The Little Warrior by P. G. Wodehouse

The shadows deepened. The top of the great building swayed gently, causing the pendulum of the grandfather-clock to knock against the sides of its wooden case. Jill started. The noise, coming after the dead silence, frightened her till she realized what it was. She had a nervous feeling of not being alone. It was as if the shadows held goblins that peered out at the intruder. She darted to the mantelpiece and replaced the photograph. She felt like some heroine of a fairy-story meddling with the contents of the giant’s castle. Soon there would come the sound of a great footstep, thud—thud —

Thud.

Jill’s heart gave another leap. She was perfectly sure she had heard a sound. It had been just like the banging of a door. She braced herself, listening, every muscle tense. And then, cleaving the stillness, came a voice from down the passage—

“Just see them Pullman porters, Dolled up with scented waters Bought with their dimes and quarters! See, here they come! Here they come!”

For an instant Jill could not have said whether she was relieved or more frightened than ever. True, that numbing sense of the uncanny had ceased to grip her, for Reason told her that spectres do not sing rag-time songs. On the other hand, owners of apartments do, and she would almost as readily have faced a spectre as the owner of this apartment. Dizzily, she wandered how in the world she was to explain her presence. Suppose he turned out to be some awful, choleric person who would listen to no explanations.

“Oh, see those starched-up collars! Hark how their captain hollers ‘Keep time! Keep time!’ It’s worth a thousand dollars To see those tip-collectors —“

Very near now. Almost at the door.

“Those upper-berth inspectors, Those Pullman porters on parade!”

A dim, shapeless figure in the black of the doorway, scrabbling of fingers on the wall.

“Where are you, dammit?” said the voice, apparently addressing the electric-light switch.

Jill shrank back, desperate fingers pressing deep into the back of an arm-chair. Light flashed from the wall at her side. And there, in the doorway, stood Wally Mason in his shirt-sleeves.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1.

In these days of rapid movement, when existence has become little more than a series of shocks of varying intensity, astonishment is the shortest-lived of all the emotions. The human brain has trained itself to elasticity and recovers its balance in the presence of the unforeseen with a speed almost miraculous. The man who says ‘I am surprised!’ really means ‘I was surprised a moment ago, but now I have adjusted myself to the situation.’ There was an instant in which Jill looked at Wally and Wally at Jill with the eye of total amazement, and then, almost simultaneously, each began—the process was sub-conscious—to regard this meeting not as an isolated and inexplicable event, but as something resulting from a perfectly logical chain of circumstances. Jill perceived that the presence in the apartment of that snap-shot of herself should have prepared her for the discovery that the place belonged to someone who had known her as a child, and that there was no reason for her to be stunned by the fact that this someone was Wally Mason. Wally, on his side, knew that Jill was in New York; and had already decided, erroneously, that she had found his address in the telephone directory and was paying an ordinary call. It was, perhaps, a little unusual that she should have got into the place without ringing the front door bell and that she should be in his sitting-room in the dark, but these were minor aspects of the matter. To the main fact, that here she was, he had adjusted his mind, and, while there was surprise in his voice when he finally spoke, it was not the surprise of one who suspects himself of seeing visions.

“Hello!” he said.

“Hullo!” said Jill.

It was not a very exalted note on which to pitch the conversation, but it had the merit of giving each of them a little more time to collect themselves.

“This is — I wasn’t expecting you!” said Wally.

“I wasn’t expecting you!” said Jill.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *