general's habit of repeating everything three times had the effect on
him of making his last night's escapade seem three times as bad. He now
saw himself on the verge of standing convicted of having painted three
statues with three pots of pink paint, and of having placed on the head
of each one of a trio of shovel-hats. But he was a strong man, and he
did his best.
'You say my hat?' he retorted with spirit. 'How do you know it was my
hat? There may have been hundreds of bishops dodging about the school
grounds last night.'
'Got your name in it. Your name. Your name.'
The bishop clutched at the arm of the chair in which he sat. The
general's eyes were piercing him through and through, and every moment
he felt more like a sheep that has had the misfortune to encounter a
potted meat manufacturer. He was on the point of protesting that the
writing in the hat was probably a forgery, when there was a tap at the
door.
'Come in,' cried the headmaster, who had been cowering in his seat.
There entered a small boy in an Eton suit, whose face seemed to the
bishop vaguely familiar. It was a face that closely resembled a ripe
tomato with a nose stuck on it, but that was not what had struck the
bishop. It was of something other than tomatoes that this lad reminded
him.
'Sir, please, sir,' said the boy.
'Yes, yes, yes,' said General Bloodenough testily. 'Run away, my boy,
run away, run away. Can't you see we're busy?'
'But, sir, please, sir, it's about the statue.'
'What about the statue? What about it? What about it?'
'Sir, please, sir, it was me.'
'What! What! What! What! What!'
The bishop, the general, and the headmaster had spoken simultaneously:
and the 'Whats' had been distributed as follows:
The Bishop 1
The General 3
The Headmaster 1
making five in all. Having uttered these ejaculations, they sat staring
at the boy, who turned a brighter vermilion.
'What are you saying?' cried the headmaster. 'You painted that statue?'
'Sir, yes, sir.'
'You?' said the bishop.
'Sir, yes, sir.'
'You? You? You?' said the general.
'Sir, yes, sir.'
There was a quivering pause. The bishop looked at the headmaster. The
headmaster looked at the bishop. The general looked at the boy. The boy
looked at the floor.
The general was the first to speak.
'Monstrous!' he exclaimed. 'Monstrous. Monstrous. Never heard of such a
thing. This boy must be expelled, Headmaster. Expelled. Ex--'
'No!' said the headmaster in a ringing voice.
'Then flogged within an inch of his life. Within an inch. An inch.'
'No!' A strange, new dignity seemed to have descended upon the Rev.
Trevor Entwhistle. He was breathing a little quickly through his nose,
and his eyes had assumed a somewhat prawn-like aspect. 'In matters
of school discipline, general, I must with all deference claim to be
paramount. I will deal with this case as I think best. In my opinion
this is not an occasion for severity. You agree with me, bishop?'
The bishop came to himself with a start. He had been thinking of an
article which he had just completed for a leading review on the subject
of Miracles, and was regretting that the tone he had taken, though
in keeping with the trend of Modern Thought, had been tinged with
something approaching scepticism.
'Oh, entirely,' he said.
'Then all I can say,' fumed the general, 'is that I wash my hands of
the whole business, the whole business, the whole business. And if
this is the way our boys are being brought up nowadays, no wonder the
country is going to the dogs, the dogs, going to the dogs.'
The door slammed behind him. The headmaster turned to the boy, a
kindly, winning smile upon his face.
'No doubt,' he said, 'you now regret this rash act?'
'Sir, yes, sir.'
'And you would not do it again?'
'Sir, no, sir.'
'Then I think,' said the headmaster cheerily, 'that we may deal
leniently with what, after all, was but a boyish prank, eh, bishop?'
'Oh, decidedly, Headmaster.'
'Quite the sort of thing--ha, ha!--that you or I might have
done--er--at his age?'
'Oh, quite.'
'Then you shall write me twenty lines of Virgil, Mulliner, and we will
say no more about it.'
The bishop sprang from his chair.
'Mulliner! Did you say Mulliner?'
'Yes.'
'I have a secretary of that name. Are you, by any chance, a relation of
his, my lad?'
'Sir, yes, sir. Brother.'
'Oh!' said the bishop.
* * * * *
The bishop found Augustine in the garden, squirting whale-oil solution
on the rose-bushes, for he was an enthusiastic horticulturist. He
placed an affectionate hand on his shoulder.
'Mulliner,' he said, 'do not think that I have not detected your hidden
hand behind this astonishing occurrence.'
'Eh?' said Augustine. 'What astonishing occurrence?'
'As you are aware, Mulliner, last night, from motives which I can
assure you were honourable and in accord with the truest spirit of
sound Churchmanship, the Rev. Trevor Entwhistle and I were compelled
to go out and paint old Fatty Hemel's statue pink. Just now, in the
headmaster's study, a boy confessed that he had done it. That boy,
Mulliner, was your brother.
'Oh yes?'
'It was you who, in order to save me, inspired him to that confession.
Do not deny it, Mulliner.'
Augustine smiled an embarrassed smile.
'It was nothing, Bish, nothing at all.'
'I trust the matter did not involve you in any too great expense. From
what I know of brothers, the lad was scarcely likely to have carried
through this benevolent ruse for nothing.'
'Oh, just a couple of quid. He wanted three, but I beat him down.
Preposterous, I mean to say,' said Augustine warmly. 'Three quid for a
perfectly simple, easy job like that? And so I told him.'
'It shall be returned to you, Mulliner.'
'No, no, Bish.'
'Yes, Mulliner, it shall be returned to you. I have not the sum on
my person, but I will forward you a cheque to your new address, The
Vicarage, Steeple Mummery, Hants.'
Augustine's eyes filled with sudden tears. He grasped the other's hand.
'Bish,' he said in a choking voice, 'I don't know how to thank you.
But--have you considered?'
'Considered?'
'The wife of thy bosom. Deuteronomy xiii, 6. What will she say when you
tell her?'
The bishop's eyes gleamed with a resolute light.
'Mulliner,' he said, 'the point you raise had not escaped me. But I
have the situation well in hand. A bird of the air shall carry the
voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. Ecclesiastes x,
20. I shall inform her of my decision on the long-distance telephone.'
5
CAME THE DAWN
The man in the corner took a sip of stout-and-mild, and proceeded to
point the moral of the story which he had just told us.
'Yes, gentlemen,' he said, 'Shakespeare was right. There's a divinity
that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.'
We nodded. He had been speaking of a favourite dog of his which,
entered recently by some error in a local cat show, had taken first
prize in the class for short-haired tortoiseshells; and we all thought
the quotation well-chosen and apposite.
'There is, indeed,' said Mr Mulliner. 'A rather similar thing happened
to my nephew Lancelot.'
In the nightly reunions in the bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest we have
been trained to believe almost anything of Mr Mulliner's relatives, but
this, we felt, was a little too much.
'You mean to say your nephew Lancelot took a prize at a cat show?'
'No, no,' said Mr Mulliner hastily. 'Certainly not. I have never
deviated from the truth in my life, and I hope I never shall. No
Mulliner has ever taken a prize at a cat show. No Mulliner, indeed, to
the best of my knowledge, has even been entered for such a competition.
What I meant was that the fact that we never know what the future holds
in store for us was well exemplified in the case of my nephew Lancelot,
just as it was in the case of this gentleman's dog which suddenly found
itself transformed for all practical purposes into a short-haired
tortoiseshell cat. It is rather a curious story, and provides a good
illustration of the adage that you never can tell and that it is always
darkest before the dawn.'
* * * * *
At the time at which my story opens (said Mr Mulliner) Lancelot,
then twenty-four years of age and recently come down from Oxford,
was spending a few days with old Jeremiah Briggs, the founder and
proprietor of the famous Briggs's Breakfast Pickles, on the latter's
yacht at Cowes.
This Jeremiah Briggs was Lancelot's uncle on the mother's side, and
he had always interested himself in the boy. It was he who had sent
him to the University; and it was the great wish of his heart that his
nephew, on completing his education, should join him in the business.
It was consequently a shock to the poor old gentleman when, as they sat
together on deck on the first morning of the visit, Lancelot, while
expressing the greatest respect for pickles as a class, firmly refused
to start in and learn the business from the bottom up.
'The fact is, uncle,' he said, 'I have mapped out a career for myself
on far different lines. I am a poet.'
'A poet? When did you feel this coming on?'
'Shortly after my twenty-second birthday.'
'Well,' said the old man, overcoming his first natural feeling of
repulsion, 'I don't see why that should stop us getting together. I use
quite a lot of poetry in my business.'
'I fear I could not bring myself to commercialize my Muse.'
'Young man,' said Mr Briggs, 'if an onion with a head like yours came
into my factory, I would refuse to pickle it.'
He stumped below, thoroughly incensed. But Lancelot merely uttered a
light laugh. He was young; it was summer; the sky was blue; the sun
was shining; and the things in the world that really mattered were
not cucumbers and vinegar but Romance and Love. Oh, he felt, for some
delightful girl to come along on whom he might lavish all the pent-up
fervour which had been sizzling inside him for weeks!
And at this moment he saw her.
She was leaning against the rail of a yacht that lay at its moorings
some forty yards away; and, as he beheld her, Lancelot's heart leaped
like a young gherkin in the boiling-vat. In her face, it seemed to him,
was concentrated all the beauty of all the ages. Confronted with this
girl, Cleopatra would have looked like Nellie Wallace, and Helen of
Troy might have been her plain sister. He was still gazing at her in
a sort of trance, when the bell sounded for luncheon and he had to go
below.
All through the meal, while his uncle spoke of pickled walnuts he had
known, Lancelot remained in a reverie. He was counting the minutes
until he could get on deck and start goggling again. Judge, therefore,
of his dismay when, on bounding up the companionway, he found that the
other yacht had disappeared. He recalled now having heard a sort of
harsh, grating noise towards the end of luncheon; but at the time he
had merely thought it was his uncle eating celery. Too late he realized
that it must have been the raising of the anchor-chain.
* * * * *
Although at heart a dreamer, Lancelot Mulliner was not without a
certain practical streak. Thinking the matter over, he soon hit upon a
rough plan of action for getting on the track of the fair unknown who
had flashed in and out of his life with such tragic abruptness. A girl
like that--beautiful, lissom, and--as far as he had been able to tell
at such long range--gimp, was sure to be fond of dancing. The chances
were, therefore, that sooner or later he would find her at some night
club or other.
He started, accordingly, to make the round of the night clubs. As
soon as one was raided, he went on to another. Within a month he had
visited the Mauve Mouse, the Scarlet Centipede, the Vicious Cheese, the
Gay Fritter, the Placid Prune, the Café de Bologna, Billy's, Milly's,
Ike's, Spike's, Mike's, and the Ham and Beef. And it was at the Ham and
Beef that at last he found her.
He had gone there one evening for the fifth time, principally because
at that establishment there were a couple of speciality dancers to
whom he had taken a dislike shared by virtually every thinking man in
London. It had always seemed to him that one of these nights the male
member of the team, while whirling his partner round in a circle by
her outstretched arms, might let her go and break her neck; and though
constant disappointment had to some extent blunted the first fine
enthusiasm of his early visits, he still hoped.
On this occasion the speciality dancers came and went unscathed as
usual, but Lancelot hardly noticed them. His whole attention was
concentrated on the girl seated across the room immediately opposite
him. It was beyond a question she.
Well, you know what poets are. When their emotions are stirred, they
are not like us dull, diffident fellows. They breathe quickly through
their noses and get off to a flying start. In one bound Lancelot was
across the room, his heart beating till it sounded like a by-request
solo from the trap-drummer.
'Shall we dance?' he said.
'Can you dance?' said the girl.
Lancelot gave a short, amused laugh. He had had a good University
education, and had not failed to profit by it. He was a man who never
let his left hip know what his right hip was doing.
'I am old Colonel Charleston's favourite son,' he said, simply.
A sound like the sudden descent of an iron girder on a sheet of tin,
followed by a jangling of bells, a wailing of tortured cats, and the
noise of a few steam-riveters at work, announced to their trained ears
that the music had begun. Sweeping her to him with a violence which,
attempted in any other place, would have earned him a sentence of
thirty days coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench, Lancelot
began to push her yielding form through the sea of humanity till they
reached the centre of the whirlpool. There, unable to move in any
direction, they surrendered themselves to the ecstasy of the dance,
wiping their feet on the polished flooring and occasionally pushing an
elbow into some stranger's encroaching rib.
'This,' murmured the girl with closed eyes, 'is divine.'
'What?' bellowed Lancelot, for the orchestra, in addition to ringing
bells, had now begun to howl like wolves at dinner-time.
'Divine,' roared the girl. 'You certainly are a beautiful dancer.'
'A beautiful what?'
'Dancer.'
'Who is?'
'You are.'
'Good egg!' shrieked Lancelot, rather wishing, though he was fond of
music, that the orchestra would stop beating the floor with hammers.
'What did you say?'
'I said, "Good egg."'
'Why?'
'Because the idea crossed my mind that, if you felt like that, you
might care to marry me.'
There was a sudden lull in the storm. It was as if the audacity
of his words had stricken the orchestra into a sort of paralysis.
Dark-complexioned men who had been exploding bombs and touching off
automobile hooters became abruptly immobile and sat rolling their
eyeballs. One or two people left the floor, and plaster stopped falling
from the ceiling.
'Marry you?' said the girl.
'I love you as no man has ever loved woman before.'
'Well, that's always something. What would the name be?'
'Mulliner. Lancelot Mulliner.'
'It might be worse.' She looked at him with pensive eyes. 'Well, why
not?' she said. 'It would be a crime to let a dancer like you go out of
the family. On the other hand, my father will kick like a mule. Father
is an Earl.'
'What Earl?'
'The Earl of Biddlecombe.'
'Well, earls aren't everything,' said Lancelot with a touch of pique.
'The Mulliners are an old and honourable family. A Sieur de Moulinières
came over with the Conqueror.'
'Ah, but did a Sieur de Moulinières ever do down the common people
for a few hundred thousand and salt it away in gilt-edged securities?
That's what's going to count with the aged parent. What with taxes
and super-taxes and death duties and falling land-values, there has
of recent years been very, very little of the right stuff in the
Biddlecombe sock. Shake the family money-box and you will hear but the
faintest rattle. And I ought to tell you that at the Junior Lipstick
Club seven to two is being freely offered on my marrying Slingsby
Purvis, of Purvis's Liquid Dinner Glue. Nothing is definitely decided
yet, but you can take it as coming straight from the stable that,
unless something happens to upset current form, she whom you now see
before you is the future Ma Purvis.'
Lancelot stamped his foot defiantly, eliciting a howl of agony from a
passing reveller.
'This shall not be,' he muttered.
'If you care to bet against it,' said the girl, producing a small
notebook, 'I can accommodate you at the current odds.'
'Purvis, forsooth!'
'I'm not saying it's a pretty name. All I'm trying to point out is that
at the present moment he heads the "All the above have arrived" list.
He is Our Newmarket Correspondent's Five-Pound Special and Captain
Coe's final selection. What makes you think you can nose him out? Are
you rich?'
'At present, only in love. But tomorrow I go to my uncle, who is
immensely wealthy--'
'And touch him?'
'Not quite that. Nobody has touched Uncle Jeremiah since the early
winter of 1885. But I shall get him to give me a job, and then we shall
see.'
'Do,' said the girl, warmly. 'And if you can stick the gaff into Purvis
and work the Young Lochinvar business, I shall be the first to touch
off red fire. On the other hand, it is only fair to inform you that at
the Junior Lipstick all the girls look on the race as a walk-over. None
of the big punters will touch it.'
Lancelot returned to his rooms that night undiscouraged. He intended
to sink his former prejudices and write a poem in praise of Briggs's
Breakfast Pickles which would mark a new era in commercial verse. This
he would submit to his uncle; and, having stunned him with it, would
agree to join the firm as chief poetry-writer. He tentatively pencilled
down five thousand pounds a year as the salary which he would demand.
With a long-term contract for five thousand a year in his pocket, he
could approach Lord Biddlecombe and jerk a father's blessing out of him
in no time. It would be humiliating, of course, to lower his genius
by writing poetry about pickles; but a lover must make sacrifices. He
bought a quire of the best foolscap, brewed a quart of the strongest
coffee, locked his door, disconnected his telephone, and sat down at
his desk.
Genial old Jeremiah Briggs received him, when he called next day at his
palatial house, the Villa Chutney, at Putney, with a bluff good-humour
which showed that he still had a warm spot in his heart for the young
rascal.
'Sit down, boy, and have a pickled onion,' said he, cheerily, slapping
Lancelot on the shoulder. 'You've come to tell me you've reconsidered
your idiotic decision about not joining the business, eh? No doubt we
thought it a little beneath our dignity to start at the bottom and work
our way up? But, consider, my dear lad. We must learn to walk before
we can run, and you could hardly expect me to make you chief cucumber
buyer, or head of the vinegar-bottling department, before you have
acquired hard-won experience.'
'If you will allow me to explain, uncle--'
'Eh?' Mr Briggs's geniality faded somewhat. 'Am I to understand that
you don't want to come into the business?'
'Yes and no,' said Lancelot. 'I still consider that slicing up
cucumbers and dipping them in vinegar is a poor life-work for a man
with the Promethean fire within him; but I propose to place at the
disposal of the Briggs Breakfast Pickle my poetic gifts.'
'Well, that's better than nothing. I've just been correcting the proofs
of the last thing our man turned in. It's really excellent. Listen:
'Soon, soon all human joys must end:
Grim Death approaches with his sickle:
Courage! There is still time, my friend,
To eat a Briggs's Breakfast Pickle.'
'If you could give us something like that--'
Lancelot raised his eyebrows. His lip curled.
'The little thing I have dashed off is not quite like that.'
'Oh, you've written something, eh?'
'A mere _morceau_. You would care to hear it?'
'Fire away, my boy.'
Lancelot produced his manuscript and cleared his throat. He began to
read in a low, musical voice.
'DARKLING (A Threnody)
BY L. BASSINGTON MULLINER
(Copyright in all languages, including the Scandinavian)
(The dramatic, musical-comedy, and motion-picture rights of this
Threnody are strictly reserved. Applications for these should be
made to the author)'
'What is a Threnody?' asked Mr Briggs.
'This is,' said Lancelot.
He cleared his throat again and resumed.
'Black branches,
Like a corpse's withered hands,
Waving against the blacker sky:
Chill winds,
Bitter like the tang of half-remembered sins;
Bats wheeling mournfully through the air,
And on the ground
Worms,
Toads,
Frogs,
And nameless creeping things;
And all around
Desolation,
Doom,
Dyspepsia,
And Despair.
I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate;
I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment;
I am a despairing toad;
I have got dyspepsia.'
He paused. His uncle's eyes were protruding rather like those of a
nameless creeping frog.
'What's all this?' said Mr Briggs.
It seemed almost incredible to Lancelot that his poem should present
any aspect of obscurity to even the meanest intellect; but he
explained.
'The thing,' he said, 'is symbolic. It essays to depict the state of
mind of the man who has not yet tried Briggs's Breakfast Pickles. I
shall require it to be printed in hand-set type on deep cream-coloured
paper.'
'Yes?' said Mr Briggs, touching the bell.
'With bevelled edges. It must be published, of course, bound in limp
leather, preferably of a violet shade, in a limited edition, confined
to one hundred and five copies. Each of these copies I will sign--'
'You rang, sir?' said the butler, appearing in the doorway.
Mr Briggs nodded curtly.
'Bewstridge,' said he, 'throw Mr Lancelot out.'
'Very good, sir.'
'And see,' added Mr Briggs, superintending the subsequent proceedings
from his library window, 'that he never darkens my doors again. When
you have finished, Bewstridge, ring up my lawyers on the telephone. I
wish to alter my will.'
* * * * *
Youth is a resilient period. With all his worldly prospects swept away
and a large bruise on his person which made it uncomfortable for him
to assume a sitting posture, you might have supposed that the return
of Lancelot Mulliner from Putney would have resembled that of the late
Napoleon from Moscow. Such, however, was not the case. What, Lancelot
asked himself as he rode back to civilization on top of an omnibus, did
money matter? Love, true love, was all. He would go to Lord Biddlecombe
and tell him so in a few neatly-chosen words. And his lordship, moved
by his eloquence, would doubtless drop a well-bred tear and at once
see that the arrangements for his wedding to Angela--for such, he had
learned, was her name--were hastened along with all possible speed. So
uplifted was he by this picture that he began to sing, and would have
continued for the remainder of the journey had not the conductor in a
rather brusque manner ordered him to desist. He was obliged to content
himself until the bus reached Hyde Park Corner by singing in dumb show.
The Earl of Biddlecombe's town residence was in Berkeley Square.
Lancelot rang the bell and a massive butler appeared.
'No hawkers, street criers, or circulars,' said the butler.
'I wish to see Lord Biddlecombe.'
'Is his lordship expecting you?'
'Yes,' said Lancelot, feeling sure that the girl would have spoken to
her father over the morning toast and marmalade of a possible visit
from him.
A voice made itself heard through an open door on the left of the long
hall.
'Fotheringay.'
'Your lordship?'
'Is that the feller?'
'Yes, your lordship.'
'Then bring him in, Fotheringay.'
'Very good, your lordship.'
Lancelot found himself in a small, comfortably-furnished room,
confronting a dignified-looking old man with a patrician nose and small
side-whiskers, who looked like something that long ago had come out of
an egg.
'Afternoon,' said this individual.
'Good afternoon, Lord Biddlecombe,' said Lancelot.
'Now, about these trousers.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'These trousers,' said the other, extending a shapely leg. 'Do they
fit? Aren't they a bit baggy round the ankles? Won't they jeopardize my
social prestige if I am seen in them in the Park?'
Lancelot was charmed with his affability. It gave him the feeling of
having been made one of the family straight away.
'You really want my opinion?'
'I do. I want your candid opinion as a God-fearing man and a member of
a West-End tailoring firm.'
'But I'm not.'
'Not a God-fearing man?'
'Not a member of a West-End tailoring firm.'