Books: Jill the Reckless)

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

"Then what?" enquired Algy Martyn.

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

Algy Martyn delivered judgment with great firmness.

"Chappie was perfectly right!"

"No, but I mean . . ."

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

"But you haven't got the story right, old thing!"

"How not?"

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

"What was it, then?"

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

"Parrot-shooting's pretty good in those parts, they tell me,"
interjected Algy satirically.

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

Algy Martin had listened to this recital with growing amazement.

"He broke it off because of that?"

"Yes."

"What absolute rot!" said Algy Martyn. "I don't believe a word of it!"

"I say, old man!"

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

"But it's true!"

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

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

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

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

2.

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

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

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

"Derek, old top."

A grunt.

"I say, Derek, old bean."

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

"Well?"

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

"I say, you know, about Jill!"

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

"Well?" said Derek again.

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

"Ronny Devereux was saying . . ." faltered Freddie.

"Damn Ronny Devereux!"

"Oh, absolutely! But . . ."

"Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?"

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

"Oh, _that_ fellow? And he has been saying something about . . . ?"

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

"What are they saying?"

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

"What are they saying?" repeated Derek grimly.

"Well . . ." Freddie hesitated. "That it's a bit tough . . . On Jill,
you know."

"They think I behaved badly?"

"Well . . . Oh, well, you know!"

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

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

"Sorry, old man. But they started it, don't you know."

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

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

"Good night."

"But, I say . . ."

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

"Freddie!"

"Hullo!"

A spasm twisted Derek's face.

"Have you got any pepsin?"

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

"Pepsin?"

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

"Yes. I've got the most damned attack of indigestion."

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

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

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

"Freddie," said Derek.

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

"What do Algy Martyn and the others say about . . . you know?"

Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.

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

"Oh, well . . ."

"They are quite right. I did."

"Oh, I shouldn't say that, you know. Faults on both sides and all
that sort of rot."

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

"She told me she was going."

"What a fool I've been!"

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

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

"Why don't you?"

"How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I can't
stir."

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

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

"I've got an idea, old bean!"

"Well, there's no need to dance, is there?"

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

"Could you?" he asked eagerly.

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

CHAPTER NINE

1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I want to see Major Selby, please."

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

"Major Selby?"

"Major Selby."

"No Major Selby living here."

"Major Christopher Selby."

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

2.

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

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

"What was the name again?"

"Selby."

"Howja spell it?"

"S-e-l-b-y."

"S-e-l-b-y. Oh, Selby?"

"Yes, Selby."

"What was the first name?"

"Christopher."

"Christopher?"

"Yes, Christopher."

"Christopher Selby? No one of that name living here."

"But there must be."

The veteran shook his head with an indulgent smile.

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

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

"I don't want Mr Sipperley. I want Major Selby."

"Howja spell it once more?"

"S-e-l-b-y."

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

"He may be all you say, and he may have a dozen bulldogs . . ."

"Only one. Jack his name is."

". . . But he isn't the right man. It's absurd. Major Selby wrote to
me from this address. This _is_ Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street?"

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

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

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

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

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

Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

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

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

3.

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

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