Jill the Reckless

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

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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
monopolising 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 demeanour 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 role of
exuberant fiance. 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 man 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 moustache 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.

IV

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 beneficent 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 to-night. 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 were 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 endeavoured 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.

CHAPTER XXI

WALLY MASON LEARNS A NEW EXERCISE

I

Up on the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamour of
the busy city, Wally Mason, at eleven o'clock on the morning after
Mrs. Peagrim's Bohemian party, was greeting the new day, as was his
custom, by going through his ante-breakfast exercises. Mankind is
divided into two classes--those who do setting-up exercises before
breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't. To the former
and more praiseworthy class Wally had belonged since boyhood. Life
might be vain and the world a void, but still he touched his toes the
prescribed number of times and twisted his muscular body about
according to the ritual. He did so this morning a little more
vigorously than usual, partly because he had sat up too late the night
before and thought too much and smoked too much, with the result that
he had risen heavy-eyed, at the present disgraceful hour, and partly
because he hoped by wearying the flesh to still the restlessness of
the spirit. Spring generally made Wally restless, but never previously
had it brought him this distracted feverishness. So he lay on his back
and waved his legs in the air, and it was only when he had risen and
was about to go still further into the matter that he perceived Jill
standing beside him.

"Good Lord!" said Wally.

"Don't stop," said Jill. "I'm enjoying it.'

"How long have you been here?"

"Oh, I only just arrived. I rang the bell, and the nice old lady who
is cooking your lunch told me you were out here.'

"Not lunch. Breakfast."

"Breakfast! At this hour?"

"Won't you join me?"

"I'll join you. But I had my breakfast long ago."

Wally found his despondency magically dispelled. It was extraordinary
how the mere sight of Jill could make the world a different place. It
was true the sun had been shining before her arrival, but in a flabby,
weak-minded way, not with the brilliance it had acquired immediately
he heard her voice.

"If you don't mind waiting for about three minutes while I have a
shower and dress...."

"Oh, is the entertainment over?" asked Jill, disappointed. "I always
arrive too late for everything."

"One of these days you shall see me go through the whole programme,
including shadow-boxing and the goose-step. Bring your friends! But at
the moment I think it would be more of a treat for you to watch me eat
an egg. Go and look at the view. From over there you can see Hoboken."

"I've seen it. I don't think much of it."

"Well, then, on this side we have Brooklyn. There is no stint. Wander
to and fro and enjoy yourself. The rendezvous is in the sitting-room
in about four moments."

Wally vaulted through the passage-window and disappeared. Then he
returned and put his head out.

"I say!"

"Yes?"

"Just occurred to me. Your uncle won't be wanting this place for half
an hour or so, will he? I mean, there will be time for me to have a
bite of breakfast?"

"I don't suppose he will require your little home till some time in
the evening."

"Fine!"

Wally disappeared again, and a few moments later Jill heard the faint
splashing of water. She walked to the parapet and looked down. On the
windows of the nearer buildings the sun cast glittering beams, but
further away a faint, translucent mist hid the city. There was Spring
humidity in the air. In the street she had found it oppressive: but on
the breezy summit of this steel-and-granite cliff the air was cool and
exhilarating. Peace stole into Jill's heart as she watched the boats
dropping slowly down the East River, which gleamed like dull steel
through the haze. She had come to Journey's End, and she was happy.
Trouble and heartache seemed as distant as those hurrying black ants
down on the streets. She felt far away from the world on an enduring
mountain of rest. She gave a little sigh of contentment and turned to
go in as Wally called.

In the sitting-room her feeling of security deepened. Here, the world
was farther away than ever. Even the faint noises which had risen to
the roof were inaudible, and only the cosy tick-tock of the
grandfather's clock punctuated the stillness.

She looked at Wally with a quickening sense of affection. He had the
divine gift of silence at the right time. Yes, this was home. This was
where she belonged.

"It didn't take me in, you know," said Jill at length, resting her
arms on the table and regarding him severely.

Wally looked up.

"What didn't take you in?"

"That bath of yours. Yes, I know you turned on the cold shower, but
you stood at a safe distance and watched it _show_!"

Wally waved his fork.

"As Heaven is my witness.... Look at my hair! Still damp! And I can
show you the towel."

"Well, then, I'll bet it was the hot water. Why weren't you at Mrs.
Peagrim's party last night?"

"It would take too long to explain all my reasons, but one of them was
that I wasn't invited. How did it go off?"

"Splendidly. Freddie's engaged!"

Wally lowered his coffee cup.

"Engaged! You don't mean what is sometimes slangily called betrothed?"

"I do. He's engaged to Nelly Bryant. Nelly told me all about it when
she got home last night. It seems that Freddie said to her 'What ho!'
and she said 'You bet!' and Freddie said 'Pip pip!' and the thing was
settled." Jill bubbled. "Freddie wants to go into vaudeville with
her!"

"No! The Juggling Rookes? Or Rooke and Bryant, the cross-talk team, a
thoroughly refined act, swell dressers on and off?"

"I don't know. But it doesn't matter. Nelly is domestic. She's going
to have a little home in the country, where she can grow chickens and
pigs."

"Father's in the pigstye, you can tell him by his hat, eh?"

"Yes. They will be very happy. Freddie will be a father to her
parrot."

Wally's cheerfulness diminished a trifle. The contemplation of
Freddie's enviable lot brought with it the inevitable contrast with
his own. A little home in the country.... Oh, well!

II

There was a pause. Jill was looking a little grave.

"Wally!"

"Yes?"

She turned her face away, for there was a gleam of mischief in her
eyes which she did not wish him to observe.

"Derek was at the party!"

Wally had been about to butter a piece of toast. The butter, jerked
from the knife by the convulsive start which he gave, popped up in a
semi-circle and plumped on to the tablecloth. He recovered himself
quickly.

"Sorry!" he said. "You mustn't mind that. They want me to be
second-string for the "Boosting the Butter" event at the next Olympic
Games, and I'm practising all the time.... Underhill was there, eh?"

"Yes."

"You met him?"

"Yes."

Wally fiddled with his knife.

"Did he come over.... I mean ... had he come specially to see you?"

"Yes."

"I see."

There was another pause.

"He wants to marry you?"

"He said he wanted to marry me."

Wally got up and went to the window. Jill could smile safely now, and
she did, but her voice was still grave.

"What ought I to do, Wally? I thought I would ask you as you are such
a friend."

Wally spoke without turning.

"You ought to marry him, of course."

"You think so?"

"You ought to marry him, of course," said Wally doggedly. "You love
him, and the fact that he came all the way to America must mean that
he still loves you. Marry him!"

"But...." Jill hesitated. "You see, there's a difficulty."

"What difficulty?"

"Well ... it was something I said to him just before he went away. I
said something that made it a little difficult."

Wally continued to inspect the roofs below.

"What did you say?"

"Well ... it was something ... something that I don't believe he liked ...
something that may interfere with his marrying me."

"What did you say?"

"I told him I was going to marry _you_!"

Wally spun round. At the same time he leaped in the air. The effect of
the combination of movements was to cause him to stagger across the
room and, after two or three impromptu dance steps which would have
interested Mrs. Peagrim, to clutch at the mantelpiece to save himself
from falling. Jill watched him with quiet approval.

"Why, that's wonderful, Wally! Is that another of your morning
exercises? If Freddie does go into vaudeville, you ought to get him to
let you join the troupe."

Wally was blinking at her from the mantelpiece.

"Jill!"

"Yes?"

"What--what--what...!"

"Now, don't talk like Freddie, even if you are going into vaudeville
with him."

"You said you were going to marry _me_?"

"I said I was going to marry you!"

"But--do you mean...?"

The mischief died out of Jill's eyes. She met his gaze frankly and
seriously.

"The lumber's gone, Wally," she said. "But my heart isn't empty. It's
quite, quite full, and it's going to be full for ever and ever and
ever."

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