Mulliner Nights (18 page)

Wittleford-cum-Bagsley-on-Sea,
so I am informed by those who have visited it, is not a Paris or a pre-War
Vienna. In fact, once the visitor has strolled along the pier and put pennies
in the slot machines, he has shot his bolt as far as the hectic whirl of
pleasure, for which the younger generation is so avid, is concerned.

Nevertheless,
Eustace found himself quite looking forward to the trip. Apart from the fact
that he would be getting himself in solid with a woman who combined the
possession of a hundred thousand pounds in Home Rails with a hereditary
tendency to rheumatic trouble of the heart, it was pleasant to reflect that in
about twenty-four hours from the time he started the girl Beatrice would have
called at the empty flat and gone away in a piqued and raised-eyebrow
condition, leaving him free to express his individuality in the matter of the
girl Marcella.

He whistled
gaily as he watched Blenkinsop pack.

‘You have
thoroughly grasped the programme outlined for the period of my absence,
Blenkinsop?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Take Master
Reginald for the daily stroll.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘See that
Master William does his fluttering.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And don’t get
them mixed. I mean, don’t let Reginald flutter and take William for a walk.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Right!’ said
Eustace. And on Sunday, Blenkinsop — tomorrow, that is to say — a young lady
will be turning up for lunch. Explain to her that I’m not here, and give her
anything she wants.’

‘Very good,
sir.’

Eustace set
out upon his journey with a light heart. Arrived at
Wittleford-cum-Bagsley-on-Sea, he passed a restful week-end playing double
patience with his aunt, tickling her cat under the left ear from time to time,
and walking along the esplanade. On the Monday he caught the one-forty train
back to London, his aunt cordial to the last.

‘I shall be
passing through London on my way to Harrogate next Friday,’ she said, as he was
leaving. ‘Perhaps you will give me tea?’

‘I shall be
more than delighted, Aunt Georgiana,’ said Eustace. ‘It has often been a great
grief to me that you allow me so few opportunities of entertaining you in my
little home. At four-thirty next Friday. Right!’

Everything
seemed to him to be shaping so satisfactorily that his spirits were at their
highest. He sang in the train to quite a considerable extent.

‘What ho,
Blenkinsop!’ he said, entering the flat in a very nearly rollicking manner. ‘Everything
all right?’

‘Yes, sir,’
said Blenkinsop. ‘I trust that you have enjoyed an agreeable week-end, sir?’

‘Topping,’ said
Eustace. ‘How are the dumb chums?

‘Master
William is in robust health, sir.’

‘Splendid! And
Reginald?’

‘Of Master
Reginald I cannot speak with the authority of first-hand knowledge, sir, as the
young lady removed him yesterday.’

Eustace
clutched at a chair.

‘Removed him?’

‘Yes, sir.
Took him away. If you recall your parting instructions, sir, you enjoined upon
me that I should give the young lady anything she wanted. She selected Master
Reginald. She desired me to inform you that she was sorry to have missed you
but quite understood that you could not disappoint your aunt, and that, as you
insisted on giving her a birthday present, she had taken Master Reginald.’

Eustace pulled
himself together with a strong effort. He saw that nothing was to be gained by
upbraiding the man. Blenkinsop, he realized, had acted according to his lights.
He told himself that he should have remembered that his valet was of a literal
turn of mind, who always carried out instructions to the letter.

‘Get her on
the ‘phone, quick,’ he said.

‘Impossible, I
fear, sir. The young lady informed me that she was leaving for Paris by the two
o’clock train this afternoon.’

‘Then,
Blenkinsop,’ said Eustace, ‘give me a quick one.

‘Very good,
sir,’

The
restorative seemed to clear the young man’s head.

‘Blenkinsop,’
he said, ‘give me your attention. Don’t let your mind wander. We’ve got to do
some close thinking — some very close thinking.’

‘Yes, sir.’

In simple
words Eustace explained the position of affairs. Blenkinsop clicked his tongue.
Eustace held up a restraining hand.

‘Don’t do
that, Blenkinsop.’

‘No, sir.’

At any other
moment I should be delighted to listen to you giving your imitation of a man drawing
corks out of champagne bottles. But not now. Reserve it for the next party you
attend.’

‘Very good,
sir.’

Eustace
returned to the matter in hand.

‘You see the
position I am in? We must put our heads together, Blenkinsop. How can I account
satisfactorily to Miss Tyrrwhitt for the loss of her dog?’

‘Would it not
be feasible to inform the young lady that you took the animal for a walk in the
park and that it slipped its collar and ran away?’

‘Very nearly
right, Blenkinsop,’ said Eustace, ‘but not quite. What actually happened was
that you took it for a walk and, like a perfect chump, went and lost it.’

‘Well, really,
sir—’

‘Blenkinsop,’
said Eustace, ‘if there is one drop of the old -feudal spirit in your system,
now is the time to show it. Stand by me in this crisis, and you will not be the
loser.’

‘Very good,
sir.’

‘You realize,
of course, that when Miss Tyrrwhitt returns it will be necessary for me to
curse you pretty freely in her presence, but you must read between the lines
and take it all in a spirit of pure badinage.’

‘Very good,
sir.’

‘Right-ho,
then, Blenkinsop. Oh, by the way, my aunt will be coming to tea on Friday.’

‘Very good,
sir.’

These
preliminaries settled, Eustace proceeded to pave the way. He wrote a long and
well-phrased letter to Marcella, telling her that, as he was unfortunately
confined to the house with one of his bronchial colds, he had been compelled to
depute the walk-in-the-park-taking of Reginald to his man Blenkinsop, in whom
he had every confidence. He went on to say that Reginald, thanks to his
assiduous love and care, was in the enjoyment of excellent health and that he
would always look back with wistful pleasure to the memory of their long, cosy
evenings together. He drew a picture of Reginald and himself sitting side by
side in silent communion — he deep in some good book, Reginald meditating on
this and that — which almost brought the tears to his eyes.’

Nevertheless,
he was far from feeling easy in his mind. Women, he knew, in moments of mental
stress, are always apt to spray the blame a good deal. And, while Blenkinsop
would presumably get the main stream, there might well be a few drops left over
which would come in his direction.

For, if this
girl Marcella Tyrrwhitt had a defect, it was that the generous warmth of her
womanly nature led her now and then to go off the deep end somewhat heartily
She was one of those tall, dark girls with flashing eyes who tend to a certain
extent, in times of stress, to draw themselves to their full height and let
their male
vis-à-vis
have it squarely in the neck. Time had done much to
heal the wound, but he could still recall some of the things she had said to
him the night when they had arrived late at the theatre, to discover that he
had left the tickets on his sitting-room mantelpiece. In two minutes any
competent biographer would have been able to gather material for a complete
character-sketch. He had found out more about himself in that one brief
interview than in all the rest of his life.

Naturally,
therefore, he brooded a good deal during the next few days. His friends were
annoyed at this period by his absent-mindedness. He developed a habit of saying
‘What?’ with a glazed’ look in his eyes and then sinking back and draining his
glass, all of which made him something of a dead weight in general
conversation.

You would see
him sitting hunched up in a corner with his jaw drooping, and a very unpleasant
spectacle it was. His fellow-members began to complain about it. They said the
taxidermist had no right to leave him lying about the club after removing his
insides, but ought to buckle to and finish stuffing him and make a job of it.

He was sitting
like this one afternoon, when suddenly, as he raised his eyes to see if there
was a waiter handy, he caught sight of the card on the wall which bore upon it
the date and the day of the week. And the next moment a couple of
fellow-members who had thought he was dead and were just going to ring to have
him swept away were stunned to observe him leap to his feet and run swiftly
from the room.

He had just
discovered that it was Friday, the day his Aunt Georgiana was coming to tea at
his flat. And he only had about three and a half minutes before the kick-off.

A speedy cab
took him quickly home, and he was relieved, ‘on entering the flat, to find that
his aunt was not there. The tea-table had been set out, but the room was empty
except for William, who was trying over a song in his cage. Greatly relieved,
Eustace went to the cage and unhooked the door, and William, after jumping up
and down for a few moments in the eccentric way canaries do, hopped out and
started to flutter to and fro.

It was at this
moment that Blenkinsop came in with a well-laden plate.

‘Cucumber
sandwiches, sir,’ said Blenkinsop. ‘Ladies are usually strongly addicted to
them.’

Eustace
nodded. The main’s instinct had not led him astray. His aunt was ‘passionately
addicted to cucumber sandwiches. Many a time he had seen her fling herself on
them like a starving wolf.

‘Her ladyship
not arrived?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ sir.
She stepped down the street to dispatch a telegram. Would you desire me to
serve cream, sir, or will the ordinary milk suffice?’

‘Cream? Milk?’

‘I have laid
out an extra saucer.

‘Blenkinsop,’
said Eustace, passing a rather feverish hand across his brow, for he had much
to disturb him these days. ‘You appear to be talking of something, but it does
not penetrate. What is all this babble of milk and cream? Why do you speak in
riddles of extra saucers?’

‘For the cat,
sir.’

‘What cat?’

‘Her ladyship
was accompanied by her cat, Francis.’

The strained
look passed from Eustace’s face.

‘Oh? Her cat?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, in
regard to nourishment, it gets milk — the same as the rest of us — and likes
it. But serve it in the kitchen, because of the canary.’

‘Master
Francis is not in the kitchen, sir.’

‘Well, in the
pantry or my bedroom or wherever he is.’

‘When last I
saw Master Francis, sir, he was enjoying a cooling stroll on the window-sill.’

And at this
juncture there silhouetted itself against the evening sky a lissom form.

‘Here! Hi! My
gosh! I say! Dash it!’ exclaimed Eustace, eyeing it with unconcealed
apprehension.

‘Yes, sir,’
said Blenkinsop. ‘Excuse me, sir. I fancy I heard the front door-bell.’

And he
withdrew, leaving Eustace a prey to the liveliest agitation.

Eustace, you
see, was still hoping, in spite of having been so remiss in the matter of the
dog, to save his stake, if I may use the expression, on the canary. In other
words, when Marcella Tyrrwhitt returned and began to be incisive on the
subject of the vanished Reginald, he wished to be in a position to say: ‘True!
True! In the matter of Reginald, I grant that I have failed you. But pause
before you speak and take a look at that canary — fit as a fiddle and bursting
with health. And why? Because of my unremitting care.’

A most
unpleasant position he would be in if, in addition to having to admit that he
was one Peke down on the general score, he also had to reveal that William, his
sheet-anchor, was inextricably mixed up with the gastric juices of a cat which
the girl did not even know by sight.

And that this
tragedy was imminent he was sickeningly aware from the expression on the animal’s
face. It was a sort of devout, ecstatic look. He had observed much the same
kind of look on the face of his Aunt Georgiana when about to sail into the
cucumber sandwiches. Francis was inside the room now, and was gazing up at the
canary with a steady, purposeful eye. His tail was twitching at the tip.

The next
moment, to the accompaniment of a moan of horror from Eustace, he had launched
himself into the air in the bird’s direction.

Well, William
was no fool. Where many a canary would have blenched, he retained his
sangfroid
unimpaired. He moved a little to the left, causing the cat to miss by a
foot. And his beak, as he did so, was curved in a derisive smile. In fact,
thinking it over later, Eustace realized that right from the beginning William
had the situation absolutely under control and wanted nothing but to be left
alone to enjoy a good laugh.

At the moment,
however, this did not occur to Eustace. Shaken to the core, he supposed the
bird to be in the gravest peril. He imagined it to stand in need of all the aid
and comfort he could supply. And, springing quickly to the tea-table, he
rummaged among its contents for something that would serve him as ammunition in
the fray.

The first
thing he put his hand on was the plate of cucumber sandwiches. These, with all
the rapidity at his command, he discharged, one after the other. But, though a
few found their mark, there was nothing in the way of substantial results. The
very nature of a cucumber sandwich makes it poor throwing. He could have
obtained direct hits on Francis all day without slowing him up. In fact, the
very moment after the last sandwich had struck him in the ribs, he was up in
the air again, clawing hopefully.’

William
side-stepped once more, and Francis returned to earth. And Eustace, emotion
ruining his aim, missed him by inches with a sultana cake, three muffins, and a
lump of sugar.