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Title: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

Author: P. G. Wodehouse

Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6768]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on January 26, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN UPSTAIRS AND OTHER STORIES ***




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THE MAN UPSTAIRS

AND OTHER STORIES





by P. G. Wodehouse





CONTENTS


THE MAN UPSTAIRS

SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT

DEEP WATERS

WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE

BY ADVICE OF COUNSEL

ROUGH-HEW THEM HOW WE WILL

THE MAN WHO DISLIKED CATS

RUTH IN EXILE

ARCHIBALD'S BENEFIT

THE MAN, THE MAID, AND THE MIASMA

THE GOOD ANGEL

POTS O' MONEY

OUT OF SCHOOL

THREE FROM DUNSTERVILLE

THE TUPPENNY MILLIONAIRE

AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

SIR AGRAVAINE

THE GOAL-KEEPER AND THE PLUTOCRAT

IN ALCALA




THE MAN UPSTAIRS


There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's
attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it
had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her
waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in
when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind
from her music. Finally, with a thrill in indignation, she knew it for
what it was--an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was
intimating his views with a boot-heel.

Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck--almost
slapped--the keys once more.

'Bang!' from the room above. 'Bang! Bang!'

Annette rose. Her face was pink, her chin tilted. Her eyes sparkled
with the light of battle. She left the room and started to mount the
stairs. No spectator, however just, could have helped feeling a pang of
pity for the wretched man who stood unconscious of imminent doom,
possibly even triumphant, behind the door at which she was on the point
of tapping.

'Come in!' cried the voice, rather a pleasant voice; but what is a
pleasant voice if the soul be vile?

Annette went in. The room was a typical Chelsea studio, scantily
furnished and lacking a carpet. In the centre was an easel, behind
which were visible a pair of trousered legs. A cloud of grey smoke was
curling up over the top of the easel.

'I beg your pardon,' began Annette.

'I don't want any models at present,' said the Brute. 'Leave your card
on the table.'

'I am not a model,' said Annette, coldly. 'I merely came--'

At this the Brute emerged from his fortifications and, removing his
pipe from his mouth, jerked his chair out into the open.

'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'Won't you sit down?'

How reckless is Nature in the distribution of her gifts! Not only had
this black-hearted knocker on floors a pleasant voice, but, in
addition, a pleasing exterior. He was slightly dishevelled at the
moment, and his hair stood up in a disordered mop; but in spite of
these drawbacks, he was quite passably good-looking. Annette admitted
this. Though wrathful, she was fair.

'I thought it was another model,' he explained. 'They've been coming in
at the rate of ten an hour ever since I settled here. I didn't object
at first, but after about the eightieth child of sunny Italy had shown
up it began to get on my nerves.'

Annette waited coldly till he had finished.

'I am sorry,' she said, in a this-is-where-you-get-yours voice, 'if my
playing disturbed you.'

One would have thought nobody but an Eskimo wearing his furs and winter
under-clothing could have withstood the iciness of her manner; but the
Brute did not freeze.

'I am sorry,' repeated Annette, well below zero, 'if my playing
disturbed you. I live in the room below, and I heard you knocking.'

'No, no,' protested the young man, affably; 'I like it. Really I do.'

'Then why knock on the floor?' said Annette, turning to go. 'It is so
bad for my ceiling,' she said over shoulder. 'I thought you would not
mind my mentioning it. Good afternoon.'

'No; but one moment. Don't go.'

She stopped. He was surveying her with a friendly smile. She noticed
most reluctantly that he had a nice smile. His composure began to
enrage her more and more. Long ere this he should have been writhing at
her feet in the dust, crushed and abject.

'You see,' he said, 'I'm awfully sorry, but it's like this. I love
music, but what I mean is, you weren't playing a _tune_. It was
just the same bit over and over again.'

'I was trying to get a phrase,' said Annette, with dignity, but less
coldly. In spite of herself she was beginning to thaw. There was
something singularly attractive about this shock-headed youth.

'A phrase?'

'Of music. For my waltz. I am composing a waltz.'

A look of such unqualified admiration overspread the young man's face
that the last remnants of the ice-pack melted. For the first time since
they had met Annette found herself positively liking this blackguardly
floor-smiter.

'Can you compose music?' he said, impressed.

'I have written one or two songs.'

'It must be great to be able to do things--artistic things, I mean,
like composing.'

'Well, you do, don't you? You paint.'

The young man shook his head with a cheerful grin.

'I fancy,' he said, 'I should make a pretty good house-painter. I want
scope. Canvas seems to cramp me.'

It seemed to cause him no discomfort. He appeared rather amused than
otherwise.

'Let me look.'

She crossed over to the easel.

'I shouldn't,' he warned her. 'You really want to? Is this not mere
recklessness? Very well, then.'

To the eye of an experienced critic the picture would certainly have
seemed crude. It was a study of a dark-eyed child holding a large black
cat. Statisticians estimate that there is no moment during the day when
one or more young artists somewhere on the face of the globe are not
painting pictures of children holding cats.

'I call it "Child and Cat",' said the young man. 'Rather a neat title,
don't you think? Gives you the main idea of the thing right away.
That,' he explained, pointing obligingly with the stem of his pipe, 'is
the cat.'

Annette belonged to that large section of the public which likes or
dislikes a picture according to whether its subject happens to please
or displease them. Probably there was not one of the million or so
child-and-cat eyesores at present in existence which she would not have
liked. Besides, he had been very nice about her music.

'I think it's splendid,' she announced.

The young man's face displayed almost more surprise than joy.

'Do you really?' he said. 'Then I can die happy--that is, if you'll let
me come down and listen to those songs of yours first.'

'You would only knock on the floor,' objected Annette.

'I'll never knock on another floor as long as I live,' said the
ex-brute, reassuringly. 'I hate knocking on floors. I don't see
what people want to knock on floors _for_, anyway.'

Friendships ripen quickly in Chelsea. Within the space of an hour and a
quarter Annette had learned that the young man's name was Alan Beverley
(for which Family Heraldic affliction she pitied rather than despised
him), that he did not depend entirely on his work for a living, having
a little money of his own, and that he considered this a fortunate
thing. From the very beginning of their talk he pleased her. She found
him an absolutely new and original variety of the unsuccessful painter.
Unlike Reginald Sellers, who had a studio in the same building, and
sometimes dropped in to drink her coffee and pour out his troubles, he
did not attribute his non-success to any malice or stupidity on the
part of the public. She was so used to hearing Sellers lash the
Philistine and hold forth on unappreciated merit that she could hardly
believe the miracle when, in answer to a sympathetic bromide on the
popular lack of taste in Art, Beverley replied that, as far as he was
concerned, the public showed strong good sense. If he had been striving
with every nerve to win her esteem, he could not have done it more
surely than with that one remark. Though she invariably listened with a
sweet patience which encouraged them to continue long after the point
at which she had begun in spirit to throw things at them, Annette had
no sympathy with men who whined. She herself was a fighter. She hated
as much as anyone the sickening blows which Fate hands out to the
struggling and ambitious; but she never made them the basis of a
monologue act. Often, after a dreary trip round the offices of the
music-publishers, she would howl bitterly in secret, and even gnaw her
pillow in the watches of the night; but in public her pride kept her
unvaryingly bright and cheerful.

Today, for the first time, she revealed something of her woes. There
was that about the mop-headed young man which invited confidences. She
told him of the stony-heartedness of music-publishers, of the
difficulty of getting songs printed unless you paid for them, of their
wretched sales.

'But those songs you've been playing,' said Beverley, 'they've been
published?'

'Yes, those three. But they are the only ones.'

'And didn't they sell?'

'Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn't sell unless somebody well known
sings it. And people promise to sing them, and then don't keep their
word. You can't depend on what they say.'

'Give me their names,' said Beverley, 'and I'll go round tomorrow and
shoot the whole lot. But can't you do anything?'

'Only keep on keeping on.'

'I wish,' he said, 'that any time you're feeling blue about things you
would come up and pour out the poison on me. It's no good bottling it
up. Come up and tell me about it, and you'll feel ever so much better.
Or let me come down. Any time things aren't going right just knock on
the ceiling.'

She laughed.

'Don't rub it in,' pleaded Beverley. 'It isn't fair. There's nobody so
sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come
down, won't you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out
and kill a policeman. But you wouldn't care for that. So the only thing
for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I'll come charging down
and see if there's anything I can do to help.'

'You'll be sorry you ever said this.'

'I won't,' he said stoutly.

'If you really mean it, it _would_ be a relief,' she admitted.
'Sometimes I'd give all the money I'm ever likely to make for someone
to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice
for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: "Sit down and
I will tell you the story of my life." Mustn't it have been heavenly?'

'Well,' said Beverley, rising, 'you know where I am if I'm wanted.
Right up there where the knocking came from.'

'Knocking?' said Annette. 'I remember no knocking.'

'Would you mind shaking hands?' said Beverley.

       *       *       *       *       *

A particularly maddening hour with one of her pupils drove her up the
very next day. Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair.
They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly
worth supporting. Some of them were learning the piano. Others thought
they sang. All had solid ivory skulls. There was about a teaspoonful of
grey matter distributed among the entire squad, and the pupil Annette
had been teaching that afternoon had come in at the tail-end of the
division.

In the studio with Beverley she found Reginald Sellers, standing in a
critical attitude before the easel. She was not very fond of him. He
was a long, offensive, patronizing person, with a moustache that looked
like a smear of charcoal, and a habit of addressing her as 'Ah, little
one!'

Beverley looked up.

'Have you brought your hatchet, Miss Brougham? If you have, you're just
in time to join in the massacre of the innocents. Sellers has been
smiting my child and cat hip and thigh. Look at his eye. There! Did you
see it flash then? He's on the warpath again.'

'My dear Beverley,' said Sellers, rather stiffly, 'I am merely
endeavouring to give you my idea of the picture's defects. I am sorry
if my criticism has to be a little harsh.'

'Go right on,' said Beverley, cordially. 'Don't mind me; it's all for
my good.'

'Well, in a word, then, it is lifeless. Neither the child nor the cat
lives.'

He stepped back a pace and made a frame of his hands.

'The cat now,' he said. 'It is--how shall I put it? It has
no--no--er--'

'That kind of cat wouldn't,' said Beverley. 'It isn't that breed.'

'I think it's a dear cat,' said Annette. She felt her temper, always
quick, getting the better of her. She knew just how incompetent
Sellers was, and it irritated her beyond endurance to see Beverley's
good-humoured acceptance of his patronage.

'At any rate,' said Beverley, with a grin, 'you both seem to recognize
that it is a cat. You're solid on that point, and that's something,
seeing I'm only a beginner.'

'I know, my dear fellow; I know,' said Sellers, graciously. 'You
mustn't let my criticism discourage you. Don't think that your work
lacks promise. Far from it. I am sure that in time you will do very
well indeed. Quite well.'

A cold glitter might have been observed in Annette's eyes.

'Mr Sellers,' she said, smoothly, 'had to work very hard himself before
he reached his present position. You know his work, of course?'

For the first time Beverley seemed somewhat confused.

'I--er--why--' he began.

'Oh, but of course you do,' she went on, sweetly. 'It's in all the
magazines.'

Beverley looked at the great man with admiration, and saw that he had
flushed uncomfortably. He put this down to the modesty of genius.

'In the advertisement pages,' said Annette. 'Mr Sellers drew that
picture of the Waukeesy Shoe and the Restawhile Settee and the tin of
sardines in the Little Gem Sardine advertisement. He is very good at
still life.'

There was a tense silence. Beverley could almost hear the voice of the
referee uttering the count.

'Miss Brougham,' said Sellers at last, spitting out the words, 'has
confined herself to the purely commercial side of my work. There is
another.'

'Why, of course there is. You sold a landscape for five pounds only
eight months ago, didn't you? And another three months before that.'

It was enough. Sellers bowed stiffly and stalked from the room.

Beverley picked up a duster and began slowly to sweep the floor with
it.

'What are you doing?' demanded Annette, in a choking voice.

'The fragments of the wretched man,' whispered Beverley. 'They must be
swept up and decently interred. You certainly have got the punch, Miss
Brougham.'

He dropped the duster with a startled exclamation, for Annette had
suddenly burst into a flood of tears. With her face buried in her hands
she sat in her chair and sobbed desperately.

'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.

'I'm a cat! I'm a beast! I hate myself!'

'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.

'I'm a pig! I'm a fiend!'

'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.

'We're all struggling and trying to get on and having hard luck, and
instead of doing what I can to help, I go and t-t-taunt him with not
being able to sell his pictures! I'm not fit to live! _Oh!_'

'Good Lord!' said Beverley, blankly.

A series of gulping sobs followed, diminishing by degrees into silence.
Presently she looked up and smiled, a moist and pathetic smile.

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'for being so stupid. But he was so horrid and
patronizing to you, I couldn't help scratching. I believe I'm the worst
cat in London.'

'No, this is,' said Beverley, pointing to the canvas. 'At least,
according to the late Sellers. But, I say, tell me, isn't the deceased
a great artist, then? He came curveting in here with his chest out and
started to slate my masterpiece, so I naturally said, "What-ho! 'Tis a
genius!" Isn't he?'

'He can't sell his pictures anywhere. He lives on the little he can get
from illustrating advertisements. And I t-taunt--'

'_Please!_' said Beverley, apprehensively.

She recovered herself with a gulp.

'I can't help it,' she said, miserably. 'I rubbed it in. Oh, it was
hateful of me! But I was all on edge from teaching one of my awful
pupils, and when he started to patronize you--'

She blinked.

'Poor devil!' said Beverley. 'I never guessed. Good Lord!'

Annette rose.

'I must go and tell him I'm sorry,' she said. 'He'll snub me horribly,
but I must.'

She went out. Beverley lit a pipe and stood at the window looking
thoughtfully down into the street.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people
do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of
them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek,
penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled, he
forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood
would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed
herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from
now on he would be more insufferable than ever.

Her surmise proved absolutely correct. His visits to the newcomer's
studio began again, and Beverley's picture, now nearing completion,
came in for criticism enough to have filled a volume. The good humour
with which he received it amazed Annette. She had no proprietary
interest in the painting beyond what she acquired from a growing regard
for its parent (which disturbed her a good deal when she had time to
think of it); but there were moments when only the recollection of her
remorse for her previous outbreak kept her from rending the critic.
Beverley, however, appeared to have no artistic sensitiveness
whatsoever. When Sellers savaged the cat in a manner which should have
brought the S.P.C.A. down upon him, Beverley merely beamed. His
long-sufferingness was beyond Annette's comprehension.

She began to admire him for it.

To make his position as critic still more impregnable, Sellers was now
able to speak as one having authority. After years of floundering, his
luck seemed at last to have turned. His pictures, which for months had
lain at an agent's, careened like crippled battleships, had at length
begun to find a market. Within the past two weeks three landscapes and
an allegorical painting had sold for good prices; and under the
influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When
Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased
by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty
guineas, Sellers' views on Philistines and their crass materialism and
lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some
friendliness of the man Bates.

'To me,' said Beverley, when informed of the event by Annette, 'the
matter has a deeper significance. It proves that Glasgow has at last
produced a sober man. No drinker would have dared face that allegory.
The whole business is very gratifying.'

Beverley himself was progressing slowly in the field of Art. He had
finished the 'Child and Cat', and had taken it to Epstein together with
a letter of introduction from Sellers. Sellers' habitual attitude now
was that of the kindly celebrity who has arrived and wishes to give the
youngsters a chance.

Since its departure Beverley had not done much in the way of actual
execution. Whenever Annette came to his studio he was either sitting in
a chair with his feet on the window-sill, smoking, or in the same
attitude listening to Sellers' views on art. Sellers being on the
upgrade, a man with many pounds to his credit in the bank, had more
leisure now. He had given up his advertisement work, and was planning a
great canvas--another allegorical work. This left him free to devote a
good deal of time to Beverley, and he did so. Beverley sat and smoked
through his harangues. He may have been listening, or he may not.
Annette listened once or twice, and the experience had the effect of
sending her to Beverley, quivering with indignation.

'Why do you _let_ him patronize you like that?' she demanded. 'If
anybody came and talked to me like that about my music, I'd--I'd--I
don't know what I'd do. Yes, even if he were really a great musician.'

'Don't you consider Sellers a great artist, then, even now?'

'He seems to be able to sell his pictures, so I suppose they must be
good; but nothing could give him the right to patronize you as he
does.'

'"My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in an emperor to a
black-beetle,"' quoted Beverley. 'Well, what are we going to do about
it?'

'If only you could sell a picture, too!'

'Ah! Well, I've done my part of the contract. I've delivered the goods.
There the thing is at Epstein's. The public can't blame me if it
doesn't sell. All they've got to do is to waltz in in their thousands
and fight for it. And, by the way, talking of waltzes--'

'Oh, it's finished,' said Annette, dispiritedly. 'Published too, for
that matter.'

'Published! What's the matter, then? Why this drooping sadness? Why
aren't you running around the square, singing like a bird?'

'Because,' said Annette, 'unfortunately, I had to pay the expenses of
publication. It was only five pounds, but the sales haven't caught up
with that yet. If they ever do, perhaps there'll be a new edition.'

'And will you have to pay for that?'

'No. The publishers would.'

'Who are they?'

'Grusczinsky and Buchterkirch.'

'Heavens, then what are you worrying about? The thing's a cert. A man
with a name like Grusczinsky could sell a dozen editions by himself.
Helped and inspired by Buchterkirch, he will make the waltz the talk of
the country. Infants will croon it in their cots.'

'He didn't seem to think so when I saw him last.'

'Of course not. He doesn't know his own power. Grusczinsky's shrinking
diffidence is a by-word in musical circles. He is the genuine Human
Violet. You must give him time.'

'I'll give him anything if he'll only sell an edition or two,' said
Annette.

The outstanding thing was that he did. There seemed no particular
reason why the sale of that waltz should not have been as small and as
slow as that of any other waltz by an unknown composer. But almost
without warning it expanded from a trickle into a flood. Grusczinsky,
beaming paternally whenever Annette entered the shop--which was
often--announced two new editions in a week. Beverley, his artistic
growth still under a watchful eye of Sellers, said he had never had
any doubts as to the success of the thing from the moment when a single
phrase in it had so carried him away that he had been compelled to stamp
his applause enthusiastically on the floor. Even Sellers forgot his own
triumphs long enough to allow him to offer affable congratulations. And
money came rolling in, smoothing the path of life.

Those were great days. There was a hat ...

Life, in short, was very full and splendid. There was, indeed, but one
thing which kept it from being perfect. The usual drawback to success is
that it annoys one's friends so; but in Annette's case this drawback was
absent. Sellers' demeanour towards her was that of an old-established
inmate welcoming a novice into the Hall of Fame. Her pupils--worthy
souls, though bone-headed--fawned upon her. Beverley seemed more pleased
than anyone. Yet it was Beverley who prevented her paradise from being
complete. Successful herself, she wanted all her friends to be successful;
but Beverley, to her discomfort, remained a cheery failure, and worse,
absolutely refused to snub Sellers. It was not as if Sellers' advice and
comments were disinterested. Beverley was simply the instrument on which
he played his songs of triumph. It distressed Annette to such an extent
that now, if she went upstairs and heard Sellers' voice in the studio,
she came down again without knocking.

       *       *       *       *       *

One afternoon, sitting in her room, she heard the telephone-bell ring.

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,' sad 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
Thursday and his day off, he was crouching in a constrained attitude in
his garden, every fibre of his being concentrated on the interment of a
plump young bulb. Consequently, when a chunk of mud came sailing over
the fence, he did not notice it.

A second, however, compelled attention by bursting like a shell on the
back of his neck. He looked up, startled. Nobody was in sight. He was
puzzled. It could hardly be raining mud. Yet the alternative theory,
that someone in the next garden was throwing it, was hardly less
bizarre. The nature of his friendship with Sally's Aunt Jane and old
Mr Williams, her husband, was comfortable rather than rollicking. It
was inconceivable that they should be flinging clods at him.

As he stood wondering whether he should go to the fence and look over,
or simply accept the phenomenon as one of those things which no fellow
can understand, there popped up before him the head and shoulders of a
girl. Poised in her right hand was a third clod, which, seeing that
there was now no need for its services, she allowed to fall to the
ground.

'Halloa!' she said. 'Good morning.'

She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Tom was by way of being the
strong, silent man with a career to think of and no time for bothering
about girls, but he saw that. There was, moreover, a certain alertness
in her expression rarely found in the feminine population of
Millbourne, who were apt to be slightly bovine.

'What do you think _you're_ messing about at?' she said, affably.

Tom was a slow-minded young man, who liked to have his thoughts well
under control before he spoke. He was not one of your gay rattlers.
Besides, there was something about this girl which confused him to an
extraordinary extent. He was conscious of new and strange emotions. He
stood staring silently.

'What's your name, anyway?'

He could answer that. He did so.

'Oh! Mine's Sally Preston. Mrs Williams is my aunt. I've come from
London.'

Tom had no remarks to make about London.

'Have you lived here all your life?'

'Yes,' said Tom.

'My goodness! Don't you ever feel fed up? Don't you want a change?'

Tom considered the point.

'No,' he said.

'Well, _I_ do. I want one now.'

'It's a nice place,' hazarded Tom.

'It's nothing of the sort. It's the beastliest hole in existence. It's
absolutely chronic. Perhaps you wonder why I'm here. Don't think I
_wanted_ to come here. Not me! I was sent. It was like this.' She
gave him a rapid summary of her troubles. 'There! Don't you call it a
bit thick?' she concluded.

Tom considered this point, too.

'You must make the best of it,' he said, at length.

'I won't! I'll make father take me back.'

Tom considered this point also. Rarely, if ever, had he been given so
many things to think about in one morning.

'How?' he inquired, at length.

'I don't know. I'll find some way. You see if I don't. I'll get away
from here jolly quick, I give you _my_ word.'

Tom bent low over a rose-bush. His face was hidden, but the brown of
his neck seemed to take on a richer hue, and his ears were undeniably
crimson. His feet moved restlessly, and from his unseen mouth there
proceeded the first gallant speech his lips had ever framed. Merely
considered as a speech, it was, perhaps, nothing wonderful; but from
Tom it was a miracle of chivalry and polish.

What he said was: 'I hope not.'

And instinct telling him that he had made his supreme effort, and that
anything further must be bathos, he turned abruptly and stalked into
his cottage, where he drank tea and ate bacon and thought chaotic
thoughts. And when his appetite declined to carry him more than half-way
through the third rasher, he understood. He was in love.

These strong, silent men who mean to be head-gardeners before they are
thirty, and eliminate woman from their lives as a dangerous obstacle to
the successful career, pay a heavy penalty when they do fall in love.
The average irresponsible young man who has hung about North Street on
Saturday nights, walked through the meadows and round by the mill and
back home past the creek on Sunday afternoons, taken his seat in the
brake for the annual outing, shuffled his way through the polka at the
tradesmen's ball, and generally seized all legitimate opportunities
for sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, has a hundred advantages
which your successful careerer lacks. There was hardly a moment during
the days which followed when Tom did not regret his neglected
education.

For he was not Sally's only victim in Millbourne. That was the trouble.
Her beauty was not of that elusive type which steals imperceptibly into
the vision of the rare connoisseur. It was sudden and compelling. It
hit you. Bright brown eyes beneath a mass of fair hair, a determined
little chin, a slim figure--these are disturbing things; and the
youths of peaceful Millbourne sat up and took notice as one youth.
Throw your mind back to the last musical comedy you saw. Recall the
leading lady's song with chorus of young men, all proffering devotion
simultaneously in a neat row. Well, that was how the lads of the
village comported themselves towards Sally.

Mr and Mrs Williams, till then a highly-esteemed but little-frequented
couple, were astonished at the sudden influx of visitors. The cottage
became practically a _salon_. There was not an evening when the
little sitting-room looking out on the garden was not packed. It is
true that the conversation lacked some of the sparkle generally found
in the better class of _salon_. To be absolutely accurate, there
was hardly any conversation. The youths of Melbourne were sturdy and
honest. They were the backbone of England. England, in her hour of
need, could have called upon them with the comfortable certainty that,
unless they happened to be otherwise engaged, they would leap to her
aid.

But they did not shine at small-talk. Conversationally they were a
spent force after they had asked Mr Williams how his rheumatism was.
Thereafter they contented themselves with sitting massively about in
corners, glowering at each other. Still, it was all very jolly and
sociable, and helped to pass the long evenings. And, as Mrs Williams
pointed out, in reply to some rather strong remarks from Mr Williams on
the subject of packs of young fools who made it impossible for a man to
get a quiet smoke in his own home, it kept them out of the public-houses.

Tom Kitchener, meanwhile, observed the invasion with growing dismay.
Shyness barred him from the evening gatherings, and what was going on
in that house, with young bloods like Ted Pringle, Albert Parsons,
Arthur Brown, and Joe Blossom (to name four of the most assiduous)
exercising their fascinations at close range, he did not like to
think. Again and again he strove to brace himself up to join the feasts
of reason and flows of soul which he knew were taking place nightly
around the object of his devotions, but every time he failed. Habit is
a terrible thing; it shackles the strongest, and Tom had fallen into
the habit of inquiring after Mr Williams' rheumatism over the garden
fence first thing in the morning.

It was a civil, neighbourly thing to do, but it annihilated the only
excuse he could think of for looking in at night. He could not help
himself. It was like some frightful scourge--the morphine habit, or
something of that sort. Every morning he swore to himself that nothing
would induce him to mention the subject of rheumatism, but no sooner
had the stricken old gentleman's head appeared above the fence than
out it came.

'Morning, Mr Williams.'

'Morning, Tom.'

Pause, indicative of a strong man struggling with himself; then:

'How's the rheumatism, Mr Williams?'

'Better, thank'ee, Tom.'

And there he was, with his guns spiked.

However, he did not give up. He brought to his wooing the same
determination which had made him second gardener at the Hall at
twenty-five. He was a novice at the game, but instinct told him that a
good line of action was to shower gifts. He did so. All he had to shower
was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the
goddess Ceres to be talked about. His garden became a perfect crater,
erupting vegetables. Why vegetables? I think I hear some heckler cry.
Why not flowers--fresh, fair, fragrant flowers? You can do a lot with
flowers. Girls love them. There is poetry in them. And, what is more,
there is a recognized language of flowers. Shoot in a rose, or a
calceolaria, or an herbaceous border, or something, I gather, and you
have made a formal proposal of marriage without any of the trouble of
rehearsing a long speech and practising appropriate gestures in front
of your bedroom looking-glass. Why, then, did not Thomas Kitchener give
Sally Preston flowers? Well, you see, unfortunately, it was now late
autumn, and there were no flowers. Nature had temporarily exhausted her
floral blessings, and was jogging along with potatoes and artichokes
and things. Love is like that. It invariably comes just at the wrong
time. A few months before there had been enough roses in Tom
Kitchener's garden to win the hearts of a dozen girls. Now there were
only vegetables, 'Twas ever thus.

It was not to be expected that a devotion so practically displayed
should escape comment. This was supplied by that shrewd observer, old
Mr Williams. He spoke seriously to Tom across the fence on the subject
of his passion.

'Young Tom,' he said, 'drop it.'

Tom muttered unintelligibly. Mr Williams adjusted the top-hat without
which he never stirred abroad, even into his garden. He blinked
benevolently at Tom.

'You're making up to that young gal of Jane's,' he proceeded. 'You
can't deceive _me_. All these p'taties, and what not. _I_ seen
your game fast enough. Just you drop it, young Tom.'

'Why?' muttered Tom, rebelliously. A sudden distaste for old Mr
Williams blazed within him.

'Why? 'Cos you'll only burn your fingers if you don't, that's why. I
been watching this young gal of Jane's, and I seen what sort of a young
gal she be. She's a flipperty piece, that's what she be. You marry that
young gal, Tom, and you'll never have no more quiet and happiness.
She'd just take and turn the place upsy-down on you. The man as marries
that young gal has got to be master in his own home. He's got to show
her what's what. Now, you ain't got the devil in you to do that, Tom.
You're what I might call a sort of a sheep. I admires it in you, Tom. I
like to see a young man steady and quiet, same as what you be. So
that's how it is, you see. Just you drop this foolishness, young Tom,
and leave that young gal be, else you'll burn your fingers, same as
what I say.'

And, giving his top-hat a rakish tilt, the old gentleman ambled
indoors, satisfied that he had dropped a guarded hint in a pleasant and
tactful manner.

It is to be supposed that this interview stung Tom to swift action.
Otherwise, one cannot explain why he should not have been just as
reticent on the subject nearest his heart when bestowing on Sally the
twenty-seventh cabbage as he had been when administering the hundred
and sixtieth potato. At any rate, the fact remains that, as that
fateful vegetable changed hands across the fence, something resembling
a proposal of marriage did actually proceed from him. As a sustained
piece of emotional prose it fell short of the highest standard. Most of
it was lost at the back of his throat, and what did emerge was mainly
inaudible. However, as she distinctly caught the word 'love' twice, and
as Tom was shuffling his feet and streaming with perspiration, and
looking everywhere at once except at her, Sally grasped the situation.
Whereupon, without any visible emotion, she accepted him.

Tom had to ask her to repeat her remark. He could not believe his
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
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, overbalancing, 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
ear said, 'Keep still; don't struggle. There's no danger.'

George did not struggle. His brain, working with the cool rapidity of a
buzz-saw in an ice-box, had planned a line of action. Few things are
more difficult in this world for a young man than the securing of an
introduction to the right girl under just the right conditions. When he
is looking his best he is presented to her in the midst of a crowd, and
is swept away after a rapid hand-shake. When there is no crowd he has
toothache, or the sun has just begun to make his nose peel. Thousands
of young lives have been saddened in this manner.

How different was George's case! By this simple accident, he reflected,
as, helping the good work along with an occasional surreptitious
leg-stroke, he was towed shorewards, there had been formed an
acquaintanceship, if nothing more, which could not lightly be broken. A
girl who has saved a man from drowning cannot pass him by next day with
a formal bow. And what a girl, too! There had been a time, in extreme
youth, when his feminine ideal was the sort of girl who has fuzzy,
golden hair, and drops things. Indeed in his first year at the
University he had said--and written--as much to one of the type, the
episode concluding with a strong little drama, in which a wrathful,
cheque-signing father had starred, supported by a subdued, misogynistic
son. Which things, aided by the march of time, had turned George's
tastes towards the healthy, open-air girl, who did things instead of
dropping them.

The pleasantest functions must come to an end sooner or later; and in
due season George felt his heels grate on the sand. His preserver
loosed her hold. They stood up and faced each other. George began to
express his gratitude as best he could--it was not easy to find neat,
convincing sentences on the spur of the moment--but she cut him short.

'Of course, it was nothing. Nothing at all,' she said, brushing the
sea-water from her eyes. 'It was just lucky I happened to be there.'

'It was splendid,' said the infatuated dramatist. 'It was magnificent.
It--'

He saw that she was smiling.

'You're very wet,' she said.

George glanced down at his soaked clothes. It had been a nice suit
once.

'Hadn't you better hurry back and change into something dry?'

Looking round about him, George perceived that sundry of the
inquisitive were swooping down, with speculation in their eyes. It was
time to depart.

'Have you far to go?'

'Not far. I'm staying at the Beach View Hotel.'

'Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again.'

'We shall,' said George confidently.

'How did you happen to fall in?'

'I was--er--I was looking at something in the water.'

'I thought you were,' said the girl, quietly.

George blushed.

'I know,' he said, 'it was abominably rude of me to stare like that;
but--'

'You should learn to swim,' interrupted the girl. 'I can't understand
why every boy in the country isn't made to learn to swim before he's
ten years old. And it isn't a bit difficult, really. I could teach you
in a week.'

The struggle between George and George's conscience was brief. The
conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had
no sort of chance from the start.

'I wish you would,' said George. And with those words he realized that
he had definitely committed himself to his hypocritical role. Till
that moment explanation would have been difficult, but possible. Now it
was impossible.

'I will,' said the girl. 'I'll start tomorrow if you like.' She waded
into the water.

'We'll talk it over at the hotel,' she said, hastily. 'Here comes a
crowd of horrid people. I'm going to swim out again.'

She hurried into deeper water, while George, turning, made his way
through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got
within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The
other nine asked him if he had fallen.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Marvis Bay in company with
an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel.
Later, after dinner, meeting both ladies on the esplanade, he gleaned
further information--to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her
aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Marvis Bay but preferred
Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go
indoors.

The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon
George's conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society
as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was
different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles.
The cue-withholding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal
comedian--up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was
endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not
so bad as they seemed.

'It's sure to be all right on the night,' she said.

How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought
he had never heard such a clear-headed, well-expressed remark.

'I suppose it will,' he said, 'but they were very bad when I left.
Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a
Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the
piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his
part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the
comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in
new scenes for him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just came away
and left them to fight it out among themselves.'

'I'm sure you have no need to worry. A play with such a good story is
certain to succeed.'

George had previously obliged with a brief description of the plot of
_The Footpills_.

'Did you like the story?' he said, tenderly.

'I thought it was fine.'

'How sympathetic you are!' cooed George, glutinously, edging a little
closer. 'Do you know--'

'Shall we be going back to the hotel?' said the girl.

       *       *       *       *       *

Those noisome creatures, the hired murderers of _Fate's Footpills_,
descended upon Marvis Bay early next afternoon, and George, meeting
them at the station, in reluctant pursuance of a promise given to
Arthur Mifflin, felt moodily that, if only they could make their
acting one-half as full of colour as their clothes, the play would be
one of the most pronounced successes of modern times. In the forefront
gleamed, like the white plumes of Navarre, the light flannel suit of
Arthur Mifflin, the woodenest juvenile in captivity.

His woodenness was, however, confined to stage rehearsals. It may be
mentioned that, once the run of a piece had begun, he was sufficiently
volatile, and in private life he was almost excessively so--a fact
which had been noted at an early date by the keen-eyed authorities of
his University, the discovery leading to his tearing himself away from
Alma Mater by request with some suddenness. He was a long, slender
youth, with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a passionate fondness for
the sound of his own voice.

'Well, here we are,' he said, kicking breezily at George's leg with his
cane.

'I saw you,' said George, coldly, side-stepping.

'The whole team,' continued Mr Mifflin; 'all bright, bonny, and trained
to the minute.'

'What happened after I left?' George asked. 'Has anybody begun to act
yet? Or are they waiting till the dress-rehearsal?'

'The rehearsals,' admitted Mr Mifflin, handsomely, 'weren't perfect;
but you wait. It'll be all right on the night.'

George thought he had never heard such a futile, vapid remark.

'Besides,' said Mr Mifflin, 'I have an idea which will make the show.
Lend me your ear--both ears. You shall have them back. Tell me: what
pulls people into a theatre? A good play? Sometimes. But failing that,
as in the present case, what? Fine acting by the leading juvenile? We
have that, but it is not enough. No, my boy; advertisement is the
thing. Look at all these men on the beach. Are they going to roll in of
their own free wills to see a play like _The Footpills_? Not on
your life. About the time the curtain rises every man of them will be
sitting in his own private corner of the beach--'

'How many corners do you think the beach has?'

'Gazing into a girl's eyes, singing, "Shine on, thou harvest moon", and
telling her how his boss is practically dependent on his advice. You
know.'

'I don't,' said George, coldly.

'Unless,' proceeded Mr Mifflin, 'we advertise. And by advertise, I
mean advertise in the right way. We have a Press-agent, but for all the
good he does he might be back on the old farm, gathering in the hay.
Luckily for us, I am among those present. I have brains, I have
resource. What's that?'

'I said nothing.'

'I thought you did. Well, I have an idea which will drag these people
like a magnet. I thought it out coming down in the train.'

'What is it?'

'I'll tell you later. There are a few details to be worked upon first.
Meanwhile, let us trickle to the sea-front and take a sail in one of
those boats. I am at my best in a boat. I rather fancy Nature intended
me for a Viking.'

Matters having been arranged with the financier to whom the boat
belonged, they set forth. Mr Mifflin, having remarked, 'Yo-ho!' in a
meditative voice, seated himself at the helm, somewhat saddened by his
failure to borrow a quid of tobacco from the _Ocean Beauty's_
proprietor. For, as he justly observed, without properties and make-up,
where were you? George, being skilled in the ways of boats, was in
charge of the sheet. The summer day had lost its oppressive heat. The
sun no longer beat down on the face of the waters. A fresh breeze had
sprung up. George, manipulating the sheet automatically, fell into a
reverie. A moment comes in the life of every man when an inward voice
whispers to him, 'This is The One!' In George's case the voice had not
whispered; it had shouted. From now onward there could be but one woman
in the world for him. From now onwards--The _Ocean Beauty_ gave a
sudden plunge. George woke up.

'What the deuce are you doing with that tiller?' he inquired.

'My gentle somnambulist,' said Mr Mifflin, aggrieved, 'I was doing
nothing with this tiller. We will now form a commission to inquire into
what you were doing with that sheet. Were you asleep?'

'My fault,' said George; 'I was thinking.'

'If you must break the habit of a lifetime,' said Mr Mifflin,
complainingly, 'I wish you would wait till we get ashore. You nearly
upset us.'

'It shan't happen again. They are tricky, these sailing boats--turn
over in a second. Whatever you do, don't get her broadside on. There's
more breeze out here than I thought there was.'

Mr Mifflin uttered a startled exclamation.

'What's the matter?' asked George.

'Just like a flash,' said Mr Mifflin, complacently. 'It's always the
way with me. Give me time, and the artistic idea is bound to come. Just
some little thought, some little, apparently obvious, idea which stamps
the man of genius. It beats me why I didn't think of it before. Why, of
course, a costume piece with a male star is a hundred times more
effective.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I see now,' continued Mr Mifflin, 'that there was a flaw in my
original plan. My idea was this. We were talking in the train about
the bathing down here, and Jane happened to say she could swim some,
and it suddenly came to me.'

Jane was the leading woman, she who omitted to give cues.

'I said to myself, "George is a sportsman. He will be delighted to do
a little thing like that".'

'Like to do what?'

'Why, rescue Jane.'

'What!'

'She and you,' said Mr Mifflin, 'were to go in swimming together,
while I waited on the sands, holding our bone-headed Press-agent on a
leash. About a hundred yards from the shore up go her arms. Piercing
scream. Agitated crowds on the beach. What is the matter? What has
happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert
Callender, author of _Fate's Footballs_, which opens at the Beach
Theatre on Monday evening next, at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her.
See! He has her. He is bringing her in. She is safe. How pleased her
mother will be! And the public, what a bit of luck for them! They will
be able to see her act at eight-fifteen sharp on Monday after all. Back
you come to the shore. Cheering crowds. Weeping women. Strong
situation. I unleash the Press-agent, and off he shoots, in time to get
the story into the evening paper. It was a great idea, but I see now
there were one or two flaws in it.'

'You do, do you?' said George.

'It occurs to me on reflection that after all you wouldn't have agreed
to it. A something, I don't know what, which is lacking in your nature,
would have made you reject the scheme.'

'I'm glad that occurred to you.'

'And a far greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you
and it boomed Jane, but I didn't get a thing out of it. My revised
scheme is a thousand times better in every way.'

'Don't say you have another.'

'I have. And,' added Mr Mifflin, with modest pride, 'it is a winner.
This time I unhesitatingly assert that I have the goods. In about one
minute from now you will hear me exclaim, in a clear musical voice, the
single word, "Jump!" That is your cue to leap over the side as quick as
you can move, for at that precise moment this spanking craft is going
to capsize.'

George spun round in his seat. Mr Mifflin's face was shining with
kindly enthusiasm. The shore was at least two hundred yards away, and
that morning he had had his first swimming-lesson.

'A movement of the tiller will do it. These accidents are common
objects of the seashore. I may mention that I can swim just enough to
keep myself afloat; so it's up to you. I wouldn't do this for everyone,
but, seeing that we were boys together--Are you ready?'

'Stop!' cried George. 'Don't do it! Listen!'

'Are you ready?'

The _Ocean Beauty_ gave a plunge.

'You lunatic! Listen to me. It--'

'Jump!' said Mr Mifflin.

George came to the surface some yards from the overturned boat, and,
looking round for Mr Mifflin, discovered that great thinker treading
water a few feet away.

'Get to work, George,' he remarked.

It is not easy to shake one's fist at a man when in deep water, but
George managed it.

'For twopence,' he cried, 'I'd leave you to look after yourself.'

'You can do better than that,' said Mr Mifflin. 'I'll give you
threepence to tow me in. Hurry up. It's cold.'

In gloomy silence George gripped him by the elbows. Mr Mifflin looked
over his shoulder.

'We shall have a good house,' he said. 'The stalls are full already,
and the dress-circle's filling. Work away, George, you're doing fine.
This act is going to be a scream from start to finish.'

With pleasant conversation he endeavoured to while away the monotony of
the journey; but George made no reply. He was doing some rapid
thinking. With ordinary luck, he felt bitterly, all would have been
well. He could have gone on splashing vigorously under his teacher's
care for a week, gradually improving till he emerged into a reasonably
proficient swimmer. But now! In an age of miracles he might have
explained away his present performance; but how was he to--And then
there came to him an idea--simple, as all great ideas are, but
magnificent.

He stopped and trod water.

'Tired?' said Mr Mifflin. 'Well, take a rest,' he added, kindly, 'take
a rest. No need to hurry.'

'Look here,' said George, 'this piece is going to be recast. We're
going to exchange parts. You're rescuing me. See? Never mind why. I
haven't time to explain it to you now. Do you understand?'

'No,' said Mr Mifflin.

'I'll get behind you and push you; but don't forget, when we get to the
shore, that you've done the rescuing.'

Mr Mifflin pondered.

'Is this wise?' he said. 'It is a strong part, the rescuer, but I'm not
sure the other wouldn't suit my style better. The silent hand-grip, the
catch in the voice. You want a practised actor for that. I don't think
you'd be up to it, George.'

'Never mind about me. That's how it's going to be.'

Mr Mifflin pondered once more.

'No,' he said at length, 'it wouldn't do. You mean well, George, but it
would kill the show. We'll go on as before.'

'Will we?' said George, unpleasantly. 'Would you like to know what I'm
going to do to you, then? I'm going to hit you very hard under the jaw,
and I'm going to take hold of your neck and squeeze it till you lose
consciousness, and then I'm going to drag you to the beach and tell
people I had to hit you because you lost your head and struggled.'

Mr Mifflin pondered for the third time.

'You are?' he said.

'I am,' said George.

'Then,' said Mr Mifflin, cordially, 'say no more. I take your point. My
objections are removed. But,' he concluded, 'this is the last time I
come bathing with you, George.'

Mr Mifflin's artistic misgivings as to his colleague's ability to
handle so subtle a part as that of rescuee were more than justified on
their arrival. A large and interested audience had collected by the
time they reached the shore, an audience to which any artist should
have been glad to play; but George, forcing his way through, hurried to
the hotel without attempting to satisfy them. Not a single silent
hand-shake did he bestow on his rescuer. There was no catch in his voice
as he made the one remark which he did make--to a man with whiskers who
asked him if the boat had upset. As an exhibition of rapid footwork
his performance was good. In other respects it was poor.

He had just changed his wet clothes--it seemed to him that he had
been doing nothing but change his wet clothes since he had come to
Marvis Bay--when Mr Mifflin entered in a bathrobe.

'They lent me this downstairs,' he explained, 'while they dried my
clothes. They would do anything for me. I'm the popular hero. My boy,
you made the mistake of your life when you threw up the rescuer part.
It has all the fat. I see that now. The rescuer plays the other man off
the stage every time. I've just been interviewed by the fellow on the
local newspaper. He's correspondent to a couple of London papers. The
country will ring with this thing. I've told them all the parts I've
ever played and my favourite breakfast food. There's a man coming up to
take my photograph tomorrow. _Footpills_ stock has gone up with a
run. Wait till Monday and see what sort of a house we shall draw. By
the way, the reporter fellow said one funny thing. He asked if you
weren't the same man who was rescued yesterday by a girl. I said of
course not--that you had only come down yesterday. But he stuck to it
that you were.'

'He was quite right.'

'What!'

'I was.'

Mr Mifflin sat down on the bed.

'This fellow fell off the pier, and a girl brought him in.'

George nodded.

'And that was you?'

George nodded.

Mr Mifflin's eyes opened wide.

'It's the heat,' he declared, finally. 'That and the worry of
rehearsals. I expect a doctor could give the technical name for it.
It's a what-do-you-call-it--an obsession. You often hear of cases.
Fellows who are absolutely sane really, but cracked on one particular
subject. Some of them think they're teapots and things. You've got a
craving for being rescued from drowning. What happens, old man? Do you
suddenly get the delusion that you can't swim? No, it can't be that,
because you were doing all the swimming for the two of us just now. I
don't know, though. Maybe you didn't realize that you were swimming?'

George finished lacing his shoe and looked up.

'Listen,' he said; 'I'll talk slow, so that you can understand. Suppose
you fell off a pier, and a girl took a great deal of trouble to get you
to the shore, would you say, "Much obliged, but you needn't have been
so officious. I can swim perfectly well?"'

Mr Mifflin considered this point. Intelligence began to dawn in his
face. 'There is more in this than meets the eye,' he said. 'Tell me
all.'

'This morning'--George's voice grew dreamy--'she gave me a
swimming-lesson. She thought it was my first. Don't cackle like that.
There's nothing to laugh at.'

Mr Mifflin contradicted this assertion.

'There is you,' he said, simply. 'This should be a lesson to you,
George. Avoid deceit. In future be simple and straightforward. Take me
as your model. You have managed to scrape through this time. Don't risk
it again. You are young. There is still time to make a fresh start. It
only needs will-power. Meanwhile, lend me something to wear. They are
going to take a week drying my clothes.'

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a rehearsal at the Beach Theatre that evening. George
attended it in a spirit of resignation and left it in one of elation.
Three days had passed since his last sight of the company at work, and
in those three days, apparently, the impossible had been achieved.
There was a snap and go about the piece now. The leading lady had at
length mastered that cue, and gave it out with bell-like clearness.
Arthur Mifflin, as if refreshed and braced by his salt-water bath, was
infusing a welcome vigour into his part. And even the comedian, George
could not help admitting, showed signs of being on the eve of becoming
funny. It was with a light heart and a light step that he made his way
back to the hotel.

In the veranda were a number of basket-chairs. Only one was occupied.
He recognized the occupant.

'I've just come back from a rehearsal,' he said, seating himself beside
her.

'Really?'

'The whole thing is different,' he went on, buoyantly. 'They know their
lines. They act as if they meant it. Arthur Mifflin's fine. The
comedian's improved till you wouldn't know him. I'm awfully pleased
about it.'

'Really?'

George felt damped.

'I thought you might be pleased, too,' he said, lamely.

'Of course I am glad that things are going well. Your accident this
afternoon was lucky, too, in a way, was it not? It will interest people
in the play.'

'You heard about it?'

'I have been hearing about nothing else.'

'Curious it happening so soon after--'

'And so soon before the production of your play. Most curious.'

There was a silence. George began to feel uneasy. You could never tell
with women, of course. It might be nothing; but it looked uncommonly as
if--

He changed the subject.

'How is your aunt this evening, Miss Vaughan?'

'Quite well, thank you. She went in. She found it a little chilly.'

George heartily commended her good sense. A little chilly did not begin
to express it. If the girl had been like this all the evening, he
wondered her aunt had not caught pneumonia. He tried again.

'Will you have time to give me another lesson tomorrow?' he said.

She turned on him.

'Mr Callender, don't you think this farce has gone on long enough?'

Once, in the dear, dead days beyond recall, when but a happy child,
George had been smitten unexpectedly by a sportive playmate a bare
half-inch below his third waistcoat-button. The resulting emotions
were still green in his memory. As he had felt then, so did he feel
now.

'Miss Vaughan! I don't understand.'

'Really?'

'What have I done?'

'You have forgotten how to swim.'

A warm and prickly sensation began to manifest itself in the region of
George's forehead.

'Forgotten!'

'Forgotten. And in a few months. I thought I had seen you before, and
today I remembered. It was just about this time last year that I saw
you at Hayling Island swimming perfectly wonderfully, and today you are
taking lessons. Can you explain it?'

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
say that he reformed with a jerk. It was a parallel case to those
sudden conversions at Welsh revival meetings. On Monday evening he had
been at his worst. On the following morning he was a changed man. Not
even after the original thunderstorm had he been more docile. Maud
could not believe that first. The lip, once bitten, was stretched in a
smile. She looked for the frown. It was not there.

Next day it was the same; and the day after that. When a week had gone
by, and still the improvement was maintained, Maud felt that she might
now look upon it as permanent. A great load seemed to have been taken
off her mind. She revised her views on the world. It was a very good
world, quite one of the best, with Arthur beaming upon it like a sun.

A number of eminent poets and essayists, in the course of the last few
centuries, have recorded, in their several ways, their opinion that one
can have too much of a good thing. The truth applies even to such a
good thing as absence of jealousy. Little by little Maud began to grow
uneasy. It began to come home to her that she preferred the old Arthur,
of the scowl and the gnawed lip. Of him she had at least been sure.
Whatever discomfort she may have suffered from his spirited imitations
of Othello, at any rate they had proved that he loved her. She would
have accepted gladly an equal amount of discomfort now in exchange for
the same certainty. She could not read this new Arthur. His thoughts
were a closed book. Superficially, he was all that she could have
wished. He still continued to escort her to the Tube, to buy her
occasional presents, to tap, when conversing, the pleasantly
sentimental vein. But now these things were not enough. Her heart was
troubled. Her thoughts frightened her. The little black imp at the back
of her mind kept whispering and whispering, till at last she was forced
to listen. 'He's tired of you. He doesn't love you any more. He's tired
of you.'

       *       *       *       *       *

It is not everybody who, in times of mental stress, can find ready to
hand among his or her personal acquaintances an expert counsellor,
prepared at a moment's notice to listen with sympathy and advise with
tact and skill. Everyone's world is full of friends, relatives, and
others, who will give advice on any subject that may be presented to
them; but there are crises in life which cannot be left to the amateur.
It is the aim of a certain widely read class of paper to fill this
void.

Of this class _Fireside Chat_ was one of the best-known
representatives. In exchange for one penny its five hundred thousand
readers received every week a serial story about life in highest
circles, a short story packed with heart-interest, articles on the
removal of stains and the best method of coping with the cold mutton,
anecdotes of Royalty, photographs of peeresses, hints on dress, chats
about baby, brief but pointed dialogues between Blogson and Snogson,
poems, Great Thoughts from the Dead and Brainy, half-hours in the
editor's cosy sanctum, a slab of brown paper, and--the journal's
leading feature--Advice on Matters of the Heart. The weekly
contribution of the advice specialist of _Fireside Chat_, entitled
'In the Consulting Room, by Dr Cupid', was made up mainly of Answers to
Correspondents. He affected the bedside manner of the kind, breezy old
physician; and probably gave a good deal of comfort. At any rate, he
always seemed to have plenty of cases on his hands.

It was to this expert that Maud took her trouble. She had been a
regular reader of the paper for several years; and had, indeed,
consulted the great man once before, when he had replied favourably to
her query as to whether it would be right for her to accept caramels
from Arthur, then almost a stranger. It was only natural that she
should go to him now, in an even greater dilemma. The letter was not
easy to write, but she finished it at last; and, after an anxious
interval, judgement was delivered as follows:

'Well, well, well! Bless my soul, what is all this? M. P. writes me:

'I am a young lady, and until recently was very, very happy, except
that my fiance, though truly loving me, was of a very jealous
disposition, though I am sure I gave him no cause. He would scowl when
I spoke to any other man, and this used to make me unhappy. But for
some time now he has quite changed, and does not seem to mind at all,
and though at first this made me feel happy, to think that he had got
over his jealousy, I now feel unhappy because I am beginning to be
afraid that he no longer cares for me. Do you think this is so, and
what ought I to do?'

'My dear young lady, I should like to be able to reassure you; but it
is kindest sometimes, you know, to be candid, however it may hurt. It
has been my experience that, when jealousy flies out of the window,
indifference comes in at the door. In the old days a knight would joust
for the love of a ladye, risking physical injury rather than permit
others to rival him in her affections. I think, M. P., that you should
endeavour to discover the true state of your fiance's feelings. I do
not, of course, advocate anything in the shape of unwomanly behaviour,
of which I am sure, my dear young lady, you are incapable; but I think
that you should certainly try to pique your fiance, to test him. At
your next ball, for instance, refuse him a certain number of dances, on
the plea that your programme is full. At garden-parties, at-homes, and
so on, exhibit pleasure in the society and conversation of other
gentlemen, and mark his demeanour as you do so. These little tests
should serve either to relieve your apprehensions, provided they are
groundless, or to show you the truth. And, after all, if it is the
truth, it must be faced, must it not, M. P.?'

Before the end of the day Maud knew the whole passage by heart. The
more her mind dwelt on it, the more clearly did it seem to express what
she had felt but could not put into words. The point about jousting
struck her as particularly well taken. She had looked up 'joust' in the
dictionary, and it seemed to her that in these few words was contained
the kernel of her trouble. In the old days, if any man had attempted to
rival him in her affections (outside business hours), Arthur would
undoubtedly have jousted--and jousted with the vigour of one who means
to make his presence felt. Now, in similar circumstances, he would
probably step aside politely, as who should say, 'After you, my dear
Alphonse.'

There was no time to lose. An hour after her first perusal of Dr
Cupid's advice, Maud had begun to act upon it. By the time the first
lull in the morning's work had come, and there was a chance for private
conversation, she had invented an imaginary young man, a shadowy
Lothario, who, being introduced into her home on the previous Sunday by
her brother Horace, had carried on in a way you wouldn't believe,
paying all manner of compliments.

'He said I had such white hands,' said Maud.

Arthur nodded, stropping a razor the while. He appeared to be bearing
the revelations with complete fortitude. Yet, only a few weeks before,
a customer's comment on this same whiteness had stirred him to his
depths.

'And this morning--what do you think? Why, he meets me as bold as you
please, and gives me a cake of toilet soap. Like his impudence!'

She paused, hopefully.

'Always useful, soap,' said Arthur, politely sententious.

'Lovely it was,' went on Maud, dully conscious of failure, but
stippling in like an artist the little touches which give atmosphere
and verisimilitude to a story. 'All scented. Horace will tease me about
it, I can tell you.'

She paused. Surely he must--Why, a sea-anemone would be torn with
jealousy at such a tale.

Arthur did not even wince. He was charming about it. Thought it very
kind of the young fellow. Didn't blame him for being struck by the
whiteness of her hands. Touched on the history of soap, which he
happened to have been reading up in the encyclopedia at the free
library. And behaved altogether in such a thoroughly gentlemanly
fashion that Maud stayed awake half the night, crying.

       *       *       *       *       *

If Maud had waited another twenty-four hours there would have been no
need for her to have taxed her powers of invention, for on the
following day there entered the shop and her life a young man who was
not imaginary--a Lothario of flesh and blood. He made his entry with
that air of having bought most of the neighbouring property which
belongs exclusively to minor actors, men of weight on the Stock
Exchange, and American professional pugilists.

Mr 'Skipper' Shute belonged to the last-named of the three classes. He
had arrived in England two months previously for the purpose of holding
a conference at eight-stone four with one Joseph Edwardes, to settle a
question of superiority at that weight which had been vexing the
sporting public of two countries for over a year. Having successfully
out-argued Mr Edwardes, mainly by means of strenuous work in the
clinches, he was now on the eve of starting on a lucrative music-hall
tour with his celebrated inaudible monologue. As a result of these
things he was feeling very, very pleased with the world in general, and
with Mr Skipper Shute in particular. And when Mr Shute was pleased with
himself his manner was apt to be of the breeziest.

He breezed into the shop, took a seat, and, having cast an experienced
eye at Maud, and found her pleasing, extended both hands, and observed,
'Go the limit, kid.'

At any other time Maud might have resented being addressed as 'kid' by
a customer, but now she welcomed it. With the exception of a slight
thickening of the lobe of one ear, Mr Shute bore no outward signs of
his profession. And being, to use his own phrase, a 'swell dresser', he
was really a most presentable young man. Just, in fact, what Maud
needed. She saw in him her last hope. If any faint spark of his ancient
fire still lingered in Arthur, it was through Mr Shute that it must be
fanned.

She smiled upon Mr Shute. She worked on his robust fingers as if it
were an artistic treat to be permitted to handle them. So carefully did
she toil that she was still busy when Arthur, taking off his apron and
putting on his hat, went out for his twenty-minutes' lunch, leaving
them alone together.

The door had scarcely shut when Mr Shute bent forward.

'Say!'

He sank his voice to a winning whisper.

'You look good to muh,' he said, gallantly.

'The idea!' said Maud, tossing her head.

'On the level,' Mr Shute assured her.

Maud laid down her orange-sticks.

'Don't be silly,' she said. 'There--I've finished.'

'I've not,' said Mr Shute. 'Not by a mile. Say!'

'Well?'

'What do you do with your evenings?'

'I go home.'

'Sure. But when you don't? It's a poor heart that never rejoices. Don't
you ever whoop it up?'

'Whoop it up?'

'The mad whirl,' explained Mr Shute. 'Ice-cream soda and buck-wheat
cakes, and a happy evening at lovely Luna Park.'

'I don't know where Luna Park is.'

'What did they teach you at school? It's out in that direction,' said
Mr Shute, pointing over his shoulder. 'You go straight on about three
thousand miles till you hit little old New York; then you turn to the
right. Say, don't you ever get a little treat? Why not come along to
the White City some old evening? This evening?'

'Mr Welsh is taking me to the White City tonight.'

'And who is Mr Welsh?'

'The gentleman who has just gone out.'

'Is that so? Well, he doesn't look a live one, but maybe it's just
because he's had bad news today. You never can tell.' He rose.
'Farewell, Evelina, fairest of your sex. We shall meet again; so keep a
stout heart.'

And, taking up his cane, straw hat, and yellow gloves, Mr Shute
departed, leaving Maud to her thoughts.

She was disappointed. She had expected better results. Mr Shute had
lowered with ease the record for gay badinage, hitherto held by the
red-faced customer; yet to all appearances there had been no change in
Arthur's manner. But perhaps he had scowled (or bitten his lip), and
she had not noticed it. Apparently he had struck Mr Shute, an unbiased
spectator, as gloomy. Perhaps at some moment when her eyes had been on
her work--She hoped for the best.

Whatever his feelings may have been during the afternoon, Arthur was
undeniably cheerful that evening. He was in excellent spirits. His
light-hearted abandon on the Wiggle-Woggle had been noted and commented
upon by several lookers-on. Confronted with the Hairy Ainus, he had
touched a high level of facetiousness. And now, as he sat with her
listening to the band, he was crooning joyously to himself in
accompaniment to the music, without, it would appear, a care in the
world.

Maud was hurt and anxious. In a mere acquaintance this blithe attitude
would have been welcome. It would have helped her to enjoy her evening.
But from Arthur at that particular moment she looked for something
else. Why was he cheerful? Only a few hours ago she had been--yes,
flirting with another man before his very eyes. What right had he to be
cheerful? He ought to be heated, full of passionate demands for an
explanation--a flushed, throaty thing to be coaxed back into a good
temper and then forgiven--all this at great length--for having been in
a bad one. Yes, she told herself, she had wanted certainty one way or
the other, and here it was. Now she knew. He no longer cared for her.

She trembled.

'Cold?' said Arthur. 'Let's walk. Evenings beginning to draw in now.
Lum-da-diddley-ah. That's what I call a good tune. Give me something
lively and bright. Dumty-umpty-iddley-ah. Dum tum--'

'Funny thing--' said Maud, deliberately.

'What's a funny thing?'

'The gentleman in the brown suit whose hands I did this afternoon--'

'He was,' agreed Arthur, brightly. 'A very funny thing.'

Maud frowned. Wit at the expense of Hairy Ainus was one thing--at her
own another.

'I was about to say,' she went on precisely, 'that it was a funny
thing, a coincidence, seeing that I was already engaged, that the
gentleman in the brown suit whose hands I did this afternoon should
have asked me to come here, to the White City, with him tonight.'

For a moment they walked on in silence. To Maud it seemed a hopeful
silence. Surely it must be the prelude to an outburst.

'Oh!' he said, and stopped.

Maud's heart gave a leap. Surely that was the old tone?

A couple of paces, and he spoke again.

'I didn't hear him ask you.'

His voice was disappointingly level.

'He asked me after you had gone out to lunch.'

'It's a nuisance,' said Arthur, cheerily, 'when things clash like that.
But perhaps he'll ask you again. Nothing to prevent you coming here
twice. Well repays a second visit, I always say. I think--'

'You shouldn't,' said a voice behind him. 'It hurts the head. Well,
kid, being shown a good time?'

The possibility of meeting Mr Shute had not occurred to Maud. She had
assumed that, being aware that she would be there with another, he
would have stayed away. It may, however, be remarked that she did not
know Mr Shute. He was not one of your sensitive plants. He smiled
pleasantly upon her, looking very dapper in evening dress and a silk
hat that, though a size too small for him, shone like a mirror.

Maud hardly knew whether she was glad or sorry to see him. It did not
seem to matter much now either way. Nothing seemed to matter much, in
fact. Arthur's cheery acceptance of the news that she received
invitations from others had been like a blow, leaving her numb and
listless.

She made the introductions. The two men eyed each other.

'Pleased to meet you,' said Mr Shute.

'Weather keeps up,' said Arthur.

And from that point onward Mr Shute took command.

It is to be assumed that this was not the first time that Mr Shute had
made one of a trio in these circumstances, for the swift dexterity with
which he lost Arthur was certainly not that of a novice. So smoothly
was it done that it was not until she emerged from the Witching Waves,
guided by the pugilist's slim but formidable right arm, that Maud
realized that Arthur had gone.

She gave a little cry of dismay. Secretly she was beginning to be
somewhat afraid of Mr Shute. He was showing signs of being about to
step out of the role she had assigned to him and attempt something on a
larger scale. His manner had that extra touch of warmth which makes all
the difference.

'Oh! He's gone!' she cried.

'Sure,' said Mr Shute. 'He's got a hurry-call from the Uji Village.
The chief's cousin wants a hair-cut.'

'We must find him. We must.'

'Surest thing you know,' said Mr Shute. 'Plenty of time.'

'We must find him.'

Mr Shute regarded her with some displeasure.

'Seems to be ace-high with you, that dub,' he said.

'I don't understand you.'

'My observation was,' explained Mr Shute, coldly, 'that, judging from
appearances, that dough-faced lemon was Willie-boy, the first and only
love.'

Maud turned on him with flaming cheeks.

'Mr Welsh is nothing to me! Nothing! Nothing!' she cried.

She walked quickly on.

'Then, if there's a vacancy, star-eyes,' said the pugilist at her side,
holding on a hat which showed a tendency to wobble, 'count me in.
Directly I saw you--see here, what's the idea of this road-work? We
aren't racing--'

Maud slowed down.

'That's better. As I was saying, directly I saw you, I said to myself,
"That's the one you need. The original candy kid. The--"'

His hat lurched drunkenly as he answered the girl's increase of speed.
He cursed it in a brief aside.

'That's what I said. "The original candy kid." So--'

He shot out a restraining hand. 'Arthur!' cried Maud. 'Arthur!'

'It's not my name' breathed Mr Shute, tenderly. 'Call me Clarence.'

Considered as an embrace, it was imperfect. At these moments a silk
hat a size too small handicaps a man. The necessity of having to be
careful about the nap prevented Mr Shute from doing himself complete
justice. But he did enough to induce Arthur Welsh, who, having sighted
the missing ones from afar, had been approaching them at a walking
pace, to substitute a run for the walk, and arrive just as Maud
wrenched herself free.

Mr Shute took off his hat, smoothed it, replaced it with extreme care,
and turned his attention to the new-comer.

'Arthur!' said Maud.

Her heart gave a great leap. There was no mistaking the meaning in the
eye that met hers. He cared! He cared!

'Arthur!'

He took no notice. His face was pale and working. He strode up to Mr
Shute.

'Well?' he said between his teeth.

An eight-stone-four champion of the world has many unusual experiences
in his life, but he rarely encounters men who say 'Well?' to him
between their teeth. Mr Shute eyed this freak with profound wonder.

'I'll teach you to--to kiss young ladies!'

Mr Shute removed his hat again and gave it another brush. This gave him
the necessary time for reflection.

'I don't need it,' he said. 'I've graduated.'

'Put them up!' hissed Arthur.

Almost a shocked look spread itself over the pugilist's face. So might
Raphael have looked if requested to draw a pavement-picture.

'You aren't speaking to ME?' he said, incredulously.

'Put them up!'

Maud, trembling from head to foot, was conscious of one overwhelming
emotion. She was terrified--yes. But stronger than the terror was the
great wave of elation which swept over her. All her doubts had
vanished. At last, after weary weeks of uncertainty, Arthur was about
to give the supreme proof. He was going to joust for her.

A couple of passers-by had paused, interested, to watch developments.
You could never tell, of course. Many an apparently promising row never
got any farther than words. But, glancing at Arthur's face, they
certainly felt justified in pausing. Mr Shute spoke.

'If it wasn't,' he said, carefully, 'that I don't want trouble with the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I'd--'

He broke off, for, to the accompaniment of a shout of approval from the
two spectators, Arthur had swung his right fist, and it had taken him
smartly on the side of the head.

Compared with the blows Mr Shute was wont to receive in the exercise of
his profession, Arthur's was a gentle tap. But there was one
circumstance which gave it a deadliness all its own. Achilles had his
heel. Mr Shute's vulnerable point was at the other extremity. Instead
of countering, he uttered a cry of agony, and clutched wildly with both
hands at his hat.

He was too late. It fell to the ground and bounded away, with its
proprietor in passionate chase. Arthur snorted and gently chafed his
knuckles.

There was a calm about Mr Shute's demeanour as, having given his
treasure a final polish and laid it carefully down, he began to advance
on his adversary, which was more than ominous. His lips were a thin
line of steel. The muscles stood out over his jaw-bones. Crouching in
his professional manner, he moved forward softly, like a cat.

And it was at this precise moment, just as the two spectators,
reinforced now by eleven other men of sporting tastes, were
co