Mulliner Nights (8 page)

‘The old boy’s
been having a couple,’ was his verdict.

Gladys, a
woman and therefore more spiritual, demurred.

‘It sounds to
me,’ she said, ‘more as if he had gone off his onion. Why should he want you to
pretend to be a lawyer?’

‘He says he
will explain fully.’

And how
do
you
pretend to be a lawyer?’

Lancelot
considered.

‘Lawyers cough
dryly, I know that,’ he said. And then I suppose one would put the tips of the
fingers together a good deal and talk about Rex
v.
Biggs Ltd and torts
and malfeasances and so forth. I think I could give a reasonably realistic
impersonation.’

‘Well, if you’re
going, you’d better start practising.’

‘Oh, I’m going
all right,’ said Lancelot. ‘Uncle Theodore is evidently in trouble of some
kind, and my place is by his side. If all goes well, I might be able to bite
his ear before he sees Webster. About how much ought we to have in order to get
married comfortably?’

At least five
hundred.’

‘I will bear
it in mind,’ said Lancelot, coughing dryly and putting the tips of his fingers
together.

Lancelot had
hoped, on arriving at Widdrington Manor, that the first person he met would be
his Uncle Theodore, explaining fully. But when the butler ushered him into the
drawing-room only Lady Widdrington, her mother Mrs Pulteney-Banks, and her cat
Percy were present. Lady Widdrington shook hands, Mrs Pulteney-Banks bowed from
the arm-chair in which she sat swathed in shawls, but when Lancelot advanced
with the friendly intention of tickling the cat Percy under the right ear, he
gave the young man a cold, evil look out of the corner of his eye and, backing
a pace, took an inch of skin off his hand with one well-judged swipe of a
steel-pronged paw.

Lady
Widdrington stiffened.

‘I’m afraid
Percy does not like you,’ she said in a distant voice.

‘They know,
they know!’ said Mrs Pulteney-Banks darkly. She knitted and purled a moment,
musing. ‘Cats are cleverer than we think,’ she added.

Lancelot’s
agony was too keen to permit him even to cough dryly. He sank into a chair and
surveyed the little company with watering eyes.

They looked to
him a hard bunch. Of Mrs Pulteney-Banks he could see little but a cocoon of
shawls, but Lady Widdrington was right out in the open, and Lancelot did not
like her appearance. The chatelaine of Widdrington Manor was one of those
agate-eyed, purposeful, tweed-clad women of whom rural England seems to have a
monopoly. She was not unlike what he imagined Queen Elizabeth must have been in
her day. A determined and vicious specimen. He marvelled that even a mutual
affection for cats could have drawn his gentle uncle to such a one.

As for Percy,
he was pure poison. Orange of body and inky-black of soul, he lay stretched out
on the rug, exuding arrogance and hate. Lancelot, as I have said, was tolerant
of toughness in cats, but there was about this animal none of Webster’s jolly,
whole-hearted, swashbuckling rowdiness. Webster was the sort of cat who would
charge, roaring and ranting, to dispute with some rival the possession of a
decaying sardine, but there was no more vice in him than in the late John L.
Sullivan. Percy, on the other hand, for all his sleek exterior, was mean and
bitter. He had no music in his soul, and was fit for treasons, stratagems and
spoils. One could picture him stealing milk from a sick tabby.

Gradually the
pain of Lancelot’s wound began to abate, but it was succeeded by a more
spiritual discomfort. It was plain to him that the recent episode had made a
bad impression on the two women. They obviously regarded him with suspicion and
dislike. The atmosphere was frigid, and conversation proceeded jerkily.
Lancelot was glad when the dressing-gong sounded and he could escape to his
room.

He was
completing the tying of his tie when the door opened and the Bishop of
Bongo-Bongo entered.

‘Lancelot, my
boy!’ said the Bishop.

‘Uncle!’ cried
Lancelot.

They clasped
hands. More than four years had passed since these two had met, and Lancelot
was shocked at the other’s appearance. When last he had seen him, at the dear
old deanery, his Uncle Theodore had been a genial, robust man who wore his
gaiters with an air. Now, in some subtle way, he seemed to have shrunk. He
looked haggard and hunted. He reminded Lancelot of a rabbit with a good deal on
its mind.

The Bishop had
moved to the door. He opened it and glanced along the passage. Then he closed
it and tip-toeing back, spoke in a cautious undertone.

‘It was good
of you to come, my dear boy,’ he said.

‘Why, of
course I came,’ replied Lancelot heartily. ‘Are you in trouble of some kind,
Uncle Theodore?’

‘In the
gravest trouble,’ said the Bishop, his voice a mere whisper. He paused for a
moment. ‘You have met Lady Widdrington?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then when I
tell you that, unless ceaseless vigilance is exercised, I shall undoubtedly
propose marriage to her, you will appreciate my concern.’

Lancelot
gaped.

‘But why do
you want to do a potty thing like that?’

The Bishop
shivered.

‘I do not want
to do it, my boy,’ he said. ‘Nothing is further from my wishes. The salient
point, however, is that Lady Widdrington and her mother want me to do it, and
you must have seen for yourself that they are strong, determined women. I fear
the worst.’

He tottered to
a chair and dropped into it, shaking. Lancelot regarded him with affectionate
pity.

‘When did this
start?’ he asked.

‘On board
ship,’ said the Bishop. ‘Have you ever made an ocean voyage, Lancelot?’

‘I’ve been to
America a couple of times.’

‘That can
scarcely be the same thing,’ said the Bishop, musingly. ‘The transatlantic
trip is so brief, and you do not get those nights of tropic moon. But even on
your voyages to America you must have noticed the peculiar attitude towards the
opposite sex induced by the salt air.’

‘They all look
good to you at sea,’ agreed Lancelot.

‘Precisely,’
said the Bishop. ‘And during a voyage, especially at night, one finds oneself
expressing oneself with a certain warmth which even at the time one tells
oneself is injudicious. I fear that on board the liner with Lady Widdrington,
my dear boy, I rather let myself go.’

Lancelot began
to understand.

‘You shouldn’t
have come to her house,’ he said.

‘When I
accepted the invitation, I was, if I may use a figure of speech, still under
the influence. It was only after I had been here some ten days that I awoke to
the realization of my peril.’

‘Why didn’t
you leave?’

The Bishop
groaned softly.

‘They would
not permit me to leave. They countered every excuse. I am virtually a prisoner
in this house, Lancelot. The other day I said that I had urgent business with
my legal adviser and that this made it imperative that I should proceed
instantly to the metropolis.’

‘That should
have worked,’ said Lancelot.

‘It did not.
It failed completely. They insisted that I invite my legal adviser down here
where my business could be discussed in the calm atmosphere of the Hampshire
countryside. I endeavoured to reason with them, but they were firm. You do not
know how firm women can be,’ said the Bishop, shivering, ‘till you have placed
yourself in my unhappy position. How well I appreciate now that powerful image
of Shakespeare’s — the one about grappling with hoops of steel. Every time I
meet Lady Widdrington, I can feel those hoops drawing me ever closer to her.
And the woman repels me even as that cat of hers repels me. Tell me, my boy, to
turn for an instant to a pleasanter subject, how is my dear Webster?’

Lancelot
hesitated.

‘Full of
beans,’ he said.

‘He is on a
diet?’ asked the Bishop anxiously. ‘The doctor has ordered vegetarianism?’

‘Just an
expression,’ explained Lancelot, ‘to indicate robust-ness.

‘Ah!’ said the
Bishop, relieved. ‘And what disposition have you made of him in your absence?
He is in good hands, I trust?’

‘The best,’
said Lancelot. ‘His host is the ablest veterinary in London — Doctor J. C.
Robinson of 9 Bott Street, Chelsea, a man not only skilled in his profession
but of the highest moral tone.’

‘I knew I
could rely on you to see that all was well with him,’ said the Bishop
emotionally. ‘Otherwise, I should have shrunk from asking you to leave London
and come here —strong shield of defence though you will be to me in my peril.’

‘But what use
can I be to you?’ said Lancelot, puzzled.

‘The greatest,’
the Bishop assured him. ‘Your presence will be invaluable. You must keep the
closest eye upon Lady Widdrington and myself, and whenever you observe us
wandering off together — she is assiduous in her efforts to induce me to visit
the rose-garden in her company, for example — you must come hurrying up and
detach me with the ostensible purpose of discussing legal matters. By these
means we may avert what I had come to regard as the inevitable.’

‘I understand
thoroughly,’ said Lancelot. A jolly good scheme. Rely on me.

‘The ruse I
have outlined,’ said the Bishop regretfully, ‘involves, as I hinted in my
telegram, a certain innocent deception, but at times like this one cannot
afford to be too nice in ones methods. By the way, under what name did you make
your appearance here?’

‘I used my
own.

‘I would have
preferred Polkinghorne or Gooch or Withers,’ said the Bishop pensively. ‘They
sound more legal. However, that is a small matter. The essential thing is that
I may rely on you to — er — to—?’

‘To stick
around?’

‘Exactly. To
adhere. From now on, my boy, you must be my constant shadow. And if, as I
trust, our efforts are rewarded, you will not find me ungrateful. In the course
of a lifetime I have contrived to accumulate no small supply of this world’s
goods, and if there is any little venture or enterprise for which you require a
certain amount of capital—’

‘I am glad,’
said Lancelot, ‘that you brought this up, Uncle Theodore. As it so happens, I
am badly in need of five hundred pounds — and could, indeed, do with a thousand.’

The Bishop
grasped his hand.

‘See me
through this ordeal, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘and you shall have it. For what
purpose do you require this money?’

‘I want to get
married.’

‘Ugh!’ said
the Bishop, shuddering strongly. ‘Well, well,’ he went on, recovering himself, ‘it
is no affair of mine. No doubt you know your own mind best. I must confess,
however, that the mere mention of the holy state occasions in me an indefinable
sinking feeling. But then, of course, you are not proposing to marry Lady
Widdrington.’

And nor,’
cried Lancelot heartily, ‘are you, uncle — not while I’m around. Tails up,
Uncle Theodore, tails up!’

‘Tails up!’
repeated the Bishop dutifully, but he spoke the words without any real ring of
conviction in his voice.

It was
fortunate that, in the days which followed, my cousin Edward’s son Lancelot was
buoyed up not only by the prospect of collecting a thousand pounds, but also by
a genuine sympathy and pity for a well-loved uncle. Otherwise, he must have
faltered and weakened.

To a sensitive
man — and all artists are sensitive — there are few things more painful than
the realization that he is an unwelcome guest. And not even if he had had the
vanity of a Narcissus could Lancelot have persuaded himself that he was
persona
grata
at Widdrington Manor.

The march of
civilization has done much to curb the natural ebullience of woman. It has
brought to her the power of self-restraint. In emotional crises nowadays women
seldom give physical expression to their feelings; and neither Lady Widdrington
nor her mother, the aged Mrs Pulteney-Banks, actually struck Lancelot or spiked
him with a knitting-needle. But there were moments when they seemed only by a
miracle of strong will to check themselves from such manifestations of dislike.

As the days
went by, and each day the young man skilfully broke up a promising
tête-à-tête,
the atmosphere grew more tense and electric. Lady Widdrington spoke
dreamily of the excellence of the train service between Bottleby-in-the-Vale
and London, paying a particularly marked tribute to the
8.45
a.m.
express. Mrs Pulteney-Banks mumbled from among her shawls of great gowks — she
did not specify more exactly, courteously refraining from naming names — who
spent their time idling in the country (where they were not wanted) when their
true duty and interest lay in the metropolis. The cat Percy, by word and look,
continued to affirm his low opinion of Lancelot.

And, to make
matters worse, the young man could see that his principal’s
morale
was
becoming steadily lowered. Despite the uniform success of their manoeuvres, it
was evident that the strain was proving too severe for the Bishop. He was
plainly cracking. A settled hopelessness had crept into his demeanour. More and
more had he come to resemble a rabbit who, fleeing from a stoat, draws no cheer
from the reflection that he is all right so far, but flings up his front paws
in a gesture of despair, as if to ask what profit there can be in attempting to
evade the inevitable.

And, at
length, one night when Lancelot had switched off his light and composed himself
for sleep, it was switched on again and he perceived his uncle standing by the
bedside, with a haggard expression on his fine features.

At a glance
Lancelot saw that the good old man had reached breaking-point.

‘Something the
matter, uncle?’ he asked.

‘My boy,’ said
the Bishop, ‘we are undone.’

‘Oh, surely
not?’ said Lancelot, as cheerily as his sinking heart would permit.