‘Cats are not dogs!’
There is only one place where you can hear good things like that thrown off quite casually in the general run of conversation, and that is the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest. It was there, as we sat grouped about the fire, that a thoughtful Pint of Bitter had made the statement just recorded.
Although the talk up to this point had been dealing with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, we readily adjusted our minds to cope with the new topic. Regular attendance at the nightly sessions over which Mr Mulliner presides with such unfailing dignity and geniality tends to produce mental nimbleness. In our little circle I have known an argument on the Final Destination of the Soul to change inside forty seconds into one concerning the best method of preserving the juiciness of bacon fat.
‘Cats,’ proceeded the Pint of Bitter, ‘are selfish. A man waits on a cat hand and foot for weeks, humouring its lightest whim, and then it goes and leaves him flat because it has found a place down the road where the fish is more frequent.’
‘What I’ve got against cats,’ said a Lemon Sour, speaking feelingly, as one brooding on a private grievance, ‘is their unreliability. They lack candour and are not square shooters. You get your cat and you call him Thomas or George, as the case may be. So far, so good. Then one morning you wake up and find six kittens in the hat-box and you have to reopen the whole matter, approaching it from an entirely different angle.’
‘If you want to know what’s the trouble with cats,’ said a red-faced man with glassy eyes, who had been rapping on the table for his fourth whisky, ‘they’ve got no tact. That’s what’s the trouble with them. I remember a friend of mine had a cat. Made quite a pet of that cat, he did. And what occurred? What was the outcome? One night he came home rather late and was feeling for the keyhole with his corkscrew; and, believe me or not, his cat selected that precise moment to jump on the back of his neck out of a tree. No tact.’
Mr Mulliner shook his head. ‘I grant you all this,’ he said, ‘but still, in my opinion, you have not got quite to the root of the matter. The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority. Cats, as a class, have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. This makes them too prone to set themselves up as critics and censors of the frail and erring human beings whose lot they share. They stare rebukingly. They view with concern. And on a sensitive man this often has the worst effects, inducing an inferiority complex of the gravest kind. It is odd that the conversation should have taken this turn,’ said Mr Mulliner, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon, ‘for I was thinking only this afternoon of the rather strange case of my cousin Edward’s son, Lancelot.’
‘I knew a cat—’ began a Small Bass.
My cousin Edward’s son, Lancelot (said Mr Mulliner) was, at the time of which I speak, a comely youth of some twenty-five summers. Orphaned at an early age, he had been brought up in the home of his Uncle Theodore, the saintly Dean of Bolsover; and it was a great shock to that good man when Lancelot, on attaining his majority, wrote from London to inform him that he had taken a studio in Bott Street, Chelsea, and proposed to remain in the metropolis and become an artist.
The Dean’s opinion of artists was low.
As a prominent member of the Bolsover Watch Committee, it had recently been his distasteful duty to be present at a private showing of the super-super-film, ‘Palettes of Passion’; and he replied to his nephew’s communication with a vibrant letter in which he emphasized the grievous pain it gave him to think that one of his flesh and blood should deliberately be embarking on a career which must inevitably lead sooner or later to the painting of Russian princesses lying on divans in the semi-nude with their arms round tame jaguars. He urged Lancelot to return and become a curate while there was yet time.
But Lancelot was firm. He deplored the rift between himself and a relative whom he had always respected; but he was dashed if he meant to go back to an environment where his individuality had been stifled and his soul confined in chains.
And for four years there was silence between uncle and nephew. During these years Lancelot had made progress in his chosen profession. At the time at which this story opens, his prospects seemed bright. He was painting the portrait of Brenda, only daughter of Mr and Mrs B. B. Carberry-Pirbright, of 11 , Maxton Square, South Kensington, which meant thirty pounds in his sock on delivery. He had learned to cook eggs and bacon. He had practically mastered the ukulele. And, in addition, he was engaged to be married to a fearless young vers libre poetess of the name of Gladys Bingley, better known as The Sweet Singer of Garbidge Mews, Fulham — a charming girl who looked like a pen-wiper.
It seemed to Lancelot that life was very full and beautiful. He lived joyously in the present, giving no thought to the past. But how true it is that the past is inextricably mixed up with the present and that we can never tell when it may not spring some delayed bomb beneath our feet.
One afternoon, as he sat making a few small alterations in the portrait of Brenda Carberry-Pirbright, his fiancée entered. He had been expecting her to call, for to-day she was going off for a three weeks’ holiday to the South of France, and she had promised to look in on her way to the station. He laid down his brush and gazed at her with a yearning affection, thinking for the thousandth time how he worshipped every spot of ink on her nose. Standing there in the doorway with her bobbed hair sticking out in every direction, she made a picture that seemed to speak to his very depths.
‘Hullo, Reptile!’ he said lovingly.
‘What ho, Worm!’ said Gladys, maidenly devotion shining through the monocle which she wore in her left eye.
‘I can stay just half an hour.’
‘Oh, well, half an hour soon passes,’ said Lancelot.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
A letter, ass. What did you think it was?’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘I found the postman outside.’
Lancelot took the envelope from her and examined it.
‘Gosh!’ he said.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s from my Uncle Theodore.’
‘I didn’t know you had an Uncle Theodore.’
‘Of course I have. I’ve had him for years.’
‘What’s he writing to you about?’
‘If you’ll kindly keep quiet for two seconds, if you know how,’ said Lancelot, ‘I’ll tell you.’
And in a clear voice which, like that of all the Mulliners, however distant from the main branch, was beautifully modulated, he read as follows:
‘The Deanery,
‘Bolsover,
‘Wilts.
‘Bolsover,
‘Wilts.
MY DEAR LANCELOT,
As you have, no doubt, already learned from your Church Times, I have been offered and have accepted the vacant Bishopric of Bongo-Bongo in West Africa. I sail immediately to take up my new duties, which I trust will be blessed.
In these circumstances, it becomes necessary for me to find a good home for my cat Webster. It is, alas, out of the question that he should accompany me, as the rigours of the climate and the lack of essential comforts might well sap a constitution which has never been robust.
I am dispatching him, therefore, to your address, my dear boy, in a straw-lined hamper, in the full confidence that you will prove a kindly and conscientious host. ‘With cordial good wishes, ‘Your affectionate uncle,
THEODORE BONGO-BONGO .’
For some moments after he had finished reading this communication, a thoughtful silence prevailed in the studio.
Finally Gladys spoke.
‘Of all the nerve!’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t do it.’
‘Why not?’
‘What do you want with a cat?’ Lancelot reflected.
‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that, given a free hand, I would prefer not to have my studio turned into a cattery or cat-bin. But consider the special circumstances. Relations between Uncle Theodore and self have for the last few years been a bit strained. In fact, you might say we had definitely patted brass-rags. It looks to me as if he were coming round. I should describe this letter as more or less what, you might call an olive-branch. If I lush this cat up satisfactorily, shall I not be in a position later on to make a swift touch?’
‘He is rich, this bean?’ said Gladys, interested.
‘Extremely.’
‘Then,’ said Gladys, ‘consider my objections withdrawn.
A good stout cheque from a grateful cat-fancier would undoubtedly come in very handy. We might be able to get married this year.’
‘Exactly,’ said Lancelot. A pretty loathsome prospect, of course, but still, as we’ve arranged to do it, the sooner we get it over, the better, what?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Then that’s settled. I accept custody of cat.’
‘It’s the only thing to do,’ said Gladys.
‘Meanwhile, can you lend me a comb? Have you such a thing in your bedroom?’
‘What do you want with a comb?’
‘I got some soup in my hair at lunch. I won’t be a minute.’
She hurried out, and Lancelot, taking up the letter again, found that he had omitted to read a continuation of it on the back page.
It was to the following effect:
‘P.S. In establishing Webster in your home, I am actuated by another motive than the simple desire to see to it that my faithful friend and companion is adequately provided for.
From both a moral and an educative standpoint, I am convinced that Webster’s society will prove of inestimable value to you. His advent, indeed, I venture to hope, will be a turning-point in your life. Thrown, as you must be, incessantly among loose and immoral Bohemians, you will find in this cat an example of upright conduct which cannot but act as an antidote to the poison cup of temptation which is, no doubt, hourly pressed to your lips.
P.P.S. Cream only at midday, and fish not more than three times a week.’
He was reading these words for the second time, when the front door-bell rang and he found a man on the steps with a hamper. A discreet mew from within revealed its contents, and Lancelot, carrying it into the studio, cut the strings.
‘Hi!’ he bellowed, going to the door.
‘What’s up?’ shrieked his betrothed from above.
‘The cat’s come.’
‘All right. I’ll be down in a jiffy.’
Lancelot returned to the studio.
‘What ho, Webster!’ he said cheerily. ‘How’s the boy?’ The cat did not reply. It was sitting with bent head, performing that wash and brush up which a journey by rail renders so necessary.
In order to facilitate these toilet operations, it had raised its left leg and was holding it rigidly in the air. And there flashed into Lancelot’s mind an old superstition handed on to him, for what it was worth, by one of the nurses of his infancy. If, this woman had said, you creep up to a cat when its leg is in the air and give it a pull, then you make a wish and your wish comes true in thirty days.
It was a pretty fancy, and it seemed to Lancelot that the theory might as well be put to the test. He advanced warily, therefore, and was in the act of extending his fingers for the pub, when Webster, lowering the leg, turned and raised his eyes.
He looked at Lancelot. And suddenly with sickening force, there came to Lancelot the realization of the unpardonable liberty he had been about to take.
Until this moment, though the postscript to his uncle’s letter should have warned him, Lancelot Mulliner had had no suspicion of what manner of cat this was that he had taken into his home. Now, for the first time, he saw him steadily and saw him whole.
Webster was very large and very black and very composed. He conveyed the impression of being a cat of deep reserves. Descendant of a long line of ecclesiastical ancestors who had conducted their decorous courtships beneath the shadow of cathedrals and on the back walls of bishops’ palaces, he had that exquisite poise which one sees in high dignitaries of the church. His eyes were clear and steady, and seemed to pierce to the very roots of the young man’s soul, filling him with a sense of guilt.
Once, long ago, in his hot childhood, Lancelot, spending his summer holidays at the deanery, had been so far carried away by ginger-beer and original sin as to plug a senior canon in the leg with his air-gun — only to discover, on turning, that a visiting archdeacon had been a spectator of the entire incident from his immediate rear. As he had felt then, when meeting the archdeacon’s eye, so did he feel now as Webster’s gaze played silently upon him.
Webster, it is true, had not actually raised his eyebrows. But this, Lancelot felt, was simply because he hadn’t any.
He backed, blushing.
‘Sorry!’ he muttered.
There was a pause. Webster continued his steady scrutiny. Lancelot edged towards the door.
‘Er — excuse me — just a moment…’ he mumbled. And, sidling from the room, he ran distractedly upstairs.
‘I say,’ said Lancelot.
‘Now what?’ asked Gladys.
‘Have you finished with the mirror?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I — er — I thought,’ said Lancelot, ‘that I might as well have a shave.’
The girl looked at him, astonished.
‘Shave? Why, you shaved only the day before yesterday.’
‘I know. But, all the same… I mean to say, it seems only respectful. That cat, I mean.
‘What about him?’
‘Well, he seems to expect it, somehow. Nothing actually said, don’t you know, but you could tell by his manner. I thought a quick shave and perhaps change into my blue serge suit—’
‘He’s probably thirsty. Why don’t you give him some milk?’
‘Could one, do you think?’ said Lancelot doubtfully. ‘I mean, I hardly seem to know him well enough.’ He paused. ‘I say, old girl,’ he went on, with a touch of hesitation.
‘Hullo?’
‘I know you won’t mind my mentioning it, but you’ve got a few spots of ink on your nose.’
‘Of course I have. I always have spots of ink on my nose.’
‘Well… you don’t think… a quick scrub with a bit of pumice-stone… I mean to say, you know how important first impressions are….’
The girl stared.
‘Lancelot Mulliner,’ she said, ‘if you think I’m going to skin my nose to the bone just to please a mangy cat—’
‘Sh!’ cried Lancelot, in agony.
‘Here, let me go down and look at him,’ said Gladys petulantly.
As they re-entered the studio, Webster was gazing with an air of quiet distaste at an illustration from La Vie Parisienne which adorned one of the walls. Lancelot tore it down hastily.
Gladys looked at Webster in an unfriendly way.
‘So that’s the blighter!’
‘Sh!’
‘If you want to know what I think,’ said Gladys, ‘that cat’s been living too high. Doing himself a dashed sight too well. You’d better cut his rations down a bit.’
In substance, her criticism was not unjustified. Certainly, there was about Webster more than a suspicion of embonpoint. He had that air of portly well-being which we associate with those who dwell in cathedral closes. But Lancelot winced uncomfortably. He had so hoped that Gladys would make a good impression, and here she was, starting right off by saying the tactless thing.
He longed to explain to Webster that it was only her way; that in the Bohemian circles of which she was such an ornament genial chaff of a personal order was accepted and, indeed, relished. But it was too late. The mischief had been done. Webster turned in a pointed manner and withdrew silently behind the chesterfield.
Gladys, all unconscious, was making preparations for departure.
‘Well, bung-oh,’ she said, lightly. ‘See you in three weeks. I suppose you and that cat’ll both be out on the tiles the moment my back’s turned.’
‘Please! Please!’ moaned Lancelot. ‘Please!’
He had caught sight of the tip of a black tail protruding from behind the chesterfield. It was twitching slightly, and Lancelot could read it like a book. With a sickening sense of dismay, he knew that Webster had formed a snap judgment of his fiancée and condemned her as frivolous and unworthy.
It was some ten days later that Bernard Worple, the neo-Vorticist sculptor, lunching at the Puce Ptarmigan, ran into Rodney Scollop, the powerful young surrealist. And after talking for a while of their art— ‘What’s all this I hear about Lancelot Mulliner?’ asked Worple. ‘There’s a wild story going about that he was seen shaved in the middle of the week. Nothing in it, I suppose?’
Scollop looked grave. He had been on the point of mentioning Lancelot himself, for he loved the lad and was deeply exercised about him.
‘It is perfectly true,’ he said.
‘It sounds incredible.’
Scollop leaned forward. His fine face was troubled.
‘Shall I tell you something, Worple?’
‘What?’
‘I know for an absolute fact,’ said Scollop, ‘that Lancelot Mulliner now shaves every morning.’
Worple pushed aside the spaghetti which he was wreathing about him and through the gap stared at his companion.
‘Every morning?’
‘Every single morning. I looked in on him myself the other day, and there he was, neatly dressed in blue serge and shaved to the core. And, what is more, I got the distinct impression that he had used talcum powder afterwards.’
‘You don’t mean that!’
‘I do. And shall I tell you something else? There was a book lying open on the table. He tried to hide it, but he wasn’t quick enough. It was one of those etiquette books!’
‘An etiquette book!’
‘“Polite Behaviour”, by Constance, Lady Bodbank.’
Worple unwound a stray tendril of spaghetti from about his left ear. He was deeply agitated. Like Scollop, he loved Lancelot.
‘He’ll be dressing for dinner next!’ he exclaimed.
‘I have every reason to believe,’ said Scollop gravely, ‘that he does dress for dinner. At any rate, a man closely resembling him was seen furtively buying three stiff collars and a black tie at Hope Brothers in the King’s Road last Tuesday.’
Worple pushed his chair back, and rose. His manner was determined.
‘Scollop,’ he said, ‘we are friends of Mulliner’s, you and I. It is evident from what you tell me that subversive influences are at work and that never has he needed our friendship more. Shall we not go round and see him immediately?’
‘It was what I was about to suggest myself,’ said Rodney Scollop.
Twenty minutes later they were in Lancelot’s studio, and with a significant glance Scollop drew his companion’s notice to their host’s appearance. Lancelot Mulliner was neatly, even foppishly, dressed in blue serge with creases down the trouser-legs, and his chin, Worple saw with a pang, gleamed smoothly in the afternoon light.
At the sight of his friends’ cigars, Lancelot exhibited unmistakable concern.
‘You don’t mind throwing those away, I’m sure,’ he said pleadingly.
Rodney Scollop drew himself up a little haughtily.
‘And since when,’ he asked, ‘have the best fourpenny cigars in Chelsea not been good enough for you?’
Lancelot hastened to soothe him.
‘It isn’t me,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Webster. My cat. I happen to know he objects to tobacco smoke. I had to give up my pipe in deference to his views.’
Bernard Worple snorted.
‘Are you trying to tell us,’ he sneered, ‘that Lancelot Mulliner allows himself to be dictated to by a blasted cat?’
‘Hush!’ cried Lancelot, trembling. ‘If you knew how he disapproves of strong language!’
‘Where is this cat?’ asked Rodney Scollop. ‘Is that the animal?’ he said,, pointing out of the window to where, in the yard, a tough-looking Tom with tattered ears stood mewing in a hard-boiled way out of the corner of its mouth.
‘Good heavens, no!’ said Lancelot. ‘That is an alley cat which comes round here from time to time to lunch at the dust-bin. Webster is quite different. Webster has a natural dignity and repose of manner. Webster is a cat who prides himself on always being well turned out and whose high principles and lofty ideals shine from his eyes like beacon-fires….’ And then suddenly, with an abrupt change of manner, Lancelot broke down and in a low voice added: ‘Curse him! Curse him! Curse him! Curse him!’
Worple looked at Scollop. Scollop looked at Worple.
‘Come, old man,’ said Scollop, laying a gentle hand on Lancelot’s bowed shoulder. ‘We are your friends. Confide in us.
‘Tell us all,’ said Worple. ‘What’s the matter?’
Lancelot uttered a bitter, mirthless laugh.
‘You want to know what’s the matter? Listen, then. I’m cat-pecked!’
‘Cat-pecked?’
‘You’ve heard of men being hen-pecked, haven’t you?’ said Lancelot with a touch of irritation. ‘Well, I’m cat-pecked.’
And in broken accents he told his story. He sketched the history of his association with Webster from the letter’s first entry into the studio. Confident now that the animal was not within earshot, he unbosomed himself without reserve.
‘It’s something in the beast’s eye,’ he said in a shaking voice. ‘Something hypnotic. He casts a spell upon me. He gazes at me and disapproves. Little by little, bit by bit, I am degenerating under his influence from a wholesome, self-respecting artist into… well, I don’t know what you would call it. Suffice it to say that I have given up smoking, that I have ceased to wear carpet slippers and go about without a collar, that I never dream of sitting down to my frugal evening meal without dressing, and’ — he choked — ‘I have sold my ukulele.’
‘Not that!’ said Worple, paling.
‘Yes,’ said Lancelot. ‘I felt he considered it frivolous.’
There was a long silence.
‘Mulliner,’ said Scollop, ‘this is more serious than I had supposed. We must brood upon your case.’
‘It may be possible,’ said Worple, ‘to find a way out.’
Lancelot shook his head hopelessly.
‘There is no way out. I have explored every avenue. The only thing that could possibly free me from this intolerable bondage would, be if once —just once — I could catch that cat unbending. If once — merely once — it would lapse in my presence from its austere dignity for but a single instant, I feel that the spell would be broken. But what hope is there of that?’ cried Lancelot passionately. ‘You were pointing just now to that alley cat in the yard. There stands one who has strained every nerve and spared no effort to break down Webster’s inhuman self-control. I have heard that animal say things to him which you would think no cat with red blood in its veins would suffer for an instant. And, Webster merely looks at him like a Suffragan Bishop eyeing an erring choir-boy and turns his head and falls into a refreshing sleep.’
He broke off with a dry sob. Worple, always an optimist, attempted in his kindly way to minimize the tragedy.
‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘It’s bad, of course, but still, I suppose there no actual harm in shaving and dressing for dinner and so on. Many great artists… Whistler, for example—’
‘Wait!’ cried Lancelot. ‘You have not heard the worst.’
He rose feverishly, and, going to the easel, disclosed the portrait of Brenda Carberry-Pirbright.
‘Take a look at that,’ he said, ‘and tell me what you think of her.’
His two friends surveyed the face before them in silence. Miss Carberry-Pirbright was a young woman of prim and glacial aspect. One sought in vain for her reasons for wanting to have her portrait painted. It would be a most unpleasant thing to have about any house.
Scollop broke the silence.
‘Friend of yours?’
‘I can’t stand the sight of her,’ said Lancelot vehemently.
‘Then,’ said Scollop, ‘I may speak frankly. I think she’s a pill.’
‘A blister,’ said Worple.
‘A boil and a disease,’ said Scollop, summing up.
Lancelot laughed hackingly.
‘You have described her to a nicety. She stands for everything most alien to my artist soul. She gives me a pain in the neck. I’m going to marry her.’
‘What!’ cried Scollop.
‘But you’re going to marry Gladys Bingley,’ said Worple.
‘Webster thinks not,’ said Lancelot bitterly. ‘At their first meeting he weighed Gladys in the balance and found her wanting. And the moment he saw Brenda Carberry-Pirbright he stuck his tail up at right angles, uttered a cordial gargle, and rubbed his head against her leg. Then, turning, he looked at me. I could read that glance. I knew what was in his mind. From that moment he has been doing everything in his power to arrange the match.’
‘But, Mulliner,’ said Worple, always eager to point out the bright side, ‘why should this girl want to marry a wretched, scrubby, hard-up footler like you? Have courage, Mulliner. It is simply a question of time before you repel and sicken her.’
Lancelot shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You speak like a true friend, Worple, but you do not understand,. Old Ma Carberry-Pirbright, this exhibit’s mother, who chaperons her at the sittings, discovered at an early date my relationship to my Uncle Theodore, who, as you know, has got it in gobs. She knows well enough that some day I shall be a rich man. She used to know my Uncle Theodore when he was Vicar of St Botolph’s in Knightsbridge, and from the very first she assumed towards me the repellent chumminess of an old family friend. She was always trying to lure me to her At Homes, her Sunday luncheons, her little dinners. Once she actually suggested that I should escort her and her beastly daughter to the Royal Academy.’
He laughed bitterly. The mordant witticisms of Lancelot Mulliner at the expense of the Royal Academy were quoted from Tite Street in the south to Holland Park in the north and eastward as far as Bloomsbury.
‘To all these overtures,’ resumed Lancelot, ‘I remained firmly unresponsive. My attitude was from the start one of frigid aloofness. I did not actually say in so many words that I would rather be dead in a ditch than at one of her At Homes, but my manner indicated it. And I was just beginning to think I had choked her off when in crashed Webster and upset everything. Do you know how many times I have been to that infernal house in the last week? Five. Webster seemed to wish it. I tell you, I am a lost man.’
He buried his face in his hands. Scollop touched Worple on the arm, and together the two men stole silently out.
‘Bad!’ said Worple.
‘Very bad,’ said Scollop.
‘It seems incredible.’
‘Oh, no. Cases of this kind are, alas, by no means uncommon among those who, like Mulliner, possess to a marked degree the highly-strung, ultra-sensitive artistic temperament. A friend of mine, a rhythmical interior decorator, once rashly consented to put his aunt’s parrot up at his studio while she was away visiting friends in the north of England. She was a woman of strong evangelical views, which the bird had imbibed from her. It had a way of puffing its head on one side, making a noise like some one drawing a cork from a bottle, and asking my friend if he was saved. To cut a long story short, I happened to call on him a month later and he had installed a harmonium in his studio and was singing hymns, ancient and modern, in a rich tenor, while the parrot, standing on one leg on its perch, took the bass. Avery sad affair. We were all much upset about it.’
Worple shuddered.
‘You appal me, Scollop! Is there nothing we can do?’ Rodney Scollop considered for a moment. ‘We might wire Gladys Bingley to come home at once. She might possibly reason with the unhappy man. -A woman’s gentle influence… Yes, we could do that. Look in at the post office on your way home and send Gladys a telegram. I’ll owe you for my half of it.’
In the studio they had left, Lancelot Mulliner was staring dumbly at a black shape which had just entered the room. He had the appearance of a man with his back to the wall.
‘No!’ he was crying. ‘No! I’m dashed if I do!’ Webster continued to look at him.
‘Why should I?’ demanded Lancelot weakly. Webster’s gaze did not flicker.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Lancelot sullenly.
He passed from the room with leaden feet, and, proceeding upstairs, changed into morning clothes and a top hat. Then, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, he made his way to 11, Maxton Square, where Mrs Carberry-Pirbright was giving one of her intimate little teas (‘just a few friends’) to meet Clara Throckmorton Stooge, authoress of ‘A Strong Man’s Kiss’.
Gladys Bingley was lunching at her hotel in Antibes when Worple’s telegram arrived. It occasioned her the gravest concern.
Exactly what it was all about, she was unable to gather, for emotion had made Bernard Worple rather incoherent. There were moments, reading it, when she fancied that Lancelot had met with a serious accident; others when the solution seemed to be that he had sprained his brain to such an extent that rival lunatic asylums were competing eagerly for his custom; others, again, when Worple appeared to be suggesting that he had gone into partnership with his cat to start a harem. But one fact emerged clearly. Her loved one was in serious trouble of some kind, and his best friends were agreed that only her immediate return could save him.
Gladys did not hesitate. Within half an hour of the receipt of the telegram she had packed her trunk, removed a piece of asparagus from her right eyebrow, and was negotiating for accommodation on the first train going north.
Arriving in London, her first impulse was to go straight to Lancelot. But a natural feminine curiosity urged her, before doing so, to call upon Bernard Worple and have light thrown on some of the more abstruse passages in the telegram.
Worple, in his capacity of author, may have tended towards obscurity, but, when confining himself to the spoken word, he told a plain story well and clearly. Five minutes of his society enabled Gladys to obtain a firm grasp on the salient facts, and there appeared on her face that grim, tight-lipped expression which is seen only on the faces of fiancées who have come back from a short holiday to discover that their dear one has been straying in their absence from the straight and narrow path.
‘Brenda Carberry-Pirbright, eh?’ said Gladys, with ominous calm. ‘I’ll give him Brenda Carberry-Pirbright! My gosh, if one can’t go off to Antibes for the merest breather without having one’s betrothed getting it up his nose and starting to act like a Mormon Elder, it begins to look a pretty tough world for a girl.’
Kind-hearted Bernard Worple did his best.
‘I blame the cat,’ he said. ‘Lancelot, to my mind,, is more sinned against than sinning. I consider him to be acting under undue influence or duress.’
‘How like a man!’ said Gladys. ‘Shoving it all off on to an innocent cat!’
‘Lancelot says it has a sort of something in its eye.’
‘Well, when I meet Lancelot,’ said Gladys, ‘he’ll find that I have a sort of something in my eye.’
She went out, breathing flame quietly through her nostrils. Worple, saddened, heaved a sigh and resumed his neo-Vorticist sculpting.
It was some five minutes later that Gladys, passing through Maxton Square on her way to Bott Street, stopped suddenly in her tracks. The sight she had seen was enough to make any fiancée do so.
Along the pavement leading to Number Eleven two figures were advancing. Or three, if you counted a morose-looking dog of a semi-Dachshund nature which preceded them, attached to a leash. One of the figures was that of Lancelot Mulliner, natty in grey herring-bone tweed and a new Homburg hat. It was he who held the leash. The other Gladys recognized from the portrait which she had seen on Lancelot’s easel as that modern Du Barry, that notorious wrecker of homes and breaker-up of love-nests, Brenda Carberry-Pirbright.
The next moment they had mounted the steps of Number Eleven, and had gone in to tea, possibly with a little music.
It was perhaps an hour and a half later that Lancelot, having wrenched himself with difficulty from the lair of the Philistines, sped homeward in a swift taxi. As always after an extended tête-à-tête with Miss Carberry-Pirbright, he felt dazed and bewildered, as if he had been swimming in a sea of glue and had swallowed a good deal of it. All he could think of dearly was that he wanted a drink and that the materials for that drink were in the cupboard behind the chesterfield in his studio.
He paid the cab and charged in with his tongue rattling dryly against his front teeth. And there before him was Gladys Bingley, whom he had supposed far, far away.
‘You!’ exclaimed Lancelot.
‘Yes, me!’ said Gladys.
Her long vigil had not helped to restore the girl’s equanimity. Since arriving at the studio she had had leisure to tap her foot three thousand, one hundred and forty-two times on the carpet, and the number of bitter smiles which had flitted across her face was nine hundred and eleven. She was about ready for the battle of the century.
She rose and faced him, all the woman in her flashing from her eyes.
‘Well, you Casanova!’ she said.
‘You who?’ said Lancelot.
‘Don’t say “Yoo-hoo!” to me!’ cried Gladys. ‘Keep that for your Brenda Carberry-Pirbrights. Yes, I know all about it, Lancelot Don Juan Henry the Eighth Mulliner! I saw you with her just now. I hear that you and she are inseparable. Bernard Worple says you said you were going to marry her.’
‘You mustn’t believe everything a neo-Vorticist sculptor tells you,’ quavered Lancelot.
‘I’ll bet you’re going back to dinner there to-night,’ said Gladys.
She had spoken at a venture, basing the charge purely on a possessive cock of the head which she had noticed in Brenda Carberry-Pirbright at their recent encounter. There, she had said to herself at the time, had gone a girl who was about to invite — or had just invited — Lancelot Mulliner to dine quietly and take her to the pictures afterwards. But the shot went home. Lancelot hung his head.
‘There was some talk of it,’ he admitted.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Gladys.
Lancelot’s eyes were haggard.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he pleaded. ‘Honestly I don’t. But Webster insists.’
‘Webster!’
‘Yes, Webster. If I attempt to evade the appointment, he will sit in front of me and look at me.’
‘Tchah!’
‘Well, he will. Ask him for yourself.’
Gladys tapped her foot six times in rapid succession on the carpet, bringing the total to three thousand, one hundred and forty-eight. Her manner had changed and was now dangerously calm.
‘Lancelot Mulliner,’ she said, ‘you have your choice. Me, on the one hand, Brenda Carberry-Pirbright on the other. I offer you a home where you will be able to smoke in bed, spill the ashes on the floor, wear pyjamas and carpet-slippers all day and shave only on Sunday mornings. From her, what have you to hope? A house in South Kensington — possibly the Brompton Road — probably with her mother living with you. A life that will be one long round of stiff collars and tight shoes, of morning-coats and top hats.’
Lancelot quivered, but she went on remorselessly.
‘You will be at home on alternate Thursdays, and will be expected to hand the cucumber sandwiches. Every day you will air the dog, till you become a confirmed dog-airer. You will dine out in Bayswater and go for the summer to Bournemouth or Dinard. Choose well, Lancelot Mulliner! I will leave you to think it over. But one last word. If by seven-thirty on the dot you have not presented yourself at 6A, Garbidge Mews ready to take me out to dinner at the Ham and Beef, I shall know what to think and shall act accordingly.’
And brushing the cigarette ashes from her chin, the girl strode haughtily from the room.
‘Gladys!’ cried Lancelot.
But she had gone.
For some minutes Lancelot Mulliner remained where he was, stunned. Then, insistently, there came to him the recollection that he had not had that drink. He rushed to the cupboard and produced the bottle. He uncorked it, and was pouring out a lavish stream, when a movement on the floor below him attracted his attention.
Webster was standing there, looking up at him. And in his eyes was that familiar expression of quiet rebuke.
‘Scarcely what I have been accustomed to at the Deanery,’ he seemed to be saying.
Lancelot stood paralysed. The feeling of being bound hand and foot, of being caught in a snare from which there was no escape, had become more poignant than ever. The bottle fell from his nerveless fingers and rolled across the floor, spilling its contents in an amber river, but he was too heavy in spirit to notice it. With a gesture such as Job might have made on discovering a new boil, he crossed to the window and stood looking moodily out.
Then, turning with a sigh, he looked at Webster again — and, looking, stood spellbound.
The spectacle which he beheld was of a kind to stun a stronger man than Lancelot Mulliner. At first, he shrank from believing his eyes. Then, slowly, came the realization that what he saw was no mere figment of a disordered imagination. This unbelievable thing was actually happening.
Webster sat crouched upon the floor beside the widening pool of whisky. But it was not horror and disgust that had caused him to crouch. He was crouched because, crouching, he could get nearer to the stuff and obtain crisper action. His tongue was moving in and out like a piston. And then abruptly, for one fleeting instant, he stopped lapping and glanced up at Lancelot, and across his face there flitted a quick smile — so genial, so intimate, so full of jovial camaraderie, that the young man found himself automatically smiling back, and not only smiling but winking. And in answer to that wink Webster winked, too — a wholehearted, roguish wink that said as plainly as if he had spoken the words:
‘How long has this been going on?’
Then with a slight hiccough he turned back to the task of getting his quick before it soaked into the floor.
Into the murky soul of Lancelot Mulliner there poured a sudden flood of sunshine. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. The intolerable obsession of the last two weeks had ceased to oppress him, and he felt a free man. At the eleventh hour the reprieve had come. Webster, that seeming pillar of austere virtue, was one of the boys, after all. Never again would Lancelot quail beneath his eye. He had the goods on him.
Webster, like the stag at eve, had now drunk his fill. He had left the pool of alcohol and was walking round in slow, meditative circles. From time to time he mewed tentatively, as if he were trying to say ‘British Constitution’. His failure to articulate the syllables appeared to tickle him, for at the end of each attempt he would utter a slow, amused chuckle. It was at about this moment that he suddenly broke into a rhythmic dance, not unlike the old Saraband.
It was an interesting spectacle, and at any other time Lancelot would have watched it raptly. But now he was busy at his desk, writing a brief note to Mrs Carberry-Pirbright, the burden of which was that if she thought he was coming within a mile of her foul house that night or any other night she had vastly underrated the dodging powers of Lancelot Mulliner.
And what of Webster? The Demon Rum now had him in an iron grip. A lifetime of abstinence had rendered him a ready victim to the fatal fluid. He had now reached the stage when geniality gives way to belligerence. The rather foolish smile had gone from his face, and in its stead there lowered a fighting frown. For a few moments he stood on his hind legs, looking about him for a suitable adversary: then, losing all vestiges of self-control, he ran five times round the room at a high rate of speed and, falling foul of a small footstool, attacked it with the utmost ferocity, sparing neither tooth nor claw.
But Lancelot did not see him. Lancelot was not there. Lancelot was out in Bott Street, hailing a cab.
‘6 A, Garbidge Mews, Fulham,’ said Lancelot to the driver.
By PG Wodehouse, From Mulliner Nights, 1933