Jill the Reckless

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

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"Which of them is giving free trips? That's the point."

"Eh? Oh!" Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep
consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost
forgotten that there existed a class which had not as much money as
himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat.
It was a purely disinterested sympathy. The fact that Nelly was a girl
and in many respects a dashed pretty girl did not affect him. What
mattered was that she was hard up. The thought hurt Freddie like a
blow. He hated the idea of anyone being hard up.

"I say!" he said. "Are you broke?"

Nelly laughed.

"Am I? If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn't even have the hole in the
middle."

Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the
streets, to whom he gave shillings, he had not met anyone for years
who had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who
frequently claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny,
but the bally penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned
out to be a couple of thousand pounds for a new car.

"Good God!" he said.

There was a pause. Then, with a sudden impulse, he began to fumble in
his breast-pocket. Rummy how things worked out for the best, however
scaly they might seem at the moment. Only an hour or so ago he had
been kicking himself for not having remembered that fifty-pound note,
tacked on to the lining of his coat, when it would have come in handy
at the police-station. He now saw that Providence had had the matter
well in hand. If he had remembered it and coughed it up to the
constabulary then, he wouldn't have had it now. And he needed it now.
A mood of quixotic generosity had surged upon him. With swift fingers
he jerked the note free from its moorings and displayed it like a
conjurer exhibiting a rabbit.

"My dear old thing," he said, "I can't stand it! I absolutely cannot
stick it at any price! I really must insist on your trousering this.
Positively!"

Nelly Bryant gazed at the note with wide eyes. She was stunned. She
took it limply, and looked at it under the dim light of the gas-lamp
over the door.

"I couldn't!" she cried.

"Oh, but really! You must!"

"But this is a fifty-pound!"

"Absolutely! It will take you back to New York, what? you asked which
line was giving free trips. The Freddie Rooke Line, by Jove, sailings
every Wednesday and Saturday! I mean, what?"

"But I can't take two hundred and fifty dollars from you!"

"Oh, rather. Of course you can."

There was another pause.

"You'll think--" Nelly's pale face flushed. "You'll think I told you
all about myself just--just because I wanted to...."

"To make a touch? Absolutely not! Rid yourself of the jolly old
supposition entirely. You see before you, old thing, a chappie who
knows more about borrowing money than any man in London. I mean to
say, I've had my ear bitten more often than anyone, I should think.
There are sixty-four ways of making a touch--I've had them all worked
on me by divers blighters here and there--and I can tell any of them
with my eyes shut. I know you weren't dreaming of any such thing."

The note crackled musically in Nelly's hand.

"I don't know what to say!"

"That's all right."

"I don't see why.... Gee! I wish I could tell you what I think of
you!"

Freddie laughed amusedly.

"Do you know," he said, "that's exactly what the beaks--the masters,
you know--used to say to me at school."

"Are you sure you can spare it?"

"Oh, rather."

Nelly's eyes shone in the light of the lamp.

"I've never met anyone like you before. I don't know how...."

Freddie shuffled nervously. Being thanked always made him feel pretty
rotten.

"Well, I think I'll be popping," he said. "Got to get back and dress
and all that. Awfully glad to have seen you, and all that sort of
rot."

Nelly unlocked the door with her latch-key, and stood on the step.

"I'll buy a fur-wrap," she said, half to herself.

"Great wheeze! I should!"

"And some nuts for Bill!"

"Bill?"

"The parrot."

"Oh, the jolly old parrot! Rather! Well, cheerio!"

"Good-bye.... You've been awfully good to me."

"Oh, no," said Freddie uncomfortably. "Any time you're passing...."

"Awfully good.... Well, good-bye."

"Toodle-oo!"

"Maybe we'll meet again some day."

"I hope so. Absolutely!"

There was a little scurry of feet. Something warm and soft pressed for
an instant against Freddie's cheek, and, as he stumbled back, Nelly
Bryant skipped up the steps and vanished through the door.

"Good God!"

Freddie felt his cheek. He was aware of an odd mixture of
embarrassment and exhilaration.

From the area below a slight cough sounded. Freddie turned sharply. A
maid in a soiled cap, worn coquettishly over one ear, was gazing
intently up through the railings. Their eyes met. Freddie turned a
warm pink. It seemed to him that the maid had the air of one about to
giggle.

"Damn!" said Freddie softly, and hurried off down the street. He
wondered whether he had made a frightful ass of himself, spraying
bank-notes all over the place like that to comparative strangers. Then
a vision came to him of Nelly's eyes as they had looked at him in the
lamp-light, and he decided--no, absolutely not. Rummy as the gadget
might appear, it had been the right thing to do. It was a binge of
which he thoroughly approved. A good egg!

II

Jill, when Freddie and Nelly left the room, had seated herself on a
low stool, and sat looking thoughtfully into the fire. She was
wondering if she had been mistaken in supposing that Uncle Chris was
worried about something. This restlessness of his, this desire for
movement, was strange in him. Hitherto he had been like a dear old
cosy cat, revelling in the comfort which he had just denounced so
eloquently. She watched him as he took up his favourite stand in
front of the fire.

"Nice girl," said Uncle Chris. "Who was she?"

"Somebody Freddie met," said Jill diplomatically. There was no need to
worry Uncle Chris with details of the afternoon's happenings.

"Very nice girl." Uncle Chris took out his cigar-case. "No need to ask
if I may, thank goodness." He lit a cigar. "Do you remember, Jill,
years ago, when you were quite small, how I used to blow smoke in your
face?"

Jill smiled.

"Of course I do. You said that you were training me for marriage. You
said that there were no happy marriages except where the wife didn't
mind the smell of tobacco. Well, it's lucky, as a matter of fact, for
Derek smokes all the time."

Uncle Chris took up his favourite stand against the fireplace.

"You're very fond of Derek, aren't you, Jill?"

"Of course I am. You are, too, aren't you?"

"Fine chap. Very fine chap. Plenty of money, too. It's a great
relief," said Uncle Chris, puffing vigorously. "A thundering relief."
He looked over Jill's head down the room. "It's fine to think of you
happily married, dear, with everything in the world that you want."

Uncle Chris' gaze wandered down to where Jill sat. A slight mist
affected his eyesight. Jill had provided a solution for the great
problem of his life. Marriage had always appalled him, but there was
this to be said for it, that married people had daughters. He had
always wanted a daughter, a smart girl he could take out and be proud
of; and fate had given him Jill at precisely the right age. A child
would have bored Uncle Chris--he was fond of children, but they made
the deuce of a noise and regarded jam as an external ornament--but a
delightful little girl of fourteen was different. Jill and he had been
very close to each other since her mother had died, a year after the
death of her father, and had left her in his charge. He had watched
her grow up with a joy that had a touch of bewilderment in it--she
seemed to grow so quickly--and had been fonder and prouder of her at
every stage of her tumultuous career.

"You're a dear," said Jill. She stroked the trouser-leg that was
nearest. "How _do_ you manage to get such a wonderful crease? You
really are a credit to me!"

There was a momentary silence. A shade of embarrassment made itself
noticeable in Uncle Chris' frank gaze. He gave a little cough, and
pulled at his moustache.

"I wish I were, my dear," he said soberly. "I wish I were. I'm afraid
I'm a poor sort of a fellow, Jill."

Jill looked up.

"What do you mean?"

"A poor sort of a fellow," repeated Uncle Chris. "Your mother was
foolish to trust you to me. Your father had more sense. He always said
I was a wrong 'un."

Jill got up quickly. She was certain now that she had been right, and
that there was something on her uncle's mind.

"What's the matter, Uncle Chris? Something's happened. What is it?"

Uncle Chris turned to knock the ash off his cigar. The movement gave
him time to collect himself for what lay before him. He had one of
those rare volatile natures which can ignore the blows of fate so long
as their effects are not brought home by visible evidence of disaster.
He lived in the moment, and, though matters had been as bad at
breakfast-time as they were now, it was not till now, when he
confronted Jill, that he had found his cheerfulness affected by them.
He was a man who hated ordeals, and one faced him now. Until this
moment he had been able to detach his mind from a state of affairs
which would have weighed unceasingly upon another man. His mind was a
telephone which he could cut off at will, when the voice of Trouble
wished to speak. The time would arrive, he had been aware, when he
would have to pay attention to that voice, but so far he had refused
to listen. Now it could be evaded no longer.

"Jill."

"Yes?"

Uncle Chris paused again, searching for the best means of saying what
had to be said.

"Jill, I don't know if you understand about these things, but there
was what is called a slump on the Stock Exchange this morning. In
other words...."

Jill laughed.

"Of course I know all about that," she said. "Poor Freddie wouldn't
talk about anything else till I made him. He was terribly blue when he
got here this afternoon. He said he had got 'nipped' in Amalgamated
Dyes. He had lost about two hundred pounds, and was furious with a
friend of his who had told him to buy margins."

Uncle Chris cleared his throat.

"Jill, I'm afraid I've got bad news for you. I bought Amalgamated
Dyes, too." He worried his moustache. "I lost heavily, very heavily."

"How naughty of you! You know you oughtn't to gamble."

"Jill, you must be brave. I--I--well, the fact is--it's no good
beating about the bush--I lost everything! Everything!"

"Everything?"

"Everything! It's all gone! All fooled away. It's a terrible business.
This house will have to go."

"But--but doesn't the house belong to me?"

"I was your trustee, dear." Uncle Chris smoked furiously. "Thank
heaven you're going to marry a rich man!"

Jill stood looking at him, perplexed. Money, as money, had never
entered into her life. There were things one wanted which had to be
paid for with money, but Uncle Chris had always looked after that. She
had taken them for granted.

"I don't understand," she said.

And then suddenly she realized that she did, and a great wave of pity
for Uncle Chris flooded over her. He was such an old dear. It must be
horrible for him to have to stand there, telling her all this. She
felt no sense of injury, only the discomfort of having to witness the
humiliation of her oldest friend. Uncle Chris was bound up
inextricably with everything in her life that was pleasant. She could
remember him, looking exactly the same, only with a thicker and wavier
crop of hair, playing with her patiently and unwearied for hours in
the hot sun, a cheerful martyr. She could remember sitting up with him
when she came home from her first grownup dance, drinking cocoa and
talking and talking and talking till the birds outside sang the sun
high up into the sky and it was breakfast time. She could remember
theatres with him, and jolly little suppers afterwards; expeditions
into the country, with lunches at queer old inns; days on the river,
days at Hurlingham, days at Lords', days at the Academy. He had always
been the same, always cheerful, always kind. He was Uncle Chris, and
he would always be Uncle Chris, whatever he had done or whatever he
might do. She slipped her arm in his and gave it a squeeze.

"Poor old thing!" she said.

Uncle Chris had been looking straight out before him with those fine
blue eyes of his. There had been just a touch of sternness in his
attitude. A stranger, coming into the room at that moment, would have
said that here was a girl trying to coax her blunt, straightforward,
military father into some course of action of which his honest nature
disapproved. He might have been posing for a statue of Rectitude. As
Jill spoke, he seemed to cave in.

"Poor old thing?" he repeated limply.

"Of course you are! And stop trying to look dignified and tragic!
Because it doesn't suit you. You're much too well dressed."

"But, my dear, you don't understand! You haven't realized!"

"Yes, I do. Yes, I have!"

"I've spent all your money--_your_ money!"

"I know! What does it matter?"

"What does it matter! Jill, don't you hate me?"

"As if anyone could hate an old darling like you!"

Uncle Chris threw away his cigar, and put his arms round Jill. For a
moment a dreadful fear came to her that he was going to cry. She
prayed that he wouldn't cry. It would be too awful. It would be a
memory of which she could never rid herself. She felt as though he
were someone extraordinarily young and unable to look after himself,
someone she must soothe and protect.

"Jill," said Uncle Chris, choking, "you're--you're--you're a little
warrior!"

Jill kissed him and moved away. She busied herself with some flowers,
her back turned. The tension had been relieved, and she wanted to give
him time to recover his poise. She knew him well enough to be sure
that, sooner or later, the resiliency of his nature would assert
itself. He could never remain long in the depths.

The silence had the effect of making her think more clearly than in
the first rush of pity she had been able to do. She was able now to
review the matter as it affected herself. It had not been easy to
grasp, the blunt fact that she was penniless, that all this comfort
which surrounded her was no longer her own. For an instant a kind of
panic seized her. There was a bleakness about the situation which made
one gasp. It was like icy water dashed in the face. Realization had
almost the physical pain of life returning to a numbed limb. Her hands
shook as she arranged the flowers, and she had to bite her lip to keep
herself from crying out.

She fought panic eye to eye, and beat it down. Uncle Chris, swiftly
recovering by the fireplace, never knew that the fight had taken
place. He was feeling quite jovial again now that the unpleasant
business of breaking the news was over, and was looking on the world
with the eye of a debonair gentleman-adventurer. As far as he was
concerned, he told himself, this was the best thing that could have
happened. He had been growing old and sluggish in prosperity. He
needed a fillip. The wits by which he had once lived so merrily had
been getting blunt in their easy retirement. He welcomed the
opportunity of matching them once more against the world. He was
remorseful as regarded Jill, but the optimist in him, never crushed
for long, told him that Jill would be all right. She would step from
the sinking ship to the safe refuge of Derek Underhill's wealth and
position, while he went out to seek a new life. Uncle Chris' blue eyes
gleamed with a new fire as he pictured himself in this new life. He
felt like a hunter setting out on a hunting expedition. There were
always adventures and the spoils of war for the man with brains to
find them and gather them in. But it was a mercy that Jill had
Derek....

Jill was thinking of Derek, too. Panic had fled, and a curious
exhilaration had seized upon her. If Derek wanted her now, it would be
because his love was the strongest thing in the world. She would come
to him like the beggar-maid to Cophetua.

Uncle Chris broke the silence with a cough. At the sound of it, Jill
smiled again. She knew it for what it was, a sign that he was himself
again.

"Tell me, Uncle Chris," she said, "just how bad is it? When you said
everything was gone, did you really mean everything, or were you being
melodramatic? Exactly how do we stand?"

"It's dashed hard to say, my dear. I expect we shall find there are a
few hundreds left. Enough to see you through till you get married.
After that it won't matter." Uncle Chris flicked a particle of dust
off his coat-sleeve. Jill could not help feeling that the action was
symbolical of his attitude towards life. He nicked away life's
problems with just the same airy carelessness. "You mustn't worry
about me, my dear. I shall be all right. I have made my way in the
world before, and I can do it again. I shall go to America and try my
luck there. Amazing how many opportunities there are in America.
Really, as far as I am concerned, this is the best thing that could
have happened. I have been getting abominably lazy. If I had gone on
living my present life for another year or two, why, dash it, I
honestly believe I should have succumbed to some sort of senile decay.
Positively I should have got fatty degeneration of the brain! This
will be the making of me."

Jill sat down on the lounge and laughed till there were tears in her
eyes. Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was
certainly making it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving
of censure, from the standpoint of the sterner morality, he made
amends. If he brought the whole world crashing in chaos about one's
ears, at least he helped one to smile among the ruins.

"Did you ever read 'Candide,' Uncle Chris?"

"'Candide'?" Uncle Chris shook his head. He was not a great reader,
except of the sporting press.

"It's a book by Voltaire. There's a character in it called Doctor
Pangloss, who thought that everything was for the best in this best of
all possible worlds."

Uncle Chris felt a touch of embarrassment. It occurred to him that he
had been betrayed by his mercurial temperament into an attitude which,
considering the circumstances, was perhaps a trifle too jubilant. He
gave his moustache a pull, and reverted to the minor key.

"Oh, you mustn't think that I don't appreciate the terrible, the criminal
thing I have done! I blame myself," said Uncle Chris cordially, nicking
another speck of dust off his sleeve. "I blame myself bitterly. Your
mother ought never to have made me your trustee, my dear. But she always
believed in me, in spite of everything, and this is how I have repaid
her." He blew his nose to cover a not unmanly emotion. "I wasn't fitted
for the position. Never become a trustee, Jill. It's the devil, is trust
money. However much you argue with yourself, you can't--dash it, you
simply can't believe that it's not your own, to do as you like with,
There it sits, smiling at you, crying 'Spend me! Spend me!' and you find
yourself dipping--dipping--till one day there's nothing left to dip
for--only a far-off rustling--the ghosts Of dead bank-notes. That's how it
was with me. The process was almost automatic. I hardly knew it was going
on. Here a little--there a little. It was like snow melting on a
mountain-top. And one morning--all gone!" Uncle Chris drove the point home
with a gesture. "I did what I could. When I found that there were only a
few hundreds left, for your sake I took a chance. All heart and no head!
There you have Christopher Selby in a nutshell! A man at the club, a fool
named--I've forgotten his damn name--recommended Amalgamated Dyestuffs as
a speculation. Monroe, that was his name, Jimmy Monroe. He talked about
the future of British Dyes now that Germany was out of the race, and ...
well, the long and short of it was that I took his advice and bought on
margin. Bought like the devil. And this morning Amalgamated Dyestuffs went
all to blazes. There you have the whole story!"

"And now," said Jill, "comes the sequel!"

"The sequel?" said Uncle Chris breezily. "Happiness, my dear,
happiness! Wedding bells and--and all that sort of thing!" He
straddled the hearth-rug manfully, and swelled his chest out. He would
permit no pessimism on this occasion of rejoicing. "You don't suppose
that the fact of your having lost your money--that is to say--er--of
_my_ having lost your money--will affect a splendid young fellow like
Derek Underhill? I know him better than to think that! I've always
liked him. He's a man you can trust! Besides," he added reflectively,
"there's no need to tell him! Till after the wedding, I mean. It won't
be hard to keep up appearances here for a month or so."

"Of course we must tell him!"

"You think it wise?"

"I don't know about it being wise. It's the only thing to do. I must
see him to-night. Oh, I forgot. He was going away this afternoon for a
day or two."

"Capital! It will give you time to think it over."

"I don't want to think it over. There's nothing to think about."

"Of course, yes, of course. Quite so."

"I shall write him a letter."

"Write, eh?"

"It's easier to put what one wants to say in a letter."

"Letters," began Uncle Chris, and stopped as the door opened. Jane,
the parlourmaid, entered, carrying a salver.

"For me?" asked Uncle Chris.

"For Miss Jill, sir."

Jill took the note off the salver.

"It's from Derek."

"There's a messenger-boy waiting, miss," said Jane. "He wasn't told if
there was an answer."

"If the note is from Derek," said Uncle Chris, "it's not likely to
want an answer. You said he left town to-day."

Jill opened the envelope.

"Is there an answer, miss?" asked Jane, after what she considered a
suitable interval. She spoke tenderly. She was a great admirer of
Derek, and considered it a pretty action on his part to send notes
like this when he was compelled to leave London.

"Any answer, Jill?"

Jill seemed to rouse herself. She had turned oddly pale.

"No, no answer, Jane."

"Thank you, miss," said Jane, and went off to tell the cook that in
her opinion Jill was lacking in heart. "It might have been a bill
instead of a love-letter," said Jane to the cook with indignation,
"the way she read it. I like people to have a little feeling!"

Jill sat turning the letter over and over in her fingers. Her face was
very white. There seemed to be a big, heavy, leaden something inside
her. A cold hand clutched her throat. Uncle Chris, who at first had
noticed nothing untoward, now began to find the silence sinister.

"No bad news, I hope, dear?"

Jill turned the letter between her fingers.

"Jill, is it bad news?"

"Derek has broken off the engagement," said Jill in a dull voice. She
let the note fall to the floor, and sat with her chin in her hands.

"What!" Uncle Chris leaped from the hearth-rug, as though the fire had
suddenly scorched him. "What did you say?"

"He's broken it off."

"The hound!" cried Uncle Chris. "The blackguard! The--the--I never
liked that man! I never trusted him!" He fumed for a moment.
"But--but--it isn't possible. How can he have heard about what's
happened? He couldn't know. It's--it's--it isn't possible!"

"He doesn't know. It has nothing to do with that."

"But...." Uncle Chris stooped to where the note lay. "May I...?"

"Yes, you can read it if you like."

Uncle Chris produced a pair of reading-glasses, and glared through
them at the sheet of paper as though it were some loathsome insect.

"The hound! The cad! If I were a younger man," shouted Uncle Chris,
smiting the letter violently, "if I were.... Jill! My dear little
Jill!"

He plunged down on his knees beside her, as she buried her face in her
hands and began to sob.

"My little girl! Damn that man! My dear little girl! The cad! The
devil! My own darling little girl! I'll thrash him within an inch of
his life!"

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes. Jill got up. Her
face was wet and quivering, but her mouth had set in a brave line.

"Jill, dear!"

She let his hand close over hers.

"Everything's happening all at once this afternoon, Uncle Chris, isn't
it!" She smiled a twisted smile. "You look so funny! Your hair's all
rumpled, and your glasses are over on one side!"

Uncle Chris breathed heavily through his nose.

"When I meet that man...." he began portentously.

"Oh, what's the good of bothering! It's not worth it! Nothing's worth
it!" Jill stopped and faced him, her hands clenched. "Let's get away!
Let's get right away! I want to get right away, Uncle Chris! Take me
away! Anywhere! Take me to America with you! I must get away!"

Uncle Chris raised his right hand, and shook it. His reading-glasses,
hanging from his left ear, bobbed drunkenly.

"We'll sail by the next boat! The very next boat, dammit! I'll take
care of you, dear. I've been a blackguard to you, my little girl. I've
robbed you, and swindled you. But I'll make up for it, by George! I'll
make up for it! I'll give you a new home, as good as this, if I die
for it. There's nothing I won't do! Nothing! By Jove!" shouted Uncle
Chris, raising his voice in a red-hot frenzy of emotion, "I'll work!
Yes, by Gad, if it comes right down to it, I'll work!"

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