instrument to which, as I have said, he was greatly addicted, and
played "Ol' Man River" for awhile. But the melancholy still lingered.
And now, it seemed to him, he had discovered its cause. What was wrong
was the fact that he was not doing enough good in the world.
Look at it this way, he felt. The world is a sad, grey place, and we
are put into it to promote as far as we can the happiness of others.
If we concentrate on our own selfish pleasures, what do we find? We
find that they speedily pall. We weary of gnawing knuckles of ham.
The ukulele loses its fascination. Of course, if we could sit down and
put our feet up and set a match to the good old pipe, that would be a
different matter. But we no longer smoke, and so all that is left to us
is the doing of good to others. By three o'clock, in short, Ignatius
Mulliner had reached the third stage, the glutinously sentimental. It
caused him to grab his hat, and sent him trotting round to Scantlebury
Square.
But his object was not, as it usually was when he went to Scantlebury
Square, to propose to Hermione Rossiter. He had a more unselfish
motive. For some time past, by hints dropped and tentative remarks
thrown out, he had been made aware that Mrs. Rossiter greatly desired
him to paint her daughter's portrait: and until now he had always
turned to these remarks and hints a deaf ear. Mrs. Rossiter's mother's
heart wanted, he knew, to get the portrait for nothing: and, while love
is love and all that, he had the artist's dislike for not collecting
all that was coming to him. Ignatius Mulliner, the man, might entertain
the idea of pleasing the girl he worshipped by painting her on the
nod, but Ignatius Mulliner, the artist, had his schedule of prices.
And until to-day it was the second Ignatius Mulliner who had said the
deciding word.
This afternoon, however, everything was changed. In a short but moving
speech he informed Hermione's mother that the one wish of his life was
to paint her daughter's portrait; that for so great a privilege he
would not dream of charging a fee; and that if she would call at the
studio on the morrow, bringing Hermione with her, he would put the job
in hand right away.
In fact, he very nearly offered to paint another portrait of Mrs.
Rossiter herself, in evening dress with her Belgian griffon. He
contrived, however, to hold the fatal words back: and it was perhaps
the recollections of this belated prudence which gave him, as he stood
on the pavement outside the house after the interview, a sense of
having failed to be as altruistic as he might have been.
Stricken with remorse, he decided to look up good old Cyprian and ask
him to come to the studio to-morrow and criticize his Academy picture.
After that, he would find dear old George and press a little money on
him. Ten minutes later, he was in Cyprian's sitting-room.
"One wishes what?" asked Cyprian incredulously.
"One wishes," repeated Ignatius, "that you would come round to-morrow
morning and have a look at one's Academy picture and give one a hint or
two about it."
"Is one really serious?" cried Cyprian, his eyes beginning to gleam. It
was seldom that he received invitations of this kind. He had, indeed,
been thrown out of more studios for butting in and giving artists a
hint or two about their pictures than any other art-critic in Chelsea.
"One is perfectly serious," Ignatius assured him. "One feels that an
opinion from an expert will be invaluable."
"Then one will be there at eleven sharp," said Cyprian, "without fail."
Ignatius wrung his hand warmly, and hurried off to the Goat and Bottle
to find George.
"George," he said, "George, my dear old chap, I passed a sleepless
night last night, wondering if you had all the money you require. The
fear that you might have run short seemed to go through me like a
knife. Call on me for as much as you need."
George's face was partially obscured by a tankard. At these words, his
eyes, bulging above the pewter, took on a sudden expression of acute
horror. He lowered the tankard, ashen to the lips, and raised his right
hand.
"This," he said in a shaking voice, "is the end. From this moment I
go off the stuff. Yes, you have seen George Plimsoll Rossiter drink
his last mild-and-bitter. I am not a nervous man, but I know when I'm
licked. And when it comes to a fellow's ears going...."
Ignatius patted his arm affectionately.
"Your ears have not gone, George," he said. "They are still there."
And so, indeed, they were, as large and red as ever. But George was not
to be comforted.
"I mean when a fellow thinks he hears things.... I give you my honest
word, old man--I solemnly assure you that I could have sworn I heard
you voluntarily offer me money."
"But I did."
"You did?"
"Certainly."
"You mean you definitely--literally--without any sort of prompting on
my part--without my so much as saying a word to indicate that I could
do with a small loan till Friday week--absolutely, positively offered
to lend me money?"
"I did."
George drew a deep breath and took up his tankard again.
"All this modern, advanced stuff you read about miracles not
happening," he said severely, "is dashed poppycock. I disapprove of
it. I resent it keenly. About how much?" he went on, pawing adoringly
at Ignatius' sleeve. "To about what, as it were, extent would you be
prepared to go? A quid?"
Ignatius raised his eyebrows.
"A quid is not much, George," he said with quiet reproach.
George made little gurgling noises.
"A fiver?"
Ignatius shook his head. The movement was a silent rebuke.
"Correct this petty, cheese-paring spirit, George," he urged. "Be big
and broad. Think spaciously."
"Not--a tenner?"
"I was about to suggest fifteen pounds," said Ignatius. "If you are
sure that will be enough."
"What ho!"
"You're positive you can manage with that? I know how many expenses you
have."
"What ho!"
"Very well, then. If you can get along with fifteen pounds, come round
to my studio to-morrow morning and we'll fix it up."
And, glowing with fervour, Ignatius slapped George's back in a hearty
sort of way and withdrew.
"Something attempted, something done," he said to himself, as he
climbed into bed some hours later, "has earned a night's repose."
* * * * *
Like so many men who live intensely and work with their brains, my
nephew Ignatius was a heavy sleeper. Generally, after waking to a new
day, he spent a considerable time lying on his back in a sort of coma,
not stirring till lured from his couch by the soft, appealing smell
of frying bacon. On the following morning, however, he was conscious,
directly he opened his eyes, of a strange alertness. He was keyed up to
quite an extraordinary extent. He had, in short, reached the stage when
the patient becomes a little nervous.
Yes, he felt, analysing his emotions, he was distinctly nervous. The
noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him
exquisite discomfort. He was just about to shout to Mrs. Perkins, his
charwoman, to stop the creature, when she rapped suddenly on the panel
to inform him that his shaving-water lay without: and at the sound he
immediately shot straight up to the ceiling in a cocoon of sheets and
blankets, turned three complete somersaults in mid-air, and came down,
quivering like a frightened mustang, in the middle of the floor. His
heart was entangled with his tonsils, his eyes had worked round to the
back of their sockets, and he wondered dazedly how many human souls
besides himself had survived the bomb-explosion.
Reason returning to her throne, his next impulse was to cry quietly.
Remembering after a while that he was a Mulliner, he checked the
unmanly tears and, creeping to the bathroom, took a cold shower and
felt a little better. A hearty breakfast assisted the cure, and he was
almost himself again, when the discovery that there was not a pipe or a
shred of tobacco in the place plunged him once more into an inky gloom.
For a long time Ignatius Mulliner sat with his face in his hands, while
all the sorrows of the world seemed to rise before him. And then,
abruptly, his mood changed again. A moment before, he had been pitying
the human race with an intensity that racked him almost unendurably.
Now, the realization surged over him that he didn't care a hoot about
the human race. The only emotion the human race evoked in him was an
intense dislike. He burned with an irritable loathing for all created
things. If the cat had been present, he would have kicked it. If Mrs.
Perkins had entered, he would have struck her with a mahl-stick. But
the cat had gone off to restore its tissues in the dust-bin, and Mrs.
Perkins was in the kitchen, singing hymns. Ignatius Mulliner boiled
with baffled fury. Here he was, with all this concentrated hatred
stored up within him, and not a living thing in sight on which to
expend it. That, he told himself with a mirthless laugh, was the way
things happened.
And just then the door opened, and there, looking like a camel arriving
at an oasis, was Cyprian.
"Ah, my dear fellow," said Cyprian. "May one enter?"
"Come right in," said Ignatius.
At the sight of this art-critic, who not only wore short side-whiskers
but also one of those black stocks which go twice round the neck
and add from forty to fifty per cent to the loathsomeness of the
wearer's appearance, a strange, febrile excitement had gripped
Ignatius Mulliner. He felt like a tiger at the Zoo who sees the keeper
approaching with the luncheon-tray. He licked his lips slowly and gazed
earnestly at the visitor. From a hook on the wall beside him there hung
a richly inlaid Damascus dagger. He took it down and tested its point
with the ball of his thumb.
Cyprian had turned his back, and was examining the Academy picture
through a black-rimmed monocle. He moved his head about and peered
between his fingers and made funny, art-critic noises.
"Ye-e-s," said Cyprian. "'Myes. Ha! H'm. Hrrmph! The thing has rhythm,
undoubted rhythm, and, to an extent, certain inevitable curves. And yet
can one conscientiously say that one altogether likes it? One fears one
cannot."
"No?" said Ignatius.
"No," said Cyprian. He toyed with his left whisker. He seemed to be
massaging it for purposes of his own. "One quite inevitably senses at a
glance that the patine lacks vitality."
"Yes?" said Ignatius.
"Yes," said Cyprian. He toyed with the whisker again. It was too early
to judge whether he was improving it at all. He shut his eyes, opened
them, half closed them once more, drew back his head, fiddled with his
fingers, and expelled his breath with a hissing sound, as if he were
grooming a horse. "Beyond a question one senses in the patine a lack
of vitality. And vitality must never be sacrificed. The artist should
use his palette as an orchestra. He should put on his colours as a
great conductor uses his instruments. There must be significant form.
The colour must have a flatness, a gravity, shall I say an aroma? The
figure must be placed on the canvas in a manner not only harmonious
but awake. Only so can a picture quite too exquisitely live. And, as
regards the patine...."
He broke off. He had had more to say about the patine, but he had heard
immediately behind him an odd, stealthy, shuffling sound not unlike
that made by a leopard of the jungle when stalking its prey. Spinning
round, he saw Ignatius Mulliner advancing upon him. The artist's lips
were curled back over his teeth in a hideous set smile. His eyes
glittered. And poised in his right hand he held a Damascus dagger,
which, Cyprian noticed, was richly inlaid.
An art-critic who makes a habit of going round the studios of
Chelsea and speaking his mind to men who are finishing their Academy
pictures gets into the way of thinking swiftly. Otherwise, he would
not quite too exquisitely live through a single visit. To cast a
glance at the door and note that it was closed and that his host was
between him and it was with Cyprian Rossiter the work of a moment;
to dart behind the easel the work of another. And with the easel as
a basis the two men for some tense minutes played a silent game of
round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush. It was in the middle of the twelfth
lap that Cyprian received a flesh wound in the upper arm.
On another man this might have had the effect of causing him to falter,
lose his head, and become an easy prey to the pursuer. But Cyprian had
the advantage of having been through this sort of thing before. Only a
day or two ago, one of England's leading animal-painters had chivvied
him for nearly an hour in a fruitless endeavour to get at him with a
short bludgeon tipped with lead.
He kept cool. In the face of danger, his footwork, always impressive,
took on a new agility. And finally, when Ignatius tripped over a
loose mat, he seized his opportunity like the strategist which every
art-critic has to be if he mixes with artists, and dodged nimbly into a
small cupboard near the model-throne.
Ignatius recovered his balance just too late. By the time he had
disentangled himself from the mat, leaped at the cupboard door and
started to tug at the handle, Cyprian was tugging at it from the other
side, and, strive though he might, Ignatius could not dislodge him.
Presently, he gave up the struggle and, moving moodily away, picked up
his ukulele and played "Ol' Man River" for awhile. He was just feeling
his way cautiously through that rather tricky "He don't say nuffin', He
must know somefin'" bit, when the door opened once more and there stood
George.
"What ho!" said George.
"Ah!" said Ignatius.
"What do you mean, Ah?"
"Just 'Ah!'," said Ignatius.
"I've come for that money."
"Ah?"
"That twenty quid or whatever it was that you very decently promised me
yesterday. And, lying in bed this morning, the thought crossed my mind:
Why not make it twenty-five? A nice, round sum," argued George.
"Ah!"
"You keep saying 'Ah!'" said George. "Why do you say 'Ah!'?"
Ignatius drew himself up haughtily.
"This is my studio, paid for with my own money, and I shall say 'Ah!'
in it just as often as I please."
"Of course," agreed George hurriedly. "Of course, my dear old chap, of
course, of course. Hullo!" He looked down. "Shoelace undone. Dangerous.
Might trip a fellow. Excuse me a moment."
He stooped: and as Ignatius gazed at his spacious trouser-seat, the
thought came to him that in the special circumstances there was but
one thing to be done. He waggled his right leg for a moment to limber
it up, backed a pace or two and crept forward.
* * * * *
Mrs. Rossiter, meanwhile, accompanied by her daughter Hermione, had
left Scantlebury Square and, though a trifle short in the wind, had
covered the distance between it and the studio in quite good time.
But the effort had told upon her, and half-way up the stairs she was
compelled to halt for a short rest. It was as she stood there, puffing
slightly like a seal after diving for fish, that something seemed to
shoot past her in the darkness.
"What was that?" she exclaimed.
"I thought I saw something, too," said Hermione.
"Some heavy, moving object."
"Yes," said Hermione. "Perhaps we had better go up and ask Mr. Mulliner
if he has been dropping things downstairs."
They made their way to the studio. Ignatius was standing on one leg,
rubbing the toes of his right foot. Your artist is proverbially a
dreamy, absent-minded man, and he had realized too late that he was
wearing bedroom slippers. Despite the fact, however, that he was in
considerable pain, his expression was not unhappy. He had the air of a
man who is conscious of having done the right thing.
"Good morning, Mr. Mulliner," said Mrs. Rossiter.
"Good morning, Mr. Mulliner," said Hermione.
"Good morning," said Ignatius, looking at them with deep loathing. It
amazed him that he had ever felt attracted by this girl. Until this
moment, his animosity had been directed wholly against the male members
of her family: but now that she stood before him he realized that the
real outstanding Rossiter gumboil was this Hermione. The brief flicker
of _joie-de-vivre_ which had followed his interview with George had
died away, leaving his mood blacker than ever. One scarcely likes to
think what might have happened, had Hermione selected that moment to
tie her shoe-lace.
"Well, here we are," said Mrs. Rossiter.
At this point, unseen by them, the cupboard door began to open
noiselessly. A pale face peeped out. The next instant, there was a
cloud of dust, a whirring noise, and the sound of footsteps descending
the stairs three at a time.
Mrs. Rossiter put a hand to her heart and panted.
"What was that?"
"It was a little blurred," said Hermione, "but I think it was Cyprian."
Ignatius uttered a passionate cry and dashed to the head of the stairs.
"Gone!"
He came back, his face contorted, muttering to himself. Mrs. Rossiter
looked at him keenly. It seemed plain to her that all that was wanted
here was a couple of doctors with fountain-pens to sign the necessary
certificate, but she was not dismayed. After all, as she reasoned with
not a little shrewd sense, a gibbering artist is just as good as a sane
artist, provided he makes no charge for painting portraits.
"Well, Mr. Mulliner," she said cheerily, dismissing from her mind the
problem, which had been puzzling her a little, of why her son Cyprian
had been in this studio behaving like the Scotch Express, "Hermione has
nothing to do this morning, so, if you are free, now would be a good
time for the first sitting."
Ignatius came out of his reverie.
"Sitting?"
"For the portrait."
"What portrait?"
"Hermione's portrait."
"You wish me to paint Miss Rossiter's portrait?"
"Why, you said you would--only last night."
"Did I?" Ignatius passed a hand across his forehead. "Perhaps I did.
Very well. Kindly step to the desk and write out a cheque for fifty
pounds. You have your book with you?"
"Fifty--what?"
"Guineas," said Ignatius. "A hundred guineas. I always require a
deposit before I start work."
"But last night you said you would paint her for nothing."
"I said I would paint her for nothing?"
"Yes."
A dim recollection of having behaved in the fatuous manner described
came to Ignatius.
"Well, and suppose I did," he said warmly. "Can't you women ever
understand when a man is kidding you? Have you no sense of humour? Must
you always take every light quip literally? If you want a portrait of
Miss Rossiter, you will jolly well pay for it in the usual manner.
The thing that beats me is why you do want a portrait of a girl who
not only has most unattractive features but is also a dull yellow in
colour. Furthermore, she flickers. As I look at her, she definitely
flickers round the edges. Her face is sallow and unwholesome. Her eyes
have no sparkle of intelligence. Her ears stick out and her chin goes
in. To sum up, her whole appearance gives me an indefinable pain in
the neck: and, if you hold me to my promise, I shall charge extra for
moral and intellectual damage and wear and tear caused by having to sit
opposite her and look at her."
With these words, Ignatius Mulliner turned and began to rummage in a
drawer for his pipe. But the drawer contained no pipe.
"What!" cried Mrs. Rossiter.
"You heard," said Ignatius.
"My smelling-salts!" gasped Mrs. Rossiter.
Ignatius ran his hand along the mantelpiece. He opened two cupboards
and looked under the settee. But he found no pipe.
The Mulliners are by nature a courteous family: and, seeing Mrs.
Rossiter sniffing and gulping there, a belated sense of having been
less tactful than he might have been came to Ignatius.
"It is possible," he said, "that my recent remarks may have caused
you pain. If so, I am sorry. My excuse must be that they came from a
full heart. I am fed to the tonsils with the human race and look on
the entire Rossiter family as perhaps its darkest blots. I cannot see
the Rossiter family. There seems to me to be no market for them. All I
require of the Rossiters is their blood. I nearly got Cyprian with a
dagger, but he was too quick for me. If he fails as a critic, there is
always a future for him as a Russian dancer. However, I had decidedly
better luck with George. I gave him the juiciest kick I have ever
administered to human frame. If he had been shot from a gun he couldn't
have gone out quicker. Probably he passed you on the stairs?"
"So _that_ was what passed us!" said Hermione, interested. "I remember
thinking at the time that there was a whiff of George."
Mrs. Rossiter was staring, aghast.
"You kicked my son!"
"As squarely in the seat of the pants, madam," said Ignatius with
modest pride, "as if I had been practising for weeks."
"My stricken child!" cried Mrs. Rossiter. And, hastening from the room,
she ran down the stairs in quest of the remains. A boy's best friend is
his mother.
In the studio she had left, Hermione was gazing at Ignatius, in her
eyes a look he had never seen there before.
"I had no idea you were so eloquent, Mr. Mulliner," she said, breaking
the silence. "What a vivid description that was that you gave of me.
Quite a prose poem."
Ignatius made a deprecating gesture.
"Oh, well," he said.
"Do you really think I am like that?"
"I do."
"Yellow?"
"Greeny yellow."
"And my eyes...?" She hesitated for a word.
"They are not unlike blue oysters," said Ignatius, prompting her,
"which have been dead some time."
"In fact, you don't admire my looks?"
"Far from it."
She was saying something, but he had ceased to listen. Quite suddenly
he had remembered that about a couple of weeks ago, at a little party
which he had given in the studio, he had dropped a half-smoked cigar
behind the bureau. And as no charwoman is allowed by the rules of her
union to sweep under bureaux, it might--nay, must--still be there. With
feverish haste he dragged the bureau out. It was.
Ignatius Mulliner sighed an ecstatic sigh. Chewed and mangled, covered
with dust and bitten by mice, this object between his fingers was
nevertheless a cigar--a genuine, smokeable cigar, containing the
regulation eight per cent of carbon monoxide. He struck a match and the
next moment he had begun to puff.
And, as he did so, the milk of human kindness surged back into his soul
like a vast tidal wave. As swiftly as a rabbit, handled by a competent
conjurer, changes into a bouquet, a bowl of goldfish or the grand old
flag, Ignatius Mulliner changed into a thing of sweetness and light,
with charity towards all, with malice towards none. The pyridine played
about his mucous surfaces, and he welcomed it like a long-lost brother.
He felt gay, happy, exhilarated.
He looked at Hermione, standing there with her eyes sparkling and her
beautiful face ashine, and he realized that he had been all wrong about
her. So far from being a gumboil, she was the loveliest thing that had
ever breathed the perfumed air of Kensington.
And then, chilling his ecstasy and stopping his heart in the middle of
a beat, came the recollection of what he had said about her appearance.
He felt pale and boneless. If ever a man had dished himself properly,
that man, he felt, was Ignatius Mulliner. And he did not mean maybe.
She was looking at him, and the expression on her face seemed somehow
to suggest that she was waiting for something.
"Well?" she said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Ignatius.
She pouted.
"Well, aren't you going to--er--?"
"What?"
"Well, fold me in your arms and all that sort of thing," said Hermione,
blushing prettily.
Ignatius tottered.
"Who, me?"
"Yes, you."
"Fold you in my arms?"
"Yes."
"But--er--do you want me to?"
"Certainly."
"I mean ... after all I said...."
She stared at him in amazement.
"Haven't you been listening to what I've been telling you?" she cried.
"I'm sorry." Ignatius stammered. "Good deal on my mind just now. Must
have missed it. What did you say?"
"I said that, if you really think I look like that, you do not love me,
as I had always supposed, for my beauty, but for my intellect. And if
you knew how I have always longed to be loved for my intellect!"
Ignatius put down his cigar and breathed deeply.
"Let me get this right," he said. "Will you marry me?"
"Of course I will. You always attracted me strangely, Ignatius, but I
thought you looked upon me as a mere doll."
He picked up his cigar, took a puff, laid it down again, took a step
forward, extended his arms, and folded her in them. And for a space
they stood there, clasped together, murmuring those broken words that
lovers know so well. Then, gently disengaging her, he went back to the
cigar and took another invigorating puff.