Meet Mr Mulliner (18 page)

“I won’t.”

“Master Frederick,” said Nurse Wilks,
rising and pointing a menacing finger, “you march straight into that cupboard
in the passage and stay there till you are good.”

Frederick hesitated. He came of a proud
family. A Mulliner had once received the thanks of his Sovereign for services
rendered on the field of Crécy. But the recollection of what his brother George
had said decided him. Infra dig. as it might be to allow himself to be shoved
away in cupboards, it was better than being responsible for a woman’s
heart-failure. With bowed head he passed through the door, and a key clicked
behind him.

All alone in a dark world that smelt of
mice, Frederick Mulliner gave himself up to gloomy reflection. He had just put
in about two minutes’ intense thought of a kind which would have made the
meditations of Schopenhauer on one of his bad mornings seem like the day-dreams
of Polyanna, when a voice spoke through the crack in the door.

“Freddie. I mean Mr Mulliner.”

“Well?”

“She’s gone into the kitchen to get the
jam,” proceeded the voice rapidly. “Shall I let you out?”

“Pray do not trouble,” said Frederick
coldly. “I am perfectly comfortable.”

Silence followed. Frederick returned to
his reverie. About now, he thought, but for his brother George’s treachery in
luring him down to this plague-spot by a misleading telegram, he would have
been on the twelfth green at Squashy Hollow, trying out that new putter.
Instead of which …

The door opened abruptly, and as abruptly
closed again. And Frederick Mulliner, who had been looking forward to an
unbroken solitude, discovered with a good deal of astonishment that he had started
taking in lodgers.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded,
with a touch of proprietorial disapproval.

The girl did not answer. But presently
muffled sounds came to him through the darkness. In spite of himself, a certain
tenderness crept upon Frederick.

“I say,” he said awkwardly. “There’s
nothing to cry about.”

I’m not crying. I’m laughing.” Oh?” The
tenderness waned. “You think it’s amusing, do you, being shut up in this damned
cupboard …”

“There is no need to use bad language.”

““I entirely disagree with you. There is
every need to use bad language. It’s ghastly enough being at Bingley-on-Sea at
all, but when it comes to being shut up in Bingley cupboards …”

“… with a girl you hate?”

“We will not go into that aspect of the
matter,” said Frederick with dignity. “The important point is that here I am in
a cupboard at Bingley-on-Sea when, if there were any justice or right-thinking
in the world, I should be out at Squashy Hollow …”

“Oh? Do you still play golf?”

“Certainly I still play golf. Why not?”

“I don’t know why not. I’m glad you are
still able to amuse yourself.”

“How do you mean, still? Do you think that
just because …?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“I suppose you imagined I would be
creeping about the place, a broken-hearted wreck?”

“Oh no. I knew you would find it very easy
to console yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Never mind.”

“Are you insinuating that I am the sort of
man who turns lightly from one woman to another—a mere butterfly who flits from
flower to flower, sipping …?”

“Yes, if you want to know, I think you are
a born sipper.”

Frederick started. The charge was
monstrous.

“I have never sipped. And, what’s more, I
have never flitted.”

“That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“What you said.”

“You appear to have a very keen sense of
humour,” said Frederick weightily. “It amuses you to be shut up in cupboards.
It amuses you to hear me say …”

“Well, it’s nice to be able to get some
amusement out of life, isn’t it? Do you want to know why she shut me up in here?”

“I haven’t the slightest curiosity. Why?”

“I forgot where I was and lighted a
cigarette. Oh, my goodness!”

“Now what?”

“I thought I heard a mouse. Do you think
there are mice in this cupboard?”

“Certainly,” said Frederick. “Dozens of
them.”

He would have gone on to specify the kind
of mice,—large, fat, slithery, active mice: but at this juncture something hard
and sharp took him agonisingly on the ankle.

“Ouch!” cried Frederick.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that you?”

“It was.”

“I was kicking about to discourage the
mice.”

“I see.”

“Did it hurt much?”

“Only a trifle more than blazes, thank you
for inquiring.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“Anyway, it would have given a mouse a
nasty jar, if it had been one, wouldn’t it?”

“The shock, I should imagine, of a
lifetime.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t mention it. Why should I worry
about a broken ankle, when …”

“When what?”

“I forget what I was going to say.”

“When your heart is broken?”

“My heart is not broken.” It was a point
which Frederick wished to make luminously clear. “I am gay … happy … Who
the devil is this man Dillingwater?” he concluded abruptly.

There was a momentary pause.

“Oh, just a man.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the Ponderbys’.”

“Where did you get engaged to him?”

“At the Ponderbys’.”

“Did you pay another visit to the Ponderbys,
then?”

“No.”

Frederick choked.

“When you went to stay with the Ponderbys,
you were engaged to me. Do you mean to say you broke off your engagement to me,
met this Dillingwater, and got engaged to him all in the course of a single
visit lasting barely two weeks?”

“Yes.”

Frederick said nothing. It struck him
later that he should have said “Oh, Woman, Woman!” but at the moment it did not
occur to him.

“I don’t see what right you have to
criticise me,” said Jane.

“Who criticised you?”

“You did.”

“When?”

“Just then.”

“I call Heaven to witness,” cried
Frederick Mulliner, “that not by so much as a single word have I hinted at my
opinion that your conduct is the vilest and most revolting that has ever been
drawn to my attention. I never so much as suggested that your revelation had
shocked me to the depths of my soul.”

“Yes, you did. You sniffed.”

“If Bingley-on-Sea is not open for being
sniffed in at this season,” said Frederick coldly; “I should have been informed
earlier.”

“I had a perfect right to get engaged to
any one I liked and as quick as I liked, after the abominable way you behaved,”

“Abominable way I behaved? What do you
mean?”

“You know.”

“Pardon me, I do not know. If you are
alluding to my refusal to wear the tie you bought for me on my last birthday, I
can but repeat my statement, made to you at the time, that, apart from being
the sort of tie no upright man would be seen dead in a ditch with, its colours
were those of a Cycling, Angling, and Dart-Throwing club of which I am not a
member.”

“I am not alluding to that. I mean the day
I was going to the Ponderbys’ and you promised to see me off at Paddington, and
then you ‘phoned and said you couldn’t as you were detained by important
business, and I thought, well, I think I’ll go by the later train after all
because that will give me time to lunch quietly at the Berkeley, and I went and
lunched quietly at the Berkeley, and when I was there who should I see but you
at a table at the other end of the room gorging yourself in the company of a
beastly creature in a pink frock and henna’d hair. That’s what I mean.”

Frederick clutched at his forehead.

“Repeat that,” he exclaimed.

Jane did so.

“Ye gods!” said Frederick.

“It was like a blow over the head.
Something seemed to snap inside me, and …”

“I can explain all,” said Frederick.

Jane’s voice in the darkness was cold.

“Explain?” she said.

“Explain,” said Frederick.

“All?”

“All.”

Jane coughed.

“Before beginning,” she said, “do not
forget that I know every one of your female relatives by sight.”

“I don’t want to talk about my female
relatives.”

“I thought you were going to say that she
was one of them—an aunt or something.”

“Nothing of the kind. She was a revue
star. You probably saw her in a piece called
Toot-Toot
.”

“And that is your idea of an explanation!”

Frederick raised his hand for silence. Realising
that she could not see it, he lowered it again.

“Jane,” he said in a low, throbbing voice,
“can you cast your mind back to a morning in the spring when we walked, you and
I, in Kensington Gardens? The sun shone brightly, the sky was a limpid blue
flecked with fleecy clouds, and from the west there blew a gentle breeze …”

“If you think you can melt me with that
sort of …”

“Nothing of the kind. What I was leading
up to was this. As we walked, you and I, there came snuffling up to us a small
Pekingese dog. It left me, I admit, quite cold, but you went into ecstasies:
and from that moment I had but one mission in life, to discover who that Peke
belonged to and buy it for you. And after the most exhaustive inquiries, I
tracked the animal down. It was the property of the lady in whose company you
saw me lunching— lightly, not gorging—at the Berkeley that day. I managed to
get an introduction to her, and immediately began to make offers to her for the
dog. Money was no object to me. All I wished was to put the little beast in
your arms and see your face light up. It was to be a surprise. That morning the
woman ‘phoned, and said that she had practically decided to close with my
latest bid, and would I take her to lunch and discuss the matter? It was agony
to have to ring you up and tell you that I could not see you off at Paddington,
but it had to be done. It was anguish having to sit for two hours listening to
that highly-coloured female telling me how the comedian had ruined her big
number in her last show by standing upstage and pretending to drink ink, but
that had to be done too. I bit the bullet and saw it through and I got the dog
that afternoon. And next morning I received your letter breaking off the engagement.”

There was a long silence.

“Is this true?” said Jane.

“Quite true.”

“It sounds too—how shall I put it? — too
frightfully probable. Look me in the face!”

“What’s the good of looking you in the
face when I can’t see an inch in front of me?”

“Well, is it true?”

“Certainly it is true.”

“Can you produce the Peke?”

“I have not got it on my person,” said Frederick
stiffly. “But it is at my flat, probably chewing up a valuable rug. I will give
it you for a wedding present.”

“Oh, Freddie!”

“A wedding present,” repeated Frederick, though
the words stuck in his throat like patent American health-cereal.

“But I’m not going to be married.”

“You’re—what did you say?”

“I’m not going to be married.”

“But what of Dillingwater?”

“That’s off.”

“Off?”

“Off,” said Jane firmly. “I only got engaged
to him out of pique. I thought I could go through with it, buoying myself up by
thinking what a score it would be off you, but one morning I saw him eating a
peach and I began to waver. He splashed himself to the eyebrows. And just after
that I found that he had a trick of making a sort of funny noise when he drank
coffee. I would sit on the other side of the breakfast table, looking at him
and saying to myself ‘Now comes the funny noise!’ and when I thought of doing
that all the rest of my life I saw that the scheme was impossible. So I broke
off the engagement.”

Frederick gasped.

“Jane!”

He groped out, found her, and drew her
into his arms.

“Freddie!”

“Jane!”

“Freddie!”

“Jane!”

“Freddie!”

“Jane!”

On the panel of the door there sounded an
authoritative rap. Through it there spoke an authoritative voice, slightly
cracked by age but full, nevertheless, of the spirit that will stand no
nonsense.

“Master Frederick.”