Jill gave a sudden gasp, and sat up, tingling. She felt as she had
sometimes felt as a child, when, on the edge of sleep, she had dreamed
that she was stepping off a precipice and had woken, tense and alert,
to find that there was no danger after all. But there was a difference
between that feeling and this. She had woken, but to find that there
was danger. It was as though some inner voice was calling to her to be
careful, to take thought. Suppose there were no Wally? … And why should
there always be Wally? He had said confidently enough that there would
never be another girl … But there were thousands of other girls,
millions of other girls, and could she suppose that one of them would
not have the sense to snap up a treasure like Wally? A sense of blank
desolation swept over Jill. Her quick imagination, leaping ahead, had
made the vague possibility of a distant future an accomplished fact.
She felt, absurdly, a sense of overwhelming loss.
Into her mind, never far distant from it, came the thought of Derek.
And, suddenly, Jill made another discovery. She was thinking of Derek,
and it was not hurting. She was thinking of him quite coolly and
clearly and her heart was not aching.
She sat back and screwed her eyes tight, as she had always done when
puzzled. Something had happened to her, but how it had happened and
when it had happened and why it had happened she could not understand.
She only knew that now for the first time she had been granted a moment
of clear vision and was seeing things truly.
She wanted Wally. She wanted him in the sense that she could not do
without him. She felt nothing of the fiery tumult which had come upon
her when she first met Derek. She and Wally would come together with a
smile and build their life on an enduring foundation of laughter and
happiness and good-fellowship. Wally had never shaken and never would
shake her senses as Derek had done. If that was love, then she did not
love Wally. But her clear vision told her that it was not love. It
might be the blazing and crackling of thorns, but it was not the fire.
She wanted Wally. She needed him as she needed the air and the
sunlight.
She opened her eyes, and saw Uncle Chris coming down the aisle towards
her. There was a man with him, and, as they moved closer in the dim
light, Jill saw that it was Derek.
“Jill, my dear,” said Uncle Chris, “here is an old friend to see you!”
And, having achieved their bringing together, he proceeded to withdraw
delicately whence he had come. It is pleasant to be able to record that
he was immediately seized upon by Mrs Peagrim, who had changed her mind
about not dancing, and led off to be her partner in a fox-trot, in the
course of which she trod on his feet three times.
“Why, Derek!” said Jill cheerfully. She got up and moved down the line
of seats. Except for a mild wonder how he came to be there, she found
herself wholly unaffected by the sight of him. “Whatever are _you_
doing here?”
Derek sat down beside her. The cordiality of her tone had relieved yet
at the same time disconcerted him. Man seldom attains to perfect
contentment in this world, and Derek, while pleased that Jill
apparently bore him no ill-will, seemed to miss something in her manner
which he would have been glad to find there.
“Jill!” he said huskily.
It seemed to Derek only decent to speak huskily. To his orderly mind
this situation could be handled only in one way. It was a plain,
straight issue of the strong man humbling himself—not too much, of
course, but sufficiently: and it called, in his opinion, for the low
voice, the clenched hand, and the broken whisper. Speaking as he had
spoken, he had given the scene the right key from the start,—or would
have done if she had not got in ahead of him and opened it on a note of
absurd cheeriness. Derek found himself resenting her cheeriness. Often
as he had attempted during the voyage from England to visualize to
himself this first meeting, he had never pictured Jill smiling brightly
at him. It was a jolly smile, and made her look extremely pretty, but
it jarred upon him. A moment before he had been half relieved, half
disconcerted: now he was definitely disconcerted. He searched in his
mind for a criticism of her attitude, and came to the conclusion that
what was wrong with it was that it was too friendly. Friendliness is
well enough in its way, but in what should have been a tense clashing
of strong emotions it did not seem to Derek fitting.
“Did you have a pleasant trip?” asked Jill. “Have you come over on
business?”
A feeling of bewilderment came upon Derek. It was wrong, it was all
wrong. Of course, she might be speaking like this to cloak intense
feeling, but, if so, she had certainly succeeded. From her manner, he
and she might be casual acquaintances. A pleasant trip! In another
minute she would be asking him how he had come out on the sweepstake on
the ship’s run. With a sense of putting his shoulder to some heavy
weight and heaving at it, he sought to lift the conversation to a
higher plane.
“I came to find _you!_” he said; still huskily but not so huskily as
before. There are degrees of huskiness, and Derek’s was sharpened a
little by a touch of irritation.
“Yes?” said Jill.
Derek was now fermenting. What she ought to have said, he did not know,
but he knew that it was not “Yes?” “Yes?” in the circumstances was
almost as bad as “Really?”
There was a pause. Jill was looking at him with a frank and
unembarrassed gaze which somehow deepened his sense of annoyance. Had
she looked at him coldly, he could have understood and even appreciated
it. He had been expecting coldness, and had braced himself to combat
it. He was still not quite sure in his mind whether he was playing the
role of a penitent or a King Cophetua, but in either character he might
have anticipated a little temporary coldness, which it would have been
his easy task to melt. But he had never expected to be looked at as if
he were a specimen in a museum, and that was how he was feeling now.
Jill was not looking at him—she was inspecting him, examining him, and
he chafed under the process.
Jill, unconscious of the discomfort she was causing, continued to gaze.
She was trying to discover in just what respect he had changed from the
god he had been. Certainly not in looks. He was as handsome as
ever,—handsomer, indeed, for the sunshine and clean breezes of the
Atlantic had given him an exceedingly becoming coat of tan. And yet he
must have changed, for now she could look upon him quite
dispassionately and criticize him without a tremor. It was like seeing
a copy of a great painting. Everything was there, except the one thing
that mattered, the magic and the glamour. It was like … She suddenly
remembered a scene in the dressing-room when the company had been in
Baltimore. Lois Denham, duly the recipient of the sunburst which her
friend Izzy had promised her, had unfortunately, in a spirit of girlish
curiosity, taken it to a jeweller to be priced, and the jeweller had
blasted her young life by declaring it a paste imitation. Jill recalled
how the stricken girl—previous to calling Izzy on the long distance and
telling him a number of things which, while probably not news to him,
must have been painful hearing—had passed the vile object round the
dressing-room for inspection. The imitation was perfect. It had been
impossible for the girls to tell that the stones were not real
diamonds. Yet the jeweller, with his sixth sense, had seen through them
in a trifle under ten seconds. Jill come to the conclusion that her
newly-discovered love for Wally Mason had equipped her with a sixth
sense, and that by its aid she was really for the first time seeing
Derek as he was.
Derek had not the privilege of being able to read Jill’s thoughts. All
he could see was the outer Jill, and the outer Jill, as she had always
done, was stirring his emotions. Her daintiness afflicted him. Not for
the first, the second, or the third time since they had come into each
other’s lives, he was astounded at the strength of the appeal which
Jill had for him when they were together, as contrasted with its
weakness when they were apart. He made another attempt to establish the
scene on a loftier plane.
“What a fool I was!” he sighed. “Jill! Can you ever forgive me?”
He tried to take her hand. Jill skilfully eluded him.
“Why, of course I’ve forgiven you, Derek, if there was anything to
forgive.”
“Anything to forgive!” Derek began to get into his stride. These were
the lines on which he had desired the interview to develop. “I was a
brute! A cad!”
“Oh, no!”
“I was. Oh, I have been through hell!”
Jill turned her head away. She did not want to hurt him, but nothing
could have kept her from smiling. She had been so sure that he would
say that sooner or later.
“Jill!” Derek had misinterpreted the cause of her movement, and had
attributed it to emotion. “Tell me that everything is as it was
before.”
Jill turned.
“I’m afraid I can’t say that, Derek.”
“Of course not!” agreed Derek in a comfortable glow of manly remorse.
He liked himself in the character of the strong man abased. “It would
be too much, to expect, I know. But, when we are married …”
“Do you really want to marry me?”
“Jill!”
“I wonder!”
“How can you doubt it?”
Jill looked at him.
“Have you thought what it would mean?”
“What it would mean?”
“Well, your mother …”
“Oh!” Derek dismissed Lady Underhill with a grand gesture.
“Yes,” persisted Jill, “but, if she disapproved of your marrying me
before, wouldn’t she disapprove a good deal more now, when I haven’t a
penny in the world and am just in the chorus …”
A sort of strangled sound proceeded from Derek’s throat.
“In the chorus!”
“Didn’t you know? I thought Freddie must have told you.”
“In the chorus!” Derek stammered. “I thought you were here as a guest
of Mrs Peagrim’s.”
“So I am,—like all the rest of the company.”
“But … But …”
“You see, it would be bound to make everything a little difficult,”
said Jill. Her face was grave, but her lips were twitching. “I mean,
you are rather a prominent man, aren’t you, and if you married a
chorus-girl …”
“Nobody would know,” said Derek limply.
Jill opened her eyes.
“Nobody would _know!_” She laughed. “But, of course, you’ve never met
our press-agent. If you think that nobody would know that a girl in the
company had married a baronet who was a member of parliament and
expected to be in the Cabinet in a few years, you’re wronging him! The
news would be on the front page of all the papers the very next
day—columns of it, with photographs. There would be articles about it
in the Sunday papers. Illustrated! And then it would be cabled to
England and would appear in the papers there … You see, you’re a very
important person, Derek.”
Derek sat clutching the arms of his chair. His face was chalky. Though
he had never been inclined to underestimate his importance as a figure
in the public eye, he had overlooked the disadvantages connected with
such an eminence. He gurgled wordlessly. He had been prepared to brave
Lady Underhill’s wrath and assert his right to marry whom he pleased,
but this was different.
Jill watched him curiously and with a certain pity. It was so easy to
read what was passing in his mind. She wondered what he would say, how
he would flounder out of his unfortunate position. She had no illusions
about him now. She did not even contemplate the possibility of chivalry
winning the battle which was going on within him.
“It would be very awkward, wouldn’t it?” she said.
And then pity had its way with Jill. He had treated her badly; for a
time she had thought that he had crushed all the heart out of her: but
he was suffering, and she hated to see anybody suffer.
“Besides,” she said, “I’m engaged to somebody else.”
As a suffocating man, his lips to the tube of oxygen, gradually comes
back to life, Derek revived,—slowly as the meaning of her words sank
into his mind, then with a sudden abruptness.
“What!” he cried.
“I’m going to marry somebody else. A man named Wally Mason.”
Derek swallowed. The chalky look died out of his face, and he flushed
hotly. His eyes, half relieved, half indignant, glowed under their
pent-house of eyebrow. He sat for a moment in silence.
“I think you might have told me before!” he said huffily.
Jill laughed.
“Yes, I suppose I ought to have told you before.”
“Leading me on … !”
Jill patted him on the arm.
“Never mind, Derek! It’s all over now. And it was great fun, wasn’t
it!”
“Fun!”
“Shall we go and dance? The music is just starting.”
“I _won’t_ dance!”
Jill got up.
“I must,” she said. “I’m so happy I can’t keep still. Well, good-bye,
Derek, in case I don’t see you again. It was nice meeting after all
this time. You haven’t altered a bit!”
Derek watched her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little
ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance.
He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He
uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing seemed to him symbolic.
§ 3.
Not having a cigarette of his own, Derek got up and went to look for
the only man he knew who could give him one: and after a search of a
few minutes came upon Freddie all alone in a dark corner, apart from
the throng. It was a very different Freddie from the moody youth who
had returned to the box after his conversation with Uncle Chris. He was
leaning against a piece of scenery with his head tilted back and a beam
of startled happiness on his face. So rapt was he in his reflections
that he did not become aware of Derek’s approach until the latter
spoke.
“Got a cigarette, Freddie?”
Freddie withdrew his gaze from the roof.
“Hullo, old son! Cigarette? Certainly and by all means. Cigarettes?
Where are the cigarettes? Mr. Rooke, forward! Show cigarettes.” He
extended his case to Derek, who helped himself in sombre silence,
finding his boyhood’s friend’s exuberance hard to bear. “I say, Derek,
old scream, the most extraordinary thing has happened! You’ll never
guess. To cut a long story short and come to the blow-out of the
scenario, I’m engaged! Engaged, old crumpet! You know what I
mean—engaged to be married!”
“Uh?” said Derek gruffly, frowning over his cigarette.
“Don’t wonder you’re surprised,” said Freddie, looking at him a little
wistfully, for his friend had scarcely been gushing, and he would have
welcomed a bit of enthusiasm. “Can hardly believe it myself.”
Derek awoke to a sense of the conventions.
“Congratulate you,” he said. “Do I know her?”
“Not yet, but you soon will. She’s a girl in the company,—in the
chorus, as a matter of fact. Girl named Nelly Bryant. An absolute
corker. I’ll go further—a topper. You’ll like her, old man.”
Derek was looking at him, amazed.
“Good Heavens!” he said.
“Extraordinary how these things happen,” proceeded Freddie. “Looking
back, I can see, of course, that I always thought her a topper, but the
idea of getting engaged—I don’t know—sort of thing that doesn’t occur
to a chappie, if you know what I mean. What I mean to say is, we had
always been the greatest of pals and all that, but it never struck me
that she would think it much of a wheeze getting hooked up for life
with a chap like me. We just sort of drifted along and so forth. All
very jolly and what not. And then this evening—I don’t know. I had a
bit of a hump, what with one thing and another, and she was most dashed
sweet and patient and soothing and—and—well, and what not, don’t you
know, and suddenly—deuced rummy sensation—the jolly old scales seemed
to fall, if you follow me, from my good old eyes; I don’t know if you
get the idea. I suddenly seemed to look myself squarely in the eyeball
and say to myself, ‘Freddie, old top, how do we go? Are we not missing
a good thing?’ And, by Jove, thinking it over, I found that I was
absolutely correct-o! You’ve no notion how dashed sympathetic she is,
old man! I mean to say, I had this hump, you know, owing to one thing
and another, and was feeling that life was more or less of a jolly old
snare and delusion, and she bucked me up and all that, and suddenly I
found myself kissing her and all that sort of rot, and she was kissing
me and so on and so forth, and she’s got the most ripping eyes, and
there was nobody about, and the long and the short of it was, old boy,
that I said, ‘Let’s get married!’ and she said, ‘When?’ and that was
that, if you see what I mean. The scheme now is to pop down to the City
Hall and get a license, which it appears you have to have if you want
to bring this sort of binge off with any success and vim, and then what
ho for the padre! Looking at it from every angle, a bit of a good egg,
what! Happiest man in the world, and all that sort of thing.”
At this point in his somewhat incoherent epic Freddie paused. It had
occurred to him that he had perhaps laid himself open to a charge of
monopolizing the conversation.
“I say! You’ll forgive my dwelling a bit on this thing, won’t you?
Never found a girl who would look twice at me before, and it’s rather
unsettled the old bean. Just occurred to me that I may have been
talking about my own affairs a bit. Your turn now, old thing. Sit down,
as the blighters in the novels used to say, and tell me the story of
your life. You’ve seen Jill, of course?”
“Yes,” said Derek shortly.
“And it’s all right, eh? Fine! We’ll make a double wedding of it, what?
Not a bad idea, that! I mean to say, the man of God might make a
reduction for quantity and shade his fee a bit. Do the job half price!”
Derek threw down the end of his cigarette, and crushed it with his
heel. A closer observer than Freddie would have detected long ere this
the fact that his demeanor was not that of a happy and successful
wooer.
“Jill and I are not going to be married,” he said.
A look of blank astonishment came into Freddie’s cheerful face. He
could hardly believe that he had heard correctly. It is true that, in
gloomier mood, he had hazarded the theory to Uncle Chris that Jill’s
independence might lead her to refuse Derek, but he had not really
believed in the possibility of such a thing even at the time, and now,
in the full flood of optimism consequent on his own engagement, it
seemed even more incredible.
“Great Scott!” he cried. “Did she give you the raspberry?”
It is to be doubted whether the pride of the Underhills would have
permitted Derek to reply in the affirmative, even if Freddie had
phrased his question differently: but the brutal directness of the
query made such a course impossible for him. Nothing was dearer to
Derek than his self-esteem, and, even at the expense of the truth, he
was resolved to shield it from injury. To face Freddie and confess that
any girl in the world had given him, Derek Underhill, what he coarsely
termed the raspberry was a task so revolting as to be utterly beyond
his powers.
“Nothing of the kind!” he snapped. “It was because we both saw that the
thing would be impossible. Why didn’t you tell me that Jill was in the
chorus of this damned piece?”
Freddie’s mouth slowly opened. He was trying not to realize the meaning
of what his friend was saying. His was a faithful soul, and for
years—to all intents and purposes for practically the whole of his
life—he had looked up to Derek and reverenced him. He absolutely
refused to believe that Derek was intending to convey what he seemed to
be trying to convey: for, if he was, well … by Jove … it was too rotten
and Algy Martyn had been right after all and the fellow was simply …
“You don’t mean, old man,” said Freddie with an almost pleading note in
his voice, “that you’re going to back out of marrying Jill because
she’s in the chorus?”
Derek looked away, and scowled. He was finding Freddie, in the capacity
of inquisitor, as trying as he had found him in the rôle of exuberant
_fiancé_. It offended his pride to have to make explanations to one
whom he had always regarded with a patronizing tolerance as not a bad
fellow in his way but in every essential respect negligible.
“I have to be sensible,” he said, chafing as the indignity of his
position intruded itself more and more. “You know what it would mean …
Paragraphs in all the papers … photographs … the news cabled to England
… everybody reading it and misunderstanding … I’ve got my career to
think of … It would cripple me …”
His voice trailed off, and there was silence for a moment. Then Freddie
burst into speech. His good-natured face was hard with unwonted scorn.
Its cheerful vacuity had changed to stony contempt. For the second time
in the evening the jolly old scales had fallen from Freddie’s good old
eyes, and, as Jill had done, he saw Derek as he was.
“My sainted aunt!” he said slowly. “So that’s it, what! Well, I’ve
always thought a dashed lot of you, as you know. I’ve always looked up
to you as a bit of a nib and wished I was like you. But, great Scott!
if that’s the sort of a chap you are, I’m deuced glad I’m not! I’m
going to wake up in the middle of the night and think how unlike you I
am and pat myself on the back! Ronny Devereux was perfectly right. A
tick’s a tick, and that’s all there is to say about it. Good old Ronny
told me what you were, and, like a silly ass, I wasted a lot of time
trying to make him believe you weren’t that sort of chap at all. It’s
no good standing there looking like your mother,” said Freddie firmly.
“This is where we jolly well part brass-rags! If we ever meet again,
I’ll trouble you not to speak to me, because I’ve a reputation to keep
up! So there you have it in a bally nutshell!”
Scarcely had Freddie ceased to administer it to his former friend in a
bally nutshell, when Uncle Chris, warm and dishevelled from the dance
as interpreted by Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim, came bustling up, saving
Derek the necessity of replying to the harangue.
“Well, Underhill, my dear fellow,” began Uncle Chris affably, attaching
himself to the other’s arm, “what … ?”
He broke off, for Derek, freeing his arm with a wrench, turned and
walked rapidly away. Derek had no desire to go over the whole thing
again with Uncle Chris. He wanted to be alone, to build up, painfully
and laboriously, the ruins of his self-esteem. The pride of the
Underhills had had a bad evening.
Uncle Chris turned to Freddie.
“What is the matter?” he asked blankly.
“I’ll tell you what’s the jolly old matter!” cried Freddie. “The
blighter isn’t going to marry poor Jill after all! He’s changed his
rotten mind! It’s off!”
“Off?”
“Absolutely off!”
“Absolutely off?”
“Napoo!” said Freddie. “He’s afraid of what will happen to his blasted
career if he marries a girl who’s been in the chorus.”
“But, my dear boy!” Uncle Chris blinked. “But, my dear boy! This is
ridiculous … Surely, if I were to speak a word …”
“You can if you like. _I_ wouldn’t speak to the cootie again if you
paid me! But it won’t do any good, so what’s the use?”
Slowly Uncle Chris adjusted his mind to the disaster.
“Then you mean … ?”
“It’s off!” said Freddie.
For a moment Uncle Chris stood motionless. Then, with a sudden jerk, he
seemed to stiffen his backbone. His face was bleak, but he pulled at
his mustache jauntily.
“_Morituri te salutant!_” he said. “Good-bye, Freddie, my boy.”
He turned away, gallant and upright, the old soldier.
“Where are you going?” asked Freddie.
“Over the top!” said Uncle Chris.
“What do you mean?”
“I am going,” said Uncle Chris steadily, “to find Mrs Peagrim!”
“Good God!” cried Freddie. He followed him, protesting weakly, but the
other gave no sign that he had heard. Freddie saw him disappear into
the stage-box, and, turning, found Jill at his elbow.
“Where did Uncle Chris go?” asked Jill. “I want to speak to him.”
“He’s in the stage-box, with Mrs Peagrim.”
“With Mrs Peagrim?”
“Proposing to her,” said Freddie solemnly.
Jill stared.
“Proposing to Mrs Peagrim? What do you mean?”
Freddie drew her aside, and began to explain.
§ 4.
In the dimness of the stage-box, his eyes a little glassy and a dull
despair in his soul, Uncle Chris was wondering how to begin. In his hot
youth he had been rather a devil of a fellow in between dances, a
coo-er of soft phrases and a stealer of never very stoutly withheld
kisses. He remembered one time in Bangalore … but that had nothing to
do with the case. The point was, how to begin with Mrs Peagrim. The
fact that twenty-five years ago he had crushed in his arms beneath the
shadows of the deodars a girl whose name he had forgotten, though he
remembered that she had worn a dress of some pink stuff, was immaterial
and irrelevant. Was he to crush Mrs Peagrim in his arms? Not, thought
Uncle Chris to himself, on a bet. He contented himself for the moment
with bending an intense gaze upon her and asking if she was tired.
“A little,” panted Mrs Peagrim, who, though she danced often and
vigorously, was never in the best of condition, owing to her habit of
neutralizing the beneficient effects of exercise by surreptitious
candy-eating. “I’m a little out of breath.”
Uncle Chris had observed this for himself, and it had not helped him to
face his task. Lovely woman loses something of her queenly dignity when
she puffs. Inwardly, he was thinking how exactly his hostess resembled
the third from the left of a troupe of performing sea-lions which he
had seen some years ago on one of his rare visits to a vaudeville
house.
“You ought not to tire yourself,” he said with a difficult tenderness.
“I am so fond of dancing,” pleaded Mrs Peagrim. Recovering some of her
breath, she gazed at her companion with a sort of short-winded
archness. “You are always so sympathetic, Major Selby.”
“Am I?” said Uncle Chris. “Am I?”
“You know you are!”
Uncle Chris swallowed quickly.
“I wonder if you have ever wondered,” he began, and stopped. He felt
that he was not putting it as well as he might. “I wonder if it has
ever struck you that there’s a reason.” He stopped again. He seemed to
remember reading something like that in an advertisement in a magazine,
and he did not want to talk like an advertisement. “I wonder if it has
ever struck you, Mrs. Peagrim,” he began again, “that any sympathy on
my part might be due to some deeper emotion which … Have you never
suspected that you have never suspected …” Uncle Chris began to feel
that he must brace himself up. Usually a man of fluent speech, he was
not at his best tonight. He was just about to try again, when he caught
his hostess’ eye, and the soft gleam in it sent him cowering back into
the silence as if he wore taking cover from an enemy’s shrapnel.
Mrs Peagrim touched him on the arm.
“You were saying … ?” she murmured encouragingly.
Uncle Chris shut his eyes. His fingers pressed desperately into the
velvet curtain beside him. He felt as he had felt when a raw lieutenant
in India, during his first hill-campaign, when the etiquette of the
service had compelled him to rise and walk up and down in front of his
men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets. He seemed to hear the
damned things _whop-whopping_ now … and almost wished that he could
really hear them. One or two good bullets just now would be a welcome
diversion.
“Yes?” said Mrs Peagrim.
“Have you never felt,” babbled Uncle Chris, “that, feeling as I feel, I
might have felt … that is to say, might be feeling a feeling … ?”
There was a tap at the door of the box. Uncle Chris started violently.
Jill came in.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said. “I wanted to speak …”
“You wanted to speak to me?” said Uncle Chris, bounding up. “Certainly,
certainly, certainly, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment?”
Mrs Peagrim bowed coldly. The interruption had annoyed her. She had no
notion who Jill was, and she resented the intrusion at this particular
juncture intensely. Not so Uncle Chris, who skipped out into the
passage like a young lamb.
“Am I in time?” asked Jill in a whisper.
“In time?”
“You know what I mean. Uncle Chris, listen to me! You are not to
propose to that awful woman. Do you understand?”
Uncle Chris shook his head.
“The die is cast!”
“The die isn’t anything of the sort,” said Jill. “Unless … .” She
stopped, aghast. “You don’t mean that you have done it already?”
“Well, no. To be perfectly accurate, no. But …”
“Then that’s all right. I know why you were doing it, and it was very
sweet of you, but you mustn’t.”
“But, Jill, you don’t understand.”
“I do understand.”
“I have a motive …”
“I know your motive. Freddie told me. Don’t you worry yourself about
me, dear, because I am all right. I am going to be married.”
A look of ecstatic relief came into Uncle Chris’ face.
“Then Underhill … ?”
“I am not marrying Derek. Somebody else. I don’t think you know him,
but I love him, and so will you.” She pulled his face down and kissed
him. “Now you can go back.”
Uncle Chris was almost too overcome to speak. He gulped a little.
“Jill,” he said shakily, “this is a … this is a great relief.”
“I knew it would be.”
“If you are really going to marry a rich man …”
“I didn’t say he was rich.”
The joy ebbed from Uncle Chris’ face.
“If he is not rich, if he cannot give you everything of which I …”
“Oh, don’t be absurd! Wally has all the money anybody needs. What’s
money?”
“What’s money?” Uncle Chris stared. “Money, my dear child, is … is …
well, you mustn’t talk of it in that light way. But, if you think you
will really have enough … ?”
“Of course we shall. Now you can go back. Mrs Peagrim will be wondering
what has become of you.”
“Must I?” said Uncle Chris doubtfully.
“Of course. You must be polite.”
“Very well,” said Uncle Chris. “But it will be a little difficult to
continue the conversation on what you might call general lines.
However!”
Back in the box, Mrs Peagrim was fanning herself with manifest
impatience.
“What did that girl want?” she demanded.
Uncle Chris seated himself with composure. The weakness had passed, and
he was himself again.
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Some trivial difficulty, which I was able to
dispose of in a few words.”
Mrs Peagrim would have liked to continue her researches, but a feeling
that it was wiser not to stray too long from the main point restrained
her. She bent towards him.
“You were going to say something when that girl interrupted us.”
Uncle Chris shot his cuffs with a debonair gesture.
“Was I? Was I? To be sure, yes. I was saying that you ought not to let
yourself get tired. Deuce of a thing, getting tired. Plays the dickens
with the system.”
Mrs Peagrim was disconcerted. The atmosphere seemed to have changed,
and she did not like it. She endeavored to restore the tone of the
conversation.
“You are so sympathetic,” she sighed, feeling that she could not do
better than to begin again at that point. The remark had produced good
results before, and it might do so a second time.
“Yes,” agreed Uncle Chris cheerily. “You see, I have seen something of
all this sort of thing, and I realize the importance of it. I know what
all this modern rush and strain of life is for a woman in your
position. Parties every night … dancing … a thousand and one calls on
the vitality … bound to have an effect sooner or later,
unless—_unless_,” said Uncle Chris solemnly, “one takes steps. Unless
one acts in time. I had a friend—” His voice sank—“I had a very dear
friend over in London, Lady Alice—but the name would convey nothing—the
point is that she was in exactly the same position as you. On the rush
all the time. Never stopped. The end was inevitable. She caught cold,
hadn’t sufficient vitality to throw it off, went to a dance in
mid-winter, contracted pneumonia …” Uncle Chris sighed. “All over in
three days,” he said sadly. “Now at that time,” he resumed, “I did not
know what I know now. If I had heard of Nervino then …” He shook his
head. “It might have saved her life. It _would_ have saved her life. I
tell you, Mrs Peagrim, that there is nothing, there is no lack of
vitality which Nervino cannot set right. I am no physician myself, I
speak as a layman, but it acts on the red corpuscles of the blood …”
Mrs Peagrim’s face was stony. She had not spoken before, because he had
given her no opportunity, but she spoke now in a hard voice.
“Major Selby!”
“Mrs Peagrim?”
“I am not interested in patent medicines!”
“One can hardly call Nervino that,” said Uncle Chris reproachfully. “It
is a sovereign specific. You can get it at any drug-store. It comes in
two sizes, the dollar-fifty—or large—size, and the …”
Mrs Peagrim rose majestically.
“Major Selby, I am tired …”
“Precisely. And, as I say, Nervino …”
“Please,” said Mrs. Peagrim coldly, “go to the stage-door and see if
you can find my limousine. It should be waiting in the street.”
“Certainly,” said Uncle Chris. “Why, certainly, certainly, certainly.”
He left the box and proceeded across the stage. He walked with a lissom
jauntiness. His eye was bright. One or two of those whom he passed on
his way had the idea that this fine-looking man was in pain. They
fancied that he was moaning. But Uncle Chris was not moaning. He was
humming a gay snatch from the lighter music of the ’nineties.