THE MAN UPSTAIRS
AND OTHER STORIES
by P. G. Wodehouse
CONTENTS
THE MAN UPSTAIRS
SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT
DEEP WATERS
WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE
BY ADVICE OF COUNSEL
ROUGH-HEW THEM HOW WE WILL
THE MAN WHO DISLIKED CATS
RUTH IN EXILE
ARCHIBALD'S BENEFIT
THE MAN, THE MAID, AND THE MIASMA
THE GOOD ANGEL
POTS O' MONEY
OUT OF SCHOOL
THREE FROM DUNSTERVILLE
THE TUPPENNY MILLIONAIRE
AHEAD OF SCHEDULE
SIR AGRAVAINE
THE GOAL-KEEPER AND THE PLUTOCRAT
IN ALCALA
THE MAN UPSTAIRS
There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's
attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it
had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her
waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in
when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind
from her music. Finally, with a thrill in indignation, she knew it for
what it was - an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was
intimating his views with a boot-heel.
Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck - almost
slapped - the keys once more.
'Bang!' from the room above. 'Bang! Bang!'
Annette rose. Her face was pink, her chin tilted. Her eyes sparkled
with the light of battle. She left the room and started to mount the
stairs. No spectator, however just, could have helped feeling a pang of
pity for the wretched man who stood unconscious of imminent doom,
possibly even triumphant, behind the door at which she was on the point
of tapping.
'Come in!' cried the voice, rather a pleasant voice; but what is a
pleasant voice if the soul be vile?
Annette went in. The room was a typical Chelsea studio, scantily
furnished and lacking a carpet. In the centre was an easel, behind
which were visible a pair of trousered legs. A cloud of grey smoke was
curling up over the top of the easel.
'I beg your pardon,' began Annette.
'I don't want any models at present,' said the Brute. 'Leave your card
on the table.'
'I am not a model,' said Annette, coldly. 'I merely came - '
At this the Brute emerged from his fortifications and, removing his
pipe from his mouth, jerked his chair out into the open.
'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'Won't you sit down?'
How reckless is Nature in the distribution of her gifts! Not only had
this black-hearted knocker on floors a pleasant voice, but, in
addition, a pleasing exterior. He was slightly dishevelled at the
moment, and his hair stood up in a disordered mop; but in spite of
these drawbacks, he was quite passably good-looking. Annette admitted
this. Though wrathful, she was fair.
'I thought it was another model,' he explained. 'They've been coming in
at the rate of ten an hour ever since I settled here. I didn't object
at first, but after about the eightieth child of sunny Italy had shown
up it began to get on my nerves.'
Annette waited coldly till he had finished.
'I am sorry,' she said, in a this-is-where-you-get-yours voice, 'if my
playing disturbed you.'
One would have thought nobody but an Eskimo wearing his furs and winter
under-clothing could have withstood the iciness of her manner; but the
Brute did not freeze.
'I am sorry,' repeated Annette, well below zero, 'if my playing
disturbed you. I live in the room below, and I heard you knocking.'
'No, no,' protested the young man, affably; 'I like it. Really I do.'
'Then why knock on the floor?' said Annette, turning to go. 'It is so
bad for my ceiling,' she said over shoulder. 'I thought you would not
mind my mentioning it. Good afternoon.'
'No; but one moment. Don't go.'
She stopped. He was surveying her with a friendly smile. She noticed
most reluctantly that he had a nice smile. His composure began to
enrage her more and more. Long ere this he should have been writhing at
her feet in the dust, crushed and abject.
'You see,' he said, 'I'm awfully sorry, but it's like this. I love
music, but what I mean is, you weren't playing a _tune_. It was
just the same bit over and over again.'
'I was trying to get a phrase,' said Annette, with dignity, but less
coldly. In spite of herself she was beginning to thaw. There was
something singularly attractive about this shock-headed youth.
'A phrase?'
'Of music. For my waltz. I am composing a waltz.'
A look of such unqualified admiration overspread the young man's face
that the last remnants of the ice-pack melted. For the first time since
they had met Annette found herself positively liking this blackguardly
floor-smiter.
'Can you compose music?' he said, impressed.
'I have written one or two songs.'
'It must be great to be able to do things - artistic things, I mean,
like composing.'
'Well, you do, don't you? You paint.'
The young man shook his head with a cheerful grin.
'I fancy,' he said, 'I should make a pretty good house-painter. I want
scope. Canvas seems to cramp me.'
It seemed to cause him no discomfort. He appeared rather amused than
otherwise.
'Let me look.'
She crossed over to the easel.
'I shouldn't,' he warned her. 'You really want to? Is this not mere
recklessness? Very well, then.'
To the eye of an experienced critic the picture would certainly have
seemed crude. It was a study of a dark-eyed child holding a large black
cat. Statisticians estimate that there is no moment during the day when
one or more young artists somewhere on the face of the globe are not
painting pictures of children holding cats.
'I call it "Child and Cat",' said the young man. 'Rather a neat title,
don't you think? Gives you the main idea of the thing right away.
That,' he explained, pointing obligingly with the stem of his pipe, 'is
the cat.'
Annette belonged to that large section of the public which likes or
dislikes a picture according to whether its subject happens to please
or displease them. Probably there was not one of the million or so
child-and-cat eyesores at present in existence which she would not have
liked. Besides, he had been very nice about her music.
'I think it's splendid,' she announced.
The young man's face displayed almost more surprise than joy.
'Do you really?' he said. 'Then I can die happy - that is, if you'll let
me come down and listen to those songs of yours first.'
'You would only knock on the floor,' objected Annette.
'I'll never knock on another floor as long as I live,' said the
ex-brute, reassuringly. 'I hate knocking on floors. I don't see
what people want to knock on floors _for_, anyway.'
Friendships ripen quickly in Chelsea. Within the space of an hour and a
quarter Annette had learned that the young man's name was Alan Beverley
(for which Family Heraldic affliction she pitied rather than despised
him), that he did not depend entirely on his work for a living, having
a little money of his own, and that he considered this a fortunate
thing. From the very beginning of their talk he pleased her. She found
him an absolutely new and original variety of the unsuccessful painter.
Unlike Reginald Sellers, who had a studio in the same building, and
sometimes dropped in to drink her coffee and pour out his troubles, he
did not attribute his non-success to any malice or stupidity on the
part of the public. She was so used to hearing Sellers lash the
Philistine and hold forth on unappreciated merit that she could hardly
believe the miracle when, in answer to a sympathetic bromide on the
popular lack of taste in Art, Beverley replied that, as far as he was
concerned, the public showed strong good sense. If he had been striving
with every nerve to win her esteem, he could not have done it more
surely than with that one remark. Though she invariably listened with a
sweet patience which encouraged them to continue long after the point
at which she had begun in spirit to throw things at them, Annette had
no sympathy with men who whined. She herself was a fighter. She hated
as much as anyone the sickening blows which Fate hands out to the
struggling and ambitious; but she never made them the basis of a
monologue act. Often, after a dreary trip round the offices of the
music-publishers, she would howl bitterly in secret, and even gnaw her
pillow in the watches of the night; but in public her pride kept her
unvaryingly bright and cheerful.
Today, for the first time, she revealed something of her woes. There
was that about the mop-headed young man which invited confidences. She
told him of the stony-heartedness of music-publishers, of the
difficulty of getting songs printed unless you paid for them, of their
wretched sales.
'But those songs you've been playing,' said Beverley, 'they've been
published?'
'Yes, those three. But they are the only ones.'
'And didn't they sell?'
'Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn't sell unless somebody well known
sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don't keep their
word. You can't depend on what they say.'
'Give me their names,' said Beverley, 'and I'll go round tomorrow and
shoot the whole lot. But can't you do anything?'
'Only keep on keeping on.'
'I wish,' he said, 'that any time you're feeling blue about things you
would come up and pour out the poison on me. It's no good bottling it
up. Come up and tell me about it, and you'll feel ever so much better.
Or let me come down. Any time things aren't going right just knock on
the ceiling.'
She laughed.
'Don't rub it in,' pleaded Beverley. 'It isn't fair. There's nobody so
sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come
down, won't you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out
and kill a policeman. But you wouldn't care for that. So the only thing
for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I'll come charging down
and see if there's anything I can do to help.'
'You'll be sorry you ever said this.'
'I won't,' he said stoutly.
'If you really mean it, it _would_ be a relief,' she admitted.
'Sometimes I'd give all the money I'm ever likely to make for someone
to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice
for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: "Sit down and
I will tell you the story of my life." Mustn't it have been heavenly?'
'Well,' said Beverley, rising, 'you know where I am if I'm wanted.
Right up there where the knocking came from.'
'Knocking?' said Annette. 'I remember no knocking.'
'Would you mind shaking hands?' said Beverley.
* * * * *
A particularly maddening hour with one of her pupils drove her up the
very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair.
They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly
worth supporting. Some of them were learning the piano. Others thought
they sang. All had solid ivory skulls. There was about a teaspoonful of
grey matter distributed among the entire squad, and the pupil Annette
had been teaching that afternoon had come in at the tail-end of the
division.
In the studio with Beverley she found Reginald Sellers, standing in a
critical attitude before the easel. She was not very fond of him. He
was a long, offensive, patronizing person, with a moustache that looked
like a smear of charcoal, and a habit of addressing her as 'Ah, little
one!'
Beverley looked up.
'Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you're just
in time to join in the massacre of the innocents. Sellers has been
smiting my child and cat hip and thigh. Look at his eye. There! Did you
see it flash then? He's on the warpath again.'
'My dear Beverley,' said Sellers, rather stiffly, 'I am merely
endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture's defects. I am sorry
if my criticism has to be a little harsh.'
'Go right on,' said Beverley, cordially. 'Don't mind me; it's all for
my good.'
'Well, in a word, then, it is lifeless. Neither the child nor the cat
lives.'
He stepped back a pace and made a frame of his hands.
'The cat now,' he said. 'It is - how shall I put it? It has
no - no - er - '
'That kind of cat wouldn't,' said Beverley. 'It isn't that breed.'
'I think it's a dear cat,' said Annette. She felt her temper, always
quick, getting the better of her. She knew just how incompetent
Sellers was, and it irritated her beyond endurance to see Beverley's
good-humoured acceptance of his patronage.
'At any rate,' said Beverley, with a grin, 'you both seem to recognize
that it is a cat. You're solid on that point, and that's something,
seeing I'm only a beginner.'
'I know, my dear fellow; I know,' said Sellers, graciously. 'You
mustn't let my criticism discourage you. Don't think that your work
lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very
well indeed. Quite well.'
A cold glitter might have been observed in Annette's eyes.
'Mr Sellers,' she said, smoothly, 'had to work very hard himself before
he reached his present position. You know his work, of course?'
For the first time Beverley seemed somewhat confused.
'I - er - why - ' he began.
'Oh, but of course you do,' she went on, sweetly. 'It's in all the
magazines.'
Beverley looked at the great man with admiration, and saw that he had
flushed uncomfortably. He put this down to the modesty of genius.
'In the advertisement pages,' said Annette. 'Mr Sellers drew that
picture of the Waukeesy Shoe and the Restawhile Settee and the tin of
sardines in the Little Gem Sardine advertisement. He is very good at
still life.'
There was a tense silence. Beverley could almost hear the voice of the
referee uttering the count.
'Miss Brougham,' said Sellers at last, spitting out the words, 'has
confined herself to the purely commercial side of my work. There is
another.'
'Why, of course there is. You sold a landscape for five pounds only
eight months ago, didn't you? And another three months before that.'
It was enough. Sellers bowed stiffly and stalked from the room.
Beverley picked up a duster and began slowly to sweep the floor with
it.
'What are you doing?' demanded Annette, in a choking voice.
'The fragments of the wretched man,' whispered Beverley. 'They must be
swept up and decently interred. You certainly have got the punch, Miss
Brougham.'
He dropped the duster with a startled exclamation, for Annette had
suddenly burst into a flood of tears. With her face buried in her hands
she sat in her chair and sobbed desperately.
'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.
'I'm a cat! I'm a beast! I hate myself!'
'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.
'I'm a pig! I'm a fiend!'
'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.
'We're all struggling and trying to get on and having hard luck, and
instead of doing what I can to help, I go and t-t-taunt him with not
being able to sell his pictures! I'm not fit to live! _Oh!_'
'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.
A series of gulping sobs followed, diminishing by degrees into silence.
Presently she looked up and smiled, a moist and pathetic smile.
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'for being so stupid. But he was so horrid and
patronizing to you, I couldn't help scratching. I believe I'm the worst
cat in London.'
'No, this is,' said Beverley, pointing to the canvas. 'At least,
according to the late Sellers. But, I say, tell me, isn't the deceased
a great artist, then? He came curveting in here with his chest out and
started to slate my masterpiece, so I naturally said, "What-ho! 'Tis a
genius!" Isn't he?'
'He can't sell his pictures anywhere. He lives on the little he can get
from illustrating advertisements. And I t-taunt - '
'_Please!_' said Beverley, apprehensively.
She recovered herself with a gulp.
'I can't help it,' she said, miserably. 'I rubbed it in. Oh, it was
hateful of me! But I was all on edge from teaching one of my awful
pupils, and when he started to patronize you - '
She blinked.
'Poor devil!' said Beverley. 'I never guessed. Good Lord!'
Annette rose.
'I must go and tell him I'm sorry,' she said. 'He'll snub me horribly,
but I must.'
She went out. Beverley lit a pipe and stood at the window looking
thoughtfully down into the street.
* * * * *
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people
do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of
them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek,
penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled, he
forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood
would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed
herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from
now on he would be more insufferable than ever.
Her surmise proved absolutely correct. His visits to the newcomer's
studio began again, and Beverley's picture, now nearing completion,
came in for criticism enough to have filled a volume. The good humour
with which he received it amazed Annette. She had no proprietary
interest in the painting beyond what she acquired from a growing regard
for its parent (which disturbed her a good deal when she had time to
think of it); but there were moments when only the recollection of her
remorse for her previous outbreak kept her from rending the critic.
Beverley, however, appeared to have no artistic sensitiveness
whatsoever. When Sellers savaged the cat in a manner which should have
brought the S.P.C.A. down upon him, Beverley merely beamed. His
long-sufferingness was beyond Annette's comprehension.
She began to admire him for it.
To make his position as critic still more impregnable, Sellers was now
able to speak as one having authority. After years of floundering, his
luck seemed at last to have turned. His pictures, which for months had
lain at an agent's, careened like crippled battleships, had at length
begun to find a market. Within the past two weeks three landscapes and
an allegorical painting had sold for good prices; and under the
influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When
Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased
by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty
guineas, Sellers' views on Philistines and their crass materialism and
lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some
friendliness of the man Bates.
'To me,' said Beverley, when informed of the event by Annette, 'the
matter has a deeper significance. It proves that Glasgow has at last
produced a sober man. No drinker would have dared face that allegory.
The whole business is very gratifying.'
Beverley himself was progressing slowly in the field of Art. He had
finished the 'Child and Cat', and had taken it to Epstein together with
a letter of introduction from Sellers. Sellers' habitual attitude now
was that of the kindly celebrity who has arrived and wishes to give the
youngsters a chance.
Since its departure Beverley had not done much in the way of actual
execution. Whenever Annette came to his studio he was either sitting in
a chair with his feet on the window-sill, smoking, or in the same
attitude listening to Sellers' views on art. Sellers being on the
upgrade, a man with many pounds to his credit in the bank, had more
leisure now. He had given up his advertisement work, and was planning a
great canvas - another allegorical work. This left him free to devote a
good deal of time to Beverley, and he did so. Beverley sat and smoked
through his harangues. He may have been listening, or he may not.
Annette listened once or twice, and the experience had the effect of
sending her to Beverley, quivering with indignation.
'Why do you _let_ him patronize you like that?' she demanded. 'If
anybody came and talked to me like that about my music, I'd - I'd - I
don't know what I'd do. Yes, even if he were really a great musician.'
'Don't you consider Sellers a great artist, then, even now?'
'He seems to be able to sell his pictures, so I suppose they must be
good; but nothing could give him the right to patronize you as he
does.'
'"My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in an emperor to a
black-beetle,"' quoted Beverley. 'Well, what are we going to do about
it?'
'If only you could sell a picture, too!'
'Ah! Well, I've done my part of the contract. I've delivered the goods.
There the thing is at Epstein's. The public can't blame me if it
doesn't sell. All they've got to do is to waltz in in their thousands
and fight for it. And, by the way, talking of waltzes - '
'Oh, it's finished,' said Annette, dispiritedly. 'Published too, for
that matter.'
'Published! What's the matter, then? Why this drooping sadness? Why
aren't you running around the square, singing like a bird?'
'Because,' said Annette, 'unfortunately, I had to pay the expenses of
publication. It was only five pounds, but the sales haven't caught up
with that yet. If they ever do, perhaps there'll be a new edition.'
'And will you have to pay for that?'
'No. The publishers would.'
'Who are they?'
'Grusczinsky and Buchterkirch.'
'Heavens, then what are you worrying about? The thing's a cert. A man
with a name like Grusczinsky could sell a dozen editions by himself.
Helped and inspired by Buchterkirch, he will make the waltz the talk of
the country. Infants will croon it in their cots.'
'He didn't seem to think so when I saw him last.'
'Of course not. He doesn't know his own power. Grusczinsky's shrinking
diffidence is a by-word in musical circles. He is the genuine Human
Violet. You must give him time.'
'I'll give him anything if he'll only sell an edition or two,' said
Annette.
The outstanding thing was that he did. There seemed no particular
reason why the sale of that waltz should not have been as small and as
slow as that of any other waltz by an unknown composer. But almost
without warning it expanded from a trickle into a flood. Grusczinsky,
beaming paternally whenever Annette entered the shop - which was
often - announced two new editions in a week. Beverley, his artistic
growth still under a watchful eye of Sellers, said he had never had
any doubts as to the success of the thing from the moment when a single
phrase in it had so carried him away that he had been compelled to stamp
his applause enthusiastically on the floor. Even Sellers forgot his own
triumphs long enough to allow him to offer affable congratulations. And
money came rolling in, smoothing the path of life.
Those were great days. There was a hat ...
Life, in short, was very full and splendid. There was, indeed, but one
thing which kept it from being perfect. The usual drawback to success is
that it annoys one's friends so; but in Annette's case this drawback was
absent. Sellers' demeanour towards her was that of an old-established
inmate welcoming a novice into the Hall of Fame. Her pupils - worthy
souls, though bone-headed - fawned upon her. Beverley seemed more pleased
than anyone. Yet it was Beverley who prevented her paradise from being
complete. Successful herself, she wanted all her friends to be successful;
but Beverley, to her discomfort, remained a cheery failure, and worse,
absolutely refused to snub Sellers. It was not as if Sellers' advice and
comments were disinterested. Beverley was simply the instrument on which
he played his songs of triumph. It distressed Annette to such an extent
that now, if she went upstairs and heard Sellers' voice in the studio,
she came down again without knocking.
* * * * *
One afternoon, sitting in her room, she heard the telephone-bell ring.
The telephone was on the stairs, just outside her door. She went out
and took up the receiver.
'Halloa!' said a querulous voice. 'Is Mr Beverley there?'
Annette remembered having heard him go out. She could always tell his
footstep.
'He is out,' she said. 'Is there any message?'
'Yes,' said the voice, emphatically. 'Tell him that Rupert Morrison
rang up to ask what he was to do with all this great stack of music
that's arrived. Does he want it forwarded on to him, or what?' The
voice was growing high and excited. Evidently Mr Morrison was in a
state of nervous tension when a man does not care particularly who
hears his troubles so long as he unburdens himself of them to someone.
'Music?' said Annette.
'Music!' shrilled Mr Morrison. 'Stacks and stacks and stacks of it. Is
he playing a practical joke on me, or what?' he demanded, hysterically.
Plainly he had now come to regard Annette as a legitimate confidante.
She was listening. That was the main point. He wanted someone - he did
not care whom - who would listen. 'He lends me his rooms,' wailed Mr
Morrison, 'so that I can be perfectly quiet and undisturbed while I
write my novel, and, first thing I know, this music starts to arrive.
How can I be quiet and undisturbed when the floor's littered two yards
high with great parcels of music, and more coming every day?'
Annette clung weakly to the telephone box. Her mind was in a whirl, but
she was beginning to see many things.
'Are you there?' called Mr Morrison.
'Yes. What - what firm does the music come from?'
'What's that?'
'Who are the publishers who send the music?'
'I can't remember. Some long name. Yes, I've got it. Grusczinsky and
someone.'
'I'll tell Mr Beverley,' said Annette, quietly. A great weight seemed
to have settled on her head.
'Halloa! Halloa! Are you there?' came Mr Morrison's voice.
'Yes?'
'And tell him there are some pictures, too.'
'Pictures?'
'Four great beastly pictures. The size of elephants. I tell you, there
isn't room to move. And - '
Annette hung up the receiver.
* * * * *
Mr Beverley, returned from his walk, was racing up the stairs three at
a time in his energetic way, when, as he arrived at Annette's door, it
opened.
'Have you a minute to spare?' said Annette.
'Of course. What's the trouble? Have they sold another edition of the
waltz?'
'I have not heard, Mr - Bates.'
For once she looked to see the cheerful composure of the man upstairs
become ruffled; but he received the blow without agitation.
'You know my name?' he said.
'I know a good deal more than your name. You are a Glasgow
millionaire.'
'It's true,' he admitted, 'but it's hereditary. My father was one
before me.'
'And you use your money,' said Annette, bitterly, 'creating fools'
paradises for your friends, which last, I suppose, until you grow tired
of the amusement and destroy them. Doesn't it ever strike you, Mr
Bates, that it's a little cruel? Do you think Mr Sellers will settle
down again cheerfully to hack-work when you stop buying his pictures,
and he finds out that - that - '
'I shan't stop,' said the young man. 'If a Glasgow millionaire mayn't
buy Sellers' allegorical pictures, whose allegorical pictures may he
buy? Sellers will never find out. He'll go on painting and I'll go on
buying, and all will be joy and peace.'
'Indeed! And what future have you arranged for me?'
'You?' he said, reflectively. 'I want to marry you.'
Annette stiffened from head to foot. He met her blazing eyes with a
look of quiet devotion.
'Marry me?'
'I know what you are thinking,' he said. 'Your mind is dwelling on the
prospect of living in a house decorated throughout with Sellers'
allegorical pictures. But it won't be. We'll store them in the attic.'
She began to speak, but he interrupted her.
'Listen!' he said. 'Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life.
We'll skip the first twenty-eight years and three months, merely
mentioning that for the greater part of that time I was looking for
somebody just like you. A month and nine days ago I found you. You were
crossing the Embankment. I was also on the Embankment. In a taxi. I
stopped the taxi, got out, and observed you just stepping into the
Charing Cross Underground. I sprang - '
'This does not interest me,' said Annette.
'The plot thickens,' he assured her. 'We left our hero springing, I
think. Just so. Well, you took the West End train and got off at Sloane
Square. So did I. You crossed Sloane Square, turned up King's Road, and
finally arrived here. I followed. I saw a notice up, "Studio to Let". I
reflected that, having done a little painting in an amateur way, I
could pose as an artist all right; so I took the studio. Also the name
of Alan Beverley. My own is Bill Bates. I had often wondered what it
would feel like to be called by some name like Alan Beverley or Cyril
Trevelyan. It was simply the spin of the coin which decided me in
favour of the former. Once in, the problem was how to get to know you.
When I heard you playing I knew it was all right. I had only to keep
knocking on the floor long enough - '
'Do - you - mean - to - tell - me' - Annette's voice trembled 'do you mean to
tell me that you knocked that time simply to make me come up?'
'That was it. Rather a scheme, don't you think? And now, would you mind
telling me how you found out that I had been buying your waltz? Those
remarks of yours about fools' paradises were not inspired solely by
the affairs of Sellers. But it beats me how you did it. I swore
Rozinsky, or whatever his name is, to secrecy.'
'A Mr Morrison,' sad Annette, indifferently, 'rang up on the telephone
and asked me to tell you that he was greatly worried by the piles of
music which were littering the rooms you lent him.'
The young man burst into a roar of laughter.
'Poor old Morrison! I forgot all about him. I lent him my rooms at the
Albany. He's writing a novel, and he can't work if the slightest thing
goes wrong. It just shows - '
'Mr Bates!'
'Yes?'
'Perhaps you didn't intend to hurt me. I dare say you meant only to be
kind. But - but - oh, can't you see how you have humiliated me? You have
treated me like a child, giving me a make-believe success just to - just
to keep me quiet, I suppose. You - '
He was fumbling in his pocket.
'May I read you a letter?' he said.
'A letter?'
'Quite a short one. It is from Epstein, the picture-dealer. This is
what he says. "Sir," meaning me, not "Dear Bill," mind you - just "Sir."
"I am glad to be able to inform you that I have this morning received
an offer of ten guineas for your picture, 'Child and Cat'. Kindly let
me know if I am to dispose of it at this price."'
'Well?' said Annette, in a small voice.
'I have just been to Epstein's. It seems that the purchaser is a Miss
Brown. She gave an address in Bayswater. I called at the address. No
Miss Brown lives there, but one of your pupils does. I asked her if she
was expecting a parcel for Miss Brown, and she said that she had had
your letter and quite understood and would take it in when it arrived.'
Annette was hiding her face in her hands.
'Go away!' she said, faintly.
Mr Bates moved a step nearer.
'Do you remember that story of the people on the island who eked out a
precarious livelihood by taking in one another's washing?' he asked,
casually.
'Go away!' cried Annette.
'I've always thought,' he said, 'that it must have drawn them very
close together - made them feel rather attached to each other. Don't
you?'
'Go away!'
'I don't want to go away. I want to stay and hear you say you'll marry
me.'
'_Please_ go away! I want to think.'
She heard him moving towards the door. He stopped, then went on again.
The door closed quietly. Presently from the room above came the sound
of footsteps - footsteps pacing monotonously to and fro like those of an
animal in a cage.
Annette sat listening. There was no break in the footsteps.
Suddenly she got up. In one corner of the room was a long pole used for
raising and lowering the window-sash. She took it, and for a moment
stood irresolute. Then with a quick movement, she lifted it and
stabbed three times at the ceiling.
SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT
A girl stood on the shingle that fringes Millbourne Bay, gazing at the
red roofs of the little village across the water. She was a pretty
girl, small and trim. Just now some secret sorrow seemed to be
troubling her, for on her forehead were wrinkles and in her eyes a look
of wistfulness. She had, in fact, all the distinguishing marks of one
who is thinking of her sailor lover.
But she was not. She had no sailor lover. What she was thinking of was
that at about this time they would be lighting up the shop-windows in
London, and that of all the deadly, depressing spots she had ever
visited this village of Millbourne was the deadliest.
The evening shadows deepened. The incoming tide glistened oilily as it
rolled over the mud flats. She rose and shivered.
'Goo! What a hole!' she said, eyeing the unconscious village morosely.
'_What_ a hole!'
* * * * *
This was Sally Preston's first evening in Millbourne. She had arrived
by the afternoon train from London - not of her own free will. Left to
herself, she would not have come within sixty miles of the place.
London supplied all that she demanded from life. She had been born in
London; she had lived there ever since - she hoped to die there. She
liked fogs, motor-buses, noise, policemen, paper-boys, shops, taxi-cabs,
artificial light, stone pavements, houses in long, grey rows, mud,
banana-skins, and moving-picture exhibitions. Especially moving-picture
exhibitions. It was, indeed, her taste for these that had caused her
banishment to Millbourne.
The great public is not yet unanimous on the subject of moving-picture
exhibitions. Sally, as I have said, approved of them. Her father, on
the other hand, did not. An austere ex-butler, who let lodgings in
Ebury Street and preached on Sundays in Hyde Park, he looked askance
at the 'movies'. It was his boast that he had never been inside a
theatre in his life, and he classed cinema palaces with theatres as
wiles of the devil. Sally, suddenly unmasked as an habitual frequenter
of these abandoned places, sprang with one bound into prominence as
the Bad Girl of the Family. Instant removal from the range of
temptation being the only possible plan, it seemed to Mr Preston that
a trip to the country was indicated.
He selected Millbourne because he had been butler at the Hall there,
and because his sister Jane, who had been a parlour-maid at the
Rectory, was now married and living in the village.
Certainly he could not have chosen a more promising reformatory for
Sally. Here, if anywhere, might she forget the heady joys of the
cinema. Tucked away in the corner of its little bay, which an
accommodating island converts into a still lagoon, Millbourne lies
dozing. In all sleepy Hampshire there is no sleepier spot. It is a
place of calm-eyed men and drowsy dogs. Things crumble away and are not
replaced. Tradesmen book orders, and then lose interest and forget to
deliver the goods. Only centenarians die, and nobody worries about
anything - or did not until Sally came and gave them something to worry
about.
* * * * *
Next door to Sally's Aunt Jane, in a cosy little cottage with a
wonderful little garden, lived Thomas Kitchener, a large, grave,
self-sufficing young man, who, by sheer application to work, had
become already, though only twenty-five, second gardener at the Hall.
Gardening absorbed him. When he was not working at the Hall he was
working at home. On the morning following Sally's arrival, it being a
Thursday and his day off, he was crouching in a constrained attitude in
his garden, every fibre of his being concentrated on the interment of a
plump young bulb. Consequently, when a chunk of mud came sailing over
the fence, he did not notice it.
A second, however, compelled attention by bursting like a shell on the
back of his neck. He looked up, startled. Nobody was in sight. He was
puzzled. It could hardly be raining mud. Yet the alternative theory,
that someone in the next garden was throwing it, was hardly less
bizarre. The nature of his friendship with Sally's Aunt Jane and old
Mr Williams, her husband, was comfortable rather than rollicking. It
was inconceivable that they should be flinging clods at him.
As he stood wondering whether he should go to the fence and look over,
or simply accept the phenomenon as one of those things which no fellow
can understand, there popped up before him the head and shoulders of a
girl. Poised in her right hand was a third clod, which, seeing that
there was now no need for its services, she allowed to fall to the
ground.
'Halloa!' she said. 'Good morning.'
She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Tom was by way of being the
strong, silent man with a career to think of and no time for bothering
about girls, but he saw that. There was, moreover, a certain alertness
in her expression rarely found in the feminine population of
Millbourne, who were apt to be slightly bovine.
'What do you think _you're_ messing about at?' she said, affably.
Tom was a slow-minded young man, who liked to have his thoughts well
under control before he spoke. He was not one of your gay rattlers.
Besides, there was something about this girl which confused him to an
extraordinary extent. He was conscious of new and strange emotions. He
stood staring silently.
'What's your name, anyway?'
He could answer that. He did so.
'Oh! Mine's Sally Preston. Mrs Williams is my aunt. I've come from
London.'
Tom had no remarks to make about London.
'Have you lived here all your life?'
'Yes,' said Tom.
'My goodness! Don't you ever feel fed up? Don't you want a change?'
Tom considered the point.
'No,' he said.
'Well, _I_ do. I want one now.'
'It's a nice place,' hazarded Tom.
'It's nothing of the sort. It's the beastliest hole in existence. It's
absolutely chronic. Perhaps you wonder why I'm here. Don't think I
_wanted_ to come here. Not me! I was sent. It was like this.' She
gave him a rapid summary of her troubles. 'There! Don't you call it a
bit thick?' she concluded.
Tom considered this point, too.
'You must make the best of it,' he said, at length.
'I won't! I'll make father take me back.'
Tom considered this point also. Rarely, if ever, had he been given so
many things to think about in one morning.
'How?' he inquired, at length.
'I don't know. I'll find some way. You see if I don't. I'll get away
from here jolly quick, I give you _my_ word.'
Tom bent low over a rose-bush. His face was hidden, but the brown of
his neck seemed to take on a richer hue, and his ears were undeniably
crimson. His feet moved restlessly, and from his unseen mouth there
proceeded the first gallant speech his lips had ever framed. Merely
considered as a speech, it was, perhaps, nothing wonderful; but from
Tom it was a miracle of chivalry and polish.
What he said was: 'I hope not.'
And instinct telling him that he had made his supreme effort, and that
anything further must be bathos, he turned abruptly and stalked into
his cottage, where he drank tea and ate bacon and thought chaotic
thoughts. And when his appetite declined to carry him more than half-way
through the third rasher, he understood. He was in love.
These strong, silent men who mean to be head-gardeners before they are
thirty, and eliminate woman from their lives as a dangerous obstacle to
the successful career, pay a heavy penalty when they do fall in love.
The average irresponsible young man who has hung about North Street on