Young Men in Spats (28 page)

It seemed to Mordred, as he travelled down on the following afternoon, that the wheels of the train, clattering over the metals, were singing ‘Sprockett-Sprockett' – not ‘Annabelle,' of course, for he did not yet know her name – and it was with a whispered ‘Sprockett-Sprockett' on his lips that he alighted at the little station of Smattering-cum-Blimpstead-in-the-Vale, which, as his hostess's notepaper had informed him, was where you got off for the Hall. And when he perceived that the girl herself had come to meet him in a two-seater car the whisper nearly became a shout.

For perhaps three minutes, as he sat beside her, Mordred remained in this condition of ecstatic bliss. Here he was, he reflected, and here she was – here, in fact, they both were – together, and he was just about to point out how jolly this was and – if he could work it without seeming to rush things too much – to drop a hint to the effect that he could wish this state of affairs to continue through all eternity, when the girl drew up outside a tobacconist's.

‘I won't be a minute,' she said. ‘I promised Biffy I would bring him back some cigarettes.'

A cold hand seemed to lay itself on Mordred's heart.

‘Biffy?'

‘Captain Biffing, one of the men at the Hall. And Guffy wants some pipe-cleaners.'

‘Guffy?'

‘Jack Guffington. I expect you know his name, if you are interested in racing. He was third in last year's Grand National.'

‘Is he staying at the Hall, too?'

‘Yes.'

‘You have a large house-party?'

‘Oh, not so very. Let me see. There's Billy Biffing, Jack Guffington, Ted Prosser, Freddie Boot – he's the tennis champion of the county, Tommy Mainprice, and – oh, yes, Algy Fripp – the big-game hunter, you know.'

The hand on Mordred's heart, now definitely iced, tightened its grip. With a lover's sanguine optimism, he had supposed that this visit of his was going to be just three days of jolly sylvan solitude with Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett. And now it appeared that the place was unwholesomely crowded with his fellow men. And what fellow men! Big-game hunters . . . Tennis champions . . . Chaps who rode in Grand Nationals . . . He could see them in his mind's eye – lean, wiry, riding-breeched and flannel-trousered young Apollos, any one of them capable of cutting out his weight in Clark Gables.

A faint hope stirred within him.

‘You have also, of course, with you Mrs Biffing, Mrs Guffington, Mrs Prosser, Mrs Boot, Mrs Mainprice and Mrs Algernon Fripp?'

‘Oh, no, they aren't married.'

‘None of them?'

‘No.'

The faint hope coughed quietly and died.

‘Ah,' said Mordred.

While the girl was in the shop, he remained brooding. The fact that none of these blisters should be married filled him with an austere disapproval. If they had had the least spark of civic sense, he felt, they would have taken on the duties and responsibilities of matrimony years ago. But no. Intent upon their selfish pleasures, they had callously remained bachelors. It was this spirit of
laissez-faire,
Mordred considered, that was eating like a canker into the soul of England.

He was aware of Annabelle standing beside him.

‘Eh?' he said, starting.

‘I was saying: “Have you plenty of cigarettes?”'

‘Plentry, thank you.'

‘Good. And of course there will be a box in your room. Men always like to smoke in their bedrooms, don't they? As a matter of fact, two boxes – Turkish and Virginian. Father put them there specially.'

‘Very kind of him,' said Mordred mechanically.

He relapsed into a moody silence, and they drove off.

It would be agreeable (said Mr Mulliner) if, having shown you my nephew so gloomy, so apprehensive, so tortured with dark forebodings at this juncture, I were able now to state that the hearty English welcome of Sir Murgatroyd and Lady Sprockett-Sprockett on his arrival at the Hall cheered him up and put new life into him. Nothing, too, would give me greater pleasure than to say that he found, on encountering the dreaded Biffies and Guffies, that they were negligible little runts with faces incapable of inspiring affection in any good woman.

But I must adhere rigidly to the facts. Genial, even effusive, though his host and hostess showed themselves, their cordiality left him cold. And, so far from his rivals being weeds, they were one and all models of manly beauty, and the spectacle of their obvious worship of Annabelle cut my nephew like a knife.

And on top of all this there was Smattering Hall itself.

Smattering Hall destroyed Mordred's last hope. It was one of those vast edifices, so common throughout the countryside of England, whose original founders seem to have budgeted for families of twenty-five or so and a domestic staff of not less than a hundred. ‘Home isn't home,' one can picture them saying to themselves, ‘unless you have plenty of elbow room.' And so this huge, majestic pile had come into being. Romantic persons, confronted with it, thought of knights in armour riding forth to the Crusades. More earthy individuals felt that it must cost a packet to keep up. Mordred's reaction on passing through the front door was a sort of sick sensation, a kind of settled despair.

How, he asked himself, even assuming that by some miracle he succeeded in fighting his way to her heart through all these Biffies and Guffies, could he ever dare to take Annabelle from a home like this? He had quite satisfactory private means, of course, and would be able, when married, to give up the bachelor flat and spread himself to something on a bigger scale – possibly, if sufficiently
bijou,
even a desirable residence in the Mayfair district. But after Smattering Hall would not Annabelle feel like a sardine in the largest of London houses?

Such were the dark thoughts that raced through Mordred's brain before, during and after dinner. At eleven o'clock he pleaded fatigue after his journey, and Sir Murgatroyd accompanied him to his room, anxious, like a good host, to see that everything was comfortable.

‘Very sensible of you to turn in early,' he said, in his bluff, genial way. ‘So many young men ruin their health with late hours. Now you, I imagine, will just get into a dressing-gown and smoke a cigarette or two and have the light out by twelve. You have plenty of cigarettes? I told them to see that you were well supplied. I always think the bedroom smoke is the best one of the day. Nobody to disturb you, and all that. If you want to write letters or anything, there is lots of paper, and here is the wastepaper basket, which is always so necessary. Well, good night, my boy, good night.'

The door closed, and Mordred, as foreshadowed, got into a dressing-gown and lit a cigarette. But though, having done this, he made his way to the writing-table, it was not with any idea of getting abreast of his correspondence. It was his purpose to compose a poem to Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett. He had felt it seething within him all the evening, and sleep would be impossible until it was out of his system.

Hitherto, I should mention, my nephew's poetry, for he belonged to the modern fearless school, had always been stark and rhymeless and had dealt principally with corpses and the smell of cooking cabbage. But now, with the moonlight silvering the balcony outside, he found that his mind had become full of words like ‘love' and ‘dove' and ‘eyes' and ‘summer skies.'

With a muttered ejaculation of chagrin he tore the sheet across and threw it into the wastepaper basket.

He threw the sheet into the wastepaper basket and rose with a stifled oath. The wastepaper basket was nearly full now, and still his poet's sense told him that he had not achieved perfection. He thought he saw the reason for this. You can't just sit in a chair and expect inspiration to flow – you want to walk about and clutch your hair and snap your fingers. It had been his intention to pace the room, but the moonlight pouring in through the open window called to him. He went out on to the balcony. It was but a short distance to the dim, mysterious lawn. Impulsively he dropped from the stone balustrade.

The effect was magical. Stimulated by the improved conditions, his Muse gave quick service, and this time he saw at once
that she had rung the bell and delivered the goods. One turn up and down the lawn, and he was reciting as follows:

And he was just wondering, for he was a severe critic of his own work, whether that last line couldn't be polished up a bit, when his eye was attracted by something that shone like summer skies or stars above and, looking more closely, he perceived that his bedroom curtains were on fire.

Now, I will not pretend that my nephew Mordred was in every respect that cool-headed man of action, but this happened to be a situation with which use had familiarized him. He knew the procedure.

‘Fire!' he shouted.

A head appeared in an upstairs window. He recognized it as that of Captain Biffing.

‘Eh?' said Captain Biffing.

‘Fire!'

‘What?'

‘Fire!' vociferated Mordred. ‘F for Francis, I for Isabel . . .'

‘Oh, fire?' said Captain Biffing. ‘Right ho.'

And presently the house began to discharge its occupants.

In the proceedings which followed, Mordred, I fear, did not appear to the greatest advantage. This is an age of specialization, and if you take the specialist off his own particular ground he is at
a loss. Mordred's genius, as we have seen, lay in the direction of starting fires. Putting them out called for quite different qualities, and these he did not possess. On the various occasions of holocausts at his series of flats, he had never attempted to play an active part, contenting himself with going downstairs and asking the janitor to step up and see what he could do about it. So now, though under the bright eyes of Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett he would have given much to be able to dominate the scene, the truth is that the Biffies and Guffies simply played him off the stage.

His heart sank as he noted the hideous efficiency of these young men. They called for buckets. They formed a line. Freddie Boot leaped lissomely on to the balcony, and Algy Fripp, mounted on a wheel-barrow, handed up to him the necessary supplies. And after Mordred, trying to do his bit, had tripped up Jack Guffington and upset two buckets over Ted Prosser, he was advised in set terms to withdraw into the background and stay there.

It was a black ten minutes for the unfortunate young man. One glance at Sir Murgatroyd's twisted face as he watched the operations was enough to tell him how desperately anxious the fine old man was for the safety of his ancestral home and how bitter would be his resentment against the person who had endangered it. And the same applied to Lady Sprockett-Sprockett and Annabelle. Mordred could see the anxiety in their eyes, and the thought that ere long those eyes must be turned accusingly on him chilled him to the marrow.

Presently Freddie Boot emerged from the bedroom to announce that all was well.

‘It's out,' he said, jumping lightly down. ‘Anybody know whose room it was?'

Mordred felt a sickening qualm, but the splendid Mulliner courage sustained him. He stepped forward, white and tense.

‘Mine,' he said.

He became the instant centre of attention. The six young men looked at him.

‘Yours?'

‘Oh, yours, was it?'

‘What happened?'

‘How did it start?'

‘Yes, how did it start?'

‘Must have started somehow, I mean,' said Captain Biffing, who was a clear thinker. ‘I mean to say, must have, don't you know, what?'

Mordred mastered his voice.

‘I was smoking, and I suppose I threw my cigarette into the wastepaper basket, and as it was full of paper . . .'

‘Full of paper? Why was it full of paper?'

‘I had been writing a poem.'

There was a stir of bewilderment.

‘A what?' said Ted Prosser.

‘Writing a what?' said Jack Guffington.

‘Writing a
poem
?' asked Captain Biffing of Tommy Mainprice.

‘That's how I got the story,' said Tommy Mainprice, plainly shaken.

‘Chap was writing a poem,' Freddie Boot informed Algy Fripp.

‘You mean the chap writes poems?'

‘That's right. Poems.'

‘Well, I'm dashed!'

‘Well, I'm blowed!'

Their now unconcealed scorn was hard to bear. Mordred chafed beneath it. The word ‘poem' was flitting from lip to lip, and it was only too evident that, had there been an ‘s' in the word, those present would have hissed it. Reason told him that these men were mere clods, Philistines, fatheads who would not recognize the rare and the beautiful if you handed it to them on a skewer, but that did not seem to make it any better. He knew that he should be scorning them, but it is not easy to go about scorning people in a dressing-gown, especially if you have no socks on and the night breeze is cool around the ankles. So, as I say, he chafed. And finally, when he saw the butler bend down with pursed lips to the ear of the cook, who was a little hard of hearing, and after a contemptuous glance in his direction speak into it, spacing his syllables carefully, something within him seemed to snap.