Jill the Reckless

P >> P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse >> Jill the Reckless

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26

"A little more," she said tensely, "and I should have struck those
unspeakable young men with my umbrella. One of the things I have never
been able to understand, Derek, is why you should have selected that
imbecile Rooke as your closest friend."

Derek smiled tolerantly.

"It was more a case of him selecting _me_. But Freddie is quite a good
fellow really. He's a man you've got to know."

"_I_ have not got to know him, and I thank heaven for it!"

"He's a very good-natured fellow. It was decent of him to put me up at
the Albany while our house was let. By the way, he has some seats for
the first night of a new piece this evening. He suggested that we
might all dine at the Albany and go on to the theatre." He hesitated a
moment. "Jill will be there," he said, and felt easier now that her
name had at last come into the talk. "She's longing to meet you."

"Then why didn't she meet me?"

"Here, do you mean? At the station? Well, I--I wanted you to see her
for the first time in pleasanter surroundings."

"Oh!" said Lady Underhill shortly.

It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much
by being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and
impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us. If Jill had been
permitted by her wary fiance to come with him to the station to meet
his mother it is certain that much trouble would have been avoided.
True, Lady Underhill would probably have been rude to her in the
opening stages of the interview, but she would not have been alarmed
and suspicious; or, rather, the vague suspicion which she had been
feeling would not have solidified, as it did now into definite
certainty of the worst. All that Derek had effected by his careful
diplomacy had been to convince his mother that he considered his
bride-elect something to be broken gently to her.

She stopped and faced him.

"Who is she?" she demanded. "Who is this girl?"

Derek flushed.

"I thought I made everything clear in my letter."

"You made nothing clear at all."

"By your leave!" chanted a porter behind them, and a baggage-truck
clove them apart.

"We can't talk in a crowded station," said Derek irritably. "Let me
get you to the taxi and take you to the hotel.... What do you want to
know about Jill?"

"Everything. Where does she come from? Who are her people? I don't
know any Mariners."

"I haven't cross-examined her," said Derek stiffly. "But I do know
that her parents are dead. Her father was an American."

"American!"

"Americans frequently have daughters, I believe."

"There is nothing to be gained by losing your temper," said Lady
Underhill with steely calm.

"There is nothing to be gained, as far as I can see, by all this
talk," retorted Derek. He wondered vexedly why his mother always had
this power of making him lose control of himself. He hated to lose
control of himself. It upset him, and blurred that vision which he
liked to have of himself as a calm, important man superior to ordinary
weaknesses. "Jill and I are engaged, and there is an end to it."

"Don't be a fool," said Lady Underhill, and was driven away by another
baggage-truck. "You know perfectly well," she resumed, returning to
the attack, "that your marriage is a matter of the greatest concern to
me and to the whole of the family."

"Listen, mother!" Derek's long wait on the draughty platform had
generated an irritability which overcame the deep-seated awe of his
mother which was the result of years of defeat in battles of the will.
"Let me tell you in a few words all that I know of Jill, and then
we'll drop the subject. In the first place, she is a lady. Secondly,
she has plenty of money...."

"The Underhills do not need to marry for money."

"I am not marrying for money!"

"Well, go on."

"I have already described to you in my letter--very inadequately, but
I did my best--what she looks like. Her sweetness, her lovableness,
all the subtle things about her which go to make her what she is, you
will have to judge for yourself."

"I intend to!"

"Well, that's all, then. She lives with her uncle, a Major Selby...."

"Major Selby? What regiment?"

"I didn't ask him," snapped the goaded Derek. "And, in the name of
heaven, what does it matter? If you are worrying about Major Selby's
social standing, I may as well tell you that he used to know father."

"What! When? Where?"

"Years ago. In India, when father was at Simla."

"Selby? Selby? Not Christopher Selby?"

"Oh, you remember him?"

"I certainly remember him! Not that he and I ever met, but your father
often spoke of him."

Derek was relieved. It was abominable that this sort of thing should
matter, but one had to face facts, and, as far as his mother was
concerned, it did. The fact that Jill's uncle had known his dead
father would make all the difference to Lady Underhill.

"Christopher Selby!" said Lady Underhill reflectively. "Yes! I have
often heard your father speak of him. He was the man who gave your
father an I.O.U. to pay a card debt, and redeemed it with a cheque
which was returned by the bank!"

"What!"

"Didn't you hear what I said? I will repeat it, if you wish."

"There must have been some mistake."

"Only the one your father made when he trusted the man."

"It must have been some other fellow."

"Of course!" said Lady Underhill satirically. "No doubt your father
knew hundreds of Christopher Selbys!"

Derek bit his lip.

"Well, after all," he said doggedly, "whether it's true or not...."

"I see no reason why your father should not have spoken the truth."

"All right. We'll say it _is_ true, then. But what does it matter? I
am marrying Jill, not her uncle."

"Nevertheless, it would be pleasanter if her only living relative
were not a swindler!... Tell me, where and how did you meet this
girl?"

"I should be glad if you would not refer to her as 'this girl.' The
name, if you have forgotten it, is Mariner."

"Well, where did you meet Miss Mariner?"

"At Prince's. Just after you left for Mentone. Freddie Rooke
introduced me."

"Oh, your intellectual friend Mr. Rooke knows her?"

"They were children together. Her people lived next to the Rookes in
Worcestershire."

"I thought you said she was an American."

"I said her father was. He settled in England. Jill hasn't been in
America since she was eight or nine."

"The fact," said Lady Underhill, "that the girl is a friend of Mr.
Rooke is no great recommendation."

Derek kicked angrily at a box of matches which someone had thrown down
on the platform.

"I wonder if you could possibly get it into your head, mother, that I
want to marry Jill, not engage her as an under-housemaid. I don't
consider that she requires recommendations, as you call them. However,
don't you think the most sensible thing is for you to wait till you
meet her at dinner to-night, and then you can form your own opinion?
I'm beginning to get a little bored by this futile discussion."

"As you seem quite unable to talk on the subject of this girl without
becoming rude," said Lady Underhill, "I agree with you. Let us hope
that my first impression will be a favourable one. Experience has
taught me that first impressions are everything."

"I'm glad you think so," said Derek, "for I fell in love with Jill the
very first moment I saw her!"

IV

Barker stepped back and surveyed with modest pride the dinner-table to
which he had been putting the finishing touches. It was an artistic
job and a credit to him.

"That's that!" said Barker, satisfied.

He went to the window and looked out. The fog which had lasted well
into the evening, had vanished now, and the clear night was bright
with stars. A distant murmur of traffic came from the direction of
Piccadilly.

As he stood there, the front-door bell rang, and continued to ring in
little spurts of sound. If character can be deduced from bell-ringing,
as nowadays it apparently can be from every other form of human
activity, one might have hazarded the guess that whoever was on the
other side of the door was determined, impetuous, and energetic.

"Barker!"

Freddie Rooke pushed a tousled head, which had yet to be brushed into
the smooth sleekness that made a delight to the public eye, out of a
room down the passage.

"Sir?"

"Somebody ringing."

"I heard, sir. I was about to answer the bell."

"If it's Lady Underhill, tell her I'll be in in a minute."

"I fancy it is Miss Mariner, sir. I think I recognize her touch."

He made his way down the passage to the front-door, and opened it. A
girl was standing outside. She wore a long grey fur coat, and a filmy
hood covered her hair. As Barker opened the door, she scampered in
like a grey kitten.

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

"Good evening, miss."

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

Barker moved to help her with her cloak.

"Sir Derek and her ladyship have not yet arrived, miss. Sir Derek went
to bring her ladyship from the Savoy Hotel. Mr. Rooke is dressing in
his bedroom and will be ready very shortly."

The girl had slipped out of the fur coat, and Barker cast a swift
glance of approval at her. He had the valet's unerring eye for a
thoroughbred, and Jill Mariner was manifestly that. It showed in her
walk, in every move of her small, active body, in the way she looked
at you, in the way she talked to you, in the little tilt of her
resolute chin. Her hair was pale gold, and had the brightness of
colouring of a child's. Her face glowed, and her grey eyes sparkled.
She looked very much alive.

It was this liveliness of hers that was her chief charm. Her eyes were
good and her mouth, with its small, even teeth, attractive, but she
would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes
doubted if she Were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained
entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had
laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up again,
had endeavoured subsequently to explain her attraction (to a bosom
friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club smoking-room) in
these words: "I don't know what it is about her, old man, but she
somehow makes a feller feel she's so damned _interested_ in a chap, if
you know what I mean." And though not generally credited in his circle
with any great acuteness, there is no doubt that the speaker had
achieved something approaching a true analysis of Jill's fascination
for his sex. She was interested in everything Life presented to her
notice, from a Coronation to a stray cat. She was vivid. She had
sympathy. She listened to you as though you really mattered. It takes
a man of tough fibre to resist these qualities. Women, on the other
hand, especially of the Lady Underhill type, can resist them without
an effort.

"Go and stir him up," said Jill, alluding to the absent Mr. Rooke.
"Tell him to come and talk to me. Where's the nearest fire? I want to
get right over it and huddle."

"The fire's burning nicely in the sitting-room, miss."

Jill hurried into the sitting-room, and increased her hold on Barker's
esteem by exclaiming rapturously at the sight that greeted her. Barker
had expended time and trouble over the sitting-room. There was no
dust, no untidiness. The pictures all hung straight; the cushions were
smooth and unrumpled; and a fire of exactly the right dimensions
burned cheerfully in the grate, flickering cosily on the small piano
by the couch, on the deep leather arm-chairs which Freddie had brought
with him from Oxford, that home of comfortable chairs, and on the
photographs that studded the walls. In the centre of the mantelpiece,
the place of honour, was the photograph of herself which she had given
Derek a week ago.

"You're simply wonderful, Barker! I don't see how you manage to make a
room so cosy!" Jill sat down on the club fender that guarded the
fireplace, and held her hands over the blaze. "I can't understand why
men ever marry. Fancy having to give up all this!"

"I am gratified that you appreciate it, miss. I did my best to make it
comfortable for you. I fancy I hear Mr. Rooke coming now."

"I hope the others won't be long. I'm starving. Has Mrs. Barker got
something very good for dinner?"

"She has strained every nerve, miss."

"Then I'm sure it's worth waiting for. Hullo, Freddie."

Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his
tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in
the glass in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes
they stay right, sometimes they wriggle up sideways. Life is full of
these anxieties.

"I shouldn't touch it," said Jill. "It looks beautiful, and, if I may
say so in confidence, is having a most disturbing effect on my
emotional nature. I'm not at all sure I shall be able to resist it
right through the evening. It isn't fair of you to try to alienate the
affections of an engaged young person like this."

Freddie squinted down, and became calmer.

"Hullo, Jill, old thing. Nobody here yet?"

"Well, I'm here--the _petite_ figure seated on the fender. But perhaps
I don't count."

"Oh, I didn't mean that, you know."

"I should hope not, when I've bought a special new dress just to
fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one
did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?"

Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded
her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical term
is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other
sex.

"Topping!" he said spaciously. "No other word for it. All wool and a
yard wide. Precisely as mother makes it. You look like a thingummy."

"How splendid. All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but
somehow I've never been able to manage it."

"A wood-nymph!" exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery. He
looked at her with honest admiration. "Dash it, Jill, you know,
there's something about you! You're--what's the word?--you've got such
small bones."

"Ugh! I suppose it's a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It
makes me feel like a skeleton."

"I mean to say, you're--you're dainty!"

"That's much better."

"You look as if you weighed about an ounce and a half. You look like
a bit of thistledown! You're a little fairy princess, dash it!"

"Freddie! This is eloquence!" Jill raised her left hand, and twiddled
a ringed finger ostentatiously. "Er--you _do_ realize that I'm
bespoke, don't you, and that my heart, alas, is another's? Because you
sound as if you were going to propose."

Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-glass.
Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an
earnest, paternal gaze.

"That reminds me," he said. "I wanted to have a bit of a talk with you
about that--being engaged and all that sort of thing. I'm glad I got
you alone before the Curse arrived."

"Curse? Do you mean Derek's mother? That sounds cheerful and
encouraging."

"Well, she is, you know," said Freddie earnestly. "She's a bird! It
would be idle to deny it. She always puts the fear of God into me. I
never know what to say to her."

"Why don't you try asking her riddles?"

"It's no joking matter," persisted Freddie, his amiable face overcast.
"Wait till you meet her! You should have seen her at the station this
morning. You don't know what you're up against!"

"You make my flesh creep, Freddie. What am I up against?"

Freddie poked the fire scientifically, and assisted it with coal.

"It's this way," he said. "Of course, dear old Derek's the finest chap
in the world."

"I know that," said Jill softly. She patted Freddie's hand with a
little gesture of gratitude. Freddie's devotion to Derek was a thing
that always touched her. She looked thoughtfully into the fire, and
her eyes seemed to glow in sympathy with the glowing coals. "There's
nobody like him!"

"But," continued Freddie, "he always has been frightfully under his
mother's thumb, you know."

Jill was conscious of a little flicker of irritation.

"Don't be absurd, Freddie. How could a man like Derek be under
anybody's thumb?"

"Well, you know what I mean!"

"I don't in the least know what you mean."

"I mean, it would be rather rotten if his mother set him against you."

Jill clenched her teeth. The quick temper which always lurked so very
little beneath the surface of her cheerfulness was stirred. She felt
suddenly chilled and miserable. She tried to tell herself that Freddie
was just an amiable blunderer who spoke without sense or reason, but
it was no use. She could not rid herself of a feeling of foreboding
and discomfort. It had been the one jarring note in the sweet melody
of her love-story, this apprehension of Derek's regarding his mother.
The Derek she loved was a strong man, with a strong man's contempt for
other people's criticism; and there had been something ignoble and
fussy in his attitude regarding Lady Underhill. She had tried to feel
that the flaw in her idol did not exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a
man who admired Derek with all his hero-worshipping nature, pointing
it out independently. She was annoyed, and she expended her annoyance,
as women will do, upon the innocent bystander.

"Do you remember the time I turned the hose on you, Freddie," she
said, rising from the fender, "years ago, when we were children, when
you and that awful Mason boy--what was his name? Wally Mason--teased
me?" She looked at the unhappy Freddie with a hostile eye. It was his
blundering words that had spoiled everything. "I've forgotten what it
was all about, but I know that you and Wally infuriated me and I
turned the garden hose on you and soaked you both to the skin. Well,
all I want to point out is that, if you go on talking nonsense about
Derek and his mother and me, I shall ask Barker to bring me a jug of
water, and I shall empty it over you! Set him against me! You talk as
if love were a thing any third party could come along and turn off
with a tap! Do you suppose that, when two people love each other as
Derek and I do, that it can possibly matter in the least what anybody
else thinks or says, even if it is his mother? I haven't got a mother,
but suppose Uncle Chris came and warned me against Derek...."

Her anger suddenly left her as quickly as it had come. That was always
the way with Jill. One moment she would be raging; the next, something
would tickle her sense of humour and restore her instantly to
cheerfulness. And the thought of dear, lazy old Uncle Chris taking the
trouble to warn anybody against anything except the wrong brand of
wine or an inferior make of cigar conjured up a picture before which
wrath melted away. She chuckled, and Freddie, who had been wilting on
the fender, perked up.

"You're an extraordinary girl, Jill. One never knows when you're going
to get the wind up."

"Isn't it enough to make me get the wind up, as you call it, when you
say absurd things like that?"

"I meant well, old girl!"

"That's the trouble with you. You always do mean well. You go about
the world meaning well till people fly to put themselves under police
protection. Besides, what on earth could Lady Underhill find to object
to in me? I've plenty of money, and I'm one of the most charming and
attractive of Society belles. You needn't take my word for that, and I
don't suppose you've noticed it, but that's what Mr. Gossip in the
_Morning Mirror_ called me when he was writing about my getting
engaged to Derek. My maid showed me the clipping. There was quite a
long paragraph, with a picture of me that looked like a Zulu
chieftainess taken in a coal-cellar during a bad fog. Well, after
that, what could anyone say against me? I'm a perfect prize! I expect
Lady Underhill screamed with joy when she heard the news and went
singing all over her Riviera villa."

"Yes," said Freddie dubiously. "Yes, yes, oh, quite so, rather!"

Jill looked at him sternly.

"Freddie, you're concealing something from me I You _don't_ think I'm
a charming and attractive Society belle! Tell me why not and I'll show
you where you are wrong. Is it my face you object to, or my manners,
or my figure? There was a young bride of Antigua, who said to her
mate, 'What a pig you are!' Said he, 'Oh, my queen, is it manners you
mean, or do you allude to my fig-u-ar?' Isn't my figuar all right,
Freddie?"

"Oh, _I_ think you're topping."

"But for some reason you're afraid that Derek's mother won't think so.
Why won't Lady Underhill agree with Mr. Gossip?"

Freddie hesitated.

"Speak up!"

"Well, it's like this. Remember, I've known the old devil...."

"Freddie Rooke! Where do you pick up such expressions? Not from me!"

"Well, that's how I always think of her! I say I've known her ever
since I used to go and stop at their place when I was at school, and I
know exactly the sort of things that put her back up. She's a
what-d'you-call-it. I mean to say, one of the old school, don't you
know. And you're so dashed impulsive, old girl. You know you are! You
are always saying things that come into your head."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't be a snob, Freddie."

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

"Have you ever had lumbago?"

"No."

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

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

"I ask him, of course."

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

Jill uttered an exclamation.

"I knew there was something! Being so cold and wanting to rush in and
crouch over a fire put it clean out of my head. He must be thinking me
a perfect beast!" She ran to the door. "Barker! Barker!"

Barker appeared from nowhere.

"Yes, miss?"

"I'm so sorry I forgot to ask before. How are your chilblains?"

"A good deal better miss, thank you."

"Did you try the stuff I recommended?"

"Yes, miss. It did them a world of good."

"Splendid!"

Jill went back into the sitting-room.

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

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

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

"It's rather awful," said Jill, "to think of Lady Underhill racing all
the way from Mentone to Paris and from Paris to Calais and from Calais
to Dover and from Dover to London simply to inspect me. You can't
wonder I'm nervous, Freddie."

The eye-glass dropped from Freddie's eye.

"Are _you_ nervous?" he asked, astonished.

"Of course I'm nervous. Wouldn't you be in my place?"

"Well, I should never have thought it."

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

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

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

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

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

John took me round to see his mother,
his mother,
his mother!
And when he'd introduced us to each other,
She sized up everything that I had on.
She put me through a cross-examination:
I fairly boiled with aggravation:
Then she shook her head,
Looked at me and said:
'Poor John! Poor John!'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26