Chapter 22
"Yes, I am. I don't often act this way, but, oh, gee! hearing you all talking like that about going to America, just as if it was the easiest thing in the world, only you couldn't be bothered to do it, kind of got me going. And to think I could be there right now if I wasn't a bonehead!"
"A bonehead?"
"A simp. I'm all right as far up as the string of near-pearls, but above that I'm reinforced concrete."
Freddie groped for her meaning.
"Do you mean you've made a bloomer of some kind?"
"I pulled the worst kind of bone. I stopped on in London when the rest of the company went back home, and now I've got to stick."
"Rush of jolly old professional engagements, what?"
Nelly laughed bitterly.
"You're a bad guesser. No, they haven't started to fight over me yet.
I'm at liberty, as they say in the _Era_."
"But, my dear old thing," said Freddie earnestly, "if you've nothing to keep you in England, why not pop back to America? I mean to say, home-sickness is the most dashed blighted thing in the world. There's nothing gives one the pip to such an extent. Why, dash it, I remember staying with an old aunt of mine up in Scotland the year before last and not being able to get away for three weeks or so, and I raved--absolutely gibbered--for the sight of the merry old metrop.
Sometimes I'd wake up in the night, thinking I was back at the Albany, and, by Jove, when I found I wasn't I howled like a dog! You take my tip, old soul, and pop back on the next boat."
"Which line?"
"How do you mean, which line? Oh, I see, you mean which line? Well...
well... I've never been on any of them, so it's rather hard to say.
But I hear the Cunard well spoken of, and then again some chappies swear by the White Star. But I should imagine you can't go far wrong, whichever you pick. They're all pretty ripe, I fancy."
"Which of them is giving free trips? That's the point."
"Eh? Oh!" Her meaning dawned upon Freddie. He regarded her with deep consternation. Life had treated him so kindly that he had almost forgotten that there existed a cla.s.s which had not as much money as himself. Sympathy welled up beneath his perfectly fitting waistcoat.
It was a purely disinterested sympathy. The
"I say!" he said. "Are you broke?"
Nelly laughed.
"Am I? If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn't even have the hole in the middle."
Freddie was stirred to his depths. Except for the beggars in the streets, to whom he gave s.h.i.+llings, he had not met anyone for years who had not plenty of money. He had friends at his clubs who frequently claimed to be unable to lay their hands on a bally penny, but the bally penny they wanted to lay their hands on generally turned out to be a couple of thousand pounds for a new car.
"Good G.o.d!" he said.
There was a pause. Then, with a sudden impulse, he began to fumble in his breast-pocket. Rummy how things worked out for the best, however scaly they might seem at the moment. Only an hour or so ago he had been kicking himself for not having remembered that fifty-pound note, tacked on to the lining of his coat, when it would have come in handy at the 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 Sat.u.r.day! 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! Rid yourself of the jolly old supposition 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 latch-key, and stood on the step.
"I'll buy a fur-wrap," she said, half to herself.
"Great wheeze! I should!"