§ 1.
Doctors, laying down the law in their usual confident way, tell us that
the vitality of the human body is at its lowest at two o’clock in the
morning: and that it is then, as a consequence, that the mind is least
able to contemplate the present with equanimity, the future with
fortitude, and the past without regret. Every thinking man, however,
knows that this is not so. The true zero hour, desolate, gloom-ridden,
and specter-haunted, occurs immediately before dinner while we are
waiting for that cocktail. It is then that, stripped for a brief moment
of our armor of complacency and self-esteem, we see ourselves as we
are,—frightful chumps in a world where nothing goes right; a gray world
in which, hoping to click, we merely get the raspberry; where, animated
by the best intentions, we nevertheless succeed in perpetrating the
scaliest bloomers and landing our loved ones neck-deep in the gumbo.
So reflected Freddie Rooke, that priceless old bean, sitting
disconsolately in an arm-chair at the Drones Club about two weeks after
Jill’s departure from England, waiting for his friend Algy Martyn to
trickle in and give him dinner.
Surveying Freddie, as he droops on his spine in the yielding leather,
one is conscious of one’s limitations as a writer. Gloom like his calls
for the pen of a master. Zola could have tackled it nicely. Gorky might
have made a stab at it. Dostoievsky would have handled it with relish.
But for oneself the thing is too vast. One cannot wangle it. It
intimidates. It would have been bad enough in any case, for Algy Martyn
was late as usual and it always gave Freddie the pip to have to wait
for dinner: but what made it worse was the fact that the Drones was not
one of Freddie’s clubs and so, until the blighter Algy arrived, it was
impossible for him to get his cocktail. There he sat, surrounded by
happy, laughing young men, each grasping a glass of the good old
mixture-as-before, absolutely unable to connect. Some of them, casual
acquaintances, had nodded to him, waved, and gone on lowering the
juice,—a spectacle which made Freddie feel much as the wounded soldier
would have felt if Sir Philip Sidney, instead of offering him the cup
of water, had placed it to his own lips and drained it with a careless
“Cheerio!” No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal
soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi’s Russian peasants when,
after putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his
wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the
cupboard, only to find the vodka-bottle empty.
Freddie gave himself up to despondency: and, as always in these days
when he was mournful, he thought of Jill. Jill’s sad case was a
continual source of mental anguish to him. From the first he had blamed
himself for the breaking-off of her engagement with Derek. If he had
not sent the message to Derek from the police-station, the latter would
never have known about their arrest, and all would have been well. And
now, a few days ago, had come the news of her financial disaster, with
its attendant complications.
It had descended on Freddie like a thunderbolt through the medium of
Ronny Devereux.
“I say,” Ronny had said, “have you heard the latest? Your pal,
Underhill, has broken off his engagement with Jill Mariner.”
“I know; rather rotten, what!”
“Rotten? I should say so! It isn’t done. I mean to say, chap can’t
chuck a girl just because she’s lost her money. Simply isn’t on the
board, old man!”
“Lost her money? What do you mean?”
Ronny was surprised. Hadn’t Freddie heard? Yes, absolute fact. He had
it from the best authority. Didn’t know how it had happened and all
that, but Jill Mariner had gone completely bust; Underhill had given
her the miss-in-baulk; and the poor girl had legged it, no one knew
where. Oh, Freddie had met her and she had told him she was going to
America? Well, then, legged it to America. But the point was that the
swine Underhill had handed her the mitten just because she was broke,
and that was what Ronny thought so bally rotten. Broker a girl is,
Ronny meant to say, more a fellow should stick to her.
“But—” Freddie rushed to his hero’s defence. “But it wasn’t that at
all. Something quite different. I mean, Derek didn’t even know Jill had
lost her money. He broke the engagement because …” Freddie stopped
short. He didn’t want everybody to know of that rotten arrest business,
as they infallibly would if he confided in Ronny Devereux. Sort of
thing he would never hear the last of. “He broke it off because of
something quite different.”
“Oh, yes!” said Ronny skeptically.
“But he did, really!”
Ronny shook his head.
“Don’t you believe it, old son. Don’t you believe it. Stands to reason
it must have been because the poor girl was broke. You wouldn’t have
done it and I wouldn’t have done it, but Underhill did, and that’s all
there is to it. I mean, a tick’s a tick, and there’s nothing more to
say. Well, I know he’s been a pal of yours, Freddie, but, next time I
meet him, by Jove, I’ll cut him dead. Only I don’t know him to speak
to, dash it!” concluded Ronny regretfully.
Ronny’s news had upset Freddie. Derek had returned to the Albany a
couple of days ago, moody and silent. They had lunched together at the
Bachelors, and Freddie had been pained at the attitude of his fellow
clubmen. Usually, when he lunched at the Bachelors, his table became a
sort of social center. Cheery birds would roll up to pass the time of
day, and festive old eggs would toddle over to have coffee and so
forth, and all that sort of thing. Jolly! On this occasion nobody had
rolled, and all the eggs present had taken their coffee elsewhere.
There was an uncomfortable chill in the atmosphere of which Freddie had
been acutely conscious, though Derek had not appeared to notice it. The
thing had only come home to Derek yesterday at the Albany, when the
painful episode of Wally Mason had occurred. It was this way:
“Hullo, Freddie, old top! Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Freddie looked up from his broken meditations, to find that his host
had arrived.
“Hullo!”
“A quick bracer,” said Algy Martyn, “and then the jolly old
food-stuffs. It’s pretty late, I see. Didn’t notice how time was
slipping.”
Over the soup, Freddie was still a prey to gloom. For once the healing
gin-and-vermouth had failed to do its noble work. He sipped sombrely,
so sombrely as to cause comment from his host.
“Pipped?” enquired Algy solicitously.
“Pretty pipped,” admitted Freddie.
“Backed a loser?”
“No.”
“Something wrong with the old tum?”
“No. … Worried.”
“Worried?”
“About Derek.”
“Derek? Who’s … ? Oh, you mean Underhill?”
“Yes.”
Algy Martyn chased an elusive piece of carrot about his soup plate,
watching it interestedly as it slid coyly from the spoon.
“Oh?” he said, with sudden coolness. “What about him?”
Freddie was too absorbed in his subject to notice the change in his
friend’s tone.
“A dashed unpleasant thing,” he said, “happened yesterday morning at my
place. I was just thinking about going out to lunch, when the door-bell
rang and Parker said a chappie of the name of Mason would like to see
me. I didn’t remember any Mason, but Parker said the chappie said he
knew me when I was a kid. So he loosed him into the room, and it turned
out to be a fellow I used to know years ago down in Worcestershire. I
didn’t know him from Adam at first, but gradually the old bean got to
work, and I placed him. Wally Mason his name was. Rummily enough, he
had spoken to me at the Leicester that night when the fire was, but not
being able to place him, I had given him the miss somewhat. You know
how it is. Chappie you’ve never been introduced to says something to
you in a theatre, and you murmur something and sheer off. What?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Algy Martyn. He thoroughly approved of Freddie’s
code of etiquette. Sheer off. Only thing to do.
“Well, anyhow, now that he had turned up again and told me who he was,
I began to remember. We had been kids together, don’t you know. (What’s
this? Salmon? Oh, right ho.) So I buzzed about and did the jovial host,
you know; gave him a drink and a toofer, and all that sort of thing;
and talked about the dear old days and what not. And so forth, if you
follow me. Then he brought the conversation round to Jill. Of course he
knew Jill at the same time when he knew me, down in Worcestershire, you
see. We were all pretty pally in those days, if you see what I mean.
Well, this man Mason, it seems, had heard somewhere about Jill losing
her money, and he wanted to know if it was true. I said absolutely.
Hadn’t heard any details, but Ronny had told me and Ronny had had it
from some one who had stable information and all that sort of thing.
‘Dashed shame, isn’t it!’ I said. ‘She’s gone to America, you know.’ ‘I
didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I understood she was going to be married quite
soon.’ Well, of course, I told him that that was off. He didn’t say
anything for a bit, then he said ‘Off?’ I said ‘Off.’ ‘Did she break it
off?’ asked the chappie. ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact Derek
broke it off.’ He said ‘Oh!’ (What? Oh yes, a bit of pheasant will be
fine.) Where was I? Oh, yes. He said ‘Oh!’ Now, before this, I ought to
tell you, this chappie Mason had asked me to come out and have a bit of
lunch. I had told him I was lunching with Derek, and he said ‘Right
ho,’ or words to that effect, ‘Bring him along.’ Derek had been out for
a stroll, you see, and we were waiting for him to come in. Well, just
at this point or juncture, if you know what I mean, in he came, and I
said ‘Oh, what ho!’ and introduced Wally Mason. ‘Oh, do you know
Underhill?’ I said, or something like that. You know the sort of thing.
And then …”
Freddie broke off and drained his glass. The recollection of that
painful moment had made him feverish. Social difficulties always did.
“Then what?” enquired Algy Martyn.
“Well, it, was pretty rotten. Derek held out his hand, as a chappie
naturally would, being introduced to a strange chappie, and Wally
Mason, giving it an absolute miss, went on talking to me just as if we
were alone, you know. Look here. Here was I, where this knife is. Derek
over here—this fork—with his hand out. Mason here—this bit of bread.
Mason looks at his watch, and says ‘I’m sorry, Freddie, but I find I’ve
an engagement for lunch. So long!’ and biffed out, without apparently
knowing Derek was on the earth. I mean …” Freddie reached for his
glass, “What I mean is, it was dashed embarrassing. I mean, cutting a
fellow dead in my rooms. I don’t know when I’ve felt so rotten!”
Algy Martyn delivered judgment with great firmness.
“Chappie was perfectly right!”
“No, but I mean …”
“Absolutely correct-o,” insisted Algy sternly. “Underhill can’t dash
about all over the place giving the girl he’s engaged to the mitten
because she’s broke, and expect no notice to be taken of it. If you
want to know what I think, old man, your pal Underhill—I can’t imagine
what the deuce you see in him, but, school together and so forth, makes
a difference, I suppose,—I say, if you want to know what I think,
Freddie, the blighter Underhill would be well advised either to leg it
after Jill and get her to marry him or else lie low for a goodish while
till people have forgotten the thing. I mean to say, fellows like Ronny
and I and Dick Wimpole and Archie Studd and the rest of our lot,—well,
we all knew Jill and thought she was a topper and had danced with her
here and there and seen her about and all that, and naturally we feel
pretty strongly about the whole dashed business. Underhill isn’t in our
particular set, but we all know most of the people he knows, and we
talk about this business, and the thing gets about, and there you are!
My sister, who was a great pal of Jill’s, swears that all the girls she
knows mean to cut Underhill. I tell you, Freddie, London’s going to get
pretty hot for him if he doesn’t do something dashed quick and with
great rapidity!”
“But you haven’t got the story right, old thing!”
“How not?”
“Well, I mean you think and Ronny thinks and all the rest of you think
that Derek broke off the engagement because of the money. It wasn’t
that at all.”
“What was it, then?”
“Well … Well, look here, it makes me seem a fearful ass and all that,
but I’d better tell you. Jill and I were going down one of those
streets near Victoria and a blighter was trying to slay a parrot …”
“Parrot-shooting’s pretty good in those parts, they tell me,”
interjected Algy satirically.
“Don’t interrupt, old man. This parrot had got out of one of the
houses, and a fellow was jabbing at it with a stick, and Jill—you know
what she’s like; impulsive, I mean, and all that—Jill got hold of the
stick and biffed him with some vim, and a policeman rolled up and the
fellow made a fuss and the policeman took Jill and me off to chokey.
Well, like an ass, I sent round to Derek to bail us out, and that’s how
he heard of the thing. Apparently he didn’t think a lot of it, and the
result was that he broke off the engagement.”
Algy Martin had listened to this recital with growing amazement.
“He broke it off because of that?”
“Yes.”
“What absolute rot!” said Algy Martyn. “I don’t believe a word of it!”
“I say, old man!”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” repeated Algy firmly. “And nobody else
will either. It’s dashed good of you, Freddie, to cook up a yarn like
that to try and make things look better for the blighter, but it won’t
work. Such a damn silly story, too!” said Algy with some indignation.
“But it’s true!”
“What’s the use, Freddie, between old pals?” said Algy protestingly.
“You know perfectly well that Underhill’s a cootie of the most
pronounced order, and that, when he found out that Jill hadn’t any
money, he chucked her.”
“But why should Derek care whether Jill was well off or not? He’s got
enough money of his own.”
“Nobody,” said Algy judicially, “has got enough money of his own.
Underhill thought he was marrying a girl with a sizeable chunk of the
ready, and, when the fuse blew out, he decided it wasn’t good enough.
For Heaven’s sake don’t let’s talk any more about the blighter. It
gives me a pain to think of him.”
And Algy Martyn, suppressing every effort which Freddie made to reopen
the subject, turned the conversation to more general matters.
§ 2.
Freddie returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness.
Algy’s remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken
him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is
nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was
hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had
decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him. Freddie
blenched at a sudden vision of street-fulls of men, long Piccadillys of
men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something had got to be
done. He was devoted to Derek. This sort of thing was as bad as being
cut himself. Whatever Freddie’s limitations in the matter of brain, he
had a large heart and an infinite capacity for faithfulness in his
friendships.
The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding
friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour
later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the
Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of
the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to
appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded
repletion which city dinners induce. The dry-salters, on these
occasions when they cast off for a night the cares and anxieties of
dry-salting, do their guests well, and Derek had that bloated sense of
foreboding which comes to a man whose stomach is not his strong point
after twelve courses and a multitude of mixed wines. A goose,
qualifying for the role of a pot of pate de foies gras, probably has
exactly the same jaundiced outlook.
Yet, unfavorably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional
moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his
private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should
be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the subject. He thought
of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and what Algy had said, of
Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and he nerved
himself to the task.
“Derek, old top.”
A grunt.
“I say, Derek, old bean.”
Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he
stood, warming his legs at the blaze.
“Well?”
Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business,
this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no
diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis.
Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of
blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it
like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.
“I say, you know, about Jill!”
He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing
with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion’s start and
the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.
“Well?” said Derek again.
Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind
that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first
time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.
“Ronny Devereux was saying …” faltered Freddie.
“Damn Ronny Devereux!”
“Oh, absolutely! But …”
“Ronny Devereux! Who the devil _is_ Ronny Devereux?”
“Why, old man, you’ve heard me speak of him, haven’t you? Pal of mine.
He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that
morning.”
“Oh, _that_ fellow? And he has been saying something about … ?”
“It isn’t only Ronny, you know,” Freddie hastened to interject. “Algy
Martyn’s talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy’s
sister and a lot of people. They’re all saying …”
“What are they saying?”
Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn’t
look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old
map. Rummy he had never noticed before how extraordinarily like his
mother he was. Freddie was conscious of a faint sense of grievance. He
could not have put it into words, but what he felt was that a fellow
had no right to go about looking like Lady Underhill.
“What are they saying?” repeated Derek grimly.
“Well …” Freddie hesitated. “That it’s a bit tough … On Jill, you
know.”
“They think I behaved badly?”
“Well … Oh, well, you know!”
Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental
disturbance. The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the
Dry-Salters’ dinner had begun to change to something more actively
unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp pain had begun to run through it,
flashing in and out like lightning through a thunder-cloud. He felt
sullen and vicious.
“I wonder,” he said with savage politeness, “if, when you chat with
your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my private
affairs.”
“Sorry, old man. But they started it, don’t you know.”
“And, if you feel you’ve got to discuss me, kindly keep it to yourself.
Don’t come and tell me what your damned friends said to each other and
to you and what you said to them, because it bores me. I’m not
interested. I don’t value their opinions as much as you seem to.” Derek
paused, to battle in silence with the imperious agony within him. “It
was good of you to put me up here,” he went on, “but I think I won’t
trespass on your hospitality any longer. Perhaps you’ll ask Parker to
pack my things tomorrow.” Derek moved, as majestically as an ex-guest
of the Worshipful Company of Dry-Salters may, in the direction of the
door. “I shall go to the Savoy.”
“Oh, I say, old man! No need to do that.”
“Good night.”
“But, I say …”
“And you can tell your friend Devereux that, if he doesn’t stop poking
his nose into my private business, I’ll pull it off.”
“Well,” said Freddie doubtfully, “of course I don’t suppose you know,
but … Ronny’s a pretty hefty bird. He boxed for Cambridge in the
light-weights the last year he was up, you know. He …”
Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs
for some minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face.
Freddie hated rows. He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a
rotten place the world was these days! Just one thing after another.
First, poor old Jill takes the knock and disappears. He would miss her
badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And now—gone. Biffed off. Next,
Derek. Together, more or less, ever since Winchester, and now—bing!…
Freddie heaved a sigh, and reached out for the _Sporting Times_, his
never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar and
curled up in one of the arm-chairs. He was feeling tired. He had been
playing squash all the afternoon, a game at which he was exceedingly
expert and to which he was much addicted.
Time passed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed it.
From the depths of the chair came a faint snore …
A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk troubled dreams.
Derek was standing beside him. A tousled Derek, apparently in pain.
“Freddie!”
“Hullo!”
A spasm twisted Derek’s face.
“Have you got any pepsin?”
Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is this
dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a
respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had
stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride had been
humbled upon the rack.
“Pepsin?”
Freddie blinked, the mists of sleep floating gently before his eyes. He
could not quite understand what his friend was asking for. It had
sounded just like pepsin, and he didn’t believe there was such a word.
“Yes. I’ve got the most damned attack of indigestion.”
The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and
became immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of
the Rookes was a good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who
suggested that Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had
vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night chemist’s
and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after
a surfeit of soda-water bottles; Freddie who mixed and administered the
dose.
His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass.
Derek recovered.
One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of
gentle remorse which came upon him as he lay in the arm-chair was one
so foreign to his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He was
like a convalescent child. Between them, the all-night chemist and the
Dry-Salters seemed to have wrought a sort of miracle. These temporary
softenings of personality frequently follow city dinners. The time to
catch your Dry-Salter in angelic mood is the day after the semi-annual
banquet. Go to him then and he will give you his watch and chain.
“Freddie,” said Derek.
They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece,
beside which Jill’s photograph had stood, pointed to ten minutes past
two. Derek spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right
after all, and two o’clock is the hour at which our self-esteem deserts
us, leaving in its place regret for past sins, good resolutions for
future behavior.
“What do Algy Martyn and the others say about … you know?”
Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.
“Oh, I know,” went on Derek. “They say I behaved like a cad.”
“Oh, well …”
“They are quite right. I did.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t say that, you know. Faults on both sides and all that
sort of rot.”
“I did!” Derek stared into the fire. Scattered all over London at that
moment, probably, a hundred worshipful Dry-Salters were equally
sleepless and subdued, looking wide-eyed into black pasts. “Is it true
she has gone to America, Freddie?”
“She told me she was going.”
“What a fool I’ve been!”
The clock ticked on through the silence. The fire sputtered faintly,
then gave a little wheeze, like a very old man. Derek rested his chin
on his hands, gazing into the ashes.
“I wish to God I could go over there and find her.”
“Why don’t you?”
“How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I can’t
stir.”
Freddie leaped from his seat. The suddenness of the action sent a
red-hot corkscrew of pain through Derek’s head.
“What the devil’s the matter?” he demanded irritably. Even the gentle
mood which comes with convalescence after a City Dinner is not
guaranteed to endure against this sort of thing.
“I’ve got an idea, old bean!”
“Well, there’s no need to dance, is there?”
“I’ve nothing to keep me here, you know. What’s the matter with my
popping over to America and finding Jill?” Freddie tramped the floor,
aglow. Each beat of his foot jarred Derek, but he made no complaint.
“Could you?” he asked eagerly.
“Of course I could. I was saying only the other day that I had half a
mind to buzz over. It’s a wheeze! I’ll get on the next boat and charge
over in the capacity of a jolly old ambassador. Have her back in no
time. Leave it to me, old thing! This is where I come out strong!”