P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

“You’re alive, my son,” said Rutherford, admiringly, as he read the sheets. “But you don’t belong to me.”

At last there came the day when the play was finished, when the last line was written, and the last possible alteration made; and, later, the day when Rutherford, bearing the brown-paper-covered package under his arm, called at the Players’ Club to keep an appointment with Winfield Knight.

Almost from the first Rutherford had a feeling that he had met the man before, that he knew him. As their acquaintance progressed-the actor was in an expansive mood, and talked much before coming to business-the feeling grew. Then he understood. This was Willie, and no other. The likeness was extraordinary. Little turns of thought, little expressions-they were all in the play.

The actor paused in a description of how he had almost beaten a champion at golf, and looked at the parcel.

“Is that the play?” he said.

“Yes,” said Rutherford. “Shall I read it?”

“Guess I’ll just look through it myself. Where’s Act I.? Here we are! Have a cigar while you’re waiting?”

Rutherford settled himself in his chair, and watched the other’s face. For the first few pages, which contained some tame dialogue between minor characters, it was blank.

” ‘Enter Willie,’ ” he said. “Am I Willie?”

“I hope so,” said Rutherford, with a smile. “It’s the star part.”

“H’m.”

He went on reading. Rutherford watched him with furtive keenness. There was a line coming at the bottom of the page which he was then reading which ought to hit him, an epigram on golf, a whimsical thought put almost exactly as he had put it himself five minutes back when telling his golf story.

The shot did not miss fire. The chuckle from the actor and the sigh of relief from Rutherford were almost simultaneous.

Winfield Knight turned to him.

“That’s a dandy line about golf,” said he.

Rutherford puffed complacently at his cigar.

“There’s lots more of them in the piece,” he said.

“Bully for you,” said the actor. And went on reading.

Three-quarters of an hour passed before he spoke again. Then he looked up.

“It’s me,” he said; “it’s me all the time. I wish I’d seen this before I put on the punk I’m doing now. This is me from the drive off the tee. It’s great! Say, what’ll you have?”

Rutherford leaned back in his chair, his mind in a whirl. He had arrived at last. His struggles were over. He would not admit of the possibility of the play being a failure. He was a made man. He could go where he pleased, and do as he pleased.

It gave him something of a shock to find how persistently his thoughts refused to remain in England. Try as he might to keep them there, they kept flitting back to Alcala.

VI

Willie in the Wilderness was not a failure. It was a triumph. Principally, it is true, a personal triumph for Winfield Knight. Everyone was agreed that he had never had a part that suited him so well. Critics forgave the blunders of the piece for the sake of its principal character. The play was a curiously amateurish thing. It was only later that Rutherford learned craft and caution. When he wrote Willie he was a colt, rambling unchecked through the field of play-writing, ignorant of its pitfalls. But, with all its faults, Willie in the Wilderness was a success. It might, as one critic pointed out, be more of a monologue act for Winfield Knight than a play, but that did not affect Rutherford.

It was late on the opening night when he returned to Alcala. He had tried to get away earlier. He wanted to see Peggy. But Winfield Knight, flushed with success, was in his most expansive mood. He seized upon Rutherford and would not let him go. There was supper, a gay, uproarious supper, at which everybody seemed to be congratulating everybody else. Men he had never met before shook him warmly by the hand. Somebody made a speech, despite the efforts of the rest of the company to prevent him. Rutherford sat there, dazed, out of touch with the mood of the party. He wanted Peggy. He was tired of all this excitement and noise. He had had enough of it. All he asked was to be allowed to slip away quietly and go home. He wanted to think, to try and realize what all this meant to him.