Mulliner Nights (10 page)

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

S
ome
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 as
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.

‘Tell me,
Clarice,’ he said, ‘why is it that you spurn a fellow’s suit? I can’t for the
life of me see why you won’t consent to marry a chap. It isn’t as if I hadn’t
asked you often enough. Playing fast and loose with a good man’s love is the
way I look at it.’

And he gazed
at her in a way that was partly melting and partly suggestive of the dominant
male. And Clarice Mallaby gave one of those light, tinkling laughs and replied:

‘Well, if you
really want to know, you’re such an ass.’

Mervyn could
make nothing of this.

‘An ass? How
do you mean an ass? Do you mean a silly ass?’

‘I mean a
goof,’ said the girl. A gump. A poop. A nitwit and a returned empty. Your name
came up the other day in the course of conversation at home, and mother said
you were a vapid and irreflective guffin, totally lacking in character and
purpose.’

‘Oh?’ said
Mervyn. ‘She did, did she?’

‘She did. And
while it isn’t often that I think along the same lines as mother, there — for
once — I consider her to have hit the bull’s-eye, rung the bell, and to be
entitled to a cigar or coco-nut, according to choice. It seemed to me what they
call the
mot juste.’

‘Indeed?’ said
Mervyn, nettled. ‘Well, let me tell you something. When it comes to discussing
brains, your mother, in my opinion, would do better to recede modestly into the
background and not try to set herself up as an authority. I strongly suspect
her of being the woman who was seen in Charing Cross Station the other day,
asking a potter if he could direct her to Charing Cross Station. And, in the
second place,’ said Mervyn, ‘I’ll show you if I haven’t got character and
purpose. Set me some quest, like the knights of old, and see how quick I’ll
deliver the goods as per esteemed order.’

‘How do you
mean — a quest?’

‘Why, bid me
do something for you, or get something for you, or buff somebody in the eye for
you. You know the procedure.’

Clarice
thought for a moment. Then she said:

All my life I’ve
wanted to eat strawberries in the middle of winter. Get me a basket of
strawberries before the end of the month and we’ll take up this matrimonial
proposition of yours in a spirit of serious research.’

‘Strawberries?’
said Mervyn.

‘Strawberries.’

Mervyn gulped
a little.

‘Strawberries?’

‘But, I say,
dash it!
Strawberries?’

‘Strawberries,’
said Clarice.

And then at
last Mervyn, reading between the lines, saw that what she wanted was
strawberries. And how he was to get any in December was more than he could have
told you.

‘I could do
you oranges,’ he said.

‘Strawberries.’

‘Or nuts. You
wouldn’t prefer a nice nut?’

‘Strawberries,’
said the girl firmly. ‘And you’re jolly lucky, my lad, not to be sent off after
the Holy Grail or something, or told to pluck me a sprig of edelweiss from the
top of the Alps. Mind you, I’m not saying yes and I’m not saying no, but this I
will say— that if you bring me that basket of strawberries in the stated time,
I shall know that there’s more in you than sawdust — which the casual observer
wouldn’t believe — and I will reopen your case and examine it thoroughly in the
light of the fresh evidence. Whereas, if you fail to deliver the fruit, I shall
know that mother was right, and you can jolly well make up your mind to doing
without my society from now on.’

Here she
stopped to take in breath, and Mervyn, after a lengthy pause, braced himself up
and managed to utter a brave laugh. It was a little roopy, if not actually
hacking, but he did it.

‘Right-ho,’ he
said. ‘Right-ho. If that’s the way you feel, well, to put it in a nutshell,
right-ho.’

My cousin’s
son Mervyn passed a restless night that night, tossing on the pillow not a
little, and feverishly at that. If this girl had been a shade less attractive,
he told himself, he would have sent her a telegram telling her to go to the
dickens. But, as it so happened, she was not; so the only thing that remained
for him to do was to pull up the old socks and take a stab at the programme, as
outlined. And he was sipping his morning cup of tea, when something more or
less resembling an idea came to him.

He reasoned
thus. The wise man, finding himself in a dilemma, consults an expert. If, for
example, some knotty point of the law has arisen, he will proceed immediately
in search of a legal expert, bring out his eight-and-six, and put the problem
up to him. If it is a cross-word puzzle and he is stuck for the word in three
letters, beginning with E and ending with U and meaning ‘large Australian bird’,
he places the matter in the hands of the editor of the
Encyclopædia
Britannica.