Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsGrand Magazine, June 1921
CHAPTER XLIV
“TO-NIGHT WILL DECIDE.”
“I MUST say, Otie,” said Mrs. Peagrim, “that for a man who has had a success like yours, you are not very cheerful. I should have thought the notices of the piece would have made you the happiest man in New York.”
“I have not seen the notices, Aunt Olive,” said Mr. Pilkington dully.
Mrs. Peagrim looked at him with positive alarm.
“You can’t be well, Otie!” she said solicitously. “Are you ill?”
“I have a severe headache,” replied the martyr. “I passed a wakeful night.”
“Let me go and mix you a dose of the most wonderful mixture,” said Mrs. Peagrim maternally. “Poor boy! I don’t wonder, after all the nervousness and excitement. . . . You sit quite still and rest. I will be back in a moment.”
She bustled out of the room, and Mr. Pilkington sagged back into his chair. He had passed a sleepless night thinking of his harsh words to Jill and he had hardly got his meditations going once more, when the door opened and the maid announced “Major Selby.”
“Good morning,” said Uncle Chris breezily, sailing down the fairway with outstretched hand. “How are——oh!”
He stopped abruptly, perceiving that Mrs. Peagrim was not present and—a more disturbing discovery—that Otis Pilkington was. It would be exaggeration to say that Uncle Chris was embarrassed. That master-mind was never actually embarrassed. But his jauntiness certainly ebbed a little, and he had to pull his moustache twice before he could face the situation with his customary aplomb. He had not expected to find Otis Pilkington here, and Otis was the last man he wished to meet. He had just parted from Jill, who had been rather plain-spoken with regard to the recent financial operations.
“Pilkington!” he cried. “My dear fellow! Just the man I wanted to see! I’m afraid there has been a little misunderstanding. Of course it has all been cleared up now, but still, I must insist on making a personal explanation, really, I must insist.”
Fortunately, the commercial side of Mr. Pilkington was entirely dormant this morning. The matter of the ten thousand dollars seemed trivial to him in comparison with the weightier problems which occupied his mind.
“Have you seen Miss Mariner?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes. I have just parted from her. She was upset, poor girl, of course.”
Mr. Pilkington moaned hollowly.
“Is she very angry with me?”
For a moment the utter inexplicability of the remark silenced Uncle Chris. Why Jill should be angry with Mr. Pilkington for being robbed of ten thousand dollars he could not understand, for Jill had told him nothing of the scene that had taken place on the previous night. But evidently this point was to Mr. Pilkington the hub of the matter, and Uncle Chris, like the strategist he was, rearranged his forces to meet the new development.
“Angry?” he said slowly. “Well, of course. . . .”
“In the heat of the moment,” confessed Mr. Pilkington, “I’m afraid I said things to Miss Mariner which I now regret.”
“Yes, yes,” said Uncle Chris cordially, “but we’ll let bygones be bygones. Start with a clean slate. You have your money back, and there’s no need to say another word about it. Let us forget it,” he concluded generously. “And, if I have any influence with Jill, you may count on me to use it to dissipate any little unfortunate rift which may have occurred between you.”
Mr. Pilkington brightened, and Mrs. Peagrim, returning with a medicine-glass, was pleased to see him looking so much better.
“You are a positive wizard, Major Selby,” she said archly. “What have you been saying to the poor boy to cheer him up so? He has a bad headache this morning. By the way, I can’t remember if I told you last night about the party. We are giving a little supper-dance to the company of Otie’s play after the performance this evening. Of course you will come?”
“Delighted,” said Uncle Chris.
The door opened.
“Mr. Rooke,” announced the maid.
“How-de-do,” said Freddie, blinking in the strong light from the window. “Hope I’m not barging in and all that sort of thing? I came round about this party to-night, you know.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Was wondering,” said Freddie, “if you would mind if I brought a friend of mine along? Popped in on me from England this morning. I’d be awfully obliged if you’d let me bring him along.”
“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Peagrim. “Any friend of yours, Mr. Rooke. . . .”
“Thanks, awfully. Special reason why I’d like him to come, and all that. He’s a fellow named Underhill. Sir Derek Underhill.”
Uncle Chris started.
“Underhill! Is Derek Underhill in America?”
“Oh, do you know him, too, Major Selby?” said Mrs. Peagrim. “Then I’m sure he must be charming!”
“Well, thanks most awfully,” interrupted Freddie. “It’s fearfully good of you to let me bring him along. I must be staggering off now. Lot of things to do.”
Uncle Chris extended a hand to his hostess.
“I think I will be going along, too, Mrs. Peagrim. I’ll walk a few yards with you, Freddie, my boy. There are one or two things I would like to talk over. Till to-night, Mrs. Peagrim.”
Uncle Chris confronted Freddie sternly outside the front door.
“Why are you bringing Underhill to this party? Don’t you realise that poor Jill will be there? How do you suppose she will feel when she sees that blackguard again?”
Freddie’s jaw fell.
“Oh, my aunt! Do you think she will be pipped?”
“A sensitive girl like Jill!”
“But listen. Derek wants to marry her. That’s why he’s come over.”
Uncle Chris shook his head.
“I don’t understand this. I saw the letter myself which he wrote to her, breaking off the engagement.”
“Yes, but he’s dashed sorry about all that now. Wishes he had never been such a mug, and all that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, that’s why I shot over here in the first place. As an ambassador, don’t you know. I told Jill all about it directly I saw her, but she seemed inclined to give it a miss rather, so I cabled old Derek to pop here in person.”
Uncle Chris nodded, his composure restored.
“Quite right. Yes, certainly, my boy, you acted most sensibly. Badly as Underhill behaved, she undoubtedly loved him. It would be the best possible thing that could happen if they could be brought together.”
“Of course,” said Freddie thoughtfully, “the catch in the whole dashed business is that she’s such a bally independent sort of girl. I mean to say, it’s quite possible she may hand Derek the mitten, you know.”
“In that case, let us hope that she will look more favourably on young Pilkington.”
“Yes,” said Freddie. “Well, yes. But I have an idea that she may give both of them the old razz. May be wrong, of course.”
“Let us hope that you are, my boy,” said Uncle Chris gravely. “For in that case I should be forced into a course of action from which I confess that I shrink.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Freddie, my boy, you are a very old friend of Jill’s and I am her uncle. I feel that I can speak plainly to you. Jill is the dearest thing to me in the world. She trusted me, and I failed her. I was responsible for the loss of her money, and my one object in life is to see her by some means or other in a position equal to the one of which I deprived her. If she marries a rich man, well and good. That, provided she marries him because she is fond of him, will be the very best thing that can happen. But, if she does not, there is another way. It may be possible for me to marry a rich woman.”
Freddie stopped, appalled.
“Good God! You don’t mean . . . you aren’t thinking of marrying Mrs. Peagrim!”
“I wouldn’t have mentioned names, but, as you have guessed. . . . Yes, if the worst comes to the worst, I shall make the supreme sacrifice. To-night will decide. Good-bye, my boy. I want to look in at my club for a few minutes. Tell Underhill that he has my best wishes.”
“I’ll bet he has!” gasped Freddie.
CHAPTER XLV
SUPPOSE THERE WAS NO WALLY
OTIS PILKINGTON left the party early. Jill had been very kind, and very sweet, and very regretful, but it was only too manifest that on the question of becoming Mrs. Otis Pilkington her mind was made up.
The news was conveyed to Freddie Rooke by Uncle Chris, who, with something of the emotions of a condemned man on the scaffold waiting for a reprieve, had watched Jill and Mr. Pilkington go off together, and, after an all too brief interval, had observed the latter whizzing back.
“Where is Underhill?” asked Uncle Chris of Freddie. “I understood that you were bringing him with you.”
“That was the scheme, but it seems he had promised some people he met on the boat to go to a theatre and have a bit of supper with them afterwards. I only heard about it when I got back this morning.”
“Good God, boy! Didn’t you tell him that Jill would be here to-night?”
“Oh, rather. And he’s coming on directly he can get away from these people. Forget their name, but they’re influential coves who can do him a bit of good and all that sort of thing. Well, pip-pip for the present.”
He disappeared, and Uncle Chris turned slowly to descend the stairs. As he reached the floor below he saw a familiar figure.
“Underhill!” He grasped the new-comer’s hand and shook it warmly.
“How are you, Major Selby?” said Derek. He was a little surprised at the warmth of his reception.
“My dear fellow, I’m delighted to see you,” cried Uncle Chris. “Well, well, well!” Every time he had met Mrs. Peagrim that evening he had quailed inwardly at what lay before him should some hitch occur to prevent the re-union of Derek and Jill: and now that the other was actually here, handsomer than ever and more than ever the sort of man no girl could resist, he declined to admit the possibility of a hitch. His spirits soared. “You haven’t seen Jill yet, of course?”
“No.” Derek hesitated. “Is Jill. . . . Does she. . . . I mean. . . .”
“My dear fellow, of course! I am sure that a word or two from you will put everything right. We all make mistakes. I have made them myself. I am convinced that everything will be perfectly all right. . . . Ah, there she is. Jill, my dear, here is an old friend to see you!”
SINCE the hurried departure of Mr. Pilkington Jill had been sitting in the auditorium, lazily listening to the music and watching the couples dancing on the stage. She did not feel like dancing herself, but it was pleasant to be there, and too much exertion to get up and go home. She found herself drifting into a mood of gentle contentment, and was at a loss to account for this. It puzzled her.
And then, quite suddenly, yet with no abruptness or sense of discovery, just as if it were something which she had known all along, the truth came upon her. It was Wally, the thought of Wally, the knowledge that Wally existed, that made her happy. He was a solid, comforting, reassuring fact in a world of doubts and perplexities. Present or absent, his personality heartened her like fine weather.
Suppose there were no Wally. . . .
Jill gave a sudden gasp, and sat up, tingling. Suppose there was no Wally. . . . And why should there always be Wally?
Into her mind, never far distant from it, came the thought of Derek. And suddenly Jill made another discovery. She was thinking of Derek, and it was not hurting.
She sat back and screwed her eyes tight, as she had always done when puzzled. Something had happened to her, but how it had happened, and when it had happened, and why it had happened, she could not understand.
She wanted Wally. She wanted him in the sense that she could not do without him. She felt nothing of the fiery tumult which had come upon her when she first met Derek. She and Wally would come together with a smile and build their life on an enduring foundation of laughter and happiness and good-fellowship. Wally had never shaken, and never would shake her senses as Derek had done. If that was love, then she did not love Wally. But her clear vision told her that it was not love.
She opened her eyes and saw Uncle Chris coming down the aisle towards her. There was a man with him, and, as they moved closer in the dim light, Jill saw that it was Derek.
“Jill, my dear,” said Uncle Chris, “here is an old friend to see you!”
“Why, Derek!” said Jill cheerfully. She got up and moved down the line of seats. But for a mild wonder as to how he came to be there she found herself wholly unaffected by the sight of him. “Whatever are you doing here?”
Derek sat down beside her. The cordiality of her tone had relieved yet at the same time disconcerted him.
“Jill!” he said huskily.
Often as he had attempted to visualise this first meeting, he had never pictured Jill smiling brightly at him. It was a jolly smile, and made her look extremely pretty, but it jarred upon him. A moment before he had been half relieved, half disconcerted: now he was definitely disconcerted. Of course, friendliness is well enough in its way, but in what should have been a tense clashing of strong emotions it did not seem to Derek fitting.
“Did you have a pleasant trip?” asked Jill. “Have you come over on business?”
A feeling of bewilderment came upon Derek. It was wrong, it was all wrong. Of course, she might be speaking like this to cloak intense feeling, but if so she had certainly succeeded.
“I came to find you!” he said, still huskily, but not so huskily as before.
“Yes?” said Jill.
There was a pause. Jill was looking at him with a frank and unembarrassed gaze which somehow deepened his sense of annoyance. Had she looked at him coldly, he could have understood and even appreciated it. He had been expecting coldness, and had braced himself to combat it.
Jill, unconscious of the discomfort she was causing, continued to gaze. She was trying to discover in just what respect he had changed from the god he had been. Everything was there, except the one thing that mattered, the magic and the glamour. Jill came to the conclusion that her newly-discovered love for Wally Mason had equipped her with a sixth sense, and that by its aid she was really for the first time seeing Derek as he was.
Derek had not the privilege of being able to read Jill’s thoughts. All he could see was the outer Jill, and the outer Jill, as she had always done, was stirring his emotions.
“What a fool I was!” he sighed. “Jill! Can you ever forgive me?”
“Why, of course, I’ve forgiven you, Derek, if there was anything to forgive.”
“Anything to forgive!” Derek began to get into his stride. These were the lines on which he had desired the interview to develop. “I was a brute! A cad! Oh, I have been through hell!”
Jill turned her head away. She did not want to hurt him, but nothing could have kept her from smiling. She had been so sure that he would say that sooner or later.
“Jill!” Derek had misinterpreted the cause of her movement, and had attributed it to emotion. “Tell me that everything is as it was before.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say that, Derek.”
“Of course not!” agreed Derek in a comfortable glow of manly remorse. He liked himself in the character of the strong man abased. “It would be too much to expect, I know. But when we are married. . . .”
“Do you really want to marry me?”
“How can you doubt it?”
“Well, your mother. . . .”
“Oh!” Derek dismissed Lady Underhill with a grand gesture.
“Yes,” persisted Jill, “but if she disapproved of your marrying me before, wouldn’t she disapprove a good deal more now, when I haven’t a penny in the world and am just in the chorus. . . .”
A sort of strangled sound proceeded from Derek’s throat.
“In the chorus!”
“Didn’t you know? I thought Freddie must have told you.”
“But. . . . But. . . .”
“You see, it would be bound to make everything a little difficult,” said Jill. Her face was grave, but her lips were twitching.
“I mean, you are rather a prominent man, aren’t you, and if you married a chorus-girl . . .”
“Nobody would know,” said Derek limply.
Jill opened her eyes.
“Nobody would know!” She laughed. “But of course you’ve never met our Press-agent. If you think that nobody would know that a girl in the company had married a baronet who was a Member of Parliament and expected to be in the Cabinet in a few years you’re wronging him! The news would be on the front page of all the papers the very next day—columns of it, with photographs. There would be articles about it in the Sunday papers. Illustrated! And then it would be cabled to England and would appear in the papers there. . . . You see, you’re a very important person, Derek.”
Derek sat clutching the arms of his chair. His face was chalky. Though he had never been inclined to under-estimate his importance as a figure in the public eye, he had overlooked the disadvantages connected with such an eminence.
Jill watched him curiously and with a certain pity. It was so easy to read what was passing in his mind. She wondered what he would say, how he would flounder out of his unfortunate position. She had no illusions about him now.
“It would be very awkward, wouldn’t it?” she said. And then pity had its way with Jill. He had treated her badly, for a time she had thought that he had crushed all the heart out of her; but he was suffering, and she hated to see anybody suffer.
“Besides,” she said, “I’m engaged to somebody else.”
As a suffocating man, his lips to the tube of oxygen, gradually comes back to life, Derek revived—slowly, as the meaning of her words sank into his mind.
“What!” he cried.
“I’m going to marry somebody else. A man named Wally Mason.”
Derek swallowed. The chalky look died out of his face, and he flushed hotly.
“I think you might have told me before!” he said huffily.
Jill laughed.
“Never mind, Derek! It’s all over now. And it was great fun, wasn’t it!”
“Fun!”
“Shall we go and dance? The music is just starting.”
“I won’t dance!”
Jill got up.
“I must,” she said. “I’m so happy I can’t keep still. Well, good-bye, Derek, in case I don’t see you again. It was nice meeting after all this time. You haven’t altered a bit!”
Derek watched her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder on to the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing seemed to him symbolic.
CHAPTER XLVI
FREDDIE BURSTS INTO SPEECH
“GOT a cigarette, Freddie?”
Freddie withdrew his gaze from the roof.
“Hullo, old son! Cigarette? Certainly, and by all means. Cigarettes? Where are the cigarettes? Mr. Rooke, forward! Show cigarettes. I say, Derek, old scream, the most extraordinary thing has happened! You’ll never guess. To cut a long story short, and come to the blow-out of the scenario, I’m engaged! Engaged, old crumpet! You know what I mean—engaged to be married!”
“Uh?” said Derek gruffly.
“Don’t wonder you’re surprised,” said Freddie, looking at him a little wistfully, for his friend had scarcely been gushing.
Derek awoke to a sense of the conventions.
“Congratulate you,” he said. “Do I know her?”
“Not yet, but you soon will. She’s a girl in the company, in the chorus, as a matter of fact. Girl named Nelly Bryant. An absolute corker. I’ll go further—a topper.”
Derek was looking at him, amazed.
“Good heavens!” he said.
“Extraordinary how these things happen,” proceeded Freddie. “Looking back, I can see, of course, that I always thought her a topper, but the idea of getting engaged—I don’t know—sort of thing that doesn’t occur to a chappie, if you know what I mean. And then this evening—I don’t know.”
At this point in his somewhat incoherent epic Freddie paused. “You’ve seen Jill, of course?”
“Yes,” said Derek shortly.
“And it’s all right, eh? Fine! We’ll make a double wedding of it, what?”
Derek threw down the end of his cigarette, and crushed it with his heel.
“Jill and I are not going to be married,” he said.
“Great Scott!” he cried. “Did she give you the raspberry?”
It is to be doubted whether the pride of the Underhills would have permitted Derek to reply in the affirmative, even if Freddie had phrased his question differently: but the brutal directness of the query made such a course impossible for him.
“Nothing of the kind!” he snapped. “It was because we both saw that the thing would be impossible. Why didn’t you tell me that Jill was in the chorus of this damned piece?”
Freddie’s mouth slowly opened. His was a faithful soul, and for years—to all intents and purposes for practically the whole of his life—he had looked up to Derek and reverenced him. He absolutely refused to believe that Derek was intending to convey what he seemed to be trying to convey.
“You don’t mean, old man,” said Freddie, with an almost pleading note in his voice, “that you’re going to back out of marrying Jill because she’s in the chorus?”
Derek looked away and scowled.
“I have to be sensible,” he said, chafing as the indignity of his position intruded itself more and more. “You know what it would mean. . . . Paragraphs in all the papers . . . photographs . . . the news cabled to England . . . everybody reading it and misunderstanding . . . I’ve got my career to think of. . . . It would cripple me . . .”
His voice trailed off, and there was silence for a moment. Then Freddie burst into speech. His good-natured face was hard with unwonted scorn. Its cheerful vacuity had changed to stony contempt.
“My sainted aunt!” he said slowly. “So that’s it—what! Well, I’ve always thought a dashed lot of you, as you know. I’ve always looked up to you as a bit of a nib, and wished I was like you. But, great Scott! if that’s the sort of a chap you are, I’m deuced glad I’m not! Algy Martyn was perfectly right. A tick’s a tick, and that’s all there is to say about it. Good old Algy told me what you were, and, like a silly ass, I wasted a lot of time trying to make him believe you weren’t that sort of chap at all. It’s no good standing there looking like your mother,” said Freddie firmly. “This is where we jolly well part brass-rags! If we ever meet again I’ll trouble you not to speak to me, because I’ve a reputation to keep up! So there you have it in a bally nutshell!”
Scarcely had Freddie ceased to administer it to his former friend in a bally nutshell when Uncle Chris came bustling up, saving Derek the necessity of replying to the harangue.
“Well, Underhill, my dear fellow,” began Uncle Chris affably, attaching himself to the other’s arm, “what . . . ?”
He broke off, for Derek, freeing his arm with a wrench, turned and walked rapidly away.
Uncle Chris turned to Freddie.
“What is the matter?” he asked blankly.
“I’ll tell you what’s the jolly old matter!” cried Freddie. And he did so—eloquently.
For a moment Uncle Chris stood motionless. Then, with a sudden jerk, he seemed to stiffen his backbone.
“Morituri te salutant!” he said. “Good-bye, Freddie, my boy.”
He turned away, gallant and upright, the old soldier.
“Where are you going?” asked Freddie.
“I am going,” said Uncle Chris steadily, “to find Mrs. Peagrim!”
CHAPTER XLVII
RESCUING UNCLE CHRIS
“I AM so fond of dancing,” said Mrs. Peagrim, gazing at her companion with a sort of short-winded archness. “You are always so sympathetic, Major Selby.”
“Am I?” said Uncle Chris. “Am I?”
“You know you are!”
Uncle Chris swallowed quickly.
“I wonder if you have ever wondered,” he began, and stopped. He felt that he was not putting it as well as he might. “I wonder if it has ever struck you that there’s a reason.” He stopped again. He seemed to remember reading something like that in an advertisement in a magazine, and he did not want to talk like an advertisement. “I wonder if it has ever struck you, Mrs. Peagrim,” he began again, “that any sympathy on my part might be due to some deeper emotion which. . . . Have you never suspected that you have never suspected . . .”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Peagrim.
There was a tap at the door of the box. Uncle Chris started violently. Jill came in.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said. “I wanted to speak. . . .”
“You wanted to speak to me?” said Uncle Chris, bounding up. “Certainly, certainly, certainly, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment?”
Mrs. Peagrim bowed coldly. The interruption had annoyed her. She had no notion who Jill was, and she resented the intrusion at this particular juncture intensely. Not so Uncle Chris, who skipped out into the passage like a young lamb.
“Am I in time?” asked Jill in a whisper.
“In time?”
“You know what I mean. Uncle Chris, listen to me! You are not to propose to that awful woman. Do you understand?”
Uncle Chris shook his head.
“The die is cast!”
“The die isn’t anything of the sort,” said Jill. “Unless . . . .” She stopped, aghast. “You don’t mean that you have done it already?”
“Well, no. To be perfectly accurate, no.”
“Then that’s all right. I know why you were doing it, and it was very sweet of you, but you mustn’t.”
“I have a motive . . .”
“I know your motive. Freddie told me. Don’t you worry yourself about me, dear, because I am all right. I am going to be married.”
A look of ecstatic relief came into Uncle Chris’s face.
“Then Underhill . . . ?”
“I am not marrying Derek. Somebody else. I don’t think you know him, but I love him, and so will you.” She pulled his face down and kissed him. “Now you can go back.”
“Must I?” said Uncle Chris doubtfully.
“Of course. You must be polite.”
“Very well,” said Uncle Chris. “But it will be a little difficult to continue the conversation on what you might call general lines. However!”
CHAPTER XLVIII
A MORNING EXERCISE
UPON the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamour of the busy city, Wally Mason, at eleven o’clock on the morning after Mrs. Peagrim’s Bohemian party, was greeting the new day by going through his ante-breakfast exercises. He lay on his back and waved his legs in the air, until suddenly he perceived Jill standing beside him.
“Good Lord!” said Wally.
“Don’t stop,” said Jill. “I’m enjoying it.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh, I only just arrived. I rang the bell, and the nice old lady who is cooking your lunch told me you were out here.”
“Not lunch. Breakfast.”
“Breakfast! At this hour?”
“Won’t you join me?”
“I’ll join you. But I had my breakfast long ago.”
Wally found his despondency magically dispelled. It was extraordinary how the mere sight of Jill could make the world a different place. It was true the sun had been shining before her arrival, but in a flabby, weak-minded way, not with the brilliance it had acquired immediately he heard her voice.
“If you don’t mind waiting for about three minutes while I have a shower and dress. . . .”
Wally vaulted through the passage-window, and disappeared. Jill heard the splashing of water. She walked to the parapet and looked down. On the windows of the nearer buildings the sun cast glittering beams, but further away a faint, translucent mist hid the city. She had come to Journey’s end, and she was happy. Trouble and heartache seemed as distant as those hurrying black ants down on the streets.
In the sitting-room her feeling of security deepened. Here, the world was farther away than ever.
She looked at Wally with a quickening sense of affection. He had the divine gift of silence at the right time. Yes, this was home. This was where she belonged.
“It didn’t take me in, you know,” said Jill at length, resting her arms on the table and regarding him severely.
Wally looked up.
“What didn’t take you in?”
“That bath of yours. Yes, I know you turned on the cold shower, but you stood at a safe distance and watched it show!”
Wally waved his fork.
“As Heaven is my witness. . . . ! Look at my hair! Still damp! And I can show you the towel.”
“Well, then, I’ll bet it was the hot water. Why weren’t you at Mrs. Peagrim’s party last night?”
“It would take too long to explain all my reasons, but one of them was that I wasn’t invited. How did it go off?”
“Splendidly. Freddie’s engaged!”
Wally lowered his coffee cup.
“Engaged! You don’t mean what is sometimes slangily called betrothed?”
“I do. He’s engaged to Nelly Bryant. Nelly told me all about it when she got home last night. It seems that Freddie said to her ‘What ho!’ and she said ‘You bet!’ and Freddie said ‘Pip, pip!’ and the thing was settled.” Jill bubbled. “Freddie wants to go into vaudeville with her!”
“No! The Juggling Rookes? Or Rooke and Bryant, the cross-talk team, a thoroughly refined act, swell dressers on and off?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Nelly is domestic. She’s going to have a little home in the country, where she can grow chickens and pigs.”
Wally’s cheerfulness diminished a trifle. The contemplation of Freddie’s enviable lot brought with it the inevitable contrast with his own. A little home in the country. . . .
There was a pause.
“Wally!”
“Yes?”
She turned her face away, for there was a gleam of mischief in her eyes which she did not wish him to observe.
“Derek was at the party!”
Wally had been about to butter a piece of toast. The butter, jerked from the knife by the convulsive start which he gave, popped up in a semi-circle and plumped on to the table-cloth.
“Sorry!” he said. “You mustn’t mind that. They want me to be second-string for the Boosting the Butter event at the next Olympic Games, and I’m practising all the time. . . . Underhill was there, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Did he come over. . . . I mean . . . . had he come specially to see you?”
“Yes.”
“He wants to marry you?”
“He said he wanted to marry me.”
Wally got up and went to the window.
“What ought I to do, Wally? I thought I would ask you, as you are such a friend.”
“You ought to marry him, of course,” said Wally doggedly. “You love him, and the fact that he came all the way to America must mean that he still loves you.”
“But . . .” Jill hesitated. “You see, there’s a difficulty.”
“What difficulty?”
“I told him I was going to marry you!”
Wally spun round. At the same time he leaped in the air. Jill watched him with quiet approval.
“Why, that’s wonderful, Wally! Is that another of your morning exercises?”
Wally was blinking at her from the mantelpiece.
“Jill!”
“Yes?”
“You said you were going to marry me?”
“I said I was going to marry you!”
“But—do you mean . . . ?”
The mischief died out of Jill’s eyes. She met his gaze frankly and seriously.
“The lumber’s gone, Wally,” she said. “But my heart isn’t empty. It’s quite, quite full, and it’s going to be full for ever and ever, and ever.”
Wally left the mantelpiece, and came slowly towards her.
“Jill!” he choked. “Jill!”
Suddenly he pounced on her and swung her off her feet. She gave a little breathless cry.
“Wally! I thought you didn’t approve of cavemen!”
“This,” said Wally, “is just another new morning exercise I’ve thought of!”
Jill sat down, gasping.
“Are you going to do that often, Wally?”
“Every day for the rest of my life!”
“Goodness!”
“Oh, you’ll get used to it.”
“You don’t think I am making a mistake marrying you?”
“No, no! I’ve given the matter a lot of thought, and . . . in fact, no, no!”
“No,” said Jill thoughtfully. “I think you’ll make a good husband. I mean, suppose we ever want the piano moved or something . . . Wally!”
“You have our ear.”
“Come out on the roof,” said Jill. “I want to show you something funny.”
Wally followed her out. They stood at the parapet together, looking down.
“I see many things, but which is the funny one?”
“Why, all these people. Over there—and there—and there. Scuttering about and thinking they know everything there is to know, and not one of them has the least idea that I am the happiest girl on earth!”
“Or that I’m the happiest man! Their ignorance is—what is the word I want? Abysmal. They don’t know what it’s like to stand beside you and see that little dimple in your chin . . . They don’t know you’ve got a little dimple in your chin . . . They don’t know. . . . They don’t know. . . . Why, I don’t suppose a single one of them even knows that I’m just going to kiss you!”
“Those girls in that window over there do,” said Jill. “They are watching us like hawks.”
“Let ’em!” said Wally briefly.
THE END
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. 422a, had an extraneous closing quotation mark after «A little home in the country . . .»