The Little Warrior | Page 4

all!' I suppose. But not

the Last of the Rookes! For, honestly, old man, between ourselves, I
don't mind admitting that this is the bravest deed of the year, and I'm
dashed if I would do it for anyone else."
"It's very good of you, Freddie . . ."
"That's all right. I'm a Boy Scout, and this is my act of kindness for
today."
Derek got up from the table.
"Of course you mustn't come," he said. "We can't form a sort of
debating society to discuss Jill on the platform at Charing Cross."
"Oh, I would just hang around in the offing, shoving in an occasional
tactful word."
"Nonsense!"
"The wheeze would simply be to . . ."
"It's impossible."
"Oh, very well," said Freddie, damped. "Just as you say, of course. But
there's nothing like a gang, old man, nothing like a gang!"
2.
Derek Underhill threw down the stump of his cigar, and grunted
irritably. Inside Charing Cross Station business was proceeding as
usual. Porters wheeling baggage-trucks moved to and fro like
Juggernauts. Belated trains clanked in, glad to get home, while others,
less fortunate, crept reluctantly out through the blackness and
disappeared into an inferno of detonating fog-signals. For outside the
fog still held. The air was cold and raw and tasted coppery. In the street
traffic moved at a funeral pace, to the accompaniment of hoarse cries
and occasional crashes. Once the sun had worked its way through the
murk and had hung in the sky like a great red orange, but now all was
darkness and discomfort again, blended with that odd suggestion of

mystery and romance which is a London fog's only redeeming quality.
It seemed to Derek that he had been patrolling the platform for a
life-time, but he resumed his sentinel duty. The fact that the boat-train,
being already forty-five minutes overdue, might arrive at any moment
made it imperative that he remain where he was instead of sitting, as he
would much have preferred to sit, in one of the waiting-rooms. It would
be a disaster if his mother should get out of the train and not find him
there to meet her. That was just the sort of thing which would infuriate
her; and her mood, after a Channel crossing and a dreary journey by
rail, would be sufficiently dangerous as it was.
The fog and the waiting had had their effect upon Derek. The resolute
front he had exhibited to Freddie at the breakfast-table had melted since
his arrival at the station, and he was feeling nervous at the prospect of
the meeting that lay before him. Calm as he had appeared to the eye of
Freddie and bravely as he had spoken, Derek, in the recesses of his
heart, was afraid of his mother. There are men--and Derek Underhill
was one of them--who never wholly emerge from the nursery. They
may put away childish things and rise in the world to affluence and
success, but the hand that rocked their cradle still rules their lives. As a
boy, Derek had always been firmly controlled by his mother, and the
sway of her aggressive personality had endured through manhood.
Lady Underhill was a born ruler, dominating most of the people with
whom life brought her in contact. Distant cousins quaked at her name,
while among the male portion of her nearer relatives she was generally
alluded to as The Family Curse.
Now that his meeting with her might occur at any moment, Derek
shrank from it. It was not likely to be a pleasant one. The mere fact that
Lady Underhill was coming to London at all made that improbable.
When a man writes to inform his mother, who is wintering on the
Riviera, that he has become engaged to be married, the natural course
for her to pursue, if she approves of the step, is to wire her
congratulations and good wishes. When for these she substitutes a curt
announcement that she is returning immediately, a certain lack of
complaisance seems to be indicated.

Would his mother approve of Jill? That was the question which he had
been asking himself over and over again as he paced the platform in the
disheartening fog. Nothing had been said, nothing had even been hinted,
but he was perfectly aware that his marriage was a matter regarding
which Lady Underhill had always assumed that she was to be consulted,
even if she did not, as he suspected, claim the right to dictate. And he
had become engaged quite suddenly, without a word to her until it was
all over and settled.
That, as Freddie had pointed out, was the confoundedly awkward part
of it. His engagement had been so sudden. Jill had swept into his life
like a comet. His mother knew