Louisa May Alcott - "Marjorie's Three Gifts"

Kathleen Norris - "The Heart of Rachael"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1569 70"

Aristophanes - "Peace"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Jill the Reckless)

P >> P. G. Wodehouse >> Jill the Reckless)




"It is pretty terrible, isn't it?"

"Worse than that. Looking at it dispassionately, I find it the
extreme, ragged, outermost edge of the limit. Freddie had the correct
description of it. He's a great critic."

"I really do think it's the worst thing I have ever seen."

"I don't know what plays you have seen, but I feel you're right."

"Perhaps the second act's better," said Jill optimistically.

"It's worse. I know that sounds like boasting, but it's true. I feel
like getting up and making a public apology."

"But . . . Oh!"

Jill turned scarlet. A monstrous suspicion had swept over her.

"The only trouble is," went on her companion, "that the audience
would undoubtedly lynch me. And, though it seems improbable just at
the present moment, it may be that life holds some happiness for me
that's worth waiting for. Anyway I'd rather not be torn limb from
limb. A messy finish! I can just see them rending me asunder in a
spasm of perfectly justifiable fury. 'She loves me!' Off comes a leg.
'She loves me not!' Off comes an arm. No, I think on the whole I'll
lie low. Besides, why should I care? Let 'em suffer. It's their own
fault. They _would_ come!"

Jill had been trying to interrupt the harangue. She was greatly
concerned.

"Did you _write_ the play?"

The man nodded.

"You are quite right to speak in that horrified tone. But, between
ourselves and on the understanding that you don't get up and denounce
me, I did."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!"

"Not half so sorry as I am, believe me!"

"I mean, I wouldn't have said . . ."

"Never mind. You didn't tell me anything I didn't know." The lights
began to go down. He rose. "Well, they're off again. Perhaps you will
excuse me? I don't feel quite equal to assisting any longer at the
wake. If you want something to occupy your mind during the next act,
try to remember my name."

He slid from his seat and disappeared. Jill clutched at Derek.

"Oh, Derek, it's too awful. I've just been talking to the man who
wrote this play, and I told him it was the worst thing I had ever
seen!"

"Did you?" Derek snorted. "Well, it's about time somebody told him!"
A thought seemed to strike him. "Why, who is he? I didn't know you
knew him."

"I don't. I don't even know his name."

"His name, according to the programme, is John Grant. Never heard of
him before. Jill, I wish you would not talk to people you don't
know," said Derek with a note of annoyance in his voice. "You can
never tell who they are."

"But . . ."

"Especially with my mother here. You must be more careful."

The curtain rose. Jill saw the stage mistily. From childhood up, she
had never been able to cure herself of an unfortunate sensitiveness
when sharply spoken to by those she loved. A rebuking world she could
face with a stout heart, but there had always been just one or two
people whose lightest word of censure could crush her. Her father had
always had that effect upon her, and now Derek had taken his place.

But if there had only been time to explain . . . Derek could not
object to her chatting with a friend of her childhood, even if she
had completely forgotten him and did not remember his name even now.
John Grant? Memory failed to produce any juvenile John Grant for her
inspection.

Puzzling over this problem, Jill missed much of the beginning of the
second act. Hers was a detachment which the rest of the audience
would gladly have shared. For the poetic drama, after a bad start,
was now plunging into worse depths of dulness. The coughing had
become almost continuous. The stalls, supported by the presence of
large droves of Sir Chester's personal friends, were struggling
gallantly to maintain a semblance of interest, but the pit and
gallery had plainly given up hope. The critic of a weekly paper of
small circulation, who had been shoved up in the upper circle, grimly
jotted down the phrase "apathetically received" on his programme. He
had come to the theatre that night in an aggrieved mood, for managers
usually put him in the dress-circle. He got out his pencil again.
Another phrase had occurred to him, admirable for the opening of his
article. "At the Leicester Theatre," he wrote, "where Sir Chester
Portwood presented 'Tried by Fire,' dulness reigned supreme. . . ."

But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over. However
uninteresting its early stages may have been, that night was to be as
animated and exciting as any audience could desire,--a night to be
looked back to and talked about. For just as the critic of _London
Gossip_ wrote those damning words on his programme, guiding his
pencil uncertainly in the dark, a curious yet familiar odor stole
over the house.

The stalls got it first, and sniffed. It rose to the dress-circle,
and the dress-circle sniffed. Floating up, it smote the silent
gallery. And, suddenly, coming to life with a single-minded
abruptness, the gallery ceased to be silent.

"Fire!"

Sir Chester Portwood, ploughing his way through a long speech,
stopped and looked apprehensively over his shoulder. The girl with
the lisp, who had been listening in a perfunctory manner to the long
speech, screamed loudly. The voice of an unseen stage-hand called
thunderously to an invisible "Bill" to cummere quick. And from the
scenery on the prompt side there curled lazily across the stage a
black wisp of smoke.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

"Just," said a voice at Jill's elbow, "what the play needed!" The
mysterious author was back in his seat again.



CHAPTER THREE


1.

In these days when the authorities who watch over the welfare of the
community have taken the trouble to reiterate encouragingly in
printed notices that a full house can be emptied in three minutes and
that all an audience has to do in an emergency is to walk, not run,
to the nearest exit, fire in the theatre has lost a good deal of its
old-time terror. Yet it would be paltering with the truth to say that
the audience which had assembled to witness the opening performance
of the new play at the Leicester was entirely at its ease. The
asbestos curtain was already on its way down, which should have been
reassuring: but then asbestos curtains never look the part. To the
lay eye they seem just the sort of thing that will blaze quickest.
Moreover, it had not yet occurred to the man at the switchboard to
turn up the house-lights, and the darkness was disconcerting.

Portions of the house were taking the thing better than other
portions. Up in the gallery a vast activity was going on. The clatter
of feet almost drowned the shouting. A moment before it would have
seemed incredible that anything could have made the occupants of the
gallery animated, but the instinct of self-preservation had put new
life into them.

The stalls had not yet entirely lost their self-control. Alarm was in
the air, but for the moment they hung on the razor-edge between panic
and dignity. Panic urged them to do something sudden and energetic:
dignity counselled them to wait. They, like the occupants of the
gallery, greatly desired to be outside, but it was bad form to rush
and jostle. The men were assisting the women into their cloaks,
assuring them the while that it was "all right" and that they must
not be frightened. But another curl of smoke had crept out just
before the asbestos curtain completed its descent, and their words
lacked the ring of conviction. The movement towards the exits had not
yet become a stampede, but already those with seats nearest the stage
had begun to feel that the more fortunate individuals near the doors
were infernally slow in removing themselves.

Suddenly, as if by mutual inspiration, the composure of the stalls
began to slip. Looking from above, one could have seen a sort of
shudder run through the crowd. It was the effect of every member of
that crowd starting to move a little more quickly.

A hand grasped Jill's arm. It was a comforting hand, the hand of a
man who had not lost his head. A pleasant voice backed up its message
of reassurance.

"It's no good getting into that mob. You might get hurt. There's no
danger: the play isn't going on."

Jill was shaken: but she had the fighting spirit and hated to show
that she was shaken. Panic was knocking at the door of her soul, but
dignity refused to be dislodged.

"All the same," she said, smiling a difficult smile, "it would be
nice to get out, wouldn't it?"

"I was just going to suggest something of that very sort," said the
man beside her. "The same thought occurred to me. We can stroll out
quite comfortably by our own private route. Come along."

Jill looked over her shoulder. Derek and Lady Underhill were merged
into the mass of refugees. She could not see them. For an instant a
little spasm of pique stung her at the thought that Derek had
deserted her. She groped her way after her companion, and presently
they came by way of a lower box to the iron pass-door leading to the
stage.

As it opened, smoke blew through, and the smell of burning was
formidable. Jill recoiled involuntarily.

"It's all right," said her companion. "It smells worse than it really
is. And, anyway, this is the quickest way out."

They passed through onto the stage, and found themselves in a world
of noise and confusion compared with which the auditorium which they
had left had been a peaceful place. Smoke was everywhere. A
stage-hand, carrying a bucket, lurched past them, bellowing. From
somewhere out of sight on the other side of the stage there came a
sound of chopping. Jill's companion moved quickly to the switchboard,
groped, found a handle, and turned it. In the narrow space between
the corner of the proscenium and the edge of the asbestos curtain
lights flashed up: and simultaneously there came a sudden diminution
of the noise from the body of the house. The stalls, snatched from
the intimidating spell of the darkness and able to see each other's
faces, discovered that they had been behaving indecorously and
checked their struggling, a little ashamed of themselves. The relief
would be only momentary, but, while it lasted, it postponed panic.

"Go straight across the stage," Jill heard her companion say, "out
along the passage and turn to the right, and you'll be at the
stage-door. I think, as there seems no one else around to do it, I'd
better go out and say a few soothing words to the customers.
Otherwise they'll be biting holes in each other."

He squeezed through the narrow opening in front of the curtain.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

Jill remained where she was, leaning with one hand against the
switchboard. She made no attempt to follow the directions he had
given her. She was aware of a sense of comradeship, of being with
this man in this adventure. If he stayed, she must stay. To go now
through the safety of the stage-door would be abominable desertion.
She listened, and found that she could hear plainly in spite of the
noise. The smoke was worse than ever, and hurt her eyes, so that the
figures of the theatre-firemen, hurrying to and fro, seemed like
Brocken specters. She slipped a corner of her cloak across her mouth,
and was able to breathe more easily.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you that there is absolutely no
danger. I am a stranger to you, so there is no reason why you should
take my word, but fortunately I can give you solid proof. If there
were any danger, _I_ wouldn't be here. All that has happened is that
the warmth of your reception of the play has set a piece of scenery
alight. . . ."

A crimson-faced stage-hand, carrying an axe in blackened hands,
roared in Jill's ear.

"Gerroutofit!"

Jill looked at him, puzzled.

"'Op it!" shouted the stage-hand. He cast his axe down with a
clatter. "Can't you see the place is afire?"

"But--but I'm waiting for . . ." Jill pointed to where her ally was
still addressing an audience that seemed reluctant to stop and listen
to him.

The stage-hand squinted out round the edge of the curtain.

"If he's a friend of yours, miss, kindly get 'im to cheese it and get
a move on. We're clearing out. There's nothing we can do. It's got
too much of an 'old. In about another two ticks the roof's going to
drop on us."

Jill's friend came squeezing back through the opening.

"Hullo! Still here?" He blinked approvingly at her through the smoke.
"You're a little soldier! Well, Augustus, what's on your mind?" The
simple question seemed to take the stage-hand aback.

"Wot's on my mind? I'll tell you wot's on my blinking mind . . ."

"Don't tell me. Let me guess. I've got it! The place is on fire!"

The stage-hand expectorated disgustedly. Flippancy at such a moment
offended his sensibilities.

"We're 'opping it," he said.

"Great minds think alike! We are hopping it, too."

"You'd better! And damn quick!"

"And, as you suggest, damn quick! You think of everything!"

Jill followed him across the stage. Her heart was beating violently.
There was not only smoke now, but heat. Across the stage little
scarlet flames were shooting, and something large and hard, unseen
through the smoke, fell with a crash. The air was heavy with the
smell of burning paint.

"Where's Sir Portwood Chester?" enquired her companion of the
stage-hand, who hurried beside them.

"'Opped it!" replied the other briefly, and coughed raspingly as he
swallowed smoke.

"Strange," said the man in Jill's ear, as he pulled her along. "This
way. Stick to me. Strange how the drama anticipates life! At the end
of act two there was a scene where Sir Chester had to creep sombrely
out into the night, and now he's gone and done it! Ah!"

They had stumbled through a doorway and were out in a narrow passage,
where the air, though tainted, was comparatively fresh. Jill drew a
deep breath. Her companion turned to the stage-hand and felt in his
pocket.

"Here, Rollo!" A coin changed hands. "Go and get a drink. You need it
after all this."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't mention it. You've saved our lives. Suppose you hadn't come up
and told us, and we had never noticed there was a fire! Charred
bones, believed to be those of a man and a woman, were found in the
ruined edifice!"

He turned to Jill. "Here's the stage-door. Shall we creep sombrely
out into the night?"

The guardian of the stage-door was standing in the entrance of his
little hutch, plainly perplexed. He was a slow thinker and a man
whose life was ruled by routine: and the events of the evening had
left him uncertain how to act.

"Wot's all this about a fire?" he demanded.

Jill's friend stopped.

"A fire?" He looked at Jill. "Did you hear anything about a fire?"

"They all come bustin' past 'ere yelling there's a fire," persisted
the door-man.

"By George! Now I come to think of it, you're perfectly right! There
_is_ a fire! If you wait here a little longer, you'll get it in the
small of the back. Take the advice of an old friend who means you
well and vanish. In the inspired words of the lad we've just parted
from, 'op it!"

The stage-door man turned this over in his mind for a space.

"But I'm supposed to stay 'ere till eleven-thirty and lock up!" he
said. "That's what I'm supposed to do. Stay 'ere till eleven-thirty
and lock up! And it ain't but ten-forty-five now."

"I see the difficulty," said Jill's companion thoughtfully. "It's
what you might call an _impasse_. French! Well, Casabianca, I'm
afraid I don't see how to help you. It's a matter for your own
conscience. I don't want to lure you from the burning deck: on the
other hand, if you stick on here, you'll most certainly be fried on
both sides . . . But, tell me. You spoke about locking up something
at eleven-thirty. What are you supposed to lock up?"

"Why, the theatre."

"Then that's all right. By eleven-thirty there won't be a theatre. If
I were you, I should leave quietly and unostentatiously now.
Tomorrow, if you wish it, and if they've cooled off sufficiently, you
can come and sit on the ruins. Good night!"


2.

Outside, the air was cold and crisp. Jill drew her warm cloak closer.
Round the corner there was noise and shouting. Fire-engines had
arrived. Jill's companion lit a cigarette.

"Do you wish to stop and see the conflagration?" he asked.

Jill shivered. She was more shaken than she had realized.

"I've seen all the conflagration I want."

"Same here. Well, it's been an exciting evening. Started slow, I
admit, but warmed up later! What I seem to need at the moment is a
restorative stroll along the Embankment. Do you know, Sir Portwood
Chester didn't like the title of my play. He said 'Tried by Fire' was
too melodramatic. Well, he can't say now it wasn't appropriate."

They made their way towards the river, avoiding the street which was
blocked by the crowds and the fire-engines. As they crossed the
Strand, the man looked back. A red glow was in the sky.

"A great blaze!" he said. "What you might call--in fact what the
papers will call--a holocaust. Quite a treat for the populace."

"Do you think they will be able to put it out?"

"Not a chance. It's got too much of a hold. It's a pity you hadn't
that garden-hose of yours with you, isn't it!"

Jill stopped, wide-eyed.

"Garden-hose?"

"Don't you remember the garden-hose? I do! I can feel that clammy
feeling of the water trickling down my back now!"

Memory, always a laggard by the wayside that redeems itself by an
eleventh-hour rush, raced back to Jill. The Embankment turned to a
sunlit garden, and the January night to a July day. She stared at
him. He was looking at her with a whimsical smile. It was a smile
which, pleasant today, had seemed mocking and hostile on that
afternoon years ago. She had always felt then that he was laughing at
her, and at the age of twelve she had resented laughter at her
expense.

"You surely can't be Wally Mason!"

"I was wondering when you would remember."

"But the programme called you something else,--John something."

"That was a cunning disguise. Wally Mason is the only genuine and
official name. And, by Jove! I've just remembered yours. It was
Mariner. By the way,"--he paused for an almost imperceptible
instant--"is it still?"



CHAPTER FOUR


1.

Jill was hardly aware that he had asked her a question. She was
suffering that momentary sense of unreality which comes to us when
the years roll away and we are thrown abruptly hack into the days of
our childhood. The logical side of her mind was quite aware that
there was nothing remarkable in the fact that Wally Mason, who had
been to her all these years a boy in an Eton suit, should now present
himself as a grown man. But for all that the transformation had
something of the effect of a conjuring-trick. It was not only the
alteration in his appearance that startled her: it was the amazing
change in his personality. Wally Mason had been the _bete noire_ of
her childhood. She had never failed to look back at the episode of
the garden-hose with the feeling that she had acted well,
that--however she might have strayed in those early days from the
straight and narrow path--in that one particular crisis she had done
the right thing. And now she had taken an instant liking for him.
Easily as she made friends, she had seldom before felt so immediately
drawn to a strange man. Gone was the ancient hostility, and in its
place a soothing sense of comradeship. The direct effect of this was
to make Jill feel suddenly old. It was as if some link that joined
her to her childhood had been snapped.

She glanced down the Embankment. Close by, to the left, Waterloo
Bridge loomed up, dark and massive against the steel-gray sky, A
tram-car, full of home-bound travellers, clattered past over rails
that shone with the peculiarly frostbitten gleam that seems to herald
snow. Across the river, everything was dark and mysterious, except
for an occasional lamp-post and the dim illumination of the wharves.
It was a depressing prospect, and the thought crossed her mind that
to the derelicts whose nightly resting-place was a seat on the
Embankment the view must seem even bleaker than it did to herself.
She gave a little shiver. Somehow this sudden severance from the old
days had brought with it a forlornness. She seemed to be standing
alone in a changed world.

"Cold?" said Wally Mason.

"A little."

"Let's walk."

They moved westwards. Cleopatra's Needle shot up beside them, a
pointing finger. Down on the silent river below, coffin-like
row-boats lay moored to the wall. Through a break in the trees the
clock over the Houses of Parliament shone for an instant as if
suspended in the sky, then vanished as the trees closed in. A distant
barge in the direction of Battersea wailed and was still. It had a
mournful and foreboding sound. Jill shivered again. It annoyed her
that she could not shake off this quite uncalled-for melancholy, but
it withstood every effort. Why she should have felt that a chapter, a
pleasant chapter, in the book of her life had been closed, she could
not have said, but the feeling lingered.

"Correct me if I am wrong," said Wally Mason, breaking a silence that
had lasted several minutes, "but you seem to me to be freezing in
your tracks. Ever since I came to London I've had a habit of heading
for the Embankment in times of mental stress, but perhaps the middle
of winter is not quite the moment for communing with the night. The
Savoy is handy, if we stop walking away from it. I think we might
celebrate this reunion with a little supper, don't you?"

Jill's depression disappeared magically. Her mercurial temperament
asserted itself.

"Lights!" she said. "Music!"

"And food! To an ethereal person like you that remark may seem gross,
but I had no dinner."

"You poor dear! Why not?"

"Just nervousness."

"Why, of course." The interlude of the fire had caused her to forget
his private and personal connection with the night's events. Her mind
went back to something he had said in the theatre. "Wally--" She
stopped, a little embarrassed. "I suppose I ought to call you Mr
Mason, but I've always thought of you . . ."

"Wally, if you please, Jill. It's not as though we were strangers. I
haven't my book of etiquette with me, but I fancy that about eleven
gallons of cold water down the neck constitutes an introduction. What
were you going to say?"

"It was what you said to Freddie about putting up money. Did you
really?"

"Put up the money for that ghastly play? I did. Every cent. It was
the only way to get it put on."

"But why . . . ? I forget what I was going to say!"

"Why did I want it put on? Well, it does seem odd, but I give you my
honest word that until tonight I thought the darned thing a
masterpiece. I've been writing musical comedies for the last few
years, and after you've done that for a while your soul rises up
within you and says, 'Come, come, my lad! You can do better than
this!' That's what mine said, and I believed it. Subsequent events
have proved that Sidney the Soul was pulling my leg!"

"But--then you've lost a great deal of money?"

"The hoarded wealth, if you don't mind my being melodramatic for a
moment, of a lifetime. And no honest old servitor who dangled me on
his knee as a baby to come along and offer me his savings! They don't
make servitors like that in America, worse luck. There is a Swedish
lady who looks after my simple needs back there, but instinct tells
me that, if I were to approach her on the subject of loosening up for
the benefit of the young master, she would call a cop. Still, I've
gained experience, which they say is just as good as cash, and I've
enough money left to pay the check, at any rate, so come along."

* * *

In the supper-room of the Savoy Hotel there was, as anticipated, food
and light and music. It was still early, and the theatres had not yet
emptied themselves, so that the fog room was as yet but half full.
Wally Mason had found a table in the corner, and proceeded to order
with the concentration of a hungry man.

"Forgive my dwelling so tensely on the bill-of-fare," he said, when
the waiter had gone. "You don't know what it means to one in my
condition to have to choose between poulet en casserole and kidneys a
la maitre d'hotel. A man's cross-roads!"

Jill smiled happily across the table at him. She could hardly believe
that this old friend with whom she had gone through the perils of the
night and with whom she was now about to feast was the sinister
figure that had cast a shadow on her childhood. He looked positively
incapable of pulling a little girl's hair--as no doubt he was.

"You always were greedy," she commented. "Just before I turned the
hose on you, I remember you had made yourself thoroughly disliked by
pocketing a piece of my birthday-cake."

"Do you remember that?" His eyes lit up and he smiled back at her. He
had an ingratiating smile. His mouth was rather wide, and it seemed
to stretch right across his face. He reminded Jill more than ever of
a big, friendly dog. "I can feel it now,--all squashy in my pocket,
inextricably mingled with a catapult, a couple of marbles, a box of
matches, and some string. I was quite the human general store in
those days. Which reminds me that we have been some time settling
down to an exchange of our childhood reminiscences, haven't we?"