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.