Meet Mr Mulliner (7 page)

The bishop was a large, burly bishop,
built for endurance rather than speed; but he was making excellent going. He
flashed past Augustine in a whirl of flying gaiters: and then, proving himself
thereby no mere specialist but a versatile all-round athlete, suddenly dived
for a tree and climbed rapidly into its branches. His motive, Augustine readily
divined, was to elude a rough, hairy dog which was toiling in his wake. The dog
reached the tree a moment after his quarry had climbed it, and stood there, barking.

Augustine strolled up.

“Having a little trouble with the dumb
friend, bish?” he asked, genially.

The bishop peered down from his eyrie.

“Young man,” he said, “save me.”

“Right most indubitably ho!” replied
Augustine. “Leave it to me.”

Until to-day he had always been terrified
of dogs, but now he did not hesitate. Almost quicker than words can tell, he
picked up a stone, discharged it at the animal, and whooped cheerily as it got
home with a thud. The dog, knowing when he had had enough, removed himself at
some forty-five m.p.h.; and the bishop, descending cautiously, clasped
Augustine’s hand in his.

“My preserver!” said the bishop.

“Don’t give it another thought,” said
Augustine, cheerily. “Always glad to do a pal a good turn. We clergymen must
stick together.”

“I thought he had me for a minute.”

“Quite a nasty customer. Full of rude
energy.”

The bishop nodded.

“His eye was not dim, nor his natural
force abated. Deuteronomy xxxiv. 7,” he agreed. “I wonder if you can direct me
to the vicarage? I fear I have come a little out of my way.”

“I’ll take you there.”

“Thank you. Perhaps it would be as well if
you did not come in. I have a serious matter to discuss with old Pieface—I
mean, with the Rev. Stanley Brandon.”

“I have a serious matter to discuss with
his daughter. I’ll just hang about the garden.”

“You are a very excellent young man,” said
the bishop, as they walked along. “You are a curate, eh?”

“At present. But,” said Augustine, tapping
his companion on the chest, “just watch my smoke. That’s all I ask you to
do—just watch my smoke.”

“I will. You should rise to great heights
—to the very top of the tree.”

“Like you did just now, eh?
Ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha!”
said the bishop. “You young
rogue!”

He poked Augustine in the ribs.

“Ha, ha, ha!” said A
ugustine.

He slapped the bishop on the back.

“But all joking aside,” said the bishop as
they entered the vicarage grounds, “I really shall keep my eye on you and see
that you receive the swift preferment which your talents and character deserve.
I say to you, my dear young friend, speaking seriously and weighing my words,
that the way you picked that dog off with that stone was the smoothest thing I
ever saw. And I am a man who always tells the strict truth.”

“Great is truth and mighty above all
things. Esdras iv. 41,” said Augustine.

He turned away and strolled towards the
laurel bushes, which were his customary meeting-place with Jane. The bishop
went on to the front door and rang the bell.

Although they had made no definite
appointment, Augustine was surprised when the minutes passed and no Jane
appeared. He did not know that she had been told off by her father to entertain
the bishop’s wife that morning, and show her the sights of Lower
Briskett-in-the-Midden. He waited some quarter of an hour with growing
impatience, and was about to leave when suddenly from the house there came to
his ears the sound of voices raised angrily.

He stopped. The voices appeared to proceed
from a room on the ground floor facing the garden.

Running lightly over the turf, Augustine
paused outside the window and listened.

The window was open at the bottom, and he
could hear quite distinctly.

The vicar was speaking in a voice that
vibrated through the room.

“Is that so?” said the vicar. Yes, it is!”
said the bishop. Ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha! to you, and see how you like it!”
rejoined the bishop with spirit.

Augustine drew a step closer. It was plain
that Jane’s fears had been justified and that there was serious trouble afoot
between these two old schoolfellows. He peeped in. The vicar, his hands behind
his coat-tails, was striding up and down the carpet, while the bishop, his back
to the fireplace, glared defiance at him from the hearth-rug.

“Who ever told you you were an authority
on chasubles?” demanded the vicar.

“That’s all right who told me,” rejoined
the bishop.

“I don’t believe you know what a chasuble
is.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s a circular cloak hanging from the
shoulders, elaborately embroidered with a pattern and with orphreys. And you
can argue as much as you like, young Pieface, but you can’t get away from the
fact that there are too many orphreys on yours. And what I’m telling you is
that you’ve jolly well got to switch off a few of those orphreys or you’ll get
it in the neck.”

The vicar’s eyes glittered furiously.

“Is that so?” he said. “Well, I just won’t,
so there! And it’s like your cheek coming here and trying to high-hat me. You
seem to have forgotten that I knew you when you were an inky-faced kid at
school, and that, if I liked, I could tell the world one or two things about
you which would probably amuse it.”

“My past is an open book.”

“Is it?” The vicar laughed malevolently. “Who
put the white mouse in the French master’s desk?”

The bishop started.

“Who put jam in the dormitory prefect’s
bed?” he retorted.

“Who couldn’t keep his collar clean?”

“Who used to wear a dickey?” The bishop’s
wonderful organ-like voice, whose softest whisper could be heard throughout a vast
cathedral, rang out in tones of thunder.

“Who was sick at the house supper?”

The vicar quivered from head to foot. His
rubicund face turned a deeper crimson.

“You know jolly well,” he said, in shaking
accents, “that there was something wrong with the turkey. Might have upset any
one.”

“The only thing wrong with the turkey was
that you ate too much of it. If you had paid as much attention to developing
your soul as you did to developing your tummy, you might by now,” said the
bishop, “have risen to my own eminence.”

“Oh, might I?”

“No, perhaps I am wrong. You never had the
brain.”

The vicar uttered another discordant
laugh.

“Brain is good! We know all about your
eminence, as you call it, and how you rose to that eminence.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a bishop. How you became one we
will not inquire.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. We will not inquire.”

“Why don’t you inquire?”

“Because,” said the vicar, “it is better
not!”

The bishop’s self-control left him. His
face contorted with fury, he took a step forward. And simultaneously Augustine
sprang lightly into the room.

“Now, now, now!” said Augustine. “Now,
now, now, now, now!”

The two men stood transfixed. They stared
at the intruder dumbly.

“Come, come!” said Augustine.

The vicar was the first to recover. He
glowered at Augustine.

“What do you mean by jumping through my
window?” he thundered. “Are you a curate or a harlequin?”

Augustine met his gaze with an unfaltering
eye.

“I am a curate,” he replied, with a
dignity that well became him. “And, as a curate, I cannot stand by and see two
superiors of the cloth, who are moreover old schoolfellows, forgetting
themselves. It isn’t right. Absolutely not right, my dear old superiors of the
cloth.”

The vicar bit his lip. The bishop bowed
his head.

“Listen,” proceeded Augustine, placing a
hand on the shoulder of each. “I hate to see you two dear good chaps quarrelling
like this.”

“He started it,” said the vicar, sullenly.

“Never mind who started it.” Augustine
silenced the bishop with a curt gesture as he made to speak. “Be sensible, my
dear fellows. Respect the decencies of debate. Exercise a little good-humoured
give-and-take. You say,” he went on, turning to the bishop, “that our good
friend here has too many orphreys on his chasuble?”

I do. And I stick to it.”

“Yes, yes, yes. But what,” said Augustine,
soothingly, “are a few orphreys between friends? Reflect! You and our worthy
vicar here were at school together. You are bound by the sacred ties of the old
Alma Mater. With him you sported on the green. With him you shared a crib and
threw inked darts in the hour supposed to be devoted to the study of French. Do
these things mean nothing to you? Do these memories touch no chord?” He turned appealingly
from one to the other. “Vicar! Bish!”

The vicar had moved away and was wiping
his eyes. The bishop fumbled for a pocket-handkerchief. There was a silence.

“Sorry, Pieface,” said the bishop, in a
choking voice.

“Shouldn’t have spoken as I did. Boko,”
mumbled the vicar.

“If you want to know what I think,” said
the bishop, “you are right in attributing your indisposition at the house
supper to something wrong with the turkey. I recollect saying at the time that
the bird should never have been served in such a condition.”

“And when you put that white mouse in the
French master’s desk,” said the vicar, “you performed one of the noblest
services to humanity of which there is any record. They ought to have made you
a bishop on the spot.”

“Pieface!”

“Boko!”

The two men clasped hands.

“Splendid!” said Augustine. “Everything
hotsy-totsy now?”

“Quite, quite,” said the vicar.

“As far as I am concerned, completely hotsy-totsy,”
said the bishop. He turned to his old friend solicitously. “You will continue
to wear all the orphreys you want— will you not, Pieface?”

“No, no. I see now that I was wrong. From
now on. Boko, I abandon orphreys altogether.”

“But, Pieface—”

“It’s all right,” the vicar assured him. “I
can take them or leave them alone.”

“Splendid fellow!” The bishop coughed to
hide his emotion, and there was another silence. “I think, perhaps,” he went
on, after a pause, “I should be leaving you now, my dear chap, and going in search
of my wife. She is with your daughter, I believe, somewhere in the village.”

“They are coming up the drive now.”

“Ah, yes, I see them. A charming girl,
your daughter.”

Augustine clapped him on the shoulder.

“Bish,” he exclaimed, “you said a
mouthful. She is the dearest, sweetest girl in the whole world. And I should be
glad, vicar, if you would give your consent to our immediate union. I love Jane
with a good man’s fervour, and I am happy to inform you that my sentiments are
returned. Assure us, therefore, of your approval, and I will go at once and
have the banns put up.”

The vicar leaped as though he had been
stung. Like so many vicars, he had a poor opinion of curates, and he had always
regarded Augustine as rather below than above the general norm or level of the
despised class.

“What!” he cried.

“A most excellent idea,” said the bishop,
beaming. “A very happy notion, I call it.”

“My daughter!” The vicar seemed dazed. “My
daughter marry a curate!”

“You were a curate once yourself.
Pie-face.”

“Yes, but not a curate like that.”

“No!” said the bishop. “You were not. Nor
was I. Better for us both had we been. This young man, I would have you know,
is the most outstandingly excellent young man I have ever encountered. Are you
aware that scarcely an hour ago he saved me with the most consummate address
from a large shaggy dog with black spots and a kink in his tail? I was sorely
pressed, Pieface, when this young man came up and, with a readiness of resource
and an accuracy of aim which it would be impossible to overpraise, got that dog
in the short ribs with a rock and sent him flying.”

The vicar seemed to be struggling with
some powerful emotion. His eyes had widened.

“A dog with black spots?”

“Very black spots. But no blacker, I fear,
than the heart they hid.”

“And he really plugged him in the short
ribs?”

“As far as I could see, squarely in the
short ribs.”

The vicar held out his hand.

“Mulliner,” he said, “I was not aware of
this. In the light of the facts which have just been drawn to my attention, I
have no hesitation in saying that my objections are removed. I have had it in
for that dog since the second Sunday before Septuagesima, when he pinned me by
the ankle as I paced beside the river composing a sermon on Certain Alarming
Manifestations of the So-called Modern Spirit. Take Jane. I give my consent
freely. And may she be as happy as any girl with such a husband ought to be.”