Mulliner Nights (21 page)

‘I am sorry,’
said Evangeline. ‘I am engaged to lunch with Mr Banks.’

‘Oh?’ said
Egbert.

‘Yes,’ said
Evangeline.

‘Ah!’ said
Egbert.

Two days later
Egbert called Evangeline up on the telephone and invited her to dinner.

‘I am sorry,’
said Evangeline. ‘I am dining with Mr Banks.’

‘Ah?’ said
Egbert.

‘Yes,’ said
Evangeline.

‘Oh!’ said
Egbert.

Three days
after that Egbert arrived at Evangeline’s flat with tickets for the theatre.

‘I am sorry—’
began Evangeline.

‘Don’t say it,’
said Egbert. ‘Let me guess. You are going to the theatre with Mr Banks?’

‘Yes, I am. He
has seats for the first night of Tchekov’s “Six Corpses in Search of an
Undertaker”.’

‘He has, has
he?’

‘Yes, he has.’

‘He
has,
eh?’

‘Yes, he has.’

Egbert took a
couple of turns about the room, and for a space there was silence except for
the sharp grinding of his teeth. Then he spoke.

‘Touching
lightly on this gumboil Banks,’ said Egbert, ‘I am the last man to stand in the
way of your having a literary agent. If you must write novels, that is a matter
between you and your God. And, if you do see fit to write novels, I suppose you
must have a literary agent. But— and this is where I want you to follow me very
closely — I cannot see the necessity of employing a literary agent who looks
like Lord Byron; a literary agent who coos in your left ear, a literary agent
who not only addresses you as “Dear lady”, but appears to find it essential to
the conduct of his business to lunch, dine, and go to the theatre with you
daily.’

‘I—’

Egbert held up
a compelling hand.

‘I have not
finished,’ he said. ‘Nobody,’ he proceeded, ‘could call me a narrow-minded man.
If Jno. Henderson Banks looked a shade less like one of the great lovers of
history, I would have nothing to say. If, when he talked business to a client,
Jno. Henderson Banks’s mode of vocal delivery were even slightly less
reminiscent of a nightingale trilling to its mate, I would remain silent. But
he doesn’t, and it isn’t. And such being the case, and taking into
consideration the fact that you are engaged to me, I feel it my duty to instruct
you to see this drooping flower far more infrequently. In fact, I would
advocate expunging him altogether. If he wishes to discuss business with you,
let him do it over the telephone. And I hope he gets the wrong number.’

Evangeline had
risen, and was facing him with flashing eyes.

‘Is that so?’
she said.

‘That,’ said
Egbert, ‘is so.’

Am I a serf?’
demanded Evangeline.

A what?’ said
Egbert.

A serf. A
slave. A peon. A creature subservient to your lightest whim.’

Egbert
considered the point.

‘No,’ he said.
‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘No,’ said
Evangeline, ‘I am not. And I refuse to allow you to dictate to me in the choice
of my friends.’

Egbert stared
blankly.

‘You mean,
after all I have said, that you intend to let this blighted chrysanthemum
continue to frisk round?’

‘I do.’

‘You seriously
propose to continue chummy with this revolting piece of cheese?’

‘I do.’

‘You
absolutely and literally decline to give this mistake of Nature the push?’

‘I do.’

‘Well!’ said
Egbert.

A pleading
note came into his voice.

‘But,
Evangeline, it is your Egbert who speaks.’

The haughty
girl laughed a hard, bitter laugh.

‘Is it?’ she
said. She laughed again. ‘Do you imagine that we are still engaged?’

‘Aren’t we?’

‘We certainly
aren’t. You have insulted me, outraged my finest feelings, given an exhibition
of malignant tyranny which makes me thankful that I have realized in time the
sort of main you are. Good-bye, Mr Mulliner!’

‘But listen—’
began Egbert.

‘Go!’ said
Evangeline. ‘Here is your hat.’

She pointed
imperiously to the door. A moment later she had banged it behind him.

It was a
grim-faced Egbert Mulliner who entered the elevator, and a grimmer-faced
Egbert Mulliner who strode down Sloane Street. His dream, he realized, was over.
He laughed harshly as he contemplated the fallen ruins of the castle which he
had built in the air.

Well, he still
had his work.

In the offices
of
The Weekly Booklover
it was whispered that a strange change had come
over Egbert Mulliner. He seemed a stronger, tougher man. His editor, who since
Egbert’s illness had behaved towards him with a touching humanity, allowing him
to remain in the office and write paragraphs about Forthcoming Books while
others, more robust, were sent off to interview the female novelists, now saw
in him a right-hand man on whom he could lean.

When a column
on ‘Myrtle Bootle Among Her Books’ was required, it was Egbert whom he sent out
into the No Man’s Land of Bloomsbury. When young Eustace Johnson, a novice who
ought never to have been entrusted with such a
dangerous commission, was
found walking round in circles and bumping his head against the railings of
Regent’s Park after twenty minutes with Laura La Motte Grindlay, the great sex
novelist, it was Egbert who was flung into the breach. And Egbert came through,
wan but unscathed.

It was during
this period that he interviewed Mabelle Graingerson and Mrs Goole-Plank on the
same afternoon — a feat which is still spoken of with bated breath in the
offices of
The Weekly Booklover.
And not only in
The Booklover
offices.
To this day ‘Remember Mulliner!’ is the slogan with which every literary editor
encourages the faint-hearted who are wincing and hanging back.

‘Was Mulliner
afraid?’ they say. ‘Did Mulliner quail?’

And so it came
about that when a ‘Chat with Evangeline Pembury’ was needed for the big
Christmas Special Number, it was of Egbert that his editor thought first. He
sent for him.

‘Ah, Mulliner!’

‘Well, chief?’

‘Stop me if
you’ve heard this one before,’ said the editor, ‘but it seems there was once an
Irishman, a Scotsman, and a Jew—’

Then, the
formalities inseparable from an interview between editor and assistant
concluded, he came down to business.

‘Mulliner,’ he
said, in that kind, fatherly way of his which endeared him to all his staff, ‘I
am going to begin by saying that it is in your power to do a big thing for the
dear old paper. But after that I must tell you that, if you wish, you can
refuse to do it. You have been through a hard time lately, and if you feel
yourself unequal to this task, I shall understand. But the fact is, we have got
to have a “Chat with Evangeline Pembury” for our Christmas Special.’

He saw the
young man wince, and nodded sympathetically.

‘You think it
would be too much for you? I feared as much. They say she is the worst of the
lot. Rather haughty and talks about uplift. Well, never mind. I must see what I
can do with young Johnson. I hear he has quite recovered now, and is anxious to
re-establish himself. Quite. I will send Johnson.’

Egbert
Mulliner was himself again now.

‘No, chief,’
he said. ‘I will go.’

‘You will?’

‘I will.’

‘We shall need
a column and a half.’

‘You shall
have a column and a half’

The editor
turned away, to hide a not unmanly emotion.

‘Do it now,
Mulliner,’ he said, ‘and get it over.’

A strange riot
of emotion seethed in Egbert Mulliner’s soul as he pressed the familiar bell
which he had thought never to press again. Since their estrangement he had seen
Evangeline once or twice, but only in the distance. Now he was to meet her face
to face. Was he glad or sorry? He could not say. He only knew he loved her
still.

He was in the
sitting-room. How cosy it looked, how impregnated with her presence. There was
the sofa on which he had so often sat, his arm about her waist— A footstep
behind him warned him that the time had come to don the mask. Forcing his
features into an interviewer’s hard smile, he turned.

‘Good
afternoon,’ he said.

She was
thinner. Either she had found success wearing, or she had been on the eighteen-day
diet. Her beautiful face seemed drawn, and, unless he was mistaken, care-worn.

He fancied
that for an instant her eyes had lit up at the sight of him, but he preserved
the formal detachment of a stranger.

‘Good
afternoon, Miss Pembury,’ he said. ‘I represent
The Weekly Book/over.
I
understand that my editor has been in communication with you and that you have
kindly consented to tell us a few things which may interest our readers
regarding your art and aims.’

She bit her
lip.

‘Will you take
a
seat, Mr—?’

‘Mulliner,’
said Egbert.

‘Mr Mulliner,’
said Evangeline. ‘Do sit down. Yes, I shall be glad to tell you anything you
wish.’

Egbert sat
down.

‘Are you fond
of dogs, Miss Pembury?’ he asked.

‘I adore them,’
said Evangeline.

‘I should
like, a little later, if I may,’ said Egbert, ‘to secure a
snapshot of
you being kind to a dog. Our readers appreciate these human touches, you
understand.’

‘Oh, quite,’
said Evangeline. ‘I will send out for a dog. I love dogs — and flowers.’

‘You are
happiest among your flowers, no doubt?’

‘On the whole,
yes.’

‘You sometimes
think they are the souls of little children who have died in their innocence?’

‘Frequently.’

‘And now,’
said Egbert, licking the tip of his pencil, ‘perhaps you would tell me
something about your ideals. How are the ideals?’

Evangeline
hesitated.

‘Oh, they’re
fine,’ she said.

‘The novel,’
said Egbert, ‘has been described as among this age’s greatest instruments for
uplift? How do you check up on
that?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Of course,
there are novels and novels.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Are you
contemplating a successor to “Parted Ways”?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Would it be
indiscreet, Miss Pembury, to inquire to what extent it has progressed?’

‘Oh, Egbert!’
said Evangeline.

There are some
speeches before which dignity melts like ice in August, resentment takes the
full count, and the milk of human kindness surges back into the aching heart as
if the dam had burst. Of these, ‘Oh, Egbert!’, especially when accompanied by
tears, is one of the most notable.’

Evangeline’s ‘Oh,
Egbert!’ had been accompanied by a Niagara of tears. She had flung herself on
the sofa and was now chewing the cushion in an ecstasy of grief. She gulped
like a bull-pup swallowing a chunk of steak. And, on the instant, Egbert Mulliner’s
adamantine reserve collapsed as if its legs had been knocked from under it. He
dived for the sofa. He clasped her hand. He stroked her hair. He squeezed her
waist. He patted her shoulder. He massaged her spine.

‘Evangeline!’

‘Oh, Egbert!’

The only flaw
in Egbert Mulliner’s happiness, as he knelt beside her, babbling comforting
words, was the gloomy conviction that Evangeline would certainly lift the
entire scene, dialogue and all, and use it in her next novel. And it was for
this reason that, when he could manage it, he censored his remarks to some
extent.

But, as he
warmed to his work, he forgot caution altogether. She was clinging to him,
whispering his name piteously. By the time he had finished, he had committed
himself to about two thousand words of a
nature calculated to send
Mainprice and Peabody screaming with joy about their office.

He refused to
allow himself to worry about it. What of it? He had done his stuff, and if it
sold a hundred thousand copies —well, let it sell a hundred thousand copies.
Holding Evangeline in his arms, he did not care if he was copyrighted in every
language, including the Scandinavian.

‘Oh, Egbert!’
said Evangeline.

‘My darling!’

‘Oh, Egbert, I’m
in such trouble.’

‘My angel!
What is it?’

Evangeline sat
up and tried to dry her eyes.

‘It’s Mr
Banks.’

A savage frown
darkened Egbert Mulliner’s face. He told himself that he might have foreseen
this. A man who wore a
tie that went twice round the neck was sure,
sooner or later, to inflict some hideous insult on helpless womanhood. Add tortoiseshell-rimmed
glasses, and you had what practically amounted to a fiend in human shape.

‘I’ll murder
him,’ he said. ‘I ought to have done it long ago, but one keeps putting these
things off. What has he done? Did he force his loathsome attentions on you? Has
that tortoiseshell-rimmed satyr been trying to kiss you, or something?’

‘He has been
fixing me up solid.’

Egbert
blinked.

‘Doing what?’

‘Fixing me up
solid. With the magazines. He has arranged for me to write three serials and I
don’t know how many short stories.’

‘Getting you
contracts, you mean?’

Evangeline
nodded tearfully.

‘Yes. He seems
to have fixed me up solid with almost everybody. And they’ve been sending me
cheques in advance — hundreds of them. What am I to do? Oh, what am I to do?’

‘Cash them,’
said Egbert.

‘But
afterwards?’

‘Spend the
money.’

‘But after
that?’

Egbert
reflected.

‘Well, it’s a
nuisance, of course,’ he said, ‘but after that I suppose you’ll have to write
the stuff.’

Evangeline
sobbed like a lost soul.

‘But I can’t!
I’ve been trying for weeks, and I can’t write anything. And I never shall be
able to write anything. I don’t want to write anything. I hate writing. I don’t
know what to write about. I wish I were dead.’