The Man With Two Left Feet Read online

  Henry eyed him inscrutably. He could look inscrutable at times.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and left quickly, with the feeling that, however poorly he had shown up during the actual interview, his exit had been good. He might have been a failure in the matter of disguise, but nobody could have put more quiet sinister-ness into that ‘Ah!’ It did much to soothe him and ensure a peaceful night’s rest.

  On the following night, for the first time in his life, Henry found himself behind the scenes of a theatre, and instantly began to experience all the complex emotions which come to the layman in that situation. That is to say, he felt like a cat which has strayed into a strange hostile backyard. He was in a new world, inhabited by weird creatures, who flitted about in an eerie semi-darkness, like brightly coloured animals in a cavern.

  The Girl from Brighton was one of those exotic productions specially designed for the Tired Business Man. It relied for a large measure of its success on the size and appearance of its chorus, and on their constant change of costume. Henry, as a consequence, was the centre of a kaleidoscopic whirl of feminine loveliness, dressed to represent such varying flora and fauna as rabbits, Parisian students, colleens, Dutch peasants, and daffodils. Musical comedy is the Irish stew of the drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.

  He scanned the throng for a sight of Alice. Often as he had seen the piece in the course of its six weeks’ wandering in the wilderness he had never succeeded in recognizing her from the front of the house. Quite possibly, he thought, she might be on the stage already, hidden in a rose tree or some other shrub, ready at the signal to burst forth upon the audience in short skirts; for in The Girl from Brighton almost anything could turn suddenly into a chorus girl.

  Then he saw her, among the daffodils. She was not a particularly convincing daffodil, but she looked good to Henry. With wabbling knees he butted his way through the crowd and seized her hand enthusiastically.

  ‘Why, Henry! Where did you come from?’

  ‘I am glad to see you!’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I am glad to see you!’

  At this point the stage manager, bellowing from the prompt-box, urged Henry to desist. It is one of the mysteries of behind-the-scenes acoustics that a whisper from any minor member of the company can be heard all over the house, while the stage manager can burst himself without annoying the audience.

  Henry, awed by authority, relapsed into silence. From the unseen stage came the sound of someone singing a song about the moon. June was also mentioned. He recognized the song as one that had always bored him. He disliked the woman who was singing it—a Miss Clarice Weaver, who played the heroine of the piece to Sidney Crane’s hero.

  In his opinion he was not alone. Miss Weaver was not popular in the company. She had secured the role rather as a testimony of personal esteem from the management than because of any innate ability. She sang badly, acted indifferently, and was uncertain what to do with her hands. All these things might have been forgiven her, but she supplemented them by the crime known in stage circles as ‘throwing her weight about.’ That is to say, she was hard to please, and, when not pleased, apt to say so in no uncertain voice. To his personal friends Walter Jelliffe had frequently confided that, though not a rich man, he was in the market with a substantial reward for anyone who was man enough to drop a ton of iron on Miss Weaver.

  Tonight the song annoyed Henry more than usual, for he knew that very soon the daffodils were due on the stage to clinch the verisimilitude of the scene by dancing the tango with the rabbits. He endeavoured to make the most of the time at his disposal.

  ‘I am glad to see you!’ he said.

  ‘Sh-h!’ said the stage manager.

  Henry was discouraged. Romeo could not have made love under these conditions. And then, just when he was pulling himself together to begin again, she was torn from him by the exigencies of the play.

  He wandered moodily off into the dusty semi-darkness. He avoided the prompt-box, whence he could have caught a glimpse of her, being loath to meet the stage manager just at present.

  Walter Jelliffe came up to him, as he sat on a box and brooded on life.

  ‘A little less of the double forte, old man,’ he said. ‘Miss Weaver has been kicking about the noise on the side. She wanted you thrown out, but I said you were my mascot, and I would die sooner than part with you. But I should go easy on the chest-notes, I think, all the same.’

  Henry nodded moodily. He was depressed. He had the feeling, which comes so easily to the intruder behind the scenes, that nobody loved him.

  The piece proceeded. From the front of the house roars of laughter indicated the presence on the stage of Walter Jelliffe, while now and then a lethargic silence suggested that Miss Clarice Weaver was in action. From time to time the empty space about him filled with girls dressed in accordance with the exuberant fancy of the producer of the piece. When this happened, Henry would leap from his seat and endeavour to locate Alice; but always, just as he thought he had done so, the hidden orchestra would burst into melody and the chorus would be called to the front.

  It was not till late in the second act that he found an opportunity for further speech.

  The plot of The Girl from Brighton had by then reached a critical stage. The situation was as follows: The hero, having been disinherited by his wealthy and titled father for falling in love with the heroine, a poor shop girl, has disguised himself (by wearing a different coloured necktie) and has come in pursuit of her to a well-known seaside resort, where, having disguised herself by changing her dress, she is serving as a waitress in the Rotunda, on the Esplanade. The family butler, disguised as a Bath chair man, has followed the hero, and the wealthy and titled father, disguised as an Italian opera singer, has come to the place for a reason which, though extremely sound, for the moment eludes the memory. Anyhow, he is there, and they all meet on the Esplanade. Each recognizes the other, but thinks he himself is unrecognized. Exeunt all, hurriedly, leaving the heroine alone on the stage.

  It is a crisis in the heroine’s life. She meets it bravely. She sings a song entitled ‘My Honolulu Queen,’ with chorus of Japanese girls and Bulgarian officers.

  Alice was one of the Japanese girls.

  She was standing a little apart from the other Japanese girls. Henry was on her with a bound. Now was his time. He felt keyed up, full of persuasive words. In the interval which had elapsed since their last conversation yeasty emotions had been playing the dickens with his self-control. It is practically impossible for a novice, suddenly introduced behind the scenes of a musical comedy, not to fall in love with somebody; and, if he is already in love, his fervour is increased to a dangerous point.

  Henry felt that it was now or never. He forgot that it was perfectly possible—indeed, the reasonable course—to wait till the performance was over, and renew his appeal to Alice to marry him on the way back to her hotel. He had the feeling that he had got just about a quarter of a minute. Quick action! That was Henry’s slogan.

  He seized her hand.

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘Sh-h!’ hissed the stage manager.

  ‘Listen! I love you. I’m crazy about you. What does it matter whether I’m on the stage or not? I love you.’

  ‘Stop that row there!’

  ‘Won’t you marry me?’

  She looked at him. It seemed to him that she hesitated.

  ‘Cut it out!’ bellowed the stage manager, and Henry cut it out.

  And at this moment, when his whole fate hung in the balance, there came from the stage that devastating high note which is the sign that the solo is over and that the chorus are now about to mobilize. As if drawn by some magnetic power, she suddenly receded from him, and went on to the stage.

  A man in Henry’s position and frame of mind is not responsible for his actions. He saw not
hing but her; he was blind to the fact that important manoeuvres were in progress. All he understood was that she was going from him, and that he must stop her and get this thing settled.

  He clutched at her. She was out of range, and getting farther away every instant.

  He sprang forward.

  The advice that should be given to every young man starting life is—if you happen to be behind the scenes at a theatre, never spring forward. The whole architecture of the place is designed to undo those who so spring. Hours before, the stage carpenters have laid their traps, and in the semi-darkness you cannot but fall into them.

  The trap into which Henry fell was a raised board. It was not a very highly-raised board. It was not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’twas enough—it served. Stubbing it squarely with his toe, Henry shot forward, all arms and legs.

  It is the instinct of Man, in such a situation, to grab at the nearest support. Henry grabbed at the Hotel Superba, the pride of the Esplanade. It was a thin wooden edifice, and it supported him for perhaps a tenth of a second. Then he staggered with it into the limelight, tripped over a Bulgarian officer who was inflating himself for a deep note, and finally fell in a complicated heap as exactly in the centre of the stage as if he had been a star of years’ standing.

  It went well; there was no question of that. Previous audiences had always been rather cold towards this particular song, but this one got on its feet and yelled for more. From all over the house came rapturous demands that Henry should go back and do it again.

  But Henry was giving no encores. He rose to his feet, a little stunned, and automatically began to dust his clothes. The orchestra, unnerved by this unrehearsed infusion of new business, had stopped playing. Bulgarian officers and Japanese girls alike seemed unequal to the situation. They stood about, waiting for the next thing to break loose. From somewhere far away came faintly the voice of the stage manager inventing new words, new combinations of words, and new throat noises.

  And then Henry, massaging a stricken elbow, was aware of Miss Weaver at his side. Looking up, he caught Miss Weaver’s eye.

  A familiar stage direction of melodrama reads, ‘Exit cautious through gap in hedge.’ It was Henry’s first appearance on any stage, but he did it like a veteran.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said Walter Jelliffe. The hour was midnight, and he was sitting in Henry’s bedroom at the hotel. Leaving the theatre, Henry had gone to bed almost instinctively. Bed seemed the only haven for him. ‘My dear fellow, don’t apologize. You have put me under lasting obligations. In the first place, with your unerring sense of the stage, you saw just the spot where the piece needed livening up, and you livened it up. That was good; but far better was it that you also sent our Miss Weaver into violent hysterics, from which she emerged to hand in her notice. She leaves us tomorrow.’

  Henry was appalled at the extent of the disaster for which he was responsible.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Do! Why, it’s what we have all been praying for—a miracle which should eject Miss Weaver. It needed a genius like you to come to bring it off. Sidney Crane’s wife can play the part without rehearsal. She understudied it all last season in London. Crane has just been speaking to her on the phone, and she is catching the night express.’

  Henry sat up in bed.

  ‘What!’

  ‘What’s the trouble now?’

  ‘Sidney Crane’s wife?’

  ‘What about her?’

  A bleakness fell upon Henry’s soul.

  ‘She was the woman who was employing me. Now I shall be taken off the job and have to go back to London.’

  ‘You don’t mean that it was really Crane’s wife?’

  Jelliffe was regarding him with a kind of awe.

  ‘Laddie,’ he said, in a hushed voice, ‘you almost scare me. There seems to be no limit to your powers as a mascot. You fill the house every night, you get rid of the Weaver woman, and now you tell me this. I drew Crane in the sweep, and I would have taken twopence for my chance of winning it.’

  ‘I shall get a telegram from my boss tomorrow recalling me.’

  ‘Don’t go. Stick with me. Join the troupe.’

  Henry stared.

  ‘What do you mean? I can’t sing or act.’

  Jelliffe’s voice thrilled with earnestness.

  ‘My boy, I can go down the Strand and pick up a hundred fellows who can sing and act. I don’t want them. I turn them away. But a seventh son of a seventh son like you, a human horseshoe like you, a king of mascots like you—they don’t make them nowadays. They’ve lost the pattern. If you like to come with me I’ll give you a contract for any number of years you suggest. I need you in my business.’ He rose. ‘Think it over, laddie, and let me know tomorrow. Look here upon this picture, and on that. As a sleuth you are poor. You couldn’t detect a bass drum in a telephone booth. You have no future. You are merely among those present. But as a mascot—my boy, you’re the only thing in sight. You can’t help succeeding on the stage. You don’t have to know how to act. Look at the dozens of good actors who are out of jobs. Why? Unlucky. No other reason. With your luck and a little experience you’ll be a star before you know you’ve begun. Think it over, and let me know in the morning.’

  Before Henry’s eyes there rose a sudden vision of Alice: Alice no longer unattainable; Alice walking on his arm down the aisle; Alice mending his socks; Alice with her heavenly hands fingering his salary envelope.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t go. I’ll let you know now.’

  The scene is the Strand, hard by Bedford Street; the time, that restful hour of the afternoon when they of the gnarled faces and the bright clothing gather together in groups to tell each other how good they are.

  Hark! A voice.

  ‘Rather! Courtneidge and the Guv’nor keep on trying to get me, but I turn them down every time. “No,” I said to Malone only yesterday, “not for me! I’m going with old Wally Jelliffe, the same as usual, and there isn’t the money in the Mint that’ll get me away.” Malone got all worked up. He—’

  It is the voice of Pifield Rice, actor.

  Extricating Young Gussie

  She sprang it on me before breakfast. There in seven words you have a complete character sketch of my Aunt Agatha. I could go on indefinitely about brutality and lack of consideration. I merely say that she routed me out of bed to listen to her painful story somewhere in the small hours. It can’t have been half past eleven when Jeeves, my man, woke me out of the dreamless and broke the news:

  ‘Mrs. Gregson to see you, sir.’

  I thought she must be walking in her sleep, but I crawled out of bed and got into a dressing gown. I knew Aunt Agatha well enough to know that, if she had come to see me, she was going to see me. That’s the sort of woman she is.

  She was sitting bolt upright in a chair, staring into space. When I came in she looked at me in that darn critical way that always makes me feel as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. Aunt Agatha is one of those strong-minded women. I should think Queen Elizabeth must have been something like her. She bosses her husband, Spencer Gregson, a battered little chappie on the Stock Exchange. She bosses my cousin, Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She bosses her sister-in-law, Gussie’s mother. And, worst of all, she bosses me. She has an eye like a man-eating fish, and she has got moral suasion down to a fine point.

  I dare say there are fellows in the world—men of blood and iron, don’t you know, and all that sort of thing—whom she couldn’t intimidate; but if you’re a chappie like me, fond of a quiet life, you simply curl into a ball when you see her coming, and hope for the best. My experience is that when Aunt Agatha wants you to do a thing you do it, or else you find yourself wondering why those fellows in the olden days made such a fuss when they had trouble with the Spanish Inquisition.

  ‘Halloa, Aunt Agatha!’ I said

&nb
sp; ‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘you look a sight. You look perfectly dissipated.’

  I was feeling like a badly wrapped brown-paper parcel. I’m never at my best in the early morning. I said so.

  ‘Early morning! I had breakfast three hours ago, and have been walking in the park ever since, trying to compose my thoughts.’

  If I ever breakfasted at half past eight I should walk on the Embankment, trying to end it all in a watery grave.

  ‘I am extremely worried, Bertie. That is why I have come to you.’

  And then I saw she was going to start something, and I bleated weakly to Jeeves to bring me tea. But she had begun before I could get it.

  ‘What are your immediate plans, Bertie?’

  ‘Well, I rather thought of tottering out for a bite of lunch later on, and then possibly staggering round to the club, and after that, if I felt strong enough, I might trickle off to Walton Heath for a round of golf.’

  I am not interested in your totterings and tricklings. I mean, have you any important engagements in the next week or so?’

  I scented danger.

  ‘Rather,’ I said. ‘Heaps! Millions! Booked solid!’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I—er—well, I don’t quite know.’

  ‘I thought as much. You have no engagements. Very well, then, I want you to start immediately for America.’

  ‘America!’

  Do not lose sight of the fact that all this was taking place on an empty stomach, shortly after the rising of the lark.

  ‘Yes, America. I suppose even you have heard of America?’

  ‘But why America?’

  ‘Because that is where your Cousin Gussie is. He is in New York, and I can’t get at him.’

  ‘What’s Gussie been doing?’

  ‘Gussie is making a perfect idiot of himself.’

  To one who knew young Gussie as well as I did, the words opened up a wide field for speculation.

  ‘In what way?’