P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

The cab, crossing a rough piece of road, jolted Peggy from her corner. Her hand fell on his.

“Peggy!” he cried, hoarsely.

Her grey eyes were wet. He could see them glisten. And then his arms were round her, and he was covering her upturned face with kisses.

The cab drew up at the entrance to Alcala. They alighted in silence, and without a word made their way through into the hall. From force of habit, Rutherford glanced at the letter-rack on the wall at the foot of the stairs. There was one letter in his pigeon-hole.

Mechanically he drew it out; and, as his eyes fell on the handwriting, something seemed to snap inside him.

He looked at Peggy, standing on the bottom stair, and back again at the envelope in his hand. His mood was changing with a violence that left him physically weak. He felt dazed, as if he had wakened out of a trance.

With a strong effort he mastered himself. Peggy had mounted a few steps, and was looking back at him over her shoulder. He could read the meaning now in the grey eyes.

“Good night, Peggy,” he said in a low voice. She turned, facing him, and for a moment neither moved.

“Good night!” said Rutherford again.

Her lips parted, as if she were about to speak, but she said nothing.

Then she turned again, and began to walk slowly upstairs.

He stood watching her till she had reached the top of the long flight. She did not look back.

V

Peggy’s nightly visits began afresh after this, and the ghost on the table troubled Rutherford no more. His restlessness left him. He began to write with a new vigour and success. In after years he wrote many plays, most of them good, clear-cut pieces of work, but none that came from him with the utter absence of labour which made the writing of Willie in the Wilderness a joy. He wrote easily, without effort. And always Peggy was there, helping, stimulating, encouraging.

Sometimes, when he came in after dinner to settle down to work, he would find a piece of paper on his table covered with her schoolgirl scrawl. It would run somewhat as follows:

“He is proud of his arms. They are skinny, but he thinks them the limit. Better put in a shirt-sleeve scene for Willie somewhere.

“He thinks he has a beautiful profile. Couldn’t you make one of the girls say something about Willie having the goods in that line?

“He is crazy about golf.

“He is proud of his French accent. Couldn’t you make Willie speak a little piece in French?”

“He” being Winfield Knight.

And so, little by little, the character of Willie grew, till it ceased to be the Willie of the magazine story, and became Winfield Knight himself, with improvements. The task began to fascinate Rutherford. It was like planning a pleasant surprise for a child. “He’ll like that,” he would say to himself, as he wrote in some speech enabling Willie to display one of the accomplishments, real or imagined, of the absent actor. Peggy read it, and approved. It was she who suggested the big speech in the second act where Willie described the progress of his love affair in terms of the golf-links. From her, too, came information as to little traits in the man’s character which the stranger would not have suspected.

As the play progressed Rutherford was amazed at the completeness of the character he had built. It lived. Willie in the magazine story might have been anyone. He fitted into the story, but you could not see him. He had no real individuality. But Willie in the play! He felt that he would recognize him in the street. There was all the difference between the two that there is between a nameless figure in some cheap picture and a portrait by Sargent. There were times when the story of the play seemed thin to him, and the other characters wooden, but in his blackest moods he was sure of Willie. All the contradictions in the character rang true: the humour, the pathos, the surface vanity covering a real diffidence, the strength and weakness fighting one another.