P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

The pleasantest functions must come to an end sooner or later; and in due season George felt his heels grate on the sand. His preserver loosed her hold. They stood up and faced each other. George began to express his gratitude as best he could-it was not easy to find neat, convincing sentences on the spur of the moment-but she cut him short.

“Of course, it was nothing. Nothing at all,” she said, brushing the sea-water from her eyes. “It was just lucky I happened to be there.”

“It was splendid,” said the infatuated dramatist. “It was magnificent. It-”

He saw that she was smiling.

“You’re very wet,” she said.

George glanced down at his soaked clothes. It had been a nice suit once.

“Hadn’t you better hurry back and change into something dry?”

Looking round about him, George perceived that sundry of the inquisitive were swooping down, with speculation in their eyes. It was time to depart.

“Have you far to go?”

“Not far. I’m staying at the Beach View Hotel.”

“Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again.”

“We shall,” said George confidently.

“How did you happen to fall in?”

“I was-er-I was looking at something in the water.”

“I thought you were,” said the girl, quietly.

George blushed.

“I know,” he said, “it was abominably rude of me to stare like that; but-”

“You should learn to swim,” interrupted the girl. “I can’t understand why every boy in the country isn’t made to learn to swim before he’s ten years old. And it isn’t a bit difficult, really. I could teach you in a week.”

The struggle between George and George’s conscience was brief. The conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had no sort of chance from the start.

“I wish you would,” said George. And with those words he realised that he had definitely committed himself to his hypocritical role. Till that moment explanation would have been difficult, but possible. Now it was impossible.

“I will,” said the girl. “I’ll start to-morrow if you like.” She waded into the water.

“We’ll talk it over at the hotel,” she said, hastily. “Here comes a crowd of horrid people. I’m going to swim out again.”

She hurried into deeper water, while George, turning, made his way through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The other nine asked him if he had fallen in.

Her name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Marvis Bay in company with an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel. Later, after dinner, meeting both ladies on the esplanade, he gleaned further information-to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Marvis Bay but preferred Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go indoors.

The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon George’s conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles. The cue-with-holding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal comedian-up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not so bad as they seemed.

“It’s sure to be all right on the night,” she said.

How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought he had never heard such a clear-headed, well-expressed remark.

“I suppose it will,” he said, “but they were very bad when I left. Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to fight it out among themselves.”