The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
He entered the room briskly.
'Good evening!' he said. 'I have brought you some more chocolates, Miss
Warden, and some fruit. Great Scott! What's the matter?'
He stopped, but only for an instant. The next he had darted across the
room, and, before the horrified eyes of Mr Warden, was holding Ruth in
his arms. She clung to him.
Bill, the fox-terrier, over whom Mr Vince had happened to stumble, was
the first to speak. Almost simultaneously Mr Warden joined in, and
there was a striking similarity between the two voices, for Mr Warden,
searching for words, emitted as a preliminary to them a sort of
passionate yelp.
Mr Vince removed the hand that was patting Ruth's shoulder and waved it
reassuringly at him.
'It's all right,' he said.
'All right! All _right_!'
'Affinities,' explained Mr Vince over his shoulder. 'Two hearts that
beat as one. We're going to be married. What's the matter, dear? Don't
you worry; you're all right.'
'I refuse!' shouted Mr Warden. 'I absolutely refuse.'
Mr Vince lowered Ruth gently into a chair and, holding her hand,
inspected the fermenting old gentleman gravely.
'You refuse?' he said. 'Why, I thought you liked me.'
Mr Warden's frenzy had cooled. It had been something foreign to his
nature. He regretted it. These things had to be managed with restraint.
'My personal likes and dislikes,' he said, 'have nothing to do with the
matter, Mr Vince. They are beside the point. I have my daughter to
consider. I cannot allow her to marry a man without a penny.'
'Quite right,' said Mr Vince, approvingly. 'Don't have anything to do
with the fellow. If he tries to butt in, send for the police.'
Mr Warden hesitated. He had always been a little ashamed of Ruth's
occupation. But necessity compelled.
'Mr Vince, my daughter is employed at the _mont-de-piete,_ and was
a witness to all that took place this afternoon.'
Mr Vince was genuinely agitated. He looked at Ruth, his face full of
concern.
'You don't mean to say you have been slaving away in that stuffy--Great
Scott! I'll have you out of that quick. You mustn't go there again.'
He stooped and kissed her.
'Perhaps you had better let me explain,' he said. 'Explanations, I
always think, are the zero on the roulette-board of life. They're
always somewhere about, waiting to pop up. Have you ever heard of
Vince's Stores, Mr Warden? Perhaps they are since your time. Well, my
father is the proprietor. One of our specialities is children's toys,
but we haven't picked a real winner for years, and my father when I
last saw him seemed so distressed about it that I said I'd see if I
couldn't whack out an idea for something. Something on the lines of the
Billiken, only better, was what he felt he needed. I'm not used to
brain work, and after a spell of it I felt I wanted a rest. I came here
to recuperate, and the very first morning I got an inspiration. You may
have noticed that the manager of the _mont-de-piete_ here isn't
strong on conventional good looks. I saw him at the casino, and the
thing flashed on me. He thinks his name's Gandinot, but it isn't. It's
Uncle Zip, the Hump-Curer, the Man who Makes You Smile.'
He pressed Ruth's hand affectionately.
'I lost track of him, and it was only the day before yesterday that I
discovered who he was and where he was to be found. Well, you can't go
up to a man and ask him to pose as a model for Uncle Zip, the
Hump-Curer. The only way to get sittings was to approach him in the
way of business. So I collected what property I had and waded in.
That's the whole story. Do I pass?'
Mr Warden's frosty demeanour had gradually thawed during this recital,
and now the sun of his smile shone out warmly. He gripped Mr Vince's
hand with every evidence of esteem, and after that he did what was
certainly the best thing, by passing gently from the room. On his face,
as he went, was a look such as Moses might have worn on the summit of
Pisgah.
It was some twenty minutes later that Ruth made a remark.
'I want you to promise me something,' she said. 'Promise that you
won't go on with that Uncle Zip drawing. I know it means ever so much
money, but it might hurt poor M. Gandinot's feelings, and he has been
very kind to me.'
'That settles it,' said Mr Vince. 'It's hard on the children of Great
Britain, but say no more. No Uncle Zip for them.'
Ruth looked at him, almost with awe.
'You really won't go on with it? In spite of all the money you would
make? Are you always going to do just what I ask you, no matter what it
costs you?'
He nodded sadly.
'You have sketched out in a few words the whole policy of my married
life. I feel an awful fraud. And I had encouraged you to look forward
to years of incessant quarrelling. Do you think you can manage without
it? I'm afraid it's going to be shockingly dull for you,' said Mr
Vince, regretfully.
ARCHIBALD'S BENEFIT
Archibald Mealing was one of those golfers in whom desire outruns
performance. Nobody could have been more willing than Archibald. He
tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would
stand in front of his mirror and practise swings. Every night before he
went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the
subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the links most of
his time was spent in retrieving lost balls or replacing America.
Whether it was that Archibald pressed too much or pressed too little,
whether it was that his club deviated from the dotted line which joined
the two points A and B in the illustrated plate of the man making the
brassy shot in the _Hints on Golf_ book, or whether it was that he
was pursued by some malignant fate, I do not know. Archibald rather
favoured the last theory.
The important point is that, in his thirty-first year, after six
seasons of untiring effort, Archibald went in for a championship, and
won it.
Archibald, mark you, whose golf was a kind of blend of hockey, Swedish
drill, and buck-and-wing dancing.
I know the ordeal I must face when I make such a statement. I see
clearly before me the solid phalanx of men from Missouri, some urging
me to tell it to the King of Denmark, others insisting that I produce
my Eskimos. Nevertheless, I do not shrink. I state once more that in
his thirty-first year Archibald Mealing went in for a golf
championship, and won it.
* * * * *
Archibald belonged to a select little golf club, the members of which
lived and worked in New York, but played in Jersey. Men of substance,
financially as well as physically, they had combined their superfluous
cash and with it purchased a strip of land close to the sea. This land
had been drained--to the huge discomfort of a colony of mosquitoes
which had come to look on the place as their private property--and
converted into links, which had become a sort of refuge for incompetent
golfers. The members of the Cape Pleasant Club were easygoing refugees
from other and more exacting clubs, men who pottered rather than raced
round the links; men, in short, who had grown tired of having to stop
their game and stand aside in order to allow perspiring experts to whiz
past them. The Cape Pleasant golfers did not make themselves slaves to
the game. Their language, when they foozled, was gently regretful
rather than sulphurous. The moment in the day's play which they enjoyed
most was when they were saying: 'Well, here's luck!' in the club-house.
It will, therefore, be readily understood that Archibald's inability to
do a hole in single figures did not handicap him at Cape Pleasant as it
might have done at St. Andrews. His kindly clubmates took him to their
bosoms to a man, and looked on him as a brother. Archibald's was one of
those admirable natures which prompt their possessor frequently to
remark: 'These are on me!' and his fellow golfers were not slow to
appreciate the fact. They all loved Archibald.
Archibald was on the floor of his bedroom one afternoon, picking up the
fragments of his mirror--a friend had advised him to practise the
Walter J. Travis lofting shot--when the telephone bell rang. He took up
the receiver, and was hailed by the comfortable voice of McCay, the
club secretary.
'Is that Mealing?' asked McCay. 'Say, Archie, I'm putting your name
down for our championship competition. That's right, isn't it?'
'Sure,' said Archibald. 'When does it start?'
'Next Saturday.'
'That's me.'
'Good for you. Oh, Archie.'
'Hello?'
'A man I met today told me you were engaged. Is that a fact?'
'Sure,' murmured Archibald, blushfully.
The wire hummed with McCay's congratulations.
'Thanks,' said Archibald. 'Thanks, old man. What? Oh, yes. Milsom's her
name. By the way, her family have taken a cottage at Cape Pleasant for
the summer. Some distance from the links. Yes, very convenient, isn't
it? Good-bye.'
He hung up the receiver and resumed his task of gathering up the
fragments. Now McCay happened to be of a romantic and sentimental
nature. He was by profession a chartered accountant, and inclined to be
stout; and all rather stout chartered accountants are sentimental.
McCay was the sort of man who keeps old ball programmes and bundles of
letters tied round with lilac ribbon. At country houses, where they
lingered in the porch after dinner to watch the moonlight flooding the
quiet garden, it was McCay and his colleague who lingered longest.
McCay knew Ella Wheeler Wilcox by heart, and could take Browning
without anaesthetics. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that
Archibald's remark about his fiancee coming to live at Cape Pleasant
should give him food for thought. It appealed to him.
He reflected on it a good deal during the day, and, running across
Sigsbee, a fellow Cape Pleasanter, after dinner that night at the
Sybarites' Club, he spoke of the matter to him. It so happened that
both had dined excellently, and were looking on the world with a sort
of cosy benevolence. They were in the mood when men pat small boys on
the head and ask them if they mean to be President when they grow up.
'I called up Archie Mealing today,' said McCay. 'Did you know he was
engaged?'
'I did hear something about it. Girl of the name of Wilson, or--'
'Milsom. She's going to spend the summer at Cape Pleasant, Archie tells
me.'
'Then she'll have a chance of seeing him play in the championship
competition.'
McCay sucked his cigar in silence for a while, watching with dreamy
eyes the blue smoke as it curled ceiling-ward. When he spoke his voice
was singularly soft.
'Do you know, Sigsbee,' he said, sipping his Maraschino with a gentle
melancholy--'do you know, there is something wonderfully pathetic to me
in this business. I see the whole thing so clearly. There was a kind of
quiver in the poor old chap's voice when he said: "She is coming to
Cape Pleasant," which told me more than any words could have done. It
is a tragedy in its way, Sigsbee. We may smile at it, think it trivial;
but it is none the less a tragedy. That warm-hearted, enthusiastic
girl, all eagerness to see the man she loves do well--Archie, poor old
Archie, all on fire to prove to her that her trust in him is not
misplaced, and the end--Disillusionment--Disappointment--Unhappiness.'
'He ought to keep his eye on the ball,' said the more practical
Sigsbee.
'Quite possibly,' continued McCay, 'he has told her that he will win
this championship.'
'If Archie's mutt enough to have told her that,' said Sigsbee
decidedly, 'he deserves all he gets. Waiter, two Scotch highballs.'
McCay was in no mood to subscribe to this stony-hearted view.
'I tell you,' he said, 'I'm _sorry_ for Archie! I'm _sorry_
for the poor old chap. And I'm more than sorry for the girl.'
'Well, I don't see what we can do,' said Sigsbee. 'We can hardly be