Books: Jill the Reckless)

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Jill sat down on the lounge and laughed till there were tears in her
eyes. Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was
certainly making it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving
of censure, from the standpoint of the sterner morality, he made
amends. If he brought the whole world crashing in chaos about one's
ears, at least he helped one to smile among the ruins.

"Did you ever read 'Candide', Uncle Chris?"

"'Candide'?" Uncle Chris shook his head. He was not a great reader,
except of the sporting press.

"It's a book by Voltaire. There's a character in it called Doctor
Pangloss, who thought that everything was for the best in this best
of all possible worlds."

Uncle Chris felt a touch of embarrassment. It occurred to him that he
had been betrayed by his mercurial temperament into an attitude
which, considering the circumstances, was perhaps a trifle too
jubilant. He gave his mustache a pull, and reverted to the minor key.

"Oh, you mustn't think that I don't appreciate the terrible, the
criminal thing I have done! I blame myself," said Uncle Chris
cordially, flicking another speck of dust off his sleeve. "I blame
myself bitterly. Your mother ought never to have made me your
trustee, my dear. But she always believed in me, in spite of
everything, and this is how I have repaid her." He blew his nose to
cover a not unmanly emotion. "I wasn't fitted for the position. Never
become a trustee, Jill. It's the devil, is trust money. However much
you argue with yourself, you can't--dash it, you simply can't believe
that it's not your own, to do as you like with. There it sits,
smiling at you, crying 'Spend me! Spend me!' and you find yourself
dipping--dipping--till one day there's nothing left to dip for--only
a far-off rustling--the ghosts of dead bank-notes. That's how it was
with me. The process was almost automatic. I hardly knew it was going
on. Here a little--there a little. It was like snow melting on a
mountain-top. And one morning--all gone!" Uncle Chris drove the point
home with a gesture. "I did what I could. When I found that there
were only a few hundreds left, for your sake I took a chance. All
heart and no head! There you have Christopher Selby in a nutshell! A
man at the club--a fool named--I've forgotten his damn
name--recommended Amalgamated Dyestuffs as a speculation. Monroe,
that was his name, Jimmy Monroe. He talked about the future of
British Dyes now that Germany was out of the race, and . . . well,
the long and short of it was that I took his advice and bought on
margin. Bought like the devil. And this morning Amalgamated Dyestuffs
went all to blazes. There you have the whole story!"

"And now," said Jill, "comes the sequel!"

"The sequel?" said Uncle Chris breezily. "Happiness, my dear,
happiness! Wedding bells and--and all that sort of thing!" He
straddled the hearth-rug manfully, and swelled his chest out. He
would permit no pessimism on this occasion of rejoicing. "You don't
suppose that the fact of your having lost your money--that is to
say--er--of my having lost your money--will affect a splendid young
fellow like Derek Underhill? I know him better than to think that!
I've always liked him. He's a man you can trust! Besides," he added
reflectively, "there's no need to tell him! Till after the wedding, I
mean. It won't be hard to keep up appearances here for a month or
so."

"Of course I must tell him!"

"You think it wise?"

"I don't know about it being wise. It's the only thing to do. I must
see him tonight. Oh, I forgot. He was going away this afternoon for a
day or two."

"Capital! It will give you time to think it over."

"I don't want to think it over. There's nothing to think about."

"Of course, yes, of course. Quite so."

"I shall write him a letter."

"Write, eh?"

"It's easier to put what one wants to say in a letter."

"Letters," began Uncle Chris, and stopped as the door opened. Jane
the parlormaid entered, carrying a salver. "For me?" asked Uncle
Chris.

"For Miss Jill, sir."

Jill took the note off the salver.

"It's from Derek."

"There's a messenger-boy waiting, miss," said Jane. "He wasn't told
if there was an answer."

"If the note is from Derek," said Uncle Chris, "it's not likely to
want an answer. You said he left town today."

Jill opened the envelope.

"Is there an answer, miss?" asked Jane, after what she considered a
suitable interval. She spoke tenderly. She was a great admirer of
Derek, and considered it a pretty action on his part to send notes
like this when he was compelled to leave London.

"Any answer, Jill?"

Jill seemed to rouse herself. She had turned oddly pale.

"No, no answer, Jane."

"Thank you, miss," said Jane, and went off to tell cook that in her
opinion Jill was lacking in heart. "It might have been a bill instead
of a love-letter," said Jane to the cook with indignation, "the way
she read it. _I_ like people to have a little feeling!"

Jill sat turning the letter over and over in her fingers. Her face
was very white. There seemed to be a big, heavy, leaden something
inside her. A cold hand clutched her throat. Uncle Chris, who at
first had noticed nothing untoward, now began to find the silence
sinister.

"No bad news, I hope, dear?"

Jill turned the letter between her fingers.

"Jill, is it bad news?"

"Derek has broken off the engagement," said Jill in a dull voice. She
let the note fall to the floor, and sat with her chin in her hands.

"What!" Uncle Chris leaped from the hearth-rug, as though the fire
had suddenly scorched him. "What did you say?"

"He's broken it off."

"The hound!" cried Uncle Chris. "The blackguard! The--the--I never
liked that man! I never trusted him!" He fumed for a moment.
"But--but--it isn't possible. How can he have heard about what's
happened? He couldn't know. It's--it's--it isn't possible!"

"He doesn't know. It has nothing to do with that."

"But . . ." Uncle Chris stooped to where the note lay. "May I . . . ?"

"Yes, you can read it if you like."

Uncle Chris produced a pair of reading-glasses, and glared through
them at the sheet of paper as though it were some loathsome insect.

"The hound! The cad! If I were a younger man," shouted Uncle Chris,
smiting the letter violently, "if I were . . . Jill! My dear little
Jill!"

He plunged down on his knees beside her, as she buried her face in
her hands and began to sob.

"My little girl! Damn that man! My dear little girl! The cad! The
devil! My own darling little girl! I'll thrash him within an inch of
his life!"

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes. Jill got up.
Her face was wet and quivering, but her mouth had set in a brave
line.

"Jill, dear!"

She let his hand close over hers.

"Everything's happening all at once this afternoon, Uncle Chris,
isn't it!" She smiled a twisted smile. "You look so funny! Your
hair's all rumpled, and your glasses are over on one side!"

Uncle Chris breathed heavily through his nose.

"When I meet that man . . ." he began portentously.

"Oh, what's the good of bothering! It's not worth it! Nothing's worth
it!" Jill stopped, and faced him, her hands clenched. "Let's get
away! Let's get right away! I want to get right away, Uncle Chris!
Take me away! Anywhere! Take me to America with you! I must get
away!"

Uncle Chris raised his right hand, and shook it. His reading-glasses,
hanging from his left ear, bobbed drunkenly.

"We'll sail by the next boat! The very next boat, dammit! I'll take
care of you, dear. I've been a blackguard to you, my little girl.
I've robbed you, and swindled you. But I'll make up for it, by
George! I'll make up for it! I'll give you a new home, as good as
this, if I die for it. There's nothing I won't do! Nothing! By Jove!"
shouted Uncle Chris, raising his voice in a red-hot frenzy of
emotion, "I'll work! Yes, by Gad, if it comes right down to it, I'll
work!"

He brought his fist down with a crash on the table where Derek's
flowers stood in their bowl. The bowl leaped in the air and tumbled
over, scattering the flowers on the floor.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1.

In the lives of each one of us, as we look back and review them in
retrospect, there are certain desert wastes from which memory winces
like some tired traveller faced with a dreary stretch of road. Even
from the security of later happiness we cannot contemplate them
without a shudder. Time robs our sorrows of their sharp vividness,
but the horror of those blank, gray days never wholly passes. It
remains for ever at the back of our consciousness to remind us that,
though we may have struggled through it to the heights, there is an
abyss. We may dwell, like the Pilgrim, on the Delectable Mountains,
but we never forget the Slough of Despond. Years afterwards, Jill
could not bring herself to think of that brief but age-long period
which lay between the evening when she read Derek's letter and the
morning when, with the wet sea-wind in her face and the cry of the
wheeling sea-gulls in her ears, she stood on the deck of the liner
that was taking her to the land where she could begin a new life. It
brooded behind her like a great, dank cloud, shutting out the
sunshine.

The conditions of modern life are singularly inimical to swift and
dramatic action when we wish to escape from surroundings that have
become intolerable. In the old days, your hero would leap on his
charger and ride out into the sunset. Now, he is compelled to remain
for a week or so to settle his affairs,--especially if he is an Uncle
Chris--and has got those affairs into such a tangle that hardened
lawyers knit their brows at the sight of them. It took one of the
most competent firms in the metropolis four days to produce some sort
of order in the confusion resulting from Major Selby's financial
operations; and during those days Jill existed in a state of being
which could be defined as living only in that she breathed and ate
and comported herself outwardly like a girl and not a ghost.

Boards announcing that the house was for sale appeared against the
railings through which Jane the parlormaid conducted her daily
conversations with the tradesmen. Strangers roamed the rooms eyeing
and appraising the furniture. Uncle Chris, on whom disaster had had a
quickening and vivifying effect, was everywhere at once, an
impressive figure of energy. One may be wronging Uncle Chris, but to
the eye of the casual observer he seemed in these days of trial to be
having the time of his life.

Jill varied the monotony of sitting in her room--which was the only
place in the house where one might be sure of not encountering a
furniture-broker's man with a note-book and pencil--by taking long
walks. She avoided as far as possible the small area which had once
made up the whole of London for her, but even so she was not always
successful in escaping from old acquaintances. Once, cutting through
Lennox Gardens on her way to that vast, desolate King's Road which
stretches its length out into regions unknown to those whose London
is the West End, she happened upon Freddie Rooke, who had been paying
a call in his best hat and a pair of white spats which would have cut
his friend Henry to the quick. It was not an enjoyable meeting.
Freddie, keenly alive to the awkwardness of the situation, was
scarlet and incoherent; and Jill, who desired nothing less than to
talk with one so intimately connected in her mind with all that she
had lost, was scarcely more collected. They parted without regret.
The only satisfaction that came to Jill from the encounter was the
knowledge that Derek was still out of town. He had wired for his
things, said Freddie and had retreated further north. Freddie, it
seemed, had been informed of the broken engagement by Lady Underhill
in an interview which appeared to have left a lasting impression on
his mind. Of Jill's monetary difficulties he had heard nothing.

After this meeting, Jill felt a slight diminution of the oppression
which weighed upon her. She could not have borne to have come
unexpectedly upon Derek, and, now that there was no danger of that,
she found life a little easier. The days passed somehow, and finally
there came the morning when, accompanied by Uncle Chris--voluble and
explanatory about the details of what he called "getting everything
settled"--she rode in a taxi to take the train for Southampton. Her
last impression of London was of rows upon rows of mean houses, of
cats wandering in back-yards among groves of home-washed
underclothing, and a smoky grayness which gave way, as the train
raced on, to the clearer gray of the suburbs and the good green and
brown of the open country.

Then the bustle and confusion of the liner; the calm monotony of the
journey, when one came on deck each morning to find the vessel so
manifestly in the same spot where it had been the morning before that
it was impossible to realize how many hundred miles of ocean had
really been placed behind one; and finally the Ambrose Channel
lightship and the great bulk of New York rising into the sky like a
city of fairyland, heartening yet sinister, at once a welcome and a
menace.

"There you are, my dear!" said Uncle Chris indulgently, as though it
were a toy he had made for her with his own hands. "New York!"

They were standing on the boat-deck, leaning over the rail. Jill
caught her breath. For the first time since disaster had come upon
her she was conscious of a rising of her spirits. It is impossible to
behold the huge buildings which fringe the harbor of New York without
a sense of expectancy and excitement. There had remained in Jill's
mind from childhood memories a vague picture of what she now saw, but
it had been feeble and inadequate. The sight of this towering city
seemed somehow to blot out everything that had gone before. The
feeling of starting afresh was strong upon her.

Uncle Chris, the old traveller, was not emotionally affected. He
smoked placidly and talked in a wholly earthy strain of grape-fruit
and buckwheat cakes.

It was now, also for the first time, that Uncle Chris touched upon
future prospects in a practical manner. On the voyage he had been
eloquent but sketchy. With the land of promise within biscuit-throw
and the tugs bustling about the great liner's skirts like little dogs
about their mistress, he descended to details.

"I shall get a room somewhere," said Uncle Chris, "and start looking
about me. I wonder if the old Holland House is still there. I fancy I
heard they'd pulled it down. Capital place. I had a steak there in
the year . . . But I expect they've pulled it down. But I shall find
somewhere to go. I'll write and tell you my address directly I've got
one."

Jill removed her gaze from the sky-line with a start.

"Write to me?"

"Didn't I tell you about that?" said Uncle Chris cheerily,--avoiding
her eye, however, for he had realized all along that it might be a
little bit awkward breaking the news. "I've arranged that you shall
go and stay for the time being down at Brookport--on Long Island, you
know--over in that direction--with your Uncle Elmer. Daresay you've
forgotten you have an Uncle Elmer, eh?" he went on quickly, as Jill
was about to speak. "Your father's brother. Used to be in business,
but retired some years ago and goes in for amateur farming. Corn
and--and corn," said Uncle Chris. "All that sort of thing. You'll
like him. Capital chap! Never met him myself, but always heard," said
Uncle Chris, who had never to his recollection heard any comments
upon Mr Elmer Mariner whatever, "that he was a splendid fellow.
Directly we decided to sail, I cabled to him, and got an answer
saying that he would be delighted to put you up. You'll be quite
happy there."

Jill listened to this programme with dismay. New York was calling to
her, and Brookport held out no attractions at all. She looked down
over the side at the tugs puffing their way through the broken blocks
of ice that reminded her of a cocoanut candy familiar to her
childhood.

"But I want to be with you," she protested.

"Impossible, my dear, for the present. I shall be very busy, very
busy indeed for some weeks, until I have found my feet. Really, you
would be in the way. He--er--travels the fastest who travels alone! I
must be in a position to go anywhere and do anything at a moment's
notice. But always remember, my dear," said Uncle Chris, patting her
shoulder affectionately, "that I shall be working for you. I have
treated you very badly, but I intend to make up for it. I shall not
forget that whatever money I may make will really belong to you." He
looked at her benignly, like a monarch of finance who has ear-marked
a million or two for the benefit of a deserving charity. "You shall
have it all, Jill."

He had so much the air of having conferred a substantial benefit upon
her that Jill felt obliged to thank him. Uncle Chris had always been
able to make people grateful for the phantom gold which he showered
upon them. He was as lavish a man with the money he was going to get
next week as ever borrowed a five-pound note to see him through till
Saturday.

"What are you going to do, Uncle Chris?" asked Jill curiously. Apart
from a nebulous idea that he intended to saunter through the city
picking dollar-bills off the sidewalk, she had no inkling of his
plans.

Uncle Chris toyed with his short mustache. He was not quite equal to
a direct answer on the spur of the moment. He had a faith in his
star. Something would turn up. Something always had turned up in the
old days, and doubtless, with the march of civilization,
opportunities had multiplied. Somewhere behind those tall buildings
the Goddess of Luck awaited him, her hands full of gifts, but
precisely what those gifts would be he was not in a position to say.

"I shall--ah--how shall I put it--?"

"Look round?" suggested Jill.

"Precisely," said Uncle Chris gratefully. "Look round. I daresay you
have noticed that I have gone out of my way during the voyage to make
myself agreeable to our fellow-travellers? I had an object.
Acquaintances begun on shipboard will often ripen into useful
friendships ashore. When I was a young man I never neglected the
opportunities which an ocean voyage affords. The offer of a book
here, a steamer-rug there, a word of encouragement to a chatty bore
in the smoke-room--these are small things, but they may lead to much.
One meets influential people on a liner. You wouldn't think it to
look at him, but that man with the eye-glasses and the thin nose I
was talking to just now is one of the richest men in Milwaukee!"

"But it's not much good having rich friends in Milwaukee when you are
in New York!"

"Exactly. There you have put your finger on the very point I have
been trying to make. It will probably be necessary for me to travel.
And for that I must be alone. I must be a mobile force. I should
dearly like to keep you with me, but you can see for yourself that
for the moment you would be an encumbrance. Later on, no doubt, when
my affairs are more settled . . ."

"Oh, I understand. I'm resigned. But, oh dear! it's going to be very
dull down at Brookport."

"Nonsense, nonsense! It's a delightful spot."

"Have you been there?"

"No! But of course everybody knows Brookport! Healthy, invigorating
. . . Sure to be! The very name . . . You'll be as happy as the days
are long!"

"And how long the days will be!"

"Come, come! You mustn't look on the dark side!"

"Is there another?" Jill laughed. "You are an old hum-bug, Uncle
Chris. You know perfectly well what you're condemning me to! I expect
Brookport will be like a sort of Southend in winter. Oh, well, I'll
be brave. But do hurry and make a fortune, because I want to come to
New York."

"My dear," said Uncle Chris solemnly, "if there is a dollar lying
loose in this city, rest assured that I shall have it! And, if it's
not loose, I will detach it with the greatest possible speed. You
have only known me in my decadence, an idle and unprofitable London
clubman. I can assure you that, lurking beneath the surface, there is
a business acumen given to few men . . ."

"Oh, if you are going to talk poetry," said Jill, "I'll leave you.
Anyhow, I ought to be getting below and putting my things together.
Subject for a historical picture,--The Belle of Brookport collecting
a few simple necessaries before entering upon the conquest of
America."

2.

If Jill's vision of Brookport as a wintery Southend was not entirely
fulfilled, neither was Uncle Chris' picture of it as an earthly
paradise. At the right time of the year, like most of the summer
resorts on the south shore of Long Island, it is not without its
attractions; but January is not the month which most people would
choose for living in it. It presented itself to Jill on first
acquaintance in the aspect of a wind-swept railroad station, dumped
down far away from human habitation in the middle of a stretch of
flat and ragged country that reminded her a little of parts of
Surrey. The station was just a shed on a foundation of planks which
lay flush with the rails. From this shed, as the train clanked in,
there emerged a tall, shambling man in a weather-beaten overcoat. He
had a clean-shaven, wrinkled face, and he looked doubtfully at Jill
with small eyes. Something in his expression reminded Jill of her
father, as a bad caricature of a public man will recall the original,
she introduced herself.

"If you're Uncle Elmer," she said, "I'm Jill."

The man held out a long hand. He did not smile. He was as bleak as
the east wind that swept the platform.

"Glad to meet you again," he said in a melancholy voice. It was news
to Jill that they had met before. She wondered where. Her uncle
supplied the information. "Last time I saw you, you were a kiddy in
short frocks, running around and shouting to beat the band." He
looked up and down the platform. "_I_ never heard a child make so
much noise!"

"I'm quite quiet now," said Jill encouragingly. The recollection of
her infant revelry seemed to her to be distressing her relative.

It appeared, however, that it was not only this that was on his mind.

"If you want to drive home," he said, "we'll have to phone to the
Durham House for a hack." He brooded awhile, Jill remaining silent at
his side, loath to break in upon whatever secret sorrow he was
wrestling with. "That would be a dollar," he went on. "They're
robbers in these parts! A dollar! And it's not over a mile and a
half. Are you fond of walking?"

Jill was a bright girl, and could take a hint.

"I love walking," she said. She might have added that she preferred
to do it on a day when the wind was not blowing quite so keenly from
the East, but her uncle's obvious excitement at the prospect of
cheating the rapacity of the sharks at the Durham House restrained
her. Her independent soul had not quite adjusted itself to the
prospect of living on the bounty of her fellows, relatives though
they were, and she was desirous of imposing as light a burden upon
them as possible. "But how about my trunk?"

"The expressman will bring that up. Fifty cents!" said Uncle Elmer in
a crushed way. The high cost of entertaining seemed to be afflicting
this man deeply.

"Oh, yes," said Jill. She could not see how this particular
expenditure was to be avoided. Anxious as she was to make herself
pleasant, she declined to consider carrying the trunk to their
destination. "Shall we start, then?"

Mr Mariner led the way out into the ice-covered road. The wind
welcomed them like a boisterous dog. For some minutes they proceeded
in silence.

"Your aunt will be glad to see you," said Mr Mariner at last in the
voice with which one announces the death of a dear friend.

"It's awfully kind of you to have me to stay with you," said Jill. It
is a human tendency to think, when crises occur, in terms of
melodrama, and unconsciously she had begun to regard herself somewhat
in the light of a heroine driven out into the world from the old
home, with no roof to shelter her head. The promptitude with which
these good people, who, though relatives, were after all complete
strangers, had offered her a resting-place touched her. "I hope I
shan't be in the way."

"Major Selby was speaking to me on the telephone just now," said Mr
Mariner, "and he said that you might be thinking of settling down in
Brookport. I've some nice little places round here which you might
like to look at. Rent or buy. It's cheaper to buy. Brookport's a
growing place. It's getting known as a summer resort. There's a
bungalow down on the shore I'd like to show you tomorrow. Stands in a
nice large plot of ground, and if you bought it for twelve thousand
you'd be getting a bargain."

Jill was too astonished to speak. Plainly Uncle Chris had made no
mention of the change in her fortunes, and this man looked on her as
a girl of wealth. She could only think how typical this was of Uncle
Chris. There was a sort of boyish impishness about him. She could see
him at the telephone, suave and important. He would have hung up the
receiver with a complacent smirk, thoroughly satisfied that he had
done her an excellent turn.

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