Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsLiberty, May 11, 1929
I HAVE heard it said that the cosy peace which envelops the bar parlor of the Angler’s Rest has a tendency to promote in the regular customers a certain callousness and indifference to human suffering. I fear there is something in the charge.
We who have made the place our retreat sit sheltered in a backwater far removed from the rushing stream of life. We may be dimly aware that out in the world there are hearts that ache and bleed; but we order another gin and ginger and forget about them. Tragedy, to us, has come to mean merely the occasional flatness of a bottle of beer.
Nevertheless, this crust of selfish detachment can be cracked.
When Mr. Mulliner entered on this Sunday evening, and announced that Miss Postlethwaite, our gifted and popular barmaid, had severed her engagement to Alfred Lukyn, the courteous assistant at the Bon Ton Drapery Stores in the High Street, it is not too much to say that we were stunned.
“But it’s only half an hour ago,” we cried, “that she went off to meet him in her best black satin with the love-light in her eyes. They were going to church together.”
“They never reached the sacred edifice,” said Mr. Mulliner, sighing and taking a grave sip of hot Scotch and lemon. “The estrangement occurred directly they met. The rock on which the frail craft of love split was the fact that Alfred Lukyn was wearing yellow shoes.”
“Yellow shoes?”
“Yellow shoes,” said Mr. Mulliner, “of a singular brightness. These came under immediate discussion. Miss Postlethwaite, a girl of exquisite sensibility and devoutness, argued that to attend evensong in shoes like that was disrespectful to the vicar. The blood of the Lukyns is hot, and Alfred, stung, retorted that he had paid sixteen shillings and eightpence for them, and that the vicar could go and boil his head.
“The ring then changed hands and arrangements were put in train for the return of all gifts and correspondence.”
“Just a lovers’ tiff.”
“Let us hope so.”
A thoughtful silence fell upon the bar parlor. Mr. Mulliner was the first to break it.
“Strange,” he said, coming out of his reverie, “to what diverse ends Fate will employ the same instrument. Here we have two loving hearts parted by a pair of yellow shoes. Yet, in the case of my cousin Cedric, it was a pair of yellow shoes that brought him a bride. These things work both ways.”
TO say I ever genuinely liked my cousin Cedric (said Mr. Mulliner) would be paltering with the truth. Even as a boy, he gave evidence of being about to become what eventually he did become—one of those neat, prim, fussy, precise, middle-aged bachelors who are so numerous in the neighbourhood of St. James Street. It is a type I have never liked, and Cedric, in addition to being neat, prim, fussy, and precise, was also one of London’s leading snobs.
For the rest, he lived in comfortable rooms at the Albany, where between the hours of 9:30 and 12 in the morning he would sit closeted with his efficient secretary, Miss Myrtle Watling, busy on some task the nature of which remained wrapped in mystery. Some said he was writing a monumental history of Spats; others that he was engaged upon his Memoirs. My private belief is that he was not working at anything, but entertained Miss Watling during those hours simply because he lacked the nerve to dismiss her. She was one of those calm, strong young women who look steadily out upon the world through spectacles with tortoise-shell rims. Her mouth was firm, her chin resolute. Mussolini might have fired her if at the top of his form, but I can think of nobody else capable of the feat.
So, there you have my cousin Cedric. Forty-five years of age, forty-five inches round the waist, an established authority on the subject of dress, one of the six recognized bores at his club, and a man with the entrée into all the best houses in London. That the peace of such a one could ever be shattered; that anything could ever occur seriously to disturb the orderly routine of such a man’s life, might seem incredible. And yet this happened. How true it is that we can never tell behind what corner Fate may be lurking with the brass knuckles.
THE day which was to prove so devastating to Cedric Mulliner’s bachelor calm began, ironically, on a note of bright happiness. It was a Sunday and he was always at his best on Sundays, for that was the day on which Miss Watling did not come to the Albany. For some little time back, he had been finding himself more than usually ill at ease in Miss Watling’s presence. She had developed a habit of looking at him with an odd, speculative expression in her eyes. It was an expression whose meaning he could not read, but it had disturbed him. He was glad to be relieved of her society for a whole day.
Then, again, his new morning clothes had just arrived from the tailor’s and, looking at himself in the mirror, he found his appearance flawless. The tie—quiet and admirable. The trousers—perfect. The gleaming black boots—just right. In the matter of dress, he was a man with a position to keep up. Younger men looked to him for guidance. Today, he felt, he would not fail them.
Finally, he was due at half-past 1 for luncheon at the house of Lord Knubble of Knopp in Grosvenor Square, and he knew that he could count on meeting there all that was best and fairest of England’s aristocracy.
His anticipations were more than fulfilled. Except for a lout of a baronet who had managed to slip in somehow, there was nobody besides himself present at the luncheon table below the rank of a viscount. And, to complete his happiness, he found himself seated next to Lady Chloe Downblotton, the beautiful daughter of the seventh Earl of Choole, for whom he had long entertained a paternal and respectful fondness. And so capitally did they get on during the meal that, when the party broke up, she suggested that if he were going in her direction, which was the Achilles statue in the park, they might stroll together.
“The fact is,” said Lady Chloe, as they walked down Park Lane, “I feel I must confide in somebody. I’ve just got engaged.”
“Engaged! Dear lady,” breathed Cedric reverently, “I wish you every happiness. But I have seen no announcement in the Morning Post.”
“No. And I shouldn’t think the betting is more than fifteen to four that you ever will. It all depends on how the good old seventh Earl reacts when I bring Claude home this afternoon and lay him on the mat. I love Claude,” sighed Lady Chloe, “with a passion too intense for words, but I’m quite aware that he isn’t everybody’s money. You see, he’s an artist and, left to himself, he dresses more like a tramp cyclist than anything else on earth. Still, I’m hoping for the best. I dragged him off to Cohen Bros. yesterday and made him buy morning clothes and top hat. Thank goodness, he looked positively respectable, so . . .”
Her voice died away in a strangled rattle. They had entered the park and were drawing near to the Achilles statue, and coming toward them, his top hat raised in a debonair manner, was a young man of pleasing appearance, correctly clad in morning coat, gray tie, stiff collar, and an unimpeachable pair of sponge-bag trousers, nicely creased from north to south.
But he was, alas, not 100 per cent correct. From neck to ankles beyond criticism, below that he went all to pieces. What had caused Lady Chloe to lose the thread of her remarks, and Cedric Mulliner to utter a horrified moan, was the fact that this young man was wearing bright yellow shoes.
“Claude!” Lady Chloe covered her eyes with a shaking hand. “Ye gods!” she cried. “The foot-joy! The banana specials! The yellow perils! Why? For what reason?”
The young man seemed taken aback.
“Don’t you like them?” he asked. “I thought they were rather natty. Just what the rig-out needed, in my opinion, a touch of colour. It seemed to me to help the composition.”
“They’re awful. Tell him how awful they are, Mr. Mulliner.”
“TAN shoes are not worn with a morning suit,” said Cedric in a low voice. He was deeply shaken.
“Why not?”
“Never mind why not,” said Lady Chloe. “They aren’t. Look at Mr. Mulliner’s.”
The young man did so.
“Tame,” he said. “Colourless. Lacking in spirit and that indefinable something. I don’t like them.”
“Well, you’ve jolly well got to learn to like them,” said Lady Chloe, “because you’re going to change with Mr. Mulliner this very minute.”
A shrill, bat-like, middle-aged bachelor squeak forced itself from Cedric’s lips. He could hardly believe he had heard correctly.
“Come along, both of you,” said Lady Chloe briskly. “You can do it over there behind those chairs. I’m sure you don’t mind, Mr. Mulliner, do you?”
Cedric was still shuddering strongly.
“You ask me to put on yellow shoes with a morning suit?” he whispered, the face beneath his shining silk hat pale and drawn.
“Yes.”
“Here? In the park? At the height of the Season?”
“Yes. Do hurry.”
“But . . .”
“Mr. Mulliner! Surely? To oblige me?”
She was gazing at him with pleading eyes, and from the confused welter of Cedric’s thoughts there emerged, clear and crystal-like, the recollection of the all-important fact that this girl was the daughter of an earl and related on her mother’s side, not only to the Somersetshire Meophams, but to the Brashmarleys of Bucks, the Widringtons of Wilts, and the Hilsbury-Hepworths of Hants.
Could he refuse any request, however monstrous, proceeding from one so extremely well connected?
He stood palsied. All his life he had prided himself on the unassailable orthodoxy of his costume. As a young man he had never gone in for bright ties. His rigidity in the matter of turned-up trousers was a byword. And, though the fashion had been set by an Exalted Personage, he had always stood out against even such a venial lapse as the wearing of a white waistcoat with a dinner jacket. How little this girl knew the magnitude of the thing she was asking of him. He blinked. His eyes watered and his ears twitched. Hyde Park seemed to whirl madly about him.
And then, like a voice from afar, something seemed to whisper in his ear that this girl’s second cousin Adelaide had married Lord Slythe and Sayle, and that among the branches of the family were the Sussex Booles and the ffrench-ffarmiloes—not the Kent ffrench-ffarmiloes, but the Dorsetshire lot. It just turned the scale.
“So be it!” said Cedric Mulliner.
For a few moments after he found himself alone, my cousin Cedric had all the appearance of a man at a loss for his next move. He stood rooted to the spot, staring spellbound at the saffron horrors which had blossomed on his hitherto blameless feet. Then, pulling himself together with a strong effort, he slunk to Hyde Park Corner, stopped a passing cab, and, having directed the driver to take him to the Albany, leaped hastily in.
The relief of being under cover was at first so exquisite that his mind had no room for other thoughts. Soon, he told himself, he would be safe in his cosy apartment, with the choice of thirty-seven pairs of black boots to take the place of these ghastly objects. It was only when the cab reached the Albany that he realized the difficulties which lay in his path.
How could he walk through the lobby of the Albany looking like a ship with yellow fever on board? He—Cedric Mulliner—the man whose advice on the niceties of dress had frequently been sought by young men in the Brigade of Guards, and once by the second son of a marquis? The thing was inconceivable.
It is characteristic of the Mulliners as a family that, however sore the straits in which they find themselves, they never wholly lose their presence of mind. Cedric leaned out of the window and addressed the driver of the cab.
“My man,” he said, “how much do you want for your boots?”
THE driver was not one of London’s lightning thinkers. For a full minute he sat, looking like a red-nosed sheep, allowing the idea to penetrate.
“My boots?” he said at length.
“Your boots.”
“How much do I want for my boots?”
“Precisely. I am anxious to obtain your boots. How much for the boots?”
“How much for the boots?”
“Exactly. The boots. How much for them?”
“You want to buy my boots?”
“Precisely.”
“Ah,” said the driver, “but the whole thing is, you see, it’s like this. I’m not wearing any boots. I suffer from corns, so I come out in a tennis shoe and a carpet slipper. I could do you them at ten bob the pair.”
Cedric Mulliner sank dumbly back. The disappointment had been numbing. But the old Mulliner resourcefulness stood him in good stead. A moment later his head was out of the window again.
“Take me,” he said, “to Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Marigold Road, Valley Fields.”
The driver thought this over for a while.
“Why?” he said.
“Never mind why.”
“The Albany you told me,” said the driver. “Take me to the Albany was what you said. And this here is the Albany. Ask anyone.”
“Yes, yes, yes. But I now wish to go to Seven, Nasturtium Villas . . .”
“How do you spell it?”
“One n. Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Marigold Road . . .”
“How do you spell that?”
“One g.”
“And it’s in Valley Fields, you say?”
“Precisely.”
“One v?”
“One v and one f,” said Cedric.
The driver sat silent for a while. The spelling bee over, he seemed to be marshaling his thoughts.
“Now I’m beginning to get the whole thing,” he said. “What you want to do is go to Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Marigold Road, Valley Fields.”
“Precisely.”
“Well, will you have the tennis shoe and the carpet slipper now, or wait till we get there?”
“I DO not desire the tennis shoe. I have no wish for the carpet slipper.”
“I could do you them at half a crown apiece.”
“No, thank you.”
“Couple of bob, then.”
“No, no, no. I do not want the tennis shoe. The carpet slipper makes no appeal to me.”
“You don’t want the shoe?”
“No.”
“And you don’t want the slipper?”
“No.”
“But you do want,” said the driver, assembling the facts and arranging them in an orderly manner, “to go to Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Marigold Road, Valley Fields.”
“Precisely.”
“Ah,” said the driver, slipping in his clutch with an air of quiet rebuke. “Now we’ve got the thing straight. If you’d only told me that in the first place, we’d have been ’arf-way there by now.”
The urge which had come upon Cedric Mulliner to visit Seven, Nasturtium Villas, Marigold Road, Valley Fields—that picturesque suburb in the southeastern postal division of London—had been due to no idle whim. Nor had it been prompted by a mere passion for travel and sight-seeing.
It was at that address that his secretary, Miss Myrtle Watling, lived; and the plan which Cedric had now formed was, in his opinion, the best to date.
What he proposed to do was to seek out Miss Watling, give her his latchkey, and dispatch her to the Albany in the cab to fetch him one of his thirty-seven pairs of black boots.
When she returned with them, he could put them on and look the world in the face again.
He could see no flaw in the scheme, nor did any present itself during the long ride to Valley Fields. It was only when the cab had stopped outside the front garden of the neat little red-brick house and he had alighted and told the driver to wait [“Wait?” said the driver. “How do you mean, ‘Wait’? Oh, you mean wait?”], that doubts began to disturb him. Even as he raised his finger to press the doorbell, there crept over him a chilly feeling of mistrust, and he drew the finger back as sharply as if he had found it on the point of prodding a dowager duchess in the ribs.
Could he meet Miss Watling in a morning suit and yellow shoes? Reluctantly he told himself that he could not. He remembered how often she had taken down, at his dictation, letters to the Times deploring modern laxity in matters of dress; and his brain reeled at the thought of how she would look if she saw him now. Those raised brows . . . those scornful lips . . . those clear, calm eyes registering disgust through their windshields . . . No, he could not face Miss Watling.
A sort of dull resignation came over Cedric Mulliner. It was useless, he saw, to struggle any longer. He was on the point of moving from the door and going back to the cab and embarking on the laborious task of explaining to the driver that he wished to return to the Albany [“I took you there once, and you didn’t like it,” he could hear the man saying], when from somewhere close at hand there came to his ears a sudden, loud, gurgling noise, rather like that which might have proceeded from a pig suffocating in a vat of glue. It was the sound of someone snoring.
He turned, and became aware of an open window at his elbow.
The afternoon, I should have mentioned before, was oppressively warm. It was the sort of afternoon when suburban householders, after keeping body and soul together with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, mealy potatoes, apple tart, Cheddar cheese, and bottled beer, retire into sitting rooms and take refreshing naps. Such a householder, enjoying such a nap, was the conspicuous feature of the room into which my cousin Cedric was now peering. He was a large, stout man, and he lay in an armchair with a handkerchief over his face and his feet on another chair. And those feet, Cedric saw, were clad merely in a pair of mauve socks. His boots lay beside him on the carpet.
With a sudden thrill as sharp as if he had backed into a hot radiator in his bathroom, Cedric perceived that they were black boots.
The next moment, as if impelled by some irresistible force, Cedric Mulliner had shot silently through the window and was crawling on all fours along the floor. His teeth were clenched and his eyes gleamed with a strange light. If he had not been wearing a top hat, he would have been an almost exact replica of the hunting leopard of the Indian jungle stalking its prey.
CEDRIC crept stealthily on. For a man who had never done this sort of thing before, he showed astonishing proficiency and technique. Indeed, had the leopard which he so closely resembled chanced to be present, it could undoubtedly have picked up a hint or two which it would have found useful in its business. Inch by inch he moved silently forward, and now his itching fingers were hovering over the nearer of the two boots. At this moment, however, the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. It was, as a matter of fact, only his hat dropping to the floor, but in the highly nervous state of mind into which he had been plunged by recent events it nearly deafened him. With one noiseless, agile spring, remarkable in one of his waist measurement, he dived for shelter behind the armchair.
A long moment passed. At first, he thought that all was well. The sleeper had apparently not wakened. Then, there was a gurgle, a heavy body sat up, and a large hand passed within an inch of Cedric’s head and pressed the bell in the wall. And presently the door opened and a parlor maid entered.
“Jane,” said the man in the chair.
“Sir?”
“Something woke me up.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I got the impression . . . Jane!”
“Sir?”
“What is that on the floor?”
“A top hat, sir.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Yes, it is a top hat. This is a nice thing,” said the man, speaking querulously. “I compose myself for a refreshing sleep, and almost before I can close my eyes the room becomes full of top hats. I come in here for a quiet rest, and without the slightest warning I find myself knee-deep in top hats. Why the top hat, Jane? I demand a categorical answer.”
“Perhaps Miss Myrtle put it there, sir.”
“Why would Miss Myrtle strew top hats about the place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you mean, ‘yes, sir’?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well. Another time, think before you speak. Remove the hat, Jane, and see to it that I am not disturbed again. It is imperative that I get my afternoon’s rest.”
“Miss Myrtle said that you were to weed the front garden, sir.”
“I am aware of the fact, Jane,” said the man with dignity. “In due time I shall proceed to the front garden and start weeding. But first I must have my afternoon’s rest. This is a Sunday in June. The birds are sleeping in the trees. Master Willie is sleeping in his room as ordered by the doctor. I, too, intend to sleep. Leave me, Jane, taking the top hat with you.”
THE door closed, the man sank back in his chair with a satisfied grunt, and presently he had begun to snore again.
Cedric did not act hastily. Bitter experience was teaching him the caution which Boy Scouts learn in the cradle. For perhaps a quarter of an hour he remained where he was, crouched in his hiding place. Then the snoring rose to a crescendo. It had now become like something out of Wagner, and it seemed to Cedric that the moment had arrived when action could safely be taken. He removed his left boot and, creeping softly from his lair, seized one of the black boots and put it on. It was a nice fit and for the first time something approaching contentment began to steal upon him. A minute more—one little minute—and all would be well.
This heartening thought had just crossed his mind when, with an abruptness which caused his heart to loosen one of his front teeth, the silence was again broken—this time by something that sounded like the Grand Fleet putting in a bit of gunnery practice off The Nore. An instant later he was back, quivering, in his niche behind the chair.
The sleeper sat up with a jerk.
“Save the women and children,” he said.
Then the hand came out and pressed the bell again.
“Jane!”
“Sir?”
“Jane, that beastly window sash has got loose again. I never saw anything like the sashes in this house. A fly settles on them and down they come. Prop it up with a book or something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I’ll tell you one thing, Jane, and you can quote me as having said so. Next time I want a quiet afternoon’s rest, I shall go to a boiler factory.”
The parlor maid withdrew. The man heaved a sigh and lowered himself into the chair again. And presently the room was echoing once more with the Ride of the Valkyries.
It was shortly after this that the bumps began on the ceiling.
They were good hearty bumps. It sounded to Cedric as if a number of people with large feet were dancing morris dances in the room above; and he chafed at the selfishness which could lead them to indulge in their pleasures at such a time. Already the man in the chair had begun to stir and now he sat up and reached for the bell with the old familiar movement.
“Jane!”
“Sir?”
“Listen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is it?”
“It is Master Willie, I think, sir, taking his Sunday sleep.”
The man heaved himself out of the chair. It was plain that his emotions were too deep for speech. He yawned cavernously and began to put on his boots.
“Jane!”
“Sir?”
“I have had enough of this. I shall now go and weed the front garden. Where is my hoe?”
“In the hall, sir.”
“Persecution,” said the man bitterly. “That’s what it is, persecution. Top hats . . . window sashes . . . Master Willie . . . You can argue as much as you like, Jane, but I shall speak out fearlessly. I insist—and the facts support me—that it is persecution. . . . Jane!”
A wordless gurgle proceeded from his lips.
He seemed to be choking.
“Jane!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Look me in the face!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, answer me, Jane, and let us have no subterfuge or equivocation. Who was it turned this boot yellow?”
“Boot, sir?”
“Yes, boot.”
“Yellow, sir?”
“Yes, yellow. Look at that boot. Inspect it. Run your eye over it in an unprejudiced spirit. When I took this boot off it was black. I close my eyes for a few brief moments and when I open them it is yellow. I am not a man tamely to submit to this sort of thing. Who did this?”
“Not me, sir.”
“Somebody must have done it. Possibly it is the work of a gang. Sinister things are happening in this house. I tell you, Jane, that Seven, Nasturtium Villas, has suddenly—and on Sunday, too, which makes it worse—become a house of mystery. I shall be vastly surprised if before the day is out, clutching hands do not appear through the curtains and dead bodies drop out of the walls. I don’t like it, Jane, and I tell you so frankly. Stand out of my way, woman, and let me get at those weeds.”
THE door banged, and there was peace in the sitting room. But not in the heart of Cedric Mulliner. All the Mulliners are clear thinkers and it did not take Cedric long to recognize the fact that his position had changed considerably for the worse. Yes, he had lost ground. He had come into this room with a top hat and yellow boots. He would go out of it minus a top hat and wearing one yellow boot and one black one.
A severe setback.
And now, to complete his discomfiture, his line of communications had been cut. Between him and the cab in which he could find at least temporary safety there stood the man with the hoe. It was a situation to intimidate even a man with a taste for adventure. Douglas Fairbanks would not have liked it. Cedric himself found it intolerable.
There seemed but one course to pursue. This ghastly house presumably possessed a back garden with a door leading out into it. The only thing to do was to flit noiselessly along the passage—if in such a house noiselessness were possible—and find that door and get out into the garden and climb over the wall into the next garden and sneak out into the road and gallop to the cab and so home.
He had almost ceased to care what the hall porter at the Albany would think of him. Perhaps he could pass his appearance off with a light laugh and some story of a bet. Possibly a handsome bribe would close the man’s mouth. At any rate, whatever might be the issue, upshot, or outcome, back to the Albany he must go, and that with all possible speed. His spirit was broken.
Tiptoeing over the carpet, Cedric opened the door and peeped out. The passage was empty. He crept along it and had nearly reached its end when he heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. There was a door to his left. It was ajar. He leaped through and found himself in a small room through the window of which he looked out on to a pleasant garden. The footsteps passed on and went down the kitchen stairs.
CEDRIC breathed again. It seemed to him that the danger was past and that he could now embark on the last portion of his perilous journey. The thought of the cab drew him like a magnet. Until this moment he had not been conscious of any marked fondness for the driver of the cab, but now he found himself yearning for his society. He panted for the driver as the hart pants after the water brooks. Cautiously Cedric Mulliner opened the window. He put his head out to examine the terrain before proceeding further. The sight encouraged him. The drop to the ground below was of the simplest. He had merely to wriggle through and all would be well.
It was as he was preparing to do this, that the window sash descended on the back of his neck like a guillotine and he found himself firmly pinned to the sill.
A thoughtful-looking ginger-coloured cat, which had risen from the mat at his entrance and had been scrutinizing him with a pale eye, now moved forward and sniffed speculatively at his left ankle. The proceedings seemed to the cat irregular but full of human interest. It sat down and gave itself up to meditation.
Cedric, meanwhile, had done the same. There is, if you come to think of it, little else that a man in his position can do but meditate. And so for some considerable space of time, Cedric Mulliner looked down upon the smiling garden and busied himself with his thoughts.
These, as may readily be imagined, were not of the most agreeable. In circumstances such as those in which he had been placed, it is but rarely that the sunny and genial side of a man’s mind comes uppermost. He tends to be bitter, and it is inevitable that his rancour should be directed at those whom he considers responsible for his unpleasant situation.
In Cedric’s case there was no difficulty in fixing the responsibility. It was a woman—if one may apply the term to the only daughter of an earl—who had caused his downfall. Nothing could be more significant of the revolution which circumstances had brought about in Cedric’s mind than the fact that, regardless of her high position in Society, he now found himself thinking of Lady Chloe Downblotton in the harshest possible vein.
So moved, indeed, was he that, not content with thoroughly disliking Lady Chloe, he was soon extending his loathing—first to her nearer relations and finally, incredible as it may seem, to the entire British aristocracy. Twenty-four hours ago—aye, even a brief two hours ago—Cedric Mulliner had loved every occupant of Debrett’s Peerage, from the premier dukes right down to the people who scrape in at the bottom of the page under the heading Collateral Branches, with a respectful fervour which it had seemed that nothing would ever be able to quench. And now there ran riot in his soul something that was little short of red republicanism.
Drones, he considered them, and—it might be severe, but he stuck to it—mere popinjays. Yes, mere thriftless popinjays.
It so happened that he had never actually seen a popinjay, but he was convinced by some strange instinct that this was what the typical aristocrat of his native country resembled.
“How long?” groaned Cedric. “How long?”
He yearned for the day when the clean flame of freedom, proceeding from Moscow, should scorch these wastrels to a crisp, starting with Lady Chloe Downblotton and then taking the others in order of precedence.
It was at this point in his meditations that his attention was diverted from the social revolution by an agonizing pain in his right calf.
To the more meditative type of cat there comes at irregular intervals a strange, dreamy urge to stand on its hind legs and sharpen its claws on the nearest perpendicular object. This is usually a tree, but in the present case, there being no tree to hand, the ginger-coloured cat inside the room had made shift with Cedric’s right calf. Absently, its mind revolving who knows what abstruse subjects, it blinked once or twice; then, rising, got its claws well into the flesh and pulled them down with a slow, lingering motion.
From Cedric’s lips there came a cry like that of some Indian peasant who, wandering on the banks of the Ganges, suddenly finds himself being bitten by a crocodile.
It rang through the garden like a clarion, and, as the echoes died away, a girl came up the path. The sun glinted on her tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, and Cedric recognized his secretary, Miss Myrtle Watling.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mulliner,” said Miss Watling.
She spoke in her usual calm, controlled voice. If she was surprised to see her employer and, seeing him, to behold nothing of him except his head, there was little to show it.
A private secretary learns at the outset of their association never to be astonished at anything her employer may do.
Yet Myrtle Watling was not altogether devoid of feminine curiosity.
“What are you doing there, Mr. Mulliner?” she asked.
“Something is biting me in the leg,” cried Cedric.
“It is probably Mortal Error,” said Miss Watling who was a Christian Scientist. “Why are you standing there in that rather constrained attitude?”
“The sash came down as I was looking out of window.”
“Why were you looking out of window?”
“To see how far there was to drop.”
“Why did you wish to drop?”
“I wanted to get away from here.”
“Why did you come here?”
It became plain to Cedric that he must tell his story.
He was loath to do so, but to refrain meant that Myrtle Watling would stand there till sunset, saying sentences beginning with “Why.”
In a husky voice he told her all.
FOR some moments after he had finished the girl remained silent. A pensive expression had come into her face.
“What you need,” she said, “is someone to look after you.”
She paused.
“Well, it’s not everybody’s job,” she said reflectively, “but I don’t mind taking it on.”
A strange foreboding chilled Cedric.
“What do you mean?” he gasped.
“What you need,” said Myrtle Watling, “is a wife. It is a matter which I have been turning over in my mind for some time, and now the whole thing is quite clear to me. You should be married. I will marry you, Mr. Mulliner.”
Cedric uttered a low cry. This, then, was the meaning of that look which during the past few weeks he had happened to note from time to time in his secretary’s glass-fringed eyes.
Footsteps on the gravel path. A voice spoke, the voice of the man who had slept in the chair. He was plainly perturbed.
“Myrtle,” he said, “I am not a man, as you know, to make a fuss about nothing. I take life as it comes, the rough with the smooth. But I feel it my duty to tell you that eerie influences are at work in this house. The atmosphere has become definitely sinister. Top hats appear from nowhere. Black boots turn yellow. And now this cabby here, this cab-driver fellow . . . I didn’t get your name. Lanchester? Mr. Lanchester, my daughter Myrtle. . . .
“And now, Mr. Lanchester here tells me that a fare of his entered our front garden some time back and instantly vanished off the face of the earth and has never been seen again. I am convinced that some little-known secret society is at work and that Seven, Nasturtium Villas, is one of those houses you see in the mystery plays, where strange laughter is heard from dark corners and mysterious Chinamen flit to and fro making meaning gestures and . . .”
He broke off with a sharp howl of dismay and stood staring. “Good God! What’s that?”
“What, father?”
“That—that bodiless head. That trunkless face. I give you my honest word that there is a severed head protruding from the side of the house. Come over where I’m standing. You can see it distinctly from here.”
“Oh, that?” said Myrtle. “That is my fiancé.”
“Your fiancé?”
“My fiancé, Mr. Cedric Mulliner.”
“Is that all there is of him?” asked the cabman, surprised.
“There is more inside the house,” said Myrtle.
MR. WATLING, his composure somewhat restored, was scrutinizing Cedric narrowly.
“Mulliner? You’re the fellow my daughter works for, aren’t you?”
“I am,” said Cedric.
“And you want to marry her?”
“Certainly he wants to marry me,” said Myrtle before Cedric could reply.
And suddenly something inside Cedric seemed to say, “Why not?”
It was true that he had never contemplated matrimony except with that horror which all middle-aged bachelors feel when the thought of it comes into their minds in moments of depression. It was true, also, that if he had been asked to submit specifications for a bride, he would have sketched out something differing from Myrtle Watling in not a few respects. But, after all, he felt as he looked at her strong, capable face, with a wife like this girl he would at least be shielded and sheltered from the world and never again exposed to the sort of thing he had been going through that afternoon. It seemed good enough.
And there was another thing, and to a man of Cedric’s strong republican views it was perhaps the most important of all. Whatever you might say against her, Myrtle Watling was not a member of the gay and heartless aristocracy. No Sussex Booles, no Hants Hilsbury-Hepworths in her family. She came of good, solid suburban stock, related on the male side to the Higginsons of Tangerine Road, Wandsworth, and through the female branch connected with the Browns of Bickley, the Perkinses of Peckham, and the Wodgers—the Winchmore Hill Wodgers, not the Ponder’s End lot.
“It is my dearest wish,” said Cedric in a low, steady voice, “and if somebody will kindly lift this window off my neck and kick this beastly cat or something which keeps clawing my leg, we can all get together and talk it over.”
the end
Annotations to the story as collected in Mr. Mulliner Speaking are on this site.