"What could be sweeter?" said Algy. He produced a cigar-case, and extracted a formidable torpedo-shaped Havana. He was feeling delightfully at his ease, and couldn't understand why Freddie had made such a fuss about meeting this nice old lady. "Don't mind if I smoke, do you? Air's a bit raw today. Gets into the lungs."
Derek chafed impotently. These unsought allies were making a difficult situation a thousand times worse. A more acute observer than young Mr Martyn, he noted the tight lines about his mother's mouth and knew them for the danger-signal they were. Endeavoring to distract her with light conversation, he selected a subject which was a little unfortunate.
"What sort of crossing did you have, mother?"
Lady Underhill winced. A current of air had sent the perfume of Algy's cigar playing about her nostrils. She closed her eyes, and her face turned a shade paler. Freddie, observing this, felt quite sorry for the poor old thing. She was a pest and a pot of poison, of course, but all the same, he reflected charitably, it was a shame that she should look so green about the gills. He came to the conclusion that she must be hungry. The thing to do was to take her mind off it till she could be conducted to a restaurant and dumped down in front of a bowl of soup.
"Bit choppy, I suppose, what?" he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and down Lady Underhill's nervous system like an electric needle. "I was afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read the forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a bit, eh?"
Lady Underhill uttered a faint moan. Freddie noticed that she was looking deucedly chippy, even chippier than a moment ago.
"It's an extraordinary thing about that Channel crossing," said Algy Martyn meditatively, as he puffed a refreshing cloud. "I've known fellows who could travel quite happily everywhere else in the world—round the Horn in sailing-ships and all that sort of thing—yield up their immortal soul crossing the Channel! Absolutely yield up their immortal soul! Don't know why. Rummy, but there it is!"
"I'm like that myself," assented Ronny Devereux. "That dashed trip from Calais gets me every time. Bowls me right over. I go aboard, stoked to the eyebrows with seasick remedies, swearing that this time I'll fool 'em, but down I go ten minutes after we've started and the next thing I know is somebody saying, 'Well, well! So this is Dover!'"
"It's exactly the same with me," said Freddie, delighted with the smooth, easy way the conversation was flowing. "Whether it's the hot, greasy smell of the engines …"
"It's not the engines," contended Ronny Devereux.
"Stands to reason it can't be. I rather like the smell of engines. This station is reeking with the smell of engine-grease, and I can drink it in and enjoy it." He sniffed luxuriantly. "It's something else."
"Ronny's right," said Algy cordially. "It isn't the engines. It's the way the boat heaves up and down and up and down and up and down …" He shifted his cigar to his left hand in order to give with his right a spirited illustration of a Channel steamer going up and down and up and down and up and down. Lady Underhill, who had opened her eyes, had an excellent view of the performance, and closed her eyes again quickly.
"Be quiet!" she snapped.
"I was only saying …"
"Be quiet!"
"Oh, rather!"
Lady Underhill wrestled with herself. She was a woman of great will-power and accustomed to triumph over the weaknesses of the flesh. After awhile her eyes opened. She had forced herself, against the evidence of her senses, to recognize that this was a platform on which she stood and not a deck.
There was a pause. Algy, damped, was temporarily out of action, and his friends had for the moment nothing to remark.
"I'm afraid you had a trying journey, mother," said Derek. "The train was very late."
"Now, train-sickness," said Algy, coming to the surface again, "is a thing lots of people suffer from. Never could understand it myself."
"I've never had a touch of train-sickness," said Ronny.
"Oh, I have," said Freddie. "I've often felt rotten on a train. I get floating spots in front of my eyes and a sort of heaving sensation, and everything kind of goes black …"
"Mr Rooke!"
"Eh?"
"I should be greatly obliged if you would keep these confidences for the ear of your medical adviser."
"Freddie," intervened Derek hastily, "my mother's rather tired. Do you think you could be going ahead and getting a taxi?"
"My dear old chap, of course! Get you one in a second. Come along, Algy. Pick up the old waukeesis, Ronny."
And Freddie, accompanied by his henchmen, ambled off, well pleased with himself. He had, he felt, helped to break the ice for Derek and had seen him safely through those awkward opening stages. Now he could totter off with a light heart and get a bite of lunch.
Lady Underhill's eyes glittered. They were small, keen, black eyes, unlike Derek's, which were large and brown. In their other features the two were obviously mother and son. Each had the same long upper lip, the same thin, firm mouth, the prominent chin which was a family characteristic of the Underhills, and the jutting Underhill nose. Most of the Underhills came into the world looking as though they meant to drive their way through life like a wedge.
"A little more," she said tensely, "and I should have struck those unspeakable young men with my umbrella. One of the things I have never been able to understand, Derek, is why you should have selected that imbecile Rooke as your closest friend."
Derek smiled tolerantly.
"It was more a case of him selecting me. But Freddie is quite a good fellow really. He's a man you've got to know."
"I have not got to know him, and I thank heaven for it!"
"He's a very good-natured fellow. It was decent of him to put me up at the Albany while our house was let. By the way, he has some seats for the first night of a new piece this evening. He suggested that we might all dine at the Albany and go on to the theatre." He hesitated a moment. "Jill will be there," he said, and felt easier now that her name had at last come into the talk. "She's longing to meet you."
"Then why didn't she meet me?"
"Here, do you mean? At the station? Well, I—I wanted you to see her for the first time in pleasanter surroundings."
"Oh!" said Lady Underhill shortly.
It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much by being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us. If Jill had been permitted by her wary fiancé to come with him to the station to meet his mother, it is certain that much trouble would have been avoided. True, Lady Underhill would probably have been rude to her in the opening stages of the interview, but she would not have been alarmed and suspicious; or, rather, the vague suspicion which she had been feeling would not have solidified, as, it did now, into definite certainty of the worst. All that Derek had effected by his careful diplomacy had been to convince his mother that he considered his bride-elect something to be broken gently to her.
She stopped and faced him.
"Who is she?" she demanded. "Who is this girl?"
Derek flushed.
"I thought I made everything clear in my letter."
"You made nothing clear at all."
"By your leave!" chanted a porter behind them, and a baggage-truck clove them apart.
"We can't talk in a crowded station," said Derek irritably. "Let me get you to the taxi and take you to the hotel. … What do you want to know about Jill?"
"Everything. Where does she come from? Who are her people? I don't know any Mariners."
"I haven't cross-examined her," said Derek stiffly. "But I do know that her parents are dead. Her father was an American."