The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
A frog-like croak was the best George could do in that line.
She went on.
'Business is business, I suppose, and a play has to be advertised
somehow. But--'
'You don't think--' croaked George.
'I should have thought it rather beneath the dignity of an author; but,
of course, you know your own business best. Only I object to being a
conspirator. I am sorry for your sake that yesterday's episode
attracted so little attention. Today it was much more satisfactory,
wasn't it? I am so glad.'
There was a massive silence for about a hundred years.
'I think I'll go for a short stroll,' said George.
* * * * *
Scarcely had he disappeared when the long form of Mr Mifflin emerged
from the shadow beyond the veranda.
'Could you spare me a moment?'
The girl looked up. The man was a stranger. She inclined her head
coldly.
'My name is Mifflin,' said the other, dropping comfortably into the
chair which had held the remains of George.
The girl inclined her head again more coldly; but it took more than
that to embarrass Mr Mifflin. Dynamite might have done it, but not
coldness.
'_The_ Mifflin,' he explained, crossing his legs. 'I overheard
your conversation just now.'
'You were listening?' said the girl, scornfully.
'For all I was worth,' said Mr Mifflin. 'These things are very much a
matter of habit. For years I have been playing in pieces where I have
had to stand concealed up stage, drinking in the private conversation
of other people, and the thing has become a second nature to me.
However, leaving that point for a moment, what I wish to say is that I
heard you--unknowingly, of course--doing a good man a grave injustice.'
'Mr Callender could have defended himself if he had wished.'
'I was not referring to George. The injustice was to myself.'
'To you?'
'I was the sole author of this afternoon's little drama. I like George,
but I cannot permit him to pose in any way as my collaborator. George
has old-fashioned ideas. He does not keep abreast of the times. He can
write plays, but he needs a man with a big brain to boom them for him.
So, far from being entitled to any credit for this afternoon's work, he
was actually opposed to it.'
'Then why did he pretend you had saved him?' she demanded.
'George's,' said Mr Mifflin, 'is essentially a chivalrous nature. At
any crisis demanding a display of the finer feelings he is there with
the goods before you can turn round. His friends frequently wrangle
warmly as to whether he is most like Bayard, Lancelot, or Happy
Hooligan. Some say one, some the other. It seems that yesterday you
saved him from a watery grave without giving him time to explain that
he could save himself. What could he do? He said to himself, "She must
never know!" and acted accordingly. But let us leave George, and
return--'
'Thank you, Mr Mifflin.' There was a break in her laugh. 'I don't think
there is any necessity. I think I understand now. It was very clever of
you.'
'It was more than cleverness,' said Mr Mifflin, rising. 'It was
genius.'
* * * * *
A white form came to meet George as he re-entered the veranda.
'Mr Callender!'
He stopped.
'I'm very sorry I said such horrid things to you just now. I have been
talking to Mr Mifflin, and I want to say I think it was ever so nice
and thoughtful of you. I understand everything.'
George did not, by a good deal; but he understood sufficient for his
needs. He shot forward as if some strong hand were behind him with a
needle.
'Miss Vaughan--Mary--I--'
'I think I hear aunt calling,' said she.
* * * * *
But a benevolent Providence has ordained that aunts cannot call for
ever; and it is on record that when George entered his box on the two
hundredth night of that great London success, _Fate's Footballs_,
he did not enter it alone.
WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE
It is possible that, at about the time at which this story opens, you
may have gone into the Hotel Belvoir for a hair-cut. Many people did;
for the young man behind the scissors, though of a singularly gloomy
countenance, was undoubtedly an artist in his line. He clipped
judiciously. He left no ridges. He never talked about the weather. And
he allowed you to go away unburdened by any bottle of hair-food.
It is possible, too, that, being there, you decided that you might as
well go the whole hog and be manicured at the same time.
It is not unlikely, moreover, that when you had got over the first
shock of finding your hands so unexpectedly large and red, you felt
disposed to chat with the young lady who looked after that branch of
the business. In your genial way you may have permitted a note of gay
(but gentlemanly) badinage to creep into your end of the dialogue.
In which case, if you had raised your eyes to the mirror, you would
certainly have observed a marked increase of gloom in the demeanour of
the young man attending to your apex. He took no official notice of the
matter. A quick frown. A tightening of the lips. Nothing more. Jealous
as Arthur Welsh was of all who inflicted gay badinage, however
gentlemanly, on Maud Peters, he never forgot that he was an artist.
Never, even in his blackest moments, had he yielded to the temptation
to dig the point of the scissors the merest fraction of an inch into a
client's skull.
But Maud, who saw, would understand. And, if the customer was an
observant man, he would notice that her replies at that juncture became
somewhat absent, her smile a little mechanical.
* * * * *
Jealousy, according to an eminent authority, is the 'hydra of
calamities, the sevenfold death'. Arthur Welsh's was all that and a bit
over. It was a constant shadow on Maud's happiness. No fair-minded girl
objects to a certain tinge of jealousy. Kept within proper bounds, it
is a compliment; it makes for piquancy; it is the gin in the
ginger-beer of devotion. But it should be a condiment, not a fluid.
It was the unfairness of the thing which hurt Maud. Her conscience was
clear. She knew girls--several girls--who gave the young men with whom
they walked out ample excuse for being perfect Othellos. If she had
ever flirted on the open beach with the baritone of the troupe of
pierrots, like Jane Oddy, she could have excused Arthur's attitude. If,
like Pauline Dicey, she had roller-skated for a solid hour with a
black-moustached stranger while her fiance floundered in Mug's Alley
she could have understood his frowning disapprovingly. But she was not
like Pauline. She scorned the coquetries of Jane. Arthur was the centre
of her world, and he knew it. Ever since the rainy evening when he had
sheltered her under his umbrella to her Tube station, he had known
perfectly well how things were with her. And yet just because, in a
strictly business-like way, she was civil to her customers, he must
scowl and bite his lip and behave generally as if it had been brought
to his notice that he had been nurturing a serpent in his bosom. It was
worse than wicked--it was unprofessional.
She remonstrated with him.
'It isn't fair,' she said, one morning when the rush of customers had
ceased and they had the shop to themselves.
Matters had been worse than usual that morning. After days of rain and
greyness the weather had turned over a new leaf. The sun glinted among
the bottles of Unfailing Lotion in the window, and everything in the
world seemed to have relaxed and become cheerful. Unfortunately,
everything had included the customers. During the last few days they
had taken their seats in moist gloom, and, brooding over the prospect
of coming colds in the head, had had little that was pleasant to say to
the divinity who was shaping their ends. But today it had been
different. Warm and happy, they had bubbled over with gay small-talk.
'It isn't fair,' she repeated.
Arthur, who was stropping a razor and whistling tunelessly, raised his
eyebrows. His manner was frosty.
'I fail to understand your meaning,' he said.
'You know what I mean. Do you think I didn't see you frowning when I
was doing that gentleman's nails?'
The allusion was to the client who had just left--a jovial individual
with a red face, who certainly had made Maud giggle a good deal. And
why not? If a gentleman tells really funny stories, what harm is there
in giggling? You had to be pleasant to people. If you snubbed
customers, what happened? Why, sooner or later, it got round to the
boss, and then where were you? Besides, it was not as if the red-faced
customer had been rude. Write down on paper what he had said to her,
and nobody could object to it. Write down on paper what she had said to
him, and you couldn't object to that either. It was just Arthur's
silliness.
She tossed her head.
'I am gratified,' said Arthur, ponderously--in happier moments Maud
had admired his gift of language; he read a great deal: encyclopedias
and papers and things--'I am gratified to find that you had time to
bestow a glance on me. You appeared absorbed.'
Maud sniffed unhappily. She had meant to be cold and dignified
throughout the conversation, but the sense of her wrongs was beginning
to be too much for her. A large tear splashed on to her tray of
orange-sticks. She wiped it away with the chamois leather.
'It isn't fair,' she sobbed. 'It isn't. You know I can't help it if
gentlemen talk and joke with me. You know it's all in the day's work.
I'm expected to be civil to gentlemen who come in to have their hands
done. Silly I should look sitting as if I'd swallowed a poker. I
_do_ think you might understand, Arthur, you being in the
profession yourself.'
He coughed.
'It isn't so much that you talk to them as that you seem to like--'
He stopped. Maud's dignity had melted completely. Her face was buried
in her arms. She did not care if a million customers came in, all at
the same time.
'Maud!'
She heard him moving towards her, but she did not look up. The next
moment his arms were round her, and he was babbling.
And a customer, pushing open the door unnoticed two minutes later,
retired hurriedly to get shaved elsewhere, doubting whether Arthur's
mind was on his job.
For a time this little thunderstorm undoubtedly cleared the air. For a
day or two Maud was happier than she ever remembered to have been.
Arthur's behaviour was unexceptionable. He bought her a wrist-watch--
light brown leather, very smart. He gave her some chocolates to eat in
the Tube. He entertained her with amazing statistics, culled from the
weekly paper which he bought on Tuesdays. He was, in short, the perfect
lover. On the second day the red-faced man came in again. Arthur joined
in the laughter at his stories. Everything seemed ideal.
It could not last. Gradually things slipped back into the old routine.
Maud, looking up from her work, would see the frown and the bitten lip.
She began again to feel uncomfortable and self-conscious as she worked.
Sometimes their conversation on the way to the Tube was almost formal.
It was useless to say anything. She had a wholesome horror of being one
of those women who nagged; and she felt that to complain again would
amount to nagging. She tried to put the thing out of her mind, but it
insisted on staying there. In a way she understood his feelings. He
loved her so much, she supposed, that he hated the idea of her
exchanging a single word with another man. This, in the abstract, was
gratifying; but in practice it distressed her. She wished she were some
sort of foreigner, so that nobody could talk to her. But then they
would look at her, and that probably would produce much the same
results. It was a hard world for a girl.
And then the strange thing happened. Arthur reformed. One might almost