‘Tchah!’ said Mrs Pulteney-Banks.
‘What do you mean, Tchah?’ demanded Lady Widdrington.
‘I mean Tchah,’ said Mrs Pulteney-Banks.
An atmosphere of constraint hung over Widdrington Manor throughout the following day. The natural embarrassment of the Bishop was increased by the attitude of Mrs Pulteney-Banks, who had contracted a habit of looking at him over her zareba of shawls and sniffing meaningly. It was with relief that towards the middle of the afternoon he accepted Lancelot’s suggestion that they should repair to the study and finish up what remained of their legal business.
The study was on the ground floor, looking out on pleasant lawns and shrubberies. Through the open window came the scent of summer flowers. It was a scene which should have soothed the most bruised soul, but the Bishop was plainly unable to draw refreshment from it. He sat with his head in his hands, refusing all Lancelot’s well-meant attempts at consolation.
‘Those sniffs!’ he said, shuddering, as if they still rang in his ears. ‘What meaning they held! What a sinister significance!’
‘She may just have got a cold in the head,’ urged Lancelot.
‘No. The matter went deeper than that. They meant that that terrible old woman saw through my subterfuge last night. She read me like a book. From now on there will be added vigilance. I shall not be permitted out of their sight, and the end can be only a question of time. Lancelot, my boy,’ said the Bishop, extending a trembling hand pathetically towards his nephew, ‘you are a young man on the threshold of life. If you wish that life to be a happy one, always remember this: when on an ocean voyage, never visit the boat-deck after dinner. You will be tempted. You will say to yourself that the lounge is stuffy and that the cool breezes will correct that replete feeling which so many of us experience after the evening meal… you will think how pleasant it must be up there, with the rays of the moon turning the waves to molten silver.., but don’t go, my boy, don’t go!’
‘Right-ho, uncle,’ said Lancelot soothingly.
The Bishop fell into a moody silence.
‘It is not merely,’ he resumed, evidently having followed some train of thought, ‘that, as one of Nature’s bachelors, I regard the married state with alarm and concern. It is the peculiar conditions of my tragedy that render me distraught. My lot once linked to that of Lady Widdrington, I shall never see Webster again.’
‘Oh, come, uncle. This is morbid.’
The Bishop shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘If this marriage takes place, my path and Webster’s must divide. I could not subject that pure cat to life at Widdrington Manor, a life involving, as it would, the constant society of the animal Percy. He would be contaminated. You know Webster, Lancelot. He has been your companion — may I not almost say your mentor? — for months. You know the loftiness of his ideals.’
For an instant, a picture shot through Lancelot’s mind — the picture of Webster, as he had seen him only a brief while since —standing in the yard with the backbone of a herring in his mouth, crooning a war-song at the alley cat from whom he had stolen the bonne-bouche. But he replied without hesitation.
‘Oh, rather.’
‘They are very high.’
‘Extremely high.’
‘And his dignity,’ said the Bishop. ‘I deprecate a spirit of pride and self-esteem, but Webster’s dignity was not tainted with those qualities. It rested on a clear conscience and the knowledge that, even as a kitten, he had never permitted his feet to stray. -I wish you could have seen Webster as a kitten, Lancelot.’
‘I wish I could, uncle.’
‘He never played with balls of wool, preferring to sit in the shadow of the cathedral wall, listening to the clear singing of the choir as it melted on the sweet stillness of the summer day. Even then you could see that deep thoughts exercised his mind. I remember once…’
But the reminiscence, unless some day it made its appearance in the good old man’s memoirs, was destined to be lost to the world. For at this moment the door opened and the butler entered. In his arms he bore a hamper, and from this hamper there proceeded the wrathful ejaculations of a cat who has had a long train-journey under constricted conditions and is beginning to ask what it is all about.
‘Bless my soul!’ cried the Bishop, startled.
A sickening sensation of doom darkened Lancelot’s soul. He had recognized that voice. He knew what was in that hamper.
‘Stop!’ he exclaimed. ‘Uncle Theodore, don’t open that hamper!’
But it was too late. Already the Bishop was cutting the strings with a hand that trembled with eagerness. Chirruping noises proceeded from him. In his eyes was the wild gleam seen only in the eyes of cat-lovers restored to their loved one.
‘Webster!’ he called in a shaking voice.
And out of the hamper shot Webster, full of strange oaths. For a moment he raced about the room, apparently searching for the man who had shut him up in the thing, for there was flame in his eye. Becoming calmer, he sat down and began to lick himself, and it was then for the first time that the Bishop was enabled to get a steady look at him.
Two weeks’ residence at the vet.’s had done something for Webster, but not enough. Not, Lancelot felt agitatedly, nearly enough. A mere fortnight’s seclusion cannot bring back fur to lacerated skin; it cannot restore to a chewed ear that extra inch which makes all the difference. Webster had gone to Doctor Robinson looking as if he had just been caught in machinery of some kind, and that was how, though in a very slightly modified degree, he looked now. And at the sight of him the Bishop uttered a sharp, anguished cry. Then, turning on Lancelot, he spoke in a voice of thunder.
‘So this, Lancelot Mulliner, is how you have fulfilled your sacred trust!’
Lancelot was shaken, but he contrived to reply.
‘It wasn’t my fault, uncle. There was no stopping him.’
‘Pshaw!’
‘Well, there wasn’t,’ said Lancelot. ‘Besides, what harm is there in an occasional healthy scrap with one of the neighbours? Cats will be cats.’
‘A sorry piece of reasoning,’ said the Bishop, breathing heavily.
‘Personally,’ Lancelot went on, though speaking dully, for he realized how hopeless it all was, ‘if I owned Webster, I should be proud of him. Consider his record,’ said Lancelot, warming a little as he proceeded. ‘He comes to Bott Street without so much as a single fight under his belt, and, despite this inexperience, shows himself possessed of such genuine natural talent that in two weeks he has every cat for streets around jumping walls and climbing lamp-posts at the mere sight of him. I wish,’ said Lancelot, now carried away by his theme, ‘that you could have seen him clean up a puce-coloured Tom from Number Eleven. It was the finest sight I have ever witnessed. He was conceding pounds to this animal, who, in addition, had a reputation extending as far afield as the Fulham Road. The first round was even, with the exchanges perhaps a shade in favour of his opponent. But when the gong went for Round Two…’
The Bishop raised his hand. His face was drawn.
‘Enough!’ he cried. ‘I am inexpressibly grieved. I…’
He stopped. Something had leaped upon the window-sill at his side, causing him to start violently. It was the cat Percy who, hearing a strange feline voice, had come to investigate.
There were days when Percy, mellowed by the influence of cream and the sunshine, could become, if not agreeable, at least free from active venom. Lancelot had once seen him actually playing with a ball of paper. But it was evident immediately that this was not one of those days. Percy was plainly in evil mood. His dark soul gleamed from his narrow eyes. He twitched his tail to and fro, and for a moment stood regarding Webster with a hard sneer.
Then, wiggling his whiskers, he said something in a low voice.
Until he spoke, Webster had apparently not observed his arrival. He was still cleaning himself after the journey. But, hearing this remark, he started and looked up. And, as he saw Percy, his ears flattened
and the battle-light came into his eye.
There was a moment’s pause. Cat stared at cat. Then, swishing his tail to and fro, Percy repeated his statement in a louder tone. And from this point, Lancelot tells me, he could follow the conversation word for word as easily as if he had studied cat language for years.
This, he says, is how the dialogue ran:
WEBSTER: ‘Who, me?
PERCY: Yes, you.
WEBSTER: A what?
PERCY: You heard.
WEBSTER: Is that so?
PERCY: Yeah.
WEBSTER: Yeah?
PERCY: Yeah. Come on up here and I’ll bite the rest of your ear off.
WEBSTER: Yeah? You and who else?
PERCY: Come on up here. I dare you.
WEBSTER: (flushing hotly): You do, do you? Of all the nerve! Of all the crust! Why, I’ve eaten better cats than you before breakfast.
(to Lancelot)
Here, hold my coat and stand to one side. Now, then!
And, with this, there was a whizzing sound and Webster had advanced in full battle-order. A moment later, a tangled mass that looked like seventeen cats in close communion fell from the window-sill into the room.
A cat-fight of major importance is always a. spectacle worth watching, but Lancelot tells me that, vivid and stimulating though this one promised to be, his attention was riveted not upon it, but upon the Bishop of Bongo-Bongo.
In the first few instants of the encounter the prelate’s features had betrayed no emotion beyond a grievous alarm and pain. ‘How art thou fallen from Heaven, oh Lucifer, Son of Morning,’ he seemed to be saying as he watched his once blameless pet countering Percy’s onslaught with what had the appearance of being about sixteen simultaneous legs. And then, almost abruptly, there seemed to awake in him at the same instant a passionate pride in Webster’s prowess and that spotting spirit which lies so near the surface in all of us. Crimson in the face, his eyes gleaming with partisan enthusiasm, he danced round the combatants, encouraging his nominee with word and gesture.
‘Capital! Excellent! Ah, stoutly struck, Webster!’
‘Hook him with your left, Webster!’ cried Lancelot.
‘Precisely!’ boomed the Bishop.
‘Soak him, Webster!’
‘Indubitably!’ agreed the Bishop. ‘The expression is new to me, but I appreciate its pith and vigour. By all means, soak him, my dear Webster.’
And it was at this moment that Lady Widdrington, attracted by the noise of battle, came hurrying into the room. She was just in time to see Percy run into a right swing and bound for the window-sill, closely pursued by his adversary. Long since Percy had begun to realize that, in inviting this encounter, he had gone out of his class and come up against something hot. All he wished for now was flight. But Webster’s hat was still in the ring, and cries from without told that the battle had been joined once more on the lawn.
Lady Widdrington stood appalled. In the agony of beholding her pet so manifestly getting the loser’s end she had forgotten her matrimonial plans. She was no longer the calm, purposeful woman who intended to lead the Bishop to the altar if she had to use chloroform; she was an outraged cat-lover, and she faced him with blazing eyes.
‘What,’ she demanded, ‘is the meaning of this?’
The Bishop was still labouring under obvious excitement.
‘That beastly animal of yours asked for it, and did Webster give it to him!’
‘Did he!’ said Lancelot. ‘That corkscrew punch with the left!’
‘That sort of quick upper-cut with the right!’ cried the Bishop.
‘There isn’t a cat in London that could beat him.’
‘In London?’ said the Bishop g warmly. ‘In the whole of England. O admirable Webster!’
Lady Widdrington stamped a furious foot.
‘I insist that you destroy that cat!’
‘Which cat?’
‘That cat,’ said Lady Widdrington, pointing.
Webster was standing on the window-sm. He was panting slightly, and his ear was in worse repair than ever, but on his face was the satisfied smile of a victor. He moved his head from side to side, as if looking for the microphone through which his public expected him to speak a modest word or two.
‘I demand that that savage animal be destroyed,’ said Lady Widdrington.
The Bishop met her eye steadily.
‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘I shall sponsor no such scheme.’
‘You refuse?’
‘Most certainly I refuse. Never have I esteemed Webster so highly as at this moment. I consider him a public benefactor, a selfless altruist. For years every right-thinking person must have yearned to handle that inexpressibly abominable cat of yours as Webster has just handled him, and I have no feelings towards him but those of gratitude and admiration. I intend, indeed, personally and with my own hands to give him a good plate of fish.’
Lady Widdrington drew in her breath sharply.
‘You will not do it here,’ she said.
She pressed the bell.
‘Fotheringay,’ she said in a tense, cold voice, as the butler appeared, ‘the Bishop is leaving us to-night. Please see that his bags are packed for the six-forty-one.’
She swept from the room. The Bishop turned to Lancelot with a benevolent smile.
‘It will just give me nice time,’ he said, ‘to write you that cheque, my boy.’
He stooped and gathered Webster into his arms, and Lancelot, after one quick look at them, stole silently out. This sacred moment was not for his eyes.
4 THE KNIGHTLY QUEST OF MERVYN
Some sort of smoking-concert seemed to be in progress in the large room across the passage from the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest, and a music-loving Stout and Mild had left the door open, the better to enjoy the entertainment. By this means we had been privileged to hear Kipling’s ‘Mandalay’, ‘I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby’, ‘The Midshipmite’, and ‘Ho, Jolly Jenkin!’: and now the piano began to tinkle again and a voice broke into a less familiar number.
The words came to us faintly, but dearly:
‘The days of Chivalry are dead,
Of which in stories I have read,
When knights were bold and acted kind of scrappy;
They used to take a lot of pains
And fight all day to please the Janes,
And if their dame was tickled they was happy.
But now the men are mild and meek:
They seem to have a yellow streak
They never lay for other guys, to flatten ‘em:
They think they’ve done a darned fine thing
If they just buy the girl a ring
Of imitation diamonds and platinum.
‘Oh, it makes me sort of sad
To think about Sir Galahad
And all the knights of that romantic day:
To amuse a girl and charm her
They would climb into their armour
And jump into the fray:
They called her “Lady love”,
They used to wear her little glove,
And everything that she said went:
For those were the days when a lady was a lady
And a gent was a perfect gent.’
A Ninepennyworth of Sherry sighed.
‘True,’ he murmured. ‘Very true.’
The singer continued:
‘Some night when they sat down to dine,
Sir Claude would say: “That girl of mine
Makes every woman jealous when she sees her.”
Then someone else would shout: “Behave,
Thou malapert and scurvy knave,
Or I will smite thee one upon the beezer!”
And then next morning in the lists
They’d take their lances in their fists
And mount a pair of chargers, highly mettled:
And when Sir Claude, so fair and young,
Got punctured in the leg or lung,
They looked upon the argument a
s settled.’
The Ninepennyworth of Sherry sighed again.
‘He’s right,’ he said. ‘We live in degenerate days, gentlemen. Where now is the fine old tradition of derring-do? Where,’ demanded the Ninepennyworth of Sherry with modest fervour, ‘shall we find in these prosaic modern times the spirit that made the knights of old go through perilous adventures and brave dreadful dangers to do their lady’s behest?’
‘In the Mulliner family,’ said Mr Mulliner, pausing for a moment from the sipping of his hot Scotch and lemon, ‘in the clan to which I have the honour to belong, the spirit to which you allude still flourishes in all its pristine vigour. I can scarcely exemplify this better than by relating the story of my cousin’s son, Mervyn, and the strawberries.’
‘But I want to listen to the concert,’ pleaded a Rum and Milk. ‘I just heard the curate clear his throat. That always means “Dangerous Dan McGrew”.’
‘The story,’ repeated Mr Mulliner with quiet firmness, as he closed the door, ‘of my cousin’s son, Mervyn, and the strawberries.’
In the circles in which the two moved (said Mr Mulliner) it had often been debated whether my cousin’s son, Mervyn, was a bigger chump than my nephew Archibald — the one who, if you recall, was so good at imitating a hen laying an egg. Some took one side, some the other; but, though the point still lies open, there is no doubt that young Mervyn was quite a big enough chump for everyday use. And it was this quality in him that deterred Clarice Mallaby from consenting to become his bride.
He discovered this one night when, as they were dancing at the Restless Cheese, he put the thing squarely up to her, not mincing his words.
Mulliner Nights Page 7