Part 17 (2/2)

And then, from behind Jill, a voice spoke.

”What's all this?”

A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty s.p.a.ce.

”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 s.h.i.+ns 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, Ovingdon 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!”

III

Lady Underhill paused for breath. She had been talking long and vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke's apartment at the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to her future daughter-in-law. But to-day she had spoken her mind with all the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself with a flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been growing within her since that first meeting in this same room. She had talked rapidly, for she was talking against time. The Town Council of the princ.i.p.al city in Derek's const.i.tuency in the north of England had decided that to-morrow morning should witness the laying of the foundation stone of their new Town Hall, and Derek as the sitting member was to preside at the celebration. Already Barker had been dispatched to telephone for a cab to take him to the station, and at any moment their conversation might be interrupted. So Lady Underhill made the most of what little time she had.

Derek listened gloomily, scarcely rousing himself to reply. His mother would have been gratified could she have known how powerfully her arguments were working on him. That little imp of doubt which had vexed him in the cab as he drove home from Ovingdon Square had not died in the night. It had grown and waxed more formidable. And now, aided by this ally from without, it had become a Colossus straddling his soul. Derek looked frequently at the clock, and cursed the unknown cabman whose delay was prolonging the scene. Something told him that only flight could serve him now. He never had been able to withstand his mother in one of her militant moods. She seemed to numb his faculties. Other members of his family had also noted this quality in Lady Underhill, and had commented on it bitterly in the smoking-rooms of distant country-houses at the hour when men meet to drink the final whisky-and-soda and unburden their souls.

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