Meet Mr. Mulliner

by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville), 1881-1975

  PORTRAIT OF A DISCIPLINARIAN 209

  perfidy of Jane Oliphant had affected him in any way : it was simply that he disliked blue skies and sunshine. He had a temperamental antipathy for them, just as he had a temperamental fondness for tombs and sleet and hurricanes and earthquakes and famines and pestilences and . . .

  He found that he had arrived in Marazion

  Road.

  Marazion Road was made up of two spotless pavements stretching into the middle distance and flanked by two rows of neat httle red-brick villas. It smote Frederick Hke a blow. He felt as he looked at those houses, with their httle brass knockers and Httle white curtains, that they were occupied by people who knew nothing of Frederick Mulhner and were content to know notliing ; people who were simply not caring a whoop that only a few short months before the girl to whom he had been engaged had sent back his letters and gone and madly got herself betrothed to a man named DilHng-water.

  He found Wee Holme, and hit it a nasty slap with its knocker. Footsteps sounded in the passage, and the door opened.

  " Why, Master Frederick ! " said Nurse Wilks. " I should hardly have known you."

  Frederick, in spite of the natural gloom caused by the blue sky and the warm sunshine, found his mood hghtening somewhat. Something that might almost have been a spasm of tenderness passed through him. He was not a bad-hearted young man—he ranked in that respect, he supposed, somewhere mid-way between his brother George, who had a heart of gold, and people like the future Mrs. Dillingwater, who had no heart at all—and there was a fragihty about Nurse Wilks that first astonished and then touched him.

  The images w^hich we form in childhood are slow to fade : and Frederick had been under the impression that Nurse Wilks w^as fully six feet tall, with the shoulders of a weight-lifter and eyes that glittered cruelly beneath beethng brows. Wliat he saw now was a little old woman with a wrinkled face, who looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away.

  He was oddly stirred. He felt large and protective. He saw his brother's point now. Most certainly this frail old thing

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  must be humoured. Only a brute would refuse to humour her—yes, felt Frederick Mulliner, even if it meant boiled eggs at five o'clock in the afternoon.

  " Well, you are getting a big boy ! " said Nurse Wilks, beaming.

  " Do you think so ? " said Frederick, with equal amiability.

  " Quite the little man ! And all dressed up. Go into the parlour, dear, and sit down. I'm getting the tea."

  " Thanks."

  " Wipe your boots ! "

  The voice, thundering from a quarter whence hitherto only soft cooings had proceeded, affected Frederick Mulliner a little Hke the touching off of a mine beneath his feet. Spinning round he perceived a different person altogether from the mild and kindly hostess of a moment back. It was plain that there yet Hngered in Nurse Wilks not a httle of the ancient fire. Her mouth was tightly compressed and her eyes gleamed dangerously.

  ' * Theideaofyourbringingyoumastydirty-bootsintomynicecleanhousewithoutwiping-them ! " said Nurse Wilks.

  " Sorry ! " said Frederick humbly.

  He burnished the criticised shoes on the mat, and tottered to the parlour. He felt much smaller, much younger and much feebler than he had felt a minute ago. His morale had been shattered into fragments.

  And it was not pieced together by the sight, as he entered the parlour, of Miss Jane OUphant sitting in an armchair by the window.

  It is hardly to be supposed that the reader will be interested in the appearance of a girl of the stamp of Jane Oliphant—a girl capable of wantonly returning a good man's letters and going off and getting engaged to a DiUingwater : but one may as well describe her and get it over. She had golden-brown hair ; golden-brown eyes ; golden-brown eyebrows ; a nice nose with one freckle on the tip ; a mouth which, when it parted in a smile, disclosed pretty teeth ; and a resolute httle chin.

  At the present moment, the mouth was not parted in a smile. It was closed up tight, and the chin was more than resolute. It looked like the ram of a very small battleship. She gazed at Frederick as if he were

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  the smell of onions, and she did not say a word.

  Nor did Frederick say very much. Nothing is more difficult for a young man than to find exactly the right remark with which to open conversation with a girl who has recently returned his letters. (Darned good letters, too. Reading them over after opening the package, he had been amazed at their charm and eloquence.)

  Frederick, then, confined his observations to the single word " Guk ! " Having uttered this, he sank into a chair and stared at the carpet. The girl stared out of window : and complete silence reigned in the room till from the interior of a clock which was ticking on the mantelpiece a small wooden bird suddenly emerged, said " Cuckoo," and withdrew.

  The abruptness of this bird's appearance and the oddly staccato nature of its diction could not but have their effect on a man whose nerves were not what they had been. Frederick MulHner, rising some eighteen inches from his chair, uttered a hasty exclamation.

  " I beg your pardon ? " said Jane OH-phant, raising her eyebrows.

  " Well, how was I to know it was going to do that ? " said Frederick defensively.

  Jane Oliphant shrugged her shoulders. The gesture seemed to imply supreme indifference to what the sweepings of the Underworld knew or did not know.

  But Frederick, the ice being now in a manner broken, refused to return to the silence.

  " What are you doing here ? " he said.

  " I have come to have tea with Nanna."

  " I didn't know you were going to be here."

  " Oh ? "

  " If I'd known that you were going to be here . . ."

  " You've got a large smut on your nose."

  Frederick gritted his teeth and reached for his handkerchief.

  " Perhaps I'd better go," he said.

  " You wiU do nothing of the kind," said Miss OUphant sharply. " She is looking forward to seeing you. Though why ..."

  " Why ? " prompted Frederick coldly.

  "Oh, nothing."

  In the unpleasant silence which followed, broken only by the deep breathing of a man who was trying to choose the rudest out of the

  PORTRAIT OF A DISCIPLINARIAN 215 three retorts which had presented themselves to him, Nurse Wilks entered.

  " It's just a suggestion," said Miss Oli-phant aloofly, " but don't you think you might help Nanna with that heavy tray ? "

  Frederick, roused from his preoccupation, sprang to his feet, blushing the blush of shame.

  " You might have strained yourself, Nanna," the girl went on, in a voice dripping with indignant sympathy.

  " I was going to help her," mumbled Frederick.

  " Yes, after she had put the tray down on the table. Poor Nanna ! How very heavy it must have been."

  Not for the first time since their acquaintance had begun, Frederick felt a sort of wistful wonder at his erstwhile fiancee's uncanny abihty to put him in the wrong. His emotions now were rather what they would have been if he had been detected striking his hostess with some blunt instrument.

  " He always was a thoughtless boy," said Nurse Wilks tolerantly. " Do sit down, Master Frederick, and have your tea. Fve

  boiled some eggs for you. I know what a boy you always are for eggs."

  Frederick, starting, directed a swift glance at the tray. Yes, his worst fears had been realised. Eggs—and large ones. A stomach which he had fallen rather into the habit of pampering of late years gave a little whimper of apprehension.

  " Yes," proceeded Nurse Wilks, pursuing the subject, " you never could have enough eggs. Nor cake. Dear me, how sick you made yourself with cake that day at Miss Jane's birthday party."

  " Please ! " said Miss Oliphant, with a slight shiver.

  She looked coldly at her fermenting fellow-guest, as he sat plumbing the deepest abysses of self-loathing.

  " No eggs for
me, thank you," he said.

  " Master Frederick, you will eat your nice boiled eggs," said Nurse Wilks. Her voice was still amiable, but there was a hint of dynamite behind it.

  " I don't want any eggs."

  " Master Frederick ! " The dynamite exploded. Once again that amazing transformation had taken place, and a frail httle

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  old woman had become an intimidating force with which only a Napoleon could have reckoned. " I will not have this

  sulking."

  Frederick gulped.

  "I'm sorry," he said, meekly. " I should enjoy an egg."

  " Two eggs," corrected Nurse Wilks.

  " Two eggs," said Frederick.

  Miss Ohphant 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 Ohphant. " Still, it's all rather unpleasant."

  A slight but well-defined glitter appeared in Nurse Wilks' 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 incHned 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 mascuHne 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 I ' "

  " Indeed ? "

  " I cannot," said Frederick judicially, '' imagine a more deplorable exhibition, and I hope you were sent to bedwithout any supper."

  " If you ever had to go without your supper," said Miss OHphant, who beUeved in

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  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 Ohphant.

  " 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 deaUng 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 apologise," 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 MuUiner had once received the thanks of his Sovereign for services rendered on the field of Crecy. 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 cHcked behind him.

  All alone in a dark world that smelt of mice, Frederick Mulhner 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

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  like the day-dreams of Polyanna, when a voice spoke through the crack in the door.

  *' Freddie. I mean Mr. MuUiner."

  " 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 Mulhner, 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

  t(

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  222 MEET MR. MULLINER

  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 . . . ? "

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  " I don't think anything."

  " I suppose you imagined I would be creeping about the place, a broken-hearted wreck ? "

  " Oh no. I knew you would find it very easy to console yourself."

  " What do you mean by that ? "

  " Never mind."

  " Are you insinuating that I am the sort of man who turns hghtly 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 bom 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 hfe, isn't it ? Do you

  H

  want to know why she shut me up in here ? "

  " I haven't the shghtest curiosity. Why ? "

  " I forgot where I was and Hghted 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, shthery, active mice : but at this juncture something hard and sharp took him agonisingly on the ankle.

  " Ouch ! " cried Frederick.

  " Oh, Fm 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."

  " Fm sorry."

  " So am 1."

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  " Anyway, it would have given a mouse a nasty jar, if it had been one, w^ouldn'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 forget 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 ? "