2.
The opportunity for a private conversation with Freddie did not occur
immediately. For ten minutes he remained alone on the stage,
absorbing abusive tuition from Mr Miller: and at the end of that
period a further ten minutes was occupied with the rehearsing of the
number with the leading lady and the rest of the male chorus. When,
finally, a roar from the back of the auditorium announced the arrival
of Mr Goble and at the same time indicated Mr Goble's desire that the
stage should be cleared and the rehearsal proper begin, a wan smile
of recognition and a faint "What ho!" was all that Freddie was able
to bestow upon Jill, before, with the rest of the _ensemble_, they
had to go out and group themselves for the opening chorus. It was
only when this had been run through four times and the stage left
vacant for two of the principals to play a scene that Jill was able
to draw the Last of the Rookes aside in a dark corner and put him to
the question.
"Freddie, what are you doing here?"
Freddie mopped his streaming brow. Johnson Miller's idea of an
opening chorus was always strenuous. On the present occasion, the
ensemble were supposed to be guests at a Long Island house-party, and
Mr Miller's conception of the gathering suggested that he supposed
house-party guests on Long Island to consist exclusively of victims
of St Vitus' dance. Freddie was feeling limp, battered, and.
exhausted: and, from what he had gathered, the worst was yet to come.
"Eh?" he said feebly.
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh, ah, yes! I see what you mean! I suppose you're surprised to find
me in New York, what?"
"I'm not surprised to find you in New York. I knew you had come over.
But I am surprised to find you on the stage, being bullied by Mr
Miller."
"I say," said Freddie in an awed voice. "He's a bit of a nut, that
lad, what! He reminds me of the troops of Midian in the hymn. The
chappies who prowled and prowled around. I'll bet he's worn a groove
in the carpet. Like a jolly old tiger at the Zoo at feeding time.
Wouldn't be surprised at any moment to look down and find him biting
a piece out of my leg!"
Jill seized his arm and shook it.
"Don't _ramble_, Freddie! Tell me how you got here."
"Oh, that was pretty simple. I had a letter of introduction to this
chappie Pilkington who's running this show, and, we having got
tolerably pally in the last few days, I went to him and asked him to
let me join the merry throng. I said I didn't want any money and the
little bit of work I would do wouldn't make any difference, so he
said 'Right ho!' or words to that effect, and here I am."
"But why? You can't be doing this for fun, surely?"
"Fun!" A pained expression came into Freddie's face. "My idea of fun
isn't anything in which jolly old Miller, the bird with the snowy
hair, is permitted to mix. Something tells me that that lad is going
to make it his life-work picking on me. No, I didn't do this for fun.
I had a talk with Wally Mason the night before last, and he seemed to
think that being in the chorus wasn't the sort of thing you ought to
be doing, so I thought it over and decided that I ought to join the
troupe too. Then I could always be on the spot, don't you know, if
there was any trouble. I mean to say, I'm not much of a chap and all
that sort of thing, but still I might come in handy one of these
times. Keep a fatherly eye on you, don't you know, and what not!"
Jill was touched.
"You're a dear, Freddie!"
"I thought, don't you know, it would make poor old Derek a bit easier
in his mind."
Jill froze.
"I don't want to talk about Derek, Freddie, please."
"Oh, I know what you must be feeling. Pretty sick, I'll bet, what?
But if you could see him now . . ."
"I don't want to talk about him!"
"He's pretty cut up, you know. Regrets bitterly and all that sort of
thing. He wants you to come back again."
"I see! He sent you to fetch me?"
"That was more or less the idea."
"It's a shame that you had all the trouble. You can get
messenger-boys to go anywhere and do anything nowadays. Derek ought
to have thought of that."
Freddie looked at her doubtfully.
"You're spoofing, aren't you? I mean to say, you wouldn't have liked
that!"
"I shouldn't have disliked it any more than his sending you."
"Oh, but I wanted to pop over. Keen to see America and so forth."
Jill looked past him at the gloomy stage. Her face was set, and her
eyes sombre.
"Can't you understand, Freddie? You've known me a long time. I should
have thought that you would have found out by now that I have a
certain amount of pride. If Derek wanted me back, there was only one
thing for him to do--come over and find me himself."
"Rummy! That's what Mason said, when I told him. You two don't
realize how dashed busy Derek is these days."
"Busy!"
Something in her face seemed to tell Freddie that he was not saying
the right thing, but he stumbled on.
"You've no notion how busy he is. I mean to say, elections coming on
and so forth. He daren't stir from the metrop."
"Of course I couldn't expect him to do anything that might interfere
with his career, could I?"
"Absolutely not. I knew you would see it!" said Freddie, charmed at
her reasonableness. All rot, what you read about women being
unreasonable. "Then I take it it's all right, eh?"
"All right?"
"I mean you will toddle home with me at the earliest opp. and make
poor old Derek happy?"
Jill laughed discordantly.
"Poor old Derek!" she echoed. "He has been badly treated, hasn't he?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that," said Freddie doubtfully. "You see,
coming down to it, the thing was more or less his fault, what?"
"More or less!"
"I mean to say . . ."
"More or less!"
Freddie glanced at her anxiously. He was not at all sure now that he
liked the way she was looking or the tone in which she spoke. He was
not a keenly observant young man, but there did begin at this point
to seep through to his brain-centers a suspicion that all was not
well.
"Let me pull myself together!" said Freddie warily to his immortal
soul. "I believe I'm getting the raspberry!" And there was silence
for a space.
The complexity of life began to weigh upon Freddie. Life was like one
of those shots at squash which seem so simple till you go to knock
the cover off the ball, when the ball sort of edges away from you and
you miss it. Life, Freddie began to perceive, was apt to have a nasty
back-spin on it. He had never had any doubt when he had started, that
the only difficult part of his expedition to America would be the
finding of Jill. Once found, he had presumed that she would be
delighted to hear his good news and would joyfully accompany him home
on the next boat. It appeared now, however, that he had been too
sanguine. Optimist as he was, he had to admit that, as far as could
be ascertained with the naked eye, the jolly old binge might be said
to have sprung a leak.
He proceeded to approach the matter from another angle.
"I say!"
"Yes?"
"You do love old Derek, don't you? I mean to say, you know what I
mean, _love_ him and all that sort of rot?"
"I don't know!"
"You don't know! Oh, I say, come now! You must _know!_ Pull up your
socks, old thing . . . I mean, pull yourself together! You either
love a chappie or you don't."
Jill smiled painfully.
"How nice it would be if everything were as simple and
straightforward as that. Haven't you ever heard that the dividing
line between love and hate is just a thread? Poets have said so a
great number of times."
"Oh, poets!" said Freddie, dismissing the genus with a wave of the
hand. He had been compelled to read Shakespeare and all that sort of
thing at school, but it had left him cold, and since growing to man's
estate he had rather handed the race of bards the mitten. He liked
Doss Chiderdoss' stuff in the _Sporting Times_, but beyond that he
was not much of a lad for poets.
"Can't you understand a girl in my position not being able to make up
her mind whether she loves a man or despises him?"
Freddie shook his head.
"No," he said. "It sounds dashed silly to me!"
"Then what's the good of talking?" cried Jill. "It only hurts."
"But--won't you come back to England?"
"No."
"Oh, I say! Be a sport! Take a stab at it!"
Jill laughed again--another of those grating laughs which afflicted
Freddie with a sense of foreboding and failure. Something had
undoubtedly gone wrong with the works. He began to fear that at some
point in the conversation--just where he could not say--he had been
less diplomatic than he might have been.
"You speak as if you were inviting me to a garden-party! No, I won't
take a stab at it. You've a lot to learn about women, Freddie!"
"Women _are_ rum!" conceded that perplexed ambassador.
Jill began to move away.
"Don't go!" urged Freddie.
"Why not? What's the use of talking any more? Have you ever broken an
arm or a leg, Freddie?"
"Yes," said Freddie, mystified. "As a matter of fact, my last year at
Oxford, playing soccer for the college in a friendly game, some
blighter barged into me and I came down on my wrist. But . . ."
"It hurt?"
"Like the deuce!"
"And then it began to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it
and twist it and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal?
I won't talk any more about Derek! I simply won't! I'm all smashed up
inside, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get well again, but at
least I'm going to give myself a chance. I'm working as hard as ever
I can, and I'm forcing myself not to think of him. I'm in a sling,
Freddie, like your wrist, and I don't want to be prodded. I hope we
shall see a lot of each other while you're over here--you always were
the greatest dear in the world--but you mustn't mention Derek again,
and you mustn't ask me to go home. If you avoid those subjects, we'll
be as happy as possible. And now I'm going to leave you to talk to
poor Nelly. She has been hovering round for the last ten minutes,
waiting for a chance to speak to you. She worships you, you know!"
Freddie started violently.
"Oh, I say! What rot!"
Jill had gone, and he was still gaping after her, when Nelly Bryant
moved towards him--shyly, like a worshiper approaching a shrine.
"Hello, Mr Rooke!" said Nelly.
"Hullo-ullo-ullo!" said Freddie.
Nelly fixed her large eyes on his face. A fleeting impression passed
through Freddie's mind that she was looking unusually pretty this
morning: nor was the impression unjustified. Nelly was wearing for
the first time a Spring suit which was the outcome of hours of
painful selection among the wares of a dozen different stores, and
the knowledge that the suit was just right seemed to glow from her
like an inner light. She felt happy: and her happiness had lent an
unwonted color to her face and a soft brightness to her eyes.
"How nice it is, your being here!"
Freddie waited for the inevitable question, the question with which
Jill had opened their conversation; but it did not come. He was
surprised, but relieved. He hated long explanations, and he was very
doubtful whether loyalty to Jill could allow him to give them to
Nelly. His reason for being where he was had to do so intimately with
Jill's most private affairs. A wave of gratitude to Nelly swept
through him when he realised that she was either incurious or else
too delicate-minded to show inquisitiveness.
As a matter of fact, it was delicacy that kept Nelly silent. Seeing
Freddie here at the theatre, she had, as is not uncommon with
fallible mortals, put two and two together and made the answer four
when it was not four at all. She had been deceived by circumstantial
evidence. Jill, whom she had left in England wealthy and secure, she
had met again in New York penniless as the result of some Stock
Exchange cataclysm in which, she remembered with the vagueness with
which one recalls once-heard pieces of information, Freddie Rooke had
been involved. True, she seemed to recollect hearing that Freddie's
losses had been comparatively slight, but his presence in the chorus
of "The Rose of America" seemed to her proof that after all the must
have been devastating. She could think of no other reason except loss
of money which could have placed Freddie in the position in which she
now found him, so she accepted it; and, with the delicacy which was
innate in her and which a hard life had never blunted, decided,
directly she saw him, to make no allusion to the disaster.
Such was Nelly's view of the matter, and sympathy gave to her manner
a kind of maternal gentleness which acted on Freddie, raw from his
late encounter with Mr Johnson Miller and disturbed by Jill's
attitude in the matter of poor old Derek, like a healing balm. His
emotions were too chaotic for analysis, but one thing stood out clear
from the welter--the fact that he was glad to be with Nelly as he had
never been glad to be with a girl before, and found her soothing as
he had never supposed a girl could be soothing.
They talked desultorily of unimportant things, and every minute found
Freddie more convinced that Nelly was not as other girls. He felt
that he must see more of her.
"I say," he said. "When this binge is over . . . when the rehearsal
finishes, you know, how about a bite to eat?"
"I should love it. I generally go to the Automat."
"The how-much? Never heard of it."
"In Times Square. It's cheap, you know."
"I was thinking of the Cosmopolis."
"But that's so expensive."
"Oh, I don't know. Much the same as any of the other places, isn't
it?"
Nelly's manner became more motherly than ever. She bent forward and
touched his arm affectionately.
"You haven't to keep up any front with me," she said gently. "I don't
care whether you're rich or poor or what. I mean, of course I'm
awfully sorry you've lost your money, but it makes it all the easier
for us to be real pals, don't you think so?"
"Lost my money!"
"Well, I know you wouldn't be here if you hadn't. I wasn't going to
say anything about it, but, when you talked of the Cosmopolis, I just
had to. You lost your money in the same thing Jill Mariner lost hers,
didn't you? I was sure you had, the moment I saw you here. Who cares?
Money isn't everything!"
Astonishment kept Freddie silent for an instant: after that he
refrained from explanations of his own free will. He accepted the
situation and rejoiced in it. Like many other wealthy and modest
young men, he had always had a sneaking suspicion at the back of his
mind that any girl who was decently civil to him was so from mixed
motives--or more likely, motives that were not even mixed. Well,
dash it, here was a girl who seemed to like him although under the
impression that he was broke to the wide. It was an intoxicating
experience. It made him feel a better chap. It fortified his
self-respect.
"You know," he said, stammering a little, for he found a sudden
difficulty in controlling his voice. "You're a dashed good sort!"
"I'm awfully glad you think so."
There was a silence--as far, at least, as he and she were concerned.
In the outer world, beyond the piece of scenery under whose shelter
they stood, stirring things, loud and exciting things, seemed to be
happening. Some sort of an argument appeared to be in progress. The
rasping voice of Mr Goble was making itself heard from the unseen
auditorium. These things they sensed vaguely, but they were too
occupied with each other to ascertain details.
"What was the name of that place again?" asked Freddie. "The
what-ho-something?"
"The Automat?"
"That's the little chap! We'll go there, shall we?"
"The food's quite good. You go and help yourself out of
slot-machines, you know."
"My favorite indoor sport!" said Freddie with enthusiasm. "Hullo!
What's up? It sounds as if there were dirty work at the cross-roads!"
The voice of the assistant stage-manager was calling--sharply
excited, agitation in every syllable.
"All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please! Mr Goble wants
all the chorus--gentlemen on the stage!"
"Well, cheerio for the present," said Freddie. "I suppose I'd better
look into this." He made his way onto the stage.
