The Little Warrior Part 5

Freddie Rooke pushed a tousled head, which had yet to be brushed into the smooth sleekness that made it a delight to the public eye, out of a room down the pa.s.sage.

"Sir?"

"Somebody ringing."

"I heard, sir. I was about to answer the bell."

"If it's Lady Underhill, tell her I'll be in in a minute."

"I fancy it is Miss Mariner, sir. I think I recognise her touch."

He made his way down the pa.s.sage to the front-door, and opened it. A girl was standing outside. She wore a long gray fur coat, and a filmy gray hood covered her hair. As Parker opened the door, she scampered in like a gray kitten.

"Brrh! It's cold!" she exclaimed. "Hullo, Parker!"

"Good evening, miss."

"Am I the last or the first or what?"

Parker moved to help her with her cloak.

"Sir Derek and her ladyship have not yet arrived, miss. Sir Derek went to bring her ladyship from the Savoy Hotel. Mr Rooke is dressing in his bedroom and will be ready very shortly."

The girl had slipped out of the fur coat, and Parker cast a swift glance of approval at her. He had the valet's unerring eye for a thoroughbred, and Jill Mariner was manifestly that. It showed in her walk, in every move of her small, active body, in the way she looked at you, in the way she talked to you, in the little tilt of her resolute chin. Her hair was pale gold, and had the brightness of coloring of a child's. Her face glowed, and her gray eyes sparkled.

She looked very much alive.

It was this aliveness of hers that was her chief charm. Her eyes were good and her mouth, with its small, even, teeth, attractive, but she would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes doubted if she were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up again, had endeavored subsequently to explain her attraction (to a bosom friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club smoking-room) in these words: "I don't know what it is about her, old man, but she somehow makes a feller feel she's so d.a.m.ned _interested_ in a chap, if you know what I mean." And, though not generally credited in his circle with any great acuteness, there is no doubt that the speaker had achieved something approaching a true a.n.a.lysis of Jill's fascination for his s.e.x. She was interested in everything Life presented to her notice, from a Coronation to a stray cat. She was vivid. She had sympathy. She listened to you as though you really mattered. It takes a man of tough fibre to resist these qualities.

Women, on the other hand, especially of the Lady Underhill type, can resist them without an effort.

"Go and stir him up," said Jill, alluding to the absent Mr Rooke.

"Tell him to come and talk to me. Where's the nearest fire? I want to get right over it and huddle."

"The fire's burning nicely in the sitting-room, miss."

Jill hurried into the sitting-room, and increased her hold on Parker's esteem by exclaiming rapturously at the sight that greeted her. Parker had expended time and trouble over the sitting-room.

There was no dust, no untidiness. The pictures all hung straight; the cushions were smooth and unrumpled; and a fire of exactly the right dimensions burned cheerfully in the grate, flickering cosily on the small piano by the couch, on the deep leather arm-chairs which Freddie had brought with him from Oxford, that home of comfortable chairs, and on the photographs that studded the walls. In the center of the mantelpiece, the place of honor, was the photograph of herself which she had given Derek a week ago.

"You're simply wonderful, Parker! I don't see how you manage to make a room so cosy!" Jill sat down on the club-fender that guarded the fireplace, and held her hands over the blaze. "I can't understand why men ever marry. Fancy having to give up all this!"

"I am gratified that you appreciate it, miss. I did my best to make it comfortable for you. I fancy I hear Mr Rooke coming now."

"I hope the others won't be long. I'm starving. Has Mrs Parker got something very good for dinner?"

"She has strained every nerve, miss."

"Then I'm sure it's worth waiting for. Hullo, Freddie."

Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in the gla.s.s in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes they stay right, sometimes they wiggle up sideways. Life is full of these anxieties.

"I shouldn't touch it," said Jill. "It looks beautiful, and, if I may say so in confidence, is having a most disturbing effect on my emotional nature. I'm not at all sure I shall be able to resist it right through the evening. It isn't fair of you to try to alienate the affections of an engaged young person like this."

Freddie squinted down, and became calmer.

"Hullo, Jill, old thing. n.o.body here yet?"

"Well, I'm here,--the pet.i.te figure seated on the fender. But perhaps I don't count."

"Oh, I didn't mean that, you know."

"I should hope not, when I've bought a special new dress just to fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?"

Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical term is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other s.e.x.

"Topping!" he said s.p.a.ciously. "No other word for it! All wool and a yard wide! Precisely as mother makes it! You look like a thingummy."

"How splendid! All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but somehow I've never been able to manage it."

"A wood-nymph!" exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery.

"Wood-nymphs didn't wear creations."

"Well, you know what I mean!" He looked at her with honest admiration. "Dash it, Jill, you know, there's something about you!

You're--what's the word?--you've got such small bones!"

"Ugh! I suppose it's a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It makes me feel like a skeleton."

"I mean to say, you're--you're dainty!"

"That's much better."

"You look as if you weighed about an ounce and a half! You look like a bit of thistledown! You're a little fairy princess, dash it!"

"Freddie! This is eloquence!" Jill raised her left hand, and twiddled a ringed finger ostentatiously. "Er--you _do_ realize that I'm bespoke, don't you, and that my heart, alas, is another's? Because you sound as if you were going to propose."

Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-gla.s.s.

Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an earnest, paternal gaze.

"That reminds me," he said. "I wanted to have, a bit of a talk with you about that--being engaged and all that sort of thing. I'm glad I got you alone before the Curse arrived."

"Curse? Do you mean Derek's mother? That sounds cheerful and encouraging."

"Well, she is, you know," said Freddie earnestly. "She's a bird! It would be idle to deny it. She always puts the fear of G.o.d into me. I never know what to say to her."

"Why don't you try asking her riddles?"

"It's no joking matter," persisted Freddie, his amiable face overcast. "Wait till you meet her! You should have seen her at the station this morning. You don't know what you're up against!"

"You make my flesh creep, Freddie. What am I up against?"