2.
Freddie returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness.
Algy's remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken
him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is
nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was
hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had
decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him.
Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of street-fulls of men, long
Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something
had got to be done. He was devoted to Derek. This sort of thing was
as bad as being cut himself. Whatever Freddie's limitations in the
matter of brain, he had a large heart and an infinite capacity for
faithfulness in his friendships.
The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding
friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour
later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the
Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of
the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to
appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded
repletion which city dinners induce. The dry-salters, on these
occasions when they cast off for a night the cares and anxieties of
dry-salting, do their guests well, and Derek had that bloated sense
of foreboding which comes to a man whose stomach is not his strong
point after twelve courses and a multitude of mixed wines. A goose,
qualifying for the role of a pot of pate de foies gras, probably has
exactly the same jaundiced outlook.
Yet, unfavorably disposed as, judging by his silence and the
occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion
of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the
night should be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the
subject. He thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and
what Algy had said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this
very room; and he nerved himself to the task.
"Derek, old top."
A grunt.
"I say, Derek, old bean."
Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he
stood, warming his legs at the blaze.
"Well?"
Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business,
this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was
no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present
crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy
gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed
on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.
"I say, you know, about Jill!"
He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was
playing with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion's
start and the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.
"Well?" said Derek again.
Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind
that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first
time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.
"Ronny Devereux was saying . . ." faltered Freddie.
"Damn Ronny Devereux!"
"Oh, absolutely! But . . ."
"Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?"
"Why, old man, you've heard me speak of him, haven't you? Pal of
mine. He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater
that morning."
"Oh, _that_ fellow? And he has been saying something about . . . ?"
"It isn't only Ronny, you know," Freddie hastened to interject. "Algy
Martyn's talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy's
sister and a lot of people. They're all saying . . ."
"What are they saying?"
Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn't
look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old
map. Rummy he had never noticed before how extraordinarily like his
mother he was. Freddie was conscious of a faint sense of grievance.
He could not have put it into words, but what he felt was that a
fellow had no right to go about looking like Lady Underhill.
"What are they saying?" repeated Derek grimly.
"Well . . ." Freddie hesitated. "That it's a bit tough . . . On Jill,
you know."
"They think I behaved badly?"
"Well . . . Oh, well, you know!"
Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental
disturbance. The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the
Dry-Salters' dinner had begun to change to something more actively
unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp pain had begun to run through it,
flashing in and out like lightning through a thunder-cloud. He felt
sullen and vicious.
"I wonder," he said with savage politeness, "if, when you chat with
your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my
private affairs."
"Sorry, old man. But they started it, don't you know."
"And, if you feel you've got to discuss me, kindly keep it to
yourself. Don't come and tell me what your damned friends said to
each other and to you and what you said to them, because it bores me.
I'm not interested. I don't value their opinions as much as you seem
to." Derek paused, to battle in silence with the imperious agony
within him. "It was good of you to put me up here," he went on, "but
I think I won't trespass on your hospitality any longer. Perhaps
you'll ask Parker to pack my things tomorrow." Derek moved, as
majestically as an ex-guest of the Worshipful Company of Dry-Salters
may, in the direction of the door. "I shall go to the Savoy."
"Oh, I say, old man! No need to do that."
"Good night."
"But, I say . . ."
"And you can tell your friend Devereux that, if he doesn't stop
poking his nose into my private business, I'll pull it off."
"Well," said Freddie doubtfully, "of course I don't suppose you know,
but . . . Ronny's a pretty hefty bird. He boxed for Cambridge in the
light-weights the last year he was up, you know. He . . ."
Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs
for some minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face.
Freddie hated rows. He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a
rotten place the world was these days! Just one thing after another.
First, poor old Jill takes the knock and disappears. He would miss
her badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And now--gone. Biffed off.
Next, Derek. Together, more or less, ever since Winchester, and
now--bing! . . .
Freddie heaved a sigh, and reached out for the Sporting Times, his
never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar
and curled up in one of the arm-chairs. He was feeling tired. He had
been playing squash all the afternoon, a game at which he was
exceedingly expert and to which he was much addicted.
Time passed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed
it. From the depths of the chair came a faint snore . . .
* * *
A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk troubled dreams.
Derek was standing beside him. A tousled Derek, apparently in pain.
"Freddie!"
"Hullo!"
A spasm twisted Derek's face.
"Have you got any pepsin?"
Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is
this dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love
itself a respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the
man who had stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride
had been humbled upon the rack.
"Pepsin?"
Freddie blinked, the mists of sleep floating gently before his eyes.
He could not quite understand what his friend was asking for. It had
sounded just like pepsin, and he didn't believe there was such a
word.
"Yes. I've got the most damned attack of indigestion."
The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and
became immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of
the Rookes was a good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who
suggested that Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had
vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night
chemist's and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an
ostrich after a surfeit of soda-water bottles; Freddie who mixed and
administered the dose.
His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass.
Derek recovered.
One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of
gentle remorse which came upon him as he lay in the arm-chair was one
so foreign to his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He
was like a convalescent child. Between them, the all-night chemist
and the Dry-Salters seemed to have wrought a sort of miracle. These
temporary softenings of personality frequently follow city dinners.
The time to catch your Dry-Salter in angelic mood is the day after
the semi-annual banquet. Go to him then and he will give you his
watch and chain.
"Freddie," said Derek.
They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece,
beside which Jill's photograph had stood, pointed to ten minutes past
two. Derek spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right
after all, and two o'clock is the hour at which our self-esteem
deserts us, leaving in its place regret for past sins, good
resolutions for future behavior.
"What do Algy Martyn and the others say about . . . you know?"
Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.
"Oh, I know," went on Derek. "They say I behaved like a cad."
"Oh, well . . ."
"They are quite right. I did."
"Oh, I shouldn't say that, you know. Faults on both sides and all
that sort of rot."
"I did!" Derek stared into the fire. Scattered all over London at
that moment, probably, a hundred worshipful Dry-Salters were equally
sleepless and subdued, looking wide-eyed into black pasts. "Is it
true she has gone to America, Freddie?"
"She told me she was going."
"What a fool I've been!"
The clock ticked on through the silence. The fire sputtered faintly,
then gave a little wheeze, like a very old man. Derek rested his chin
on his hands, gazing into the ashes.
"I wish to God I could go over there and find her."
"Why don't you?"
"How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I can't
stir."
Freddie leaped from his seat. The suddenness of the action sent a
red-hot corkscrew of pain through Derek's head.
"What the devil's the matter?" he demanded irritably. Even the gentle
mood which comes with convalescence after a City Dinner is not
guaranteed to endure against this sort of thing.
"I've got an idea, old bean!"
"Well, there's no need to dance, is there?"
"I've nothing to keep me here, you know. What's the matter with my
popping over to America and finding Jill?" Freddie tramped the floor,
aglow. Each beat of his foot jarred Derek, but he made no complaint.
"Could you?" he asked eagerly.
"Of course I could. I was saying only the other day that I had half a
mind to buzz over. It's a wheeze! I'll get on the next boat and
charge over in the capacity of a jolly old ambassador. Have her back
in no time. Leave it to me, old thing! This is where I come out
strong!"
