§ 1.
A taxi-cab stopped at the door of number twenty-two Ovington Square.
Freddie Rooke emerged, followed by Jill. While Freddie paid the driver,
Jill sniffed the afternoon air happily. It had turned into a delightful
day. A westerly breeze, springing up in the morning, had sent the
thermometer up with a run and broken the cold spell which had been
gripping London. It was one of those afternoons which intrude on the
bleakness of winter with a false but none the less agreeable intimation
that Spring is on its way. The sidewalks were wet underfoot, and the
gutters ran with thawed snow. The sun shone exhilaratingly from a sky
the color of a hedge-sparrow’s egg.
“Doesn’t everything smell lovely, Freddie,” said Jill, “after our
prison-life!”
“Topping!”
“Fancy getting out so quickly! Whenever I’m arrested, I must always
make a point of having a rich man with me. I shall never tease you
about that fifty-pound note again.”
“Fifty-pound note?”
“It certainly came in handy today!”
She was opening the door with her latch-key, and missed the sudden
sagging of Freddie’s jaw, the sudden clutch at his breast-pocket, and
the look of horror and anguish that started into his eyes. Freddie was
appalled. Finding himself at the police-station penniless with the
exception of a little loose change, he had sent that message to Derek,
imploring assistance, as the only alternative to spending the night in
a cell, with Jill in another. He had realized that there was a risk of
Derek taking the matter hardly, and he had not wanted to get Jill into
trouble, but there seemed nothing else to do. If they remained where
they were overnight, the thing would get into the papers, and that
would be a thousand times worse. And if he applied for aid to Ronny
Devereux or Algy Martyn or anybody like that all London would know
about it next day. So Freddie, with misgivings, had sent the message to
Derek, and now Jill’s words had reminded him that there was no need to
have done so. Years ago he had read somewhere or heard somewhere about
some chappie who always buzzed around with a sizeable banknote stitched
into his clothes, and the scheme had seemed to him ripe to a degree.
You never knew when you might find yourself short of cash and faced by
an immediate call for the ready. He had followed the chappie’s example.
And now, when the crisis had arrived, he had forgotten—absolutely
forgotten!—that he had the dashed thing on his person at all.
He followed Jill into the house, groaning in spirit, but thankful that
she had taken it for granted that he had secured their release in the
manner indicated. He did not propose to disillusion her. It would be
time enough to take the blame when the blame came along. Probably old
Derek would simply be amused and laugh at the whole bally affair like a
sportsman. Freddie cheered up considerably at the thought.
Jill was talking to the parlormaid whose head had popped up over the
banisters flanking the stairs that led to the kitchen.
“Major Selby hasn’t arrived yet, miss.”
“That’s odd. I suppose he must have taken a later train.”
“There’s a lady in the drawing-room, miss, waiting to see him. She
didn’t give any name. She said she would wait till the major came.
She’s been waiting a goodish while.”
“All right, Jane. Thanks. Will you bring up tea.”
They walked down the hall. The drawing-room was on the ground floor, a
long, dim room that would have looked like a converted studio but for
the absence of bright light. A girl was sitting at the far end by the
fireplace. She rose: as they entered.
“How do you do?” said Jill. “I’m afraid my uncle has not come back yet
…”
“Say!” cried the visitor. “You _did_ get out quick!”
Jill was surprised. She had no recollection of ever having seen the
other before. Her visitor was a rather pretty girl, with a sort of
jaunty way of carrying herself which made a piquant contrast to her
tired eyes and wistful face. Jill took an immediate liking to her. She
looked so forlorn and pathetic.
“My name’s Nelly Bryant,” said the girl. “That parrot belongs to me.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I heard you say to the cop that you lived here, so I came along to
tell your folks what had happened, so that they could do something. The
maid said that your uncle was expected any minute, so I waited.”
“That was awfully good of you.”
“Dashed good,” said Freddie.
“Oh, no! Honest, I don’t know how to thank you for what you did. You
don’t know what a pal Bill is to me. It would have broken me all up if
that plug-ugly had killed him.”
“But what a shame you had to wait so long.”
“I liked it.”
Nelly Bryant looked about the room wistfully. This was the sort of room
she sometimes dreamed about. She loved its subdued light and the pulpy
cushions on the sofa.
“You’ll have some tea before you go, won’t you?” said Jill, switching
on the lights.
“It’s very kind of you.”
“Why, hullo!” said Freddie. “By Jove! I say! We’ve met before, what?”
“Why, so we have!”
“That lunch at Oddy’s that young Threepwood gave, what?”
“I wonder you remember.”
“Oh, I remember. Quite a time ago, eh? Miss Bryant was in that show,
‘Follow the Girl,’ Jill, at the Regal.”
“Oh, yes. I remember you took me to see it.”
“Dashed odd meeting again like this!” said Freddie. “Really rummy!”
Jane, the parlormaid, entering with tea, interrupted his comments.
“You’re American, then?” said Jill, interested. “The whole company came
from New York, didn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“I’m half American myself, you know. I used to live in New York when I
was very small, but I’ve almost forgotten what it was like. I remember
a sort of over-head railway that made an awful noise …”
“The Elevated!” murmured Nelly devoutly. A wave of homesickness seemed
to choke her for a moment.
“And the air. Like champagne. And a very blue sky.”
“Yes,” said Nelly in a small voice.
“I shouldn’t half mind popping over New York for a bit,” said Freddie,
unconscious of the agony he was inflicting. “I’ve met some very sound
sportsmen who came from there. You don’t know a fellow named
Williamson, do you?”
“I don’t believe I do.”
“Or Oakes?”
“No.”
“That’s rummy! Oakes has lived in New York for years.”
“So have about seven million other people,” interposed Jill. “Don’t be
silly, Freddie. How would you like somebody to ask of you if you knew a
man named Jenkins in London?”
“I _do_ know a man named Jenkins in London,” replied Freddie
triumphantly.
Jill poured out a cup of tea for her visitor, and looked at the clock.
“I wonder where Uncle Chris has got to,” she said. “He ought to be here
by now. I hope he hasn’t got into any mischief among the wild
stock-brokers down at Brighton.”
Freddie laid down his cup on the table and uttered a loud snort.
“Oh, Freddie, darling!” said Jill remorsefully. “I forgot!
Stock-brokers are a painful subject, aren’t they!” She turned to Nelly.
“There’s been an awful slump on the Stock Exchange today, and he
got—what was the word, Freddie?”
“Nipped!” said Freddie with gloom.
“Nipped!”
“Nipped like the dickens!”
“Nipped like the dickens!” Jill smiled at Nelly. “He had forgotten all
about it in the excitement of being a jailbird, and I went and reminded
him.”
Freddie sought sympathy from Nelly.
“A silly ass at the club named Jimmy Monroe told me to take a flutter
in some rotten thing called Amalgamated Dyes. You know how it is, when
you’re feeling devilish fit and cheery and all that after dinner, and
somebody sidles up to you and slips his little hand in yours and tells
you to do some fool thing. You’re so dashed nappy you simply say
‘Right-ho, old bird! Make it so!’ That’s the way I got had!”
Jill laughed unfeelingly.
“It will do you good, Freddie. It’ll stir you up and prevent you being
so silly again. Besides, you know you’ll hardly notice it. You’ve much
too much money as it is.”
“It’s not the money. It’s the principle of the thing. I hate looking a
frightful chump.”
“Well, you needn’t tell anybody. We’ll keep it a secret. In fact, we’ll
start at once, for I hear Uncle Chris outside. Let us dissemble. We are
observed!… Hullo, Uncle Chris!”
She ran down the room, as the door opened, and kissed the tall,
soldierly man who entered.
“Well, Jill, my dear.”
“How late you are. I was expecting you hours ago.”
“I had to call on my broker.”
“Hush! Hush!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing. … We’ve got visitors. You know Freddie Rooke, of
course?”
“How are you, Freddie, my boy?”
“Cheerio!” said Freddie. “Pretty fit?”
“And Miss Bryant,” said Jill.
“How do you do?” said Uncle Chris in the bluff, genial way which, in
his younger days, had charmed many a five-pound note out of the pockets
of his fellow-men and many a soft glance out of the eyes of their
sisters, their cousins, and their aunts.
“Come and have some tea,” said Jill. “You’re just in time.”
Nelly had subsided shyly into the depths of her big armchair. Somehow
she felt a better and a more important girl since Uncle Chris had
addressed her. Most people felt like that after encountering Jill’s
Uncle Christopher. Uncle Chris had a manner. It was not precisely
condescending, and yet it was not the manner of an equal. He treated
you as an equal, true, but all the time you were conscious of the fact
that it was extraordinarily good of him to do so. Uncle Chris affected
the rank and file of his fellow-men much as a genial knight of the
Middle Ages would have affected a scurvy knave or varlet if he had cast
aside social distinctions for awhile and hobnobbed with the latter in a
tavern. He never patronized, but the mere fact that he abstained from
patronizing seemed somehow impressive.
To this impressiveness his appearance contributed largely. He was a
fine, upstanding man, who looked less than his forty-nine years in
spite of an ominous thinning of the hair which he tended and brushed so
carefully. He had a firm chin, a mouth that smiled often and pleasantly
beneath the closely-clipped moustache, and very bright blue eyes which
met yours in a clear, frank, honest gaze. Though he had served in his
youth in India, he had none of the Anglo-Indian’s sun-scorched
sallowness. His complexion was fresh and sanguine. He looked as if he
had just stepped out of a cold tub,—a misleading impression, for Uncle
Chris detested cold water and always took his morning bath as hot as he
could get it.
It was his clothes, however, which, even more than his appearance,
fascinated the populace. There is only one tailor in London, as
distinguished from the ambitious mechanics who make coats and trousers,
and Uncle Chris was his best customer. Similarly, London is full of
young fellows trying to get along by the manufacture of foot-wear, but
there is only one boot-maker in the true meaning of the word,—the one
who supplied Uncle Chris. And, as for hats, while it is no doubt a fact
that you can get at plenty of London shops some sort of covering for
your head which will keep it warm, the only hatter—using the term in
its deeper sense—is the man who enjoyed the patronage of Major
Christopher Selby. From foot to head, in short, from furthest South to
extremest North, Uncle Chris was perfect. He was an ornament to his
surroundings. The Metropolis looked better for him. One seems to
picture London as a mother with a horde of untidy children, children
with made-up ties, children with wrinkled coats and baggy trouser-legs,
sighing to herself as she beheld them, then cheering up and murmuring
with a touch of restored complacency, “Ah, well, I still have Uncle
Chris!”
“Miss Bryant is American, Uncle Chris,” said Jill.
Uncle Chris spread his shapely legs before the fire, and glanced down
kindly at Nelly.
“Indeed?” He took a cup of tea and stirred it. “I was in America as a
young man.”
“Whereabouts?” asked Nelly eagerly.
“Oh, here and there and everywhere. I travelled considerably.”
“That’s how it is with me,” said Nelly, overcoming her diffidence as
she warmed to the favorite topic. “I guess I know most every town in
every State, from New York to the last one-night stand. It’s a great
old country, isn’t it?”
“It is!” said Uncle Chris. “I shall be returning there very shortly.”
He paused meditatively. “Very shortly indeed.”
Nelly bit her lip. It seemed to be her fate today to meet people who
were going to America.
“When did you decide to do that?” asked Jill.
She had been looking at him, puzzled. Years of association with Uncle
Chris had enabled her to read his moods quickly, and she was sure that
there was something on his mind. It was not likely that the others had
noticed it, for his manner was as genial and urbane as ever. But
something about him, a look in his eyes that came and went, an
occasional quick twitching of his mouth, told her that all was not
well. She was a little troubled, but not greatly. Uncle Chris was not
the sort of man to whom grave tragedies happened. It was probably some
mere trifle which she could smooth out for him in five minutes, once
they were alone together. She reached out and patted his sleeve
affectionately. She was fonder of Uncle Chris than of anyone in the
world except Derek.
“The thought,” said Uncle Chris, “came to me this morning, as I read my
morning paper while breakfasting. It has grown and developed during the
day. At this moment you might almost call it an obsession. I am very
fond of America. I spent several happy years there. On that occasion, I
set sail for the land of promise, I admit, somewhat reluctantly. Of my
own free will I might never have made the expedition. But the general
sentiment seemed so strongly in favor of my doing so that I yielded to
what I might call a public demand. The willing hands for my nearest and
dearest were behind me, pushing, and I did not resist them. I have
never regretted it. America is a part of every young man’s education.
You ought to go there, Freddie.”
“Rummily enough,” said Freddie, “I was saying just before you came in
that I had half a mind to pop over. Only it’s rather a bally fag,
starting. Getting your luggage packed and all that sort of thing.”
Nelly, whose luggage consisted of one small trunk, heaved a silent
sigh. Mingling with the idle rich carried its penalties.
“America,” said Uncle Chris, “taught me poker, for which I can never be
sufficiently grateful. Also an exotic pastime styled Craps,—or,
alternatively, ‘rolling the bones’—which in those days was a very
present help in time of trouble. At Craps, I fear, my hand in late
years had lost much of its cunning. I have had little opportunity of
practising. But as a young man I was no mean exponent of the art. Let
me see,” said Uncle Chris meditatively. “What was the precise ritual?
Ah! I have it, ‘Come, little seven!’”
“‘Come, eleven!’” exclaimed Nelly excitedly.
“‘Baby …’ I feel convinced that in some manner the word baby entered
into it.”
“‘Baby needs new shoes!’”
“‘Baby needs new shoes!’ Precisely!”
“It sounds to me,” said Freddie, “dashed silly.”
“Oh, no!” cried Nelly reproachfully.
“Well, what I mean to say is, there’s no sense in it, don’t you know.”
“It is a noble pursuit,” said Uncle Chris firmly. “Worthy of the great
nation that has produced it. No doubt, when I return to America, I
shall have opportunities of recovering my lost skill.”
“You aren’t returning to America,” said Jill. “You’re going to stay
safe at home like a good little uncle. I’m not going to have you
running wild all over the world at your age.”
“Age?” declaimed Uncle Chris. “What is my age? At the present moment I
feel in the neighborhood of twenty-one, and Ambition is tapping me on
the shoulder and whispering ‘Young man, go West!’ The years are
slipping away from me, my dear Jill,—slipping so quickly that in a few
minutes you will be wondering why my nurse does not come to fetch me.
The wanderlust is upon me. I gaze around me at all this prosperity in
which I am lapped,” said Uncle Chris, eyeing the arm-chair severely,
“all this comfort and luxury which swaddles me, and I feel staggered. I
want activity. I want to be braced!”
“You would hate it,” said Jill composedly. “You know you’re the laziest
old darling in the world.”
“Exactly what I am endeavoring to point out. I am lazy. Or, I was till
this morning.”
“Something very extraordinary must have happened this morning. I can
see that.”
“I wallowed in gross comfort. I was what Shakespeare calls a ‘fat and
greasy citizen’!”
“Please, Uncle Chris!” protested Jill. “Not while I’m eating buttered
toast!”
“But now I am myself again.”
“That’s splendid.”
“I have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,” chanted Uncle Chris,
“and the thresh of the deep-sea rain. I have heard the song—How long!
how long! Pull out on the trail again!”
“He can also recite ‘Gunga Din,’” said Jill to Nelly. “I really must
apologize for all this. He’s usually as good as gold.”
“I believe I know how he feels,” said Nelly softly.
“Of course you do. You and I, Miss Bryant, are of the gipsies of the
world. We are not vegetables like young Rooke here.”
“Eh, what?” said the vegetable, waking from a reverie. He had been
watching Nelly’s face. Its wistfulness attracted him.
“We are only happy,” proceeded Uncle Chris, “when we are wandering.”
“You should see Uncle Chris wander to his club in the morning,” said
Jill. “He trudges off in a taxi, singing wild gipsy songs, absolutely
defying fatigue.”
“That,” said Uncle Chris, “is a perfectly justified slur. I shudder at
the depths to which prosperity has caused me to sink.” He expanded his
chest. “I shall be a different man in America. America would make a
different man of you, Freddie.”
“I’m all right, thanks!” said that easily satisfied young man.
Uncle Chris turned to Nelly, pointing dramatically.
“Young woman, go West! Return to your bracing home, and leave this
enervating London! You …”
Nelly got up abruptly. She could endure no more.
“I believe I’ll have to be going now,” she said. “Bill misses me if I’m
away long. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for what you did.”
“It was awfully kind of you to come round,” said Jill.
“Good-bye, Major Selby.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mr Rooke.”
Freddie awoke from another reverie.
“Eh? Oh, I say, half a jiffy. I think I may as well be toddling along
myself. About time I was getting back to dress for dinner and all that.
See you home, may I, and then I’ll get a taxi at Victoria. Toodle-oo,
everybody.”
Freddie escorted Nelly through the hall and opened the front door for
her. The night was cool and cloudy, and there was still in the air that
odd, rejuvenating suggestion of Spring. A wet fragrance came from the
dripping trees.
“Topping evening!” said Freddie conversationally.
“Yes.”
They walked through the square in silence. Freddie shot an appreciative
glance at his companion. Freddie, as he would have admitted frankly,
was not much of a lad for the modern girl. The modern girl, he
considered, was too dashed rowdy and exuberant for a chappie of
peaceful tastes. Now, this girl, on the other hand, had all the
earmarks of being something of a topper. She had a soft voice. Rummy
accent and all that, but nevertheless a soft and pleasing voice. She
was mild and unaggressive, and these were qualities which Freddie
esteemed. Freddie, though this was a thing he would not have admitted,
was afraid of girls, the sort of girls he had to take down to dinner
and dance with and so forth. They were too dashed clever, and always
seemed to be waiting for a chance to score off a fellow. This one was
not like that. Not a bit. She was gentle and quiet and what not.
It was at this point that it came home to him how remarkably quiet she
was. She had not said a word for the last five minutes. He was just
about to break the silence, when, as they passed under a street lamp,
he perceived that she was crying,—crying very softly to herself, like a
child in the dark.
“Good God!” said Freddie, appalled. There were two things in life with
which he felt totally unable to cope,—crying girls and dog-fights. The
glimpse he had caught of Nelly’s face froze him into a speechlessness
which lasted until they reached Daubeny Street and stopped at her door.
“Good-bye,” said Nelly.
“Good-bye-ee!” said Freddie mechanically. “That’s to say, I mean to
say, half a second!” he added quickly. He faced her nervously, with one
hand on the grimy railings. This wanted looking into. When it came to
girls trickling to and fro in the public streets, weeping, well, it was
pretty rotten and something had to be done about it. “What’s up?” he
demanded.
“It’s nothing. Good-bye.”
“But, my dear old soul,” said Freddie, clutching the railing for moral
support, “it _is_ something. It must be! You might not think it, to
look at me, but I’m really rather a dashed shrewd chap, and I can _see_
there’s something up. Why not give me the jolly old scenario and see if
we can’t do something?”
Nelly moved as if to turn to the door, then stopped. She was thoroughly
ashamed of herself.
“I’m a fool!”
“No, no!”
“Yes, I am. I don’t often act this way, but, oh, gee! hearing you all
talking like that about going to America, just as if it was the easiest
thing in the world, only you couldn’t be bothered to do it, kind of got
me going. And to think I could be there right now if I wasn’t a
bonehead!”
“A bonehead?”
“A simp. I’m all right as far up as the string of near-pearls, but
above that I’m reinforced concrete.”
Freddie groped for her meaning.
“Do you mean you’ve made a bloomer of some kind?”
“I pulled the worst kind of bone. I stopped on in London when the rest
of the company went back home, and now I’ve got to stick.”
“Rush of jolly old professional engagement, what?”
Nelly laughed bitterly.
“You’re a bad guesser. No, they haven’t started to fight over me yet.
I’m at liberty, as they say in the Era.”
“But, my dear old thing,” said Freddie earnestly, “if you’ve got
nothing to keep you in England, why not pop back to America? I mean to
say, home-sickness is the most dashed blighted thing in the world.
There’s nothing gives one the pip to such an extent. Why, dash it, I
remember staying with an old aunt of mine up in Scotland the year
before last and not being able to get away for three weeks or so, and I
raved—absolutely gibbered—for a sight of the merry old metrop.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the night, thinking I was back at the Albany,
and, by Jove, when I found I wasn’t I howled like a dog! You take my
tip, old soul, and pop back on the next boat.”
“Which line?”
“How do you mean, which line? Oh, I see, you mean which line? Well …
well … I’ve never been on any of them, so it’s rather hard to say. But
I hear the Cunard well spoken of, and then again some chappies swear by
the White Star. But I should imagine you can’t go far wrong, whichever
you pick. They’re all pretty ripe, I fancy.”
“Which of them is giving free trips? That’s the point.”
“Eh? Oh!” Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep
consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost
forgotten that there existed a class which had not as much money as
himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat. It
was a purely disinterested sympathy. The fact that Nelly was a girl and
in many respects a dashed pretty girl did not affect him. What mattered
was that she was hard up. The thought hurt Freddie like a blow. He
hated the idea of anyone being hard up.
“I say!” he said. “Are you broke?”
Nelly laughed.
“Am I! If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn’t even have the hole in the
middle.”
Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the
streets, to whom he gave shillings, he had not met anyone for years who
had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who frequently
claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny, but the bally
penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned out to be a
couple of thousand pounds for a new car.
“Good God!” he said.
There was a pause. Then, with a sudden impulse, he began to fumble in
his breast-pocket. Rummy how things worked out for the best, however
scaly they might seem at the moment. Only an hour or so ago he had been
kicking himself for not having remembered that fifty-pound note, tacked
onto the lining of his coat, when it would have come in handy at the
police-station. He now saw that Providence had had the matter well in
hand. If he had remembered it and coughed it up to the constabulary
then, he wouldn’t have had it now. And he needed it now. A mood of
quixotic generosity had surged upon him. With swift fingers he jerked
the note free from its moorings and displayed it like a conjurer
exhibiting a rabbit.
“My dear old thing,” he said, “I can’t stand it! I absolutely cannot
stick it at any price! I really must insist on your trousering this.
Positively!”
Nelly Bryant gazed at the note with wide eyes. She was stunned. She
took it limply, and looked at it under the dim light of the gas-lamp
over the door.
“I couldn’t!” she cried.
“Oh, but really! You must!”
“But this is a fifty-pound!”
“Absolutely! It will take you back to New York, what? You asked which
line was giving free trips. The Freddie Rooke Line, by Jove, sailings
every Wednesday and Saturday! I mean, what!”
“But I can’t take two hundred and fifty dollars from you!”
“Oh, rather. Of course you can.”
There was another pause.
“You’ll think—” Nelly’s pale face flushed. “You’ll think I told you all
about myself just—just because I wanted to …”
“To make a touch? Absolutely not! Kid yourself of the jolly old
superstition entirely. You see before you, old thing, a chappie who
knows more about borrowing money than any man in London. I mean to say,
I’ve had my ear bitten more often than anyone, I should think. There
are sixty-four ways of making a touch—I’ve had them all worked on me by
divers blighters here and there—and I can tell any of them with my eyes
shut. I know you weren’t dreaming of any such thing.”
The note crackled musically in Nelly’s hand.
“I don’t know what to say!”
“That’s all right.”
“I don’t see why … Gee! I wish I could tell you what I think of you!”
Freddie laughed amusedly.
“Do you know,” he said, “that’s exactly what the beaks—the masters, you
know,—used to say to me at school.”
“Are you sure you can spare it?”
“Oh, rather.”
Nelly’s eyes shone in the light of the lamp.
“I’ve never met anyone like you before. I don’t know how …”
Freddie shuffled nervously. Being thanked always made him feel pretty
rotten.
“Well, I think I’ll be popping,” he said. “Got to get back and dress
and all that. Awfully glad to have seen you, and all that sort of rot.”
Nelly unlocked the door with her latchkey, and stood on the step.
“I’ll buy a fur-wrap,” she said, half to herself.
“Great wheeze! I should!”
“And some nuts for Bill!”
“Bill?”
“The parrot.”
“Oh, the jolly old parrot! Rather! Well, cheerio!”
“Good-bye … You’ve been awfully good to me.”
“Oh, no,” said Freddie uncomfortably. “Any time you’re passing … !”
“Awfully good … Well, good-bye.”
“Toodle-oo!”
“Maybe we’ll meet again some day.”
“I hope so. Absolutely!”
There was a little scurry of feet. Something warm and soft pressed for
an instant against Freddie’s cheek, and, as he stumbled back, Nelly
Bryant skipped up the steps and vanished through the door.
“Good God!”
Freddie felt his cheek. He was aware of an odd mixture of embarrassment
and exhilaration.
From the area below a slight cough sounded. Freddie turned sharply. A
maid in a soiled cap, worn coquettishly over one ear, was gazing
intently up through the railings. Their eyes met. Freddie turned a warm
pink. It seemed to him that the maid had the air of one about to
giggle.
“Damn!” said Freddie softly, and hurried off down the street. He
wondered whether he had made a frightful ass of himself, spraying
bank-notes all over the place like that to comparative strangers. Then
a vision came to him of Nelly’s eyes as they had looked at him in the
lamp-light, and he decided—no, absolutely not. Rummy as the gadget
might appear, it had been the right thing to do. It was a binge of
which he thoroughly approved. A good egg!
§ 2.
Jill, when Freddie and Nelly left the room, had seated herself on a low
stool, and sat, looking thoughtfully into the fire. She was wondering
if she had been mistaken in supposing that Uncle Chris was worried
about something. This restlessness of his, this desire for movement,
was strange in him. Hitherto he had been like a dear old cosy cat,
revelling in the comfort which he had just denounced so eloquently. She
watched him as he took up his favorite stand in front of the fire.
“Nice girl,” said Uncle Chris. “Who was she?”
“Somebody Freddie met,” said Jill diplomatically. There was no need to
worry Uncle Chris with details of the afternoon’s happenings.
“Very nice girl.” Uncle Chris took out his cigar-case. “No need to ask
if I may, thank goodness.” He lit a cigar. “Do you remember, Jill,
years ago, when you were quite small, how I used to blow smoke in your
face?”
Jill smiled.
“Of course I do. You said that you were training me for marriage. You
said that there were no happy marriages except where the wife didn’t
mind the smell of tobacco. Well, it’s lucky, as a matter of fact, for
Derek smokes all the time.”
Uncle Chris took up his favorite stand against the fireplace.
“You’re very fond of Derek, aren’t you, Jill?”
“Of course I am. You are, too, aren’t you?”
“Fine chap. Very fine chap. Plenty of money, too. It’s a great relief,”
said Uncle Chris, puffing vigorously. “A thundering relief.” He looked
over Jill’s head down the room. “It’s fine to think of you happily
married, dear, with everything in the world that you want.”
Uncle Chris’ gaze wandered down to where Jill sat. A slight mist
affected his eyesight. Jill had provided a solution for the great
problem of his life. Marriage had always appalled him, but there was
this to be said for it, that married people had daughters. He had
always wanted a daughter, a smart girl he could take out and be proud
of; and fate had given him Jill at precisely the right age. A child
would have bored Uncle Chris—he was fond of children, but they made the
deuce of a noise and regarded jam as an external ornament—but a
delightful little girl of fourteen was different. Jill and he had been
very close to each other since her mother had died, a year after the
death of her father, and had left her in his charge. He had watched her
grow up with a joy that had a touch of bewilderment in it—she seemed to
grow so quickly—and had been fonder and prouder of her at every stage
of her tumultuous career.
“You’re a dear,” said Jill. She stroked the trouser-leg that was
nearest. “How _do_ you manage to get such a wonderful crease? You
really are a credit to me!”
There was a momentary silence. A shade of embarrassment made itself
noticeable in Uncle Chris’ frank gaze. He gave a little cough, and
pulled at his mustache.
“I wish I were, my dear,” he said soberly. “I wish I were. I’m afraid
I’m a poor sort of fellow, Jill.”
Jill looked up.
“What do you mean?”
“A poor sort of fellow,” repeated Uncle Chris. “Your mother was foolish
to trust you to me. Your father had more sense. He always said I was a
wrong’un.”
Jill got up quickly. She was certain now that she had been right, and
that there was something on her uncle’s mind.
“What’s the matter, Uncle Chris? Something’s happened. What is it?”
Uncle Chris turned to knock the ash off his cigar. The movement gave
him time to collect himself for what lay before him. He had one of
those rare volatile natures which can ignore the blows of fate so long
as their effects are not brought home by visible evidence of disaster.
He lived in the moment, and, though matters had been as bad at
breakfast-time as they were now, it was not till now, when he
confronted Jill, that he had found his cheerfulness affected by them.
He was a man who hated ordeals, and one faced him now. Until this
moment he had been able to detach his mind from a state of affairs
which would have weighed unceasingly upon another man. His mind was a
telephone which he could cut off at will, when the voice of Trouble
wished to speak. The time would arrive, he had been aware, when he
would have to pay attention to that voice, but so far he had refused to
listen. Now it could be evaded no longer.
“Jill.”
“Yes?”
Uncle Chris paused again, searching for the best means of saying what
had to be said.
“Jill, I don’t know if you understand about these things, but there was
what is called a slump on the Stock Exchange this morning. In other
words …”
Jill laughed.
“Of course I know all about that,” she said. “Poor Freddie wouldn’t
talk about anything else till I made him. He was terribly blue when he
got here this afternoon. He said he had got ‘nipped’ in Amalgamated
Dyes. He had lost about two hundred pounds, and was furious with a
friend of his who had told him to buy margins.”
Uncle Chris cleared his throat.
“Jill, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. I bought Amalgamated Dyes,
too.” He worried his mustache. “I lost heavily, very heavily.”
“How naughty of you! You know you oughtn’t to gamble.”
“Jill, you must be brave. I—I—well, the fact is—it’s no good beating
about the bush—I lost everything! Everything!”
“Everything?”
“Everything! It’s all gone! All fooled away. It’s a terrible business.
This house will have to go.”
“But—but doesn’t the house belong to me?”
“I was your trustee, dear.” Uncle Chris smoked furiously. “Thank heaven
you’re going to marry a rich man!”
Jill stood looking at him, perplexed. Money, as money, had never
entered into her life. There were things one wanted, which had to be
paid for with money, but Uncle Chris had always looked after that. She
had taken them for granted.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
And then suddenly she realized that she did, and a great wave of pity
for Uncle Chris flooded over her. He was such an old dear. It must be
horrible for him to have to stand there, telling her all this. She felt
no sense of injury, only the discomfort of having to witness the
humiliation of her oldest friend. Uncle Chris was bound up inextricably
with everything in her life that was pleasant. She could remember him,
looking exactly the same, only with a thicker and wavier crop of hair,
playing with her patiently and unwearied for hours in the hot sun, a
cheerful martyr. She could remember sitting up with him when she came
home from her first grown-up dance, drinking cocoa and talking and
talking and talking till the birds outside sang the sun high up into
the sky and it was breakfast-time. She could remember theatres with
him, and jolly little suppers afterwards; expeditions into the country,
with lunches at queer old inns; days on the river, days at Hurlingham,
days at Lords’, days at the Academy. He had always been the same,
always cheerful, always kind. He was Uncle Chris, and he would always
be Uncle Chris, whatever he had done or whatever he might do. She
slipped her arm in his and gave it a squeeze.
“Poor old thing!” she said.
Uncle Chris had been looking straight out before him with those fine
blue eyes of his. There had been just a touch of sternness in his
attitude. A stranger, coming into the room at that moment, would have
said that here was a girl trying to coax her blunt, straightforward,
military father into some course of action of which his honest nature
disapproved. He might have been posing for a statue of Rectitude. As
Jill spoke, he seemed to cave in.
“Poor old thing?” he repeated limply.
“Of course you are! And stop trying to look dignified and tragic!
Because it doesn’t suit you. You’re much too well dressed.”
“But, my dear, you don’t understand! You haven’t realized!”
“Yes, I do. Yes, I have!”
“I’ve spent all your money—_your_ money!”
“I know! What does it matter?”
“What does it matter! Jill, don’t you hate me?”
“As if anyone could hate an old darling like you!”
Uncle Chris threw away his cigar, and put his arms round Jill. For a
moment a dreadful fear came to her that he was going to cry. She prayed
that he wouldn’t cry. It would be too awful. It would be a memory of
which she could never rid herself. She felt as though he were someone
extraordinarily young and unable to look after himself, someone she
must soothe and protect.
“Jill,” said Uncle Chris, choking, “you’re—you’re—you’re a little
warrior!”
Jill kissed him, and moved away. She busied herself with some flowers,
her back turned. The tension had been relieved, and she wanted to give
him time to recover his poise. She knew him well enough to be sure
that, sooner or later, the resiliency of his nature would assert
itself. He could never remain long in the depths.
The silence had the effect of making her think more clearly than in the
first rush of pity she had been able to do. She was able now to review
the matter as it affected herself. It had not been easy to grasp, the
blunt fact that she was penniless, that all this comfort which
surrounded her was no longer her own. For an instant a kind of panic
seized her. There was a bleakness about the situation which made one
gasp. It was like icy water dashed in the face. Realization had almost
the physical pain of life returning to a numbed limb. Her hands shook
as she arranged the flowers, and she had to bite her lip to keep
herself from crying out.
She fought panic eye to eye, and beat it down. Uncle Chris, swiftly
recovering by the fireplace, never knew that the fight had taken place.
He was feeling quite jovial again now that the unpleasant business of
breaking the news was over, and was looking on the world with the eye
of a debonair gentleman-adventurer. As far as he was concerned, he told
himself, this was the best thing that could have happened. He had been
growing old and sluggish in prosperity. He needed a fillip. The wits by
which he had once lived so merrily had been getting blunt in their easy
retirement. He welcomed the opportunity of matching them once more
against the world. He was remorseful as regarded Jill, but the optimist
in him, never crushed for long, told him that Jill would be all right.
She would step from the sinking ship to the safe refuge of Derek
Underhill’s wealth and position, while he went out to seek a new life.
Uncle Chris’ blue eyes gleamed with a new fire as he pictured himself
in this new life. He felt like a hunter setting out on a hunting
expedition. There were always adventures and the spoils of war for the
man with brains to find them and gather them in. But it was a mercy
that Jill had Derek. …
Jill was thinking of Derek, too. Panic had fled, and a curious
exhilaration had seized upon her. If Derek wanted her now, it would be
because his love was the strongest thing in the world. She would come
to him like the beggar-maid to Cophetua.
Uncle Chris broke the silence with a cough. At the sound of it, Jill
smiled again. She knew it for what it was, a sign that he was himself
again.
“Tell me, Uncle Chris,” she said, “just how bad is it? When you said
everything was gone, did you really mean everything, or were you being
melodramatic? Exactly how do we stand?”
“It’s dashed hard to say, my dear. I expect we shall find there are a
few hundreds left. Enough to see you through till you get married.
After that it won’t matter.” Uncle Chris flicked a particle of dust off
his coat-sleeve. Jill could not help feeling that the action was
symbolical of his attitude towards life. He flicked away life’s
problems with just the same airy carelessness. “You mustn’t worry about
me, my dear. I shall be all right. I have made my way in the world
before, and I can do it again. I shall go to America and try my luck
there. Amazing how many opportunities there are in America. Really, as
far as I am concerned, this is the best thing that could have happened.
I have been getting abominably lazy. If I had gone on living my present
life for another year or two, why, dash it! I honestly believe I should
have succumbed to some sort of senile decay. Positively I should have
got fatty degeneration of the brain! This will be the making of me.”
Jill sat down on the lounge and laughed till there were tears in her
eyes. Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was
certainly making it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving of
censure, from the standpoint of the sterner morality, he made amends.
If he brought the whole world crashing in chaos about one’s ears, at
least he helped one to smile among the ruins.
“Did you ever read ‘Candide’, Uncle Chris?”
“‘Candide’?” Uncle Chris shook his head. He was not a great reader,
except of the sporting press.
“It’s a book by Voltaire. There’s a character in it called Doctor
Pangloss, who thought that everything was for the best in this best of
all possible worlds.”
Uncle Chris felt a touch of embarrassment. It occurred to him that he
had been betrayed by his mercurial temperament into an attitude which,
considering the circumstances, was perhaps a trifle too jubilant. He
gave his mustache a pull, and reverted to the minor key.
“Oh, you mustn’t think that I don’t appreciate the terrible, the
criminal thing I have done! I blame myself,” said Uncle Chris
cordially, flicking another speck of dust off his sleeve. “I blame
myself bitterly. Your mother ought never to have made me your trustee,
my dear. But she always believed in me, in spite of everything, and
this is how I have repaid her.” He blew his nose to cover a not unmanly
emotion. “I wasn’t fitted for the position. Never become a trustee,
Jill. It’s the devil, is trust money. However much you argue with
yourself, you can’t—dash it, you simply can’t believe that it’s not
your own, to do as you like with. There it sits, smiling at you, crying
‘Spend me! Spend me!’ and you find yourself dipping—dipping—till one
day there’s nothing left to dip for—only a far-off rustling—the ghosts
of dead bank-notes. That’s how it was with me. The process was almost
automatic. I hardly knew it was going on. Here a little—there a little.
It was like snow melting on a mountain-top. And one morning—all gone!”
Uncle Chris drove the point home with a gesture. “I did what I could.
When I found that there were only a few hundreds left, for your sake I
took a chance. All heart and no head! There you have Christopher Selby
in a nutshell! A man at the club—a fool named—I’ve forgotten his damn
name—recommended Amalgamated Dyestuffs as a speculation. Monroe, that
was his name, Jimmy Monroe. He talked about the future of British Dyes
now that Germany was out of the race, and … well, the long and short of
it was that I took his advice and bought on margin. Bought like the
devil. And this morning Amalgamated Dyestuffs went all to blazes. There
you have the whole story!”
“And now,” said Jill, “comes the sequel!”
“The sequel?” said Uncle Chris breezily. “Happiness, my dear,
happiness! Wedding bells and—and all that sort of thing!” He straddled
the hearth-rug manfully, and swelled his chest out. He would permit no
pessimism on this occasion of rejoicing. “You don’t suppose that the
fact of your having lost your money—that is to say—er—of _my_ having
lost your money—will affect a splendid young fellow like Derek
Underhill? I know him better than to think that! I’ve always liked him.
He’s a man you can trust! Besides,” he added reflectively, “there’s no
need to tell him! Till after the wedding, I mean. It won’t be hard to
keep up appearances here for a month or so.”
“Of course I must tell him!”
“You think it wise?”
“I don’t know about it being wise. It’s the only thing to do. I must
see him tonight. Oh, I forgot. He was going away this afternoon for a
day or two.”
“Capital! It will give you time to think it over.”
“I don’t want to think it over. There’s nothing to think about.”
“Of course, yes, of course. Quite so.”
“I shall write him a letter.”
“Write, eh?”
“It’s easier to put what one wants to say in a letter.”
“Letters,” began Uncle Chris, and stopped as the door opened. Jane the
parlormaid entered, carrying a salver. “For me?” asked Uncle Chris.
“For Miss Jill, sir.”
Jill took the note off the salver.
“It’s from Derek.”
“There’s a messenger-boy waiting, miss,” said Jane. “He wasn’t told if
there was an answer.”
“If the note is from Derek,” said Uncle Chris, “it’s not likely to want
an answer. You said he left town today.”
Jill opened the envelope.
“Is there an answer, miss?” asked Jane, after what she considered a
suitable interval. She spoke tenderly. She was a great admirer of
Derek, and considered it a pretty action on his part to send notes like
this when he was compelled to leave London.
“Any answer, Jill?”
Jill seemed to rouse herself. She had turned oddly pale.
“No, no answer, Jane.”
“Thank you, miss,” said Jane, and went off to tell cook that in her
opinion Jill was lacking in heart. “It might have been a bill instead
of a love-letter,” said Jane to the cook with indignation, “the way she
read it. _I_ like people to have a little feeling!”
Jill sat turning the letter over and over in her fingers. Her face was
very white. There seemed to be a big, heavy, leaden something inside
her. A cold hand clutched her throat. Uncle Chris, who at first had
noticed nothing untoward, now began to find the silence sinister.
“No bad news, I hope, dear?”
Jill turned the letter between her fingers.
“Jill, is it bad news?”
“Derek has broken off the engagement,” said Jill in a dull voice. She
let the note fall to the floor, and sat with her chin in her hands.
“What!” Uncle Chris leaped from the hearth-rug, as though the fire had
suddenly scorched him. “What did you say?”
“He’s broken it off.”
“The hound!” cried Uncle Chris. “The blackguard! The—the—I never liked
that man! I never trusted him!” He fumed for a moment. “But—but—it
isn’t possible. How can he have heard about what’s happened? He
couldn’t know. It’s—it’s—it isn’t possible!”
“He doesn’t know. It has nothing to do with that.”
“But …” Uncle Chris stooped to where the note lay. “May I … ?”
“Yes, you can read it if you like.”
Uncle Chris produced a pair of reading-glasses, and glared through them
at the sheet of paper as though it were some loathsome insect.
“The hound! The cad! If I were a younger man,” shouted Uncle Chris,
smiting the letter violently, “if I were … Jill! My dear little Jill!”
He plunged down on his knees beside her, as she buried her face in her
hands and began to sob.
“My little girl! Damn that man! My dear little girl! The cad! The
devil! My own darling little girl! I’ll thrash him within an inch of
his life!”
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes. Jill got up. Her
face was wet and quivering, but her mouth had set in a brave line.
“Jill, dear!”
She let his hand close over hers.
“Everything’s happening all at once this afternoon, Uncle Chris, isn’t
it!” She smiled a twisted smile. “You look so funny! Your hair’s all
rumpled, and your glasses are over on one side!”
Uncle Chris breathed heavily through his nose.
“When I meet that man …” he began portentously.
“Oh, what’s the good of bothering! It’s not worth it! Nothing’s worth
it!” Jill stopped, and faced him, her hands clenched. “Let’s get away!
Let’s get right away! I want to get right away, Uncle Chris! Take me
away! Anywhere! Take me to America with you! I must get away!”
Uncle Chris raised his right hand, and shook it. His reading-glasses,
hanging from his left ear, bobbed drunkenly.
“We’ll sail by the next boat! The very next boat, dammit! I’ll take
care of you, dear. I’ve been a blackguard to you, my little girl. I’ve
robbed you, and swindled you. But I’ll make up for it, by George! I’ll
make up for it! I’ll give you a new home, as good as this, if I die for
it. There’s nothing I won’t do! Nothing! By Jove!” shouted Uncle Chris,
raising his voice in a red-hot frenzy of emotion, “I’ll work! Yes, by
Gad, if it comes right down to it, I’ll work!”
He brought his fist down with a crash on the table where Derek’s
flowers stood in their bowl. The bowl leaped in the air and tumbled
over, scattering the flowers on the floor.