3.
Not having a cigarette of his own, Derek got up and went to look for the only man he knew who could give him one: and after a search of a few minutes came upon Freddie all alone in a dark corner, apart from the throng. It was a very different Freddie from the moody youth who had returned to the box after his conversation with Uncle Chris. He was leaning against a piece of scenery with his head tilted back and a beam of startled happiness on his face. So rapt was he in his reflections that he did not become aware of Derek’s approach until the latter spoke.
“Got a cigarette, Freddie?”
Freddie withdrew his gaze from the roof.
“Hullo, old son! Cigarette? Certainly and by all means. Cigarettes? Where are the cigarettes? Mr. Rooke, forward! Show cigarettes.” He extended his case to Derek, who helped himself in sombre silence, finding his boyhood’s friend’s exuberance hard to bear. “I say, Derek, old scream, the most extraordinary thing has happened! You’ll never guess. To cut a long story short and come to the blow-out of the scenario, I’m engaged! Engaged, old crumpet! You know what I mean—engaged to be married!”
“Uh?” said Derek gruffly, frowning over his cigarette.
“Don’t wonder you’re surprised,” said Freddie, looking at him a little wistfully, for his friend had scarcely been gushing, and he would have welcomed a bit of enthusiasm. “Can hardly believe it myself.”
Derek awoke to a sense of the conventions.
“Congratulate you,” he said. “Do I know her?”
“Not yet, but you soon will. She’s a girl in the company,—in the chorus, as a matter of fact. Girl named Nelly Bryant. An absolute corker. I’ll go further—a topper. You’ll like her, old man.”
Derek was looking at him, amazed.
“Good Heavens!” he said.
“Extraordinary how these things happen,” proceeded Freddie. “Looking back, I can see, of course, that I always thought her a topper, but the idea of getting engaged—I don’t know—sort of thing that doesn’t occur to a chappie, if you know what I mean. What I mean to say is, we had always been the greatest of pals and all that, but it never struck me that she would think it much of a wheeze getting hooked up for life with a chap like me. We just sort of drifted along and so forth. All very jolly and what not. And then this evening—I don’t know. I had a bit of a hump, what with one thing and another, and she was most dashed sweet and patient and soothing and—and—well, and what not, don’t you know, and suddenly—deuced rummy sensation—the jolly old scales seemed to fall, if you follow me, from my good old eyes; I don’t know if you get the idea. I suddenly seemed to look myself squarely in the eyeball and say to myself, ‘Freddie, old top, how do we go? Are we not missing a good thing?’ And, by Jove, thinking it over, I found that I was absolutely correct-o! You’ve no notion how dashed sympathetic she is, old man! I mean to say, I had this hump, you know, owing to one thing and another, and was feeling that life was more or less of a jolly old snare and delusion, and she bucked me up and all that, and suddenly I found myself kissing her and all that sort of rot, and she was kissing me and so on and so forth, and she’s got the most ripping eyes, and there was nobody about, and the long and the short of it was, old boy, that I said, ‘Let’s get married!’ and she said, ‘When?’ and that was that, if you see what I mean. The scheme now is to pop down to the City Hall and get a license, which it appears you have to have if you want to bring this sort of binge off with any success and vim, and then what ho for the padre! Looking at it from every angle, a bit of a good egg, what! Happiest man in the world, and all that sort of thing.”
At this point in his somewhat incoherent epic Freddie paused. It had occurred to him that he had perhaps laid himself open to a charge of monopolizing the conversation.