Pelham Grenville Wodehouse: The Adventures of Sally

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.

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.