P. G. Wodehouse

“ 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. ”

“ Goble might dismiss him. Should that disaster occur, he felt there was always a future for him in the movies.
Scarcely had Mr. Miller disappeared on his peace-making errand, when there was a noise like a fowl going through a quickset hedge, and Mr. Saltzburg, brandishing his baton as if he were conducting an unseen orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. ”

“ We may say what we will against the upper strata of Society, but it cannot be denied that breeding tells. Only by falling back for support on the traditions of his class and the solid support of a gentle up-bringing was the Last of the Rookes able to crush down the words that leaped to his lips and to substitute for them a politely conventional agreement. If Mr. Pilkington was feeling like a too impulsive seller of gold mines, Freddie's emotions were akin to those of the Spartan boy with the fox under his vest. ”

“ It was one of those afternoons which intrude on the bleakness of winter with a false but none the less agreeable intimation that Spring is on its way. The sidewalks were wet underfoot, and the gutters ran with thawed snow. The sun shone exhilaratingly from a sky the colour of a hedge-sparrow's egg.
"Doesn't everything smell lovely, Freddie," said Jill, "after our prison-life!"
"Topping!"
"Fancy getting out so quickly! Whenever I'm arrested, I must always make a point of having a rich man with me. ”

“ Uncle Chris was not the sort of man to whom grave tragedies happened. It was probably some mere trifle which she could smooth out for him in five minutes, once they were alone together. She reached out and patted his sleeve affectionately. She was fonder of Uncle Chris than of anyone in the world except Derek.
"The thought," said Uncle Chris, "came to me this morning, as I read my morning paper while breakfasting. It has grown and developed during the day. At this moment you might almost call it an obsession. I am very fond of America. ”

“ If Jill's vision of Brookport as a wintry Southend was not entirely fulfilled, neither was Uncle Chris' picture of it as an earthly paradise. At the right time of the year, like most of the summer resorts on the south shore of Long Island, it is not without its attractions; but January is not the month which most people would choose for living in it. It presented itself to Jill on first acquaintance in the aspect of a wind-swept railroad station, dumped down far away from human habitation in the middle of a stretch of flat and ragged country that reminded her a little of parts of Surrey. ”

“ The resolute front he had exhibited to Freddie at the breakfast-table had melted since his arrival at the station, and he was feeling nervous at the prospect of the meeting that lay before him. Calm as he had appeared to the eye of Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the recesses of his heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men—and Derek Underhill was one of them—who never wholly emerge from the nursery. They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives. ”

“ Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-glass. Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an earnest, paternal gaze.
"That reminds me," he said. "I wanted to have a bit of a talk with you about that—being engaged and all that sort of thing. I'm glad I got you alone before the Curse arrived."
"Curse? Do you mean Derek's mother? That sounds cheerful and encouraging."
"Well, she is, you know," said Freddie earnestly. "She's a bird! It would be idle to deny it. She always puts the fear of God into me. I never know what to say to her." ”

“ From somewhere out of sight on the other side of the stage there came a sound of chopping. Jill's companion moved quickly to the switchboard, groped, found a handle, and turned it. In the narrow space between the corner of the proscenium and the edge of the asbestos curtain lights flashed up: and simultaneously there came a sudden diminution of the noise from the body of the house. The stalls, snatched from the intimidating spell of the darkness and able to see each other's faces, discovered that they had been behaving indecorously and checked their struggling, a little ashamed of themselves. ”

“ It is impossible to behold the huge buildings which fringe the harbour of New York without a sense of expectancy and excitement. There had remained in Jill's mind from childhood memories a vague picture of what she now saw, but it had been feeble and inadequate. The sight of this towering city seemed somehow to blot out everything that had gone before. The feeling of starting afresh was strong upon her.
Uncle Chris, the old traveller, was not emotionally affected. He smoked placidly and talked in a wholly earthy strain of grape-fruit and buckwheat cakes. ”

“ So the Duchess, abandoning that aristocratic manner criticized by some of her colleagues as "up-stage" and by others as "Ritz-y," sat in her chair and consumed pocket-handkerchiefs as fast as they were offered to her.
Jill had been the only girl in the room who had spoken no word of consolation. This was not because she was not sorry for the Duchess. She had never been sorrier for any one in her life. The pathos of that swift descent from haughtiness to misery had bitten deep into her sensitive heart. ”

“ Freddie, whose idea had been a tête-à-tête 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." ”

“ Like all musical directors he had in his leisure moments composed the complete score of a musical play and spent much of his time waylaying librettists on the Rialto and trying to lure them to his apartment to listen to it, with a view to business. The eternal tragedy of a musical director's life is comparable only to that of the waiter who, himself fasting, has to assist others to eat. Mr. Saltzburg had lofty ideas on music, and his soul revolted at being compelled perpetually to rehearse and direct the inferior compositions of other men. ”

“ Social difficulties always did.
"Then what?" enquired Algy Martyn.
"Well, it was pretty rotten. Derek held out his hand, as a chappie naturally would, being introduced to a strange chappie, and Wally Mason, giving it an absolute miss, went on talking to me just as if we were alone, you know. Look here. Here was I, where this knife is. Derek over here—this fork—with his hand out. Mason here—this bit of bread. Mason looks at his watch, and says 'I'm sorry, Freddie, but I find I've an engagement for lunch. So long!' and biffed out, without apparently knowing that Derek was on the earth. ”

“ The days passed somehow, and finally there came the morning, when, accompanied by Uncle Chris—voluble and explanatory about the details of what he called "getting everything settled"—she rode in a taxi to take the train for Southampton. Her last impression of London was of rows upon rows of mean houses, of cats wandering in back-yards among groves of home-washed underclothing, and a smoky greyness which gave way, as the train raced on, to the clearer grey of the suburbs and the good green and brown of the open country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never liked that girl!"
"Now there," said Wally, "is just the point on which we differ. I have always liked her, and I've known her all my life. So, shipmate, if you have any derogatory remarks to make about Miss Mariner, keep them where they belong—there!" He prodded the other sharply in the stomach. He was smiling pleasantly, but the stage-director, catching his eye, decided that his advice was good and should be followed. It is just as bad for the home if the head of the family gets his neck broken as if he succumbs to apoplexy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jill had listened to this diatribe with a certain uneasiness. Her brief encounters with Mr. Goble told her that every word was probably true. She could still feel the unpleasant sensation of being inspected by the eye which Wally had compared—quite justly—to that of a codfish. But her pride forbade any admission of weakness.
"I can take care of myself," she said.
"I don't doubt it," said Wally. "And you could probably take care of yourself if you fell into a muddy pond. But I shouldn't like to stand on the bank and watch you doing it. I know what girls in the chorus have to go through. ”

“ Marriage had always appalled him, but there was this to be said for it, that married people had daughters. He had always wanted a daughter, a smart girl he could take out and be proud of; and fate had given him Jill at precisely the right age. A child would have bored Uncle Chris—he was fond of children, but they made the deuce of a noise and regarded jam as an external ornament—but a delightful little girl of fourteen was different. ”

“ He was not a keenly observant young man, but there did begin at this point to seep through to his brain-centres 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. ”

“ In a body by themselves, rather forlorn and neglected, half a dozen solemn and immaculately dressed [153] young men were propping themselves up against the wall and looking on, like men in a ball-room who do not dance.
Jill listened to the conversation without taking any great part in it herself. She felt as she had done on her first day at school, a little shy and desirous of effacing herself. The talk dealt with clothes, men, and the show business, in that order of importance. ”

“ Most managers are respectable, middle-aged men with wives and families. They are in the business to make money, and they don't want anything else out of it. The girls in their companies are like so many clerks to them, just machines that help to bring the money in. They don't know half a dozen of them to speak to. But our genial Ike is not like that." Wally consumed a mouthful of sole. "Ike Goble is a bad citizen. He paws! He's a slinker and a prowler and a leerer. He's a pest and a worm! He's fat and soft and flabby. He has a greasy soul, a withered heart, and an eye like a codfish. ”

“ Barker slid softly from the room. Derek Underhill sat down at the table. He was a strikingly handsome man, with a strong, forceful face, dark, lean and cleanly shaven. He was one of those men whom a stranger would instinctively pick out of a crowd as worthy of note. His only defect was that his heavy eyebrows gave him at times an expression which was a little forbidding. Women, however, had never been repelled by it. He was very popular with women, not quite so popular with men—always excepting Freddie Rooke, who worshipped him. ”

“ Up on the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamour of the busy city, Wally Mason, at eleven o'clock on the morning after Mrs. Peagrim's Bohemian party, was greeting the new day, as was his custom, by going through his ante-breakfast exercises. Mankind is divided into two classes—those who do setting-up exercises before breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't. ”

“ Once, butting through Lennox Gardens on her way to that vast, desolate King's Road which stretches its length out into regions unknown to [107] those whose London is the West End, she happened upon Freddie Rooke, who had been paying a call in his best, and a pair of white spats which would have cut his friend Henry to the quick. It was not an enjoyable meeting. Freddie, keenly alive to the awkwardness of the situation, was scarlet and incoherent; and Jill, who desired nothing less than to talk with one so intimately connected in her mind with all that she had lost, was scarcely more collected. ”

“ In these days of rapid movement, when existence has become little more than a series of shocks of varying intensity, astonishment is the shortest-lived of all the emotions. There was an instant in which Jill looked at Wally and Wally at Jill with the eye of total amazement, and then, almost simultaneously, each began—the process was subconscious—to regard this meeting not as an isolated and inexplicable event, but as something resulting from a perfectly logical chain of circumstances.
"Hullo!" said Wally. ”

“ A snappy dresser, as the technical term is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other sex.
"Topping!" he said spaciously. "No other word for it. All wool and a yard wide. Precisely as mother makes it. You look like a thingummy."
"How splendid. All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but somehow I've never been able to manage it."
"A wood-nymph!" exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery. He looked at her with honest admiration. "Dash it, Jill, you know, there's something about you! You're—what's the word?—you've got such small bones." ”

“ Spectators with sufficient time on their hands to permit them to stand and watch were enabled to witness a New York midday meal in every stage of its career, from its protoplasmic beginnings as a stream of yellowish-white liquid poured on top of the stove to its ultimate Nirvana in the interior of the luncher in the form of an appetising cake. It was a spectacle which no hungry girl could resist. Jill went in, and, as she made her way among the tables, a voice spoke her name.
"Miss Mariner!" ”