Books: Jill the Reckless)

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"It's an extraordinary thing about that Channel crossing," said Algy
Martyn meditatively, as he puffed a refreshing cloud. "I've known
fellows who could travel quite happily everywhere else in the
world--round the Horn in sailing-ships and all that sort of
thing--yield up their immortal soul crossing the Channel! Absolutely
yield up their immortal soul! Don't know why. Rummy, but there it
is!"

"I'm like that myself," assented Ronny Devereux. "That dashed trip
from Calais gets me every time. Bowls me right over. I go aboard,
stoked to the eyebrows with seasick remedies, swearing that this time
I'll fool 'em, but down I go ten minutes after we've started and the
next thing I know is somebody saying, 'Well, well! So this is
Dover!'"

"It's exactly the same with me," said Freddie, delighted with the
smooth, easy way the conversation was flowing. "Whether it's the hot,
greasy smell of the engines . . ."

"It's not the engines," contended Ronny Devereux.

"Stands to reason it can't be. I rather like the smell of engines.
This station is reeking with the smell of engine-grease, and I can
drink it in and enjoy it." He sniffed luxuriantly. "It's something
else."

"Ronny's right," said Algy cordially. "It isn't the engines. It's the
way the boat heaves up and down and up and down and up and down . . ."
He shifted his cigar to his left hand in order to give with his right
a spirited illustration of a Channel steamer going up and down and up
and down and up and down. Lady Underhill, who had opened her eyes,
had an excellent view of the performance, and closed her eyes again
quickly.

"Be quiet!" she snapped.

"I was only saying . . ."

"Be quiet!"

"Oh, rather!"

Lady Underhill wrestled with herself. She was a woman of great
will-power and accustomed to triumph over the weaknesses of the
flesh. After awhile her eyes opened. She had forced herself, against
the evidence of her senses, to recognize that this was a platform on
which she stood and not a deck.

There was a pause. Algy, damped, was temporarily out of action, and
his friends had for the moment nothing to remark.

"I'm afraid you had a trying journey, mother," said Derek. "The train
was very late."

"Now, _train_-sickness," said Algy, coming to the surface again, "is
a thing lots of people suffer from. Never could understand it myself."

"I've never had a touch of train-sickness," said Ronny.

"Oh, I have," said Freddie. "I've often felt rotten on a train. I get
floating spots in front of my eyes and a sort of heaving sensation,
and everything kind of goes black . . ."

"Mr Rooke!"

"Eh?"

"I should be greatly obliged if you would keep these confidences for
the ear of your medical adviser."

"Freddie," intervened Derek hastily, "my mother's rather tired. Do
you think you could be going ahead and getting a taxi?"

"My dear old chap, of course! Get you one in a second. Come along,
Algy. Pick up the old waukeesis, Ronny."

And Freddie, accompanied by his henchmen, ambled off, well pleased
with himself. He had, he felt, helped to break the ice for Derek and
had seen him safely through those awkward opening stages. Now he
could totter off with a light heart and get a bite of lunch.

Lady Underhill's eyes glittered. They were small, keen, black eyes,
unlike Derek's, which were large and brown. In their other features
the two were obviously mother and son. Each had the same long upper
lip, the same thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family
characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose.
Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they
meant to drive their way through life like a wedge.

"A little more," she said tensely, "and I should have struck those
unspeakable young men with my umbrella. One of the things I have
never been able to understand, Derek, is why you should have selected
that imbecile Rooke as your closest friend."

Derek smiled tolerantly.

"It was more a case of him selecting _me_. But Freddie is quite a
good fellow really. He's a man you've got to know."

"_I_ have not got to know him, and I thank heaven for it!"

"He's a very good-natured fellow. It was decent of him to put me up
at the Albany while our house was let. By the way, he has some seats
for the first night of a new piece this evening. He suggested that we
might all dine at the Albany and go on to the theatre." He hesitated
a moment. "Jill will be there," he said, and felt easier now that her
name had at last come into the talk. "She's longing to meet you."

"Then why didn't she meet me?"

"Here, do you mean? At the station? Well, I--I wanted you to see her
for the first time in pleasanter surroundings."

"Oh!" said Lady Underhill shortly.

It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much
by being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and
impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us. If Jill had been
permitted by her wary fiancé to come with him to the station to meet
his mother, it is certain that much trouble would have been avoided.
True, Lady Underhill would probably have been rude to her in the
opening stages of the interview, but she would not have been alarmed
and suspicious; or, rather, the vague suspicion which she had been
feeling would not have solidified, as, it did now, into definite
certainty of the worst. All that Derek had effected by his careful
diplomacy had been to convince his mother that he considered his
bride-elect something to be broken gently to her.

She stopped and faced him.

"Who is she?" she demanded. "Who is this girl?"

Derek flushed.

"I thought I made everything clear in my letter."

"You made nothing clear at all."

"By your leave!" chanted a porter behind them, and a baggage-truck
clove them apart.

"We can't talk in a crowded station," said Derek irritably. "Let me
get you to the taxi and take you to the hotel. . . . What do you want
to know about Jill?"

"Everything. Where does she come from? Who are her people? I don't
know any Mariners."

"I haven't cross-examined her," said Derek stiffly. "But I do know
that her parents are dead. Her father was an American."

"American!"

"Americans frequently have daughters, I believe."

"There is nothing to be gained by losing your temper," said Lady
Underhill with steely calm.

"There is nothing to be gained, as far as I can see, by all this
talk," retorted Derek. He wondered vexedly why his mother always had
this power of making him lose control of himself. He hated to lose
control of himself. It upset him, and blurred that vision which he
liked to have of himself as a calm, important man superior to
ordinary weaknesses. "Jill and I are engaged, and there is an end of
it."

"Don't be a fool," said Lady Underhill, and was driven away by
another baggage-truck. "You know perfectly well," she resumed,
returning to the attack, "that your marriage is a matter of the
greatest concern to me and to the whole of the family."

"Listen, mother!" Derek's long wait on the draughty platform had
generated an irritability which overcame the deep-seated awe of his
mother which was the result of years of defeat in battles of the
will. "Let me tell you in a few words all that I know of Jill, and
then we'll drop the subject. In the first place, she is a lady.
Secondly, she has plenty of money . . ."

"The Underhills do not need to marry for money."

"I am not marrying for money!"

"Well, go on."

"I have already described to you in my letter--very inadequately, but
I did my best--what she looks like. Her sweetness, her loveableness,
all the subtle things about her which go to make her what she is, you
will have to judge for yourself."

"I intend to!"

"Well, that's all, then. She lives with her uncle, a Major Selby . . ."

"Major Selby? What regiment?"

"I didn't ask him," snapped the goaded Derek. "And, in the name of
heaven, what does it matter?"

"Not the Guards?"

"I tell you I don't know."

"Probably a line regiment," said Lady Underhill with an indescribable
sniff.

"Possibly. What then?" He paused, to play his trump card. "If you are
worrying about Major Selby's social standing, I may as well tell you
that he used to know father."

"What! When? Where?"

"Years ago. In India, when father was at Simla."

"Selby? Selby? Not Christopher Selby?"

"Oh, you remember him?"

"I certainly remember him! Not that he and I ever met, but your
father often spoke of him."

Derek was relieved. It was abominable that this sort of thing should
matter, but one had to face facts, and, as far as his mother was
concerned, it did. The fact that Jill's uncle had known his dead
father would make all the difference to Lady Underhill.

"Christopher Selby!" said Lady Underhill reflectively. "Yes! I have
often heard your father speak of him. He was the man who gave your
father an I.O.U. to pay a card debt, and redeemed it with a check
which was returned by the bank!"

"What!"

"Didn't you hear what I said? I will repeat it, if you wish."

"There must have been some mistake."

"Only the one your father made when he trusted the man."

"It must have been some other fellow."

"Of course!" said Lady Underhill satirically. "No doubt your father
knew hundreds of Christopher Selbys!"

Derek bit his lip.

"Well, after all," he said doggedly, "whether it's true or not . . ."

"I see no reason why your father should not have spoken the truth."

"All right. We'll say it is true, then. But what does it matter? I am
marrying Jill, not her uncle."

"Nevertheless, it would be pleasanter if her only living relative
were not a swindler! . . . Tell me, where and how did you meet this
girl?"

"I should be glad if you would not refer to her as 'this girl.' The
name, if you have forgotten it, is Mariner."

"Well, where did you meet Miss Mariner?"

"At Prince's."

"Restaurant?"

"Skating-rink," said Derek impatiently. "Just after you left for
Mentone. Freddie Rooke introduced me."

"Oh, your intellectual friend Mr Rooke knows her?"

"They were children together. Her people lived next to the Rookes in
Worcestershire."

"I thought you said she was an American."

"I said her father was. He settled in England. Jill hasn't been in
America since she was eight or nine."

"The fact," said Lady Underhill, "that the girl is a friend of Mr
Rooke is no great recommendation."

Derek kicked angrily at a box of matches which someone had thrown
down on the platform.

"I wonder if you could possibly get it into your head, mother, that I
want to marry Jill, not engage her as an under-housemaid. I don't
consider that she requires recommendations, as you call them.
However, don't you think the most sensible thing is for you to wait
till you meet her at dinner tonight, and then you can form your own
opinion? I'm beginning to get a little bored with this futile
discussion."

"As you seem quite unable to talk on the subject of this girl without
becoming rude," said Lady Underhill, "I agree with you. Let us hope
that my first impression will be a favorable one. Experience has
taught me that first impressions are everything."

"I'm glad you think so," said Derek, "for I fell in love with Jill
the very first moment I saw her!"

4.

Parker stepped back, and surveyed with modest pride the dinner-table
to which he had been putting the finishing touches. It was an
artistic job and a credit to him.

"That's that!" said Parker, satisfied.

He went to the window and looked out. The fog which had lasted well
into the evening, had vanished now, and the clear night was bright
with stars. A distant murmur of traffic came from the direction of
Piccadilly.

As he stood there, the front-door bell rang, and continued to ring in
little spurts of sound. If character can be deduced from
bell-ringing, as nowadays it apparently can be from every other form
of human activity, one might have hazarded the guess that whoever was
on the other side of the door was determined, impetuous, and
energetic.

"Parker!"

Freddie Rooke pushed a tousled head, which had yet to be brushed into
the smooth sleekness that made it a delight to the public eye, out of
a room down the passage.

"Sir?"

"Somebody ringing."

"I heard, sir. I was about to answer the bell."

"If it's Lady Underhill, tell her I'll be in in a minute."

"I fancy it is Miss Mariner, sir. I think I recognise her touch."

He made his way down the passage to the front-door, and opened it. A
girl was standing outside. She wore a long gray fur coat, and a filmy
gray hood covered her hair. As Parker opened the door, she scampered
in like a gray kitten.

"Brrh! It's cold!" she exclaimed. "Hullo, Parker!"

"Good evening, miss."

"Am I the last or the first or what?"

Parker moved to help her with her cloak.

"Sir Derek and her ladyship have not yet arrived, miss. Sir Derek
went to bring her ladyship from the Savoy Hotel. Mr Rooke is dressing
in his bedroom and will be ready very shortly."

The girl had slipped out of the fur coat, and Parker cast a swift
glance of approval at her. He had the valet's unerring eye for a
thoroughbred, and Jill Mariner was manifestly that. It showed in her
walk, in every move of her small, active body, in the way she looked
at you, in the way she talked to you, in the little tilt of her
resolute chin. Her hair was pale gold, and had the brightness of
coloring of a child's. Her face glowed, and her gray eyes sparkled.
She looked very much alive.

It was this aliveness of hers that was her chief charm. Her eyes were
good and her mouth, with its small, even, teeth, attractive, but she
would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes
doubted if she were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained
entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had
laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up
again, had endeavored subsequently to explain her attraction (to a
bosom friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club
smoking-room) in these words: "I don't know what it is about her, old
man, but she somehow makes a feller feel she's so damned _interested_
in a chap, if you know what I mean." And, though not generally
credited in his circle with any great acuteness, there is no doubt
that the speaker had achieved something approaching a true analysis
of Jill's fascination for his sex. She was interested in everything
Life presented to her notice, from a Coronation to a stray cat. She
was vivid. She had sympathy. She listened to you as though you really
mattered. It takes a man of tough fibre to resist these qualities.
Women, on the other hand, especially of the Lady Underhill type, can
resist them without an effort.

"Go and stir him up," said Jill, alluding to the absent Mr Rooke.
"Tell him to come and talk to me. Where's the nearest fire? I want to
get right over it and huddle."

"The fire's burning nicely in the sitting-room, miss."

Jill hurried into the sitting-room, and increased her hold on
Parker's esteem by exclaiming rapturously at the sight that greeted
her. Parker had expended time and trouble over the sitting-room.
There was no dust, no untidiness. The pictures all hung straight; the
cushions were smooth and unrumpled; and a fire of exactly the right
dimensions burned cheerfully in the grate, flickering cosily on the
small piano by the couch, on the deep leather arm-chairs which
Freddie had brought with him from Oxford, that home of comfortable
chairs, and on the photographs that studded the walls. In the center
of the mantelpiece, the place of honor, was the photograph of herself
which she had given Derek a week ago.

"You're simply wonderful, Parker! I don't see how you manage to make
a room so cosy!" Jill sat down on the club-fender that guarded the
fireplace, and held her hands over the blaze. "I can't understand why
men ever marry. Fancy having to give up all this!"

"I am gratified that you appreciate it, miss. I did my best to make
it comfortable for you. I fancy I hear Mr Rooke coming now."

"I hope the others won't be long. I'm starving. Has Mrs Parker got
something very good for dinner?"

"She has strained every nerve, miss."

"Then I'm sure it's worth waiting for. Hullo, Freddie."

Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his
tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in
the glass in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes
they stay right, sometimes they wiggle up sideways. Life is full of
these anxieties.

"I shouldn't touch it," said Jill. "It looks beautiful, and, if I may
say so in confidence, is having a most disturbing effect on my
emotional nature. I'm not at all sure I shall be able to resist it
right through the evening. It isn't fair of you to try to alienate
the affections of an engaged young person like this."

Freddie squinted down, and became calmer.

"Hullo, Jill, old thing. Nobody here yet?"

"Well, I'm here,--the petite figure seated on the fender. But perhaps
I don't count."

"Oh, I didn't mean that, you know."

"I should hope not, when I've bought a special new dress just to
fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one
did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?"

Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded
her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical
term is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the
other sex.

"Topping!" he said spaciously. "No other word for it! All wool and a
yard wide! Precisely as mother makes it! You look like a thingummy."

"How splendid! All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but
somehow I've never been able to manage it."

"A wood-nymph!" exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery.

"Wood-nymphs didn't wear creations."

"Well, you know what I mean!" He looked at her with honest
admiration. "Dash it, Jill, you know, there's something about you!
You're--what's the word?--you've got such small bones!"

"Ugh! I suppose it's a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It
makes me feel like a skeleton."

"I mean to say, you're--you're dainty!"

"That's much better."

"You look as if you weighed about an ounce and a half! You look like
a bit of thistledown! You're a little fairy princess, dash it!"

"Freddie! This is eloquence!" Jill raised her left hand, and twiddled
a ringed finger ostentatiously. "Er--you _do_ realize that I'm
bespoke, don't you, and that my heart, alas, is another's? Because
you sound as if you were going to propose."

Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-glass.
Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an
earnest, paternal gaze.

"That reminds me," he said. "I wanted to have, a bit of a talk with
you about that--being engaged and all that sort of thing. I'm glad I
got you alone before the Curse arrived."

"Curse? Do you mean Derek's mother? That sounds cheerful and
encouraging."

"Well, she is, you know," said Freddie earnestly. "She's a bird! It
would be idle to deny it. She always puts the fear of God into me. I
never know what to say to her."

"Why don't you try asking her riddles?"

"It's no joking matter," persisted Freddie, his amiable face
overcast. "Wait till you meet her! You should have seen her at the
station this morning. You don't know what you're up against!"

"You make my flesh creep, Freddie. What am I up against?"

Freddie poked the fire scientifically, and assisted it with coal.

"It's this way," he said. "Of course, dear old Derek's the finest
chap in the world."

"I know that," said Jill softly. She patted Freddie's hand with a
little gesture of gratitude. Freddie's devotion to Derek was a thing
that always touched her. She looked thoughtfully into the fire, and
her eyes seemed to glow in sympathy with the glowing coals. "There's
nobody like him!"

"But," continued Freddie, "he always has been frightfully under his
mother's thumb, you know."

Jill was conscious of a little flicker of irritation.

"Don't be absurd, Freddie. How could a man like Derek be under
anybody's thumb?"

"Well, you know what I mean!"

"I don't in the least know what you mean."

"I mean, it would be rather rotten if his mother set him against
you."

Jill clenched her teeth. The quick temper which always lurked so very
little beneath the surface of her cheerfulness was stirred. She felt
suddenly chilled and miserable. She tried to tell herself that
Freddie was just an amiable blunderer who spoke without sense or
reason, but it was no use. She could not rid herself of a feeling of
foreboding and discomfort. It had been the one jarring note in the
sweet melody of her love-story, this apprehension of Derek's
regarding his mother. The Derek she loved was a strong man, with a
strong man's contempt for other people's criticism; and there had
been something ignoble and fussy in his attitude regarding Lady
Underhill. She had tried to feel that the flaw in her idol did not
exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a man who admired Derek with all
his hero-worshipping nature, pointing it out independently. She was
annoyed, and she expended her annoyance, as women will do, upon the
innocent bystander.

"Do you remember the time I turned the hose on you, Freddie," she
said, rising from the fender, "years ago, when we were children, when
you and that awful Mason boy--what was his name? Wally Mason--teased
me?" She looked at the unhappy Freddie with a hostile eye. It was his
blundering words that had spoiled everything. "I've forgotten what it
was all about, but I know that you and Wally infuriated me and I
turned the garden hose on you and soaked you both to the skin. Well,
all I want to point out is that, if you go on talking nonsense about
Derek and his mother and me, I shall ask Parker to bring me a jug of
water, and I shall empty it over you! Set him against me! You talk as
if love were a thing any third party could come along and turn off
with a tap! Do you suppose that, when two people love each other as
Derek and I do, that it can possibly matter in the least what anybody
else thinks or says, even if it is his mother? I haven't got a
mother, but suppose Uncle Chris came and warned me against Derek . . ."

Her anger suddenly left her as quickly as it had come. That was
always the way with Jill. One moment later she would be raging; the
next, something would tickle her sense of humor and restore her
instantly to cheerfulness. And the thought of dear, lazy old Uncle
Chris taking the trouble to warn anybody against anything except the
wrong brand of wine or an inferior make of cigar conjured up a
picture before which wrath melted away. She chuckled, and Freddie,
who had been wilting on the fender, perked up.

"You're an extraordinary girl, Jill! One never knows when you're
going to get the wind up."

"Isn't it enough to make me get the wind up, as you call it, when you
say absurd things like that?"

"I meant well, old girl!"

"That's the trouble with you. You always do mean well. You go about
the world meaning well till people fly to put themselves under police
protection. Besides, what on earth could Lady Underhill find to
object to in me? I've plenty of money, and I'm one of the most
charming and attractive of Society belles. You needn't take my word
for that, and I don't suppose you've noticed it, but that's what Mr
Gossip in the _Morning Mirror_ called me when he was writing about my
getting engaged to Derek. My maid showed me the clipping. There was
quite a long paragraph, with a picture of me that looked like a Zulu
chieftainess taken in a coal-cellar during a bad fog. Well, after
that, what could anyone say against me? I'm a perfect prize! I expect
Lady Underhill screamed with joy when she heard the news and went
singing all over her Riviera villa."

"Yes," said Freddie dubiously. "Yes, yes, oh, quite so, rather!"

Jill looked at him sternly.

"Freddie, you're concealing something from me! You _don't_ think I'm
a charming and attractive Society belle! Tell me why not and I'll
show you where you are wrong. Is it my face you object to, or my
manners, or my figure? There was a young bride of Antigua, who said
to her mate, 'What a pig you are!' Said he, 'Oh, my queen, is it
manners you mean, or do you allude to my fig-u-ar?' Isn't my figuar
all right, Freddie?"

"Oh, _I_ think you're topping."

"But for some reason you're afraid that Derek's mother won't think
so. Why won't Lady Underhill agree with Mr Gossip?"

Freddie hesitated.

"Speak up!"

"Well, it's like this. Remember I've known the old devil . . ."

"Freddie Rooke! Where do you pick up such expressions? Not from me!"

"Well, that's how I always think of her! I say I've known her ever
since I used to go and stop at their place when I was at school, and
I know exactly the sort of things that put her back up. She's a
what-d'you-call-it."

"I see no harm in that. Why shouldn't the dear old lady be a
what-d'you-call-it? She must do _something_ in her spare time."

"I mean to say, one of the old school, don't you know. And you're so
dashed impulsive, old girl. You know you are! You are always saying
things that come into your head."

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