A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse (pocket ebook reader txt) 📕

of about twenty-seven, tall and well knit, with an agreeable, clean-cut face, of which a pair of good and honest eyes were the most noticeable feature. His sensitive mouth was drawn down a little at the corners, and he looked tired.

“Morning, Mac.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“Anything for me?”

“Yes, sir. Some telegrams. I’ll get ’em. Oh, I’ll get ’em,” said Mac, as if reassuring some doubting friend and supporter as to his ability to carry through a labour of Hercules.

He disappeared into his glass case. George Bevan remained outside in the street surveying the frisking children with a sombre glance. They seemed to him very noisy, very dirty and very young. Disgustingly young. Theirs was joyous, exuberant youth which made a fellow feel at least sixty. Something was wrong with George today, for normally he was fond of children. Indeed, normally he was fond of most things. He was a good-natured and cheerful young man, who liked life and the great majority of those who lived it contemporaneously with himself. He had no enemies and many friends.

But today he had noticed from the moment he had got out of bed that something was amiss with the world. Either he was in the grip of some divine discontent due to the highly developed condition of his soul, or else he had a grouch. One of the two. Or it might have been the reaction from the emotions of the previous night. On the morning after an opening your sensitive artist is always apt to feel as if he had been dried over a barrel.

Besides, last night there had been a supper party after the performance at the flat which the comedian of the troupe had rented in Jermyn Street, a forced, rowdy supper party where a number of tired people with overstrained nerves had seemed to feel it a duty to be artificially vivacious. It had lasted till four o’clock when the morning papers with the notices arrived, and George had not got to bed till four-thirty. These things colour the mental outlook.

Mac reappeared.

“Here you are, sir.”

“Thanks.”

George put the telegrams in his pocket. A cat, on its way back from lunch, paused beside him in order to use his leg as a serviette. George tickled it under the ear abstractedly. He was always courteous to cats, but today he went through the movements perfunctorily and without enthusiasm.

The cat moved on. Mac became conversational.

“They tell me the piece was a hit last night, sir.”

“It seemed to go very well.”

“My Missus saw it from the gallery, and all the first-nighters was speaking very ’ighly of it. There’s a regular click, you know, sir, over here in London, that goes to all the first nights in the gallery. ’Ighly critical they are always. Specially if it’s an American piece like this one. If they don’t like it, they precious soon let you know. My missus ses they was all speakin’ very ’ighly of it. My missus says she ain’t seen a livelier show for a long time, and she’s a great theatregoer. My missus says they was all specially pleased with the music.”

“That’s good.”

“The Morning Leader give it a fine write-up. How was the rest of the papers?”

“Splendid, all of them. I haven’t seen the evening papers yet. I came out to get them.”

Mac looked down the street.

“There’ll be a rehearsal this afternoon, I suppose, sir? Here’s Miss Dore coming along.”

George followed his glance. A tall girl in a tailor-made suit of blue was coming towards them. Even at a distance one caught the genial personality of the new arrival. It seemed to go before her like a heartening breeze. She picked her way carefully through the children crawling on the side walk. She stopped for a moment and said something to one of them. The child grinned. Even the proprietor of the grocery store appeared to brighten up at the sight of her, as at the sight of some old friend.

“How’s business, Bill?” she called to him as she passed the spot where he stood brooding on the mortality of tomatoes. And, though he replied “Rotten,” a faint, grim smile did nevertheless flicker across his tragic mask.

Billie Dore, who was one of the chorus of George Bevan’s musical comedy, had an attractive face, a mouth that laughed readily, rather bright golden hair (which, she was fond of insisting with perfect truth, was genuine though appearances were against it), and steady blue eyes. The latter were frequently employed by her in quelling admirers who were encouraged by the former to become too ardent. Billie’s views on the opposite sex who forgot themselves were as rigid as those of Lord Marshmoreton concerning thrips. She liked men, and she would signify this liking in a practical manner by lunching and dining with them, but she was entirely self-supporting, and when men overlooked that fact she reminded them of it in no uncertain voice; for she was a girl of ready speech and direct.

“ ’Morning, George. ’Morning, Mac. Any mail?”

“I’ll see, miss.”

“How did your better four-fifths like the show, Mac?”

“I was just telling Mr. Bevan, miss, that the missus said she ’adn’t seen a livelier show for a long time.”

“Fine. I knew I’d be a hit. Well, George, how’s the boy this bright afternoon?”

“Limp and pessimistic.”

“That comes of sitting up till four in the morning with festive hams.”

“You were up as late as I was, and you look like Little Eva after a night of sweet, childish slumber.”

“Yes, but I drank ginger ale, and didn’t smoke eighteen cigars. And yet, I don’t know. I think I must be getting old, George. All-night parties seem to have lost their charm. I was ready to quit at one o’clock, but it didn’t seem matey. I think I’ll marry a farmer and settle down.”

George was amazed. He had not expected to find his present view of life shared in this quarter.

“I was just thinking myself,” he said, feeling not for the first time how different Billie was from the majority of those with whom his