Meet Mr Mulliner (14 page)
“Came the Dawn!” he murmured. “Came the
Dawn!”
6
M
ISS
P
OSTLETHWAITE
, our able and vigilant barmaid, had whispered to us that the
gentleman sitting over there in the comer was an American gentleman.
“Comes from America,” added Miss
Postlethwaite, making her meaning clearer.
“From America?” echoed we.
“From America,” said Miss Postlethwaite. “He’s
an American.”
Mr Mulliner rose with an old-world grace.
We do not often get Americans in the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest. When we
do, we welcome them. We make them realise that Hands Across the Sea is no mere
phrase.
“Good evening, sir,” said Mr Mulliner.
“I wonder if you would care to join my friend
and myself in a little refreshment?”
“Very kind of you, sir.”
“Miss Postlethwaite, the usual. I
understand you are from the other side, sir. Do you find our English
country-side pleasant?”
“Delightful. Though, of course, if I may
say so, scarcely to be compared with the scenery of my home State.”
“What State is that?”
“California,” replied the other, baring
his head. “California, the Jewel State of the Union. With its azure sea, its
noble hills, its eternal sunshine, and its fragrant flowers, California stands
alone. Peopled by stalwart men and womanly women …”
“California would be all right,” said Mr
Mulliner, “if it wasn’t for the earthquakes.”
Our guest started as though some venomous
snake had bitten him.
“Earthquakes are absolutely unknown in
California,” he said, hoarsely.
“What about the one in 1906?”
“That was not an earthquake. It was a
fire.”
“An earthquake, I always understood,” said
Mr Mulliner. “My Uncle William was out there during it, and many a time has he
said to me, ‘My boy, it was the San Francisco earthquake that won me a bride.’”
“Couldn’t have been the earthquake. May
have been the fire.”
“Well, I will tell you the story, and you
shall judge for yourself.”
“I shall be glad to hear your story about
the San Francisco fire,” said the Californian, courteously.
My Uncle William (said Mr Mulliner) was
returning from the East at the time. The commercial interests of the Mulliners
have always been far-flung: and he had been over in China looking into the
workings of a tea-exporting business in which he held a number of shares. It
was his intention to get off the boat at San Francisco and cross the continent
by rail. He particularly wanted to see the Grand Canyon of Arizona. And when he
found that Myrtle Banks had for years cherished the same desire, it seemed to
him so plain a proof that they were twin souls that he decided to offer her his
hand and heart without delay.
This Miss Banks had been a
fellow-traveller on the boat all the way from Hong-Kong; and day by day William
Mulliner had fallen more and more deeply in love with her. So on the last day
of the voyage, as they were steaming in at the Golden Gate, he proposed.
I have never been informed of the exact
words which he employed, but no doubt they were eloquent. All the Mulliners
have been able speakers, and on such an occasion, he would, of course, have
extended himself. When at length he finished, it seemed to him that the girl’s
attitude was distinctly promising. She stood gazing over the rail into the
water below in a sort of rapt way. Then she turned.
“Mr Mulliner,” she said, “I am greatly
flattered and honoured by what you have just told me.” These things happened,
you will remember, in the days when girls talked like that. “You have paid me
the greatest compliment a man can bestow on a woman. And yet …”
William Mulliner’s heart stood still. He
did not like that “And yet—”
“Is there another?” he muttered.
“Well, yes, there is. Mr Franklyn proposed
to me this morning. I told him I would think it over.”
There was a silence. William was telling himself
that he had been afraid of that bounder Franklyn all along. He might have
known, he felt, that Desmond Franklyn would be a menace. The man was one of
those lean, keen, hawk-faced, Empire-building sort of chaps you find out
East—the kind of fellow who stands on deck chewing his moustache with a
far-away look in his eyes, and then, when the girl asks him what he is thinking
about, draws a short, quick breath and says he is sorry to be so absent-minded,
but a sunset like that always reminds him of the day when he killed the four
pirates with his bare hands and saved dear old Tuppy Smithers in the nick of
time.
“There is a great glamour about Mr
Franklyn,” said Myrtle Banks. “We women admire men who do things. A girl cannot
help but respect a man who once killed three sharks with a Boy Scout
pocket-knife.”
“So he says,” growled William.
“He showed me the pocket-knife,” said the
girl, simply. “And on another occasion he brought down two lions with one shot.”
William Mulliner’s heart was heavy, but he
struggled on.
“Very possibly he may have done these things,”
he said, “but surely marriage means more than this. Personally, if I were a girl,
I would go rather for a certain steadiness and stability of character. To
illustrate what I mean, did you happen to see me win the Egg-and-Spoon race at
the ship’s sports? Now there, it seems to me, in what I might call microcosm,
was an exhibition of all the qualities a married man most requires— intense
coolness, iron resolution, and a quiet, unassuming courage. The man who under
test conditions has carried an egg once and a half times round a deck in a
small spoon, is a man who can be trusted.”
She seemed to waver, but only for a
moment.
“I must think,” she said. “I must think.”
“Certainly,” said William. “You will let
me see something of you at the hotel, after we have landed?”
“Of course. And if—I mean to say, whatever
happens, I shall always look on you as a dear, dear friend.”
“M’yes,” said William Mulliner.
For three days my Uncle William’s stay in
San Francisco was as pleasant as could reasonably be expected, considering that
Desmond Franklyn was also stopping at his and Miss Banks’s hotel. He contrived
to get the girl to himself to quite a satisfactory extent; and they spent many
happy hours together in the Golden Gate Park and at the Cliff House, watching
the seals basking on the rocks. But on the evening of the third day the blow
fell.
“Mr Mulliner,” said Myrtle Banks, “I want
to tell you something.”
“Anything,” breathed William tenderly, “except
that you are going to marry that perisher Franklyn.”
“But that is exactly what I was going to
tell you, and I must not let you call him a perisher, for he is a very brave,
intrepid man.”
“When did you decide on this rash act?” asked
William dully.
“Scarcely an hour ago. We were talking in
the garden, and somehow or other we got on to the subject of rhinoceroses. He
then told me how he had once been chased up a tree by a rhinoceros in Africa
and escaped by throwing pepper in the brute’s eyes. He most fortunately chanced
to be eating his lunch when the animal arrived, and he had a hard-boiled egg
and the pepper-pot in his hands. When I heard this story, like Desdemona, I
loved him for the dangers he had passed, and he loved me that I did pity them.
The wedding is to be in June.”
William Mulliner ground his teeth in a
sudden access of jealous rage.
“Personally,” he said, “I consider that
the story you have just related reveals this man Franklyn in a very dubious—I
might almost say sinister—light. On his own showing, the leading trait in his
character appears to be cruelty to animals. The fellow seems totally incapable
of meeting a shark or a rhinoceros or any other of our dumb friends without
instantly going out of his way to inflict bodily injury on it. The last thing I
would wish is to be indelicate, but I cannot refrain from pointing out that, if
your union is blessed, your children will probably be the sort of children who
kick cats and tie tin cans to dogs’ tails. If you take my advice, you will
write the man a little note, saying that you are sorry but you have changed
your mind.”
The girl rose in a marked manner.
“I do not require your advice, Mr
Mulliner,” she said, coldly. “And I have not changed my mind.”
Instantly William Mulliner was all
contrition. There is a certain stage in the progress of a man’s love when he
feels like curling up in a ball and making little bleating noises if the object
of his affections so much as looks squiggle-eyed at him; and this stage my
Uncle William had reached. He followed her as she paced proudly away through
the hotel lobby, and stammered incoherent apologies. But Myrtle Banks was
adamant.
“Leave me, Mr Mulliner,” she said,
pointing at the revolving door that led into the street. “You have maligned a
better man than yourself, and I wish to have nothing more to do with you. Go!”
William went, as directed. And so great
was the confusion of his mind that he got stuck in the revolving door and had
gone round in it no fewer than eleven times before the hall-porter came to
extricate him.
“I would have removed you from the
machinery earlier, sir,” said the hall-porter deferentially, having deposited
him safely in the street, “but my bet with my mate in there called for ten
laps. I waited till you had completed eleven so that there should be no
argument.”
William looked at him dazedly.
“Hall-porter,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Tell me, hall-porter,” said William, “suppose
the only girl you have ever loved had gone and got engaged to another, what
would you do?”
The hall-porter considered.
“Let me get this right,” he said. “The
proposition is, if I have followed you correctly, what would I do supposing the
Jane on whom I had always looked as a steady mamma had handed me the old
skimmer and told me to take all the air I needed because she had gotten another
sweetie?”
“Precisely.”
“Your question is easily answered,” said
the hall-porter. “I would go around the corner and get me a nice stiff drink at
Mike’s Place.”
“A drink?”
“Yes, sir. A nice stiff one.”
“At—where did you say?”
“Mike’s Place, sir. Just round the corner.
You can’t miss it.”
William thanked him and walked away. The
man’s words had started a new, and in many ways interesting, train of thought.
A drink? And a nice stiff one? There might be something in it.
William Mulliner had never tasted alcohol
in his life. He had promised his late mother that he would not do so until he
was either twenty-one or forty-one—he could never remember which. He was at
present twenty-nine; but wishing to be on the safe side in case he had got his
figures wrong, he had remained a teetotaller. But now, as he walked listlessly
along the street towards the corner, it seemed to him that his mother in the
special circumstances could not reasonably object if he took a slight snort. He
raised his eyes to heaven, as though to ask her if a couple of quick ones might
not be permitted; and he fancied that a faint, far-off voice whispered, “Go to
it!”
And at this moment he found himself
standing outside a brightly-lighted saloon.
For an instant he hesitated. Then, as a
twinge of anguish in the region of his broken heart reminded him of the
necessity for immediate remedies, he pushed open the swing doors and went in.
The principal feature of the cheerful,
brightly-lit room in which he found himself was a long counter, at which were
standing a number of the citizenry, each with an elbow on the woodwork and a
foot upon the neat brass rail which ran below. Behind the counter appeared the
upper section of one of the most benevolent and kindly-looking men that William
had ever seen. He had a large smooth face, and he wore a white coat, and he
eyed William, as he advanced, with a sort of reverent joy.
“Is this Mike’s Place?” asked William.
“Yes, sir,” replied the white-coated man.
“Are you Mike?”
“No, sir. But I am his representative, and
have full authority to act on his behalf. What can I have the pleasure of doing
for you?”
The man’s whole attitude made him seem so
like a large-hearted elder brother that William felt no diffidence about
confiding in him. He placed an elbow on the counter and a foot on the rail, and
spoke with a sob in his voice.
“Suppose the only girl you had ever loved
had gone and got engaged to another, what in your view would best meet the case?”