The Adventures of Sally, P. G. Wodehouse [interesting novels in english txt] 📗

“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