Young Men in Spats (25 page)

‘Tell a girl it's all off, I mean,' said the Whisky Sour. ‘It must take the courage of a lion. I was a daring sort of young chap in my prime, but if you had told me to go to my dear wife – Miss Bootle she was then, one of the East Balham Booties – and cast her aside like a soiled glove, I'd never have had the nerve. Yet apparently it's happening every day. Odd.'

A thoughtful Eggnogg said that he understood that the telephone was a great help on these occasions. A Gin and Ginger preferred what he called the good old false beard method.

‘It solves the whole problem,' said the Gin and Ginger. ‘You get your false beard, then you write the girl a letter, then you slap on the beard and go to Nova Scotia.'

A Half of Stout said that wasn't British. The Gin and Ginger said: Yes, it was, very British. The Half of Stout appealed to Mr Mulliner.

‘Would you do that, Mr M.? If you were engaged to a girl and wanted to break it off, would you buy a false beard?'

Mr Mulliner smiled indulgently.

‘In my case, as in that of any member of my family,' he said, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon, ‘the question of how to break off an engagement could never arise. We may be wrong, we may be foolishly jealous of the
noblesse oblige
of an ancient name, but the code of the Mulliners is that an engagement cannot be broken off by the male contracting party. When a Mulliner plights his troth, it stays plighted. It was this scrupulous sense of chivalry, handed down to him by a long line of ancestors, that so complicated matters for my nephew Archibald when he wished to be free of his honourable obligations to Aurelia Cammarleigh.'

We were stunned.

‘Archibald?' we cried. ‘Your nephew Archibald? The one who imitated hens? But we thought he worshipped the girl with the utmost fervour.'

‘He did.'

‘Then why did he want to break the engagement?'

‘I need scarcely say that his motives, as the motives of any nephew of mine could not fail to be, were in the last degree praiseworthy and altruistic. He conceived himself to be acting entirely in Aurelia's best interests. But perhaps you would care to hear the story?'

You remarked just now (said Mr Mulliner) that my nephew Archibald worshipped Aurelia Cammarleigh with the utmost fervour, and that is precisely what he did worship her with. Her lightest word was law to him. A smile from her made his day. When I tell you that not once but on three separate occasions he sent his man, Meadowes, out into the Park with instructions to carve his, Archibald's, initials and those of Miss Cammarleigh
on the nearest convenient tree with a heart round them, you will understand something of the depths of his feelings. And you will also understand why, when after they had been betrothed some six weeks he found her manner towards him growing definitely cold, he was shaken to the core.

Now, mere temporary and fleeting demonstrations of frigidity on the part of the adored object are, of course, not unusual. Girls affect them simply in order to enjoy the luxury of melting again. But this was different. This had all the earmarks of the real stuff. He would call her the lodestar of his life, and she would say ‘Ho-hum.' He would enquire of her if she loved her little Archibald, and she would say ‘Hi-ho.' He would speak of their coming wedding-day, and she would ask him if he had read any good books lately. Trifles, you may say . . . Nothing tangible, I grant . . . But, nevertheless, taking this with that and weighing all the evidence, Archibald Mulliner became convinced that for some mysterious reason his Aurelia had gone off the boil. And at length, as every young man should do when his heart is aching, he decided to go and ask advice of his mother.

Archibald's mother, since her widowhood, had taken up her abode in the neighbourhood of Kew. Between her and Aurelia there had sprung up a warm friendship, and it occurred to Archibald that in the course of one of their chats together the girl might possibly have let fall some remark which would provide a clue to the mystery. At any rate, it seemed a good speculative venture to pop round and enquire, so he unleashed his two-seater and presently was making his way through the little garden to the sunlit room at the back of the house where his mother liked to sit of an afternoon. And he was just about to step through the open french windows with a filial ‘Pip-pip', when a sudden sight sent him back on his heels and he stood
gaping – his eyeglass, cast adrift in his emotion, bobbing like some live thing on the end of its cord.

For there, gentlemen, in that sunlit room, stood Lady (Wilhelmina) Mulliner, relict of the late Sir Sholto Mulliner, M.V.O., with her tongue out like a dog's, panting in deep gasps with a sort of horrible ‘ha-ha-ha-ha-ha' sound that turned the blood in Archibald's veins to ice. And then, as he watched, she suddenly stopped panting and began to utter a remark which, even by Archibald's not too exacting standards, seemed noticeably goofy. It consisted of the letters ‘QX', repeated over and over again. And, as Archibald has often told me, it was the way she said them that got right in amongst a fellow.

The ‘Q', he tells me, was an almost inaudible murmur, produced through pouting lips. That, he says, he could have endured. What made everything seem so sad and hopeless was the ‘X'. As she emitted this, she drew her mouth back in a ghastly grin till the muscles of her neck stood out like ropes. And she went on and on and on. She refrained from Q-ing the ‘Q' only to X the ‘X', and when she wasn't X-ing to beat the band she was Q-ing away like a two-year-old. That was how my nephew Archibald described the scene to me, and I must admit that it conjures up a vivid picture.

Well, of course, Archibald understood now why Aurelia's manner towards him had changed of late. Obviously, she must have come upon the poor old parent unexpectedly in the middle of one of these spells of hers and perceived, as he did, that she was as loony as a coot. Enough to make any girl think a bit.

He turned away and staggered out of the garden with blind steps. One can, of course, appreciate his agony, poor lad. Few things are less pleasant for a young man in the spring-time of life than to have a well-loved mother suddenly go off her rocker: and
when such a tragedy involves also the breaking off of his engagement to the girl he worships, you have got something that Somerset Maugham could make a three-act play out of without conscious cerebration.

For he realized, of course, that his engagement would have to be broken off. A man of nice scruples like Archibald Mulliner could have no option. A chap, he meant to say, can't go lugging girls off to the altar if there is insanity in his family. Apart from anything else, this pottiness was probably catching. Quite likely it would be coming out in himself, too, before he knew where he was. And a nice thing it would be for Aurelia if, as they stood side by side in the sacred edifice and the clergyman said, ‘Wilt thou, Archibald?' he were to reply, ‘QX' or, worse, pant like a dog with his tongue out. All sorts of remarks it would cause. A girl in such circumstances could scarcely help but feel pretty silly.

No, he must break the engagement at once . . .

And then, suddenly, even as he framed the thought, there rose up before him the recollection of the code of the Mulliners, and he saw that the whole affair was going to be a good deal more difficult and complex than he had supposed. He could not break the engagement. He would have to do something to make Aurelia take that step. And what it now boiled down to was What?

He mused. What girls of his acquaintance had broken off their engagements? And why?

There was Jane Todmarsh. Her betrothed, taking her out for a spin in the old Pommery Seven, had driven it, her, and himself into a duck-pond out Hitchin way. She had given the young man his freedom within two seconds of spitting the first newt out of her mouth.

Suppose he were to take Aurelia for a drive and . . . No. He shrank from it. He couldn't say why exactly, but he shrank from it.

Milly Salt had returned her fiancé to store because of his habit of uttering a short, dry, nasty snigger every time she missed a shot in the mixed doubles. No help for Archibald here. Aurelia did not play tennis. Besides, he knew that in no circumstances could he bring himself to snigger drily and nastily at one who to him was more like some sort of a goddess than anything.

The case of Hypatia Sloggett was different. A former flame of the future lord and master had turned up in the middle of dinner one night at the Savoy and made a row.

This, Archibald felt, was the best bet yet. There was the difficulty that he had no former flames, but a moment's thought told him that he could easily go round to some theatrical agency and engage one. There were probably a hundred out-of-work actresses in the Strand neighbourhood who would be delighted to come in on the deal for a fiver.

And yet once again he found himself shrinking. That sort of thing happening in a crowded restaurant could not fail to make a fellow feel pretty dashed conspicuous, and he hated feeling conspicuous. If there was any other alternative, he would vastly prefer to take it.

And it was then that he remembered Dora Trevis. On the eve of becoming Mrs Aubrey Rochester-Wapshott, she had notified the
Morning Post
that the fixture was off, and the whole trouble, Archibald recalled, had been caused by poor old Aubrey getting a bit pie-eyed at the family dinner table and insulting her father.

There was the solution. He would insult old Cammarleigh and leave the rest to Aurelia.

Not but what, felt Archibald, it was going to take some doing. This father of Aurelia's was not one of those mild old men who make nice easy insulting. He was a tough, hardbitten retired Colonial Governor of the type which comes back to England to spend the evening of its days barking at club waiters, and until now it had been Archibald's prudent policy to conciliate him to the utmost. With sedulous assiduity he had always bent himself to the task of giving Sir Rackstraw Cammarleigh the old oil. He had deferred to his opinions. He had smirked meekly, infusing into his manner a rather revolting reverence. Above all, he had listened raptly to his stories, caring little that a certain eccentricity of memory sometimes led the ex-proconsul to tell the same one four evenings in succession.

By these means, he had so succeeded in ingratiating himself with the old blighter that a sudden reversal of policy would have all the greater effect. One bold effort, and it seemed to Archibald that the whole subject of wedding-bells must inevitably be removed from the agenda-paper.

Pale but resolute, my nephew dressed himself with his usual care and set off to dine
en famille
at his loved one's home.

I do not know if any of you gentlemen have ever watched a retired Colonial Governor at his evening meal. I have not had the experience myself, but Archibald tells me it is one fraught with interest. He begins, it seems, in a spirit rather similar to that of the lion of the jungle at feeding-time, growling fiercely over his soup, absorbing his fish to the accompaniment of a series of muffled snarls. It is only with the entrée that a softer mood starts to manifest itself. Then, and onward through the
joint and sweet, one is aware of a growing geniality. The first animal hunger has abated. Repletion has done its kindly work.

With the dessert and port, the now mellow subject leans back and starts to tell stories.

It was so that it happened tonight. Bagshot, the butler, filled his employer's glass and stepped back into the shadows: and Sir Rackstraw, grunting not unamiably, fixed Archibald with a bulging eye. Had he been a man to take notice of such phenomena, he would have seen that the young man was white and tense and wore a strung-up look. But if there was one thing in this world that did not interest Sir Rackstraw Cammarleigh it was the play of expression on the face of Archibald Mulliner. He was regarding him now purely in the light of a recipient of his story of old George Bates and the rhinoceros.

‘What you say about there being a full moon tonight,' he began, for it was on this subject that Archibald had just hazarded a remark, ‘reminds me of a curious thing that happened to an old friend of mine out in Bongo-Bongo. Old George Bates.'

He paused to sip at his glass, and Archibald saw that Aurelia's face had grown tired and hard. Her mother, too, a pale, worn woman, uttered a stifled little sigh. Somewhere in the background he could hear Bagshot stirring uneasily.

‘At the time of the full moon,' resumed Sir Rackstraw, ‘it is the custom in Bongo-Bongo to hunt the rhinoceros, and this friend of mine . . . George Bates his name was . . . by the way, stop me if I've told you this before . . .'

‘Stop!' said Archibald.

There was a tense silence. Sir Rackstraw was quivering as if the word had been a bullet and he the rhinoceros which in his less cordial moods he somewhat resembled.

‘What did you say?' he rasped.

‘I said “Stop!”,' replied Archibald. Though quaking inwardly, he preserved an outward firmness, even a sort of truculence. ‘You told me to stop you if I had heard it before, and I stopped you. I have heard that story six times before. Even if it were good, I wouldn't like it. But it is not good. It is rotten. And I shall be extremely obliged, Cammarleigh, if you will refrain from inflicting it upon me either now or at any other time when you may feel the urge. I never wish to hear of Bates and his rhinoceros again. And I couple with the name of this rhinoceros the names of any other rhinoceri you or your friends may have encountered in your exceptionally tedious past. You understand me, Cammarleigh? Enough is enough.'

He stopped and helped himself to port. At the same moment, he pushed his chair back a little, prepared, should events so shape themselves as to render such a course advisable, to slide under the table and there defend himself with tooth and claw. A stoutish ex-Colonial Governor, he reasoned, would find it pretty hard to get at a fellow who had dug himself well in under a table.

It was as he reached this decision that Lady Cammarleigh spoke.