Pelham Wodehouse - The Little Warrior

"Cold?" said Wally Mason.

"A little."

"Let's walk."

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. Through a break in the trees the clock over the Houses of Parliament shone for an instant as if suspended in the sky, then vanished as the trees closed in. A distant barge in the direction of Battersea wailed and was still. It had a mournful and foreboding sound. Jill shivered again. It annoyed her that she could not shake off this quite uncalled-for melancholy, but it withstood every effort. Why she should have felt that a chapter, a pleasant chapter, in the book of her life had been closed, she could not have said, but the feeling lingered.

"Correct me if I am wrong," said Wally Mason, breaking a silence that had lasted several minutes, "but you seem to me to be freezing in your tracks. Ever since I came to London I've had a habit of heading for the Embankment in times of mental stress, but perhaps the middle of winter is not quite the moment for communing with the night. The Savoy is handy, if we stop walking away from it. I think we might celebrate this reunion with a little supper, don't you?"

Jill's depression disappeared magically. Her mercurial temperament asserted itself.

"Lights!" she said. "Music!"

"And food! To an ethereal person like you that remark may seem gross, but I had no dinner."

"You poor dear! Why not?"

"Just nervousness."

"Why, of course." The interlude of the fire had caused her to forget his private and personal connection with the night's events. Her mind went back to something he had said in the theatre. "Wally—" She stopped, a little embarrassed. "I suppose I ought to call you Mr Mason, but I've always thought of you …"

"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?"

"It was what you said to Freddie about putting up money. Did you really?"

"Put up the money for that ghastly play? I did. Every cent. It was the only way to get it put on."

"But why … ? I forget what I was going to say!"

"Why did I want it put on? Well, it does seem odd, but I give you my honest word that until tonight I thought the darned thing a masterpiece. I've been writing musical comedies for the last few years, and after you've done that for a while your soul rises up within you and says, 'Come, come, my lad! You can do better than this!' That's what mine said, and I believed it. Subsequent events have proved that Sidney the Soul was pulling my leg!"

"But—then you've lost a great deal of money?"

"The hoarded wealth, if you don't mind my being melodramatic for a moment, of a lifetime. And no honest old servitor who dangled me on his knee as a baby to come along and offer me his savings! They don't make servitors like that in America, worse luck. There is a Swedish lady who looks after my simple needs back there, but instinct tells me that, if I were to approach her on the subject of loosening up for the benefit of the young master, she would call a cop. Still, I've gained experience, which they say is just as good as cash, and I've enough money left to pay the check, at any rate, so come along."

In the supper-room of the Savoy Hotel there was, as anticipated, food and light and music. It was still early, and the theatres had not yet emptied themselves, so that the fog room was as yet but half full. Wally Mason had found a table in the corner, and proceeded to order with the concentration of a hungry man.

"Forgive my dwelling so tensely on the bill-of-fare," he said, when the waiter had gone. "You don't know what it means to one in my condition to have to choose between poulet en casserole and kidneys a la maitre d'hotel. A man's cross-roads!"

Jill smiled happily across the table at him. She could hardly believe that this old friend with whom she had gone through the perils of the night and with whom she was now about to feast was the sinister figure that had cast a shadow on her childhood. He looked positively incapable of pulling a little girl's hair—as no doubt he was.

"You always were greedy," she commented. "Just before I turned the hose on you, I remember you had made yourself thoroughly disliked by pocketing a piece of my birthday-cake."

"Do you remember that?" His eyes lit up and he smiled back at her. He had an ingratiating smile. His mouth was rather wide, and it seemed to stretch right across his face. He reminded Jill more than ever of a big, friendly dog. "I can feel it now,—all squashy in my pocket, inextricably mingled with a catapult, a couple of marbles, a box of matches, and some string. I was quite the human general store in those days. Which reminds me that we have been some time settling down to an exchange of our childhood reminiscences, haven't we?"

"I've been trying to realise that you are Wally Mason. You have altered so."

"For the better?"

"Very much for the better! You were a horrid little brute. You used to terrify me. I never knew when you were going to bound out at me from behind a tree or something. I remember your chasing me for miles, shrieking at the top of your voice!"

"Sheer embarrassment! I told you just now how I used to worship you. If I shrieked a little, it was merely because I was shy. I did it to hide my devotion."

"You certainly succeeded. I never even suspected it."

Wally sighed.

"How like life! I never told my love, but let concealment like a worm i' the bud …"

"Talking of worms, you once put one down my back!"

"No, no," said Wally in a shocked voice. "Not that! I was boisterous, perhaps, but surely always the gentleman."

"You did! In the shrubbery. There had been a thunderstorm and …"

"I remember the incident now. A mere misunderstanding. I had done with the worm, and thought you might be glad to have it."

"You were always doing things like that. Once you held me over the pond and threatened to drop me into the water—in the winter! Just before Christmas. It was a particularly mean thing to do, because I couldn't even kick your shins for fear you would let me fall. Luckily Uncle Chris came up and made you stop."

"You considered that a fortunate occurrence, did you?" said Wally. "Well, perhaps from your point of view it may have been. I saw the thing from a different angle. Your uncle had a whangee with him, and the episode remains photographically lined on the tablets of my mind when a yesterday has faded from its page. My friends sometimes wonder what I mean when I say that my old wound troubles me in frosty weather. By the way, how is your uncle?"

"Oh, he's very well. Just as lazy as ever. He's away at present, down at Brighton."

"He didn't strike me as lazy," said Wally thoughtfully. "Dynamic would express it better. But perhaps I happened to encounter him in a moment of energy."

"He doesn't look a day older than he did then."

"I'm afraid I don't recall his appearance very distinctly. On the only occasion on which we ever really foregathered—hobnobbed, so to speak—he was behind me most of the time. Ah!" The waiter had returned with a loaded tray. "The food! Forgive me if I seem a little distrait for a moment or two. There is man's work before me!"

"And later on, I suppose, you would like a chop or something to take away in your pocket?"

"I will think it over. Possibly a little soup. My needs are very simple these days."

Jill watched him with a growing sense of satisfaction. There was something boyishly engaging about this man. She felt at home with him. He affected her in much the same way as did Freddie Rooke. He was a definite addition to the things that went to make her happy.