Mr. Mulliner Speaking Page 4

  The thought occurred to Ignatius that one of these two might be able to give him some inside information on the problem. They were often in Hermione's society, and it was quite likely that she might have happened to mention at one time or another what it was about him that caused her so repeatedly to hand the mitten to a good man's love. He called upon Cyprian at his flat and put the thing to him squarely. Cyprian listened attentively, stroking his left side-whisker with a lean hand.

  'Ah?' said Cyprian. 'One senses, does one, a reluctance on the girl's part to entertain one's suggestions of marriage?'

  'One does,' replied Ignatius.

  'One wonders why one is unable to make progress?'

  'One does.'

  'One asks oneself what is the reason?'

  'One does – repeatedly.'

  'Well, if one really desires to hear the truth,' said Cyprian, stroking his right whisker, 'I happen to know that Hermione objects to you because you remind her of my brother George.'

  Ignatius staggered back, appalled, and an animal cry escaped his lips.

  'Remind her of George?'

  'That's what she says.'

  'But I can't be like George. It isn't humanly possible for anybody to be like George.'

  'One merely repeats what one has heard.'

  Ignatius staggered from the room and, tottering into the Fulham Road, made for the Goat and Bottle to purchase a restorative. And the first person he saw in the saloon-bar was George, taking his elevenses.

  'What ho!' said George. 'What ho, what ho, what ho!'

  He looked pinker and stouter than ever, and the theory that he could possibly resemble this distressing object was so distasteful to Ignatius that he decided to get a second opinion.

  'George,' he said, 'have you any idea why it is that your sister Hermione spurns my suit?'

  'Certainly,' said George.

  'You have? Then why is it?'

  George drained his glass.

  'You ask me why?'

  'Yes.'

  'You want to know the reason?'

  'I do.'

  'Well, then, first and foremost,' said George, 'can you lend me a quid till Wednesday week without fail?'

  'No, I can't.'

  'Nor ten bob?'

  'Nor ten bob. Kindly stick to the subject and tell me why your sister will not look at me.'

  'I will,' said George. 'Not only have you a mean and parsimonious disposition, but she says you remind her of my brother Cyprian.'

  Ignatius staggered and would have fallen had he not placed a foot on the brass rail.

  'I remind her of Cyprian?'

  'That's what she says.'

  With bowed head Ignatius left the saloon-bar and returned to his studio to meditate. He was stricken to the core. He had asked for inside information and he had got it, but nobody was going to make him like it.

  He was not only stricken to the core, but utterly bewildered. That a man – stretching the possibilities a little – might resemble George Rossiter was intelligible. He could also understand that a man – assuming that Nature had played a scurvy trick upon him – might conceivably be like Cyprian. But how could anyone be like both of them and live?

  He took pencil and paper and devoted himself to making a list in parallel columns of the qualities and characteristics of the brothers. When he had finished, he scanned it carefully. This is what he found he had written:

  GEORGE CYPRIAN

  Face like pig Face like camel

  Pimples Whiskers

  Confirmed sponger Writes art-criticism

  Says 'What ho!' Says 'One senses'

  Slaps backs Has nasty, dry snigger

  Eats too much Fruitarian

  Tells funny stories Recites poetry

  Clammy hands Bony hands

  He frowned. The mystery was still unsolved. And then he came to the last item.

  GEORGE CYPRIAN

  Heavy smoker Heavy smoker

  A spasm ran through Ignatius Mulliner. Here, at last, was a common factor. Was it possible . . .? Could it be . . .?

  It seemed the only solution, and yet Ignatius fought against it. His love for Hermione was the lodestar of his life, but next to it, beaten only by a short head, came his love for his pipe. Had he really to choose between the two?

  Could he make such a sacrifice?

  He wavered.

  And then he saw the eleven photographs of Hermione Rossiter gazing at him from the mantelpiece, and it seemed to him that they smiled encouragingly. He hesitated no longer. With a soft sigh such as might have proceeded from some loving father on the Steppes of Russia when compelled, in order to ensure his own safety, to throw his children out of the back of the sleigh to the pursuing wolf-pack, he took the pipe from his mouth, collected his other pipes, his tobacco and his cigars, wrapped them in a neat parcel and, summoning the charwoman who cleaned his studio, gave her the consignment to take home to her husband, an estimable man of the name of Perkins who, being of straitened means, smoked, as a rule, only what he could pick up in the street.

  Ignatius Mulliner had made the great decision.

  As those of you who have tried it are aware, the deadly effects of giving up smoking rarely make themselves felt immediately in their full virulence. The process is gradual. In the first stage, indeed, the patient not only suffers no discomfort but goes about inflated by a sort of gaseous spiritual pride. All through the morning of the following day, Ignatius, as he walked abroad, found himself regarding such fellow-members of the community as had pipes and cigarettes in their mouths with a pitying disdain. He felt like some saint purified and purged of the grosser emotions by a life of asceticism. He longed to tell these people all about pyridine and the intense irritation it causes to the throats and other mucous surfaces of those who inhale the tobacco smoke in which it lurks. He wanted to buttonhole men sucking at their cigars and inform them that tobacco contains an appreciable quantity of the gas known as carbon monoxide, which, entering into direct combination with the colouring matter of the blood, forms so staple a compound as to render the corpuscles incapable of carrying oxygen to the tissues. He yearned to make it clear to them that smoking was simply a habit which with a little exercise of the will-power a man could give up at a moment's notice, whenever he pleased.

  It was only after he had returned to his studio to put the finishing touches to his Academy picture that the second stage set in.

  Having consumed an artist's lunch consisting of two sardines, the remnants of a knuckle of ham, and a bottle of beer, he found stealing over him, as his stomach got onto the fact that the meal was not to be topped off by a soothing pipe, a kind of vague sense of emptiness and bereavement akin to that experienced by the historian Gibbon on completing his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Its symptoms were an inability to work and a dim feeling of oppression, as if he had just lost some dear friend. Life seemed somehow to have been robbed of all motive. He wandered about the studio, haunted by a sensation that he was leaving undone something that he ought to be doing. From time to time he blew little bubbles, and once or twice his teeth clicked, as if he were trying to close them on something that was not there.

  A twilight sadness had him in its grip. He took up his ukulele, an instrument to which, as I have said, he was greatly addicted, and played 'Ol' Man River' for awhile. But the melancholy still lingered. And now, it seemed to him, he had discovered its cause. What was wrong was the fact that he was not doing enough good in the world.

  Look at it this way, he felt. The world is a sad, grey place, and we are put into it to promote as far as we can the happiness of others. If we concentrate on our own selfish pleasures, what do we find? We find that they speedily pall. We weary of gnawing knuckles of ham. The ukulele loses its fascination. Of course, if we could sit down and put our feet up and set a match to the good old pipe, that would be a different matter. But we no longer smoke, and so all that is left to us is the doing of good to others. By three o'clock, in short, Ignatius Mulliner had reached the
third stage, the glutinously sentimental. It caused him to grab his hat, and sent him trotting round to Scantlebury Square.

  But his object was not, as it usually was when he went to Scantlebury Square, to propose to Hermione Rossiter. He had a more unselfish motive. For some time past, by hints dropped and tentative remarks thrown out, he had been made aware that Mrs Rossiter greatly desired him to paint her daughter's portrait: and until now he had always turned to these remarks and hints a deaf ear. Mrs Rossiter's mother's heart wanted, he knew, to get the portrait for nothing: and, while love is love and all that, he had the artist's dislike for not collecting all that was coming to him. Ignatius Mulliner, the man, might entertain the idea of pleasing the girl he worshipped by painting her on the nod, but Ignatius Mulliner, the artist, had his schedule of prices. And until to-day it was the second Ignatius Mulliner who had said the deciding word.

  This afternoon, however, everything was changed. In a short but moving speech he informed Hermione's mother that the one wish of his life was to paint her daughter's portrait; that for so great a privilege he would not dream of charging a fee; and that if she would call at the studio on the morrow, bringing Hermione with her, he would put the job in hand right away.

  In fact, he very nearly offered to paint another portrait of Mrs Rossiter herself, in evening dress with her Belgian griffon. He contrived, however, to hold the fatal words back: and it was perhaps the recollection of this belated prudence which gave him, as he stood on the pavement outside the house after the interview, a sense of having failed to be as altruistic as he might have been.

  Stricken with remorse, he decided to look up good old Cyprian and ask him to come to the studio to-morrow and criticize his Academy picture. After that, he would find dear old George and press a little money on him. Ten minutes later, he was in Cyprian's sitting-room.

  'One wishes what?' asked Cyprian incredulously.

  'One wishes,' repeated Ignatius, 'that you would come round to-morrow morning and have a look at one's Academy picture and give one a hint or two about it.'

  'Is one really serious?' cried Cyprian, his eyes beginning to gleam. It was seldom that he received invitations of this kind. He had, indeed, been thrown out of more studios for butting in and giving artists a hint or two about their pictures than any other art-critic in Chelsea.

  'One is perfectly serious,' Ignatius assured him. 'One feels that an opinion from an expert will be invaluable.'

  'Then one will be there at eleven sharp,' said Cyprian, 'without fail.'

  Ignatius wrung his hand warmly, and hurried off to the Goat and Bottle to find George.

  'George,' he said, 'George, my dear old chap; I passed a sleepless night last night, wondering if you had all the money you require. The fear that you might have run short seemed to go through me like a knife. Call on me for as much as you need.'

  George's face was partially obscured by a tankard. At these words, his eyes, bulging above the pewter, took on a sudden expression of acute horror. He lowered the tankard, ashen to the lips, and raised his right hand.

  'This,' he said in a shaking voice, 'is the end. From this moment I go off the stuff. Yes, you have seen George Plimsoll Rossiter drink his last mild-and-bitter. I am not a nervous man, but I know when I'm licked. And when it comes to a fellow's ears going . . .'

  Ignatius patted his arm affectionately.

  'Your ears have not gone, George,' he said. 'They are still there.'

  And so, indeed, they were, as large and red as ever. But George was not to be comforted.

  'I mean when a fellow thinks he hears things . . . I give you my honest word, old man – I solemnly assure you that I could have sworn I heard you voluntarily offer me money.'

  'But I did.'

  'You did?'

  'Certainly.'

  'You mean you definitely – literally – without any sort of prompting on my part – without my so much as saying a word to indicate that I could do with a small loan till Friday week – absolutely, positively offered to lend me money?'

  'I did.'

  George drew a deep breath and took up his tankard again.

  'All this modern, advanced stuff you read about miracles not happening,' he said severely, 'is dashed poppycock. I disapprove of it. I resent it keenly. About how much?' he went on, pawing adoringly at Ignatius' sleeve. 'To about what, as it were, extent would you be prepared to go? A quid?'

  Ignatius raised his eyebrows.

  'A quid is not much, George,' he said with quiet reproach.

  George made little gurgling noises.

  'A fiver?'

  Ignatius shook his head. The movement was a silent rebuke.

  'Correct this petty, cheese-paring spirit, George,' he urged. 'Be big and broad. Think spaciously.'

  'Not – a tenner?'

  'I was about to suggest fifteen pounds,' said Ignatius. 'If you are sure that will be enough.'

  'What ho!'

  'You're positive you can manage with that? I know how many expenses you have.'

  'What ho!'

  'Very well, then. If you can get along with fifteen pounds, come round to my studio to-morrow morning and we'll fix it up.'

  And, glowing with fervour, Ignatius slapped George's back in a hearty sort of way and withdrew.

  'Something attempted, something done,' he said to himself, as he climbed into bed some hours later, 'has earned a night's repose.'

  Like so many men who live intensely and work with their brains, my nephew Ignatius was a heavy sleeper. Generally, after waking to a new day, he spent a considerable time lying on his back in a sort of coma, not stirring till lured from his couch by the soft, appealing smell of frying bacon. On the following morning, however, he was conscious, directly he opened his eyes, of a strange alertness. He was keyed up to quite an extraordinary extent. He had, in short, reached the stage when the patient becomes a little nervous.

  Yes, he felt, analysing his emotions, he was distinctly nervous. The noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort. He was just about to shout to Mrs Perkins, his charwoman, to stop the creature, when she rapped suddenly on the panel to inform him that his shaving-water lay without: and at the sound he immediately shot straight up to the ceiling in a cocoon of sheets and blankets, turned three complete somersaults in mid-air, and came down, quivering like a frightened mustang, in the middle of the floor. His heart was entangled with his tonsils, his eyes had worked round to the back of their sockets, and he wondered dazedly how many human souls besides himself had survived the bomb-explosion.

  Reason returning to her throne, his next impulse was to cry quietly. Remembering after a while that he was a Mulliner, he checked the unmanly tears and, creeping to the bathroom, took a cold shower and felt a little better. A hearty breakfast assisted the cure, and he was almost himself again, when the discovery that there was not a pipe or a shred of tobacco in the place plunged him once more into an inky gloom.

  For a long time Ignatius Mulliner sat with his face in his hands, while all the sorrows of the world seemed to rise before him. And then, abruptly, his mood changed again. A moment before, he had been pitying the human race with an intensity that racked him almost unendurably. Now, the realization surged over him that he didn't care a hoot about the human race. The only emotion the human race evoked in him was an intense dislike. He burned with an irritable loathing for all created things. If the cat had been present, he would have kicked it. If Mrs Perkins had entered, he would have struck her with a mahl-stick. But the cat had gone off to restore its tissues in the dust-bin, and Mrs Perkins was in the kitchen, singing hymns. Ignatius Mulliner boiled with baffled fury. Here he was, with all this concentrated hatred stored up within him, and not a living thing in sight on which to expend it. That, he told himself with a mirthless laugh, was the way things happened.