Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsGrand Magazine, October 1920
SYNOPSIS
Jill Mariner, half English, half American, and wholly charming, has become engaged to Sir Derek Underhill, a rising young politician. Derek’s mother, known among her relatives as the Family Curse, rushes home from the Riviera to inspect Jill, and Freddy Rooke, an inconsequent but good-hearted young man-about-town, gives a dinner in their honour. Lady Underhill disapproves of Freddy, immediately dislikes Jill, and generally freezes the company. After dinner they go on to see a new play, which proves insufferably dull. Jill, who is impulsive, is led into a discussion of it with a young man sitting next to her and presently discovers to her horror that he is the author of the play she has been abusing. He also admits having known her in their childhood, but before she can discover his identity, Derek intervenes, much shocked that she should talk to a stranger. In the middle of his lecture on the proprieties there is a cry of fire.
CHAPTER VII.
“YOUR NAME WAS JILL MARINER”
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.
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.
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 on to 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.
“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 about to do it, I’d better go 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.
“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.
“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.
“Where’s Sir Portwood Chester?” inquired her companion of the stage-hand, who hurried beside them.
“ ’Opped it!” replied the other briefly.
“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 II. 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.
“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 here, you’ll most certainly be fried on both sides. . . . But, tell me. You spoke of 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. To-morrow, if you wish it and if they’ve cooled off sufficiently, you can come and sit on the ruins. Good-night!”
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 realised.
“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, 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 to-day, 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 VIII.
THE BIRD OF THE DIFFICULT EYE
Jill was hardly aware that he had asked her a question. She was suffering that momentary sense of unreality which comes to us when the years roll away, and we are thrown abruptly back into the days of our childhood. The logical side of her mind was quite aware that there was nothing remarkable in the fact that Wally Mason, who had been to her all these years a boy in an Eton suit, should now present himself as a grown man. But for all that the transformation had something of the effect of a conjuring trick. It was not only the alteration in his appearance that startled her: it was the amazing change in his personality.
He had been the bête 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.
She glanced down the Embankment. Close by, to the left, Waterloo Bridge loomed up, dark and massive against the steel-grey sky. A tram-car, full of home-bound travellers, clattered past over rails that shone with the peculiarly frost-bitten gleam that seems to herald snow. 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.
“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 to-night 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 awhile 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. Still, I’ve gained experience, which they say is just as good as cash, and I’ve enough money left to pay the cheque, at any rate, so come along.”
In the supper-room of the Savoy Hotel there was, as anticipated, food and light and music. It was still early, and the theatres had not yet emptied themselves, so that the big room was as yet but half full. Wally Mason had found a table in the corner, and proceeded to order with the concentration of a hungry man.
“Forgive my dwelling so tensely on the bill-of-fare,” he said, when the waiter had gone. “You don’t know what it means to one in my condition to have to choose between poulet en casserole and kidneys au maître d’hôtel. A man’s cross-roads!”
Jill smiled happily across the table at him.
“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 childish 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 pages. 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 pockets?”
“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.
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 behaviour 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.
“A wonderful thing, food!” he said, apologetically. “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.”
“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 about, but we crept silently out of the neighbourhood 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 anyone any good except the fellow who had the last hit. 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.
“What’s the matter? Do you know her? Somebody you don’t want to meet?”
“It’s Lady Underhill! And Derek’s with her!”
CHAPTER IX.
DEREK RIDES A HIGH HORSE
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!”
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 shouldn’t be worried.”
“Derek will be awfully cross.”
Wally’s good-humoured 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?”
“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 civilised 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 criticised him, presumed. 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 criticise 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 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 inquired 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.” Wally scrawled his name across the bill 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.
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 lift.
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, good-bye, then.”
“Good-bye.”
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?
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.
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 the 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 soliloquising. “I simply cannot understand you. After what happened before dinner to-night, 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 behaviour 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 women 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 unforgivable 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 on to 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 behaviour 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 house 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 recognised 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.
CHAPTER X.
FREDDIE THE DUTCH UNCLE
Arriving at the Albany he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in a deep armchair. 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. He had finished reading a sporting paper, 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 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 sympathised with affliction when it presented itself to his notice.
“Something on your mind, old bean?” he inquired 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 someone. And Freddie, moreover, was an old friend of Jill and the man who had introduced him to her.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m listening, old top,” said Freddie. “Release the film.”
Derek drew at his cigar and watched the smoke as it curled to the ceiling.
“It’s about Jill.”
Freddie signified his interest by wriggling still further sideways.
“Jill, eh?”
“Freddie, she’s so damned impulsive!”
Freddie nearly rolled out of his chair. This, he took it, was what writing-chappies called a coincidence.
“Rummy you should say that,” he ejaculated. “I was telling her exactly the same thing myself only this evening.” He hesitated. “I fancy I can see what you’re driving at, old thing. The watchword is ‘What ho, the mater!’ yes, no? You’ve begun to get a sort of idea that if Jill doesn’t watch her step she’s apt to sink pretty low in the betting, what? I know exactly what you mean! You and I know all right that Jill’s a topper. But one can see that to your mater she might seem a bit different. I mean to say your jolly old mater only judging by first impressions, and the meeting not having come off quite as scheduled. . . I say, old man,” he broke off, “fearfully sorry and all that about that business. You know what I mean! Wouldn’t have had it happen for the world. I take it the mater was a trifle peeved? Not to say perturbed and chagrined? I seemed to notice it at dinner.”
“She was furious, of course. She did not refer to the matter when we were alone together, but there was no need to. I knew what she was thinking.”
Derek threw away his cigar. Freddie noted this evidence of an overwrought soul—the thing was only a quarter smoked, and it was a dashed good brand, mark you—with concern.
“The whole thing,” he conceded, “was a bit unfortunate.” Derek began to pace the room.
“Freddie.”
“On the spot, old man!”
“Something’s got to be done!”
“Absolutely!” Freddie nodded, solemnly. He had taken this matter greatly to heart. Derek was his best friend, and he had always been extremely fond of Jill. It hurt him to see things going wrong. “I’ll tell you what, old bean. Let me handle this binge for you.”
“You?”
“Me! The Final Rooke!” He jumped up and leaned against the mantelpiece. “I’m the lad to do it. I’ve known Jill for years. She’ll listen to me. I’ll talk to her like a Dutch uncle and make her understand the general scheme of things. I’ll take her out to tea to-morrow and slang her in no uncertain voice! Leave the whole thing to me, laddie!”
Derek considered.
“It might do some good,” he said.
“Good?” said Freddie. “It’s It, dear boy! It’s a wheeze! You toddle off to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll fix the whole thing for you!”
CHAPTER XI.
BILL THE PARROT
There are streets in London into which the sun seems never to penetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to be supposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well on note-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it. The majority, however, are in the mean neighbourhoods of the great railway termini, and appear to offer no compensation whatever. They are lean, furtive streets, grey as the January sky with a sort of arrested decay. They smell of cabbage and are much prowled over by vagrom cats. At night they are empty and dark, but by day they achieve a certain animation through the intermittent appearance of women in aprons, who shake rugs out of the front doors or, emerging from areas, go down to the public-house on the corner with jugs to fetch the supper beer. In almost every ground-floor window there is a card announcing that furnished lodgings may be had within. You will find these streets by the score if you leave the main thoroughfares and take a short cut on your way to Euston, to Paddington, or to Waterloo. But the dingiest, and deadliest, and most depressing lie round about Victoria. And Daubeny Street, Pimlico, is one of the worst of them all.
On the afternoon following the events recorded, a girl was dressing in the ground-floor room of No. 9 Daubeny Street. A tray, bearing the remains of a late breakfast, stood on the rickety table beside a bowl of wax flowers. From beneath the table peeped the green cover of a copy of Variety. A grey parrot in a cage by the window cracked seed and looked out into the room with a satirical eye. He had seen all this so many times before—Nelly Bryant arraying herself in her smartest clothes to go out and besiege agents in their offices off the Strand. It happened every day. In an hour or two she would come back as usual, say “Oh, Gee!” in a tired sort of voice, and then Bill the parrot’s day proper would begin. He was a bird who liked the sound of his own voice, and he never got the chance of a really sustained conversation till Nelly returned in the evening.
“Who cares?” said Bill, and cracked another seed.
If rooms are an indication of the characters of their occupants, Nelly Bryant came well out of the test of her surroundings. Nothing can make a London furnished room much less horrible than it intends to be, but Nelly had done her best. The furniture, what there was of it, was of that lodging-house kind which resembles nothing else in the world. But a few little touches here and there, a few instinctively tasteful alterations in the general scheme of things, had given the room almost a cosy air. Later on, with the gas lit, it would achieve something approaching homeliness. Nelly, like many another nomad, had taught herself to accomplish a good deal with poor material. On the road in America she had sometimes made even a bedroom in a small hotel tolerably comfortable, than which there is no greater achievement. Oddly, considering her life, she had a genius for domesticity.
To-day, not for the first time, Nelly was feeling unhappy. The face that looked back at her out of the mirror at which she was arranging her most becoming hat was weary. It was only a moderately pretty face, but loneliness and underfeeding had given it a wistful expression that had charm. Unfortunately, it was not the sort of charm which made a great appeal to the stout, whisky-nourished men who sat behind paper-littered tables, smoking cigars, in the rooms marked “Private” in the offices of theatrical agents. Nelly had been out of a “shop” now for many weeks—ever since, in fact, Follow The Girl had finished its long run at the Regal Theatre.
Follow The Girl, an American musical comedy, had come over from New York with an American company, of which Nelly had been a humble unit, and, after playing a year in London and some weeks in the number one towns, had returned to New York. It did not cheer Nelly up in the long evening in Daubeny Street to reflect that, if she had wished, she could have gone home with the rest of the company. A mad impulse had seized her to try her luck in London, and here she was now, marooned.
“Who cares?” said Bill.
For a bird who enjoyed talking he was a little limited in his remarks and apt to repeat himself.
“I do, you poor fish!” said Nelly, completing her manœuvres with the hat and turning to the cage. “It’s all right for you—you have a swell time with nothing to do but sit there and eat seed—but how do you suppose I enjoy tramping around looking for work and never finding any?” She picked up her gloves. “Oh, well!” she said. “Wish me luck!”
“Good-bye, boy!” said the parrot, clinging to the bars.
Nelly thrust a finger into the cage and scratched his head.
“Anxious to get rid of me, aren’t you? Well, so long.”
“Good-bye, boy!”
“All right, I’m going. Be good!”
“Woof-woof-woof!” barked Bill the parrot, not committing himself to any promises.
For some moments after Nelly had gone he remained hunched on his perch contemplating the infinite. Then he sauntered along to the seed-box and took some more light nourishment. He always liked to spread his meals out, to make them last longer. A drink of water to wash the food down, and he returned to the middle of the cage, where he proceeded to conduct a few intimate researches with his beak under his left wing. After which he mewed like a cat and relapsed into silent meditation once more. He closed his eyes and pondered on his favourite problem—Why was he a parrot? This was always good for an hour or so, and it was three o’clock before he had come to his customary decision that he didn’t know. Then, exhausted by brain-work and feeling a trifle hipped by the silence of the room, he looked about him for some way of jazzing existence up a little. It occurred to him that if he barked again it might help.
“Woof-woof-woof!”
Good as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. It was not real excitement. Something rather more dashing seemed to him to be indicated. He hammered for a moment or two on the floor of his cage, ate a mouthful of the newspaper there, and stood with his head on one side, chewing thoughtfully. It didn’t taste as good as usual. He suspected Nelly of having changed his Daily Mail for the Daily Express or something. He swallowed the piece of paper, and was struck by the thought that a little climbing exercise might be what his soul demanded. (You hang on by your beak and claws and work your way up to the roof. It sounds tame, but it’s something to do.) He tried it. And, as he gripped the door of the cage, it swung open. Bill the parrot now perceived that this was going to be one of those days. He had not had a bit of luck like this for months.
For awhile he sat regarding the open door. Unless excited by outside influences he never did anything in a hurry. Then proceeding cautiously, he passed out into the room. He had been out there before, but always chaperoned by Nelly. This was something quite different. It was an adventure. He hopped on to the window-sill. There was a ball of yellow wool there, but he had lunched and could eat nothing. He cast around in his mind for something to occupy him, and perceived suddenly that the world was larger than he had supposed. Apparently there was a lot of it outside the room. How long this had been going on he did not know, but obviously it was a thing to be investigated. The window was open at the bottom, and just outside the window were what he took to be the bars of another and larger cage. As a matter of fact they were the railings which afforded a modest protection to No. 9. They ran the length of the house, and were much used by small boys as a means of rattling sticks. One of these stick-rattlers passed as Bill stood there looking down. The noise startled him for a moment, then he seemed to come to the conclusion that this sort of thing was to be expected if you went out into the great world, and that a parrot who intended to see life must not allow himself to be deterred by trifles. He crooned a little, and finally, stepping in a stately way over the window-sill with his toes turned in at right-angles, caught at the top of the railing with his beak, and proceeded to lower himself. Arrived at the level of the street he stood looking out.
A dog trotted up, spied him, and came up to sniff.
“Good-bye, boy!” said Bill chattily.
The dog was taken aback. Hitherto, in his limited experience, birds had been birds and men men. Here was a blend of the two. What was to be done about it? He barked tentatively, then, finding that nothing disastrous ensued, pushed his nose between two of the bars and barked again. Anyone who knew Bill could have told him that he was asking for it, and he got it. Bill leaned forward and nipped his nose. The dog started back with a howl of agony. He was learning something new every minute.
“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill, sardonically.
He perceived trousered legs, four of them, and cocking his eye upwards, saw that two men of the lower orders stood before him. They were gazing down at him in the stolid manner peculiar to the proletariat of London in the presence of the unusual. For some minutes they stood drinking him in, then one of them gave judgment.
“It’s a parrot!” He removed a pipe from his mouth and pointed with the stem. “A perishin’ parrot, that is, ’Erb.”
“Ah!” said ’Erb, a man of few words.
“A parrot,” proceeded the other. He was seeing clearer into the matter every moment. “That’s a parrot, that is, ’Erb. My brother Joe’s wife’s sister ’ad one of ’em. Come from abroad, they do. My brother Joe’s wife’s sister ’ad one of ’em. Red-’aired gel she was. Married a feller down at the Docks. She ’ad one of ’em. Parrots they’re called.”
He bent down for a closer inspection and inserted a finger through the railings. ’Erb abandoned his customary taciturnity and spoke words of warning.
“Tike care ’e don’t sting yer, ’Enry!”
Henry seemed wounded.
“Woddyer mean sting me? I know all abart parrots, I do. My brother Joe’s wife’s sister ’ad one of ’em. They don’t ’urt yer, not if you’re kind to ’em. You know yer pals when you see ’em, don’t yer, mate?” he went on, addressing Bill, who was contemplating the finger with one half-closed eye.
“Good-bye, boy,” said the parrot, evading the point.
“Jear that?” cried Henry delightedly. “ ‘Goo’-bye, boy!’ ’Uman they are!”
“ ’E’ll ’ave a piece out of yer finger,” warned ’Erb, the suspicious.
“Wot, ’im!” Henry’s voice was indignant. He seemed to think that his reputation as an expert on parrots had been challenged. “ ’E wouldn’t ’ave no piece out of my finger.”
“Bet yer a narf-pint ’e’ll ’ave a piece out of yer finger,” persisted the sceptic.
“No blinkin’ parrot’s goin’ to ’ave no piece out of no finger of mine! My brother Joe’s wife’s sister’s parrot never ’ad no piece out of no finger of mine!” He extended the finger further and waggled it enticingly beneath Bill’s beak. “Cheerio, matey!” he said winningly. “Polly want a nut?”
Whether it was mere indolence, or whether the advertised docility of that other parrot belonging to Henry’s brother’s wife’s sister had caused him to realise that there was a certain standard of good conduct for his species, one cannot say: but for awhile Bill merely contemplated temptation with a detached eye.
“See!” said Henry.
“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill.
“Wow-wow-wow!” yapped the dog, suddenly returning to the scene and going on with the argument at the point where he had left off.
The effect on Bill was catastrophic. Ever a high-strung bird, he lost completely the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere and the better order of parrot. His nerves were shocked, and, as always under such conditions, his impulse was to bite blindly. He bit, and Henry—one feels sorry for Henry: he was a well-meaning man—leaped back with a loud howl.
“That’ll be ’arf-a-pint,” said ’Erb, always the business man.
There was a lull in the rapid action. The dog, mumbling softly to himself, had moved away again and was watching affairs from the edge of the sidewalk. ’Erb, having won his point, was silent once more. Henry sucked his finger. Bill, having met the world squarely and shown it what was what, stood where he was, whistling nonchalantly.
Henry removed his finger from his mouth.
“Lend me the loan of that stick of yours, ’Erb!” he said tensely.
’Erb silently yielded up the stout stick which was his inseparable companion. Henry, a vastly different man from the genial saunterer of a moment ago, poked wildly through the railings. Bill, panic-stricken now and wishing for nothing better than to be back in his cosy cage, shrieked loudly for help. And Freddie Rooke, rounding the corner with Jill, stopped dead and turned pale.
“Good God!” said Freddie.
CHAPTER XII.
WHITE SPATS
In pursuance of his overnight promise to Derek, Freddie Rooke had got in touch with Jill through the medium of the telephone immediately after breakfast, and had arranged to call at Ovington Square in the afternoon. Arrived there, he found Jill with a telegram in her hand. Her Uncle Christopher, who had been enjoying a breath of sea-air down at Brighton, was returning by an afternoon train, and Jill had suggested that Freddie should accompany her to Victoria, pick up Uncle Chris, and escort him home. Freddie, whose idea had been a tête-à-tête involving a brotherly lecture on impetuosity, had demurred, but had given way in the end: and they had set out to walk to Victoria together. Their way had lain through Daubeny Street, and they turned the corner just as the brutal onslaught on the innocent Henry had occurred. Bill’s shrieks, which were of an appalling timbre, brought them to a halt.
“What is it?” cried Jill.
“It sounds like a murder!”
“Nonsense!”
“I don’t know, you know—this is the sort of street chappies are murdering people in all the time.”
They caught sight of the group in front of them and were reassured. Nobody could possibly be looking so aloof and distrait as ’Erb if there were a murder going on.
“It’s a bird!”
“It’s a jolly old parrot. See it? Just inside the railings.”
A red-hot wave of rage swept over Jill. Whatever her defects—and already this story has shown her far from perfect—she had the excellent quality of loving animals and blazing into fury when she saw them ill-treated. At least three draymen were going about London with burning ears as the result of what she had said to them on discovering them abusing their patient horses. Strictly speaking, Bill the parrot was not an animal, but he counted as one with Jill, and she sped down Daubeny Street to his rescue—Freddie, spatted and hatted and trousered as became the man of fashion, following disconsolately, ruefully aware that he did not look his best sprinting like that. But Jill was cutting out a warm pace, and he held his hat on with one neatly-gloved hand and did what he could to keep up.
Jill reached the scene of battle, and stopping, eyed Henry with a baleful glare. We, who have seen Henry in his calmer moments and know him for the good fellow he was, are aware that he was more sinned against than sinning. If there is any spirit of justice in us, we are pro-Henry. In his encounter with Bill the parrot Henry undoubtedly had right on his side. His friendly overtures, made in the best spirit of kindliness, had been repulsed. He had been severely bitten. And he had lost half-a-pint of beer to ’Erb. As impartial judges we have no other course before us than to wish Henry luck and bid him go to it. But Jill, who had not seen the opening stages of the affair, thought far otherwise. She merely saw in Henry a great brute of a man poking at a defenceless bird with a stick.
She turned to Freddie, who had come up at a gallop and was wondering why the deuce this sort of thing happened to him out of a city of six millions.
“Make him stop, Freddie!”
“Oh, I say, you know, what!”
“Can’t you see he’s hurting the poor thing? Make him leave off! Brute!” she added to Henry (for whom one’s heart bleeds), as he jabbed once again at his adversary.
Freddie stepped reluctantly up to Henry and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Look here, you know, you can’t do this sort of thing, you know!” said Freddie.
Henry raised a scarlet face.
“ ’Oo are you?” he demanded.
“Well—” Freddie hesitated. It seemed silly to offer the fellow one of his cards. “Well, as a matter of fact, my name’s Rooke. . . .”
“And who,” pursued Henry, “arsked you to come shoving your ugly mug in ’ere?”
“Well, if you put it that way . . .”
“ ’E comes messing about,” said Henry, complainingly, addressing the universe, “and interfering in what don’t concern ’im and mucking around and interfering and messing about . . . Why,” he broke off in a sudden burst of eloquence, “I could eat two of you wiv me tea, even if you ’ave got white spats!”
Here ’Erb, who had contributed nothing to the conversation, remarked, “Ah!” and expectorated on the sidewalk.
“Just because you’ve got white spats,” proceeded Henry, on whose sensitive mind these adjuncts of the costume of the well-dressed man-about-town seemed to have made a deep and unfavourable impression, “you think you can come mucking around and messing abart and interfering and mucking around! This bird’s bit me in the finger—and ’ere’s the finger if you don’t believe me—and I’m going to twist ’is neck if all the perishers with white spats in London come messing abart and mucking around.”
And Henry shoved the stick energetically once more through the railings.
Jill darted forward. Always a girl who believed that if you want a thing well done you must do it yourself, she had applied to Freddie for assistance merely as a matter of form. Freddie’s policy in this affair was obviously to rely on the magic of speech, and any magic his speech might have had was manifestly offset by the fact that he was wearing white spats and that Henry, apparently, belonged to some sort of league or society which had for its main object the discouragement of white spats. She seized the stick and wrenched it out of Henry’s hand.
“Woof-woof-woof!” said Bill the parrot.
No dispassionate auditor could have failed to detect the nasty ring of sarcasm. It stung Henry. He was not normally a man who believed in violence to the gentler sex outside a clump on the head of his missus when the occasion seemed to demand it; but now he threw away the guiding principles of a lifetime and turned on Jill like a tiger.
“Gimme that stick!”
“Get back!”
(“Here, I say, you know!” said Freddie.)
Henry, now thoroughly overwrought, made a rush at Jill; and Jill, who had a straight eye, hit him accurately on the side of the head.
“Goo!” said Henry, and sat down.
And then from behind Jill a voice spoke.
“What’s all this?”
A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty space.
“This won’t do!” said the policeman.
’Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech.
“She ’it ’im!”
The policeman looked at Jill. She was well dressed but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffragette disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the peace.
“Your name, please, and address, miss?” he said.
A girl in blue with a big hat had come up and was standing staring open-mouthed at the group. At the sight of her Bill the parrot uttered a shriek of welcome. Nelly Bryant had returned.
“Mariner,” said Jill, pale and bright-eyed. “I live at No. 22, Ovington Square.”
“And yours, sir?”
“Mine? Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Rooke, you know. F. L. Rooke. I live at the Albany and all that sort of thing.”
“Officer,” cried Jill, “this man was trying to kill that parrot and I stopped him. . . .”
“Can’t help that, miss. You ’adn’t no right to hit a man with a stick. You’ll ’ave to come along.”
“But, I say, you know!” Freddie was appalled. This sort of thing had happened to him before, but only on boat-race night at the Empire, where it was expected of a chappie. “I mean to say!”
“And you, too, sir. You’re both in it.”
“But . . .”
“Oh, come along, Freddie,” said Jill quietly. “It’s perfectly absurd, but it’s no use making a fuss.”
“That,” said the policeman cordially, “is the right spirit!”
Notes:
Compare this with the American serialization in Collier’s Weekly.
Note that the chapter divisions and their titles and numbering are different in this edition than in other versions of the novel. A table of correspondences (opens in a new browser window or tab) is on this site.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 166a, omitted apostrophe in «’Erb silently»
Not corrected:
The show title Follow The Girl appears as Follow the Girl in parts 3 and 7.