CHAPTER IV
THE LAST OF THE ROOKES TAKES A HAND
I
Jill was hardly aware that he had asked her a question. She wassuffering that momentary sense of unreality which comes to us when theyears roll away and we are thrown abruptly back into the days of ourchildhood. The logical side of her mind was quite aware that there wasnothing remarkable in the fact that Wally Mason, who had been to herall these years a boy in an Eton suit, should now present himself as agrown man. But for all that the transformation had something of theeffect of a conjuring-trick. It was not only the alteration in hisappearance that startled her: it was the amazing change in hispersonality. Wally Mason had been the _bete noire_ of her childhood.She had never failed to look back at the episode of the garden-hosewith the feeling that she had acted well, that--however she might havestrayed in those early days from the straight and narrow path--in thatone particular crisis she had done the right thing. And now she hadtaken an instant liking for him. Easily as she made friends, she hadseldom before felt so immediately drawn to a strange man. Gone wasthe ancient hostility, and in its place a soothing sense ofcomradeship. The direct effect of this was to make Jill feel suddenlyold. It was as if some link that joined her to her childhood had beensnapped.
She glanced down the Embankment. Close by, to the left, WaterlooBridge loomed up, dark and massive against the steel-grey sky. Atram-car, full of home-bound travellers, clattered past over railsthat shone with the peculiarly frost-bitten gleam that seems to heraldsnow. Across the river everything was dark and mysterious, except foran occasional lamp-post and the dim illumination of the wharves. Itwas a depressing prospect, and the thought crossed her mind that tothe derelicts whose nightly resting-place was a seat on the Embankmentthe view must seem even bleaker than it did to herself. She gave alittle shiver. Somehow this sudden severance from the old days hadbrought with it a forlornness. She seemed to be standing alone in achanged world.
"Cold?" said Wally Mason.
"A little."
"Let's walk."
They moved westwards. Cleopatra's Needle shot up beside them, apointing finger. Down on the silent river below, coffin-like row-boatslay moored to the wall. Through a break in the trees the clock overthe Houses of Parliament shone for an instant as if suspended in thesky, then vanished as the trees closed in. A distant barge in thedirection of Battersea wailed and was still. It had a mournful andforeboding sound. Jill shivered again. It annoyed her that she couldnot shake off this quite uncalled-for melancholy, but it withstoodevery effort. Why she should have felt that a chapter, a pleasantchapter, in the book of her life had been closed, she could not havesaid, but the feeling lingered.
"Correct me if I am wrong," said Wally Mason, breaking a silence thathad lasted several minutes, "but you seem to me to be freezing in yourtracks. Ever since I came to London I've had a habit of heading forthe Embankment in times of mental stress, but perhaps the middle ofwinter is not quite the moment for communing with the night. The Savoyis handy, if we stop walking away from it. I think we might celebratethis re-union with a little supper, don't you?"
Jill's depression disappeared magically. Her mercurial temperamentasserted 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 forgethis private and personal connection with the night's events. Her mindwent back to something he had said in the theatre. "Wally--" Shestopped, 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. Ihaven't my book of etiquette with me, but I fancy that about elevengallons of cold water down the neck constitutes an introduction. Whatwere you going to say?"
"It was what you said to Freddie about putting up money. Did youreally?"
"Put up the money for that ghastly play? I did. Every cent. It was theonly 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 myhonest word that until to-night I thought the darned thing amasterpiece. I've been writing musical comedies for the last fewyears, and after you've done that for a while your soul rises upwithin you and says, 'Come, come, my lad! You can do better thanthis!' That's what mine said, and I believed it. Subsequent eventshave 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 amoment, of a lifetime. And no honest old servitor who dangled me onhis knee as a baby to come along and offer me his savings! They don'tmake servitors like that in America, worse luck. There is a Swedishlady who looks after my simple needs back there, but instinct tells methat, if I were to approach her on the subject of loosening up for thebenefit of the young master, she would call a cop. Still, I've gainedexperience, which they say is just as good as cash, and I've enoughmoney left to pay the bill, at any rate, so come along."
In the supper-room of the Savoy Hotel there was, as anticipated, foodand light and music. It was still early, and the theatres had not yetemptied themselves, so that the big room was as yet but half full.Wally Mason had found a table in the corner, and proceeded to orderwith the concentration of a hungry man.
"Forgive my dwelling so tensely on the bill-of-fare," he said, whenthe waiter had gone. "You don't know what it means to one in mycondition 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 believethat this old friend with whom she had gone through the perils of thenight and with whom she was now about to feast was the sinister figurethat had cast a shadow on her childhood. He looked positivelyincapable of pulling a little girl's hair--as no doubt he was.
"You always were greedy," she commented. "Just before I turned thehose on you, I remember you had made yourself thoroughly disliked bypocketing a piece of my birthday cake."
"Do you remember that?" His eyes lit up and he smiled back at her. Hehad an ingratiating smile. His mouth was rather wide, and it seemed tostretch right across his face. He reminded Jill more than ever of abig, friendly dog. "I can feel it now--all squashy in my pocket,inextricably mingled with a catapult, a couple of marbles, a box ofmatches, and some string. I was quite the human general store in thosedays. Which reminds me that we have been some time settling down to anexchange of our childish reminiscences, haven't we?"
"I've been trying to realize that you are Wally Mason. You havealtered so."
"For the better?"
"Very much for the better! You were a horrid little brute. You used toterrify me. I never knew when you were going to bound out at me frombehind 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 tohide my devotion."
"You certainly succeeded. I never even suspected it."
Wally sighed.
"How like life! I never told my love, but let concealment like a wormi' 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 withthe worm, and thought you might be glad to have it."
"You were always doing things like that. Once you held me over thepond and threatened to drop me into the water--in the winter! Justbefore Christmas. It was a particularly mean thing to do, because Icouldn't even kick your shins for fear you would let me fall. L
uckilyUncle 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 thething from a different angle. Your uncle had a whangee with him. Myfriends sometimes wonder what I mean when I say that my old woundtroubles 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, downat Brighton."
"He didn't strike me as lazy," said Wally thoughtfully. "Dynamic wouldexpress it better. But perhaps I happened to encounter him in a momentof 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 isman's work before me!"
"And later on, I suppose, you would like a chop or something to takeaway in your pocket?"
"I will think it over. Possibly a little soup. My needs are verysimple these days."
Jill watched him with a growing sense of satisfaction. There wassomething 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 adefinite addition to the things that went to make her happy.
She liked him particularly for being such a good loser. She hadalways been a good loser herself, and the quality was one which sheadmired. It was nice of him to dismiss from his conversation--andapparently from his thoughts--that night's fiasco and all that it musthave cost him. She wondered how much he had lost. Certainly somethingvery substantial. Yet it seemed to trouble him not at all. Jillconsidered his behaviour gallant, and her heart warmed to him. Thiswas how a man ought to take the slings and arrows of outrageousfortune.
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 happyabout the place than swooning on the floor with starvation. Awonderful thing, food! I am now ready to converse intelligently on anysubject you care to suggest. I have eaten rose-leaves and am no more agolden 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 totouch on? My thoughts, my tastes, my amusements, my career, or what? Ican talk about myself for hours. My friends in New York often complainabout 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 playof 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 anew departure, you see. What the critics in those parts expect from meis something entitled 'Wow! Wow!' or 'The Girl from Yonkers.' It wouldhave unsettled their minds to find me breaking out in poetic drama.They are men of coarse fibre and ribald mind and they would have beenfunny 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 hadknown 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 yearsafter the hose episode. Probably you didn't observe that I wasn'tstill around, but we crept silently out of the neighbourhood roundabout that time and went to live in London." His tone lost itslightness momentarily. "My father died, you know, and that sort ofbroke things up. He didn't leave any too much money, either.Apparently we had been living on rather too expensive a scale duringthe time I knew you. At any rate, I was more or less up against ituntil 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'tsuppose he would have known me by sight, and, even if he hadremembered me, I shouldn't have imagined that the memory would havebeen a pleasant one. But he couldn't have taken more trouble if I hadbeen 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 afew vaudeville songs. Then I came across a man named Bevan at a musicpublisher's. He was just starting to write music, and we got togetherand turned out some vaudeville sketches, and then a manager sent forus to fix up a show that was dying on the road and we had the goodluck to turn it into a success, and after that it was pretty goodgoing. 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 daysyou'll meet some lovely American girl and then you'll put a worm downher back or pull her hair or whatever it is you do when you want toshow your devotion, and.... What are you looking at? Is somethinginteresting 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 twotables back of you who has been staring at you, with intervals forrefreshment, for the last five minutes. You seem to fascinate her."
"An old lady?"
"Yes. With a glare! She looks like Dunsany's Bird of the DifficultEye. Count ten and turn carelessly round, There, at that table. Almostbehind 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.
II
Jill looked at her companion anxiously. Recent events had caused hercompletely to forget the existence of Lady Underhill. She was alwaysso intensely interested in what she happened to be doing at the momentthat she often suffered these temporary lapses of memory. It occurredto her now--too late, as usual--that the Savoy Hotel was the lastplace in London where she should have come to supper with Wally. Itwas the hotel where Lady Underhill was staying. She frowned. Life hadsuddenly ceased to be careless and happy, and had become aproblem-ridden thing, full of perplexity and misunderstandings.
"What shall I do?"
Wally Mason started at the sound of her voice. He appeared to be deepin 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 anold friend."
"N-no," said Jill doubtfully. "But...."
"Derek Underhill," said Wally reflectively. "Is that Sir DerekUnderhill, 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 increasesthe expenses."
"Given it up?"
"Don't you remember sharing one of your father's cigars with me behindthe haystack in the meadow? We cut it in half. I finished my half, butI 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 shallever 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 I were to dare you to get up and walkover to that table and look your fiance in the eye and say, 'Stopscowling at my back hair! I've a perfect right to be supping with anold friend!'--would you do it?"
"Is he?" said Jill startled.
"Scowling? Can't you feel it on the back of your head?" He drewthoughtfully at his cigarette. "If I were you I should stop that sortof thing at the source. It's a habit that can't be discouraged in ahusband too early. Scowling is the civilized man's substitute forwife-beating."
Jill moved uncomfortably in her chair. Her quick temper resented histone. There was a hostility, a hardly veiled contempt in his voicewhich 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 haddisliked in the old days. There was a gleam in her eyes which shouldhave warned him, but he went on.
"I should imagine that this Derek of yours is not one of our leadingsunbeams. Well, I suppose he could hardly be, if that's his mother andthere 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 fellbetween them a silence that was like a shadow, Jill sipped her coffeemiserably. She was regretting that little spurt of temper. She wishedshe could have recalled the words. Not that it was the actual wordsthat had torn asunder this gossamer thing, the friendship which theyhad begun to weave like some fragile web: it was her manner, themanner of the princess rebuking an underling. She knew that, if shehad struck him, she could not have offended Wally more deeply. Thereare some men whose ebullient natures enable them to rise unscathedfrom the worst snub. Wally, her intuition told her, was not that kindof man.
There was only one way of mending the matter. In these clashes ofhuman temperaments, these sudden storms that spring up out of a clearsky, it is possible sometimes to repair the damage, if thepsychological moment is resolutely seized, by talking rapidly and withdetachment on neutral topics. Words have made the rift, and wordsalone can bridge it. But neither Jill nor her companion could findwords, and the silence lengthened grimly. When Wally spoke, it was inthe 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 preferthe window up or down. It had the effect of killing her regrets andfeeding 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 thearrival of the hour of closing. In the momentary darkness they bothrose. Wally scrawled his name across the bill which the waiter hadinsinuated upon his attention. "I suppose we had better be moving?"
They crossed the room in silence. Everybody was moving in the samedirection. The broad stairway leading to the lobby was crowded withchattering 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 youhome, 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 wasalone. Lady Underhill presumably had gone up to her room in theelevator.
Wally was holding out his hand. His face was stolid and his eyesavoided hers.
"Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye," said Jill.
She felt curiously embarrassed. At this last moment hostility hadweakened, and she was conscious of a desire to make amends. She andthis man had been through much together that night, much that wasperilous and much that was pleasant. A sudden feeling of remorse cameover her.
"You'll come and see us, won't you?" she said a little wistfully. "I'msure my uncle would like to meet you again."
"It's very good of you," said Wally, "but I'm afraid I shall be goingback 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 joinDerek. She felt angry and depressed, full of a sense of the futilityof things. People flashed into one's life and out again. Where was thesense of it?
III
Derek had been scowling, and Derek still scowled. His eyebrows wereformidable, and his mouth smiled no welcome at Jill as she approachedhim. The evening, portions of which Jill had found so enjoyable, hadcontained no pleasant portions for Derek. Looking back over a lifetimewhose events had been almost uniformly agreeable, he told himselfthat he could not recall another day which had gone so completelyawry. It had started with the fog. He hated fog. Then had come thatmeeting with his mother at Charing Cross, which had been enough toupset him by itself. After that, rising to a crescendo ofunpleasantness, the day had provided that appalling situation at theAlbany, the recollection of which still made him tingle; and there hadfollowed the silent dinner, the boredom of the early part of the play,the fire at the theatre, the undignified scramble for the exits, andnow this discovery of the girl whom he was engaged to marry supping atthe Savoy with a fellow he didn't remember ever having seen in hislife. All these things combined to induce in Derek a mood bordering onferocity. His birth and income combining to make him one of thespoiled children of the world, had fitted him ill for such a series ofcatastrophes. He received Jill with frozen silence and led her out tothe waiting taxi-cab. It was only when the cab had started on itsjourney that he found relief in speech.
"Well," he said, mastering with difficulty an inclination to raise hisvoice to a shout, "perhaps you will kindly explain?"
Jill had sunk back against the cushions of the cab. The touch of hisbody against hers always gave her a thrill, half pleasurable, halffrightening. She had never met anybody who affected her in this way asDerek did. She moved a little closer, and felt for his hand. But, asshe touched it, it retreated--coldly. Her heart sank. It was likebeing cut in public by somebody very dignified.
"Derek, darling!" Her lips trembled. Others had seen this side ofDerek Underhill frequently, for he was a man who believed in keepingthe world in its place, but she never. To her he had always been theperfect, gracious knight. A little too perfect, perhaps, a trifle toogracious, possibly, but she had been too deeply in love to noticethat. "Don't be cross!"
The English language is the richest in the world, and yet somehow inmoments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. Theadjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath thatconsumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was asthough Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been askedif he were piqued.
"Cross!"
The cab rolled on. Lights from lamp-posts flashed in at windows. Itwas a pale, anxious little face that they lit up when they shone uponJill.
"I can't understand you," said Derek at last. Jill noticed that he hadnot yet addressed her by her name. He was speaking straight out infront of him as if he were soliloquising. "I simply cannot understandyou. After what happened before dinner to-night, for you to capeverything by going off alone to supper at a restaurant, where halfthe 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 apoint made Derek feel a little better. "I admit it. Your behaviour isincomprehensible. 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 t
o? The fellow who scrapedacquaintance with you between the acts?"
"But I found out he was an old friend. I mean, I knew him when I was achild."
"You didn't tell me that."
"I only found it out later."
"After he had invited you to supper! It's maddening!" cried Derek, thesense of his wrongs surging back over him. "What do you suppose mymother thought? She asked me who the man with you was. I had to say Ididn't know! What do you suppose she thought?"
It is to be doubted whether anything else in the world could haverestored the fighting spirit to Jill's cowering soul at that moment;but the reference to Lady Underhill achieved this miracle. That deepmutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sighthad sprung up between the two at the instant of their meeting. Thecircumstances of that meeting had caused it to take root and grow. ToJill, Derek's mother was by this time not so much a fellow human beingwhom she disliked as a something, a sort of force, that made for herunhappiness. 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 who got me safely out ofthe theatre after you...." She checked herself. She did not want tosay the unforgivable thing. "You see," she said more quietly, "you haddisappeared...."
"My mother is an old woman," said Derek stiffly. "Naturally I had tolook after her. I called to you to follow."
"Oh, I understand. I'm simply trying to explain what happened. I wasthere all alone, and Wally Mason...."
"Wally!" Derek uttered a short laugh, almost a bark. "It got toChristian 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 thestage-door."
Derek was feeling cheated. He had the uncomfortable sensation thatcomes to men who grandly contemplate mountains and see them dwindle tomolehills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in explanationnothing so out-of-the-way after all. He seized upon the single pointin Jill's behaviour that still constituted a grievance.
"There was no need for you to go to supper with the man!" Jove-likewrath had ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous grumble."You should have gone straight home. You must have known how anxious Iwould be about you."
"Well, really, Derek, dear! You didn't seem so very anxious! You werehaving 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, despiteall the occurrences of this dreadful day, it was not till she madethis remark that Derek Underhill first admitted to himself that,intoxicate his senses as she might, there was a possibility that JillMariner was not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and went morequickly than breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been. Thereare men who fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword. Derekwas one of these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity istheir most precious possession, he winced from an edged tongue.
"My mother was greatly upset," he replied coldly. "I thought a cup ofsoup would do her good. And, as for being anxious about you, Itelephoned to your home to ask if you had come in."
"And when," thought Jill, "they told you I hadn't, you went off tosupper!"
She did not speak the words. If she had an edged tongue, she had alsothe control of it. She had no wish to wound Derek. Whole-hearted ineverything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might bespecks upon her idol--that its feet might be clay she could neverbelieve--but they mattered nothing. She loved him.
"I'm so sorry, dear," she said. "So awfully sorry! I've been a badgirl, haven't I?"
She felt for his hand again, and this time he allowed it to remainstiffly in her grasp. It was like being grudgingly recognized bysomebody very dignified who had his doubts about you but reservedjudgment.
The cab drew up at the door of the house in Ovingdon Square whichJill's Uncle Christopher had settled upon as a suitable address for agentleman of his standing. Jill put up her face to be kissed, like apenitent 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 ofher nearness, her sweetness, the faint perfume of her hair, and hereyes, shining softly in the darkness so close to his own, overcamehim. He crushed her to him.
Jill disappeared into the house with a happy laugh. It had been aterrible 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. Thecab rolled on. Presently his exalted mood vanished as quickly as ithad come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jillpresent. He was not a man of strong imagination, and the stimulus ofher waned when she was not with him. Long before the cab reached theAlbany the frown was back on his face.
IV
Arriving at the Albany, he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in adeep arm-chair. His slippered feet were on the mantelpiece, and he wasrestoring his wasted tissues with a strong whisky-and-soda. One ofthe cigars which Barker, the valet, had stamped with the seal of hisapproval was in the corner of his mouth. The _Sporting Times_, with aperusal of which he had been soothing his fluttered nerves, had fallenon the floor beside the chair. He had finished reading, and was nowgazing peacefully at the ceiling, his mind a perfect blank. There wasnothing the matter with Freddie.
"Hullo, old thing," he observed as Derek entered. "So you buzzed outof 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 oldsystem all stirred up! I'll do anything in reason to oblige and helpthings along and all that, but to be called on at a moment's notice toplay Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rolled into one, withoutrehearsal or make-up, is a bit too thick! No, young feller-me-lad! Iftheatre fires are going to be the fashion this season, the Last of theRookes will sit quietly at home and play solitaire. Mix yourself adrink of something, old man, or something of that kind. By the way,your jolly old mater. All right? Not even singed? Fine! Make a longarm and gather in a cigar."
And Freddie, having exerted himself to play the host in a suitablemanner, wedged himself more firmly into his chair and blew a cloud ofsmoke.
Derek sat down. He lit a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. Fromthe mantelpiece Jill's photograph smiled down, but he did not look atit. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie hadhad a trying evening What he wanted just now was merry prattle, andhis friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removedhis feet from the mantelpiece and wriggled himself sideways, so thathe could see Derek's face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from hisadmiration for Derek, he was a warmhearted young man, and sympathizedwith 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 ashe esteemed the other's mentality, he and Freddie had known each othera long time, and that it would be a relief to confide in some one. AndFreddie, moreover, was an old friend of Jill and the man who hadintroduced 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 theceiling.
"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 whatwriting-chappies called a coincidence.
"Rummy you should say that," he ejaculated. "I was telling her exactlythe same thing myself only this evening." He hesitated. "I fancy I cansee what you're driving at, old thing. The watchword is 'What ho, themat
er!' yes, no? You've begun to get a sort of idea that if Jilldoesn'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 thatJill's a topper. But one can see that to your mater she might seem abit different. I mean to say, your jolly old mater only judging byfirst impressions, and the meeting not having come off quite asscheduled.... I say, old man," he broke off, "fearfully sorry and allthat about that business. You know what I mean! Wouldn't have had ithappen for the world. I take it the mater was a trifle peeved? Not tosay perturbed and chagrined? I seemed to notice it at dinner."
"She was furious, of course. She did not refer to the matter when wewere alone together, but there was no need to. I knew what she wasthinking."
Derek threw away his cigar. Freddie noted this evidence of anoverwrought 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 mattergreatly to heart. Derek was his best friend, and he had always beenextremely fond of Jill. It hurt him to see things going wrong. "I'lltell you what, old bean. Let _me_ handle this binge for you."
"You?"
"Me! The Final Rooke!" He jumped up, and leaned against themantelpiece. "I'm the lad to do it. I've known Jill for years. She'lllisten to me. I'll talk to her like a Dutch uncle and make herunderstand the general scheme of things. I'll take her out to teato-morrow and slang her in no uncertain voice! Leave the whole thingto _me_, laddie!"
Derek considered.
"It might do some good," he said.
"Good?" said Freddie. "It's _it_, dear boy! It's a wheeze! You toddleoff to bed and have a good sleep. I'll fix the whole thing for you!"