“I say! You’ll forgive my dwelling a bit on this thing, won’t you? Never found a girl who would look twice at me before, and it’s rather unsettled the old bean. Just occurred to me that I may have been talking about my own affairs a bit. Your turn now, old thing. Sit down, as the blighters in the novels used to say, and tell me the story of your life. You’ve seen Jill, of course?”
“Yes,” said Derek shortly.
“And it’s all right, eh? Fine! We’ll make a double wedding of it, what? Not a bad idea, that! I mean to say, the man of God might make a reduction for quantity and shade his fee a bit. Do the job half price!”
Derek threw down the end of his cigarette, and crushed it with his heel. A closer observer than Freddie would have detected long ere this the fact that his demeanor was not that of a happy and successful wooer.
“Jill and I are not going to be married,” he said.
A look of blank astonishment came into Freddie’s cheerful face. He could hardly believe that he had heard correctly. It is true that, in gloomier mood, he had hazarded the theory to Uncle Chris that Jill’s independence might lead her to refuse Derek, but he had not really believed in the possibility of such a thing even at the time, and now, in the full flood of optimism consequent on his own engagement, it seemed even more incredible.
“Great Scott!” he cried. “Did she give you the raspberry?”
It is to be doubted whether the pride of the Underhills would have permitted Derek to reply in the affirmative, even if Freddie had phrased his question differently: but the brutal directness of the query made such a course impossible for him. Nothing was dearer to Derek than his self-esteem, and, even at the expense of the truth, he was resolved to shield it from injury. To face Freddie and confess that any girl in the world had given him, Derek Underhill, what he coarsely termed the raspberry was a task so revolting as to be utterly beyond his powers.
“Nothing of the kind!” he snapped. “It was because we both saw that the thing would be impossible. Why didn’t you tell me that Jill was in the chorus of this damned piece?”
Freddie’s mouth slowly opened. He was trying not to realize the meaning of what his friend was saying. His was a faithful soul, and for years—to all intents and purposes for practically the whole of his life—he had looked up to Derek and reverenced him. He absolutely refused to believe that Derek was intending to convey what he seemed to be trying to convey: for, if he was, well — by Jove — it was too rotten and Algy Martyn had been right after all and the fellow was simply —
“You don’t mean, old man,” said Freddie with an almost pleading note in his voice, “that you’re going to back out of marrying Jill because she’s in the chorus?”
Derek looked away, and scowled. He was finding Freddie, in the capacity of inquisitor, as trying as he had found him in the role of exuberant fiancé. It offended his pride to have to make explanations to one whom he had always regarded with a patronizing tolerance as not a bad fellow in his way but in every essential respect negligible.
“I have to be sensible,” he said, chafing as the indignity of his position intruded itself more and more. “You know what it would mean — Paragraphs in all the papers — photographs — the news cabled to England — everybody reading it and misunderstanding — I’ve got my career to think of — It would cripple me —”
His voice trailed off, and there was silence for a moment. Then Freddie burst into speech. His good-natured face was hard with unwonted scorn. Its cheerful vacuity had changed to stony contempt. For the second time in the evening the jolly old scales had fallen from Freddie’s good old eyes, and, as Jill had done, he saw Derek as he was.
“My sainted aunt!” he said slowly. “So that’s it, what! Well, I’ve always thought a dashed lot of you, as you know. I’ve always looked up to you as a bit of a nib and wished I was like you. But, great Scott! if that’s the sort of a chap you are, I’m deuced glad I’m not! I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and think how unlike you I am and pat myself on the back! Ronny Devereux was perfectly right. A tick’s a tick, and that’s all there is to say about it. Good old Ronny told me what you were, and, like a silly ass, I wasted a lot of time trying to make him believe you weren’t that sort of chap at all. It’s no good standing there looking like your mother,” said Freddie firmly. “This is where we jolly well part brass-rags! If we ever meet again, I’ll trouble you not to speak to me, because I’ve a reputation to keep up! So there you have it in a bally nutshell!”