Pelham Wodehouse - The Little Warrior

"I'm a fool!"

"No, no!"

"Yes, I am. I don't often act this way, but, oh, gee! hearing you all talking like that about going to America, just as if it was the easiest thing in the world, only you couldn't be bothered to do it, kind of got me going. And to think I could be there right now if I wasn't a bonehead!"

"A bonehead?"

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

Freddie groped for her meaning.

"Do you mean you've made a bloomer of some kind?"

"I pulled the worst kind of bone. I stopped on in London when the rest of the company went back home, and now I've got to stick."

"Rush of jolly old professional engagement, what?"

Nelly laughed bitterly.

"You're a bad guesser. No, they haven't started to fight over me yet. I'm at liberty, as they say in the Era."

"But, my dear old thing," said Freddie earnestly, "if you've got nothing to keep you in England, why not pop back to America? I mean to say, home-sickness is the most dashed blighted thing in the world. There's nothing gives one the pip to such an extent. Why, dash it, I remember staying with an old aunt of mine up in Scotland the year before last and not being able to get away for three weeks or so, and I raved—absolutely gibbered—for a sight of the merry old metrop. Sometimes I'd wake up in the night, thinking I was back at the Albany, and, by Jove, when I found I wasn't I howled like a dog! You take my tip, old soul, and pop back on the next boat."

"Which line?"

"How do you mean, which line? Oh, I see, you mean which line? Well … well … I've never been on any of them, so it's rather hard to say. But I hear the Cunard well spoken of, and then again some chappies swear by the White Star. But I should imagine you can't go far wrong, whichever you pick. They're all pretty ripe, I fancy."

"Which of them is giving free trips? That's the point."

"Eh? Oh!" Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost forgotten that there existed a class which had not as much money as himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat. It was a purely disinterested sympathy. The fact that Nelly was a girl and in many respects a dashed pretty girl did not affect him. What mattered was that she was hard up. The thought hurt Freddie like a blow. He hated the idea of anyone being hard up.

"I say!" he said. "Are you broke?"

Nelly laughed.

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

Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the streets, to whom he gave shillings, he had not met anyone for years who had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who frequently claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny, but the bally penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned out to be a couple of thousand pounds for a new car.

"Good God!" he said.

There was a pause. Then, with a sudden impulse, he began to fumble in his breast-pocket. Rummy how things worked out for the best, however scaly they might seem at the moment. Only an hour or so ago he had been kicking himself for not having remembered that fifty-pound note, tacked onto the lining of his coat, when it would have come in handy at the police-station. He now saw that Providence had had the matter well in hand. If he had remembered it and coughed it up to the constabulary then, he wouldn't have had it now. And he needed it now. A mood of quixotic generosity had surged upon him. With swift fingers he jerked the note free from its moorings and displayed it like a conjurer exhibiting a rabbit.

"My dear old thing," he said, "I can't stand it! I absolutely cannot stick it at any price! I really must insist on your trousering this. Positively!"

Nelly Bryant gazed at the note with wide eyes. She was stunned. She took it limply, and looked at it under the dim light of the gas-lamp over the door.

"I couldn't!" she cried.

"Oh, but really! You must!"

"But this is a fifty-pound!"

"Absolutely! It will take you back to New York, what? You asked which line was giving free trips. The Freddie Rooke Line, by Jove, sailings every Wednesday and Saturday! I mean, what!"

"But I can't take two hundred and fifty dollars from you!"

"Oh, rather. Of course you can."

There was another pause.

"You'll think—" Nelly's pale face flushed. "You'll think I told you all about myself just—just because I wanted to …"

"To make a touch? Absolutely not! Kid yourself of the jolly old superstition entirely. You see before you, old thing, a chappie who knows more about borrowing money than any man in London. I mean to say, I've had my ear bitten more often than anyone, I should think. There are sixty-four ways of making a touch—I've had them all worked on me by divers blighters here and there—and I can tell any of them with my eyes shut. I know you weren't dreaming of any such thing."

The note crackled musically in Nelly's hand.

"I don't know what to say!"

"That's all right."

"I don't see why … Gee! I wish I could tell you what I think of you!"

Freddie laughed amusedly.

"Do you know," he said, "that's exactly what the beaks—the masters, you know,—used to say to me at school."

"Are you sure you can spare it?"

"Oh, rather."

Nelly's eyes shone in the light of the lamp.

"I've never met anyone like you before. I don't know how …"

Freddie shuffled nervously. Being thanked always made him feel pretty rotten.

"Well, I think I'll be popping," he said. "Got to get back and dress and all that. Awfully glad to have seen you, and all that sort of rot."

Nelly unlocked the door with her latchkey, and stood on the step.

"I'll buy a fur-wrap," she said, half to herself.

"Great wheeze! I should!"

"And some nuts for Bill!"

"Bill?"

"The parrot."

"Oh, the jolly old parrot! Rather! Well, cheerio!"

"Good-bye … You've been awfully good to me."

"Oh, no," said Freddie uncomfortably. "Any time you're passing … !"

"Awfully good … Well, good-bye."

"Toodle-oo!"

"Maybe we'll meet again some day."

"I hope so. Absolutely!"

There was a little scurry of feet. Something warm and soft pressed for an instant against Freddie's cheek, and, as he stumbled back, Nelly Bryant skipped up the steps and vanished through the door.

"Good God!"

Freddie felt his cheek. He was aware of an odd mixture of embarrassment and exhilaration.

From the area below a slight cough sounded. Freddie turned sharply. A maid in a soiled cap, worn coquettishly over one ear, was gazing intently up through the railings. Their eyes met. Freddie turned a warm pink. It seemed to him that the maid had the air of one about to giggle.

"Damn!" said Freddie softly, and hurried off down the street. He wondered whether he had made a frightful ass of himself, spraying bank-notes all over the place like that to comparative strangers. Then a vision came to him of Nelly's eyes as they had looked at him in the lamp-light, and he decided—no, absolutely not. Rummy as the gadget might appear, it had been the right thing to do. It was a binge of which he thoroughly approved. A good egg!

Jill, when Freddie and Nelly left the room, had seated herself on a low stool, and sat, looking thoughtfully into the fire. She was wondering if she had been mistaken in supposing that Uncle Chris was worried about something. This restlessness of his, this desire for movement, was strange in him. Hitherto he had been like a dear old cosy cat, revelling in the comfort which he had just denounced so eloquently. She watched him as he took up his favorite stand in front of the fire.