P G Wodehouse - Man Upstairs

by Man Upstairs

  Since his 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 up-grade, 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 patronise 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 patronise 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 would 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 astounding 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. Sellar's 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 came 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 s
tiffened 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," said 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 from 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 was she 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 parlourmaid 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 concentrate
d 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.