The Little Warrior by P. G. Wodehouse (top 50 books to read txt) 📗

I’ll cut him dead. Only I don’t know him to speak to, dash it!” concluded Ronny regretfully.

Ronny’s news had upset Freddie. Derek had returned to the Albany a couple of days ago, moody and silent. They had lunched together at the Bachelors, and Freddie had been pained at the attitude of his fellow clubmen. Usually, when he lunched at the Bachelors, his table became a sort of social center. Cheery birds would roll up to pass the time of day, and festive old eggs would toddle over to have coffee and so forth, and all that sort of thing. Jolly! On this occasion nobody had rolled, and all the eggs present had taken their coffee elsewhere. There was an uncomfortable chill in the atmosphere of which Freddie had been acutely conscious, though Derek had not appeared to notice it. The thing had only come home to Derek yesterday at the Albany, when the painful episode of Wally Mason had occurred. It was this way:

“Hullo, Freddie, old top! Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Freddie looked up from his broken meditations, to find that his host had arrived.

“Hullo!”

“A quick bracer,” said Algy Martyn, “and then the jolly old food-stuffs. It’s pretty late, I see. Didn’t notice how time was slipping.”

Over the soup, Freddie was still a prey to gloom. For once the healing gin-and-vermouth had failed to do its noble work. He sipped sombrely, so sombrely as to cause comment from his host.

“Pipped?” enquired Algy solicitously.

“Pretty pipped,” admitted Freddie.

“Backed a loser?”

“No.”

“Something wrong with the old tum?”

“No. … Worried.”

“Worried?”

“About Derek.”

“Derek? Who’s … ? Oh, you mean Underhill?”

“Yes.”

Algy Martyn chased an elusive piece of carrot about his soup plate, watching it interestedly as it slid coyly from the spoon.

“Oh?” he said, with sudden coolness. “What about him?”

Freddie was too absorbed in his subject to notice the change in his friend’s tone.

“A dashed unpleasant thing,” he said, “happened yesterday morning at my place. I was just thinking about going out to lunch, when the door-bell rang and Parker said a chappie of the name of Mason would like to see me. I didn’t remember any Mason, but Parker said the chappie said he knew me when I was a kid. So he loosed him into the room, and it turned out to be a fellow I used to know years ago down in Worcestershire. I didn’t know him from Adam at first, but gradually the old bean got to work, and I placed him. Wally Mason his name was. Rummily enough, he had spoken to me at the Leicester that night when the fire was, but not being able to place him, I had given him the miss somewhat. You know how it is. Chappie you’ve never been introduced to says something to you in a theatre, and you murmur something and sheer off. What?”

“Absolutely,” agreed Algy Martyn. He thoroughly approved of Freddie’s code of etiquette. Sheer off. Only thing to do.

“Well, anyhow, now that he had turned up again and told me who he was, I began to remember. We had been kids together, don’t you know. (What’s this? Salmon? Oh, right ho.) So I buzzed about and did the jovial host, you know; gave him a drink and a toofer, and all that sort of thing; and talked about the dear old days and what not. And so forth, if you follow me. Then he brought the conversation round to Jill. Of course he knew Jill at the same time when he knew me, down in Worcestershire, you see. We were all pretty pally in those days, if you see what I mean. Well, this man Mason, it seems, had heard somewhere about Jill losing her money, and he wanted to know if it was true. I said absolutely. Hadn’t heard any details, but Ronny had told me and Ronny had had it from some one who had stable information and all that sort of thing. ‘Dashed shame, isn’t it!’ I said. ‘She’s gone to America, you know.’ ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I understood she was going to be married quite soon.’ Well, of course, I told him that that was off. He didn’t say anything for a bit, then he said ‘Off?’ I said ‘Off.’ ‘Did she break it off?’ asked the chappie. ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact Derek broke it off.’ He said ‘Oh!’ (What? Oh yes, a bit of pheasant will be fine.) Where was I? Oh, yes. He said ‘Oh!’ Now, before this, I ought to tell you, this chappie Mason had asked me to come out and have a bit of lunch. I had told him I was lunching with Derek, and he said ‘Right ho,’ or words to that effect, ‘Bring him along.’ Derek had been out for a stroll, you see, and we were waiting for him to come in. Well, just at this point or juncture, if you know what I mean, in he came, and I said ‘Oh, what ho!’ and introduced Wally Mason. ‘Oh, do you know Underhill?’ I said, or something like that. You know the sort of thing. And then …”

Freddie broke off and drained his glass. The recollection of that painful moment had made him feverish. Social difficulties always did.

“Then what?” enquired Algy Martyn.

“Well, it, was pretty rotten. Derek held out his hand, as a chappie naturally would, being introduced to a strange chappie, and Wally Mason, giving it an absolute miss, went on talking to me just as if we were alone, you know. Look here. Here was I, where this knife is. Derek over here—this fork—with his hand out. Mason here—this bit of bread. Mason looks at his watch, and says ‘I’m sorry, Freddie, but I find I’ve an engagement for lunch. So long!’ and biffed out, without apparently knowing Derek was on the earth. I mean …” Freddie reached for his glass, “What I mean is, it was dashed embarrassing. I mean, cutting a fellow dead in my rooms. I don’t know when I’ve felt so rotten!”

Algy Martyn delivered judgment with great firmness.

“Chappie was perfectly right!”

“No, but I mean …”

“Absolutely correct-o,” insisted Algy sternly. “Underhill can’t dash about all over the place giving the girl he’s engaged to the mitten because she’s broke, and expect no notice to be taken of it. If you want to know what I think, old man, your pal Underhill—I can’t imagine what the deuce you see in him, but, school together and so forth, makes a difference, I suppose,—I say, if you want to know what I think, Freddie, the blighter Underhill would be well advised either to leg it after Jill and get her to marry him or else lie low for a goodish while till people have forgotten the thing. I mean to say, fellows like Ronny and I and Dick Wimpole and Archie Studd and the rest of our lot,—well, we all knew Jill and thought she was a topper and had danced with her here and there and seen her about and all that, and naturally we feel pretty strongly about the whole dashed business. Underhill isn’t in our particular set, but we all know most of the people he knows, and we talk about this business, and the thing gets about, and there you are! My sister, who was a great pal of Jill’s, swears that all the girls she knows mean to cut Underhill. I tell you, Freddie, London’s going to get pretty hot for him if he doesn’t do something dashed quick and with great rapidity!”

“But you haven’t got the story right, old thing!”

“How not?”

“Well, I mean you think and Ronny thinks and all the rest of you think that Derek broke off the engagement because of the money. It wasn’t that at all.”

“What was it, then?”

“Well … Well, look here, it makes me seem a fearful ass and all that, but I’d better tell you. Jill and I were going down one of those streets near Victoria and a blighter was trying to slay a parrot …”

“Parrot-shooting’s pretty good in those parts, they tell me,” interjected Algy satirically.

“Don’t interrupt, old man. This parrot had got out of one of the houses, and a fellow was jabbing at it with a stick, and Jill—you know what she’s like; impulsive, I mean, and all that—Jill got hold of the stick and biffed him with some vim, and a policeman rolled up and the fellow made a fuss and the policeman took Jill and me off to chokey. Well, like an ass, I sent round to Derek to bail us out, and that’s how he heard of the thing. Apparently he didn’t think a lot of it, and the result was that he broke off the engagement.”

Algy Martin had listened to this recital with growing amazement.

“He broke it off because of that?”

“Yes.”

“What absolute rot!” said Algy Martyn. “I don’t believe a word of it!”

“I say, old man!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” repeated Algy firmly. “And nobody else will either. It’s dashed good of you, Freddie, to cook up a yarn like that to try and make things look better for the blighter, but it won’t work. Such a damn silly story, too!” said Algy with some indignation.

“But it’s true!”

“What’s the use, Freddie, between old pals?” said Algy protestingly. “You know perfectly well that Underhill’s a cootie of the most pronounced order, and that, when he found out that Jill hadn’t any money, he chucked her.”

“But why should Derek care whether Jill was well off or not? He’s got enough money of his own.”

“Nobody,” said Algy judicially, “has got enough money of his own. Underhill thought he was marrying a girl with a sizeable chunk of the ready, and, when the fuse blew out, he decided it wasn’t good enough. For Heaven’s sake don’t let’s talk any more about the blighter. It gives me a pain to think of him.”

And Algy Martyn, suppressing every effort which Freddie made to reopen the subject, turned the conversation to more general matters.

§ 2.

Freddie returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness. Algy’s remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him. Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of street-fulls of men, long Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something had got to be done. He was devoted to Derek. This sort of thing was as bad as being cut himself. Whatever Freddie’s limitations in the matter of brain, he had a large heart and an infinite capacity for faithfulness in his friendships.

The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded repletion which city dinners induce. The dry-salters, on these occasions when they cast off for a night the cares and anxieties of dry-salting, do their guests well, and Derek had that bloated sense of foreboding which comes to a man whose stomach is not his strong point after twelve courses and a multitude of mixed wines. A goose, qualifying for the role of a pot of pate de foies gras, probably has exactly the same jaundiced outlook.

Yet, unfavorably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the subject. He thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and what Algy had said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and he nerved himself to the task.

“Derek, old top.”

A grunt.

“I say, Derek, old bean.”

Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he stood, warming his legs at the blaze.

“Well?”

Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.

“I say, you know, about Jill!”

He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire