P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

Ruth did not fall asleep so easily. The episode had disturbed her. A new element had entered her life, and one that gave promise of producing strange by-products.

When, on the following evening, Ruth returned from the stroll on the Promenade which she always took after leaving the mont-de-piété, with a feeling of irritation towards things in general, this feeling was not diminished by the sight of Mr. Vince, very much at his ease, standing against the mantelpiece of the tiny parlour.

“How do you do?” he said. “By an extraordinary coincidence I happened to be hanging about outside this house just now, when your father came along and invited me in to dinner. Have you ever thought much about coincidences, Miss Warden? To my mind, they may be described as the zero on the roulette- board of life.”

He regarded her fondly.

“For a shy man, conscious that the girl he loves is inspecting him closely and making up her mind about him,” he proceeded, “these unexpected meetings are very trying ordeals. You must not form your judgment of me too hastily. You see me now, nervous, embarrassed, tongue-tied. But I am not always like this. Beneath this crust of diffidence there is sterling stuff, Miss Warden. People who know me have spoken of me as a little ray of sun-But here is your father.”

Mr. Warden was more than usually disappointed with Ruth during dinner. It was the same old story. So far from making herself pleasant to this attractive stranger, she seemed positively to dislike him. She was barely civil to him. With a sigh Mr. Warden told himself that he did not understand Ruth, and the rosy dreams he had formed began to fade.

Ruth’s ideas on the subject of Mr. Vince as the days went by were chaotic. Though she told herself that she thoroughly objected to him, he had nevertheless begun to have an undeniable attraction for her. In what this attraction consisted she could not say. When she tried to analyse it, she came to the conclusion that it was due to the fact that he was the only element in her life that made for excitement. Since his advent the days had certainly passed more swiftly for her. The dead-level of monotony had been broken. There was a certain fascination in exerting herself to suppress him, which increased daily as each attempt failed.

Mr. Vince put this feeling into words for her. He had a maddening habit of discussing the progress of his courtship in the manner of an impartial lecturer.

“I am making headway,” he observed. “The fact that we cannot meet without your endeavouring to plant a temperamental left jab on my spiritual sola plexus encourages me to think that you are beginning at last to understand that we are affinities. To persons of spirit like ourselves the only happy marriage is that which is based on a firm foundation of almost incessant quarrelling. The most beautiful line in English poetry, to my mind, is, ‘We fell out, my wife and I.’ You would be wretched with a husband who didn’t like you to quarrel with him. The position of affairs now is that I have become necessary to you. If I went out of your life now I should leave an aching void. You would still have that beautiful punch of yours, and there would be nobody to exercise it on. You would pine away. From now on matters should, I think, move rapidly. During the course of the next week I shall endeavour to propitiate you with gifts. Here is the first of them.”

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. It was a pencil-sketch, rough and unfinished, but wonderfully clever. Even Ruth could appreciate that-and she was a prejudiced observer, for the sketch was a caricature of herself. It represented her, drawn up to her full height, with enormous, scornful eyes and curling lips, and the artist had managed to combine an excellent likeness while accentuating everything that was marked in what she knew had come to be her normal expression of scorn and discontent.

“I didn’t know you were an artist, Mr. Vince,” she said, handing it back.