To dive under the bed was with Sacheverell Mulliner the work of a moment. And there, as the door opened, he lay, holding his breath and trying to keep his ears from rustling in the draught.
Smethurst (alias Bognor) was a leisurely undresser. He doffed his gaiters, and then for some little time stood, apparently in a reverie, humming one of the song-hits from the psalms. Eventually, he resumed his disrobing, but even then the ordeal was not over. As far as Sacheverell could see, in the constrained position in which he was lying, the Bishop was doing a few setting-up exercises. Then he went into the bathroom and cleaned his teeth. It was only at the end of half an hour that he finally climbed between the sheets and switched off the light.
For a long while after he had done so, Sacheverell remained where he was, motionless. But presently a faint, rhythmical sound from the neighbourhood of the pillows assured him that the other was asleep, and he crawled cautiously from his lair.
Then, stepping with infinite caution, he moved to the door, opened it, and passed through.
The relief which Sacheverell felt as he closed the door behind him would have been less intense, had he realized that through a slight mistake in his bearings he had not, as he supposed, reached the haven of the passage outside but had merely entered the bathroom. This fact was not brought home to him until he had collided with an unexpected chair, upset it, tripped over a bathmat, clutched for support into the darkness and brushed from off the glass shelf above the basin a series of bottles, containing — in the order given — Scalpo (‘It Fertilizes the Follicles’), Soothine — for applying to the face after shaving, and Doctor Wilberforce’s Golden Gargle in the large or seven-and-sixpenny size. These, crashing to the floor, would have revealed the truth to a far duller man than Sacheverell Mulliner.
He acted swiftly. From the room beyond, there had come to his ears the unmistakable sound of a Bishop sitting up in bed, and he did not delay. Hastily groping for the switch, he turned on the light. He found the bolt and shot it. Only then did he sit down on the edge of the bath and attempt to pass the situation under careful review.
He was not allowed long for quiet thinking. Through the door came the sound of deep breathing. Then a voice spoke.
‘Who is they-ah?’
As always in the dear old days of school, it caused Sacheverell to leap six inches. He had just descended again, when another voice spoke in the bedroom. It was that of Colonel Sir Redvers Branksome, who had heard the crashing of glass and had come, in the kindly spirit of a good host, to make enquiries.
‘What is the matter, my dear Bishop?’ he asked.
‘It is a burglar, my dear Colonel,’ said the Bishop.
‘A burglar?’
A burglar. He has locked himself in the bathroom.’
‘Then how extremely fortunate,’ said the Colonel heartily, ‘that I should have brought along this baffle-axe and shot-gun on the chance.’
Sacheverell felt that it was time to join in the conversation. He went to the door and put his lips against the keyhole.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, quaveringly.
The Colonel uttered a surprised exclamation.
‘He says it’s all right,’ he reported.
‘Why does he say it is all right?’ asked the Bishop.
‘I didn’t ask him,’ replied the Colonel. ‘He just said it was all right.’
The Bishop sniffed peevishly.
‘It is not all right,’ he said, with a certain heat. ‘And I am at a .loss to understand why the man should affect to assume that it is. I suggest, my dear Colonel, that our best method of procedure is as follows, you take the shot-gun and stand in readiness, and I will hew down the door with this admirable battle-axe.’
And it was at this undeniably critical point in the proceedings that something ‘soft and clinging brushed against Sacheverell’s right ear, causing him to leap again — this time a matter of eight inches and a quarter. And, spinning round, he discovered that what had touched his ear was the curtain of the bathroom window.
There now came a splintering crash, and the door shook on its hinges. The Bishop, with all the blood of a hundred Militant Churchmen ancestors afire within him, had started operations with the axe.
But Sacheverell scarcely heard the noise. The sight of the open window had claimed his entire attention. And now, moving nimbly, he clambered through it, alighting on what seemed to be leads.
For an instant he gazed wildly about him; then, animated, perhaps, by some subconscious memory of the boy who bore ‘mid snow and ice the banner with the strange device ‘Excelsior!’ he leaped quickly upwards and started to climb the roof.
Muriel Branksome, on retiring to her room on the floor above the Blue Suite, had not gone to bed. She was sitting at her open window, thinking, thinking.
Her thoughts were bitter ones. It was not that she felt remorseful. In giving Sacheverell the air at their recent interview, her conscience told her that she had acted rightly. He had behaved like a domineering sheik of the desert: and a dislike for domineering sheiks of the desert had always been an integral part of her spiritual make-up.
But the consciousness of having justice on her side is not always enough to sustain a girl at such a time: and an aching pain gripped Muriel as she thought of the Sacheverell she had loved —the old, mild, sweet-natured Sacheverell who had asked nothing better than to gaze at her with adoring eyes, removing them only when he found it necessary to give his attention to the bit of string with which he was doing tricks. She mourned for this vanished Sacheverell.
Obviously, after what had happened, he would leave the house early in the morning — probably long before she came down, for she was a late riser. She wondered if she would ever see him again.
At this moment, she did. He was climbing up the slope of the roof towards her on his hands and knees — and, for one who was not a cat, doing it extremely well. She had hardly risen to her feet before he was standing at the window, clutching the sill.
Muriel choked. She stared at him with wide, tragic eyes.
‘What do you want?’ she asked harshly.
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ said Sacheverell, ‘I was wondering if you would mind if I hid under your bed for a bit.’
And suddenly, in the dim light, the girl saw that his face was contorted with a strange terror. And, at the spectacle, all her animosity seemed to be swept away as if on a tidal wave, and back came the old love and esteem, piping hot and as fresh as’ ever. An instant before, she had been wanting to beat him over the head with a brick. Now, she ached to comfort and protect him. For here once more was the Sacheverell she had worshipped — the poor, timid, fluttering, helpless pipsqueak whose hair she had always wanted to stroke and’ to whom she had felt a strange, intermittent urge to offer lumps of sugar.
‘Come right in,’ she said.
He threw her a hasty word of thanks and shot over the sill. Then abruptly he stiffened, and the wild, hunted look was in his eyes again. From somewhere below there had come the deep baying of a Bishop on the scent. He clutched at Muriel, and she held him to her like a mother soothing a nightmare-ridden child.
‘Listen!’ he whispered.
‘Who are they?’ asked Muriel.
‘Headmasters,’ panted Sacheverell. ‘Droves of headmasters. And colonels. Coveys of colonels. With baffle-axes and shotguns. Save me, Muriel!’
‘There, there!’ said Muriel. ‘There, there, there!’She directed him to the bed, and he disappeared beneath it like a diving duck.
‘You will be quite safe there,’ said Muriel. ‘And now tell me what it is all about.’
Outside, they could hear the noise of the hue-and-cry. The original strength of the company appeared to have been augmented’ by the butler and a few sporting footmen. Brokenly, Sacheverell told her all.
‘But what were you doing in the Blue Suite?’ asked the girl, when he had concluded his tale. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I went to interview your cousin Bernard, to tell
him that he should marry you only over my dead body.’
‘What an unpleasant idea!’ said Muriel, shivering a little. ‘And I don’t see how it could have been done, anyway.’ She paused a moment, listening to the uproar. Somewhere downstairs, footmen seemed to be falling over one another: and once there came the shrill cry of a Hunting Bishop stymied by a hat-stand. ‘But what on earth,’ she asked, resuming her remarks, ‘made you think that I was going to marry Bernard?’
‘I thought that that was why you gave me the bird.’
‘Of course it wasn’t. I gave you the bird because you had suddenly turned into a beastly, barking, bullying, overbearing blighter.’
There was a pause before Sacheverell spoke.
‘Had I?’ he said at length. ‘Yes, I suppose I had. Tell me,’ he continued, ‘is there a good milk-train in the morning?’
At three-forty, I believe.’
‘I’ll catch it.’
‘Must you really go?’
‘I must, indeed.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Muriel. ‘It won’t be long before we meet again. I’ll run up to London one of these days, and we’ll have a bit of lunch together and get married and…’
A gasp came from beneath the bed.
‘Married! Do you really mean that you will marry me, Muriel?’
‘Of course I will. The past is dead. You are my own precious angel pet again, and I love you madly, passionately. What’s been the matter with you these last few weeks I can’t imagine, but I can see it’s all over now, so don’t let’s talk any more about it. Hark!’ she said, holding up a finger as a sonorous booming noise filled the night, accompanied by a flood of rich oaths in what appeared to be some foreign language, possibly Hindustani. ‘I think father has tripped over the dinner-gong.’
Sacheverell did not answer. His heart was too full for words. He was thinking how deeply he loved this girl and how happy those few remarks of hers had made him.
And yet, mingled with his joy, there was something of sorrow. As the old Roman poet has it, surgit amari aliquid. He had just remembered that he had paid the Leave-It-To-Us Correspondence School fifteen guineas in advance for a course of twenty lessons. He was abandoning the course after taking eight. And the thought that stabbed him like a knife was that he no longer had enough self-confidence and iron will left to enable him to go to Jno. B. Philbrick, Mgr, and demand a refund.
6 OPEN HOUSE
Mr Mulliner put away the letter he had been reading, and beamed contentedly on the little group in the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest.
‘Most gratifying,’ he murmured.
‘Good news?’ we asked.
‘Excellent,’ said Mr Mulliner. ‘The letter was from my nephew Eustace, who is attached to our Embassy in Switzerland. He has fully justified the family’s hopes.’
‘Doing well, is he?’
‘Capitally,’ said Mr Mulliner.
He chuckled reflectively.
‘Odd,’ he said, ‘now that the young fellow has made so signal a success, to think what a business we had getting him to undertake the job. At one time it seemed as if it would be hopeless to try to persuade him. Indeed, if Fate had not taken a hand…’
‘Didn’t he want to become attached to the Embassy?’
The idea revolted him (said Mr Mulliner). Here was this splendid opening, dangled before his eyes through the influence of his godfather, Lord Knubble of Knopp, and he stoutly refused to avail himself of it. He wanted to stay in London, he said. He liked London, he insisted, and he jolly well wasn’t going to stir from the good old place.
To the rest of his relations this obduracy seemed mere capriciousness. But I, possessing the young fellow’s confidence, knew ‘that there were solid reasons behind, his decision. In the first ‘place, he knew himself to be the favourite nephew of his Aunt Georgiana, relict of the late Sir Cuthbert Beazley-Beazley, Bart, a woman of advanced years and more than ample means. And, secondly, he had recently fallen in love with a girl of the name of Marcella Tyrrwhitt.
A nice sort of chump I should be, buzzing off to Switzerland,’ he said to me one day when I had been endeavouring to break down his resistance. ‘I’ve got to stay on the spot, haven’t I, to give Aunt Georgiana the ‘old oil from time to time? And if you suppose a fellow can woo a girl like Marcella Tyrrwhitt through the medium of the post, you are vastly mistaken. Something occurred this morning which makes me think she’s weakening, and that’s just the moment when the personal touch is so essential. Come one, come all, this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I,’ said Eustace, who, like so many of the Mulliners, had a strong vein of the poetic in him.
What had occurred that morning, I learned later, was that Marcella Tyrrwhitt had rung my nephew up on the telephone.
‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Is that Eustace?’
‘Yes,’ said Eustace, for it was.
‘I say, Eustace,’ proceeded the girl, ‘I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.
‘You aren’t!’ said Eustace.
‘Yes, I am, you silly ass,’ said the girl, ‘and I’ve got the tickets to prove it. Listen, Eustace. There’s something I want you to do for me. You know my canary?’
‘William?’
‘William is right. And you know my Peke?’
‘Reginald?’
‘Reginald is correct. Well, I can’t take them with me, because William hates travelling and Reginald would have to go into quarantine for six months when I got back, which would make him froth with fury. So will you give them a couple of beds at your flat while I’m away?’
Absolutely,’ said Eustace. ‘We keep open house, we Mulliners.’
‘You won’t find them any trouble. There’s nothing of the athlete about Reginald. A brisk walk of twenty minutes in the park sets him up for the day, as regards exercise. And, as for food, give him whatever you’re having yourself — raw meat, puppy biscuits and so on. Don’t let him have cocktails. They unsettle him.’
‘Right-ho,’ said Eustace. ‘The scenario seems pretty smooth so far. How about William?’
‘In re William, he’s a bit of an eccentric in the food line. Heaven knows why, but he likes bird-seed and groundsel. Couldn’t touch the stuff myself. You get bird-seed at a birdseed shop.’
‘And groundsel, no doubt, at the groundseller’s?’
‘Exactly. And you have to let William out of his cage once or twice a day, so that he can keep his waist-line down by fluttering about the room. He comes back all right as soon as he’s had his bath. Do you follow all that?’
‘Like a leopard,’ said Eustace.
‘I bet you don’t.’
‘Yes, I do. Brisk walk Reginald. Brisk flutter William.’
‘You’ve got it. All right, then. And remember that I set a high value on those two, so guard them with your very life.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Eustace. ‘Rather! You bet. I should say so. Positively.’
Ironical, of course, it seems now, in the light of what occurred subsequently, but my nephew told me that that was the happiest moment of his life.
He loved this girl with every fibre of his being, and it seemed to him that, if she selected him out of all her circle for this intensely important trust, it must mean that she regarded him as a man of solid worth and one she could lean on.
‘These others,’ she must have said to herself, running over the roster of her friends. ‘What are they, after all? Mere butterflies. But Eustace Mulliner — ah, that’s different. Good stuff there. A young fellow of character.’
He was delighted, also, for another reason. Much as he would miss Marcella Tyrrwhitt, he was glad that she was leaving London for a while, because his love-life at the’ moment had got into something of a tangle, and her absence would just give him nice time to do a little adjusting and unscrambling.
Until a week or so before he had been deeply in love with another girl — a certain Beatrice Watterson. And then, one night at a studio-party, he had met Marcella and had instantly discerned in h
er an infinitely superior object for his passion.
It ‘is this sort of thing that so complicates life for the young man about town. He is too apt to make his choice before walking the whole length of the counter. He bestows a strong main’s love on Girl A. and is just congratulating himself when along comes ‘Girl B. whose very existence he had not suspected, and he finds that he has picked the wrong one ‘and has to work like a beaver to make the switch.
What Eustace wanted to do at this point was to taper off with Beatrice, thus clearing the stage and leaving himself free to concentrate his whole soul on Marcella. And Marcella’s departure from London would afford him the necessary leisure for the process.
So, by the way of tapering off with Beatrice, he took her to tea the day Marcella left, and at tea Beatrice happened to mention, as girls will, that it would be her birthday next Sunday, and Eustace said: ‘Oh, I say, really? Come and have a bite of lunch at my flat,’ and Beatrice said that she would love it, and Eustace ‘said that he must give her something tophole as a present, and Beatrice said: ‘Oh, no, really, you mustn’t,’ and Eustace said Yes, dash it, he was resolved. Which started the tapering process nicely, for Eustace knew that on the Sunday he was due down at his Aunt Georgiana’s at Wittleford-cum-Bagsley-on-Sea for the week-end, so that when the girl arrived all eager for lunch and found not only that her host was not there but that there was not a birthday present in sight of any description, she would be deeply offended and would become cold and distant and aloof.
Tact, my nephew tells me, is what you need on these occasions. You want to gain the desired end without hurting anybody’s feelings. And, no doubt, he is right.
After tea he came back to’ his flat and took Reginald for a brisk walk and gave William a flutter, and went to bed that night, feeling that God was in His heaven and all right with the world.