A Benefit Performance Page #4

"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

								


Mrs. Pepper, bursting into angry tears, flung her arms round his neck
again, and sobbed on his shoulder. The pilot, obeying the frenzied
injunctions of his friend’s eye, drew down the blind.

“There’s quite a crowd outside,” he remarked.

“I don’t mind,” said his wife amiably. “They’ll soon know who he is.”

She stood holding the captain’s hand and stroking it, and whenever his
feelings became too much for her put her head down on his waistcoat. At
such times the captain glared fiercely at the ex-pilot, who, being of a
weak nature, was unable, despite his anxiety, to give his risible
faculties that control which the solemnity of the occasion demanded.

The afternoon wore slowly away. Miss Winthrop, who disliked scandal,
had allowed something of the affair to leak out, and several visitors,
including a local reporter, called, but were put off till the morrow,
on the not unnatural plea that the long-separated couple desired a
little privacy. The three sat silent, the ex-pilot, with wrinkled
brows, trying hard to decipher the lip-language in which the captain
addressed him whenever he had an opportunity, but could only dimly
guess its purport, when the captain pressed his huge fist into the
service as well.

Mrs. Pepper rose at length, and went into the back room to prepare tea.
As she left the door open, however, and took the captain’s hat with
her, he built no hopes on her absence, but turned furiously to the
ex-pilot.

“What’s to be done?” he inquired in a fierce whisper. “This can’t go
on.”

“It’ll have to,” whispered the other.

“Now, look here,” said Crippen menacingly, “I’m going into the kitchen
to make a clean breast of it. I’m sorry for you, but I’ve done the best
I can. Come and help me to explain.”

He turned to the kitchen, but the other, with the strength born of
despair, seized him by the sleeve and held him back.

“She’ll kill me,” he whispered breathlessly.

“I can’t help it,” said Crippen, shaking him off. “Serve you right.”

“And she’ll tell the folks outside, and they’ll kill you,” continued
Pepper.

The captain sat down again, and confronted him with a face as pale as
his own.

“The last train leaves at eight,” whispered the pilot hurriedly. “It’s
desperate, but it’s the only thing you can do. Take her for a stroll up
by the fields near the railway station. You can see the train coming in
for a mile off nearly. Time yourself carefully, and make a bolt for it.
She can’t run.”

The entrance of their victim with the tea-tray stopped the
conversation; but the captain nodded acceptance behind her back, and
then, with a forced gaiety, sat down to tea.

For the first time since his successful appearance he became
loquacious, and spoke so freely of incidents in the life of the man he
was impersonating that the ex-pilot sat in a perfect fever lest he
should blunder. The meal finished, he proposed a stroll, and, as the
unsuspecting Mrs. Pepper tied on her bonnet, slapped his leg, and
winked confidently at his fellow-conspirator.

“I’m not much of a walker,” said the innocent Mrs. Pepper, “so you must
go slowly.”

The captain nodded, and at Pepper’s suggestion left by the back way, to
avoid the gaze of the curious.

For some time after their departure Pepper sat smoking, with his
anxious face turned to the clock, until at length, unable to endure the
strain any longer, and not without a sportsmanlike idea of being in at
the death, he made his way to the station, and placed himself behind a
convenient coal-truck.

He waited impatiently, with his eyes fixed on the road up which he
expected the captain to come. He looked at his watch. Five minutes to
eight, and still no captain. The platform began to fill, a porter
seized the big bell and rang it lustily; in the distance a patch of
white smoke showed. Just as the watcher had given up all hope, the
figure of the captain came in sight. He was swaying from side to side,
holding his hat in his hand, but doggedly racing the train to the
station.

“He’ll never do it!” groaned the pilot. Then he held his breath, for
three or four hundred yards behind the captain Mrs. Pepper pounded in
pursuit.

The train rolled into the station; passengers stepped in and out; doors
slammed, and the guard had already placed the whistle in his mouth,
when Captain Crippen, breathing stentorously, came stumbling blindly on
to the platform, and was hustled into a third class carriage.

“Close shave that, sir,” said the station-master as he closed the door.

The captain sank back in his seat, fighting for breath, and turning his
head, gave a last triumphant look up the road.

“All right, sir,” said the station-master kindly, as he followed the
direction of the other’s eyes and caught sight of Mrs. Pepper. “We’ll
wait for your lady.”

Jackson Pepper came from behind the coal-truck and watched the train
out of sight, wondering in a dull, vague fashion what the conversation
was like. He stood so long that a tender hearted porter, who had heard
the news, made bold to come up and put a friendly hand on his shoulder.

“You’ll never see her again, Mr. Pepper,” he said sympathetically.

The ex-pilot turned and regarded him fixedly, and the last bit of
spirit he was ever known to show flashed up in his face as he spoke.

“You’re a blamed idiot!” he said rudely.
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