4.
Out in the street Wally had overtaken Jill, and they faced one
another in the light of a street lamp. Forty-first Street at midnight
is a quiet oasis. They had it to themselves.
Jill was pale, and she was breathing quickly, but she forced a smile.
"Well, Wally," she said. "My career as a manager didn't last long,
did it?"
"What are you going to do?"
Jill looked down the street.
"I don't know," she said. "I suppose I shall have to start trying to
find something."
"But . . ."
Jill drew him suddenly into the dark alley-way leading to the
stage-door of the Gotham Theatre's nearest neighbor: and, as she did
so, a long, thin form, swathed in an overcoat and surmounted by an
opera-hat, flashed past.
"I don't think I could have gone through another meeting with Mr
Pilkington," said Jill. "It wasn't his fault, and he was quite
justified, but what he said about Uncle Chris rather hurt."
Wally, who had ideas of his own similar to those of Mr Pilkington on
the subject of Uncle Chris and had intended to express them,
prudently kept them unspoken.
"I suppose," he said, "there is no doubt . . . ?"
"There can't be. Poor Uncle Chris! He is like Freddie. He means
well!"
There was a pause. They left the alley and walked down the street.
"Where are you going now?" asked Wally.
"I'm going home."
"Where's home?"
"Forty-ninth Street. I live in a boarding-house there." A sudden
recollection of the boarding-house at which she had lived in Atlantic
City smote Wally, and it turned the scale. He had not intended to
speak, but he could not help himself.
"Jill!" he cried. "It's no good. I must say it! I want to get you out
of all this. I want to take care of you. Why should you go on living
this sort of life, when. . . . Why won't you let me . . . ?"
He stopped. Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of what he was
saying. Jill was not a girl to be won with words.
They walked on in silence for a moment. They crossed Broadway, noisy
with night traffic, and passed into the stillness on the other side.
"Wally," said Jill at last.
She was looking straight in front of her. Her voice was troubled.
"Yes?"
Jill hesitated.
"Wally, you wouldn't want me to marry you if you knew you weren't the
only man in the world that mattered to me, would you?"
They had reached Sixth Avenue before Wally replied.
"No!" he said.
For an instant, Jill could not have said whether the feeling that
shot through her like the abrupt touching of a nerve was relief or
disappointment. Then suddenly she realized that it was disappointment.
It was absurd to her to feel disappointed, but at that moment she
would have welcomed a different attitude in him. If only this problem
of hers could be taken forcefully out of her hands, what a relief it
would be. If only Wally, masterfully insistent, would batter down her
hesitations and _grab_ her, knock her on the head and carry her off
like a caveman, care less about her happiness and concentrate on his
own, what a solution it would be. . . . But then he wouldn't be Wally.
. . . Nevertheless, Jill gave a little sigh. Her new life had changed
her already. It had blunted the sharp edge of her independence.
Tonight she was feeling the need of some one to lean on--some one
strong and cosy and sympathetic who would treat her like a little girl
and shield her from all the roughness of life. The fighting spirit had
gone out of her, and she was no longer the little warrior facing the
world with a brave eye and a tilted chin. She wanted to cry and be
petted.
"No!" said Wally again. There had been the faintest suggestion of a
doubt when he had spoken the word before, but now it shot out like a
bullet. "And I'll tell you why. I want _you_--and, if you married me
feeling like that, it wouldn't be you. I want Jill, the whole Jill,
and nothing but Jill, and, if I can't have that, I'd rather not have
anything. Marriage isn't a motion-picture close-up with slow fade-out
on the embrace. It's a partnership, and what's the good of a
partnership if your heart's not in it? It's like collaborating with a
man you dislike. . . . I believe you wish sometimes--not often,
perhaps, but when you're feeling lonely and miserable--that I would
pester and bludgeon you into marrying me. . . . What's the matter?"
Jill had started. It was disquieting to have her thoughts read with
such accuracy.
"Nothing," she said.
"It wouldn't be any good," Wally went on "because it wouldn't be
_me_. I couldn't keep that attitude up, and I know I should hate
myself for ever having tried it. There's nothing in the world I
wouldn't do to help you, though I know it's no use offering to do
anything. You're a fighter, and you mean to fight your own battle. It
might happen that, if I kept after you and badgered you and nagged
you, one of these days, when you were feeling particularly all alone
in the world and tired of fighting for yourself, you might consent to
marry me. But it wouldn't do. Even if you reconciled yourself to it,
it wouldn't do. I suppose, the cave-woman sometimes felt rather
relieved when everything was settled for her with a club, but I'm
sure the caveman must have had a hard time ridding himself of the
thought that he had behaved like a cad and taken a mean advantage. I
don't want to feel like that. I couldn't make you happy if I felt
like that. Much better to have you go on regarding me as a friend . . .
knowing that, if ever your feelings do change, that I am right there,
waiting."
"But by that time _your_ feelings will have changed."
Wally laughed.
"Never!"
"You'll meet some other girl . . ."
"I've met every girl in the world! None of them will do!" The
lightness came back into Wally's voice. "I'm sorry for the poor
things, but they won't do! Take 'em away! There's only one girl in
the world for me--oh, confound it! why is it that one always thinks
in song-titles! Well, there it is. I'm not going to bother you. We're
pals. And, as a pal, may I offer you my bank-roll?"
"No!" said Jill. She smiled up at him. "I believe you would give me
your coat if I asked you for it!"
Wally stopped.
"Do you want it? Here you are!"
"Wally, behave! There's a policeman looking at you!"
"Oh, well, if you won't! It's a good coat, all the same."
They turned the corner, and stopped before a brown-stone house, with
a long ladder of untidy steps running up to the front door,
"Is this where you live?" Wally asked. He looked at the gloomy place
disapprovingly. "You do choose the most awful places!"
"I don't choose them. They're thrust on me. Yes, this is where I
live. If you want to know the exact room, it's the third window up
there over the front door. Well, good night."
"Good night," said Wally. He paused. "Jill."
"Yes?"
"I know it's not worth mentioning, and it's breaking our agreement to
mention it, but you do understand, don't you?"
"Yes, Wally dear, I understand."
"I'm round the corner, you know, waiting! And, if you ever do change,
all you've got to do is just to come to me and say 'It's all right!'
. . ."
Jill laughed a little shakily.
"That doesn't sound very romantic!"
"Not sound romantic! If you can think of any three words in the
language that sound more romantic, let me have them! Well, never mind
how they sound, just say them, and watch the result! But you must get
to bed. Good night."
"Good night, Wally."
She passed in through the dingy door. It closed behind her, and Wally
stood for some moments staring at it with a gloomy repulsion. He
thought he had never seen a dingier door.
Then he started to walk back to his apartment. He walked very
quickly, with clenched hands. He was wondering if after all there was
not something to be said for the methods of the caveman when he went
a-wooing. Twinges of conscience the caveman may have had when all was
over, but at least he had established his right to look after the
woman he loved.
