Part 6

He dressed hastily, his numbed fingers fumbling with his gaiters. It all came back to him now. Yes, he could remember putting the hat on the statue's head. It had seemed a good thing to do at the time, and he had done it. How little we guess at the moment how far-reaching our most trivial actions may be!

The headmaster was over at the school, instructing the Sixth Form in Greek Composition: and he was obliged to wait, chafing, until twelve-thirty, when the bell rang for the half-way halt in the day's work. He stood at the study window, watching with ill-controlled impatience, and presently the headmaster appeared, walking heavily like one on whose mind there is a weight.

'Well?' cried the bishop, as he entered the study.

The headmaster doffed his cap and gown, and sank limply into a chair.

'I cannot conceive,' he groaned, 'what madness had me in its grip last night.'

The bishop was shaken, but he could not countenance such an attitude as this.

'I do not understand you, Headmaster,' he said stiffly. 'It was our simple duty, as a protest against the undue exaltation of one whom we both know to have been a most unpleasant school-mate, to paint that statue.'

'And I suppose it was your duty to leave your hat on its head?'

'Now there,' said the bishop, 'I may possibly have gone a little too far.' He coughed. 'Has that perhaps somewhat ill-considered action led to the harbouring of suspicions by those in authority?'

'They don't know what to think.'

'What is the view of the Board of Governors?'

'They insist on my finding the culprit. Should I fail to do so, they hint at the gravest consequences.'

'You mean they will deprive you of your headmastership?'

'That is what they imply. I shall be asked to hand in my resignation. And, if that happens, bim goes my chance of ever being a bishop.'

'Well, it's not all jam being a bishop. You wouldn't enjoy it, Catsmeat.'

'All very well for you to talk, Boko. You got me into this, you silly ass.'

'I like that! You were just as keen on it as I was.'

'You suggested it.'

'Well, you jumped at the suggestion.'

The two men had faced each other heatedly, and for a moment it seemed as if there was to be a serious falling-out. Then the bishop recovered himself.

'Catsmeat,' he said, with that wonderful smile of his, taking the other's hand, 'this is unworthy of us. We must not quarrel. We must put our heads together and see if there is not some avenue of escape from the unfortunate position in which, however creditable our motives, we appear to have placed ourselves. How would it be--?'

'I thought of that,' said the headmaster. 'It wouldn't do a bit of good. Of course, we might--'

'No, that's no use, either,' said the bishop.

They sat for a while in meditative silence. And, as they sat, the door opened.

'General Bloodenough,' announced the butler.

'Oh, that I had wings like a dove. Psalm xlv, 6,' muttered the bishop.

His desire to be wafted from that spot with all available speed could hardly be considered unreasonable. General Sir Hector Bloodenough, V.C., K.C.I.E., M.V.O., on retiring from the army, had been for many years, until his final return to England, in charge of the Secret Service in Western Africa, where his unerring acumen had won for him from the natives the soubriquet of Wah-nah-B'gosh-B'jingo--which, freely translated, means Big Chief Who Can See Through The Hole In A Doughnut.

A man impossible to deceive. The last man the bishop would have wished to be conducting the present investigations.

The general stalked into the room. He had keen blue eyes, topped by bushy white eyebrows: and the bishop found his gaze far too piercing to be agreeable.

'Bad business, this,' he said. 'Bad business. Bad business.'

'It is, indeed,' faltered the bishop.

'Shocking bad business. Shocking. Shocking. Do you know what we found on the head of that statue, eh? that statue, that statue? Your hat, bishop. Your hat. Your hat.'

The bishop made an attempt to rally. His mind was in a whirl, for the general's habit of repeating everything three times had the effect on him of making his last night's escapade seem three times as bad. He now saw himself on the verge of standing convicted of having painted three statues with three pots of pink paint, and of having placed on the head of each one of a trio of shovel-hats. But he was a strong man, and he did his best.

'You say my hat?' he retorted with spirit. 'How do you know it was my hat? There may have been hundreds of bishops dodging about the school grounds last night.'

'Got your name in it. Your name. Your name.'

The bishop clutched at the arm of the chair in which he sat. The general's eyes were piercing him through and through, and every moment he felt more like a sheep that has had the misfortune to encounter a potted meat manufacturer. He was on the point of protesting that the writing in the hat was probably a forgery, when there was a tap at the door.

'Come in,' cried the headmaster, who had been cowering in his seat.

There entered a small boy in an Eton suit, whose face seemed to the bishop vaguely familiar. It was a face that closely resembled a ripe tomato with a nose stuck on it, but that was not what had struck the bishop. It was of something other than tomatoes that this lad reminded him.

'Sir, please, sir,' said the boy.

'Yes, yes, yes,' said General Bloodenough testily. 'Run away, my boy, run away, run away. Can't you see we're busy?'

'But, sir, please, sir, it's about the statue.'

'What about the statue? What about it? What about it?'

'Sir, please, sir, it was me.'

'What! What! What! What! What!'

The bishop, the general, and the headmaster had spoken simultaneously: and the 'Whats' had been distributed as follows:

The Bishop 1 The General 3 The Headmaster 1

making five in all. Having uttered these ejaculations, they sat staring at the boy, who turned a brighter vermilion.

'What are you saying?' cried the headmaster. 'You painted that statue?'

'Sir, yes, sir.'

'You?' said the bishop.

'Sir, yes, sir.'

'You? You? You?' said the general.

'Sir, yes, sir.'

There was a quivering pause. The bishop looked at the headmaster. The headmaster looked at the bishop. The general looked at the boy. The boy looked at the floor.

The general was the first to speak.

'Monstrous!' he exclaimed. 'Monstrous. Monstrous. Never heard of such a thing. This boy must be expelled, Headmaster. Expelled. Ex--'

'No!' said the headmaster in a ringing voice.

'Then flogged within an inch of his life. Within an inch. An inch.'

'No!' A strange, new dignity seemed to have descended upon the Rev. Trevor Entwhistle. He was breathing a little quickly through his nose, and his eyes had assumed a somewhat prawn-like aspect. 'In matters of school discipline, general, I must with all deference claim to be paramount. I will deal with this case as I think best. In my opinion this is not an occasion for severity. You agree with me, bishop?'

The bishop came to himself with a start. He had been thinking of an article which he had just completed for a leading review on the subject of Miracles, and was regretting that the tone he had taken, though in keeping with the trend of Modern Thought, had been tinged with something approaching scepticism.

'Oh, entirely,' he said.

'Then all I can say,' fumed the general, 'is that I wash my hands of the whole business, the whole business, the whole business. And if this is the way our boys are being brought up nowadays, no wonder the country is going to the dogs, the dogs, going to the dogs.'

The door slammed behind him. The headmaster turned to the boy, a kindly, winning smile upon his face.

'No doubt,' he said, 'you now regret this rash act?'

'Sir, yes, sir.'

'And you would not do it again?'

'Sir, no, sir.'

'Then I think,' said the headmaster cheerily, 'that we may deal leniently with what, after all, was but a boyish prank, eh, bishop?'

'Oh, decidedly, Headmaster.'

'Quite the sort of thing--ha, ha!--that you or I might have done--er--at his age?'

'Oh, quite.'

'Then you shall write me twenty lines of Virgil, Mulliner, and we will say no more about it.'

The bishop sprang from his chair.

'Mulliner! Did you say Mulliner?'

'Yes.'

'I have a secretary of that name. Are you, by any chance, a relation of his, my lad?'

'Sir, yes, sir. Brother.'

'Oh!' said the bishop.

* * * * *

The bishop found Augustine in the garden, squirting whale-oil solution on the rose-bushes, for he was an enthusiastic horticulturist. He placed an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

'Mulliner,' he said, 'do not think that I have not detected your hidden hand behind this astonishing occurrence.'

'Eh?' said Augustine. 'What astonishing occurrence?'

'As you are aware, Mulliner, last night, from motives which I can assure you were honourable and in accord with the truest spirit of sound Churchmanship, the Rev. Trevor Entwhistle and I were compelled to go out and paint old Fatty Hemel's statue pink. Just now, in the headmaster's study, a boy confessed that he had done it. That boy, Mulliner, was your brother.

'Oh yes?'

'It was you who, in order to save me, inspired him to that confession. Do not deny it, Mulliner.'

Augustine smiled an embarrassed smile.

'It was nothing, Bish, nothing at all.'

'I trust the matter did not involve you in any too great expense. From what I know of brothers, the lad was scarcely likely to have carried through this benevolent ruse for nothing.'

'Oh, just a couple of quid. He wanted three, but I beat him down. Preposterous, I mean to say,' said Augustine warmly. 'Three quid for a perfectly simple, easy job like that? And so I told him.'

'It shall be returned to you, Mulliner.'

'No, no, Bish.'

'Yes, Mulliner, it shall be returned to you. I have not the sum on my person, but I will forward you a cheque to your new address, The Vicarage, Steeple Mummery, Hants.'

Augustine's eyes filled with sudden tears. He grasped the other's hand.

'Bish,' he said in a choking voice, 'I don't know how to thank you. But--have you considered?'

'Considered?'

'The wife of thy bosom. Deuteronomy xiii, 6. What will she say when you tell her?'

The bishop's eyes gleamed with a resolute light.

'Mulliner,' he said, 'the point you raise had not escaped me. But I have the situation well in hand. A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. Ecclesiastes x, 20. I shall inform her of my decision on the long-distance telephone.'

5

CAME THE DAWN

The man in the corner took a sip of stout-and-mild, and proceeded to point the moral of the story which he had just told us.

'Yes, gentlemen,' he said, 'Shakespeare was right. There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.'

We nodded. He had been speaking of a favourite dog of his which, entered recently by some error in a local cat show, had taken first prize in the class for short-haired tortoiseshells; and we all thought the quotation well-chosen and apposite.

'There is, indeed,' said Mr Mulliner. 'A rather similar thing happened to my nephew Lancelot.'

In the nightly reunions in the bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest we have been trained to believe almost anything of Mr Mulliner's relatives, but this, we felt, was a little too much.

'You mean to say your nephew Lancelot took a prize at a cat show?'

'No, no,' said Mr Mulliner hastily. 'Certainly not. I have never deviated from the truth in my life, and I hope I never shall. No Mulliner has ever taken a prize at a cat show. No Mulliner, indeed, to the best of my knowledge, has even been entered for such a competition. What I meant was that the fact that we never know what the future holds in store for us was well exemplified in the case of my nephew Lancelot, just as it was in the case of this gentleman's dog which suddenly found itself transformed for all practical purposes into a short-haired tortoiseshell cat. It is rather a curious story, and provides a good illustration of the adage that you never can tell and that it is always darkest before the dawn.'

* * * * *

At the time at which my story opens (said Mr Mulliner) Lancelot, then twenty-four years of age and recently come down from Oxford, was spending a few days with old Jeremiah Briggs, the founder and proprietor of the famous Briggs's Breakfast Pickles, on the latter's yacht at Cowes.

This Jeremiah Briggs was Lancelot's uncle on the mother's side, and he had always interested himself in the boy. It was he who had sent him to the University; and it was the great wish of his heart that his nephew, on completing his education, should join him in the business. It was consequently a shock to the poor old gentleman when, as they sat together on deck on the first morning of the visit, Lancelot, while expressing the greatest respect for pickles as a class, firmly refused to start in and learn the business from the bottom up.

'The fact is, uncle,' he said, 'I have mapped out a career for myself on far different lines. I am a poet.'

'A poet? When did you feel this coming on?'

'Shortly after my twenty-second birthday.'

'Well,' said the old man, overcoming his first natural feeling of repulsion, 'I don't see why that should stop us getting together. I use quite a lot of poetry in my business.'

'I fear I could not bring myself to commercialize my Muse.'

'Young man,' said Mr Briggs, 'if an onion with a head like yours came into my factory, I would refuse to pickle it.'

He stumped below, thoroughly incensed. But Lancelot merely uttered a light laugh. He was young; it was summer; the sky was blue; the sun was shining; and the things in the world that really mattered were not cucumbers and vinegar but Romance and Love. Oh, he felt, for some delightful girl to come along on whom he might lavish all the pent-up fervour which had been sizzling inside him for weeks!

And at this moment he saw her.

She was leaning against the rail of a yacht that lay at its moorings some forty yards away; and, as he beheld her, Lancelot's heart leaped like a young gherkin in the boiling-vat. In her face, it seemed to him, was concentrated all the beauty of all the ages. Confronted with this girl, Cleopatra would have looked like Nellie Wallace, and Helen of Troy might have been her plain sister. He was still gazing at her in a sort of trance, when the bell sounded for luncheon and he had to go below.

All through the meal, while his uncle spoke of pickled walnuts he had known, Lancelot remained in a reverie. He was counting the minutes until he could get on deck and start goggling again. Judge, therefore, of his dismay when, on bounding up the companionway, he found that the other yacht had disappeared. He recalled now having heard a sort of harsh, grating noise towards the end of luncheon; but at the time he had merely thought it was his uncle eating celery. Too late he realized that it must have been the raising of the anchor-chain.

* * * * *

Although at heart a dreamer, Lancelot Mulliner was not without a certain practical streak. Thinking the matter over, he soon hit upon a rough plan of action for getting on the track of the fair unknown who had flashed in and out of his life with such tragic abruptness. A girl like that--beautiful, lissom, and--as far as he had been able to tell at such long range--gimp, was sure to be fond of dancing. The chances were, therefore, that sooner or later he would find her at some night club or other.

He started, accordingly, to make the round of the night clubs. As soon as one was raided, he went on to another. Within a month he had visited the Mauve Mouse, the Scarlet Centipede, the Vicious Cheese, the Gay Fritter, the Placid Prune, the Café de Bologna, Billy's, Milly's, Ike's, Spike's, Mike's, and the Ham and Beef. And it was at the Ham and Beef that at last he found her.

He had gone there one evening for the fifth time, principally because at that establishment there were a couple of speciality dancers to whom he had taken a dislike shared by virtually every thinking man in London. It had always seemed to him that one of these nights the male member of the team, while whirling his partner round in a circle by her outstretched arms, might let her go and break her neck; and though constant disappointment had to some extent blunted the first fine enthusiasm of his early visits, he still hoped.

On this occasion the speciality dancers came and went unscathed as usual, but Lancelot hardly noticed them. His whole attention was concentrated on the girl seated across the room immediately opposite him. It was beyond a question she.

Well, you know what poets are. When their emotions are stirred, they are not like us dull, diffident fellows. They breathe quickly through their noses and get off to a flying start. In one bound Lancelot was across the room, his heart beating till it sounded like a by-request solo from the trap-drummer.

'Shall we dance?' he said.

'Can you dance?' said the girl.

Lancelot gave a short, amused laugh. He had had a good University education, and had not failed to profit by it. He was a man who never let his left hip know what his right hip was doing.

'I am old Colonel Charleston's favourite son,' he said, simply.

A sound like the sudden descent of an iron girder on a sheet of tin, followed by a jangling of bells, a wailing of tortured cats, and the noise of a few steam-riveters at work, announced to their trained ears that the music had begun. Sweeping her to him with a violence which, attempted in any other place, would have earned him a sentence of thirty days coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench, Lancelot began to push her yielding form through the sea of humanity till they reached the centre of the whirlpool. There, unable to move in any direction, they surrendered themselves to the ecstasy of the dance, wiping their feet on the polished flooring and occasionally pushing an elbow into some stranger's encroaching rib.

'This,' murmured the girl with closed eyes, 'is divine.'

'What?' bellowed Lancelot, for the orchestra, in addition to ringing bells, had now begun to howl like wolves at dinner-time.

'Divine,' roared the girl. 'You certainly are a beautiful dancer.'

'A beautiful what?'

'Dancer.'

'Who is?'

'You are.'

'Good egg!' shrieked Lancelot, rather wishing, though he was fond of music, that the orchestra would stop beating the floor with hammers.

'What did you say?'

'I said, "Good egg."'

'Why?'

'Because the idea crossed my mind that, if you felt like that, you might care to marry me.'

There was a sudden lull in the storm. It was as if the audacity of his words had stricken the orchestra into a sort of paralysis. Dark-complexioned men who had been exploding bombs and touching off automobile hooters became abruptly immobile and sat rolling their eyeballs. One or two people left the floor, and plaster stopped falling from the ceiling.

'Marry you?' said the girl.

'I love you as no man has ever loved woman before.'

'Well, that's always something. What would the name be?'

'Mulliner. Lancelot Mulliner.'

'It might be worse.' She looked at him with pensive eyes. 'Well, why not?' she said. 'It would be a crime to let a dancer like you go out of the family. On the other hand, my father will kick like a mule. Father is an Earl.'

'What Earl?'

'The Earl of Biddlecombe.'

'Well, earls aren't everything,' said Lancelot with a touch of pique. 'The Mulliners are an old and honourable family. A Sieur de Moulinières came over with the Conqueror.'

'Ah, but did a Sieur de Moulinières ever do down the common people for a few hundred thousand and salt it away in gilt-edged securities? That's what's going to count with the aged parent. What with taxes and super-taxes and death duties and falling land-values, there has of recent years been very, very little of the right stuff in the Biddlecombe sock. Shake the family money-box and you will hear but the faintest rattle. And I ought to tell you that at the Junior Lipstick Club seven to two is being freely offered on my marrying Slingsby Purvis, of Purvis's Liquid Dinner Glue. Nothing is definitely decided yet, but you can take it as coming straight from the stable that, unless something happens to upset current form, she whom you now see before you is the future Ma Purvis.'

Lancelot stamped his foot defiantly, eliciting a howl of agony from a passing reveller.

'This shall not be,' he muttered.

'If you care to bet against it,' said the girl, producing a small notebook, 'I can accommodate you at the current odds.'

'Purvis, forsooth!'

'I'm not saying it's a pretty name. All I'm trying to point out is that at the present moment he heads the "All the above have arrived" list. He is Our Newmarket Correspondent's Five-Pound Special and Captain Coe's final selection. What makes you think you can nose him out? Are you rich?'

'At present, only in love. But tomorrow I go to my uncle, who is immensely wealthy--'

'And touch him?'

'Not quite that. Nobody has touched Uncle Jeremiah since the early winter of 1885. But I shall get him to give me a job, and then we shall see.'

'Do,' said the girl, warmly. 'And if you can stick the gaff into Purvis and work the Young Lochinvar business, I shall be the first to touch off red fire. On the other hand, it is only fair to inform you that at the Junior Lipstick all the girls look on the race as a walk-over. None of the big punters will touch it.'

Lancelot returned to his rooms that night undiscouraged. He intended to sink his former prejudices and write a poem in praise of Briggs's Breakfast Pickles which would mark a new era in commercial verse. This he would submit to his uncle; and, having stunned him with it, would agree to join the firm as chief poetry-writer. He tentatively pencilled down five thousand pounds a year as the salary which he would demand. With a long-term contract for five thousand a year in his pocket, he could approach Lord Biddlecombe and jerk a father's blessing out of him in no time. It would be humiliating, of course, to lower his genius by writing poetry about pickles; but a lover must make sacrifices. He bought a quire of the best foolscap, brewed a quart of the strongest coffee, locked his door, disconnected his telephone, and sat down at his desk.

Genial old Jeremiah Briggs received him, when he called next day at his palatial house, the Villa Chutney, at Putney, with a bluff good-humour which showed that he still had a warm spot in his heart for the young rascal.

'Sit down, boy, and have a pickled onion,' said he, cheerily, slapping Lancelot on the shoulder. 'You've come to tell me you've reconsidered your idiotic decision about not joining the business, eh? No doubt we thought it a little beneath our dignity to start at the bottom and work our way up? But, consider, my dear lad. We must learn to walk before we can run, and you could hardly expect me to make you chief cucumber buyer, or head of the vinegar-bottling department, before you have acquired hard-won experience.'

'If you will allow me to explain, uncle--'

'Eh?' Mr Briggs's geniality faded somewhat. 'Am I to understand that you don't want to come into the business?'

'Yes and no,' said Lancelot. 'I still consider that slicing up cucumbers and dipping them in vinegar is a poor life-work for a man with the Promethean fire within him; but I propose to place at the disposal of the Briggs Breakfast Pickle my poetic gifts.'

'Well, that's better than nothing. I've just been correcting the proofs of the last thing our man turned in. It's really excellent. Listen:

'Soon, soon all human joys must end: Grim Death approaches with his sickle: Courage! There is still time, my friend, To eat a Briggs's Breakfast Pickle.'

'If you could give us something like that--'

Lancelot raised his eyebrows. His lip curled.

'The little thing I have dashed off is not quite like that.'