The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
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,' 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 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