The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded repletion which city dinners induce. The dry-salters, on these occasions when they cast off for a night the cares and anxieties of dry-salting, do their guests well, and Derek had that bloated sense of foreboding which comes to a man whose stomach is not his strong point after twelve courses and a multitude of mixed wines. A goose, qualifying for the role of a pot of pate de foies gras, probably has exactly the same jaundiced outlook.
Yet, unfavorably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the subject. He thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and what Algy had said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and he nerved himself to the task.
“Derek, old top.”
A grunt.
“I say, Derek, old bean.”
Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he stood, warming his legs at the blaze.
“Well?”
Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.
“I say, you know, about Jill!”
He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion’s start and the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.
“Well?” said Derek again.
Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.
“Ronny Devereux was saying —” faltered Freddie.
“Damn Ronny Devereux!”
“Oh, absolutely! But —”
“Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?”
“Why, old man, you’ve heard me speak of him, haven’t you? Pal of mine. He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that morning.”
“Oh, that fellow? And he has been saying something about — ?”
“It isn’t only Ronny, you know,” Freddie hastened to interject. “Algy Martyn’s talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy’s sister and a lot of people. They’re all saying —”
“What are they saying?”
Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn’t look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old map. Rummy he had never noticed before how extraordinarily like his mother he was. Freddie was conscious of a faint sense of grievance. He could not have put it into words, but what he felt was that a fellow had no right to go about looking like Lady Underhill.
“What are they saying?” repeated Derek grimly.
“Well —” Freddie hesitated. “That it’s a bit tough — On Jill, you know.”
“They think I behaved badly?”
“Well — Oh, well, you know!”
Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental disturbance. The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the Dry-Salters’ dinner had begun to change to something more actively unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp pain had begun to run through it, flashing in and out like lightning through a thunder-cloud. He felt sullen and vicious.
“I wonder,” he said with savage politeness, “if, when you chat with your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my private affairs.”
“Sorry, old man. But they started it, don’t you know.”