The Strand Magazine, March 1929

 

 

IN a mixed assemblage like the little group of serious thinkers which gathers nightly in the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest it is hardly to be expected that there will invariably prevail an unbroken harmony. We are all men of spirit; and when men of spirit, with opinions of their own, get together, disputes are bound to arise. Frequently, therefore, even in this peaceful haven, you will hear voices raised, tables banged, and tenor Permit-me-to-inform-you-sir’s competing with baritone And-jolly-well-permit-me-to-inform-you’s. I have known fists to be shaken and on one occasion the word “fathead” to be used.

Fortunately, Mr. Mulliner is always there, ready with the soothing magic of his personality to calm the storm before things have gone too far. To-night, as I entered the room, I found him in the act of intervening between a flushed Lemon Squash and a scowling Tankard of Ale, who had fallen foul of one another in the corner by the window.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he was saying in his suave, ambassadorial way. “What is all the trouble about?”

The Tankard of Ale pointed the stem of his pipe accusingly at his adversary. One could see that he was deeply stirred.

“He’s talking rot about smoking.”

“I’m talking sense.”

“I didn’t hear any.”

“I said that smoking was dangerous to the health. And it is.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is. I can prove it from my own personal experience. I was once,” said the Lemon Squash, “a smoker myself, and the vile habit reduced me to a physical wreck. My cheeks sagged, my eyes became bleary, my whole face gaunt, yellow, and hideously lined. It was giving up smoking that brought about the change.”

“What change?” asked the Tankard.

The Lemon Squash, who seemed to have taken offence at something, rose and, walking stiffly to the door, disappeared into the night. Mr. Mulliner gave a little sigh of relief.

“I am glad he has left us,” he said. “Smoking is a subject on which I hold strong views. I look upon tobacco as life’s outstanding boon, and it annoys me to hear these faddists abusing it. And how foolish their arguments are, how easily refuted! They come to me and tell me that if they place two drops of nicotine on the tongue of a dog the animal instantly dies; and when I ask them if they have ever tried the childishly simple plan of not placing nicotine on the dog’s tongue, they have nothing to reply. They are nonplussed. They go away mumbling something about never having thought of that.”

He puffed at his cigar in silence for a few moments. His genial face had grown grave.

“If you ask my opinion, gentlemen,” he resumed, “I say it is not only foolish for a man to give up smoking—it is not safe. Such an action wakes the fiend that sleeps in all of us. To give up smoking is to become a menace to the community. I shall not readily forget what happened in the case of my nephew Ignatius. Mercifully, the thing had a happy ending, but——!”

 

Those of you (said Mr. Mulliner) who move in artistic circles are possibly familiar with the name and work of my nephew Ignatius. He is a portrait-painter of steadily growing reputation. At the time of which I speak, however, he was not so well known as he is to-day, and consequently had intervals of leisure between commissions. These he occupied in playing the ukulele and proposing marriage to Hermione, the beautiful daughter of Herbert J. Rossiter and Mrs. Rossiter, of Three, Scantlebury Square, Kensington. Scantlebury Square was only just round the corner from his studio, and it was his practice, when he had a moment to spare, to pop across, propose to Hermione, get rejected, pop back again, play a bar or two on the ukulele, and then light a pipe, put his feet on the mantelpiece, and wonder what it was about him that appeared to make him distasteful to this lovely girl.

It could not be that she scorned his honest poverty. His income was most satisfactory.

It could not be that she had heard something damaging about his past. His past was blameless.

It could not be that she objected to his looks, for, like all the Mulliners, his personal appearance was engaging—and even—from certain angles—fascinating. Besides, a girl who had been brought up in a home containing a father who was one of Kensington’s leading gargoyles, and a couple of sub-humans like her brother Cyprian and her brother George, would scarcely be an exacting judge of male beauty. Cyprian was pale and thin and wrote art-criticism for the weekly papers, and George was stout and pink and did no work of any kind, having developed at an early age considerable skill in the way of touching friends and acquaintances for small loans.

The thought occurred to Ignatius that one of these two might be able to give him some inside information on the problem. They were often in Hermione’s society, and it was quite likely that she might have happened to mention at one time or another what it was about him that caused her so repeatedly to hand the mitten to a good man's love. He called upon Cyprian at his flat and put the thing to him squarely. Cyprian listened attentively, stroking his left side-whisker with a lean hand.

“Ah!” said Cyprian. “One senses, does one, a reluctance on the girl’s part to entertain one’s suggestions of marriage?”

“One does,” replied Ignatius.

“One wonders why one is unable to make progress?”

“One does.”

“One asks oneself what is the reason?”

“One does—repeatedly.”

“Well, if one really desires to hear the truth,” said Cyprian, stroking his right whisker, “I happen to know that Hermione objects to you because you remind her of my brother George."

Ignatius staggered back, appalled, and an animal cry escaped his lips.

“Remind her of George?”

“That’s what she says.”

“But I can’t be like George. It isn’t humanly possible for anybody to be like George.”

“One merely repeats what one has heard.”

Ignatius staggered from the room and, tottering into the Fulham Road, made for the Goat and Bottle to purchase a restorative. And the first person he saw in the saloon bar was George, taking his elevenses.

“What-ho!” said George. “What-ho, what-ho, what-ho!”

He looked pinker and stouter than ever, and the theory that he could possibly resemble this distressing incident was so distasteful to Ignatius that he decided to get a second opinion.

“George,” he said, “have you any idea why it is that your sister Hermione spurns my suit?”

“Certainly,” said George.

“You have? Then why is it?”

George drained his glass.

“You ask me why?”

“Yes.”

“You want to know the reason?”

“I do.”

“Well, then, first and foremost,” said George, “can you lend me a quid till Wednesday week without fail?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Nor ten bob?”

“Nor ten bob. Kindly stick to the subject and tell me why your sister will not look at me.”

“I will,” said George. “Not only have you a mean and parsimonious disposition, but she says you remind her of my brother Cyprian.”

Ignatius staggered and would have fallen had he not placed a foot on the brass rail.

“I remind her of Cyprian?”

“That’s what she says.”

With bowed head, Ignatius left the saloon bar and returned to his studio to meditate. He was stricken to the core. He had asked for inside information and he had got it, but nobody was going to make him like it.

He was not only stricken to the core, but utterly bewildered. That a man—stretching the possibilities a little—might resemble George Rossiter was intelligible. He could also understand that a man—assuming that Nature had played a scurvy trick upon him—might conceivably be like Cyprian. But how could anyone be like both of them and live?

He took pencil and paper and devoted himself to making a list in parallel columns of the qualities and characteristics of the brothers. When he had finished, he scanned it carefully. This is what he found he had written:—

He frowned. The mystery was still unsolved. And then he came to the last item.

A spasm ran through Ignatius Mulliner. Here, at last, was a common factor. Was it possible——? Could it be——?

It seemed the only solution, and yet Ignatius fought against it. His love for Hermione was the lodestar of his life, but next to it, beaten only by a short head, came his love for his pipe. Had he really to choose between the two?

Could he make such a sacrifice?

He wavered.

And then he saw the eleven photographs of Hermione Rossiter gazing at him from the mantelpiece, and it seemed to him that they smiled encouragingly. He hesitated no longer. With a soft sigh such as might have proceeded from some loving father on the Steppes of Russia when compelled, in order to ensure his own safety, to throw his children out of the back of the sleigh to the pursuing wolf-pack, he took the pipe from his mouth, collected his other pipes, his tobacco and his cigars, wrapped them in a neat parcel, and, summoning the charwoman who cleaned his studio, gave her the consignment to take home to her husband, an estimable man of the name of Perkins, who, being of straitened means, smoked, as a rule, only what he could pick up in the street.

Ignatius Mulliner had made the great decision.

 

AS those of you who have tried it are aware, the deadly effects of giving up smoking rarely make themselves felt immediately in their full virulence. The process is gradual. In the first stage, indeed, the patient not only suffers no discomfort but goes about inflated by a sort of gaseous spiritual pride. All through the morning of the following day, Ignatius, as he walked abroad, found himself regarding such fellow-members of the community as had pipes and cigarettes in their mouths with a pitying disdain. He felt like some saint purified and purged of the grosser emotions by a life of asceticism. He longed to tell these people all about pyridine and the intense irritation it causes to the throats and other mucous surfaces of those who inhale the tobacco smoke in which it lurks. He wanted to buttonhole men sucking at their cigars and inform them that tobacco contains an appreciable quantity of the gas known as carbon monoxide, which, entering into direct combination with the colouring matter of the blood, forms so staple a compound as to render the corpuscles incapable of carrying oxygen to the tissues. He yearned to make it clear to them that smoking was simply a habit which with a little exercise of the will-power a man could give up at a moment’s notice, whenever he pleased.

It was only after he had returned to his studio to put the finishing touches to his Academy picture that the second stage set in.

Having consumed an artist’s lunch, consisting of two sardines, the remnants of a knuckle of ham, and a bottle of beer, he found stealing over him, as his stomach got on to the fact that the meal was not to be topped off by a soothing pipe, a kind of vague sense of emptiness and bereavement akin to that experienced by the historian Gibbon on completing his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Its symptoms were an inability to work and a dim feeling of oppression, as if he had just lost some dear friend. Life seemed somehow to have been robbed of all motive. He wandered about the studio, haunted by a sensation that he was leaving undone something that he ought to be doing. From time to time he blew little bubbles, and once or twice his teeth clicked, as if he were trying to close them on something that was not there.

A twilight sadness had him in its grip. He took up his ukulele, an instrument to which, as I have said, he was greatly addicted, and played “Ol’ Man River” for awhile. But melancholy still lingered. And now, it seemed to him, he had discovered its cause. What was wrong was the fact that he was not doing enough good in the world.

Look at it this way, he felt. The world is a sad, grey place, and we are put into it to promote as far as we can the happiness of others. If we concentrate on our own selfish pleasures, what do we find? We find that they speedily pall. We weary of gnawing knuckles of ham. The ukulele loses its fascination. Of course, if we could sit down and put our feet up and set a match to the good old pipe, that would be a different matter. But we no longer smoke, and so all that is left to us is the doing of good to others. By three o’clock, in short, Ignatius Mulliner had reached the third stage, the glutinously sentimental. It caused him to grab his hat and sent him trotting round to Scantlebury Square.

But his object was not, as it usually was when he went to Scantlebury Square, to propose to Hermione Rossiter. He had a more unselfish motive. For some time past, by hints dropped and tentative remarks thrown out, he had been made aware that Mrs. Rossiter greatly desired him to paint her daughter’s portrait; and until now he had always turned to these remarks and hints a deaf ear. Mrs. Rossiter’s mother’s heart wanted, he knew, to get the portrait for nothing; and, while love is love and all that, he had the artist’s dislike for not collecting all that was coming to him. Ignatius Mulliner, the man, might entertain the idea of pleasing the girl he worshipped by painting her on the nod, but Ignatius Mulliner, the artist, had his schedule of prices. And until to-day it was the second Ignatius Mulliner who had said the deciding word.

 

THIS afternoon, however, everything was changed. In a short but moving speech he informed Hermione’s mother that the one wish of his life was to paint her daughter’s portrait; that for so great a privilege he would not dream of charging a fee; and that if she would call at the studio on the morrow, bringing Hermione with her, he would put the job in hand right away.

In fact, he very nearly offered to paint another portrait of Mrs. Rossiter herself, in evening dress and holding her Pekingese. He contrived, however, to hold the fatal words back; and it was perhaps the recollection of this belated prudence which gave him, as he stood on the pavement outside the house after the interview, a sense of having failed to be as altruistic as he might have been.

Stricken with remorse, he decided to look up good old Cyprian and ask him to come to the studio to-morrow and criticize his Academy picture. After that he would find dear old George and press a little money on him. Ten minutes later he was in Cyprian’s sitting-room.

“One wishes what?” asked Cyprian, incredulously.

“One wishes,” repeated Ignatius, “that you would come round to-morrow morning and have a look at one’s Academy picture and give one a hint or two about it.”

“Is one really serious?” cried Cyprian, his eyes beginning to gleam. It was seldom that he received invitations of this kind. He had, indeed, been thrown out of more studios for butting in and giving artists a hint or two about their pictures than any other art-critic in Chelsea.

“One is perfectly serious,” Ignatius assured him. “One feels that an opinion from an expert will be invaluable.”

“Then one will be there at eleven sharp,” said Cyprian, “without fail.”

Ignatius wrung his hand warmly, and hurried off to the Goat and Bottle to find George.

“George,” he said, “George, my dear old chap, I passed a sleepless night last night, wondering if you had all the money you require. The fear that you might have run short seemed to go through me like a knife. Call on me for as much as you need.”

George’s face was partially obscured by a tankard. At these words his eyes, bulging above the pewter, took on a sudden expression of acute horror. He lowered the tankard, ashen to the lips, and raised his right hand.

“This,” he said, in a shaking voice, “is the end. From this moment I go off the stuff. Yes, you have seen George Plimsoll Rossiter drink his last mild-and-bitter. I am not a nervous man, but I know when I’m licked. And when it comes to a fellow’s ears going——”

Ignatius patted his arm affectionately.

“Your ears have not gone, George,” he said. “They are still there——”

And so, indeed, they were, as large and red as ever. But George was not to be comforted.

“I mean when a fellow thinks he hears things—I give you my honest word, old man—I solemnly assure you that I could have sworn I heard you voluntarily offer me money.”

“But I did.”

“You did?”

“Certainly.”

“You mean you definitely—literally—without any sort of prompting on my part—without my so much as saying a word to indicate that I could do with a small loan till Friday week—absolutely, positively offered to lend me money?”

“I did.”

George drew a deep breath and took up his tankard again.

“All this modern, advanced stuff you read about miracles not happening,” he said, severely, “is dashed poppycock. I disapprove of it. I resent it keenly. About how much?” he went on, pawing adoringly at Ignatius’s sleeve. “To about what, as it were, extent would you be prepared to go? A quid?”

Ignatius raised his eyebrows.

“A quid is not much, George,” he said, with quiet reproach.

George made a little gurgling noise.

“A fiver?”

Ignatius shook his head. The movement was a silent rebuke.

“Correct this petty, cheese-paring spirit, George,” he urged. “Be big and broad. Think spaciously.”

“Not—a tenner?”

“I was about to suggest fifteen pounds,” said Ignatius. “If you are sure that that will be enough.”

“What-ho!”

“You’re positive you can manage with that? I know how many expenses you have.”

“What-ho!”

“Very well, then. If you can get along with fifteen pounds, come round to my studio to-morrow morning and we’ll fix it up.”

And, glowing with fervour, Ignatius slapped George’s back in a hearty sort of way and withdrew.

“Something attempted, something done,” he said to himself, as he climbed into bed some hours later, “has earned a night’s repose.”

 

LIKE so many men who live intensely and work with their brains, my nephew Ignatius was a heavy sleeper. Generally, after waking to a new day, he spent a considerable time lying on his back in a sort of coma, not stirring till lured from his couch by the soft, appealing smell of frying bacon. On the following morning, however, he was conscious, directly he opened his eyes, of a strange alertness. He was keyed up to quite an extraordinary extent. He had, in short, reached the stage when the patient becomes a little nervous.

Yes, he felt, analyzing his emotions, he was distinctly nervous. The noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort. He was just about to shout to Mrs. Perkins, his charwoman, to stop the creature, when she rapped suddenly on the panel to inform him that his shaving-water lay without; and at the sound he immediately shot straight up to the ceiling in a cocoon of sheets and blankets, turned three complete somersaults in mid-air, and came down, quivering like a frightened mustang, in the middle of the floor. His heart was entangled with his tonsils, his eyes had worked round to the back of their sockets, and he wondered dazedly how many human souls beside himself had survived the bomb-explosion.

Reason returning to her throne, his next impulse was to cry quietly. Remembering after a while that he was a Mulliner, he checked the unmanly tears and, creeping to the bathroom, took a cold shower and felt a little better. A hearty breakfast assisted the cure, and he was almost himself again, when the discovery that there was not a pipe or a shred of tobacco in the place plunged him once more into an inky gloom.

For a long time Ignatius Mulliner sat with his face in his hands, while all the sorrows of the world seemed to rise before him. And then, abruptly, his mood changed again. A moment before he had been pitying the human race with an intensity that racked him almost unendurably. Now the realization surged over him that he didn’t care a hoot about the human race. The only emotion the human race evoked in him was an intense dislike.

He burned with an irritable loathing for all created things. If the cat had been present he would have kicked it. If Mrs. Perkins had entered, he would have struck her with a mahlstick. But the cat had gone off to restore its tissues in the dust-bin, and Mrs. Perkins was in the kitchen singing hymns. Ignatius Mulliner boiled with baffled fury. Here he was, with all this concentrated hatred stored up within him, and not a living thing in sight on which to expend it. That, he told himself with a mirthless laugh, was the way things happened.

And just then the door opened, and there, looking like a camel arriving at an oasis, was Cyprian.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” said Cyprian. “May one enter?”

“Come right in,” said Ignatius.

At the sight of this art-critic, who not only wore short side-whiskers, but also one of those black stocks which go twice round the neck and add from forty to fifty per cent. to the loathsomeness of the wearer’s appearance, a strange, febrile excitement had gripped Ignatius Mulliner. He felt like a tiger at the Zoo who sees the keeper approaching with the luncheon-tray. He licked his lips slowly and gazed earnestly at the visitor. From a hook on the wall beside him there hung a richly inlaid Damascus dagger. He took it down and tested its point with the ball of his thumb.

Cyprian had turned his back, and was examining the Academy picture through a black-rimmed monocle. He moved his head about and peered between his fingers and made funny, art-critic noises.

“Ye-e-s,” said Cyprian. “ ’Myes. Ha! H’m! Hrrmph! The thing has rhythm, undoubted rhythm, and, to an extent, certain inevitable curves. And yet can one conscientiously say that one altogether likes it? One fears one cannot.”

“No?” said Ignatius.

“No,” said Cyprian. He toyed with his left whisker. He seemed to be massaging it for purposes of his own. “One quite inevitably senses at a glance that the patine lacks vitality.”

“Yes?” said Ignatius.

“Yes,” said Cyprian. He toyed with the whisker again. It was too early to judge whether he was improving it at all. He shut his eyes, opened them, half closed them once more, drew back his head, fiddled with his fingers, and expelled his breath with a hissing sound, as if he were grooming a horse. “Beyond a question one senses in the patine a lack of vitality. And vitality must never be sacrificed. The artist should use his palette as an orchestra. He should put on his colours as a great conductor uses his orchestra. There must be significant form. The colour must have a flatness, a gravity, shall I say an aroma? The figure must be placed on the canvas in a manner not only harmonious but awake. Only so can a picture quite too exquisitely live. And, as regards the patine——”

He broke off. He had had more to say about the patine, but he had heard immediately behind him an odd, stealthy, shuffling sound, not unlike that made by a leopard of the jungle when stalking its prey. Spinning round, he saw Ignatius Mulliner advancing upon him. The artist’s lips were curled back over his teeth in a hideous set smile. His eyes glittered. And poised in his right hand he held a Damascus dagger which, Cyprian noticed, was richly inlaid.

An art-critic who makes a habit of going round the studios of Chelsea and speaking his mind to men who are finishing their Academy pictures gets into the way of thinking swiftly. Otherwise, he would not quite too exquisitely live through a single visit. To cast a glance at the door and note that it was closed and that his host was between him and it was with Cyprian Rossiter the work of a moment; to dart behind the easel the work of another. And with the easel as a basis the two men for some tense minutes played a silent game of round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush. It was in the middle of the twelfth lap that Cyprian received a flesh wound in the upper arm.

On another man this might have had the effect of causing him to falter, lose his head, and become an easy prey to the pursuer. But Cyprian had the advantage of having been through this sort of thing before. Only a day or two ago one of England’s leading animal-painters had chivvied him for nearly an hour in a fruitless endeavour to get at him with a short bludgeon tipped with lead.

He kept cool. In the face of danger, his footwork, always impressive, took on a new agility. And finally, when Ignatius tripped over a loose mat, he seized his opportunity, like the strategist which every art-critic has to be if he mixes with artists, and dodged nimbly into a small cupboard near the model-throne.

Ignatius recovered his balance just too late. By the time he had disentangled himself from the mat, leaped at the cupboard door, and started to tug at the handle, Cyprian was tugging at it from the other side, and, strive though he might, Ignatius could not dislodge him.

Presently he gave up the struggle, and, moving moodily away, picked up his ukulele and played “Ol’ Man River” for awhile. He was just feeling his way cautiously through that rather tricky “He don’t say nuffin’, He must know somefin’ ” bit, when the door opened once more and there stood George.

“What-ho!” said George.

“Ah!” said Ignatius.

“What do you mean, ‘Ah!’?”

“Just ‘Ah!’ ” said Ignatius.

“I’ve come for that money.”

“Ah!”

“That twenty quid or whatever it was that you very decently promised me yesterday. And, lying in bed this morning, the thought crossed my mind—Why not make it twenty-five? A nice round sum,” argued George.

“Ah!”

“You keep saying ‘Ah!’ ” said George. “Why do you say ‘Ah!’?”

Ignatius drew himself up haughtily.

“This is my studio, paid for with my money, and I shall say ‘Ah!’ in it just as often as I please.”

“Of course,” agreed George, hurriedly. “Of course, my dear old chap, of course, of course. Hullo!” He looked down. “Shoelace undone. Dangerous. Might trip a fellow. Excuse me a moment.”

He stooped: and as Ignatius gazed at his spacious trouser-seat, the thought came to him that in the special circumstances there was but one thing to be done. He waggled his right leg for a moment to limber it up, drew back a pace or two, and crept forward.

 

MRS. ROSSITER, meanwhile, accompanied by her daughter Hermione, had left Scantlebury Square and, though a trifle short in the wind, had covered the distance between it and the studio in quite good time. But the effort had told upon her, and half-way up the stairs she was compelled to halt for a short rest. It was as she stood there, puffing slightly like a seal after diving for fish, that something seemed to shoot past her in the darkness.

“What was that?” she exclaimed.

“I thought I saw something, too,” said Hermione.

“Some heavy, moving object.”

“Yes,” said Hermione. “Perhaps we had better go up and ask Mr. Mulliner if he has been dropping things downstairs.”

They made their way to the studio. Ignatius was standing on one leg, rubbing the toes of his right foot. Your artist is proverbially a dreamy, absent-minded man, and he had realized too late that he was wearing bedroom slippers. Despite the fact, however, that he was in considerable pain, his expression was not unhappy. He had the air of a man who is conscious of having done the right thing.

“Good morning, Mr. Mulliner,” said Mrs. Rossiter.

“Good morning, Mr. Mulliner,” said Hermione.

“Good morning,” said Ignatius, looking at them with deep loathing. It amazed him that he had ever felt attracted by this girl. Until this moment his animosity had been directed wholly against the male members of her family; but now that she stood before him he realized that the real outstanding Rossiter blister was this Hermione. The brief flicker of joie-de-vivre which had followed his interview with George had died away, leaving his mood blacker than ever. One scarcely likes to think what might have happened had Hermione selected that moment to tie her shoelace.

“Well, here we are," said Mrs. Rossiter.

At this point, unseen by them, the cupboard door began to open noiselessly. A pale face peeped out. The next instant there was a cloud of dust, a whirring noise, and the sound of footsteps descending the stairs three at a time.

Mrs. Rossiter put a hand to her heart and panted.

“What was that?”

“It was a little blurred," said Hermione, “but I think it was Cyprian.”

Ignatius uttered a passionate cry and dashed to the head of the stairs.

“Gone!”

He came back, his face contorted, muttering to himself. Mrs. Rossiter looked at him keenly. It seemed plain to her that all that was wanted here were a couple of doctors with fountain pens to sign the necessary certificate, but she was not dismayed. After all, as she reasoned with not a little shrewd sense, a gibbering artist is just as good as a sane artist, provided he makes no charge for painting portraits.

“Well, Mr. Mulliner,” she said, cheerily, dismissing from her mind the problem, which had been puzzling her a little, of why her son Cyprian had been in this studio behaving like a Scotch Express, “Hermione has nothing to do this morning, so, if you are free, now would be a good time for the first sitting.”

Ignatius came out of his reverie.

“Sitting?”

“For the portrait.”

“What portrait?”

“Hermione’s portrait.”

“You wish me to paint Miss Rossiter’s portrait?”

“Why, you said you would—only last night.”

“Did I?” Ignatius passed a hand across his forehead. “Perhaps I did. Very well. Kindly step to the desk and write out a cheque for fifty pounds. You have your book with you?”

“Fifty—what?”

“Guineas,” said Ignatius. “A hundred guineas. I always require a deposit before I start work.”

“But last night you said you would paint her for nothing.”

“I said I would paint her for nothing?”

“Yes.”

A dim recollection of having behaved in the fatuous manner described came to Ignatius.

“Well, and suppose I did,” he said, warmly. “Can’t you women ever understand when a man is kidding you? Have you no sense of humour? Must you always take every light quip literally? If you want a portrait of Miss Rossiter, you will jolly well pay for it in the usual manner. The thing that beats me is why you do want a portrait of a girl who not only has most unattractive features, but is also a dull yellow in colour. Furthermore, she flickers. As I look at her, she definitely flickers round the edges. Her face is sallow and unwholesome. Her eyes have no sparkle of intelligence. Her ears stick out and her chin goes in. To sum up, her whole appearance gives me an indefinable pain in the neck; and, if you hold me to my promise, I shall charge extra for moral and intellectual damage and wear and tear caused by having to sit opposite her and look at her.”

 

WITH these words, Ignatius Mulliner turned and began to rummage in a drawer for his pipe. But the drawer contained no pipe.

“What?” cried Mrs. Rossiter.

“You heard,” said Ignatius.

“My smelling-salts!” gasped Mrs. Rossiter.

Ignatius ran his hand along the mantelpiece. He opened two cupboards and looked under the settee. But he found no pipe.

The Mulliners are by nature a courteous family; and, seeing Mrs. Rossiter sniffing and gulping there, a belated sense of having been less tactful than he might have been came to Ignatius.

“It is possible,” he said, “that my recent remarks may have caused you pain. If so, I am sorry. My excuse must be that they came from a full heart. I am fed to the teeth with the human race, and look on the entire Rossiter family as its darkest blots. I cannot see the Rossiter family. There seems to me to be no market for them. All I require of the Rossiters is their blood. I nearly got Cyprian with a dagger, but he was too quick for me. If he fails as a critic, there is always a future for him as a Russian dancer. However, I had decidedly better luck with George. I gave him the juiciest kick I have ever administered to human frame. If he had been shot from a gun he couldn’t have gone out quicker. Probably he passed you on the stairs?”

“So that was what passed us!” said Hermione, interested. “I remember thinking at the time that there was a whiff of George.”

Mrs. Rossiter was staring aghast.

“You kicked my son!”

“As squarely in the seat of the pants, madam,” said Ignatius, with modest pride, “as if I had been practising for weeks.”

“My stricken child!” cried Mrs. Rossiter. And, hastening from the room, she ran down the stairs in quest of the remains. A boy’s best friend is his mother.

In the studio she had left, Hermione was gazing at Ignatius, in her eyes a look he had never seen there before.

“I had no idea you were so eloquent, Mr. Mulliner,” she said, breaking the silence. “What a vivid description that was that you gave of me! Quite a prose poem.”

Ignatius made a deprecating gesture.

“Oh, well,” he said.

“Do you really think I am like that?”

“I do.”

“Yellow?”

“Greeny yellow.”

“And my eyes——?” She hesitated for a word.

“They are not unlike blue oysters,” said Ignatius, prompting her, “which have been dead some time.”

“In fact, you don’t admire my looks?”

“Far from it.”

She was saying something, but he had ceased to listen. Quite suddenly he had remembered that about a couple of weeks ago, at a little party which he had given in the studio, he had dropped a half-smoked cigar behind the bureau. And as no charwoman is allowed by the rules of her union to sweep under bureaus, it might—nay, must—still be there. With feverish haste he dragged the bureau out. It was.

Ignatiis Mulliner sighed an ecstatic sigh. Chewed and mangled, covered with dust and bitten by mice, this object between his fingers was nevertheless a cigar—a genuine, smokeable cigar, containing the regulation eight per cent. carbon monoxide. He struck a match, and the next moment he had begun to puff.

And, as he did so, the milk of human kindness surged back into his soul like a vast tidal wave. As swiftly as a rabbit, handled by a competent conjurer, changes into a bouquet, a bowl of goldfish, or the grand old flag, Ignatius Mulliner changed into a thing of sweetness and light, with charity towards all, with malice towards none. The pyridine played about his mucous surfaces, and he welcomed it like a long-lost brother. He felt gay, happy, exhilarated.

He looked at Hermione, standing there with her eyes sparkling and her beautiful face ashine, and he realized that he had been all wrong about her. So far from being a blister, she was the loveliest thing that had ever breathed the perfumed air of Kensington.

 

AND then, chilling his ecstasy and stopping his heart in the middle of a beat, came the recollection of what he had said about her appearance. He felt pale and boneless. If ever a man had dished himself properly, that man, he felt, was Ignatius Mulliner. And he did not mean maybe.

She was looking at him, and the expression on her face seemed somehow to suggest that she was waiting for something.

“Well?” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Ignatius.

She pouted.

“Well, aren’t you going to—er——?”

“What?”

“Well, fold me in your arms and all that sort of thing,” said Hermione, blushing prettily.

Ignatius tottered.

“Who, me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Fold you in my arms?”

“Yes.”

“But—er—do you want me to?”

“Certainly.”

“I mean—after all I said——”

She stared at him in amazement.

“Haven't you been listening to what I’ve been telling you?” she cried.

“I’m sorry,” Ignatius stammered. “Good deal on my mind just now. Must have missed it. What did you say?”

“I said that, if you really think I look like that, you do not love me, as I had always supposed, for my beauty, but for my intellect. And if you knew how I have always longed to be loved for my intellect!”

Ignatius put down his cigar and breathed deeply.

“Let me get this right,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

“Of course I will. You always attracted me strangely, Ignatius, but I thought you looked upon me as a mere doll.”

He picked up his cigar, took a puff, laid it down again, took a step forward, extended his arms, and folded her in them. And for a space they stood there, clasped together, murmuring those broken words that lovers know so well. Then, gently disengaging her, he went back to the cigar and took another invigorating puff.

“Besides,” she said, “how could a girl help but love a man who could lift my brother George right down a whole flight of stairs with a single kick?”

Ignatius’s face clouded.

“George! That reminds me. Cyprian said you said I was like George.”

“Oh! I didn’t mean him to repeat that.”

“Well, he did,” said Ignatius, moodily. “And the thought was agony."

“But I only meant that you and George were both always playing the ukulele! And I hate ukuleles.”

Ignatius’s face cleared.

“I will give mine to the poor this afternoon. And, touching Cyprian—George said you said I reminded you of him.”

She hastened to soothe him.

“It’s only the way you dress. You both wear such horrid sloppy clothes.”

Ignatius folded her in his arms once more.

“You shall take me this very instant to the best tailor in London," he said. “Give me a minute to put on my boots, and I’ll be with you. You don’t mind if I just stop at my tobacconist’s for a moment on the way? I have a large order for him.”

 

---

 

Printer’s error corrected above:
Magazine, p. 218a, omitted the closing double quotation mark in “You keep saying ‘Ah!’ ” said George.

Annotations to the story as collected in Mr. Mulliner Speaking are on this site.

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