‘Wot you doin’ there?’ he demanded.
Archibald replied cordially enough that he had just been enjoying a medium-grilled steak and fried.
‘R!’ said the other. ‘And took it out of the mouth of the widow and the orphan, like as not.’
‘Absolutely no,’ replied Archibald. ‘The waitress brought it on a tray.’
‘So you say.’
‘I give you my solemn word,’ said Archibald. ‘I wouldn’t dream of eating a steak that had been in the mouth of a widow or an orphan. I mean to say, in any case, what a beastly idea.’
‘And flaunting a collar,’ grumbled the man.
‘Oh, no, dash it,’ objected Archibald. ‘Would you say flaunting?’
‘Flaunting,’ insisted the other.
Archibald was embarrassed.
‘Well, I’m awfully sorry,’ he said. ‘If I’d only known we were going to meet and you would take it like this, I wouldn’t have worn a collar. It isn’t a stiff collar,’ he added, more hopefully. ‘Just flannel, soft, gent’s one. But, if you like, I’ll take it off.’
‘Wear it while you can,’ advised the dishevelled man. ‘The day’s coming when collars’ll run in streams down Park Lane.’
This puzzled Archibald.
‘You don’t mean collars, do you? Blood, surely?’
‘Blood, too. Blood and collars.’
‘We’ll be able to play boats,’ suggested Archibald brightly.
‘You won’t,’ said the man. ‘And why? Because you’ll be inside one of them collars and outside all that blood. Rivers of blood there’ll be. Great flowing, bubbling rivers of spouting blood.’
‘I say, old lad,’ begged Archibald, who was a little squeamish, ‘not quite so soon after dinner, if you don’t mind.’
‘Eh?’
‘I say I’ve just finished dinner, and . . .’
‘Dinner! And took it out of the mouth of the widow and the . . .’
‘No, no. We went into all that before.’
‘Well, get on with it,’ said the man, with a moody gesture. Archibald was perplexed.
‘Get on with it?’
‘Your dinner. You ain’t got much time. Because soon you’ll be flowing down Park Lane.’
‘But I’ve finished my dinner.’
‘No, you ain’t.’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘No, you ain’t. That’s just where you make your ruddy error. If you’ve finished your dinner, what’s all that fat doing there on the side of the plate?’
‘I never eat fat.’
The man had risen. He was now scowling menacingly at Archibald.
‘You don’t eat fat?’
‘No, never.’
The man banged the table.
‘You eat that fat,’ he bellowed. ‘That’s what you do. I was taught when I was a nipper to always eat my fat.’
‘But, I say . . .’
‘You eat that fat!’
‘No, but listen, laddie . . .’
‘You eat that FAT!’
It was a difficult situation, and my nephew Archibald recognized it as such. It was not easy to see how two individuals of such conflicting views as this dishevelled man and himself could ever find a formula. Where he liked collars and disliked fat, the other had this powerful anti-collar complex and, apparently, an equally strong fat-urge. He was glad when, presumably attracted by the voice of his companion, who for the last minute and a half had been shouting ‘Fat! Fat! Fat!’ at the extreme limit of his lungs, somebody came hurrying along the corridor outside and burst into the room.
I say he was glad, but I must add that his gladness was of very brief duration. For the newcomer was none other than his old acquaintance, the shirt-sleeved man.
Yes, gentlemen, like all travellers lost in strange, desert lands, my nephew Archibald, after leaving the Goose and Gherkin, had been wandering round in a circle. And at long last his footsteps had taken him back to the Goose and Gherkin once more. And here he was, face to face again with the one man who, he had hoped, had passed permanently out of his life.
‘Wot’s all this?’ demanded the shirt-sleeved man.
The dishevelled customer had undergone a sudden change of mood. No longer meancing, he was now crying quietly into an ashtray.
‘He won’t eat his fat,’ he sobbed. ‘His fat, that’s what he won’t eat, and it’s breakin’ his poor father’s heart.’ He gulped. ‘Wears a blinkin’ collar, goes runnin’ in streams down Park Lane, and won’t eat his fat. Make him eat his fat,’ he begged, brushing away with a piece of potato the tears that coursed over his face.
‘Don’t you pay no attention to him . . .’ the shirt-sleeved man had begun to say to Archibald. And then the ingratiating note of host to customer faded from his voice. He stopped, stared, uttered a strangled gulp, stared again.
‘Gor-blimey!’ he whispered, awed. ‘You again?’
He raised a hand, moistened it slightly: raised the other, and moistened that.
‘I say, listen . . .’ begged Archibald.
‘I’m listenin’,’ said the dishevelled man. He was now in his old position, with head sunk on arms. ‘I’m listenin’. That’s right,’ he said, as a fearful crashing resounded through the room. ‘Make him eat his fat.’
It was as the hands of such clocks as were right by Greenwich time were pointing to five minutes past three on the following morning that an at first faint, then swelling ‘Charawk-chawk-chawk’ made itself heard beneath the window of Aurelia Cammarleigh’s bedroom at Number 36A, Park Street. Weary, footsore, remorseful, emptied of his love for the Masses, but full once more of passion for the girl he adored, Archibald Mulliner was fulfilling her behest and imitating for her the hen laying an egg. She had ordered him to come round to her house and give of his best, and here he was, doing it.
For a while, physical fatigue had rendered the performance a poor one. But gradually, as, artist-like, he became absorbed in his task, Archibald’s voice gained in volume, in expression, and in all those qualities which make a hen-imitation a thing of beauty. Soon windows all along the street were opening, heads were being thrust out, and complaining voices calling for the police. All the world loves a lover, but not when imitating hens outside their bedroom windows at three in the morning.
The force manifested itself in the person of Constable C-44.
‘What,’ he asked, ‘is all this?’
‘Charawk,’ cried Archibald.
‘Pardon?’ said the constable.
‘Charawk,’ fluted Archibald. ‘Charawk.’
And now, having reached the point where it was necessary for the purposes of his art to run round in a circle, holding the sides of his coat, and finding the officer’s hand on his shoulder an impediment, he punched the latter smartly in the wind and freed himself. And it was at this moment that Aurelia’s window flew open. The lovely girl was a sound sleeper, and, at first, even when the mellow clucking had reached her ears, she had thought it but a dream.
But now she was awake, and her heart was filled with an ecstasy of relief and love.
Archibald!’ she cried. ‘Is that really you, you old leper?’
‘In person,’ replied Archibald, suspending his rendition for an instant.
‘Come in and have a spot.’
‘Thanks. I’d like to. No, sorry,’ added Archibald, as the hand of the Law fell on his shoulder once more. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve just been pinched by a bally policeman.’
‘And you’ll stay pinched,’ said Officer C-44 in a none too genial voice. His abdomen was still paining him.
‘And he says I’ll stay pinched,’ added Archibald. ‘Indeed, it looks very much as if I were even now off to chokey . . . for about how long would you say, Officer?’
‘For about fourteen days without the op.,’ replied the other, rubbing his waistband with his disengaged hand. ‘Charged with resisting and assaulting the police in the execution of their duty, that’s
what you’ll be.’
‘Fourteen days or two weeks, it begins to look like,’ shouted Archibald, as he was dragged away. ‘Call it a fortnight.’
‘I will be waiting for you when you come out,’ cried Aurelia.
‘You’ll be what?’ asked Archibald. His voice was barely audible to her now, for the officer was cutting out a good pace.
‘Waiting for you . . . When you come out,’ shrieked Aurelia.
‘Then you love me still?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘Yes!!’
‘Sorry. I didn’t get it.’
‘YES!!!’ roared Aurelia.
And, as she stopped to ease her tortured throat, from round the corner there came to her ears a faint, barely audible ‘Charawk’, and she knew that he understood.
Park Street closed its windows and went to sleep again.
10 THE CODE OF THE MULLINERS
OUR LITTLE GROUP of serious thinkers in the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest had been discussing a breach of promise case to which the papers were giving a good deal of prominence at the moment: and a Whisky Sour had raised the question of how these fellows did it.
‘Tell a girl it’s all off, I mean,’ said the Whisky Sour. ‘It must take the courage of a lion. I was a daring sort of young chap in my prime, but if you had told me to go to my dear wife – Miss Bootle she was then, one of the East Balham Booties – and cast her aside like a soiled glove, I’d never have had the nerve. Yet apparently it’s happening every day. Odd.’
A thoughtful Eggnogg said that he understood that the telephone was a great help on these occasions. A Gin and Ginger preferred what he called the good old false beard method.
‘It solves the whole problem,’ said the Gin and Ginger. ‘You get your false beard, then you write the girl a letter, then you slap on the beard and go to Nova Scotia.’
A Half of Stout said that wasn’t British. The Gin and Ginger said: Yes, it was, very British. The Half of Stout appealed to Mr Mulliner.
‘Would you do that, Mr M.? If you were engaged to a girl and wanted to break it off, would you buy a false beard?’
Mr Mulliner smiled indulgently.
‘In my case, as in that of any member of my family,’ he said, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon, ‘the question of how to break off an engagement could never arise. We may be wrong, we may be foolishly jealous of the noblesse oblige of an ancient name, but the code of the Mulliners is that an engagement cannot be broken off by the male contracting party. When a Mulliner plights his troth, it stays plighted. It was this scrupulous sense of chivalry, handed down to him by a long line of ancestors, that so complicated matters for my nephew Archibald when he wished to be free of his honourable obligations to Aurelia Cammarleigh.’
We were stunned.
‘Archibald?’ we cried. ‘Your nephew Archibald? The one who imitated hens? But we thought he worshipped the girl with the utmost fervour.’
‘He did.’
‘Then why did he want to break the engagement?’
‘I need scarcely say that his motives, as the motives of any nephew of mine could not fail to be, were in the last degree praiseworthy and altruistic. He conceived himself to be acting entirely in Aurelia’s best interests. But perhaps you would care to hear the story?’
You remarked just now (said Mr Mulliner) that my nephew Archibald worshipped Aurelia Cammarleigh with the utmost fervour, and that is precisely what he did worship her with. Her lightest word was law to him. A smile from her made his day. When I tell you that not once but on three separate occasions he sent his man, Meadowes, out into the Park with instructions to carve his, Archibald’s, initials and those of Miss Cammarleigh on the nearest convenient tree with a heart round them, you will understand something of the depths of his feelings. And you will also understand why, when after they had been betrothed some six weeks he found her manner towards him growing definitely cold, he was shaken to the core.
Now, mere temporary and fleeting demonstrations of frigidity on the part of the adored object are, of course, not unusual. Girls affect them simply in order to enjoy the luxury of melting again. But this was different. This had all the earmarks of the real stuff. He would call her the lodestar of his life, and she would say ‘Ho-hum.’ He would enquire of her if she loved her little Archibald, and she would say ‘Hi-ho.’ He would speak of their coming wedding-day, and she would ask him if he had read any good books lately. Trifles, you may say . . . Nothing tangible, I grant . . . But, nevertheless, taking this with that and weighing all the evidence, Archibald Mulliner became convinced that for some mysterious reason his Aurelia had gone off the boil. And at length, as every young man should do when his heart is aching, he decided to go and ask advice of his mother.
Archibald’s mother, since her widowhood, had taken up her abode in the neighbourhood of Kew. Between her and Aurelia there had sprung up a warm friendship, and it occurred to Archibald that in the course of one of their chats together the girl might possibly have let fall some remark which would provide a clue to the mystery. At any rate, it seemed a good speculative venture to pop round and enquire, so he unleashed his two-seater and presently was making his way through the little garden to the sunlit room at the back of the house where his mother liked to sit of an afternoon. And he was just about to step through the open french windows with a filial ‘Pip-pip’, when a sudden sight sent him back on his heels and he stood gaping – his eyeglass, cast adrift in his emotion, bobbing like some live thing on the end of its cord.
For there, gentlemen, in that sunlit room, stood Lady (Wilhelmina) Mulliner, relict of the late Sir Sholto Mulliner, M.V.O., with her tongue out like a dog’s, panting in deep gasps with a sort of horrible ‘ha-ha-ha-ha-ha’ sound that turned the blood in Archibald’s veins to ice. And then, as he watched, she suddenly stopped panting and began to utter a remark which, even by Archibald’s not too exacting standards, seemed noticeably goofy. It consisted of the letters ‘QX’, repeated over and over again. And, as Archibald has often told me, it was the way she said them that got right in amongst a fellow.
The ‘Q’, he tells me, was an almost inaudible murmur, produced through pouting lips. That, he says, he could have endured. What made everything seem so sad and hopeless was the ‘X’. As she emitted this, she drew her mouth back in a ghastly grin till the muscles of her neck stood out like ropes. And she went on and on and on. She refrained from Q-ing the ‘Q’ only to X the ‘X’, and when she wasn’t X-ing to beat the band she was Q-ing away like a two-year-old. That was how my nephew Archibald described the scene to me, and I must admit that it conjures up a vivid picture.
Well, of course, Archibald understood now why Aurelia’s manner towards him had changed of late. Obviously, she must have come upon the poor old parent unexpectedly in the middle of one of these spells of hers and perceived, as he did, that she was as loony as a coot. Enough to make any girl think a bit.
He turned away and staggered out of the garden with blind steps. One can, of course, appreciate his agony, poor lad. Few things are less pleasant for a young man in the spring-time of life than to have a well-loved mother suddenly go off her rocker: and when such a tragedy involves also the breaking off of his engagement to the girl he worships, you have got something that Somerset Maugham could make a three-act play out of without conscious cerebration.
For he realized, of course, that his engagement would have to be broken off. A man of nice scruples like Archibald Mulliner could have no option. A chap, he meant to say, can’t go lugging girls off to the altar if there is insanity in his family. Apart from anything else, this pottiness was probably catching. Quite likely it would be coming out in himself, too, before he knew where he was. And a nice thing it would be for Aurelia if, as they stood side by side in the sacred edifice and the clergyman said, ‘Wilt thou, Archibald?’ he were to reply, ‘QX’ or, worse, pant like a dog with his tongue out. All sorts of remarks it would cause. A girl in such circumstances could scarcely help bu
t feel pretty silly.
No, he must break the engagement at once . . .
And then, suddenly, even as he framed the thought, there rose up before him the recollection of the code of the Mulliners, and he saw that the whole affair was going to be a good deal more difficult and complex than he had supposed. He could not break the engagement. He would have to do something to make Aurelia take that step. And what it now boiled down to was What?
He mused. What girls of his acquaintance had broken off their engagements? And why?
There was Jane Todmarsh. Her betrothed, taking her out for a spin in the old Pommery Seven, had driven it, her, and himself into a duck-pond out Hitchin way. She had given the young man his freedom within two seconds of spitting the first newt out of her mouth.
Suppose he were to take Aurelia for a drive and . . . No. He shrank from it. He couldn’t say why exactly, but he shrank from it.
Milly Salt had returned her fiancé to store because of his habit of uttering a short, dry, nasty snigger every time she missed a shot in the mixed doubles. No help for Archibald here. Aurelia did not play tennis. Besides, he knew that in no circumstances could he bring himself to snigger drily and nastily at one who to him was more like some sort of a goddess than anything.
The case of Hypatia Sloggett was different. A former flame of the future lord and master had turned up in the middle of dinner one night at the Savoy and made a row.
This, Archibald felt, was the best bet yet. There was the difficulty that he had no former flames, but a moment’s thought told him that he could easily go round to some theatrical agency and engage one. There were probably a hundred out-of-work actresses in the Strand neighbourhood who would be delighted to come in on the deal for a fiver.
And yet once again he found himself shrinking. That sort of thing happening in a crowded restaurant could not fail to make a fellow feel pretty dashed conspicuous, and he hated feeling conspicuous. If there was any other alternative, he would vastly prefer to take it.