Surrey side.
He must have been standing there for some time, his thoughts far
away, when a voice spoke at his elbow.
“I say. Excuse me, have you–Hullo!” It was his light-haired
lordship of Dreever. “I say, by Jove, why we’re always meeting!”
A tramp on a bench close by stirred uneasily in his sleep as the
gurgling laugh rippled the air.
“Been looking at the water?” inquired Lord Dreever. “I have. I often
do. Don’t you think it sort of makes a chap feel–oh, you know. Sort
of–I don’t know how to put it.”
“Mushy?” said Jimmy.
“I was going to say poetical. Suppose there’s a girl–”
He paused, and looked down at the water. Jimmy was sympathetic with
this mood of contemplation, for in his case, too, there was a girl.
“I saw my party off in a taxi,” continued Lord Dreever, “and came
down here for a smoke; only, I hadn’t a match. Have you–?”
Jimmy handed over his match-box. Lord Dreever lighted a cigar, and
fixed his gaze once more on the river.
“Ripping it looks,” he said.
Jimmy nodded.
“Funny thing,” said Lord Dreever. “In the daytime, the water here
looks all muddy and beastly. Damn’ depressing, I call it. But at
night–” He paused. “I say,” he went on after a moment, “Did you see
the girl I was with at the Savoy?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy.
“She’s a ripper,” said Lord Dreever, devoutly.
On the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of a summer morning,
there is no such thing as a stranger. The man you talk with is a
friend, and, if he will listen–as, by the etiquette of the place,
he must–you may pour out your heart to him without restraint. It is
expected of you!
“I’m fearfully in love with her,” said his lordship.
“She looked a charming girl,” said Jimmy.
They examined the water in silence. From somewhere out in the
night came the sound of oars, as the police-boat moved on its
patrol.
“Does she make you want to go to Japan?” asked Jimmy, suddenly.
“Eh?” said Lord Dreever, startled. “Japan?”
Jimmy adroitly abandoned the position of confidant, and seized that
of confider.
“I met a girl a year ago–only really met her once, and even then–
oh, well! Anyway, it’s made me so restless that I haven’t been able
to stay in one place for more than a month on end. I tried Morocco,
and had to quit. I tried Spain, and that wasn’t any good, either.
The other day, I heard a fellow say that Japan was a pretty
interesting sort of country. I was wondering whether I wouldn’t give
it a trial.”
Lord Dreever regarded this traveled man with interest.
“It beats me,” he said, wonderingly. “What do you want to leg it
about the world like that for? What’s the trouble? Why don’t you
stay where the girl is?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Don’t know?”
“She disappeared.”
“Where did you see her last?” asked his lordship, as if Molly were a
mislaid penknife.
“New York.”
“But how do you mean, disappeared? Don’t you know her address?”
“I don’t even know her name.”
“But dash it all, I say, I mean! Have you ever spoken to her?”
“Only once. It’s rather a complicated story. At any rate, she’s
gone.”
Lord Dreever said that it was a rum business. Jimmy conceded the
point.
“Seems to me,” said his lordship, “we’re both in the cart.”
“What’s your trouble?”
Lord Dreever hesitated.
“Oh, well, it’s only that I want to marry one girl, and my uncle’s
dead set on my marrying another.”
“Are you afraid of hurting your uncle’s feelings?”
“It’s not so much hurting his feelings. It’s–oh, well, it’s too
long to tell now. I think I’ll be getting home. I’m staying at our
place in Eaton Square.”
“How are you going? If you’ll walk, I’ll come some of the way with
you.”
“Right you are. Let’s be pushing along, shall we?”
They turned up into the Strand, and through Trafalgar Square into
Piccadilly. Piccadilly has a restful aspect in the small hours. Some
men were cleaning the road with water from a long hose. The swishing