A Few Quick Ones (6 page)

"Gesundheit," said a Draught Ale.

"I wasn't sneezing, I was snorting," said the Whisky-and-Splash. Disgustedly, he added. "Why do they publish these things?"

"What things would that be?"

"These stories, illustrated in glorious technicolour, where the fellow meets the girl on the beach, and they start kidding back and forth, and twenty minutes after they've seen each other for the first time, they're engaged to be married."

Mr. Mulliner took a sip from his hot Scotch and lemon.

"You find that unconvincing?"

"Yes, I do. I am a married man, and it took me two years and more boxes of chocolates than I care to think of to persuade the lady who is now my wife to sign on the dotted line. And though it is not for me to say so, I was a pretty fascinating chap in those days. Ask anybody."

Mr. Mulliner nodded.

"Your point is well taken. But you must make allowances for the editor of the Saturday Evening Post. He lives in a world of his own, and really does think that two complete strangers can meet in bathing suits on the beach and conclude their initial conversation by becoming betrothed. However, as you say, it seldom happens in ordinary life. Even the Mulliners, most of whom have fallen in love at first sight, have not found the going quite so smooth and simple as that. They have been compelled to pull up their socks and put in not a little preliminary spadework. The case of my nephew Augustus is one that springs to the mind."

"Did he meet girls in bathing suits on beaches?"

"Frequently. But it was at
a
charity bazaar at
a
house called Balmoral on Wimbledon Common that love came to him, for it was there that he saw Hermione Brimble and fell with a thud that could have been heard as far off as Putney Hill."

It was owing to his godmother's fondness for bazaars (said Mr. Mulliner) that Augustus found himself in the garden of Balmoral, and it is ironical to reflect that when she ordered him to escort her there, he was considerably annoyed, for he had been planning to go to Kempton Park and with word and gesture encourage in the two-thirty race
a
horse in whose fortunes he was interested. But his chagrin was not long-lasting. What caused it to vanish was the sight of a girl so divine that, as his gaze rested upon her, the top hat rocked on his head and only
a
sudden snatch at the last moment prevented his umbrella from falling from his grip.

"Well, well," he said to himself, as he drank her in, "This certainly opens up a new line of thought."

She was presiding over a stall in the shade of a large cedar at the edge of the lawn, and as soon as he could get his limbs to function he hastened up and began buying everything in sight. And when a tea-cosy, two Teddy bears, a penwiper, a bowl of wax flowers and a fretwork pipe-rack had changed hands he felt that he was entitled to regard himself as a member of the club and get friendly.

"Lovely day," he said.

"Beautiful," said the girl.

"The sun," said Augustus, pointing it out with his umbrella.

The girl said Yes, she had noticed the sun.

"I always think it seems to make everything so much brighter, if you know what I mean, when the sun's shining," said Augustus. "Well, it's been awfully jolly, meeting you
.
My name, in case you're interested, is Mulliner."

The girl said hers was Hermione Brimble, and further enquiry elicited the fact that she lived there with her Aunt, Mrs. Willoughby Gudgeon. And Augustus was wondering if he could start calling her Hermione right away, or whether it would be better to wait for a few minutes, when a formidable woman of the heavy-battle-cruiser class came rolling up.

"Well, dear," she said. "How are you doing?"

The girl, addressing the newcomer as Aunt Beatrice, replied that the market had opened easy, but that sales had recently been stepped up by the arrival of a big-time operator. "Mr. Mulliner," she said, indicating Augustus, who was
J
ending on one leg, looking ingratiating.

"Mulliner?" said Mrs. Gudgeon. "Are you related to the Bishop of Bognor? He was the Rev. Theophilus Mulliner. We were great friends when I was a girl."

It was the first time that Augustus had heard of this prelate, but he was not going to pass up the smallest chance of furthering his interests.

"Oh, rather. A cousin. But I always call him Uncle Phil."

"I have not seen him for some time. How is he these days?"

"Oh, fine. Full of yeast."

"I am relieved to hear it. He used to be troubled a good deal by clergyman's sore throat, like my niece Hermione's father, the late Bishop of Stortford," said Mrs. Gudgeon, and it was at this moment that Augustus came to the decision which was to plunge him into what Shakespeare calls a sea of troubles.

This girl, he told himself, was the daughter of a bishop and looked like something out of a stained-glass window, a pure white soul if he ever saw one. Her aunt was the sort of woman who went around with gangs of the higher clergy. Obviously, then, what would establish him as a desirable suitor was saintly rectitude. His until now had been a somewhat rackety life, including no fewer than three fines for disorderly conduct on Boat Race Night, but he resolved from even date to be so saintly and so rectitudinous that both the girl and her aunt would draw in their breath with an awed "What ho!" as he did his stuff.

Taking as his cue a statement on the part of the latter that this bazaar was in aid of the Wimbledon Social Purity League, he hitched up his diaphragm and let himself go. He said he was glad they were giving Social Purity a break because he was strong for it and always had been. There was a type of young man, he went on, who would not recognize Social Purity if you handed it to him on a skewer, and it was a type he had always avoided. Give him fine weather and a spot of Social Purity, he said, and you need not worry about him any further. You could just leave him, he said, confident that he was having the time of his life. And it was not long before he was receiving from Mrs. Willoughby Gudgeon a cordial invitation to haunt the house, an invitation of which he was determined to avail himself freely.

Into the events of the next few weeks it is not necessary for me to go in detail. Suffice it to say that at his every visit to Balmoral Augustus displayed an all-in saintliness which would have caused comment at a Pan-Anglican Synod. He brought the girl serious books. He spoke of his ideals. On several occasions at luncheon he declined a second go at the roast duck and peas or whatever it might be, indicating by his manner that all that sort of thing seemed to him a little gross and unspiritual. And it was clear to him that in supposing that this was the stuff to give them he had not been mistaken. He would sometimes catch the girl looking at him in a strange, thoughtful way, as if she were asking herself if he could really be true, and he was convinced that love was burgeoning.

At the outset of his wooing he had had some anxious moments owing to the constant presence at Balmoral of Mrs. Gudgeon's stepson, Oswald Stoker, a young man who wrote novels and, differing in this respect from the great majority of novelists, looked not like something brought in by a not too fastidious cat but was extremely personable. He was also gay and debonair. He did not live at Balmoral, but he was frequently there, and every time his visits coincided with those of Augustus the latter was pained to observe the cordiality of his relations with Hermione.

Of course, they were sort of cousins, and you have to allow sort of cousins a bit of leeway, but still he did not like it, and it was with profound relief that he learned one day that Oswald was earmarked elsewhere, being betrothed to a girl named Yvonne something who was connected with the television industry. It changed his whole view of the man. He could see now that Oswald Stoker was a charming chap, with whom he might easily form a beautiful friendship, and when one afternoon arriving at   Balmoral for the day's haunting, he found him in the drawing-room with Hermione, he greeted him warmly and enquired solicitously after his health,

"My health," said Oswald Stoker, having thanked him for asking, "is at present excellent, but who can predict how I shall be feeling this time tomorrow? I have stern work before me this night, Mulliner. Russell Clutterbuck, my American publisher, is in London, and I am dining with him. Have you ever dined with Russell Clutterbuck?"

Augustus said that he had not the pleasure of Mr. Clutterbuck's acquaintance.

"It's an experience," said Oswald Stoker moodily, and left the room shaking his head.

His new affection for the novelist made Augustus feel concerned. He said he was afraid Oswald was worried, and Hermione sighed.

"He is.”

"You mean that on the previous night he had overindulged?"

"The evidence thinking of the last time he dined with Mr. Clutterbuck."

"What happened?"

"He is vague on the subject. He says his memory is blurred. All he can recall is waking next morning on the floor of his bedroom and shooting up to the ceiling when a sparrow on the window-sill chirped unexpectedly. Gave his head a nasty bump, he tells me."

“You mean that on the previous night he overindulged”

“The evidence would seem to point that way."

"Tck, tck!"

"It shocks you?"

"It does a little, I confess. I have never been able to understand what pleasure men can find in spirituous liquors. Lemonade is so much more refreshing. I drink nothing else myself."

"But you're different."

"I suppose so."

"You are so good and steady," said Hermione, giving him that strange, thoughtful look of hers.

It seemed to Augustus that he could scarcely want a better cue than this. He tried, but failed, to take her little hand in his.

"Hermione," he said, "I love you."

"Oh, yes?" said Hermione.

"Will you marry me?"

"No," said Hermione.

Augustus stared, amazed.

"No?"

"No."

"You mean you won't marry me?"

Hermione said that that put in a nutshell exactly what she was trying to convey. She then gazed at him, gave a little shudder, and left the room.

All through the day and far into the night Augustus sat in his rooms brooding on the girl's extraordinary attitude, and the more he brooded on it, the more baffling did it appear. She had bewildered him. He reviewed his behaviour of the last few weeks, and if ever there was behaviour calculated to make the daughter of a bishop feel that here was her destined mate, this behaviour, he considered, was that behaviour. If she was not satisfied with the Augustus Mulliner of his Wimbledon period, all one could say was that she must beholding out for something pretty super.

It was towards one in the morning that he came to the conclusion that she had not meant what she said, maidenly modesty having caused her to fluff her lines, and he decided that this theory must be tested immediately. The hour was a little advanced, but your impetuous lover does not keep his eye on the clock. Augustus, like all the Mulliners, was a man of action. He sprang from his chair, sprang for his hat, sprang into the street, sprang into a passing taxi, and some forty minutes later was ringing the front door bell of Balmoral.

After a considerable interval the door was opened by Staniforth, the butler, in pyjamas and a dressing-gown. His manner seemed a little short, Augustus was unable to think why, and it was almost curtly that he informed my nephew that Mrs. Gudgeon and Hermione were attending the Social Purity Ball at the Town Hall and would not be back for some time.

"I'll come in and wait," said Augustus.

He was in error. Even as he spoke, the door slammed, leaving him alone in the silent night.

An ardent swain who is left alone in the silent night in the garden of the aunt of the girl he loves does not say to himself "Ho, hum. Well, better call it a day, I suppose" and go home to bed. He backs away from the house and stands gazing reverently up at her window. And if, like Augustus, he does not know which her window is, he gazes reverently at all the windows, taking them in rotation. Augustus was doing this, and had just shifted his eye from the top left second window to the top left third window, when a voice spoke behind him, causing him to break the European record for the standing high jump.

"Ah, Mulliner, old friend," said Oswald Stoker, for the voice was his, "I thought I should find you here. Gazing at her window, eh? Very natural. In my courting days I used to do a lot of window-gazing. There is no healthier pursuit. Keeps you out in the open and fills your lungs with fresh air. Harley Street physicians recommend it. But is window-gazing enough? That is what we must ask ourselves. I say no. You need a better approach. In this matter of wooing, everything, I contend, turns on getting the right approach, and this, my dear Mulliner, you have not yet got. I have watched with a fatherly eye your passion for my step-cousin or whatever the hell she is, and it has amazed me that you have overlooked the one essential factor in winning a girl's heart. I allude to the serenade. Have you ever stood beneath her window and to the accompaniment of a banjo begged her to throw you down one little rose from her hair? To the best of my knowledge, no. You should iron out this bug in the production at the earliest possible moment, Mulliner, if you want the thing to be a success."

Augustus did not at all like having his great love subjected to analysis by one who, after all, was a comparative stranger, but his mind at the moment was occupied with another aspect of the matter. The visibility was too poor for him to see his companion's face, but there was that in the timbre of his voice which enabled him to form a swift diagnosis. He had had countless opportunities of studying the symptoms, and it was plain to him that the man, if not yet actually ossified, was indubitably plastered. Yielding to the dictates of his lower nature, he must for some hours have been mopping up the stuff like a suction pump.

Oswald Stoker seemed to sense the silent criticism, for it was on this that he now touched.

"It has probably not escaped you, Mulliner, that I am a trifle under the influence of the sauce. As who would not be after spending the evening with Russell Clutterbuck, of the firm of Winch and Clutterbuck, Madison Avenue, New York, publishers of the book beautiful. I suppose there is no wilder Indian than an American publisher, when he gets off the reservation. Relieved for the nonce of the nauseous daily task of interviewing American authors, most of them wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, he has an exhilarating sense of freedom. He expands. He lets himself go. Well, when I tell you that in a few short hours Russell Clutterbuck got self and guest thrown out of three grillrooms and a milk bar, you will appreciate what I mean. Rightly or wrongly, he feels that electric fans are placed there to have eggs thrown at them, and he saw to it that before we started making the rounds he was well supplied with these. He kept showing me how a baseball pitcher winds up and propels the ball. Speed and control, he told me, are what you have to have."