Chapter 17
She turned to Freddie, who had come up at a gallop and was wondering why the deuce this sort of thing happened to him out of a city of six millions.
"Make him stop, Freddie!"
"Oh, I say, you know, what?"
"Can't you see he's hurting the poor thing? Make him leave off!
Brute!" she added to Henry (for whom one's heart bleeds), as he jabbed once again at his adversary.
Freddie stepped reluctantly up to Henry, and tapped him on the shoulder. Freddie was one of those men who have a rooted idea that a conversation of this sort can only be begun by a tap on the shoulder.
"'Look here, you know, you can't do this sort of thing, you know!"
said Freddie.
Henry raised a scarlet face.
"'Oo are _you_?" he demanded.
This attack from the rear, coming on top of his other troubles, tried his restraint sorely.
"Well--" Freddie hesitated. It seemed silly to offer the fellow one of his cards. "Well, as a matter of fact, my name's Rooke...."
"And who," pursued Henry, "arsked _you_ to come shoving your ugly mug in 'ere?"
"Well, if you put it that way...."
"'E comes messing abart," said Henry complainingly, addressing the universe, "and interfering in what don't concern 'im and mucking around and interfering and messing abart.... Why," he broke off in a sudden burst of eloquence, "I could eat two of you for a relish wiv me tea, even if you '_ave_ got white spats!"
Here Erb, who had contributed nothing to the conversation, remarked "Ah!" and expectorated on the sidewalk. The point, one gathers, seemed to Erb well taken. A neat thrust, was Erb's verdict.
"Just because you've got white spats," proceeded Henry, on whose sensitive mind these adjuncts of the costume of the well-dressed man about town seemed to have made a deep and unfavourable impression, "you think you can come mucking around and messing abart and interfering and mucking around. This bird's bit me in the finger, and 'ere's the finger, if you don't believe me--and I'm going to twist 'is ruddy neck, if all the perishers with white spats in London come messing abart and mucking around, so you take them white spats of yours 'ome and give 'em to the old woman to cook for your Sunday dinner!"
And Henry, having cleansed his stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart, shoved the stick energetically once more through the railings.
Jill darted forward. Always a girl who believed that, if you want a thing well done, you must do it yourself, she had applied to Freddie for a.s.sistance merely as a matter of form. All the time she had felt that Freddie was a broken reed, and such he had proved himself.
Freddie's policy in this affair was obviously to rely on the magic of speech, and any magic his speech might have had was manifestly offset by the fact that he was wearing white spats and that Henry, apparently, belonged to some sort of league or society which had for its main object the discouragement of white spats. It was plainly no good leaving the conduct of the campaign to Freddie. Whatever was to
"Woof-woof-woof!" said Bill the parrot.
No dispa.s.sionate auditor could have failed to detect the nasty ring of sarcasm. It stung Henry. He was not normally a man who believed in violence to the gentler s.e.x outside a clump on the head of his missus when the occasion seemed to demand it; but now he threw away the guiding principles of a lifetime and turned on Jill like a tiger.
"Gimme that stick!"
"Get back!"
"Here, I say, you know!" said Freddie.
Henry, now thoroughly overwrought, made a rush at Jill; and Jill, who had a straight eye, hit him accurately on the side of the head.
"Goo!" said Henry, and sat down.
And then, from behind Jill, a voice spoke.
"What's all this?"
A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty s.p.a.ce.
"This won't do!" said the policeman.
Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech.
"She 'it 'im!"
The policeman looked at Jill. He was an officer of many years' experience in the Force, and time had dulled in him that respect for good clothes which he had brought with him from Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days of his novitiate. Jill was well dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffrage disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the s.h.i.+ns and even bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the peace. His gaze, as it fell upon Jill, red-handed as it were with the stick still in her grasp, was stern.
"Your name, please, and address, miss?" he said.
A girl in blue with a big hat had come up, and was standing staring open-mouthed at the group. At the sight of her Bill the parrot uttered a shriek of welcome. Nelly Bryant had returned, and everything would now be all right again.
"Mariner," said Jill, pale and bright-eyed. "I live at Number Twenty-two, Ovingdon Square."
"And yours, sir?"
"Mine? Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Rooke, you know. F. L. Rooke.
I live at the Albany and all that sort of thing."
The policeman made an entry in his note-book.
"Officer," cried Jill, "this man was trying to kill that parrot and I stopped him...."
"Can't help that, miss. You 'adn't no right to hit a man with a stick.
You'll 'ave to come along."
"But, I say, you know!" Freddie was appalled. This sort of thing had happened to him before, but only on Boat-Race Night at the Empire, where it was expected of a chappie. "I mean to say!"
"And you, too, sir. You're both in it."
"But...."
"Oh, come along, Freddie," said Jill quietly. "It's perfectly absurd, but it's no use making a fuss."
"That," said the policeman cordially, "is the right spirit!"
III
Lady Underhill paused for breath. She had been talking long and vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke's apartment at the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to her future daughter-in-law. But to-day she had spoken her mind with all the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself with a flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been growing within her since that first meeting in this same room. She had talked rapidly, for she was talking against time. The Town Council of the princ.i.p.al city in Derek's const.i.tuency in the north of England had decided that to-morrow morning should witness the laying of the foundation stone of their new Town Hall, and Derek as the sitting member was to preside at the celebration. Already Barker had been dispatched to telephone for a cab to take him to the station, and at any moment their conversation might be interrupted. So Lady Underhill made the most of what little time she had.
Derek listened gloomily, scarcely rousing himself to reply. His mother would have been gratified could she have known how powerfully her arguments were working on him. That little imp of doubt which had vexed him in the cab as he drove home from Ovingdon Square had not died in the night. It had grown and waxed more formidable. And now, aided by this ally from without, it had become a Colossus straddling his soul. Derek looked frequently at the clock, and cursed the unknown cabman whose delay was prolonging the scene. Something told him that only flight could serve him now. He never had been able to withstand his mother in one of her militant moods. She seemed to numb his faculties. Other members of his family had also noted this quality in Lady Underhill, and had commented on it bitterly in the smoking-rooms of distant country-houses at the hour when men meet to drink the final whisky-and-soda and unburden their souls.