Mr Mulliner Speaking (20 page)

Frederick Pilcher stooped and picked his ball up.

'Here!' cried Agnes Flack.

'Hey!' ejaculated John Gooch.

'What on earth do you think you're doing?' said Agnes Flack.

Frederick Pilcher looked at them with mild surprise.

'What's the matter?' he said. 'There's a blob of mud on my ball. I just wanted to brush it off.'

'Oh, my heavens!' thundered Agnes Flack. 'Haven't you ever read the rules? You're disqualified.'

'Disqualified?'

'Dis-jolly-well-qualified,' said Agnes Flack, her eyes flashing scorn. 'This cripple here wins the match.'

Frederick Pilcher heaved a sigh.

'So be it,' he said. 'So be it.'

'What do you mean, so be it? Of course it is.'

'Exactly. Exactly. I quite understand. I have lost the match. So be it.'

And, with drooping shoulders, Frederick Pilcher shuffled off in the direction of the bar.

John Gooch watched him go with a seething fury which for the moment robbed him of speech. He might, he told himself, have expected something like this. Frederick Pilcher, lost to every sense of good feeling and fair play, had double-crossed him. He shuddered as he realized how inky must be the hue of Frederick Pilcher's soul; and he wished in a frenzy of regret that he had thought of picking his own ball up. Too late! Too late!

For an instant the world had been blotted out for John Gooch by a sort of red mist. This mist clearing, he now saw Agnes Flack standing looking at him in a speculative sort of way, an odd expression in her eyes. And beyond her, leaning darkly against the club-house wall, his bulging muscles swelling beneath his coat and his powerful fingers tearing to pieces what appeared to be a section of lead piping, stood Sidney McMurdo.

John Gooch did not hesitate. Although McMurdo was some distance away, he could see him quite clearly; and with equal clearness he could remember every detail of that recent interview with him. He drew a step nearer to Agnes Flack, and having gulped once or twice, began to speak.

'Agnes,' he said huskily, 'there is something I want to say to you. Oh, Agnes, have you not guessed—'

'One moment,' said Agnes Flack. 'If you're trying to propose to me, sign off. There is nothing doing. The idea is all wet.'

'All wet?'

'All absolutely wet. I admit that there was a time when I toyed with the idea of marrying a man with brains, but there are limits. I wouldn't marry a man who played golf as badly as you do if he were the last man in the world. Sid-nee!' she roared, turning and cupping her mouth with her hands; and a nervous golfer down by the lake-hole leaped three feet and got his mashie entangled between his legs.

'Hullo?'

'I'm going to marry you, after all.'

'Me?'

'Yes, you.'

'Three rousing cheers!' bellowed McMurdo.

Agnes Flack turned to John Gooch. There was something like commiseration in her eyes, for she was a woman. Rather on the large side, but still a woman.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

'Don't mention it,' said John Gooch.

'I hope this won't ruin your life.'

'No, no.'

'You still have your Art.'

'Yes, I still have my Art.'

'Are you working on anything just now?' asked Agnes Flack.

'I'm starting a new story to-night,' said John Gooch. 'It will be called
Saved from the Scaffold
.'

There had been a gap for a week or so in our little circle at the Angler's Rest, and that gap the most serious that could have occurred. Mr Mulliner's had been the vacant chair, and we had felt his absence acutely. Inquiry on his welcome return elicited the fact that he had been down in Hertfordshire, paying a visit to his cousin Lady Wickham, at her historic residence, Skeldings Hall. He had left her well, he informed us, but somewhat worried.

'About her daughter Roberta,' said Mr Mulliner.

'Delicate girl?' we asked sympathetically.

'Not at all. Physically, most robust. What is troubling my cousin is the fact that she does not get married.'

A tactless Mild-and-Bitter, who was a newcomer to the bar-parlour and so should not have spoken at all, said that that was often the way with these plain girls. The modern young man, he said, valued mere looks too highly, and instead of being patient, and carrying on pluckily till he was able to penetrate the unsightly exterior to the good womanly heart within . . .

'My cousin's daughter Roberta,' said Mr Mulliner with some asperity, 'is not plain. Like all the Mulliners on the female side, however distantly removed from the main branch, she is remarkably beautiful. And yet she does not get married.'

'A mystery,' we mused.

'One,' said Mr Mulliner, 'that I have been able to solve. I was privileged to enjoy a good deal of Roberta's confidence during my visit, and I also met a young man named Algernon Crufts who appears to enjoy still more and also to be friendly with some of those of the male sex in whose society she has been moving lately. I am afraid that, like so many spirited girls of to-day, she is inclined to treat her suitors badly. They get discouraged, and I think with some excuse. There was young Attwater, for instance . . .'

Mr Mulliner broke off and sipped his hot Scotch and lemon. He appeared to have fallen into a reverie. From time to time, as he paused in his sipping, a chuckle escaped him.

'Attwater?' we said.

'Yes, that was the name.'

'What happened to him?'

'Oh, you wish to hear the story? Certainly, certainly, by all means.'

He rapped gently on the table, eyed his re-charged glass with quiet satisfaction, and proceeded.

In the demeanour of Roland Moresby Attwater, that rising young essayist and literary critic, there appeared (said Mr Mulliner) as he stood holding the door open to allow the ladies to leave his uncle Joseph's dining-room, no outward and visible sign of the irritation that seethed beneath his mud-stained shirt-front. Well-bred and highly civilized, he knew how to wear the mask. The lofty forehead that shone above his rimless pince-nez was smooth and unruffled, and if he bared his teeth it was only in a polite smile. Nevertheless, Roland Attwater was fed to the eyebrows.

In the first place, he hated these family dinners. In the second place, he had been longing all the evening for a chance to explain that muddy shirt, and everybody had treated it with a silent tact which was simply maddening. In the third place, he knew that his uncle Joseph was only waiting for the women to go to bring up once again the infuriating topic of Lucy.

After a preliminary fluttering, not unlike that of hens disturbed in a barnyard, the female members of the party rustled past him in single file – his aunt Emily; his aunt Emily's friend, Mrs Hughes Higham; his aunt Emily's companion and secretary, Miss Partlett; and his aunt Emily's adopted daughter, Lucy. The last-named brought up the rear of the procession. She was a gentle-looking girl with spaniel eyes and freckles, and as she passed she gave Roland a swift, shy glance of admiration and gratitude. It was the sort of look Ariadne might have given Theseus immediately after his turn-up with the Minotaur: and a casual observer, not knowing the facts, would have supposed that, instead of merely opening a door for her, Roland had rescued her at considerable bodily risk from some frightful doom.

Roland closed the door and returned to the table. His uncle, having pushed port towards him, coughed significantly and opened fire.

'How did you think Lucy was looking to-night, Roland?'

The young man winced, but the fine courtly spirit which is such a characteristic of the younger members of the intelligentsia did not fail him. Instead of banging the speaker over the head with the decanter, he replied with quiet civility:

'Splendid.'

'Nice girl.'

'Very.'

'Wonderful disposition.'

'Quite.'

'And so sensible.'

'Precisely.'

'Very different from these shingled, cigarette-smoking young women who infest the place nowadays.'

'Decidedly.'

'Had one of 'em up before me this morning,' said uncle Joseph, frowning austerely over his port. Sir Joseph Moresby was by profession a metropolitan magistrate. 'Charged with speeding. That's their idea of life.'

'Girls,' argued Roland, 'will be girls.'

'Not while I'm sitting at Bosher Street police-court, they won't,' said his uncle, with decision. 'Unless they want to pay five-pound fines and have their licences endorsed.' He sipped thoughtfully. 'Look here, Roland,' he said, as one struck by a novel idea, 'why the devil don't you marry Lucy?'

'Well, uncle—'

'You've got a bit of money, she's got a bit of money. Ideal. Besides, you want somebody to look after you.'

'Do you suggest,' inquired Roland, his eyebrows rising coldly, 'that I am incapable of looking after myself ?'

'Yes, I do. Why, dammit, you can't even dress for dinner, apparently, without getting mud all over your shirt-front.'

Roland's cue had been long in coming, but it had arrived at a very acceptable moment.

'If you really want to know how that mud came to be on my shirt-front, uncle Joseph,' he said, with quiet dignity, 'I got it saving a man's life.'

'Eh? What? How?'

'A man slipped on the pavement as I was passing through Grosvenor Square on my way here. It was raining, you know, and I—'

'You walked here?'

'Yes. And just as I reached the corner of Duke Street—'

'Walked here in the rain? There you are! Lucy would never let you do a foolish thing like that.'

'It began to rain after I had started.'

'Lucy would never have let you start.'

'Are you interested in my story, uncle,' said Roland, stiffly, 'or shall we go upstairs?'

'Eh? My dear boy, of course, of course. Most interested. Want to hear the whole thing from beginning to end. You say it was raining and this fellow slipped off the pavement. And then I suppose a car or a taxi or something came along suddenly and you pulled him out of danger. Yes, go on, my boy.'

'How do you mean, go on?' said Roland morosely. He felt like a public speaker whose chairman has appropriated the cream of his speech and inserted it in his own introductory remarks. 'That's all there is.'

'Well, who was the man? Did he ask you for your name and address?'

'He did.'

'Good! A young fellow once did something very similar to what you did, and the man turned out to be a millionaire and left him his entire fortune. I remember reading about it.'

'In the
Family Herald
, no doubt?'

'Did your man look like a millionaire?'

'He did not. He looked like what he actually was – the proprietor of a small bird-and-snake shop in the Seven Dials.'

'Oh!' said Sir Joseph, a trifle dashed. 'Well, I must tell Lucy about this,' he said, brightening. 'She will be tremendously excited. Just the sort of thing to appeal to a warm-hearted girl like her. Look here, Roland, why don't you marry Lucy?'

Roland came to a swift decision. It had not been his intention to lay bare his secret dreams to this pertinacious old blighter, but there seemed no other way of stopping him. He drained a glass of port and spoke crisply.

'Uncle Joseph, I love somebody else.'

'Eh? What's that? Who?'

'This is, of course, strictly between ourselves.'

'Of course.'

'Her name is Wickham. I expect you know the family? The Hertfordshire Wickhams.'

'Hertfordshire Wickhams!' Sir Joseph snorted with extraordinary violence. 'Bosher Street Wickhams, you mean. If it's Roberta Wickham, a red-headed hussy who ought to be smacked and sent to bed without her supper, that's the girl I fined this morning.'

'You fined her!' gasped Roland.

'Five pounds,' said his uncle, complacently. 'Wish I could have given her five years. Menace to the public safety. How on earth did you get to know a girl like that?'

'I met her at a dance. I happened to mention that I was a critic of some small standing, and she told me that her mother wrote novels. I chanced to receive one of Lady Wickham's books for review shortly afterwards, and the – er – favourable tone of my notice apparently gave her some pleasure.' Roland's voice trembled slightly, and he blushed. Only he knew what it had cost him to write eulogistically of that terrible book. 'She has invited me down to Skeldings, their place in Hertfordshire, for the week-end to-morrow.'

'Send her a telegram.'

'Saying what?'

'That you can't go.'

'But I am going.' It is a pretty tough thing if a man of letters who has sold his critical soul is not to receive the reward of his crime. 'I wouldn't miss it for anything.'

'Don't you be a fool, my boy,' said Sir Joseph. 'I've known you all your life – know you better than you know yourself – and I tell you it's sheer insanity for a man like you to dream of marrying a girl like that. Forty miles an hour she was going, right down the middle of Piccadilly. The constable proved it up to the hilt. You're a quiet, sensible fellow, and you ought to marry a quiet, sensible girl. You're what I call a rabbit.'

'A rabbit!'

'There is no stigma attached to being a rabbit,' said Sir Joseph, pacifically. 'Every man with a grain of sense is one. It simply means that you prefer a normal, wholesome life to gadding about like a – like a non-rabbit. You're going out of your class, my boy. You're trying to change your zoological species, and it can't be done. Half the divorces to-day are due to the fact that rabbits won't believe they're rabbits till it's too late. It is the peculiar nature of the rabbit—'

'I think we had better join the ladies, uncle Joseph,' said Roland, frostily. 'Aunt Emily will be wondering what has become of us.'

In spite of the innate modesty of all heroes, it was with something closely resembling chagrin that Roland discovered, on going to his club in the morning, that the Press of London was unanimously silent on the subject of his last night's exploit. Not that one expected anything in the nature of publicity, of course, or even desired it. Still, if there had happened to be some small paragraph under some such title as 'Gallant Behaviour of an Author' or 'Critical Moment for a Critic,' it would have done no harm to the sale of that little book of thoughtful essays which Blenkinsop's had just put on the market.

And the fellow had seemed so touchingly grateful at the time.

Pawing at Roland's chest with muddy hands he had told him that he would never forget this moment as long as he lived. And he had not bothered even to go and call at a newspaper office.