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JILL THE RECKLESS

P. G. WODEHOUSE

HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED

3 DUKE OF YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S, LONDON, S.W. 1

MY WIFE BLESS HER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. The Family Curse 9

II. The First Night at the Leicester 34

III. Jill and the Unknown Escape 45

IV. The Last of the Rookes Takes a Hand 51

V. Lady Underhill Receives a Shock 68

VI. Uncle Chris Bangs the Table 82

VII. Jill Catches the 10.10 106

VIII. The Dry-Salters Wing Derek 119

IX. Jill in Search of an Uncle 131

X. Jill Ignores Authority 142

XI. Mr. Pilkington's Love Light 151

XII. Uncle Chris Borrows a Flat 168

XIII. The Ambassador Arrives 180

XIV. Mr. Goble Makes the Big Noise 193

XV. Jill Explains 218

XVI. Mr. Goble Plays with Fate 230

XVII. The Cost of a Row 252

XVIII. Jill Receives Notice 260

XIX. Mrs. Peagrim Burns Incense 278

XX. Derek Loses One Bird and Secures Another 287

XXI. Wally Mason Learns a New Exercise 308

JILL THE RECKLESS [9]

CHAPTER I

THE FAMILY CURSE I

Freddie Rooke gazed coldly at the breakfast-table. Through a gleaming eyeglass he inspected the revolting object which Barker, his faithful man, had placed on a plate before him.

"Barker!" His voice had a ring of pain. "Sir?"

"What's this?" "Poached egg, sir."

Freddie averted his eyes with a silent shudder.

"It looks just like an old aunt of mine," he said. "Remove it!"

He got up, and, wrapping his dressing-gown about his long legs, took up a stand in front of the fireplace. From this position he surveyed the room, his shoulders against the mantelpiece, his calves pressing the club fender. It was a cheerful oasis in a chill and foggy world, a typical London bachelor's breakfast-room. The walls were a restful grey, and the table, set for two, a comfortable arrangement in white and silver.

"Eggs, Barker," said Freddie solemnly, "are the acid test!" "Yes, sir?"

"If, on the morning after, you can tackle a poached egg, you are all right. If not, not. And don't let anybody tell you otherwise." "No, sir."

Freddie pressed the palm of his hand to his brow, and sighed.[10]

"It would seem, then, that I must have revelled a trifle whole-heartedly last night. I was possibly a little blotto. Not whiffled, perhaps,

but indisputably blotto. Did I make much noise coming in?" "No, sir. You were very quiet."

"Ah! A dashed bad sign!"

Freddie moved to the table, and poured himself a cup of coffee. "The cream jug is to your right, sir," said the helpful Barker.

"Let it remain there. Cafe noir for me this morning. As noir as it can jolly well stick!" Freddie retired to the fireplace and sipped

delicately. "As far as I can remember, it was Ronny Devereux' birthday or something...."

"Mr. Martyn's, I think you said, sir."

"That's right. Algy Martyn's birthday, and Ronny and I were the guests. It all comes back to me. I wanted Derek to roll along and join the festivities--he's never met Ronny--but he gave it a miss. Quite right! A chap in his position has responsibilities. Member of Parliament and all that. Besides," said Freddie earnestly, driving home the point with a wave of his spoon, "he's engaged to be married. You must remember that, Barker!"

"I will endeavour to, sir."

"Sometimes," said Freddie dreamily, "I wish I were engaged to be married. Sometimes I wish I had some sweet girl to watch over me and.... No, I don't, by Jove. It would give me the utter pip! Is Sir Derek up yet, Barker?"

"Getting up, sir."

"See that everything is all right, will you? I mean as regards the food-stuffs and what not. I want him to make a good breakfast. He's got to meet his mother this morning at Charing Cross. She's legging it back from the Riviera."

"Indeed, sir?"

Freddie shook his head.

"You wouldn't speak in that light, careless tone if you knew her! Well, you'll see her to-night. She's coming here to dinner." "Yes, sir."

"Miss Mariner will be here, too. A foursome. Tell Mrs. Barker to pull up her socks and give us something pretty ripe. Soup, fish, all

that sort of thing. She knows. And[11] let's have a stoup of malvoisie from the oldest bin. This is a special occasion!"

"Her ladyship will be meeting Miss Mariner for the first time, sir?"

"You've put your finger on it! Absolutely the first time on this or any stage! We must all rally round and make the thing a success."

"I am sure Mrs. Barker will strain every nerve, sir." Barker moved to the door, carrying the rejected egg, and stepped aside to allow a tall, well-built man of about thirty to enter. "Good morning, Sir Derek."

"Morning, Barker."

Barker slid softly from the room. Derek Underhill sat down at the table. He was a strikingly handsome man, with a strong, forceful face, dark, lean and cleanly shaven. He was one of those men whom a stranger would instinctively pick out of a crowd as worthy of note. His only defect was that his heavy eyebrows gave him at times an expression which was a little forbidding. Women, however, had never been repelled by it. He was very popular with women, not quite so popular with men--always excepting Freddie Rooke, who worshipped him. They had been at school together, though Freddie was the younger by several years.

"Finished, Freddie?" asked Derek. Freddie smiled wanly.

"We are not breakfasting this morning," he replied. "The spirit was willing, but the jolly old flesh would have none of it. To be perfectly frank, the Last of the Rookes has a bit of a head."

"Ass!" said Derek.

"A bit of sympathy," said Freddie, pained, "would not be out of place. We are far from well. Some person unknown has put a thresh-ing-machine inside the old bean and substituted a piece of brown paper for our tongue. Things look dark and yellow and wobbly!"

"You shouldn't have overdone it last night."

"It was Algy Martyn's birthday," pleaded Freddie.

"If I were an ass like Algy Martyn," said Derek, "I wouldn't go about advertising the fact that I'd been born. I'd hush it up!"

He helped himself to a plentiful portion of kedgeree, Freddie watching him with repulsion mingled with envy.[12] When he began to eat the spectacle became too poignant for the sufferer, and he wandered to the window.

"What a beast of a day!"

It was an appalling day. January, that grim month, was treating London with its usual severity. Early in the morning a bank of fog had rolled up off the river, and was deepening from pearly white to a lurid brown. It pressed on the window-pane like a blanket, leaving dark, damp rivulets on the glass.

"Awful!" said Derek,

"Your mater's train will be late."

"Yes. Damned nuisance. It's bad enough meeting trains in any case, without having to hang about a draughty station for an hour." "And it's sure, I should imagine," went on Freddie, pursuing his train of thought, "to make the dear old thing pretty tolerably ratty, if

she has one of those slow journeys." He pottered back to the fireplace, and rubbed his shoulders reflectively against the mantelpiece.

"I take it that you wrote to her about Jill?"

"Of course. That's why she's coming over, I suppose. By the way, you got those seats for that theatre to-night?"

"Yes. Three together and one somewhere on the outskirts. If it's all the same to you, old thing, I'll have the one on the outskirts." Derek, who had finished his kedgeree and was now making himself a blot on Freddie's horizon with toast and marmalade, laughed. "What a rabbit you are, Freddie! Why on earth are you so afraid of mother?"

Freddie looked at him as a timid young squire might have gazed upon St. George when the latter set out to do battle with the dragon. He was of the amiable type which makes heroes of its friends. In the old days when he had fagged for him at Winchester he had thought Derek the most wonderful person in the world, and this view he still retained. Indeed, subsequent events had strengthened

it. Derek had done the most amazing things since leaving school. He had had a brilliant career at Oxford, and now, in the House of Commons, was already looked upon by the leaders of his party as one to be watched and encouraged. He played polo superlatively well, and was a fine shot. But of all his gifts and qualities the one that extorted Freddie's admiration in[13] its intensest form was his lion-like courage as exemplified by his behaviour in the present crisis. There he sat, placidly eating toast and marmalade, while the boat-train containing Lady Underhill already sped on its way from Dover to London. It was like Drake playing bowls with the Span-ish Armada in sight.

"I wish I had your nerve!" he said awed. "What I should be feeling, if I were in your place and had to meet your mater after telling her that I was engaged to marry a girl she had never seen, I don't know. I'd rather face a wounded tiger!"

"Idiot!" said Derek placidly.

"Not," pursued Freddie, "that I mean to say anything in the least derogatory and so forth to your jolly old mater, if you understand me, but the fact remains she scares me pallid. Always has, ever since the first time I went to stay at your place when I was a kid. I can still remember catching her eye the morning I happened by pure chance to bung an apple through her bedroom window, meaning to let a cat on the sill below have it in the short ribs. She was at least thirty feet away, but, by Jove, it stopped me like a bullet!"

"Push the bell, old man, will you? I want some more toast." Freddie did as he was requested, with growing admiration.

"The condemned man made an excellent breakfast," he murmured. "More toast, Barker," he added, as that admirable servitor opened the door. "Gallant! That's what I call it. Gallant!"

Derek tilted his chair back.

"Mother is sure to like Jill when she sees her," he said.

"When she sees her! Ah! But the trouble is, young feller-me-lad, that she hasn't seen her! That's the weak spot in your case, old companion. A month ago she didn't know of Jill's existence. Now, you know and I know that Jill is one of the best and brightest. As far as we are concerned, everything in the good old garden is lovely. Why, dash it, Jill and I were children together. Sported side by side on the green, and what not. I remember Jill, when she was twelve, turning the garden hose on me and knocking about seventy-five per cent off the market value of my best Sunday suit. That sort of thing forms a bond, you know,[14] and I've always felt that she was a corker. But your mater's got to discover it for herself. It's a dashed pity, by Jove, that Jill hasn't a father or a mother or something of that species to rally round just now. They would form a gang. There's nothing like a gang! But she's only got that old uncle of hers. A rummy bird. Met him?"

"Several times. I like him."

"Oh, he's a genial old buck all right. A very bonhomous lad. But you hear some pretty queer stories about him if you get among peo-ple who knew him in the old days. Even now I'm not so dashed sure I should care to play cards with him. Young Threepwood was telling me only the other day that the old boy took thirty quid off him at picquet as clean as a whistle. And Jimmy Monroe, who's on the Stock Exchange, says he's frightfully busy these times buying margins or whatever it is chappies do down in the City. Margins. That's the word. Jimmy made me buy some myself on a thing called Amalgamated Dyes. I don't understand the procedure exactly,

but Jimmy says it's a sound egg and will do me a bit of good. What was I talking about? Oh, yes, old Selby. There's no doubt he's quite a sportsman. But till you've got Jill well established, you know, I shouldn't enlarge on him too much with the mater."

"On the contrary," said Derek, "I shall mention him at the first opportunity. He knew my father out in India."

"Did he, by Jove! Oh, well, that makes a difference."

Barker entered with the toast, and Derek resumed his breakfast.

"It may be a little bit awkward," he said, "at first, meeting mother. But everything will be all right after five minutes."

"Absolutely! But, oh, boy! that first five minutes!" Freddie gazed portentously through his eyeglass. Then he seemed to be undergo-ing some internal struggle, for he gulped once or twice. "That first five minutes!" he said, and paused again. A moment's silent self-communion, and he went on with a rush. "I say, listen. Shall I come along, too?"

"Come along?"

"To the station. With you." "What on earth for?"

"To see you through the opening stages. Break the ice,[15] and all that sort of thing. Nothing like collecting a gang, you know. Moments when a feller needs a friend and so forth. Say the word, and I'll buzz along and lend my moral support."

Derek's heavy eyebrows closed together in an offended frown, and seemed to darken his whole face. This unsolicited offer of assistance hurt his dignity. He showed a touch of the petulance which came now and then when he was annoyed, to suggest that he might not possess so strong a character as his exterior indicated.

"It's very kind of you," he began stiffly.

Freddie nodded. He was acutely conscious of this himself.

"Some fellows," he observed, "would say 'Not at all!' I suppose. But not the Last of the Rookes! For, honestly, old man, between ourselves, I don't mind admitting that this is the bravest deed of the year, and I'm dashed if I would do it for anyone else."

"It's very good of you, Freddie...."

"That's all right. I'm a Boy Scout, and this is my act of kindness for to-day."

Derek got up from the table.

"Of course you mustn't come," he said. "We can't form a sort of debating society to discuss Jill on the platform at Charing Cross."

"Oh, I would just hang around in the offing, shoving in an occasional tactful word."

"Nonsense!"

"The wheeze would simply be to...." "It's impossible."

"Oh, very well," said Freddie, damped. "Just as you say, of course. But there's nothing like a gang, old son, nothing like a gang!" II

Derek Underhill threw down the stump of his cigar, and grunted irritably. Inside Charing Cross Station business was proceeding as usual. Porters wheeling baggage-trucks moved to and fro like Juggernauts. Belated trains clanked in, glad to get home, while others, less fortunate, crept reluctantly out through the blackness and disappeared into an inferno of detonating fog-signals. For outside the fog[16] still held. The air was cold and raw and tasted coppery. In the street traffic moved at a funeral pace, to the accompaniment of hoarse cries and occasional crashes. Once the sun had worked its way through the murk and had hung in the sky like a great red or-ange, but now all was darkness and discomfort again, blended with that odd suggestion of mystery and romance which is a London fog's only redeeming quality.

The fog and the waiting had had their effect upon Derek. The resolute front he had exhibited to Freddie at the breakfast-table had melted since his arrival at the station, and he was feeling nervous at the prospect of the meeting that lay before him. Calm as he had appeared to the eye of Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the recesses of his heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men--and Derek Underhill was one of them--who never wholly emerge from the nursery. They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives.

Derek turned to begin one more walk along the platform, and stopped in mid-stride, raging. Beaming over the collar of a plaid greatcoat, all helpfulness and devotion, Freddie Rooke was advancing towards him, the friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Like some loving dog, who, ordered home sneaks softly on through alleys and by-ways, peeping round corners and crouching behind lamp-posts, the faithful Freddie had followed him after all. And with him, to add the last touch to Derek's discomfiture, were those two inseparable allies of his, Ronny Devereux and Algy Martyn.

"Well, old thing," said Freddie, patting Derek encouragingly on the shoulder, "here we are after all! I know you told me not to roll round and so forth, but I knew you didn't mean it. I thought it over after you had left, and decided it would be a rotten trick not to cluster about you in your hour of need. I hope you don't mind Ronny and Algy breezing along too. The fact is, I was in the deuce of a funk--your jolly old mater always rather paralyses my nerve-centres, you know--so I roped them in. Met 'em in Piccadilly, groping about for the club, and conscripted 'em both, they very decently consenting. We all toddled off and had a pick-me-up at that chemist chappie's at the top of the Hay-market, and now we're feeling full of beans and buck, ready[17] for anything. I've explained the whole thing to them, and they're with you to the death! Collect a gang, dear boy, collect a gang! That's the motto. There's nothing like it!"

"Nothing!" said Ronny. "Absolutely nothing!" said Algy.

"We'll just see you through the opening stages," said Freddie, "and then leg it. We'll keep the conversation general you know." "Stop it getting into painful channels," said Ronny.

"Steer it clear," said Algy, "of the touchy topic."

"That's the wheeze," said Freddie. "We'll ... Oh, golly! There's the train coming in now!" His voice quavered, for not even the comforting presence of his two allies could altogether sustain him in this ordeal. But he pulled himself together with a manful effort.

"Stick it, old beans!" he said doughtily. "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party!" "We're here!" said Ronny Devereux.

"On the spot!" said Algy Martyn. III

The boat-train slid into the station. Bells rang, engines blew off steam, porters shouted, baggage-trucks rattled over the platform. The train began to give up its contents, now in ones and twos, now in a steady stream. Most of the travellers seemed limp and exhausted, and were pale with the pallor that comes of a choppy Channel crossing. Almost the only exception to the general condition of collapse was the eagle-faced lady in the brown ulster, who had taken up her stand in the middle of the platform and was harangu-ing a subdued little maid in a voice that cut the gloomy air like a steel knife. Like the other travellers, she was pale, but she bore up resolutely. No one could have told from Lady Underhill's demeanour that the solid platform seemed to heave beneath her feet like a deck.

Derek approached, acutely conscious of Freddie, Ronny, and Algy, who were skirmishing about his flank.

"Well, mother! So there you are at last!" "Well, Derek!"

Derek kissed his mother. Freddie, Ronny, and Algy shuffled closer, like leopards. Freddie, with the expression of[18] one who leads a

forlorn hope, moved his Adam's apple briskly up and down several times, and spoke. "How do you do, Lady Underhill?"

"How do you do, Mr. Rooke?"

Lady Underhill bowed stiffly and without pleasure. She was not fond of the Last of the Rookes. She supposed the Almighty had had

some wise purpose in creating Freddie, but it had always been inscrutable to her. "Like you," mumbled Freddie, "to meet my friends. Lady Underhill. Mr. Devereux." "Charmed," said Ronny affably.

"Mr. Martyn."

"Delighted," said Algy with old-world courtesy.

Lady Underhill regarded this mob-scene with an eye of ice.

"How do you do?" she said. "Have you come to meet somebody?"

"I--er--we--er--why--er--" This woman always made Freddie feel as if he were being disembowelled by some clumsy amateur. He wished that he had defied the dictates of his better nature and remained in his snug rooms at the Albany, allowing Derek to go through this business by himself. "I--er--we--er--came to meet you, don't you know!"

"Indeed! That was very kind of you!" "Oh, not at all."

"Thought we'd welcome you back to the old homestead," said Ronny beaming.

"What could be sweeter?" said Algy. He produced a cigar-case, and extracted a formidable torpedo-shaped Havana. He was feeling delightfully at his ease, and couldn't understand why Freddie had made such a fuss about meeting this nice old lady. "Don't mind if I smoke, do you? Air's a bit raw to-day. Gets into the lungs."

Derek chafed impotently. These unsought allies were making a difficult situation a thousand times worse. A more acute observer than young Mr. Martyn, he noted the tight lines about his mother's mouth and knew them for the danger-signal they were. Endeavouring to distract her with light conversation, he selected a subject which was a little unfortunate.

"What sort of crossing did you have, mother?"

Lady Underhill winced. A current of air had sent the[19] perfume of Algy's cigar playing about her nostrils. She closed her eyes, and her face turned a shade paler. Freddie, observing this, felt quite sorry for the poor old thing. She was a pest and a pot of poison, of course, but all the same, he reflected charitably, it was a shame that she should look so green about the gills. He came to the conclusion that she must be hungry. The thing to do was to take her mind off it till she could be conducted to a restaurant and dumped down in front of a bowl of soup.

"Bit choppy, I suppose, what?" he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and down Lady Underhill's nervous system like an electric needle. "I was afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read the forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a bit, eh?"

Lady Underhill uttered a faint moan. Freddie noticed that she was looking deucedly chippy, even chippier than a moment ago.

"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 sea-sick 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[20] 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 a while 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 those 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[21] 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 fiance 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?"[22]

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 to 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 lovable-ness, all the subtle things about her[23] 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? 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 cheque 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[24] 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. 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 to-night, and then you can form your own opinion? I'm beginning to get a little bored by 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 favourable 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!"

Barker 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 Barker, 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.[25]

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.

"Barker!"

Freddie Rooke pushed a tousled head, which had yet to be brushed into the smooth sleekness that made 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 recognize 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 grey fur coat, and a

filmy hood covered her hair. As Barker opened the door, she scampered in like a grey kitten.

"Brrh! It's cold!" she exclaimed. "Hullo, Barker!" "Good evening, miss."

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

Barker 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 Barker cast a swift glance of approval at her. He had the valet's unerring eye for a thor-oughbred, 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 colouring of a child's. Her face glowed, and her grey eyes sparkled. She looked very much alive.

It was this liveliness 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[26] 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 endeavoured 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 acute-ness, 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 Barker's esteem by exclaiming rapturously at the sight that greeted her. Barker 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 centre of the mantelpiece, the place of honour, was the photograph of herself which she had given Derek a week ago.

"You're simply wonderful, Barker! 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."[27] "I hope the others won't be long. I'm starving. Has Mrs. Barker 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 wriggle 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. 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.[28] 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 be-spoke, 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 eyeglass. 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!"[29]

"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 Barker 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 she would be raging; the next, something would tickle her sense of humour and restore her instantly to cheerfulness. And the thought of dear, lazy old Uncle Chris taking the trouble[30] 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...."[31]

"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 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."

"You can't say a thing unless it comes into your head."

"You know what I mean," Freddie went on earnestly, not to be diverted from his theme. "You say rummy things and you do rummy things. What I mean to say is, you're impulsive."

"What have I ever done that the sternest critic could call rummy?"

"Well, I've seen you with my own eyes stop in the middle of Bond Street and help a lot of fellows shove along a cart that had got stuck. Mind you, I'm not blaming you for it...."

"I should hope not. The poor old horse was trying all he knew to get going, and he couldn't quite make it. Naturally, I helped."

"Oh, I know. Very decent and all that, but I doubt if Lady Underhill would have thought a lot of it. And you're so dashed chummy with the lower orders."

"Don't be a snob, Freddie."

"I'm not a snob," protested Freddie, wounded. "When I'm alone with Barker--for instance--I'm as chatty as dammit. But I don't ask waiters in public restaurants how their lumbago is."

"Have you ever had lumbago?" "No."

"Well, it's a very painful thing, and waiters get it just as badly as dukes. Worse, I should think, because they're always bending and stooping and carrying things. Naturally one feels sorry for them."

"But how do you ever find out that a waiter has got lumbago?"

"I ask him, of course."

"Well, for goodness' sake," said Freddie, "if you feel the impulse to do that sort of thing to-night, try and restrain[32] it. I mean to say, if you're curious to know anything about Barker's chilblains, for instance, don't enquire after them while he's handing Lady Underhill the potatoes! She wouldn't like it."

Jill uttered an exclamation.

"I knew there was something! Being so cold and wanting to rush in and crouch over a fire put it clean out of my head. He must be

thinking me a perfect beast!" She ran to the door. "Barker! Barker!" Barker appeared from nowhere.

"Yes, miss?"

"I'm so sorry I forgot to ask before. How are your chilblains?" "A good deal better miss, thank you."

"Did you try the stuff I recommended?" "Yes, miss. It did them a world of good." "Splendid!"

Jill went back into the sitting-room.

"It's all right," she said reassuringly. "They're better."

She wandered restlessly about the room, looking at the photographs, then sat down at the piano and touched the keys. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour. "I wish to goodness they would arrive," she said.

"They'll be here pretty soon, I expect."

"It's rather awful," said Jill, "to think of Lady Underhill racing all the way from Mentone to Paris and from Paris to Calais and from

Calais to Dover and from Dover to London simply to inspect me. You can't wonder I'm nervous, Freddie." The eyeglass dropped from Freddie's eye.

"Are you nervous?" he asked, astonished.

"Of course I'm nervous. Wouldn't you be in my place?" "Well, I should never have thought it."

"Why do you suppose I've been talking such a lot? Why do you imagine I snapped your poor, innocent head off just now! I'm terri-

fied inside, terrified!"

"You don't look it, by Jove!"

"No, I'm trying to be a little warrior. That's what Uncle Chris always used to call me. It started the day when he took me to have a tooth out, when I was ten. 'Be a little warrior, Jill!' he kept saying. 'Be a little warrior!' And I was." She looked at the clock. "But I shan't be if they[33] don't get here soon. The suspense is awful." She strummed the keys. "Suppose she doesn't like me, Freddie! You see how you've scared me."

"I didn't say she wouldn't. I only said you'd got to watch out a bit."

"Something tells me she won't. My nerve is oozing out of me." Jill shook her head impatiently. "It's all so vulgar! I thought this sort of thing only happened in the comic papers and in music-hall songs. Why, it's just like that song somebody used to sing." She laughed. "Do you remember? I don't know how the verse went, but ...

John took me round to see his mother, his mother,

his mother!

And when he'd introduced us to each other, She sized up everything that I had on.

She put me through a cross-examination: I fairly boiled with aggravation:

Then she shook her head, Looked at me and said:

'Poor John! Poor John!'

Chorus, Freddie! Let's cheer ourselves up! We need it!"

John took me round to see his mother...!

"His m-o-o-other!" croaked Freddie. Curiously enough, this ballad was one of Freddie's favourites. He had rendered it with a good

deal of success on three separate occasions at village entertainments down in Worcestershire, and he rather flattered himself that he could get about as much out of it as the next man. He proceeded to abet Jill heartily with gruff sounds which he was under the impression constituted what is known in musical circles as "singing seconds."

"His mo-o-other!" he growled with frightful scorn. "And when he'd introduced us to each other...."

"O-o-o-other!"

"She sized up everything that I had on!" "Pom-pom-pom!"

"She put me through a cross-examination...."

Jill had thrown her head back, and was singing jubilantly at the top of her voice. The appositeness of the song had cheered her up. It seemed somehow to make her forebodings rather ridiculous, to reduce them to absurdity, to turn into[34] farce the gathering tragedy which had been weighing upon her nerves.

Then she shook her head, Looked at me and said:

'Poor John!'....

"Jill," said a voice at the door. "I want you to meet my mother!"

"Poo-oo-oor John!" bleated the hapless Freddie, unable to check himself.

"Dinner," said Barker the valet, appearing at the door and breaking a silence that seemed to fill the room like a tangible presence, "is

served!" CHAPTER II

THE FIRST NIGHT AT THE LEICESTER I

The front-door closed softly behind the theatre-party. Dinner was over, and Barker had just been assisting the expedition out of the place. Sensitive to atmosphere, he had found his share in the dinner a little trying. It had been a strained meal, and what he liked was a clatter of conversation and everybody having a good time and enjoying themselves.

"Ellen!" called Barker, as he proceeded down the passage to the empty dining-room. "Ellen!"

Mrs. Barker appeared out of the kitchen, wiping her hands. Her work for the evening, like her husband's, was over. Presently what is technically called a "useful girl" would come in to wash up the dishes, leaving the evening free for social intercourse. Mrs. Barker had done well by her patrons that night, and now she wanted a quiet chat with Barker over a glass of Freddie Rooke's port.

"Have they gone, Horace?" she asked, following him into the dining-room.

Barker selected a cigar from Freddie's humidor, crackled it against his ear, smelt it, clipped off the end, and lit it. He took the de-

canter and filled his wife's glass, then mixed himself a whisky-and-soda.

"Happy days!" said Barker. "Yes, they've gone!" "I didn't see her ladyship."[35]

"You didn't miss much! A nasty, dangerous specimen, she is! 'Always merry and bright,' I don't think. I wish you'd have had my job of waiting on 'em, Ellen, and me been the one to stay in the kitchen safe out of it all. That's all I say! It's no treat to me to 'and the dishes when the atmosphere's what you might call electric. I didn't envy them that vol-au-vent of yours, Ellen, good as it smelt. Bet-ter a dinner of 'erbs where love is than a stalled ox and 'atred therewith," said Barker, helping himself to a walnut.

"Did they have words?"

Barker shook his head impatiently.

"That sort don't have words, Ellen. They just sit and goggle."

"How did her ladyship seem to hit it off with Miss Mariner, Horace?" Barker uttered a dry laugh.

"Ever seen a couple of strange dogs watching each other sort of wary? That was them! Not that Miss Mariner wasn't all that was pleasant and nice-spoken. She's all right, Miss Mariner is. She's a little queen. It wasn't her fault the dinner you'd took so much

trouble over was more like an evening in the Morgue than a Christian dinner-party. She tried to help things along best she could. But what with Sir Derek chewing his lip 'alf the time and his mother acting about as matey as a pennorth of ice-cream, she didn't have

a chance. As for the guv'nor--well, I wish you could have seen him, that's all. You know, Ellen, sometimes I'm not altogether easy

in my mind about the guv'nor's mental balance. He knows how to buy cigars, and you tell me his port is good--I never touch it my-self--but sometimes he seems to me to go right off his onion. Just sat there, he did, all through dinner, looking as if he expected the good food to rise up and bite him in the face, and jumping nervous when I spoke to him. It's not my fault," said Barker, aggrieved.

"I can't give gentlemen warning before I ask 'em if they'll have sherry or hock. I can't ring a bell or toot a horn to show 'em I'm coming. It's my place to bend over and whisper in their ear, and they've no right to leap about in their seats and make me spill good wine. (You'll see the spot close by where you're sitting, Ellen. Jogged my wrist, he did!) I'd like to know why people in the spear of

life which these people are in can't behave themselves rational,[36] same as we do. When we were walking out and I took you to have

tea with my mother, it was one of the pleasantest meals I ever ate. Talk about 'armony! It was a love-feast!" "Your ma and I took to each other right from the start, Horace," said Mrs. Barker softly. "That's the difference."

"Well, any woman with any sense would take to Miss Mariner. If I told you how near I came to spilling the sauce-boat accidentally over that old fossil's head, you'd be surprised, Ellen. She just sat there brooding like an old eagle. If you ask my opinion, Miss Mariner's a long sight too good for her precious son!"

"Oh, but Horace! Sir Derek's a baronet!"

"What of it? Kind 'earts are more than coronets and simple faith than Norman blood, aren't they?" "You're talking Socialism, Horace."

"No, I'm not. I'm talking sense. I don't know who Miss Mariner's parents may have been--I never enquired--but anyone can see she's a lady born and bred. But do you suppose the path of true love is going to run smooth, for all that? Not it! She's got a 'ard time ahead of her, that poor girl!"

"Horace!" Mrs. Barker's gentle heart was wrung. The situation hinted at by her husband was no new one--indeed, it formed the basis of at least fifty per cent of the stories in the True Heart Novelette Series, of which she was a determined reader--but it had never failed to touch her. "Do you think her ladyship means to come between them and wreck their romance?"

"I think she means to have a jolly good try."

"But Sir Derek has his own money, hasn't he? I mean it's not like when Sir Courtenay Travers fell in love with the milkmaid and was dependent on his mother, the Countess, for everything. Sir Derek can afford to do what he pleases, can't he?"

Barker shook his head tolerantly. The excellence of the cigar and the soothing qualities of the whisky-and-soda had worked upon

him, and he was feeling less ruffled.

"You don't understand these things," he said. "Women like her ladyship can talk a man into anything and out of anything. I wouldn't

care, only you can see the poor girl is mad over the feller. What she finds attractive in him, I can't say, but that's her own affair."[37] "He's very handsome, Horace, with those flashing eyes and that stern mouth," argued Mrs. Barker.

Barker sniffed.

"Have it your own way," he said. "It's no treat to me to see his eyes flash, and if he'd put that stern mouth of his to some better

use than advising the guv'nor to lock up the cigars and trouser the key, I'd be better pleased. If there's one thing I can't stand," said Barker, "it's not to be trusted!" He lifted his cigar and looked at it censoriously. "I thought so! Burning all down one side. They will do that if you light 'em careless. Oh, well," he continued, rising and going to the humidor, "there's plenty more where that came from. Out of evil cometh good," said Barker philosophically. "If the guv'nor hadn't been in such a overwrought state to-night, he'd have remembered not to leave the key in the keyhole. Help yourself to another glass of port, Ellen, and let's enjoy ourselves!"

When one considers how full of his own troubles, how weighed down with the problems of his own existence the average playgoer

generally is when enters a theatre, it is remarkable that dramatists ever find it possible to divert and entertain whole audiences for a space of several hours. As regards at least three of those who had assembled to witness its opening performance, the author of "Tried by Fire," at the Leicester Theatre, undoubtedly had his work cut out for him.

It has perhaps been sufficiently indicated by the remarks of Barker, the valet, that the little dinner at Freddie Rooke's had not been an unqualified success. Searching the records for an adequately gloomy parallel to the taxi-cab journey to the theatre which followed it, one can only think of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. And yet even that was probably not conducted in dead silence.

The only member of the party who was even remotely happy was, curiously enough, Freddie Rooke. Originally Freddie had obtained three tickets for "Tried by Fire." The unexpected arrival of Lady Underhill had obliged him to buy a fourth, separated by several

rows from the other three. This, as he had told Derek at breakfast, was the seat he proposed to occupy himself.[38]

It consoles the philosopher in this hard world to reflect that, even if man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward, it is still possible for small things to make him happy. The thought of being several rows away from Lady Underhill had restored Freddie's equanimity like a tonic. It thrilled him like the strains of some grand, sweet anthem all the way to the theatre. If Freddie Rooke had been asked at that moment to define happiness in a few words, he would have replied that it consisted in being several rows away from Lady Underhill.

The theatre was nearly full when Freddie's party arrived. The Leicester Theatre had been rented for the season by the newest theatri-

cal knight, Sir Chester Portwood, who had a large following; and, whatever might be the fate of the play in the final issue, it would do at least one night's business. The stalls were ablaze with jewellery and crackling with starched shirt-fronts; and expensive scents pervaded the air, putting up a stiff battle with the plebeian peppermint that emanated from the pit. The boxes were filled, and up in the gallery grim-faced patrons of the drama, who had paid their shillings at the door and intended to get a shilling's worth of entertainment in return, sat and waited stolidly for the curtain to rise.

The lights shot up beyond the curtain. The house-lights dimmed. Conversation ceased. The curtain rose. Jill wriggled herself comfortably into her seat, and slipped her hand into Derek's. She felt a glow of happiness as it closed over hers. All, she told herself, was right with the world.

All, that is to say, except the drama which was unfolding on the stage. It was one of those plays which start wrong and never recover. By the end of the first ten minutes there had spread through the theatre that uneasy feeling which comes over the audience at an opening performance when it realizes that it is going to be bored. A sort of lethargy had gripped the stalls. The dress-circle was coughing. Up in the gallery there was grim silence.

Sir Chester Portwood was an actor-manager who had made his reputation in light comedy of the tea-cup school. His numerous admirers attended a first night at his theatre in a mood of comfortable anticipation, assured of something pleasant and frothy with a good deal of bright dialogue and not too much plot. To-night he seemed to have fallen a[39] victim to that spirit of ambition

which intermittently attacks actor-managers of his class, expressing itself in an attempt to prove that, having established themselves securely as light comedians, they can, like the lady reciter, turn right around and be serious. The one thing which the London public felt that it was safe from in a Portwood play was heaviness, and "Tried by Fire" was grievously heavy. It was a poetic drama, and the audience, though loath to do anybody an injustice, was beginning to suspect that it was written in blank verse.

The acting did nothing to dispel the growing uneasiness. Sir Chester himself, apparently oppressed by the weightiness of the occasion and the responsibility of offering an unfamiliar brand of goods to his public, had dropped his customary debonair method of delivering lines and was mouthing his speeches. It was good gargling, but bad elocution. And, for some reason best known to himself, he had entrusted the role of the heroine to a doll-like damsel with a lisp, of whom the audience disapproved sternly from her initial entrance.

It was about half-way through the first act that Jill, whose attention had begun to wander, heard a soft groan at her side. The seats which Freddie Rooke had bought were at the extreme end of the seventh row. There was only one other seat in the row, and, as Derek had placed his mother on his left and was sitting between her and Jill, the latter had this seat on her right. It had been empty at the rise of the curtain, but in the past few minutes a man had slipped silently into it. The darkness prevented Jill from seeing his face, but it was plain that he was suffering, and her sympathy went out to him. His opinion of the play so obviously coincided with her own.

Presently the first act ended, and the lights went up. There was a spatter of insincere applause from the stalls, echoed in the dress-

circle. It grew fainter in the upper circle, and did not reach the gallery at all. "Well?" said Jill to Derek. "What do you think of it?"

"Too awful for words," said Derek sternly.

He leaned forward to join the conversation which had started between Lady Underhill and some friends she had discovered in the seats in front; and Jill, turning, became aware that the man on her right was looking at her intently. He was a big man with rough, wiry hair and a humorous[40] mouth. His age appeared to be somewhere in the middle twenties. Jill, in the brief moment in which

their eyes met, decided that he was ugly, but with an ugliness that was rather attractive. He reminded her of one of those large, loose, shaggy dogs that break things in drawing-rooms but make admirable companions for the open road. She had a feeling that he would look better in tweeds in a field than in evening dress in a theatre. He had nice eyes. She could not distinguish their colour, but they were frank and friendly.

All this Jill noted with her customary quickness, and then she looked away. For an instant she had had an odd feeling that somewhere she had met this man or somebody very like him before, but the impression vanished. She also had the impression that he was still looking at her, but she gazed demurely in front of her and did not attempt to verify the suspicion.

Between them, as they sat side by side, there inserted itself suddenly the pinkly remorseful face of Freddie Rooke. Freddie, hav-

ing skirmished warily in the aisle until it was clear that Lady Underhill's attention was engaged elsewhere, had occupied a seat in the row behind which had been left vacant temporarily by an owner who liked refreshment between the acts. Freddie was feeling deeply ashamed of himself. He felt that he had perpetrated a bloomer of no slight magnitude.

"I'm awfully sorry about this," he said penitently. "I mean, roping you in to listen to this frightful tosh! When I think I might have got seats just as well for any one of half a dozen topping musical comedies, I feel like kicking myself with some vim. But, honestly, how was I to know? I never dreamed we were going to be let in for anything of this sort. Portwood's plays are usually so dashed bright and snappy and all that. Can't think what he was doing, putting on a thing like this. Why, it's blue round the edges!"

The man on Jill's right laughed sharply.

"Perhaps," he said, "the chump who wrote the piece got away from the asylum long enough to put up the money to produce it." If there is one thing that startles the well-bred Londoner and throws him off his balance, it is to be addressed unexpectedly by a

stranger. Freddie's sense of decency was revolted. A voice from the tomb could hardly have shaken[41] him more. All the traditions to which he had been brought up had gone to solidify his belief that this was one of the things which didn't happen. Absolutely it wasn't done. During an earthquake or a shipwreck and possibly on the Day of Judgment, yes. But only then. At other times, unless they wanted a match or the time or something, chappies did not speak to fellows to whom they had not been introduced. He was far too amiable to snub the man, but to go on with this degrading scene was out of the question. There was nothing for it but flight.

"Oh, ah, yes," he mumbled. "Well," he added to Jill, "I suppose I may as well be toddling back. See you later and so forth." And with a faint "Good-bye-ee!" Freddie removed himself, thoroughly unnerved.

Jill looked out of the corner of her eye at Derek. He was still occupied with the people in front. She turned to the man on her right. She was not the slave to etiquette that Freddie was. She was much too interested in life to refrain from speaking to strangers.

"You shocked him!" she said dimpling. "Yes. It broke Freddie all up, didn't it!"

It was Jill's turn to be startled. She looked at him in astonishment. "Freddie?"

"That was Freddie Rooke, wasn't it? Surely I wasn't mistaken?" "But--do you know him? He didn't seem to know you."

"These are life's tragedies He has forgotten me. My boyhood friend!" "Oh, you were at school with him?"

"No. Freddie went to Winchester, if I remember. I was at Haileybury. Our acquaintance was confined to the holidays. My people

lived near his people in Worcestershire."

"Worcestershire!" Jill leaned forward excitedly. "But I used to live near Freddie in Worcestershire myself when I was small. I knew him there when he was a boy. We must have met!"

"We met all right."

Jill wrinkled her forehead. That odd familiar look was in his eyes again. But memory failed to respond. She shook her head.[42]

"I don't remember you," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Never mind. Perhaps the recollection would have been painful." "How do you mean, painful?"

"Well, looking back, I can see that I must have been a very unpleasant child. I have always thought it greatly to the credit of my parents that they let me grow up. It would have been so easy to have dropped something heavy on me out of a window. They must have been tempted a hundred times, but they refrained. Yes, I was a great pest around the home. My only redeeming point was the way I worshipped you!"

"What!"

"Oh, yes. You probably didn't notice it at the time, for I had a curious way of expressing my adoration. But you remain the brightest memory of a chequered youth."

Jill searched his face with grave eyes, then shook her head again. "Nothing stirs?" asked the man sympathetically.

"It's too maddening! Why does one forget things?" She reflected. "You aren't Bobby Morrison?"

"I am not. What is more, I never was!"

Jill dived into the past once more and emerged with another possibility. "Or--Charlie--Charlie what was it?--Charlie Field?"

"You wound me! Have you forgotten that Charlie Field wore velvet Lord Fauntleroy suits and long golden curls? My past is not smirched with anything like that."

"Would I remember your name if you told me?"

"I don't know. I've forgotten yours. Your surname, that is. Of course, I remember that your Christian name was Jill. It has always seemed to me the prettiest monosyllable in the language." He looked at her thoughtfully. "It's odd how little you've altered in looks. Freddie's just the same, too, only larger. And he didn't wear an eyeglass in those days, though I can see he was bound to later on. And yet I've changed so much that you can't place me. It shows what a wearing life I must have led. I feel like Rip van Winkle. Old and withered. But that may be just the result of watching this play."

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

"Worse than that. Looking at it dispassionately, I find it[43] 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!"[44]

"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 sensitive-ness 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 dullness. 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,' dullness reigned supreme...."

But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over.[45] 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 Lon-don Gossip wrote those damning words on his programme, guiding his pencil uncertainly in the dark, a curious yet familiar odour 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 commere 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 III

JILL AND THE UNKNOWN ESCAPE I

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[46] 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 in 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."[47]

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 on to 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[48] the theatre-firemen, hurrying to and fro, seemed like Brocken spectres. 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.

"'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.[49]

"Where's Sir Chester Portwood?" 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." 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!" 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.[50]

"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 fired 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. To-

morrow, if you wish it, and if they've cooled off sufficiently, you can come and sit on the ruins. Good night!"

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 Chester Portwood 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[51] itself by an eleventh-hour rush, raced back to Jill. The Embankment

turned to a sun-lit 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 to-day, 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 IV

THE LAST OF THE ROOKES TAKES A HAND I

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 back 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[52] immediately drawn to a strange man. Gone was the ancient hostility, and in its place a soothing sense of comradeship. The direct ef-fect 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-grey sky. A tram-car, full of home-bound travellers, clattered past over rails that shone with the peculiarly frost-bitten 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 freez-ing 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 re-union with a little supper, don't you?"[53]

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 to-night 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 bill, at any rate, so come along."[54]

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 big 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 childish reminiscences, haven't we?"

"I've been trying to realize that you are Wally Mason. You have altered so." "For the better?"

"Very much for the better! You were a horrid little brute. You used to terrify me. I never knew when you were going to bound out at me from behind a tree or something. I remember your chasing me for miles, shrieking at the top of your voice!"

"Sheer embarrassment! I told you just now how I used to worship you. If I shrieked a little, it was merely because I was shy. I did it to hide my devotion."[55]

"You certainly succeeded. I never even suspected it." Wally sighed.

"How like life! I never told my love, but let concealment like a worm i' the bud...." "Talking of worms, you once put one down my back!"

"No, no," said Wally in a shocked voice. "Not that I I was boisterous, perhaps, but surely always the gentleman." "You did! In the shrubbery. There had been a thunderstorm and...."

"I remember the incident now. A mere misunderstanding. I had done with the worm, and thought you might be glad to have it."

"You were always doing things like that. Once you held me over the pond and threatened to drop me into the water--in the winter! Just before Christmas. It was a particularly mean thing to do, because I couldn't even kick your shins for fear you would let me fall. Luckily Uncle Chris came up and made you stop."

"You considered that a fortunate occurrence, did you?" said Wally. "Well, perhaps from your point of view it may have been. I saw the thing from a different angle. Your uncle had a whangee with him. My friends sometimes wonder what I mean when I say that my old wound troubles me in frosty weather. By the way, how is your uncle?"

"Oh, he's very well. Just as lazy as ever. He's away at present, down at Brighton."

"He didn't strike me as lazy," said Wally thoughtfully. "Dynamic would express it better. But perhaps I happened to encounter him in a moment of energy. Ah!" The waiter had returned with a loaded tray. "The food! Forgive me if I seem a little distrait for a moment or two. There is man's work before me!"

"And later on, I suppose, you would like a chop or something to take away in your pocket?" "I will think it over. Possibly a little soup. My needs are very simple these days."

Jill watched him with a growing sense of satisfaction. There was something boyishly engaging about this man. She felt at home with him. He affected her in much the same way as did Freddie Rooke. He was a definite addition to the things that went to make her happy.

She liked him particularly for being such a good loser.[56] She had always been a good loser herself, and the quality was one which she admired. It was nice of him to dismiss from his conversation--and apparently from his thoughts--that night's fiasco and all that it must have cost him. She wondered how much he had lost. Certainly something very substantial. Yet it seemed to trouble him not

at all. Jill considered his behaviour gallant, and her heart warmed to him. This was how a man ought to take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Wally sighed contentedly, and leaned back in his chair.

"An unpleasant exhibition!" he said apologetically. "But unavoidable. And, anyway, I take it that you prefer to have me well-fed and happy about the place than swooning on the floor with starvation. A wonderful thing, food! I am now ready to converse intelligently on any subject you care to suggest. I have eaten rose-leaves and am no more a golden ass, so to speak. What shall we talk about?"

"Tell me about yourself."

"There is no nobler topic. But what aspect of myself do you wish me to touch on? My thoughts, my tastes, my amusements, my career, or what? I can talk about myself for hours. My friends in New York often complain about it bitterly."

"New York?" said Jill. "Oh, then you live in America?"

"Yes. I only came over here to see that darned false alarm of a play of mine put on." "Why didn't you put it on in New York?"

"Too many of the lads of the village know me over there. This was a new departure, you see. What the critics in those parts expect from me is something entitled 'Wow! Wow!' or 'The Girl from Yonkers.' It would have unsettled their minds to find me breaking out in poetic drama. They are men of coarse fibre and ribald mind and they would have been funny about it. I thought it wiser to come over here among strangers, little thinking that I should sit in the next seat to somebody I had known all my life."

"But when did you go to America? And why?"

"I think it must have been four--five--well, quite a number of years after the hose episode. Probably you didn't observe that I wasn't still around, but we crept silently out of the neighbourhood round about that time and went to live in London." His tone lost its lightness momentarily. "My[57] father died, you know, and that sort of broke things up. He didn't leave any too much money, either. Apparently we had been living on rather too expensive a scale during the time I knew you. At any rate, I was more or less up against it until your father got me a job in an office in New York."

"My father!"

"Yes. It was wonderfully good of him to bother about me. I didn't suppose he would have known me by sight, and, even if he had remembered me, I shouldn't have imagined that the memory would have been a pleasant one. But he couldn't have taken more trou-

ble if I had been a blood-relation."

"That was just like father," said Jill softly. "He was a prince."

"But you aren't in the office now?"

"No. I found I had a knack of writing verses and things, and I wrote a few vaudeville songs. Then I came across a man named Bevan at a music publisher's. He was just starting to write music, and we got together and turned out some vaudeville sketches, and then a manager sent for us to fix up a show that was dying on the road and we had the good luck to turn it into a success, and after that it was pretty good going. George Bevan got married the other day. Lucky devil!"

"Are you married?" "No."

"You were faithful to my memory?" said Jill with a smile. "I was."

"It can't last," said Jill, shaking her head. "One of these days you'll meet some lovely American girl and then you'll put a worm down her back or pull her hair or whatever it is you do when you want to show your devotion, and.... What are you looking at? Is something interesting going on behind me?"

He had been looking past her out into the room.

"It's nothing," he said. "Only there's a statuesque old lady about two tables back of you who has been staring at you, with intervals

for refreshment, for the last five minutes. You seem to fascinate her."

"An old lady?"

"Yes. With a glare! She looks like Dunsany's Bird of[58] the Difficult Eye. Count ten and turn carelessly round, There, at that table.

Almost behind you."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Jill. She turned quickly round again.

"What's the matter? Do you know her? Somebody you don't want to meet?" "It's Lady Underhill! And Derek's with her!"

Wally had been lifting his glass. He put it down rather suddenly. "Derek?" he said.

"Derek Underhill. The man I'm engaged to marry." There was a moment's silence.

"Oh!" said Wally thoughtfully. "The man you're engaged to marry? Yes, I see!" He raised his glass again, and drank its contents quickly.

Jill looked at her companion anxiously. Recent events had caused her completely to forget the existence of Lady Underhill. She was

always so intensely interested in what she happened to be doing at the moment that she often suffered these temporary lapses of memory. It occurred to her now--too late, as usual--that the Savoy Hotel was the last place in London where she should have come to supper with Wally. It was the hotel where Lady Underhill was staying. She frowned. Life had suddenly ceased to be careless and happy, and had become a problem-ridden thing, full of perplexity and misunderstandings.

"What shall I do?"

Wally Mason started at the sound of her voice. He appeared to be deep in thoughts of his own. "I beg your pardon?"

"What shall I do?"

"I shouldn't be worried." "Derek will be awfully cross."

Wally's good-humoured mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.

"Why?" he said. "There's nothing wrong in your having supper with an old friend." "N-no," said Jill doubtfully. "But...."

"Derek Underhill," said Wally reflectively. "Is that Sir[59] Derek Underhill, whose name one's always seeing in the papers?"

"Derek is in the papers a lot. He's an M.P. and all sorts of things." "Good-looking fellow. Ah, here's the coffee."

"I don't want any, thanks."

"Nonsense. Why spoil your meal because of this? Do you smoke?" "No, thanks."

"Given it up, eh? Daresay you're wise. Stunts the growth and increases the expenses." "Given it up?"

"Don't you remember sharing one of your father's cigars with me behind the haystack in the meadow? We cut it in half. I finished

my half, but I fancy about three puffs were enough for you. Those were happy days!" "That one wasn't! Of course I remember it now. I don't suppose I shall ever forget it." "The thing was my fault, as usual. I recollect I dared you."

"Yes. I always took a dare." "Do you still?"

"What do you mean?"

Wally knocked the ash off his cigarette.

"Well," he said slowly, "suppose! were to dare you to get up and walk over to that table and look your fiance in the eye and say, 'Stop

scowling at my back hair! I've a perfect right to be supping with an old friend!'--would you do it?"

"Is he?" said Jill startled.

"Scowling? Can't you feel it on the back of your head?" He drew thoughtfully at his cigarette. "If I were you I should stop that sort of thing at the source. It's a habit that can't be discouraged in a husband too early. Scowling is the civilized man's substitute for wife-beating."

Jill moved uncomfortably in her chair. Her quick temper resented his tone. There was a hostility, a hardly veiled contempt in his voice which stung her. Derek was sacred. Whoever criticised him, presumed. Wally, a few minutes before a friend and an agreeable companion, seemed to her to have changed. He was once more the boy whom she had disliked in the old days. There was a gleam in her eyes which should have warned him, but he went on.[60]

"I should imagine that this Derek of yours is not one of our leading sunbeams. Well, I suppose he could hardly be, if that's his mother and there is anything in heredity."

"Please don't criticise Derek," said Jill coldly. "I was only saying...."

"Never mind. I don't like it."

A slow flush crept over Wally's face. He made no reply, and there fell between them a silence that was like a shadow, Jill sipped her coffee miserably. She was regretting that little spurt of temper. She wished she could have recalled the words. Not that it was the ac-tual words that had torn asunder this gossamer thing, the friendship which they had begun to weave like some fragile web: it was her manner, the manner of the princess rebuking an underling. She knew that, if she had struck him, she could not have offended Wally more deeply. There are some men whose ebullient natures enable them to rise unscathed from the worst snub. Wally, her intuition told her, was not that kind of man.

There was only one way of mending the matter. In these clashes of human temperaments, these sudden storms that spring up out of a clear sky, it is possible sometimes to repair the damage, if the psychological moment is resolutely seized, by talking rapidly and with detachment on neutral topics. Words have made the rift, and words alone can bridge it. But neither Jill nor her companion could find words, and the silence lengthened grimly. When Wally spoke, it was in the level tones of a polite stranger.

"Your friends have gone."

His voice was the voice in which, when she went on railway journeys, fellow-travellers in the carriage enquired of Jill if she would prefer the window up or down. It had the effect of killing her regrets and feeding her resentment. She was a girl who never refused a challenge, and she set herself to be as frigidly polite and aloof as he.

"Really?" she said. "When did they leave?"

"A moment ago." The lights gave the warning flicker that announces the arrival of the hour of closing. In the momentary darkness they both rose. Wally scrawled his name across the bill which the waiter had insinuated upon his attention. "I suppose we had better be moving?"

They crossed the room in silence. Everybody was moving in the same direction. The broad stairway leading to the[61] lobby was crowded with chattering supper-parties. The light had gone up again.

At the cloak-room Wally stopped.

"I see Underhill waiting up there," he said casually. "To take you home, I suppose. Shall we say good-night? I'm staying in the hotel." Jill glanced towards the head of the stairs. Derek was there. He was alone. Lady Underhill presumably had gone up to her room in

the elevator.

Wally was holding out his hand. His face was stolid and his eyes avoided hers. "Good-bye," he said.

"Good-bye," said Jill.

She felt curiously embarrassed. At this last moment hostility had weakened, and she was conscious of a desire to make amends. She and this man had been through much together that night, much that was perilous and much that was pleasant. A sudden feeling of remorse came over her.

"You'll come and see us, won't you?" she said a little wistfully. "I'm sure my uncle would like to meet you again." "It's very good of you," said Wally, "but I'm afraid I shall be going back to America at any moment now."

Pique, that ally of the devil, regained its slipping grip upon Jill. "Oh? I'm sorry," she said indifferently. "Well, good-bye, then." "Good-bye."

"I hope you have a pleasant voyage." "Thanks."

He turned into the cloak-room, and Jill went up the stairs to join Derek. She felt angry and depressed, full of a sense of the futility

of things. People flashed into one's life and out again. Where was the sense of it?

III

Derek had been scowling, and Derek still scowled. His eyebrows were formidable, and his mouth smiled no welcome at Jill as she approached him. The evening, portions of which Jill had found so enjoyable, had contained no pleasant portions for Derek. Looking back over a lifetime whose events had been almost uniformly agreeable, he told himself[62] that he could not recall another day which had gone so completely awry. It had started with the fog. He hated fog. Then had come that meeting with his mother at Charing Cross, which had been enough to upset him by itself. After that, rising to a crescendo of unpleasantness, the day had provided that appalling situation at the Albany, the recollection of which still made him tingle; and there had followed the silent dinner, the boredom of the early part of the play, the fire at the theatre, the undignified scramble for the exits, and now this discovery of the

girl whom he was engaged to marry supping at the Savoy with a fellow he didn't remember ever having seen in his life. All these things combined to induce in Derek a mood bordering on ferocity. His birth and income combining to make him one of the spoiled children of the world, had fitted him ill for such a series of catastrophes. He received Jill with frozen silence and led her out to the waiting taxi-cab. It was only when the cab had started on its journey that he found relief in speech.

"Well," he said, mastering with difficulty an inclination to raise his voice to a shout, "perhaps you will kindly explain?"

Jill had sunk back against the cushions of the cab. The touch of his body against hers always gave her a thrill, half pleasurable, half frightening. She had never met anybody who affected her in this way as Derek did. She moved a little closer, and felt for his hand. But, as she touched it, it retreated--coldly. Her heart sank. It was like being cut in public by somebody very dignified.

"Derek, darling!" Her lips trembled. Others had seen this side of Derek Underhill frequently, for he was a man who believed in keeping the world in its place, but she never. To her he had always been the perfect, gracious knight. A little too perfect, perhaps, a trifle too gracious, possibly, but she had been too deeply in love to notice that. "Don't be cross!"

The English language is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been asked if he were piqued.[63]

"Cross!"

The cab rolled on. Lights from lamp-posts flashed in at windows. It was a pale, anxious little face that they lit up when they shone

upon Jill.

"I can't understand you," said Derek at last. Jill noticed that he had not yet addressed her by her name. He was speaking straight out in front of him as if he were soliloquising. "I simply cannot understand you. After what happened before dinner to-night, for you to cap everything by going off alone to supper at a restaurant, where half the people in the room must have known you, with a man...."

"You don't understand!"

"Exactly! I said I did not understand." The feeling of having scored a point made Derek feel a little better. "I admit it. Your behaviour is incomprehensible. Where did you meet this fellow?"

"I met him at the theatre. He was the author of the play."

"The man you told me you had been talking to? The fellow who scraped acquaintance with you between the acts?" "But I found out he was an old friend. I mean, I knew him when I was a child."

"You didn't tell me that." "I only found it out later."

"After he had invited you to supper! It's maddening!" cried Derek, the sense of his wrongs surging back over him. "What do you suppose my mother thought? She asked me who the man with you was. I had to say I didn't know! What do you suppose she thought?"

It is to be doubted whether anything else in the world could have restored the fighting spirit to Jill's cowering soul at that moment; but the reference to Lady Underhill achieved this miracle. That deep mutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sight had sprung up between the two at the instant of their meeting. The circumstances of that meeting had caused it to take root and grow. To Jill, Derek's mother was by this time not so much a fellow human being whom she disliked as a something, a sort of force, that made for her unhappiness. She was a menace and a loathing.

"If your mother had asked me that question," she retorted with spirit, "I should have told her that he was the man[64] who got me safely out of the theatre after you...." She checked herself. She did not want to say the unforgivable thing. "You see," she said more quietly, "you had disappeared...."

"My mother is an old woman," said Derek stiffly. "Naturally I had to look after her. I called to you to follow." "Oh, I understand. I'm simply trying to explain what happened. I was there all alone, and Wally Mason...." "Wally!" Derek uttered a short laugh, almost a bark. "It got to Christian names, eh?"

Jill set her teeth.

"I told you I knew him as a child. I always called him Wally then." "I beg your pardon. I had forgotten."

"He got me out through the pass-door on to the stage and through the stage-door."

Derek was feeling cheated. He had the uncomfortable sensation that comes to men who grandly contemplate mountains and see them dwindle to molehills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in explanation nothing so out-of-the-way after all. He seized upon the single point in Jill's behaviour that still constituted a grievance.

"There was no need for you to go to supper with the man!" Jove-like wrath had ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous grumble. "You should have gone straight home. You must have known how anxious I would be about you."

"Well, really, Derek, dear! You didn't seem so very anxious! You were having supper yourself quite cosily."

The human mind is curiously constituted. It is worthy of record that, despite his mother's obvious disapproval of his engagement, despite all the occurrences of this dreadful day, it was not till she made this remark that Derek Underhill first admitted to himself that, intoxicate his senses as she might, there was a possibility that Jill Mariner was not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and

went more quickly than breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been. There are men who fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword. Derek was one of these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity is their most precious possession, he winced from

an edged tongue.

"My mother was greatly upset," he replied coldly. "I[65] thought a cup of soup would do her good. And, as for being anxious about you, I telephoned to your home to ask if you had come in."

"And when," thought Jill, "they told you I hadn't, you went off to supper!"

She did not speak the words. If she had an edged tongue, she had also the control of it. She had no wish to wound Derek. Whole-hearted in everything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might be specks upon her idol--that its feet might be clay she could never believe--but they mattered nothing. She loved him.

"I'm so sorry, dear," she said. "So awfully sorry! I've been a bad girl, haven't I?"

She felt for his hand again, and this time he allowed it to remain stiffly in her grasp. It was like being grudgingly recognized by some-

body very dignified who had his doubts about you but reserved judgment.

The cab drew up at the door of the house in Ovingdon Square which Jill's Uncle Christopher had settled upon as a suitable address for a gentleman of his standing. Jill put up her face to be kissed, like a penitent child.

"I'll never be naughty again!"

For a flickering instant Derek hesitated. The drive, long as it was, had been too short wholly to restore his equanimity. Then the sense of her nearness, her sweetness, the faint perfume of her hair, and her eyes, shining softly in the darkness so close to his own, overcame him. He crushed her to him.

Jill disappeared into the house with a happy laugh. It had been a terrible day, but it had ended well. "The Albany," said Derek to the cabman.

He leaned back against the cushions. His senses were in a whirl. The cab rolled on. Presently his exalted mood vanished as quickly as it had come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jill present. He was not a man of strong imagination, and the stimulus

of her waned when she was not with him. Long before the cab reached the Albany the frown was back on his face. IV

Arriving at the Albany, he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in a deep arm-chair. His slippered feet were on the mantelpiece, and he was restoring his wasted tissues[66] with a strong whisky-and-soda. One of the cigars which Barker, the valet, had stamped with the seal of his approval was in the corner of his mouth. The Sporting Times, with a perusal of which he had been soothing his fluttered nerves, had fallen on the floor beside the chair. He had finished reading, and was now gazing peacefully at the ceiling, his mind a perfect blank. There was nothing the matter with Freddie.

"Hullo, old thing," he observed as Derek entered. "So you buzzed out of the fiery furnace all right? I was wondering how you had got along. How are you feeling? I'm not the man I was! These things get the old system all stirred up! I'll do anything in reason to oblige and help things along and all that, but to be called on at a moment's notice to play Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rolled into one, without rehearsal or make-up, is a bit too thick! No, young feller-me-lad! If theatre fires are going to be the fashion this season, the Last of the Rookes will sit quietly at home and play solitaire. Mix yourself a drink of something, old man, or something of that kind. By the way, your jolly old mater. All right? Not even singed? Fine! Make a long arm and gather in a cigar."

And Freddie, having exerted himself to play the host in a suitable manner, wedged himself more firmly into his chair and blew a

cloud of smoke.

Derek sat down. He lit a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. From the mantelpiece Jill's photograph smiled down, but he did not look at it. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie had had a trying evening What he wanted just now was merry prattle, and his friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removed his feet from the mantelpiece and wriggled himself sideways, so that he could see Derek's face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from his admiration for Derek, he was a warmhearted young man, and sympathized with affliction when it presented itself for his notice.

"Something on your mind, old bean?" he enquired delicately.

Derek did not answer for a moment. Then he reflected that, little as he esteemed the other's mentality, he and Freddie had known each other a long time, and that it would be a relief to confide in some one. And Freddie, moreover,[67] was an old friend of Jill and the man who had introduced him to her.

"Yes," he said.

"I'm listening, old top," said Freddie. "Release the film."

Derek drew at his cigar, and watched the smoke as it curled to the ceiling. "It's about Jill."

Freddie signified his interest by wriggling still further sideways.

"Jill, eh?"

"Freddie, she's so damned impulsive!"

Freddie nearly rolled out of his chair. This, he took it, was what writing-chappies called a coincidence.

"Rummy you should say that," he ejaculated. "I was telling her exactly the same thing myself only this evening." He hesitated. "I fancy I can see what you're driving at, old thing. The watchword is 'What ho, the mater!' yes, no? You've begun to get a sort of idea that if Jill doesn't watch her step, she's apt to sink pretty low in the betting, what? I know exactly what you mean! You and I know

all right that Jill's a topper. But one can see that to your mater she might seem a bit different. I mean to say, your jolly old mater only judging by first impressions, and the meeting not having come off quite as scheduled.... I say, old man," he broke off, "fearfully sorry and all that about that business. You know what I mean! Wouldn't have had it happen for the world. I take it the mater was a trifle peeved? Not to say perturbed and chagrined? I seemed to notice it at dinner."

"She was furious, of course. She did not refer to the matter when we were alone together, but there was no need to. I knew what she was thinking."

Derek threw away his cigar. Freddie noted this evidence of an overwrought soul with concern. "The whole thing," he conceded, "was a bit unfortunate."

Derek began to pace the room. "Freddie."

"On the spot, old man." "Something's got to be done."

"Absolutely!" Freddie nodded solemnly. He had taken this matter greatly to heart. Derek was his best friend, and[68] he had always been extremely fond of Jill. It hurt him to see things going wrong. "I'll tell you what, old bean. Let me handle this binge for you."

"You?"

"Me! The Final Rooke!" He jumped up, and leaned against the mantelpiece. "I'm the lad to do it. I've known Jill for years. She'll lis-ten to me. I'll talk to her like a Dutch uncle and make her understand the general scheme of things. I'll take her out to tea to-morrow and slang her in no uncertain voice! Leave the whole thing to me, laddie!"

Derek considered.

"It might do some good," he said.

"Good?" said Freddie. "It's it, dear boy! It's a wheeze! You toddle off to bed and have a good sleep. I'll fix the whole thing for you!"

CHAPTER V

LADY UNDERHILL RECEIVES A SHOCK I

There are streets in London into which the sun seems never to penetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to be supposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well on note-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it. The majority, however, are in the mean neighbourhoods of the great railway termini, and appear to offer no compensation whatever. They are lean, furtive streets, grey as the January sky with a sort of arrested decay. They smell of cabbage and are much prowled over by vagrom cats. At night they are empty and dark, and a stillness broods on them, broken only by the cracked tingle of an occasional piano playing one of the easier hymns, a form of music to which the dwellers in the dingy houses are greatly ad-

dicted. By day they achieve a certain animation through the intermittent appearance of women in aprons, who shake rugs out of the front doors or, emerging from areas, go down to the public-house on the corner with jugs to fetch the supper-beer. In almost every ground-floor window there is a card announcing that furnished lodgings may be had within. You will find these[69] streets by the score if you leave the main thoroughfares and take a short cut on your way to Euston, to Paddington, or to Waterloo. But the dingi-est and deadliest and most depressing lie round about Victoria. And Daubeny Street, Pimlico, is one of the worst of them all.

On the afternoon following the events recorded, a girl was dressing in the ground-floor room of Number Nine, Daubeny Street. A tray bearing the remains of a late breakfast stood on the rickety table beside a bowl of wax flowers. From beneath the table peered the green cover of a copy of Variety. A grey parrot in a cage by the window cracked seed and looked out into the room with a satirical eye. He had seen all this so many times before--Nelly Bryant arraying herself in her smartest clothes to go out and besiege agents in their offices off the Strand. It happened every day. In an hour or two she would come back as usual, say "Oh, Gee!" in a tired sort of voice, and then Bill the parrot's day proper would begin. He was a bird who liked the sound of his own voice, and he never got the chance of a really sustained conversation till Nelly returned in the evening.

"Who cares?" said Bill, and cracked another seed.

If rooms are an indication of the characters of their occupants, Nelly Bryant came well out of the test of her surroundings. Nothing can make a London furnished room much less horrible than it intends to be, but Nelly had done her best. The furniture, what there was of it, was of that lodging-house kind which resembles nothing else in the world. But a few little touches here and there, a few instinctively tasteful alterations in the general scheme of things, had given the room almost a cosy air. Later on, with the gas lit, it would achieve something approaching homeliness. Nelly, like many another nomad, had taught herself to accomplish a good deal with poor material. On tour in America, she had sometimes made even a bedroom in a small hotel tolerably comfortable, than which there is no greater achievement. Oddly, considering her life, she had a genius for domesticity.

To-day, not for the first time, Nelly was feeling unhappy. The face that looked back at her out of the mirror at which she was arranging her most becoming hat was weary. It was only a moderately pretty face, but loneliness and underfeeding had given it a wistful expression that had charm.[70] Unfortunately, it was not the sort of charm which made a great appeal to the stout, whisky-nourished men who sat behind paper-littered tables, smoking cigars, in the rooms marked "Private" in the offices of theatrical agents. Nelly had been out of a "shop" now for many weeks--ever since, in fact, "Follow the Girl" had finished its long run at the Regal Theatre.

"Follow the Girl," an American musical comedy, had come over from New York with an American company, of which Nelly had been a humble unit, and, after playing a year in London and some weeks in the number one towns, had returned to New York. It did not cheer Nelly up in the long evenings in Daubeny Street to reflect that, if she had wished, she could have gone home with the rest of the company. A mad impulse had seized her to try her luck in London, and here she was now, marooned.

"Who cares?" said Bill.

For a bird who enjoyed talking he was a little limited in his remarks and apt to repeat himself.

"I do, you poor fish!" said Nelly, completing her manoeuvres with the hat and turning to the cage. "It's all right for you--you have

a swell time with nothing to do but sit there and eat seed--but how do you suppose I enjoy tramping around looking for work and

never finding any?"

She picked up her gloves. "Oh, well!" she said. "Wish me luck!"

"Good-bye, boy!" said the parrot, clinging to the bars. Nelly thrust a finger into the cage, and scratched his head. "Anxious to get rid of me, aren't you? Well, so long." "Good-bye, boy!"

"All right, I'm going. Be good!"

"Woof-woof-woof !" barked Bill the parrot, not committing himself to any promises.

For some moments after Nelly had gone he remained hunched on his perch, contemplating the infinite. Then he sauntered along to the seed-box and took some more light nourishment. He always liked to spread his meals out, to make them last longer. A drink of water to wash the food down, and he returned to the middle of the cage, where he proceeded to conduct a few intimate researches with his beak under his left wing. After which he mewed like a cat, and relapsed into silent meditation once more. He[71] closed his eyes and pondered on his favourite problem--Why was he a parrot? This was always good for an hour or so, and it was three o'clock before he had come to his customary decision that he didn't know. Then, exhausted by brain-work and feeling a trifle hipped by the silence of the room, he looked about him for some way of jazzing existence up a little. It occurred to him that if he barked again it might help.

"Woof-woof-woof !"

Good as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. It was not real excitement. Something rather more dashing seemed to him to be indicated. He hammered for a moment or two on the floor of his cage, ate a mouthful of the newspaper there, and stood with his head on one side, chewing thoughtfully. It didn't taste as good as usual. He suspected Nelly of having changed his Daily Mail for the Daily Express or something. He swallowed the piece of paper, and was struck by the thought that a little climbing exercise might be what his soul demanded. (You hang on by your beak and claws and work your way up to the roof. It sounds tame, but it's something to do.) He tried it. And, as he gripped the door of the cage it swung open. Bill the parrot now perceived that this was going to be one of those days. He had not had a bit of luck like this for months.

For a while he sat regarding the open door. Unless excited by outside influences, he never did anything in a hurry. Then proceeding cautiously, he passed out into the room. He had been out there before, but always chaperoned by Nelly. This was something quite different. It was an adventure. He hopped on to the window-sill. There was a ball of yellow wool there, but he had lunched and could eat nothing. He cast around in his mind for something to occupy him, and perceived suddenly that the world was larger than he had supposed. Apparently there was a lot of it outside the room. How long this had been going on he did not know, but obviously it was a thing to be investigated. The window was open at the bottom, and just outside the window were what he took to be the bars of another and larger cage. As a matter of fact they were the railings which afforded a modest protection to Number Nine. They ran the length of the house, and were much used by small boys as a means of rattling sticks. One of these stick-rattlers passed as Bill[72] stood there looking down. The noise startled him for a moment, then he seemed to come to the conclusion that this sort of thing was to be expected if you went out into the great world and that a parrot who intended to see life must not allow himself

to be deterred by trifles. He crooned a little, and finally, stepping in a stately way over the window-sill, with his toes turned in at right angles, caught at the top of the railing with his beak, and proceeded to lower himself. Arrived at the level of the street, he stood looking out.

A dog trotted up, spied him, and came to sniff. "Good-bye, boy!" said Bill chattily.

The dog was taken aback. Hitherto, in his limited experience, birds had been birds and men men. Here was a blend of the two. What

was to be done about it? He barked tentatively, then, finding that nothing disastrous ensued, pushed his nose between two of the bars and barked again. Any one who knew Bill could have told him that he was asking for it, and he got it. Bill leaned forward and nipped his nose. The dog started back with a howl of agony. He was learning something new every minute.

"Woof-woof-woof !" said Bill sardonically.

He perceived trousered legs, four of them, and, cocking his eye upwards, saw that two men of the lower orders stood before him. They were gazing down at him in the stolid manner peculiar to the proletariat of London in the presence of the unusual. For some

minutes they stood drinking him in, then one of them gave judgment.

"It's a parrot!" He removed a pipe from his mouth and pointed with the stem. "A perishin' parrot, Erb." "Ah!" said Erb, a man of few words.

"A parrot," proceeded the other. He was seeing clearer into the matter every moment. "That's a parrot, that is Erb. My brother Joe's wife's sister had one of 'em. Come from abroad, they do. My brother Joe's wife's sister 'ad one of 'em. Red-'aired gel she was. Married a feller down at the Docks She 'ad one of 'em. Parrots they're called."

He bent down for a closer inspection, and inserted a finger through the railings. Erb abandoned his customary taciturnity and spoke

words of warning.

"Tike care 'e don't sting yer, 'Enry!" Henry seemed wounded.

"Woddyer mean, sting me? I know all abart parrots, I do.[73] My brother Joe's wife's sister 'ad one of 'em. They don't 'urt yer, not if you're kind to 'em. You know yer pals when you see 'em, don't yer, mate?" he went on, addressing Bill, who was contemplating the finger with one half-closed eye.

"Good-bye, boy," said the parrot, evading the point.

"Jear that?" cried Henry delightedly. "'Goo'-bye, boy!' 'Uman they are!"

"'E'll 'ave a piece out of yer finger," warned Erb the suspicious.

"Wot, 'im?" Henry's voice was indignant. He seemed to think that his reputation as an expert on parrots had been challenged. "'E

wouldn't 'ave no piece out of my finger."

"Bet yer a narf-pint 'e would 'ave a piece out of yer finger," persisted the sceptic.

"No blinkin' parrot's goin' to 'ave no piece of no finger of mine! My brother Joe's wife's sister's parrot never 'ad no piece out of no finger of mine!" He extended the finger further and waggled it enticingly beneath Bill's beak. "Cheerio, matey!" he said winningly. "Polly want a nut?"

Whether it was mere indolence or whether the advertised docility of that other parrot belonging to Henry's brother's wife's sister had caused him to realize that there was a certain standard of good conduct for his species one cannot say; but for a while Bill merely contemplated temptation with a detached eye.

"See!" said Henry.

"Woof-woof-woof !" said Bill.

"Wow-Wow-Wow!" yapped the dog, suddenly returning to the scene and going on with the argument at the point where he had left off.

The effect on Bill was catastrophic. Ever a high-strung bird, he lost completely the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere

and the better order of parrot. His nerves were shocked, and, as always under such conditions, his impulse was to bite blindly. He bit, and Henry--one feels sorry for Henry: he was a well-meaning man--leaped back with a loud howl.

"'That'll be 'arf a pint," said Erb, always the business man.

There was a lull in the rapid action. The dog, mumbling softly to himself, had moved away again and was watching affairs from

the edge of the sidewalk. Erb, having won his[74] point, was silent once more. Henry sucked his finger. Bill, having met the world

squarely and shown it what was what, stood where he was, whistling nonchalantly.

Henry removed his finger from his mouth. "Lend the loan of that stick of yours, Erb," he said tensely.

Erb silently yielded up the stout stick which was his inseparable companion. Henry, a vastly different man from the genial saunterer of a moment ago, poked wildly through the railings. Bill, panic-stricken now and wishing for nothing better than to be back in his cosy cage, shrieked loudly for help. And Freddie Rooke, running round the corner with Jill, stopped dead and turned pale.

"Good God!" said Freddie. II

In pursuance of his overnight promise to Derek, Freddie Rooke had got in touch with Jill through the medium of the telephone immediately after breakfast, and had arranged to call at Ovingdon Square in the afternoon. Arrived there, he found Jill with a telegram in her hand. Her Uncle Christopher, who had been enjoying a breath of sea-air down at Brighton, was returning by an afternoon train, and Jill had suggested that Freddie should accompany her to Victoria, pick up Uncle Chris, and escort him home. Freddie, whose idea had been a tete-a-tete involving a brotherly lecture on impetuosity, had demurred but had given way in the end; and they had set out to walk to Victoria together. Their way had lain through Daubeny Street, and they turned the corner just as the brutal onslaught on the innocent Henry had occurred. Bill's shrieks, which were of an appalling timbre, brought them to a halt.

"What is it?" cried Jill.

"It sounds like a murder!" "Nonsense!"

"I don't know, you know. This is the sort of street chappies are murdering people in all the time."

They caught sight of the group in front of them, and were reassured. Nobody could possibly be looking so aloof and distrait as Erb if there were a murder going on.

"It's a bird!"

"It's a jolly old parrot. See it? Just inside the railings."[75]

A red-hot wave of rage swept over Jill. Whatever her defects--and already this story has shown her far from perfect--she had the excellent quality of loving animals and blazing into fury when she saw them ill-treated. At least three draymen were going about Lon-don with burning ears as the result of what she had said to them on discovering them abusing their patient horses. Zoologically, Bill the parrot was not an animal, but he counted as one with Jill, and she sped down Daubeny Street to his rescue--Freddie, spatted and hatted and trousered as became the man of fashion, following disconsolately, ruefully aware that he did not look his best sprinting

like that. But Jill was cutting out a warm pace, and he held his hat on with one neatly-gloved hand and did what he could to keep up.

Jill reached the scene of battle, and, stopping, eyed Henry with a baleful glare. We, who have seen Henry in his calmer moments and know him for the good fellow he was, are aware that he was more sinned against than sinning. If there is any spirit of justice in us, we are pro-Henry. In his encounter with Bill the parrot, Henry undoubtedly had right on his side. His friendly overtures, made in

the best spirit of kindliness, had been repulsed. He had been severely bitten. And he had lost half a pint of beer to Erb. As impartial judges we have no other course before us than to wish Henry luck and bid him go to it. But Jill, who had not seen the opening stages of the affair, thought far otherwise. She merely saw in Henry a great brute of a man poking at a defenceless bird with a stick.

She turned to Freddie, who had come up at a gallop and was wondering why the deuce this sort of thing happened to him out of a city of six millions.

"Make him stop, Freddie!" "Oh, I say, you know, what?"

"Can't you see he's hurting the poor thing? Make him leave off ! Brute!" she added to Henry (for whom one's heart bleeds), as he jabbed once again at his adversary.

Freddie stepped reluctantly up to Henry, and tapped him on the shoulder. Freddie was one of those men who have a rooted idea that a conversation of this sort can only be begun by a tap on the shoulder.

"'Look here, you know, you can't do this sort of thing, you know!" said Freddie.[76] Henry raised a scarlet face.

"'Oo are you?" he demanded.

This attack from the rear, coming on top of his other troubles, tried his restraint sorely.

"Well--" Freddie hesitated. It seemed silly to offer the fellow one of his cards. "Well, as a matter of fact, my name's Rooke...." "And who," pursued Henry, "arsked you to come shoving your ugly mug in 'ere?"

"Well, if you put it that way...."

"'E comes messing abart," said Henry complainingly, addressing the universe, "and interfering in what don't concern 'im and mucking around and interfering and messing abart.... Why," he broke off in a sudden burst of eloquence, "I could eat two of you for a relish wiv me tea, even if you 'ave got white spats!"

Here Erb, who had contributed nothing to the conversation, remarked "Ah!" and expectorated on the sidewalk. The point, one gathers, seemed to Erb well taken. A neat thrust, was Erb's verdict.

"Just because you've got white spats," proceeded Henry, on whose sensitive mind these adjuncts of the costume of the well-dressed man about town seemed to have made a deep and unfavourable impression, "you think you can come mucking around and messing abart and interfering and mucking around. This bird's bit me in the finger, and 'ere's the finger, if you don't believe me--and I'm go-ing to twist 'is ruddy neck, if all the perishers with white spats in London come messing abart and mucking around, so you take them white spats of yours 'ome and give 'em to the old woman to cook for your Sunday dinner!"

And Henry, having cleansed his stuff 'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart, shoved the stick energetically once more through the railings.

Jill darted forward. Always a girl who believed that, if you want a thing well done, you must do it yourself, she had applied to Freddie for assistance merely as a matter of form. All the time she had felt that Freddie was a broken reed, and such he had proved himself. Freddie's policy in this affair was obviously to rely on the magic of speech, and any magic his speech might have had was manifestly offset by the fact that he was wearing white spats and that[77] Henry, apparently, belonged to some sort of league or society which had for its main object the discouragement of white spats. It was plainly no good leaving the conduct of the campaign to Freddie. Whatever was to be done must be done by herself. She seized the stick and wrenched it out of Henry's hand.

"Woof-woof-woof !" said Bill the parrot.

No dispassionate auditor could have failed to detect the nasty ring of sarcasm. It stung Henry. He was not normally a man who believed in violence to the gentler sex outside a clump on the head of his missus when the occasion seemed to demand it; but now he threw away the guiding principles of a lifetime and turned on Jill like a tiger.

"Gimme that stick!" "Get back!"

"Here, I say, you know!" said Freddie.

Henry, now thoroughly overwrought, made a rush at Jill; and Jill, who had a straight eye, hit him accurately on the side of the head. "Goo!" said Henry, and sat down.

And then, from behind Jill, a voice spoke.

"What's all this?"

A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty space. "This won't do!" said the policeman.

Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech. "She 'it 'im!"

The policeman looked at Jill. He was an officer of many years' experience in the Force, and time had dulled in him that respect for good clothes which he had brought with him from Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days of his novitiate. Jill was well dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffrage disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven Dials,

but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the peace. His gaze, as it fell upon Jill, red-handed as it were with the stick still in her grasp, was stern.

"Your name, please, and address, miss?" he said.

A girl in blue with a big hat had come up, and was standing[78] staring open-mouthed at the group. At the sight of her Bill the parrot uttered a shriek of welcome. Nelly Bryant had returned, and everything would now be all right again.

"Mariner," said Jill, pale and bright-eyed. "I live at Number Twenty-two, Ovingdon Square." "And yours, sir?"

"Mine? Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Rooke, you know. F. L. Rooke. I live at the Albany and all that sort of thing." The policeman made an entry in his note-book.

"Officer," cried Jill, "this man was trying to kill that parrot and I stopped him...."

"Can't help that, miss. You 'adn't no right to hit a man with a stick. You'll 'ave to come along."

"But, I say, you know!" Freddie was appalled. This sort of thing had happened to him before, but only on Boat-Race Night at the

Empire, where it was expected of a chappie. "I mean to say!" "And you, too, sir. You're both in it."

"But...."

"Oh, come along, Freddie," said Jill quietly. "It's perfectly absurd, but it's no use making a fuss." "That," said the policeman cordially, "is the right spirit!"

III

Lady Underhill paused for breath. She had been talking long and vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke's apartment at the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to her future daughter-in-law. But

to-day she had spoken her mind with all the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself with a flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been growing within her since that first meeting in this same room. She had talked rapidly, for she was talking against time. The Town Council of the principal city in Derek's constituency in the north of England had decided that

to-morrow morning[79] should witness the laying of the foundation stone of their new Town Hall, and Derek as the sitting member was to preside at the celebration. Already Barker had been dispatched to telephone for a cab to take him to the station, and at any moment their conversation might be interrupted. So Lady Underhill made the most of what little time she had.

Derek listened gloomily, scarcely rousing himself to reply. His mother would have been gratified could she have known how

powerfully her arguments were working on him. That little imp of doubt which had vexed him in the cab as he drove home from

Ovingdon Square had not died in the night. It had grown and waxed more formidable. And now, aided by this ally from without, it had become a Colossus straddling his soul. Derek looked frequently at the clock, and cursed the unknown cabman whose delay was prolonging the scene. Something told him that only flight could serve him now. He never had been able to withstand his mother

in one of her militant moods. She seemed to numb his faculties. Other members of his family had also noted this quality in Lady Underhill, and had commented on it bitterly in the smoking-rooms of distant country-houses at the hour when men meet to drink the final whisky-and-soda and unburden their souls.

Lady Underhill, having said all she had to say, recovered her breath and began to say it again. Frequent iteration was one of her strongest weapons. As her brother Edwin, who was fond of homely imagery, had often observed, she could talk the hind-leg off a donkey.

"You must be mad, Derek, to dream of handicapping yourself at this vital stage of your career with a wife who not only will not be a help to you, but must actually be a ruinous handicap. I am not blaming you for imagining yourself in love in the first place, though I really should have thought that a man of your strength and character would.... However, as I say, I am not blaming you for that. Superficially, no doubt, this girl might be called attractive. I do not admire the type myself, but I suppose she has that quality--in my time we should have called it boldness--which seems to appeal to the young men of to-day. I could imagine her fascinating a weak-minded imbecile like your friend Mr. Rooke. But that you.... Still, there is no need to go into that. What I am trying to point out[80]

is that in your position, with a career like yours in front of you--it's quite certain that in a year or two you will be offered some really big and responsible position--you would be insane to tie yourself to a girl who seems to have been allowed to run perfectly wild, whose uncle is a swindler...."

"She can't be blamed for her uncle."

"... Who sups alone with strange men in public restaurants...." "I explained that."

"You may have explained it. You certainly did not excuse it or make it a whit less outrageous. You cannot pretend that you really imagine that an engaged girl is behaving with perfect correctness when she allows a man she has only just met to take her to supper

at the Savoy, even if she did know him slightly years and years ago. It is very idyllic to suppose that a childhood acquaintance excuses every breach of decorum, but I was brought up to believe otherwise. I don't wish to be vulgar, but what it amounts to is that this girl was having supper--supper! In my days girls were in bed at supper-time!--with a strange man who picked her up at a theatre!"

Derek shifted uneasily. There was a part of his mind which called upon him to rise up and challenge the outrageous phrase and de-mand that it be taken back. But he remained silent. The imp-Colossus was too strong for him. She is quite right, said the imp. That is an unpleasant but accurate description of what happened. He looked at the clock again, and wished for the hundredth time that the cab would come. Jill's photograph smiled at him from beside the clock. He looked away, for, when he found his eyes upon it, he had an odd sensation of baseness, as if he were playing some one false who loved and trusted him.

"Well, I am not going to say any more," she said, getting up and buttoning her glove. "I will leave you to think it over. All I will say is that, though I only met her yesterday, I can assure you that I am quite confident that this girl is just the sort of harum-scarum so-called 'modern' girl who is sure some day to involve herself in a really serious scandal. I don't want her to be in a position to drag you into it as well. Yes, Barker, what is it? Is Sir Derek's cab here?"

The lantern-jawed Barker had entered softly, and was[81] standing deferentially in the doorway. There was no emotion on his face be-yond the vague sadness which a sense of what was correct made him always wear like a sort of mask when in the presence of those of superior station.

"The cab will be at the door very shortly, m'lady. If you please, Sir Derek, a policeman has come with a message." "A policeman?"

"With a message from Mr. Rooke." "What do you mean?"

"I have had a few words of conversation with the constable, sir," said Barker sadly, "and I understand from him that Mr. Rooke and

Miss Mariner have been arrested."

"Arrested! What are you talking about?"

"Mr. Rooke desired the officer to ask you to be good enough to step round and bail them out!" The gleam in Lady Underhill's eye became a flame, but she controlled her voice.

"Why were Miss Mariner and Mr. Rooke arrested, Barker?"

"As far as I can gather, m'lady, Miss Mariner struck a man in the street with a stick, and they took both her and Mr. Rooke to the

Chelsea Police Station."

Lady Underhill glanced at Derek, who was looking into the fire.

"This is a little awkward, Derek," she said suavely. "If you go to the police-station, you will miss your train." "I fancy, m'lady, it would be sufficient if Sir Derek were to dispatch me with a cheque for ten pounds." "Very well. Tell the policeman to wait a moment."

"Very good, m'lady."

Derek roused himself with an effort. His face was drawn and gloomy. He sat down at the writing-table, and took out his cheque-book. There was silence for a moment, broken only by the scratching of the pen. Barker took the cheque and left the room.

Jill the Reckless - The Original Classic Edition

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