Meet Mr Mulliner (8 page)
A few more affecting words were exchanged,
and then the bishop and Augustine left the house. The bishop was silent and
thoughtful.
“I owe you a great deal, Mulliner,” he
said at length.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Augustine. “Would
you say that?”
“A very great deal. You saved me from a
terrible disaster. Had you not leaped through that window at that precise
juncture and intervened, I really believe I should have pasted my dear old
friend Brandon in the eye. I was sorely exasperated.”
“Our good vicar can be trying at times,”
agreed Augustine.
“My list was already clenched, and I was
just hauling off for the swing when you checked me. What the result would have
been, had you not exhibited a tact and discretion beyond your years, I do not
like to think. I might have been unfrocked.” He shivered at the thought, though
the weather was mild. “I could never have shown my face at the Athenaeum again.
But, tut, tut!” went on the bishop, patting Augustine on the shoulder, “let us
not dwell on what might have been. Speak to me of yourself. The vicar’s
charming daughter—you really love her?”
“I do, indeed.”
The bishop’s face had grown grave.
“Think well, Mulliner,” he said. “Marriage
is a serious affair. Do not plunge into it without due reflection. I myself am
a husband, and, though singularly blessed in the possession of a devoted helpmeet,
cannot but feel sometimes that a man is better off as a bachelor. Women,
Mulliner, are odd.”
“True,” said Augustine.
“My own dear wife is the best of women.
And, as I never weary of saying, a good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving
to the right and the good under all change; lovely in youthful comeliness,
lovely all her life in comeliness of heart. And yet—”
“And yet?” said Augustine.
The bishop mused for a moment. He wriggled
a little with an expression of pain, and scratched himself between the
shoulder-blades.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the bishop. “It
is a warm and pleasant day to-day, is it not?”
“Exceptionally clement,” said Augustine.
“A fair, sunny day, made gracious by a
temperate westerly breeze. And yet, Mulliner, if you will credit my statement,
my wife insisted on my putting on my thick winter woollies this morning. Truly,”
sighed the bishop, “as a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman
which is without discretion. Proverbs xi. 21.”
“Twenty-two,” corrected Augustine.
“I should have said twenty-two. They are
made of thick flannel, and I have an exceptionally sensitive skin. Oblige me,
my dear fellow, by rubbing me in the small of the back with the ferrule of your
stick. I think it will ease the irritation.”
“But, my poor dear old bish,” said Augustine,
sympathetically, “this must not be.”
The bishop shook his head ruefully.
“You would not speak so hardily, Mulliner,
if you knew my wife. There is no appeal from her decrees.”
“Nonsense,” cried Augustine, cheerily. He
looked through the trees to where the lady bishopess, escorted by Jane, was
examining a lobelia through her lorgnette with just the right blend of cordiality
and condescension. “I’ll fix that for you in a second.”
The bishop clutched at his arm.
“My boy! What are you going to do?”
“I’m. just going to have a word with your
wife and put the matter up to her as a reasonable woman. Thick winter woollies
on a day like this! Absurd!” said Augustine. “Preposterous! I never heard such
rot.”
The bishop gazed after him with a laden
heart. Already he had come to love this young man like a son: and to see him charging
so light-heartedly into the very jaws of destruction afflicted him with a deep
and poignant sadness. He knew what his wife was like when even the highest in
the land attempted to thwart her; and this brave lad was but a curate. In
another moment she would be looking at him through her lorgnette: and England
was littered with the shrivelled remains of curates at whom the lady bishopess
had looked through her lorgnette. Pie had seen them wilt like salted slugs at
the episcopal breakfast-table.
He held his breath. Augustine had reached
the lady bishopess, and the lady bishopess was even now raising her lorgnette.
The bishop shut his eyes and turned away.
And then—years afterwards, it seemed to him—a cheery voice hailed him: and,
turning, he perceived Augustine bounding back through the trees.
“It’s all right, bish,” said Augustine.
All—all right?” faltered the bishop. Yes. She says you can go and change into
the thin cashmere.”
The bishop reeled.
“But—but—but what did you say to her? What
arguments did you employ?”
“Oh, I just pointed out what a warm day it
was and jollied her along a bit.”
“Jollied her along a bit!”
“And she agreed in the most friendly and
cordial manner. She has asked me to call at the Palace one of these days.”
The bishop seized Augustine’s hand. My
boy,” he said in a broken voice, you shall do more than call at the Palace. You
shall come and live at the Palace. Become my secretary, Mulliner, and name your
own salary. If you intend to marry, you will require an increased stipend.
Become my secretary, boy, and never leave my side. I have needed somebody like
you for years.”
It was late in the afternoon when
Augustine returned to his rooms, for he had been invited to lunch at the
vicarage and had been the life and soul of the cheery little party.
“A letter for you, sir,” said Mrs Wardle,
obsequiously.
Augustine took the letter.
“I am sorry to say I shall be leaving you
shortly, Mrs Wardle.”
“Oh, sir! If there’s anything I can do—”
“Oh, it’s not that. The fact is, the bishop
has made me his secretary, and I shall have to shift my toothbrush and spats to
the Palace, you see.”
“Well, fancy that, sir! Why, you’ll be a
bishop yourself one of these days.”
“Possibly,” said Augustine. “Possibly. And
now let me read this.”
He opened the letter. A thoughtful frown
appeared on his face as he read.
My dear Augustine,
I am writing in
some haste to tell you that the impulsiveness of your aunt has led to a rather
serious mistake.
She tells me that
she dispatched to you yesterday by parcels post a sample bottle of my new
Buck-U-Uppo, which she obtained without my knowledge from my laboratory. Had
she mentioned what she was intending to do, I could have prevented a very
unfortunate occurrence.
Mulliner’s
Buck-U-Uppo is of two grades or qualities — the A and the B. The A is a mild,
but strengthening, tonic designed for human invalids. The B, on the other hand,
is purely for circulation in the animal kingdom, and was invented to fill a
long-felt want throughout our Indian possessions.
As you are
doubtless aware, the favourite pastime of the Indian Maharajahs is the hunting
of the tiger of the jungle from the hacks of elephants; and it has happened
frequently in the past that hunts have been spoiled by the failure of the
elephant to see eye to eye with its owner in the matter of what constitutes
sport.
Too often
elephants, on sighting the tiger, have turned and galloped home: and it was to
correct this tendency on their part that I invented Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo “B.”
One teaspoonful of the Buck-U-Uppo “B” administered in its morning bran-mash
will cause the most timid elephant to trumpet loudly and charge the fiercest
tiger without a qualm.
Abstain,
therefore, from taking any of the contents of the bottle you now possess,
And believe me,
Your affectionate
uncle.
Wilfred Mulliner.
Augustine remained for some time in deep
thought after perusing this communication. Then, rising, he whistled a few bars
of the psalm appointed for the twenty-sixth of June and left the room.
Half an hour later a telegraphic message
was speeding over the wires.
It ran as follows:—
Wilfred Mulliner,
The Gables,
Lesser Lossingham,
Salop.
Letter received.
Send immediately, C.O.D., three cases of the “B.” ‘Blessed shall be thy basket
and thy store.’ Deuteronomy xxviii. 5.
Augustine.
4
A
NOTHER
Sunday was drawing to a close, and Mr Mulliner had come into the
bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest wearing on his head, in place of the seedy old
wide-awake which usually adorned it, a glistening top hat. From this, combined
with the sober black of his costume and the rather devout voice in which he
ordered hot Scotch and lemon, I deduced that he had been attending Evensong.
“Good sermon?” I asked.
“Quite good. The new curate preached. He
seems a nice young fellow.”
“Speaking of curates,” I said, “I have
often wondered what became of your nephew —the one you were telling me about
the other day.”
“Augustine?”
“The fellow who took the Buck-U-Uppo.”
“That was Augustine. And I am pleased and
not a little touched,’ said Mr Mulliner, beaming, “that you should have
remembered the trivial anecdote which I related. In this self-centred world one
does not always find such a sympathetic listener to one’s stories. Let me see,
where did we leave Augustine?”
“He had just become the bishop’s secretary
and gone to live at the Palace.”
“Ah, yes. We will take up his career,
then, some six months after the date which you have indicated.”
It was the custom of the good Bishop of
Stortford—for, like all the prelates of our Church, he loved his labours—to
embark upon the duties of the day (said Mr Mulliner) in a cheerful and jocund
spirit. Usually, as he entered his study to dispatch such business as might
have arisen from the correspondence which had reached the Palace by the first
post, there was a smile upon his face and possibly upon his lips a snatch of
some gay psalm. But on the morning on which this story begins an observer would
have noted that he wore a preoccupied, even a sombre, look. Reaching the study
door, he hesitated as if reluctant to enter; then, pulling himself together
with a visible effort, he turned the handle.
“Good morning, Mulliner, my boy,” he said.
His manner was noticeably embarrassed.
Augustine glanced brightly up from the
pile of letters which he was opening.
“Cheerio, Bish. How’s the lumbago to-day?”
“I find the pain sensibly diminished,
thank you, Mulliner—in fact, almost non-existent. This pleasant weather seems
to do me good. For lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the
flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing birds is come, and the
voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Song of Solomon ii. ii, 12.”
“Good work,” said Augustine. “Well, there’s
nothing much of interest in these letters so far. The Vicar of St. Beowulf’s in
the West wants to know, How about incense?”
“Tell him he mustn’t.” ‘
“Right ho.”
The bishop stroked his chin uneasily.
He seemed to be nerving himself for some
unpleasant task.
“Mulliner,” he said.
“Hullo?”
“Your mention of the word ‘vicar’ provides
a cue, which I must not ignore, for alluding to a matter which you and I had
under advisement yesterday — the matter of the vacant living of Steeple
Mummery.”
“Yes?” said Augustine eagerly. “Do I click?”
A spasm of pain passed across the bishop’s
face. He shook his head sadly.
“Mulliner, my boy,” he said. “You know
that I look upon you as a son and that, left to my own initiative, I would
bestow this vacant living on you without a moment’s hesitation. But an
unforeseen complication has arisen. Unhappy lad, my wife has instructed me to
give the post to a cousin of hers. A fellow,” said the bishop bitterly, “who
bleats like a sheep and doesn’t know an alb from a reredos.”
Augustine, as was only natural, was
conscious of a momentary pang of disappointment. But he was a Mulliner and a
sportsman.
“Don’t give it another thought, Bish,” he
said cordially. “I quite understand. I don’t say I hadn’t hopes, but no doubt
there will be another along in a minute.”
“You know how it is,” said the bishop,
looking cautiously round to see that the door was closed. “It is better to
dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.
Proverbs xxi. 9.”