The Adventures of Sally. P. G. Wodehouse
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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!”
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