The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
He stood watching her till she had reached the top of the long flight.
She did not look back.
5
Peggy's nightly visits began afresh after this, and the ghost on the
table troubled Rutherford no more. His restlessness left him. He began
to write with a new vigour and success. In after years he wrote many
plays, most of them good, clear-cut pieces of work, but none that came
from him with the utter absence of labour which made the writing of
_Willie in the Wilderness_ a joy. He wrote easily, without effort.
And always Peggy was there, helping, stimulating, encouraging.
Sometimes, when he came in after dinner to settle down to work, he
would find a piece of paper on his table covered with her schoolgirl
scrawl. It would run somewhat as follows:
'He is proud of his arms. They are skinny, but he thinks them the
limit. Better put in a shirt-sleeve scene for Willie somewhere.'
'He thinks he has a beautiful profile. Couldn't you make one of the
girls say something about Willie having the goods in that line?'
'He is crazy about golf.'
'He is proud of his French accent. Couldn't you make Willie speak a
little piece in French?'
'He' being Winfield Knight.
* * * * *
And so, little by little, the character of Willie grew, till it ceased
to be the Willie of the magazine story, and became Winfield Knight
himself, with improvements. The task began to fascinate Rutherford. It
was like planning a pleasant surprise for a child. 'He'll like that,'
he would say to himself, as he wrote in some speech enabling Willie to
display one of the accomplishments, real or imagined, of the absent
actor. Peggy read it, and approved. It was she who suggested the big
speech in the second act where Willie described the progress of his
love affair in terms of the golf-links. From her, too, came information
as to little traits in the man's character which the stranger would not
have suspected.
As the play progressed Rutherford was amazed at the completeness of the
character he had built. It lived. Willie in the magazine story might
have been anyone. He fitted into the story, but you could not see him.
He had no real individuality. But Willie in the play! He felt that he
would recognize him in the street. There was all the difference between
the two that there is between a nameless figure in some cheap picture
and a portrait by Sargent. There were times when the story of the play
seemed thin to him, and the other characters wooden, but in his
blackest moods he was sure of Willie. All the contradictions in the
character rang true: the humour, the pathos, the surface vanity
covering a real diffidence, the strength and weakness fighting one
another.
'You're alive, my son,' said Rutherford, admiringly, as he read the
sheets. 'But you don't belong to me.'
At last there came the day when the play was finished, when the last
line was written, and the last possible alteration made; and later, the
day when Rutherford, bearing the brown-paper-covered package under his
arm, called at the Players' Club to keep an appointment with Winfield
Knight.
Almost from the first Rutherford had a feeling that he had met the man
before, that he knew him. As their acquaintance progressed--the actor
was in an expansive mood, and talked much before coming to business--the
feeling grew. Then he understood. This was Willie, and no other. The
likeness was extraordinary. Little turns of thought, little
expressions--they were all in the play.
The actor paused in a description of how he had almost beaten a
champion at golf, and looked at the parcel.
'Is that the play?' he said.
'Yes,' said Rutherford. 'Shall I read it?'
'Guess I'll just look through it myself. Where's Act I? Here we are!
Have a cigar while you're waiting?'
Rutherford settled himself in his chair, and watched the other's face.
For the first few pages, which contained some tame dialogue between
minor characters, it was blank.
'"Enter Willie,"' he said. 'Am I Willie?'
'I hope so,' said Rutherford, with a smile. 'It's the star part.'
'H'm.'
He went on reading. Rutherford watched him with furtive keenness. There
was a line coming at the bottom of the page which he was then reading
which ought to hit him, an epigram on golf, a whimsical thought put
almost exactly as he had put it himself five minutes back when telling
his golf story.
The shot did not miss fire. The chuckle from the actor and the sigh of
relief from Rutherford were almost simultaneous. Winfield Knight turned
to him.
'That's a dandy line about golf,' said he.
Rutherford puffed complacently at his cigar.
'There's lots more of them in the piece,' he said.
'Bully for you,' said the actor. And went on reading.
Three-quarters of an hour passed before he spoke again. Then he looked
up.
'It's me,' he said; 'it's me all the time. I wish I'd seen this before
I put on the punk I'm doing now. This is me from the drive off the tee.
It's great! Say, what'll you have?'
Rutherford leaned back in his chair, his mind in a whirl. He had
arrived at last. His struggles were over. He would not admit of the
possibility of the play being a failure. He was a made man. He could go
where he pleased, and do as he pleased.
It gave him something of a shock to find how persistently his thoughts
refused to remain in England. Try as he might to keep them there, they
kept flitting back to Alcala.
6
_Willie in the Wilderness_ was not a failure. It was a triumph.
Principally, it is true, a personal triumph for Winfield Knight.
Everyone was agreed that he had never had a part that suited him so
well. Critics forgave the blunders of the piece for the sake of its
principal character. The play was a curiously amateurish thing. It was
only later that Rutherford learned craft and caution. When he wrote
_Willie_ he was a colt, rambling unchecked through the field of
play-writing, ignorant of its pitfalls. But, with all its faults,
_Willie in the Wilderness_ was a success. It might, as one critic
pointed out, be more of a monologue act for Winfield Knight than a
play, but that did not affect Rutherford.
It was late on the opening night when he returned to Alcala. He had
tried to get away earlier. He wanted to see Peggy. But Winfield Knight,
flushed with success, was in his most expansive mood. He seized upon
Rutherford and would not let him go. There was supper, a gay,
uproarious supper, at which everybody seemed to be congratulating
everybody else. Men he had never met before shook him warmly by the
hand. Somebody made a speech, despite the efforts of the rest of the
company to prevent him. Rutherford sat there, dazed, out of touch with
the mood of the party. He wanted Peggy. He was tired of all this
excitement and noise. He had had enough of it. All he asked was to be
allowed to slip away quietly and go home. He wanted to think, to try
and realize what all this meant to him.
At length the party broke up in one last explosion of handshaking and
congratulations; and, eluding Winfield Knight, who proposed to take him
off to his club, he started to walk up Broadway.
It was late when he reached Alcala. There was a light in his room.
Peggy had waited up to hear the news.
She jumped off the table as he came in.
'Well?' she cried.
Rutherford sat down and stretched out his legs.
'It's a success,' he said. 'A tremendous success!'
Peggy clapped her hands.
'Bully for you, George! I knew it would be. Tell me all about it. Was
Winfield good?'
'He was the whole piece. There was nothing in it but him.' He rose and
placed his hands on her shoulders. 'Peggy, old girl, I don't know what
to say. You know as well as I do that it's all owing to you that the
piece has been a success. If I hadn't had your help--'
Peggy laughed.
'Oh, beat it, George!' she said. 'Don't you come jollying me. I look
like a high-brow playwright, don't I! No; I'm real glad you've made a
hit, George, but don't start handing out any story about it's not being
your own. I didn't do a thing.'
'You did. You did everything.'
'I didn't. But, say, don't let's start quarrelling. Tell me more about
it. How many calls did you take.'
He told her all that had happened. When he had finished, there was a
silence.
'I guess you'll be quitting soon, George?' said Peggy, at last. 'Now
that you've made a home-run. You'll be going back to that rube joint,
with the cows and hens--isn't that it?'
Rutherford did not reply. He was staring thoughtfully at the floor. He
did not seem to have heard.
'I guess that girl'll be glad to see you,' she went on. 'Shall you
cable tomorrow, George? And then you'll get married and go and live in
the rube house, and become a regular hayseed and--' She broke off
suddenly, with a catch in her voice. 'Gee,' she whispered, halt to
herself, 'I'll be sorry when you go, George.'
He sprang up.
'Peggy!'
He seized her by the arm. He heard the quick intake of her breath.
'Peggy, listen!' He gripped her till she winced with pain. 'I'm not
going back. I'm never going back. I'm a cad, I'm a hound! I know I am.
But I'm not going back. I'm going to stay here with you. I want you,
Peggy. Do you hear? I want you!'
She tried to draw herself away, but he held her.
'I love you, Peggy! Peggy, will you be my wife?'
There was utter astonishment in her grey eyes. Her face was very white.
'Will you, Peggy?'
He dropped her arm.
'Will you, Peggy?'
'No!' she cried.
He drew back.
'No!' she cried sharply, as if it hurt her to speak. 'I wouldn't play
you such a mean trick. I'm too fond of you, George. There's never been
anybody just like you. You've been mighty good to me. I've never met a
man who treated me like you. You're the only real white man that's ever
happened to me, and I guess I'm not going to play you a low-down trick
like spoiling your life. George, I thought you knew. Honest, I thought
you knew. How did you think I lived in a swell place like this, if you
didn't know? How did you suppose everyone knew me at Rector's? How did
you think I'd managed to find out so much about Winfield Knight? Can't
you guess?'
She drew a long breath.
'I--'
He interrupted her hoarsely.
'Is there anyone now, Peggy?'
'Yes,' she said, 'there is.'
'You don't love him, Peggy, do you?'
'Love him?' She laughed bitterly. 'No; I don't love him.'
'Then come to me, dear,' he said.
She shook her head in silence. Rutherford sat down, his chin resting in
his hands. She came across to him, and smoothed his hair.
'It wouldn't do, George,' she said. 'Honest, it wouldn't do. Listen.
When we first met, I--I rather liked you, George, and I was mad at you
for being so fond of the other girl and taking no notice of me--not in
the way I wanted, and I tried--Gee, I feel mean. It was all my fault. I
didn't think it would matter. There didn't seem no chance then of your
being able to go back and have the sort of good time you wanted; and I
thought you'd just stay here and we'd be pals and--but now you can go
back, it's all different. I couldn't keep you. It would be too mean.
You see, you don't really want to stop. You think you do, but you
don't!'
'I love you,' he muttered.
'You'll forget me. It's all just a Broadway dream, George. Think of it
like that. Broadway's got you now, but you don't really belong. You're
not like me. It's not in your blood, so's you can't get it out. It's
the chickens and roses you want really. Just a Broadway dream. That's
what it is. George, when I was a kid, I remember crying and crying for
a lump of candy in the window of a store till one of my brothers up and
bought it for me just to stop the racket. Gee! For about a minute I was
the busiest thing that ever happened, eating away. And then it didn't