The Adventures of Sally
Page 7
Bedtime at Roville is an hour that seems to vary according to one'sproximity to the sea. The gilded palaces along the front keep deplorablehours, polluting the night air till dawn with indefatigable jazz: but atthe pensions of the economical like the Normandie, early to bed is therule. True, Jules, the stout young native who combined the offices ofnight-clerk and lift attendant at that establishment, was on duty in thehall throughout the night, but few of the Normandie's patrons made useof his services.
Sally, entering shortly before twelve o'clock on the night of the dayon which the dark man, the red-haired young man, and their friendScrymgeour had come into her life, found the little hall dim and silent.Through the iron cage of the lift a single faint bulb glowed: another,over the desk in the far corner, illuminated the upper half of Jules,slumbering in a chair. Jules seemed to Sally to be on duty in somecapacity or other all the time. His work, like women's, was never done.He was now restoring his tissues with a few winks of much-needed beautysleep. Sally, who had been to the Casino to hear the band and afterwardshad strolled on the moonlit promenade, had a guilty sense of intrusion.
As she stood there, reluctant to break in on Jules' rest--for hersympathetic heart, always at the disposal of the oppressed, had longached for this overworked peon--she was relieved to hear footsteps inthe street outside, followed by the opening of the front door. If Juleswould have had to wake up anyway, she felt her sense of responsibilitylessened. The door, having opened, closed again with a bang. Julesstirred, gurgled, blinked, and sat up, and Sally, turning, perceivedthat the new arrival was the red-haired young man.
"Oh, good evening," said Sally welcomingly.
The young man stopped, and shuffled uncomfortably. The morning'shappenings were obviously still green in his memory. He had either notceased blushing since their last meeting or he was celebrating theirreunion by beginning to blush again: for his face was a familiarscarlet.
"Er--good evening," he said, disentangling his feet, which, in theembarrassment of the moment, had somehow got coiled up together.
"Or bon soir, I suppose you would say," murmured Sally.
The young man acknowledged receipt of this thrust by dropping his hatand tripping over it as he stooped to pick it up.
Jules, meanwhile, who had been navigating in a sort of somnambulistictrance in the neighbourhood of the lift, now threw back the cage with arattle.
"It's a shame to have woken you up," said Sally, commiseratingly,stepping in.
Jules did not reply, for the excellent reason that he had not beenwoken up. Constant practice enabled him to do this sort of work withoutbreaking his slumber. His brain, if you could call it that, was workingautomatically. He had shut up the gate with a clang and was tuggingsluggishly at the correct rope, so that the lift was going slowly upinstead of retiring down into the basement, but he was not awake.
Sally and the red-haired young man sat side by side on the small seat,watching their conductor's efforts. After the first spurt, conversationhad languished. Sally had nothing of immediate interest to say, and hercompanion seemed to be one of these strong, silent men you read about.Only a slight snore from Jules broke the silence.
At the third floor Sally leaned forward and prodded Jules in the lowerribs. All through her stay at Roville, she had found in dealing with thenative population that actions spoke louder than words. If she wantedanything in a restaurant or at a shop, she pointed; and, when she wishedthe lift to stop, she prodded the man in charge. It was a system worth adozen French conversation books.
Jules brought the machine to a halt: and it was at this point thathe should have done the one thing connected with his professionalactivities which he did really well--the opening, to wit, of the ironcage. There are ways of doing this. Jules' was the right way. He wasaccustomed to do it with a flourish, and generally remarked "V'la!" ina modest but self-congratulatory voice as though he would have likedto see another man who could have put through a job like that. Jules'opinion was that he might not be much to look at, but that he could opena lift door.
To-night, however, it seemed as if even this not very exacting feat wasbeyond his powers. Instead of inserting his key in the lock, he stoodstaring in an attitude of frozen horror. He was a man who took mostthings in life pretty seriously, and whatever was the little difficultyjust now seemed to have broken him all up.
"There appears," said Sally, turning to her companion, "to be a hitch.Would you mind asking what's the matter? I don't know any French myselfexcept 'oo la la!'"
The young man, thus appealed to, nerved himself to the task. He eyed themelancholy Jules doubtfully, and coughed in a strangled sort of way.
"Oh, esker... esker vous..."
"Don't weaken," said Sally. "I think you've got him going."
"Esker vous... Pourquoi vous ne... I mean ne vous... that is to say,quel est le raison..."
He broke off here, because at this point Jules began to explain. Heexplained very rapidly and at considerable length. The fact that neitherof his hearers understood a word of what he was saying appeared notto have impressed itself upon him. Or, if he gave a thought to it,he dismissed the objection as trifling. He wanted to explain, and heexplained. Words rushed from him like water from a geyser. Sounds whichyou felt you would have been able to put a meaning to if he had detachedthem from the main body and repeated them slowly, went swirling down thestream and were lost for ever.
"Stop him!" said Sally firmly.
The red-haired young man looked as a native of Johnstown might havelooked on being requested to stop that city's celebrated flood.
"Stop him?"
"Yes. Blow a whistle or something."
Out of the depths of the young man's memory there swam to the surfacea single word--a word which he must have heard somewhere or readsomewhere: a legacy, perhaps, from long-vanished school-days.
"Zut!" he barked, and instantaneously Jules turned himself off at themain. There was a moment of dazed silence, such as might occur in aboiler-factory if the works suddenly shut down.
"Quick! Now you've got him!" cried Sally. "Ask him what he's talkingabout--if he knows, which I doubt--and tell him to speak slowly. Then weshall get somewhere."
The young man nodded intelligently. The advice was good.
"Lentement," he said. "Parlez lentement. Pas si--you know what Imean--pas si dashed vite!"
"Ah-a-ah!" cried Jules, catching the idea on the fly. "Lentement. Ah,oui, lentement."
There followed a lengthy conversation which, while conveying nothing toSally, seemed intelligible to the red-haired linguist.
"The silly ass," he was able to announce some few minutes later, "hasmade a bloomer. Apparently he was half asleep when we came in, and heshoved us into the lift and slammed the door, forgetting that he hadleft the keys on the desk."
"I see," said Sally. "So we're shut in?"
"I'm afraid so. I wish to goodness," said the young man, "I knew Frenchwell. I'd curse him with some vim and not a little animation, the chump!I wonder what 'blighter' is in French," he said, meditating.
"It's the merest suggestion," said Sally, "but oughtn't we to dosomething?"
"What could we do?"
"Well, for one thing, we might all utter a loud yell. It would scaremost of the people in the hotel to death, but there might be a survivoror two who would come and investigate and let us out."
"What a ripping idea!" said the young man, impressed.
"I'm glad you like it. Now tell him the main out-line, or he'll thinkwe've gone mad."
The young man searched for words, and eventually found some whichexpressed his meaning lamely but well enough to cause Jules to nod in adepressed sort of way.
"Fine!" said Sally. "Now, all together at the word 'three.'One--two--Oh, poor darling!" she broke off. "Look at him!"
In the far corner of the lift, the emotional Jules was sobbing silentlyinto the bunch of cotton-waste which served him in the office of apocket-handkerchief. His broken-hearted gulps echoed hollowly down theshaft.