Meet Mr Mulliner (12 page)

“I am old Colonel Charleston’s favourite
son,” he said, simply.

A sound like the sudden descent of an iron
girder on a sheet of tin, followed by a jangling of bells, a wailing of
tortured cats, and the noise of a few steam-riveters at work, announced to
their trained ears that the music had begun. Sweeping her to him with a
violence which, attempted in any other place, would have earned him a sentence
of thirty days coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench, Lancelot began
to push her yielding form through the sea of humanity till they reached the
centre of the whirlpool. There, unable to move in any direction, they
surrendered themselves to the ecstasy of the dance, wiping their feet on the polished
flooring and occasionally pushing an elbow into some stranger’s encroaching
rib.

“This,” murmured the girl with closed
eyes, “is divine.”

“What?” bellowed Lancelot, for the
orchestra, in addition to ringing bells, had now begun to howl like wolves at
dinner-time.

“Divine,” roared the girl. “You certainly
are a beautiful dancer.”

“A beautiful what?”

“Dancer.”

“Who is?”

“You are.”

“Good egg!” shrieked Lancelot, rather
wishing, though he was fond of music, that the orchestra would stop beating the
floor with hammers.

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Good egg.’”

“Why?”

“Because the idea crossed my mind that, if
you felt like that, you might care to marry me.”

There was a sudden lull in the storm. It
was as if the audacity of his words had stricken the orchestra into a sort of
paralysis. Dark-complexioned men who had been exploding bombs and touching off
automobile hooters became abruptly immobile and sat rolling their eyeballs. One
or two people left the floor, and plaster stopped falling from the ceiling.

“Marry you?” said the girl.

“I love you as no man has ever loved woman
before.”

“Well, that’s always something. What would
the name be?”

“Mulliner. Lancelot Mulliner.”

“It might be worse.” She looked at him
with pensive eyes. “Well, why not?” she said. “It would be a crime to let a
dancer like you go out of the family. On the other hand, my father will kick
like a mule. Father is an Earl.”

“What Earl?”

“The Earl of Biddlecombe.”

“Well, earls aren’t everything,” said
Lancelot with a touch of pique. “The Mulliners are an old and honourable
family. A Sieur de Moulinières came over with the Conqueror.”

“Ah, but did a Sieur de Moulinières ever
do down the common people for a few hundred thousand and salt it away in
gilt-edged securities? That’s what’s going to count with the aged parent. What
with taxes and super-taxes and death duties and falling land-values, there has
of recent years been very, very little of the right stuff in the Biddlecombe
sock. Shake the family money-box and you will hear but the faintest rattle. And
I ought to tell you that at the Junior Lipstick Club seven to two is being
freely offered on my marrying Slingsby Purvis, of Purvis’s Liquid Dinner Glue.
Nothing is definitely decided yet, but you can take it as coming straight from
the stable that, unless something happens to upset current form, she whom you
now see before you is the future Ma Purvis.”

Lancelot stamped his foot defiantly, eliciting
a howl of agony from a passing reveller. “This shall not be,” he muttered.

“If you care to bet against it,” said the
girl, producing a small note-book, “I can accommodate you at the current odds.”

“Purvis, forsooth!”

“I’m not saying it’s a pretty name. All I’m
trying to point out is that at the present moment he heads the ‘All the above
have arrived’ list. He is Our Newmarket Correspondent’s Five-Pound Special and
Captain Coe’s final selection. What makes you think you can nose him out? Are
you rich?”

“At present, only in love. But tomorrow I
go to my uncle, who is immensely wealthy—”

“And touch him?”

“Not quite that. Nobody has touched Uncle
Jeremiah since the early winter of 1885. But I shall get him to give me a job,
and then we shall see.”

“Do,” said the girl, warmly. “And if you
can stick the gaff into Purvis and work the Young Lochinvar business, I shall
be the first to touch off red fire. On the other hand, it is only fair to
inform you that at the Junior Lipstick all the girls look on the race as a
walk-over. None of the big punters will touch it.”

Lancelot returned to his rooms that night undiscouraged.
He intended to sink his former prejudices and write a poem in praise of Briggs’s
Breakfast Pickles which would mark a new era in commercial verse. This he would
submit to his uncle; and, having stunned him with it, would agree to join the
firm as chief poetry-writer. He tentatively pencilled down five thousand pounds
a year as the salary which he would demand. With a long-term contract for five
thousand a year in his pocket, he could approach Lord Biddlecombe and jerk a
father’s blessing out of him in no time. It would be humiliating, of course, to
lower his genius by writing poetry about pickles; but a lover must make
sacrifices. He bought a quire of the best foolscap, brewed a quart of the
strongest coffee, locked his door, disconnected his telephone, and sat down at
his desk.

Genial old Jeremiah Briggs received him,
when he called next day at his palatial house, the Villa Chutney, at Putney,
with a bluff good-humour which showed that he still had a warm spot in his
heart for the young rascal.

“Sit down, boy, and have a pickled onion,”
said he, cheerily, slapping Lancelot on the shoulder. “You’ve come to tell me
you’ve reconsidered your idiotic decision about not joining the business, eh?
No doubt we thought it a little beneath our dignity to start at the bottom and
work our way up? But, consider, my dear lad. We must learn to walk before we
can run, and you could hardly expect me to make you chief cucumber-buyer, or
head of the vinegar-bottling department, before you have acquired hard-won
experience.”

“If you will allow me to explain, uncle—“

“Eh?” Mr Briggs’s geniality faded
somewhat. “Am I to understand that you don’t want to come into the business?”

“Yes and no,” said Lancelot. “I still
consider that slicing up cucumbers and dipping them in vinegar is a poor life-work
for a man with the Promethean fire within him; but I propose to place at the
disposal of the Briggs Breakfast Pickle my poetic gifts.”

“Well, that’s better than nothing. I’ve
just been correcting the proofs of the last thing our man turned in. It’s
really excellent. Listen:

“Soon,
soon all human joys must end:

Grim
Death approaches with his sickle:

Courage!
There is still time, my friend.

To
eat a Briggs’s Breakfast Pickle.”

“If you could give us something like that—”

Lancelot raised his eyebrows. His lip curled.

“The little thing I have dashed off is not
quite like that.”

“Oh, you’ve written something, eh?”

“A mere
morceau
. You would care to
hear it?”

“Fire away, my boy.”

Lancelot produced his manuscript and
cleared his throat. He began to read in a low, musical voice.

“DARKLING (
A Threnody
).

BY L. BASSINGTON MULLINER.

(Copyright in all languages, including the
Scandinavian.)

(The dramatic, musical comedy, and motion picture
rights of this Threnody are strictly reserved. Applications for these should be
made to the author.)”

“What is a Threnody?” asked Mr Briggs.

“This is,” said Lancelot.

He cleared his throat again and resumed.

“Black branches,

Like a corpse s withered hands,

Waving against the blacker sky:

Chill winds,

Bitter like the tang of half-remembered
sins;

Bats wheeling mournfully through the air,

And on the ground

Worms,

Toads,

Frogs,

And nameless creeping things;

And all around

Desolation,

Doom,

Dyspepsia,

And Despair.

I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate:

I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of
Disillusionment;

I am a despairing toad;

I have got dyspepsia.”

He paused. His uncle’s eyes were protruding
rather like those of a nameless creeping frog.

“What’s all this?” said Mr Briggs.

It seemed almost incredible to Lancelot
that his poem should present any aspect of obscurity to even the meanest
intellect; but he explained.

“The thing,” he said, “is symbolic. It
essays to depict the state of mind of the man who has not yet tried Briggs’s
Breakfast Pickles. I shall require it to be printed in hand-set type on deep
cream-coloured paper.”

“Yes?” said Mr Briggs, touching the bell.

“With bevelled edges. It must be published,
of course, bound in limp leather, preferably of a violet shade, in a limited
edition, confined to one hundred and five copies. Each of these copies I will
sign—”

“You rang, sir?” said the butler,
appearing in the doorway.

Mr Briggs nodded curtly.

“Bewstridge,” said he, “throw Mr Lancelot
out.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And see,” added Mr Briggs, superintending
the subsequent proceedings from his library window, “that he never darkens my doors
again. When you have finished, Bewstridge, ring up my lawyers on the telephone.
I wish to alter my will.”

Youth is a resilient period. With all his
worldly prospects swept away and a large bruise on his person which made it
uncomfortable for him to assume a sitting posture, you might have supposed that
the return of Lancelot Mulliner from Putney would have resembled that of the
late Napoleon from Moscow. Such, however, was not the case. What, Lancelot
asked himself as he rode back to civilisation on top of an omnibus, did money
matter? Love, true love, was all. He would go to Lord Biddlecombe and tell him
so in a few neatly-chosen words. And his lordship, moved by his eloquence,
would doubtless drop a well-bred tear and at once see that the arrangements for
his wedding to Angela—for such, he had learned, was her name—were hastened
along with all possible speed. So uplifted was he by this picture that he began
to sing, and would have continued for the remainder of the journey had not the
conductor in a rather brusque manner ordered him to desist. He was obliged to content
himself until the bus reached Hyde Park Corner by singing in dumb show.

The Earl of Biddlecombe’s town residence
was in Berkeley Square. Lancelot rang the bell and a massive butler appeared.

“No hawkers, street criers, or circulars,”
said the butler.

“I wish to see Lord Biddlecombe.”

“Is his lordship expecting you?”

“Yes,” said Lancelot, feeling sure that
the girl would have spoken to her father over the morning toast and marmalade
of a possible visit from him.

A voice made itself heard through an open
door on the left of the long hall.

“Fotheringay.”

“Your lordship?”

“Is that the feller?”

“Yes, your lordship.”

“Then bung him in, Fotheringay.”

“Very good, your lordship.”

Lancelot found himself in a small,
comfortably-furnished room, confronting a dignified-looking old man with a
patrician nose and small side-whiskers, who looked like something that long ago
had come out of an egg.

“Afternoon,” said this individual.

“Good afternoon, Lord Biddlecombe,” said
Lancelot.

“Now, about these trousers.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“These trousers,” said the other,
extending a shapely leg. “Do they fit? Aren’t they a bit baggy round the ankles?
Won’t they jeopardise my social prestige if I am seen in them in the Park?”

Lancelot was charmed with his affability. It
gave him the feeling of having been made one of the family straight away.

“You really want my opinion?”

“I do. I want your candid opinion as a
God-fearing man and a member of a West-end tailoring firm.”

“But I’m not.”

“Not a God-fearing man?”

“Not a member of a West-end tailoring
firm.”

“Come, come,” said his lordship, testily.
“You represent Gusset and Mainprice, of Cork Street.”