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The Adventures of Sally

by P. G. Wodehouse · English · Gutenberg #7464 · 453,301 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Adventures of Sally

Author: P. G. Wodehouse


        
Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #7464]
                Most recently updated: August 18, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7464

Credits: Produced by Tim Barnett, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF SALLY ***




Produced by Tim Barnett





THE ADVENTURES OF SALLY


By P. G. Wodehouse





CHAPTER I. SALLY GIVES A PARTY



1

Sally looked contentedly down the long table. She felt happy at last.
Everybody was talking and laughing now, and her party, rallying after an
uncertain start, was plainly the success she had hoped it would be. The
first atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint, caused, she was only too
well aware, by her brother Fillmore's white evening waistcoat, had
worn off; and the male and female patrons of Mrs. Meecher's select
boarding-house (transient and residential) were themselves again.

At her end of the table the conversation had turned once more to the
great vital topic of Sally's legacy and what she ought to do with it.
The next best thing to having money of one's own, is to dictate the
spending of somebody else's, and Sally's guests were finding a good deal
of satisfaction in arranging a Budget for her. Rumour having put the
sum at their disposal at a high figure, their suggestions had certain
spaciousness.

“Let me tell you,” said Augustus Bartlett, briskly, “what I'd do, if
I were you.” Augustus Bartlett, who occupied an intensely subordinate
position in the firm of Kahn, Morris and Brown, the Wall Street brokers,
always affected a brisk, incisive style of speech, as befitted a man
in close touch with the great ones of Finance. “I'd sink a couple of
hundred thousand in some good, safe bond-issue--we've just put one out
which you would do well to consider--and play about with the rest. When
I say play about, I mean have a flutter in anything good that crops up.
Multiple Steel's worth looking at. They tell me it'll be up to a hundred
and fifty before next Saturday.”

Elsa Doland, the pretty girl with the big eyes who sat on Mr. Bartlett's
left, had other views.

“Buy a theatre, Sally, and put on good stuff.”

“And lose every bean you've got,” said a mild young man, with a deep
voice across the table. “If I had a few hundred thousand,” said the
mild young man, “I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the
heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke
has been got at and means to lie down in the seventh...”

“Say, listen,” interrupted another voice, “lemme tell you what I'd do
with four hundred thousand...”

“If I had four hundred thousand,” said Elsa Doland, “I know what would
be the first thing I'd do.”

“What's that?” asked Sally.

“Pay my bill for last week, due this morning.”

Sally got up quickly, and flitting down the table, put her arm round her
friend's shoulder and whispered in her ear:

“Elsa darling, are you really broke? If you are, you know, I'll...”

Elsa Doland laughed.

“You're an angel, Sally. There's no one like you. You'd give your last
cent to anyone. Of course I'm not broke. I've just come back from the
road, and I've saved a fortune. I only said that to draw you.”

Sally returned to her seat, relieved, and found that the company had now
divided itself into two schools of thought. The conservative and prudent
element, led by Augustus Bartlett, had definitely decided on three
hundred thousand in Liberty Bonds and the rest in some safe real estate;
while the smaller, more sporting section, impressed by the mild young
man's inside information, had already placed Sally's money on Benny
Whistler, doling it out cautiously in small sums so as not to spoil the
market. And so solid, it seemed, was Mr. Tuke's reputation with those
in the inner circle of knowledge that the mild young man was confident
that, if you went about the matter cannily and without precipitation,
three to one might be obtained. It seemed to Sally that the time had
come to correct certain misapprehensions.

“I don't know where you get your figures,” she said, “but I'm afraid
they're wrong. I've just twenty-five thousand dollars.”

The statement had a chilling effect. To these jugglers with
half-millions the amount mentioned seemed for the moment almost too
small to bother about. It was the sort of sum which they had been
mentally setting aside for the heiress's car fare. Then they managed to
adjust their minds to it. After all, one could do something even with a
pittance like twenty-five thousand.

“If I'd twenty-five thousand,” said Augustus Bartlett, the first to
rally from the shock, “I'd buy Amalgamated...”

“If I had twenty-five thousand...” began Elsa Doland.

“If I'd had twenty-five thousand in the year nineteen hundred,” observed
a gloomy-looking man with spectacles, “I could have started a revolution
in Paraguay.”

He brooded sombrely on what might have been.

“Well, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do,” said Sally. “I'm
going to start with a trip to Europe... France, specially. I've heard
France well spoken of--as soon as I can get my passport; and after I've
loafed there for a few weeks, I'm coming back to look about and find
some nice cosy little business which will let me put money into it and
keep me in luxury. Are there any complaints?”

“Even a couple of thousand on Benny Whistler...” said the mild young
man.

“I don't want your Benny Whistler,” said Sally. “I wouldn't have him if
you gave him to me. If I want to lose money, I'll go to Monte Carlo and
do it properly.”

“Monte Carlo,” said the gloomy man, brightening up at the magic name.
“I was in Monte Carlo in the year '97, and if I'd had another fifty
dollars... just fifty... I'd have...”

At the far end of the table there was a stir, a cough, and the grating
of a chair on the floor; and slowly, with that easy grace which actors
of the old school learned in the days when acting was acting, Mr.
Maxwell Faucitt, the boarding-house's oldest inhabitant, rose to his
feet.

“Ladies,” said Mr. Faucitt, bowing courteously, “and...” ceasing to bow
and casting from beneath his white and venerable eyebrows a quelling
glance at certain male members of the boarding-house's younger set who
were showing a disposition towards restiveness, “... gentlemen. I feel
that I cannot allow this occasion to pass without saying a few words.”

His audience did not seem surprised. It was possible that life, always
prolific of incident in a great city like New York, might some day
produce an occasion which Mr. Faucitt would feel that he could allow to
pass without saying a few words; but nothing of the sort had happened as
yet, and they had given up hope. Right from the start of the meal they
had felt that it would be optimism run mad to expect the old gentleman
to abstain from speech on the night of Sally Nicholas' farewell
dinner party; and partly because they had braced themselves to it, but
principally because Miss Nicholas' hospitality had left them with a
genial feeling of repletion, they settled themselves to listen
with something resembling equanimity. A movement on the part of the
Marvellous Murphys--new arrivals, who had been playing the Bushwick with
their equilibristic act during the preceding week--to form a party of
the extreme left and heckle the speaker, broke down under a cold look
from their hostess. Brief though their acquaintance had been, both of
these lissom young gentlemen admired Sally immensely.

And it should be set on record that this admiration of theirs was not
misplaced. He would have been hard to please who had not been attracted
by Sally. She was a small, trim, wisp of a girl with the tiniest hands
and feet, the friendliest of smiles, and a dimple that came and went
in the curve of her rounded chin. Her eyes, which disappeared when she
laughed, which was often, were a bright hazel; her hair a soft mass of
brown. She had, moreover, a manner, an air of distinction lacking in the
majority of Mrs. Meecher's guests. And she carried youth like a banner.
In approving of Sally, the Marvellous Murphys had been guilty of no
lapse from their high critical standard.

“I have been asked,” proceeded Mr. Faucitt, “though I am aware that
there are others here far worthier of such a task--Brutuses compared
with whom I, like Marc Antony, am no orator--I have been asked to
propose the health...”

“Who asked you?” It was the smaller of the Marvellous Murphys who spoke.
He was an unpleasant youth, snub-nosed and spotty. Still, he could
balance himself with one hand on an inverted ginger-ale bottle while
revolving a barrel on the soles of his feet. There is good in all of us.

“I have been asked,” repeated Mr. Faucitt, ignoring the unmannerly
interruption, which, indeed, he would have found it hard to answer, “to
propose the health of our charming hostess (applause), coupled with the
name of her brother, our old friend Fillmore Nicholas.”

The gentleman referred to, who sat at the speaker's end of the table,
acknowledged the tribute with a brief nod of the head. It was a nod of
condescension; the nod of one who, conscious of being hedged about by
social inferiors, nevertheless does his best to be not unkindly. And
Sally, seeing it, debated in her mind for an instant the advisability
of throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her
hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but
she restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive
impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance
of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest
motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that
quarter would be weakened.

She leaned back with a sigh. The temptation had been hard to resist. A
democratic girl, pomposity was a quality which she thoroughly disliked;
and though she loved him, she could not disguise from herself that,
ever since affluence had descended upon him some months ago, her brother
Fillmore had become insufferably pompous. If there are any young men
whom inherited wealth improves, Fillmore Nicholas was not one of them.
He seemed to regard himself nowadays as a sort of Man of Destiny. To
converse with him was for the ordinary human being like being received
in audience by some more than stand-offish monarch. It had taken Sally
over an hour to persuade him to leave his apartment on Riverside Drive
and revisit the boarding-house for this special occasion; and, when he
had come, he had entered wearing such faultless evening dress that he
had made the rest of the party look like a gathering of tramp-cyclists.
His white waistcoat alone was a silent reproach to honest poverty,
and had caused an awkward constraint right through the soup and fish
courses. Most of those present had known Fillmore Nicholas as an
impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one
would have believed possible; they had called him “Fill” and helped him
in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had
eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank back abashed.

“Speaking,” said Mr. Faucitt, “as an Englishman--for though I have long
since taken out what are technically known as my 'papers' it was as a
subject of the island kingdom that I first visited this great country--I
may say that the two factors in American life which have always made
the profoundest impression upon me have been the lavishness of American
hospitality and the charm of the American girl. To-night we have been
privileged to witness the American girl in the capacity of hostess, and
I think I am right in saying, in asseverating, in committing myself to
the statement that this has been a night which none of us present here
will ever forget. Miss Nicholas has given us, ladies and gentlemen, a
banquet. I repeat, a banquet. There has been alcoholic refreshment. I
do not know where it came from: I do not ask how it was procured, but we
have had it. Miss Nicholas...”

Mr. Faucitt paused to puff at his cigar. Sally's brother Fillmore
suppressed a yawn and glanced at his watch. Sally continued to lean
forward raptly. She knew how happy it made the old gentleman to deliver
a formal speech; and though she wished the subject had been different,
she was prepared to listen indefinitely.

“Miss Nicholas,” resumed Mr. Faucitt, lowering his cigar, “... But why,”
 he demanded abruptly, “do I call her Miss Nicholas?”

“Because it's her name,” hazarded the taller Murphy.

Mr. Faucitt eyed him with disfavour. He disapproved of the marvellous
brethren on general grounds because, himself a resident of years
standing, he considered that these transients from the vaudeville stage
lowered the tone of the boarding-house; but particularly because the one
who had just spoken had, on his first evening in the place, addressed
him as “grandpa.”

“Yes, sir,” he said severely, “it is her name. But she has another name,
sweeter to those who love her, those who worship her, those who have
watched her with the eye of sedulous affection through the three years
she has spent beneath this roof, though that name,” said Mr. Faucitt,
lowering the tone of his address and descending to what might almost be
termed personalities, “may not be familiar to a couple of dud acrobats
who have only been in the place a week-end, thank heaven, and are off
to-morrow to infest some other city. That name,” said Mr. Faucitt,
soaring once more to a loftier plane, “is Sally. Our Sally. For three
years our Sally has flitted about this establishment like--I choose the
simile advisedly--like a ray of sunshine. For three years she has
made life for us a brighter, sweeter thing. And now a sudden access of
worldly wealth, happily synchronizing with her twenty-first birthday, is
to remove her from our midst. From our midst, ladies and gentlemen,
but not from our hearts. And I think I may venture to hope, to
prognosticate, that, whatever lofty sphere she may adorn in the future,
to whatever heights in the social world she may soar, she will still
continue to hold a corner in her own golden heart for the comrades of
her Bohemian days. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our hostess, Miss
Sally Nicholas, coupled with the name of our old friend, her brother
Fillmore.”

Sally, watching her brother heave himself to his feet as the cheers died
away, felt her heart beat a little faster with anticipation. Fillmore
was a fluent young man, once a power in his college debating society,
and it was for that reason that she had insisted on his coming here
tonight.

She had guessed that Mr. Faucitt, the old dear, would say all sorts of
delightful things about her, and she had mistrusted her ability to
make a fitting reply. And it was imperative that a fitting reply should
proceed from someone. She knew Mr. Faucitt so well. He looked on these
occasions rather in the light of scenes from some play; and, sustaining
his own part in them with such polished grace, was certain to be pained
by anything in the nature of an anti-climax after he should have ceased
to take the stage. Eloquent himself, he must be answered with eloquence,
or his whole evening would be spoiled.

Fillmore Nicholas smoothed a wrinkle out of his white waistcoat; and
having rested one podgy hand on the table-cloth and the thumb of the
other in his pocket, glanced down the table with eyes so haughtily
drooping that Sally's fingers closed automatically about her orange, as
she wondered whether even now it might not be a good thing...

It seems to be one of Nature's laws that the most attractive girls
should have the least attractive brothers. Fillmore Nicholas had not
worn well. At the age of seven he had been an extraordinarily beautiful
child, but after that he had gone all to pieces; and now, at the age of
twenty-five, it would be idle to deny that he was something of a mess.
For the three years preceding his twenty-fifth birthday, restricted
means and hard work had kept his figure in check; but with money there
had come an ever-increasing sleekness. He looked as if he fed too often
and too well.

All this, however, Sally was prepared to forgive him, if he would only
make a good speech. She could see Mr. Faucitt leaning back in his chair,
all courteous attention. Rolling periods were meat and drink to the old
gentleman.

Fillmore spoke.

“I'm sure,” said Fillmore, “you don't want a speech... Very good of you
to drink our health. Thank you.”

He sat down.

The effect of these few simple words on the company was marked, but not
in every case identical. To the majority the emotion which they brought
was one of unmixed relief. There had been something so menacing, so easy
and practised, in Fillmore's attitude as he had stood there that the
gloomier-minded had given him at least twenty minutes, and even the
optimists had reckoned that they would be lucky if they got off with
ten. As far as the bulk of the guests were concerned, there was
no grumbling. Fillmore's, to their thinking, had been the ideal
after-dinner speech.

Far different was it with Mr. Maxwell Faucitt. The poor old man was
wearing such an expression of surprise and dismay as he might have
worn had somebody unexpectedly pulled the chair from under him. He was
feeling the sick shock which comes to those who tread on a non-existent
last stair. And Sally, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp
wordless exclamation as if she had seen a child fall down and hurt
itself in the street. The next moment she had run round the table and
was standing behind him with her arms round his neck. She spoke across
him with a sob in her voice.

“My brother,” she stammered, directing a malevolent look at the
immaculate Fillmore, who, avoiding her gaze, glanced down his nose
and smoothed another wrinkle out of his waistcoat, “has not said
quite--quite all I hoped he was going to say. I can't make a speech,
but...” Sally gulped, “... but, I love you all and of course I shall
never forget you, and... and...”

Here Sally kissed Mr. Faucitt and burst into tears.

“There, there,” said Mr. Faucitt, soothingly. The kindest critic could
not have claimed that Sally had been eloquent: nevertheless Mr. Maxwell
Faucitt was conscious of no sense of anti-climax.



2



Sally had just finished telling her brother Fillmore what a pig he was.
The lecture had taken place in the street outside the boarding-house
immediately on the conclusion of the festivities, when Fillmore, who
had furtively collected his hat and overcoat, had stolen forth into the
night, had been overtaken and brought to bay by his justly indignant
sister. Her remarks, punctuated at intervals by bleating sounds from the
accused, had lasted some ten minutes.

As she paused for breath, Fillmore seemed to expand, like an indiarubber
ball which has been sat on. Dignified as he was to the world, he had
never been able to prevent himself being intimidated by Sally when
in one of these moods of hers. He regretted this, for it hurt his
self-esteem, but he did not see how the fact could be altered. Sally
had always been like that. Even the uncle, who after the deaths of their
parents had become their guardian, had never, though a grim man, been
able to cope successfully with Sally. In that last hectic scene three
years ago, which had ended in their going out into the world, together
like a second Adam and Eve, the verbal victory had been hers. And it
had been Sally who had achieved triumph in the one battle which Mrs.
Meecher, apparently as a matter of duty, always brought about with each
of her patrons in the first week of their stay. A sweet-tempered
girl, Sally, like most women of a generous spirit, had cyclonic
potentialities.

As she seemed to have said her say, Fillmore kept on expanding till he
had reached the normal, when he ventured upon a speech for the defence.

“What have I done?” demanded Fillmore plaintively.

“Do you want to hear all over again?”

“No, no,” said Fillmore hastily. “But, listen, Sally, you don't
understand my position. You don't seem to realize that all that sort of
thing, all that boarding-house stuff, is a thing of the past. One's got
beyond it. One wants to drop it. One wants to forget it, darn it! Be
fair. Look at it from my viewpoint. I'm going to be a big man...”

“You're going to be a fat man,” said Sally, coldly.

Fillmore refrained from discussing the point. He was sensitive.

“I'm going to do big things,” he substituted. “I've got a deal on at
this very moment which... well, I can't tell you about it, but it's
going to be big. Well, what I'm driving at, is about all this sort of
thing”--he indicated the lighted front of Mrs. Meecher's home-from-home
with a wide gesture--“is that it's over. Finished and done with. These
people were all very well when...”

“... when you'd lost your week's salary at poker and wanted to borrow a
few dollars for the rent.”

“I always paid them back,” protested Fillmore, defensively.

“I did.”

“Well, we did,” said Fillmore, accepting the amendment with the air of
a man who has no time for chopping straws. “Anyway, what I mean is, I
don't see why, just because one has known people at a certain period in
one's life when one was practically down and out, one should have
them round one's neck for ever. One can't prevent people forming an
I-knew-him-when club, but, darn it, one needn't attend the meetings.”

“One's friends...”

“Oh, friends,” said Fillmore. “That's just where all this makes me so
tired. One's in a position where all these people are entitled to call
themselves one's friends, simply because father put it in his will that
I wasn't to get the money till I was twenty-five, instead of letting me
have it at twenty-one like anybody else. I wonder where I should have
been by now if I could have got that money when I was twenty-one.”

“In the poor-house, probably,” said Sally.

Fillmore was wounded.

“Ah! you don't believe in me,” he sighed.

“Oh, you would be all right if you had one thing,” said Sally.

Fillmore passed his qualities in swift review before his mental eye.
Brains? Dash? Spaciousness? Initiative? All present and correct. He
wondered where Sally imagined the hiatus to exist.

“One thing?” he said. “What's that?”

“A nurse.”

Fillmore's sense of injury deepened. He supposed that this was always
the way, that those nearest to a man never believed in his ability
till he had proved it so masterfully that it no longer required the
assistance of faith. Still, it was trying; and there was not much
consolation to be derived from the thought that Napoleon had had to go
through this sort of thing in his day. “I shall find my place in the
world,” he said sulkily.

“Oh, you'll find your place all right,” said Sally. “And I'll come
round and bring you jelly and read to you on the days when visitors are
allowed... Oh, hullo.”

The last remark was addressed to a young man who had been swinging
briskly along the sidewalk from the direction of Broadway and who now,
coming abreast of them, stopped.

“Good evening, Mr. Foster.”

“Good evening. Miss Nicholas.”

“You don't know my brother, do you?”

“I don't believe I do.”

“He left the underworld before you came to it,” said Sally. “You
wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was once a prune-eater among
the proletariat, even as you and I. Mrs. Meecher looks on him as a son.”

The two men shook hands. Fillmore was not short, but Gerald Foster
with his lean, well-built figure seemed to tower over him. He was an
Englishman, a man in the middle twenties, clean-shaven, keen-eyed, and
very good to look at. Fillmore, who had recently been going in for one
of those sum-up-your-fellow-man-at-a-glance courses, the better to fit
himself for his career of greatness, was rather impressed. It seemed to
him that this Mr. Foster, like himself, was one of those who Get There.
If you are that kind yourself, you get into the knack of recognizing the
others. It is a sort of gift.

There was a few moments of desultory conversation, of the kind that
usually follows an introduction, and then Fillmore, by no means sorry
to get the chance, took advantage of the coming of this new arrival to
remove himself. He had not enjoyed his chat with Sally, and it seemed
probable that he would enjoy a continuation of it even less. He was glad
that Mr. Foster had happened along at this particular juncture. Excusing
himself briefly, he hurried off down the street.

Sally stood for a minute, watching him till he had disappeared round the
corner. She had a slightly regretful feeling that, now it was too late,
she would think of a whole lot more good things which it would have been
agreeable to say to him. And it had become obvious to her that Fillmore
was not getting nearly enough of that kind of thing said to him
nowadays. Then she dismissed him from her mind and turning to Gerald
Foster, slipped her arm through his.

“Well, Jerry, darling,” she said. “What a shame you couldn't come to the
party. Tell me all about everything.”



3



It was exactly two months since Sally had become engaged to Gerald
Foster; but so rigorously had they kept the secret that nobody at Mrs.
Meecher's so much as suspected it. To Sally, who all her life had hated
concealing things, secrecy of any kind was objectionable: but in this
matter Gerald had shown an odd streak almost of furtiveness in his
character. An announced engagement complicated life. People fussed about
you and bothered you. People either watched you or avoided you. Such
were his arguments, and Sally, who would have glossed over and found
excuses for a disposition on his part towards homicide or arson, put
them down to artistic sensitiveness. There is nobody so sensitive as
your artist, particularly if he be unsuccessful: and when an artist has
so little success that he cannot afford to make a home for the woman
he loves, his sensitiveness presumably becomes great indeed. Putting
herself in his place, Sally could see that a protracted engagement,
known by everybody, would be a standing advertisement of Gerald's
failure to make good: and she acquiesced in the policy of secrecy,
hoping that it would not last long. It seemed absurd to think of Gerald
as an unsuccessful man. He had in him, as the recent Fillmore had
perceived, something dynamic. He was one of those men of whom one could
predict that they would succeed very suddenly and rapidly--overnight, as
it were.

“The party,” said Sally, “went off splendidly.” They had passed the
boarding-house door, and were walking slowly down the street. “Everybody
enjoyed themselves, I think, even though Fillmore did his best to spoil
things by coming looking like an advertisement of What The Smart Men
Will Wear This Season. You didn't see his waistcoat just now. He
had covered it up. Conscience, I suppose. It was white and bulgy and
gleaming and full up of pearl buttons and everything. I saw Augustus
Bartlett curl up like a burnt feather when he caught sight of it. Still,
time seemed to heal the wound, and everybody relaxed after a bit. Mr.
Faucitt made a speech and I made a speech and cried, and...oh, it was
all very festive. It only needed you.”

“I wish I could have come. I had to go to that dinner, though. Sally...”
 Gerald paused, and Sally saw that he was electric with suppressed
excitement. “Sally, the play's going to be put on!”

Sally gave a little gasp. She had lived this moment in anticipation for
weeks. She had always known that sooner or later this would happen. She
had read his plays over and over again, and was convinced that they were
wonderful. Of course, hers was a biased view, but then Elsa Doland also
admired them; and Elsa's opinion was one that carried weight. Elsa was
another of those people who were bound to succeed suddenly. Even old Mr.
Faucitt, who was a stern judge of acting and rather inclined to consider
that nowadays there was no such thing, believed that she was a girl with
a future who would do something big directly she got her chance.

“Jerry!” She gave his arm a hug. “How simply terrific! Then Goble and
Kohn have changed their minds after all and want it? I knew they would.”

A slight cloud seemed to dim the sunniness of the author's mood.

“No, not that one,” he said reluctantly. “No hope there, I'm afraid. I
saw Goble this morning about that, and he said it didn't add up right.
The one that's going to be put on is 'The Primrose Way.' You remember?
It's got a big part for a girl in it.”

“Of course! The one Elsa liked so much. Well, that's just as good. Who's
going to do it? I thought you hadn't sent it out again.”

“Well, it happens...” Gerald hesitated once more. “It seems that this
man I was dining with to-night--a man named Cracknell...”

“Cracknell? Not the Cracknell?”

“The Cracknell?”

“The one people are always talking about. The man they call the
Millionaire Kid.”

“Yes. Why, do you know him?”

“He was at Harvard with Fillmore. I never saw him, but he must be rather
a painful person.”

“Oh, he's all right. Not much brains, of course, but--well, he's all
right. And, anyway, he wants to put the play on.”

“Well, that's splendid,” said Sally: but she could not get the right
ring of enthusiasm into her voice. She had had ideals for Gerald. She
had dreamed of him invading Broadway triumphantly under the banner of
one of the big managers whose name carried a prestige, and there seemed
something unworthy in this association with a man whose chief claim to
eminence lay in the fact that he was credited by metropolitan gossip
with possessing the largest private stock of alcohol in existence.

“I thought you would be pleased,” said Gerald.

“Oh, I am,” said Sally.

With the buoyant optimism which never deserted her for long, she had
already begun to cast off her momentary depression. After all, did
it matter who financed a play so long as it obtained a production? A
manager was simply a piece of machinery for paying the bills; and if
he had money for that purpose, why demand asceticism and the finer
sensibilities from him? The real thing that mattered was the question
of who was going to play the leading part, that deftly drawn character
which had so excited the admiration of Elsa Doland. She sought
information on this point.

“Who will play Ruth?” she asked. “You must have somebody wonderful. It
needs a tremendously clever woman. Did Mr. Cracknell say anything about
that?”

“Oh, yes, we discussed that, of course.”

“Well?”

“Well, it seems...” Again Sally noticed that odd, almost stealthy
embarrassment. Gerald appeared unable to begin a sentence to-night
without feeling his way into it like a man creeping cautiously down a
dark alley. She noticed it the more because it was so different from
his usual direct method. Gerald, as a rule, was not one of those who
apologize for themselves. He was forthright and masterful and inclined
to talk to her from a height. To-night he seemed different.

He broke off, was silent for a moment, and began again with a question.

“Do you know Mabel Hobson?”

“Mabel Hobson? I've seen her in the 'Follies,' of course.”

Sally started. A suspicion had stung her, so monstrous that its
absurdity became manifest the moment it had formed. And yet was
it absurd? Most Broadway gossip filtered eventually into the
boarding-house, chiefly through the medium of that seasoned sport, the
mild young man who thought so highly of the redoubtable Benny Whistler,
and she was aware that the name of Reginald Cracknell, which was always
getting itself linked with somebody, had been coupled with that of Miss
Hobson. It seemed likely that in this instance rumour spoke truth,
for the lady was of that compellingly blonde beauty which attracts the
Cracknells of this world. But even so...

“It seems that Cracknell...” said Gerald. “Apparently this man
Cracknell...” He was finding Sally's bright, horrified gaze somewhat
trying. “Well, the fact is Cracknell believes in Mabel Hobson...and...
well, he thinks this part would suit her.”

“Oh, Jerry!”

Could infatuation go to such a length? Could even the spacious heart of
a Reginald Cracknell so dominate that gentleman's small size in heads as
to make him entrust a part like Ruth in “The Primrose Way” to one who,
when desired by the producer of her last revue to carry a bowl of roses
across the stage and place it on a table, had rebelled on the plea that
she had not been engaged as a dancer? Surely even lovelorn Reginald
could perceive that this was not the stuff of which great emotional
actresses are made.

“Oh, Jerry!” she said again.

There was an uncomfortable silence. They turned and walked back in the
direction of the boarding-house. Somehow Gerald's arm had managed to get
itself detached from Sally's. She was conscious of a curious dull ache
that was almost like a physical pain.

“Jerry! Is it worth it?” she burst out vehemently.

The question seemed to sting the young man into something like his usual
decisive speech.

“Worth it? Of course it's worth it. It's a Broadway production. That's
all that matters. Good heavens! I've been trying long enough to get a
play on Broadway, and it isn't likely that I'm going to chuck away my
chance when it comes along just because one might do better in the way
of casting.”

“But, Jerry! Mabel Hobson! It's... it's murder! Murder in the first
degree.”

“Nonsense. She'll be all right. The part will play itself. Besides,
she has a personality and a following, and Cracknell will spend all the
money in the world to make the thing a success. And it will be a start,
whatever happens. Of course, it's worth it.”

Fillmore would have been impressed by this speech. He would have
recognized and respected in it the unmistakable ring which characterizes
even the lightest utterances of those who get there. On Sally it had not
immediately that effect. Nevertheless, her habit of making the best of
things, working together with that primary article of her creed that
the man she loved could do no wrong, succeeded finally in raising her
spirits. Of course Jerry was right. It would have been foolish to refuse
a contract because all its clauses were not ideal.

“You old darling,” she said affectionately attaching herself to the
vacant arm once more and giving it a penitent squeeze, “you're quite
right. Of course you are. I can see it now. I was only a little startled
at first. Everything's going to be wonderful. Let's get all our chickens
out and count 'em. How are you going to spend the money?”

“I know how I'm going to spend a dollar of it,” said Gerald completely
restored.

“I mean the big money. What's a dollar?”

“It pays for a marriage-licence.”

Sally gave his arm another squeeze.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Look at this man. Observe him. My
partner!”




CHAPTER II. ENTER GINGER



1



Sally was sitting with her back against a hillock of golden sand,
watching with half-closed eyes the denizens of Roville-sur-Mer at their
familiar morning occupations. At Roville, as at most French seashore
resorts, the morning is the time when the visiting population assembles
in force on the beach. Whiskered fathers of families made cheerful
patches of colour in the foreground. Their female friends and relatives
clustered in groups under gay parasols. Dogs roamed to and fro, and
children dug industriously with spades, ever and anon suspending their
labours in order to smite one another with these handy implements. One
of the dogs, a poodle of military aspect, wandered up to Sally: and
discovering that she was in possession of a box of sweets, decided to
remain and await developments.

Few things are so pleasant as the anticipation of them, but Sally's
vacation had proved an exception to this rule. It had been a magic month
of lazy happiness. She had drifted luxuriously from one French town to
another, till the charm of Roville, with its blue sky, its Casino,
its snow-white hotels along the Promenade, and its general glitter
and gaiety, had brought her to a halt. Here she could have stayed
indefinitely, but the voice of America was calling her back. Gerald had
written to say that “The Primrose Way” was to be produced in Detroit,
preliminary to its New York run, so soon that, if she wished to see the
opening, she must return at once. A scrappy, hurried, unsatisfactory
letter, the letter of a busy man: but one that Sally could not ignore.
She was leaving Roville to-morrow.

To-day, however, was to-day: and she sat and watched the bathers with
a familiar feeling of peace, revelling as usual in the still novel
sensation of having nothing to do but bask in the warm sunshine and
listen to the faint murmur of the little waves.

But, if there was one drawback, she had discovered, to a morning on the
Roville plage, it was that you had a tendency to fall asleep: and this
is a degrading thing to do so soon after breakfast, even if you are on
a holiday. Usually, Sally fought stoutly against the temptation, but
to-day the sun was so warm and the whisper of the waves so insinuating
that she had almost dozed off, when she was aroused by voices close at
hand. There were many voices on the beach, both near and distant, but
these were talking English, a novelty in Roville, and the sound of the
familiar tongue jerked Sally back from the borders of sleep. A few feet
away, two men had seated themselves on the sand.

From the first moment she had set out on her travels, it had been one of
Sally's principal amusements to examine the strangers whom chance threw
in her way and to try by the light of her intuition to fit them out with
characters and occupations: nor had she been discouraged by an almost
consistent failure to guess right. Out of the corner of her eye she
inspected these two men.

The first of the pair did not attract her. He was a tall, dark man whose
tight, precise mouth and rather high cheeks bones gave him an appearance
vaguely sinister. He had the dusky look of the clean-shaven man whose
life is a perpetual struggle with a determined beard. He certainly
shaved twice a day, and just as certainly had the self-control not to
swear when he cut himself. She could picture him smiling nastily when
this happened.

“Hard,” diagnosed Sally. “I shouldn't like him. A lawyer or something, I
think.”

She turned to the other and found herself looking into his eyes. This
was because he had been staring at Sally with the utmost intentness ever
since his arrival. His mouth had opened slightly. He had the air of a
man who, after many disappointments, has at last found something worth
looking at.

“Rather a dear,” decided Sally.

He was a sturdy, thick-set young man with an amiable, freckled face and
the reddest hair Sally had ever seen. He had a square chin, and at one
angle of the chin a slight cut. And Sally was convinced that, however
he had behaved on receipt of that wound, it had not been with superior
self-control.

“A temper, I should think,” she meditated. “Very quick, but soon over.
Not very clever, I should say, but nice.”

She looked away, finding his fascinated gaze a little embarrassing.

The dark man, who in the objectionably competent fashion which, one
felt, characterized all his actions, had just succeeded in lighting
a cigarette in the teeth of a strong breeze, threw away the match and
resumed the conversation, which had presumably been interrupted by the
process of sitting down.

“And how is Scrymgeour?” he inquired.

“Oh, all right,” replied the young man with red hair absently. Sally was
looking straight in front of her, but she felt that his eyes were still
busy.

“I was surprised at his being here. He told me he meant to stay in
Paris.”

There was a slight pause. Sally gave the attentive poodle a piece of
nougat.

“I say,” observed the red-haired young man in clear, penetrating tones
that vibrated with intense feeling, “that's the prettiest girl I've seen
in my life!”



2



At this frank revelation of the red-haired young man's personal
opinions, Sally, though considerably startled, was not displeased. A
broad-minded girl, the outburst seemed to her a legitimate comment on a
matter of public interest. The young man's companion, on the other hand,
was unmixedly shocked.

“My dear fellow!” he ejaculated.

“Oh, it's all right,” said the red-haired young man, unmoved. “She can't
understand. There isn't a bally soul in this dashed place that can speak
a word of English. If I didn't happen to remember a few odd bits of
French, I should have starved by this time. That girl,” he went on,
returning to the subject most imperatively occupying his mind, “is an
absolute topper! I give you my solemn word I've never seen anybody to
touch her. Look at those hands and feet. You don't get them outside
France. Of course, her mouth is a bit wide,” he said reluctantly.

Sally's immobility, added to the other's assurance concerning the
linguistic deficiencies of the inhabitants of Roville, seemed to
reassure the dark man. He breathed again. At no period of his life
had he ever behaved with anything but the most scrupulous correctness
himself, but he had quailed at the idea of being associated even
remotely with incorrectness in another. It had been a black moment for
him when the red-haired young man had uttered those few kind words.

“Still you ought to be careful,” he said austerely.

He looked at Sally, who was now dividing her attention between the
poodle and a raffish-looking mongrel, who had joined the party, and
returned to the topic of the mysterious Scrymgeour.

“How is Scrymgeour's dyspepsia?”

The red-haired young man seemed but faintly interested in the
vicissitudes of Scrymgeour's interior.

“Do you notice the way her hair sort of curls over her ears?” he said.
“Eh? Oh, pretty much the same, I think.”

“What hotel are you staying at?”

“The Normandie.”

Sally, dipping into the box for another chocolate cream, gave an
imperceptible start. She, too, was staying at the Normandie. She
presumed that her admirer was a recent arrival, for she had seen nothing
of him at the hotel.

“The Normandie?” The dark man looked puzzled. “I know Roville pretty
well by report, but I've never heard of any Hotel Normandie. Where is
it?”

“It's a little shanty down near the station. Not much of a place. Still,
it's cheap, and the cooking's all right.”

His companion's bewilderment increased.

“What on earth is a man like Scrymgeour doing there?” he said. Sally
was conscious of an urgent desire to know more and more about the absent
Scrymgeour. Constant repetition of his name had made him seem almost
like an old friend. “If there's one thing he's fussy about...”

“There are at least eleven thousand things he's fussy about,”
 interrupted the red-haired young man disapprovingly. “Jumpy old
blighter!”

“If there's one thing he's particular about, it's the sort of hotel
he goes to. Ever since I've known him he has always wanted the best. I
should have thought he would have gone to the Splendide.” He mused on
this problem in a dissatisfied sort of way for a moment, then seemed to
reconcile himself to the fact that a rich man's eccentricities must be
humoured. “I'd like to see him again. Ask him if he will dine with me at
the Splendide to-night. Say eight sharp.”

Sally, occupied with her dogs, whose numbers had now been augmented by
a white terrier with a black patch over its left eye, could not see
the young man's face: but his voice, when he replied, told her that
something was wrong. There was a false airiness in it.

“Oh, Scrymgeour isn't in Roville.”

“No? Where is he?”

“Paris, I believe.”

“What!” The dark man's voice sharpened. He sounded as though he were
cross-examining a reluctant witness. “Then why aren't you there? What
are you doing here? Did he give you a holiday?”

“Yes, he did.”

“When do you rejoin him?”

“I don't.”

“What!”

The red-haired young man's manner was not unmistakably dogged.

“Well, if you want to know,” he said, “the old blighter fired me the day
before yesterday.”



3



There was a shuffling of sand as the dark man sprang up. Sally, intent
on the drama which was unfolding itself beside her, absent-mindedly gave
the poodle a piece of nougat which should by rights have gone to the
terrier. She shot a swift glance sideways, and saw the dark man standing
in an attitude rather reminiscent of the stern father of melodrama about
to drive his erring daughter out into the snow. The red-haired young
man, outwardly stolid, was gazing before him down the beach at a fat
bather in an orange suit who, after six false starts, was now actually
in the water, floating with the dignity of a wrecked balloon.

“Do you mean to tell me,” demanded the dark man, “that, after all the
trouble the family took to get you what was practically a sinecure
with endless possibilities if you only behaved yourself, you have
deliberately thrown away...” A despairing gesture completed the
sentence. “Good God, you're hopeless!”

The red-haired young man made no reply. He continued to gaze down the
beach. Of all outdoor sports, few are more stimulating than watching
middle-aged Frenchmen bathe. Drama, action, suspense, all are here. From
the first stealthy testing of the water with an apprehensive toe to the
final seal-like plunge, there is never a dull moment. And apart from the
excitement of the thing, judging it from a purely aesthetic standpoint,
his must be a dull soul who can fail to be uplifted by the spectacle of
a series of very stout men with whiskers, seen in tight bathing suits
against a background of brightest blue. Yet the young man with red hair,
recently in the employment of Mr. Scrymgeour, eyed this free circus
without any enjoyment whatever.

“It's maddening! What are you going to do? What do you expect us to do?
Are we to spend our whole lives getting you positions which you won't
keep? I can tell you we're... it's monstrous! It's sickening! Good God!”

And with these words the dark man, apparently feeling, as Sally had
sometimes felt in the society of her brother Fillmore, the futility of
mere language, turned sharply and stalked away up the beach, the dignity
of his exit somewhat marred a moment later by the fact of his straw hat
blowing off and being trodden on by a passing child.

He left behind him the sort of electric calm which follows the falling
of a thunderbolt; that stunned calm through which the air seems still to
quiver protestingly. How long this would have lasted one cannot say:
for towards the end of the first minute it was shattered by a purely
terrestrial uproar. With an abruptness heralded only by one short, low
gurgling snarl, there sprang into being the prettiest dog fight that
Roville had seen that season.

It was the terrier with the black patch who began it. That was Sally's
opinion: and such, one feels, will be the verdict of history. His best
friend, anxious to make out a case for him, could not have denied that
he fired the first gun of the campaign. But we must be just. The fault
was really Sally's. Absorbed in the scene which had just concluded and
acutely inquisitive as to why the shadowy Scrymgeour had seen fit to
dispense with the red-haired young man's services, she had thrice in
succession helped the poodle out of his turn. The third occasion was too
much for the terrier.

There is about any dog fight a wild, gusty fury which affects the
average mortal with something of the helplessness induced by some vast
clashing of the elements. It seems so outside one's jurisdiction. One is
oppressed with a sense of the futility of interference. And this was no
ordinary dog fight. It was a stunning mêlée, which would have excited
favourable comment even among the blasé residents of a negro quarter or
the not easily-pleased critics of a Lancashire mining-village. From all
over the beach dogs of every size, breed, and colour were racing to the
scene: and while some of these merely remained in the ringside seats
and barked, a considerable proportion immediately started fighting one
another on general principles, well content to be in action without
bothering about first causes. The terrier had got the poodle by the
left hind-leg and was restating his war-aims. The raffish mongrel
was apparently endeavouring to fletcherize a complete stranger of the
Sealyham family.

Sally was frankly unequal to the situation, as were the entire crowd of
spectators who had come galloping up from the water's edge. She had been
paralysed from the start. Snarling bundles bumped against her legs and
bounced away again, but she made no move. Advice in fluent French rent
the air. Arms waved, and well-filled bathing suits leaped up and down.
But nobody did anything practical until in the centre of the theatre of
war there suddenly appeared the red-haired young man.

The only reason why dog fights do not go on for ever is that Providence
has decided that on each such occasion there shall always be among those
present one Master Mind; one wizard who, whatever his shortcomings in
other battles of life, is in this single particular sphere competent and
dominating. At Roville-sur-Mer it was the red-haired young man. His dark
companion might have turned from him in disgust: his services might not
have seemed worth retaining by the haughty Scrymgeour: he might be a
pain in the neck to “the family”; but he did know how to stop a dog
fight. From the first moment of his intervention calm began to steal
over the scene. He had the same effect on the almost inextricably
entwined belligerents as, in mediaeval legend, the Holy Grail, sliding
down the sunbeam, used to have on battling knights. He did not look like
a dove of peace, but the most captious could not have denied that he
brought home the goods. There was a magic in his soothing hands, a
spell in his voice: and in a shorter time than one would have believed
possible dog after dog had been sorted out and calmed down; until
presently all that was left of Armageddon was one solitary small Scotch
terrier, thoughtfully licking a chewed leg. The rest of the combatants,
once more in their right mind and wondering what all the fuss was about,
had been captured and haled away in a whirl of recrimination by voluble
owners.

Having achieved this miracle, the young man turned to Sally. Gallant,
one might say reckless, as he had been a moment before, he now gave
indications of a rather pleasing shyness. He braced himself with that
painful air of effort which announces to the world that an Englishman is
about to speak a language other than his own.

“J'espère,” he said, having swallowed once or twice to brace himself up
for the journey through the jungle of a foreign tongue, “J'espère que
vous n'êtes pas--oh, dammit, what's the word--J'espère que vous n'êtes
pas blessée?”

“Blessée?”

“Yes, blessée. Wounded. Hurt, don't you know. Bitten. Oh, dash it.
J'espère...”

“Oh, bitten!” said Sally, dimpling. “Oh, no, thanks very much. I wasn't
bitten. And I think it was awfully brave of you to save all our lives.”

The compliment seemed to pass over the young man's head. He stared at
Sally with horrified eyes. Over his amiable face there swept a vivid
blush. His jaw dropped.

“Oh, my sainted aunt!” he ejaculated.

Then, as if the situation was too much for him and flight the only
possible solution, he spun round and disappeared at a walk so rapid that
it was almost a run. Sally watched him go and was sorry that he had torn
himself away. She still wanted to know why Scrymgeour had fired him.



4



Bedtime at Roville is an hour that seems to vary according to one's
proximity to the sea. The gilded palaces along the front keep deplorable
hours, polluting the night air till dawn with indefatigable jazz: but at
the pensions of the economical like the Normandie, early to bed is the
rule. True, Jules, the stout young native who combined the offices of
night-clerk and lift attendant at that establishment, was on duty in the
hall throughout the night, but few of the Normandie's patrons made use
of his services.

Sally, entering shortly before twelve o'clock on the night of the day
on which the dark man, the red-haired young man, and their friend
Scrymgeour had come into her life, found the little hall dim and silent.
Through the iron cage of the lift a single faint bulb glowed: another,
over the desk in the far corner, illuminated the upper half of Jules,
slumbering in a chair. Jules seemed to Sally to be on duty in some
capacity or other all the time. His work, like women's, was never done.
He was now restoring his tissues with a few winks of much-needed beauty
sleep. Sally, who had been to the Casino to hear the band and afterwards
had strolled on the moonlit promenade, had a guilty sense of intrusion.

As she stood there, reluctant to break in on Jules' rest--for her
sympathetic heart, always at the disposal of the oppressed, had long
ached for this overworked peon--she was relieved to hear footsteps in
the street outside, followed by the opening of the front door. If Jules
would have had to wake up anyway, she felt her sense of responsibility
lessened. The door, having opened, closed again with a bang. Jules
stirred, gurgled, blinked, and sat up, and Sally, turning, perceived
that the new arrival was the red-haired young man.

“Oh, good evening,” said Sally welcomingly.

The young man stopped, and shuffled uncomfortably. The morning's
happenings were obviously still green in his memory. He had either not
ceased blushing since their last meeting or he was celebrating their
reunion by beginning to blush again: for his face was a familiar
scarlet.

“Er--good evening,” he said, disentangling his feet, which, in the
embarrassment of the moment, had somehow got coiled up together.

“Or bon soir, I suppose you would say,” murmured Sally.

The young man acknowledged receipt of this thrust by dropping his hat
and tripping over it as he stooped to pick it up.

Jules, meanwhile, who had been navigating in a sort of somnambulistic
trance in the neighbourhood of the lift, now threw back the cage with a
rattle.

“It's a shame to have woken you up,” said Sally, commiseratingly,
stepping in.

Jules did not reply, for the excellent reason that he had not been
woken up. Constant practice enabled him to do this sort of work without
breaking his slumber. His brain, if you could call it that, was working
automatically. He had shut up the gate with a clang and was tugging
sluggishly at the correct rope, so that the lift was going slowly up
instead of retiring down into the basement, but he was not awake.

Sally and the red-haired young man sat side by side on the small seat,
watching their conductor's efforts. After the first spurt, conversation
had languished. Sally had nothing of immediate interest to say, and her
companion seemed to be one of these strong, silent men you read about.
Only a slight snore from Jules broke the silence.

At the third floor Sally leaned forward and prodded Jules in the lower
ribs. All through her stay at Roville, she had found in dealing with the
native population that actions spoke louder than words. If she wanted
anything in a restaurant or at a shop, she pointed; and, when she wished
the lift to stop, she prodded the man in charge. It was a system worth a
dozen French conversation books.

Jules brought the machine to a halt: and it was at this point that
he should have done the one thing connected with his professional
activities which he did really well--the opening, to wit, of the iron
cage. There are ways of doing this. Jules' was the right way. He was
accustomed to do it with a flourish, and generally remarked “V'la!” in
a modest but self-congratulatory voice as though he would have liked
to see another man who could have put through a job like that. Jules'
opinion was that he might not be much to look at, but that he could open
a lift door.

To-night, however, it seemed as if even this not very exacting feat was
beyond his powers. Instead of inserting his key in the lock, he stood
staring in an attitude of frozen horror. He was a man who took most
things in life pretty seriously, and whatever was the little difficulty
just now seemed to have broken him all up.

“There appears,” said Sally, turning to her companion, “to be a hitch.
Would you mind asking what's the matter? I don't know any French myself
except 'oo la la!'”

The young man, thus appealed to, nerved himself to the task. He eyed the
melancholy Jules doubtfully, and coughed in a strangled sort of way.

“Oh, esker... esker vous...”

“Don't weaken,” said Sally. “I think you've got him going.”

“Esker vous... Pourquoi vous ne... I mean ne vous... that is to say,
quel est le raison...”

He broke off here, because at this point Jules began to explain. He
explained very rapidly and at considerable length. The fact that neither
of his hearers understood a word of what he was saying appeared not
to have impressed itself upon him. Or, if he gave a thought to it,
he dismissed the objection as trifling. He wanted to explain, and he
explained. Words rushed from him like water from a geyser. Sounds which
you felt you would have been able to put a meaning to if he had detached
them from the main body and repeated them slowly, went swirling down the
stream and were lost for ever.

“Stop him!” said Sally firmly.

The red-haired young man looked as a native of Johnstown might have
looked on being requested to stop that city's celebrated flood.

“Stop him?”

“Yes. Blow a whistle or something.”

Out of the depths of the young man's memory there swam to the surface
a single word--a word which he must have heard somewhere or read
somewhere: a legacy, perhaps, from long-vanished school-days.

“Zut!” he barked, and instantaneously Jules turned himself off at the
main. There was a moment of dazed silence, such as might occur in a
boiler-factory if the works suddenly shut down.

“Quick! Now you've got him!” cried Sally. “Ask him what he's talking
about--if he knows, which I doubt--and tell him to speak slowly. Then we
shall get somewhere.”

The young man nodded intelligently. The advice was good.

“Lentement,” he said. “Parlez lentement. Pas si--you know what I
mean--pas si dashed vite!”

“Ah-a-ah!” cried Jules, catching the idea on the fly. “Lentement. Ah,
oui, lentement.”

There followed a lengthy conversation which, while conveying nothing to
Sally, seemed intelligible to the red-haired linguist.

“The silly ass,” he was able to announce some few minutes later, “has
made a bloomer. Apparently he was half asleep when we came in, and he
shoved us into the lift and slammed the door, forgetting that he had
left the keys on the desk.”

“I see,” said Sally. “So we're shut in?”

“I'm afraid so. I wish to goodness,” said the young man, “I knew French
well. I'd curse him with some vim and not a little animation, the chump!
I wonder what 'blighter' is in French,” he said, meditating.

“It's the merest suggestion,” said Sally, “but oughtn't we to do
something?”

“What could we do?”

“Well, for one thing, we might all utter a loud yell. It would scare
most of the people in the hotel to death, but there might be a survivor
or two who would come and investigate and let us out.”

“What a ripping idea!” said the young man, impressed.

“I'm glad you like it. Now tell him the main out-line, or he'll think
we've gone mad.”

The young man searched for words, and eventually found some which
expressed his meaning lamely but well enough to cause Jules to nod in a
depressed sort of way.

“Fine!” said Sally. “Now, all together at the word 'three.'
One--two--Oh, poor darling!” she broke off. “Look at him!”

In the far corner of the lift, the emotional Jules was sobbing silently
into the bunch of cotton-waste which served him in the office of a
pocket-handkerchief. His broken-hearted gulps echoed hollowly down the
shaft.



5



In these days of cheap books of instruction on every subject under the
sun, we most of us know how to behave in the majority of life's little
crises. We have only ourselves to blame if we are ignorant of what to
do before the doctor comes, of how to make a dainty winter coat for baby
out of father's last year's under-vest and of the best method of coping
with the cold mutton. But nobody yet has come forward with practical
advice as to the correct method of behaviour to be adopted when
a lift-attendant starts crying. And Sally and her companion, as a
consequence, for a few moments merely stared at each other helplessly.

“Poor darling!” said Sally, finding speech. “Ask him what's the matter.”

The young man looked at her doubtfully.

“You know,” he said, “I don't enjoy chatting with this blighter. I mean
to say, it's a bit of an effort. I don't know why it is, but talking
French always makes me feel as if my nose were coming off. Couldn't we
just leave him to have his cry out by himself?”

“The idea!” said Sally. “Have you no heart? Are you one of those fiends
in human shape?”

He turned reluctantly to Jules, and paused to overhaul his vocabulary.

“You ought to be thankful for this chance,” said Sally. “It's the only
real way of learning French, and you're getting a lesson for nothing.
What did he say then?”

“Something about losing something, it seemed to me. I thought I caught
the word perdu.”

“But that means a partridge, doesn't it? I'm sure I've seen it on the
menus.”

“Would he talk about partridges at a time like this?”

“He might. The French are extraordinary people.”

“Well, I'll have another go at him. But he's a difficult chap to chat
with. If you give him the least encouragement, he sort of goes off like
a rocket.” He addressed another question to the sufferer, and listened
attentively to the voluble reply.

“Oh!” he said with sudden enlightenment. “Your job?” He turned to Sally.
“I got it that time,” he said. “The trouble is, he says, that if we yell
and rouse the house, we'll get out all right, but he will lose his job,
because this is the second time this sort of thing has happened, and
they warned him last time that once more would mean the push.”

“Then we mustn't dream of yelling,” said Sally, decidedly. “It means
a pretty long wait, you know. As far as I can gather, there's just a
chance of somebody else coming in later, in which case he could let
us out. But it's doubtful. He rather thinks that everybody has gone to
roost.”

“Well, we must try it. I wouldn't think of losing the poor man his job.
Tell him to take the car down to the ground-floor, and then we'll just
sit and amuse ourselves till something happens. We've lots to talk
about. We can tell each other the story of our lives.”

Jules, cheered by his victims' kindly forbearance, lowered the car to
the ground floor, where, after a glance of infinite longing at the keys
on the distant desk, the sort of glance which Moses must have cast at
the Promised Land from the summit of Mount Pisgah, he sagged down in a
heap and resumed his slumbers. Sally settled herself as comfortably as
possible in her corner.

“You'd better smoke,” she said. “It will be something to do.”

“Thanks awfully.”

“And now,” said Sally, “tell me why Scrymgeour fired you.”

Little by little, under the stimulating influence of this nocturnal
adventure, the red-haired young man had lost that shy confusion which
had rendered him so ill at ease when he had encountered Sally in the
hall of the hotel; but at this question embarrassment gripped him once
more. Another of those comprehensive blushes of his raced over his face,
and he stammered.

“I say, I'm glad... I'm fearfully sorry about that, you know!”

“About Scrymgeour?”

“You know what I mean. I mean, about making such a most ghastly ass of
myself this morning. I... I never dreamed you understood English.”

“Why, I didn't object. I thought you were very nice and complimentary.
Of course, I don't know how many girls you've seen in your life, but...”

“No, I say, don't! It makes me feel such a chump.”

“And I'm sorry about my mouth. It is wide. But I know you're a
fair-minded man and realize that it isn't my fault.”

“Don't rub it in,” pleaded the young man. “As a matter of fact, if you
want to know, I think your mouth is absolutely perfect. I think,” he
proceeded, a little feverishly, “that you are the most indescribable
topper that ever...”

“You were going to tell me about Scrymgeour,” said Sally.

The young man blinked as if he had collided with some hard object while
sleep-walking. Eloquence had carried him away.

“Scrymgeour?” he said. “Oh, that would bore you.”

“Don't be silly,” said Sally reprovingly. “Can't you realize that we're
practically castaways on a desert island? There's nothing to do till
to-morrow but talk about ourselves. I want to hear all about you,
and then I'll tell you all about myself. If you feel diffident about
starting the revelations, I'll begin. Better start with names. Mine is
Sally Nicholas. What's yours?”

“Mine? Oh, ah, yes, I see what you mean.”

“I thought you would. I put it as clearly as I could. Well, what is it?”

“Kemp.”

“And the first name?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” said the young man, “I've always rather
hushed up my first name, because when I was christened they worked a
low-down trick on me!”

“You can't shock me,” said Sally, encouragingly. “My father's name was
Ezekiel, and I've a brother who was christened Fillmore.”

Mr. Kemp brightened. “Well, mine isn't as bad as that... No, I don't
mean that,” he broke off apologetically. “Both awfully jolly names, of
course...”

“Get on,” said Sally.

“Well, they called me Lancelot. And, of course, the thing is that I
don't look like a Lancelot and never shall. My pals,” he added in a more
cheerful strain, “call me Ginger.”

“I don't blame them,” said Sally.

“Perhaps you wouldn't mind thinking of me as Ginger?'' suggested the
young man diffidently.

“Certainly.”

“That's awfully good of you.”

“Not at all.”

Jules stirred in his sleep and grunted. No other sound came to disturb
the stillness of the night.

“You were going to tell me about yourself?” said Mr. Lancelot (Ginger)
Kemp.

“I'm going to tell you all about myself,” said Sally, “not because I
think it will interest you...”

“Oh, it will!”

“Not, I say, because I think it will interest you...”

“It will, really.”

Sally looked at him coldly.

“Is this a duet?” she inquired, “or have I the floor?”

“I'm awfully sorry.”

“Not, I repeat for the third time, because I think It will interest you,
but because if I do you won't have any excuse for not telling me your
life-history, and you wouldn't believe how inquisitive I am. Well, in
the first place, I live in America. I'm over here on a holiday. And it's
the first real holiday I've had in three years--since I left home, in
fact.” Sally paused. “I ran away from home,” she said.

“Good egg!” said Ginger Kemp.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, quite right. I bet you were quite right.”

“When I say home,” Sally went on, “it was only a sort of imitation
home, you know. One of those just-as-good homes which are never as
satisfactory as the real kind. My father and mother both died a good
many years ago. My brother and I were dumped down on the reluctant
doorstep of an uncle.”

“Uncles,” said Ginger Kemp, feelingly, “are the devil. I've got an...
but I'm interrupting you.”

“My uncle was our trustee. He had control of all my brother's money
and mine till I was twenty-one. My brother was to get his when he was
twenty-five. My poor father trusted him blindly, and what do you think
happened?”

“Good Lord! The blighter embezzled the lot?”

“No, not a cent. Wasn't it extraordinary! Have you ever heard of a
blindly trusted uncle who was perfectly honest? Well, mine was. But the
trouble was that, while an excellent man to have looking after one's
money, he wasn't a very lovable character. He was very hard. Hard!
He was as hard as--well, nearly as hard as this seat. He hated poor
Fill...”

“Phil?”

“I broke it to you just now that my brother's name was Fillmore.”

“Oh, your brother. Oh, ah, yes.”

“He was always picking on poor Fill. And I'm bound to say that Fill
rather laid himself out as what you might call a pickee. He was always
getting into trouble. One day, about three years ago, he was expelled
from Harvard, and my uncle vowed he would have nothing more to do with
him. So I said, if Fill left, I would leave. And, as this seemed to be
my uncle's idea of a large evening, no objection was raised, and Fill
and I departed. We went to New York, and there we've been ever since.
About six months' ago Fill passed the twenty-five mark and collected his
money, and last month I marched past the given point and got mine. So it
all ends happily, you see. Now tell me about yourself.”

“But, I say, you know, dash it, you've skipped a lot. I mean to say, you
must have had an awful time in New York, didn't you? How on earth did
you get along?”

“Oh, we found work. My brother tried one or two things, and finally
became an assistant stage-manager with some theatre people. The only
thing I could do, having been raised in enervating luxury, was ballroom
dancing, so I ball-room danced. I got a job at a place in Broadway
called 'The Flower Garden' as what is humorously called an
'instructress,' as if anybody could 'instruct' the men who came there.
One was lucky if one saved one's life and wasn't quashed to death.”

“How perfectly foul!”

“Oh, I don't know. It was rather fun for a while. Still,” said Sally,
meditatively, “I'm not saying I could have held out much longer: I was
beginning to give. I suppose I've been trampled underfoot by more fat
men than any other girl of my age in America. I don't know why it was,
but every man who came in who was a bit overweight seemed to make for me
by instinct. That's why I like to sit on the sands here and watch
these Frenchmen bathing. It's just heavenly to lie back and watch a two
hundred and fifty pound man, coming along and feel that he isn't going
to dance with me.”

“But, I say! How absolutely rotten it must have been for you!”

“Well, I'll tell you one thing. It's going to make me a very
domesticated wife one of these days. You won't find me gadding about in
gilded jazz-palaces! For me, a little place in the country somewhere,
with my knitting and an Elsie book, and bed at half-past nine! And now
tell me the story of your life. And make it long because I'm perfectly
certain there's going to be no relief-expedition. I'm sure the last
dweller under this roof came in years ago. We shall be here till
morning.”

“I really think we had better shout, you know.”

“And lose Jules his job? Never!”

“Well, of course, I'm sorry for poor old Jules' troubles, but I hate to
think of you having to...”

“Now get on with the story,” said Sally.



6



Ginger Kemp exhibited some of the symptoms of a young bridegroom called
upon at a wedding-breakfast to respond to the toast. He moved his feet
restlessly and twisted his fingers.

“I hate talking about myself, you know,” he said.

“So I supposed,” said Sally. “That's why I gave you my autobiography
first, to give you no chance of backing out. Don't be such a shrinking
violet. We're all shipwrecked mariners here. I am intensely interested
in your narrative. And, even if I wasn't, I'd much rather listen to it
than to Jules' snoring.”

“He is snoring a bit, what? Does it annoy you? Shall I stir him?”

“You seem to have an extraordinary brutal streak in your nature,” said
Sally. “You appear to think of nothing else but schemes for harassing
poor Jules. Leave him alone for a second, and start telling me about
yourself.”

“Where shall I start?”

“Well, not with your childhood, I think. We'll skip that.”

“Well...” Ginger Kemp knitted his brow, searching for a dramatic
opening. “Well, I'm more or less what you might call an orphan, like
you. I mean to say, both my people are dead and all that sort of thing.”

“Thanks for explaining. That has made it quite clear.”

“I can't remember my mother. My father died when I was in my last
year at Cambridge. I'd been having a most awfully good time at the
'varsity,'” said Ginger, warming to his theme. “Not thick, you know, but
good. I'd got my rugger and boxing blues and I'd just been picked for
scrum-half for England against the North in the first trial match, and
between ourselves it really did look as if I was more or less of a snip
for my international.”

Sally gazed at him wide eyed.

“Is that good or bad?” she asked.

“Eh?”

“Are you reciting a catalogue of your crimes, or do you expect me to get
up and cheer? What is a rugger blue, to start with?”

“Well, it's... it's a rugger blue, you know.”

“Oh, I see,” said Sally. “You mean a rugger blue.”

“I mean to say, I played rugger--footer--that's to say, football--Rugby
football--for Cambridge, against Oxford. I was scrum-half.”

“And what is a scrum-half?” asked Sally, patiently. “Yes, I know you're
going to say it's a scrum-half, but can't you make it easier?”

“The scrum-half,” said Ginger, “is the half who works the scrum. He
slings the pill out to the fly-half, who starts the three-quarters
going. I don't know if you understand?”

“I don't.”

“It's dashed hard to explain,” said Ginger Kemp, unhappily. “I mean,
I don't think I've ever met anyone before who didn't know what a
scrum-half was.”

“Well, I can see that it has something to do with football, so we'll
leave it at that. I suppose it's something like our quarter-back. And
what's an international?”

“It's called getting your international when you play for England, you
know. England plays Wales, France, Ireland, and Scotland. If it hadn't
been for the smash, I think I should have played for England against
Wales.”

“I see at last. What you're trying to tell me is that you were very good
at football.”

Ginger Kemp blushed warmly.

“Oh, I don't say that. England was pretty short of scrum-halves that
year.”

“What a horrible thing to happen to a country! Still, you were likely
to be picked on the All-England team when the smash came? What was the
smash?”

“Well, it turned out that the poor old pater hadn't left a penny. I
never understood the process exactly, but I'd always supposed that we
were pretty well off; and then it turned out that I hadn't anything at
all. I'm bound to say it was a bit of a jar. I had to come down from
Cambridge and go to work in my uncle's office. Of course, I made an
absolute hash of it.”

“Why, of course?”

“Well, I'm not a very clever sort of chap, you see. I somehow didn't
seem able to grasp the workings. After about a year, my uncle, getting
a bit fed-up, hoofed me out and got me a mastership at a school, and I
made a hash of that. He got me one or two other jobs, and I made a hash
of those.”

“You certainly do seem to be one of our most prominent young hashers!”
 gasped Sally.

“I am,” said Ginger, modestly.

There was a silence.

“And what about Scrymgeour?” Sally asked.

“That was the last of the jobs,” said Ginger. “Scrymgeour is a pompous
old ass who thinks he's going to be Prime Minister some day. He's a big
bug at the Bar and has just got into Parliament. My cousin used to devil
for him. That's how I got mixed up with the blighter.”

“Your cousin used...? I wish you would talk English.”

“That was my cousin who was with me on the beach this morning.”

“And what did you say he used to do for Mr. Scrymgeour?”

“Oh, it's called devilling. My cousin's at the Bar, too--one of our
rising nibs, as a matter of fact...”

“I thought he was a lawyer of some kind.”

“He's got a long way beyond it now, but when he started he used to devil
for Scrymgeour--assist him, don't you know. His name's Carmyle, you
know. Perhaps you've heard of him? He's rather a prominent johnny in his
way. Bruce Carmyle, you know.”

“I haven't.”

“Well, he got me this job of secretary to Scrymgeour.”

“And why did Mr. Scrymgeour fire you?”

Ginger Kemp's face darkened. He frowned. Sally, watching him, felt that
she had been right when she had guessed that he had a temper. She liked
him none the worse for it. Mild men did not appeal to her.

“I don't know if you're fond of dogs?” said Ginger.

“I used to be before this morning,” said Sally. “And I suppose I shall
be again in time. For the moment I've had what you might call rather a
surfeit of dogs. But aren't you straying from the point? I asked you why
Mr. Scrymgeour dismissed you.”

“I'm telling you.”

“I'm glad of that. I didn't know.”

“The old brute,” said Ginger, frowning again, “has a dog. A very jolly
little spaniel. Great pal of mine. And Scrymgeour is the sort of fool
who oughtn't to be allowed to own a dog. He's one of those asses who
isn't fit to own a dog. As a matter of fact, of all the blighted,
pompous, bullying, shrivelled-souled old devils...”

“One moment,” said Sally. “I'm getting an impression that you don't like
Mr. Scrymgeour. Am I right?”

“Yes!”

“I thought so. Womanly intuition! Go on.”

“He used to insist on the poor animal doing tricks. I hate seeing a
dog do tricks. Dogs loathe it, you know. They're frightfully sensitive.
Well, Scrymgeour used to make this spaniel of his do tricks--fool-things
that no self-respecting dogs would do: and eventually poor old Billy got
fed up and jibbed. He was too polite to bite, but he sort of shook his
head and crawled under a chair. You'd have thought anyone would have
let it go at that, but would old Scrymgeour? Not a bit of it! Of all the
poisonous...”

“Yes, I know. Go on.”

“Well, the thing ended in the blighter hauling him out from under the
chair and getting more and more shirty, until finally he laid into him
with a stick. That is to say,” said Ginger, coldly accurate, “he started
laying into him with a stick.” He brooded for a moment with knit brows.
“A spaniel, mind you! Can you imagine anyone beating a spaniel? It's
like hitting a little girl. Well, he's a fairly oldish man, you know,
and that hampered me a bit: but I got hold of the stick and broke it
into about eleven pieces, and by great good luck it was a stick he
happened to value rather highly. It had a gold knob and had been
presented to him by his constituents or something. I minced it up
a goodish bit, and then I told him a fair amount about himself. And
then--well, after that he shot me out, and I came here.”

Sally did not speak for a moment.

“You were quite right,” she said at last, in a sober voice that had
nothing in it of her customary flippancy. She paused again. “And what
are you going to do now?” she said.

“I don't know.”

“You'll get something?”

“Oh, yes, I shall get something, I suppose. The family will be pretty
sick, of course.”

“For goodness' sake! Why do you bother about the family?” Sally burst
out. She could not reconcile this young man's flabby dependence on his
family with the enterprise and vigour which he had shown in his dealings
with the unspeakable Scrymgeour. Of course, he had been brought up to
look on himself as a rich man's son and appeared to have drifted as such
young men are wont to do; but even so... “The whole trouble with you,”
 she said, embarking on a subject on which she held strong views, “is
that...”

Her harangue was interrupted by what--at the Normandie, at one o'clock
in the morning--practically amounted to a miracle. The front door of
the hotel opened, and there entered a young man in evening dress.
Such persons were sufficiently rare at the Normandie, which catered
principally for the staid and middle-aged, and this youth's presence was
due, if one must pause to explain it, to the fact that, in the middle
of his stay at Roville, a disastrous evening at the Casino had so
diminished his funds that he had been obliged to make a hurried shift
from the Hotel Splendide to the humbler Normandie. His late appearance
to-night was caused by the fact that he had been attending a dance
at the Splendide, principally in the hope of finding there some
kind-hearted friend of his prosperity from whom he might borrow.

A rapid-fire dialogue having taken place between Jules and the newcomer,
the keys were handed through the cage, the door opened and the lift was
set once more in motion. And a few minutes later, Sally, suddenly aware
of an overpowering sleepiness, had switched off her light and jumped
into bed. Her last waking thought was a regret that she had not been
able to speak at length to Mr. Ginger Kemp on the subject of enterprise,
and resolve that the address should be delivered at the earliest
opportunity.




CHAPTER III. THE DIGNIFIED MR. CARMYLE



1



By six o'clock on the following evening, however, Sally had been forced
to the conclusion that Ginger would have to struggle through life as
best he could without the assistance of her contemplated remarks: for
she had seen nothing of him all day and in another hour she would have
left Roville on the seven-fifteen express which was to take her to
Paris, en route for Cherbourg and the liner whereon she had booked her
passage for New York.

It was in the faint hope of finding him even now that, at half-past six,
having conveyed her baggage to the station and left it in charge of
an amiable porter, she paid a last visit to the Casino Municipale. She
disliked the thought of leaving Ginger without having uplifted him. Like
so many alert and active-minded girls, she possessed in a great degree
the quality of interesting herself in--or, as her brother Fillmore
preferred to put it, messing about with--the private affairs of others.
Ginger had impressed her as a man to whom it was worth while to give a
friendly shove on the right path; and it was with much gratification,
therefore, that, having entered the Casino, she perceived a flaming
head shining through the crowd which had gathered at one of the
roulette-tables.

There are two Casinos at Roville-sur-Mer. The one on the Promenade goes
in mostly for sea-air and a mild game called boule. It is the big Casino
Municipale down in the Palace Massena near the railway station which is
the haunt of the earnest gambler who means business; and it was plain to
Sally directly she arrived that Ginger Kemp not only meant business
but was getting results. Ginger was going extremely strong. He was
entrenched behind an opulent-looking mound of square counters: and, even
as Sally looked, a wooden-faced croupier shoved a further instalment
across the table to him at the end of his long rake.

“Epatant!” murmured a wistful man at Sally's side, removing an elbow
from her ribs in order the better to gesticulate. Sally, though no French
scholar, gathered that he was startled and gratified. The entire crowd
seemed to be startled and gratified. There is undoubtedly a
certain altruism in the make-up of the spectators at a Continental
roulette-table. They seem to derive a spiritual pleasure from seeing
somebody else win.

The croupier gave his moustache a twist with his left hand and the wheel
a twist with his right, and silence fell again. Sally, who had shifted
to a spot where the pressure of the crowd was less acute, was now able
to see Ginger's face, and as she saw it she gave an involuntary laugh.
He looked exactly like a dog at a rat-hole. His hair seemed to bristle
with excitement. One could almost fancy that his ears were pricked up.

In the tense hush which had fallen on the crowd at the restarting of the
wheel, Sally's laugh rang out with an embarrassing clearness. It had a
marked effect on all those within hearing. There is something almost of
religious ecstasy in the deportment of the spectators at a table where
anyone is having a run of luck at roulette, and if she had guffawed in
a cathedral she could not have caused a more pained consternation. The
earnest worshippers gazed at her with shocked eyes, and Ginger, turning
with a start, saw her and jumped up. As he did so, the ball fell with a
rattling click into a red compartment of the wheel; and, as it ceased to
revolve and it was seen that at last the big winner had picked the wrong
colour, a shuddering groan ran through the congregation like that which
convulses the penitents' bench at a negro revival meeting. More
glances of reproach were cast at Sally. It was generally felt that her
injudicious behaviour had changed Ginger's luck.

The only person who did not appear to be concerned was Ginger himself.
He gathered up his loot, thrust it into his pocket, and elbowed his
way to where Sally stood, now definitely established in the eyes of the
crowd as a pariah. There was universal regret that he had decided to
call it a day. It was to the spectators as though a star had suddenly
walked off the stage in the middle of his big scene; and not even a loud
and violent quarrel which sprang up at this moment between two excitable
gamblers over a disputed five-franc counter could wholly console them.

“I say,” said Ginger, dexterously plucking Sally out of the crowd,
“this is topping, meeting you like this. I've been looking for you
everywhere.”

“It's funny you didn't find me, then, for that's where I've been. I was
looking for you.”

“No, really?” Ginger seemed pleased. He led the way to the quiet
ante-room outside the gambling-hall, and they sat down in a corner.
It was pleasant here, with nobody near except the gorgeously uniformed
attendant over by the door. “That was awfully good of you.”

“I felt I must have a talk with you before my train went.”

Ginger started violently.

“Your train? What do you mean?”

“The puff-puff,” explained Sally. “I'm leaving to-night, you know.”

“Leaving?” Ginger looked as horrified as the devoutest of the
congregation of which Sally had just ceased to be a member. “You don't
mean leaving? You're not going away from Roville?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“But why? Where are you going?”

“Back to America. My boat sails from Cherbourg tomorrow.”

“Oh, my aunt!”

“I'm sorry,” said Sally, touched by his concern. She was a warm-hearted
girl and liked being appreciated. “But...”

“I say...” Ginger Kemp turned bright scarlet and glared before him at
the uniformed official, who was regarding their tête-à-tête with the
indulgent eye of one who has been through this sort of thing himself. “I
say, look here, will you marry me?”



2



Sally stared at his vermilion profile in frank amazement. Ginger, she
had realized by this time, was in many ways a surprising young man, but
she had not expected him to be as surprising as this.

“Marry you!”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I do. You allude to the holy state. Yes, I know
what you mean.”

“Then how about it?”

Sally began to regain her composure. Her sense of humour was tickled.
She looked at Ginger gravely. He did not meet her eye, but continued to
drink in the uniformed official, who was by now so carried away by
the romance of it all that he had begun to hum a love-ballad under his
breath. The official could not hear what they were saying, and would not
have been able to understand it even if he could have heard; but he was
an expert in the language of the eyes.

“But isn't this--don't think I am trying to make difficulties--isn't
this a little sudden?”

“It's got to be sudden,” said Ginger Kemp, complainingly. “I thought you
were going to be here for weeks.”

“But, my infant, my babe, has it occurred to you that we are practically
strangers?” She patted his hand tolerantly, causing the uniformed
official to heave a tender sigh. “I see what has happened,” she said.
“You're mistaking me for some other girl, some girl you know really
well, and were properly introduced to. Take a good look at me, and
you'll see.”

“If I take a good look at you,” said Ginger, feverishly, “I'm dashed if
I'll answer for the consequences.”

“And this is the man I was going to lecture on 'Enterprise.'”

“You're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, dash it!” said Ginger,
his gaze still riveted on the official by the door “I dare say it is
sudden. I can't help that. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you,
and there you are!”

“But...”

“Now, look here, I know I'm not much of a chap and all that, but...
well, I've just won the deuce of a lot of money in there...”

“Would you buy me with your gold?”

“I mean to say, we should have enough to start on, and... of course I've
made an infernal hash of everything I've tried up till now, but there
must be something I can do, and you can jolly well bet I'd have a
goodish stab at it. I mean to say, with you to buck me up and so forth,
don't you know. Well, I mean...”

“Has it struck you that I may already be engaged to someone else?”

“Oh, golly! Are you?”

For the first time he turned and faced her, and there was a look in his
eyes which touched Sally and drove all sense of the ludicrous out of
her. Absurd as it was, this man was really serious.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am,” she said soberly.

Ginger Kemp bit his lip and for a moment was silent.

“Oh, well, that's torn it!” he said at last.

Sally was aware of an emotion too complex to analyse. There was pity in
it, but amusement too. The emotion, though she did not recognize it, was
maternal. Mothers, listening to their children pleading with engaging
absurdity for something wholly out of their power to bestow, feel that
same wavering between tears and laughter. Sally wanted to pick Ginger up
and kiss him. The one thing she could not do was to look on him, sorry
as she was for him, as a reasonable, grown-up man.

“You don't really mean it, you know.”

“Don't I!” said Ginger, hollowly. “Oh, don't I!”

“You can't! There isn't such a thing in real life as love at first
sight. Love's a thing that comes when you know a person well and...”
 She paused. It had just occurred to her that she was hardly the girl to
lecture in this strain. Her love for Gerald Foster had been sufficiently
sudden, even instantaneous. What did she know of Gerald except that
she loved him? They had become engaged within two weeks of their first
meeting. She found this recollection damping to her eloquence, and ended
by saying tamely:

“It's ridiculous.”

Ginger had simmered down to a mood of melancholy resignation.

“I couldn't have expected you to care for me, I suppose, anyway,” he
said, sombrely. “I'm not much of a chap.”

It was just the diversion from the theme under discussion which Sally
had been longing to find. She welcomed the chance of continuing the
conversation on a less intimate and sentimental note.

“That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, seizing
the opportunity offered by this display of humility. “I've been looking
for you all day to go on with what I was starting to say in the lift
last night when we were interrupted. Do you mind if I talk to you like
an aunt--or a sister, suppose we say? Really, the best plan would be for
you to adopt me as an honorary sister. What do you think?”

Ginger did not appear noticeably elated at the suggested relationship.

“Because I really do take a tremendous interest in you.”

Ginger brightened. “That's awfully good of you.”

“I'm going to speak words of wisdom. Ginger, why don't you brace up?”

“Brace up?”

“Yes, stiffen your backbone and stick out your chin, and square your
elbows, and really amount to something. Why do you simply flop about and
do nothing and leave everything to what you call 'the family'? Why do
you have to be helped all the time? Why don't you help yourself? Why do
you have to have jobs found for you? Why don't you rush out and get one?
Why do you have to worry about what, 'the family' thinks of you? Why
don't you make yourself independent of them? I know you had hard luck,
suddenly finding yourself without money and all that, but, good heavens,
everybody else in the world who has ever done anything has been broke at
one time or another. It's part of the fun. You'll never get anywhere
by letting yourself be picked up by the family like... like a floppy
Newfoundland puppy and dumped down in any old place that happens to
suit them. A job's a thing you've got to choose for yourself and get for
yourself. Think what you can do--there must be something--and then go
at it with a snort and grab it and hold it down and teach it to take
a joke. You've managed to collect some money. It will give you time
to look round. And, when you've had a look round, do something! Try to
realize you're alive, and try to imagine the family isn't!”

Sally stopped and drew a deep breath. Ginger Kemp did not reply for a
moment. He seemed greatly impressed.

“When you talk quick,” he said at length, in a serious meditative voice,
“your nose sort of goes all squiggly. Ripping, it looks!”

Sally uttered an indignant cry.

“Do you mean to say you haven't been listening to a word I've been
saying,” she demanded.

“Oh, rather! Oh, by Jove, yes.”

“Well, what did I say?”

“You... er... And your eyes sort of shine, too.”

“Never mind my eyes. What did I say?”

“You told me,” said Ginger, on reflection, “to get a job.”

“Well, yes. I put it much better than that, but that's what it amounted
to, I suppose. All right, then. I'm glad you...”

Ginger was eyeing her with mournful devotion. “I say,” he interrupted,
“I wish you'd let me write to you. Letters, I mean, and all that. I have
an idea it would kind of buck me up.”

“You won't have time for writing letters.”

“I'll have time to write them to you. You haven't an address or anything
of that sort in America, have you, by any chance? I mean, so that I'd
know where to write to.”

“I can give you an address which will always find me.” She told him the
number and street of Mrs. Meecher's boarding-house, and he wrote them
down reverently on his shirt-cuff. “Yes, on second thoughts, do write,”
 she said. “Of course, I shall want to know how you've got on. I... oh,
my goodness! That clock's not right?”

“Just about. What time does your train go?”

“Go! It's gone! Or, at least, it goes in about two seconds.” She made a
rush for the swing-door, to the confusion of the uniformed official who
had not been expecting this sudden activity. “Good-bye, Ginger. Write to
me, and remember what I said.”

Ginger, alert after his unexpected fashion when it became a question
of physical action, had followed her through the swing-door, and they
emerged together and started running down the square.

“Stick it!” said Ginger, encouragingly. He was running easily and well,
as becomes a man who, in his day, had been a snip for his international
at scrum-half.

Sally saved her breath. The train was beginning to move slowly out of
the station as they sprinted abreast on to the platform. Ginger dived
for the nearest door, wrenched it open, gathered Sally neatly in his
arms, and flung her in. She landed squarely on the toes of a man who
occupied the corner seat, and, bounding off again, made for the window.
Ginger, faithful to the last, was trotting beside the train as it
gathered speed.

“Ginger! My poor porter! Tip him. I forgot.”

“Right ho!”

“And don't forget what I've been saying.”

“Right ho!”

“Look after yourself and 'Death to the Family!'”

“Right ho!”

The train passed smoothly out of the station. Sally cast one last look
back at her red-haired friend, who had now halted and was waving a
handkerchief. Then she turned to apologize to the other occupant of the
carriage.

“I'm so sorry,” she said, breathlessly. “I hope I didn't hurt you.”

She found herself facing Ginger's cousin, the dark man of yesterday's
episode on the beach, Bruce Carmyle.



3



Mr. Carmyle was not a man who readily allowed himself to be disturbed
by life's little surprises, but at the present moment he could not help
feeling slightly dazed. He recognized Sally now as the French girl who
had attracted his cousin Lancelot's notice on the beach. At least he had
assumed that she was French, and it was startling to be addressed by
her now in fluent English. How had she suddenly acquired this gift of
tongues? And how on earth had she had time since yesterday, when he
had been a total stranger to her, to become sufficiently intimate with
Cousin Lancelot to be sprinting with him down station platforms and
addressing him out of railway-carriage windows as Ginger? Bruce Carmyle
was aware that most members of that sub-species of humanity, his
cousin's personal friends, called him by that familiar--and, so Carmyle
held, vulgar--nickname: but how had this girl got hold of it?

If Sally had been less pretty, Mr. Carmyle would undoubtedly have looked
disapprovingly at her, for she had given his rather rigid sense of the
proprieties a nasty jar. But as, panting and flushed from her run, she
was prettier than any girl he had yet met, he contrived to smile.

“Not at all,” he said in answer to her question, though it was far from
the truth. His left big toe was aching confoundedly. Even a girl with
a foot as small as Sally's can make her presence felt on a man's toe if
the scrum-half who is handling her aims well and uses plenty of vigour.

“If you don't mind,” said Sally, sitting down, “I think I'll breathe a
little.”

She breathed. The train sped on.

“Quite a close thing,” said Bruce Carmyle, affably. The pain in his toe
was diminishing. “You nearly missed it.”

“Yes. It was lucky Mr. Kemp was with me. He throws very straight,
doesn't he.”

“Tell me,” said Carmyle, “how do you come to know my Cousin? On the
beach yesterday morning...”

“Oh, we didn't know each other then. But we were staying at the same
hotel, and we spent an hour or so shut up in an elevator together. That
was when we really got acquainted.”

A waiter entered the compartment, announcing in unexpected English that
dinner was served in the restaurant car. “Would you care for dinner?”

“I'm starving,” said Sally.

She reproved herself, as they made their way down the corridor, for
being so foolish as to judge anyone by his appearance. This man was
perfectly pleasant in spite of his grim exterior. She had decided by the
time they had seated themselves at the table she liked him.

At the table, however, Mr. Carmyle's manner changed for the worse. He
lost his amiability. He was evidently a man who took his meals seriously
and believed in treating waiters with severity. He shuddered austerely
at a stain on the table-cloth, and then concentrated himself frowningly
on the bill of fare. Sally, meanwhile, was establishing cosy relations
with the much too friendly waiter, a cheerful old man who from the start
seemed to have made up his mind to regard her as a favourite daughter.
The waiter talked no English and Sally no French, but they were getting
along capitally, when Mr. Carmyle, who had been irritably waving aside
the servitor's light-hearted advice--at the Hotel Splendide the waiters
never bent over you and breathed cordial suggestions down the side of
your face--gave his order crisply in the Anglo-Gallic dialect of the
travelling Briton. The waiter remarked, “Boum!” in a pleased sort of
way, and vanished.

“Nice old man!” said Sally.

“Infernally familiar!” said Mr. Carmyle.

Sally perceived that on the topic of the waiter she and her host did not
see eye to eye and that little pleasure or profit could be derived from
any discussion centring about him. She changed the subject. She was not
liking Mr. Carmyle quite so much as she had done a few minutes ago, but
it was courteous of him to give her dinner, and she tried to like him as
much as she could.

“By the way,” she said, “my name is Nicholas. I always think it's a good
thing to start with names, don't you?”

“Mine...”

“Oh, I know yours. Ginger--Mr. Kemp told me.”

Mr. Carmyle, who since the waiter's departure, had been thawing,
stiffened again at the mention of Ginger.

“Indeed?” he said, coldly. “Apparently you got intimate.”

Sally did not like his tone. He seemed to be criticizing her, and she
resented criticism from a stranger. Her eyes opened wide and she looked
dangerously across the table.

“Why 'apparently'? I told you that we had got intimate, and I explained
how. You can't stay shut up in an elevator half the night with anybody
without getting to know him. I found Mr. Kemp very pleasant.”

“Really?”

“And very interesting.”

Mr. Carmyle raised his eyebrows.

“Would you call him interesting?”

“I did call him interesting.” Sally was beginning to feel the
exhilaration of battle. Men usually made themselves extremely agreeable
to her, and she reacted belligerently under the stiff unfriendliness
which had come over her companion in the last few minutes.

“He told me all about himself.”

“And you found that interesting?”

“Why not?”

“Well...” A frigid half-smile came and went on Bruce Carmyle's dark
face. “My cousin has many excellent qualities, no doubt--he used to
play football well, and I understand that he is a capable amateur
pugilist--but I should not have supposed him entertaining. We find him a
little dull.”

“I thought it was only royalty that called themselves 'we.'”

“I meant myself--and the rest of the family.”

The mention of the family was too much for Sally. She had to stop
talking in order to allow her mind to clear itself of rude thoughts.

“Mr. Kemp was telling me about Mr. Scrymgeour,” she went on at length.

Bruce Carmyle stared for a moment at the yard or so of French bread
which the waiter had placed on the table.

“Indeed?” he said. “He has an engaging lack of reticence.”

The waiter returned bearing soup and dumped it down.

“V'la!” he observed, with the satisfied air of a man who has
successfully performed a difficult conjuring trick. He smiled at Sally
expectantly, as though confident of applause from this section of his
audience at least. But Sally's face was set and rigid. She had been
snubbed, and the sensation was as pleasant as it was novel.

“I think Mr. Kemp had hard luck,” she said.

“If you will excuse me, I would prefer not to discuss the matter.”

Mr. Carmyle's attitude was that Sally might be a pretty girl, but she
was a stranger, and the intimate affairs of the Family were not to be
discussed with strangers, however prepossessing.

“He was quite in the right. Mr. Scrymgeour was beating a dog...”

“I've heard the details.”

“Oh, I didn't know that. Well, don't you agree with me, then?”

“I do not. A man who would throw away an excellent position simply
because...”

“Oh, well, if that's your view, I suppose it is useless to talk about
it.”

“Quite.”

“Still, there's no harm in asking what you propose to do about
Gin--about Mr. Kemp.”

Mr. Carmyle became more glacial.

“I'm afraid I cannot discuss...”

Sally's quick impatience, nobly restrained till now, finally got the
better of her.

“Oh, for goodness' sake,” she snapped, “do try to be human, and don't
always be snubbing people. You remind me of one of those portraits of
men in the eighteenth century, with wooden faces, who look out of
heavy gold frames at you with fishy eyes as if you were a regrettable
incident.”

“Rosbif,” said the waiter genially, manifesting himself suddenly beside
them as if he had popped up out of a trap.

Bruce Carmyle attacked his roast beef morosely. Sally who was in the
mood when she knew that she would be ashamed of herself later on, but
was full of battle at the moment, sat in silence.

“I am sorry,” said Mr. Carmyle ponderously, “if my eyes are fishy. The
fact has not been called to my attention before.”

“I suppose you never had any sisters,” said Sally. “They would have told
you.”

Mr. Carmyle relapsed into an offended dumbness, which lasted till the
waiter had brought the coffee.

“I think,” said Sally, getting up, “I'll be going now. I don't seem to
want any coffee, and, if I stay on, I may say something rude. I thought
I might be able to put in a good word for Mr. Kemp and save him from
being massacred, but apparently it's no use. Good-bye, Mr. Carmyle, and
thank you for giving me dinner.”

She made her way down the car, followed by Bruce Carmyle's indignant,
yet fascinated, gaze. Strange emotions were stirring in Mr. Carmyle's
bosom.




CHAPTER IV. GINGER IN DANGEROUS MOOD



Some few days later, owing to the fact that the latter, being
preoccupied, did not see him first, Bruce Carmyle met his cousin
Lancelot in Piccadilly. They had returned by different routes from
Roville, and Ginger would have preferred the separation to continue. He
was hurrying on with a nod, when Carmyle stopped him.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” he observed.

“Oh, hullo!” said Ginger, without joy.

“I was thinking of calling at your club.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Cigarette?”

Ginger peered at the proffered case with the vague suspicion of the man
who has allowed himself to be lured on to the platform and is accepting
a card from the conjurer. He felt bewildered. In all the years of their
acquaintance he could not recall another such exhibition of geniality on
his cousin's part. He was surprised, indeed, at Mr. Carmyle's speaking
to him at all, for the affaire Scrymgeour remained an un-healed wound,
and the Family, Ginger knew, were even now in session upon it.

“Been back in London long?”

“Day or two.”

“I heard quite by accident that you had returned and that you were
staying at the club. By the way, thank you for introducing me to Miss
Nicholas.”

Ginger started violently.

“What!”

“I was in that compartment, you know, at Roville Station. You threw
her right on top of me. We agreed to consider that an introduction. An
attractive girl.”

Bruce Carmyle had not entirely made up his mind regarding Sally, but on
one point he was clear, that she should not, if he could help it, pass
out of his life. Her abrupt departure had left him with that baffled and
dissatisfied feeling which, though it has little in common with love at
first sight, frequently produces the same effects. She had had, he could
not disguise it from himself, the better of their late encounter and he
was conscious of a desire to meet her again and show her that there was
more in him than she apparently supposed. Bruce Carmyle, in a word,
was piqued: and, though he could not quite decide whether he liked or
disliked Sally, he was very sure that a future without her would have an
element of flatness.

“A very attractive girl. We had a very pleasant talk.”

“I bet you did,” said Ginger enviously.

“By the way, she did not give you her address by any chance?”

“Why?” said Ginger suspiciously. His attitude towards Sally's address
resembled somewhat that of a connoisseur who has acquired a unique work
of art. He wanted to keep it to himself and gloat over it.

“Well, I--er--I promised to send her some books she was anxious to
read...”

“I shouldn't think she gets much time for reading.”

“Books which are not published in America.”

“Oh, pretty nearly everything is published in America, what? Bound to
be, I mean.”

“Well, these particular books are not,” said Mr. Carmyle shortly. He was
finding Ginger's reserve a little trying, and wished that he had been
more inventive.

“Give them to me and I'll send them to her,” suggested Ginger.

“Good Lord, man!” snapped Mr. Carmyle. “I'm capable of sending a few
books to America. Where does she live?”

Ginger revealed the sacred number of the holy street which had the luck
to be Sally's headquarters. He did it because with a persistent devil
like his cousin there seemed no way of getting out of it: but he did it
grudgingly.

“Thanks.” Bruce Carmyle wrote the information down with a gold pencil
in a dapper little morocco-bound note-book. He was the sort of man who
always has a pencil, and the backs of old envelopes never enter into his
life.

There was a pause. Bruce Carmyle coughed.

“I saw Uncle Donald this morning,” he said.

His manner had lost its geniality. There was no need for it now, and he
was a man who objected to waste. He spoke coldly, and in his voice there
was a familiar sub-tingle of reproof.

“Yes?” said Ginger moodily. This was the uncle in whose office he
had made his debut as a hasher: a worthy man, highly respected in the
National Liberal Club, but never a favourite of Ginger's. There were
other minor uncles and a few subsidiary aunts who went to make up the
Family, but Uncle Donald was unquestionably the managing director of
that body and it was Ginger's considered opinion that in this capacity
he approximated to a human blister.

“He wants you to dine with him to-night at Bleke's.”

Ginger's depression deepened. A dinner with Uncle Donald would hardly
have been a cheerful function, even in the surroundings of a banquet
in the Arabian Nights. There was that about Uncle Donald's personality
which would have cast a sobering influence over the orgies of the
Emperor Tiberius at Capri. To dine with him at a morgue like that
relic of Old London, Bleke's Coffee House, which confined its custom
principally to regular patrons who had not missed an evening there for
half a century, was to touch something very near bed-rock. Ginger was
extremely doubtful whether flesh and blood were equal to it.

“To-night?” he said. “Oh, you mean to-night? Well...”

“Don't be a fool. You know as well as I do that you've got to go.”
 Uncle Donald's invitations were royal commands in the Family. “If you've
another engagement you must put it off.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Seven-thirty sharp.”

“All right,” said Ginger gloomily.

The two men went their ways, Bruce Carmyle eastwards because he had
clients to see in his chambers at the Temple; Ginger westwards because
Mr. Carmyle had gone east. There was little sympathy between these
cousins: yet, oddly enough, their thoughts as they walked centred on the
same object. Bruce Carmyle, threading his way briskly through the crowds
of Piccadilly Circus, was thinking of Sally: and so was Ginger as he
loafed aimlessly towards Hyde Park Corner, bumping in a sort of coma
from pedestrian to pedestrian.

Since his return to London Ginger had been in bad shape. He mooned
through the days and slept poorly at night. If there is one thing
rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives
a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an absolute onion,
it is hopeless love. Hopeless love had got Ginger all stirred up. His
had been hitherto a placid soul. Even the financial crash which had so
altered his life had not bruised him very deeply. His temperament had
enabled him to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with
a philosophic “Right ho!” But now everything seemed different. Things
irritated him acutely, which before he had accepted as inevitable--his
Uncle Donald's moustache, for instance, and its owner's habit of
employing it during meals as a sort of zareba or earthwork against the
assaults of soup.

“By gad!” thought Ginger, stopping suddenly opposite Devonshire House.
“If he uses that damned shrubbery as soup-strainer to-night, I'll slosh
him with a fork!”

Hard thoughts... hard thoughts! And getting harder all the time, for
nothing grows more quickly than a mood of rebellion. Rebellion is a
forest fire that flames across the soul. The spark had been lighted in
Ginger, and long before he reached Hyde Park Corner he was ablaze and
crackling. By the time he returned to his club he was practically a
menace to society--to that section of it, at any rate, which embraced
his Uncle Donald, his minor uncles George and William, and his aunts
Mary, Geraldine, and Louise.

Nor had the mood passed when he began to dress for the dismal
festivities of Bleke's Coffee House. He scowled as he struggled morosely
with an obstinate tie. One cannot disguise the fact--Ginger was warming
up. And it was just at this moment that Fate, as though it had been
waiting for the psychological instant, applied the finishing touch.
There was a knock at the door, and a waiter came in with a telegram.

Ginger looked at the envelope. It had been readdressed and forwarded
on from the Hotel Normandie. It was a wireless, handed in on board the
White Star liner Olympic, and it ran as follows:

Remember. Death to the Family. S.

Ginger sat down heavily on the bed.

The driver of the taxi-cab which at twenty-five minutes past seven drew
up at the dingy door of Bleke's Coffee House in the Strand was rather
struck by his fare's manner and appearance. A determined-looking sort of
young bloke, was the taxi-driver's verdict.




CHAPTER V. SALLY HEARS NEWS



It had been Sally's intention, on arriving in New York, to take a room
at the St. Regis and revel in the gilded luxury to which her wealth
entitled her before moving into the small but comfortable apartment
which, as soon as she had the time, she intended to find and make her
permanent abode. But when the moment came and she was giving directions
to the taxi-driver at the dock, there seemed to her something
revoltingly Fillmorian about the scheme. It would be time enough to
sever herself from the boarding-house which had been her home for three
years when she had found the apartment. Meanwhile, the decent thing to
do, if she did not want to brand herself in the sight of her conscience
as a female Fillmore, was to go back temporarily to Mrs. Meecher's
admirable establishment and foregather with her old friends. After all,
home is where the heart is, even if there are more prunes there than the
gourmet would consider judicious.

Perhaps it was the unavoidable complacency induced by the thought
that she was doing the right thing, or possibly it was the tingling
expectation of meeting Gerald Foster again after all these weeks of
separation, that made the familiar streets seem wonderfully bright as
she drove through them. It was a perfect, crisp New York morning, all
blue sky and amber sunshine, and even the ash-cans had a stimulating
look about them. The street cars were full of happy people rollicking
off to work: policemen directed the traffic with jaunty affability:
and the white-clad street-cleaners went about their poetic tasks with a
quiet but none the less noticeable relish. It was improbable that any of
these people knew that she was back, but somehow they all seemed to be
behaving as though this were a special day.

The first discordant note in this overture of happiness was struck by
Mrs. Meecher, who informed Sally, after expressing her gratification
at the news that she required her old room, that Gerald Foster had left
town that morning.

“Gone to Detroit, he has,” said Mrs. Meecher. “Miss Doland, too.” She
broke off to speak a caustic word to the boarding-house handyman,
who, with Sally's trunk as a weapon, was depreciating the value of the
wall-paper in the hall. “There's that play of his being tried out there,
you know, Monday,” resumed Mrs. Meecher, after the handyman had bumped
his way up the staircase. “They been rehearsing ever since you left.”

Sally was disappointed, but it was such a beautiful morning, and New
York was so wonderful after the dull voyage in the liner that she was
not going to allow herself to be depressed without good reason. After
all, she could go on to Detroit tomorrow. It was nice to have something
to which she could look forward.

“Oh, is Elsa in the company?” she said.

“Sure. And very good too, I hear.” Mrs. Meecher kept abreast of
theatrical gossip. She was an ex-member of the profession herself,
having been in the first production of “Florodora,” though, unlike
everybody else, not one of the original Sextette. “Mr. Faucitt was down
to see a rehearsal, and he said Miss Doland was fine. And he's not easy
to please, as you know.”

“How is Mr. Faucitt?”

Mrs. Meecher, not unwillingly, for she was a woman who enjoyed the
tragedies of life, made her second essay in the direction of lowering
Sally's uplifted mood.

“Poor old gentleman, he ain't over and above well. Went to bed early
last night with a headache, and this morning I been to see him and he
don't look well. There's a lot of this Spanish influenza about. It might
be that. Lots o' people have been dying of it, if you believe what you
see in the papers,” said Mrs. Meecher buoyantly.

“Good gracious! You don't think...?”

“Well, he ain't turned black,” admitted Mrs. Meecher with regret. “They
say they turn black. If you believe what you see in the papers, that is.
Of course, that may come later,” she added with the air of one confident
that all will come right in the future. “The doctor'll be in to see him
pretty soon. He's quite happy. Toto's sitting with him.”

Sally's concern increased. Like everyone who had ever spent any length
of time in the house, she had strong views on Toto. This quadruped, who
stained the fame of the entire canine race by posing as a dog, was a
small woolly animal with a persistent and penetrating yap, hard to bear
with equanimity in health and certainly quite outside the range of a
sick man. Her heart bled for Mr. Faucitt. Mrs. Meecher, on the other
hand, who held a faith in her little pet's amiability and power to
soothe which seven years' close association had been unable to shake,
seemed to feel that, with Toto on the spot, all that could be done had
been done as far as pampering the invalid was concerned.

“I must go up and see him,” cried Sally. “Poor old dear.”

“Sure. You know his room. You can hear Toto talking to him now,” said
Mrs. Meecher complacently. “He wants a cracker, that's what he wants.
Toto likes a cracker after breakfast.”

The invalid's eyes, as Sally entered the room, turned wearily to the
door. At the sight of Sally they lit up with an incredulous rapture.
Almost any intervention would have pleased Mr. Faucitt at that moment,
for his little playmate had long outstayed any welcome that might
originally have been his: but that the caller should be his beloved
Sally seemed to the old man something in the nature of a return of the
age of miracles.

“Sally!”

“One moment. Here, Toto!”

Toto, struck momentarily dumb by the sight of food, had jumped off the
bed and was standing with his head on one side, peering questioningly at
the cracker. He was a suspicious dog, but he allowed himself to be lured
into the passage, upon which Sally threw the cracker down and slipped
in and shut the door. Toto, after a couple of yaps, which may have been
gratitude or baffled fury, trotted off downstairs, and Mr. Faucitt drew
a deep breath.

“Sally, you come, as ever, as an angel of mercy. Our worthy Mrs. Meecher
means well, and I yield to no man in my respect for her innate kindness
of heart: but she errs in supposing that that thrice-damned whelp of
hers is a combination of sick-nurse, soothing medicine, and a week at
the seaside. She insisted on bringing him here. He was yapping then, as
he was yapping when, with womanly resource which I cannot sufficiently
praise, you decoyed him hence. And each yap went through me like
hammer-strokes on sheeted tin. Sally, you stand alone among womankind.
You shine like a good deed in a naughty world. When did you get back?”

“I've only just arrived in my hired barouche from the pier.”

“And you came to see your old friend without delay? I am grateful and
flattered. Sally, my dear.”

“Of course I came to see you. Do you suppose that, when Mrs. Meecher
told me you were sick, I just said 'Is that so?' and went on talking
about the weather? Well, what do you mean by it? Frightening everybody.
Poor old darling, do you feel very bad?”

“One thousand individual mice are nibbling the base of my spine, and
I am conscious of a constant need of cooling refreshment. But what of
that? Your presence is a tonic. Tell me, how did our Sally enjoy foreign
travel?”

“Our Sally had the time of her life.”

“Did you visit England?”

“Only passing through.”

“How did it look?” asked Mr. Faucitt eagerly.

“Moist. Very moist.”

“It would,” said Mr. Faucitt indulgently. “I confess that, happy as I
have been in this country, there are times when I miss those wonderful
London days, when a sort of cosy brown mist hangs over the streets and
the pavements ooze with a perspiration of mud and water, and you see
through the haze the yellow glow of the Bodega lamps shining in the
distance like harbour-lights. Not,” said Mr. Faucitt, “that I specify
the Bodega to the exclusion of other and equally worthy hostelries. I
have passed just as pleasant hours in Rule's and Short's. You missed
something by not lingering in England, Sally.”

“I know I did--pneumonia.”

Mr. Faucitt shook his head reproachfully.

“You are prejudiced, my dear. You would have enjoyed London if you had
had the courage to brave its superficial gloom. Where did you spend your
holiday? Paris?”

“Part of the time. And the rest of the while I was down by the sea. It
was glorious. I don't think I would ever have come back if I hadn't had
to. But, of course, I wanted to see you all again. And I wanted to be at
the opening of Mr. Foster's play. Mrs. Meecher tells me you went to one
of the rehearsals.”

“I attended a dog-fight which I was informed was a rehearsal,” said Mr.
Faucitt severely. “There is no rehearsing nowadays.”

“Oh dear! Was it as bad as all that?”

“The play is good. The play--I will go further--is excellent. It has
fat. But the acting...”

“Mrs. Meecher said you told her that Elsa was good.”

“Our worthy hostess did not misreport me. Miss Doland has great
possibilities. She reminds me somewhat of Matilda Devine, under whose
banner I played a season at the Old Royalty in London many years ago.
She has the seeds of greatness in her, but she is wasted in the present
case on an insignificant part. There is only one part in the play. I
allude to the one murdered by Miss Mabel Hobson.”

“Murdered!” Sally's heart sank. She had been afraid of this, and it
was no satisfaction to feel that she had warned Gerald. “Is she very
terrible?”

“She has the face of an angel and the histrionic ability of that curious
suet pudding which our estimable Mrs. Meecher is apt to give us on
Fridays. In my professional career I have seen many cases of what I may
term the Lady Friend in the role of star, but Miss Hobson eclipses them
all. I remember in the year '94 a certain scion of the plutocracy
took it into his head to present a female for whom he had conceived an
admiration in a part which would have taxed the resources of the ablest.
I was engaged in her support, and at the first rehearsal I recollect
saying to my dear old friend, Arthur Moseby--dead, alas, these many
years. An excellent juvenile, but, like so many good fellows, cursed
with a tendency to lift the elbow--I recollect saying to him 'Arthur,
dear boy, I give it two weeks.' 'Max,' was his reply, 'you are an
incurable optimist. One consecutive night, laddie, one consecutive
night.' We had, I recall, an even half-crown upon it. He won. We opened
at Wigan, our leading lady got the bird, and the show closed next day.
I was forcibly reminded of this incident as I watched Miss Hobson
rehearsing.”

“Oh, poor Ger--poor Mr. Foster!”

“I do not share your commiseration for that young man,” said Mr. Faucitt
austerely. “You probably are almost a stranger to him, but he and I have
been thrown together a good deal of late. A young man upon whom, mark my
words, success, if it ever comes, will have the worst effects. I dislike
him. Sally. He is, I think, without exception, the most selfish and
self-centred young man of my acquaintance. He reminds me very much
of old Billy Fothergill, with whom I toured a good deal in the later
eighties. Did I ever tell you the story of Billy and the amateur
who...?”

Sally was in no mood to listen to the adventures of Mr. Fothergill.
The old man's innocent criticism of Gerald had stabbed her deeply. A
momentary impulse to speak hotly in his defence died away as she saw
Mr. Faucitt's pale, worn old face. He had meant no harm, after all. How
could he know what Gerald was to her?

She changed the conversation abruptly.

“Have you seen anything of Fillmore while I've been away?”

“Fillmore? Why yes, my dear, curiously enough I happened to run into him
on Broadway only a few days ago. He seemed changed--less stiff and aloof
than he had been for some time past. I may be wronging him, but there
have been times of late when one might almost have fancied him a trifle
up-stage. All that was gone at our last encounter. He appeared glad to
see me and was most cordial.”

Sally found her composure restored. Her lecture on the night of the
party had evidently, she thought, not been wasted. Mr. Faucitt, however,
advanced another theory to account for the change in the Man of Destiny.

“I rather fancy,” he said, “that the softening influence has been the
young man's fiancée.”

“What? Fillmore's not engaged?”

“Did he not write and tell you? I suppose he was waiting to inform you
when you returned. Yes, Fillmore is betrothed. The lady was with
him when we met. A Miss Winch. In the profession, I understand. He
introduced me. A very charming and sensible young lady, I thought.”

Sally shook her head.

“She can't be. Fillmore would never have got engaged to anyone like
that. Was her hair crimson?”

“Brown, if I recollect rightly.”

“Very loud, I suppose, and overdressed?”

“On the contrary, neat and quiet.”

“You've made a mistake,” said Sally decidedly. “She can't have been like
that. I shall have to look into this. It does seem hard that I can't go
away for a few weeks without all my friends taking to beds of sickness
and all my brothers getting ensnared by vampires.”

A knock at the door interrupted her complaint. Mrs. Meecher entered,
ushering in a pleasant little man with spectacles and black bag.

“The doctor to see you, Mr. Faucitt.” Mrs. Meecher cast an appraising
eye at the invalid, as if to detect symptoms of approaching
discoloration. “I've been telling him that what I think you've gotten is
this here new Spanish influenza. Two more deaths there were in the paper
this morning, if you can believe what you see...”

“I wonder,” said the doctor, “if you would mind going and bringing me a
small glass of water?”

“Why, sure.”

“Not a large glass--a small glass. Just let the tap run for a few
moments and take care not to spill any as you come up the stairs. I
always ask ladies, like our friend who has just gone,” he added as the
door closed, “to bring me a glass of water. It keeps them amused and
interested and gets them out of the way, and they think I am going to do
a conjuring trick with it. As a matter of fact, I'm going to drink it.
Now let's have a look at you.”

The examination did not take long. At the end of it the doctor seemed
somewhat chagrined.

“Our good friend's diagnosis was correct. I'd give a leg to say it
wasn't, but it was. It is this here new Spanish influenza. Not a bad
attack. You want to stay in bed and keep warm, and I'll write you out a
prescription. You ought to be nursed. Is this young lady a nurse?”

“No, no, merely...”

“Of course I'm a nurse,” said Sally decidedly. “It isn't difficult,
is it, doctor? I know nurses smooth pillows. I can do that. Is there
anything else?”

“Their principal duty is to sit here and prevent the excellent and
garrulous lady who has just left us from getting in. They must also be
able to aim straight with a book or an old shoe, if that small woolly
dog I met downstairs tries to force an entrance. If you are equal to
these tasks, I can leave the case in your hands with every confidence.”

“But, Sally, my dear,” said Mr. Faucitt, concerned, “you must not waste
your time looking after me. You have a thousand things to occupy you.”

“There's nothing I want to do more than help you to get better. I'll
just go out and send a wire, and then I'll be right back.”

Five minutes later, Sally was in a Western Union office, telegraphing
to Gerald that she would be unable to reach Detroit in time for the
opening.




CHAPTER VI. FIRST AID FOR FILLMORE



1



It was not till the following Friday that Sally was able to start for
Detroit. She arrived on the Saturday morning and drove to the Hotel
Statler. Having ascertained that Gerald was stopping in the hotel and
having 'phoned up to his room to tell him to join her, she went into the
dining-room and ordered breakfast.

She felt low-spirited as she waited for the food to arrive. The nursing
of Mr. Faucitt had left her tired, and she had not slept well on the
train. But the real cause of her depression was the fact that there had
been a lack of enthusiasm in Gerald's greeting over the telephone just
now. He had spoken listlessly, as though the fact of her returning
after all these weeks was a matter of no account, and she felt hurt and
perplexed.

A cup of coffee had a stimulating effect. Men, of course, were always
like this in the early morning. It would, no doubt, be a very different
Gerald who would presently bound into the dining-room, quickened and
restored by a cold shower-bath. In the meantime, here was food, and she
needed it.

She was pouring out her second cup of coffee when a stout young man,
of whom she had caught a glimpse as he moved about that section of the
hotel lobby which was visible through the open door of the dining-room,
came in and stood peering about as though in search of someone. The
momentary sight she had had of this young man had interested Sally. She
had thought how extraordinarily like he was to her brother Fillmore. Now
she perceived that it was Fillmore himself.

Sally was puzzled. What could Fillmore be doing so far west? She had
supposed him to be a permanent resident of New York. But, of course,
your man of affairs and vast interests flits about all over the place.
At any rate, here he was, and she called him. And, after he had stood in
the doorway looking in every direction except the right one for another
minute, he saw her and came over to her table.

“Why, Sally?” His manner, she thought, was nervous--one might almost
have said embarrassed. She attributed this to a guilty conscience.
Presently he would have to break to her the news that he had become
engaged to be married without her sisterly sanction, and no doubt he was
wondering how to begin. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in
Europe.”

“I got back a week ago, but I've been nursing poor old Mr. Faucitt ever
since then. He's been ill, poor old dear. I've come here to see Mr.
Foster's play, 'The Primrose Way,' you know. Is it a success?”

“It hasn't opened yet.”

“Don't be silly, Fill. Do pull yourself together. It opened last
Monday.”

“No, it didn't. Haven't you heard? They've closed all the theatres
because of this infernal Spanish influenza. Nothing has been playing
this week. You must have seen it in the papers.”

“I haven't had time to read the papers. Oh, Fill, what an awful shame!”

“Yes, it's pretty tough. Makes the company all on edge. I've had the
darndest time, I can tell you.”

“Why, what have you got to do with it?”

Fillmore coughed.

“I--er--oh, I didn't tell you that. I'm sort of--er--mixed up in the
show. Cracknell--you remember he was at college with me--suggested that
I should come down and look at it. Shouldn't wonder if he wants me to
put money into it and so on.”

“I thought he had all the money in the world.”

“Yes, he has a lot, but these fellows like to let a pal in on a good
thing.”

“Is it a good thing?”

“The play's fine.”

“That's what Mr. Faucitt said. But Mabel Hobson...”

Fillmore's ample face registered emotion.

“She's an awful woman, Sally! She can't act, and she throws her
weight about all the time. The other day there was a fuss about a
paper-knife...”

“How do you mean, a fuss about a paper-knife?”

“One of the props, you know. It got mislaid. I'm certain it wasn't my
fault...”

“How could it have been your fault?” asked Sally wonderingly. Love
seemed to have the worst effects on Fillmore's mentality.

“Well--er--you know how it is. Angry woman... blames the first person
she sees... This paper-knife...”

Fillmore's voice trailed off into pained silence.

“Mr. Faucitt said Elsa Doland was good.”

“Oh, she's all right,” said Fillmore indifferently. “But--” His face
brightened and animation crept into his voice. “But the girl you want to
watch is Miss Winch. Gladys Winch. She plays the maid. She's only in
the first act, and hasn't much to say, except 'Did you ring, madam?' and
things like that. But it's the way she says 'em! Sally, that girl's a
genius! The greatest character actress in a dozen years! You mark my
words, in a darned little while you'll see her name up on Broadway in
electric light. Personality? Ask me! Charm? She wrote the words and
music! Looks?...”

“All right! All right! I know all about it, Fill. And will you kindly
inform me how you dared to get engaged without consulting me?”

Fillmore blushed richly.

“Oh, do you know?”

“Yes. Mr. Faucitt told me.”

“Well...”

“Well?”

“Well, I'm only human,” argued Fillmore.

“I call that a very handsome admission. You've got quite modest, Fill.”

He had certainly changed for the better since their last meeting.

It was as if someone had punctured him and let out all the pomposity.
If this was due, as Mr. Faucitt had suggested, to the influence of Miss
Winch, Sally felt that she could not but approve of the romance.

“I'll introduce you sometime,' said Fillmore.

“I want to meet her very much.”

“I'll have to be going now. I've got to see Bunbury. I thought he might
be in here.”

“Who's Bunbury?”

“The producer. I suppose he is breakfasting in his room. I'd better go
up.”

“You are busy, aren't you. Little marvel! It's lucky they've got you to
look after them.”

Fillmore retired and Sally settled down to wait for Gerald, no longer
hurt by his manner over the telephone. Poor Gerald! No wonder he had
seemed upset.

A few minutes later he came in.

“Oh, Jerry darling,” said Sally, as he reached the table, “I'm so sorry.
I've just been hearing about it.”

Gerald sat down. His appearance fulfilled the promise of his voice
over the telephone. A sort of nervous dullness wrapped him about like a
garment.

“It's just my luck,” he said gloomily. “It's the kind of thing that
couldn't happen to anyone but me. Damned fools! Where's the sense in
shutting the theatres, even if there is influenza about? They let people
jam against one another all day in the stores. If that doesn't hurt them
why should it hurt them to go to theatres? Besides, it's all infernal
nonsense about this thing. I don't believe there is such a thing as
Spanish influenza. People get colds in their heads and think they're
dying. It's all a fake scare.”

“I don't think it's that,” said Sally. “Poor Mr. Faucitt had it quite
badly. That's why I couldn't come earlier.”

Gerald did not seem interested either by the news of Mr. Faucitt's
illness or by the fact that Sally, after delay, had at last arrived. He
dug a spoon sombrely into his grape-fruit.

“We've been hanging about here day after day, getting bored to death
all the time... The company's going all to pieces. They're sick of
rehearsing and rehearsing when nobody knows if we'll ever open. They
were all keyed up a week ago, and they've been sagging ever since. It
will ruin the play, of course. My first chance! Just chucked away.”

Sally was listening with a growing feeling of desolation. She tried to
be fair, to remember that he had had a terrible disappointment and was
under a great strain. And yet... it was unfortunate that self-pity was a
thing she particularly disliked in a man. Her vanity, too, was hurt. It
was obvious that her arrival, so far from acting as a magic restorative,
had effected nothing. She could not help remembering, though it made
her feel disloyal, what Mr. Faucitt had said about Gerald. She had never
noticed before that he was remarkably self-centred, but he was thrusting
the fact upon her attention now.

“That Hobson woman is beginning to make trouble,” went on Gerald,
prodding in a despairing sort of way at scrambled eggs. “She ought never
to have had the part, never. She can't handle it. Elsa Doland could play
it a thousand times better. I wrote Elsa in a few lines the other day,
and the Hobson woman went right up in the air. You don't know what a
star is till you've seen one of these promoted clothes-props from the
Follies trying to be one. It took me an hour to talk her round and keep
her from throwing up her part.”

“Why not let her throw up her part?”

“For heaven's sake talk sense,” said Gerald querulously. “Do you suppose
that man Cracknell would keep the play on if she wasn't in it? He would
close the show in a second, and where would I be then? You don't seem
to realize that this is a big chance for me. I'd look a fool throwing it
away.”

“I see,” said Sally, shortly. She had never felt so wretched in her
life. Foreign travel, she decided, was a mistake. It might be pleasant
and broadening to the mind, but it seemed to put you so out of touch
with people when you got back. She analysed her sensations, and arrived
at the conclusion that what she was resenting was the fact that Gerald
was trying to get the advantages of two attitudes simultaneously. A man
in trouble may either be the captain of his soul and superior to pity,
or he may be a broken thing for a woman to pet and comfort. Gerald,
it seemed to her, was advertising himself as an object for her
commiseration, and at the same time raising a barrier against it. He
appeared to demand her sympathy while holding himself aloof from it. She
had the uncomfortable sensation of feeling herself shut out and useless.

“By the way,” said Gerald, “there's one thing. I have to keep her
jollying along all the time, so for goodness' sake don't go letting it
out that we're engaged.”

Sally's chin went up with a jerk. This was too much.

“If you find it a handicap being engaged to me...”

“Don't be silly.” Gerald took refuge in pathos. “Good God! It's tough!
Here am I, worried to death, and you...”

Before he could finish the sentence, Sally's mood had undergone one
of those swift changes which sometimes made her feel that she must be
lacking in character. A simple, comforting thought had come to her,
altering her entire outlook. She had come off the train tired and
gritty, and what seemed the general out-of-jointness of the world was
entirely due, she decided, to the fact that she had not had a bath and
that her hair was all anyhow. She felt suddenly tranquil. If it was
merely her grubby and dishevelled condition that made Gerald seem to her
so different, all was well. She put her hand on his with a quick gesture
of penitence.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I've been a brute, but I do sympathize,
really.”

“I've had an awful time,” mumbled Gerald.

“I know, I know. But you never told me you were glad to see me.”

“Of course I'm glad to see you.”

“Why didn't you say so, then, you poor fish? And why didn't you ask me
if I had enjoyed myself in Europe?”

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yes, except that I missed you so much. There! Now we can consider my
lecture on foreign travel finished, and you can go on telling me your
troubles.”

Gerald accepted the invitation. He spoke at considerable length, though
with little variety. It appeared definitely established in his mind that
Providence had invented Spanish influenza purely with a view to wrecking
his future. But now he seemed less aloof, more open to sympathy.
The brief thunderstorm had cleared the air. Sally lost that sense of
detachment and exclusion which had weighed upon her.

“Well,” said Gerald, at length, looking at his watch, “I suppose I had
better be off.”

“Rehearsal?”

“Yes, confound it. It's the only way of getting through the day. Are you
coming along?”

“I'll come directly I've unpacked and tidied myself up.”

“See you at the theatre, then.”

Sally went out and rang for the lift to take her up to her room.



2



The rehearsal had started when she reached the theatre. As she entered
the dark auditorium, voices came to her with that thin and reedy effect
which is produced by people talking in an empty building. She sat down
at the back of the house, and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,
was able to see Gerald sitting in the front row beside a man with a bald
head fringed with orange hair whom she took correctly to be Mr. Bunbury,
the producer. Dotted about the house in ones and twos were members of
the company whose presence was not required in the first act. On the
stage, Elsa Doland, looking very attractive, was playing a scene with a
man in a bowler hat. She was speaking a line, as Sally came in.

“Why, what do you mean, father?”

“Tiddly-omty-om,” was the bowler-hatted one's surprising reply.
“Tiddly-omty-om... long speech ending in 'find me in the library.' And
exit,” said the man in the bowler hat, starting to do so.

For the first time Sally became aware of the atmosphere of nerves.
Mr. Bunbury, who seemed to be a man of temperament, picked up his
walking-stick, which was leaning against the next seat, and flung it
with some violence across the house.

“For God's sake!” said Mr. Bunbury.

“Now what?” inquired the bowler hat, interested, pausing hallway across
the stage.

“Do speak the lines, Teddy,” exclaimed Gerald. “Don't skip them in that
sloppy fashion.”

“You don't want me to go over the whole thing?” asked the bowler hat,
amazed.

“Yes!”

“Not the whole damn thing?” queried the bowler hat, fighting with
incredulity.

“This is a rehearsal,” snapped Mr. Bunbury. “If we are not going to do
it properly, what's the use of doing it at all?”

This seemed to strike the erring Teddy, if not as reasonable, at any
rate as one way of looking at it. He delivered the speech in an injured
tone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now.
Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nursery
and its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goes
wrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strange
hotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had been
polished to the last syllable more than a week ago--these things had
sapped the nerve of the Primrose Way company and demoralization had set
in. It would require only a trifle to produce an explosion.

Elsa Doland now moved to the door, pressed a bell, and, taking a
magazine from the table, sat down in a chair near the footlights.
A moment later, in answer to the ring, a young woman entered, to be
greeted instantly by an impassioned bellow from Mr. Bunbury.

“Miss Winch!”

The new arrival stopped and looked out over the footlights, not in the
pained manner of the man in the bowler hat, but with the sort of
genial indulgence of one who has come to a juvenile party to amuse the
children. She was a square, wholesome, good-humoured looking girl with
a serious face, the gravity of which was contradicted by the faint smile
that seemed to lurk about the corner of her mouth. She was certainly not
pretty, and Sally, watching her with keen interest, was surprised that
Fillmore had had the sense to disregard surface homeliness and recognize
her charm. Deep down in Fillmore, Sally decided, there must lurk an
unsuspected vein of intelligence.

“Hello?” said Miss Winch, amiably.

Mr. Bunbury seemed profoundly moved.

“Miss Winch, did I or did I not ask you to refrain from chewing gum
during rehearsal?”

“That's right, so you did,” admitted Miss Winch, chummily.

“Then why are you doing it?”

Fillmore's fiancée revolved the criticized refreshment about her tongue
for a moment before replying.

“Bit o' business,” she announced, at length.

“What do you mean, a bit of business?”

“Character stuff,” explained Miss Winch in her pleasant, drawling voice.
“Thought it out myself. Maids chew gum, you know.”

Mr. Bunbury ruffled his orange hair in an over-wrought manner with the
palm of his right hand.

“Have you ever seen a maid?” he asked, despairingly.

“Yes, sir. And they chew gum.”

“I mean a parlour-maid in a smart house,” moaned Mr. Bunbury. “Do you
imagine for a moment that in a house such as this is supposed to be the
parlour-maid would be allowed to come into the drawing-room champing
that disgusting, beastly stuff?”

Miss Winch considered the point.

“Maybe you're right.” She brightened. “Listen! Great idea! Mr. Foster
can write in a line for Elsa, calling me down, and another giving me
a good come-back, and then another for Elsa saying something else, and
then something really funny for me, and so on. We can work it up into a
big comic scene. Five or six minutes, all laughs.”

This ingenious suggestion had the effect of depriving the producer
momentarily of speech, and while he was struggling for utterance, there
dashed out from the wings a gorgeous being in blue velvet and a hat of
such unimpeachable smartness that Sally ached at the sight of it with a
spasm of pure envy.

“Say!”

Miss Mabel Hobson had practically every personal advantage which
nature can bestow with the exception of a musical voice. Her figure was
perfect, her face beautiful, and her hair a mass of spun gold; but her
voice in moments of emotion was the voice of a peacock.

“Say, listen to me for just one moment!”

Mr. Bunbury recovered from his trance.

“Miss Hobson! Please!”

“Yes, that's all very well...”

“You are interrupting the rehearsal.”

“You bet your sorrowful existence I'm interrupting the rehearsal,”
 agreed Miss Hobson, with emphasis. “And, if you want to make a little
easy money, you go and bet somebody ten seeds that I'm going to
interrupt it again every time there's any talk of writing up any darned
part in the show except mine. Write up other people's parts? Not while I
have my strength!”

A young man with butter-coloured hair, who had entered from the wings in
close attendance on the injured lady, attempted to calm the storm.

“Now, sweetie!”

“Oh, can it, Reggie!” said Miss Hobson, curtly.

Mr. Cracknell obediently canned it. He was not one of your brutal
cave-men. He subsided into the recesses of a high collar and began to
chew the knob of his stick.

“I'm the star,” resumed Miss Hobson, vehemently, “and, if you think
anybody else's part's going to be written up... well, pardon me while I
choke with laughter! If so much as a syllable is written into anybody's
part, I walk straight out on my two feet. You won't see me go, I'll be
so quick.”

Mr. Bunbury sprang to his feet and waved his hands.

“For heaven's sake! Are we rehearsing, or is this a debating society?
Miss Hobson, nothing is going to be written into anybody's part. Now are
you satisfied?”

“She said...”

“Oh, never mind,” observed Miss Winch, equably. “It was only a random
thought. Working for the good of the show all the time. That's me.”

“Now, sweetie!” pleaded Mr. Cracknell, emerging from the collar like a
tortoise.

Miss Hobson reluctantly allowed herself to be reassured.

“Oh, well, that's all right, then. But don't forget I know how to look
after myself,” she said, stating a fact which was abundantly obvious to
all who had had the privilege of listening to her. “Any raw work, and
out I walk so quick it'll make you giddy.”

She retired, followed by Mr. Cracknell, and the wings swallowed her up.

“Shall I say my big speech now?” inquired Miss Winch, over the
footlights.

“Yes, yes! Get on with the rehearsal. We've wasted half the morning.”

“Did you ring, madam?” said Miss Winch to Elsa, who had been reading her
magazine placidly through the late scene.

The rehearsal proceeded, and Sally watched it with a sinking heart. It
was all wrong. Novice as she was in things theatrical, she could see
that. There was no doubt that Miss Hobson was superbly beautiful and
would have shed lustre on any part which involved the minimum of words
and the maximum of clothes: but in the pivotal role of a serious play,
her very physical attributes only served to emphasize and point her
hopeless incapacity. Sally remembered Mr. Faucitt's story of the lady
who got the bird at Wigan. She did not see how history could fail to
repeat itself. The theatrical public of America will endure much from
youth and beauty, but there is a limit.

A shrill, passionate cry from the front row, and Mr. Bunbury was on his
feet again. Sally could not help wondering whether things were going
particularly wrong to-day, or whether this was one of Mr. Bunbury's
ordinary mornings.

“Miss Hobson!”

The action of the drama had just brought that emotional lady on left
centre and had taken her across to the desk which stood on the other
side of the stage. The desk was an important feature of the play, for it
symbolized the absorption in business which, exhibited by her husband,
was rapidly breaking Miss Hobson's heart. He loved his desk better than
his young wife, that was what it amounted to, and no wife can stand that
sort of thing.

“Oh, gee!” said Miss Hobson, ceasing to be the distressed wife and
becoming the offended star. “What's it this time?”

“I suggested at the last rehearsal and at the rehearsal before and
the rehearsal before that, that, on that line, you, should pick up
the paper-knife and toy negligently with it. You did it yesterday, and
to-day you've forgotten it again.”

“My God!” cried Miss Hobson, wounded to the quick. “If this don't beat
everything! How the heck can I toy negligently with a paper-knife when
there's no paper-knife for me to toy negligently with?”

“The paper-knife is on the desk.”

“It's not on the desk.”

“No paper-knife?”

“No paper-knife. And it's no good picking on me. I'm the star, not the
assistant stage manager. If you're going to pick on anybody, pick on
him.”

The advice appeared to strike Mr. Bunbury as good. He threw back his
head and bayed like a bloodhound.

There was a momentary pause, and then from the wings on the prompt side
there shambled out a stout and shrinking figure, in whose hand was a
script of the play and on whose face, lit up by the footlights, there
shone a look of apprehension. It was Fillmore, the Man of Destiny.



3



Alas, poor Fillmore! He stood in the middle of the stage with the
lightning of Mr. Bunbury's wrath playing about his defenceless head, and
Sally, recovering from her first astonishment, sent a wave of sisterly
commiseration floating across the theatre to him. She did not often pity
Fillmore. His was a nature which in the sunshine of prosperity had a
tendency to grow a trifle lush; and such of the minor ills of life as
had afflicted him during the past three years, had, she considered,
been wholesome and educative and a matter not for concern but for
congratulation. Unmoved, she had watched him through that lean period
lunching on coffee and buckwheat cakes, and curbing from motives of
economy a somewhat florid taste in dress. But this was different. This
was tragedy. Somehow or other, blasting disaster must have smitten the
Fillmore bank-roll, and he was back where he had started. His presence
here this morning could mean nothing else.

She recalled his words at the breakfast-table about financing the
play. How like Fillmore to try to save his face for the moment with an
outrageous bluff, though well aware that he would have to reveal the
truth sooner or later. She realized how he must have felt when he had
seen her at the hotel. Yes, she was sorry for Fillmore.

And, as she listened to the fervent eloquence of Mr. Bunbury, she
perceived that she had every reason to be. Fillmore was having a bad
time. One of the chief articles of faith in the creed of all theatrical
producers is that if anything goes wrong it must be the fault of the
assistant stage manager and Mr. Bunbury was evidently orthodox in his
views. He was showing oratorical gifts of no mean order. The paper-knife
seemed to inspire him. Gradually, Sally began to get the feeling that
this harmless, necessary stage-property was the source from which
sprang most, if not all, of the trouble in the world. It had disappeared
before. Now it had disappeared again. Could Mr. Bunbury go on struggling
in a universe where this sort of thing happened? He seemed to doubt it.
Being a red-blooded, one-hundred-per-cent American man, he would try
hard, but it was a hundred to one shot that he would get through. He
had asked for a paper-knife. There was no paper-knife. Why was there no
paper-knife? Where was the paper-knife anyway?

“I assure you, Mr. Bunbury,” bleated the unhappy Fillmore, obsequiously.
“I placed it with the rest of the properties after the last rehearsal.”

“You couldn't have done.”

“I assure you I did.”

“And it walked away, I suppose,” said Miss Hobson with cold scorn,
pausing in the operation of brightening up her lower lip with a
lip-stick.

A calm, clear voice spoke.

“It was taken away,” said the calm, clear voice.

Miss Winch had added herself to the symposium. She stood beside
Fillmore, chewing placidly. It took more than raised voices and
gesticulating hands to disturb Miss Winch.

“Miss Hobson took it,” she went on in her cosy, drawling voice. “I saw
her.”

Sensation in court. The prisoner, who seemed to feel his position
deeply, cast a pop-eyed glance full of gratitude at his advocate.
Mr. Bunbury, in his capacity of prosecuting attorney, ran his fingers
through his hair in some embarrassment, for he was regretting now that
he had made such a fuss. Miss Hobson thus assailed by an underling,
spun round and dropped the lip-stick, which was neatly retrieved by the
assiduous Mr. Cracknell. Mr. Cracknell had his limitations, but he was
rather good at picking up lip-sticks.

“What's that? I took it? I never did anything of the sort.”

“Miss Hobson took it after the rehearsal yesterday,” drawled Gladys
Winch, addressing the world in general, “and threw it negligently at the
theatre cat.”

Miss Hobson seemed taken aback. Her composure was not restored by Mr.
Bunbury's next remark. The producer, like his company, had been feeling
the strain of the past few days, and, though as a rule he avoided
anything in the nature of a clash with the temperamental star, this
matter of the missing paper-knife had bitten so deeply into his soul
that he felt compelled to speak his mind.

“In future, Miss Hobson, I should be glad if, when you wish to throw
anything at the cat, you would not select a missile from the property
box. Good heavens!” he cried, stung by the way fate was maltreating
him, “I have never experienced anything like this before. I have
been producing plays all my life, and this is the first time this has
happened. I have produced Nazimova. Nazimova never threw paper-knives at
cats.”

“Well, I hate cats,” said Miss Hobson, as though that settled it.

“I,” murmured Miss Winch, “love little pussy, her fur is so warm, and if
I don't hurt her she'll do me no...”

“Oh, my heavens!” shouted Gerald Foster, bounding from his seat and for
the first time taking a share in the debate. “Are we going to spend the
whole day arguing about cats and paper-knives? For goodness' sake, clear
the stage and stop wasting time.”

Miss Hobson chose to regard this intervention as an affront.

“Don't shout at me, Mr. Foster!”

“I wasn't shouting at you.”

“If you have anything to say to me, lower your voice.”

“He can't,” observed Miss Winch. “He's a tenor.”

“Nazimova never...” began Mr. Bunbury.

Miss Hobson was not to be diverted from her theme by reminiscences of
Nazimova. She had not finished dealing with Gerald.

“In the shows I've been in,” she said, mordantly, “the author wasn't
allowed to go about the place getting fresh with the leading lady. In
the shows I've been in the author sat at the back and spoke when he was
spoken to. In the shows I've been in...”

Sally was tingling all over. This reminded her of the dog-fight on the
Roville sands. She wanted to be in it, and only the recognition that it
was a private fight and that she would be intruding kept her silent. The
lure of the fray, however, was too strong for her wholly to resist it.
Almost unconsciously, she had risen from her place and drifted down the
aisle so as to be nearer the white-hot centre of things. She was now
standing in the lighted space by the orchestra-pit, and her presence
attracted the roving attention of Miss Hobson, who, having concluded her
remarks on authors and their legitimate sphere of activity, was looking
about for some other object of attack.

“Who the devil,” inquired Miss Hobson, “is that?”

Sally found herself an object of universal scrutiny and wished that she
had remained in the obscurity of the back rows.

“I am Mr. Nicholas' sister,” was the best method of identification that
she could find.

“Who's Mr. Nicholas?”

Fillmore timidly admitted that he was Mr. Nicholas. He did it in the
manner of one in the dock pleading guilty to a major charge, and
at least half of those present seemed surprised. To them, till now,
Fillmore had been a nameless thing, answering to the shout of “Hi!”

Miss Hobson received the information with a laugh of such exceeding
bitterness that strong men blanched and Mr. Cracknell started so
convulsively that he nearly jerked his collar off its stud.

“Now, sweetie!” urged Mr. Cracknell.

Miss Hobson said that Mr. Cracknell gave her a pain in the gizzard. She
recommended his fading away, and he did so--into his collar. He seemed
to feel that once well inside his collar he was “home” and safe from
attack.

“I'm through!” announced Miss Hobson. It appeared that Sally's presence
had in some mysterious fashion fulfilled the function of the last straw.
“This is the by-Goddest show I was ever in! I can stand for a whole lot,
but when it comes to the assistant stage manager being allowed to fill
the theatre with his sisters and his cousins and his aunts it's time to
quit.”

“But, sweetie!” pleaded Mr. Cracknell, coming to the surface.

“Oh, go and choke yourself!” said Miss Hobson, crisply. And, swinging
round like a blue panther, she strode off. A door banged, and the sound
of it seemed to restore Mr. Cracknell's power of movement. He, too, shot
up stage and disappeared.

“Hello, Sally,” said Elsa Doland, looking up from her magazine. The
battle, raging all round her, had failed to disturb her detachment.
“When did you get back?”

Sally trotted up the steps which had been propped against the stage to
form a bridge over the orchestra pit.

“Hello, Elsa.”

The late debaters had split into groups. Mr. Bunbury and Gerald were
pacing up and down the central aisle, talking earnestly. Fillmore had
subsided into a chair.

“Do you know Gladys Winch?” asked Elsa.

Sally shook hands with the placid lodestar of her brother's affections.
Miss Winch, on closer inspection, proved to have deep grey eyes and
freckles. Sally's liking for her increased.

“Thank you for saving Fillmore from the wolves,” she said. “They would
have torn him in pieces but for you.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Miss Winch.

“It was noble.”

“Oh, well!”

“I think,” said Sally, “I'll go and have a talk with Fillmore. He looks
as though he wanted consoling.”

She made her way to that picturesque ruin.



4



Fillmore had the air of a man who thought it wasn't loaded. A wild,
startled expression had settled itself upon his face and he was
breathing heavily.

“Cheer up!” said Sally. Fillmore jumped like a stricken jelly. “Tell me
all,” said Sally, sitting down beside him. “I leave you a gentleman of
large and independent means, and I come back and find you one of the
wage-slaves again. How did it all happen?”

“Sally,” said Fillmore, “I will be frank with you. Can you lend me ten
dollars?”

“I don't see how you make that out an answer to my question, but here
you are.”

“Thanks.” Fillmore pocketed the bill. “I'll let you have it back next
week. I want to take Miss Winch out to lunch.”

“If that's what you want it for, don't look on it as a loan, take it as
a gift with my blessing thrown in.” She looked over her shoulder at
Miss Winch, who, the cares of rehearsal being temporarily suspended, was
practising golf-shots with an umbrella at the other side of the stage.
“However did you have the sense to fall in love with her, Fill?”

“Do you like her?” asked Fillmore, brightening.

“I love her.”

“I knew you would. She's just the right girl for me, isn't she?”

“She certainly is.”

“So sympathetic.”

“Yes.”

“So kind.”

“Yes.”

“And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the
girl who marries you will need.”

Fillmore drew himself up with as much hauteur as a stout man sitting in
a low chair can achieve.

“Some day I will make you believe in me, Sally.”

“Less of the Merchant Prince, my lad,” said Sally, firmly. “You just
confine yourself to explaining how you got this way, instead of taking
up my valuable time telling me what you mean to do in the future. You've
lost all your money?”

“I have suffered certain reverses,” said Fillmore, with dignity, “which
have left me temporarily... Yes, every bean,” he concluded simply.

“How?”

“Well...” Fillmore hesitated. “I've had bad luck, you know. First I
bought Consolidated Rails for the rise, and they fell. So that went
wrong.”

“Yes?”

“And then I bought Russian Roubles for the fall, and they rose. So that
went wrong.”

“Good gracious! Why, I've heard all this before.”

“Who told you?”

“No, I remember now. It's just that you remind me of a man I met at
Roville. He was telling me the story of his life, and how he had made a
hash of everything. Well, that took all you had, I suppose?”

“Not quite. I had a few thousand left, and I went into a deal that
really did look cast-iron.”

“And that went wrong!”

“It wasn't my fault,” said Fillmore querulously. “It was just my
poisonous luck. A man I knew got me to join a syndicate which had
bought up a lot of whisky. The idea was to ship it into Chicago in
herring-barrels. We should have cleaned up big, only a mutt of a
detective took it into his darned head to go fooling about with a
crowbar. Officious ass! It wasn't as if the barrels weren't labelled
'Herrings' as plainly as they could be,” said Fillmore with honest
indignation. He shuddered. “I nearly got arrested.”

“But that went wrong? Well, that's something to be thankful for. Stripes
wouldn't suit your figure.” Sally gave his arm a squeeze. She was
very fond of Fillmore, though for the good of his soul she generally
concealed her affection beneath a manner which he had once compared,
not without some reason, to that of a governess who had afflicted their
mutual childhood. “Never mind, you poor ill-used martyr. Things are sure
to come right. We shall see you a millionaire some day. And, oh heavens,
brother Fillmore, what a bore you'll be when you are! I can just see
you being interviewed and giving hints to young men on how to make good.
'Mr. Nicholas attributes his success to sheer hard work. He can lay his
hand on his bulging waistcoat and say that he has never once indulged in
those rash get-rich-quick speculations, where you buy for the rise and
watch things fall and then rush out and buy for the fall and watch 'em
rise.' Fill... I'll tell you what I'll do. They all say it's the first
bit of money that counts in building a vast fortune. I'll lend you some
of mine.”

“You will? Sally, I always said you were an ace.”

“I never heard you. You oughtn't to mumble so.”

“Will you lend me twenty thousand dollars?”

Sally patted his hand soothingly.

“Come slowly down to earth,” she said. “Two hundred was the sum I had in
mind.”

“I want twenty thousand.”

“You'd better rob a bank. Any policeman will direct you to a good bank.”

“I'll tell you why I want twenty thousand.”

“You might just mention it.”

“If I had twenty thousand, I'd buy this production from Cracknell. He'll
be back in a few minutes to tell us that the Hobson woman has quit: and,
if she really has, you take it from me that he will close the show. And,
even if he manages to jolly her along this time and she comes back, it's
going to happen sooner or later. It's a shame to let a show like this
close. I believe in it, Sally. It's a darn good play. With Elsa Doland
in the big part, it couldn't fail.”

Sally started. Her money was too recent for her to have grown fully
accustomed to it, and she had never realized that she was in a position
to wave a wand and make things happen on any big scale. The financing of
a theatrical production had always been to her something mysterious
and out of the reach of ordinary persons like herself. Fillmore, that
spacious thinker, had brought it into the sphere of the possible.

“He'd sell for less than that, of course, but one would need a bit in
hand. You have to face a loss on the road before coming into New York.
I'd give you ten per cent on your money, Sally.”

Sally found herself wavering. The prudent side of her nature, which
hitherto had steered her safely through most of life's rapids, seemed
oddly dormant. Sub-consciously she was aware that on past performances
Fillmore was decidedly not the man to be allowed control of anybody's
little fortune, but somehow the thought did not seem to grip her. He had
touched her imagination.

“It's a gold-mine!”

Sally's prudent side stirred in its sleep. Fillmore had chosen an
unfortunate expression. To the novice in finance the word gold-mine
had repellent associations. If there was one thing in which Sally had
proposed not to invest her legacy, it was a gold-mine; what she had had
in view, as a matter of fact, had been one of those little fancy shops
which are called Ye Blue Bird or Ye Corner Shoppe, or something like
that, where you sell exotic bric-a-brac to the wealthy at extortionate
prices. She knew two girls who were doing splendidly in that line. As
Fillmore spoke those words, Ye Corner Shoppe suddenly looked very good
to her.

At this moment, however, two things happened. Gerald and Mr. Bunbury,
in the course of their perambulations, came into the glow of the
footlights, and she was able to see Gerald's face: and at the same time
Mr. Reginald Cracknell hurried on to the stage, his whole demeanour that
of the bearer of evil tidings.

The sight of Gerald's face annihilated Sally's prudence at a single
stroke. Ye Corner Shoppe, which a moment before had been shining
brightly before her mental eye, flickered and melted out. The whole
issue became clear and simple. Gerald was miserable and she had it in
her power to make him happy. He was sullenly awaiting disaster and she
with a word could avert it. She wondered that she had ever hesitated.

“All right,” she said simply.

Fillmore quivered from head to foot. A powerful electric shock could not
have produced a stronger convulsion. He knew Sally of old as cautious
and clear-headed, by no means to be stampeded by a brother's eloquence;
and he had never looked on this thing as anything better than a hundred
to one shot.

“You'll do it?” he whispered, and held his breath. After all he might
not have heard correctly.

“Yes.”

All the complex emotion in Fillmore's soul found expression in one vast
whoop. It rang through the empty theatre like the last trump, beating
against the back wall and rising in hollow echoes to the very gallery.
Mr. Bunbury, conversing in low undertones with Mr. Cracknell across the
footlights, shied like a startled mule. There was reproach and menace in
the look he cast at Fillmore, and a minute earlier it would have reduced
that financial magnate to apologetic pulp. But Fillmore was not to
be intimidated now by a look. He strode down to the group at the
footlights,

“Cracknell,” he said importantly, “one moment, I should like a word with
you.”




CHAPTER VII. SOME MEDITATIONS ON SUCCESS



If actors and actresses are like children in that they are readily
depressed by disaster, they have the child's compensating gift of being
easily uplifted by good fortune. It amazed Sally that any one mortal
should have been able to spread such universal happiness as she had
done by the simple act of lending her brother Fillmore twenty thousand
dollars. If the Millennium had arrived, the members of the Primrose
Way Company could not have been on better terms with themselves. The
lethargy and dispiritedness, caused by their week of inaction, fell from
them like a cloak. The sudden elevation of that creature of the abyss,
the assistant stage manager, to the dizzy height of proprietor of the
show appealed to their sense of drama. Most of them had played in pieces
where much the same thing had happened to the persecuted heroine round
about eleven o'clock, and the situation struck them as theatrically
sound. Also, now that she had gone, the extent to which Miss Hobson had
acted as a blight was universally recognized.

A spirit of optimism reigned, and cheerful rumours became current. The
bowler-hatted Teddy had it straight from the lift-boy at his hotel that
the ban on the theatres was to be lifted on Tuesday at the latest; while
no less an authority than the cigar-stand girl at the Pontchatrain had
informed the man who played the butler that Toledo and Cleveland were
opening to-morrow. It was generally felt that the sun was bursting
through the clouds and that Fate would soon despair of the hopeless task
of trying to keep good men down.

Fillmore was himself again. We all have our particular mode of
self-expression in moments of elation. Fillmore's took the shape of
buying a new waistcoat and a hundred half-dollar cigars and being very
fussy about what he had for lunch. It may have been an optical illusion,
but he appeared to Sally to put on at least six pounds in weight on the
first day of the new regime. As a serf looking after paper-knives and
other properties, he had been--for him--almost slim. As a manager
he blossomed out into soft billowy curves, and when he stood on the
sidewalk in front of the theatre, gloating over the new posters which
bore the legend,

     FILLMORE NICHOLAS

     PRESENTS


the populace had to make a detour to get round him.

In this era of bubbling joy, it was hard that Sally, the fairy godmother
responsible for it all, should not have been completely happy too; and
it puzzled her why she was not. But whatever it was that cast the faint
shadow refused obstinately to come out from the back of her mind and
show itself and be challenged. It was not till she was out driving in
a hired car with Gerald one afternoon on Belle Isle that enlightenment
came.

Gerald, since the departure of Miss Hobson, had been at his best. Like
Fillmore, he was a man who responded to the sunshine of prosperity. His
moodiness had vanished, and all his old charm had returned. And yet...
it seemed to Sally, as the car slid smoothly through the pleasant woods
and fields by the river, that there was something that jarred.

Gerald was cheerful and talkative. He, at any rate, found nothing wrong
with life. He held forth spaciously on the big things he intended to do.

“If this play get over--and it's going to--I'll show 'em!” His jaw was
squared, and his eyes glowed as they stared into the inviting future.
“One success--that's all I need--then watch me! I haven't had a chance
yet, but...”

His voice rolled on, but Sally had ceased to listen. It was the time of
year when the chill of evening follows swiftly on the mellow warmth
of afternoon. The sun had gone behind the trees, and a cold wind was
blowing up from the river. And quite suddenly, as though it was the
wind that had cleared her mind, she understood what it was that had been
lurking at the back of her thoughts. For an instant it stood out nakedly
without concealment, and the world became a forlorn place. She had
realized the fundamental difference between man's outlook on life and
woman's.

Success! How men worshipped it, and how little of themselves they had to
spare for anything else. Ironically, it was the theme of this very play
of Gerald's which she had saved from destruction. Of all the men she
knew, how many had any view of life except as a race which they must
strain every nerve to win, regardless of what they missed by the wayside
in their haste? Fillmore--Gerald--all of them. There might be a woman in
each of their lives, but she came second--an afterthought--a thing for
their spare time. Gerald was everything to her. His success would never
be more than a side-issue as far as she was concerned. He himself,
without any of the trappings of success, was enough for her. But she was
not enough for him. A spasm of futile jealousy shook her. She shivered.

“Cold?” said Gerald. “I'll tell the man to drive back... I don't see any
reason why this play shouldn't run a year in New York. Everybody says
it's good... if it does get over, they'll all be after me. I...”

Sally stared out into a bleak world. The sky was a leaden grey, and the
wind from the river blew with a dismal chill.




CHAPTER VIII. REAPPEARANCE OF MR. CARMYLE--AND GINGER



1



When Sally left Detroit on the following Saturday, accompanied by
Fillmore, who was returning to the metropolis for a few days in order to
secure offices and generally make his presence felt along Broadway, her
spirits had completely recovered. She felt guiltily that she had been
fanciful, even morbid. Naturally men wanted to get on in the world.
It was their job. She told herself that she was bound up with Gerald's
success, and that the last thing of which she ought to complain was the
energy he put into efforts of which she as well as he would reap the
reward.

To this happier frame of mind the excitement of the last few days had
contributed. Detroit, that city of amiable audiences, had liked “The
Primrose Way.” The theatre, in fulfilment of Teddy's prophecy, had
been allowed to open on the Tuesday, and a full house, hungry for
entertainment after its enforced abstinence, had welcomed the play
wholeheartedly. The papers, not always in agreement with the applause of
a first-night audience, had on this occasion endorsed the verdict, with
agreeable unanimity hailing Gerald as the coming author and Elsa Doland
as the coming star. There had even been a brief mention of Fillmore as
the coming manager. But there is always some trifle that jars in our
greatest moments, and Fillmore's triumph had been almost spoilt by the
fact that the only notice taken of Gladys Winch was by the critic who
printed her name--spelt Wunch--in the list of those whom the cast “also
included.”

“One of the greatest character actresses on the stage,” said Fillmore
bitterly, talking over this outrage with Sally on the morning after the
production.

From this blow, however, his buoyant nature had soon enabled him to
rally. Life contained so much that was bright that it would have been
churlish to concentrate the attention on the one dark spot. Business had
been excellent all through the week. Elsa Doland had got better at
every performance. The receipt of a long and agitated telegram from Mr.
Cracknell, pleading to be allowed to buy the piece back, the passage of
time having apparently softened Miss Hobson, was a pleasant incident.
And, best of all, the great Ike Schumann, who owned half the theatres
in New York and had been in Detroit superintending one of his musical
productions, had looked in one evening and stamped “The Primrose Way”
 with the seal of his approval. As Fillmore sat opposite Sally on the
train, he radiated contentment and importance.

“Yes, do,” said Sally, breaking a long silence.

Fillmore awoke from happy dreams.

“Eh?”

“I said 'Yes, do.' I think you owe it to your position.”

“Do what?”

“Buy a fur coat. Wasn't that what you were meditating about?”

“Don't be a chump,” said Fillmore, blushing nevertheless. It was true
that once or twice during the past week he had toyed negligently, as
Mr. Bunbury would have said, with the notion, and why not? A fellow must
keep warm.

“With an astrakhan collar,” insisted Sally.

“As a matter of fact,” said Fillmore loftily, his great soul ill-attuned
to this badinage, “what I was really thinking about at the moment was
something Ike said.”

“Ike?”

“Ike Schumann. He's on the train. I met him just now.”

“We call him Ike!”

“Of course I call him Ike,” said Fillmore heatedly. “Everyone calls him
Ike.”

“He wears a fur coat,” Sally murmured.

Fillmore registered annoyance.

“I wish you wouldn't keep on harping on that damned coat. And, anyway,
why shouldn't I have a fur coat?”

“Fill...! How can you be so brutal as to suggest that I ever said you
shouldn't? Why, I'm one of the strongest supporters of the fur coat.
With big cuffs. And you must roll up Fifth Avenue in your car, and I'll
point and say 'That's my brother!' 'Your brother? No!' 'He is, really.'
'You're joking. Why, that's the great Fillmore Nicholas.' 'I know. But
he really is my brother. And I was with him when he bought that coat.'”

“Do leave off about the coat!”

“'And it isn't only the coat,' I shall say. 'It's what's underneath.
Tucked away inside that mass of fur, dodging about behind that dollar
cigar, is one to whom we point with pride... '”

Fillmore looked coldly at his watch.

“I've got to go and see Ike Schumann.”

“We are in hourly consultation with Ike.”

“He wants to see me about the show. He suggests putting it into Chicago
before opening in New York.”

“Oh no,” cried Sally, dismayed.

“Why not?”

Sally recovered herself. Identifying Gerald so closely with his play,
she had supposed for a moment that if the piece opened in Chicago it
would mean a further prolonged separation from him. But of course there
would be no need, she realized, for him to stay with the company after
the first day or two.

“You're thinking that we ought to have a New York reputation before
tackling Chicago. There's a lot to be said for that. Still, it works
both ways. A Chicago run would help us in New York. Well, I'll have
to think it over,” said Fillmore, importantly, “I'll have to think it
over.”

He mused with drawn brows.

“All wrong,” said Sally.

“Eh?”

“Not a bit like it. The lips should be compressed and the forefinger of
the right hand laid in a careworn way against the right temple. You've a
lot to learn. Fill.”

“Oh, stop it!”

“Fillmore Nicholas,” said Sally, “if you knew what pain it gives me to
josh my only brother, you'd be sorry for me. But you know it's for your
good. Now run along and put Ike out of his misery. I know he's waiting
for you with his watch out. 'You do think he'll come, Miss Nicholas?'
were his last words to me as he stepped on the train, and oh, Fill, the
yearning in his voice. 'Why, of course he will, Mr. Schumann,' I said.
'For all his exalted position, my brother is kindliness itself. Of
course he'll come.' 'If I could only think so!' he said with a gulp. 'If
I could only think so. But you know what these managers are. A thousand
calls on their time. They get brooding on their fur coats and forget
everything else.' 'Have no fear, Mr. Schumann,' I said. 'Fillmore
Nicholas is a man of his word.'”

She would have been willing, for she was a girl who never believed in
sparing herself where it was a question of entertaining her nearest and
dearest, to continue the dialogue, but Fillmore was already moving down
the car, his rigid back a silent protest against sisterly levity. Sally
watched him disappear, then picked up a magazine and began to read.

She had just finished tracking a story of gripping interest through
a jungle of advertisements, only to find that it was in two parts, of
which the one she was reading was the first, when a voice spoke.

“How do you do, Miss Nicholas?”

Into the seat before her, recently released from the weight of the
coming manager, Bruce Carmyle of all people in the world insinuated
himself with that well-bred air of deferential restraint which never
left him.



2



Sally was considerably startled. Everybody travels nowadays, of course,
and there is nothing really remarkable in finding a man in America whom
you had supposed to be in Europe: but nevertheless she was conscious of
a dream-like sensation, as though the clock had been turned back and a
chapter of her life reopened which she had thought closed for ever.

“Mr. Carmyle!” she cried.

If Sally had been constantly in Bruce Carmyle's thoughts since they
had parted on the Paris express, Mr. Carmyle had been very little in
Sally's--so little, indeed, that she had had to search her memory for a
moment before she identified him.

“We're always meeting on trains, aren't we?” she went on, her composure
returning. “I never expected to see you in America.”

“I came over.”

Sally was tempted to reply that she gathered that, but a sudden
embarrassment curbed her tongue. She had just remembered that at their
last meeting she had been abominably rude to this man. She was never
rude to anyone, without subsequent remorse. She contented herself with a
tame “Yes.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Carmyle, “it is a good many years since I have taken
a real holiday. My doctor seemed to think I was a trifle run down. It
seemed a good opportunity to visit America. Everybody,” said Mr. Carmyle
oracularly, endeavouring, as he had often done since his ship had left
England, to persuade himself that his object in making the trip had not
been merely to renew his acquaintance with Sally, “everybody ought to
visit America at least once. It is part of one's education.”

“And what are your impressions of our glorious country?” said Sally
rallying.

Mr. Carmyle seemed glad of the opportunity of lecturing on an impersonal
subject. He, too, though his face had shown no trace of it, had been
embarrassed in the opening stages of the conversation. The sound of his
voice restored him.

“I have been visiting Chicago,” he said after a brief travelogue.

“Oh!”

“A wonderful city.”

“I've never seen it. I've come from Detroit.”

“Yes, I heard you were in Detroit.”

Sally's eyes opened.

“You heard I was in Detroit? Good gracious! How?”

“I--ah--called at your New York address and made inquiries,” said Mr.
Carmyle a little awkwardly.

“But how did you know where I lived?”

“My cousin--er--Lancelot told me.”

Sally was silent for a moment. She had much the same feeling that
comes to the man in the detective story who realizes that he is being
shadowed. Even if this almost complete stranger had not actually come to
America in direct pursuit of her, there was no disguising the fact that
he evidently found her an object of considerable interest. It was a
compliment, but Sally was not at all sure that she liked it. Bruce
Carmyle meant nothing to her, and it was rather disturbing to find that
she was apparently of great importance to him. She seized on the mention
of Ginger as a lever for diverting the conversation from its present too
intimate course.

“How is Mr. Kemp?” she asked.

Mr. Carmyle's dark face seemed to become a trifle darker.

“We have had no news of him,” he said shortly.

“No news? How do you mean? You speak as though he had disappeared.”

“He has disappeared!”

“Good heavens! When?”

“Shortly after I saw you last.”

“Disappeared!”

Mr. Carmyle frowned. Sally, watching him, found her antipathy stirring
again. There was something about this man which she had disliked
instinctively from the first, a sort of hardness.

“But where has he gone to?”

“I don't know.” Mr. Carmyle frowned again. The subject of Ginger was
plainly a sore one. “And I don't want to know,” he went on heatedly,
a dull flush rising in the cheeks which Sally was sure he had to shave
twice a day. “I don't care to know. The Family have washed their hands
of him. For the future he may look after himself as best he can. I
believe he is off his head.”

Sally's rebellious temper was well ablaze now, but she fought it down.
She would dearly have loved to give battle to Mr. Carmyle--it was odd,
she felt, how she seemed to have constituted herself Ginger's champion
and protector--but she perceived that, if she wished, as she did, to
hear more of her red-headed friend, he must be humoured and conciliated.

“But what happened? What was all the trouble about?”

Mr. Carmyle's eyebrows met.

“He--insulted his uncle. His uncle Donald. He insulted him--grossly. The
one man in the world he should have made a point of--er--”

“Keeping in with?”

“Yes. His future depended upon him.”

“But what did he do?” cried Sally, trying hard to keep a thoroughly
reprehensible joy out of her voice.

“I have heard no details. My uncle is reticent as to what actually
took place. He invited Lancelot to dinner to discuss his plans, and
it appears that Lancelot--defied him. Defied him! He was rude and
insulting. My uncle refuses to have anything more to do with him.
Apparently the young fool managed to win some money at the tables at
Roville, and this seems to have turned his head completely. My uncle
insists that he is mad. I agree with him. Since the night of that dinner
nothing has been heard of Lancelot.”

Mr. Carmyle broke off to brood once more, and before Sally could speak
the impressive bulk of Fillmore loomed up in the aisle beside them.
Explanations seemed to Fillmore to be in order. He cast a questioning
glance at the mysterious stranger, who, in addition to being in
conversation with his sister, had collared his seat.

“Oh, hullo, Fill,” said Sally. “Fillmore, this is Mr. Carmyle. We met
abroad. My brother Fillmore, Mr. Carmyle.”

Proper introduction having been thus effected, Fillmore approved of Mr.
Carmyle. His air of being someone in particular appealed to him.

“Strange you meeting again like this,” he said affably.

The porter, who had been making up berths along the car, was now
hovering expectantly in the offing.

“You two had better go into the smoking room,” suggested Sally. “I'm
going to bed.”

She wanted to be alone, to think. Mr. Carmyle's tale of a roused and
revolting Ginger had stirred her.

The two men went off to the smoking-room, and Sally found an empty seat
and sat down to wait for her berth to be made up. She was aglow with a
curious exhilaration. So Ginger had taken her advice! Excellent Ginger!
She felt proud of him. She also had that feeling of complacency,
amounting almost to sinful pride, which comes to those who give advice
and find it acted upon. She had the emotions of a creator. After all,
had she not created this new Ginger? It was she who had stirred him
up. It was she who had unleashed him. She had changed him from a meek
dependent of the Family to a ravening creature, who went about the place
insulting uncles.

It was a feat, there was no denying it. It was something attempted,
something done: and by all the rules laid down by the poet it should,
therefore, have earned a night's repose. Yet, Sally, jolted by the
train, which towards the small hours seemed to be trying out some new
buck-and-wing steps of its own invention, slept ill, and presently, as
she lay awake, there came to her bedside the Spectre of Doubt, gaunt and
questioning. Had she, after all, wrought so well? Had she been wise in
tampering with this young man's life?

“What about it?” said the Spectre of Doubt.



3



Daylight brought no comforting answer to the question. Breakfast failed
to manufacture an easy mind. Sally got off the train, at the Grand
Central station in a state of remorseful concern. She declined the offer
of Mr. Carmyle to drive her to the boarding-house, and started to walk
there, hoping that the crisp morning air would effect a cure.

She wondered now how she could ever have looked with approval on her
rash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling had
possessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them.
She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothing
more nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man,
obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assisted
through life by his relatives, and she had deliberately egged him on
to wreck his prospects. She blushed hotly as she remembered that mad
wireless she had sent him from the boat.

Miserable Ginger! She pictured him, his little stock of money gone,
wandering foot-sore about London, seeking in vain for work; forcing
himself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps by
haughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark waters
of the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing to the parapet
and...

“Ugh!” said Sally.

She had arrived at the door of the boarding-house, and Mrs. Meecher was
regarding her with welcoming eyes, little knowing that to all practical
intents and purposes she had slain in his prime a red-headed young
man of amiable manners and--when not ill-advised by meddling, muddling
females--of excellent behaviour.

Mrs. Meecher was friendly and garrulous. Variety, the journal which,
next to the dog Toto, was the thing she loved best in the world, had
informed her on the Friday morning that Mr. Foster's play had got over
big in Detroit, and that Miss Doland had made every kind of hit. It was
not often that the old alumni of the boarding-house forced their
way after this fashion into the Hall of Fame, and, according to Mrs.
Meecher, the establishment was ringing with the news. That blue ribbon
round Toto's neck was worn in honour of the triumph. There was also,
though you could not see it, a chicken dinner in Toto's interior, by way
of further celebration.

And was it true that Mr. Fillmore had bought the piece? A great man, was
Mrs. Meecher's verdict. Mr. Faucitt had always said so...

“Oh, how is Mr. Faucitt?” Sally asked, reproaching herself for having
allowed the pressure of other matters to drive all thoughts of her late
patient from her mind.

“He's gone,” said Mrs. Meecher with such relish that to Sally, in her
morbid condition, the words had only one meaning. She turned white and
clutched at the banisters.

“Gone!”

“To England,” added Mrs. Meecher. Sally was vastly relieved.

“Oh, I thought you meant...”

“Oh no, not that.” Mrs. Meecher sighed, for she had been a little
disappointed in the old gentleman, who started out as such a promising
invalid, only to fall away into the dullness of robust health once more.
“He's well enough. I never seen anybody better. You'd think,” said Mrs.
Meecher, bearing up with difficulty under her grievance, “you'd
think this here new Spanish influenza was a sort of a tonic or
somep'n, the way he looks now. Of course,” she added, trying to find
justification for a respected lodger, “he's had good news. His brother's
dead.”

“What!”

“Not, I don't mean, that that was good news, far from it, though, come
to think of it, all flesh is as grass and we all got to be prepared for
somep'n of the sort breaking loose...but it seems this here new brother
of his--I didn't know he'd a brother, and I don't suppose you knew he
had a brother. Men are secretive, ain't they!--this brother of his
has left him a parcel of money, and Mr. Faucitt he had to get on the
Wednesday boat quick as he could and go right over to the other side to
look after things. Wind up the estate, I believe they call it. Left in a
awful hurry, he did. Sent his love to you and said he'd write. Funny him
having a brother, now, wasn't it? Not,” said Mrs. Meecher, at heart a
reasonable woman, “that folks don't have brothers. I got two myself, one
in Portland, Oregon, and the other goodness knows where he is. But what
I'm trying to say...”

Sally disengaged herself, and went up to her room. For a brief while the
excitement which comes of hearing good news about those of whom we are
fond acted as a stimulant, and she felt almost cheerful. Dear old Mr.
Faucitt. She was sorry for his brother, of course, though she had never
had the pleasure of his acquaintance and had only just heard that he had
ever existed; but it was nice to think that her old friend's remaining
years would be years of affluence.

Presently, however, she found her thoughts wandering back into their
melancholy groove. She threw herself wearily on the bed. She was tired
after her bad night.

But she could not sleep. Remorse kept her awake. Besides, she could hear
Mrs. Meecher prowling disturbingly about the house, apparently in search
of someone, her progress indicated by creaking boards and the strenuous
yapping of Toto.

Sally turned restlessly, and, having turned remained for a long instant
transfixed and rigid. She had seen something, and what she had seen
was enough to surprise any girl in the privacy of her bedroom. From
underneath the bed there peeped coyly forth an undeniably masculine shoe
and six inches of a grey trouser-leg.

Sally bounded to the floor. She was a girl of courage, and she meant to
probe this matter thoroughly.

“What are you doing under my bed?”

The question was a reasonable one, and evidently seemed to the intruder
to deserve an answer. There was a muffled sneeze, and he began to crawl
out.

The shoe came first. Then the legs. Then a sturdy body in a dusty coat.
And finally there flashed on Sally's fascinated gaze a head of so nearly
the maximum redness that it could only belong to one person in the
world.

“Ginger!”

Mr. Lancelot Kemp, on all fours, blinked up at her.

“Oh, hullo!” he said.




CHAPTER IX. GINGER BECOMES A RIGHT-HAND MAN



It was not till she saw him actually standing there before her with his
hair rumpled and a large smut on the tip of his nose, that Sally really
understood how profoundly troubled she had been about this young man,
and how vivid had been that vision of him bobbing about on the waters
of the Thames, a cold and unappreciated corpse. She was a girl of keen
imagination, and she had allowed her imagination to riot unchecked.
Astonishment, therefore, at the extraordinary fact of his being there
was for the moment thrust aside by relief. Never before in her life had
she experienced such an overwhelming rush of exhilaration. She flung
herself into a chair and burst into a screech of laughter which even to
her own ears sounded strange. It struck Ginger as hysterical.

“I say, you know!” said Ginger, as the merriment showed no signs of
abating. Ginger was concerned. Nasty shock for a girl, finding blighters
under her bed.

Sally sat up, gurgling, and wiped her eyes.

“Oh, I am glad to see you,” she gasped.

“No, really?” said Ginger, gratified. “That's fine.” It occurred to him
that some sort of apology would be a graceful act. “I say, you know,
awfully sorry. About barging in here, I mean. Never dreamed it was your
room. Unoccupied, I thought.”

“Don't mention it. I ought not to have disturbed you. You were having a
nice sleep, of course. Do you always sleep on the floor?”

“It was like this...”

“Of course, if you're wearing it for ornament, as a sort of
beauty-spot,” said Sally, “all right. But in case you don't know, you've
a smut on your nose.”

“Oh, my aunt! Not really?”

“Now would I deceive you on an important point like that?”

“Do you mind if I have a look in the glass?”

“Certainly, if you can stand it.”

Ginger moved hurriedly to the dressing-table.

“You're perfectly right,” he announced, applying his handkerchief.

“I thought I was. I'm very quick at noticing things.”

“My hair's a bit rumpled, too.”

“Very much so.”

“You take my tip,” said Ginger, earnestly, “and never lie about under
beds. There's nothing in it.”

“That reminds me. You won't be offended if I asked you something?”

“No, no. Go ahead.”

“It's rather an impertinent question. You may resent it.”

“No, no.”

“Well, then, what were you doing under my bed?”

“Oh, under your bed?”

“Yes. Under my bed. This. It's a bed, you know. Mine. My bed. You were
under it. Why? Or putting it another way, why were you under my bed?”

“I was hiding.”

“Playing hide-and-seek? That explains it.”

“Mrs. What's-her-name--Beecher--Meecher--was after me.”

Sally shook her head disapprovingly.

“You mustn't encourage Mrs. Meecher in these childish pastimes. It
unsettles her.”

Ginger passed an agitated hand over his forehead.

“It's like this...”

“I hate to keep criticizing your appearance,” said Sally, “and
personally I like it; but, when you clutched your brow just then, you
put about a pound of dust on it. Your hands are probably grubby.”

Ginger inspected them.

“They are!”

“Why not make a really good job of it and have a wash?”

“Do you mind?”

“I'd prefer it.”

“Thanks awfully. I mean to say it's your basin, you know, and all that.
What I mean is, seem to be making myself pretty well at home.”

“Oh, no.”

“Touching the matter of soap...”

“Use mine. We Americans are famous for our hospitality.”

“Thanks awfully.”

“The towel is on your right.”

“Thanks awfully.”

“And I've a clothes brush in my bag.”

“Thanks awfully.”

Splashing followed like a sea-lion taking a dip. “Now, then,” said
Sally, “why were you hiding from Mrs. Meecher?”

A careworn, almost hunted look came into Ginger's face. “I say, you
know, that woman is rather by way of being one of the lads, what! Scares
me! Word was brought that she was on the prowl, so it seemed to me a
judicious move to take cover till she sort of blew over. If she'd found
me, she'd have made me take that dog of hers for a walk.”

“Toto?”

“Toto. You know,” said Ginger, with a strong sense of injury, “no dog's
got a right to be a dog like that. I don't suppose there's anyone
keener on dogs than I am, but a thing like a woolly rat.” He shuddered
slightly. “Well, one hates to be seen about with it in the public
streets.”

“Why couldn't you have refused in a firm but gentlemanly manner to take
Toto out?”

“Ah! There you rather touch the spot. You see, the fact of the matter
is, I'm a bit behind with the rent, and that makes it rather hard to
take what you might call a firm stand.”

“But how can you be behind with the rent? I only left here the Saturday
before last and you weren't in the place then. You can't have been here
more than a week.”

“I've been here just a week. That's the week I'm behind with.”

“But why? You were a millionaire when I left you at Roville.”

“Well, the fact of the matter is, I went back to the tables that night
and lost a goodish bit of what I'd won. And, somehow or another, when I
got to America, the stuff seemed to slip away.”

“What made you come to America at all?” said Sally, asking the question
which, she felt, any sensible person would have asked at the opening of
the conversation.

One of his familiar blushes raced over Ginger's face. “Oh, I thought I
would. Land of opportunity, you know.”

“Have you managed to find any of the opportunities yet?”

“Well, I have got a job of sorts, I'm a waiter at a rummy little place
on Second Avenue. The salary isn't big, but I'd have wangled enough out
of it to pay last week's rent, only they docked me a goodish bit for
breaking plates and what not. The fact is, I'm making rather a hash of
it.”

“Oh, Ginger! You oughtn't to be a waiter!”

“That's what the boss seems to think.”

“I mean, you ought to be doing something ever so much better.”

“But what? You've no notion how well all these blighters here seem to
be able to get along without my help. I've tramped all over the place,
offering my services, but they all say they'll try to carry on as they
are.”

Sally reflected.

“I know!”

“What?”

“I'll make Fillmore give you a job. I wonder I didn't think of it
before.”

“Fillmore?”

“My brother. Yes, he'll be able to use you.”

“What as?”

Sally considered.

“As a--as a--oh, as his right-hand man.”

“Does he want a right-hand man?”

“Sure to. He's a young fellow trying to get along. Sure to want a
right-hand man.”

“'M yes,” said Ginger reflectively. “Of course, I've never been a
right-hand man, you know.”

“Oh, you'd pick it up. I'll take you round to him now. He's staying at
the Astor.”

“There's just one thing,” said Ginger.

“What's that?”

“I might make a hash of it.”

“Heavens, Ginger! There must be something in this world that you
wouldn't make a hash of. Don't stand arguing any longer. Are you dry?
and clean? Very well, then. Let's be off.”

“Right ho.”

Ginger took a step towards the door, then paused, rigid, with one leg in
the air, as though some spell had been cast upon him. From the passage
outside there had sounded a shrill yapping. Ginger looked at Sally. Then
he looked--longingly--at the bed.

“Don't be such a coward,” said Sally, severely.

“Yes, but...”

“How much do you owe Mrs. Meecher?”

“Round about twelve dollars, I think it is.”

“I'll pay her.”

Ginger flushed awkwardly.

“No, I'm hanged if you will! I mean,” he stammered, “it's frightfully
good of you and all that, and I can't tell you how grateful I am, but
honestly, I couldn't...”

Sally did not press the point. She liked him the better for a rugged
independence, which in the days of his impecuniousness her brother
Fillmore had neve

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