But on the woman opposite the effect of
the untoward occurrence was still more marked. With a single piercing shriek,
she rose from her seat straight into the air like a rocketing pheasant; and,
having clutched the communication-cord, fell back again. Impressive as her
previous leap had been, she excelled it now by several inches. I do not know
what the existing record for the Sitting High-Jump is, but she undoubtedly
lowered it; and if George had been a member of the Olympic Games Selection
Committee, he would have signed this woman up immediately.
It is a curious thing that, in spite of
the railway companies’ sporting willingness to let their patrons have a tug at
the extremely moderate price of five pounds a go, very few people have ever
either pulled a communication-cord or seen one pulled. There is, thus, a
widespread ignorance as to what precisely happens on such occasions.
The procedure, George tells me, is as follows:
First there comes a grinding noise, as the brakes are applied. Then the train
stops. And finally, from every point of the compass, a seething mob of
interested onlookers begins to appear.
It was about a mile and a half from East
Wobsley that the affair had taken place, and as far as the eye could reach the
countryside was totally devoid of humanity. A moment before nothing had been
visible but smiling cornfields and broad pasture-lands; but now from east,
west, north, and south running figures began to appear. We must remember that
George at the time was in a somewhat overwrought frame of mind, and his
statements should therefore be accepted with caution; but he tells me that out
of the middle of a single empty meadow, entirely devoid of cover, no fewer than
twenty-seven distinct rustics suddenly appeared, having undoubtedly shot up
through the ground.
The rails, which had been completely
unoccupied, were now thronged with so dense a crowd of navvies that it seemed
to George absurd to pretend that there was any unemployment in England. Every
member of the labouring classes throughout the country was so palpably present.
Moreover, the train, which at Ippleton had seemed sparsely occupied, was
disgorging passengers from every door. It was the sort of mob-scene which would
have made David W. Griffith scream with delight; and it looked, George says, like
Guest Night at the Royal Automobile Club. But, as I say, we must remember that
he was overwrought.
It is difficult to say what precisely
would have been the correct behaviour of your polished man of the world in such
a situation. I think myself that a great deal of sang-froid and address would
be required even by the most self-possessed in order to pass off such a contretemps.
To George, I may say at once, the crisis revealed itself immediately as one
which he was totally incapable of handling. The one clear thought that stood
out from the welter of his emotions was the reflection that it was advisable to
remove himself, and to do so without delay. Drawing a deep breath, he shot
swiftly off the mark.
All we Mulliners have been athletes; and
George, when at the University, had been noted for his speed of foot. He ran
now as he had never run before. His statement, however, that as he sprinted
across the first field he distinctly saw a rabbit shoot an envious glance at
him as he passed and shrug its shoulders hopelessly, I am inclined to discount.
George, as I have said before, was a little over-excited.
Nevertheless, it is not to be questioned
that he made good going. And he had need to, for after the first instant of
surprise, which had enabled him to secure a lead, the whole mob was pouring
across country after him; and dimly, as he ran, he could hear voices in the
throng informally discussing the advisability of lynching him. Moreover, the
field through which he was running, a moment before a bare expanse of green,
was now black with figures, headed by a man with a beard who carried a
pitchfork. George swerved sharply to the right, casting a swift glance over his
shoulder at his pursuers. He disliked them all, but especially the man with the
pitchfork.
It is impossible for one who was not an
eye-witness to say how long the chase continued and how much ground was covered
by the interested parties. I know the East Wobsley country well, and I have
checked George’s statements; and, if it is true that he travelled east as far
as Little-Wigmarsh-in-the-Dell and as far west as
Higgleford-cum-Wortlebury-beneath-the-Hill, he must undoubtedly have done a lot
of running.
But a point which must not be forgotten is
that, to a man not in a condition to observe closely, the village of
Higgleford-cum-Wortlebury-beneath-the-Hill might easily not have been Higgleford-cum-Wortlebury-beneath-the-Hill
at all, but another hamlet which in many respects closely resembles it. I need
scarcely say that I allude to Lesser-Snodsbury-in-the-Vale.
Let us assume, therefore, that George,
having touched Little-Wigmarsh-in-the-Dell, shot off at a tangent and reached
Lesser-Snodsbury-in-the-Vale. This would be a considerable run. And, as he
remembers flitting past Farmer Higgins’s pigsty and the Dog and Duck at
Pondlebury Parva and splashing through the brook Wipple at the point where it
joins the River Wopple, we can safely assume that, wherever else he went, he
got plenty of exercise.
But the pleasantest of functions must end,
and, just as the setting sun was gilding the spire of the ivy-covered church of
St. Barnabas the Resilient, where George as a child had sat so often, enlivening
the tedium of the sermon by making faces at the choirboys, a damp and
bedraggled figure might have been observed crawling painfully along the High
Street of East Wobsley in the direction of the cosy little cottage known to its
builder as Chatsworth and to the village tradesmen as “Mulliner’s.”
It was George, home from the
hunting-field.
Slowly George Mulliner made his way to the
familiar door, and, passing through it, flung himself into his favourite chair.
But a moment later a more imperious need than the desire to rest forced itself
upon his attention. Rising stiffly, he tottered to the kitchen and mixed
himself a revivifying whisky-and-soda. Then, refilling his glass, he returned
to the sitting-room, to find that it was no longer empty. A slim, fair girl,
tastefully attired in tailor-made tweeds, was leaning over the desk on which he
kept his
Dictionary of English Synonyms
.
She looked up as he entered, startled.
“Why, Mr Mulliner!” she exclaimed. “What
has been happening? Your clothes are torn, rent, ragged, tattered, and your
hair is all dishevelled, untrimmed, hanging loose or negligently, at loose ends!”
George smiled a wan smile.
“You are right,” he said. “And, what is
more, I am suffering from extreme fatigue, weariness, lassitude, exhaustion,
prostration, and languor.”
The girl gazed at him, a divine pity in
her soft eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “So very
sorry, grieved, distressed, afflicted, pained, mortified, dejected, and upset.”
George took her hand. Her sweet sympathy
had effected the cure for which he had been seeking so long. Coming on top of
the violent emotions through which he had been passing all day, it seemed to
work on him like some healing spell, charm, or incantation. Suddenly, in a
flash, he realised that he was no longer a stammerer. Had he wished at that
moment to say, “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” he could have
done it without a second thought.
But he had better things to say than that.
“Miss Blake—Susan—Susie.” He took her
other hand in his. His voice rang out clear and unimpeded. It seemed to him
incredible that he had ever yammered at this girl like an overheated
steam-radiator. “It cannot have escaped your notice that I have long
entertained towards you sentiments warmer and deeper than those of ordinary
friendship. It is love, Susan, that has been animating my bosom. Love, first a
tiny seed, has burgeoned in my heart till, blazing into flame, it has swept
away on the crest of its wave my diffidence, my doubt, my fears, and my
foreboding, and now, like the topmost topaz of some ancient tower, it cries to
all the world in a voice of thunder: ‘You are mine! My mate! Predestined to me
since Time first began!’ As the star guides the mariner when, battered by boiling
billows, he hies him home to the haven of hope and happiness, so do you gleam
upon me along life’s rough road and seem to say, ‘Have courage, George! I am
here!’ Susan, I am not an eloquent man—I cannot speak fluently as I could
wish—but these simple words which you have just heard come from the heart, from
the unspotted heart of an English gentleman. Susan, I love you. Will you be my
wife, married woman, matron, spouse, help-meet, consort, partner or better half?”
“Oh, George!” said Susan. “Yes, yea, ay,
aye! Decidedly, unquestionably, indubitably, incontrovertibly, and past all
dispute!”
He folded her in his arms. And, as he did
so, there came from the street outside —faintly, as from a distance—the sound
of feet and voices. George leaped to the window. Rounding the comer, just by
the Cow and Wheelbarrow public-house, licensed to sell ales, wines, and
spirits, was the man with the pitchfork, and behind him followed a vast crowd.
“My darling,” said George. “For purely
personal and private reasons, into which I need not enter, I must now leave
you. Will you join me later?”
“I will follow you to the ends of the
earth,” replied Susan, passionately.
“It will not be necessary,” said George. “I
am only going down to the coal-cellar. I shall spend the next half-hour or so
there.
If anybody calls and asks for me, perhaps
you would not mind telling them that I am out.”
“I will, I will,” said Susan. “And,
George, by the way. What I really came here for was to ask you if you knew a
hyphenated word of nine letters, ending in k and signifying an implement
employed in the pursuit of agriculture.”
“Pitch-fork, sweetheart,” said George. “But
you may take it from me, as one who knows, that agriculture isn’t the only
thing it is used in pursuit of.”
And since that day (concluded Mr Mulliner)
George, believe me or believe me not, has not had the slightest trace of an
impediment in his speech. He is now the chosen orator at all political rallies
for miles around; and so offensively self-confident has his manner become that
only last Friday he had his eye blacked by a hay-corn-and-feed merchant of the
name of Stubbs. It just shows you, doesn’t it?
2
T
HE
conversation in the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest had drifted
round to the subject of the Arts: and somebody asked if that film-serial,
The
Vicissitudes of Vera
, which they were showing down at the Bijou Dream, was
worth seeing.
“It’s very good,” said Miss Postlethwaite,
our courteous and efficient barmaid, who is a prominent first-nighter. “It’s
about this mad professor who gets this girl into his toils and tries to turn
her into a lobster.”
“Tries to turn her into a lobster?” echoed
we, surprised.
“Yes, sir. Into
a
lobster. It seems
he collected thousands and thousands of lobsters and mashed them up and boiled
down the juice from their glands and was just going to inject it into this Vera
Dalrymple’s spinal column when Jack Frobisher broke into the house and stopped
him.”
“Why did he do that?”
“Because he didn’t want the girl he loved
to be turned into a lobster.”
“What we mean,” said we, “is why did the
professor want to turn the girl into a lobster?”
“He had a grudge against her.”
This seemed plausible, and we thought it
over for a while. Then one of the company shook his head disapprovingly.
“I don’t like stories like that,” he said.
“They aren’t true to life.”
“Pardon me, sir,” said a voice. And we
were aware of Mr Mulliner in our midst.
“Excuse me interrupting what may be a
private discussion,” said Mr Mulliner, “but I chanced to overhear the recent
remarks, and you, sir, have opened up a subject on which I happen to hold
strong views—to wit, the question of what is and what is not true to life. How
can we, with our limited experience, answer that question? For all we know, at
this very moment hundreds of young women all over the country may be in the
process of being turned into lobsters. Forgive my warmth, but I have suffered a
good deal from this sceptical attitude of mind which is so prevalent nowadays.
I have even met people who refused to believe my story about my brother
Wilfred, purely because it was a little out of the ordinary run of the average
man’s experience.”
Considerably moved, Mr Mulliner ordered a
hot Scotch with a slice of lemon.
“What happened to your brother Wilfred?
Was he turned into a lobster?”
“No,” said Mr Mulliner, fixing his honest
blue eyes on the speaker, “he was not. It would be perfectly easy for me to
pretend that he was turned into a lobster; but I have always made it a
practice—and I always shall make it a practice—to speak nothing but the bare
truth. My brother Wilfred simply had rather a curious adventure.”