The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

P. G. Wodehouse

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Title: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

Author: P. G. Wodehouse

Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6768]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on January 26, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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

THE GOAL-KEEPER AND THE PLUTOCRAT

IN ALCALA

THE MAN UPSTAIRS

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

intimating his views with a boot-heel.

Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck--almost

pity for the wretched man who stood unconscious of imminent doom,

of tapping.

'Come in!' cried the voice, rather a pleasant voice; but what is a

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

this black-hearted knocker on floors a pleasant voice, but, in

moment, and his hair stood up in a disordered mop; but in spite of

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.

playing disturbed you.'

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.'

bad for my ceiling,' she said over shoulder. 'I thought you would not

her feet in the dust, crushed and abject.

'You see,' he said, 'I'm awfully sorry, but it's like this. I love

just the same bit over and over again.'

'I was trying to get a phrase,' said Annette, with dignity, but less

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.

scope. Canvas seems to cramp me.'

It seemed to cause him no discomfort. He appeared rather amused than

otherwise.

'Let me look.'

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,

That,' he explained, pointing obligingly with the stem of his pipe, 'is

dislikes a picture according to whether its subject happens to please

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

Philistine and hold forth on unappreciated merit that she could hardly

popular lack of taste in Art, Beverley replied that, as far as he was

with every nerve to win her esteem, he could not have done it more

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

unvaryingly bright and cheerful.

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

sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don't keep their

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

up. Come up and tell me about it, and you'll feel ever so much better.

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.'

to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice

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.

'Knocking?' said Annette. 'I remember no knocking.'

'Would you mind shaking hands?' said Beverley.

* * * * *

very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair.

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

was a long, offensive, patronizing person, with a moustache that looked

one!'

Beverley looked up.

'Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you're just

endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture's defects. I am sorry

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

seeing I'm only a beginner.'

'I know, my dear fellow; I know,' said Sellers, graciously. 'You

lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very

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.

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

sardines in the Little Gem Sardine advertisement. He is very good at

referee uttering the count.

'Miss Brougham,' said Sellers at last, spitting out the words, 'has

'Why, of course there is. You sold a landscape for five pounds only

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.

instead of doing what I can to help, I go and t-t-taunt him with not

'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."'

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.

precarious livelihood by taking in one another's washing?' he asked,

close together--made them feel rather attached to each other. Don't

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

SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT

red roofs of the little village across the water. She was a pretty

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

'Goo! What a hole!' she said, eyeing the unconscious village morosely.

'_What_ a hole!'

* * * * *

by the afternoon train from London--not of her own free will. Left to

London supplied all that she demanded from life. She had been born in

liked fogs, motor-buses, noise, policemen, paper-boys, shops, taxi-cabs,

banana-skins, and moving-picture exhibitions. Especially moving-picture

The great public is not yet unanimous on the subject of moving-picture

the other hand, did not. An austere ex-butler, who let lodgings in

at the 'movies'. It was his boast that he had never been inside a

wiles of the devil. Sally, suddenly unmasked as an habitual frequenter

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

about.

* * * * *

Next door to Sally's Aunt Jane, in a cosy little cottage with a

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

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.

or simply accept the phenomenon as one of those things which no fellow

girl. Poised in her right hand was a third clod, which, seeing that

ground.

'Halloa!' she said. 'Good morning.'

about girls, but he saw that. There was, moreover, a certain alertness

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

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.

'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

bit thick?' she concluded.

'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

from here jolly quick, I give you _my_ word.'

Tom bent low over a rose-bush. His face was hidden, but the brown of

considered as a speech, it was, perhaps, nothing wonderful; but from

anything further must be bathos, he turned abruptly and stalked into

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

Saturday nights, walked through the meadows and round by the mill and

back home past the creek on Sunday afternoons, taken his seat in the

brake for the annual outing, shuffled his way through the polka at the

tradesmen's ball, and generally seized all legitimate opportunities

for sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, has a hundred advantages

Her beauty was not of that elusive type which steals imperceptibly into

hit you. Bright brown eyes beneath a mass of fair hair, a determined

youths of peaceful Millbourne sat up and took notice as one youth.

leading lady's song with chorus of young men, all proffering devotion

simultaneously in a neat row. Well, that was how the lads of the

village comported themselves towards Sally.

Mr and Mrs Williams, till then a highly-esteemed but little-frequented

couple, were astonished at the sudden influx of visitors. The cottage

became practically a _salon_. There was not an evening when the

true that the conversation lacked some of the sparkle generally found

need, could have called upon them with the comfortable certainty that,

unless they happened to be otherwise engaged, they would leap to her

aid.

But they did not shine at small-talk. Conversationally they were a

Thereafter they contented themselves with sitting massively about in

sociable, and helped to pass the long evenings. And, as Mrs Williams

the subject of packs of young fools who made it impossible for a man to

Arthur Brown, and Joe Blossom (to name four of the most assiduous)

think. Again and again he strove to brace himself up to join the feasts

around the object of his devotions, but every time he failed. Habit is

the habit of inquiring after Mr Williams' rheumatism over the garden

It was a civil, neighbourly thing to do, but it annihilated the only

excuse he could think of for looking in at night. He could not help

himself. It was like some frightful scourge--the morphine habit, or

something of that sort. Every morning he swore to himself that nothing

would induce him to mention the subject of rheumatism, but no sooner

had the stricken old gentleman's head appeared above the fence than

out it came.

'Morning, Mr Williams.'

'Morning, Tom.'

'Better, thank'ee, Tom.'

And there he was, with his guns spiked.

However, he did not give up. He brought to his wooing the same

twenty-five. He was a novice at the game, but instinct told him that a

good line of action was to shower gifts. He did so. All he had to shower

was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the

goddess Ceres to be talked about. His garden became a perfect crater,

erupting vegetables. Why vegetables? I think I hear some heckler cry.

Why not flowers--fresh, fair, fragrant flowers? You can do a lot with

flowers. Girls love them. There is poetry in them. And, what is more,

calceolaria, or an herbaceous border, or something, I gather, and you

Sally Preston flowers? Well, you see, unfortunately, it was now late

autumn, and there were no flowers. Nature had temporarily exhausted her

floral blessings, and was jogging along with potatoes and artichokes

and things. Love is like that. It invariably comes just at the wrong

time. A few months before there had been enough roses in Tom

only vegetables, 'Twas ever thus.

It was not to be expected that a devotion so practically displayed

Mr Williams. He spoke seriously to Tom across the fence on the subject

which he never stirred abroad, even into his garden. He blinked

can't deceive _me_. All these p'taties, and what not. _I_ seen

Williams blazed within him.

'Why? 'Cos you'll only burn your fingers if you don't, that's why. I

been watching this young gal of Jane's, and I seen what sort of a young

gal she be. She's a flipperty piece, that's what she be. You marry that

young gal, Tom, and you'll never have no more quiet and happiness.

She'd just take and turn the place upsy-down on you. The man as marries

that young gal has got to be master in his own home. He's got to show

her what's what. Now, you ain't got the devil in you to do that, Tom.

You're what I might call a sort of a sheep. I admires it in you, Tom. I

like to see a young man steady and quiet, same as what you be. So

that's how it is, you see. Just you drop this foolishness, young Tom,

tactful manner.

It is to be supposed that this interview stung Tom to swift action.

reticent on the subject nearest his heart when bestowing on Sally the

and sixtieth potato. At any rate, the fact remains that, as that

fateful vegetable changed hands across the fence, something resembling

a proposal of marriage did actually proceed from him. As a sustained

piece of emotional prose it fell short of the highest standard. Most of

it was lost at the back of his throat, and what did emerge was mainly

inaudible. However, as she distinctly caught the word 'love' twice, and

as Tom was shuffling his feet and streaming with perspiration, and

Whereupon, without any visible emotion, she accepted him.

become, once he is in love. When Colonel Milvery, of the Hall, had

informed him of his promotion to the post of second gardener, Tom had

demanded no _encore_. He knew his worth. He was perfectly aware

that he was a good gardener, and official recognition of the fact left

him gratified, but unperturbed. But this affair of Sally was quite

him to consider himself as a man, entirely apart from his skill as a

apart from his skill as a gardener, he amounted to much.

He was overwhelmed. He kissed Sally across the fence humbly. Sally, for

than Thomas Kitchener might have said that, to all appearances, the

defiantly to old Mr Williams, to say nothing of making a considerable

agreed.

* * * * *

There are moments in a man's life when, however enthusiastic