2.
In pursuance of his overnight promise to Derek, Freddie Rooke had got
in touch with Jill through the medium of the telephone immediately
after breakfast, and had arranged to call at Ovington Square in the
afternoon. Arrived there, he found Jill with a telegram in her hand.
Her Uncle Christopher, who had been enjoying a breath of sea-air down
at Brighton, was returning by an afternoon train, and Jill had
suggested that Freddie should accompany her to Victoria, pick up
Uncle Chris, and escort him home. Freddie, whose idea had been a
_tete-a-tete_ involving a brotherly lecture on impetuosity, had
demurred but had given way in the end; and they had set out to walk
to Victoria together. Their way had lain through Daubeny Street, and
they turned the corner just as the brutal onslaught on the innocent
Henry had occurred. Bill's shrieks, which were of an appalling
timbre, brought them to a halt.
"What is it?" cried Jill.
"It sounds like a murder!"
"Nonsense!"
"I don't know, you know this is the sort of street chappies are
murdering people in all the time."
They caught sight of the group in front of them, and were reassured.
Nobody could possibly be looking so aloof and distrait as Erb, if
there were a murder going on.
"It's a bird!"
"It's a jolly old parrot. See it? Just inside the railings."
A red-hot wave of rage swept over Jill. Whatever her defects,--and
already this story has shown her far from perfect,--she had the
excellent quality of loving animals and blazing into fury when she
saw them ill-treated. At least three draymen were going about London
with burning ears as the result of what she had said to them on
discovering them abusing their patient horses. Zoologically, Bill the
parrot was not an animal, but he counted as one with Jill, and she
sped down Daubeny Street to his rescue,--Freddie, spatted and hatted
and trousered as became the man of fashion, following disconsolately,
ruefully aware that he did not look his best sprinting like that. But
Jill was cutting out a warm pace, and he held his hat on with one
neatly-gloved hand and did what he could to keep up.
Jill reached the scene of battle, and, stopping, eyed Henry with a
baleful glare. We, who have seen Henry in his calmer moments and know
him for the good fellow he was, are aware that he was more sinned
against than sinning. If there is any spirit of justice in us, we are
pro-Henry. In his encounter with Bill the parrot, Henry undoubtedly
had right on his side. His friendly overtures, made in the best
spirit of kindliness, had been repulsed. He had been severely bitten.
And he had lost half a pint of beer to Erb. As impartial judges we
have no other course before us than to wish Henry luck and bid him go
to it. But Jill, who had not seen the opening stages of the affair,
thought far otherwise. She merely saw in Henry a great brute of a man
poking at a defenceless bird with a stick.
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 unfavorable 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 I 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 assistance 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
be done must be done by herself. She seized the stick and wrenched it
out of Henry's hand.
"Woof-woof-woof!" said Bill the parrot.
No dispassionate 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 sex 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 space.
"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 shins 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, Ovington 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!".
