Mr. Mulliner Stories · Portrait of a Disciplinarian (2/2)

“Two eggs,” corrected Nurse Wilks.

“Two eggs,” said Frederick.

Miss Oliphant twisted the knife in the wound.

“There seems to be plenty of cake, too. How nice for you! Still, I should be careful, if I were you. It looks rather rich. I never could understand,” she went on, addressing Nurse Wilks in a voice which Frederick, who was now about seven years old, considered insufferably grown-up and affected, “why people should find any enjoyment in stuffing and gorging and making pigs of themselves.”

“Boys will be boys,” argued Nurse Wilks.

“I suppose so,” sighed Miss Oliphant. “Still, it’s all rather unpleasant.”

A slight but well-defined glitter appeared in Nurse Wilks’s eyes. She detected a tendency to hoighty-toightiness in her young guest’s manner, and hoighty-toightiness was a thing to be checked.

“Girls,” she said, “are by no means perfect.”

“Ah!” breathed Frederick, in rapturous adhesion to the sentiment.

“Girls have their little faults. Girls are sometimes inclined to be vain. I know a little girl not a hundred miles from this room who was so proud of her new panties that she ran out in the street in them.”

“Nanna!” cried Miss Oliphant pinkly.

“Disgusting!” said Frederick.

He uttered a short laugh: and so full was this laugh, though short, of scorn, disdain, and a certain hideous masculine superiority, that Jane Oliphant’s proud spirit writhed beneath the infliction. She turned on him with blazing eyes.

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘Disgusting!’ ”

“Indeed?”

“I cannot,” said Frederick judicially, “imagine a more deplorable exhibition, and I hope you were sent to bed without any supper.”

“If you ever had to go without your supper,” said Miss Oliphant, who believed in attack as the best form of defence, “it would kill you.”

“Is that so?” said Frederick.

“You’re a beast, and I hate you,” said Miss Oliphant.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that is so.”

“Now, now, now,” said Nurse Wilks. “Come, come, come!”

She eyed the two with that comfortable look of power and capability which comes naturally to women who have spent half a century in dealing with the young and fractious.

“We will have no quarrelling,” she said. “Make it up at once. Master Frederick, give Miss Jane a nice kiss.”

The room rocked before Frederick’s bulging eyes.

“A what?” he gasped.

“Give her a nice big kiss and tell her you’re sorry you quarrelled with her.”

“She quarrelled with me.”

“Never mind. A little gentleman must always take the blame.”

Frederick, working desperately, dragged to the surface a sketchy smile.

“I apologize,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” said Miss Oliphant.

“Kiss her,” said Nurse Wilks.

“I won’t!” said Frederick.

“What!”

“I won’t.”

“Master Frederick,” said Nurse Wilks, rising and pointing a menacing finger, “you march straight into that cupboard in the passage and stay there till you are good.”

Frederick hesitated. He came of a proud family. A Mulliner had once received the thanks of his Sovereign for services rendered on the field of Crécy. But the recollection of what his brother George had said decided him. Infra dig. as it might be to allow himself to be shoved away in cupboards, it was better than being responsible for a woman’s heart-failure. With bowed head he passed through the door, and a key clicked behind him.

All alone in a dark world that smelt of mice, Frederick Mulliner gave himself up to gloomy reflection. He had just put in about two minutes’ intense thought of a kind which would have made the meditations of Schopenhauer on one of his bad mornings seem like the daydreams of Pollyanna, when a voice spoke through the crack in the door.

“Freddie. I mean Mr. Mulliner.”

“Well?”

“She’s gone into the kitchen to get the jam,” proceeded the voice rapidly. “Shall I let you out?”

“Pray do not trouble,” said Frederick coldly. “I am perfectly comfortable.”

Silence followed. Frederick returned to his reverie. About now, he thought, but for his brother George’s treachery in luring him down to this plague-spot by a misleading telegram, he would have been on the twelfth green at Squashy Hollow, trying out that new putter. Instead of which.⁠ ⁠…

The door opened abruptly, and as abruptly closed again. And Frederick Mulliner, who had been looking forward to an unbroken solitude, discovered with a good deal of astonishment that he had started taking in lodgers.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, with a touch of proprietorial disapproval.

The girl did not answer. But presently muffled sounds came to him through the darkness. In spite of himself, a certain tenderness crept upon Frederick.

“I say,” he said awkwardly. “There’s nothing to cry about.”

“I’m not crying. I’m laughing.”

“Oh?” The tenderness waned. “You think it’s amusing, do you, being shut up in this damned cupboard.⁠ ⁠…”

“There is no need to use bad language.”

“I entirely disagree with you. There is every need to use bad language. It’s ghastly enough being at Bingley-on-Sea at all, but when it comes to being shut up in Bingley cupboards.⁠ ⁠…”

“… with a girl you hate?”

“We will not go into that aspect of the matter,” said Frederick with dignity. “The important point is that here I am in a cupboard at Bingley-on-Sea when, if there were any justice or right-thinking in the world, I should be out at Squashy Hollow.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh? Do you still play golf?”

“Certainly I still play golf. Why not?”

“I don’t know why not. I’m glad you are still able to amuse yourself.”

“How do you mean, still? Do you think that just because.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t think anything.”

“I suppose you imagined I would be creeping about the place, a brokenhearted wreck?”

“Oh no. I knew you would find it easy to console yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Never mind.”

“Are you insinuating that I am the sort of man who turns lightly from one woman to another⁠—a mere butterfly who flits from flower to flower, sipping⁠ ⁠… ?”

“Yes, if you want to know, I think you are a born sipper.”

Frederick started. The charge was monstrous.

“I have never sipped. And, what’s more, I have never flitted.”

“That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

“What you said.”

“You appear to have a very keen sense of humour,” said Frederick weightily. “It amuses you to be shut up in cupboards. It amuses you to hear me say.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, it’s nice to be able to get some amusement out of life, isn’t it? Do you want to know why she shut me up in here?”

“I haven’t the slightest curiosity. Why?”

“I forgot where I was and lighted a cigarette. Oh, my goodness!”

“Now what?”

“I thought I heard a mouse. Do you think there are mice in this cupboard?”

“Certainly,” said Frederick. “Dozens of them.”

He would have gone on to specify the kind of mice⁠—large, fat, slithery, active mice: but at this juncture something hard and sharp took him agonizingly on the ankle.

“Ouch!” cried Frederick.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that you?”

“It was.”

“I was kicking about to discourage the mice.”

“I see.”

“Did it hurt much?”

“Only a trifle more than blazes, thank you for inquiring.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“Anyway, it would have given a mouse a nasty jar, if it had been one, wouldn’t it?”

“The shock, I should imagine, of a lifetime.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t mention it. Why should I worry about a broken ankle, when.⁠ ⁠…”

“When what?”

“I forgot what I was going to say.”

“When your heart is broken?”

“My heart is not broken.” It was a point which Frederick wished to make luminously clear. “I am gay⁠ ⁠… happy.⁠ ⁠… Who the devil is this man Dillingwater?” he concluded abruptly.

There was a momentary pause.

“Oh, just a man.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the Ponderbys’.”

“Where did you get engaged to him?”

“At the Ponderbys’.”

“Did you pay another visit to the Ponderbys’, then?”

“No.”

Frederick choked.

“When you went to stay with the Ponderbys, you were engaged to me. Do you mean to say you broke off your engagement to me, met this Dillingwater, and got engaged to him all in the course of a single visit lasting barely two weeks?”

“Yes.”

Frederick said nothing. It struck him later that he should have said “Oh, Woman, Woman!” but at the moment it did not occur to him.

“I don’t see what right you have to criticize me,” said Jane.

“Who criticized you?”

“You did.”

“When?”

“Just then.”

“I call Heaven to witness,” cried Frederick Mulliner, “that not by so much as a single word have I hinted at my opinion that your conduct is the vilest and most revolting that has ever been drawn to my attention. I never so much as suggested that your revelation had shocked me to the depths of my soul.”

“Yes, you did. You sniffed.”

“If Bingley-on-Sea is not open for being sniffed in at this season,” said Frederick coldly, “I should have been informed earlier.”

“I had a perfect right to get engaged to anyone I liked and as quick as I liked, after the abominable way you behaved.”

“Abominable way I behaved? What do you mean?”

“You know.”

“Pardon me, I do not know. If you are alluding to my refusal to wear the tie you bought for me on my last birthday, I can but repeat my statement, made to you at the time, that, apart from being the sort of tie no upright man would be seen dead in a ditch with, its colours were those of a Cycling, Angling, and Dart-Throwing club of which I am not a member.”

“I am not alluding to that. I mean the day I was going to the Ponderbys’ and you promised to see me off at Paddington, and then you phoned and said you couldn’t as you were detained by important business, and I thought, well, I think I’ll go by the later train after all because that will give me time to lunch quietly at the Berkeley, and I went and lunched quietly at the Berkeley, and when I was there who should I see but you at a table at the other end of the room gorging yourself in the company of a beastly creature in a pink frock and henna’d hair. That’s what I mean.”

Frederick clutched at his forehead.

“Repeat that,” he exclaimed.

Jane did so.

“Ye gods!” said Frederick.

“It was like a blow over the head. Something seemed to snap inside me, and.⁠ ⁠…”

“I can explain all,” said Frederick.

Jane’s voice in the darkness was cold.

“Explain?” she said.

“Explain,” said Frederick.

“All?”

“All.”

Jane coughed.

“Before beginning,” she said, “do not forget that I know every one of your female relatives by sight.”

“I don’t want to talk about my female relatives.”

“I thought you were going to say that she was one of them⁠—an aunt or something.”

“Nothing of the kind. She was a revue star. You probably saw her in a piece called Toot-Toot.”

“And that is your idea of an explanation!”

Frederick raised his hand for silence. Realizing that she could not see it, he lowered it again.

“Jane,” he said in a low, throbbing voice, “can you cast your mind back to a morning in the spring when we walked, you and I, in Kensington Gardens? The sun shone brightly, the sky was a limpid blue flecked with fleecy clouds, and from the west there blew a gentle breeze.⁠ ⁠…”

“If you think you can melt me with that sort of.⁠ ⁠…”

“Nothing of the kind. What I was leading up to was this. As we walked, you and I, there came snuffling up to us a small Pekinese dog. It left me, I admit, quite cold, but you went into ecstasies: and from that moment I had but one mission in life, to discover who that Peke belonged to and buy it for you. And after the most exhaustive inquiries, I tracked the animal down. It was the property of the lady in whose company you saw me lunching⁠—lightly, not gorging⁠—at the Berkeley that day. I managed to get an introduction to her, and immediately began to make offers to her for the dog. Money was no object to me. All I wished was to put the little beast in your arms and see your face light up. It was to be a surprise. That morning the woman phoned, and said that she had practically decided to close with my latest bid, and would I take her to lunch and discuss the matter? It was agony to have to ring you up and tell you that I could not see you off at Paddington, but it had to be done. It was anguish having to sit for two hours listening to that highly-coloured female telling me how the comedian had ruined her big number in her last show by standing upstage and pretending to drink ink, but that had to be done too. I bit the bullet and saw it through and I got the dog that afternoon. And next morning I received your letter breaking off the engagement.”

There was a long silence.

“Is this true?” said Jane.

“Quite true.”

“It sounds too⁠—how shall I put it?⁠—too frightfully probable. Look me in the face!”

“What’s the good of looking you in the face when I can’t see an inch in front of me?”

“Well, is it true?”

“Certainly it is true.”

“Can you produce the Peke?”

“I have not got it on my person,” said Frederick stiffly. “But it is at my flat, probably chewing up a valuable rug. I will give it you for a wedding present.”

“Oh, Freddie!”

“A wedding present,” repeated Frederick, though the words stuck in his throat like patent American health-cereal.

“But I’m not going to be married.”

“You’re⁠—what did you say?”

“I’m not going to be married.”

“But what of Dillingwater?”

“That’s off.”

“Off?”

“Off,” said Jane firmly. “I only got engaged to him out of pique. I thought I could go through with it, buoying myself up by thinking what a score it would be off you, but one morning I saw him eating a peach and I began to waver. He splashed himself to the eyebrows. And just after that I found that he had a trick of making a sort of funny noise when he drank coffee. I would sit on the other side of the breakfast table, looking at him and saying to myself ‘Now comes the funny noise!’ and when I thought of doing that all the rest of my life I saw that the scheme was impossible. So I broke off the engagement.”

Frederick gasped.

“Jane!”

He groped out, found her, and drew her into his arms.

“Freddie!”

“Jane!”

“Freddie!”

“Jane!”

“Freddie!”

“Jane!”

On the panel of the door there sounded an authoritative rap. Through it there spoke an authoritative voice, slightly cracked by age but full, nevertheless, of the spirit that will stand no nonsense.

“Master Frederick.”

“Hullo?”

“Are you good now?”

“You bet I’m good.”

“Will you give Miss Jane a nice kiss?”

“I will do,” said Frederick Mulliner, enthusiasm ringing in every syllable, “just that little thing!”

“Then you may come out,” said Nurse Wilks. “I have boiled you two more eggs.”

Frederick paled, but only for an instant. What did anything matter now? His lips were set in a firm line, and his voice, when he spoke, was calm and steady.

“Lead me to them,” he said.