Meet Mr Mulliner (9 page)

“A continual dropping in a very rainy day
and a contentious woman are alike. Proverbs xxvii. 15,” agreed Augustine.

“Exactly. How well you understand me, Mulliner.”

“Meanwhile,” said Augustine, holding up a
letter, “here’s something that calls for attention. It’s from a bird of the
name of Trevor Entwhistle.”

“Indeed? An old schoolfellow of mine. He
is now Headmaster of Harchester, the foundation at which we both received our
early education. What does he say?”

“He wants to know if you will run down for
a few days and unveil a statue which they have just put up to Lord Hemel of
Hempstead.”

“Another old schoolfellow. We called him
Fatty.”

“There’s a postscript over the page. He
says he still has a dozen of the ‘87 port.”

The bishop pursed his lips.

“These earthly considerations do not weigh
with me so much as old Catsmeat— as the Reverend Trevor Entwhistle seems to
suppose. However, one must not neglect the call of the dear old school. We will
certainly go.”

“We?”

“I shall require your company. I think you
will like Harchester, Mulliner. A noble pile, founded by the seventh Henry.”

“I know it well. A young brother of mine
is there.”

“Indeed? Dear me,” mused the bishop, “it
must be twenty years and more since I last visited Harchester. I shall enjoy
seeing the old, familiar scenes once again. After all, Mulliner, to whatever
eminence we may soar, howsoever great may be the prizes which life has bestowed
upon us, we never wholly lose our sentiment for the dear old school. It is our
Alma Mater, Mulliner, the gentle mother that has set our hesitating footsteps
on the—”

“Absolutely,” said Augustine.

“And, as we grow older, we see that never
can we recapture the old, careless gaiety of our school days. Life was not
complex then, Mulliner. Life in that halcyon period was free from problems. We
were not faced with the necessity of disappointing our friends.”

“Now listen, Bish,” said Augustine
cheerily, “if you’re still worrying about that living, forget it. Look at me. I’m
quite chirpy, aren’t I?”

The bishop sighed.

“I wish I had your sunny resilience, Mulliner.
How do you manage it?”

“Oh, I keep smiling, and take the
Buck-U-Uppo daily.”

“The Buck-U-Uppo?”

“It’s a tonic my uncle Wilfred invented.
Works like magic.”

“I must ask you to let me try it one of
these days. For somehow, Mulliner, I am finding life a little grey. What on
earth,” said the bishop, half to himself and speaking peevishly, “they wanted
to put up a statue to old Fatty for, I can’t imagine. A fellow who used to
throw inked darts at people. However,” he continued, abruptly abandoning this
train of thought, “that is neither here nor there. If the Board of Governors of
Harchester College has decided that Lord Kernel of Hempstead has by his
services in the public weal earned a statue, it is not for us to cavil. Write
to Mr Entwhistle, Mulliner, and say that I shall be delighted.”

Although, as he had told Augustine, fully
twenty years had passed since his last visit to Harchester, the bishop found,
somewhat to his surprise, that little or no alteration had taken place in the
grounds, buildings and personnel of the school. It seemed to him almost
precisely the same as it had been on the day, forty-three years before, when he
had first come there as a new boy.

There was the tuck-shop where, a lissom
stripling with bony elbows, he had shoved and pushed so often in order to get
near the counter and snaffle a jam-sandwich in the eleven o’clock recess. There
were the baths, the fives courts, the football fields, the library, the
gymnasium, the gravel, the chestnut trees, all just as they had been when the
only thing he knew about bishops was that they wore bootlaces in their hats.

The sole change that he could see was that
on the triangle of turf in front of the library there had been erected a
granite pedestal surmounted by a shapeless something swathed in a large
sheet—the statue to Lord Hemel of Hempstead which he had come down to unveil.

And gradually, as his visit proceeded,
there began to steal over him an emotion which defied analysis.

At first he supposed it to be a natural
sentimentality. But, had it been that, would it not have been a more
pleasurable emotion? For his feelings had begun to be far from unmixedly
agreeable. Once, when rounding a comer, he came upon the captain of football in
all his majesty, there had swept over him a hideous blend of fear and shame
which had made his gaitered legs wobble like jellies. The captain of football
doffed his cap respectfully, and the feeling passed as quickly as it had come:
but not so soon that the bishop had not recognised it. It was exactly the
feeling he had been wont to have forty-odd years ago when, sneaking softly away
from football practice, he had encountered one in authority.

The bishop was puzzled. It was as if some
fairy had touched him with her wand, sweeping away the years and making him an
inky-faced boy again. Day by day this illusion grew, the constant society of
the Rev. Trevor Entwhistle doing much to foster it. For young Catsmeat
Entwhistle had been the bishop’s particular crony at Harchester, and he seemed
to have altered his appearance since those days in no way whatsoever. The
bishop had had a nasty shock when, entering the headmaster’s study on the third
morning of his visit, he found him sitting in the headmaster’s chair with the
headmaster’s cap and gown on. It had seemed to him that young Catsmeat, in
order to indulge his distorted sense of humour, was taking the most frightful
risk. Suppose the Old Man were to come in and cop him!

Altogether, it was a relief to the bishop
when the day of the unveiling arrived.

The actual ceremony, however, he found
both tedious and irritating. Lord Hemel of Hempstead had not been a favourite
of his in their school days, and there was something extremely disagreeable to
him in being obliged to roll out sonorous periods in his praise.

In addition to this, he had suffered from
the very start of the proceedings from a bad attack of stage fright. He could
not help thinking that he must look the most awful chump standing up there in
front of all those people and spouting. He half expected one of the prefects in
the audience to step up and clout his head and tell him not to be a funny young
swine.

However, no disaster of this nature
occurred. Indeed, his speech was notably successful.

“My dear bishop,” said old General
Bloodenough, the Chairman of the College Board of Governors, shaking his hand
at the conclusion of the unveiling, “your magnificent oration put my own feeble
efforts to shame, put them to shame, to shame. You were astounding!”

“Thanks awfully,” mumbled the bishop,
blushing and shuffling his feet.

The weariness which had come upon the bishop
as the result of the prolonged ceremony seemed to grow as the day wore on. By
the time he was seated in the headmaster’s study after dinner he was in the
grip of a severe headache.

The Rev. Trevor Entwhistle also appeared
jaded.

“These affairs are somewhat fatiguing,
bishop,” he said, stifling a yawn. “They are, indeed. Headmaster.”

“Even the ‘87 port seems an inefficient
restorative.”

“Markedly inefficient. I wonder,” said the
bishop, struck with an idea, “if a little Buck-U-Uppo might not alleviate our
exhaustion. It is a tonic of some kind which my secretary is in the habit of
taking. It certainly appears to do him good. A livelier, more vigorous young
fellow I have never seen. Suppose we ask your butler to go to his room and
borrow the bottle? I am sure he will be delighted to give it to us.”

“By all means.”

The butler, dispatched to Augustine’s
room, returned with a bottle half full of a thick, dark coloured liquid. The
bishop examined it thoughtfully.

“I see there are no directions given as to
the requisite dose,” he said. “However, I do not like to keep disturbing your
butler, who has now doubtless returned to his pantry and is once more settling
down to the enjoyment of a well-earned rest after a day more than ordinarily
fraught with toil and anxiety. Suppose we use our own judgment?”

“Certainly. Is it nasty?”

The bishop licked the cork warily.

“No. I should not call it nasty. The
taste, while individual and distinctive and even striking, is by no means
disagreeable.”

“Then let us take a glassful apiece.”

The bishop filled two portly wine-glasses
with the fluid, and they sat sipping gravely.

“It’s rather good,” said the bishop.

“Distinctly good,” said the headmaster.

“It sort of sends a kind of glow over you.”

“A noticeable glow.”

“A little more. Headmaster?”

“No, I thank you.”

“Oh, come.”

“Well, just a spot, bishop, if you insist.”

“It’s rather good,” said the bishop.

“Distinctly good,” said the headmaster.

Now you, who have listened to the story of
Augustine’s previous adventures with the Buck-U-Uppo, are aware that my brother
Wilfred invented it primarily with the object of providing Indian Rajahs with a
specific which would encourage their elephants to face the tiger of the jungle
with a jaunty sang-froid: and he had advocated as a medium dose for an adult
elephant a tea-spoonful stirred up with its morning bran-mash. It is not
surprising, therefore, that after they had drunk two wine-glassfuls apiece of
the mixture the outlook on life of both the bishop and the headmaster began to
undergo a marked change.

Their fatigue had left them, and with it
the depression which a few moments before had been weighing on them so heavily.
Both were conscious of an extraordinary feeling of good cheer, and the odd
illusion of extreme youth which had been upon the bishop since his arrival at
Harchester was now more pronounced than ever. He felt a youngish and rather
rowdy fifteen.

“Where does your butler sleep, Cats-meat?”
he asked, after a thoughtful pause.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I was only thinking that it would be a
lark to go and put a booby-trap on his door.”

The headmaster’s eyes glistened.

“Yes, wouldn’t it!” he said.

They mused for awhile. Then the headmaster
uttered a deep chuckle.

“What are you giggling about?” asked the
bishop.

“I was only thinking what a priceless ass
you looked this afternoon, talking all that rot about old Fatty.”

In spite of his cheerfulness, a frown
passed over the bishop’s fine forehead.

“It went very much against the grain to
speak in terms of eulogy—yes, fulsome eulogy —of one whom we both know to have
been a blighter of the worst description. Where does Fatty get off, having
statues put up to him?”

“Oh well, he’s an Empire builder, I
suppose,” said the headmaster, who was a fair-minded man.

“Just the sort of thing he would be,”
grumbled the bishop. “Shoving himself forward! If ever there was a chap I
barred, it was Fatty.”

“Me, too,” agreed the headmaster. Beastly
laugh he’d got. Like glue pouring out of a jug.”

“Greedy little beast, if you remember. A
fellow in his house told me he once ate three shoes of brown boot-polish spread
on bread after he had finished the potted meat.”

“Between you and me, I always suspected
him of swiping buns at the school shop. I don’t wish to make rash charges
unsupported by true evidence, but it always seemed to me extremely odd that,
whatever time of the term it was, and however hard up everybody else might be,
you never saw Fatty without his bun.”

“Catsmeat,” said the bishop, “I’ll tell
you something about Fatty that isn’t generally known. In a scrum in the final
House Match in the year 1888 he deliberately hoofed me on the shin.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“I do.”

“Great Scott!”

“An ordinary hack on the shin,” said the
bishop coldly, “no fellow minds. It is part of the give and take of normal
social life. But when a bounder deliberately hauls off and lets drive at you
with the sole intention of laying you out, it—well, it’s a bit thick.”

“And those chumps of Governors have put up
a statue to him!”

The bishop leaned forward and lowered his
voice.

“Catsmeat.”

“What?”

“Do you know what?”

“No, what?”

“What we ought to do is to wait till
twelve o’clock or so, till there’s no one about, and then beetle out and paint
that statue blue.”

“Why not pink?”

“Pink, if you prefer it.”

“Pink’s a nice colour.”

“It is. Very nice.”

“Besides, I know where I can lay my hands
on some pink paint.”

“You do?”