Jill smiled.
"Of course I do. You said that you were training me for marriage. You said that there were no happy marriages except where the wife didn"t mind the smell of tobacco. Well, it"s lucky, as a matter of fact, for Derek smokes all the time."
Uncle Chris took up his favorite stand against the fireplace.
"You"re very fond of Derek, aren"t you, Jill?"
"Of course I am. You are, too, aren"t you?"
"Fine chap. Very fine chap. Plenty of money, too. It"s a great relief," said Uncle Chris, puffing vigorously. "A thundering relief."
He looked over Jill"s head down the room. "It"s fine to think of you happily married, dear, with everything in the world that you want."
Uncle Chris" gaze wandered down to where Jill sat. A slight mist affected his eyesight. Jill had provided a solution for the great problem of his life. 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. Jill and he had been very close to each other since her mother had died, a year after the death of her father, and had left her in his charge. He had watched her grow up with a joy that had a touch of bewilderment in it--she seemed to grow so quickly--and had been fonder and prouder of her at every stage of her tumultuous career.
"You"re a dear," said Jill. She stroked the trouser-leg that was nearest. "How do you manage to get such a wonderful crease? You really are a credit to me!"
There was a momentary silence. A shade of embarra.s.sment made itself noticeable in Uncle Chris" frank gaze. He gave a little cough, and pulled at his mustache.
"I wish I were, my dear," he said soberly. "I wish I were. I"m afraid I"m a poor sort of fellow, Jill."
Jill looked up.
"What do you mean?"
"A poor sort of fellow," repeated Uncle Chris. "Your mother was foolish to trust you to me. Your father had more sense. He always said I was a wrong"un."
Jill got up quickly. She was certain now that she had been right, and that there was something on her uncle"s mind.
"What"s the matter, Uncle Chris? Something"s happened. What is it?"
Uncle Chris turned to knock the ash off his cigar. The movement gave him time to collect himself for what lay before him. He had one of those rare volatile natures which can ignore the blows of fate so long as their effects are not brought home by visible evidence of disaster. He lived in the moment, and, though matters had been as bad at breakfast-time as they were now, it was not till now, when he confronted Jill, that he had found his cheerfulness affected by them.
He was a man who hated ordeals, and one faced him now. Until this moment he had been able to detach his mind from a state of affairs which would have weighed unceasingly upon another man. His mind was a telephone which he could cut off at will, when the voice of Trouble wished to speak. The time would arrive, he had been aware, when he would have to pay attention to that voice, but so far he had refused to listen. Now it could be evaded no longer.
"Jill."
"Yes?"
Uncle Chris paused again, searching for the best means of saying what had to be said.
"Jill, I don"t know if you understand about these things, but there was what is called a slump on the Stock Exchange this morning. In other words ..."
Jill laughed.
"Of course I know all about that," she said. "Poor Freddie wouldn"t talk about anything else till I made him. He was terribly blue when he got here this afternoon. He said he had got "nipped" in Amalgamated Dyes. He had lost about two hundred pounds, and was furious with a friend of his who had told him to buy margins."
Uncle Chris cleared his throat.
"Jill, I"m afraid I"ve got bad news for you. I bought Amalgamated Dyes, too." He worried his mustache. "I lost heavily, very heavily."
"How naughty of you! You know you oughtn"t to gamble."
"Jill, you must be brave. I--I--well, the fact is--it"s no good beating about the bush--I lost everything! Everything!"
"Everything?"
"Everything! It"s all gone! All fooled away. It"s a terrible business. This house will have to go."
"But--but doesn"t the house belong to me?"
"I was your trustee, dear." Uncle Chris smoked furiously. "Thank heaven you"re going to marry a rich man!"
Jill stood looking at him, perplexed. Money, as money, had never entered into her life. There were things one wanted, which had to be paid for with money, but Uncle Chris had always looked after that.
She had taken them for granted.
"I don"t understand," she said.
And then suddenly she realized that she did, and a great wave of pity for Uncle Chris flooded over her. He was such an old dear. It must be horrible for him to have to stand there, telling her all this. She felt no sense of injury, only the discomfort of having to witness the humiliation of her oldest friend. Uncle Chris was bound up inextricably with everything in her life that was pleasant. She could remember him, looking exactly the same, only with a thicker and wavier crop of hair, playing with her patiently and unwearied for hours in the hot sun, a cheerful martyr. She could remember sitting up with him when she came home from her first grown-up dance, drinking cocoa and talking and talking and talking till the birds outside sang the sun high up into the sky and it was breakfast-time.
She could remember theatres with him, and jolly little suppers afterwards; expeditions into the country, with lunches at queer old inns; days on the river, days at Hurlingham, days at Lords", days at the Academy. He had always been the same, always cheerful, always kind. He was Uncle Chris, and he would always be Uncle Chris, whatever he had done or whatever he might do. She slipped her arm in his and gave it a squeeze.
"Poor old thing!" she said.
Uncle Chris had been looking straight out before him with those fine blue eyes of his. There had been just a touch of sternness in his att.i.tude. A stranger, coming into the room at that moment, would have said that here was a girl trying to coax her blunt, straightforward, military father into some course of action of which his honest nature disapproved. He might have been posing for a statue of Rect.i.tude. As Jill spoke, he seemed to cave in.
"Poor old thing?" he repeated limply.
"Of course you are! And stop trying to look dignified and tragic!
Because it doesn"t suit you. You"re much too well dressed."
"But, my dear, you don"t understand! You haven"t realized!"
"Yes, I do. Yes, I have!"
"I"ve spent all your money--_your_ money!"
"I know! What does it matter?"
"What does it matter! Jill, don"t you hate me?"
"As if anyone could hate an old darling like you!"
Uncle Chris threw away his cigar, and put his arms round Jill. For a moment a dreadful fear came to her that he was going to cry. She prayed that he wouldn"t cry. It would be too awful. It would be a memory of which she could never rid herself. She felt as though he were someone extraordinarily young and unable to look after himself, someone she must soothe and protect.
"Jill," said Uncle Chris, choking, "you"re--you"re--you"re a little warrior!"
Jill kissed him, and moved away. She busied herself with some flowers, her back turned. The tension had been relieved, and she wanted to give him time to recover his poise. She knew him well enough to be sure that, sooner or later, the resiliency of his nature would a.s.sert itself. He could never remain long in the depths.
The silence had the effect of making her think more clearly than in the first rush of pity she had been able to do. She was able now to review the matter as it affected herself. It had not been easy to grasp, the blunt fact that she was penniless, that all this comfort which surrounded her was no longer her own. For an instant a kind of panic seized her. There was a bleakness about the situation which made one gasp. It was like icy water dashed in the face. Realization had almost the physical pain of life returning to a numbed limb. Her hands shook as she arranged the flowers, and she had to bite her lip to keep herself from crying out.
She fought panic eye to eye, and beat it down. Uncle Chris, swiftly recovering by the fireplace, never knew that the fight had taken place. He was feeling quite jovial again now that the unpleasant business of breaking the news was over, and was looking on the world with the eye of a debonair gentleman-adventurer. As far as he was concerned, he told himself, this was the best thing that could have happened. He had been growing old and sluggish in prosperity. He needed a fillip. The wits by which he had once lived so merrily had been getting blunt in their easy retirement. He welcomed the opportunity of matching them once more against the world. He was remorseful as regarded Jill, but the optimist in him, never crushed for long, told him that Jill would be all right. She would step from the sinking ship to the safe refuge of Derek Underhill"s wealth and position, while he went out to seek a new life. Uncle Chris" blue eyes gleamed with a new fire as he pictured himself in this new life.