Jack Compton's Luck. Paula Marshall
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didn’t say so. He assumed, rightly, that it was something more respectable than a gigolo, but both words were damned un English so far as he was concerned.
They had lost sight of Jack, who had come across an old friend from his Army days who had stayed behind in Europe when Jack went to Palestine and had got involved with Allenby’s lot and ‘that bounder, T. E. Lawrence’: the friend’s description, not Jack’s. Jack’s attempt to explain the intricacies of Middle East politics was lost on him and he was thankful when he heard the strains of the Charleston begin to filter into the supper room.
‘Forgive me, lady waiting,’ he offered, and set off at the double. Wouldn’t do to offer Miss Lacey Chancellor the opportunity to stage a conniption fit in Lady Leominster’s august halls.
She was where he had left her, with the dragon aunt. She was looking about the ballroom, a trifle anxiously, he thought, but her face brightened up amazingly when she saw him.
‘I thought that you’d taken the coward’s way out,’ she told him, offering him her hand—which he took with the usual electric effect on both of them.
‘Never,’ said Jack, after taking it and leading her on to the floor, ‘and I promise not to throw a conniption fit if I make a cake of myself in the dance.’
Rupert, together with Darcey and a group of other spectators, watched Jack join the romping Charlestonites, with a look of total disbelief on his face.
Darcey exclaimed, ‘Told you the fur and feathers would fly if those two got together. Who else would tease old Jack into making an exhibition of himself!’
‘Only he isn’t,’ said Rupert gloomily. ‘Just watch him go. Do you believe he’s never danced the damn thing before? And how did she get him to do it with her?’
‘Clever girl that she is,’ said Darcey slowly, ‘she used what we told her about Jack accepting challenges. She challenged him, that’s what. All I have to say is that it’s a damned sight safer than some of the other things he got up to. No breaking his neck in this.’
‘Break his leg more likely,’ grumbled Rupert. ‘You know I suggested that he had a go for her and her fortune before he even saw her. Do you think that’s what it’s about?’
Darcey shook his head. ‘Not Jack, from all I’ve heard of him, he’s not a fortune hunter. Just a chap who can’t refuse a challenge.’
Lacey panted at Jack when she saw him rivalling her in agility, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had danced this before?’
‘Because I haven’t,’ Jack panted in reply once he had recovered enough breath to answer her. ‘But I watched you and Cousin Darcey enjoying yourselves and it didn’t strike me as particularly difficult. I can only wonder, though, what Queen Victoria would have made of it if it had arrived in England in her reign.’
‘Or most of the other things we do these days,’ gasped out Lacey, after several more hectic minutes, ‘such as women smoking and driving motor cars, to say nothing of short skirts and Eton crops.’
By now they had arrived at the musicians’ corner; when he saw Lacey and Jack’s spirited rendition of the dance, their leader stood up and played his saxophone pointedly in their direction.
She waved back at him, so Jack did too. Who was it who had once said, ‘It’s my night to howl?’ He couldn’t remember, which didn’t matter, because he was too busy enjoying himself after a fashion which he couldn’t have anticipated when he had reluctantly agreed to accompany Rupert to ‘old Mother Leominster’s’, to worry about such irrelevancies.
Inevitably the dance came to an uproarious climax during which those who could not keep up with the musicians’ increasingly rapid tempo stood back to admire Lacey and Jack’s performance which had become more and more inventive. Both of them were separately whirling and twirling before coming back to face one another again, slapping their knees and bending their legs in a rhythm which was almost professional.
The moment that the music ended the spectators gave them an ovation. They had been so involved with each other and the dance, that, as in the slow foxtrot, they had forgotten that the rest of the world existed. When the clapping broke out, they stopped, stared at one another, and Jack asked Lacey, ‘Good God! Never say that was for us?’
‘Afraid it was,’ she said, her campaign to unfreeze Jack having succeeded even beyond her wildest dreams. She was not sure how he was going to take it, and was tremendously relieved when he began to laugh.
‘Minx,’ he choked at her, taking her hand and piloting her off the floor.
He was amused to hear someone whose face he vaguely remembered call out to him as they made for the supper room and a much needed drink, ‘So Fighting Jack rides again, good for you, old chap.’
‘I told you that I should make a spectacle of myself and never live it down.’
‘Aren’t you pleased you did?’ Lacey responded pertly. ‘Now, be a good fellow and bring me a drink, a long cool one, no alcohol, I’m tight enough already without having the excuse of drinking very much to account for it.’
‘Excitement,’ said Jack soothingly. ‘Sure you don’t want a gin and it—or some champagne?’
‘Quite sure. Lemonade and lots of it.’
He reached the bar to find Rupert there on his own, Darcey having discovered another flapper to squire.
‘My word, you were going the pace, old fellow, weren’t you? Took what I suggested to you earlier seriously, did you?’
Jack, who had forgotten Rupert’s advice about Lacey’s fortune, ordered her lemonade and a glass of champagne for himself, before saying, ‘What was that, then?’
‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten that she’s an heiress? The one I recommended you to go for.’
‘Oh, damn that,’ said Jack cheerfully. In his present mood the cloud which had hung over him for so long seemed to have disappeared and it had been Lacey Chancellor who had dispersed it. ‘She’s a jolly good sort—and would be with, or without, a fortune. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for years.’
‘So I saw,’ returned Rupert glumly, his own evening not having been much of a success. ‘And while you’re feeling so happy, could I touch you for a couple of hundred? I’m a bit short at the minute and you can probably stand it.’
‘Not really,’ replied Jack, frowning. ‘Besides that, I don’t lend money to either friends or relatives, it’s the best way to lose them in my experience.’
‘But I really am most awfully strapped, old chap.’
Jack sighed. ‘Let me be honest with you. I’m just about keeping the whole boiling back home from falling into instant bankruptcy. Apart from my reservations about lending money at all, I simply don’t have that much ready cash to spare. I’m surprised to learn that you are having trouble given that you have a well-paid position at Coutts Bank.’
Rupert made a face. ‘It’s the gee-gees, I’m afraid. I made a few horrid bets lately. Lost a packet on the Grand National to make matters worse, and I’m no longer at Coutts.’
Jack refrained from advising Rupert not to gamble and particularly not to bet on the horses. He thought it would be a waste of time. Instead he said, as gently as he could, ‘I’m sorry, but I have Will to think of and young Robbie, Max’s boy, as well as the estate. We’re even more strapped for cash than you are, I’m afraid. I try to put a brave face on things and you ought to have asked yourself why I’m staying in a cheap lodging house. The flat in town went long ago.’
‘Oh, God, Jack!’ Rupert’s face crumpled as though he were about to cry. ‘Everything’s gone since the war, hasn’t it? Nothing is ever going to be the same.’
‘That’s true enough,’ Jack said, ‘but we have to keep a stiff upper lip and