Dimly, he realized that Aurelia was saying something to him.
‘Eh?’ he said.
‘I said, “There’s your mother”.’
‘I saw her.’
‘She’s looking ever so much better, don’t you think?’
‘Better?’
‘She was worried,’ explained Aurelia, ‘because she was getting a double chin. I found her in floods of tears one afternoon, trying to work it off with a squeegee. Absolutely no good, of course, and I told her so. There’s only one thing for a double chin, and that’s this new method everybody’s going in for these days. First, you stand and pant like a dog for twenty minutes. This hardens the throat muscles. Then you breathe deeply and keep saying “QX”, “QX” over and over again. The “Q” isn’t so important, but the “X” is the goods. It works directly on the chin and neck, tightening them up and breaking down the fatty tissues.’
The room seemed to be rocking about Archibald.
‘What!’
‘Absolutely,’ said Aurelia. ‘You’ve got to be careful, of course, at first, otherwise you’re extremely apt to dislocate your neck, or something.’
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ demanded Archibald, choking, ‘that all that “QX” stuff I saw her doing was simply one of these bally modern beauty-drill things?’
‘Oh, did you see her? It must have given you rather a shock, I should think. The first time I saw my aunt doing it, I was on the phone, ringing up doctors to come on the run and certify her, before you could say “What ho”.’
Archibald leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. For a moment, all he could feel was a sullen resentment against the Fate that wrecks our lives – as far as one can see, in a spirit of pure whimsicality. A fat lot of good it was, he felt, acting from the best motives in this world.
Then his resentment extended itself to Woman. Women, he felt, simply ought not to be allowed loose. You never knew what they were going to do next.
And then, correcting himself, he realized that he knew quite well what one woman, at least, was going to do next. Miss Yvonne Maltravers was going to come entering left and telling him that he was sullying the grand old name of Middlesbrough or whatever it was.
He looked at his watch. The hands pointed to fourteen minutes past nine.
‘Of course, if it’s a question of reducing the tummy,’ said Aurelia, ‘that’s different. You have to go down on all fours and crawl round the room, saying “Oofa-oofa”. I say,’ she broke off, and her silvery laugh rang through the room once more, ‘you do get all sorts in these eating-houses nowadays. Look at that weird female by the door.’
Archibald followed her gaze, and his heart did two double hand-springs. It was Miss Maltravers who stood on the threshold or, as she would no doubt have preferred to put it herself, in the downstage O.P. entrance. She was peering about her at the tables.
‘Seems to be looking for someone,’ said Aurelia.
If some sportive hand had suddenly introduced a bradawl into the seat of my nephew Archibald’s trousers, he could not have risen with more celerity. There was, he told himself, just one hope. It might lead to a certain amount of talk, but if he were to place one hand over Miss Maltravers’s mouth and, seizing the slack of her dress with the other, rush her out the way she had come, dump her into a cab, tell that cab to drive to Shepherd’s Bush, and on the way thither drop the talented artiste out of window into a convenient basement, he might yet be saved.
The policy, as I say, might excite comment. Aurelia, no doubt, would raise her eyebrows in a mute demand for an explanation. But he could always say that it was one of these new slimming exercises, designed to strengthen the triceps muscles and remove superfluous fat from the upper chest.
More like a puma of the African hinterlands than a Mulliner, Archibald sped across the room. And Miss Maltravers, sighting him, spoke.
‘Oh, Mr Mulliner, I was looking for you.’
To Archibald’s surprise, she spoke in a whisper. At their previous meeting, in the Bodega, her voice had been full and robust – so much so that nervous fellow-customers had twice complained. But now she was more like a leaky gas-pipe than anything Archibald could think of. And even this novel method of delivery seemed to cause her pain. She winced distinctly.
‘I wanted to tell you, dearie,’ she proceeded, still in that same strange, hushed voice, ‘that there’s been a sort of hitch, if you know what I mean. The fact is, like a silly girl, taking those harsh words of Mr McCallum’s too much to heart, I started trying one of these new exercises for reducing the chin this afternoon, that a lady friend happened to tell me of. You may have heard of it – it’s the one where you say “QX”, and it was all right for the first three “Q”s and the first two “X”s, but I wasn’t more than half-way through the third “X” when something suddenly seemed to go crack in my throat, and now I can’t speak except in a whisper without feeling as if I was being torn asunder with pincers. So there it is, dearie, I hate to disappoint my public, a thing I’ve never done in my life before – “This loyal artist.” – Wolverhampton Express – so I’ll go on, if you like, but I warn you it won’t be the same thing. I shan’t be able to do myself what you might call justice. That part wants playing, and a girl can’t give of her best in a whisper. Why, once in Peebles I cracked a couple of footlights. Still, as I say, if you’d like me to walk the scene, I will.’
For a moment, Archibald could not speak. It was not so much that his mouth was still full of sardines on toast as that he was overpowered, unmanned by a rush of emotion such as he had not experienced since the day when Aurelia Cammarleigh had promised to be his.
‘Don’t dream of it,’ he urged. ‘It won’t be necessary. Owing to unforeseen circumstances, the production is off. You go straight home, old soul, and rub liniment on yourself. I’ll send you a cheque in the morning.’
‘It’s just about here that it seems to catch me.’
‘I’ll bet it does,’ said Archibald. ‘Well, pip-pip, toodle-oo, cheerio, and God bless you. I shall watch your future career with considerable interest.’
With feet that hardly seemed to touch the floor he returned to his table. Aurelia was puzzled and curious.
‘Did you know her?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Archibald. ‘Old nurse of mine.’
‘What did she want?’
‘Just came to wish me many happy returns of the day.’
‘But it isn’t your birthday.’
‘No, but you know what these old nurses are. Now, tell me, my precious angel dream-rabbit,’ said Archibald, ‘this wedding of ours. My idea is to rope in a couple of Bishops and do the thing right. Not one Bishop, if you see what I mean – two Bishops. Because, if you have a spare, nothing can go wrong. And nowadays, when you see people straining their throats on all sides, you can’t afford to take any chances.’
11 THE FIERY WOOING OF MORDRED
THE PINT OF Lager breathed heavily through his nose.
‘Silly fathead!’ he said. ‘Ashtrays in every nook and cranny of the room – ashtrays staring you in the eye wherever you look – and he has to go and do a fool thing like that.’
He was alluding to a young gentleman with a vacant, fish-like face who, leaving the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest a few moments before, had thrown his cigarette into the wastepaper basket, causing it to burst into a cheerful blaze. Not one of the little company of amateur fire-fighters but was ruffled. A Small Bass with a high blood pressure had had to have his collar loosened, and the satin-clad bosom of Miss Postlethwaite, our emotional barmaid, was still heaving.
Only Mr Mulliner seemed disposed to take a tolerant view of what had occurred.
‘In fairness to the lad,’ he pointed out, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon, ‘we must remember that our bar-parlour contains no grand piano or priceless old walnut table, which to the younger generation are the normal and natural repositories for lighted cigarette-ends. Failing these, he, of course, selected the wastepaper basket. Li
ke Mordred.’
‘Like who?’ asked a Whisky and Splash.
‘Whom,’ corrected Miss Postlethwaite.
The Whisky and Splash apologized.
‘A nephew of mine. Mordred Mulliner, the poet.’
‘Mordred,’ murmured Miss Postlethwaite pensively. ‘A sweet name.’
‘And one,’ said Mr Mulliner, ‘that fitted him admirably, for he was a comely lovable sensitive youth with large, fawn-like eyes, delicately chiselled features and excellent teeth. I mention these teeth, because it was owing to them that the train of events started which I am about to describe.’
‘He bit somebody?’ queried Miss Postlethwaite, groping.
‘No. But if he had had no teeth he would not have gone to the dentist’s that day, and if he had not gone to the dentist’s he would not have met Annabelle.’
‘Annabelle whom?’
‘Who,’ corrected Miss Postlethwaite.
‘Oh, shoot,’ said the Whisky and Splash.
Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett, the only daughter of Sir Murgatroyd and Lady Sprockett-Sprockett of Smattering Hall, Worcestershire. Impractical in many ways (said Mr Mulliner), Mordred never failed to visit his dentist every six months, and on the morning on which my story opens he had just seated himself in the empty waiting-room and was turning the pages of a three-months-old copy of the Tatler when the door opened and there entered a girl at the sight of whom – or who, if our friend here prefers it – something seemed to explode on the left side of his chest like a bomb. The Tatler swam before his eyes, and when it solidified again he realized that love had come to him at last.
Most of the Mulliners have fallen in love at first sight, but few with so good an excuse as Mordred. She was a singularly beautiful girl, and for a while it was this beauty of hers that enchained my nephew’s attention to the exclusion of all else. It was only after he had sat gulping for some minutes like a dog with a chicken bone in its throat that he detected the sadness in her face. He could see now that her eyes, as she listlessly perused her four-months-old copy of Punch, were heavy with pain.
His heart ached for her, and as there is something about the atmosphere of a dentist’s waiting-room which breaks down the barriers of conventional etiquette he was emboldened to speak.
‘Courage!’ he said. ‘It may not be so bad, after all. He may just fool about with that little mirror thing of his, and decide that there is nothing that needs to be done.’
For the first time she smiled – faintly, but with sufficient breadth to give Mordred another powerful jolt.
‘I’m not worrying about the dentist,’ she explained. ‘My trouble is that I live miles away in the country and only get a chance of coming to London about twice a year for about a couple of hours. I was hoping that I should be able to put in a long spell of window-shopping in Bond Street, but now I’ve got to wait goodness knows how long I don’t suppose I shall have time to do a thing. My train goes at one-fifteen.’
All the chivalry in Mordred came to the surface like a leaping trout.
‘If you would care to take my place–’
‘Oh, I couldn’t.’
‘Please. I shall enjoy waiting. It will give me an opportunity of catching up with my reading.’
‘Well, if you really wouldn’t mind—’
Considering that Mordred by this time was in the market to tackle dragons on her behalf or to climb the loftiest peak of the Alps to supply her with edelweiss, he was able to assure her that he did not mind. So in she went, flashing at him a shy glance of gratitude which nearly doubled him up, and he lit a cigarette and fell into a reverie. And presently she came out and he sprang to his feet, courteously throwing his cigarette into the wastepaper basket.
She uttered a cry. Mordred recovered the cigarette.
‘Silly of me,’ he said, with a deprecating laugh. ‘I’m always doing that. Absent-minded. I’ve burned two flats already this year.’
She caught her breath.
‘Burned them to the ground?’
‘Well, not to the ground. They were on the top floor.’
‘But you burned them?’
‘Oh, yes. I burned them.’
‘Well, well!’ She seemed to muse. ‘Well, goodbye, Mr—’
‘Mulliner. Mordred Mulliner.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Mulliner, and thank you so much.’
‘Not at all, Miss—’
‘Sprockett-Sprockett.’
‘Not at all, Miss Sprockett-Sprockett. A pleasure.’
She passed from the room, and a few minutes later he was lying back in the dentist’s chair, filled with an infinite sadness. This was not due to any activity on the part of the dentist, who had just said with a rueful sigh that there didn’t seem to be anything to do this time, but to the fact that his life was now a blank. He loved this beautiful girl, and he would never see her more. It was just another case of ships that pass in the waiting-room.
Conceive his astonishment, therefore, when by the afternoon post next day he received a letter which ran as follows:
Smattering Hall,
Lower Smattering-on-the-Wissel,
Worcestershire.
Dear Mr Mulliner,
My little girl has told me how very kind you were to her at the dentist’s today. I cannot tell you how grateful she was. She does so love to walk down Bond Street and breathe on the jewellers’ windows, and but for you she would have had to go another six months without her little treat.
I suppose you are a very busy man, like everybody in London, but if you can spare the time it would give my husband and myself so much pleasure if you could run down and stay with us for a few days – a long week-end, or even longer if you can manage it.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Sprockett-Sprockett.
Mordred read this communication six times in a minute and a quarter and then seventeen times rather more slowly in order to savour any nuance of it that he might have overlooked. He took it that the girl must have got his address from the dentist’s secretary on her way out, and he was doubly thrilled – first, by this evidence that one so lovely was as intelligent as she was beautiful, and secondly because the whole thing seemed to him so frightfully significant. A girl, he meant to say, does not get her mother to invite fellows to her country home for long week-ends (or even longer if they can manage it) unless such fellows have made a pretty substantial hit with her. This, he contended, stood to reason.
He hastened to the nearest post-office, dispatched a telegram to Lady Sprockett-Sprockett assuring her that he would be with her on the morrow, and returned to his flat to pack his effects. His heart was singing within him. Apart from anything else, the invitation could not have come at a more fortunate moment, for what with musing on his great love while smoking cigarettes he had practically gutted his little nest on the previous evening, and while it was still habitable in a sense there was no gainsaying the fact that all those charred sofas and things struck a rather melancholy note and he would be glad to be away from it all for a few days.
It seemed to Mordred, as he travelled down on the following afternoon, that the wheels of the train, clattering over the metals, were singing ‘Sprockett-Sprockett’ – not ‘Annabelle,’ of course, for he did not yet know her name – and it was with a whispered ‘Sprockett-Sprockett’ on his lips that he alighted at the little station of Smattering-cum-Blimpstead-in-the-Vale, which, as his hostess’s notepaper had informed him, was where you got off for the Hall. And when he perceived that the girl herself had come to meet him in a two-seater car the whisper nearly became a shout.
For perhaps three minutes, as he sat beside her, Mordred remained in this condition of ecstatic bliss. Here he was, he reflected, and here she was – here, in fact, they both were – together, and he was just about to point out how jolly this was and – if he could work it without seeming to rush things too much – to drop a hint to the effect that he could wish this state of affairs to continue through all etern
ity, when the girl drew up outside a tobacconist’s.
‘I won’t be a minute,’ she said. ‘I promised Biffy I would bring him back some cigarettes.’
A cold hand seemed to lay itself on Mordred’s heart.
‘Biffy?’
‘Captain Biffing, one of the men at the Hall. And Guffy wants some pipe-cleaners.’
‘Guffy?’
‘Jack Guffington. I expect you know his name, if you are interested in racing. He was third in last year’s Grand National.’
‘Is he staying at the Hall, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have a large house-party?’
‘Oh, not so very. Let me see. There’s Billy Biffing, Jack Guffington, Ted Prosser, Freddie Boot – he’s the tennis champion of the county, Tommy Mainprice, and – oh, yes, Algy Fripp – the big-game hunter, you know.’
The hand on Mordred’s heart, now definitely iced, tightened its grip. With a lover’s sanguine optimism, he had supposed that this visit of his was going to be just three days of jolly sylvan solitude with Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett. And now it appeared that the place was unwholesomely crowded with his fellow men. And what fellow men! Big-game hunters . . . Tennis champions . . . Chaps who rode in Grand Nationals . . . He could see them in his mind’s eye – lean, wiry, riding-breeched and flannel-trousered young Apollos, any one of them capable of cutting out his weight in Clark Gables.
A faint hope stirred within him.
‘You have also, of course, with you Mrs Biffing, Mrs Guffington, Mrs Prosser, Mrs Boot, Mrs Mainprice and Mrs Algernon Fripp?’
‘Oh, no, they aren’t married.’
‘None of them?’
‘No.’
The faint hope coughed quietly and died.
‘Ah,’ said Mordred.
While the girl was in the shop, he remained brooding. The fact that none of these blisters should be married filled him with an austere disapproval. If they had had the least spark of civic sense, he felt, they would have taken on the duties and responsibilities of matrimony years ago. But no. Intent upon their selfish pleasures, they had callously remained bachelors. It was this spirit of laissez-faire, Mordred considered, that was eating like a canker into the soul of England.