The Adventures of Sally
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
CHAPTER I
SALLY GIVES A PARTY
1
Sally looked contentedly down the long table. She felt happy at last.
Everybody was talking and laughing now, and her party, rallying after an
uncertain start, was plainly the success she had hoped it would be. The
first atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint, caused, she was only too
well aware, by her brother Fillmore's white evening waistcoat, had worn
off; and the male and female patrons of Mrs. Meecher's select
boarding-house (transient and residential) were themselves again.
At her end of the table the conversation had turned once more to the
great vital topic of Sally's legacy and what she ought to do with it.
The next best thing to having money of one's own, is to dictate the
spending of somebody else's, and Sally's guests were finding a good deal
of satisfaction in arranging a Budget for her. Rumour having put the sum
at their disposal at a high figure, their suggestions had certain
spaciousness.
"Let me tell you," said Augustus Bartlett, briskly, "what I'd do, if I
were you." Augustus Bartlett, who occupied an intensely subordinate
position in the firm of Kahn, Morris and Brown, the Wall Street brokers,
always affected a brisk, incisive style of speech, as befitted a man in
close touch with the great ones of Finance. "I'd sink a couple of
hundred thousand in some good, safe bond-issue--we've just put one out
which you would do well to consider--and play about with the rest. When
I say play about, I mean have a flutter in anything good that crops up.
Multiple Steel's worth looking at. They tell me it'll be up to a hundred
and fifty before next Saturday."
Elsa Doland, the pretty girl with the big eyes who sat on Mr. Bartlett's
left, had other views.
"Buy a theatre. Sally, and put on good stuff."
"And lose every bean you've got," said a mild young man, with a deep
voice across the table. "If I had a few hundred thousand," said the mild
young man, "I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the
heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke
has been got at and means to lie down in the seventh..."
"Say, listen," interrupted another voice, "lemme tell you what I'd do
with four hundred thousand..."
"If I had four hundred thousand," said Elsa Doland, "I know what would
be the first thing I'd do."
"What's that?" asked Sally.
"Pay my bill for last week, due this morning."
Sally got up quickly, and flitting down the table, put her arm round her
friend's shoulder and whispered in her ear:
"Elsa darling, are you really broke? If you are, you know, I'll..."
Elsa Doland laughed.
"You're an angel, Sally. There's no one like you. You'd give your last
cent to anyone. Of course I'm not broke. I've just come back from the
road, and I've saved a fortune. I only said that to draw you."
Sally returned to her seat, relieved, and found that the company had now
divided itself into two schools of thought. The conservative and prudent
element, led by Augustus Bartlett, had definitely decided on three
hundred thousand in Liberty Bonds and the rest in some safe real estate;
while the smaller, more sporting section, impressed by the mild young
man's inside information, had already placed Sally's money on Benny
Whistler, doling it out cautiously in small sums so as not to spoil the
market. And so solid, it seemed, was Mr. Tuke's reputation with those in
the inner circle of knowledge that the mild young man was confident
that, if you went about the matter cannily and without precipitation,
three to one might be obtained. It seemed to Sally that the time had
come to correct certain misapprehensions.
"I don't know where you get your figures," she said, "but I'm afraid
they're wrong. I've just twenty-five thousand dollars."
The statement had a chilling effect. To these jugglers with
half-millions the amount mentioned seemed for the moment almost too
small to bother about. It was the sort of sum which they had been
mentally setting aside for the heiress's car fare. Then they managed to
adjust their minds to it. After all, one could do something even with a
pittance like twenty-five thousand.
"If I'd twenty-five thousand," said Augustus Bartlett, the first to
rally from the shock, "I'd buy Amalgamated..."
"If I had twenty-five thousand..." began Elsa Doland.
"If I'd had twenty-five thousand in the year nineteen hundred," observed
a gloomy-looking man with spectacles, "I could have started a revolution
in Paraguay."
He brooded sombrely on what might have been.
"Well, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do," said Sally. "I'm
going to start with a trip to Europe... France, specially. I've heard
France well spoken of--as soon as I can get my passport; and after I've
loafed there for a few weeks, I'm coming back to look about and find
some nice cosy little business which will let me put money into it and
keep me in luxury. Are there any complaints?"
"Even a couple of thousand on Benny Whistler..." said the mild young man.
"I don't want your Benny Whistler," said Sally. "I wouldn't have him if
you gave him to me. If I want to lose money, I'll go to Monte Carlo and
do it properly."
"Monte Carlo," said the gloomy man, brightening up at the magic name.
"I was in Monte Carlo in the year '97, and if I'd had another fifty
dollars... just fifty... I'd have..."
At the far end of the table there was a stir, a cough, and the grating
of a chair on the floor; and slowly, with that easy grace which actors
of the old school learned in the days when acting was acting, Mr.
Maxwell Faucitt, the boarding-house's oldest inhabitant, rose to his
feet.
"Ladies," said Mr. Faucitt, bowing courteously, "and..." ceasing to bow
and casting from beneath his white and venerable eyebrows a quelling
glance at certain male members of the boarding-house's younger set who
were showing a disposition towards restiveness, "... gentlemen. I feel
that I cannot allow this occasion to pass without saying a few words."
His audience did not seem surprised. It was possible that life, always
prolific of incident in a great city like New York, might some day
produce an occasion which Mr. Faucitt would feel that he could allow to
pass without saying a few words; but nothing of the sort had happened as
yet, and they had given up hope. Right from the start of the meal they
had felt that it would be optimism run mad to expect the old gentleman
to abstain from speech on the night of Sally Nicholas' farewell dinner
party; and partly because they had braced themselves to it, but
principally because Miss Nicholas' hospitality had left them with a
genial feeling of repletion, they settled themselves to listen with
something resembling equanimity. A movement on the part of the
Marvellous Murphys--new arrivals, who had been playing the Bushwick
with their equilibristic act during the preceding week--to form a party
of the extreme left and heckle the speaker, broke down under a cold look
from their hostess. Brief though their acquaintance had been, both of
these lissom young gentlemen admired Sally immensely.
And it should be set on record that this admiration of theirs was not
misplaced. He would have been hard to please who had not been attracted
by Sally. She was a small, trim, wisp of a girl with the tiniest hands
and feet, the friendliest of smiles, and a dimple that came and went in
the curve of her rounded chin. Her eyes, which disappeared when she
laughed, which was often, were a bright hazel; her hair a soft mass of
brown. She had, moreover, a manner, an air of distinction lacking in the
majority of Mrs. Meecher's guests. And she carried youth like a banner.
In approving of Sally, the Marvellous Murphys had been guilty of no
lapse from their high critical standard.
"I have been asked," proceeded Mr. Faucitt, "though I am aware that
there are others here far worthier of such a task--Brutuses compared
with whom I, like Marc Antony, am no orator--I have been asked to
propose the health..."
"Who asked you?" It was the smaller of the Marvellous Murphys who spoke.
He was an unpleasant youth, snub-nosed and spotty. Still, he could
balance himself with one hand on an inverted ginger-ale bottle while
revolving a barrel on the soles of his feet. There is good in all of us.
"I have been asked," repeated Mr. Faucitt, ignoring the unmannerly
interruption, which, indeed, he would have found it hard to answer, "to
propose the health of our charming hostess (applause), coupled with
the name of her brother, our old friend Fillmore Nicholas."
The gentleman referred to, who sat at the speaker's end of the table,
acknowledged the tribute with a brief nod of the head. It was a nod of
condescension; the nod of one who, conscious of being hedged about by
social inferiors, nevertheless does his best to be not unkindly. And
Sally, seeing it, debated in her mind for an instant the advisability of
throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her
hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but she
restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive
impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance
of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest
motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that
quarter would be weakened.
She leaned back with a sigh. The temptation had been hard to resist. A
democratic girl, pomposity was a quality which she thoroughly disliked;
and though she loved him, she could not disguise from herself that, ever
since affluence had descended upon him some months ago, her brother
Fillmore had become insufferably pompous. If there are any young men
whom inherited wealth improves, Fillmore Nicholas was not one of them.
He seemed to regard himself nowadays as a sort of Man of Destiny. To
converse with him was for the ordinary human being like being received
in audience by some more than stand-offish monarch. It had taken Sally
over an hour to persuade him to leave his apartment on Riverside Drive
and revisit the boarding-house for this special occasion; and, when he
had come, he had entered wearing such faultless evening dress that he
had made the rest of the party look like a gathering of tramp-cyclists.
His white waistcoat alone was a silent reproach to honest poverty, and
had caused an awkward constraint right through the soup and fish
courses. Most of those present had known Fillmore Nicholas as an
impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one
would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him
in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had
eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank back abashed.
"Speaking," said Mr. Faucitt, "as an Englishman--for though I have long
since taken out what are technically known as my 'papers' it was as a
subject of the island kingdom that I first visited this great country--I
may say that the two factors in American life which have always made the
profoundest impression upon me have been the lavishness of American
hospitality and the charm of the American girl. To-night we have been
privileged to witness the American girl in the capacity of hostess, and
I think I am right in saying, in asseverating, in committing myself to
the statement that his has been a night which none of us present here
will ever forget. Miss Nicholas has given us, ladies and gentlemen, a
banquet. I repeat, a banquet. There has been alcoholic refreshment. I do
not know where it came from: I do not ask how it was procured, but we
have had it. Miss Nicholas..."
Mr. Faucitt paused to puff at his cigar. Sally's brother Fillmore
suppressed a yawn and glanced at his watch. Sally continued to lean
forward raptly. She knew how happy it made the old gentleman to deliver
a formal speech; and though she wished the subject had been different,
she was prepared to listen indefinitely.
"Miss Nicholas," resumed Mr. Faucitt, lowering his cigar, "... But why,"
he demanded abruptly, "do I call her Miss Nicholas?"
"Because it's her name," hazarded the taller Murphy.
Mr. Faucitt eyed him with disfavour. He disapproved of the marvellous
brethren on general grounds because, himself a resident of years
standing, he considered that these transients from the vaudeville stage
lowered the tone of the boarding-house; but particularly because the one
who had just spoken had, on his first evening in the place, addressed
him as "grandpa."
"Yes, sir," he said severely, "it is her name. But she has another
name, sweeter to those who love her, those who worship her, those who
have watched her with the eye of sedulous affection through the three
years she has spent beneath this roof, though that name," said Mr.
Faucitt, lowering the tone of his address and descending to what might
almost be termed personalities, "may not be familiar to a couple of dud
acrobats who have only been in the place a week-end, thank heaven, and
are off to-morrow to infest some other city. That name," said Mr.
Faucitt, soaring once more to a loftier plane, "is Sally. Our Sally. For
three years our Sally has flitted about this establishment like--I
choose the simile advisedly--like a ray of sunshine. For three years she
has made life for us a brighter, sweeter thing. And now a sudden access
of worldly wealth, happily synchronizing with her twenty-first
birthday, is to remove her from our midst. From our midst, ladies and
gentlemen, but not from our hearts. And I think I may venture to hope,
to prognosticate, that, whatever lofty sphere she may adorn in the
future, to whatever heights in the social world she may soar, she will
still continue to hold a corner in her own golden heart for the comrades
of her Bohemian days. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our hostess, Miss
Sally Nicholas, coupled with the name of our old friend, her brother
Fillmore."
Sally, watching her brother heave himself to his feet as the cheers died
away, felt her heart beat a little faster with anticipation. Fillmore
was a fluent young man, once a power in his college debating society,
and it was for that reason that she had insisted on his coming here
tonight.
She had guessed that Mr. Faucitt, the old dear, would say all sorts of
delightful things about her, and she had mistrusted her ability to make
a fitting reply. And it was imperative that a fitting reply should
proceed from someone. She knew Mr. Faucitt so well. He looked on these
occasions rather in the light of scenes from some play; and, sustaining
his own part in them with such polished grace, was certain to be pained
by anything in the nature of an anti-climax after he should have ceased
to take the stage. Eloquent himself, he must be answered with eloquence,
or his whole evening would be spoiled.
Fillmore Nicholas smoothed a wrinkle out of his white waistcoat; and
having rested one podgy hand on the table-cloth and the thumb of the
other in his pocket, glanced down the table with eyes so haughtily
drooping that Sally's fingers closed automatically about her orange, as
she wondered whether even now it might not be a good thing...
It seems to be one of Nature's laws that the most attractive girls
should have the least attractive brothers. Fillmore Nicholas had not
worn well. At the age of seven he had been an extraordinarily beautiful
child, but after that he had gone all to pieces; and now, at the age of
twenty-five, it would be idle to deny that he was something of a mess.
For the three years preceding his twenty-fifth birthday, restricted
means and hard work had kept his figure in check; but with money there
had come an ever-increasing sleekness. He looked as if he fed too often
and too well.
All this, however, Sally was prepared to forgive him, if he would only
make a good speech. She could see Mr. Faucitt leaning back in his chair,
all courteous attention. Rolling periods were meat and drink to the old
gentleman.
Fillmore spoke.
"I'm sure," said Fillmore, "you don't want a speech... Very good of
you to drink our health. Thank you."
He sat down.
The effect of these few simple words on the company was marked, but not
in every case identical. To the majority the emotion which they brought
was one of unmixed relief. There had been something so menacing, so easy
and practised, in Fillmore's attitude as he had stood there that the
gloomier-minded had given him at least twenty minutes, and even the
optimists had reckoned that they would be lucky if they got off with
ten. As far as the bulk of the guests were concerned, there was no
grumbling. Fillmore's, to their thinking, had been the ideal
after-dinner speech.
Far different was it with Mr. Maxwell Faucitt. The poor old man was
wearing such an expression of surprise and dismay as he might have worn
had somebody unexpectedly pulled the chair from under him. He was
feeling the sick shock which comes to those who tread on a non-existent
last stair. And Sally, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp
wordless exclamation as if she had seen a child fall down and hurt
itself in the street. The next moment she had run round the table and
was standing behind him with her arms round his neck. She spoke across
him with a sob in her voice.
"My brother," she stammered, directing a malevolent look at the
immaculate Fillmore, who, avoiding her gaze, glanced down his nose and
smoothed another wrinkle out of his waistcoat, "has not said
quite--quite all I hoped he was going to say. I can't make a speech,
but..." Sally gulped, "... but, I love you all and of course I shall
never forget you, and... and..."
Here Sally kissed Mr. Faucitt and burst into tears.
"There, there," said Mr. Faucitt, soothingly. The kindest critic could
not have claimed that Sally had been eloquent: nevertheless Mr. Maxwell
Faucitt was conscious of no sense of anti-climax.
