P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

“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 to-day I remembered. It was just about this time last year that I saw you at Hayling Island swimming perfectly wonderfully, and to-day 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. To-day 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.”