The Little Warrior

"You speak as if you were inviting me to a garden-party! No, I won't take a stab at it. You've a lot to learn about women, Freddie!"

"Women are rum!" conceded that perplexed ambassador.

Jill began to move away.

"Don't go!" urged Freddie.

"Why not? What's the use of talking any more? Have you ever broken an arm or a leg, Freddie?"

"Yes," said Freddie, mystified. "As a matter of fact, my last year at Oxford, playing soccer for the college in a friendly game, some blighter barged into me and I came down on my wrist. But …"

"It hurt?"

"Like the deuce!"

"And then it began to get better, I suppose. Well, used you to hit it and twist it and prod it, or did you leave it alone to try and heal? I won't talk any more about Derek! I simply won't! I'm all smashed up inside, and I don't know if I'm ever going to get well again, but at least I'm going to give myself a chance. I'm working as hard as ever I can, and I'm forcing myself not to think of him. I'm in a sling, Freddie, like your wrist, and I don't want to be prodded. I hope we shall see a lot of each other while you're over here—you always were the greatest dear in the world—but you mustn't mention Derek again, and you mustn't ask me to go home. If you avoid those subjects, we'll be as happy as possible. And now I'm going to leave you to talk to poor Nelly. She has been hovering round for the last ten minutes, waiting for a chance to speak to you. She worships you, you know!"

Freddie started violently.

"Oh, I say! What rot!"

Jill had gone, and he was still gaping after her, when Nelly Bryant moved towards him—shyly, like a worshiper approaching a shrine.

"Hello, Mr Rooke!" said Nelly.

"Hullo-ullo-ullo!" said Freddie.

Nelly fixed her large eyes on his face. A fleeting impression passed through Freddie's mind that she was looking unusually pretty this morning: nor was the impression unjustified. Nelly was wearing for the first time a Spring suit which was the outcome of hours of painful selection among the wares of a dozen different stores, and the knowledge that the suit was just right seemed to glow from her like an inner light. She felt happy: and her happiness had lent an unwonted color to her face and a soft brightness to her eyes.

"How nice it is, your being here!"

Freddie waited for the inevitable question, the question with which Jill had opened their conversation; but it did not come. He was surprised, but relieved. He hated long explanations, and he was very doubtful whether loyalty to Jill could allow him to give them to Nelly. His reason for being where he was had to do so intimately with Jill's most private affairs. A wave of gratitude to Nelly swept through him when he realised that she was either incurious or else too delicate-minded to show inquisitiveness.

As a matter of fact, it was delicacy that kept Nelly silent. Seeing Freddie here at the theatre, she had, as is not uncommon with fallible mortals, put two and two together and made the answer four when it was not four at all. She had been deceived by circumstantial evidence. Jill, whom she had left in England wealthy and secure, she had met again in New York penniless as the result of some Stock Exchange cataclysm in which, she remembered with the vagueness with which one recalls once-heard pieces of information, Freddie Rooke had been involved. True, she seemed to recollect hearing that Freddie's losses had been comparatively slight, but his presence in the chorus of "The Rose of America" seemed to her proof that after all the must have been devastating. She could think of no other reason except loss of money which could have placed Freddie in the position in which she now found him, so she accepted it; and, with the delicacy which was innate in her and which a hard life had never blunted, decided, directly she saw him, to make no allusion to the disaster.

Such was Nelly's view of the matter, and sympathy gave to her manner a kind of maternal gentleness which acted on Freddie, raw from his late encounter with Mr Johnson Miller and disturbed by Jill's attitude in the matter of poor old Derek, like a healing balm. His emotions were too chaotic for analysis, but one thing stood out clear from the welter—the fact that he was glad to be with Nelly as he had never been glad to be with a girl before, and found her soothing as he had never supposed a girl could be soothing.

They talked desultorily of unimportant things, and every minute found Freddie more convinced that Nelly was not as other girls. He felt that he must see more of her.

"I say," he said. "When this binge is over … when the rehearsal finishes, you know, how about a bite to eat?"

"I should love it. I generally go to the Automat."

"The how-much? Never heard of it."

"In Times Square. It's cheap, you know."

"I was thinking of the Cosmopolis."

"But that's so expensive."

"Oh, I don't know. Much the same as any of the other places, isn't it?"

Nelly's manner became more motherly than ever. She bent forward and touched his arm affectionately.