Still, he did not want the dear little soul to be disappointed.
‘I wonder if they have any flavour at all?’ said Mervyn to himself.
Well, the first one had not. Nor had the second. The third was rather better. And the fourth was quite juicy. And the best of all, oddly enough, was the last one in the basket.
He was just finishing it when Clarice Mallaby came running in.
Well, Mervyn tried to pass it off, of course. But his efforts were not rewarded with any great measure of success. In fact, he tells me that he did not get beyond a tentative ‘Oh, I say … ‘And the upshot of the whole matter was that the girl threw him out into the winter evening without so much as giving him a chance to take his hat.
Nor had he the courage to go back and fetch it later, for Clarice Mallaby stated specifically that if he dared to show his ugly face at the house again the butler had instructions to knock him down and skin him, and the butler was looking forward to it, as he had never liked Mervyn.
So there the matter rests. The whole thing has been a great blow to my cousin’s son, for he considers — and rightly, I suppose — that, if you really come down to it, he failed in his quest. Nevertheless, I think that we must give him credit for the possession of the old knightly spirit to which our friend here was alluding just now.
He meant well. He did his best. And even of a Mulliner more cannot be said than that.
5 THE VOICE FROM THE PAST
At the ancient and historic public-school which stands a mile or two up the river from the Angler’s Rest there had recently been a change of headmasters, and our little group in the bar-parlour, naturally interested, was discussing the new appointment.
A grizzled Tankard of Stout frankly viewed it with concern.
‘Benger!’ he exclaimed. ‘Fancy making Benger a headmaster.’
‘He has a fine record.’
‘Yes, but, dash it, he was at school with me.’
‘One lives these things down in time,’ we urged.
The Tankard said we had missed his point, which was that he could remember young Scrubby Benger in an Eton collar with jam on it, getting properly cursed by the Mathematics beak for bringing white mice into the form-room.
‘He was a small, fat kid with a pink face,’ proceeded the Tankard. ‘I met him again only last July, and he looked just the same. I can’t see him as a headmaster. I thought they had to be a hundred years old and seven feet high, with eyes of flame, and long white beards. To me, a headmaster has always been a sort of blend of Epstein’s Genesis and something out of the Book of Revelations.’
Mr Mulliner smiled tolerantly.
‘You left school at an early age, I imagine?’
‘Sixteen. I had to go into my uncle’s business.’
‘Exactly,’ said Mr Mulliner, nodding sagely. ‘You completed your school career, in other words, before the age at which a boy, coming into personal relationship with the man up top, learns to regard him as a guide, philosopher and friend. The result is that you are suffering from the well-known Headmaster Fixation or Phobia — precisely as my nephew Sacheverell did. A rather delicate youth, he was removed by his parents from Harborough College shortly after his fifteenth birthday and educated at home by a private tutor; and I have frequently heard him assert that the Rev. J. G. Smethurst, the ruling spirit of Harborough, was a man who chewed broken bottles and devoured his young.
‘I strongly suspected my headmaster of conducting human sacrifices behind the fives-courts at the time of the full moon, said the Tankard.
‘Men like yourself and my nephew Sacheverell who leave school early,’ said Mr Mulliner, ‘never wholly lose these poetic boyish fancies. All their lives, the phobia persists. And sometimes this has curious results — as in the case of my nephew Sacheverell.’
It was to the terror inspired by his old headmaster (said Mr Mulliner) that I always attributed my nephew Sacheverell’s extraordinary mildness and timidity. A nervous boy, the years seemed to bring him no store of self-confidence. By the time he arrived at man’s estate, he belonged definitely to the class of humanity which never gets a seat on an underground train and is ill at ease in the presence of butlers, traffic policemen, and female assistants in post offices. He was the sort of young fellow at whom people laugh when the waiter speaks to them in French.
And this was particularly unfortunate, as he had recently become secretly affianced to Muriel, only daughter of Lieut.-Colonel Sir Redvers Branksome, one of the old-school type of squire and as tough an egg as ever said ‘Yoicks’ to a fox-hound. He had met her while she was on a visit to an aunt in London, and had endeared himself to her partly by his modest and diffident demeanour and partly by doing tricks with a bit of string, an art at which he was highly proficient.
Muriel was one of those hearty, breezy girls who abound in the hunting counties of England. Brought up all her life among confident young men who wore gaiters and smacked them with riding-crops, she had always yearned subconsciously. for something different: and Sacheverell’s shy, mild, shrinking personality seemed to wake the maternal in her. He was so weak, so helpless, that her heart went out to him. Friendship speedily ripened into love, with the result that one afternoon my nephew found himself definitely engaged and faced with the prospect of breaking the news to the old folks at home.
‘And if you think you’ve got a picnic ahead of you,’ said Muriel, ‘forget it. Father’s a gorilla. I remember when I was engaged to my cousin Bernard—’
‘When you were what to your what?’ gasped Sacheverell.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the girl. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I was engaged once to my cousin Bernard, but I broke it off because he tried to boss me. A little too much of the dominant male there was about old B., and I handed him his hat. Though we’re still good friends. But what I was saying was that Bernard used to gulp like a seal and stand on one leg when father came along. And he’s in the Guards. That just shows you. However, we’ll start the thing going. I’ll get you down to the Towers for a week-end, and we’ll see what happens.’
If Muriel had hoped that a mutual esteem would spring up between her father and her betrothed during this week-end visit, she was doomed to disappointment. The thing was a failure from the start. Sacheverell’s host did him extremely well, giving him the star guest-room, the Blue Suite, and bringing out the oldest port for his benefit, but it was plain that he thought little of the young man. The colonel’s subjects were sheep (in sickness and in health), manure, wheat, mangold-wurzels, huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’: while Sacheverell was at his best on Proust, the Russian Ballet, Japanese prints, and the Influence of James Joyce on the younger Bloomsbury novelists. There was no fusion between these men’s souls. Colonel Branksome did not actually bite Sacheverell in the leg, but when you had said that you had said everything.
Muriel was deeply concerned.
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Dogface,’ she said, as she was seeing her loved one to his train on the Monday, ‘we’ve got off on the wrong foot. The male parent may have loved you at sight, but, if he did, he took another look and changed his mind.’
‘I fear we were not exactly en rapport,’ sighed Sacheverell. Apart from the fact that the mere look of him gave me a strange, sinking feeling, my conversation seemed to bore him.’
‘You didn’t talk about the right things.’
‘I couldn’t. I know so little of mangold-wurzels. Manure is a sealed book to me.
‘Just what I’m driving at,’ said Muriel. ‘And all that must be altered. Before you spring the tidings on father, there will have to be a lot of careful preliminary top-dressing of the soil, if you follow what I mean. By the time the bell goes for the second round and old Dangerous Dan McGrew comes out of his corner at you, breathing fire, you must have acquired a good working knowledge of Scientific Agriculture. That’ll tickle him pink.’
‘But how?’
‘I’ll tell you how. I was reading a magazine the other day, and there was an advertisement in
it of a Correspondence School which teaches practically everything. You put a cross against the course you want to take and clip out the coupon and bung it in, and they do the rest. I suppose they send you pamphlets and things. So the moment you get back to London, look up this advertisement — it was in the Piccadilly Magazine — and write to these people and tell them to shoot the works.’
Sacheverell pondered this advice during the railway journey, and the more he pondered it the more clearly did he see how excellent it was. It offered the solution to all his troubles. There was no doubt whatever that the bad impression he had made on Colonel Branksome was due chiefly to his ignorance of the latter’s pet subjects. If he were in a position to throw off a good thing from time to time on Guano or the Influence of Dip on the Younger Leicestershire Sheep, Muriel’s father would unquestionably view him with a far kindlier eye.
He lost no time in clipping out the coupon and forwarding it with a covering cheque to the address given in the advertisement. And two days later a bulky package arrived, and he settled down to an intensive course of study.
By the time Sacheverell had mastered the first six lessons, a feeling of perplexity had begun to steal over him. He knew nothing, of course, of the methods of Correspondence Schools and was prepared to put his trust blindly in his unseen tutor; but it did strike him as odd that a course on Scientific Agriculture should have absolutely no mention of Scientific Agriculture in it.
Though admittedly a child in these matters, he had supposed that that was one of the first topics on which the thing would have touched.
But such was not the case. The lessons contained a great deal of advice about deep breathing and regular exercise and cold baths and Yogis and the training of the mind, but on the subject of Scientific Agriculture they were vague and elusive. They simply would not come to the point. They said nothing about sheep, nothing about manure, and from the way they avoided mangold-wurzels you might have thought they considered these wholesome vegetables almost improper.
At first, Sacheverell accepted this meekly, as he accepted everything in life. But gradually, as his reading progressed, a strange sensation of annoyance began to grip him. He found himself chafing a good deal, particularly in the mornings. And when the seventh lesson arrived and still there was this absurd coyness on the part of his instructors to come to grips with Scientific Agriculture, he decided to put up with it no longer. He was enraged. These people, he considered, were deliberately hornswoggling him. He resolved to go round and see them and put it to them straight that he was not the sort of main to be trifled with in this fashion.
The headquarters of the Leave-It-To-Us Correspondence School were in a large building off Kingsway. Sacheverell, passing through the front door like an east wind, found himself confronted by a small boy with a cold and supercilious eye.
‘Yes?’ said the boy, with deep suspicion. He seemed to be a lad who distrusted his fellow-men and attributed the worst motives to their actions.
Sacheverell pointed curtly to a door on which was the legend ‘Jno. B. Philbrick, Mgr’.
‘I wish to see Jno. B. Philbrick, Mgr,’ he said.
The boy’s lip curled contemptuously. He appeared to be on the point of treating the application with silent disdain. Then he vouchsafed a single, scornful word.
‘Can’tseeMrPhilbrickwithoutanappointment,’ he said.
A few weeks before, a rebuff like this would have sent Sacheverell stumbling blushfully out of the place, tripping over his feet. But now he merely brushed the child aside like a feather, and strode to the inner office.
A bald-headed man with a walrus moustache was seated at the desk.
‘Jno. Philbrick?’ said Sacheverell brusquely.
‘That is my name.
‘Then listen to me, Philbrick,’ said Sacheverell. ‘I paid fifteen guineas in advance for a course on Scientific Agriculture. I have here the seven lessons which you have sent me to date, and if you can find a single word in them that has anything even remotely to do with Scientific Agriculture, I will eat my hat — and yours, too, Philbrick.’
The manager had produced a pair of spectacles and through them was gazing at the mass of literature which Sacheverell had hurled before him. He raised his eyebrows and clicked his tongue.
‘Stop clicking!’ said Sacheverell. ‘I came here to be explained to, not clicked at.’
‘Dear me!’ said the manager. ‘How very curious.
Sacheverell banged the desk forcefully.
‘Philbrick,’ he shouted, ‘do not evade the issue. It is not curious. It is scandalous, monstrous, disgraceful, and I intend to take very strong steps. I shall give this outrage the widest and most pitiless publicity, and spare no effort to make a complete exposé.
The manager held up a deprecating hand.
‘Please!’ he begged. ‘I appreciate your indignation, Mr … Mulliner? Thank you… I appreciate your indignation, Mr Mulliner. I sympathize with your concern. But I can assure you that there has been no desire to deceive. Merely an unfortunate blunder on the part of our clerical staff, who shall be severely reprimanded. What has happened is that the wrong course has been sent to you.
Sacheverell’s righteous wrath cooled a little.
‘Oh?’ he said, somewhat mollified. ‘I see. The wrong course, eh?’
‘The wrong course,’ said Mr Philbrick. ‘And,’ he went on, with a sly glance at his visitor, ‘I think you will agree with me that such immediate results are a striking testimony to the efficacy of our system.’
Sacheverell was puzzled.
‘Results?’ he said. ‘How do you mean, results?’
The manager smiled genially.
‘What you have been studying for the past few weeks, Mr Mulliner,’ he said, ‘is our course on How to Acquire Complete Self-Confidence and an Iron Will.’
A strange elation filled Sacheverell Mulliner’s bosom as he left the offices of the Correspondence School. It is always a relief to have a mystery solved which has been vexing one for any considerable time: and what Jno. Philbrick had told him made several puzzling things clear. For quite a little while he had been aware that a change had taken place in his relationship to the world about him. He recalled taxi-cabmen whom he had looked in the eye and made to wilt; intrusive pedestrians to whom he had refused to yield an inch of the pavement, where formerly he would have stepped meekly aside. These episodes had perplexed him at the time, but now everything was explained.
But what principally pleased him was the thought that he was now relieved of the tedious necessity of making a study of Scientific Agriculture, a subject from which his artist soul had always revolted. Obviously, a man with a will as iron as his would be merely wasting time boning up a lot of dull facts simply with the view of pleasing Sir Redvers Branksome. Sir Redvers Branksome, felt Sacheverell, would jolly well take him as he was, and like it.
He anticipated no trouble from that quarter. In his mind’s eye he could see himself lolling at the dinner-table at the Towers and informing the Colonel over a glass of port that he proposed, at an early date, to marry his daughter. Possibly, purely out of courtesy, he would make the graceful gesture of affecting to seek the old buster’s approval of the match: but at the slightest sign of obduracy he would know what to do about it.
Well pleased, Sacheverell was walking to the Carlton Hotel, where he intended to lunch, when, just as he entered the Hay-market, he stopped abruptly, and a dark frown came into his resolute face.
A cab had passed him, and in that cab was sitting his fiancée, Muriel Branksome. And beside her, with a grin on his beastly face, was a young man in a Brigade of Guards tie. They had the air of a couple on their way to enjoy a spot of lunch somewhere.
That Sacheverell should have deduced immediately that the young man was Muriel’s cousin, Bernard, was due to the fact that, like all the Mulliners, he was keenly intuitive. That he should have stood, fists clenched and eyes blazing, staring after the cab, we may set down to the circumstance that the spectacle of the
se two, squashed together in carefree proximity on the seat of a taxi, had occasioned in him the utmost rancour and jealousy.
Muriel, as she had told him, had once been engaged to her cousin, and the thought that they were still on terms of such sickening intimacy acted like acid on Sacheverell’s soul.
Hobnobbing in cabs, by Jove! Revelling tête-à-tête at luncheon-tables, forsooth! Just the sort of goings-On that got the Cities of the Plain so disliked. He saw clearly that Muriel was a girl who would have to be handled firmly. There was nothing of the possessive Victorian male about him — he flattered himself that he was essentially modern and broadminded in his outlook — but if Muriel supposed that he was going to stand by like a clam while she went on Babylonian orgies all over the place with pop-eyed, smirking, toothbrush-moustached Guardees, she was due for a rude awakening.
And Sacheverell Mulliner did not mean maybe.
For an instant, he toyed with the idea of hailing another cab and following them. Then he thought better of it. He was enraged, but still master of himself. When he ticked Muriel off, as he intended to do, he wished to tick her off alone. If she was in London, she was, no doubt, staying with her aunt in Ennismore Gardens. He would get a bit of food and go on there at his leisure.
The butler at Ennismore Gardens informed Sacheverell, when he arrived, that Muriel was, as he supposed, visiting the house, though for the moment out to lunch. Sacheverell waited, and presently the door of the drawing-room opened and the girl came in.
She seemed delighted to see him.
‘Hullo, old streptococcus,’ she said. ‘Here you are, eh? I rang you up this morning to ask you to give me a bite of lunch, but you were out, so I roped in Bernard instead and we buzzed off to the Savoy in a taximeter.’
‘I saw you,’ said Sacheverell coldly.
‘Did you? You poor chump, why didn’t you yell?’