2.
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-humored 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 I were to dare you to get up and
walk over to that table and look your fiancé 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 criticized 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 criticize 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 check 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 lights 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, goodbye, 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?
