Man With Two Left Feet | Page 7

he was blind to the fact that important
manoeuvres were in progress. All he understood was that she was
going from him, and that he must stop her and get this thing settled.
He clutched at her. She was out of range, and getting farther away
every instant.
He sprang forward.
The advice that should be given to every young man starting life is--if
you happen to be behind the scenes at a theatre, never spring forward.
The whole architecture of the place is designed to undo those who so
spring. Hours before, the stage-carpenters have laid their traps, and in
the semi-darkness you cannot but fall into them.
The trap into which Henry fell was a raised board. It was not a very
highly-raised board. It was not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door, but 'twas enough--it served. Stubbing it squarely with his
toe, Henry shot forward, all arms and legs.
It is the instinct of Man, in such a situation, to grab at the nearest
support. Henry grabbed at the Hotel Superba, the pride of the
Esplanade. It was a thin wooden edifice, and it supported him for

perhaps a tenth of a second. Then he staggered with it into the limelight,
tripped over a Bulgarian officer who was inflating himself for a deep
note, and finally fell in a complicated heap as exactly in the centre of
the stage as if he had been a star of years' standing.
It went well; there was no question of that. Previous audiences had
always been rather cold towards this particular song, but this one got on
its feet and yelled for more. From all over the house came rapturous
demands that Henry should go back and do it again.
But Henry was giving no encores. He rose to his feet, a little stunned,
and automatically began to dust his clothes. The orchestra, unnerved by
this unrehearsed infusion of new business, had stopped playing.
Bulgarian officers and Japanese girls alike seemed unequal to the
situation. They stood about, waiting for the next thing to break loose.
From somewhere far away came faintly the voice of the stage-manager
inventing new words, new combinations of words, and new throat
noises.
And then Henry, massaging a stricken elbow, was aware of Miss
Weaver at his side. Looking up, he caught Miss Weaver's eye.
A familiar stage-direction of melodrama reads, 'Exit cautious through
gap in hedge'. It was Henry's first appearance on any stage, but he did it
like a veteran.
'My dear fellow,' said Walter Jelliffe. The hour was midnight, and he
was sitting in Henry's bedroom at the hotel. Leaving the theatre, Henry
had gone to bed almost instinctively. Bed seemed the only haven for
him. 'My dear fellow, don't apologize. You have put me under lasting
obligations. In the first place, with your unerring sense of the stage, you
saw just the spot where the piece needed livening up, and you livened it
up. That was good; but far better was it that you also sent our Miss
Weaver into violent hysterics, from which she emerged to hand in her
notice. She leaves us tomorrow.'
Henry was appalled at the extent of the disaster for which he was
responsible.

'What will you do?'
'Do! Why, it's what we have all been praying for--a miracle which
should eject Miss Weaver. It needed a genius like you to come to bring
it off. Sidney Crane's wife can play the part without rehearsal. She
understudied it all last season in London. Crane has just been speaking
to her on the phone, and she is catching the night express.'
Henry sat up in bed.
'What!'
'What's the trouble now?'
'Sidney Crane's wife?'
'What about her?'
A bleakness fell upon Henry's soul.
'She was the woman who was employing me. Now I shall be taken off
the job and have to go back to London.'
'You don't mean that it was really Crane's wife?'
Jelliffe was regarding him with a kind of awe.
'Laddie,' he said, in a hushed voice, 'you almost scare me. There seems
to be no limit to your powers as a mascot. You fill the house every
night, you get rid of the Weaver woman, and now you tell me this. I
drew Crane in the sweep, and I would have taken twopence for my
chance of winning it.'
'I shall get a telegram from my boss tomorrow recalling me.'
'Don't go. Stick with me. Join the troupe.'
Henry stared.

'What do you mean? I can't sing or act.'
Jelliffe's voice thrilled with earnestness.
'My boy, I can go down the Strand and pick up a hundred fellows who
can sing and act. I don't want them. I turn them away. But a seventh son
of a seventh son like