Jill the Reckless quotes

Calm as he had appeared to the eye of Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the recesses of his heart, was afraid of his mother.

There are men—and Derek Underhill was one of them—who never wholly emerge from the nursery.

They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives.

Calm as he had appeared to the eye of Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the recesses of his heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men—and Derek Underhill was one of them—who never wholly emerge from the nursery.

They may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives.

Derek turned to begin one more walk along the platform, and stopped in mid-stride, raging. Beaming over the collar of a plaid greatcoat, all helpfulness and devotion, Freddie Rooke was advancing towards him, the friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

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."

"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.

"

Americans frequently have daughters, I believe.

"

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 analysis of Jill's fascination for his sex.

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.

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.

Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his tie with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in the glass in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes they stay right, sometimes they wriggle 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.

"How splendid.

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

"

"That's the trouble with you. You always do mean well.

You go about the world meaning well till people fly to put themselves under police protection.

Besides, what on earth could Lady Underhill find to object to in me? I've plenty of money, and I'm one of the most charming and attractive of Society belles.

"

You can't say a thing unless it comes into your head.

"

The thought of being several rows away from Lady Underhill had restored Freddie's equanimity like a tonic. It thrilled him like the strains of some grand, sweet anthem all the way to the theatre.

If Freddie Rooke had been asked at that moment to define happiness in a few words, he would have replied that it consisted in being several rows away from Lady Underhill.

The theatre was nearly full when Freddie's party arrived. The Leicester Theatre had been rented for the season by the newest theatrical knight, Sir Chester Portwood, who had a large following;

All, that is to say, except the drama which was unfolding on the stage.

It was one of those plays which start wrong and never recover.

By the end of the first ten minutes there had spread through the theatre that uneasy feeling which comes over the audience at an opening performance when it realizes that it is going to be bored. A sort of lethargy had gripped the stalls.

Sir Chester himself, apparently oppressed by the weightiness of the occasion and the responsibility of offering an unfamiliar brand of goods to his public, had dropped his customary debonair method of delivering lines and was mouthing his speeches.

It was good gargling, but bad elocution.

And, for some reason best known to himself, he had entrusted the rôle of the heroine to a doll-like damsel with a lisp, of whom the audience disapproved sternly from her initial entrance.

"Well, looking back, I can see that I must have been a very unpleasant child.

I have always thought it greatly to the credit of my parents that they let me grow up. It would have been so easy to have dropped something heavy on me out of a window.

They must have been tempted a hundred times, but they refrained. Yes, I was a great pest around the home. My only redeeming point was the way I worshipped you!"

"Worse than that.

Looking at it dispassionately, I find it the extreme, ragged, outermost edge of the limit.

Freddie had the correct description of it. He's a great critic."

He got out his pencil again. Another phrase had occurred to him, admirable for the opening of his article. "At the Leicester Theatre," he wrote, "where Sir Chester Portwood presented 'Tried by Fire,' dullness reigned supreme...."

But you never know. Call no evening dull till it is over.

However uninteresting its early stages may have been that night was to be as animated and exciting as any audience could desire—a night to be looked back to and talked about, for just as the critic of London Gossip wrote those damning words on his …

"It's no good getting into that mob. You might get hurt.

There's no danger; the play isn't going on.

"

Jill was shaken; but she had the fighting spirit and hated to show that she was shaken.

Panic was knocking at the door of her soul, but dignity refused to be dislodged.

"All the same," she said, smiling a difficult smile, "it would be nice to get out, wouldn't it?"

She gave a little shiver. Somehow this sudden severance from the old days had brought with it a forlornness.

She seemed to be standing alone in a changed world.

They moved westwards. Cleopatra's Needle shot up beside them, a pointing finger. Down on the silent river below, coffin-like row-boats lay moored to the wall.

"Wally, if you please, Jill. It's not as though we were strangers.

I haven't my book of etiquette with me, but I fancy that about eleven gallons of cold water down the neck constitutes an introduction.

What were you going to say?"

"I remember the incident now. A mere misunderstanding.

I had done with the worm, and thought you might be glad to have it.

"

"Scowling? Can't you feel it on the back of your head?" He drew thoughtfully at his cigarette. "If I were you I should stop that sort of thing at the source. It's a habit that can't be discouraged in a husband too early.

Scowling is the civilized man's substitute for wife-beating.

"

In these clashes of human temperaments, these sudden storms that spring up out of a clear sky, it is possible sometimes to repair the damage, if the psychological moment is resolutely seized, by talking rapidly and with detachment on neutral topics.

Words have made the rift, and words alone can bridge it.

But neither Jill nor her companion could find words, and the silence lengthened grimly. When Wally spoke, it was in the level tones of a polite stranger.

He turned into the cloak-room, and Jill went up the stairs to join Derek. She felt angry and depressed, full of a sense of the futility of things.

People flashed into one's life and out again. Where was the sense of it?

To her he had always been the perfect, gracious knight. A little too perfect, perhaps, a trifle too gracious, possibly, but she had been too deeply in love to notice that. "Don't be cross!"

The English language is the richest in the world, and yet somehow in moments when words count most we generally choose the wrong ones.

The adjective "cross" as a description of his Jove-like wrath that consumed his whole being jarred upon Derek profoundly. It was as though Prometheus, with the vultures tearing his liver, had been asked if he were piqued.

The idea came and went more quickly than breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been.

There are men who fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword.

Derek was one of these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity is their most precious possession, he winced from an edged tongue.

After which he mewed like a cat, and relapsed into silent meditation once more.

He closed his eyes and pondered on his favourite problem—Why was he a parrot?

This was always good for an hour or so, and it was three o'clock before he had come to his customary decision that he didn't know.

"Very well. I will leave you to think it over, then." Lady Underhill moved to the door. At the door she paused for a moment, and seemed about to speak again, but her mouth closed resolutely.

She was a shrewd woman, and knew that the art of life is to know when to stop talking. What words have accomplished, too many words can undo.

"I'll see you when you get back?"

"

We are only happy," proceeded Uncle Chris, "when we are wandering.

"

"A simp.

I'm all right as far up as the string of near-pearls, but above that I'm reinforced concrete.

"

"Am I?

If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn't even have the hole in the middle.

"

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.

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.

Uncle Chris might be responsible for this disaster, but he was certainly making it endurable. However greatly he might be deserving of censure, from the standpoint of the sterner morality, he made amends.

If he brought the whole world crashing in chaos about one's ears, at least he helped one to smile among the ruins.

"Did you ever read 'Candide,' Uncle Chris?"

He brought his fist down with a crash on the table where Derek's flowers stood in their bowl. The bowl leaped in the air and tumbled over, scattering the flowers on the floor.

In the lives of each one of us, as we look back and review them in retrospect, there are certain desert wastes from which memory winces like some tired traveller faced with a dreary stretch of road.

Even from the security of later happiness we cannot contemplate them without a shudder.

He had so much the air of having conferred a substantial benefit upon her that Jill felt obliged to thank him.

Uncle Chris had always been able to make people grateful for the phantom gold which he showered upon them. He was as lavish a man with the money he was going to get next week as ever borrowed a five-pound note to see him through till Saturday.

"What are you going to do, Uncle Chris?" asked Jill curiously. Apart from a nebulous idea that he intended to saunter through the city picking dollar-bills off the sidewalk, she had no inkling of his plans.

Mr. Mariner led the way out into the ice-covered road.

The wind welcomed them like a boisterous dog.

For some minutes they proceeded in silence.

The alteration in the demeanour of people of parsimonious habit, when they discover that the guest they are entertaining is a pauper and not, as they had supposed, an heiress, is subtle but well marked. In most cases, more well marked than subtle.

Nothing was actually said, but there are thoughts that are almost as audible as words.

A certain suspense seemed to creep into the air, as happens when a situation has been reached which is too poignant to last. Greek Tragedy affects the reader with the same sense of overhanging doom. Things, we feel, cannot go on as they are.

The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye appear so much more expensive than the real thing.

Everybody looked very dashing and very young, except about the eyes.

Most of the eyes that glanced at Jill were weary. The women were nearly all blondes, blondness having been decided upon in the theatre as the colour that brings the best results.

… all musical directors he had in his leisure moments composed the complete score of a musical play and spent much of his time waylaying librettists on the Rialto and trying to lure them to his apartment to listen to it, with a view to business.

The eternal tragedy of a musical director's life is comparable only to that of the waiter who, himself fasting, has to assist others to eat.

Mr. Saltzburg had lofty ideas on music, and his soul revolted at being compelled perpetually to rehearse and direct the inferior compositions of other men.

"Then what made you give it up? Conscience?"

"Conscience never made me give up anything," said Uncle Chris firmly.

"No, there were a hundred chances to one against anything going wrong, and it was the hundredth that happened.

"Well, you certainly think of everything."

"Whatever success I may have achieved," replied Uncle Chris, with the dignity of a Captain of Industry confiding in an interviewer, "I attribute to always thinking of everything."

Jill gurgled with laughter. There was that about her uncle which always acted on her moral sense like an opiate, lulling it to sleep and preventing it from rising up and becoming critical.

"I have not actually placed my hands on it yet," admitted Uncle Chris. "But it is hovering in the air all round me.

I can hear the beating of the wings of the dollar-bills as they flutter to and fro, almost within reach.

Sooner or later I shall grab them. I never forget, my dear, that I have a task before me—to restore to you the money of which I deprived you. Some day—be sure—I shall do it.

The mantelpiece was her first objective.

She always made for other people's mantelpieces, for there, more than anywhere else, is the character of a proprietor revealed.

This mantelpiece was sprinkled with photographs, large, small, framed and unframed. In the centre of it, standing all alone and looking curiously out of place among its large neighbours, was a little snapshot.

"I see," he said at last.

"It's a variant of those advertisements they print in the magazines. 'Why pay rent? Own somebody else's home!'"

"That does rather sum it up," said Jill.

Jill was immensely relieved. For all her courageous bearing, she had not relished the task of breaking the news to Wally.

She knew that he had a sense of humour, but a man may have a sense of humour and yet not see anything amusing in having his home stolen in his absence.

"I'm so glad you're not angry."

Directly before him, crowned with its white lantern, the Metropolitan Tower reared its graceful height to the stars.

And all around, in the windows of the tall buildings that looked from this bastion on which he stood almost squat, a million lights stared up at him, the unsleeping eyes of New York.

It was a scene of which Wally, always sensitive to beauty, never tired: but to-night it had lost its appeal.

"And then it began to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it, and twist it, and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal? I won't talk any more about Derek! I simply won't!

I'm all smashed up inside, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get well again, but at least I'm going to give myself a chance.

I'm working as hard as ever I can and I'm forcing myself not to think of him. I'm in a sling, Freddie, like your wrist, and I don't want to be prodded.

"You're a good kid. I like having you around. I was half thinking of giving you a show to do this Fall. Corking book. French farce. Ran two years in Paris. But what's the good, if you want the earth?"

"Always useful, the earth. Good thing to have."

"See here, if you'll fix up this show for half of one per cent, I'll give you the other to do."

There was something in the latter's manner which seemed to him sometimes almost contemptuous. He regretted the necessity of having to employ him. There was, of course, no real necessity why he should have employed Wally.

New York was full of librettists who would have done the work equally well for half the money, but, like most managers, Mr. Goble had the mental processes of a sheep.

"Follow the Girl" was the last outstanding musical success in New York theatrical history: Wally had written it, therefore nobody but Wally was capable of re-writing "The Rose of America." The thing had for Mr. Goble the inevitability of Fate.

"Don't talk back at me!"

"Kindly don't shout at me! Your voice is unpleasant enough without your raising it."

Open defiance was a thing which Mr. Goble had never encountered before, and for a moment it deprived him of breath. He recovered it, however, almost immediately.

"I must! It's the most priceless thing I ever heard. I've always maintained and I always will maintain that for pure lunacy nothing can touch the musical comedy business.

There isn't anything that can't happen in musical comedy. 'Alice in Wonderland' is nothing to it.

"

He has probably done his best friend out of a few thousand dollars the same morning, and you see them lunching together after the ceremony as happily as possible. You've got to make allowances for managers. They are the victims of heredity.

When a burglar marries a hat-check girl, their offspring goes into the theatrical business automatically, and he can't shake off the early teaching which he imbibed at his father's knee.

But morals...."

There's nothing wrong with most of them. As a general thing, they are very decent fellows—extraordinarily decent if you think of the position they are in. I don't say that in a business way there's much they won't try to put over on you.

In the theatre, when it comes to business, everything goes except biting and gouging.

'There's never a law of God or man runs north of fifty-three.' If you alter that to 'north of Forty-first Street' it doesn't scan as well, but it's just as true.

Wally broke off to allow the waiter to place a fried sole before him.

Waiters always select the moment when we are talking our best to intrude themselves.

"As regards morals," resumed Wally, "that is a different matter. Most managers are respectable, middle-aged men with wives and families. They are in the business to make money, and they don't want anything else out of it.

I hate talking about it, but you know how things are with me. Freddie must have told you. Even if he didn't, you must have guessed, meeting me here all alone and remembering how things were when we last met. You must understand!

Haven't you ever had a terrible shock or a dreadful disappointment that seemed to smash up the whole world? And didn't you find that the only possible thing to do was to work and work and work as hard as ever you could?

When I first came to America, I nearly went mad. Uncle Chris sent me down to a place on Long Island, and I had nothing to do all day but think. I couldn't stand it.

"You think I'm altruistic? I'm not. I'm just as selfish and self-centred as any other man who wants a thing very badly.

I'm as altruistic as a child crying for the moon.

I want you to marry me because I love you, because there never was anybody like you, because you're the whole world, because I always have loved you.

"

My heart's full, Wally dear. I know it's just lumber that's choking it up, but it's difficult to get it out.

It takes time getting it out. I put it in, thinking it was wonderful furniture, the most wonderful in the world, and—I was cheated. It was just lumber. But it's there. It's still there. It's there all the time. And what am I to do?"

"

If one is expecting to be treated fairly," said the Duchess with a prolonged yawn, "one should not go into the show-business.

"

"Are we going in the right direction? You lead the way. I know exactly how you feel. We're old friends, and nothing more. But, as an old friend, I claim the right to behave like an old friend.

If an old friend can't behave like an old friend, how can an old friend behave?

And now we'll rule the whole topic out of the conversation. But perhaps you're too tired for conversation?"

The stir became a movement.

Enthusiasm is catching, and every girl is at heart a rebel.

And the idea was appealing to the imagination. Refuse to give a show on the opening night! Had a chorus ever done such a thing? They trembled on the verge of making history.

A dark suspicion that Mr. Goble, who had seen to all the executive end of the business, had a secret arrangement with the costumer whereby he received a private rebate, deepened his gloom.

Why, for ten thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars and fifty cents you could dress the whole female population of New York State and have a bit left over for Connecticut.

So thought Mr. Pilkington, as he read the bad news in the train. He only ceased to brood upon the high cost of costuming when in the next line but one there smote his eye an item of four hundred and ninety-eight dollars for "Clothing."

Mr. Pilkington gave him a dollar.

Money—money! Life was just one long round of paying out and paying out.

The day which Mr. Pilkington had selected for his visit to the provinces was a Tuesday.

It is not only twin-souls in this world who yearn to meet each other.

Between Otis Pilkington and Mr. Goble there was little in common, yet, at the moment when Otis set out to find Mr. Goble, the thing which Mr. Goble desired most in the world was an interview with Otis.

"But I hadn't finished!" wailed Mr. Pilkington, clutching at Wally. He was feeling profoundly aggrieved.

If it is bad to be all dressed up and no place to go, it is almost worse to be full of talk and to have no one to talk it to.

Otis Pilkington had at least another twenty minutes of speech inside him on the topic of Uncle Chris, and Wally was the nearest human being with a pair of ears.

He detached himself with a jerk, and stalked with long strides up the stage. Mr. Goble watched him go with a lowering gaze. A heavy sense of the unkindness of fate was oppressing Mr. Goble.

If you couldn't gyp a bone-headed amateur out of a piece of property, whom could you gyp?

Mr. Goble sighed. It hardly seemed to him worth while going on.

"And I'll tell you why. I want you—and, if you married me feeling like that, it wouldn't be you. I want Jill, the whole Jill, and nothing but Jill, and, if I can't have that, I'd rather not have anything.

Marriage isn't a motion-picture close-up with slow fade-out on the embrace. It's a partnership, and what's the good of a partnership if your heart's not in it?

It's like collaborating with a man you dislike.... I believe you wish sometimes—not often, perhaps, but when you're feeling lonely and miserable—that I would pester and bludgeon you into marrying me.... What's the matter?"

"I'll bet he has!" gasped Freddie.

It is safest for the historian, if he values accuracy, to wait till a thing has happened before writing about it. Otherwise he may commit himself to statements which are not borne out by the actual facts.

Mrs. Peagrim, recording in advance the success of her party at the Gotham Theatre, had done this. It is true that she was a "radiant and vivacious hostess," and it is possible, her standard not being very high, that she had "never looked more charming."

Uncle Chris had observed this for himself, and it had not helped him to face his task.

Lovely woman loses something of her queenly dignity when she puffs.

Inwardly, he was thinking how exactly his hostess resembled the third from the left of a troupe of performing sea-lions which he had seen some years ago on one of his rare visits to a vaudeville house.