The Little Warrior, P. G. Wodehouse [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗
- Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Book online «The Little Warrior, P. G. Wodehouse [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗». Author P. G. Wodehouse
“The Albany,” said Derek to the cabman.
He leaned back against the cushions. His senses were in a whirl. The cab rolled on. Presently his exalted mood vanished as quickly as it had come. Jill absent always affected him differently from Jill present. He was not a man of strong imagination, and the stimulus of her waned when she was not with him. Long before the cab reached the Albany the frown was back on his face.
§ 4.Arriving at the Albany, he found Freddie Rooke lying on his spine in a deep arm-chair. His slippered feet were on the mantelpiece, and he was restoring his wasted tissues with a strong whisky-and-soda. One of the cigars which Parker, the valet, had stamped with the seal of his approval was in the corner of his mouth. The Sporting Times, with a perusal of which he had been soothing his fluttered nerves, had fallen on the floor beside the chair. He had finished reading, and was now gazing peacefully at the ceiling, his mind a perfect blank. There was nothing the matter with Freddie.
“Hullo, old thing,” he observed as Derek entered. “So you buzzed out of the fiery furnace all right? I was wondering how you had got along. How are you feeling? I’m not the man I was! These things get the old system all stirred up! I’ll do anything in reason to oblige and help things along and all that, but to be called on at a moment’s notice to play Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rolled into one, without rehearsal or make-up, is a bit too thick! No, young feller-me-lad! If theatre-fires are going to be the fashion this season, the Last of the Rookes will sit quietly at home and play solitaire. Mix yourself a drink of something, old man, or something of that kind. By the way, your jolly old mater. All right? Not even singed? Fine! Make a long arm and gather in a cigar.”
And Freddie, having exerted himself to play the host in a suitable manner, wedged himself more firmly into his chair and blew a cloud of smoke.
Derek sat down. He lit a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. From the mantelpiece Jill’s photograph smiled down, but he did not look at it. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie had had a trying evening. What he wanted just now was merry prattle, and his friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removed his feet from the mantelpiece, and wriggled himself sideways, so that he could see Derek’s face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from his admiration for Derek, he was a warm-hearted young man, and sympathized with affliction when it presented itself to his notice.
“Something on your mind, old bean?” he enquired delicately.
Derek did not answer for a moment. Then he reflected that, little as he esteemed the other’s mentality, he and Freddie had known each other a long time, and that it would be a relief to confide in some one. And Freddie, moreover, was an old friend of Jill and the man who had introduced him to her.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m listening, old top,” said Freddie. “Release the film.”
Derek drew at his cigar, and watched the smoke as it curled to the ceiling.
“It’s about Jill.”
Freddie signified his interest by wriggling still further sideways.
“Jill, eh?”
“Freddie, she’s so damned impulsive!”
Freddie nearly rolled out of his chair. This, he took it, was what writing-chappies called a coincidence.
“Rummy you should say that,” he ejaculated. “I was telling her exactly the same thing myself only this evening.” He hesitated. “I fancy I can see what you’re driving at, old thing. The watchword is ‘What ho, the mater!’ yes, no? You’ve begun to get a sort of idea that if Jill doesn’t watch her step, she’s apt to sink pretty low in the betting, what? I know exactly what you mean! You and I know all right that Jill’s a topper. But one can see that to your mater she might seem a bit different. I mean to say, your jolly old mater only judging by first impressions, and the meeting not having come off quite as scheduled … I say, old man,” he broke off, “fearfully sorry and all that about that business. You know what I mean! Wouldn’t have had it happen for the world. I take it the mater was a trifle peeved? Not to say perturbed and chagrined? I seemed to notice at dinner.”
“She was furious, of course. She did not refer to the matter when we were alone together, but there was no need to. I knew what she was thinking.”
Derek threw away his cigar. Freddie noted this evidence of an overwrought soul—the thing was only a quarter smoked, and it was a dashed good brand, mark you—with concern.
“The whole thing,” he conceded, “was a bit unfortunate.”
Derek began to pace the room.
“Freddie!”
“On the spot, old man!”
“Something’s got to be done!”
“Absolutely!” Freddie nodded solemnly. He had taken this matter greatly to heart. Derek was his best friend, and he had always been extremely fond of him. It hurt him to see things going wrong. “I’ll tell you what, old bean. Let me handle this binge for you.”
“You?”
“Me! The Final Rooke!” He jumped up, and leaned against the mantelpiece. “I’m the lad to do it. I’ve known Jill for years. She’ll listen to me. I’ll talk to her like a Dutch uncle and make her understand the general scheme of things. I’ll take her out to tea tomorrow and slang her in no uncertain voice! Leave the whole thing to me, laddie!”
Derek considered.
“It might do some good,” he said.
“Good?” said Freddie. “It’s it, dear boy! It’s a wheeze! You toddle off to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll fix the whole thing for you!”
There are streets in London into which the sun seems never to penetrate. Some of these are in fashionable quarters, and it is to be supposed that their inhabitants find an address which looks well on note-paper a sufficient compensation for the gloom that goes with it. The majority, however, are in the mean neighborhoods of the great railway termini, and appear to offer no compensation whatever. They are lean, furtive streets, gray as the January sky with a sort of arrested decay. They smell of cabbage and are much prowled over by vagrom cats. At night they are empty and dark, and a stillness broods on them, broken only by the cracked tingle of an occasional piano playing one of the easier hymns, a form of music to which the dwellers in the dingy houses are greatly addicted. By day they achieve a certain animation through the intermittent appearance of women in aprons, who shake rugs out of the front doors or, emerging from areas, go down to the public-house on the corner with jugs to fetch the supper-beer. In almost every ground-floor window there is a card announcing that furnished lodgings may be had within. You will find these streets by the score if you leave the main thoroughfares and take a short cut on your way to Euston, to Paddington, or to Waterloo. But the dingiest and deadliest and most depressing lie round about Victoria. And Daubeny Street, Pimlico, is one of the worst of them all.
On the afternoon following the events recorded, a girl was dressing in the ground-floor room of Number Nine, Daubeny Street. A tray bearing the remains of a late breakfast stood on the rickety table beside a bowl of wax flowers. From beneath the table peered the green cover of a copy of Variety. A gray parrot in a cage by the window cracked seed and looked out into the room with a satirical eye. He had seen all this so many times before,—Nelly Bryant arraying herself in her smartest clothes to go out and besiege agents in their offices off the Strand. It happened every day. In an hour or two she would come back as usual, say “Oh, Gee!” in a tired sort of voice, and then Bill the parrot’s day proper would begin. He was a bird who liked the sound of his own voice, and he never got the chance of a really sustained conversation till Nelly returned in the evening.
“Who cares?” said Bill, and cracked another seed.
If rooms are an indication of the characters of their occupants, Nelly Bryant came well out of the test of her surroundings. Nothing can make a London furnished room much less horrible than it intends to be, but Nelly had done her best. The furniture, what there was of it, was of that lodging-house kind which resembles nothing else in the world. But a few little touches here and there, a few instinctively tasteful alterations in the general scheme of things, had given the room almost a cosy air. Later on, with the gas lit, it would achieve something approaching homeiness. Nelly, like many another nomad, had taught herself to accomplish a good deal with poor material. On the road in America, she had sometimes made even a bedroom in a small hotel tolerably comfortable, than which there is no greater achievement. Oddly, considering her life, she had a genius for domesticity.
Today, not for the first time, Nelly was feeling unhappy. The face that looked back at her out of the mirror at which she was arranging her most becoming hat was weary. It was only a moderately pretty face, but loneliness and underfeeding had given it a wistful expression that had charm. Unfortunately, it was not the sort of charm which made a great appeal to the stout, whisky-nourished men who sat behind paper-littered tables, smoking cigars, in the rooms marked “Private” in the offices of theatrical agents. Nelly had been out of a “shop” now for many weeks,—ever since, in fact, “Follow the Girl” had finished its long ran at the Regal Theatre.
“Follow the Girl,” an American musical comedy, had come over from New York with an American company, of which Nelly had been a humble unit, and, after playing a year in London and some weeks in the number one towns, had returned to New York. It did not cheer Nelly up in the long evenings in Daubeny Street to reflect that, if she had wished, she could have gone home with the rest of the company. A mad impulse had seized her to try her luck in London, and here she was now, marooned.
“Who cares?” said Bill.
For a bird who enjoyed talking he was a little limited in his remarks and apt to repeat himself.
“I do, you poor fish!” said Nelly, completing her maneuvers with the hat and turning to the cage. “It’s all right for you—you have a swell time with nothing to do but sit there and eat seed—but how do you suppose I enjoy tramping around, looking for work and never finding any?”
She picked up her gloves. “Oh, well!” she said. “Wish me luck!”
“Good-bye, boy!” said the parrot, clinging to the bars.
Nelly thrust a finger into the cage and scratched his head.
“Anxious to get rid of me, aren’t you? Well, so long.”
“Good-bye, boy!”
“All right, I’m going. Be good!”
“Woof-woof-woof!” barked Bill the parrot, not committing himself to any promises.
For some moments after Nelly had gone he remained hunched on his perch, contemplating the infinite. Then he sauntered along to the seed-box and took some more light nourishment. He always liked to spread his meals out, to make them last longer. A drink of water to wash the food down, and he returned to the middle of the cage, where he proceeded to conduct a few intimate researches with his beak under his left wing. After which he mewed like a cat, and relapsed into silent meditation once more. He closed his eyes and pondered on his favorite problem—Why was he a parrot? This was always good for an hour or so, and it was three o’clock before he had come to his customary decision that he didn’t know. Then, exhausted by brain-work and feeling a trifle hipped by the silence of the room, he looked about him for some way of jazzing existence up a little. It occurred to him that if he barked again it might help.
“Woof-woof-woof!”
Good as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. It was not real excitement. Something rather more dashing seemed to him to be indicated. He hammered for a moment or two on the floor of his cage, ate a mouthful of the newspaper there, and stood with his head on one side, chewing thoughtfully. It didn’t taste as good as usual. He suspected Nelly of having changed his Daily Mail for the Daily Express or something. He swallowed the piece of paper, and was struck by the thought that
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