Jill the Reckless

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

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Otis Pilkington, indeed, found it impossible, and, ceasing to try,
left early. Just twenty minutes after the proceedings had begun, he
seized his coat and hat, shot out into the night, made off blindly up
Broadway, and walked twice round Central Park before his feet gave out
and he allowed himself to be taken back to his apartment in a taxi.
Jill had been very kind and very sweet and very regretful, but it was
only too manifest that on the question of becoming Mrs. Otis
Pilkington her mind was made up. She was willing to like him, to be a
sister to him, to watch his future progress with considerable
interest, but she would not marry him.

One feels sorry for Otis Pilkington in his hour of travail. This was
the fifth or sixth time that this sort of thing had happened to him,
and he was getting tired of it. If he could have looked into the
future--five years almost to a day from that evening--and seen himself
walking blushfully down the aisle of St. Thomas' with Roland Trevis'
sister Angela on his arm, his gloom might have been lightened. More
probably, however, it would have been increased. At the moment, Roland
Trevis' sister Angela was fifteen, frivolous, and freckled and, except
that he rather disliked her and suspected her--correctly--of laughing
at him, amounted to just _nil_ in Mr. Pilkington's life. The idea of
linking his lot with hers would have appalled him, enthusiastically
though he was in favour of it five years later.

However, Mr. Pilkington was unable to look into the future, so his
reflections on this night of sorrow were not diverted from Jill. He
thought sadly of Jill till two-thirty, when he fell asleep in his
chair and dreamed of her. At seven o'clock his Japanese valet, who had
been given the night off, returned home, found him, and gave him
breakfast. After which, Mr. Pilkington went to bed, played three games
of solitaire, and slept till dinner-time, when he awoke to take up the
burden of life again. He still brooded on the tragedy which had
shattered him. Indeed, it was only two weeks later, when at a dance he
was introduced to a red-haired girl from Detroit, that he really got
over it.

* * * * *

The news was conveyed to Freddie Rooke by Uncle Chris. Uncle Chris,
with something of the emotions of a condemned man on the scaffold
waiting for a reprieve, had watched Jill and Mr. Pilkington go off
together into the dim solitude at the back of the orchestra chairs,
and, after an all too brief interval, had observed the latter whizzing
back, his every little movement having a meaning of its own--and that
meaning one which convinced Uncle Chris that Freddie, in estimating
Mr. Pilkington as a sixty to one chance, had not erred in his judgment
of form.

Uncle Chris found Freddie in one of the upper boxes, talking to Nelly
Bryant. Dancing was going on down on the stage, but Freddie, though
normally a young man who shook a skilful shoe, was in no mood for
dancing to-night. The return to the scenes of his former triumphs and
the meeting with the companions of happier days, severed from him by a
two-weeks' notice, had affected Freddie powerfully. Eyeing the happy
throng below, he experienced the emotions of that Peri who, in the
poem, "at the gate of Eden stood disconsolate."

Excusing himself from Nelly and following Uncle Chris into the
passage-way outside the box, he heard the other's news listlessly. It
came as no shock to Freddie. He had never thought Mr. Pilkington
anything to write home about, and had never supposed that Jill would
accept him. He said as much. Sorry for the chap in a way, and all
that, but had never imagined for an instant that he would click.

"Where is Underhill?" asked Uncle Chris agitated.

"Derek? Oh, he isn't here yet."

"But why isn't he here? I understood that you were bringing him with
you."

"That was the scheme, but it seems he had promised some people he met
on the boat to go to a theatre and have a bit of supper with them
afterwards. I only heard about it when I got back this morning."

"Good God, boy! Didn't you tell him that Jill would be here to-night?"

"Oh, rather. And he's coming on directly he can get away from these
people. Ought to be here any moment now."

Uncle Chris plucked at his moustache gloomily. Freddie's detachment
depressed him. He had looked for more animation and a greater sense of
the importance of the issue.

"Well, pip-pip for the present," said Freddie, moving toward the box.
"Have to be getting back. See you later."

He disappeared, and Uncle Chris turned slowly to descend the stairs.
As he reached the floor below, the door of the stage-box opened, and
Mrs. Peagrim came out.

"Oh, Major Selby!" cried the radiant and vivacious hostess. "I
couldn't think where you had got to. I have been looking for you
everywhere."

Uncle Chris quivered slightly, but braced himself to do his duty.

"May I have the pleasure...?" he began, then broke off as he saw the
man who had come out of the box behind his hostess. "Underhill!" He
grasped his hand and shook it warmly. "My dear fellow! I had no notion
that you had arrived!"

"Sir Derek came just a moment ago," said Mrs. Peagrim.

"How are you, Major Selby?" said Derek. He was a little surprised at
the warmth of his reception. He had not anticipated this geniality.

"My dear fellow, I'm delighted to see you," cried Uncle Chris. "But,
as I was saying, Mrs. Peagrim, may I have the pleasure of this dance?"

"I don't think I will dance this one," said Mrs. Peagrim surprisingly.
"I'm sure you two must have ever so much to talk about. Why don't you
take Sir Derek and give him a cup of coffee?"

"Capital idea!" said Uncle Chris. "Come this way, my dear fellow. As
Mrs. Peagrim says, I have ever so much to talk about. Along this
passage, my boy. Be careful. There's a step. Well, well, well! It's
delightful to see you again!" He massaged Derek's arm affectionately.
Every time he had met Mrs. Peagrim that evening he had quailed
inwardly at what lay before him, should some hitch occur to prevent
the re-union of Derek and Jill: and now that the other was actually
here, handsomer than ever and more than ever the sort of man no girl
could resist, he declined to admit the possibility of a hitch. His
spirits soared. "You haven't seen Jill yet, of course?"

"No." Derek hesitated. "Is Jill.... Does she.... I mean...."

Uncle Chris resumed his osteopathy. He kneaded his companion's
coat-sleeve with a jovial hand.

"My dear fellow, of course! I am sure that a word or two from you will
put everything right. We all make mistakes. I have made them myself. I
am convinced that everything will be perfectly all right.... Ah, there
she is. Jill, my dear, here is an old friend to see you!"

II

Since the hurried departure of Mr. Pilkington, Jill had been sitting
in the auditorium, lazily listening to the music and watching the
couples dancing on the stage. She found herself drifting into a mood
of gentle contentment, and was at a loss to account for this. She was
happy--quietly and peacefully happy, when she was aware that she ought
to have been both agitated and apprehensive. When she had anticipated
the recent interview with Otis Pilkington, which she had known was
bound to come sooner or later, it had been shrinkingly and with
foreboding. She hated hurting people's feelings, and, though she read
Mr. Pilkington's character accurately enough to know that time would
heal any anguish which she might cause him, she had had no doubt that
the temperamental surface of that long young man, when he succeeded in
getting her alone, was going to be badly bruised. And it had fallen
out just as she had expected. Mr. Pilkington had said his say and
departed, a pitiful figure, a spectacle which should have wrung her
heart. It had not wrung her heart. Except for one fleeting instant
when she was actually saying the fatal words, it had not interfered
with her happiness at all; and already she was beginning to forget
that the incident had ever happened.

And, if the past should have depressed her, the future might have been
expected to depress her even more. There was nothing in it, either
immediate or distant, which could account for her feeling gently
contented. And yet, as she leaned back in her seat, her heart was
dancing in time to the dance-music of Mrs. Peagrim's hired orchestra.
It puzzled Jill.

And then, quite suddenly, yet with no abruptness or sense of
discovery, just as if it were something which she had known all along,
the truth came upon her. It was Wally, the thought of Wally, the
knowledge that Wally existed, that made her happy. He was a solid,
comforting, reassuring fact in a world of doubts and perplexities. She
did not need to be with him to be fortified, it was enough just to
think of him. Present or absent, his personality heartened her like
fine weather or music or a sea-breeze--or like that friendly, soothing
night-light which they used to leave in her nursery when she was
little, to scare away the goblins and see her safely over the road
that led to the gates of the city of dreams.

Suppose there were no Wally...?

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. 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 came 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 abashed. "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 on to 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.

III

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!"

"Ugh!" 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 will soon. 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 licence, 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."

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