The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
Flip-Flap--which had seemed to both of them a fitting climax for
the evening's emotions--that Arthur, fumbling in his waist-coat pocket,
produced a small slip of paper.
'What's that?' Maud asked.
'Read it,' said Arthur. 'It's from _Home Moments_, in answer to a
letter I sent them. And,' he added with heat, 'I'd like to have five
minutes alone with the chap who wrote it.'
And under the electric light Maud read
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
_By the Heart Specialist_
Arthur W.--Jealousy, Arthur W., is not only the most wicked, but the
most foolish of passions. Shakespeare says:
_It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on._
You admit that you have frequently caused great distress to the young
lady of your affections by your exhibition of this weakness. Exactly.
There is nothing a girl dislikes or despises more than jealousy. Be a
man, Arthur W. Fight against it. You may find it hard at first, but
persevere. Keep a smiling face. If she seems to enjoy talking to other
men, show no resentment. Be merry and bright. Believe me, it is the
only way.
BY ADVICE OF COUNSEL
The traveller champed meditatively at his steak. He paid no attention
to the altercation which was in progress between the waiter and the man
at the other end of the dingy room. The sounds of strife ceased. The
waiter came over to the traveller's table and stood behind his chair.
He was ruffled.
'If he meant lamb,' he said, querulously, 'why didn't he say "lamb",
so's a feller could hear him? I thought he said "ham", so I brought
ham. Now Lord Percy gets all peevish.'
He laughed bitterly. The traveller made no reply.
'If people spoke distinct,' said the waiter, 'there wouldn't be half
the trouble there is in the world. Not half the trouble there wouldn't
be. I shouldn't be here, for one thing. In this restawrong, I mean.' A
sigh escaped him.
'I shouldn't,' he said, 'and that's the truth. I should be getting up
when I pleased, eating and drinking all I wanted, and carrying on same
as in the good old days. You wouldn't think, to look at me, would you
now, that I was once like the lily of the field?'
The waiter was a tall, stringy man, who gave the impression of having
no spine. In that he drooped, he might have been said to resemble a
flower, but in no other respect. He had sandy hair, weak eyes set close
together, and a day's growth of red stubble on his chin. One could not
see him in the lily class.
'What I mean to say is, I didn't toil, neither did I spin. Ah, them was
happy days! Lying on me back, plenty of tobacco, something cool in a
jug--'
He sighed once more.
'Did you ever know a man of the name of Moore? Jerry Moore?'
The traveller applied himself to his steak in silence.
'Nice feller. Simple sort of feller. Big. Quiet. Bit deaf in one ear.
Straw-coloured hair. Blue eyes. 'Andsome, rather. Had a 'ouse just
outside of Reigate. Has it still. Money of his own. Left him by his pa.
Simple sort of feller. Not much to say for himself. I used to know him
well in them days. Used to live with him. Nice feller he was. Big. Bit
hard of hearing. Got a sleepy kind of grin, like this--something.'
The traveller sipped his beer in thoughtful silence.
'I reckon you never met him,' said the waiter. 'Maybe you never knew
Gentleman Bailey, either? We always called him that. He was one of
these broken-down Eton or 'Arrer fellers, folks said. We struck up a
partnership kind of casual, both being on the tramp together, and after
a while we 'appened to be round about Reigate. And the first house we
come to was this Jerry Moore's. He come up just as we was sliding to
the back door, and grins that sleepy grin. Like this--something.
"'Ullo!" he says. Gentleman kind of gives a whoop, and hollers, "If it
ain't my old pal, Jerry Moore! Jack," he says to me, "this is my old
pal, Mr Jerry Moore, wot I met in 'appier days down at Ramsgate one
summer."
'They shakes hands, and Jerry Moore says, "Is this a friend of yours,
Bailey?" looking at me. Gentleman introduces me. "We are partners," he
says, "partners in misfortune. This is my friend, Mr Roach."
'"Come along in," says Jerry.
'So we went in, and he makes us at home. He's a bachelor, and lives all
by himself in this desirable 'ouse.
'Well, I seen pretty quick that Jerry thinks the world of Gentleman.
All that evening he's acting as if he's as pleased as Punch to have
him there. Couldn't do enough for him. _It_ was a bit of _all_
right, I said to meself. It was, too.
'Next day we gets up late and has a good breakfast, and sits on the
lawn and smokes. The sun was shining, the little birds was singing, and
there wasn't a thing, east, west, north, or south, that looked like
work. If I had been asked my address at that moment, on oath, I
wouldn't have hesitated a second. I should have answered, "No. 1, Easy
Street." You see, Jerry Moore was one of these slow, simple fellers,
and you could tell in a moment what a lot he thought of Gentleman.
Gentleman, you see, had a way with him. Not haughty, he wasn't. More
affable, I should call it. He sort of made you feel that all men are
born equal, but that it was awful good of him to be talking to you, and
that he wouldn't do it for everybody. It went down proper with Jerry
Moore. Jerry would sit and listen to him giving his views on things by
the hour. By the end of the first day I was having visions of sitting
in that garden a white-baked old man, and being laid out, when my time
should come, in Jerry's front room.'
He paused, his mind evidently in the past, among the cigars and big
breakfasts. Presently he took up his tale.
'This here Jerry Moore was a simple sort of feller. Deafies are like
that. Ever noticed? Not that Jerry was a real deafy. His hearing was a
bit off, but he could foller you if you spoke to him nice and clear.
Well, I was saying, he was kind of simple. Liked to put in his days
pottering about the little garden he'd made for himself, looking after
his flowers and his fowls, and sit of an evening listening to Gentleman
'olding forth on Life. He was a philosopher, Gentleman was. And Jerry
took everything he said as gospel. He didn't want no proofs. 'E and
the King of Denmark would have been great pals. He just sat by with his
big blue eyes getting rounder every minute and lapped it up.
'Now you'd think a man like that could be counted on, wouldn't you?
Would he want anything more? Not he, you'd say. You'd be wrong. Believe
me, there isn't a man on earth that's fixed and contented but what a
woman can't knock his old Paradise into 'ash with one punch.
'It wasn't long before I begin to notice a change in Jerry. He never
had been what you'd call a champion catch-as-catch-can talker, but now
he was silenter than ever. And he got a habit of switching Gentleman
off from his theories on Life in general to Woman in particular. This
suited Gentleman just right. What he didn't know about Woman wasn't
knowledge.
'Gentleman was too busy talking to have time to get suspicious, but I
wasn't; and one day I draws Gentleman aside and puts it to him
straight. "Gentleman," I says, "Jerry Moore is in love!"
'Well, this was a nasty knock, of course, for Gentleman. He knew as
well as I did what it would mean if Jerry was to lead home a blushing
bride through that front door. It would be outside into the cold, hard
world for the bachelor friends. Gentleman sees that quick, and his jaw
drops. I goes on. "All the time," I says, "that you're talking away of
an evening, Jerry's seeing visions of a little woman sitting in your
chair. And you can bet we don't enter into them visions. He may dream
of little feet pattering about the house," I says, "but they aren't
ours; and you can 'ave something on that both ways. Look alive,
Gentleman," I says, "and think out some plan, or we might as well be
padding the hoof now."
'Well, Gentleman did what he could. In his evening discourses he
started to give it to Woman all he knew. Began to talk about Delilahs
and Jezebels and Fools-there-was and the rest of it, and what a mug a
feller was to let a female into 'is cosy home, who'd only make him
spend his days hooking her up, and his nights wondering how to get back
the blankets without waking her. My, he was crisp! Enough to have given
Romeo the jumps, you'd have thought. But, lor! It's no good talking to
them when they've got it bad.
'A few days later we caught him with the goods, talking in the road to
a girl in a pink dress.
'I couldn't but admit that Jerry had picked one right from the top of
the basket. This wasn't one of them languishing sort wot sits about in
cosy corners and reads story-books, and don't care what's happening in
the home so long as they find out what became of the hero in his duel
with the Grand Duke. She was a brown, slim, wiry-looking little thing.
_You_ know. Held her chin up and looked you up and down with eyes
the colour of Scotch whisky, as much as to say, "Well, what
_about_ it?" You could tell without looking at her, just by the
feel of the atmosphere when she was near, that she had as much snap and
go in her as Jerry Moore hadn't, which was a good bit. I knew, just as
sure as I was standing there on one leg, that this was the sort of girl
who would have me and Gentleman out of that house about three seconds
after the clergyman had tied the knot.
'Jerry says, "These are my friends, Miss Tuxton--Mr Bailey and Mr
Roach. They are staying with me for a visit. This is Miss Jane Tuxton,"
he says to us. "I was just going to see Miss Tuxton home," he says,
sort of wistful. "Excellent," says Gentleman. "We'll come too." And we
all goes along. There wasn't much done in the way of conversation.
Jerry never was one for pushing out the words; nor was I, when in the
presence of the sect; and Miss Jane had her chin in the air, as if she
thought me and Gentleman was not needed in any way whatsoever. The
only talk before we turned her in at the garden gate was done by
Gentleman, who told a pretty long story about a friend of his in Upper
Sydenham who had been silly enough to marry, and had had trouble ever
since.
'That night, after we had went to bed, I said to Gentleman,
"Gentleman," I says, "what's going to be done about this? We've got
about as much chance, if Jerry marries that girl," I says, "as a couple
of helpless chocolate creams at a school-girls' picnic." "If," says
Gentleman. "He ain't married her yet. That is a girl of character,
Jack. Trust me. Didn't she strike you as a girl who would like a man
with a bit of devil in him, a man with some go in him, a you-be-darned
kind of man? Does Jerry fill the bill? He's more like a doormat with
'Welcome' written on it, than anything else."
'Well, we seen a good deal of Miss Jane in the next week or so. We
keeps Jerry under--what's it the heroine says in the melodrama? "Oh,
cruel, cruel, S.P. something." Espionage, that's it. We keeps Jerry
under espionage, and whenever he goes trickling round after the girl,
we goes trickling round after him.
'"Things is running our way," says Gentleman to me, after one of these
meetings. "That girl is getting cross with Jerry. She wants Reckless
Rudolf, not a man who stands and grins when other men butt in on him
and his girl. Mark my words, Jack. She'll get tired of Jerry, and go
off and marry a soldier, and we'll live happy ever after." "Think so?"
I says. "Sure of it," said Gentleman.
'It was the Sunday after this that Jerry Moore announces to us,
wriggling, that he had an engagement to take supper with Jane and her
folks. He'd have liked to have slipped away secret, but we was keeping
him under espionage too crisp for that, so he has to tell us.
"Excellent," said Gentleman. "It will be a great treat to Jack and