Mr Mulliner Speaking (5 page)

'Twin souls,' cried Archibald. 'That's what we are, when you come right down to it. I suspected it all along, and now I know. Two jolly old twin souls.' He embraced her ardently. 'And now,' he said, 'let us pop downstairs and put this bulldog in the butler's pantry, where he will come upon him unexpectedly in the morning and doubtless get a shock which will do him as much good as a week at the seaside. Are you on?'

'I am,' whispered Aurelia. 'Oh, I am!'

And hand in hand they wandered out together onto the broad staircase.

In a mixed assemblage like the little group of serious thinkers which gathers nightly in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest it is hardly to be expected that there will invariably prevail an unbroken harmony. We are all men of spirit: and when men of spirit, with opinions of their own, get together, disputes are bound to arise. Frequently, therefore, even in this peaceful haven, you will hear voices raised, tables banged, and tenor Permit-me-to-inform-you-sir's competing with baritone And-jolly-well-permit-me-to-inform-
you's
. I have known fists to be shaken and on one occasion the word 'fathead' to be used.

Fortunately, Mr Mulliner is always there, ready with the soothing magic of his personality to calm the storm before things have gone too far. To-night, as I entered the room, I found him in the act of intervening between a flushed Lemon Squash and a scowling Tankard of Ale who had fallen foul of one another in the corner by the window.

'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' he was saying in his suave, ambassadorial way, 'what is all the trouble about?'

The Tankard of Ale pointed the stem of his pipe accusingly at his adversary. One could see that he was deeply stirred.

'He's talking Rot about smoking.'

'I am talking sense.'

'I didn't hear any.'

'I said that smoking was dangerous to the health. And it is.'

'It isn't.'

'It is. I can prove it from my own personal experience. I was once,' said the Lemon Squash, 'a smoker myself, and the vile habit reduced me to a physical wreck. My cheeks sagged, my eyes became bleary, my whole face gaunt, yellow and hideously lined. It was giving up smoking that brought about the change.'

'What change?' asked the Tankard.

The Lemon Squash, who seemed to have taken offence at something, rose and, walking stiffly to the door, disappeared into the night. Mr Mulliner gave a little sigh of relief.

'I am glad he has left us,' he said. 'Smoking is a subject on which I hold strong views. I look upon tobacco as life's outstanding boon, and it annoys me to hear these faddists abusing it. And how foolish their arguments are, how easily refuted. They come to me and tell me that if they place two drops of nicotine on the tongue of a dog the animal instantly dies: and when I ask them if they have ever tried the childishly simple device of not placing nicotine on the dog's tongue, they have nothing to reply. They are non-plussed. They go away mumbling something about never having thought of that.'

He puffed at his cigar in silence for a few moments. His genial face had grown grave.

'If you ask my opinion, gentlemen,' he resumed, 'I say it is not only foolish for a man to give up smoking – it is not safe. Such an action wakes the fiend that sleeps in all of us. To give up smoking is to become a menace to the community. I shall not readily forget what happened in the case of my nephew Ignatius. Mercifully, the thing had a happy ending, but . . .'

Those of you (said Mr Mulliner) who move in artistic circles are possibly familiar with the name and work of my nephew Ignatius. He is a portrait-painter of steadily growing reputation. At the time of which I speak, however, he was not so well-known as he is to-day, and consequently had intervals of leisure between commissions. These he occupied in playing the ukulele and proposing marriage to Hermione, the beautiful daughter of Herbert J. Rossiter and Mrs Rossiter, of 3 Scantlebury Square, Kensington. Scantlebury Square was only just round the corner from his studio, and it was his practice, when he had a moment to spare, to pop across, propose to Hermione, get rejected, pop back again, play a bar or two on the ukulele, and then light a pipe, put his feet on the mantelpiece, and wonder what it was about him that appeared to make him distasteful to this lovely girl.

It could not be that she scorned his honest poverty. His income was most satisfactory.

It could not be that she had heard something damaging about his past. His past was blameless.

It could not be that she objected to his looks for, like all the Mulliners, his personal appearance was engaging and even – from certain angles – fascinating. Besides, a girl who had been brought up in a home containing a father who was one of Kensington's leading gargoyles and a couple of sub-humans like her brother Cyprian and her brother George would scarcely be an exacting judge of male beauty. Cyprian was pale and thin and wrote art-criticism for the weekly papers, and George was stout and pink and did no work of any kind, having developed at an early age considerable skill in the way of touching friends and acquaintances for small loans.

The thought occurred to Ignatius that one of these two might be able to give him some inside information on the problem. They were often in Hermione's society, and it was quite likely that she might have happened to mention at one time or another what it was about him that caused her so repeatedly to hand the mitten to a good man's love. He called upon Cyprian at his flat and put the thing to him squarely. Cyprian listened attentively, stroking his left side-whisker with a lean hand.

'Ah?' said Cyprian. 'One senses, does one, a reluctance on the girl's part to entertain one's suggestions of marriage?'

'One does,' replied Ignatius.

'One wonders why one is unable to make progress?'

'One does.'

'One asks oneself what is the reason?'

'One does – repeatedly.'

'Well, if one really desires to hear the truth,' said Cyprian, stroking his right whisker, 'I happen to know that Hermione objects to you because you remind her of my brother George.'

Ignatius staggered back, appalled, and an animal cry escaped his lips.

'Remind her of George?'

'That's what she says.'

'But I can't be like George. It isn't humanly possible for anybody to be like George.'

'One merely repeats what one has heard.'

Ignatius staggered from the room and, tottering into the Fulham Road, made for the Goat and Bottle to purchase a restorative. And the first person he saw in the saloon-bar was George, taking his elevenses.

'What ho!' said George. 'What ho, what ho, what ho!'

He looked pinker and stouter than ever, and the theory that he could possibly resemble this distressing object was so distasteful to Ignatius that he decided to get a second opinion.

'George,' he said, 'have you any idea why it is that your sister Hermione spurns my suit?'

'Certainly,' said George.

'You have? Then why is it?'

George drained his glass.

'You ask me why?'

'Yes.'

'You want to know the reason?'

'I do.'

'Well, then, first and foremost,' said George, 'can you lend me a quid till Wednesday week without fail?'

'No, I can't.'

'Nor ten bob?'

'Nor ten bob. Kindly stick to the subject and tell me why your sister will not look at me.'

'I will,' said George. 'Not only have you a mean and parsimonious disposition, but she says you remind her of my brother Cyprian.'

Ignatius staggered and would have fallen had he not placed a foot on the brass rail.

'I remind her of Cyprian?'

'That's what she says.'

With bowed head Ignatius left the saloon-bar and returned to his studio to meditate. He was stricken to the core. He had asked for inside information and he had got it, but nobody was going to make him like it.

He was not only stricken to the core, but utterly bewildered. That a man – stretching the possibilities a little – might resemble George Rossiter was intelligible. He could also understand that a man – assuming that Nature had played a scurvy trick upon him – might conceivably be like Cyprian. But how could anyone be like both of them and live?

He took pencil and paper and devoted himself to making a list in parallel columns of the qualities and characteristics of the brothers. When he had finished, he scanned it carefully. This is what he found he had written:

He frowned. The mystery was still unsolved. And then he came to the last item.

A spasm ran through Ignatius Mulliner. Here, at last, was a common factor. Was it possible . . .? Could it be . . .?

It seemed the only solution, and yet Ignatius fought against it. His love for Hermione was the lodestar of his life, but next to it, beaten only by a short head, came his love for his pipe. Had he really to choose between the two?

Could he make such a sacrifice?

He wavered.

And then he saw the eleven photographs of Hermione Rossiter gazing at him from the mantelpiece, and it seemed to him that they smiled encouragingly. He hesitated no longer. With a soft sigh such as might have proceeded from some loving father on the Steppes of Russia when compelled, in order to ensure his own safety, to throw his children out of the back of the sleigh to the pursuing wolf-pack, he took the pipe from his mouth, collected his other pipes, his tobacco and his cigars, wrapped them in a neat parcel and, summoning the charwoman who cleaned his studio, gave her the consignment to take home to her husband, an estimable man of the name of Perkins who, being of straitened means, smoked, as a rule, only what he could pick up in the street.

Ignatius Mulliner had made the great decision.

As those of you who have tried it are aware, the deadly effects of giving up smoking rarely make themselves felt immediately in their full virulence. The process is gradual. In the first stage, indeed, the patient not only suffers no discomfort but goes about inflated by a sort of gaseous spiritual pride. All through the morning of the following day, Ignatius, as he walked abroad, found himself regarding such fellow-members of the community as had pipes and cigarettes in their mouths with a pitying disdain. He felt like some saint purified and purged of the grosser emotions by a life of asceticism. He longed to tell these people all about pyridine and the intense irritation it causes to the throats and other mucous surfaces of those who inhale the tobacco smoke in which it lurks. He wanted to buttonhole men sucking at their cigars and inform them that tobacco contains an appreciable quantity of the gas known as carbon monoxide, which, entering into direct combination with the colouring matter of the blood, forms so staple a compound as to render the corpuscles incapable of carrying oxygen to the tissues. He yearned to make it clear to them that smoking was simply a habit which with a little exercise of the will-power a man could give up at a moment's notice, whenever he pleased.

It was only after he had returned to his studio to put the finishing touches to his Academy picture that the second stage set in.

Having consumed an artist's lunch consisting of two sardines, the remnants of a knuckle of ham, and a bottle of beer, he found stealing over him, as his stomach got onto the fact that the meal was not to be topped off by a soothing pipe, a kind of vague sense of emptiness and bereavement akin to that experienced by the historian Gibbon on completing his
Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire
. Its symptoms were an inability to work and a dim feeling of oppression, as if he had just lost some dear friend. Life seemed somehow to have been robbed of all motive. He wandered about the studio, haunted by a sensation that he was leaving undone something that he ought to be doing. From time to time he blew little bubbles, and once or twice his teeth clicked, as if he were trying to close them on something that was not there.