The Man With Two Left Feet

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'Come back to the hotel, Gussie,' I said. 'There's a sportsman there
who mixes things he calls "lightning whizzers". Something tells me I
need one now. And excuse me for one minute, Gussie. I want to send a
cable.'

It was clear to me by now that Aunt Agatha had picked the wrong man for
this job of disentangling Gussie from the clutches of the American
vaudeville profession. What I needed was reinforcements. For a moment I
thought of cabling Aunt Agatha to come over, but reason told me that
this would be overdoing it. I wanted assistance, but not so badly as
that. I hit what seemed to me the happy mean. I cabled to Gussie's
mother and made it urgent.

'What were you cabling about?' asked Gussie, later.

'Oh just to say I had arrived safely, and all that sort of tosh,' I
answered.

* * * * *

Gussie opened his vaudeville career on the following Monday at a rummy
sort of place uptown where they had moving pictures some of the time
and, in between, one or two vaudeville acts. It had taken a lot of
careful handling to bring him up to scratch. He seemed to take my
sympathy and assistance for granted, and I couldn't let him down. My
only hope, which grew as I listened to him rehearsing, was that he
would be such a frightful frost at his first appearance that he would
never dare to perform again; and, as that would automatically squash
the marriage, it seemed best to me to let the thing go on.

He wasn't taking any chances. On the Saturday and Sunday we practically
lived in a beastly little music-room at the offices of the publishers
whose songs he proposed to use. A little chappie with a hooked nose
sucked a cigarette and played the piano all day. Nothing could tire
that lad. He seemed to take a personal interest in the thing.

Gussie would cleat his throat and begin:

'There's a great big choo-choo waiting at the deepo.'

THE CHAPPIE (playing chords): 'Is that so? What's it waiting for?'

GUSSIE (rather rattled at the interruption): 'Waiting for me.'

THE CHAPPIE (surprised): For you?'

GUSSIE (sticking to it): 'Waiting for me-e-ee!'

THE CHAPPIE (sceptically): 'You don't say!'

GUSSIE: 'For I'm off to Tennessee.'

THE CHAPPIE (conceding a point): 'Now, I live at Yonkers.'

He did this all through the song. At first poor old Gussie asked him to
stop, but the chappie said, No, it was always done. It helped to get
pep into the thing. He appealed to me whether the thing didn't want a
bit of pep, and I said it wanted all the pep it could get. And the
chappie said to Gussie, 'There you are!' So Gussie had to stand it.

The other song that he intended to sing was one of those moon songs. He
told me in a hushed voice that he was using it because it was one of
the songs that the girl Ray sang when lifting them out of their seats
at Mosenstein's and elsewhere. The fact seemed to give it sacred
associations for him.

You will scarcely believe me, but the management expected Gussie to
show up and start performing at one o'clock in the afternoon. I told
him they couldn't be serious, as they must know that he would be
rolling out for a bit of lunch at that hour, but Gussie said this was
the usual thing in the four-a-day, and he didn't suppose he would ever
get any lunch again until he landed on the big time. I was just
condoling with him, when I found that he was taking it for granted that
I should be there at one o'clock, too. My idea had been that I should
look in at night, when--if he survived--he would be coming up for the
fourth time; but I've never deserted a pal in distress, so I said
good-bye to the little lunch I'd been planning at a rather decent
tavern I'd discovered on Fifth Avenue, and trailed along. They were
showing pictures when I reached my seat. It was one of those Western
films, where the cowboy jumps on his horse and rides across country at
a hundred and fifty miles an hour to escape the sheriff, not knowing,
poor chump! that he might just as well stay where he is, the sheriff
having a horse of his own which can do three hundred miles an hour
without coughing. I was just going to close my eyes and try to forget
till they put Gussie's name up when I discovered that I was sitting
next to a deucedly pretty girl.

No, let me be honest. When I went in I had seen that there was a
deucedly pretty girl sitting in that particular seat, so I had taken
the next one. What happened now was that I began, as it were, to drink
her in. I wished they would turn the lights up so that I could see her
better. She was rather small, with great big eyes and a ripping smile.
It was a shame to let all that run to seed, so to speak, in
semi-darkness.

Suddenly the lights did go up, and the orchestra began to play a tune
which, though I haven't much of an ear for music, seemed somehow
familiar. The next instant out pranced old Gussie from the wings in a
purple frock-coat and a brown top-hat, grinned feebly at the audience,
tripped over his feet blushed, and began to sing the Tennessee song.

It was rotten. The poor nut had got stage fright so badly that it
practically eliminated his voice. He sounded like some far-off echo of
the past 'yodelling' through a woollen blanket.

For the first time since I had heard that he was about to go into
vaudeville I felt a faint hope creeping over me. I was sorry for the
wretched chap, of course, but there was no denying that the thing had
its bright side. No management on earth would go on paying thirty-five
dollars a week for this sort of performance. This was going to be
Gussie's first and only. He would have to leave the profession. The old
boy would say, 'Unhand my daughter'. And, with decent luck, I saw
myself leading Gussie on to the next England-bound liner and handing
him over intact to Aunt Agatha.

He got through the song somehow and limped off amidst roars of silence
from the audience. There was a brief respite, then out he came again.

He sang this time as if nobody loved him. As a song, it was not a very
pathetic song, being all about coons spooning in June under the moon,
and so on and so forth, but Gussie handled it in such a sad, crushed
way that there was genuine anguish in every line. By the time he
reached the refrain I was nearly in tears. It seemed such a rotten sort
of world with all that kind of thing going on in it.

He started the refrain, and then the most frightful thing happened. The
girl next to me got up in her seat, chucked her head back, and began to
sing too. I say 'too', but it wasn't really too, because her first note
stopped Gussie dead, as if he had been pole-axed.

I never felt so bally conspicuous in my life. I huddled down in my seat
and wished I could turn my collar up. Everybody seemed to be looking at
me.

In the midst of my agony I caught sight of Gussie. A complete change
had taken place in the old lad. He was looking most frightfully bucked.
I must say the girl was singing most awfully well, and it seemed to act
on Gussie like a tonic. When she came to the end of the refrain, he
took it up, and they sang it together, and the end of it was that he
went off the popular hero. The audience yelled for more, and were only
quieted when they turned down the lights and put on a film.

When I had recovered I tottered round to see Gussie. I found him
sitting on a box behind the stage, looking like one who had seen
visions.

'Isn't she a wonder, Bertie?' he said, devoutly. 'I hadn't a notion she
was going to be there. She's playing at the Auditorium this week, and
she can only just have had time to get back to her _matinee_. She
risked being late, just to come and see me through. She's my good
angel, Bertie. She saved me. If she hadn't helped me out I don't know
what would have happened. I was so nervous I didn't know what I was
doing. Now that I've got through the first show I shall be all right.'

I was glad I had sent that cable to his mother. I was going to need
her. The thing had got beyond me.

* * * * *

During the next week I saw a lot of old Gussie, and was introduced to
the girl. I also met her father, a formidable old boy with quick
eyebrows and a sort of determined expression. On the following
Wednesday Aunt Julia arrived. Mrs Mannering-Phipps, my aunt Julia, is,
I think, the most dignified person I know. She lacks Aunt Agatha's
punch, but in a quiet way she has always contrived to make me feel,
from boyhood up, that I was a poor worm. Not that she harries me like
Aunt Agatha. The difference between the two is that Aunt Agatha conveys
the impression that she considers me personally responsible for all the
sin and sorrow in the world, while Aunt Julia's manner seems to suggest
that I am more to be pitied than censured.

If it wasn't that the thing was a matter of historical fact, I should
be inclined to believe that Aunt Julia had never been on the vaudeville
stage. She is like a stage duchess.

She always seems to me to be in a perpetual state of being about to
desire the butler to instruct the head footman to serve lunch in the
blue-room overlooking the west terrace. She exudes dignity. Yet,
twenty-five years ago, so I've been told by old boys who were lads
about town in those days, she was knocking them cold at the Tivoli in a
double act called 'Fun in a Tea-Shop', in which she wore tights and
sang a song with a chorus that began, 'Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay'.

There are some things a chappie's mind absolutely refuses to picture,
and Aunt Julia singing 'Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay' is one of them.

She got straight to the point within five minutes of our meeting.

'What is this about Gussie? Why did you cable for me, Bertie?'

'It's rather a long story,' I said, 'and complicated. If you don't
mind, I'll let you have it in a series of motion pictures. Suppose we
look in at the Auditorium for a few minutes.'

The girl, Ray, had been re-engaged for a second week at the Auditorium,
owing to the big success of her first week. Her act consisted of three
songs. She did herself well in the matter of costume and scenery. She
had a ripping voice. She looked most awfully pretty; and altogether the
act was, broadly speaking, a pippin.

Aunt Julia didn't speak till we were in our seats. Then she gave a sort
of sigh.

'It's twenty-five years since I was in a music-hall!'

She didn't say any more, but sat there with her eyes glued on the
stage.

After about half an hour the johnnies who work the card-index system at
the side of the stage put up the name of Ray Denison, and there was a
good deal of applause.

'Watch this act, Aunt Julia,' I said.

She didn't seem to hear me.

'Twenty-five years! What did you say, Bertie?'

'Watch this act and tell me what you think of it.'

'Who is it? Ray. Oh!'

'Exhibit A,' I said. 'The girl Gussie's engaged to.'

The girl did her act, and the house rose at her. They didn't want to
let her go. She had to come back again and again. When she had finally
disappeared I turned to Aunt Julia.

'Well?' I said.

'I like her work. She's an artist.'

'We will now, if you don't mind, step a goodish way uptown.'

And we took the subway to where Gussie, the human film, was earning his
thirty-five per. As luck would have it, we hadn't been in the place ten
minutes when out he came.

'Exhibit B,' I said. 'Gussie.'

I don't quite know what I had expected her to do, but I certainly
didn't expect her to sit there without a word. She did not move a
muscle, but just stared at Gussie as he drooled on about the moon. I
was sorry for the woman, for it must have been a shock to her to see
her only son in a mauve frockcoat and a brown top-hat, but I thought it
best to let her get a strangle-hold on the intricacies of the situation
as quickly as possible. If I had tried to explain the affair without
the aid of illustrations I should have talked all day and left her
muddled up as to who was going to marry whom, and why.

I was astonished at the improvement in dear old Gussie. He had got back
his voice and was putting the stuff over well. It reminded me of the
night at Oxford when, then but a lad of eighteen, he sang 'Let's All Go
Down the Strand' after a bump supper, standing the while up to his
knees in the college fountain. He was putting just the same zip into
the thing now.

When he had gone off Aunt Julia sat perfectly still for a long time,
and then she turned to me. Her eyes shone queerly.

'What does this mean, Bertie?'

She spoke quite quietly, but her voice shook a bit.

'Gussie went into the business,' I said, 'because the girl's father
wouldn't let him marry her unless he did. If you feel up to it perhaps
you wouldn't mind tottering round to One Hundred and Thirty-third
Street and having a chat with him. He's an old boy with eyebrows, and
he's Exhibit C on my list. When I've put you in touch with him I rather
fancy my share of the business is concluded, and it's up to you.'

The Danbys lived in one of those big apartments uptown which look as if
they cost the earth and really cost about half as much as a hall-room
down in the forties. We were shown into the sitting-room, and presently
old Danby came in.

'Good afternoon, Mr Danby,' I began.

I had got as far as that when there was a kind of gasping cry at my
elbow.

'Joe!' cried Aunt Julia, and staggered against the sofa.

For a moment old Danby stared at her, and then his mouth fell open and
his eyebrows shot up like rockets.

'Julie!'

And then they had got hold of each other's hands and were shaking them
till I wondered their arms didn't come unscrewed.

I'm not equal to this sort of thing at such short notice. The
change in Aunt Julia made me feel quite dizzy. She had shed her
_grande-dame_ manner completely, and was blushing and smiling. I
don't like to say such things of any aunt of mine, or I would go
further and put it on record that she was giggling. And old Danby, who
usually looked like a cross between a Roman emperor and Napoleon
Bonaparte in a bad temper, was behaving like a small boy.

'Joe!'

'Julie!'

'Dear old Joe! Fancy meeting you again!'

'Wherever have you come from, Julie?'

Well, I didn't know what it was all about, but I felt a bit out of it.
I butted in:

'Aunt Julia wants to have a talk with you, Mr Danby.'

'I knew you in a second, Joe!'

'It's twenty-five years since I saw you, kid, and you don't look a day
older.'

'Oh, Joe! I'm an old woman!'

'What are you doing over here? I suppose'--old Danby's cheerfulness
waned a trifle--'I suppose your husband is with you?'

'My husband died a long, long while ago, Joe.'

Old Danby shook his head.

'You never ought to have married out of the profession, Julie. I'm
not saying a word against the late--I can't remember his name; never
could--but you shouldn't have done it, an artist like you. Shall I ever
forget the way you used to knock them with "Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay"?'

'Ah! how wonderful you were in that act, Joe.' Aunt Julia sighed. 'Do
you remember the back-fall you used to do down the steps? I always have
said that you did the best back-fall in the profession.'

'I couldn't do it now!'

'Do you remember how we put it across at the Canterbury, Joe? Think of
it! The Canterbury's a moving-picture house now, and the old Mogul runs
French revues.'

'I'm glad I'm not there to see them.'

'Joe, tell me, why did you leave England?'

'Well, I--I wanted a change. No I'll tell you the truth, kid. I wanted
you, Julie. You went off and married that--whatever that stage-door
johnny's name was--and it broke me all up.'

Aunt Julia was staring at him. She is what they call a well-preserved
woman. It's easy to see that, twenty-five years ago, she must have been
something quite extraordinary to look at. Even now she's almost
beautiful. She has very large brown eyes, a mass of soft grey hair, and
the complexion of a girl of seventeen.

'Joe, you aren't going to tell me you were fond of me yourself!'

'Of course I was fond of you. Why did I let you have all the fat in
"Fun in a Tea-Shop"? Why did I hang about upstage while you sang
"Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay"? Do you remember my giving you a bag of buns
when we were on the road at Bristol?'

'Yes, but--'

'Do you remember my giving you the ham sandwiches at Portsmouth?'

'Joe!'

'Do you remember my giving you a seed-cake at Birmingham? What did you
think all that meant, if not that I loved you? Why, I was working up by
degrees to telling you straight out when you suddenly went off and
married that cane-sucking dude. That's why I wouldn't let my daughter
marry this young chap, Wilson, unless he went into the profession.
She's an artist--'

'She certainly is, Joe.'

'You've seen her? Where?'

'At the Auditorium just now. But, Joe, you mustn't stand in the way of
her marrying the man she's in love with. He's an artist, too.'

'In the small time.'

'You were in the small time once, Joe. You mustn't look down on him
because he's a beginner. I know you feel that your daughter is marrying
beneath her, but--'

'How on earth do you know anything about young Wilson?

'He's my son.'

'Your son?'

'Yes, Joe. And I've just been watching him work. Oh, Joe, you can't
think how proud I was of him! He's got it in him. It's fate. He's my
son and he's in the profession! Joe, you don't know what I've been
through for his sake. They made a lady of me. I never worked so hard in
my life as I did to become a real lady. They kept telling me I had got
to put it across, no matter what it cost, so that he wouldn't be
ashamed of me. The study was something terrible. I had to watch myself
every minute for years, and I never knew when I might fluff my lines or
fall down on some bit of business. But I did it, because I didn't want
him to be ashamed of me, though all the time I was just aching to be
back where I belonged.'

Old Danby made a jump at her, and took her by the shoulders.

'Come back where you belong, Julie!' he cried. 'Your husband's dead,
your son's a pro. Come back! It's twenty-five years ago, but I haven't
changed. I want you still. I've always wanted you. You've got to come
back, kid, where you belong.'

Aunt Julia gave a sort of gulp and looked at him.

'Joe!' she said in a kind of whisper.

'You're here, kid,' said Old Danby, huskily. 'You've come back....
Twenty-five years!... You've come back and you're going to stay!'

She pitched forward into his arms, and he caught her.

'Oh, Joe! Joe! Joe!' she said. 'Hold me. Don't let me go. Take care of
me.'

And I edged for the door and slipped from the room. I felt weak. The
old bean will stand a certain amount, but this was too much. I groped
my way out into the street and wailed for a taxi.

Gussie called on me at the hotel that night. He curveted into the room
as if he had bought it and the rest of the city.

'Bertie,' he said, 'I feel as if I were dreaming.'

'I wish I could feel like that, old top,' I said, and I took another
glance at a cable that had arrived half an hour ago from Aunt Agatha. I
had been looking at it at intervals ever since.

'Ray and I got back to her flat this evening. Who do you think was
there? The mater! She was sitting hand in hand with old Danby.'

'Yes?'

'He was sitting hand in hand with her.'

'Really?'

'They are going to be married.'

'Exactly.'

'Ray and I are going to be married.'

'I suppose so.'

'Bertie, old man, I feel immense. I look round me, and everything seems
to be absolutely corking. The change in the mater is marvellous. She is
twenty-five years younger. She and old Danby are talking of reviving
"Fun in a Tea-Shop", and going out on the road with it.'

I got up.

'Gussie, old top,' I said, 'leave me for a while. I would be alone. I
think I've got brain fever or something.'

'Sorry, old man; perhaps New York doesn't agree with you. When do you
expect to go back to England?'

I looked again at Aunt Agatha's cable.

'With luck,' I said, 'in about ten years.'

When he was gone I took up the cable and read it again.

'What is happening?' it read. 'Shall I come over?'

I sucked a pencil for a while, and then I wrote the reply.

It was not an easy cable to word, but I managed it.

'No,' I wrote, 'stay where you are. Profession overcrowded.'

WILTON'S HOLIDAY

When Jack Wilton first came to Marois Bay, none of us dreamed that he
was a man with a hidden sorrow in his life. There was something about
the man which made the idea absurd, or would have made it absurd if he
himself had not been the authority for the story. He looked so
thoroughly pleased with life and with himself. He was one of those men
whom you instinctively label in your mind as 'strong'. He was so
healthy, so fit, and had such a confident, yet sympathetic, look about
him that you felt directly you saw him that here was the one person you
would have selected as the recipient of that hard-luck story of yours.
You felt that his kindly strength would have been something to lean on.

As a matter of fact, it was by trying to lean on it that Spencer Clay
got hold of the facts of the case; and when young Clay got hold of
anything, Marois Bay at large had it hot and fresh a few hours later;
for Spencer was one of those slack-jawed youths who are
constitutionally incapable of preserving a secret.

Within two hours, then, of Clay's chat with Wilton, everyone in the
place knew that, jolly and hearty as the new-comer might seem, there
was that gnawing at his heart which made his outward cheeriness simply
heroic.

Clay, it seems, who is the worst specimen of self-pitier, had gone to
Wilton, in whom, as a new-comer, he naturally saw a fine fresh
repository for his tales of woe, and had opened with a long yarn of
some misfortune or other. I forget which it was; it might have been any
one of a dozen or so which he had constantly in stock, and it is
immaterial which it was. The point is that, having heard him out very
politely and patiently, Wilton came back at him with a story which
silenced even Clay. Spencer was equal to most things, but even he could
not go on whining about how he had foozled his putting and been snubbed
at the bridge-table, or whatever it was that he was pitying himself
about just then, when a man was telling him the story of a wrecked
life.

'He told me not to let it go any further,' said Clay to everyone he
met, 'but of course it doesn't matter telling you. It is a thing he
doesn't like to have known. He told me because he said there was
something about me that seemed to extract confidences--a kind of
strength, he said. You wouldn't think it to look at him, but his life
is an absolute blank. Absolutely ruined, don't you know. He told me the
whole thing so simply and frankly that it broke me all up. It seems
that he was engaged to be married a few years ago, and on the wedding
morning--absolutely on the wedding morning--the girl was taken suddenly
ill, and--'

'And died?'

'And died. Died in his arms. Absolutely in his arms, old top.'

'What a terrible thing!'

'Absolutely. He's never got over it. You won't let it go any further,
will you old man?'

And off sped Spencer, to tell the tale to someone else.

* * * * *

Everyone was terribly sorry for Wilton. He was such a good fellow, such
a sportsman, and, above all, so young, that one hated the thought that,
laugh as he might, beneath his laughter there lay the pain of that
awful memory. He seemed so happy, too. It was only in moments of
confidence, in those heart-to-heart talks when men reveal their deeper
feelings, that he ever gave a hint that all was not well with him. As,
for example, when Ellerton, who is always in love with someone, backed
him into a corner one evening and began to tell him the story of his
latest affair, he had hardly begun when such a look of pain came over
Wilton's face that he ceased instantly. He said afterwards that the
sudden realization of the horrible break he was making hit him like a
bullet, and the manner in which he turned the conversation practically
without pausing from love to a discussion of the best method of getting
out of the bunker at the seventh hole was, in the circumstances, a
triumph of tact.

Marois Bay is a quiet place even in the summer, and the Wilton tragedy
was naturally the subject of much talk. It is a sobering thing to get a
glimpse of the underlying sadness of life like that, and there was a
disposition at first on the part of the community to behave in his
presence in a manner reminiscent of pall-bearers at a funeral. But
things soon adjusted themselves. He was outwardly so cheerful that it
seemed ridiculous for the rest of us to step softly and speak with
hushed voices. After all, when you came to examine it, the thing was
his affair, and it was for him to dictate the lines on which it should
be treated. If he elected to hide his pain under a bright smile and a
laugh like that of a hyena with a more than usually keen sense of
humour, our line was obviously to follow his lead.

We did so; and by degrees the fact that his life was permanently
blighted became almost a legend. At the back of our minds we were aware
of it, but it did not obtrude itself into the affairs of every day. It
was only when someone, forgetting, as Ellerton had done, tried to
enlist his sympathy for some misfortune of his own that the look of
pain in his eyes and the sudden tightening of his lips reminded us that
he still remembered.

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