The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
hurt, that he should sweep triumphantly over Albert Parsons as he had
swept over Ted Pringle.
Unfortunately, it was evident, even to her, that he was being hurt, and
that he was very far from sweeping triumphantly over Albert Parsons. He
had not allowed himself time to recover from his first battle, and his
blows were slow and weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff
than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time
in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week
in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their
methods--their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were the
merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he side-stepped
Tom, he jabbed Tom; he did everything to Tom that a trained boxer can
do to a reckless novice, except knock the fight out of him, until
presently, through the sheer labour of hitting, he, too, grew weary.
Now, in the days when Albert Parsons had fought whole families of Toms
in an evening, he had fought in rounds, with the boss holding the
watch, and half-minute rests, and water to refresh him, and all orderly
and proper. Today there were no rounds, no rests, no water, and the
peaceful tending of cows had caused flesh to grow where there had been
only muscle. Tom's headlong rushes became less easy to side-step, his
swinging blows more difficult than the scientific counter that shot out
to check them. As he tired Tom seemed to regain strength. The tide of
the battle began to ebb. He clinched, and Tom threw him off. He
feinted, and while he was feinting Tom was on him. It was the climax of
the battle--the last rally. Down went Albert, and stayed down.
Physically, he was not finished; but in his mind a question had framed
itself--the question. 'Was it worth it?'--and he was answering, 'No.'
There were other girls in the world. No girl was worth all this
trouble.
He did not rise.
'Come along!' said Tom.
He spoke thickly. His breath was coming in gasps. He was a terrible
spectacle, but Sally was past the weaker emotions. She was back in the
Stone Age, and her only feeling was one of passionate pride. She tried
to speak. She struggled to put all she felt into words, but something
kept her dumb, and she followed him in silence.
In the lane outside his cottage, down by the creek, Joe Blossom was
clipping a hedge. The sound of footsteps made him turn.
He did not recognize Tom till he spoke.
'Joe, there's been a mistake,' said Tom.
'Been a gunpowder explosion, more like,' said Joe, a simple, practical
man. 'What you been doin' to your face?'
'She's going to marry me, Joe.'
Joe eyed Sally inquiringly.
'Eh? You promised to marry _me_.'
'She promised to marry all of us. You, me, Ted Pringle, and Albert
Parsons.'
'Promised--to--marry--all--of--us!'
'That's where the mistake was. She's only going to marry me. I--I've
arranged it with Ted and Albert, and now I've come to explain to you,
Joe.'
'You promised to marry--!'
The colossal nature of Sally's deceit was plainly troubling Joe
Blossom. He expelled his breath in a long note of amazement. Then he
summed up.
'Why you're nothing more nor less than a Joshua!'
The years that had passed since Joe had attended the village
Sunday-school had weakened his once easy familiarity with the
characters of the Old Testament. It is possible that he had somebody
else in his mind.
Tom stuck doggedly to his point.
'You can't marry her, Joe.'
Joe Blossom raised his shears and clipped a protruding branch. The
point under discussion seemed to have ceased to interest him.
'Who wants to?' he said. 'Good riddance!'
They went down the lane. Silence still brooded over them. The words
she wanted continued to evade her.
They came to a grassy bank. Tom sat down. He was feeling unutterably
tired.
'Tom!'
He looked up. His mind was working dizzily.
'You're going to marry me,' he muttered.
She sat down beside him.
'I know,' she said. 'Tom, dear, lay your head on my lap and go to
sleep.'
If this story proves anything (beyond the advantage of being in good
training when you fight), it proves that you cannot get away from the
moving pictures even in a place like Millbourne; for as Sally sat
there, nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very
situation with which that 'Romance of the Middle Ages' film ended. You
know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my
memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in
distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her; gets wounded, and is
nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And
every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and
that that sort of thing can't happen nowadays.
DEEP WATERS
Historians of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a
certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in
'em. When his friends said, 'You fish!' he would answer, 'Oh, pish!
Fish can't swim like _me_, they've no vim in 'em.'
Just such another was George Barnert Callender.
On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little
remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the
ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary
amount of physical strength. Such was George--on shore. But remove his
clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and
instantly, like the gentleman in _The Tempest_, he 'suffered a
sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted,
and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of
a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint,
anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering
derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable
club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did
the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that
that was the only possible method of progression.
George came to Marvis Bay at about five o'clock one evening in July.
Marvis Bay has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and,
while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable
writer of the local guide-book asserts it to be, on the whole it earns
its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost
imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and
smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not
confined to jumping up and down on a given jelly-fish. At the northern
end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made
his way on his arrival.
It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of
fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the
enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture post-cards, and
had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were
practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was
deserted; George had it to himself. He strolled slowly along. The water
glittered under the sun-rays, breaking into a flurry of white foam as
it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangements
were a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that
George had come to Marvis Bay with the single aim of finding an
antidote to metropolitan stuffiness. There was a more important reason.
In three days Marvis Bay was to be the scene of the production of
_Fate's Footballs_, a comedy in four acts by G. Barnert Callender.
For George, though you would not have suspected it from his exterior,
was one of those in whose cerebra the grey matter splashes restlessly
about, producing strong curtains and crisp dialogue. The company was
due at Marvis Bay on the following evening for the last spasm of
rehearsals.
George's mind, as he paced the pier, was divided between the beauties
of Nature and the forthcoming crisis in his affairs in the ratio of
one-eighth to the former and seven-eighths to the latter. At the moment
when he had left London, thoroughly disgusted with the entire
theatrical world in general and the company which was rehearsing
_Fate's Footballs_ in particular, rehearsals had just reached that
stage of brisk delirium when the author toys with his bottle of poison
and the stage-manager becomes icily polite. _The Footpills_--as
Arthur Mifflin, the leading juvenile in the great play, insisted upon
calling it, much to George's disapproval--was his first piece. Never
before had he been in one of those kitchens where many cooks prepare,
and sometimes spoil, the theatrical broth. Consequently the chaos
seemed to him unique. Had he been a more experienced dramatist, he would
have said to himself, 'Twas ever thus.' As it was, what he said to
himself--and others--was more forcible.
He was trying to dismiss the whole thing from his mind--a feat which
had hitherto proved beyond his powers--when Fate, in an unusually
kindly mood, enabled him to do so in a flash by presenting to his
jaundiced gaze what, on consideration, he decided was the most
beautiful girl he had ever seen. 'When a man's afraid,' shrewdly sings
the bard, 'a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see'. In the present
instance the sight acted on George like a tonic. He forgot that the lady
to whom an injudicious management had assigned the role of heroine in
_Fate's Footballs_ invariably--no doubt from the best motives--omitted
to give the cynical _roue_ his cue for the big speech in Act III.
His mind no longer dwelt on the fact that Arthur Mifflin, an estimable
person in private life, and one who had been a friend of his at
Cambridge, preferred to deliver the impassioned lines of the great
renunciation scene in a manner suggesting a small boy (and a sufferer
from nasal catarrh at that) speaking a piece at a Sunday-school treat.
The recollection of the hideous depression and gloom which the leading
comedian had radiated in great clouds fled from him like some grisly
nightmare before the goddess of day. Every cell in his brain was
occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the girl swimming
in the water below.
She swam well. His practised eye saw that. Her strong, easy strokes
carried her swiftly over the swell of the waves. He stared, transfixed.
He was a well-brought-up young man, and he knew how ill-bred it was to
stare; but this was a special occasion. Ordinary rules of conventional
etiquette could not apply to a case like this. He stared. More, he
gaped. As the girl passed on into the shadow of the pier he leaned
farther over the rail, and his neck extended in joints like a
telescope.
At this point the girl turned to swim on her back. Her eyes met his.
Hers were deep and clear; his, bulging. For what seemed an eternity to
George, she continued to look at him. Then, turning over again, she
shot past under the pier.
George's neck was now at its full stretch. No power of will or muscle
could add another yard to it. Realizing this, he leaned farther over
the rail, and farther still. His hat slid from his hand. He grabbed at
it, and, over-balancing, fell with a splash into the water.
Now, in ordinary circumstances, to fall twelve feet into the ocean with
all his clothes on would have incommoded George little. He would hardly
have noticed it. He would have swum to shore with merely a feeling of
amused self-reproach akin to that of the man who absent-mindedly walks
into a lamp-post in the street. When, therefore, he came to the
surface he prepared without agitation to strike out in his usual bold
fashion. At this moment, however, two hands, grasping him beneath the
arms, lifted his head still farther from the waves, and a voice in his