P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

Adolf’s eyes gleamed.

“Zo? Lizzun! When I do gom virst here, I myself do to giss Violed vunce vish. But she do push dze zide of my face, and my lof is durned to hate.”

James listened attentively to this tabloid tragedy, but made no comment.

“Anysing vrom dze fillage, sare?”

Adolf’s voice was meaning. James produced a half-crown.

“Here you are, then. Get me half a dozen stamps and keep the change.”

“Zdamps? Yes, sure At vunce.”‘

“James’s last impression of the departing one was of a vast and greasy grin, stretching most of the way across his face.

Adolf, as blackmailer, in which rôle he now showed himself, differed in some respects from the conventional blackmailer of fiction. It may be that he was doubtful as to how much James would stand, or it may be that his soul as a general rule was above money. At any rate, in actual specie he took very little from his victim. He seemed to wish to be sent to the village oftener than before, but that was all. Half a crown a week would have covered James’s financial loss.

But he asserted himself in another way. In his most lighthearted moments Adolf never forgot the reason which had brought him to England. He had come to the country to learn the language, and he meant to do it. The difficulty which had always handicapped him hitherto-namely, the poverty of the vocabularies of those in the servants’ quarters-was now removed. He appointed James tutor-in-chief of the English language to himself, and saw that he entered upon his duties at once.

The first time that he accosted James in the passage outside the class-room, and desired him to explain certain difficult words in a leading article of yesterday’s paper, James was pleased. Adolf, he thought, regarded the painful episode as closed. He had accepted the half-crown as the full price of silence, and was now endeavouring to be friendly in order to make amends.

This right-minded conduct gratified James. He felt genially disposed toward Adolf. He read the leading article, and proceeded to give a full and kindly explanation of the hard words. He took trouble over it. He went into the derivations of the words. He touched on certain rather tricky sub-meanings of the same. Adolf went away with any doubts he might have had of James’s capabilities as a teacher of English definitely scattered. He felt that he had got hold of the right man.

There was a shade less geniality in James’s manner when the same thing happened on the following morning. But he did not refuse to help the untutored foreigner. The lecture was less exhaustive than that of the previous morning, but we must suppose that it satisfied Adolf, for he came again next day, his faith in his teacher undiminished.

James was trying to write a story. He turned on the student.

“Get out!” he howled. “And take that beastly paper away. Can’t you see I’m busy? Do you think I can spend all my time teaching you to read? Get out!”

“Dere some hard vord vos,” said Adolf, patiently “of which I gannot dze meaning.”

James briefly cursed the hard word.

“But,” proceeded Adolf, “of one vord, of dze vord ‘giss,’ I dze meaning know. Zo!”

James looked at him. There was a pause.

Two minutes later the English lesson was in full swing.

All that James had ever heard or read about the wonderful devotion to study of the modern German young man came home to him during the next two weeks. Our English youth fritters away its time in idleness and pleasure-seeking. The German concentrates. Adolf concentrated like a porous plaster. Every day after breakfast, just when the success of James’s literary career depended on absolute seclusion, he would come trotting up for his lesson. James’s writing practically ceased.

This sort of thing cannot last. There is a limit, and Adolf reached it when he attempted to add night- classes to the existing curriculum.

James, as had been said, was in the habit of taking coffee with Mr. Blatherwick in his study after seeing the boys into bed. It was while he was on his way to keep this appointment, a fortnight after his first interview with Adolf, that the young student waylaid him with the evening paper.