Short Fiction - P. G. Wodehouse (top ten ebook reader txt) 📗

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 hackwork 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