A Benefit Performance

"A Benefit Performance" is a short story by W. W. Jacobs that revolves around the comedic misadventures tied to a theatrical production. The narrative follows a group of characters who are involved in a charity performance, highlighting their eccentric personalities and the chaos that ensues. Through witty dialogue and humorous situations, Jacobs explores themes of ambition, social status, and the unpredictability of live events, ultimately delivering a satire on the world of theater and the human condition. The story encapsulates Jacobs' signature style of blending humor with keen observations of everyday life.

• Fiction

								
In the small front parlour of No. 3, Mermaid Passage, Sunset Bay,
Jackson Pepper, ex-pilot, sat in a state of indignant collapse,
tenderly feeling a cheek on which the print of hasty fingers still
lingered.

The room, which was in excellent order, showed no signs of the tornado
which had passed through it, and Jackson Pepper, looking vaguely round,
was dimly reminded of those tropical hurricanes he had read about which
would strike only the objects in the path, and leave all others
undisturbed.

In this instance he had been the object, and the tornado, after
obliterating him, had passed up the small staircase which led from the
room, leaving him listening anxiously to its distant mutterings.

To his great discomfort the storm showed signs of coming up again, and
he had barely time to effect an appearance of easy unconcern, which
accorded but ill with the flush afore-mentioned, when a big, red-faced
woman came heavily downstairs and burst into the room.

“You have made me ill again,” she said severely, “and now I hope you
are satisfied with your work. You’ll kill me before you have done with
me!”

The ex-pilot shifted on his chair.

“You’re not fit to have a wife,” continued Mrs. Pepper, “aggravating
them and upsetting them! Any other woman would have left you long ago!”

“We’ve only been married three months,” Pepper reminded her.

“Don’t talk to me!” said his wife; “it seems more like a lifetime!”

“It seems a long time to me,” said the ex-pilot, plucking up a little
courage.

“That’s right!” said his wife, striding over to where he sat. “Say
you’re tired of me; say you wish you hadn’t married me! You coward! Ah!
if my poor first husband was only alive and sitting in that chair now
instead of you, how happy I would be!”

“If he likes to come and take it he’s welcome!” said Pepper; “it’s my
chair, and it was my father’s before me, but there’s no man living I
would sooner give it to than your first. Ah! he knew what he was about
when the Dolphin went down, he did. I don’t blame him, though.”

“What do you mean?” demanded his wife.

“It’s my belief that he didn’t go down with her,” said Pepper, crossing
over to the staircase and standing with his hand on the door.

“Didn’t go down with her?” repeated his wife scornfully. “What became
of him, then? Where’s he been this thirty years?”

“In hiding!” said Pepper spitefully, and passed hastily upstairs.

The room above was charged with memories of the late lamented. His
portrait in oils hung above the mantel-piece, smaller
portraits—specimens of the photographer’s want of art—were scattered
about the room, while various personal effects, including a mammoth
pair of sea-boots, stood in a corner. On all these articles the eye of
Jackson Pepper dwelt with an air of chastened regret.

“It ’ud be a rum go if he did turn up after all,” he said to himself
softly, as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ve heard of such things in
books. I dessay she’d be disappointed if she did see him now. Thirty
years makes a bit of difference in a man.”

“Jackson!” cried his wife from below, “I’m going out. If you want any
dinner you can get it; if not, you can go without it!”

The front door slammed violently, and Jackson, advancing cautiously to
the window, saw the form of his wife sailing majestically up the
passage. Then he sat down again and resumed his meditations.

“If it wasn’t for leaving all my property I’d go,” he said gloomily.
“There’s not a bit of comfort in the place! Nag, nag, nag, from morn
till night! Ah, Cap’n Budd, you let me in for a nice thing when you
went down with that boat of yours. Come back and fill them boots again;
they’re too big for me.”

He rose suddenly and stood gaping in the centre of the room, as a mad,
hazy idea began to form in his brain. His eyes blinked and his face
grew white with excitement. He pushed open the little lattice window,
and sat looking abstractedly up the passage on to the bay beyond. Then
he put on his hat, and, deep in thought, went out.

He was still thinking deeply as he boarded the train for London next
morning, and watched Sunset Bay from the window until it disappeared
round the curve. So many and various were the changes that flitted over
his face that an old lady, whose seat he had taken, gave up her
intention of apprising him of the fact, and indulged instead in a
bitter conversation with her daughter, of which the erring Pepper was
the unconscious object.

In the same preoccupied fashion he got on a Bayswater omnibus, and
waited patiently for it to reach Poplar. Strange changes in the
landscape, not to be accounted for by the mere lapse of time, led to
explanations, and the conductor—a humane man, who said he had got an
idiot boy at home—personally laid down the lines of his tour. Two hours
later he stood in front of a small house painted in many colours, and,
ringing the bell, inquired for Cap’n Crippen.

In response to his inquiry, a big man, with light blue eyes and a long
grey beard, appeared, and, recognising his visitor with a grunt of
surprise, drew him heartily into the passage and thrust him into the
parlour. He then shook hands with him, and, clapping him on the back,
bawled lustily for the small boy who had opened the door.

“Pot o’ stout, bottle o’ gin, and two long pipes,” said he, as the boy
came to the door and eyed the ex-pilot curiously.

At all these honest preparations for his welcome the heart of Jackson
grew faint within him.

“Well, I call it good of you to come all this way to see me,” said the
captain, after the boy had disappeared; “but you always was
warm-hearted, Pepper. And how’s the missis?”

“Shocking!” said Pepper, with a groan.

“Ill?” inquired the captain.

“Ill-tempered,” said Pepper. “In fact, cap’n, I don’t mind telling you,
she’s killing me—slowly killing me!”

“Pooh!” said Crippen. “Nonsense! You don’t know how to manage her!”

“I thought perhaps you could advise me,” said the artful Pepper. “I
said to myself yesterday, ‘Pepper, go and see Cap’n Crippen. What he
don’t know about wimmen and their management ain’t worth knowing! If
there’s anybody can get you out of a hole, it’s him. He’s got the
power, and, what’s more, he’s got the will!’”

“What causes the temper?” inquired the captain, with his most judicial
air, as he took the liquor from his messenger and carefully filled a
couple of glasses.

“It’s natural!” said his friend ruefully. “She calls it having a high
spirit herself. And she’s so generous. She’s got a married niece living
in the place, and when that gal comes round and admires the things—my
things—she gives ’em to her! She gave her a sofa the other day, and,
what’s more, she made me help the gal to carry it home!”

“Have you tried being sarcastic?” inquired the captain thoughtfully.

“I have,” said Pepper, with a shiver. “The other day I said, very
nasty, ‘Is there anything else you’d like, my dear?’ but she didn’t
understand it.”

“No?” said the captain.

“No,” said Pepper. “She said I was very kind, and she’d like the clock;

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes