Mr. Mulliner Stories · Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo (2/3)

“Ha, ha! to you, and see how you like it!” rejoined the bishop with spirit.

Augustine drew a step closer. It was plain that Jane’s fears had been justified and that there was serious trouble afoot between these two old schoolfellows. He peeped in. The vicar, his hands behind his coattails, was striding up and down the carpet, while the bishop, his back to the fireplace, glared defiance at him from the hearthrug.

“Who ever told you you were an authority on chasubles?” demanded the vicar.

“That’s all right who told me,” rejoined the bishop.

“I don’t believe you know what a chasuble is.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s a circular cloak hanging from the shoulders, elaborately embroidered with a pattern and with orphreys. And you can argue as much as you like, young Pieface, but you can’t get away from the fact that there are too many orphreys on yours. And what I’m telling you is that you’ve jolly well got to switch off a few of these orphreys or you’ll get it in the neck.”

The vicar’s eyes glittered furiously.

“Is that so?” he said. “Well, I just won’t, so there! And it’s like your cheek coming here and trying to high-hat me. You seem to have forgotten that I knew you when you were an inky-faced kid at school, and that, if I liked, I could tell the world one or two things about you which would probably amuse it.”

“My past is an open book.”

“Is it?” The vicar laughed malevolently. “Who put the white mouse in the French master’s desk?”

The bishop started.

“Who put jam in the dormitory prefect’s bed?” he retorted.

“Who couldn’t keep his collar clean?”

“Who used to wear a dickey?” The bishop’s wonderful organ-like voice, whose softest whisper could be heard throughout a vast cathedral, rang out in tone of thunder. “Who was sick at the house supper?”

The vicar quivered from head to foot. His rubicund face turned a deeper crimson.

“You know jolly well,” he said, in shaking accents, “that there was something wrong with the turkey. Might have upset anyone.”

“The only thing wrong with the turkey was that you ate too much of it. If you had paid as much attention to developing your soul as you did to developing your tummy, you might by now,” said the bishop, “have risen to my own eminence.”

“Oh, might I?”

“No, perhaps I am wrong. You never had the brain.”

The vicar uttered another discordant laugh.

“Brain is good! We know all about your eminence, as you call it, and how you rose to that eminence.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a bishop. How you became one we will not inquire.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. We will not inquire.”

“Why don’t you inquire?”

“Because,” said the vicar, “it is better not!”

The bishop’s self-control left him. His face contorted with fury, he took a step forward. And simultaneously Augustine sprang lightly into the room.

“Now, now, now!” said Augustine. “Now, now, now, now, now!”

The two men stood transfixed. They stared at the intruder dumbly.

“Come, come!” said Augustine.

The vicar was the first to recover. He glowered at Augustine.

“What do you mean by jumping through my window?” he thundered. “Are you a curate or a harlequin?”

Augustine met his gaze with an unfaltering eye.

“I am a curate,” he replied, with a dignity that well became him. “And, as a curate, I cannot stand by and see two superiors of the cloth, who are moreover old schoolfellows, forgetting themselves. It isn’t right. Absolutely not right, my old superiors of the cloth.”

The vicar bit his lip. The bishop bowed his head.

“Listen,” proceeded Augustine, placing a hand on the shoulder of each. “I hate to see you two dear good chaps quarrelling like this.”

“He started it,” said the vicar, sullenly.

“Never mind who started it.” Augustine silenced the bishop with a curt gesture as he made to speak. “Be sensible, my dear fellows. Respect the decencies of debate. Exercise a little good-humoured give-and-take. You say,” he went on, turning to the bishop, “that our good friend here has too many orphreys on his chasuble?”

“I do. And I stick to it.”

“Yes, yes, yes. But what,” said Augustine, soothingly, “are a few orphreys between friends? Reflect! You and our worthy vicar here were at school together. You are bound by the sacred ties of the old Alma Mater. With him you sported on the green. With him you shared a crib and threw inked darts in the hour supposed to be devoted to the study of French. Do these things mean nothing to you? Do these memories touch no chord?” He turned appealingly from one to the other. “Vicar! Bish!”

The vicar had moved away and was wiping his eyes. The bishop fumbled for a pocket-handkerchief. There was a silence.

“Sorry, Pieface,” said the bishop, in a choking voice.

“Shouldn’t have spoken as I did, Boko,” mumbled the vicar.

“If you want to know what I think,” said the bishop, “you are right in attributing your indisposition at the house supper to something wrong with the turkey. I recollect saying at the time that the bird should never have been served in such a condition.”

“And when you put that white mouse in the French master’s desk,” said the vicar, “you performed one of the noblest services to humanity of which there is any record. They ought to have made you a bishop on the spot.”

“Pieface!”

“Boko!”

The two men clasped hands.

“Splendid!” said Augustine. “Everything hotsy-totsy now?”

“Quite, quite,” said the vicar.

“As far as I am concerned, completely hotsy-totsy,” said the bishop. He turned to his old friend solicitously. “You will continue to wear all the orphreys you want⁠—will you not, Pieface?”

“No, no. I see now that I was wrong. From now on, Boko, I abandon orphreys altogether.”

“But, Pieface⁠—”

“It’s all right,” the vicar assured him. “I can take them or leave them alone.”

“Splendid fellow!” The bishop coughed to hide his emotion, and there was another silence. “I think, perhaps,” he went on, after a pause, “I should be leaving you now, my dear chap, and going in search of my wife. She is with your daughter, I believe, somewhere in the village.”

“They are coming up the drive now.”

“Ah, yes, I see them. A charming girl, your daughter.”

Augustine clapped him on the shoulder.

“Bish,” he exclaimed, “you said a mouthful. She is the dearest, sweetest girl in the whole world. And I should be glad, vicar, if you would give your consent to our immediate union. I love Jane with a good man’s fervour, and I am happy to inform you that my sentiments are returned. Assure us, therefore, of your approval, and I will go at once and have the banns put up.”

The vicar leaped as though he had been stung. Like so many vicars, he had a poor opinion of curates, and he had always regarded Augustine as rather below than above the general norm or level of the despised class.

“What!” he cried.

“A most excellent idea,” said the bishop, beaming. “A very happy notion, I call it.”

“My daughter!” The vicar seemed dazed. “My daughter marry a curate!”

“You were a curate once yourself, Pieface.”

“Yes, but not a curate like that.”

“No!” said the bishop. “You were not. Nor was I. Better for us both had we been. This young man, I would have you know, is the most outstandingly excellent young man I have ever encountered. Are you aware that scarcely an hour ago he saved me with the most consummate address from a large shaggy dog with black spots and a kink in his tail? I was sorely pressed, Pieface, when this young man came up and, with a readiness of resource and an accuracy of aim which it would be impossible to overpraise, got that dog in the short ribs with a rock and sent him flying.”

The vicar seemed to be struggling with some powerful emotion. His eyes had widened.

“A dog with black spots?”

“Very black spots. But no blacker, I fear, than the heart they hid.”

“And he really plugged him in the short ribs?”

“As far as I could see, squarely in the short ribs.”

The vicar held out his hand.

“Mulliner,” he said, “I was not aware of this. In the light of the facts which have just been drawn to my attention, I have no hesitation in saying that my objections are removed. I have had it in for that dog since the second Sunday before Septuagesima, when he pinned me by the ankle as I paced beside the river composing a sermon on Certain Alarming Manifestations of the So-called Modern Spirit. Take Jane. I give my consent freely. And may she be as happy as any girl with such a husband ought to be.”

A few more affecting words were exchanged, and then the bishop and Augustine left the house. The bishop was silent and thoughtful.

“I owe you a great deal, Mulliner,” he said at length.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Augustine. “Would you say that?”

“A very great deal. You saved me from a terrible disaster. Had you not leaped through that window at that precise juncture and intervened, I really believe I should have pasted my dear old friend Brandon in the eye. I was sorely exasperated.”

“Our good vicar can be trying at times,” agreed Augustine.

“My fist was already clenched, and I was just hauling off for the swing when you checked me. What the result would have been, had you not exhibited a tact and discretion beyond your years, I do not like to think. I might have been unfrocked.” He shivered at the thought, though the weather was mild. “I could never have shown my face at the Athenaeum again. But, tut, tut!” went on the bishop, patting Augustine on the shoulder, “let us not dwell on what might have been. Speak to me of yourself. The vicar’s charming daughter⁠—you really love her?”

“I do, indeed.”

The bishop’s face had grown grave.

“Think well, Mulliner,” he said. “Marriage is a serious affair. Do not plunge into it without due reflection. I myself am a husband, and, though singularly blessed in the possession of a devoted helpmeet, cannot but feel sometimes that a man is better off as a bachelor. Women, Mulliner, are odd.”

“True,” said Augustine.

“My own dear wife is the best of women. And, as I never weary of saying, a good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving to the right and the good under all change; lovely in youthful comeliness, lovely all her life in comeliness of heart. And yet⁠—”

“And yet?” said Augustine.

The bishop mused for a moment. He wriggled a little with an expression of pain, and scratched himself between the shoulder-blades.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the bishop. “It is a warm and pleasant day today, is it not?”

“Exceptionally clement,” said Augustine.

“A fair, sunny day, made gracious by a temperate westerly breeze. And yet, Mulliner, if you will credit my statement, my wife insisted on my putting on my thick winter woollies this morning. Truly,” sighed the bishop, “as a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion. Proverbs 11:21.”

“Twenty-two,” corrected Augustine.

“I should have said twenty-two. They are made of thick flannel, and I have an exceptionally sensitive skin. Oblige me, my dear fellow, by rubbing me in the small of the back with the ferrule of your stick. I think it will ease the irritation.”

“But, my poor dear old bish,” said Augustine, sympathetically, “this must not be.”

The bishop shook his head ruefully.

“You would not speak so hardily, Mulliner, if you knew my wife. There is no appeal from her decrees.”

“Nonsense,” cried Augustine, cheerily. He looked through the trees to where the lady bishopess, escorted by Jane, was examining a lobelia through her lorgnette with just the right blend of cordiality and condescension. “I’ll fix that for you in a second.”

The bishop clutched at his arm.

“My boy! What are you going to do?”

“I’m just going to have a word with your wife and put the matter up to her as a reasonable woman. Thick winter woollies on a day like this! Absurd!” said Augustine. “Preposterous! I never heard such rot.”

The bishop gazed after him with a laden heart. Already he had come to love this young man like a son: and to see him charging so light-heartedly into the very jaws of destruction afflicted him with a deep and poignant sadness. He knew what his wife was like when even the highest in the land attempted to thwart her; and this brave lad was but a curate. In another moment she would be looking at him through her lorgnette: and England was littered with the shrivelled remains of curates at whom the lady bishopess had looked through her lorgnette. He had seen them wilt like salted slugs at the episcopal breakfast-table.

He held his breath. Augustine had reached the lady bishopess, and the lady bishopess was even now raising her lorgnette.

The bishop shut his eyes and turned away. And then⁠—years afterwards, it seemed to him⁠—a cheery voice hailed him: and, turning, he perceived Augustine bounding back through the trees.

“It’s all right, bish,” said Augustine.

“All⁠—all right?” faltered the bishop.

“Yes. She says you can go and change into the thin cashmere.”

The bishop reeled.

“But⁠—but⁠—but what did you say to her? What arguments did you employ?”

“Oh, I just pointed out what a warm day it was and jollied her along a bit⁠—”

“Jollied her along a bit!”

“And she agreed in the most friendly and cordial manner. She has asked me to call at the Palace one of these days.”

The bishop seized Augustine’s hand.

“My boy,” he said in a broken voice, “you shall do more than call at the Palace. You shall come and live at the Palace. Become my secretary, Mulliner, and name your own salary. If you intend to marry, you will require an increased stipend. Become my secretary, boy, and never leave my side. I have needed somebody like you for years.”

It was late in the afternoon when Augustine returned to his rooms, for he had been invited to lunch at the vicarage and had been the life and soul of the cheery little party.

“A letter for you, sir,” said Mrs. Wardle, obsequiously.

Augustine took the letter.

“I am sorry to say I shall be leaving you shortly, Mrs. Wardle.”

“Oh, sir! If there’s anything I can do⁠—”

“Oh, it’s not that. The fact is, the bishop has made me his secretary, and I shall have to shift my toothbrush and spats to the Palace, you see.”

“Well, fancy that, sir! Why, you’ll be a bishop yourself one of these days.”

“Possibly,” said Augustine. “Possibly. And now let me read this.”

He opened the letter. A thoughtful frown appeared on his face as he read.

My dear Augustine,

I am writing in some haste to tell you that the impulsiveness of your aunt has led to a rather serious mistake.

She tells me that she dispatched to you yesterday by parcels post a sample bottle of my new Buck-U-Uppo, which she obtained without my knowledge from my laboratory. Had she mentioned what she was intending to do, I could have prevented a very unfortunate occurrence.

Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo is of two grades or qualities⁠—the A and the B. The A is a mild, but strengthening, tonic designed for human invalids. The B, on the other hand, is purely for circulation in the animal kingdom, and was invented to fill a long-felt want throughout our Indian possessions.

As you are doubtless aware, the favourite pastime of the Indian Maharajahs is the hunting of the tiger of the jungle from the backs of elephants; and it has happened frequently in the past that hunts have been spoiled by the failure of the elephant to see eye to eye with its owner in the matter of what constitutes sport.

Too often elephants, on sighting the tiger, have turned and galloped home: and it was to correct this tendency on their part that I invented Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo “B.” One teaspoonful of the Buck-U-Uppo “B” administered in its morning bran-mash will cause the most timid elephant to trumpet loudly and charge the fiercest tiger without a qualm.

Abstain, therefore, from taking any of the contents of the bottle you now possess,

Augustine remained for some time in deep thought after perusing this communication. Then, rising, he whistled a few bars of the psalm appointed for the twenty-sixth of June and left the room.