CHAPTER TWENTY

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CHAPTER TWENTY

1.

It is safest for the historian, if he values accuracy, to wait till a
thing has happened before writing about it. Otherwise he may commit
himself to statements which are not borne out by the actual facts.
Mrs Peagrim, recording in advance the success of her party at the
Gotham Theatre, had done this. It is true that she was a "radiant and
vivacious hostess," and it is possible, her standard not being very
high, that she had "never looked more charming." But, when, she went
on to say that all present were in agreement that they had never
spent a more delightful evening, she deceived the public. Uncle
Chris, for one; Otis Pilkington, for another, and Freddie Rooke, for
a third, were so far from spending a delightful evening that they
found it hard to mask their true emotions and keep a smiling face to
the world.

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. He tried to tell himself that this was only what he had
expected, but was able to draw no consolation from the fact. He tried
to tell himself that Jill might change her mind, but hope refused to
stir. 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 favor 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 tonight. 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 tonight?"

"Oh, rather. And he's coming on directly he can get away from these
people. Forget their name, but they're influential coves who can do
him a bit of good and all that sort of thing. The man--the head of
the gang, you know--is something connected with the Cabinet or the
Prime Minister or something. You'd know his name in a minute if I
told you--always seeing it in the papers--they have pictures of him
in _Punch_ a lot--but I'm rotten at names. Derek did tell me, but
it's slipped the old bean. Well, he had to leg it with these people,
but he's coming on later. Ought to be here any moment now."

Uncle Chris plucked at his mustache 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. Weil, 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!"

2.

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 did not feel like dancing herself,
but it was pleasant to be there and too much exertion to get up and
go home. 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. The future was a fog, into which she had to grope
her way blindly. She could not see a step ahead. 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 of 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. She got up and moved down the
line of seats. 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 deemed 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 come 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 abased. "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 onto 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.

3.

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!"

"Uh?" 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 soon will. 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 license, 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."

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
monopolizing 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 demeanor 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 _fiancé_. 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 cootie 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 mustache 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.

4.

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 beneficient 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 tonight. 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 wore 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 endeavored 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.

Content of CHAPTER TWENTY [P G Wodehouse's novel: The Little Warrior]

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