“Oh, hallo,” I said. “I got your note. Aunt Agatha.”
She waved me away. No welcoming smile for Bertram.
“Oh don’t bother me now,” she snapped, looking at me as if I were more or less the last straw.
“Something up?”
“Yes, yes, yes! I’ve lost my pearls.”
“Pearls? Pearls? Pearls?” I said. “No, really? Dashed annoying. Where did you see them last?”
“What does it matter where I saw them last? They have been stolen.”
Here Wilfred the Whisker-King, who seemed to have been taking a rest between rounds, stepped into the ring again and began to talk rapidly in French. Cut to the quick he seemed. The chambermaid whooped in the corner.
“Sure you’ve looked everywhere?” I asked.
“Of course I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, you know. I’ve often lost a collar-stud and — ”
“Do try not to be so maddening, Bertie! I have enough to bear without your imbecilities. Oh, be quiet! Be quiet!” she shouted. And such was the magnetism of what Jeeves called her forceful personality that Wilfred subsided as though he had run into a wall. The chambermaid continued to go strong.
“I say,” I said, ‘T think there’s something the matter with this girl. Isn’t she crying or something?”
“She stole my pearls! I am convinced of it.”
This started the whisker-specialist off again, and I left them at it and wandered off on a tour round the room. I slipped the pearls out of the case and decanted them into a drawer. By the time I’d done this and had leisure to observe the free-for-all once more. Aunt Agatha had reached the frozen grande-dame stage and was putting the Last of the Bandits through it in the voice she usually reserves for snubbing waiters in restaurants.
“I tell you, my good man, for the hundredth time, that I have searched thoroughly — everywhere. Why you should imagine that I have overlooked so elementary — ”
“I say,” I said, “don’t want to interrupt you and all that sort of thing, but aren’t these the little chaps?”
I pulled them out of the drawer and held them up.
“These look like pearls, what?”
I don’t know when I’ve had a more juicy moment. It was one of those occasions about which I shall prattle to my grand-children — if I ever have any, which at the moment of going to press seems more or less of a hundred-to-one shot. Aunt Agatha simply deflated before my eyes. It reminded me of when I once saw some intrepid aeronauts letting the gas out of a balloon.
“Where — where — where?” she gurgled.
“In this drawer. They’d slid under some paper.”
“Oh!” said Aunt Agatha, and there was a bit of silence.
I dug out my entire stock of manly courage, breathed a short prayer, and let her have it right in the thorax.
“I must say. Aunt Agatha, dash it,” I said, crisply, “I think you have been a little hasty, what? I mean to say, giving this poor man here so much anxiety and worry and generally biting him in the gizzard. You’ve been very, very unjust to this poor man!”
“Yes, yes,” chipped in the poor man.
“And this unfortunate girl, what about her? Where does she get off? You’ve accused her of pinching the things on absolutely no evidence. I think she would be jolly well advised to bring an action for — for whatever it is, and soak you for substantial damages.”
“Mais oui, mais oui, c’est trop fort!” shouted the Bandit Chief, backing me up like a good ‘un. And the chambermaid looked up inquiringly, as if the sun was breaking the clouds.
“I shall recompense her,” said Aunt Agatha, feebly.
“If you take my tip, you jolly well will, and that eftsoons or right speedily. She’s got a cast-iron case, and if I were her I wouldn’t take a cent under twenty quid. But what gives me the pip most is the way you’ve abused this poor man and tried to give his hotel a bad name — ‘*
“Yes, by damn! It’s too bad!” cried the whiskered marvel. “You careless old woman! You give my hotel bad names, would you or wasn’t it? To-morrow you leave my hotel.”
And more to the same effect, all good, ripe stuff. And presently, having said his say, he withdrew, taking the chambermaid with him, the latter with a crisp tenner clutched in a vicelike grip. I suppose she and the bandit split it outside. A French hotel-manager wouldn’t be likely to let real money wander away from him without counting himself in on the division.
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down-express in the small of the back.
“There was something you wished to speak to me about?” I said.
“No, no. Go away, go away.”
“You said in your note — ”
“Yes, yes, never mind. Please go away, Bertie. I wish to be alone.”
“Oh, right-ho!” I said. “Right-ho! right-ho!” And back to the good old suite.
“Ten o’clock, a clear night, and all’s well, Jeeves,’’ I said, breezing in.
“I am gratified to hear it, sir.”
“If twenty quid would be any use to you, Jeeves — ?”
“I am much obliged, sir.’’
There was a pause. And then — well, it was a wrench, but I did it. I unstripped the cummerbund and handed it over.
“Do you wish me to press this, sir?”
I gave the thing one last longing look. It had been very dear to me.
“No,” I said, “take it away; give it to the deserving poor. I shall never wear it again.’’
“Thank you very much, sir,’’ said Jeeves.
THE FIERY WOOING OF MORDRED
THE PINT OF LAGER BREATHED HEAVILY THROUGH his nose.
“Silly fathead!” he said. “Ash-trays in every nook and cranny of the room — ash-trays staring you in the eye wherever you look — and he has to go and do a fool thing like that.”
He was alluding to a young gentleman with a vacant, fishlike face who, leaving the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest a few moments before, had thrown his cigarette into the waste-paper basket, causing it to burst into a cheerful blaze. Not one of the little company of amateur fire-fighters but was ruffled. A Small Bass with a high blood pressure had had to have his collar loosened, and the satin-clad bosom of Miss Postlethwaite, our emotional barmaid, was still heaving.
Only Mr. Mulliner seemed disposed to take a tolerant view of what had occurred.
“In fairness to the lad,” he pointed out, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon, “we must remember that our bar-parlour contains no grand piano or priceless old walnut table, which to the younger generation are the normal and natural repositories for lighted cigarette-ends. Failing these, he, of course, selected the waste-paper basket. Like Mordred.”
“Like who?” asked a Whisky and Splash.
“Whom,” corrected Miss Postlethwaite.
The Whisky and Splash apologized.
“A nephew of mine. Mordred Mulliner, the poet.”
“Mordred,” murmured Miss Postlethwaite pensively. “A sweet name.”
“And one,” said Mr. Mulliner, “that fitted him admirably, for he was a comely lovable sensitive youth with large, fawnlike eyes, delicately chiselled features and excellent teeth. I mention these teeth, because it was owing to them that the train of events started which I am about to describe.”
“He bit somebody?” queried Miss Postlethwaite, groping.
“No. But if he had had no teeth he would not have gone to the dentist’s that day, and if he had not gone to the dentist’s he would not have met Annabelle.”
“Annabelle whom?”
“Who,” corrected Miss Postlethwaite.
“Oh, shoot,” said the Whisky and Splash.
“Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett, the only daughter of Sir Murgatroyd and Lady Sprockett-Sprockett of Smattering Hall, Worcestershire. Impractical in many ways,” said Mr. Mulliner, “Mordred never failed to visit his dentist every six months, and on the morning o
n which my story opens he had just seated himself in the empty waiting-room and was turning the pages of a three-months-old copy of the Tatler when the door opened and there entered a girl at the sight of whom — or who, if our friend here prefers it — something seemed to explode on the left side of his chest like a bomb. The Tatler swam before his eyes, and when it solidified again he realized that love had come to him at last.”
Most of the Mulliners have fallen in love at first sight, but few with so good an excuse as Mordred. She was a singularly beautiful girl, and for a while it was this beauty of hers that enchained my nephew’s attention to the exclusion of all else. It was only after he had sat gulping for some minutes like a dog with a chicken bone in its throat that he detected the sadness in her face. He could see now that her eyes, as she listlessly perused her four-months-old copy of Punch, were heavy with pain.
His heart ached for her, and as there is something about the atmosphere of a dentist’s waiting-room which breaks down the barriers of conventional etiquette he was emboldened to speak.
“Courage!” he said. “It may not be so bad, after all. He may just fool about with that little mirror thing of his, and decide that there is nothing that needs to be done.”
For the first time she smiled — faintly, but with sufficient breadth to give Mordred another powerful jolt.
“I’m not worrying about the dentist,” she explained. “My trouble is that I live miles away in the country and only get a chance of coming to London about twice a year for about a couple of hours. I was hoping that I should be able to put in a long spell of window-shopping in Bond Street, but now I’ve got to wait goodness knows how long I don’t suppose I shall have time to do a thing. My train goes at one-fifteen.”
All the chivalry in Mordred came to the surface like a leaping trout.
“If you would care to take my place — ”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“Please. I shall enjoy waiting. It will give me an opportunity of catching up with my reading.”
“Well, if you really wouldn’t mind — ”
Considering that Mordred by this time was in the market to tackle dragons on her behalf or to climb the loftiest peak of the Alps to supply her with edelweiss, he was able to assure her that he did not mind. So in she went, flashing at him a shy glance of gratitude which nearly doubled him up, and he lit a cigarette and fell into a reverie. And presently she came out and he sprang to his feet, courteously throwing his cigarette into the waste-paper basket.
She uttered a cry. Mordred recovered the cigarette.
“Silly of me,” he said, with a deprecating laugh. “I’m always doing that. Absent-minded. I’ve burned two flats already this year.”
She caught her breath.
“Burned them to the ground?”
“Well, not to the ground. They were on the top floor.”
“But you burned them?”
“Oh, yes. I burned them.”
“Well, well!” She seemed to muse. “Well, good-bye, Mr.
“Mulliner. Mordred Mulliner.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Mulliner, and thank you so much.”
“Not at all. Miss — ”
“Sprockett-Sprockett.”
“Not at all. Miss Sprockett-Sprockett. A pleasure.”
She passed from the room, and a few minutes later he was lying back in the dentist’s chair, filled with an infinite sadness. This was not due to any activity on the part of the dentist, who had just said with a rueful sigh that there didn’t seem to be anything to do this time, but to the fact that his life was now a blank. He loved this beautiful girl, and he would never see her more. It was just another case of ships that pass in the waiting-room.
Conceive his astonishment, therefore, when by the afternoon post next day he received a letter which ran as follows:
Smattering Hally Lower Smattering-on-the- Wissell Worcestershire.
Dear Mr. Mullinery
My little girl has told me how very kind you were to her at the dentist’s to-day. I cannot tell you how grateful she was. She does so love to walk down Bond Street and breathe on the jewellers’ windows, and but for you she would have had to go another six months without her little treat.
I suppose you are a very busy man, like everybody in London, but if you can spare the time it would give my husband and myself so much pleasure if you could run down and stay with us for a few days — a long weekend, or even longer if you can manage it.
With best wishes.
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Sprockett-Sprockett
Mordred read this communication six times in a minute and a quarter and then seventeen times rather more slowly in order to savour any nuance of it that he might have overlooked. He took it that the girl must have got his address from the dentist’s secretary on her way out, and he was doubly thrilled — first, by this evidence that one so lovely was as intelligent as she was beautiful, and secondly because the whole thing seemed to him so frightfully significant. A girl, he meant to say, does not get her mother to invite fellows to her country home for long week-ends (or even longer if they can manage it) unless such fellows have made a pretty substantial hit with her. This, he contended, stood to reason.
He hastened to the nearest post-office, despatched a telegram to Lady Sprockett-Sprockett assuring her that he would be with her on the morrow, and returned to his flat to pack his effects. His heart was singing within him. Apart from anything else, the invitation could not have come at a more fortunate moment, for what with musing on his great love while smoking cigarettes he had practically gutted his little nest on the previous evening, and while it was still habitable in a sense there was no gainsaying the fact that all those charred sofas and things struck a rather melancholy note and he would be glad to be away from it all for a few days.
It seemed to Mordred, as he travelled down on the following afternoon, that the wheels of the train, clattering over the. metals, were singing “Sprockett-Sprockett” — not “Annabelle,” of course, for he did not yet know her name — and it was with a whispered “Sprockett-Sprockett” on his lips that he alighted at the little station of Smattering-cum-Blimpstead-in-the-Vale, which, as his hostess’s note-paper had informed him, was where you got off for the Hall. And when he perceived that the girl herself had come to meet him in a two-seater car the whisper nearly became a shout.
For perhaps three minutes, as he sat beside her, Mordred remained in this condition of ecstatic bliss. Here he was, he reflected, and here she was — here, in fact, they both were — together, and he was just about to point out how jolly this was and — if he could work it without seeming to rush things too much — to drop a hint to the effect that he could wish this state of affairs to continue through all eternity, when the girl drew up outside a tobacconist’s.
“I won’t be a minute,” she said. “I promised Biffy I would bring him back some cigarettes.”
A cold hand seemed to lay itself on Mordred’s heart.
“Biffy?”
“Captain Biffing, one of the men at the Hall. And Guffy wants some pipe-cleaners.”
“Guffy?”
“Jack Guffington. I expect you know his name, if you are interested in racing. He was third in last year’s Grand National.”
“Is he staying at the Hall, too?”
“Yes.”
“You have a large house-party?”
“Oh, not so very. Let me see. There’s Billy Biffing, Jack Guffington, Ted Prosser, Freddie Boot — he’s the tennis champion of the county, Tommy Mainprice, and — oh, yes, Algy Fripp — the big-game hunter, you know.”
The hand on Mordred’s heart, now definitely iced, tightened its grip. With a lover’s sanguine optimism, he had supposed that this visit of his was going to be just three days of jolly sylvan solitude with Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett. And now it appeared that the place was unwholesomely crowded with his fellow men. And what fellow men! Big-game hunters . . Tennis champions … Chaps who rode in Grand Nationals … He could
see them in his mind’s eye — lean, wiry, riding-breeched and flannel-trousered young Apollos, any one of them capable of cutting out his weight in Clark Gables.
A faint hope stirred within him.
“You have also, of course, with you Mrs, Biffing, Mrs. Guffington, Mrs. Prosser, Mrs. Boot, Mrs. Mainprice and Mrs. Algernon Fripp?”
“Oh, no, they aren’t married.’’
“None of them?”
“No.”
The faint hope coughed quietly and died.
“Ah,” said Mordred.
While the girl was in the shop, he remained brooding. The fact that not one of these blisters should be married filled him with an austere disapproval. If they had had the least spark of civic sense, he felt, they would have taken on the duties and responsibilities of matrimony years ago. But no. Intent upon their selfish pleasures, they had callously remained bachelors. It was this spirit of laissez-faire, Mordred considered, that was eating like a canker into the soul of England.
He was aware of Annabelle standing beside him.
“Eh?” he said, starting.
“I was saying: Have you plenty of cigarettes?”
“Plenty, thank you.”
“Good. And of course there will be a box in your room. Men always like to smoke in their bedrooms, don’t they? As a matter of fact, two boxes — Turkish and Virginian. Father put them there specially.”
“Very kind of him,” said Mordred mechanically.
He relapsed into a moody silence, and they drove off.
It would be agreeable (said Mr. Mulliner) if, having shown you my nephew so gloomy, so apprehensive, so tortured with dark forebodings at this juncture, I were able now to state that the hearty English welcome of Sir Murgatroyd and Lady Sprockett-Sprockett on his arrival at the Hall cheered him up and put new life into him. Nothing, too, would give me greater pleasure than to say that he found, on encountering the dreaded Biffles and Guffies, that they were negligible little runts with faces incapable of inspiring affection in any good woman.
But I must adhere rigidly to the facts. Genial, even effusive, though his host and hostess showed themselves, their cordiality left him cold. And, so far from his rivals being weeds, they were one and all models of manly beauty, and the spectacle of their obvious worship of Annabelle cut my nephew like a knife.
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