The Little Warrior, P. G. Wodehouse [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

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!

§ 2.

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.

“Nice girl,” said Uncle Chris. “Who was she?”

“Somebody Freddie met,” said Jill diplomatically. There was no need to worry Uncle Chris with details of the afternoon’s happenings.

“Very nice girl.” Uncle Chris took out his cigar-case. “No need to ask if I may, thank goodness.” He lit a cigar. “Do you remember, Jill, years ago, when you were quite small, how I used to blow smoke in your face?”

Jill smiled.

“Of course I do. You said that you were training me for marriage. You said that there were no happy marriages except where the wife didn’t mind the smell of tobacco. Well, it’s lucky, as a matter of fact, for Derek smokes all the time.”

Uncle Chris took up his favorite stand against the fireplace.

“You’re very fond of Derek, aren’t you, Jill?”

“Of course I am. You are, too, aren’t you?”

“Fine chap. Very fine chap. Plenty of money, too. It’s a great relief,” said Uncle Chris, puffing vigorously. “A thundering relief.” He looked over Jill’s head down the room. “It’s fine to think of you happily married, dear, with everything in the world that you want.”

Uncle Chris’ gaze wandered down to where Jill sat. A slight mist affected his eyesight. Jill had provided a solution for the great problem of his life. Marriage had always appalled him, but there was this to be said for it, that married people had daughters. He had always wanted a daughter, a smart girl he could take out and be proud of; and fate had given him Jill at precisely the right age. A child would have bored Uncle Chris—he was fond of children, but they made the deuce of a noise and regarded jam as an external ornament—but a delightful little girl of fourteen was different. Jill and he had been very close to each other since her mother had died, a year after the death of her father, and had left her in his charge. He had watched her grow up with a joy that had a touch of bewilderment in it—she seemed to grow so quickly—and had been fonder and prouder of her at every stage of her tumultuous career.

“You’re a dear,” said Jill. She stroked the trouser-leg that was nearest. “How do you manage to get such a wonderful crease? You really are a credit to me!”

There was a momentary silence. A shade of embarrassment made itself noticeable in Uncle Chris’ frank gaze. He gave a little cough, and pulled at his mustache.

“I wish I were, my dear,” he said soberly. “I wish I were. I’m afraid I’m a poor sort of fellow, Jill.”

Jill looked up.

“What do you mean?”

“A poor sort of fellow,” repeated Uncle Chris. “Your mother was foolish to trust you to me. Your father had more sense. He always said I was a wrong’un.”

Jill got up quickly. She was certain now that she had been right, and that there was something on her uncle’s mind.

“What’s the matter, Uncle Chris? Something’s happened. What is it?”

Uncle Chris turned to knock the ash off his cigar. The movement gave him time to collect himself for what lay before him. He had one of those rare volatile natures which can ignore the blows of fate so long as their effects are not brought home by visible evidence of disaster. He lived in the moment, and, though matters had been as bad at breakfast-time as they were now, it was not till now, when he confronted Jill, that he had found his cheerfulness affected by them. He was a man who hated ordeals, and one faced him now. Until this moment he had been able to detach his mind from a state of affairs which would have weighed unceasingly upon another man. His mind was a telephone which he could cut off at will, when the voice of Trouble wished to speak. The time would arrive, he had been aware, when he would have to pay attention to that voice, but so far he had refused to listen. Now it could be evaded no longer.

“Jill.”

“Yes?”

Uncle Chris paused again, searching for the best means of saying what had to be said.

“Jill, I don’t know if you understand about these things, but there was what is called a slump on the Stock Exchange this morning. In other words …”

Jill laughed.

“Of course I know all about that,” she said. “Poor Freddie wouldn’t talk about anything else till I made him. He was terribly blue when he got here this afternoon. He said he had got ‘nipped’ in Amalgamated Dyes. He had lost about two hundred pounds, and was furious with a friend of his who had told him to buy margins.”

Uncle Chris cleared his throat.

“Jill, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. I bought Amalgamated Dyes, too.” He worried his mustache. “I lost heavily, very heavily.”

“How naughty of you! You know you oughtn’t to gamble.”

“Jill, you must be brave. I—I—well, the fact is—it’s no good beating about the bush—I lost everything! Everything!”

“Everything?”

“Everything! It’s all gone! All fooled away. It’s a terrible business. This house will have to go.”

“But—but doesn’t the house belong to me?”

“I was your trustee, dear.” Uncle Chris smoked furiously. “Thank heaven you’re going to marry a rich man!”

Jill stood looking at him, perplexed. Money, as money, had never entered into her life. There were things one wanted, which had to be paid for with money, but Uncle Chris had always looked after that. She had taken them for granted.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

And then suddenly she realized that she did, and a great wave of pity for Uncle Chris flooded over her. He was such an old dear. It must be horrible for him to have to stand there, telling her all this. She felt no sense of injury, only the discomfort of having to witness the humiliation of her oldest friend. Uncle Chris was bound up inextricably with everything in her life that was pleasant. She could remember him, looking exactly the same, only with a thicker and wavier crop of hair, playing with her patiently and unwearied for hours in the hot sun, a cheerful martyr. She could remember sitting up with him when she came home from her first grown-up dance, drinking cocoa and talking and talking and talking till the birds outside sang the sun high up into the sky and it was breakfast-time. She could remember theatres with him, and jolly little suppers afterwards; expeditions into the country, with lunches at queer old inns; days on the river, days at Hurlingham, days at Lords’, days at the Academy. He had always been the same, always cheerful, always kind. He was Uncle Chris, and he would always be Uncle Chris, whatever he had done or whatever he might do. She slipped her arm in his and gave it a squeeze.

“Poor old thing!” she said.

Uncle Chris had been looking straight out before him with those fine blue eyes of his. There had been just a touch of sternness in his attitude. A stranger, coming into the room at that moment, would have said that here was a girl trying to coax her blunt, straightforward, military father into some course of action of which his honest nature disapproved. He might have been posing for a statue of Rectitude. As Jill spoke, he seemed to cave in.

“Poor old thing?” he repeated limply.

“Of course you are! And stop trying to look dignified and tragic! Because it doesn’t suit you. You’re much too well dressed.”

“But, my dear, you don’t understand! You haven’t realized!”

“Yes, I do. Yes, I have!”

“I’ve spent all your money—your money!”

“I know! What does it matter?”

“What does it matter! Jill, don’t you hate me?”

“As if anyone could hate an old darling like you!”

Uncle Chris threw away his cigar, and put his arms round Jill. For a moment a dreadful fear came to her that he was going to cry. She prayed that he wouldn’t cry. It would be too awful. It would be a memory of which she could never rid herself. She felt as though he were someone extraordinarily young and unable to look after himself, someone she must soothe and protect.

“Jill,” said Uncle Chris, choking, “you’re—you’re—you’re a little warrior!”

Jill kissed him, and moved away. She busied herself with some flowers, her back turned. The tension had been relieved, and she wanted to give him time to recover his poise. She knew him well enough to be sure that, sooner or later, the resiliency of his