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

All the money I had in the world was three-and-six. But by a merciful dispensation of Providence the curate had called that morning and left a money-box for subscriptions to the village organ-fund … It’s wonderful what you can do with a turn for crime and the small blade of a pocket-knife! I don’t think I have ever made money quicker!” He looked at the photograph again. “Not that it seemed quick at the moment. I died at least a dozen agonizing deaths in the few minutes I was operating. Have you ever noticed how slowly time goes when you are coaxing a shilling and a sixpence out of somebody’s money-box? Centuries! But I was forgetting. Of course you’ve had no experience.”

“You poor thing!”

“It was worth it.”

“And you’ve had it ever since!”

“I wouldn’t part with it for all Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim’s millions,” said Wally with sudden and startling vehemence, “if she offered me them.” He paused. “She hasn’t, as a matter of fact.”

There was a silence. Jill looked at Wally furtively, as he returned to his seat. She was seeing him with new eyes. It was as if this trifling incident had removed some sort of a veil. He had suddenly become more alive. For an instant she had seen right into him, to the hidden deeps of his soul. She felt shy and embarrassed.

“Pat died,” she said, at length. She felt the necessity of saying something.

“I liked Pat.”

“He picked up some poison, poor darling … How long ago those days seem, don’t they!”

“They are always pretty vivid to me. I wonder who has that old house of yours now.”

“I heard the other day,” said Jill more easily. The odd sensation of embarrassment was passing. “Some people called … what was the name?… Debenham, I think.”

Silence fell again. It was broken by the front-door bell, like an alarm-clock that shatters a dream.

Wally got up.

“Your uncle,” he said.

“You aren’t going to open the door?”

“That was the scheme.”

“But he’ll get such a shock when he sees you.”

“He must look on it in the light of rent. I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a little passing amusement from this business.”

He left the room. Jill heard the front door open. She waited breathlessly. Pity for Uncle Chris struggled with the sterner feeling that it served him right.

“Hullo!” she heard Wally say.

“Hullo-ullo-ullo!” replied an exuberant voice. “Wondered if I’d find you in, and all that sort of thing. I say, what a deuce of a way up it is here. Sort of gets a chap into training for going to heaven, what? I mean, what?”

Jill looked about her like a trapped animal. It was absurd, she felt, but every nerve in her body cried out against the prospect of meeting Freddie. His very voice had opened old wounds and set them throbbing.

She listened in the doorway. Out of sight down the passage, Freddie seemed by the sounds to be removing his overcoat. She stole out and darted like a shadow down the corridor that led to Wally’s bedroom. The window of the bedroom opened onto the wide roof which Uncle Chris had eulogized. She slipped noiselessly out, closing the window behind her.

§ 2.

“I say, Mason, old top,” said Freddie, entering the sitting-room, “I hope you don’t mind my barging in like this but the fact is things are a bit thick. I’m dashed worried and I didn’t know another soul I could talk it over with. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure you were in New York at all but I remembered hearing you say in London that you went popping back almost at once, so I looked you up in the telephone book and took a chance. I’m dashed glad you are back. When did you arrive?”

“This afternoon.”

“I’ve been here two or three days. Well, it’s a bit of luck catching you. You see, what I want to ask your advice about …”

Wally looked at his watch. He was not surprised to find that Jill had taken to flight. He understood her feelings perfectly, and was anxious to get rid of the inopportune Freddie as soon as possible.

“You’ll have to talk quick, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ve lent this place to a man for the evening, and he’s having some people to dinner. What’s the trouble?”

“It’s about Jill.”

“Jill?”

“Jill Mariner, you know. You remember Jill? You haven’t forgotten my telling you all that? About her losing her money and coming over to America?”

“No. I remember you telling me that.”

Freddie seemed to miss something in his companion’s manner, some note of excitement and perturbation.

“Of course,” he said, as if endeavoring to explain this to himself, “you hardly knew her, I suppose. Only met once since you were kids and all that sort of thing. But I’m a pal of hers and I’m dashed upset by the whole business, I can tell you. It worries me, I mean to say. Poor girl, you know, landed on her uppers in a strange country. Well, I mean, it worries me. So the first thing I did when I got here was to try to find her. That’s why I came over, really, to try to find her. Apart from anything else, you see, poor old Derek is dashed worried about her.”

“Need we bring Underhill in?”

“Oh, I know you don’t like him and think he behaved rather rummily and so forth, but that’s all right now.”

“It is, is it?” said Wally drily.

“Oh, absolutely. It’s all on again.”

“What’s all on again?”

“Why, I mean he wants to marry Jill. I came over to find her and tell her so.”

Wally’s eyes glowed.

“If you have come over as an ambassador …”

“That’s right. Jolly old ambassador. Very word I used myself.”

“I say, if you have come over as an ambassador with the idea of reopening negotiations with Jill on behalf of that infernal swine …”

“Old man!” protested Freddie, pained. “Pal of mine, you know.”

“If he is, after what’s happened, your mental processes are beyond me.”

“My what, old son?”

“Your mental processes.”

“Oh, ah!” said Freddie, learning for the first time that he had any.

Wally looked at him intently. There was a curious expression on his rough-hewn face.

“I can’t understand you, Freddie. If ever there was a fellow who might have been expected to take the only possible view of Underhill’s behavior in this business, I should have said it was you. You’re a public-school man. You’ve mixed all the time with decent people. You wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t straight yourself to save your life, it seems to have made absolutely no difference in your opinion of this man Underhill that he behaved like an utter cad to a girl who was one of your best friends. You seem to worship him just as much as ever. And you have travelled three thousand miles to bring a message from him to Jill—Good God! Jill!—to the effect, as far as I understand it, that he has thought it over and come to the conclusion that after all she may possibly be good enough for him!”

Freddie recovered the eye-glass which the raising of his eyebrows had caused to fall, and polished it in a crushed sort of way. Rummy, he reflected, how chappies stayed the same all their lives as they were when they were kids. Nasty, tough sort of chap Wally Mason had been as a boy, and here he was, apparently, not altered a bit. At least, the only improvement he could detect was that, whereas in the old days Wally, when in an ugly mood like this, would undoubtedly have kicked him, he now seemed content with mere words. All the same, he was being dashed unpleasant. And he was all wrong about poor old Derek. This last fact he endeavored to make clear.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t realize. You’ve never met Lady Underhill, have you?”

“What has she got to do with it?”

“Everything, old bean, everything. If it hadn’t been for her, there wouldn’t have been any trouble of any description, sort, or order. But she barged in and savaged poor old Derek till she absolutely made him break off the engagement.”

“If you call him ‘poor old Derek’ again, Freddie,” said Wally viciously, “I’ll drop you out of the window and throw your hat after you! If he’s such a gelatine-backboned worm that his mother can …”

“You don’t know her, old thing! She’s the original hellhound!”

“I don’t care what …”

“Must be seen to be believed,” mumbled Freddie.

“I don’t care what she’s like! Any man who could …”

“Once seen, never forgotten!”

“Damn you! Don’t interrupt every time I try to get a word in!”

“Sorry, old man! Shan’t occur again!”

Wally moved to the window, and stood looking out. He had had much more to say on the subject of Derek Underhill, but Freddie’s interruptions had put it out of his head, and he felt irritated and baffled.

“Well, all I can say is,” he remarked savagely, “that, if you have come over here as an ambassador to try and effect a reconciliation between Jill and Underhill, I hope to God you’ll never find her.”

Freddie emitted a weak cough, like a very far-off asthmatic old sheep. He was finding Wally more overpowering every moment. He had rather forgotten the dear old days of his childhood, but this conversation was beginning to refresh his memory: and he was realizing more vividly with every moment that passed how very Wallyish Wally was,—how extraordinarily like the Wally who had dominated his growing intellect when they were both in Eton suits. Freddie in those days had been all for peace, and he was all for peace now. He made his next observation diffidently.

“I have found her!”

Wally spun round.

“What!”

“When I say that, I don’t absolutely mean. I’ve seen her. I mean I know where she is. That’s what I came round to see you about. Felt I must talk it over, you know. The situation seems to me dashed rotten and not a little thick. The fact is, old man, she’s gone on the stage. In the chorus, you know. And, I mean to say, well, if you follow what I’m driving at, what, what?”

“In the chorus!”

“In the chorus!”

“How do you know?”

Freddie groped for his eye-glass, which had fallen again.

He regarded it a trifle sternly. He was fond of the little chap, but it was always doing that sort of thing. The whole trouble was that, if you wanted to keep it in its place, you simply couldn’t register any sort of emotion with the good old features: and, when you were chatting with a fellow like Wally Mason, you had to be registering something all the time.

“Well, that was a bit of luck, as a matter of fact. When I first got here, you know, it seemed to me the only thing to do was to round up a merry old detective and put the matter in his hands, like they do in stories. You know! Ring at the bell. ‘And this, if I mistake not, Watson, is my client now.’ And then in breezes client and spills the plot. I found a sleuth in the classified telephone directory, and toddled round. Rummy chaps, detectives! Ever met any? I always thought they were lean, hatchet-faced Johnnies with inscrutable smiles. This one looked just like my old Uncle Ted, the one who died of apoplexy. Jovial, puffy-faced bird, who kept bobbing up behind a fat cigar. Have you ever noticed what whacking big cigars these fellows over here smoke? Rummy country, America. You ought to have seen the way this blighter could shift his cigar right across his face without moving his jaw-muscles. Like a flash! Most remarkable thing you ever saw, I give you my honest word! He …”

“Couldn’t you keep your Impressions of America for the book you’re going to write, and come to the point?” said Wally rudely.

“Sorry, old chap,” said Freddie meekly. “Glad you reminded me. Well … Oh, yes. We had got as far as the jovial old human bloodhound, hadn’t we? Well, I put the matter before this chappie. Told him I wanted to find a girl, showed him a photograph, and so forth. I say,” said Freddie, wandering off once more into speculation, “why is it that coves like that always talk of a girl as ‘the little lady’? This chap kept saying ‘We’ll find the little lady for you!’ Oh, well, that’s rather off the rails, isn’t it? It just floated across my mind and I thought I’d mention it. Well, this blighter presumably nosed about and made enquiries for a couple of days, but didn’t effect anything that you might call substantial. I’m not blaming him, mind you. I shouldn’t care to have a job like that myself. I mean to say, when you come to think of what a frightful number of girls there are in this place, to have to