. “What did you say?”

“Sandringham. Where we live. I got the name from your father. I remember
him telling me there was a place called that in England.”

“There is.” Jill’s voice bubbled. “The King lives
there.”

“Is that so?” said Mr Mariner. “Well, I bet he doesn’t
have the trouble with help that we have here. I have to pay our girl fifty
dollars a month, and another twenty for the man who looks after the furnace and
chops wood. They’re all robbers. And if you kick they quit on you!”

§ 3.

Jill endured Sandringham for ten days; and, looking back on that period of her
life later, she wondered how she did it. The sense of desolation which had
gripped her on the station platform increased rather than diminished as she
grew accustomed to her surroundings. The east wind died away, and the sun shone
fitfully with a suggestion of warmth, but her uncle’s bleakness appeared
to be a static quality, independent of weather conditions. Her aunt, a faded
woman with a perpetual cold in the head, did nothing to promote cheerfulness.
The rest of the household consisted of a gloomy child, “Tibby,”
aged eight; a spaniel, probably a few years older, and an intermittent cat,
who, when he did put in an appearance, was the life and soul of the party, but
whose visits to his home were all too infrequent for Jill. Thomas was a genial
animal, whose color-scheme, like a Whistler picture, was an arrangement in
black and white. He had green eyes and a purr like a racing automobile. But his
social engagements in the neighborhood kept him away much of the time. He was
the popular and energetic secretary of the local cats’ debating society.
One could hear him at night sometimes reading the minutes in a loud, clear
voice; after which the debate was considered formally open.

Each day was the same as the last, almost to the final detail. Sometimes Tibby
would be naughty at breakfast, sometimes at lunch; while Rover, the spaniel, a
great devotee of the garbage-can, would occasionally be sick at mid-day instead
of after the evening meal. But, with these exceptions, there was a uniformity
about the course of life in the Mariner household which began to prey on
Jill’s nerves as early as the third day.

The picture which Mr Mariner had formed in his mind of Jill as a wealthy young
lady with a taste for house property continued as vivid as ever. It was his
practice each morning to conduct her about the neighborhood, introducing her to
the various houses in which he had sunk most of the money which he had made in
business. Mr Mariner’s life centered around Brookport real estate, and
the embarrassed Jill was compelled to inspect sitting-rooms, bathrooms,
kitchens, and master’s bedrooms till the sound of a key turning in a lock
gave her a feeling of nervous exhaustion. Most of her uncle’s houses were
converted farmhouses and, as one unfortunate purchaser had remarked, not so
darned converted at that. The days she spent at Brookport remained in
Jill’s memory as a smell of dampness and chill and closeness.

“You want to buy,” said Mr Mariner every time he shut a front-door
behind them. “Not rent. Buy. Then, if you don’t want to live here,
you can always rent in the summer.”

It seemed incredible to Jill that the summer would ever come. Winter held
Brookport in its grip. For the first time in her life she was tasting real
loneliness. She wandered over the snow-patched fields down to the frozen bay,
and found the intense stillness, punctuated only by the occasional distant
gunshot of some optimist trying for duck, oppressive rather than restful. She
looked on the weird beauty of the ice-bound marshes which glittered red and
green and blue in the sun with unseeing eyes; for her isolation was giving her
time to think, and thought was a torment.

On the eighth day came a letter from Uncle Chris,—a cheerful, even
rollicking letter. Things were going well with Uncle Chris, it seemed. As was
his habit, he did not enter into details, but he wrote in a spacious way of
large things to be, of affairs that were coming out right, of prosperity in
sight. As tangible evidence of success, he enclosed a present of twenty
dollars, for Jill to spend in the Brookport shops.

The letter arrived by the morning mail, and two hours later Mr Mariner took
Jill by one of his usual overland routes to see a house nearer the village than
most of those which she had viewed. Mr Mariner had exhausted the supply of
cottages belonging to himself, and this one was the property of an
acquaintance. There would be an agent’s fee for him in the deal, if it
went through, and Mr Mariner was not a man who despised money in small
quantities.

There was a touch of hopefulness in his gloom this morning, like the first
intimation of sunshine after a wet day. He had been thinking the thing over,
and had come to the conclusion that Jill’s unresponsiveness when
confronted with the houses she had already seen was due to the fact that she
had loftier ideas than he had supposed. Something a little more magnificent
than the twelve thousand dollar places he had shown her was what she desired.
This house stood on a hill looking down on the bay, in several acres of ground.
It had its private landing-stage and bath-house, its dairy, its
sleeping-porches,—everything, in fact, that a sensible girl could want.
Mr Mariner could not bring himself to suppose that he would fail again today.

“They’re asking a hundred and five thousand,” he said,
“but I know they’d take a hundred thousand. And, if it was a
question of cash down, they would go even lower. It’s a fine house. You
could entertain there. Mrs Bruggenheim rented it last summer, and wanted to
buy, but she wouldn’t go above ninety thousand. If you want it,
you’d better make up your mind quick. A place like this is apt to be
snapped up in a hurry.”

Jill could endure it no longer.

“But, you see,” she said gently, “all I have in the world is
twenty dollars!”

There was a painful pause. Mr Mariner shot a swift glance at her in the hope of
discovering that she had spoken humorously, but was compelled to decide that
she had not. His face under normal conditions always achieved the maximum gloom
possible for any face, so he gave no outward sign of the shock which had
shattered his mental poise; but he expressed his emotion by walking nearly a
mile without saying a word. He was stunned. He had supported himself up till
now by the thought that, frightful as the expense of entertaining Jill as a
guest might be, the outlay was a good sporting speculation if she intended
buying house-property in the neighbourhood. The realization that he was down to
the extent of a week’s breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, with nothing to
show for it, appalled him. There had been a black morning some years before
when Mr. Mariner had given a waiter a ten-dollar bill in mistake for a one. As
he had felt then, on discovering his error when it was too late to retrieve it,
so did he feel now.

“Twenty dollars!” he exclaimed, at the end of the mile.

“Twenty dollars,” said Jill,

“But your father was a rich man.” Mr. Mariner’s voice was
high and plaintive. “He made a fortune over here before he went to
England.”

“It’s all gone. I got nipped,” said Jill, who was finding a
certain amount of humor in the situation, “in Amalgamated Dyes.”

“Amalgamated Dyes?”

“They’re something,” explained Jill, “that people get
nipped in.”

Mr Mariner digested this.

“You speculated?” he gasped.

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t have been allowed to do it,” said Mr Mariner
warmly. “Major Selby—your uncle ought to have known better than to
allow you.”

“Yes, oughtn’t he,” said Jill demurely.

There was another silence, lasting for about a quarter of a mile.

“Well, it’s a bad business,” said Mr Mariner.

“Yes,” said Jill. “I’ve felt that myself.”

The result of this conversation was to effect a change in the atmosphere of
Sandringham. The alteration in the demeanor of people of parsimonious habit,
when they discover that the guest they are entertaining is a pauper and not, as
they had supposed, an heiress, is subtle but well-marked. In most cases, more
well-marked than subtle. Nothing was actually said, but there are thoughts that
are almost as audible as words. A certain suspense seemed to creep into the
air, as happens when a situation has been reached which is too poignant to
last. Greek Tragedy affects the reader with the same sense of over-hanging
doom. Things, we feel, cannot go on as they are.

That night, after dinner, Mrs Mariner asked Jill to read to her.

“Print tries my eyes so, dear,” said Mrs Mariner. It was a small
thing, but it had the significance of that little cloud that arose out of the
sea like a man’s hand. Jill appreciated the portent. She was, she
perceived, to make herself useful.

“Of course I will,” she said cordially. “What would you me to
read?”

She hated reading aloud. It always made her throat sore, and her eye skipped to
the end of each page and took the interest out of it long before the proper
time. But she proceeded bravely, for her conscience was troubling her. Her
sympathy was divided equally between these unfortunate people who had been
saddled with an undesired visitor and herself who had been placed in a position
at which every independent nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had
loathed being under obligations to strangers or those whom she did not love.

“Thank you, dear,” said Mrs Mariner, when Jill’s voice had
roughened to a weary croak. “You read so well.” She wrestled
ineffectually with her handkerchief against the cold in the head from which she
always suffered. “It would be nice if you would do it every night,
don’t you think? You have no idea how tired print makes my eyes.”

On the following morning after breakfast, at the hour when she had hitherto
gone house-hunting with Mr Mariner, the child Tibby, of whom up till now she
had seen little except at meals, presented himself to her, coated and shod for
the open and regarding her with a dull and phlegmatic gaze.

“Ma says will you please take me for a nice walk!”

Jill’s heart sank. She loved children, but Tibby was not an ingratiating
child. He was a Mr Mariner in little. He had the family gloom. It puzzled Jill
sometimes why this branch of the family should look on life with so jaundiced
an eye. She remembered her father as a cheerful man, alive to the small humors
of life.

“All right, Tibby. Where shall we go?”

“Ma says we must keep on the roads and I mustn’t slide.”

Jill was thoughtful during the walk. Tibby, who was no conversationalist, gave
her every opportunity for meditation. She perceived that in the space of a few
hours she had sunk in the social scale. If there was any difference between her
position and that of a paid nurse and companion, it lay in the fact that she
was not paid. She looked about her at the grim countryside, gave a thought to
the chill gloom of the house to which she was about to return, and her heart
sank.

Nearing home, Tibby vouchsafed his first independent observation.

“The hired man’s quit!”

“Has he?”

“Yep. Quit this morning.”

It had begun to snow. They turned and made their way back to the house. The
information she had received did not cause Jill any great apprehension. It was
hardly likely that her new duties would include the stoking of the furnace.
That and cooking appeared to be the only acts about the house which were
outside her present sphere of usefulness.

“He killed a rat once in the wood-shed with an axe,” said Tibby
chattily. “Yessir! Chopped it right in half, and it bled!”

“Look at the pretty snow falling on the trees,” said Jill faintly.

At breakfast next morning, Mrs Mariner having sneezed, made a suggestion.

“Tibby, darling, wouldn’t it be nice if you and cousin Jill played
a game of pretending you were pioneers in the Far West?”

“What’s a pioneer?” enquired Tibby, pausing in the middle of
an act of violence on a plate of oatmeal.

“The pioneers were the early settlers in this country, dear. You have
read about them in your history book. They endured a great many hardships, for
life was very rough for them, with no railroads or anything. I think it would
be a nice game to play this morning.”

Tibby looked at Jill. There was doubt in his eye. Jill returned his gaze
sympathetically. One thought was in both their minds.

“There is a string to this!” said Tibby’s eye.

“Exactly what I think!” said Jill’s.

Mrs Mariner sneezed again.

“You would have lots of fun,” she said.

“What’ud we do?” asked Tibby cautiously. He had been this way
before. Only last Summer, on his mother’s suggestion that he should
pretend he was a ship-wrecked sailor on a desert island, he had perspired
through a whole afternoon cutting the grass in front of the house to make a
ship-wrecked sailor’s simple bed.

“I know,” said Jill. “We’ll pretend we’re
pioneers stormbound in their log cabin in the woods, and the wolves are howling
outside, and they daren’t go out, so they make a lovely big fire and sit
in front of it and read.”

“And eat candy,” suggested Tibby, warming to the idea.

“And eat candy,” agreed Jill.

Mrs Mariner frowned.

“I was going to suggest,” she said frostily, “that you
shovelled the snow away from the front steps!”

“Splendid!” said Jill. “Oh, but I forgot. I want to go to the
village first.”

“There will be plenty of time to do it when you get back.”

“All right. I’ll do it when I get back.”

It was a quarter of an hour’s walk to the village. Jill stopped at the
post-office.

“Could you tell me,” she asked, “when the next train is to
New York?”

“There’s one at ten-ten,” said the woman, behind the window.
“You’ll have to hurry.”

“I’ll hurry!” said Jill.

CHAPTER EIGHT

§ 1.

Doctors, laying down the law in their usual confident way, tell us that the
vitality of the human body is at its lowest at two o’clock in the
morning: and that it is then, as a consequence, that the mind is least able to
contemplate the present with equanimity, the future with fortitude, and the
past without regret. Every thinking man, however, knows that this is not so.
The true zero hour, desolate, gloom-ridden, and specter-haunted, occurs
immediately before dinner while we are waiting for that cocktail. It is then
that, stripped for a brief moment of our armor of complacency and self-esteem,
we see ourselves as we are,—frightful chumps in a world where nothing
goes right; a gray world in which, hoping to click, we merely get the
raspberry; where, animated by the best intentions, we nevertheless succeed in
perpetrating the scaliest bloomers and landing our loved ones neck-deep in the
gumbo.

So reflected Freddie Rooke, that priceless old bean, sitting disconsolately in
an arm-chair at the Drones Club about two weeks after Jill’s departure
from England, waiting for his friend Algy Martyn to trickle in and give him
dinner.

Surveying Freddie, as he droops on his spine in the yielding leather, one is
conscious of one’s limitations as a writer. Gloom like his calls for the
pen of a master. Zola could have tackled it nicely. Gorky might have made a
stab at it. Dostoievsky would have handled it with relish. But for oneself the
thing is too vast. One cannot wangle it. It intimidates. It would have been bad
enough in any case, for Algy Martyn was late as usual and it always gave
Freddie the pip to have to wait for dinner: but what made it worse was the fact
that the Drones was not one of Freddie’s clubs and so, until the blighter
Algy arrived, it was impossible for him to get his cocktail. There he sat,
surrounded by happy, laughing young men, each grasping a glass of the good old
mixture-as-before, absolutely unable to connect. Some of them, casual
acquaintances, had nodded to him, waved, and gone on lowering the
juice,—a spectacle which made Freddie feel much as the wounded soldier
would have felt if Sir Philip Sidney, instead of offering him the cup of water,
had placed it to his own lips and drained it with a careless
“Cheerio!” No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal
soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi’s Russian peasants when, after
putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his wife,
and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only
to find the vodka-bottle empty.

Freddie gave himself up to despondency: and, as always in these days when he
was mournful, he thought of Jill. Jill’s sad case was a continual source
of mental anguish to him. From the first he had blamed himself for the
breaking-off of her engagement with Derek. If he had not sent the message to
Derek from the police-station, the latter would never have known about their
arrest, and all would have been well. And now, a few days ago, had come the
news of her financial disaster, with its attendant complications.

It had descended on Freddie like a thunderbolt through the medium of Ronny
Devereux.

“I say,” Ronny had said, “have you heard the latest? Your
pal, Underhill, has broken off his engagement with Jill Mariner.”

“I know; rather rotten, what!”

“Rotten? I should say so! It isn’t done. I mean to say, chap
can’t chuck a girl just because she’s lost her money. Simply
isn’t on the board, old man!”

“Lost her money? What do you mean?”

Ronny was surprised. Hadn’t Freddie heard? Yes, absolute fact. He had it
from the best authority. Didn’t know how it had happened and all that,
but Jill Mariner had gone completely bust; Underhill had given her the
miss-in-baulk; and the poor girl had legged it, no one knew where. Oh, Freddie
had met her and she had told him she was going to America? Well, then, legged
it to America. But the point was that the swine Underhill had handed her the
mitten just because she was broke, and that was what Ronny thought so bally
rotten. Broker a girl is, Ronny meant to say, more a fellow should stick to
her.

“But—” Freddie rushed to his hero’s defence. “But
it wasn’t that at all. Something quite different. I mean, Derek
didn’t even know Jill had lost her money. He broke the engagement because
…” Freddie stopped short. He didn’t want everybody to know
of that rotten arrest business, as they infallibly would if he confided in
Ronny Devereux. Sort of thing he would never hear the last of. “He broke
it off because of something quite different.”

“Oh, yes!” said Ronny skeptically.

“But he did, really!”

Ronny shook his head.

“Don’t you believe it, old son. Don’t you believe it. Stands
to reason it must have been because the poor girl was broke. You wouldn’t
have done it and I wouldn’t have done it, but Underhill did, and
that’s all there is to it. I mean, a tick’s a tick, and
there’s nothing more to say. Well, I know he’s been a pal of yours,
Freddie, but, next time I meet him, by Jove, I’ll cut him dead. Only I
don’t know him to speak to, dash it!” concluded Ronny regretfully.

Ronny’s news had upset Freddie. Derek had returned to the Albany a couple
of days ago, moody and silent. They had lunched together at the Bachelors, and
Freddie had been pained at the attitude of his fellow clubmen. Usually, when he
lunched at the Bachelors, his table became a sort of social center. Cheery
birds would roll up to pass the time of day, and festive old eggs would toddle
over to have coffee and so forth, and all that sort of thing. Jolly! On this
occasion nobody had rolled, and all the eggs present had taken their coffee
elsewhere. There was an uncomfortable chill in the atmosphere of which Freddie
had been acutely conscious, though Derek had not appeared to notice it. The
thing had only come home to Derek yesterday at the Albany, when the painful
episode of Wally Mason had occurred. It was this way:

“Hullo, Freddie, old top! Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Freddie looked up from his broken meditations, to find that his host had
arrived.

“Hullo!”

“A quick bracer,” said Algy Martyn, “and then the jolly old
food-stuffs. It’s pretty late, I see. Didn’t notice how time was
slipping.”

Over the soup, Freddie was still a prey to gloom. For once the healing
gin-and-vermouth had failed to do its noble work. He sipped sombrely, so
sombrely as to cause comment from his host.

“Pipped?” enquired Algy solicitously.

“Pretty pipped,” admitted Freddie.

“Backed a loser?”

“No.”

“Something wrong with the old tum?”

“No. … Worried.”

“Worried?”

“About Derek.”

“Derek? Who’s … ? Oh, you mean Underhill?”

“Yes.”

Algy Martyn chased an elusive piece of carrot about his soup plate, watching it
interestedly as it slid coyly from the spoon.

“Oh?” he said, with sudden coolness. “What about him?”

Freddie was too absorbed in his subject to notice the change in his
friend’s tone.

“A dashed unpleasant thing,” he said, “happened yesterday
morning at my place. I was just thinking about going out to lunch, when the
door-bell rang and Parker said a chappie of the name of Mason would like to see
me. I didn’t remember any Mason, but Parker said the chappie said he knew
me when I was a kid. So he loosed him into the room, and it turned out to be a
fellow I used to know years ago down in Worcestershire. I didn’t know him
from Adam at first, but gradually the old bean got to work, and I placed him.
Wally Mason his name was. Rummily enough, he had spoken to me at the Leicester
that night when the fire was, but not being able to place him, I had given him
the miss somewhat. You know how it is. Chappie you’ve never been
introduced to says something to you in a theatre, and you murmur something and
sheer off. What?”

“Absolutely,” agreed Algy Martyn. He thoroughly approved of
Freddie’s code of etiquette. Sheer off. Only thing to do.

“Well, anyhow, now that he had turned up again and told me who he was, I
began to remember. We had been kids together, don’t you know.
(What’s this? Salmon? Oh, right ho.) So I buzzed about and did the jovial
host, you know; gave him a drink and a toofer, and all that sort of thing; and
talked about the dear old days and what not. And so forth, if you follow me.
Then he brought the conversation round to Jill. Of course he knew Jill at the
same time when he knew me, down in Worcestershire, you see. We were all pretty
pally in those days, if you see what I mean. Well, this man Mason, it seems,
had heard somewhere about Jill losing her money, and he wanted to know if it
was true. I said absolutely. Hadn’t heard any details, but Ronny had told
me and Ronny had had it from some one who had stable information and all that
sort of thing. ‘Dashed shame, isn’t it!’ I said.
‘She’s gone to America, you know.’ ‘I didn’t
know,’ he said. ‘I understood she was going to be married quite
soon.’ Well, of course, I told him that that was off. He didn’t say
anything for a bit, then he said ‘Off?’ I said ‘Off.’
‘Did she break it off?’ asked the chappie. ‘Well, no,’
I said. ‘As a matter of fact Derek broke it off.’ He said
‘Oh!’ (What? Oh yes, a bit of pheasant will be fine.) Where was I?
Oh, yes. He said ‘Oh!’ Now, before this, I ought to tell you, this
chappie Mason had asked me to come out and have a bit of lunch. I had told him
I was lunching with Derek, and he said ‘Right ho,’ or words to that
effect, ‘Bring him along.’ Derek had been out for a stroll, you
see, and we were waiting for him to come in. Well, just at this point or
juncture, if you know what I mean, in he came, and I said ‘Oh, what
ho!’ and introduced Wally Mason. ‘Oh, do you know Underhill?’
I said, or something like that. You know the sort of thing. And then
…”

Freddie broke off and drained his glass. The recollection of that painful
moment had made him feverish. Social difficulties always did.

“Then what?” enquired Algy Martyn.

“Well, it, was pretty rotten. Derek held out his hand, as a chappie
naturally would, being introduced to a strange chappie, and Wally Mason, giving
it an absolute miss, went on talking to me just as if we were alone, you know.
Look here. Here was I, where this knife is. Derek over here—this
fork—with his hand out. Mason here—this bit of bread. Mason looks
at his watch, and says ‘I’m sorry, Freddie, but I find I’ve
an engagement for lunch. So long!’ and biffed out, without apparently
knowing Derek was on the earth. I mean …” Freddie reached for his
glass, “What I mean is, it was dashed embarrassing. I mean, cutting a
fellow dead in my rooms. I don’t know when I’ve felt so
rotten!”

Algy Martyn delivered judgment with great firmness.

“Chappie was perfectly right!”

“No, but I mean …”

“Absolutely correct-o,” insisted Algy sternly. “Underhill
can’t dash about all over the place giving the girl he’s engaged to
the mitten because she’s broke, and expect no notice to be taken of it.
If you want to know what I think, old man, your pal Underhill—I
can’t imagine what the deuce you see in him, but, school together and so
forth, makes a difference, I suppose,—I say, if you want to know what I
think, Freddie, the blighter Underhill would be well advised either to leg it
after Jill and get her to marry him or else lie low for a goodish while till
people have forgotten the thing. I mean to say, fellows like Ronny and I and
Dick Wimpole and Archie Studd and the rest of our lot,—well, we all knew
Jill and thought she was a topper and had danced with her here and there and
seen her about and all that, and naturally we feel pretty strongly about the
whole dashed business. Underhill isn’t in our particular set, but we all
know most of the people he knows, and we talk about this business, and the
thing gets about, and there you are! My sister, who was a great pal of
Jill’s, swears that all the girls she knows mean to cut Underhill. I tell
you, Freddie, London’s going to get pretty hot for him if he
doesn’t do something dashed quick and with great rapidity!”

“But you haven’t got the story right, old thing!”

“How not?”

“Well, I mean you think and Ronny thinks and all the rest of you think
that Derek broke off the engagement because of the money. It wasn’t that
at all.”

“What was it, then?”

“Well … Well, look here, it makes me seem a fearful ass and all
that, but I’d better tell you. Jill and I were going down one of those
streets near Victoria and a blighter was trying to slay a parrot
…”

“Parrot-shooting’s pretty good in those parts, they tell me,”
interjected Algy satirically.

“Don’t interrupt, old man. This parrot had got out of one of the
houses, and a fellow was jabbing at it with a stick, and Jill—you know
what she’s like; impulsive, I mean, and all that—Jill got hold of
the stick and biffed him with some vim, and a policeman rolled up and the
fellow made a fuss and the policeman took Jill and me off to chokey. Well, like
an ass, I sent round to Derek to bail us out, and that’s how he heard of
the thing. Apparently he didn’t think a lot of it, and the result was
that he broke off the engagement.”

Algy Martin had listened to this recital with growing amazement.

“He broke it off because of that?”

“Yes.”

“What absolute rot!” said Algy Martyn. “I don’t believe
a word of it!”

“I say, old man!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” repeated Algy firmly.
“And nobody else will either. It’s dashed good of you, Freddie, to
cook up a yarn like that to try and make things look better for the blighter,
but it won’t work. Such a damn silly story, too!” said Algy with
some indignation.

“But it’s true!”

“What’s the use, Freddie, between old pals?” said Algy
protestingly. “You know perfectly well that Underhill’s a cootie of
the most pronounced order, and that, when he found out that Jill hadn’t
any money, he chucked her.”

“But why should Derek care whether Jill was well off or not? He’s
got enough money of his own.”

“Nobody,” said Algy judicially, “has got enough money of his
own. Underhill thought he was marrying a girl with a sizeable chunk of the
ready, and, when the fuse blew out, he decided it wasn’t good enough. For
Heaven’s sake don’t let’s talk any more about the blighter.
It gives me a pain to think of him.”

And Algy Martyn, suppressing every effort which Freddie made to reopen the
subject, turned the conversation to more general matters.

§ 2.

Freddie returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness. Algy’s
remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken him. The London
in which he and Derek moved and had their being is nothing but a village, and
it was evident that village gossip was hostile to Derek. People were talking
about him. Local opinion had decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man
had cut him. Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of street-fulls of men, long
Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something had got to
be done. He was devoted to Derek. This sort of thing was as bad as being cut
himself. Whatever Freddie’s limitations in the matter of brain, he had a
large heart and an infinite capacity for faithfulness in his friendships.

The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding friend, as
he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour later. Derek had been
attending the semi-annual banquet of the Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in
the City, understudying one of the speakers, a leading member of Parliament,
who had been unable to appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of
degraded repletion which city dinners induce. The dry-salters, on these
occasions when they cast off for a night the cares and anxieties of
dry-salting, do their guests well, and Derek had that bloated sense of
foreboding which comes to a man whose stomach is not his strong point after
twelve courses and a multitude of mixed wines. A goose, qualifying for the role
of a pot of pate de foies gras, probably has exactly the same jaundiced
outlook.

Yet, unfavorably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional moody
grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his private affairs, it
seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should be allowed to pass without
some word spoken on the subject. He thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said,
of Algy and what Algy had said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in
this very room; and he nerved himself to the task.

“Derek, old top.”

A grunt.

“I say, Derek, old bean.”

Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he stood,
warming his legs at the blaze.

“Well?”

Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One
that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the
fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with
an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at
the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.

“I say, you know, about Jill!”

He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing with a
little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion’s start and the sudden
thickening of his bushy eyebrows.

“Well?” said Derek again.

Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind that Derek
was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first time he had seen the
family resemblance quite so marked.

“Ronny Devereux was saying …” faltered Freddie.

“Damn Ronny Devereux!”

“Oh, absolutely! But …”

“Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?”

“Why, old man, you’ve heard me speak of him, haven’t you? Pal
of mine. He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that
morning.”

“Oh, that fellow? And he has been saying something about …
?”

“It isn’t only Ronny, you know,” Freddie hastened to
interject. “Algy Martyn’s talking about it, too. And lots of other
fellows. And Algy’s sister and a lot of people. They’re all saying
…”

“What are they saying?”

Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn’t
look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old map. Rummy
he had never noticed before how extraordinarily like his mother he was. Freddie
was conscious of a faint sense of grievance. He could not have put it into
words, but what he felt was that a fellow had no right to go about looking like
Lady Underhill.

“What are they saying?” repeated Derek grimly.

“Well …” Freddie hesitated. “That it’s a bit
tough … On Jill, you know.”

“They think I behaved badly?”

“Well … Oh, well, you know!”

Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental disturbance.
The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the Dry-Salters’ dinner had
begun to change to something more actively unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp
pain had begun to run through it, flashing in and out like lightning through a
thunder-cloud. He felt sullen and vicious.

“I wonder,” he said with savage politeness, “if, when you
chat with your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my
private affairs.”

“Sorry, old man. But they started it, don’t you know.”

“And, if you feel you’ve got to discuss me, kindly keep it to
yourself. Don’t come and tell me what your damned friends said to each
other and to you and what you said to them, because it bores me. I’m not
interested. I don’t value their opinions as much as you seem to.”
Derek paused, to battle in silence with the imperious agony within him.
“It was good of you to put me up here,” he went on, “but I
think I won’t trespass on your hospitality any longer. Perhaps
you’ll ask Parker to pack my things tomorrow.” Derek moved, as
majestically as an ex-guest of the Worshipful Company of Dry-Salters may, in
the direction of the door. “I shall go to the Savoy.”

“Oh, I say, old man! No need to do that.”

“Good night.”

“But, I say …”

“And you can tell your friend Devereux that, if he doesn’t stop
poking his nose into my private business, I’ll pull it off.”

“Well,” said Freddie doubtfully, “of course I don’t
suppose you know, but … Ronny’s a pretty hefty bird. He boxed for
Cambridge in the light-weights the last year he was up, you know. He
…”

Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs for some
minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face. Freddie hated rows.
He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a rotten place the world was
these days! Just one thing after another. First, poor old Jill takes the knock
and disappears. He would miss her badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And
now—gone. Biffed off. Next, Derek. Together, more or less, ever since
Winchester, and now—bing!…

Freddie heaved a sigh, and reached out for the Sporting Times, his
never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar and curled
up in one of the arm-chairs. He was feeling tired. He had been playing squash
all the afternoon, a game at which he was exceedingly expert and to which he
was much addicted.

Time passed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed it. From the
depths of the chair came a faint snore …

A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk troubled dreams. Derek was
standing beside him. A tousled Derek, apparently in pain.

“Freddie!”

“Hullo!”

A spasm twisted Derek’s face.

“Have you got any pepsin?”

Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is this
dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a respecter
of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had stalked stiffly
from the room two hours before. His pride had been humbled upon the rack.

“Pepsin?”

Freddie blinked, the mists of sleep floating gently before his eyes. He could
not quite understand what his friend was asking for. It had sounded just like
pepsin, and he didn’t believe there was such a word.

“Yes. I’ve got the most damned attack of indigestion.”

The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and became
immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of the Rookes was a
good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who suggested that Derek should
recline in the arm-chair which he had vacated; Freddie who nipped round the
corner to the all-night chemist’s and returned with a magic bottle
guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after a surfeit of soda-water bottles; Freddie
who mixed and administered the dose.

His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass. Derek
recovered.

One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of gentle
remorse which came upon him as he lay in the arm-chair was one so foreign to
his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He was like a convalescent
child. Between them, the all-night chemist and the Dry-Salters seemed to have
wrought a sort of miracle. These temporary softenings of personality frequently
follow city dinners. The time to catch your Dry-Salter in angelic mood is the
day after the semi-annual banquet. Go to him then and he will give you his
watch and chain.

“Freddie,” said Derek.

They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece, beside
which Jill’s photograph had stood, pointed to ten minutes past two. Derek
spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right after all, and two
o’clock is the hour at which our self-esteem deserts us, leaving in its
place regret for past sins, good resolutions for future behavior.

“What do Algy Martyn and the others say about … you know?”

Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.

“Oh, I know,” went on Derek. “They say I behaved like a
cad.”

“Oh, well …”

“They are quite right. I did.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say that, you know. Faults on both sides and all
that sort of rot.”

“I did!” Derek stared into the fire. Scattered all over London at
that moment, probably, a hundred worshipful Dry-Salters were equally sleepless
and subdued, looking wide-eyed into black pasts. “Is it true she has gone
to America, Freddie?”

“She told me she was going.”

“What a fool I’ve been!”

The clock ticked on through the silence. The fire sputtered faintly, then gave
a little wheeze, like a very old man. Derek rested his chin on his hands,
gazing into the ashes.

“I wish to God I could go over there and find her.”

“Why don’t you?”

“How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I
can’t stir.”

Freddie leaped from his seat. The suddenness of the action sent a red-hot
corkscrew of pain through Derek’s head.

“What the devil’s the matter?” he demanded irritably. Even
the gentle mood which comes with convalescence after a City Dinner is not
guaranteed to endure against this sort of thing.

“I’ve got an idea, old bean!”

“Well, there’s no need to dance, is there?”

“I’ve nothing to keep me here, you know. What’s the matter
with my popping over to America and finding Jill?” Freddie tramped the
floor, aglow. Each beat of his foot jarred Derek, but he made no complaint.

“Could you?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course I could. I was saying only the other day that I had half a
mind to buzz over. It’s a wheeze! I’ll get on the next boat and
charge over in the capacity of a jolly old ambassador. Have her back in no
time. Leave it to me, old thing! This is where I come out strong!”

CHAPTER NINE

§ 1.

New York welcomed Jill, as she came out of the Pennsylvania Station into
Seventh Avenue, with a whirl of powdered snow that touched her cheek like a
kiss, the cold, bracing kiss one would expect from this vivid city. She stood
at the station entrance, a tiny figure beside the huge pillars, looking round
her with eager eyes. A wind was whipping down the avenue. The sky was a clear,
brilliant tent of the brightest blue. Energy was in the air, and hopefulness.
She wondered if Mr Elmer Mariner ever came to New York. It was hard to see how
even his gloom would contrive to remain unaffected by the exhilaration of the
place.

Yes, New York looked good … good and exciting, with all the taxi-cabs
rattling in at the dark tunnel beside her, with all the people hurrying in and
hurrying out, with all this medley of street-cars and sky-signs and crushed
snow and drays and horses and policemen, and that vast hotel across the street,
towering to heaven like a cliff. It even smelt good. She remembered an old
picture in Punch, of two country visitors standing on the step of their
railway carriage at a London terminus, one saying ecstatically to other:
“Don’t speak! Just sniff! Doesn’t it smell of the
Season!” She knew exactly how they had felt, and she approved of their
attitude. That was the right way to behave on being introduced to a great
metropolis. She stood and sniffed reverently. But for the presence of the
hurrying crowds, she could almost have imitated the example of that king who
kissed the soil of his country on landing from his ship.

She took Uncle Chris’ letter from her bag. He had written from an address
on East Fifty-seventh Street. There would be just time to catch him before he
went out to lunch. She hailed a taxi-cab which was coming out of the station.

It was a slow ride, halted repeatedly by congestion of the traffic, but a short
one for Jill. She was surprised at herself, a Londoner of long standing, for
feeling so provincial and being so impressed. But London was far away. It
belonged to a life that seemed years ago and a world from which she had parted
for ever. Moreover, this was undeniably a stupendous city through which her
taxi-cab was carrying her. At Times Square the stream of the traffic plunged
into a whirlpool, swinging out of Broadway to meet the rapids which poured in
from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the automobiles in the world
were gathered together. On the sidewalks, pedestrians, muffled against the
nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to and fro. And, above, that sapphire
sky spread a rich velvet curtain which made the tops of the buildings stand out
like the white minarets of some eastern city of romance.

The cab drew up in front of a stone apartment house; and Jill, getting out,
passed under an awning through a sort of mediaeval courtyard, gay with potted
shrubs, to an inner door. She was impressed. The very atmosphere was redolent
of riches, and she wondered how in the world Uncle Chris had managed to acquire
wealth on this scale in the extremely short space of time which had elapsed
since his landing. There bustled past her an obvious millionaire—or, more
probably, a greater monarch of finance who looked down upon mere millionaires
and out of the goodness of his heart tried to check a tendency to speak
patronisingly to them. He was concealed to the eyebrows in a fur coat, and,
reaching the sidewalk, was instantly absorbed in a large limousine. Two
expensive-looking ladies followed him. Jill began to feel a little dazed.
Evidently the tales one heard of fortunes accumulated overnight in this magic
city were true, and one of them must have fallen to the lot of Uncle Chris. For
nobody to whom money was a concern could possibly afford to live in a place
like this. If Crœsus and the Count of Monte Cristo had applied for lodging
there, the authorities would probably have looked on them a little doubtfully
at first and hinted at the desirability of a month’s rent in advance.

In a glass case behind the inner door, reading a newspaper and chewing gum, sat
a dignified old man in the rich uniform of a general in the Guatemalan army. He
was a brilliant spectacle. He wore no jewelry, but this, no doubt, was due to a
private distaste for display. As there was no one else of humbler rank at hand
from whom Jill could solicit an introduction and the privilege of an audience,
she took the bold step of addressing him directly.

“I want to see Major Selby, please.”

The Guatemalan general arrested for a moment the rhythmic action of his jaws,
lowered his paper and looked at her with raised eyebrows. At first Jill thought
that he was registering haughty contempt, then she saw what she had taken for
scorn was surprise.

“Major Selby?”

“Major Selby.”

“No Major Selby living here.”

“Major Christopher Selby.”

“Not here,” said the associate of ambassadors and the pampered pet
of Guatemala’s proudest beauties. “Never heard of him in my
life!”

§ 2.

Jill had read works of fiction in which at certain crises everything had
“seemed to swim” in front of the heroine’s eyes, but never
till this moment had she experienced that remarkable sensation herself. The
Savior of Guatemala did not actually swim, perhaps, but he certainly flickered.
She had to blink to restore his prismatic outlines to their proper sharpness.
Already the bustle and noise of New York had begun to induce in her that dizzy
condition of unreality which one feels in dreams, and this extraordinary
statement added the finishing touch.

Perhaps the fact that she had said “please” to him when she opened
the conversation touched the heart of the hero of a thousand revolutions.
Dignified and beautiful as he was to the eye of the stranger, it is unpleasant
to have to record that he lived in a world which rather neglected the minor
courtesies of speech. People did not often say “please” to him.
“Here!” “Hi!” and “Gosh darn you!” yes; but
seldom “please.” He seemed to approve of Jill, for he shifted his
chewing-gum to a position which facilitated speech, and began to be helpful.

“What was the name again?”

“Selby.”

“Howja spell it?”

“S-e-l-b-y.”

“S-e-l-b-y. Oh, Selby?”

“Yes, Selby.”

“What was the first name?”

“Christopher.”

“Christopher?”

“Yes, Christopher.”

“Christopher Selby? No one of that name living here.”

“But there must be.”

The veteran shook his head with an indulgent smile.

“You want Mr Sipperley,” he said tolerantly. In Guatemala these
mistakes are always happening. “Mr George Sipperley. He’s on the
fourth floor. What name shall I say?”

He had almost reached the telephone when Jill stopped him. This is an age of
just-as-good substitutes, but she refused to accept any unknown Sipperley as a
satisfactory alternative for Uncle Chris.

“I don’t want Mr Sipperley. I want Major Selby.”

“Howja spell it once more?”

“S-e-l-b-y.”

“S-e-l-b-y. No one of that name living here. Mr.
Sipperley—”—he spoke in a wheedling voice, as if determined,
in spite of herself, to make Jill see what was in her best
interests—“Mr Sipperley’s on the fourth floor. Gentleman in
the real estate business,” he added insinuatingly. “He’s got
blond hair and a Boston bull-dog.”

“He may be all you say, and he may have a dozen bulldogs …”

“Only one. Jack his name is.”

“… But he isn’t the right man. It’s absurd. Major
Selby wrote to me from this address. This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh
Street?”

“This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street,” conceded the other
cautiously.

“I’ve got his letter here.” She opened her bag, and gave an
exclamation of dismay. “It’s gone!”

“Mr Sipperley used to have a friend staying with him last Fall. A Mr
Robertson. Dark-complected man with a mustache.”

“I took it out to look at the address, and I was sure I put it back. I
must have dropped it.”

“There’s a Mr Rainsby on the seventh floor. He’s a broker
down on Wall Street. Short man with an impediment in his speech.”

Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

“Never mind,” she said. “I must have made a mistake. I was
quite sure that this was the address, but it evidently isn’t. Thank you
so much. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”

She walked away, leaving the Terror of Paraguay and all points west speechless:
for people who said “Thank you so much” to him were even rarer than
those who said “please.” He followed her with an affectionate eye
till she was out of sight, then, restoring his chewing-gum to circulation,
returned to the perusal of his paper. A momentary suggestion presented itself
to his mind that what Jill had really wanted was Mr Willoughby on the eighth
floor, but it was too late to say so now: and soon, becoming absorbed in the
narrative of a spirited householder in Kansas who had run amuck with a hatchet
and slain six, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

§ 3.

Jill walked back to Fifth Avenue, crossed it, and made her way thoughtfully
along the breezy street which, flanked on one side by the Park and on the other
by the green-roofed Plaza Hotel and the apartment houses of the wealthy, ends
in the humbler and more democratic spaces of Columbus Circle. She perceived
that she was in that position, familiar to melodrama, of being alone in a great
city. The reflection brought with it a certain discomfort. The bag that dangled
from her wrist contained all the money she had in the world, the very broken
remains of the twenty dollars which Uncle Chris had sent her at Brookport. She
had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and no immediately obvious means of adding
to her capital. It was a situation which she had not foreseen when she set out
to walk to Brookport station.

She pondered over the mystery of Uncle Chris’ disappearance, and found no
solution. The thing was inexplicable. She was as sure of the address he had
given in his letter as she was of anything in the world. Yet at that address
nothing had been heard of him. His name was not even known. These were deeper
waters than Jill was able to fathom.

She walked on, aimlessly. Presently she came to Columbus Circle, and, crossing
Broadway at the point where that street breaks out into an eruption of
automobile stores, found herself suddenly hungry, opposite a restaurant whose
entire front was a sheet of plate glass. On the other side of this glass, at
marble-topped tables, apparently careless of their total lack of privacy, sat
the impecunious, lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the passer-by.
It reminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the center of the
window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples and grape-fruit, a
white-robed ministrant at a stove juggled ceaselessly with buckwheat cakes. He
struck the final note in the candidness of the establishment, a priest whose
ritual contained no mysteries. Spectators with sufficient time on their hands
to permit them to stand and watch were enabled to witness a New York mid-day
meal in every stage of its career, from its protoplasmic beginnings as a stream
of yellowish-white liquid poured on top of the stove to its ultimate Nirvana in
the interior of the luncher in the form of an appetising cake. It was a
spectacle which no hungry girl could resist. Jill went in, and, as she made her
way among the tables, a voice spoke her name.

“Miss Mariner!”

Jill jumped, and thought for a moment that the thing must have been an
hallucination. It was impossible that anybody in the place should have called
her name. Except for Uncle Chris, wherever he might be, she knew no one in New
York. Then the voice spoke again, competing valiantly with a clatter of
crockery so uproarious as to be more like something solid than a mere sound.

“I couldn’t believe it was you!”

A girl in blue had risen from the nearest table, and was staring at her in
astonishment, Jill recognized her instantly. Those big, pathetic eyes, like a
lost child’s, were unmistakable. It was the parrot girl, the girl whom
she and Freddie Rooke had found in the drawing-room, at Ovington Square that
afternoon when the foundations of the world had given way and chaos had begun.

“Good gracious!” cried Jill. “I thought you were in
London!”

That feeling of emptiness and panic, the result of her interview with the
Guatemalan general at the apartment house, vanished magically. She sat down at
this unexpected friend’s table with a light heart.

“Whatever are you doing in New York?” asked the girl. “I
never knew you meant to come over.”

“It was a little sudden. Still, here I am. And I’m starving. What
are those things you’re eating?”

“Buckwheat cakes.”

“Oh, yes. I remember Uncle Chris talking about them on the boat.
I’ll have some.”

“But when did you come over?”

“I landed about ten days ago. I’ve been down at a place called
Brookport on Long Island. How funny running into you like this!”

“I was surprised that you remembered me.”

“I’ve forgotten your name,” admitted Jill frankly. “But
that’s nothing. I always forget names.”

“My name’s Nelly Bryant.”

“Of course. And you’re on the stage, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve just got work with Goble and Cohn. … Hullo,
Phil!”

A young man with a lithe figure and smooth black hair brushed straight back
from his forehead had paused at the table on his way to the cashier’s
desk.

“Hello, Nelly.”

“I didn’t know you lunched here.”

“Don’t often. Been rehearsing with Joe up at the Century Roof, and
had a quarter of an hour to get a bite. Can I sit down?”

“Sure. This is my friend, Miss Mariner.”

The young man shook hands with Jill, flashing an approving glance at her out of
his dark, restless eyes.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“This is Phil Brown,” said Nelly. “He plays the straight for
Joe Widgeon. They’re the best jazz-and-hokum team on the Keith
Circuit.”

“Oh, hush!” said Mr Brown modestly. “You always were a great
little booster, Nelly.”

“Well, you know you are! Weren’t you held over at the Palace last
time! Well, then!”

“That’s true,” admitted the young man. “Maybe we
didn’t gool ’em, eh? Stop me on the street and ask me! Only
eighteen bows second house Saturday!”

Jill was listening, fascinated.

“I can’t understand a word,” she said. “It’s like
another language.”

“You’re from the other side, aren’t you?” asked Mr
Brown.

“She only landed a week ago,” said Nelly.

“I thought so from the accent,” said Mr Brown. “So our talk
sort of goes over the top, does it? Well, you’ll learn American soon, if
you stick around.”

“I’ve learned some already,” said Jill. The relief of meeting
Nelly had made her feel very happy. She liked this smooth-haired young man.
“A man on the train this morning said to me, ‘Would you care for
the morning paper, sister?’ I said, ‘No, thanks, brother, I want to
look out of the window and think!’”

“You meet a lot of fresh guys on trains,” commented Mr Brown
austerely. “You want to give ’em the cold-storage eye.” He
turned to Nelly. “Did you go down to Ike, as I told you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you cop?”

“Yes. I never felt so happy in my life. I’d waited over an hour on
that landing of theirs, and then Johnny Miller came along, and I yelled in his
ear that I was after work, and he told me it would be all right. He’s
awfully good to girls who’ve worked in shows for him before. If it
hadn’t been for him I might have been waiting there still.”

“Who,” enquired Jill, anxious to be abreast of the conversation,
“is Ike?”

“Mr Goble. Where I’ve just got work. Goble and Cohn, you
know.”

“I never heard of them!”

The young man extended his hand.

“Put it there!” he said. “They never heard of me! At least,
the fellow I saw when I went down to the office hadn’t! Can you beat
it?”

“Oh, did you go down there, too?” asked Nelly.

“Sure. Joe wanted to get in another show on Broadway. He’d sort of
got tired of vodevil. Say, I don’t want to scare you, Nelly, but, if you
ask me, that show they’re putting out down there is a citron! I
don’t think Ike’s got a cent of his own money in it. My belief is
that he’s running it for a lot of amateurs. Why, say, listen! Joe and I
blow in there to see if there’s anything for us, and there’s a tall
guy in tortoiseshell cheaters sitting in Ike’s office. Said he was the
author and was engaging the principals. We told him who we were, and it
didn’t make any hit with him at all. He said he had never heard of us.
And, when we explained, he said no, there wasn’t going to be any of our
sort of work in the show. Said he was making an effort to give the public
something rather better than the usual sort of thing. No specialties required.
He said it was an effort to restore the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. Say,
who are these Gilbert and Sullivan guys, anyway? They get written up in the
papers all the time, and I never met any one who’d run across them. If
you want my opinion, that show down there is a comic opera!”

“For heaven’s sake!” Nelly had the musical comedy
performer’s horror of the older-established form of entertainment.
“Why, comic opera died in the year one!”

“Well, these guys are going to dig it up. That’s the way it looks
to me.” He lowered his voice. “Say, I saw Clarice last
night,” he said in a confidential undertone. “It’s all
right.”

“It is?”

“We’ve made it up. It was like this …”

His conversation took an intimate turn. He expounded for Nelly’s benefit
the inner history, with all its ramifications, of a recent unfortunate rift
between himself and “the best little girl in Flatbush,”—what
he had said, what she had said, what her sister had said, and how it all come
right in the end. Jill might have felt a little excluded, but for the fact that
a sudden and exciting idea had come to her. She sat back, thinking. …
After all, what else was she to do? She must do something. …

She bent forward and interrupted Mr Brown in his description of a brisk passage
of arms between himself and the best little girl’s sister, who seemed to
be an unpleasant sort of person in every way.

“Mr Brown.”

“Hello?”

“Do you think there would be any chance for me if I asked for work at
Goble and Cohn’s?”

“You’re joking!” cried Nelly.

“I’m not at all.”

“But what do you want with work?”

“I’ve got to find some. And right away, too.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jill hesitated. She disliked discussing her private affairs, but there was
obviously no way of avoiding it. Nelly was round-eyed and mystified, and Mr
Brown had manifestly no intention whatever of withdrawing tactfully. He wanted
to hear all.

“I’ve lost my money,” said Jill.

“Lost your money! Do you mean … ?”

“I’ve lost it all. Every penny I had in the world.”

“Tough!” interpolated Mr Brown judicially. “I was broke once
way out in a tank-town in Oklahoma. The manager skipped with our salaries. Last
we saw of him he was doing the trip to Canada in nothing flat.”

“But how?” gasped Nelly.

“It happened about the time we met in London. Do you remember Freddie
Rooke, who was at our house that after-noon?”

A dreamy look came into Nelly’s eyes. There had not been an hour since
their parting when she had not thought of that immaculate sportsman. It would
have amazed Freddie, could he have known, but to Nelly Bryant he was the one
perfect man in an imperfect world.

“Do I!” she sighed ecstatically.

Mr Brown shot a keen glance at her.

“Aha!” he cried facetiously. “Who is he, Nelly? Who is this
blue-eyed boy?”

“If you want to know,” said Nelly, defiance in her tone,
“he’s the fellow who gave me fifty pounds, with no strings tied to
it,—get that!—when I was broke in London! If it hadn’t been
for him, I’d be there still.”

“Did he?” cried Jill. “Freddie!”

“Yes. Oh, Gee!” Nelly sighed once more. “I suppose I’ll
never see him again in this world.”

“Introduce me to him, if you do,” said Mr Brown. “He sounds
just the sort of little pal I’d like to have!”

“You remember hearing Freddie say something about losing money in a slump
on the Stock Exchange,” proceeded Jill. “Well, that was how I lost
mine. It’s a long story, and it’s not worth talking about, but
that’s how things stand, and I’ve got to find work of some sort,
and it looks to me as if I should have a better chance of finding it on the
stage than anywhere else.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Oh, it’s all right. How much would these people Goble and Cohn
give me if I got an engagement?”

“Only forty a week.”

“Forty dollars a week! It’s wealth! Where are they?”

“Over at the Gotham Theatre in Forty-second Street.”

“I’ll go there at once.”

“But you’ll hate it. You don’t realize what it’s like.
You wait hours and hours and nobody sees you.”

“Why shouldn’t I walk straight in and say that I’ve come for
work?”

Nelly’s big eyes grew bigger.

“But you couldn’t!”

“Why not?”

“Why, you couldn’t!”

“I don’t see why.”

Mr Brown intervened with decision.

“You’re dead right,” he said to Jill approvingly. “If
you ask me, that’s the only sensible thing to do. Where’s the sense
of hanging around and getting stalled? Managers are human guys, some of
’em. Probably, if you were to try it, they’d appreciate a bit of
gall. It would show ’em you’d got pep. You go down there and try
walking straight in. They can’t eat you. It makes me sick when I see all
those poor devils hanging about outside these offices, waiting to get noticed
and nobody ever paying any attention to them. You push the office-boy in the
face if he tries to stop you, and go in and make ’em take notice. And,
whatever you do, don’t leave your name and address! That’s the old,
moth-eaten gag they’re sure to try to pull on you. Tell ’em
there’s nothing doing. Say you’re out for a quick decision! Stand
’em on their heads!”

Jill got up, fired by this eloquence. She called for her check.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I’m going to do exactly as you
say. Where can I find you afterwards?” she said to Nelly.

“You aren’t really going?”

“I am!”

Nelly scribbled on a piece of paper.

“Here’s my address. I’ll be in all evening.”

“I’ll come and see you. Good-bye, Mr Brown. And thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” said Mr Brown.

Nelly watched Jill depart with wide eyes.

“Why did you tell her to do that?” she said.

“Why not?” said Mr Brown. “I started something, didn’t
I? Well, I guess I’ll have to be leaving, too. Got to get back to
rehearsal. Say, I like that friend of yours, Nelly. There’s no yellow
streak about her! I wish her luck!”

CHAPTER TEN

§ 1.

THE offices of Messrs Goble and Cohn were situated, like everything else in New
York that appertains to the drama, in the neighborhood of Times Square. They
occupied the fifth floor of the Gotham Theatre on West Forty-second Street. As
there was no elevator in the building except the small private one used by the
two members of the firm, Jill walked up the stairs, and found signs of a
thriving business beginning to present themselves as early as the third floor,
where half a dozen patient persons of either sex had draped themselves like
roosting fowls upon the banisters. There were more on the fourth floor, and the
landing of the fifth, which served the firm as a waiting-room, was quite full.
It is the custom of theatrical managers—the lowest order of intelligence,
with the possible exception of the limax maximus or garden slug, known
to science—to omit from their calculations the fact that they are likely
every day to receive a large number of visitors, whom they will be obliged to
keep waiting; and that these people will require somewhere to wait. Such
considerations never occur to them. Messrs Goble and Cohn had provided for
those who called to see them one small bench on the landing, conveniently
situated at the intersecting point of three draughts, and had let it go at
that.

Nobody, except perhaps the night-watchman, had ever seen this bench empty. At
whatever hour of the day you happened to call, you would always find three
wistful individuals seated side by side with their eyes on the tiny ante-room
where sat the office-boy, the telephone-girl, and Mr Goble’s
stenographer. Beyond this was the door marked “Private,” through
which, as it opened to admit some careless, debonair, thousand-dollar-a-week
comedian who sauntered in with a jaunty “Hello, Ike!” or some
furred and scented female star, the rank and file of the profession were
greeted, like Moses on Pisgah, with a fleeting glimpse of the promised land,
consisting of a large desk and a section of a very fat man with spectacles and
a bald head or a younger man with fair hair and a double chin.

The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost
aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist,
the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye appear so much more
expensive than the real thing. Everybody looked very dashing and very young,
except about the eyes. Most of the eyes that glanced at Jill were weary. The
women were nearly all blondes, blondness having been decided upon in the
theatre as the color that brings the best results. The men were all so much
alike that they seemed to be members of one large family,—an illusion
which was heightened by the scraps of conversation, studded with
“dears,” “old mans,” and “honeys,” which
came to Jill’s ears. A stern fight for supremacy was being waged by a
score or so of lively and powerful young scents.

For a moment Jill was somewhat daunted by the spectacle, but she recovered
almost immediately. The exhilarating and heady influence of New York still
wrought within her. The Berserk spirit was upon her, and she remembered the
stimulating words of Mr Brown, of Brown and Widgeon, the best jazz-and-hokum
team on the Keith Circuit. “Walk straight in!” had been the burden
of his inspiring address. She pushed her way through the crowd until she came
to the small ante-room.

In the ante-room were the outposts, the pickets of the enemy. In one corner a
girl was hammering energetically and with great speed on a typewriter: a second
girl, seated at a switchboard, was having an argument with Central which was
already warm and threatened to descend shortly to personalities: on a chair
tilted back so that it rested against the wall, a small boy sat eating candy
and reading the comic page of an evening newspaper. All three were enclosed,
like zoological specimens, in a cage formed by a high counter terminating in
brass bars.

Beyond these watchers on the threshold was the door marked
“Private.” Through it, as Jill reached the outer defences, filtered
the sound of a piano.

Those who have studied the subject have come to the conclusion that the
boorishness of theatrical managers’ office-boys cannot be the product of
mere chance. Somewhere, in some sinister den in the criminal districts of the
town, there is a school where small boys are trained for these positions, where
their finer instincts are rigorously uprooted and rudeness systematically
inculcated by competent professors. Of this school the candy-eating Cerberus of
Messrs Goble and Cohn had been the star scholar. Quickly seeing his natural
gifts, his teachers had given him special attention. When he had graduated, it
had been amidst the cordial good wishes of the entire faculty. They had taught
him all they knew, and they were proud of him. They felt that he would do them
credit.

This boy raised a pair of pink-rimmed eyes to Jill, sniffed—for like all
theatrical managers’ office-boys he had a permanent cold in the
head—bit his thumb-nail, and spoke. He was a snub-nosed boy. His ears and
hair were vermilion. His name was Ralph. He had seven hundred and forty-three
pimples.

“Woddyerwant?” enquired Ralph, coming within an ace of condensing
the question into a word of one syllable.

“I want to see Mr Goble.”

“Zout!” said the Pimple King, and returned to his paper.

There will, no doubt, always be class distinctions. Sparta had her kings and
her helots, King Arthur’s Round Table its knights and its scullions,
America her Simon Legree and her Uncle Tom. But in no nation and at no period
of history has any one ever been so brutally superior to any one else as is the
Broadway theatrical office-boy to the caller who wishes to see the manager.
Thomas Jefferson held these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Theatrical office-boys do not see eye to eye with Thomas. From their pinnacle
they look down on the common herd, the canaille, and despise them. They
coldly question their right to live.

Jill turned pink. Mr Brown, her guide and mentor, foreseeing this situation,
had, she remembered, recommended “pushing the office-boy in the
face”: and for a moment she felt like following his advice. Prudence, or
the fact that he was out of reach behind the brass bars, restrained her.
Without further delay she made for the door of the inner room. That was her
objective, and she did not intend to be diverted from it. Her fingers were on
the handle before any of those present divined her intention. Then the
stenographer stopped typing and sat with raised fingers, aghast. The girl at
the telephone broke off in mid-sentence and stared round over her shoulder.
Ralph, the office-boy, outraged, dropped his paper and constituted himself the
spokesman of the invaded force.

“Hey!”

Jill stopped and eyed the lad militantly.

“Were you speaking to me?”

“Yes, I was speaking to you!”

“Don’t do it again with your mouth full,” said Jill, turning
to the door.

The belligerent fire in the office-boy’s pink-rimmed eyes was suddenly
dimmed by a gush of water. It was not remorse that caused him to weep, however.
In the heat of the moment he had swallowed a large, jagged piece of candy, and
he was suffering severely.

“You can’t go in there!” he managed to articulate, his iron
will triumphing over the flesh sufficiently to enable him to speak.

“I am going in there!”

“That’s Mr Goble’s private room.”

“Well, I want a private talk with Mr Goble.”

Ralph, his eyes still moist, felt that the situation was slipping from his
grip. This sort of thing had never happened to him before.

“I tell ya he zout!”

Jill looked at him sternly.

“You wretched child!” she said, encouraged by a sharp giggle from
the neighborhood of the switchboard. “Do you know where little boys go
who don’t speak the truth? I can hear him playing the piano. Now
he’s singing! And it’s no good telling me he’s busy. If he
was busy, he wouldn’t have time to sing. If you’re as deceitful as
this at your age, what do you expect to be when you grow up? You’re an
ugly little boy, you’ve got red ears, and your collar doesn’t fit!
I shall speak to Mr Goble about you.”

With which words Jill opened the door and walked in.

“Good afternoon,” she said brightly.

After the congested and unfurnished discomfort of the landing, the room in
which Jill found herself had an air of cosiness and almost of luxury. It was a
large room, solidly upholstered. Along the further wall, filling nearly the
whole of its space, stood a vast and gleaming desk, covered with a litter of
papers which rose at one end of it to a sort of mountain of play-scripts in
buff covers. There was a bookshelf to the left. Photographs covered the walls.
Near the window was a deep leather lounge: to the right of this stood a small
piano, the music-stool of which was occupied by a young man with untidy black
hair that needed cutting. On top of the piano, taking the eye immediately by
reason of its bold brightness, was balanced a large cardboard poster. Much of
its surface was filled by a picture of a youth in polo costume bending over a
blonde goddess in a bathing-suit. What space was left displayed the legend:

ISAAC GOBLE AND JACOB
COHN
PRESENT
THE ROSE OF AMERICA
(A Musical Fantasy)
BOOK AND LYRICS BY OTIS PILKINGTON
MUSIC BY ROLAND TREVIS

Turning her eyes from this, Jill became aware that something was going on at
the other side of the desk: and she perceived that a second young man, the
longest and thinnest she had ever seen, was in the act of rising to his feet,
length upon length like an unfolding snake. At the moment of her entry he had
been lying back in an office-chair, so that only a merely nominal section of
his upper structure was visible. Now he reared his impressive length until his
head came within measurable distance of the ceiling. He had a hatchet face and
a receding chin, and he gazed at Jill through what she assumed were the
“tortoiseshell cheaters” referred to by her recent acquaintance, Mr
Brown.

“Er … ?” said this young man enquiringly in a high, flat
voice.

Jill, like many other people, had a brain which was under the alternating
control of two diametrically opposite forces. It was like an automobile steered
in turn by two drivers, the one a dashing, reckless fellow with no regard for
the speed limits, the other a timid novice. All through the proceedings up to
this point the dasher had been in command. He had whisked her along at a
break-neck pace, ignoring obstacles and police regulations. Now, having brought
her to this situation, he abruptly abandoned the wheel and turned it over to
his colleague, the shrinker. Jill, greatly daring a moment ago, now felt an
overwhelming shyness.

She gulped, and her heart beat quickly. The thin man towered over her. The
black-haired pianist shook his locks at her like Banquo.

“I …” she began.

Then, suddenly, womanly intuition came to her aid. Something seemed to tell her
that these men were just as scared as she was. And, at the discovery, the
dashing driver resumed his post at the wheel, and she began to deal with the
situation with composure.

“I want to see Mr Goble.”

“Mr Goble is out,” said the long young man, plucking nervously at
the papers on the desk. Jill had affected him powerfully.

“Out!” She felt she had wronged the pimpled office-boy.

“We are not expecting him back this afternoon. Is there anything I can
do?”

He spoke tenderly. This weak-minded young man—at school his coarse
companions had called him Simp—was thinking that he had never seen
anything like Jill before. And it was true that she was looking very pretty,
with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. She touched a chord in the
young man which seemed to make the world a flower-scented thing, full of soft
music. Often as he had been in love at first sight before in his time, Otis
Pilkington could not recall an occasion on which he had been in love at first
sight more completely than now. When she smiled at him, it was as if the gates
of heaven had opened. He did not reflect how many times, in similar
circumstances, these same gates had opened before; and that on one occasion
when they had done so it had cost him eight thousand dollars to settle the case
out of court. One does not think of these things at such times, for they strike
a jarring note. Otis Pilkington was in love. That was all he knew, or cared to
know.

“Won’t you take a seat, Miss …”

“Mariner,” prompted Jill. “Thank you.”

“Miss Mariner. May I introduce Mr Roland Trevis?”

The man at the piano bowed. His black hair heaved upon his skull like seaweed
in a ground swell.

“My name is Pilkington. Otis Pilkington.”

The uncomfortable silence which always follows introductions was broken by the
sound of the telephone-bell on the desk. Otis Pilkington, who had moved out
into the room and was nowhere near the desk, stretched forth a preposterous arm
and removed the receiver.

“Yes? Oh, will you say, please, that I have a conference at
present.” Jill was to learn that people in the theatrical business never
talked: they always held conferences. “Tell Mrs Peagrim that I shall be
calling later in the afternoon, but cannot be spared just now.” He
replaced the receiver. “Aunt Olive’s secretary,” he murmured
in a soft aside to Mr Trevis. “Aunt Olive wanted me to go for a
ride.” He turned to Jill. “Excuse me. Is there anything I can do
for you, Miss Mariner?”

Jill’s composure was now completely restored. This interview was turning
out so totally different from anything she had expected. The atmosphere was
cosy and social. She felt as if she were back in Ovington Square, giving tea to
Freddie Rooke and Ronny Devereux and the rest of her friends of the London
period. All that was needed to complete the picture was a tea-table in front of
her. The business note hardly intruded on the proceedings at all. Still, as
business was the object of her visit, she felt that she had better approach it.

“I came for work.”

“Work!” cried Mr Pilkington. He, too, appeared to be regarding the
interview as purely of a social nature.

“In the chorus,” explained Jill.

Mr Pilkington seemed shocked. He winced away from the word as though it pained
him.

“There is no chorus in ‘The Rose of America,’” he said.

“I thought it was a musical comedy.”

Mr Pilkington winced again.

“It is a musical fantasy!” he said. “But there will be
no chorus. We shall have,” he added, a touch of rebuke in his voice,
“the services of twelve refined ladies of the ensemble.”

Jill laughed.

“It does sound much better, doesn’t it!” she said.
“Well, am I refined enough, do you think?”

“I shall be only too happy if you will join us,” said Mr Pilkington
promptly.

The long-haired composer looked doubtful. He struck a note up in the treble,
then whirled round on his stool.

“If you don’t mind my mentioning it, Otie, we have twelve girls
already.”

“Then we must have thirteen,” said Otis Pilkington firmly.

“Unlucky number,” argued Mr Trevis.

“I don’t care. We must have Miss Mariner. You can see for yourself
that she is exactly the type we need.”

He spoke feelingly. Ever since the business of engaging a company had begun, he
had been thinking wistfully of the evening when “The Rose of
America” had had its opening performance—at his aunt’s house
at Newport last Summer—with an all-star cast of society favorites and an
ensemble recruited entirely from debutantes and matrons of the Younger Set.
That was the sort of company he had longed to assemble for the piece’s
professional career, and until this afternoon he had met with nothing but
disappointment. Jill seemed to be the only girl in theatrical New York who came
up to the standard he would have liked to demand.

“Thank you very much,” said Jill.

There was another pause. The social note crept into the atmosphere again. Jill
felt the hostess’ desire to keep conversation circulating.

“I hear,” she said, “that this piece is a sort of Gilbert and
Sullivan opera.”

Mr Pilkington considered the point.

“I confess,” he said, “that, in writing the book, I had
Gilbert before me as a model. Whether I have in any sense succeeded in
…”

“The book,” said Mr Trevis, running his fingers over the piano,
“is as good as anything Gilbert ever wrote.”

“Oh come, Rolie!” protested Mr Pilkington modestly.

“Better,” insisted Mr Trevis. “For one thing, it is
up-to-date.”

“I do try to strike the modern tone,” murmured Mr
Pilkington.

“And you have avoided Gilbert’s mistake of being too
fanciful.”

“He was fanciful,” admitted Mr Pilkington. “The music,”
he added, in a generous spirit of give and take, “has all
Sullivan’s melody with a newness of rhythm peculiarly its own. You will
like the music.”

“It sounds,” said Jill amiably, “as though the piece is bound
to be a tremendous success.”

“We hope so,” said Mr Pilkington. “We feel that the time has
come when the public is beginning to demand something better than what it has
been accustomed to. People are getting tired of the brainless trash and jingly
tunes which have been given them by men like Wallace Mason and George Bevan.
They want a certain polish. … It was just the same in Gilbert and
Sullivan’s day. They started writing at a time when the musical stage had
reached a terrible depth of inanity. The theatre was given over to burlesques
of the most idiotic description. The public was waiting eagerly to welcome
something of a higher class. It is just the same today. But the managers will
not see it. ‘The Rose of America’ went up and down Broadway for
months, knocking at managers’ doors.”

“It should have walked in without knocking, like me,” said Jill.
She got up. “Well, it was very kind of you to see me when I came in so
unceremoniously. But I felt it was no good waiting outside on that landing.
I’m so glad everything is settled. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Miss Mariner.” Mr Pilkington took her outstretched hand
devoutly. “There is a rehearsal called for the ensemble at—when is
it, Rolie?”

“Eleven o’clock, day after tomorrow, at Bryant Hall.”

“I’ll be there,” said Jill. “Good-bye, and thank you
very much.”

The silence which had fallen upon the room as she left it, was broken by Mr
Trevis.

“Some pip!” observed Mr Trevis.

Otis Pilkington awoke from day-dreams with a start.

“What did you say?”

“That girl … I said she was some pippin!”

“Miss Mariner,” said Mr Pilkington icily, “is a most
charming, refined, cultured, and vivacious girl, if you mean that.”

“Yes,” said Mr Trevis. “That was what I meant!”

§ 2.

Jill walked out into Forty-second Street, looking about her with the eye of a
conqueror. Very little change had taken place in the aspect of New York since
she had entered the Gotham Theatre, but it seemed a different city to her. An
hour ago, she had been a stranger, drifting aimlessly along its rapids. Now she
belonged to New York, and New York belonged to her. She had faced it squarely,
and forced from it the means of living. She walked on with a new jauntiness in
her stride.

The address which Nelly had given her was on the east side of Fifth Avenue. She
made her way along Forty-second Street. It seemed the jolliest, alivest street
she had ever encountered. The rattle of the Elevated as she crossed Sixth
Avenue was music, and she loved the crowds that jostled her with every step she
took.

She reached the Fifth Avenue corner just as the policeman out in the middle of
the street swung his Stop-and-Go post round to allow the up-town traffic to
proceed on its way. A stream of automobiles which had been dammed up as far as
the eye could reach began to flow swiftly past. They moved in a double line,
red limousines, blue limousines, mauve limousines, green limousines. She stood
waiting for the flood to cease, and, as she did so, there purred past her the
biggest and reddest limousine of all. It was a colossal vehicle with a
polar-bear at the steering-wheel and another at his side. And in the interior,
very much at his ease, his gaze bent courteously upon a massive lady in a mink
coat, sat Uncle Chris.

For a moment he was so near to her that, but for the closed window, she could
have touched him. Then the polar-bear at the wheel, noting a gap in the
traffic, stepped on the accelerator and slipped neatly through. The car moved
swiftly on and disappeared.

Jill drew a deep breath. The Stop-and-Go sign swung round again. She crossed
the avenue, and set out once more to find Nelly Bryant. It occurred to her,
five minutes later, that a really practical and quick-thinking girl would have
noted the number of the limousine.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

§ 1.

The rehearsals of a musical comedy—a term which embraces “musical
fantasies”—generally begin in a desultory sort of way at that
curious building, Bryant Hall, on Sixth Avenue just off Forty-second Street.
There, in a dusty, uncarpeted room, simply furnished with a few wooden chairs
and some long wooden benches, the chorus—or, in the case of “The
Rose of America,” the ensemble—sit round a piano and endeavor, with
the assistance of the musical director, to get the words and melodies of the
first-act numbers into their heads. This done, they are ready for the dance
director to instil into them the steps, the groupings, and the business for the
encores, of which that incurable optimist always seems to expect there will be
at least six. Later, the principals are injected into the numbers. And finally,
leaving Bryant Hall and dodging about from one unoccupied theatre to another,
principals and chorus rehearse together, running through the entire piece over
and over again till the opening night of the preliminary road tour.

To Jill, in the early stages, rehearsing was just like being back at school.
She could remember her first school-mistress, whom the musical director
somewhat resembled in manner and appearance, hammering out hymns on a piano and
leading in a weak soprano an eager, baying pack of children, each anxious from
motives of pride to out-bawl her nearest neighbor.

The proceedings began on the first morning with the entrance of Mr Saltzburg,
the musical director, a brisk, busy little man with benevolent eyes behind big
spectacles, who bustled over to the piano, sat down, and played a loud chord,
designed to act as a sort of bugle blast, rallying the ladies of the ensemble
from the corners where they sat in groups, chatting. For the process of making
one another’s acquaintance had begun some ten minutes before with mutual
recognitions between those who knew each other from having been together in
previous productions. There followed rapid introductions of friends. Nelly
Bryant had been welcomed warmly by a pretty girl with red hair, whom she
introduced to Jill as Babe: Babe had a willowy blonde friend, named Lois: and
the four of them had seated themselves on one of the benches and opened a
conversation; their numbers being added to a moment later by a dark girl with a
Southern accent and another blonde. Elsewhere other groups had formed, and the
room was filled with a noise like the chattering of starlings. In a body by
themselves, rather forlorn and neglected, half a dozen solemn and immaculately
dressed young men were propping themselves up against the wall and looking on,
like men in a ball-room who do not dance.

Jill listened to the conversation without taking any great part in it herself.
She felt as she had done on her first day at school, a little shy and desirous
of effacing herself. The talk dealt with clothes, men, and the show business,
in that order of importance. Presently one of the young men sauntered
diffidently across the room and added himself to the group with the remark that
it was a fine day. He was received a little grudgingly, Jill thought, but by
degrees succeeded in assimilating himself. A second young man drifted up;
reminded the willowy girl that they had worked together in the western company
of “You’re the One”; was recognized and introduced; and
justified his admission to the circle by a creditable imitation of a cat-fight.
Five minutes later he was addressing the Southern girl as “honey,”
and had informed Jill that he had only joined this show to fill in before
opening on the three-a-day with the swellest little song-and-dance act which he
and a little girl who worked in the cabaret at Geisenheimer’s had fixed
up.

On this scene of harmony and good-fellowship Mr Saltzburg’s chord
intruded jarringly. There was a general movement, and chairs and benches were
dragged to the piano. Mr Saltzburg causing a momentary delay by opening a large
brown music-bag and digging in it like a terrier at a rat-hole, conversation
broke out again.

Mr Saltzburg emerged from the bag, with his hands full of papers, protesting.

“Childrun! Chil-drun! If you please, less noise and attend to
me!” He distributed sheets of paper. “Act One, Opening Chorus. I
will play the melody three—four times. Follow attentively. Then we will
sing it la-la-la, and after that we will sing the words. So!”

He struck the yellow-keyed piano a vicious blow, producing a tinny and
complaining sound. Bending forward with his spectacles almost touching the
music, he plodded determinedly through the tune, then encored himself, and
after that encored himself again. When he had done this, he removed his
spectacles and wiped them. There was a pause.

“Izzy,” observed the willowy young lady chattily, leaning across
Jill and addressing the Southern girl’s blonde friend, “has
promised me a sunburst!”

A general stir of interest and a coming close together of heads.

“What! Izzy!”

“Sure, Izzy.”

“Well!”

“He’s just landed the hat-check privilege at the St Aurea!”

“You don’t say!”

“He told me so last night and promised me the sunburst. He was,”
admitted the willowy girl regretfully, “a good bit tanked at the time,
but I guess he’ll make good.” She mused awhile, a rather anxious
expression clouding her perfect profile. She looked like a meditative Greek
Goddess. “If he doesn’t,” she added with maidenly dignity,
“it’s the las’ time I go out with the big stiff.
I’d tie a can to him quicker’n look at him!”

A murmur of approval greeted this admirable sentiment.

“Childrun!” protested Mr Saltzburg. “Chil-drun! Less noise
and chatter of conversation. We are here to work! We must not waste time! So!
Act One, Opening Chorus. Now, all together. La-la-la …”

“La-la-la …”

“Tum-tum-tumty-tumty …”

“Tum-tum-tumty …”

Mr Saltzburg pressed his hands to his ears in a spasm of pain.

“No, no, no! Sour! Sour! Sour!… Once again. La-la-la
…”

A round-faced girl with golden hair and the face of a wondering cherub
interrupted, speaking with a lisp.

“Mithter Thalzburg.”

“Now what is it, Miss Trevor?”

“What sort of a show is this?”

“A musical show,” said Mr Saltzburg severely, “and this is a
rehearsal of it, not a conversazione. Once more, please …”

The cherub was not to be rebuffed.

“Is the music good, Mithter Thalzburg?”

“When you have rehearsed it, you shall judge for yourself. Come, now
…”

“Is there anything in it as good as that waltz of yours you played us
when we were rehearthing ‘Mind How You Go?’ You remember. The one
that went …”

A tall and stately girl, with sleepy brown eyes and the air of a duchess in the
servants’ hall, bent forward and took a kindly interest in the
conversation.

“Oh, have you composed a varlse, Mr Saltzburg?” she asked with
pleasant condescension. “How interesting, really! Won’t you play it
for us?”

The sentiment of the meeting seemed to be unanimous in favor of shelving work
and listening to Mr Saltzburg’s waltz.

“Oh, Mr Saltzburg, do!”

“Please!”

“Some one told me it was a pipterino!”

“I cert’nly do love waltzes!”

“Please, Mr Saltzburg!”

Mr Saltzburg obviously weakened. His fingers touched the keys irresolutely.

“But, childrun!”

“I am sure it would be a great pleasure to all of us,” said the
duchess graciously, “if you would play it. There is nothing I enjoy more
than a good varlse.”

Mr Saltzburg capitulated. Like all musical directors he had in his leisure
moments composed the complete score of a musical play and spent much of his
time waylaying librettists on the Rialto and trying to lure them to his
apartment to listen to it, with a view to business. The eternal tragedy of a
musical director’s life is comparable only to that of the waiter who,
himself fasting, has to assist others to eat, Mr Saltzburg had lofty ideas on
music, and his soul revolted at being compelled perpetually to rehearse and
direct the inferior compositions of other men. Far less persuasion than he had
received today was usually required to induce him to play the whole of his
score.

“You wish it?” he said. “Well, then! This waltz, you will
understand, is the theme of a musical romance which I have composed. It will be
sung once in the first act by the heroine, then in the second act as a duet for
heroine and hero. I weave it into the finale of the second act, and we have an
echo of it, sung off stage, in the third act. What I play you now is the
second-act duet. The verse is longer. So! The male voice begins.”

A pleasant time was had by all for ten minutes.

“Ah, but this is not rehearsing, childrun!” cried Mr Saltzburg
remorsefully at the end of that period. “This is not business. Come now,
the opening chorus of act one, and please this time keep on the key. Before, it
was sour, sour. Come! La-la-la …”

“Mr Thalzburg!”

“Miss Trevor?”

“There was an awfully thweet fox-trot you used to play us. I do wish
…”

“Some other time, some other time! Now we must work. Come! La-la-la
…”

“I wish you could have heard it, girls,” said the cherub
regretfully. “Honetht, it wath a lalapalootha!”

The pack broke into full cry.

“Oh, Mr Saltzburg!”

“Please, Mr Saltzburg!”

“Do play the fox-trot, Mr Saltzburg!”

“If it is as good as the varlse,” said the duchess, stooping once
more to the common level, “I am sure it must be very good indeed.”
She powdered her nose. “And one so rarely hears musicianly music
nowadays, does one?”

“Which fox-trot?” asked Mr Saltzburg weakly.

“Play ’em all!” decided a voice on the left.

“Yes, play ’em all,” bayed the pack.

“I am sure that that would be charming,” agreed the duchess,
replacing her powder-puff.

Mr Saltzburg played ’em all. This man by now seemed entirely lost to
shame. The precious minutes that belonged to his employers and should have been
earmarked for “The Rose of America” flitted by. The ladies and
gentlemen of the ensemble, who should have been absorbing and learning to
deliver the melodies of Roland Trevis and the lyrics of Otis Pilkington, lolled
back in their seats. The yellow-keyed piano rocked beneath an unprecedented
onslaught. The proceedings had begun to resemble not so much a rehearsal as a
home evening, and grateful glances were cast at the complacent cherub. She had,
it was felt, shown tact and discretion.

Pleasant conversation began again.

“… And I walked a couple of blocks, and there was exactly the same
model in Schwartz and Gulderstein’s window at twenty-six fifty
…”

“… He got on at Forty-second Street, and he was kinda fresh from
the start. I could see he was carrying a package. At Sixty-sixth he came
sasshaying right down the car and said ‘Hello, patootie!’ Well, I
drew myself up …”

“… ‘Even if you are my sister’s husband,’ I said
to him. Oh, I suppose I got a temper. It takes a lot to arouse it,
y’know, but I c’n get pretty mad …”

“… You don’t know the half of it, dearie, you don’t
know the half of it! A one-piece bathing suit! Well, you could call it that,
but the cop on the beach said it was more like a baby’s sock. And when
…”

“… So I said ‘Listen, Izzy, that’ll be about all from
you! My father was a gentleman, though I don’t suppose you know what that
means, and I’m not accustomed …’”

“Hey!”

A voice from the neighborhood of the door had cut into the babble like a knife
into butter; a rough, rasping voice, loud and compelling, which caused the
conversation of the members of the ensemble to cease on the instant. Only Mr
Saltzburg, now in a perfect frenzy of musicianly fervor, continued to assault
the decrepit piano, unwitting of an unsympathetic addition to his audience.

“What I play you now is the laughing trio from my second act. It is a
building number. It is sung by tenor, principal comedian, and soubrette. On the
second refrain four girls will come out and two boys. The girls will dance with
the two men, the boys with the soubrette. So! On the encore, four more girls
and two more boys. Third encore, solo-dance for specialty dancer, all on stage
beating time by clapping their hands. On repeat, all sing refrain once more,
and off-encore, the three principals and specialty dancer dance the dance with
entire chorus. It is a great building number, you understand. It is enough to
make the success of any musical play, but can I get a hearing? No! If I ask
managers to listen to my music, they are busy! If I beg them to give me a
libretto to set, they laugh—ha! ha!” Mr Saltzburg gave a spirited
and lifelike representation of a manager laughing ha-ha when begged to disgorge
a libretto. “Now I play it once more!”

“Like hell you do!” said the voice. “Say, what is this,
anyway? A concert?”

Mr Saltzburg swung round on the music-stool, a startled and apprehensive man,
and nearly fell off it. The divine afflatus left him like air oozing from a
punctured toy-balloon, and, like such a balloon, he seemed to grow suddenly
limp and flat. He stared with fallen jaw at the new arrival.

Two men had entered the room. One was the long Mr Pilkington. The other, who
looked shorter and stouter than he really was beside his giraffe-like
companion, was a thickset, fleshy man in the early thirties with a blond,
clean-shaven, double-chinned face. He had smooth yellow hair, an unwholesome
complexion, and light green eyes, set close together. From the edge of the
semi-circle about the piano, he glared menacingly over the heads of the chorus
at the unfortunate Mr Saltzburg,

“Why aren’t these girls working?”

Mr Saltzburg, who had risen nervously from his stool, backed away
apprehensively from his gaze, and, stumbling over the stool, sat down abruptly
on the piano, producing a curious noise like Futurist music.

“I—We—Why, Mr Goble …”

Mr Goble turned his green gaze on the concert audience, and spread discomfort
as if it were something liquid which he was spraying through a hose. The girls
who were nearest looked down flutteringly at their shoes: those further away
concealed themselves behind their neighbors. Even the duchess, who prided
herself on being the possessor of a stare of unrivalled haughtiness, before
which the fresh quailed and those who made breaks subsided in confusion, was
unable to meet his eyes: and the willowy friend of Izzy, for all her victories
over that monarch of the hat-checks, bowed before it like a slim tree before a
blizzard.

Only Jill returned the manager’s gaze. She was seated on the outer rim of
the semi-circle, and she stared frankly at Mr Goble. She had never seen
anything like him before, and he fascinated her. This behavior on her part
singled her out from the throng, and Mr Goble concentrated his attention on
her.

For some seconds he stood looking at her; then, raising a stubby finger, he let
his eye travel over the company, and seemed to be engrossed in some sort of
mathematical calculation.

“Thirteen,” he said at length. “I make it thirteen.” He
rounded on Mr Pilkington. “I told you we were going to have a chorus of
twelve.”

Mr Pilkington blushed and stumbled over his feet.

“Ah, yes … yes,” he murmured vaguely. “Yes!”

“Well, there are thirteen here. Count ’em for yourself.” He
whipped round on Jill. “What’s your name? Who engaged
you?”

A croaking sound from the neighborhood of the ceiling indicated the clearing of
Mr Pilkington’s throat.

“I—er—I engaged Miss Mariner, Mr Goble.”

“Oh, you engaged her?”

He stared again at Jill. The inspection was long and lingering, and affected
Jill with a sense of being inadequately clothed. She returned the gaze as
defiantly as she could, but her heart was beating fast. She had never yet beer
frightened of any man, but there was something reptilian about this fat,
yellow-haired individual which disquieted her; much as cockroaches had done in
her childhood. A momentary thought flashed through her mind that it would be
horrible to be touched by him. He looked soft and glutinous.

“All right,” said Mr Goble at last, after what seemed to Jill many
minutes. He nodded to Mr Saltzburg. “Get on with it! And try working a
little this time! I don’t hire you to give musical entertainments.”

“Yes, Mr Goble, yes. I mean no, Mr Goble!”

“You can have the Gotham stage this afternoon,” said Mr Goble.
“Call the rehearsal for two sharp.”

Outside the door, he turned to Mr Pilkington.

“That was a fool trick of yours, hiring that girl. Thirteen! I’d as
soon walk under a ladder on a Friday as open in New York with a chorus of
thirteen. Well, it don’t matter. We can fire one of ’em after
we’ve opened on the road.” He mused for a moment. “Darned
pretty girl, that!” he went on meditatively. “Where did you get
her?”

“She—ah—came into the office, when you were out. She struck
me as being essentially the type we required for our ensemble, so
I—er—engaged her. She—” Mr Pilkington gulped.
“She is a charming, refined girl!”

“She’s darned pretty,” admitted Mr Goble, and went on his way
wrapped in thought, Mr Pilkington following timorously. It was episodes like
the one that had just concluded which made Otis Pilkington wish that he
possessed a little more assertion. He regretted wistfully that he was not one
of those men who can put their hat on the side of their heads and shoot out
their chins and say to the world “Well, what about it!” He was
bearing the financial burden of this production. If it should be a failure, his
would be the loss. Yet somehow this coarse, rough person in front of him never
seemed to allow him a word in the executive policy of the piece. He treated him
as a child. He domineered and he shouted, and behaved as if he were in sole
command. Mr Pilkington sighed. He rather wished he had never gone into this
undertaking.

Inside the room, Mr Saltzburg wiped his forehead, spectacles, and his hands. He
had the aspect of one wakes from a dreadful dream.

“Childrun!” he whispered brokenly. “Childrun! If yoll please,
once more. Act One, Opening Chorus. Come! La-la-la!”

“La-la-la!” chanted the subdued members of the ensemble.

§ 2.

By the time the two halves of the company, ensemble and principals, melted into
one complete whole, the novelty of her new surroundings had worn off, and Jill
was feeling that there had never been a time when she had not been one of a
theatrical troupe, rehearsing. The pleasant social gatherings round Mr
Saltzburg’s piano gave way after a few days to something far less
agreeable and infinitely more strenuous, the breaking-in of the dances under
the supervision of the famous Johnson Miller. Johnson Miller was a little man
with snow-white hair and the india-rubber physique of a juvenile acrobat.
Nobody knew actually how old he was, but he certainly looked much too advanced
in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He
had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded more
companies along the rocky road that leads to success than any half-dozen
dance-directors in the country, in spite of his handicap in being almost
completely deaf. He had an almost miraculous gift of picking up the melodies
for which it was his business to design dances, without apparently hearing
them. He seemed to absorb them through the pores. He had a blunt and arbitrary
manner, and invariably spoke his mind frankly and honestly—a habit which
made him strangely popular in a profession where the language of equivoque is
cultivated almost as sedulously as in the circles of international diplomacy.
What Johnson Miller said to your face was official, not subject to revision as
soon as your back was turned: and people appreciated this.

Izzy’s willowy friend summed him up one evening when the ladies of the
ensemble were changing their practise-clothes after a particularly strenuous
rehearsal, defending him against the Southern girl, who complained that he made
her tired.

“You bet he makes you tired,” she said. “So he does me.
I’m losing my girlish curves, and I’m so stiff I can’t lace
my shoes. But he knows his business and he’s on the level, which is more
than you can say of most of these guys in the show business.”

“That’s right,” agreed the Southern girl’s blonde
friend. “He does know his business. He’s put over any amount of
shows which would have flopped like dogs without him to stage the
numbers.”

The duchess yawned. Rehearsing always bored her, and she had not been greatly
impressed by what she had seen of “The Rose of America.”

“One will be greatly surprised if he can make a success of this
show! I confess I find it perfectly ridiculous.”

“Ithn’t it the limit, honetht!” said the cherub, arranging
her golden hair at the mirror. “It maketh me thick! Why on earth is Ike
putting it on?”

The girl who knew everything—there is always one in every
company—hastened to explain.

“I heard all about that. Ike hasn’t any of his own money in the
thing. He’s getting twenty-five per cent of the show for running it. The
angel is the long fellow you see jumping around. Pilkington his name is.”

“Well, it’ll need to be Rockefeller later on,” said the
blonde.

“Oh, they’ll get thomebody down to fixth it after we’ve out
on the road a couple of days,” said the cherub, optimistically.
“They alwayth do. I’ve seen worse shows than this turned into hits.
All it wants ith a new book and lyrics and a different thcore.”

“And a new set of principals,” said the red-headed Babe. “Did
you ever see such a bunch?”

The duchess, with another tired sigh, arched her well-shaped eyebrows and
studied the effect in the mirror.

“One wonders where they pick these persons up,” she assented
languidly. “They remind me of a headline I saw in the paper this
morning—‘Tons of Hams Unfit for Human Consumption.’ Are any
of you girls coming my way? I can give two or three of you a lift in my
limousine.”

“Thorry, old dear, and thanks ever so much,” said the cherub,
“but I instructed Clarence, my man, to have the street-car waiting on the
corner, and he’ll be tho upset if I’m not there.”

Nelly had an engagement to go and help one of the other girls buy a Spring
suit, a solemn rite which it is impossible to conduct by oneself: and Jill and
the cherub walked to the corner together. Jill had become very fond of the
little thing since rehearsals began. She reminded her of a London sparrow. She
was so small and perky and so absurdly able to take care of herself.

“Limouthine!” snorted the cherub. The duchess’ concluding
speech evidently still rankled. “She gives me a pain in the
gizthard!”

“Hasn’t she got a limousine?” asked Jill.

“Of course she hasn’t. She’s engaged to be married to a
demonstrator in the Speedwell Auto Company, and he thneaks off when he can get
away and gives her joy-rides. That’s all the limousine she’s got.
It beats me why girls in the show business are alwayth tho crazy to make
themselves out vamps with a dozen millionaires on a string. If Mae
wouldn’t four-flush and act like the Belle of the Moulin Rouge,
she’d be the nithest girl you ever met. She’s mad about the fellow
she’s engaged to, and wouldn’t look at all the millionaires in New
York if you brought ’em to her on a tray. She’s going to marry him
as thoon as he’s thaved enough to buy the furniture, and then
she’ll thettle down in Harlem thomewhere and cook and mind the baby and
regularly be one of the lower middle classes. All that’s wrong with Mae
ith that she’s read Gingery Stories and thinkth that’s the way a
girl has to act when she’th in the chorus.”

“That’s funny,” said Jill. “I should never have thought
it. I swallowed the limousine whole.”

The cherub looked at her curiously. Jill puzzled her. Jill had, indeed, been
the subject of much private speculation among her colleagues.

“This is your first show, ithn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Thay, what are you doing in the chorus, anyway?”

“Getting scolded by Mr Miller mostly, it seems to me.”

“Thcolded by Mr Miller! Why didn’t you say ‘bawled out by
Johnny?’ That’th what any of the retht of us would have
said.”

“Well, I’ve lived most of my life in England. You can’t
expect me to talk the language yet.”

“I thought you were English. You’ve got an acthent like the fellow
who plays the dude in thith show. Thay, why did you ever get into the show
business?”

“Well … well, why did you? Why does anybody?”

“Why did I? Oh, I belong there. I’m a regular Broadway rat. I
wouldn’t be happy anywhere elthe. I was born in the show business.
I’ve got two thithters in the two-a-day and a brother in thtock out in
California and dad’s one of the betht comedians on the burlethque wheel.
But any one can thee you’re different. There’s no reathon why you
should be bumming around in the chorus.”

“But there is. I’ve no money, and I can’t do anything to make
it.”

“Honetht?”

“Honest.”

“That’s tough.” The cherub pondered, her round eyes searching
Jill’s face. “Why don’t you get married?”

Jill laughed.

“Nobody’s asked me.”

“Somebody thoon will. At least, if he’s on the level, and I think
he is. You can generally tell by the look of a guy, and, if you ask me, friend
Pilkington’s got the license in hith pocket and the ring all ordered and
everything.”

“Pilkington!” cried Jill, aghast.

She remembered certain occasions during rehearsals, when, while the chorus
idled in the body of the theatre and listened to the principals working at
their scenes, the elongated Pilkington had suddenly appeared in the next seat
and conversed sheepishly in a low voice. Could this be love? If so, it was a
terrible nuisance. Jill had had her experience in London of enamoured young men
who, running true to national form, declined to know when they were beaten, and
she had not enjoyed the process of cooling their ardor. She had a kind heart,
and it distressed her to give pain. It also got on her nerves to be dogged by
stricken males who tried to catch her eye in order that she might observe their
broken condition. She recalled one house-party in Wales where it rained all the
time and she had been cooped up with a victim who kept popping out from obscure
corners and beginning all his pleas with the words “I say, you know
… !” She trusted that Otis Pilkington was not proposing to conduct
a wooing on those lines. Yet he had certainly developed a sinister habit of
popping out at the theatre. On several occasions he had startled her by
appearing at her side as if he had come up out of a trap.

“Oh, no!” cried Jill.

“Oh, yeth!” insisted the cherub, waving imperiously to an
approaching street-car. “Well, I must be getting uptown. I’ve got a
date. Thee you later.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

“I’m not.”

“But what makes you think so?”

The cherub placed a hand on the rail of the car, preparatory to swinging
herself on board.

“Well, for one thing,” she said, “he’th been stalking
you like an Indian ever since we left the theatre! Look behind you. Good-bye,
honey. Thend me a piece of the cake!”

The street-car bore her away. The last that Jill saw of her was a wide and
amiable grin. Then, turning, she beheld the snake-like form of Otis Pilkington
towering at her side.

Mr Pilkington seemed nervous but determined. His face was half hidden by the
silk scarf that muffled his throat, for he was careful of his health and had a
fancied tendency to bronchial trouble. Above the scarf a pair of mild eyes
gazed down at Jill through their tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. It was
hopeless for Jill to try to tell herself that the tender gleam behind the glass
was not the love-light in Otis Pilkington’s eyes. The truth was too
obvious.

“Good evening, Miss Mariner,” said Mr Pilkington, his voice
sounding muffled and far away through the scarf. “Are you going
up-town?”

“No, down-town,” said Jill quickly.

“So am I,” said Mr Pilkington.

Jill felt annoyed, but helpless. It is difficult to bid a tactful farewell to a
man who has stated his intention of going in the same direction as yourself.
There was nothing for it but to accept the unspoken offer of Otis
Pilkington’s escort. They began to walk down Broadway together.

“I suppose you are tired after the rehearsal?” enquired Mr
Pilkington in his precise voice. He always spoke as if he were weighing each
word and clipping it off a reel.

“A little. Mr Miller is very enthusiastic.”

“About the piece?” Her companion spoke eagerly.

“No; I meant hard-working.”

“Has he said anything about the piece?”

“Well, no. You see, he doesn’t confide in us a great deal, except
to tell us his opinion of the way we do the steps. I don’t think we
impress him very much, to judge from what he says. But the girls say he always
tells every chorus he rehearses that it is the worst he ever had anything to do
with.”

“And the chor—the—er—ladies of the ensemble? What do
they think of the piece?”

“Well, I don’t suppose they are very good judges, are they?”
said Jill diplomatically.

“You mean they do not like it?”

“Some of them don’t seem quite to understand it.”

Mr Pilkington was silent for a moment.

“I am beginning to wonder myself whether it may not be a little over the
heads of the public,” he said ruefully. “When it was first
performed …”

“Oh, has it been done before?”

“By amateurs, yes, at the house of my aunt, Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim, at
Newport, last Summer. In aid of the Armenian orphans. It was extraordinarily
well received on that occasion. We nearly made our expenses. It was such a
success that—I feel I can confide in you. I should not like this repeated
to your—your—the other ladies—it was such a success that,
against my aunt’s advice, I decided to give it a Broadway production.
Between ourselves, I am shouldering practically all the expenses of the
undertaking. Mr Goble has nothing to do with the financial arrangements of
‘The Rose of America.’ Those are entirely in my hands. Mr Goble, in
return for a share in the profits, is giving us the benefit of his experience
as regards the management and booking of the piece. I have always had the
greatest faith in it. Trevis and I wrote it when we were in college together,
and all our friends thought it exceptionally brilliant. My aunt, as I say, was
opposed to the venture. She holds the view that I am not a good man of
business. In a sense, perhaps, she is right. Temperamentally, no doubt, I am
more the artist. But I was determined to show the public something superior to
the so-called Broadway successes, which are so terribly trashy. Unfortunately,
I am beginning to wonder whether it is possible, with the crude type of actor
at one’s disposal in this country, to give a really adequate performance
of such a play as ‘The Rose of America.’ These people seem to miss
the spirit of the piece, its subtle topsy-turvy humor, its delicate
whimsicality. This afternoon,” Mr Pilkington choked. “This
afternoon I happened to overhear two of the principals, who were not aware that
I was within earshot, discussing the play. One of them—these people
express themselves curiously—one of them said that he thought it a
quince: and the other described it as a piece of gorgonzola cheese! That is not
the spirit that wins success!”

Jill was feeling immensely relieved. After all, it seemed, this poor young man
merely wanted sympathy, not romance. She had been mistaken, she felt, about
that gleam in his eyes. It was not the love-light: it was the light of panic.
He was the author of the play. He had sunk a large sum of money in its
production, he had heard people criticizing it harshly, and he was suffering
from what her colleagues in the chorus would have called cold feet. It was such
a human emotion and he seemed so like an overgrown child pleading to be
comforted that her heart warmed to him. Relief melted her defences. And when,
on their arrival at Thirty-fourth Street Mr Pilkington suggested that she
partake of a cup of tea at his apartment, which was only a couple of blocks
away off Madison Avenue, she accepted the invitation without hesitating.

On the way to his apartment Mr Pilkington continued in the minor key. He was a
great deal more communicative than she herself would have been to such a
comparative stranger as she was, but she knew that men were often like this.
Over in London, she had frequently been made the recipient of the most intimate
confidences by young men whom she had met for the first time the same evening
at a dance. She had been forced to believe that there was something about her
personality that acted on a certain type of man like the crack in the dam,
setting loose the surging flood of their eloquence. To this class Otis
Pilkington evidently belonged: for, once started, he withheld nothing.

“It isn’t that I’m dependent on Aunt Olive or anything like
that,” he vouchsafed, as he stirred the tea in his Japanese-print hung
studio. “But you know how it is. Aunt Olive is in a position to make it
very unpleasant for me if I do anything foolish. At present, I have reason to
know that she intends to leave me practically all that she possesses.
Millions!” said Mr Pilkington, handing Jill a cup. “I assure you,
millions! But there is a hard commercial strain in her. It would have the most
prejudicial effect upon her if, especially after she had expressly warned me
against it, I were to lose a great deal of money over this production. She is
always complaining that I am not a business man like my late uncle. Mr
Waddesleigh Peagrim made a fortune in smoked hams.” Mr Pilkington looked
at the Japanese prints, and shuddered slightly. “Right up to the time of
his death he was urging me to go into the business. I could not have endured
it. But, when I heard those two men discussing the play, I almost wished that I
had done so.”

Jill was now completely disarmed. She would almost have patted this unfortunate
young man’s head, if she could have reached it.

“I shouldn’t worry about the piece,” she said.
“I’ve read somewhere or heard somewhere that it’s the surest
sign of a success when actors don’t like a play.”

Mr Pilkington drew his chair an imperceptible inch nearer.

“How sympathetic you are!”

Jill perceived with chagrin that she had been mistaken after all. It was
the love-light. The tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles sprayed it all over her
like a couple of searchlights. Otis Pilkington was looking exactly like a
sheep, and she knew from past experience that that was the infallible sign.
When young men looked like that, it was time to go.

“I’m afraid I must be off,” she said. “Thank you so
much for giving me tea. I shouldn’t be a bit afraid about the play.
I’m sure it’s going to be splendid. Good-bye.”

“You aren’t going already?”

“I must. I’m very late as it is. I promised …”

Whatever fiction Jill might have invented to the detriment of her soul was
interrupted by a ring at the bell. The steps of Mr Pilkington’s Japanese
servant crossing the hall came faintly to the sitting-room.

“Mr Pilkington in?”

Otis Pilkington motioned pleadingly to Jill.

“Don’t go!” he urged. “It’s only a man I know. He
has probably come to remind me that I am dining with him tonight. He
won’t stay a minute. Please don’t go.”

Jill sat down. She had no intention of going now. The cheery voice at the front
door had been the cheery voice of her long-lost uncle, Major Christopher Selby.

CHAPTER TWELVE

§ 1.

Uncle Chris walked breezily into the room, flicking a jaunty glove. He stopped
short on seeing that Mr Pilkington was not alone.

“Oh, I beg your pardon! I understood …” He peered at Jill
uncertainly. Mr Pilkington affected a dim, artistic lighting-system in his
studio, and people who entered from the great outdoors generally had to take
time to accustom their eyes to it. “If you’re engaged
…”

“Er—allow me … Miss Mariner … Major Selby.”

“Hullo, Uncle Chris!” said Jill.

“God bless my soul!” ejaculated that startled gentleman adventurer,
and collapsed onto a settee as if his legs had been mown from under him.

“I’ve been looking for you all over New York,” said Jill.

Mr Pilkington found himself unequal to the intellectual pressure of the
conversation.

“Uncle Chris?” he said with a note of feeble enquiry in his voice.

“Major Selby is my uncle.”

“Are you sure?” said Mr Pilkington. “I mean …”

Not being able to ascertain, after a moment’s self-examination, what he
did mean, he relapsed into silence.

“Whatever are you doing here?” asked Uncle Chris.

“I’ve been having tea with Mr Pilkington.”

“But … but why Mr Pilkington?”

“Well, he invited me.”

“But how do you know him?”

“We met at the theatre.”

“Theatre?”

Otis Pilkington recovered his power of speech.

“Miss Mariner is rehearsing with a little play in which I am
interested,” he explained.

Uncle Chris half rose from the settee. He blinked twice in rapid succession.
Jill had never seen him so shaken from his customary poise.

“Don’t tell me you have gone on the stage, Jill!”

“I have. I’m in the chorus …”

“Ensemble,” corrected Mr Pilkington softly.

“I’m in the ensemble of a piece called ‘The Rose of
America.’ We’ve been rehearsing for ever so long.”

Uncle Chris digested this information in silence for a moment. He pulled at his
short mustache.

“Why, of course!” he said at length. Jill, who know him so well,
could tell by the restored ring of cheeriness in his tone that he was himself
again. He had dealt with this situation in his mind and was prepared to cope
with it. The surmise was confirmed the next instant when he rose and stationed
himself in front of the fire. Mr Pilkington detested steam-heat and had scoured
the city till he had found a studio apartment with an open fireplace. Uncle
Chris spread his legs and expanded his chest. “Of course,” he said.
“I remember now that you told me in your letter that you were thinking of
going on the stage. My niece,” explained Uncle Chris to the attentive Mr
Pilkington, “came over from England on a later boat. I was not expecting
her for some weeks. Hence my surprise at meeting her here. Of course. You told
me that you intended to go on the stage, and I strongly recommended you to
begin at the bottom of the ladder and learn the ground-work thoroughly before
you attempted higher flights.”

“Oh, that was it?” said Mr Pilkington. He had been wondering.

“There is no finer training,” resumed Uncle Chris, completely at
his ease once more, “than the chorus. How many of the best-known
actresses in America began in that way! Dozens. Dozens. If I were giving advice
to any young girl with theatrical aspirations, I should say ‘Begin in the
chorus!’ On the other hand,” he proceeded, turning to Pilkington,
“I think it would be just as well if you would not mention the fact of my
niece being in that position to Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim. She might not
understand.”

“Exactly,” assented Mr Pilkington.

“The term ‘chorus’…”

“I dislike it intensely myself.”

“It suggests …”

“Precisely.”

Uncle Chris inflated his chest again, well satisfied.

“Capital!” he said. “Well, I only dropped in to remind you,
my boy, that you and your aunt are dining with me tonight. I was afraid a busy
man like you might forget.”

“I was looking forward to it,” said Mr Pilkington, charmed at the
description.

“You remember the address? Nine East Forty-First Street. I have moved,
you remember.”

“So that was why I couldn’t find you at the other place,”
said Jill. “The man at the door said he had never heard of you.”

“Stupid idiot!” said Uncle Chris testily. “These New York
hall-porters are recruited entirely from homes for the feeble-minded. I suppose
he was a new man. Well, Pilkington, my boy, I shall expect you at seven
o’clock. Goodbye till then. Come, Jill.”

“Good-bye, Mr Pilkington,” said Jill.

“Good-bye for the present, Miss Mariner,” said Mr Pilkington,
bending down to take her hand. The tortoiseshell spectacles shot a last soft
beam at her.

As the front door closed behind them, Uncle Chris heaved a sigh of relief.

“Whew! I think I handled that little contretemps with diplomacy! A
certain amount of diplomacy, I think!”

“If you mean,” said Jill severely, “that you told some
disgraceful fibs …”

“Fibs, my dear,—or shall we say, artistic mouldings of the
unshapely clay of truth—are the … how shall I put it?…
Well, anyway, they come in dashed handy. It would never have done for Mrs
Peagrim to have found out that you were in the chorus. If she discovered that
my niece was in the chorus, she would infallibly suspect me of being an
adventurer. And while,” said Uncle Chris meditatively, “of course I
am, it is nice to have one’s little secrets. The good lady has had
a rooted distaste for girls in that perfectly honorable but maligned profession
ever since our long young friend back there was sued for breach of promise by a
member of a touring company in his sophomore year at college. We all have our
prejudices. That is hers. However, I think we may rely on our friend to say
nothing about the matter … But why did you do it? My dear child,
whatever induced you to take such a step?”

Jill laughed.

“That’s practically what Mr Miller said to me when we were
rehearsing one of the dances this afternoon, only he put it differently.”
She linked her arm in his. “What else could I do? I was alone in New York
with the remains of that twenty dollars you sent me and no more in
sight.”

“But why didn’t you stay down at Brookport with your Uncle
Elmer?”

“Have you ever seen my Uncle Elmer?”

“No. Curiously enough, I never have.”

“If you had, you wouldn’t ask. Brookport! Ugh! I left when they
tried to get me to understudy the hired man, who had resigned.”

“What!”

“Yes, they got tired of supporting me in the state to which I was
accustomed—I don’t blame them!—so they began to find ways of
making me useful about the home. I didn’t mind reading to Aunt Julia, and
I could just stand taking Tibby for walks. But, when it came to shoveling snow,
I softly and silently vanished away.”

“But I can’t understand all this. I suggested to your
uncle—diplomatically—that you had large private means.”

“I know you did. And he spent all his time showing me over houses and
telling me I could have them for a hundred thousand dollars cash down.”
Jill bubbled. “You should have seen his face when I told him that twenty
dollars was all I had in the world!”

“You didn’t tell him that!”

“I did.”

Uncle Chris shook his head, like an indulgent father disappointed in a favorite
child.

“You’re a dear girl, Jill, but really you do seem totally lacking
in … how shall I put it?—finesse. Your mother was just the same. A
sweet woman, but with no diplomacy, no notion of handling a situation. I
remember her as a child giving me away hopelessly on one occasion after we had
been at the jam-cupboard. She did not mean any harm, but she was
constitutionally incapable of a tactful negative at the right time.”
Uncle Chris brooded for a moment on the past. “Oh, well, it’s a
very fine trait, no doubt, though inconvenient. I don’t blame you for
leaving Brookport if you weren’t happy there. But I wish you had
consulted me before going on the stage.”

“Shall I strike this man?” asked Jill of the world at large.
“How could I consult you? My darling, precious uncle, don’t you
realize that you had vanished into thin air, leaving me penniless? I had to do
something. And, now that we are on the subject, perhaps you will explain your
movements. Why did you write to me from that place on Fifty-Seventh Street if
you weren’t there?”

Uncle Chris cleared his throat.

“In a sense … when I wrote … I was there.”

“I suppose that means something, but it’s beyond me. I’m not
nearly as intelligent as you think, Uncle Chris, so you’ll have to
explain.”

“Well, it was this way, my dear. I was in a peculiar position you must
remember. I had made a number of wealthy friends on the boat and it is possible
that—unwittingly—I gave them the impression that I was as
comfortably off as themselves. At any rate, that is the impression they
gathered, and it hardly seemed expedient to correct it. For it is a deplorable
trait in the character of the majority of rich people that they
only—er—expand,—they only show the best and most
companionable side of themselves to those whom they imagine to be as wealthy as
they are. Well, of course, while one was on the boat, the fact that I was
sailing under what a purist might have termed false colors did not matter. The
problem was how to keep up the—er—innocent deception after we had
reached New York. A woman like Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim—a ghastly
creature, my dear, all front teeth and exuberance, but richer than the
Sub-Treasury—looks askance at a man, however agreeable, if he endeavors
to cement a friendship begun on board ship from a cheap boarding-house on
Amsterdam Avenue. It was imperative that I should find something in the nature
of what I might call a suitable base of operations. Fortune played into my
hands. One of the first men I met in New York was an old soldier-servant of
mine, to whom I had been able to do some kindnesses in the old days. In
fact—it shows how bread cast upon the waters returns to us after many
days—it was with the assistance of a small loan from me that he was
enabled to emigrate to America. Well, I met this man, and, after a short
conversation, he revealed the fact that he was the hall-porter at that
apartment-house which you visited, the one on Fifty-Seventh Street. At this
time of the year, I knew, many wealthy people go south, to Florida and the
Carolinas, and it occurred to me that there might be a vacant apartment in his
building. There was. I took it.”

“But how on earth could you afford to pay for an apartment in a place
like that?”

Uncle Chris coughed.

“I didn’t say I paid for it. I said I took it. That is, as one
might say, the point of my story. My old friend, grateful for favors received
and wishing to do me a good turn consented to become my accomplice in
another—er—innocent deception. I gave my friends the address and
telephone number of the apartment-house, living the while myself in
surroundings of a somewhat humbler and less expensive character. I called every
morning for letters. If anybody rang me up on the telephone, the admirable man
answered in the capacity of my servant, took a message, and relayed it on to me
at my boarding-house. If anybody called, he merely said that I was out. There
wasn’t a flaw in the whole scheme, my dear, and its chief merit was its
beautiful simplicity.”

“Then what made you give it up? Conscience?”

“Conscience never made me give up anything,” said Uncle
Chris firmly. “No, there were a hundred chances to one against anything
going wrong, and it was the hundredth that happened. When you have been in New
York longer, you will realize that one peculiarity of the place is that the
working-classes are in a constant state of flux. On Monday you meet a plumber.
Ah! you say, A plumber! Capital! On the following Thursday you meet him again,
and he is a car-conductor. Next week he will be squirting soda in a drug-store.
It’s the fault of these dashed magazines, with their advertisements of
correspondence courses—Are You Earning All You Should?—Write To Us
and Learn Chicken-Farming By Mail … It puts wrong ideas into the
fellows’ heads. It unsettles them. It was so in this case. Everything was
going swimmingly, when my man suddenly conceived the idea that destiny had
intended him for a chauffeur-gardener, and he threw up his position!”

“Leaving you homeless!”

“As you say, homeless—temporarily. But, fortunately,—I have
been amazingly lucky all through; it really does seem as if you cannot keep a
good man down—fortunately my friend had a friend who was janitor at a
place on East Forty-First Street, and by a miracle of luck the only apartment
in the building was empty. It is an office-building, but, like some of these
places, it has one small bachelor’s apartment on the top floor.”

“And you are the small bachelor?”

“Precisely. My friend explained matters to his friend—a few
financial details were satisfactorily arranged—and here I am, perfectly
happy with the cosiest little place in the world, rent free. I am even better
off than I was before, as a matter of fact, for my new ally’s wife is an
excellent cook, and I have been enabled to give one or two very pleasant
dinners at my new home. It lends verisimilitude to the thing if you can
entertain a little. If you are never in when people call, they begin to wonder.
I am giving dinner to your friend Pilkington and Mrs Peagrim there tonight.
Homey, delightful, and infinitely cheaper than a restaurant.”

“And what will you do when the real owner of the place walks in in the
middle of dinner?”

“Out of the question. The janitor informs me that he left for England
some weeks ago, intending to make a stay of several months.”

“Well, you certainly think of everything.”

“Whatever success I may have achieved,” replied Uncle Chris, with
the dignity of a Captain of Industry confiding in an interviewer, “I
attribute to always thinking of everything.”

Jill gurgled with laughter. There was that about her uncle which always acted
on her moral sense like an opiate, lulling it to sleep and preventing it from
rising up and becoming critical. If he had stolen a watch and chain, he would
somehow have succeeded in convincing her that he had acted for the best under
the dictates of a benevolent altruism.

“What success have you achieved?” she asked, interested.
“When you left me, you were on your way to find a fortune. Did you find
it?”

“I have not actually placed my hands upon it yet,” admitted Uncle
Chris. “But it is hovering in the air all round me. I can hear the
beating of the wings of the dollar-bills as they flutter to and fro, almost
within reach. Sooner or later I shall grab them. I never forget, my dear, that
I have a task before me,—to restore to you the money of which I deprived
you. Some day—be sure—I shall do it. Some day you will receive a
letter from me, containing a large sum—five thousand—ten
thousand—twenty thousand—whatever it may be, with the simple words
‘First Instalment’.” He repeated the phrase, as if it pleased
him. “First Instalment!”

Jill hugged his arm. She was in the mood in which she used to listen to him
ages ago telling her fairy stories.

“Go on!” she cried. “Go on! It’s wonderful! Once upon a
time Uncle Chris was walking along Fifth Avenue, when he happened to meet a
poor old woman gathering sticks for firewood. She looked so old and tired that
he was sorry for her, so he gave her ten cents which he had borrowed from the
janitor, and suddenly she turned into a beautiful girl and said ‘I am a
fairy! In return for your kindness I grant you three wishes!’ And Uncle
Chris thought for a moment, and said, ‘I want twenty thousand dollars to
send to Jill!’ And the fairy said, ‘It shall be attended to. And
the next article?’”

“It is all very well to joke,” protested Uncle Chris, pained by
this flippancy, “but let me tell you that I shall not require magic
assistance to become a rich man. Do you realize that at houses like Mrs
Waddesleigh Peagrim’s I am meeting men all the time who have only to say
one little word to make me a millionaire? They are fat, gray men with fishy
eyes and large waistcoats, and they sit smoking cigars and brooding on what
they are going to do to the market next day. If I were a mind-reader I could
have made a dozen fortunes by now. I sat opposite that old pirate, Bruce
Bishop, for over an hour the very day before he and his gang sent Consolidated
Pea-Nuts down twenty points! If I had known what was in the wind, I doubt if I
could have restrained myself from choking his intentions out of the fellow.
Well, what I am trying to point out is that one of these days one of these old
oysters will have a fleeting moment of human pity and disgorge some tip on
which I can act. It is that reflection that keeps me so constantly at Mrs
Peagrim’s house.” Uncle Chris shivered slightly. “A fearsome
woman, my dear! Weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and as skittish as a young
lamb in springtime! She makes me dance with her!” Uncle Chris’ lips
quivered in a spasm of pain, and he was silent for a moment. “Thank
heaven I was once a footballer!” he said reverently.

“But what do you live on?” asked Jill. “I know you are going
to be a millionaire next Tuesday week, but how are you getting along in the
meantime?”

Uncle Chris coughed.

“Well, as regards actual living expenses, I have managed by a shrewd
business stroke to acquire a small but sufficient income. I live in a
boarding-house—true—but I contrive to keep the wolf away from its
door,—which, by the by, badly needs a lick of paint. Have you ever heard
of Nervino?”

“I don’t think so. It sounds like a patent medicine.”

“It is a patent medicine.” Uncle Chris stopped and looked anxiously
at her. “Jill, you’re looking pale, my dear.”

“Am I? We had rather a tiring rehearsal.”

“Are you sure,” said Uncle Chris seriously, “that it is only
that? Are you sure that your vitality has not become generally lowered by the
fierce rush of metropolitan life? Are you aware of the things that can happen
to you if you allow the red corpuscles of your blood to become devitalised? I
had a friend …”

“Stop! You’re scaring me to death!”

Uncle Chris gave his mustache a satisfied twirl. “Just what I meant to
do, my dear. And, when I had scared you sufficiently—you wouldn’t
wait for the story of my consumptive friend! Pity! It’s one of my
best!—I should have mentioned that I had been having much the same
trouble myself until lately, but the other day I happened to try Nervino, the
great specific … I was giving you an illustration of myself in action,
my dear. I went to these Nervino people—happened to see one of their
posters and got the idea in a flash—I went to them and said, ‘Here
am I, a presentable man of persuasive manners and a large acquaintance among
the leaders of New York Society. What would it be worth to you to have me hint
from time to time at dinner parties and so forth that Nervino is the rich
man’s panacea?’ I put the thing lucidly to them. I said, ‘No
doubt you have a thousand agents in the city, but have you one who does not
look like an agent and won’t talk like an agent? Have you one who is
inside the houses of the wealthy, at their very dinner-tables, instead of being
on the front step, trying to hold the door open with his foot? That is the
point you have to consider.’ They saw the idea at once. We arranged
terms—not as generous as I could wish, perhaps, but quite ample. I
receive a tolerably satisfactory salary each week, and in return I spread the
good word about Nervino in the gilded palaces of the rich. Those are the people
to go for, Jill. They have been so busy wrenching money away from the widow and
the orphan that they haven’t had time to look after their health. You
catch one of them after dinner, just as he is wondering if he was really wise
in taking two helpings of the lobster Newburg, and he is clay in your hands. I
draw my chair up to his and become sympathetic and say that I had precisely the
same trouble myself until recently and mention a dear old friend of mine who
died of indigestion, and gradually lead the conversation round to Nervino. I
don’t force it on them. I don’t even ask them to try it. I merely
point to myself, rosy with health, and say that I owe everything to it, and the
thing is done. They thank me profusely and scribble the name down on their
shirt-cuffs. And there your are! I don’t suppose,” said Uncle Chris
philosophically, “that the stuff can do them any actual harm.”

They had come to the corner of Forty-first Street. Uncle Chris felt in his
pocket and produced a key.

“If you want to go and take a look at my little nest, you can let
yourself in. It’s on the twenty-second floor. Don’t fail to go out
on the roof and look at the view. It’s worth seeing. It will give you
some idea of the size of the city. A wonderful, amazing city, my dear, full of
people who need Nervino. I shall go on and drop in at the club for half an
hour. They have given me a fortnight’s card at the Avenue. Capital place.
Here’s the key.”

Jill turned down Forty-first Street, and came to a mammoth structure of steel
and stone which dwarfed the modest brown houses beside it into nothingness. It
was curious to think of a private apartment nestling on the summit of this
mountain. She went in, and the elevator shot her giddily upwards to the
twenty-second floor. She found herself facing a short flight of stone steps,
ending in a door. She mounted the steps, tried the key, and, turning it,
entered a hall-way. Proceeding down the passage, she reached a sitting-room.

It was a small room, but furnished with a solid comfort which soothed her. For
the first time since she had arrived in New York, she had the sense of being
miles away from the noise and bustle of the city. There was a complete and
restful silence. She was alone in a nest of books and deep chairs, on which a
large grandfather-clock looked down with that wide-faced benevolence peculiar
to its kind. So peaceful was this eyrie, perched high up above the clamor and
rattle of civilization, that every nerve in her body seemed to relax in a
delicious content. It was like being in Peter Pan’s house in the
tree-tops.

§ 2.

Jill possessed in an unusual degree that instinct for exploration which is
implanted in most of us. She was frankly inquisitive, and could never be two
minutes in a strange room without making a tour of it and examining its books,
pictures, and photographs. Almost at once she began to prowl.

The mantelpiece was her first objective. She always made for other
people’s mantelpieces, for there, more than anywhere else, is the
character of a proprietor revealed. This mantelpiece was sprinkled with
photographs, large, small, framed and unframed. In the center of it, standing
all alone and looking curiously out of place among its large neighbors, was a
little snapshot.

It was dark by the mantelpiece. Jill took the photograph, to the window, where
the fading light could fall on it. Why, she could not have said, but the thing
interested her. There was mystery about it. It seemed in itself so
insignificant to have the place of honor.

The snapshot had evidently been taken by an amateur, but it was one of those
lucky successes which happen at rare intervals to amateur photographers to
encourage them to proceed with their hobby. It showed a small girl in a white
dress cut short above slim, black legs, standing in the porch of an old house,
one hand swinging a sunbonnet, the other patting an Irish terrier which had
planted its front paws against her waist and was looking up into her face with
that grave melancholy characteristic of Irish terriers. The sunlight was
evidently strong, for the child’s face was puckered in a twisted though
engaging grin. Jill’s first thought was “What a jolly kid!”
And then, with a leaping of the heart that seemed to send something big and
choking into her throat, she saw that it was a photograph of herself.

With a swooping bound memory raced back over the years. She could feel the hot
sun on her face, hear the anxious voice of Freddie Rooke—then fourteen
and for the first time the owner of a camera—imploring her to stand just
like that because he wouldn’t be half a minute only some rotten thing had
stuck or something. Then the sharp click, the doubtful assurance of Freddie
that he thought it was all right if he hadn’t forgotten to shift the film
(in which case she might expect to appear in combination with a cow which he
had snapped on his way to the house), and the relieved disappearance of Pat,
the terrier, who didn’t understand photography. How many years ago had
that been? She could not remember. But Freddie had grown to long-legged
manhood, she to an age of discretion and full-length frocks, Pat had died, the
old house was inhabited by strangers … and here was the silent record of
that sun-lit afternoon, three thousand miles away from the English garden in
which it had come into existence.

The shadows deepened. The top of the great building swayed gently, causing the
pendulum of the grandfather-clock to knock against the sides of its wooden
case. Jill started. The noise, coming after the dead silence, frightened her
till she realized what it was. She had a nervous feeling of not being alone. It
was as if the shadows held goblins that peered out at the intruder. She darted
to the mantelpiece and replaced the photograph. She felt like some heroine of a
fairy-story meddling with the contents of the giant’s castle. Soon there
would come the sound of a great footstep, thud—thud …

Thud.

Jill’s heart gave another leap. She was perfectly sure she had heard a
sound. It had been just like the banging of a door. She braced herself,
listening, every muscle tense. And then, cleaving the stillness, came a voice
from down the passage—

“Just see them Pullman porters,
Dolled up with scented waters
Bought with their dimes and quarters!
    See, here they come! Here they come!”

For an instant Jill could not have said whether she was relieved or more
frightened than ever. True, that numbing sense of the uncanny had ceased to
grip her, for Reason told her that spectres do not sing rag-time songs. On the
other hand, owners of apartments do, and she would almost as readily have faced
a spectre as the owner of this apartment. Dizzily, she wandered how in the
world she was to explain her presence. Suppose he turned out to be some awful,
choleric person who would listen to no explanations.

“Oh, see those starched-up collars!
Hark how their captain hollers
        ‘Keep time! Keep time!’
It’s worth a thousand dollars
To see those tip-collectors …”

Very near now. Almost at the door.

“Those upper-berth inspectors,
Those Pullman porters on parade!”

A dim, shapeless figure in the black of the doorway, scrabbling of fingers on
the wall.

“Where are you, dammit?” said the voice, apparently addressing the
electric-light switch.

Jill shrank back, desperate fingers pressing deep into the back of an
arm-chair. Light flashed from the wall at her side. And there, in the doorway,
stood Wally Mason in his shirt-sleeves.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

§ 1.

In these days of rapid movement, when existence has become little more than a
series of shocks of varying intensity, astonishment is the shortest-lived of
all the emotions. The human brain has trained itself to elasticity and recovers
its balance in the presence of the unforeseen with a speed almost miraculous.
The man who says ‘I am surprised!’ really means ‘I
was surprised a moment ago, but now I have adjusted myself to the
situation.’ There was an instant in which Jill looked at Wally and Wally
at Jill with the eye of total amazement, and then, almost simultaneously, each
began—the process was sub-conscious—to regard this meeting not as
an isolated and inexplicable event, but as something resulting from a perfectly
logical chain of circumstances. Jill perceived that the presence in the
apartment of that snap-shot of herself should have prepared her for the
discovery that the place belonged to someone who had known her as a child, and
that there was no reason for her to be stunned by the fact that this someone
was Wally Mason. Wally, on his side, knew that Jill was in New York; and had
already decided, erroneously, that she had found his address in the telephone
directory and was paying an ordinary call. It was, perhaps, a little unusual
that she should have got into the place without ringing the front door bell and
that she should be in his sitting-room in the dark, but these were minor
aspects of the matter. To the main fact, that here she was, he had adjusted his
mind, and, while there was surprise in his voice when he finally spoke, it was
not the surprise of one who suspects himself of seeing visions.

“Hello!” he said.

“Hullo!” said Jill.

It was not a very exalted note on which to pitch the conversation, but it had
the merit of giving each of them a little more time to collect themselves.

“This is … I wasn’t expecting you!” said Wally.

“I wasn’t expecting you!” said Jill.

There was another pause, in which Wally, apparently examining her last words
and turning them over in his mind found that they did not square with his
preconceived theories.

“You weren’t expecting me?”

“I certainly was not!”

“But … but you knew I lived here?”

Jill shook her head. Wally reflected for an instant, and then put his finger,
with a happy inspiration, on the very heart of the mystery.

“Then how on earth did you get here?”

He was glad he had asked that. The sense of unreality which had come to him in
the first startling moment of seeing her and vanished under the influence of
logic had returned as strong as ever. If she did not know he lived in this
place, how in the name of everything uncanny had she found her way here? A
momentary wonder as to whether all this was not mixed up with telepathy and
mental suggestion and all that sort of thing came to him. Certainly he had been
thinking of her all the time since their parting at the Savoy Hotel that night
three weeks and more back … No, that was absurd. There must be some
sounder reason for her presence. He waited for her to give it.

Jill for the moment felt physically incapable of giving it. She shrank from the
interminable explanation which confronted her as a weary traveller shrinks from
a dusty, far-stretching desert. She simply could not go into all that now. So
she answered with a question.

“When did you land in New York?”

“This afternoon. We were supposed to dock this morning, but the boat was
late.” Wally perceived that he was pushed away from the main point, and
jostled his way to it. “But what are you doing here?”

“It’s such a long story.”

Her voice was plaintive. Remorse smote Wally. It occurred to him that he had
not been sufficiently sympathetic. Not a word had he said on the subject of her
change of fortunes. He had just stood and gaped and asked questions. After all,
what the devil did it matter how she came to be here? He had anticipated a long
and tedious search for her through the labyrinth of New York, and here Fate had
brought her to his very door, and all he could do was to ask why, instead of
being thankful. He perceived that he was not much of a fellow.

“Never mind,” he said. “You can tell me what you feel like
it.” He looked at her eagerly. Time seemed to have wiped away that little
misunderstanding under the burden of which they had parted. “It’s
too wonderful finding you like this!” He hesitated. “I heard
about—everything,” he said awkwardly.

“My—” Jill hesitated too. “My smash?”

“Yes. Freddie Rooke told me. I was terribly sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Jill.

There was a pause. They were both thinking of that other disaster which had
happened. The presence of Derek Underhill seemed to stand like an unseen
phantom between them. Finally Wally spoke at random, choosing the first words
that came into his head in his desire to break the silence.

“Jolly place, this, isn’t it?”

Jill perceived that an opening for those tedious explanations had been granted
her.

“Uncle Chris thinks so,” she said demurely.

Wally looked puzzled.

“Uncle Chris? Oh, your uncle?”

“Yes.”

“But—he has never been here.”

“Oh, yes. He’s giving a dinner party here tonight!”

“He’s … what did you say?”

“It’s all right. I only began at the end of the story instead of
the beginning. I’ll tell you the whole thing, then … then I
suppose you will be terribly angry and make a fuss.”

“I’m not much of a lad, as Freddie Rooke would say, for making
fusses. And I can’t imagine being terribly angry with you.”

“Well, I’ll risk it. Though, if I wasn’t a brave girl, I
should leave Uncle Chris to explain for himself and simply run away.”

“Anything is better than that. It’s a miracle meeting you like
this, and I don’t want to be deprived of the fruits of it. Tell me
anything, but don’t go.”

“You’ll be furious.”

“Not with you.”

“I should hope not with me. I’ve done nothing. I am the innocent
heroine. But I’m afraid you will be very angry with Uncle Chris.”

“If he’s your uncle, that passes him. Besides, he once licked the
stuffing out of me with a whangee. That forms a bond. Tell me all.”

Jill considered. She had promised to begin at the beginning, but it was
difficult to know what was the beginning.

“Have you ever heard of Captain Kidd?” she asked at length.

“You’re wandering from the point, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. Have you heard of Captain Kidd?”

“The pirate? Of course.”

“Well, Uncle Chris is his direct lineal descendant. That really explains
the whole thing.”

Wally looked at her enquiringly.

“Could you make it a little easier?” he said.

“I can tell you everything in half a dozen words, if you like. But it
will sound awfully abrupt.”

“Go ahead.”

“Uncle Chris has stolen your apartment.”

Wally nodded slowly.

“I see. Stolen my apartment.”

“Of course you can’t possibly understand. I shall have to tell you
the whole thing, after all.”

Wally listened with flattering attention as she began the epic of Major
Christopher Selby’s doings in New York. Whatever his emotions, he
certainly was not bored.

“So that’s how it all happened,” concluded Jill.

For a moment Wally said nothing. He seemed to be digesting what he had heard.

“I see,” he said at last. “It’s a variant of those
advertisements they print in the magazines. ‘Why pay rent? Own somebody
else’s home!’”

“That does rather sum it up,” said Jill.

Wally burst into a roar of laughter.

“He’s a corker!”

Jill was immensely relieved. For all her courageous bearing, she had not
relished the task of breaking the news to Wally. She knew that he had a sense
of humor, but a man may have a sense of humor and yet not see anything amusing
in having his home stolen in his absence.

“I’m so glad you’re not angry.”

“Of course not.”

“Most men would be.”

“Most men are chumps.”

“It’s so wonderful that it happened to be you. Suppose it had been
an utter stranger! What could I have done?”

“It would have been the same thing. You would have won him over in two
minutes. Nobody could resist you.”

“That’s very sweet of you.”

“I can’t help telling the truth. Washington was just the
same.”

“Then you don’t mind Uncle Chris giving his dinner-party here
tonight?”

“He has my blessing.”

“You really are an angel,” said Jill gratefully. “From what
he said, I think he looks on it as rather an important function. He has invited
a very rich woman, who has been showing him a lot of hospitality,—a Mrs
Peagrim …”

“Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim?”

“Yes? Why, do you know her?”

“Quite well. She goes in a good deal for being Bohemian and knowing
people who write and paint and act and so on. That reminds me. I gave Freddie
Rooke a letter of introduction to her.”

“Freddie Rooke!”

“Yes. He suddenly made up his mind to come over. He came to me for advice
about the journey. He sailed a couple of days before I did. I suppose
he’s somewhere in New York by now, unless he was going on to Florida. He
didn’t tell me what his plans were.”

Jill was conscious of a sudden depression. Much as she liked Freddie, he
belonged to a chapter in her life which was closed and which she was trying her
hardest to forget. It was impossible to think of Freddie without thinking of
Derek, and to think of Derek was like touching an exposed nerve. The news that
Freddie was in New York shocked her. New York had already shown itself a city
of chance encounters. Could she avoid meeting Freddie?

She knew Freddie so well. There was not a dearer or a better-hearted youth in
the world, but he had not that fine sensibility which pilots a man through the
awkwardnesses of life. He was a blunderer. Instinct told her that, if she met
Freddie, he would talk of Derek, and, if thinking of Derek was touching an
exposed nerve, talking of him would like pressing on that nerve with a heavy
hand. She shivered.

Wally was observant.

“There’s no need to meet him, if you don’t want to,” he
said.

“No,” said Jill doubtfully.

“New York’s a large place. By the way,” he went on, “to
return once more to the interesting subject of my lodger, does your uncle sleep
here at nights, do you know?”

Jill looked at him gratefully. He was no blunderer. Her desire to avoid Freddie
Rooke was, he gave her tacitly to understand, her business, and he did not
propose to intrude on it. She liked him for dismissing the subject so easily.

“No, I think he told me he doesn’t.”

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it! I call that darned nice of
him! I wonder if I could drop back here somewhere about eleven o’clock.
Are the festivities likely to be over by then? If I know Mrs Peagrim, she will
insist on going off to one of the hotels to dance directly after dinner.
She’s a confirmed trotter.”

“I don’t know how to apologize,” began Jill remorsefully.

“Please don’t. It’s absolutely all right.” His eye
wandered to the mantelpiece, as it had done once or twice during the
conversation. In her hurry Jill had replaced the snapshot with its back to the
room, and Wally had the fidgety air of a man whose most cherished possession is
maltreated. He got up now and, walking across, turned the photograph round. He
stood for a moment, looking at it.

Jill had forgotten the snapshot. Curiosity returned to her.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

Wally turned.

“Oh, did you see this?”

“I was looking at it just before you nearly frightened me to death by
appearing so unexpectedly.”

“Freddie Rooke sold it to me fourteen years ago.”

“Fourteen years ago!”

“Next July,” added Wally. “I gave him five shillings for
it.”

“Five shillings! The little brute!” cried Jill indignantly
“It must have been all the money you had in the world!”

“A trifle more, as a matter of fact. All the money I had in the world was
three-and-six. But by a merciful dispensation of Providence the curate had
called that morning and left a money-box for subscriptions to the village
organ-fund … It’s wonderful what you can do with a turn for crime
and the small blade of a pocket-knife! I don’t think I have ever made
money quicker!” He looked at the photograph again. “Not that it
seemed quick at the moment. I died at least a dozen agonizing deaths in the few
minutes I was operating. Have you ever noticed how slowly time goes when you
are coaxing a shilling and a sixpence out of somebody’s money-box?
Centuries! But I was forgetting. Of course you’ve had no
experience.”

“You poor thing!”

“It was worth it.”

“And you’ve had it ever since!”

“I wouldn’t part with it for all Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim’s
millions,” said Wally with sudden and startling vehemence, “if she
offered me them.” He paused. “She hasn’t, as a matter of
fact.”

There was a silence. Jill looked at Wally furtively, as he returned to his
seat. She was seeing him with new eyes. It was as if this trifling incident had
removed some sort of a veil. He had suddenly become more alive. For an instant
she had seen right into him, to the hidden deeps of his soul. She felt shy and
embarrassed.

“Pat died,” she said, at length. She felt the necessity of saying
something.

“I liked Pat.”

“He picked up some poison, poor darling … How long ago those days
seem, don’t they!”

“They are always pretty vivid to me. I wonder who has that old house of
yours now.”

“I heard the other day,” said Jill more easily. The odd sensation
of embarrassment was passing. “Some people called … what was the
name?… Debenham, I think.”

Silence fell again. It was broken by the front-door bell, like an alarm-clock
that shatters a dream.

Wally got up.

“Your uncle,” he said.

“You aren’t going to open the door?”

“That was the scheme.”

“But he’ll get such a shock when he sees you.”

“He must look on it in the light of rent. I don’t see why I
shouldn’t have a little passing amusement from this business.”

He left the room. Jill heard the front door open. She waited breathlessly. Pity
for Uncle Chris struggled with the sterner feeling that it served him right.

“Hullo!” she heard Wally say.

“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” replied an exuberant voice. “Wondered if
I’d find you in, and all that sort of thing. I say, what a deuce of a way
up it is here. Sort of gets a chap into training for going to heaven, what? I
mean, what?”

Jill looked about her like a trapped animal. It was absurd, she felt, but every
nerve in her body cried out against the prospect of meeting Freddie. His very
voice had opened old wounds and set them throbbing.

She listened in the doorway. Out of sight down the passage, Freddie seemed by
the sounds to be removing his overcoat. She stole out and darted like a shadow
down the corridor that led to Wally’s bedroom. The window of the bedroom
opened onto the wide roof which Uncle Chris had eulogized. She slipped
noiselessly out, closing the window behind her.

§ 2.

“I say, Mason, old top,” said Freddie, entering the sitting-room,
“I hope you don’t mind my barging in like this but the fact is
things are a bit thick. I’m dashed worried and I didn’t know
another soul I could talk it over with. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t
sure you were in New York at all but I remembered hearing you say in London
that you went popping back almost at once, so I looked you up in the telephone
book and took a chance. I’m dashed glad you are back. When did you
arrive?”

“This afternoon.”

“I’ve been here two or three days. Well, it’s a bit of luck
catching you. You see, what I want to ask your advice about …”

Wally looked at his watch. He was not surprised to find that Jill had taken to
flight. He understood her feelings perfectly, and was anxious to get rid of the
inopportune Freddie as soon as possible.

“You’ll have to talk quick, I’m afraid,” he said.
“I’ve lent this place to a man for the evening, and he’s
having some people to dinner. What’s the trouble?”

“It’s about Jill.”

“Jill?”

“Jill Mariner, you know. You remember Jill? You haven’t forgotten
my telling you all that? About her losing her money and coming over to
America?”

“No. I remember you telling me that.”

Freddie seemed to miss something in his companion’s manner, some note of
excitement and perturbation.

“Of course,” he said, as if endeavoring to explain this to himself,
“you hardly knew her, I suppose. Only met once since you were kids and
all that sort of thing. But I’m a pal of hers and I’m dashed upset
by the whole business, I can tell you. It worries me, I mean to say. Poor girl,
you know, landed on her uppers in a strange country. Well, I mean, it worries
me. So the first thing I did when I got here was to try to find her.
That’s why I came over, really, to try to find her. Apart from anything
else, you see, poor old Derek is dashed worried about her.”

“Need we bring Underhill in?”

“Oh, I know you don’t like him and think he behaved rather rummily
and so forth, but that’s all right now.”

“It is, is it?” said Wally drily.

“Oh, absolutely. It’s all on again.”

“What’s all on again?”

“Why, I mean he wants to marry Jill. I came over to find her and tell her
so.”

Wally’s eyes glowed.

“If you have come over as an ambassador …”

“That’s right. Jolly old ambassador. Very word I used
myself.”

“I say, if you have come over as an ambassador with the idea of reopening
negotiations with Jill on behalf of that infernal swine …”

“Old man!” protested Freddie, pained. “Pal of mine, you
know.”

“If he is, after what’s happened, your mental processes are beyond
me.”

“My what, old son?”

“Your mental processes.”

“Oh, ah!” said Freddie, learning for the first time that he had
any.

Wally looked at him intently. There was a curious expression on his rough-hewn
face.

“I can’t understand you, Freddie. If ever there was a fellow who
might have been expected to take the only possible view of Underhill’s
behavior in this business, I should have said it was you. You’re a
public-school man. You’ve mixed all the time with decent people. You
wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t straight yourself to save your
life, it seems to have made absolutely no difference in your opinion of this
man Underhill that he behaved like an utter cad to a girl who was one of your
best friends. You seem to worship him just as much as ever. And you have
travelled three thousand miles to bring a message from him to Jill—Good
God! Jill!—to the effect, as far as I understand it, that he has
thought it over and come to the conclusion that after all she may possibly be
good enough for him!”

Freddie recovered the eye-glass which the raising of his eyebrows had caused to
fall, and polished it in a crushed sort of way. Rummy, he reflected, how
chappies stayed the same all their lives as they were when they were kids.
Nasty, tough sort of chap Wally Mason had been as a boy, and here he was,
apparently, not altered a bit. At least, the only improvement he could detect
was that, whereas in the old days Wally, when in an ugly mood like this, would
undoubtedly have kicked him, he now seemed content with mere words. All the
same, he was being dashed unpleasant. And he was all wrong about poor old
Derek. This last fact he endeavored to make clear.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t
realize. You’ve never met Lady Underhill, have you?”

“What has she got to do with it?”

“Everything, old bean, everything. If it hadn’t been for her, there
wouldn’t have been any trouble of any description, sort, or order. But
she barged in and savaged poor old Derek till she absolutely made him break off
the engagement.”

“If you call him ‘poor old Derek’ again, Freddie,” said
Wally viciously, “I’ll drop you out of the window and throw your
hat after you! If he’s such a gelatine-backboned worm that his mother can
…”

“You don’t know her, old thing! She’s the original
hellhound!”

“I don’t care what …”

“Must be seen to be believed,” mumbled Freddie.

“I don’t care what she’s like! Any man who could
…”

“Once seen, never forgotten!”

“Damn you! Don’t interrupt every time I try to get a word
in!”

“Sorry, old man! Shan’t occur again!”

Wally moved to the window, and stood looking out. He had had much more to say
on the subject of Derek Underhill, but Freddie’s interruptions had put it
out of his head, and he felt irritated and baffled.

“Well, all I can say is,” he remarked savagely, “that, if you
have come over here as an ambassador to try and effect a reconciliation between
Jill and Underhill, I hope to God you’ll never find her.”

Freddie emitted a weak cough, like a very far-off asthmatic old sheep. He was
finding Wally more overpowering every moment. He had rather forgotten the dear
old days of his childhood, but this conversation was beginning to refresh his
memory: and he was realizing more vividly with every moment that passed how
very Wallyish Wally was,—how extraordinarily like the Wally who had
dominated his growing intellect when they were both in Eton suits. Freddie in
those days had been all for peace, and he was all for peace now. He made his
next observation diffidently.

“I have found her!”

Wally spun round.

“What!”

“When I say that, I don’t absolutely mean. I’ve seen her. I
mean I know where she is. That’s what I came round to see you about. Felt
I must talk it over, you know. The situation seems to me dashed rotten and not
a little thick. The fact is, old man, she’s gone on the stage. In the
chorus, you know. And, I mean to say, well, if you follow what I’m
driving at, what, what?”

“In the chorus!”

“In the chorus!”

“How do you know?”

Freddie groped for his eye-glass, which had fallen again.

He regarded it a trifle sternly. He was fond of the little chap, but it was
always doing that sort of thing. The whole trouble was that, if you wanted to
keep it in its place, you simply couldn’t register any sort of emotion
with the good old features: and, when you were chatting with a fellow like
Wally Mason, you had to be registering something all the time.

“Well, that was a bit of luck, as a matter of fact. When I first got
here, you know, it seemed to me the only thing to do was to round up a merry
old detective and put the matter in his hands, like they do in stories.
You know! Ring at the bell. ‘And this, if I mistake not, Watson,
is my client now.’ And then in breezes client and spills the plot. I
found a sleuth in the classified telephone directory, and toddled round. Rummy
chaps, detectives! Ever met any? I always thought they were lean, hatchet-faced
Johnnies with inscrutable smiles. This one looked just like my old Uncle Ted,
the one who died of apoplexy. Jovial, puffy-faced bird, who kept bobbing up
behind a fat cigar. Have you ever noticed what whacking big cigars these
fellows over here smoke? Rummy country, America. You ought to have seen the way
this blighter could shift his cigar right across his face without moving his
jaw-muscles. Like a flash! Most remarkable thing you ever saw, I give you my
honest word! He …”

“Couldn’t you keep your Impressions of America for the book
you’re going to write, and come to the point?” said Wally rudely.

“Sorry, old chap,” said Freddie meekly. “Glad you reminded
me. Well … Oh, yes. We had got as far as the jovial old human
bloodhound, hadn’t we? Well, I put the matter before this chappie. Told
him I wanted to find a girl, showed him a photograph, and so forth. I
say,” said Freddie, wandering off once more into speculation, “why
is it that coves like that always talk of a girl as ‘the little
lady’? This chap kept saying ‘We’ll find the little lady for
you!’ Oh, well, that’s rather off the rails, isn’t it? It
just floated across my mind and I thought I’d mention it. Well, this
blighter presumably nosed about and made enquiries for a couple of days, but
didn’t effect anything that you might call substantial. I’m not
blaming him, mind you. I shouldn’t care to have a job like that myself. I
mean to say, when you come to think of what a frightful number of girls there
are in this place, to have to … well, as I say, he did his best but
didn’t click; and then this evening, just before I came here, I met a
girl I had known in England—she was in a show over there—a girl
called Nelly Bryant …”

“Nelly Bryant? I know her.”

“Yes? Fancy that! She was in a thing called ‘Follow the Girl’
in London. Did you see it by any chance? Topping show! There was one scene
where the …”

“Get on! Get on! I wrote it,”

“You wrote it?” Freddie beamed simple-hearted admiration. “My
dear old chap, I congratulate you! One of the ripest and most all-wool musical
comedies I’ve ever seen. I went twenty-four times. Rummy I don’t
remember spotting that you wrote it. I suppose one never looks at the names on
the programme. Yes, I went twenty-four times. The first time I went was with a
couple of chappies from …”

“Listen, Freddie!” said Wally feverishly. “On some other
occasion I should dearly love to hear the story of your life, but just now
…”

“Absolutely, old man. You’re perfectly right. Well, to cut a long
story short, Nelly Bryant told me that she and Jill were rehearsing with a
piece called ‘The Rose of America.’”

“‘The Rose of America!’”

“I think that was the name of it.”

“That’s Ike Goble’s show. He called me up on the phone about
it half an hour ago. I promised to go and see a rehearsal of it tomorrow or the
day after. And Jill’s in that?”

“Yes. How about it? I mean, I don’t know much about this sort of
thing, but do you think it’s the sort of thing Jill ought to be
doing?”

Wally was moving restlessly about the room. Freddie’s news had disquieted
him. Mr Goble had a reputation.

“I know a lot about it,” he replied, “and it certainly
isn’t.” He scowled at the carpet. “Oh, damn everybody!”

Freddie paused to allow him to proceed, if such should be his wish, but Wally
had apparently said his say. Freddie went on to point out an aspect of the
matter which was troubling him greatly.

“I’m sure poor old Derek wouldn’t like her being in the
chorus!”

Wally started so violently that for a moment Freddie was uneasy.

“I mean Underhill,” he corrected himself hastily.

“Freddie,” said Wally, “you’re an awfully good chap,
but I wish you would exit rapidly now! Thanks for coming and telling me, very
good of you. This way out!”

“But, old man … !”

“Now what?”

“I thought we were going to discuss this binge and decide what to do and
all that sort of thing.”

“Some other time. I want to think about it.”

“Oh, you will think about it?”

“Yes, I’ll think about it.”

“Topping! You see, you’re a brainy sort of feller, and you’ll
probably hit something.”

“I probably shall, if you don’t go.”

“Eh? Oh, ah, yes!” Freddie struggled into his coat. More than ever
did the adult Wally remind him of the dangerous stripling of years gone by.
“Well, cheerio!”

“Same to you!”

“You’ll let me know if you scare up some devilish fruity wheeze,
won’t you? I’m at the Biltmore.”

“Very good place to be. Go there now.”

“Right ho! Well, toodle-oo!”

“The elevator is at the foot of the stairs,” said Wally. “You
press the bell and up it comes. You hop in and down you go. It’s a great
invention! Good night!”

“Oh, I say. One moment …”

“Good night!” said Wally.

He closed the door, and ran down the passage.

“Jill!” he called. He opened the bedroom window and stepped out.
“Jill!”

There was no reply.

“Jill!” called Wally once again, but again there was no answer.

Wally walked to the parapet, and looked over. Below him the vastness of the
city stretched itself in a great triangle, its apex the harbor, its sides the
dull silver of the East and Hudson rivers. Directly before him, crowned with
its white lantern, the Metropolitan Tower reared its graceful height to the
stars. And all around, in the windows of the tall buildings that looked from
this bastion on which he stood almost squat, a million lights stared up at him,
the unsleeping eyes of New York. It was a scene of which Wally, always
sensitive to beauty, never tired: but tonight it had lost its appeal. A
pleasant breeze from the Jersey shore greeted him with a quickening whisper of
springtime and romance, but it did not lift the heaviness of his heart. He felt
depressed and apprehensive.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

§ 1.

Spring, whose coming the breeze had heralded to Wally as he smoked upon the
roof, floated graciously upon New York two mornings later. The city awoke to a
day of blue and gold and to a sense of hard times over and good times to come.
In a million homes, a million young men thought of sunny afternoons at the Polo
Grounds; a million young women of long summer Sundays by the crowded waves of
Coney Island. In his apartment on Park Avenue, Mr Isaac Goble, sniffing the
gentle air from the window of his breakfast-room, returned to his meal and his
Morning Telegraph with a resolve to walk to the theatre for rehearsal: a
resolve which had also come to Jill and Nelly Bryant, eating stewed prunes in
their boarding-house in the Forties. On the summit of his sky-scraper, Wally
Mason, performing Swedish exercises to the delectation of various clerks and
stenographers in the upper windows of neighboring buildings, felt young and
vigorous and optimistic; and went in to his shower-bath thinking of Jill. And
it was of Jill, too, that young Mr Pilkington thought, as he propped his long
form up against the pillows and sipped his morning cup of tea. He had not yet
had an opportunity of inspecting the day for himself, but his Japanese valet,
who had been round the corner for papers, had spoken well of it; and even in
his bedroom the sunlight falling on the carpet gave some indication of what
might be expected outside. For the first time in several days a certain
moodiness which had affected Otis Pilkington left him, and he dreamed happy
daydreams.

The gaiety of Otis was not, however, entirely or even primarily due to the
improvement in the weather. It had its source in a conversation which had taken
place between himself and Jill’s Uncle Chris on the previous night.
Exactly how it had come about, Mr Pilkington was not entirely clear, but,
somehow, before he was fully aware of what he was saying, he had begun to pour
into Major Selby’s sympathetic ears the story of his romance. Encouraged
by the other’s kindly receptiveness, he had told him all—his love
for Jill, his hopes that some day it might be returned, the difficulties
complicating the situation owing to the known prejudices of Mrs Waddesleigh
Peagrim concerning girls who formed the personnel of musical comedy
ensembles. To all these outpourings Major Selby had listened with keen
attention, and finally had made one of those luminous suggestions, so simple
yet so shrewd, which emanate only from your man of the world. It was
Jill’s girlish ambition, it seemed from Major Selby’s statement, to
become a force in the motion-picture world. The movies were her objective. When
she had told him of this, said Uncle Chris, he had urged her, speaking in her
best interests, to gain experience by joining in the humblest capacity the
company of some good musical play, where she could learn from the best masters
so much of the technique of the business. That done, she could go about her
life-work, fortified and competent.

What, he broke off to ask, did Pilkington think of the idea?

Pilkington thought the idea splendid. Miss Mariner, with her charm and looks,
would be wonderful in the movies.

There was, said Uncle Chris, a future for a girl in the movies.

Mr Pilkington agreed cordially. A great future.

“Look at Mary Pickford!” said Uncle Chris. “Millions a
year!”

Mr Pilkington contemplated Miss Pickford, and agreed again. He instanced other
stars—lesser luminaries, perhaps, but each with her thousands a week.
There was no doubt about it—a girl’s best friend was the movies.

“Observe,” proceeded Uncle Chris, gathering speed and expanding his
chest as he spread his legs before the fire, “how it would simplify the
whole matter if Jill were to become a motion-picture artist and win fame and
wealth in her profession. And there can be no reasonable doubt, my boy, that
she would. As you say, with her appearance and her charm … Which of
these women whose names you see all along Broadway in electric lights can hold
a candle to her? Once started, with the proper backing behind her, her future
would be assured. And then. … Of course, as regards her feelings I
cannot speak, as I know nothing of them, but we will assume that she is not
indifferent to you … what then? You go to your excellent aunt and
announce that you are engaged to be married to Jill Mariner. There is a
momentary pause. ‘Not the Jill Mariner?’ falters Mrs
Peagrim. ‘Yes, the famous Miss Mariner!’ you reply. Well, I ask
you, my boy, can you see her making an objection? Such a thing would be absurd.
No, I can see no flaw in the project whatsoever.” Here Uncle Chris, as he
had pictured Mrs Peagrim doing, paused for a moment. “Of course, there
would be the preliminaries.”

“The preliminaries?”

Uncle Chris’ voice became a melodious coo. He beamed upon Mr Pilkington.

“Well, think for yourself, my boy! These things cannot be done without
money. I do not propose to allow my niece to waste her time and her energy in
the rank and file of the profession, waiting years for a chance that might
never come. There is plenty of room at the top, and that, in the motion-picture
profession, is the place to start. If Jill is to become a motion-picture
artist, a special company must be formed to promote her. She must be made a
feature, a star, from the beginning. That is why I have advised her to accept
her present position temporarily, in order that she may gain experience. She
must learn to walk before she runs. She must study before she soars. But when
the moment arrives for her to take the step, she must not be hampered by lack
of money. Whether,” said Uncle Chris, smoothing the crease of his
trousers, “you would wish to take shares in the company yourself
…”

“Oo … !”

“… is a matter,” proceeded Uncle Chris, ignoring the
interruption, “for you yourself to decide. Possibly you have other claims
on your purse. Possibly this musical play of yours has taken all the cash you
are prepared to lock up. Possibly you may consider the venture too speculative.
Possibly … there are a hundred reasons why you may not wish to join us.
But I know a dozen men—I can go down Wall Street tomorrow and pick out
twenty men—who will be glad to advance the necessary capital. I can
assure you that I personally shall not hesitate to risk—if one can call
it risking—any loose cash which I may have lying idle at my
banker’s.”

He rattled the loose cash which he had lying idle in his
trouser-pocket—fifteen cents in all—and stopped to flick a piece of
fluff off his coat-sleeve. Mr Pilkington was thus enabled to insert a word.

“How much would you want?” he enquired.

“That,” said Uncle Chris meditatively, “is a little hard to
say. I should have to look into the matter more closely in order to give you
the exact figures. But let us say for the sake of argument that you put
up—what shall we say?—a hundred thousand? fifty thousand?…
no, we will be conservative. Perhaps you had better not begin with more than
ten thousand. You can always buy more shares later. I don’t suppose I
shall begin with more than ten thousand myself.”

“I could manage ten thousand all right.”

“Excellent. We make progress, we make progress. Very well, then. I go to
my Wall Street friends—I would give you their names, only for the
present, till something definite has been done, that would hardly be
politic—I go to my Wall Street friends, and tell them about the scheme,
and say ‘Here is ten thousand dollars! What is your contribution?’
It puts the affair on a business-like basis, you understand. Then we really get
to work. But use your own judgment my boy, you know. Use your own judgment. I
would not think of persuading you to take such a step, if you felt at all
doubtful. Think it over. Sleep on it. And, whatever you decide to do, on no
account say a word about it to Jill. It would be cruel to raise her hopes until
we are certain that we are in a position to enable her to realize them. And, of
course, not a word to Mrs Peagrim.”

“Of course.”

“Very well, then, my boy.” said Uncle Chris affably. “I will
leave you to turn the whole thing over in your mind. Act entirely as you think
best. How is your insomnia, by the way? Did you try Nervino? Capital!
There’s nothing like it. It did wonders for me! Good-night,
good-night!”

Otis Pilkington had been turning the thing over in his mind, with an interval
for sleep, ever since. And the more he thought of it, the better the scheme
appeared to him. He winced a little at the thought of the ten thousand dollars,
for he came of prudent stock and had been brought up in habits of parsimony,
but, after all, he reflected, the money would be merely a loan. Once the
company found its feet, it would be returned to him a hundred-fold. And there
was no doubt that this would put a completely different aspect on his wooing of
Jill, as far as his Aunt Olive was concerned. Why, a cousin of his—young
Brewster Philmore—had married a movie-star only two years ago, and nobody
had made the slightest objection. Brewster was to be seen with his bride
frequently beneath Mrs Peagrim’s roof. Against the higher strata of
Bohemia Mrs Peagrim had no prejudice at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. She
liked the society of those whose names were often in the papers and much in the
public mouth. It seemed to Otis Pilkington, in short, that Love had found a
way. He sipped his tea with relish, and when the Japanese valet brought in the
toast all burned on one side, chided him with a gentle sweetness which, one may
hope, touched the latter’s Oriental heart and inspired him with a desire
to serve this best of employers more efficiently.

At half-past ten, Otis Pilkington removed his dressing-gown and began to put on
his clothes to visit the theatre. There was a rehearsal-call for the whole
company at eleven. As he dressed, his mood was as sunny as the day itself.

And the day, by half-past ten, was as sunny as ever Spring day had been in a
country where Spring comes early and does its best from the very start. The
blue sky beamed down on a happy city. To and fro the citizenry bustled, aglow
with the perfection of the weather. Everywhere was gaiety and good cheer,
except on the stage of the Gotham Theatre, where an early rehearsal,
preliminary to the main event, had been called by Johnson Miller in order to
iron some of the kinks out of the “My Heart and I” number, which,
with the assistance of the male chorus, the leading lady was to render in act
one.

On the stage of the Gotham gloom reigned—literally, because the stage was
wide and deep and was illumined only by a single electric light: and
figuratively, because things were going even worse than usual with the
“My Heart and I” number, and Johnson Miller, always of an emotional
and easily stirred temperament, had been goaded by the incompetence of his male
chorus to a state of frenzy. At about the moment when Otis Pilkington shed his
flowered dressing-gown and reached for his trousers (the heather-mixture with
the red twill), Johnson Miller was pacing the gangway between the orchestra pit
and the first row of the orchestra chairs, waving one hand and clutching his
white locks with the other, his voice raised the while in agonized protest.

“Gentlemen, you silly idiots,” complained Mr Miller loudly,
“you’ve had three weeks to get these movements into your thick
heads, and you haven’t done a damn thing right! You’re all over the
place! You don’t seem able to turn without tumbling over each other like
a lot of Keystone Kops! What’s the matter with you? You’re not
doing the movements I showed you; you’re doing some you have invented
yourselves, and they are rotten! I’ve no doubt you think you can arrange
a number better than I can, but Mr Goble engaged me to be the director, so
kindly do exactly as I tell you. Don’t try to use your own intelligence,
because you haven’t any. I’m not blaming you for it. It
wasn’t your fault that your nurses dropped you on your heads when you
were babies. But it handicaps you when you try to think.”

Of the seven gentlemanly members of the male ensemble present, six looked
wounded by this tirade. They had the air of good men wrongfully accused. They
appeared to be silently calling on Heaven to see justice done between Mr.
Miller and themselves. The seventh, a long-legged young man in
faultlessly-fitting tweeds of English cut, seemed, on the other hand, not so
much hurt as embarrassed. It was this youth who now stepped down to the
darkened footlights and spoke in a remorseful and conscience-stricken manner.

“I say!”

Mr Miller, that martyr to deafness, did not hear the pathetic bleat. He had
swung off at right angles and was marching in an overwrought way up the central
aisle leading to the back of the house, his india rubber form moving in
convulsive jerks. Only when he had turned and retraced his steps did he
perceive the speaker and prepare to take his share in the conversation.

“What?” he shouted. “Can’t hear you!”

“I say, you know, it’s my fault, really.”

“What?”

“I mean to say, you know …”

“What? Speak up, can’t you?”

Mr Saltzburg, who had been seated at the piano, absently playing a melody from
his unproduced musical comedy, awoke to the fact that the services of an
interpreter were needed. He obligingly left the music-stool and crept,
crablike, along the ledge of the stage-box. He placed his arm about Mr
Miller’s shoulders and his lips to Mr Miller’s left ear, and drew a
deep breath.

“He says it is his fault!”

Mr Miller nodded adhesion to this admirable sentiment.

“I know they’re not worth their salt!” he replied.

Mr Saltzburg patiently took in a fresh stock of breath.

“This young man says it is his fault that the movement went wrong!”

“Tell him I only signed on this morning, laddie,” urged the
tweed-clad young man.

“He only joined the company this morning!”

This puzzled Mr Miller.

“How do you mean, warning?” he asked.

Mr Saltzburg, purple in the face, made a last effort.

“This young man is new,” he bellowed carefully, keeping to words of
one syllable. “He does not yet know the steps. He says this is his first
day here, so he does not yet know the steps. When he has been here some more
time he will know the steps. But now he does not know the steps.”

“What he means,” explained the young man in tweeds helpfully,
“is that I don’t know the steps.”

“He does not know the steps!” roared Mr Saltzburg.

“I know he doesn’t know the steps,” said Mr Miller.
“Why doesn’t he know the steps? He’s had long enough to learn
them.”

“He is new!”

“Hugh?”

“New!”

“Oh, new?”

“Yes, new!”

“Why the devil is he new?” cried Mr Miller, awaking suddenly to the
truth and filled with a sense of outrage. “Why didn’t he join with
the rest of the company? How can I put on chorus numbers if I am saddled every
day with new people to teach? Who engaged him?”

“Who engaged you?” enquired Mr Saltzburg of the culprit.

“Mr Pilkington.”

“Mr Pilkington,” shouted Mr Saltzburg.

“When?”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Last night.”

Mr Miller waved his hands in a gesture of divine despair, spun round, darted up
the aisle, turned, and bounded back. “What can I do?” he wailed.
“My hands are tied! I am hampered! I am handicapped! We open in two
weeks, and every day I find somebody new in the company to upset everything I
have done. I shall go to Mr Goble and ask to be released from my contract. I
shall … Come along, come along, come along now!” he broke off
suddenly. “Why are we wasting time? The whole number once more. The whole
number once more from the beginning!”

The young man tottered back to his gentlemanly colleagues, running a finger in
an agitated manner round the inside of his collar. He was not used to this sort
of thing. In a large experience of amateur theatricals he had never encountered
anything like it. In the breathing-space afforded by the singing of the first
verse and refrain by the lady who played the heroine of “The Rose of
America,” he found time to make an enquiry of the artist on his right.

“I say! Is he always like this?”

“Who? Johnny?”

“The sportsman with the hair that turned white in a single night. The
barker on the skyline. Does he often get the wind up like this?”

His colleague smiled tolerantly.

“Why, that’s nothing!” he replied. “Wait till you see
him really cut loose! That was just a gentle whisper!”

“My God!” said the newcomer, staring into a bleak future. The
leading lady came to the end of her refrain, and the gentlemen of the ensemble,
who had been hanging about up-stage, began to curvet nimbly down towards her in
a double line; the new arrival, with an eye on his nearest neighbor,
endeavouring to curvet as nimbly as the others. A clapping of hands from the
dark auditorium indicated—inappropriately—that he had failed to do
so. Mr Miller could be perceived—dimly—with all his fingers
entwined in his hair.

“Clear the stage!” yelled Mr Miller. “Not you!” he
shouted, as the latest addition to the company began to drift off with the
others. “You stay!”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I shall have to teach you the steps by yourself, or we shall
get nowhere. Go on-stage. Start the music again, Mr Saltzburg. Now, when the
refrain begins, come down. Gracefully! Gracefully!”

The young man, pink but determined, began to come down gracefully. And it was
while he was thus occupied that Jill and Nelly Bryant, entering the wings which
were beginning to fill up as eleven o’clock approached, saw him.

“Whoever is that?” said Nelly.

“New man,” replied one of the chorus gentlemen. “Came this
morning.”

Nelly turned to Jill.

“He looks just like Mr Rooke!” she exclaimed.

“He is Mr Rooke!” said Jill.

“He can’t be!”

“He is!”

“But what is he doing here?”

Jill bit her lip.

“That’s just what I’m going to ask him myself,” she
said.

§ 2.

The opportunity for a private conversation with Freddie did not occur
immediately. For ten minutes he remained alone on the stage, absorbing abusive
tuition from Mr Miller: and at the end of that period a further ten minutes was
occupied with the rehearsing of the number with the leading lady and the rest
of the male chorus. When, finally, a roar from the back of the auditorium
announced the arrival of Mr Goble and at the same time indicated Mr
Goble’s desire that the stage should be cleared and the rehearsal proper
begin, a wan smile of recognition and a faint “What ho!” was all
that Freddie was able to bestow upon Jill, before, with the rest of the
ensemble, they had to go out and group themselves for the opening
chorus. It was only when this had been run through four times and the stage
left vacant for two of the principals to play a scene that Jill was able to
draw the Last of the Rookes aside in a dark corner and put him to the question.

“Freddie, what are you doing here?”

Freddie mopped his streaming brow. Johnson Miller’s idea of an opening
chorus was always strenuous. On the present occasion, the ensemble were
supposed to be guests at a Long Island house-party, and Mr Miller’s
conception of the gathering suggested that he supposed house-party guests on
Long Island to consist exclusively of victims of St Vitus’ dance. Freddie
was feeling limp, battered, and exhausted: and, from what he had gathered, the
worst was yet to come.

“Eh?” he said feebly.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, ah, yes! I see what you mean! I suppose you’re surprised to
find me in New York, what?”

“I’m not surprised to find you in New York. I knew you had come
over. But I am surprised to find you on the stage, being bullied by Mr
Miller.”

“I say,” said Freddie in an awed voice. “He’s a bit of
a nut, that lad, what! He reminds me of the troops of Midian in the hymn. The
chappies who prowled and prowled around. I’ll bet he’s worn a
groove in the carpet. Like a jolly old tiger at the Zoo at feeding time.
Wouldn’t be surprised at any moment to look down and find him biting a
piece out of my leg!”

Jill seized his arm and shook it.

“Don’t ramble, Freddie! Tell me how you got here.”

“Oh, that was pretty simple. I had a letter of introduction to this
chappie Pilkington who’s running this show, and, we having got tolerably
pally in the last few days, I went to him and asked him to let me join the
merry throng. I said I didn’t want any money and the little bit of work I
would do wouldn’t make any difference, so he said ‘Right ho!’
or words to that effect, and here I am.”

“But why? You can’t be doing this for fun, surely?”

“Fun!” A pained expression came into Freddie’s face.
“My idea of fun isn’t anything in which jolly old Miller, the bird
with the snowy hair, is permitted to mix. Something tells me that that lad is
going to make it his life-work picking on me. No, I didn’t do this for
fun. I had a talk with Wally Mason the night before last, and he seemed to
think that being in the chorus wasn’t the sort of thing you ought to be
doing, so I thought it over and decided that I ought to join the troupe too.
Then I could always be on the spot, don’t you know, if there was any
trouble. I mean to say, I’m not much of a chap and all that sort of
thing, but still I might come in handy one of these times. Keep a fatherly eye
on you, don’t you know, and what not!”

Jill was touched.

“You’re a dear, Freddie!”

“I thought, don’t you know, it would make poor old Derek a bit
easier in his mind.”

Jill froze.

“I don’t want to talk about Derek, Freddie, please.”

“Oh, I know what you must be feeling. Pretty sick, I’ll bet, what?
But if you could see him now …”

“I don’t want to talk about him!”

“He’s pretty cut up, you know. Regrets bitterly and all that sort
of thing. He wants you to come back again.”

“I see! He sent you to fetch me?”

“That was more or less the idea.”

“It’s a shame that you had all the trouble. You can get
messenger-boys to go anywhere and do anything nowadays. Derek ought to have
thought of that.”

Freddie looked at her doubtfully.

“You’re spoofing, aren’t you? I mean to say, you
wouldn’t have liked that!”

“I shouldn’t have disliked it any more than his sending you.”

“Oh, but I wanted to pop over. Keen to see America and so forth.”

Jill looked past him at the gloomy stage. Her face was set, and her eyes
sombre.

“Can’t you understand, Freddie? You’ve known me a long time.
I should have thought that you would have found out by now that I have a
certain amount of pride. If Derek wanted me back, there was only one thing for
him to do—come over and find me himself.”

“Rummy! That’s what Mason said, when I told him. You two
don’t realize how dashed busy Derek is these days.”

“Busy!”

Something in her face seemed to tell Freddie that he was not saying the right
thing, but he stumbled on.

“You’ve no notion how busy he is. I mean to say, elections coming
on and so forth. He daren’t stir from the metrop.”

“Of course I couldn’t expect him to do anything that might
interfere with his career, could I?”

“Absolutely not. I knew you would see it!” said Freddie, charmed at
her reasonableness. All rot, what you read about women being unreasonable.
“Then I take it it’s all right, eh?”

“All right?”

“I mean you will toddle home with me at the earliest opp. and make poor
old Derek happy?”

Jill laughed discordantly.

“Poor old Derek!” she echoed. “He has been badly treated,
hasn’t he?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said Freddie doubtfully.
“You see, coming down to it, the thing was more or less his fault,
what?”

“More or less!”

“I mean to say …”

“More or less!”

Freddie glanced at her anxiously. He was not at all sure now that he liked the
way she was looking or the tone in which she spoke. He was not a keenly
observant young man, but there did begin at this point to seep through to his
brain-centers a suspicion that all was not well.

“Let me pull myself together!” said Freddie warily to his immortal
soul. “I believe I’m getting the raspberry!” And there was
silence for a space.

The complexity of life began to weigh upon Freddie. Life was like one of those
shots at squash which seem so simple till you go to knock the cover off the
ball, when the ball sort of edges away from you and you miss it. Life, Freddie
began to perceive, was apt to have a nasty back-spin on it. He had never had
any doubt when he had started, that the only difficult part of his expedition
to America would be the finding of Jill. Once found, he had presumed that she
would be delighted to hear his good news and would joyfully accompany him home
on the next boat. It appeared now, however, that he had been too sanguine.
Optimist as he was, he had to admit that, as far as could be ascertained with
the naked eye, the jolly old binge might be said to have sprung a leak.

He proceeded to approach the matter from another angle.

“I say!”

“Yes?”

“You do love old Derek, don’t you? I mean to say, you know what I
mean, love him and all that sort of rot?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know! Oh, I say, come now! You must know! Pull up
your socks, old thing … I mean, pull yourself together! You either love
a chappie or you don’t.”

Jill smiled painfully.

“How nice it would be if everything were as simple and straightforward as
that. Haven’t you ever heard that the dividing line between love and hate
is just a thread? Poets have said so a great number of times.”

“Oh, poets!” said Freddie, dismissing the genus with a wave of the
hand. He had been compelled to read Shakespeare and all that sort of thing at
school, but it had left him cold, and since growing to man’s estate he
had rather handed the race of bards the mitten. He liked Doss Chiderdoss’
stuff in the Sporting Times, but beyond that he was not much of a lad
for poets.

“Can’t you understand a girl in my position not being able to make
up her mind whether she loves a man or despises him?”

Freddie shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It sounds dashed silly to me!”

“Then what’s the good of talking?” cried Jill. “It only
hurts.”

“But—won’t you come back to England?”

“No.”

“Oh, I say! Be a sport! Take a stab at it!”

Jill laughed again—another of those grating laughs which afflicted
Freddie with a sense of foreboding and failure. Something had undoubtedly gone
wrong with the works. He began to fear that at some point in the
conversation—just where he could not say—he had been less
diplomatic than he might have been.

“You speak as if you were inviting me to a garden-party! No, I
won’t take a stab at it. You’ve a lot to learn about women,
Freddie!”

“Women are rum!” conceded that perplexed ambassador.

Jill began to move away.

“Don’t go!” urged Freddie.

“Why not? What’s the use of talking any more? Have you ever broken
an arm or a leg, Freddie?”

“Yes,” said Freddie, mystified. “As a matter of fact, my last
year at Oxford, playing soccer for the college in a friendly game, some
blighter barged into me and I came down on my wrist. But …”

“It hurt?”

“Like the deuce!”

“And then it began to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it and
twist it and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal? I won’t
talk any more about Derek! I simply won’t! I’m all smashed up
inside, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get well again, but
at least I’m going to give myself a chance. I’m working as hard as
ever I can, and I’m forcing myself not to think of him. I’m in a
sling, Freddie, like your wrist, and I don’t want to be prodded. I hope
we shall see a lot of each other while you’re over here—you always
were the greatest dear in the world—but you mustn’t mention Derek
again, and you mustn’t ask me to go home. If you avoid those subjects,
we’ll be as happy as possible. And now I’m going to leave you to
talk to poor Nelly. She has been hovering round for the last ten minutes,
waiting for a chance to speak to you. She worships you, you know!”

Freddie started violently.

“Oh, I say! What rot!”

Jill had gone, and he was still gaping after her, when Nelly Bryant moved
towards him—shyly, like a worshiper approaching a shrine.

“Hello, Mr Rooke!” said Nelly.

“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” said Freddie.

Nelly fixed her large eyes on his face. A fleeting impression passed through
Freddie’s mind that she was looking unusually pretty this morning: nor
was the impression unjustified. Nelly was wearing for the first time a Spring
suit which was the outcome of hours of painful selection among the wares of a
dozen different stores, and the knowledge that the suit was just right seemed
to glow from her like an inner light. She felt happy: and her happiness had
lent an unwonted color to her face and a soft brightness to her eyes.

“How nice it is, your being here!”

Freddie waited for the inevitable question, the question with which Jill had
opened their conversation; but it did not come. He was surprised, but relieved.
He hated long explanations, and he was very doubtful whether loyalty to Jill
could allow him to give them to Nelly. His reason for being where he was had to
do so intimately with Jill’s most private affairs. A wave of gratitude to
Nelly swept through him when he realised that she was either incurious or else
too delicate-minded to show inquisitiveness.

As a matter of fact, it was delicacy that kept Nelly silent. Seeing Freddie
here at the theatre, she had, as is not uncommon with fallible mortals, put two
and two together and made the answer four when it was not four at all. She had
been deceived by circumstantial evidence. Jill, whom she had left in England
wealthy and secure, she had met again in New York penniless as the result of
some Stock Exchange cataclysm in which, she remembered with the vagueness with
which one recalls once-heard pieces of information, Freddie Rooke had been
involved. True, she seemed to recollect hearing that Freddie’s losses had
been comparatively slight, but his presence in the chorus of “The Rose of
America” seemed to her proof that after all they must have been
devastating. She could think of no other reason except loss of money which
could have placed Freddie in the position in which she now found him, so she
accepted it; and, with the delicacy which was innate in her and which a hard
life had never blunted, decided, directly she saw him, to make no allusion to
the disaster.

Such was Nelly’s view of the matter, and sympathy gave to her manner a
kind of maternal gentleness which acted on Freddie, raw from his late encounter
with Mr Johnson Miller and disturbed by Jill’s attitude in the matter of
poor old Derek, like a healing balm. His emotions were too chaotic for
analysis, but one thing stood out clear from the welter—the fact that he
was glad to be with Nelly as he had never been glad to be with a girl before,
and found her soothing as he had never supposed a girl could be soothing.

They talked desultorily of unimportant things, and every minute found Freddie
more convinced that Nelly was not as other girls. He felt that he must see more
of her.

“I say,” he said. “When this binge is over … when the
rehearsal finishes, you know, how about a bite to eat?”

“I should love it. I generally go to the Automat.”

“The how-much? Never heard of it.”

“In Times Square. It’s cheap, you know.”

“I was thinking of the Cosmopolis.”

“But that’s so expensive.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Much the same as any of the other places,
isn’t it?”

Nelly’s manner became more motherly than ever. She bent forward and
touched his arm affectionately.

“You haven’t to keep up any front with me,” she said gently.
“I don’t care whether you’re rich or poor or what. I mean, of
course I’m awfully sorry you’ve lost your money, but it makes it
all the easier for us to be real pals, don’t you think so?”

“Lost my money!”

“Well, I know you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t. I
wasn’t going to say anything about it, but, when you talked of the
Cosmopolis, I just had to. You lost your money in the same thing Jill Mariner
lost hers, didn’t you? I was sure you had, the moment I saw you here. Who
cares? Money isn’t everything!”

Astonishment kept Freddie silent for an instant: after that he refrained from
explanations of his own free will. He accepted the situation and rejoiced in
it. Like many other wealthy and modest young men, he had always had a sneaking
suspicion at the back of his mind that any girl who was decently civil to him
was so from mixed motives—or more likely, motives that were not even
mixed. Well, dash it, here was a girl who seemed to like him although under the
impression that he was broke to the wide. It was an intoxicating experience. It
made him feel a better chap. It fortified his self-respect.

“You know,” he said, stammering a little, for he found a sudden
difficulty in controlling his voice. “You’re a dashed good
sort!”

“I’m awfully glad you think so.”

There was a silence—as far, at least, as he and she were concerned. In
the outer world, beyond the piece of scenery under whose shelter they stood,
stirring things, loud and exciting things, seemed to be happening. Some sort of
an argument appeared to be in progress. The rasping voice of Mr Goble was
making itself heard from the unseen auditorium. These things they sensed
vaguely, but they were too occupied with each other to ascertain details.

“What was the name of that place again?” asked Freddie. “The
what-ho-something?”

“The Automat?”

“That’s the little chap! We’ll go there, shall we?”

“The food’s quite good. You go and help yourself out of
slot-machines, you know.”

“My favorite indoor sport!” said Freddie with enthusiasm.
“Hullo! What’s up? It sounds as if there were dirty work at the
cross-roads!”

The voice of the assistant stage-manager was calling—sharply excited,
agitation in every syllable.

“All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please! Mr Goble wants all
the chorus—gentlemen on the stage!”

“Well, cheerio for the present,” said Freddie. “I suppose
I’d better look into this.” He made his way onto the stage.

§ 3.

There is an insidious something about the atmosphere of a rehearsal of a
musical play which saps the finer feelings of those connected with it. Softened
by the gentle beauty of the Spring weather, Mr Goble had come to the Gotham
Theatre that morning in an excellent temper, firmly intending to remain in an
excellent temper all day. Five minutes of “The Rose of America” had
sent him back to the normal: and at ten minutes past eleven he was chewing his
cigar and glowering at the stage with all the sweetness gone from his soul.
When Wally Mason arrived at a quarter past eleven and dropped into the seat
beside him, the manager received him with a grunt and even omitted to offer him
a cigar. And when a New York theatrical manager does that, it is a certain sign
that his mood is of the worst.

One may find excuses for Mr Goble. “The Rose of America” would have
tested the equanimity of a far more amiable man: and on Mr Goble what Otis
Pilkington had called its delicate whimsicality jarred profoundly. He had been
brought up in the lower-browed school of musical comedy, where you shelved the
plot after the opening number and filled in the rest of the evening by bringing
on the girls in a variety of exotic costumes, with some good vaudeville
specialists to get the laughs. Mr Goble’s idea of a musical piece was
something embracing trained seals, acrobats, and two or three teams of skilled
buck-and-wing dancers, with nothing on the stage, from a tree to a lamp-shade,
which could not suddenly turn into a chorus-girl. The austere legitimateness of
“The Rose of America” gave him a pain in the neck. He loathed plot,
and “The Rose of America” was all plot.

Why, then, had the earthy Mr. Goble consented to associate himself with the
production of this intellectual play? Because he was subject, like all other
New York managers, to intermittent spasms of the idea that the time is ripe for
a revival of comic opera. Sometimes, lunching in his favorite corner in the
Cosmopolis grill-room, he would lean across the table and beg some other
manager to take it from him that the time was ripe for a revival of comic
opera—or more cautiously, that pretty soon the time was going to be ripe
for a revival of comic opera. And the other manager would nod his head and
thoughtfully stroke his three chins and admit that, sure as God made little
apples, the time was darned soon going to be ripe for a revival of comic opera.
And then they would stuff themselves with rich food and light big cigars and
brood meditatively.

With most managers these spasms, which may be compared to twinges of
conscience, pass as quickly as they come, and they go back to coining money
with rowdy musical comedies, quite contented. But Otis Pilkington, happening
along with the script of “The Rose of America” and the cash to back
it, had caught Mr Goble in the full grip of an attack, and all the arrangements
had been made before the latter emerged from the influence. He now regretted
his rash act.

“Say, listen,” he said to Wally, his gaze on the stage, his words
proceeding from the corner of his mouth, “you’ve got to stick
around with this show after it opens on the road. We’ll talk terms later.
But we’ve got to get it right, don’t care what it costs.
See?”

“You think it will need fixing?”

Mr Goble scowled at the unconscious artists, who were now going through a
particularly arid stretch of dialogue.

“Fixing! It’s all wrong! It don’t add up right! You’ll
have to rewrite it from end to end.”

“Well, I’ve got some ideas about it. I saw it played by amateurs
last summer, you know. I could make a quick job of it, if you want me to. But
will the author stand for it?”

Mr Goble allowed a belligerent eye to stray from the stage, and twisted it
round in Wally’s direction.

“Say, listen! He’ll stand for anything I say. I’m the little
guy that gives orders round here. I’m the big noise!”

As if in support of this statement he suddenly emitted a terrific bellow. The
effect was magical. The refined and painstaking artists on the stage stopped as
if they had been shot. The assistant stage-director bent sedulously over the
footlights, which had now been turned up, shading his eyes with the prompt
script.

“Take that over again!” shouted Mr Goble. “Yes, that speech
about life being like a water-melon. It don’t sound to me as though it
meant anything.” He cocked his cigar at an angle, and listened fiercely.
He clapped his hands. The action stopped again. “Cut it!” said Mr
Goble tersely.

“Cut the speech, Mr Goble?” queried the obsequious assistant
stage-director.

“Yes. Cut it. It don’t mean nothing!”

Down the aisle, springing from a seat at the back, shimmered Mr Pilkington,
wounded to the quick.

“Mr Goble! Mr Goble!”

“Well?”

“That is the best epigram in the play.”

“The best what?”

“Epigram. The best epigram in the play.”

Mr. Goble knocked the ash off his cigar. “The public don’t want
epigrams. The public don’t like epigrams. I’ve been in the show
business fifteen years, and I’m telling you! Epigrams give them a pain
under the vest. All right, get on.”

Mr Pilkington fluttered agitatedly. This was his first experience of Mr Goble
in the capacity of stage-director. It was the latter’s custom to leave
the early rehearsals of the pieces with which he was connected to a subordinate
producer, who did what Mr Goble called the breaking-in. This accomplished, he
would appear in person, undo most of the other’s work, make cuts, tell
the actors how to read their lines, and generally enjoy himself. Producing
plays was Mr Goble’s hobby. He imagined himself to have a genius in that
direction, and it was useless to try to induce him to alter any decision to
which he might have come. He regarded those who did not agree with him with the
lofty contempt of an Eastern despot.

Of this Mr Pilkington was not yet aware.

“But, Mr Goble … !”

The potentate swung irritably round on him.

“What is it? What is it? Can’t you see I’m
busy?”

“That epigram …”

“It’s out!”

“But … !”

“It’s out!”

“Surely,” protested Mr Pilkington almost tearfully, “I have a
voice …”

“Sure you have a voice,” retorted Mr Goble, “and you can use
it any old place you want, except in my theatre. Have all the voice you like!
Go round the corner and talk to yourself! Sing in your bath! But don’t
come using it here, because I’m the little guy that does all the talking
in this theatre! That fellow gets my goat,” he added complainingly to
Wally, as Mr Pilkington withdrew like a foiled python. “He don’t
know nothing about the show business, and he keeps butting in and making fool
suggestions. He ought to be darned glad he’s getting his first play
produced and not trying to teach me how to direct it.” He clapped his
hands imperiously. The assistant stage-manager bent over the footlights.
“What was that that guy said? Lord Finchley’s last speech. Take it
again.”

The gentleman who was playing the part of Lord Finchley, an English character
actor who specialized in London “nuts,” raised his eyebrows,
annoyed. Like Mr Pilkington, he had never before come into contact with Mr
Goble as stage-director, and, accustomed to the suaver methods of his native
land, he was finding the experience trying. He had not yet recovered from the
agony of having that water-melon line cut out of his part. It was the only good
line, he considered, that he had. Any line that is cut out of an actor’s
part is always the only good line he has.

“The speech about Omar Khayyam?” he enquired with suppressed
irritation.

“I thought that was the way you said it. All wrong! It’s Omar
of Khayyam.”

“I think you will find that Omar Khayyam is the—ah—generally
accepted version of the poet’s name,” said the portrayer of Lord
Finchley, adding beneath his breath. “You silly ass!”

“You say Omar of Khayyam,” bellowed Mr Goble.
“Who’s running this show, anyway?”

“Just as you please.”

Mr Goble turned to Wally.

“These actors …” he began, when Mr Pilkington appeared again
at his elbow.

“Mr Goble! Mr Goble!”

“What is it now?”

“Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet. His name was Khayyam.”

“That wasn’t the way I heard it,” said Mr Goble
doggedly. “Did you?” he enquired of Wally. “I thought
he was born at Khayyam.”

“You’re probably quite right,” said Wally, “but, if so,
everybody else has been wrong for a good many years. It’s usually
supposed that the gentleman’s name was Omar Khayyam. Khayyam, Omar J.
Born 1050 A.D., educated privately and at Bagdad University. Represented Persia
in the Olympic Games of 1072, winning the sitting high-jump and the
egg-and-spoon race. The Khayyams were quite a well-known family in Bagdad, and
there was a lot of talk when Omar, who was Mrs Khayyam’s pet son, took to
drink and writing poetry. They had had it all fixed for him to go into his
father’s date business.”

Mr Goble was impressed. He had a respect for Wally’s opinion, for Wally
had written “Follow the Girl” and look what a knock-out that had
been. He stopped the rehearsal again.

“Go back to that Khayyam speech!” he said, interrupting Lord
Finchley in mid-sentence.

The actor whispered a hearty English oath beneath his breath. He had been up
late last night, and, in spite of the fair weather, he was feeling a trifle on
edge.

“‘In the words of Omar of Khayyam’…”

Mr Goble clapped his hands.

“Cut that ‘of,’” he said. “The show’s too
long, anyway.”

And, having handled a delicate matter in masterly fashion, he leaned back in
his chair and chewed the end off another cigar.

For some minutes after this the rehearsal proceeded smoothly. If Mr Goble did
not enjoy the play, at least he made no criticisms except to Wally. To him he
enlarged from time to time on the pain which “The Rose of America”
caused him.

“How I ever came to put on junk like this beats me,” confessed Mr
Goble frankly.

“You probably saw that there was a good idea at the back of it,”
suggested Wally. “There is, you know. Properly handled, it’s an
idea that could be made into a success.”

“What would you do with it?”

“Oh, a lot of things,” said Wally warily. In his younger and
callower days he had sometimes been rash enough to scatter views on the
reconstruction of plays broadcast, to find them gratefully absorbed and acted
upon and treated as a friendly gift. His affection for Mr Goble was not so
overpowering as to cause him to give him ideas for nothing now. “Any time
you want me to fix it for you, I’ll come along. About one and a half per
cent of the gross would meet the case, I think.”

Mr Goble faced him, registering the utmost astonishment and horror.

“One and a half per cent for fixing a show like this? Why, darn it,
there’s hardly anything to do to it!
It’s—it’s—in!”

“You called it junk just now.”

“Well, all I meant was that it wasn’t the sort of thing I cared for
myself. The public will eat it! Take it from me, the time is just about ripe
for a revival of comic opera.”

“This one will want all the reviving you can give it. Better use a
pulmotor.”

“But that long boob, that Pilkington … he would never stand for my
handing you one and a half per cent.”

“I thought you were the little guy who arranged things round
here.”

“But he’s got money in the show.”

“Well, if he wants to get any out, he’d better call in somebody to
rewrite it. You don’t have to engage me if you don’t want to. But I
know I could make a good job of it. There’s just one little twist the
thing needs and you would have quite a different piece.”

“What’s that?” enquired Mr Goble casually.

“Oh, just a little … what shall I say?… a little touch of
what-d’you-call-it and a bit of thingummy. You know the sort of thing!
That’s all it wants.”

Mr Goble gnawed his cigar, baffled.

“You think so, eh?” he said at length.

“And perhaps a suspicion of je-ne-sais-quoi,” added Wally.

Mr Goble worried his cigar, and essayed a new form of attack.

“You’ve done a lot of work for me,” he said. “Good
work!”

“Glad you liked it,” said Wally.

“You’re a good kid! I like having you around. I was half thinking
of giving you a show to do this Fall. Corking book. French farce. Ran two years
in Paris. But what’s the good, if you want the earth?”

“Always useful, the earth. Good thing to have.”

“See here, if you’ll fix up this show for half of one per cent,
I’ll give you the other to do.”

“You shouldn’t slur your words so. For a moment I thought you said
‘half of one per cent.’ One and a half of course you really
said.”

“If you won’t take half, you don’t get the other.”

“All right,” said Wally. “There are lots of other managers in
New York. Haven’t you seen them popping about? Rich, enterprising men,
and all of them love me like a son.”

“Make it one per cent,” said Mr Goble, “and I’ll see if
I can fix it with Pilkington.”

“One and a half.”

“Oh, damn it, one and a half, then,” said Mr Goble morosely.
“What’s the good of splitting straws?”

“Forgotten Sports of the Past—Splitting the Straw. All right. If
you drop me a line to that effect, legibly signed with your name, I’ll
wear it next my heart. I shall have to go now. I have a date. Good-bye. Glad
everything’s settled and everybody’s happy.”

For some moments after Wally had left, Mr Goble sat hunched up in his
orchestra-chair, smoking sullenly, his mood less sunny than ever. Living in a
little world of sycophants, he was galled by the off-hand way in which Wally
always treated him. There was something in the latter’s manner which
seemed to him sometimes almost contemptuous. He regretted the necessity of
having to employ him. There was, of course, no real necessity why he should
have employed Wally. New York was full of librettists who would have done the
work equally well for half the money, but, like most managers, Mr Goble had the
mental processes of a sheep. “Follow the Girl” was the last
outstanding musical success in New York theatrical history: Wally had written
it: therefore nobody but Wally was capable of rewriting “The Rose of
America.” The thing had for Mr Goble the inevitability of Fate. Except
for deciding mentally that Wally had swelled head, there was nothing to be
done.

Having decided that Wally had swelled head and not feeling much better, Mr
Goble concentrated his attention on the stage. A good deal of action had taken
place there during recently concluded business talk, and the unfortunate
Finchley was back again, playing another of his scenes. Mr Goble glared at Lord
Finchley. He did not like him, and he did not like the way he was speaking his
lines.

The part of Lord Finchley was a non-singing role. It was a type part. Otis
Pilkington had gone to the straight stage to find an artist, and had secured
the not uncelebrated Wentworth Hill, who had come over from London to play in
an English comedy which had just closed. The newspapers had called the play
thin, but had thought that Wentworth Hill was an excellent comedian. Mr Hill
thought so too, and it was consequently a shock to his already disordered
nerves when a bellow from the auditorium stopped him in the middle of one of
his speeches and a rasping voice informed him that he was doing it all wrong.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Hill, quietly but dangerously,
stepping to the footlights.

“All wrong!” repeated Mr Goble.

“Really?” Wentworth Hill, who a few years earlier had spent several
terms at Oxford University before being sent down for aggravated
disorderliness, had brought little away with him from that seat of learning
except the Oxford manner. This he now employed upon Mr Goble with an icy
severity which put the last touch to the manager’s fermenting state of
mind. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me just how you think
that part should be played?”

Mr Goble marched down the aisle.

“Speak out to the audience,” he said, stationing himself by the
orchestra pit. “You’re turning your head away all the darned
time.”

“I may be wrong,” said Mr Hill, “but I have played a certain
amount, don’t you know, in pretty good companies, and I was always under
the impression that one should address one’s remarks to the person one
was speaking to, not deliver a recitation to the gallery. I was taught that
that was the legitimate method.”

The word touched off all the dynamite in Mr Goble. Of all things in the theatre
he detested most the “legitimate method.” His idea of producing was
to instruct the cast to come down to the footlights and hand it to ’em.
These people who looked up stage and talked to the audience through the backs
of their necks revolted him.

“Legitimate! That’s a hell of a thing to be! Where do you get that
legitimate stuff? You aren’t playing Ibsen!”

“Nor am I playing a knockabout vaudeville sketch.”

“Don’t talk back at me!”

“Kindly don’t shout at me! Your voice is unpleasant enough
without your raising it.”

Open defiance was a thing which Mr Goble had never encountered before, and for
a moment it deprived him of breath. He recovered it, however, almost
immediately.

“You’re fired!”

“On the contrary,” said Mr Hill, “I’m resigning.”
He drew a green-covered script from his pocket and handed it with an air to the
pallid assistant stage-director. Then, more gracefully than ever Freddie Rooke
had managed to move downstage under the tuition of Johnson Miller, he moved
upstage to the exit. “I trust that you will be able to find someone who
will play the part according to your ideas!”

“I’ll find,” bellowed Mr Goble at his vanishing back,
“a chorus-man who’ll play it a damned sight better than you!”
He waved to the assistant stage-director. “Send the chorus-men on the
stage!”

“All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please!” shrilled
the assistant stage-director, bounding into the wings like a retriever.

“Mr Goble wants all the chorus-gentlemen on the stage!”

There was a moment, when the seven male members of “The Rose of
America” ensemble lined up self-consciously before his gleaming eyes,
when Mr Goble repented of his brave words. An uncomfortable feeling passed
across his mind that Fate had called his bluff and that he would not be able to
make good. All chorus-men are exactly alike, and they are like nothing else on
earth. Even Mr Goble, anxious as he was to overlook their deficiencies, could
not persuade himself that in their ranks stood even an adequate Lord Finchley.
And then, just as a cold reaction from his fervid mood was about to set in, he
perceived that Providence had been good to him. There, at the extreme end of
the line, stood a young man who, as far as appearance went, was the ideal Lord
Finchley,—as far as appearance went, a far better Lord Finchley than the
late Mr Hill. He beckoned imperiously.

“You at the end!”

“Me?” said the young man.

“Yes, you. What’s your name?”

“Rooke. Frederick Rooke, don’t you know.”

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Eh? Oh, yes, absolutely!”

“Ever played a part before?”

“Part? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, in amateur theatricals, you know,
and all that sort of rot.”

His words were music to Mr Goble’s ears. He felt that his Napoleonic
action had justified itself by success. His fury left him. If he had been
capable of beaming, one would have said that he beamed at Freddie.

“Well, you play the part of Lord Finchley from now on. Come to my office
this afternoon for your contract. Clear the stage. We’ve wasted enough
time.”

Five minutes later, in the wings, Freddie, receiving congratulations from Nelly
Bryant, asserted himself.

“Not the Automat today, I think, what! Now that I’m a
jolly old star and all that sort of thing, it can’t be done. Directly
this is over we’ll roll round to the Cosmopolis. A slight celebration is
indicated, what? Right ho! Rally round, dear heart, rally round!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

§ 1.

The lobby of the Hotel Cosmopolis is the exact center of New York, the spot
where at certain hours one is sure of meeting everybody one knows. The first
person that Nelly and Freddie saw, as they passed through the swing doors, was
Jill. She was seated on the chair by the big pillar in the middle of the hall.

“What ho!” said Freddie. “Waiting for someone?”

“Hullo, Freddie. Yes, I’m waiting for Wally Mason. I got a note
from him this morning, asking me to meet him here. I’m a little early. I
haven’t congratulated you yet. You’re wonderful!”

“Thanks, old girl. Our young hero is making pretty hefty strides
in his chosen profesh, what! Mr Rooke, who appears quite simple and unspoiled
by success, replied to our representative’s enquiry as to his future
plans that he proposed to stagger into the grill-room and imbibe about eighteen
dollars’ worth of lunch. Yes, it is a bit of all right, taking it
by and large, isn’t it? I mean to say, the salary, the jolly old salary,
you know … quite a help when a fellow’s lost all his money!”

Jill was surprised to observe that the Last of the Rookes was contorting his
face in an unsightly manner that seemed to be an attempt at a wink, pregnant
with hidden meaning. She took her cue dutifully, though without understanding.

“Oh, yes,” she replied.

Freddie seemed grateful. With a cordial “Cheerio!” he led Nelly off
to the grill-room.

“I didn’t know Jill knew Mr Mason,” said Nelly, as they sat
down at their table.

“No?” said Freddie absently, running an experienced eye over the
bill-of-fare. He gave an elaborate order. “What was that? Oh, absolutely!
Jill and I and Wally were children together.”

“How funny you should all be together again like this.”

“Yes. Oh, good Lord!”

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s nothing. I meant to send a cable to a pal of mine in England.
I’ll send it after lunch.”

Freddie took out his handkerchief, and tied a knot in it. He was slightly
ashamed of the necessity of taking such a precaution, but it was better to be
on the safe side. His interview with Jill at the theatre had left him with the
conviction that there was only one thing for him to do, and that was to cable
poor old Derek to forget impending elections and all the rest of it and pop
over to America at once. He knew that he would never have the courage to
re-open the matter with Jill himself. As an ambassador he was a spent force. If
Jill was to be wooed from her mood of intractability, Derek was the only man to
do it. Freddie was convinced that, seeing him in person, she would melt and
fall into his arms. Too dashed absurd, Freddie felt, two loving hearts being
separated like this and all that sort of thing. He replaced his handkerchief in
his pocket, relieved, and concentrated himself on the entertainment of Nelly. A
simple task, for, the longer he was with this girl, the easier did it seem to
talk to her.

Jill, left alone in the lobby, was finding the moments pass quite pleasantly.
She liked watching the people as they came in. One or two of the girls of the
company fluttered in like birds, were swooped upon by their cavaliers, and
fluttered off to the grill-room. The red-headed Babe passed her with a genial
nod, and, shortly after, Lois Denham, the willowy recipient of sunbursts from
her friend Izzy of the hat-checks, came by in company with a sallow, hawk-faced
young man with a furtive eye, whom Jill took—correctly—to be Izzy
himself. Lois was looking pale and proud, and from the few words which came to
Jill’s ears as they neared her, seemed to be annoyed at having been kept
waiting.

It was immediately after this that the swing-doors revolved rather more
violently than usual, and Mr Goble burst into view.

There was a cloud upon Mr Goble’s brow, seeming to indicate that his
grievance against life had not yet been satisfactorily adjusted: but it passed
as he saw Jill, and he came up to her with what he would probably have claimed
to be an ingratiating smile.

“Hello!” said Mr Goble. “All alone?”

Jill was about to say that the condition was merely temporary when the manager
went on.

“Come and have a bit of lunch.”

“Thank you very much,” said Jill, with the politeness of dislike,
“but I’m waiting for someone.”

“Chuck him!” advised Mr Goble cordially.

“No, thanks, I couldn’t, really.”

The cloud began to descend again upon Mr Goble’s brow. He was accustomed
to having these invitations of his treated as royal commands.

“Come along!”

“I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

Mr Goble subjected her to a prolonged stare, seemed about to speak, changed his
mind, and swung off moodily in the direction of the grill-room. He was not used
to this sort of treatment.