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Title: The Little Warrior
       (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless)

Author: P. G. Wodehouse

Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6837]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on January 29, 2003]
[Date last updated: December 5, 2005]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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




Produced by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>





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. Cafe 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 roil
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 hack 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 fog 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