P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

He was smiling, but wanly. Nobody but a professional fasting man could have looked unmoved into the Inferno she had pictured. Then he rallied.

“Cake!” he said, scornfully.

She nodded grimly.

“Cocoa!”

Again that nod, ineffably sinister.

“I’m afraid I don’t care for either,” he said.

“If you will excuse me,” she said, indifferently, “I have a little work that I must finish.”

She turned to her desk, leaving him to his thoughts. They were not exhilarating. He had maintained a brave front, but inwardly he quailed. Reared in the country, he had developed at an early age a fine, healthy appetite. Once, soon after his arrival in London, he had allowed a dangerous fanatic to persuade him that the secret of health was to go without breakfast. His lunch that day had cost him eight shillings, and only decent shame had kept the figure as low as that. He knew perfectly well that long ere the dawn of day his whole soul would be crying out for cake, squealing frantically for cocoa. Would it not be better to-no, a thousand times no! Death, but not surrender. His self-respect was at stake. Looking back, he saw that his entire relations with this girl had been a series of battles of will. So far, though he had certainly not won, he had not been defeated. He must not be defeated now.

He crossed his legs and sang a gay air under his breath.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said the girl, looking up.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your groaning interrupts my work.”

“I was not groaning. I was singing.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

“Not at all.”

Eight bars rest.

Mr. Ferguson, deprived of the solace of song, filled in the time by gazing at the toilers’ back-hair. It set in motion a train of thought-an express train bound for the Land of Yesterday. It recalled days in the woods, evenings on the lawn. It recalled sunshine-and storm. Plenty of storm. Minor tempests that burst from a clear sky, apparently without cause, and the great final tornado. There had been cause enough for that. Why was it, mused Mr. Ferguson, that every girl in every country town in every county of England who had ever recited “Curfew shall not ring to-night” well enough to escape lynching at the hands of a rustic audience was seized with the desire to come to London and go on the stage?

He sighed.

“Please don’t snort,” said a cold voice, from behind the back-hair.

There was a train-wreck in the Land of Yesterday. Mr. Ferguson, the only survivor, limped back into the Present.

The Present had little charm, but at least it was better than the cakeless Future. He fixed his thoughts on it. He wondered how Master Bean was passing the time. Probably doing deep-breathing exercises, or reading a pocket Aristotle.

The girl pushed back her chair and rose.

She went to a small cupboard in the corner of the room, and from it produced in instalments all that goes to make cake and cocoa. She did not speak. Presently, filling Space, there sprang into being an Odour; and as it reached him Mr. Ferguson stiffened in his chair, bracing himself as for a fight to the death. It was more than an odour. It was the soul of the cocoa singing to him. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair. This was the test.

The girl separated a section of cake from the parent body. She caught his eye.

“You had better go,” she said. “If you go now it’s just possible that I may-but I forgot, you don’t like cocoa.”

“No,” said he, resolutely, “I don’t.”

She seemed now in the mood for conversation.

“I wonder why you came up here at all,” she said.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. I came up here because my late office-boy is downstairs.”

“Why should that send you up?”

“You’ve never met him or you wouldn’t ask. Have you ever had to face someone who is simply incarnate Saintliness and Disapproval, who-”

“Are you forgetting that I was engaged to you for several weeks?”

He was too startled to be hurt. The idea of himself as a Roland Bean was too new to be assimilated immediately. It called for meditation.