Meet Mr Mulliner (21 page)
The door opened. Clarence made his leap.
And he was just about to start on the programme as arranged, when he discovered
with a shock of horror that this was no
O.B.E
. that he was being rough
with, but a woman. And no photographer worthy of the name will ever lay a hand
upon a woman, save to raise her chin and tilt it a little more to the left.
“I beg your pardon!” he cried.
“Don’t mention it,” said his visitor, in a
low voice. “I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
“Not at all,” said Clarence.
There was a pause.
“Rotten weather,” said Clarence, feeling
that it was for him, as the male member of the sketch, to keep the conversation
going.
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“A lot of rain we’ve had this summer.”
“Yes. It seems to get worse every year.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“So bad for tennis.”
“And cricket.”
“And polo.”
“And garden parties.”
“I hate rain.”
“So do I.”
“Of course, we may have a fine August.”
“Yes, there’s always that.”
The ice was broken, and the girl seemed to
become more at her ease.
“I came to let you out,” she said. “I must
apologise for my father. He loves me foolishly and has no scruples where my
happiness is concerned. He has always yearned to have me photographed by you,
but I cannot consent to allow a photographer to be coerced into abandoning his
principles. If you will follow me, I will let you out by the front door.”
“It’s awfully good of you,” said Clarence,
awkwardly. As any man of nice sentiment would have been, he was embarrassed. He
wished that he could have obliged this kind-hearted girl by taking her picture,
but a natural delicacy restrained him from touching on this subject. They went
down the stairs in silence.
On the first landing a hand was placed on
his in the darkness and the girl’s voice whispered in his ear.
“We are just outside father’s study,” he
heard her say. “We must be as quiet as mice.”
“As what?” said Clarence.
“Mice.”
“Oh, rather,” said Clarence, and
immediately bumped into what appeared to be a pedestal of some sort.
These pedestals usually have vases on top
of them, and it was revealed to Clarence a moment later that this one was no
exception. There was a noise like ten simultaneous dinner-services coming apart
in the hands of ten simultaneous parlour-maids; and then the door was flung
open, the landing became flooded with light, and the Mayor of Tooting East
stood before them. He was carrying a revolver and his face was dark with
menace.
“Ha!” said the Mayor.
But Clarence was paying no attention to
him. He was staring open-mouthed at the girl. She had shrunk back against the
wall, and the light fell full upon her.
“You!” cried Clarence.
“This—” began the Mayor.
“You! At last!”
“This is a pretty—”
“Am I dreaming?”
“This is a pretty state of af—”
“Ever since that day I saw you in the cab
I have been scouring London for you. To think that I have found you at last!”
“This is a pretty state of affairs,” said
the Mayor, breathing on the barrel of his revolver and polishing it on the
sleeve of his coat.
“My daughter helping the foe of her family
to fly—”
“Flee, father,” corrected the girl,
faintly.
“Flea or fly—this is no time for arguing
about insects. Let me tell you—”
Clarence interrupted him indignantly.
“What do you mean,” he cried, “by saying
that she took after you?
“She does.”
“She does not. She is the loveliest girl
in the world, while you look like Lon Chaney made up for something. See for
yourself.” Clarence led them to the large mirror at the head of the stairs. “Your
face—if you can call it that—is one of those beastly blobby squashy sort of
faces—”
“Here!” said the Mayor.
“—whereas hers is simply divine. Your eyes
are bulbous and goofy—”
“Hey!” said the Mayor.
“—while hers are sweet and soft and
intelligent. Your ears—”
“Yes, yes,” said the Mayor, petulantly. “Some
other time, some other time. Then am I to take it, Mr Mulliner—”
“Call me Clarence.”
“I refuse to call you Clarence.”
“You will have to very shortly, when I am
your son-in-law.”
The girl uttered a cry. The Mayor uttered
a louder cry.
“My son-in-law!”
“That,” said Clarence, firmly, “is what I
intend to be—and speedily.” He turned to the girl. “I am a man of volcanic
passions, and now that love has come to me there is no power in heaven or earth
that can keep me from the object of my love. It will be my never-ceasing
task—er—”
“Gladys,” prompted the girl.
“Thank you. It will be my never-ceasing
task, Gladys, to strive daily to make you return that love—”
“You need not strive, Clarence,” she
whispered, softly. “It is already returned.”
Clarence reeled.
“Already?” he gasped.
“I have loved you since I saw you in that
cab. When we were torn asunder, I felt quite faint.”
“So did I. I was in a daze. I tipped my
cabman at Waterloo three half-crowns. I was aflame with love.”
“I can hardly believe it.”
“Nor could I, when I found out. I thought
it was threepence. And ever since that day—”
The Mayor coughed.
“Then am I to take it—er—Clarence,” he
said, “that your objections to photographing my daughter are removed?”
Clarence laughed happily.
“Listen,” he said, “and I’ll show you the
sort of son-in-law I am. Ruin my professional reputation though it may, I will
take a photograph of you too!”
“Me!”
“Absolutely. Standing beside her with the
tips of your fingers on her shoulder. And what’s more, you can wear your cocked
hat.”
Tears had begun to trickle down the Mayor’s
cheeks.
“My boy!” he sobbed, brokenly. “My boy!”
And so happiness came to Clarence Mulliner
at last. He never became President of the Bulb-Squeezers, for he retired from
business the next day, declaring that the hand that had snapped the shutter
when taking the photograph of his dear wife should never snap it again for
sordid profit. The wedding, which took place some six weeks later, was attended
by almost everybody of any note in Society or on the Stage; and was the first
occasion on which a bride and bridegroom had ever walked out of church beneath
an arch of crossed tripods.
9
D
O
you believe in ghosts?” asked Mr Mulliner abruptly. I weighed the
question thoughtfully. I was a little surprised, for nothing in our previous
conversation had suggested the topic.
“Well,” I replied, “I don’t like them, if
that’s what you mean. I was once butted by one as a child.”
“Ghosts. Not goats.”
“Oh, ghosts? Do I believe in ghosts?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, yes—and no.”
“Let me put it another way,” said Mr Mulliner,
patiently. “Do you believe in haunted houses? Do you believe that it is possible
for a malign influence to envelop a place and work a spell on all who come within
its radius?”
I hesitated.
“Well, no—and yes.”
Mr Mulliner sighed a little. He seemed to
be wondering if I was always as bright as this.
“Of course,” I went on, “one has read
stories. Henry James’s
Turn of The Screw
…”
“I am not talking about fiction.”
“Well, in real life — Well, look here, I once,
as a matter of fact, did meet a man who knew a fellow …”
“My distant cousin James Rodman spent some
weeks in a haunted house,” said Mr Mulliner, who, if he has a fault, is not a
very good listener. “It cost him five thousand pounds. That is to say, he
sacrificed five thousand pounds by not remaining there. Did you ever,” he
asked, wandering, it seemed to me, from the subject, “hear of Leila J. Pinckney?’
Naturally I had heard of Leila J.
Pinckney. Her death some years ago has diminished her vogue, but at one time it
was impossible to pass a book-shop or a railway bookstall without seeing a long
row of her novels. I had never myself actually read any of them, but I knew
that in her particular line of literature, the Squashily Sentimental, she had
always been regarded by those entitled to judge as pre-eminent. The critics
usually headed their reviews of her stories with the words:—
ANOTHER PINCKNEY
or sometimes, more offensively:—
ANOTHER PINCKNEY!!!
And once, dealing with, I think,
The Love Which Prevails
, the
literary expert of the
Scrutinizer
had compressed his entire critique
into the single phrase “Oh, God!”
“Of course,” I said. “But what about her?”
“She was James Rodman’s aunt.”
“Yes?”
“And when she died James found that she
had left him five thousand pounds and the house in the country where she had
lived for the last twenty years of her life.”
“A very nice little legacy.”
“Twenty years,” repeated Mr Mulliner. “Grasp
that, for it has a vital bearing on what follows. Twenty years, mind you, and Miss
Pinckney turned out two novels and twelve short stories regularly every year,
besides a monthly page of Advice to Young Girls in one of the magazines. That
is to say, forty of her novels and no fewer than two hundred and forty of her
short stories were written under the roof of Honeysuckle Cottage.”
“A pretty name.”
“A nasty, sloppy name,” said Mr Mulliner
severely, “which should have warned my distant cousin James from the start.
Have you a pencil and a piece of paper?” He scribbled for awhile, poring
frowningly over columns of figures. “Yes,” he said, looking up, “if my
calculations are correct, Leila J. Pinckney wrote in all a matter of nine million
one hundred and forty thousand words of glutinous sentimentality at Honeysuckle
Cottage, and it was a condition of her will that James should reside there for
six months in every year. Failing to do this, he was to forfeit the five
thousand pounds.”
“It must be great fun making a freak will,”
I mused. “I often wish I was rich enough to do it.”
“This was not a freak will. The conditions
are perfectly understandable. James Rodman was a writer of sensational mystery
stories, and his aunt Leila had always disapproved of his work. She was a great
believer in the influence of environment, and the reason why she inserted that
clause in her will was that she wished to compel James to move from London to
the country. She considered that living in London hardened him and made his
outlook on life sordid. She often asked him if he thought it quite nice to harp
so much on sudden death and blackmailers with squints. Surely, she said, there
were enough squinting blackmailers in the world without writing about them.
“The fact that Literature meant such
different things to these two had, I believe, caused something of a coolness
between them, and James had never dreamed that he would be remembered in his
aunt’s will. For he had never concealed his opinion that Leila J. Pinckney’s
style of writing revolted him, however dear it might be to her enormous public.
He held rigid views on the art of the novel, and always maintained that an
artist with a true reverence for his craft should not descend to goo-ey love
stories, but should stick austerely to revolvers, cries in the night, missing
papers, mysterious Chinamen and dead bodies—with or without gash in throat. And
not even the thought that his aunt had dandled him on her knee as a baby could
induce him to stifle his literary conscience to the extent of pretending to
enjoy her work. First, last and all the time, James Rodman had held the
opinion—and voiced it fearlessly—that Leila J. Pinckney wrote bilge.
“It was a surprise to him, therefore, to
find that he had been left this legacy. A pleasant surprise, of course. James
was making quite a decent income out of the three novels and eighteen short
stories which he produced annually, but an author can always find a use for
five thousand pounds. And, as for the cottage, he had actually been looking
about for a little place in the country at the very moment when he received the
lawyer’s letter. In less than a week he was installed at his new residence.”