The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
luck. It is singular how diffident a normally self-confident man can
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
another matter. It had revolutionized his standards of value--forced
him to consider himself as a man, entirely apart from his skill as a
gardener. And until this moment he had had grave doubt as to whether,
apart from his skill as a gardener, he amounted to much.
He was overwhelmed. He kissed Sally across the fence humbly. Sally, for
her part, seemed very unconcerned about it all. A more critical man
than Thomas Kitchener might have said that, to all appearances, the
thing rather bored Sally.
'Don't tell anybody just yet,' she stipulated.
Tom would have given much to be allowed to announce his triumph
defiantly to old Mr Williams, to say nothing of making a considerable
noise about it in the village; but her wish was law, and he reluctantly
agreed.
* * * * *
There are moments in a man's life when, however enthusiastic a
gardener he may be, his soul soars above vegetables. Tom's shot with a
jerk into the animal kingdom. The first present he gave Sally in his
capacity of fiance was a dog.
It was a half-grown puppy with long legs and a long tail, belonging
to no one species, but generously distributing itself among about six.
Sally loved it, and took it with her wherever she went. And on one of
these rambles down swooped Constable Cobb, the village policeman,
pointing out that, contrary to regulations, the puppy had no collar.
It is possible that a judicious meekness on Sally's part might have
averted disaster. Mr Cobb was human, and Sally was looking
particularly attractive that morning. Meekness, however, did not come
easily to Sally. In a speech which began as argument and ended (Mr
Cobb proving solid and unyielding) as pure cheek, she utterly routed
the constable. But her victory was only a moral one, for as she turned
to go Mr Cobb, dull red and puffing slightly, was already entering
particulars of the affair in his note-book, and Sally knew that the
last word was with him.
On her way back she met Tom Kitchener. He was looking very tough and
strong, and at the sight of him a half-formed idea, which she had
regretfully dismissed as impracticable, of assaulting Constable Cobb,
returned to her in an amended form. Tom did not know it, but the
reason why she smiled so radiantly upon him at that moment was that she
had just elected him to the post of hired assassin. While she did not
want Constable Cobb actually assassinated, she earnestly desired him
to have his helmet smashed down over his eyes; and it seemed to her
that Tom was the man to do it.
She poured out her grievance to him and suggested her scheme. She even
elaborated it.
'Why shouldn't you wait for him one night and throw him into the creek?
It isn't deep, and it's jolly muddy.'
'Um!' said Tom, doubtfully.
'It would just teach him,' she pointed out.
But the prospect of undertaking the higher education of the police did
not seem to appeal to Tom. In his heart he rather sympathized with
Constable Cobb. He saw the policeman's point of view. It is all very
well to talk, but when you are stationed in a sleepy village where no
one ever murders, or robs, or commits arson, or even gets drunk and
disorderly in the street, a puppy without a collar is simply a godsend.
A man must look out for himself.
He tried to make this side of the question clear to Sally, but failed
signally. She took a deplorable view of his attitude.
'I might have known you'd have been afraid,' she said, with a
contemptuous jerk of her chin. 'Good morning.'
Tom flushed. He knew he had never been afraid of anything in his life,
except her; but nevertheless the accusation stung. And as he was still
afraid of her he stammered as he began to deny the charge.
'Oh, leave off!' said Sally, irritably. 'Suck a lozenge.'
'I'm not afraid,' said Tom, condensing his remarks to their minimum as
his only chance of being intelligible.
'You are.'
'I'm not. It's just that I--'
A nasty gleam came into Sally's eyes. Her manner was haughty.
'It doesn't matter.' She paused. 'I've no doubt Ted Pringle will do
what I want.'
For all her contempt, she could not keep a touch of uneasiness from her
eyes as she prepared to make her next remark. There was a look about
Tom's set jaw which made her hesitate. But her temper had run away with
her, and she went on.
'I am sure he will,' she said. 'When we became engaged he said that he
would do anything for me.'
There are some speeches that are such conversational knockout blows
that one can hardly believe that life will ever pick itself up and go
on again after them. Yet it does. The dramatist brings down the
curtain on such speeches. The novelist blocks his reader's path with a
zareba of stars. But in life there are no curtains, no stars, nothing
final and definite--only ragged pauses and discomfort. There was such
a pause now.
'What do you mean?' said Tom at last. 'You promised to marry me.'
'I know I did--and I promised to marry Ted Pringle!'
That touch of panic which she could not wholly repress, the panic that
comes to everyone when a situation has run away with them like a
strange, unmanageable machine, infused a shade too much of the defiant
into Sally's manner. She had wished to be cool, even casual, but she
was beginning to be afraid. Why, she could not have said. Certainly she
did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps
it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always
looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now
he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable
behind his stolidity, something that made her feel mean and
insignificant.
She fought against the feeling, but it gripped her; and, in spite of
herself, she found her voice growing shrill and out of control.
'I promised to marry Ted Pringle, and I promised to marry Joe Blossom,
and I promised to marry Albert Parsons. And I was going to promise to
marry Arthur Brown and anybody else who asked me. So now you know! I
told you I'd make father take me back to London. Well, when he hears
that I've promised to marry four different men, I bet he'll have me
home by the first train.'
She stopped. She had more to say, but she could not say it. She stood
looking at him. And he looked at her. His face was grey and his mouth
oddly twisted. Silence seemed to fall on the whole universe.
Sally was really afraid now, and she knew it. She was feeling very
small and defenceless in an extremely alarming world. She could not
have said what it was that had happened to her. She only knew that life
had become of a sudden very vivid, and that her ideas as to what was
amusing had undergone a striking change. A man's development is a slow
and steady process of the years--a woman's a thing of an instant. In
the silence which followed her words Sally had grown up.
Tom broke the silence.
'Is that true?' he said.
His voice made her start. He had spoken quietly, but there was a new
note in it, strange to her. Just as she could not have said what it was
that had happened to her, so now she could not have said what had
happened to Tom. He, too, had changed, but how she did not know. Yet
the explanation was simple. He also had, in a sense, grown up. He was
no longer afraid of her.
He stood thinking. Hours seemed to pass.
'Come along!' he said, at last, and he began to move off down the road.
Sally followed. The possibility of refusing did not enter her mind.
'Where are you going?' she asked. It was unbearable, this silence.
He did not answer.
In this fashion, he leading, she following, they went down the road
into a lane, and through a gate into a field. They passed into a second
field, and as they did so Sally's heart gave a leap. Ted Pringle was
there.
Ted Pringle was a big young man, bigger even than Tom Kitchener, and,
like Tom, he was of silent habit. He eyed the little procession
inquiringly, but spoke no word. There was a pause.
'Ted,' said Tom, 'there's been a mistake.'
He stepped quickly to Sally's side, and the next moment he had swung
her off her feet and kissed her.
To the type of mind that Millbourne breeds, actions speak louder than
words, and Ted Pringle, who had gaped, gaped no more. He sprang
forward, and Tom, pushing Sally aside, turned to meet him.
I cannot help feeling a little sorry for Ted Pringle. In the light of
what happened, I could wish that it were possible to portray him as a
hulking brute of evil appearance and worse morals--the sort of person
concerning whom one could reflect comfortably that he deserved all he
got. I should like to make him an unsympathetic character, over whose
downfall the reader would gloat. But honesty compels me to own that Ted
was a thoroughly decent young man in every way. He was a good citizen,
a dutiful son, and would certainly have made an excellent husband.
Furthermore, in the dispute on hand he had right on his side fully as
much as Tom. The whole affair was one of those elemental clashings of
man and man where the historian cannot sympathize with either side at
the expense of the other, but must confine himself to a mere statement
of what occurred. And, briefly, what occurred was that Tom, bringing to
the fray a pent-up fury which his adversary had had no time to
generate, fought Ted to a complete standstill in the space of two
minutes and a half.
Sally had watched the proceedings, sick and horrified. She had never
seen men fight before, and the terror of it overwhelmed her. Her
vanity received no pleasant stimulation from the thought that it was
for her sake that this storm had been let loose. For the moment her
vanity was dead, stunned by collision with the realities. She found
herself watching in a dream. She saw Ted fall, rise, fall again, and
lie where he had fallen; and then she was aware that Tom was speaking.
'Come along!'
She hung back. Ted was lying very still. Gruesome ideas presented
themselves. She had just accepted them as truth when Ted wriggled. He
wriggled again. Then he sat up suddenly, looked at her with unseeing
eyes, and said something in a thick voice. She gave a little sob of
relief. It was ghastly, but not so ghastly as what she had been
imagining.
Somebody touched her arm. Tom was by her side, grim and formidable. He
was wiping blood from his face.
'Come along!'
She followed him without a word. And presently, behold, in another
field, whistling meditatively and regardless of impending ill, Albert
Parsons.
In everything that he did Tom was a man of method. He did not depart
from his chosen formula.
'Albert,' he said, 'there's been a mistake.'
And Albert gaped, as Ted had gaped.
Tom kissed Sally with the gravity of one performing a ritual.
The uglinesses of life, as we grow accustomed to them, lose their power
to shock, and there is no doubt that Sally looked with a different eye
upon this second struggle. She was conscious of a thrill of
excitement, very different from the shrinking horror which had seized
her before. Her stunned vanity began to tingle into life again. The
fight was raging furiously over the trampled turf, and quite suddenly,
as she watched, she was aware that her heart was with Tom.
It was no longer two strange brutes fighting in a field. It was her man
battling for her sake.
She desired overwhelmingly that he should win, that he should not be