The Man Upstairs and Other StoriesWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
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The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Humorous stories, English
'"Come along in," says Jerry.
'So we went in, and he makes us at home. He's a bachelor, and lives all
by himself in this desirable 'ouse.
'Well, I seen pretty quick that Jerry thinks the world of Gentleman.
All that evening he's acting as if he's as pleased as Punch to have
him there. Couldn't do enough for him. _It_ was a bit of _all_
right, I said to meself. It was, too.
'Next day we gets up late and has a good breakfast, and sits on the
lawn and smokes. The sun was shining, the little birds was singing, and
there wasn't a thing, east, west, north, or south, that looked like
work. If I had been asked my address at that moment, on oath, I
wouldn't have hesitated a second. I should have answered, "No. 1, Easy
Street." You see, Jerry Moore was one of these slow, simple fellers,
and you could tell in a moment what a lot he thought of Gentleman.
Gentleman, you see, had a way with him. Not haughty, he wasn't. More
affable, I should call it. He sort of made you feel that all men are
born equal, but that it was awful good of him to be talking to you, and
that he wouldn't do it for everybody. It went down proper with Jerry
Moore. Jerry would sit and listen to him giving his views on things by
the hour. By the end of the first day I was having visions of sitting
in that garden a white-baked old man, and being laid out, when my time
should come, in Jerry's front room.'
He paused, his mind evidently in the past, among the cigars and big
breakfasts. Presently he took up his tale.
'This here Jerry Moore was a simple sort of feller. Deafies are like
that. Ever noticed? Not that Jerry was a real deafy. His hearing was a
bit off, but he could foller you if you spoke to him nice and clear.
Well, I was saying, he was kind of simple. Liked to put in his days
pottering about the little garden he'd made for himself, looking after
his flowers and his fowls, and sit of an evening listening to Gentleman
'olding forth on Life. He was a philosopher, Gentleman was. And Jerry
took everything he said as gospel. He didn't want no proofs. 'E and
the King of Denmark would have been great pals. He just sat by with his
big blue eyes getting rounder every minute and lapped it up.
'Now you'd think a man like that could be counted on, wouldn't you?
Would he want anything more? Not he, you'd say. You'd be wrong. Believe
me, there isn't a man on earth that's fixed and contented but what a
woman can't knock his old Paradise into 'ash with one punch.
'It wasn't long before I begin to notice a change in Jerry. He never
had been what you'd call a champion catch-as-catch-can talker, but now
he was silenter than ever. And he got a habit of switching Gentleman
off from his theories on Life in general to Woman in particular. This
suited Gentleman just right. What he didn't know about Woman wasn't
knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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