Pelham Wodehouse - The Little Warrior

Mrs Peagrim touched him on the arm.

"You were saying … ?" she murmured encouragingly.

Uncle Chris shut his eyes. His fingers pressed desperately into the velvet curtain beside him. He felt as he had felt when a raw lieutenant in India, during his first hill-campaign, when the etiquette of the service had compelled him to rise and walk up and down in front of his men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets. He seemed to hear the damned things whop-whopping now … and almost wished that he could really hear them. One or two good bullets just now would be a welcome diversion.

"Yes?" said Mrs Peagrim.

"Have you never felt," babbled Uncle Chris, "that, feeling as I feel, I might have felt … that is to say, might be feeling a feeling … ?"

There was a tap at the door of the box. Uncle Chris started violently. Jill came in.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said. "I wanted to speak …"

"You wanted to speak to me?" said Uncle Chris, bounding up. "Certainly, certainly, certainly, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment?"

Mrs Peagrim bowed coldly. The interruption had annoyed her. She had no notion who Jill was, and she resented the intrusion at this particular juncture intensely. Not so Uncle Chris, who skipped out into the passage like a young lamb.

"Am I in time?" asked Jill in a whisper.

"In time?"

"You know what I mean. Uncle Chris, listen to me! You are not to propose to that awful woman. Do you understand?"

Uncle Chris shook his head.

"The die is cast!"

"The die isn't anything of the sort," said Jill. "Unless … ." She stopped, aghast. "You don't mean that you have done it already?"

"Well, no. To be perfectly accurate, no. But …"

"Then that's all right. I know why you were doing it, and it was very sweet of you, but you mustn't."

"But, Jill, you don't understand."

"I do understand."

"I have a motive …"

"I know your motive. Freddie told me. Don't you worry yourself about me, dear, because I am all right. I am going to be married."

A look of ecstatic relief came into Uncle Chris' face.

"Then Underhill … ?"

"I am not marrying Derek. Somebody else. I don't think you know him, but I love him, and so will you." She pulled his face down and kissed him. "Now you can go back."

Uncle Chris was almost too overcome to speak. He gulped a little.

"Jill," he said shakily, "this is a … this is a great relief."

"I knew it would be."

"If you are really going to marry a rich man …"

"I didn't say he was rich."

The joy ebbed from Uncle Chris' face.

"If he is not rich, if he cannot give you everything of which I …"

"Oh, don't be absurd! Wally has all the money anybody needs. What's money?"

"What's money?" Uncle Chris stared. "Money, my dear child, is … is … well, you mustn't talk of it in that light way. But, if you think you will really have enough … ?"

"Of course we shall. Now you can go back. Mrs Peagrim will be wondering what has become of you."

"Must I?" said Uncle Chris doubtfully.

"Of course. You must be polite."

"Very well," said Uncle Chris. "But it will be a little difficult to continue the conversation on what you might call general lines. However!"

Back in the box, Mrs Peagrim was fanning herself with manifest impatience.

"What did that girl want?" she demanded.

Uncle Chris seated himself with composure. The weakness had passed, and he was himself again.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Some trivial difficulty, which I was able to dispose of in a few words."

Mrs Peagrim would have liked to continue her researches, but a feeling that it was wiser not to stray too long from the main point restrained her. She bent towards him.

"You were going to say something when that girl interrupted us."

Uncle Chris shot his cuffs with a debonair gesture.

"Was I? Was I? To be sure, yes. I was saying that you ought not to let yourself get tired. Deuce of a thing, getting tired. Plays the dickens with the system."

Mrs Peagrim was disconcerted. The atmosphere seemed to have changed, and she did not like it. She endeavored to restore the tone of the conversation.

"You are so sympathetic," she sighed, feeling that she could not do better than to begin again at that point. The remark had produced good results before, and it might do so a second time.

"Yes," agreed Uncle Chris cheerily. "You see, I have seen something of all this sort of thing, and I realize the importance of it. I know what all this modern rush and strain of life is for a woman in your position. Parties every night … dancing … a thousand and one calls on the vitality … bound to have an effect sooner or later, unless— unless ," said Uncle Chris solemnly, "one takes steps. Unless one acts in time. I had a friend—" His voice sank—"I had a very dear friend over in London, Lady Alice—but the name would convey nothing—the point is that she was in exactly the same position as you. On the rush all the time. Never stopped. The end was inevitable. She caught cold, hadn't sufficient vitality to throw it off, went to a dance in mid-winter, contracted pneumonia …" Uncle Chris sighed. "All over in three days," he said sadly. "Now at that time," he resumed, "I did not know what I know now. If I had heard of Nervino then …" He shook his head. "It might have saved her life. It would have saved her life. I tell you, Mrs Peagrim, that there is nothing, there is no lack of vitality which Nervino cannot set right. I am no physician myself, I speak as a layman, but it acts on the red corpuscles of the blood …"

Mrs Peagrim's face was stony. She had not spoken before, because he had given her no opportunity, but she spoke now in a hard voice.

"Major Selby!"

"Mrs Peagrim?"

"I am not interested in patent medicines!"

"One can hardly call Nervino that," said Uncle Chris reproachfully. "It is a sovereign specific. You can get it at any drug-store. It comes in two sizes, the dollar-fifty—or large—size, and the …"

Mrs Peagrim rose majestically.

"Major Selby, I am tired …"

"Precisely. And, as I say, Nervino …"

"Please," said Mrs. Peagrim coldly, "go to the stage-door and see if you can find my limousine. It should be waiting in the street."

"Certainly," said Uncle Chris. "Why, certainly, certainly, certainly."

He left the box and proceeded across the stage. He walked with a lissom jauntiness. His eye was bright. One or two of those whom he passed on his way had the idea that this fine-looking man was in pain. They fancied that he was moaning. But Uncle Chris was not moaning. He was humming a gay snatch from the lighter music of the 'nineties.

Up on the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamor of the busy city, Wally Mason, at eleven o'clock on the morning after Mrs Peagrim's bohemian party, was greeting the new day, as was his custom, by going through his ante-breakfast exercises. Mankind is divided into two classes, those who do setting-up exercises before breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't. To the former and more praiseworthy class Wally had belonged since boyhood. Life might be vain and the world a void, but still he touched his toes the prescribed number of times and twisted his muscular body about according to the ritual. He did so this morning a little more vigorously than usual, partly because he had sat up too late the night before and thought too much and smoked too much, with the result that he had risen heavy-eyed, at the present disgraceful hour, and partly because he hoped by wearying the flesh to still the restlessness of the spirit. Spring generally made Wally restless, but never previously had it brought him this distracted feverishness. So he lay on his back and waved his legs in the air, and it was only when he had risen and was about to go still further into the matter that he perceived Jill standing beside him.