Jill the Reckless

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

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"My father!"

"Yes. It was wonderfully good of him to bother about me. I didn't
suppose he would have known me by sight, and, even if he had
remembered me, I shouldn't have imagined that the memory would have
been a pleasant one. But he couldn't have taken more trouble if I had
been a blood-relation."

"That was just like father," said Jill softly.

"He was a prince."

"But you aren't in the office now?"

"No. I found I had a knack of writing verses and things, and I wrote a
few vaudeville songs. Then I came across a man named Bevan at a music
publisher's. He was just starting to write music, and we got together
and turned out some vaudeville sketches, and then a manager sent for
us to fix up a show that was dying on the road and we had the good
luck to turn it into a success, and after that it was pretty good
going. George Bevan got married the other day. Lucky devil!"

"Are you married?"

"No."

"You were faithful to my memory?" said Jill with a smile.

"I was."

"It can't last," said Jill, shaking her head. "One of these days
you'll meet some lovely American girl and then you'll put a worm down
her back or pull her hair or whatever it is you do when you want to
show your devotion, and.... What are you looking at? Is something
interesting going on behind me?"

He had been looking past her out into the room.

"It's nothing," he said. "Only there's a statuesque old lady about two
tables back of you who has been staring at you, with intervals for
refreshment, for the last five minutes. You seem to fascinate her."

"An old lady?"

"Yes. With a glare! She looks like Dunsany's Bird of the Difficult
Eye. Count ten and turn carelessly round, There, at that table. Almost
behind you."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Jill.

She turned quickly round again.

"What's the matter? Do you know her? Somebody you don't want to meet?"

"It's Lady Underhill! And Derek's with her!"

Wally had been lifting his glass. He put it down rather suddenly.

"Derek?" he said.

"Derek Underhill. The man I'm engaged to marry."

There was a moment's silence.

"Oh!" said Wally thoughtfully. "The man you're engaged to marry? Yes,
I see!"

He raised his glass again, and drank its contents quickly.

II

Jill looked at her companion anxiously. Recent events had caused her
completely to forget the existence of Lady Underhill. She was always
so intensely interested in what she happened to be doing at the moment
that she often suffered these temporary lapses of memory. It occurred
to her now--too late, as usual--that the Savoy Hotel was the last
place in London where she should have come to supper with Wally. It
was the hotel where Lady Underhill was staying. She frowned. Life had
suddenly ceased to be careless and happy, and had become a
problem-ridden thing, full of perplexity and misunderstandings.

"What shall I do?"

Wally Mason started at the sound of her voice. He appeared to be deep
in thoughts of his own.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What shall I do?"

"I shouldn't be worried."

"Derek will be awfully cross."

Wally's good-humoured mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.

"Why?" he said. "There's nothing wrong in your having supper with an
old friend."

"N-no," said Jill doubtfully. "But...."

"Derek Underhill," said Wally reflectively. "Is that Sir Derek
Underhill, whose name one's always seeing in the papers?"

"Derek is in the papers a lot. He's an M.P. and all sorts of things."

"Good-looking fellow. Ah, here's the coffee."

"I don't want any, thanks."

"Nonsense. Why spoil your meal because of this? Do you smoke?"

"No, thanks."

"Given it up, eh? Daresay you're wise. Stunts the growth and increases
the expenses."

"Given it up?"

"Don't you remember sharing one of your father's cigars with me behind
the haystack in the meadow? We cut it in half. I finished my half, but
I fancy about three puffs were enough for you. Those were happy days!"

"That one wasn't! Of course I remember it now. I don't suppose I shall
ever forget it."

"The thing was my fault, as usual. I recollect I dared you."

"Yes. I always took a dare."

"Do you still?"

"What do you mean?"

Wally knocked the ash off his cigarette.

"Well," he said slowly, "suppose! were to dare you to get up and walk
over to that table and look your fiance in the eye and say, 'Stop
scowling at my back hair! I've a perfect right to be supping with an
old friend!'--would you do it?"

"Is he?" said Jill startled.

"Scowling? Can't you feel it on the back of your head?" He drew
thoughtfully at his cigarette. "If I were you I should stop that sort
of thing at the source. It's a habit that can't be discouraged in a
husband too early. Scowling is the civilized man's substitute for
wife-beating."

Jill moved uncomfortably in her chair. Her quick temper resented his
tone. There was a hostility, a hardly veiled contempt in his voice
which stung her. Derek was sacred. Whoever criticised him, presumed.
Wally, a few minutes before a friend and an agreeable companion,
seemed to her to have changed. He was once more the boy whom she had
disliked in the old days. There was a gleam in her eyes which should
have warned him, but he went on.

"I should imagine that this Derek of yours is not one of our leading
sunbeams. Well, I suppose he could hardly be, if that's his mother and
there is anything in heredity."

"Please don't criticise Derek," said Jill coldly.

"I was only saying...."

"Never mind. I don't like it."

A slow flush crept over Wally's face. He made no reply, and there fell
between them a silence that was like a shadow, Jill sipped her coffee
miserably. She was regretting that little spurt of temper. She wished
she could have recalled the words. Not that it was the actual words
that had torn asunder this gossamer thing, the friendship which they
had begun to weave like some fragile web: it was her manner, the
manner of the princess rebuking an underling. She knew that, if she
had struck him, she could not have offended Wally more deeply. There
are some men whose ebullient natures enable them to rise unscathed
from the worst snub. Wally, her intuition told her, was not that kind
of man.

There was only one way of mending the matter. In these clashes of
human temperaments, these sudden storms that spring up out of a clear
sky, it is possible sometimes to repair the damage, if the
psychological moment is resolutely seized, by talking rapidly and with
detachment on neutral topics. Words have made the rift, and words
alone can bridge it. But neither Jill nor her companion could find
words, and the silence lengthened grimly. When Wally spoke, it was in
the level tones of a polite stranger.

"Your friends have gone."

His voice was the voice in which, when she went on railway journeys,
fellow-travellers in the carriage enquired of Jill if she would prefer
the window up or down. It had the effect of killing her regrets and
feeding her resentment. She was a girl who never refused a challenge,
and she set herself to be as frigidly polite and aloof as he.

"Really?" she said. "When did they leave?"

"A moment ago." The lights gave the warning flicker that announces the
arrival of the hour of closing. In the momentary darkness they both
rose. Wally scrawled his name across the bill which the waiter had
insinuated upon his attention. "I suppose we had better be moving?"

They crossed the room in silence. Everybody was moving in the same
direction. The broad stairway leading to the lobby was crowded with
chattering supper-parties. The light had gone up again.

At the cloak-room Wally stopped.

"I see Underhill waiting up there," he said casually. "To take you
home, I suppose. Shall we say good-night? I'm staying in the hotel."

Jill glanced towards the head of the stairs. Derek was there. He was
alone. Lady Underhill presumably had gone up to her room in the
elevator.

Wally was holding out his hand. His face was stolid and his eyes
avoided hers.

"Good-bye," he said.

"Good-bye," said Jill.

She felt curiously embarrassed. At this last moment hostility had
weakened, and she was conscious of a desire to make amends. She and
this man had been through much together that night, much that was
perilous and much that was pleasant. A sudden feeling of remorse came
over her.

"You'll come and see us, won't you?" she said a little wistfully. "I'm
sure my uncle would like to meet you again."

"It's very good of you," said Wally, "but I'm afraid I shall be going
back to America at any moment now."

Pique, that ally of the devil, regained its slipping grip upon Jill.

"Oh? I'm sorry," she said indifferently. "Well, good-bye, then."

"Good-bye."

"I hope you have a pleasant voyage."

"Thanks."

He turned into the cloak-room, and Jill went up the stairs to join
Derek. She felt angry and depressed, full of a sense of the futility
of things. People flashed into one's life and out again. Where was the
sense of it?

III

Derek had been scowling, and Derek still scowled. His eyebrows were
formidable, and his mouth smiled no welcome at Jill as she approached
him. The evening, portions of which Jill had found so enjoyable, had
contained no pleasant portions for Derek. Looking back over a lifetime
whose events had been almost uniformly agreeable, he told himself
that he could not recall another day which had gone so completely
awry. It had started with the fog. He hated fog. Then had come that
meeting with his mother at Charing Cross, which had been enough to
upset him by itself. After that, rising to a crescendo of
unpleasantness, the day had provided that appalling situation at the
Albany, the recollection of which still made him tingle; and there had
followed the silent dinner, the boredom of the early part of the play,
the fire at the theatre, the undignified scramble for the exits, and
now this discovery of the girl whom he was engaged to marry supping at
the Savoy with a fellow he didn't remember ever having seen in his
life. All these things combined to induce in Derek a mood bordering on
ferocity. His birth and income combining to make him one of the
spoiled children of the world, had fitted him ill for such a series of
catastrophes. He received Jill with frozen silence and led her out to
the waiting taxi-cab. It was only when the cab had started on its
journey that he found relief in speech.

"Well," he said, mastering with difficulty an inclination to raise his
voice to a shout, "perhaps you will kindly explain?"

Jill had sunk back against the cushions of the cab. The touch of his
body against hers always gave her a thrill, half pleasurable, half
frightening. She had never met anybody who affected her in this way as
Derek did. She moved a little closer, and felt for his hand. But, as
she touched it, it retreated--coldly. Her heart sank. It was like
being cut in public by somebody very dignified.

"Derek, darling!" Her lips trembled. Others had seen this side of
Derek Underhill frequently, for he was a man who believed in keeping
the world in its place, but she never. To her he had always been the
perfect, gracious knight. A little too perfect, perhaps, a trifle too
gracious, possibly, but she had been too deeply in love to notice
that. "Don't be cross!"

The English language is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in
moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones. The
adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that
consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as
though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been asked
if he were piqued.

"Cross!"

The cab rolled on. Lights from lamp-posts flashed in at windows. It
was a pale, anxious little face that they lit up when they shone upon
Jill.

"I can't understand you," said Derek at last. Jill noticed that he had
not yet addressed her by her name. He was speaking straight out in
front of him as if he were soliloquising. "I simply cannot understand
you. After what happened before dinner to-night, for you to cap
everything by going off alone to supper at a restaurant, where half
the people in the room must have known you, with a man...."

"You don't understand!"

"Exactly! I said I did not understand." The feeling of having scored a
point made Derek feel a little better. "I admit it. Your behaviour is
incomprehensible. Where did you meet this fellow?"

"I met him at the theatre. He was the author of the play."

"The man you told me you had been talking to? The fellow who scraped
acquaintance with you between the acts?"

"But I found out he was an old friend. I mean, I knew him when I was a
child."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I only found it out later."

"After he had invited you to supper! It's maddening!" cried Derek, the
sense of his wrongs surging back over him. "What do you suppose my
mother thought? She asked me who the man with you was. I had to say I
didn't know! What do you suppose she thought?"

It is to be doubted whether anything else in the world could have
restored the fighting spirit to Jill's cowering soul at that moment;
but the reference to Lady Underhill achieved this miracle. That deep
mutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sight
had sprung up between the two at the instant of their meeting. The
circumstances of that meeting had caused it to take root and grow. To
Jill, Derek's mother was by this time not so much a fellow human being
whom she disliked as a something, a sort of force, that made for her
unhappiness. She was a menace and a loathing.

"If your mother had asked me that question," she retorted with spirit,
"I should have told her that he was the man who got me safely out of
the theatre after you...." She checked herself. She did not want to
say the unforgivable thing. "You see," she said more quietly, "you had
disappeared...."

"My mother is an old woman," said Derek stiffly. "Naturally I had to
look after her. I called to you to follow."

"Oh, I understand. I'm simply trying to explain what happened. I was
there all alone, and Wally Mason...."

"Wally!" Derek uttered a short laugh, almost a bark. "It got to
Christian names, eh?"

Jill set her teeth.

"I told you I knew him as a child. I always called him Wally then."

"I beg your pardon. I had forgotten."

"He got me out through the pass-door on to the stage and through the
stage-door."

Derek was feeling cheated. He had the uncomfortable sensation that
comes to men who grandly contemplate mountains and see them dwindle to
molehills. The apparently outrageous had shown itself in explanation
nothing so out-of-the-way after all. He seized upon the single point
in Jill's behaviour that still constituted a grievance.

"There was no need for you to go to supper with the man!" Jove-like
wrath had ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous grumble.
"You should have gone straight home. You must have known how anxious I
would be about you."

"Well, really, Derek, dear! You didn't seem so very anxious! You were
having supper yourself quite cosily."

The human mind is curiously constituted. It is worthy of record that,
despite his mother's obvious disapproval of his engagement, despite
all the occurrences of this dreadful day, it was not till she made
this remark that Derek Underhill first admitted to himself that,
intoxicate his senses as she might, there was a possibility that Jill
Mariner was not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and went more
quickly than breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been. There
are men who fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword. Derek
was one of these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity is
their most precious possession, he winced from an edged tongue.

"My mother was greatly upset," he replied coldly. "I thought a cup of
soup would do her good. And, as for being anxious about you, I
telephoned to your home to ask if you had come in."

"And when," thought Jill, "they told you I hadn't, you went off to
supper!"

She did not speak the words. If she had an edged tongue, she had also
the control of it. She had no wish to wound Derek. Whole-hearted in
everything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might be
specks upon her idol--that its feet might be clay she could never
believe--but they mattered nothing. She loved him.

"I'm so sorry, dear," she said. "So awfully sorry! I've been a bad
girl, haven't I?"

She felt for his hand again, and this time he allowed it to remain
stiffly in her grasp. It was like being grudgingly recognized by
somebody very dignified who had his doubts about you but reserved
judgment.

The cab drew up at the door of the house in Ovingdon Square which
Jill's Uncle Christopher had settled upon as a suitable address for a
gentleman of his standing. Jill put up her face to be kissed, like a
penitent child.

"I'll never be naughty again!"

For a flickering instant Derek hesitated. The drive, long as it was,
had been too short wholly to restore his equanimity. Then the sense of
her nearness, her sweetness, the faint perfume of her hair, and her
eyes, shining softly in the darkness so close to his own, overcame
him. He crushed her to him.

Jill disappeared into the house with a happy laugh. It had been a
terrible day, but it had ended well.

"The Albany," said Derek to the cabman.

He leaned back against the cushions. His senses were in a whirl. The
cab rolled on. Presently his exalted mood vanished as quickly as it
had come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jill
present. He was not a man of strong imagination, and the stimulus of
her waned when she was not with him. Long before the cab reached the
Albany the frown was back on his face.

IV

Arriving at the Albany, he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in a
deep arm-chair. His slippered feet were on the mantelpiece, and he was
restoring his wasted tissues with a strong whisky-and-soda. One of
the cigars which Barker, the valet, had stamped with the seal of his
approval was in the corner of his mouth. The _Sporting Times_, with a
perusal of which he had been soothing his fluttered nerves, had fallen
on the floor beside the chair. He had finished reading, and was now
gazing peacefully at the ceiling, his mind a perfect blank. There was
nothing the matter with Freddie.

"Hullo, old thing," he observed as Derek entered. "So you buzzed out
of the fiery furnace all right? I was wondering how you had got along.
How are you feeling? I'm not the man I was! These things get the old
system all stirred up! I'll do anything in reason to oblige and help
things along and all that, but to be called on at a moment's notice to
play Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rolled into one, without
rehearsal or make-up, is a bit too thick! No, young feller-me-lad! If
theatre fires are going to be the fashion this season, the Last of the
Rookes will sit quietly at home and play solitaire. Mix yourself a
drink of something, old man, or something of that kind. By the way,
your jolly old mater. All right? Not even singed? Fine! Make a long
arm and gather in a cigar."

And Freddie, having exerted himself to play the host in a suitable
manner, wedged himself more firmly into his chair and blew a cloud of
smoke.

Derek sat down. He lit a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. From
the mantelpiece Jill's photograph smiled down, but he did not look at
it. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie had
had a trying evening What he wanted just now was merry prattle, and
his friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removed
his feet from the mantelpiece and wriggled himself sideways, so that
he could see Derek's face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from his
admiration for Derek, he was a warmhearted young man, and sympathized
with affliction when it presented itself for his notice.

"Something on your mind, old bean?" he enquired delicately.

Derek did not answer for a moment. Then he reflected that, little as
he esteemed the other's mentality, he and Freddie had known each other
a long time, and that it would be a relief to confide in some one. And
Freddie, moreover, was an old friend of Jill and the man who had
introduced him to her.

"Yes," he said.

"I'm listening, old top," said Freddie. "Release the film."

Derek drew at his cigar, and watched the smoke as it curled to the
ceiling.

"It's about Jill."

Freddie signified his interest by wriggling still further sideways.

"Jill, eh?"

"Freddie, she's so damned impulsive!"

Freddie nearly rolled out of his chair. This, he took it, was what
writing-chappies called a coincidence.

"Rummy you should say that," he ejaculated. "I was telling her exactly
the same thing myself only this evening." He hesitated. "I fancy I can
see what you're driving at, old thing. The watchword is 'What ho, the
mater!' yes, no? You've begun to get a sort of idea that if Jill
doesn't watch her step, she's apt to sink pretty low in the betting,
what? I know exactly what you mean! You and I know all right that
Jill's a topper. But one can see that to your mater she might seem a
bit different. I mean to say, your jolly old mater only judging by
first impressions, and the meeting not having come off quite as
scheduled.... I say, old man," he broke off, "fearfully sorry and all
that about that business. You know what I mean! Wouldn't have had it
happen for the world. I take it the mater was a trifle peeved? Not to
say perturbed and chagrined? I seemed to notice it at dinner."

"She was furious, of course. She did not refer to the matter when we
were alone together, but there was no need to. I knew what she was
thinking."

Derek threw away his cigar. Freddie noted this evidence of an
overwrought soul with concern.

"The whole thing," he conceded, "was a bit unfortunate."

Derek began to pace the room.

"Freddie."

"On the spot, old man."

"Something's got to be done."

"Absolutely!" Freddie nodded solemnly. He had taken this matter
greatly to heart. Derek was his best friend, and he had always been
extremely fond of Jill. It hurt him to see things going wrong. "I'll
tell you what, old bean. Let _me_ handle this binge for you."

"You?"

"Me! The Final Rooke!" He jumped up, and leaned against the
mantelpiece. "I'm the lad to do it. I've known Jill for years. She'll
listen to me. I'll talk to her like a Dutch uncle and make her
understand the general scheme of things. I'll take her out to tea
to-morrow and slang her in no uncertain voice! Leave the whole thing
to _me_, laddie!"

Derek considered.

"It might do some good," he said.

"Good?" said Freddie. "It's _it_, dear boy! It's a wheeze! You toddle
off to bed and have a good sleep. I'll fix the whole thing for you!"

CHAPTER V

LADY UNDERHILL RECEIVES A SHOCK

I

There are streets in London into which the sun seems never to
penetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to be
supposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well on
note-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it.
The majority, however, are in the mean neighbourhoods of the great
railway termini, and appear to offer no compensation whatever. They
are lean, furtive streets, grey as the January sky with a sort of
arrested decay. They smell of cabbage and are much prowled over by
vagrom cats. At night they are empty and dark, and a stillness broods
on them, broken only by the cracked tingle of an occasional piano
playing one of the easier hymns, a form of music to which the dwellers
in the dingy houses are greatly addicted. By day they achieve a
certain animation through the intermittent appearance of women in
aprons, who shake rugs out of the front doors or, emerging from areas,
go down to the public-house on the corner with jugs to fetch the
supper-beer. In almost every ground-floor window there is a card
announcing that furnished lodgings may be had within. You will find
these streets by the score if you leave the main thoroughfares and
take a short cut on your way to Euston, to Paddington, or to Waterloo.
But the dingiest and deadliest and most depressing lie round about
Victoria. And Daubeny Street, Pimlico, is one of the worst of them
all.

On the afternoon following the events recorded, a girl was dressing in
the ground-floor room of Number Nine, Daubeny Street. A tray bearing
the remains of a late breakfast stood on the rickety table beside a
bowl of wax flowers. From beneath the table peered the green cover of
a copy of _Variety_. A grey parrot in a cage by the window cracked
seed and looked out into the room with a satirical eye. He had seen
all this so many times before--Nelly Bryant arraying herself in her
smartest clothes to go out and besiege agents in their offices off the
Strand. It happened every day. In an hour or two she would come back
as usual, say "Oh, Gee!" in a tired sort of voice, and then Bill the
parrot's day proper would begin. He was a bird who liked the sound of
his own voice, and he never got the chance of a really sustained
conversation till Nelly returned in the evening.

"Who cares?" said Bill, and cracked another seed.

If rooms are an indication of the characters of their occupants, Nelly
Bryant came well out of the test of her surroundings. Nothing can make
a London furnished room much less horrible than it intends to be, but
Nelly had done her best. The furniture, what there was of it, was of
that lodging-house kind which resembles nothing else in the world. But
a few little touches here and there, a few instinctively tasteful
alterations in the general scheme of things, had given the room almost
a cosy air. Later on, with the gas lit, it would achieve something
approaching homeliness. Nelly, like many another nomad, had taught
herself to accomplish a good deal with poor material. On tour in
America, she had sometimes made even a bedroom in a small hotel
tolerably comfortable, than which there is no greater achievement.
Oddly, considering her life, she had a genius for domesticity.

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