The Pint of Lager breathed
heavily through his nose.
"Silly
fathead!" he said. "Ashtrays in every nook and cranny of the
room-ashtrays staring you in the eye wherever you look-and he has to go and do
a fool thing like that."
He
was alluding to a young gentleman with a vacant, fish-like face who, leaving
the bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest a few moments before, had thrown his
cigarette into the wastepaper basket, causing it to burst into a cheerful
blaze. Not one of the' little company of amateur fire-fighters but was ruffled.
A Small Bass with a high blood pressure had had to have his collar loosened,
and the satin-clad bosom of Miss Postlethwaite, our emotional barmaid, was
still heaving.
Only
Mr. Mulliner seemed disposed to take a tolerant view of what had occurred.
"In
fairness to the lad," he pointed out, sipping his hot Scotch and lemon,
"we must remember that our bar-parlour contains no grand piano or
priceless old walnut table, which to the younger generation are the normal and
natural repositories for lighted cigarette-ends. Failing these, he, of course,
selected the wastepaper basket. Like Mordred."
"Like
who?" asked a Whisky and Splash.
"Whom,"
corrected Miss Postlethwaite.
The
Whisky and Splash apologized.
"A
nephew of mine. Mordred Mulliner, the poet."
"Mordred,"
murmured Miss Postlethwaite pensively. "A sweet name."
"And
one," said Mr. Mulliner, "that fitted him admirably, for he was a
comely lovable sensitive youth with large, faun-like eyes, delicately chiseled
features and excellent teeth. I mention these teeth, because it was owing to
them that the train of events started which I am about to describe."
"He
bit somebody?" queried Miss Postlethwaite, groping.
"No.
But if he had had no teeth he would not have gone to the dentist's that day,
and if he had not gone to the dentist's he would not have met Annabelle."
"Annabelle
whom?"
"Who,"
corrected Miss Postlethwaite.
"Oh,
shoot," said the Whisky and Splash.
Annabelle
Sprockett-Sprockett, the only daughter of Sir Murgatroyd and Lady
Sprockett-Sprockett of Smattering Hall, Worcestershire. Impractical in many
ways, (said Mr. Mulliner), Mordred never failed to visit his dentist every six
months, and on the morning on which my story opens he had just seated himself
in the empty waiting-room and was turning the pages of a three-months-old copy
of the Tatler when the door opened and there entered a girl at the sight of
whom -- or who, if our friend here prefers it -- something seemed to explode on
the left side of his chest like a bomb. The Tatler swam before his eyes, and
when it solidified again he realized that love had come to him at last.
Most
of the Mulliners have fallen in love at first sight, but few with so good an
excuse as Mordred. She was a singularly beautiful girl, and for a while it was
this beauty of hers that enchained my nephew's attention to the exclusion of
all else. It was only after he had sat gulping for some minutes like a dog with
a chicken bone in its throat that he detected the sadness in her face. He could
see now that her eyes, as she listlessly perused her four-months-old copy of
Punch, were heavy with pain.
His
heart ached for her, and as there is something about the atmosphere of a
dentist's waiting-room which breaks down the barriers of conventional etiquette
he was emboldened to speak.
"Courage
!" he said. "It may not be so bad, after all. He may just fool about
with that little mirror thing of his, and decide that there is nothing that
needs to be done."
For
the first time she smiled-faintly, but with sufficient breadth to give Mordred
another powerful jolt.
"I'm
not worrying about the dentist," she explained. "My trouble is that I
live miles away in the country and only get a chance of coming to London about
twice a year for about a couple of hours. I was hoping that I should be able to
put in a long spell of window-shopping in Bond Street, but now I've got to wait
goodness knows how long I don't suppose I shall have time to do a thing. My
train goes at one-fifteen."
All
the chivalry in Mordred came to the surface like a leaping trout.
"If
you would care to take my place--"
"Oh,
I couldn't."
"Please.
I shall enjoy waiting. It will give me an opportunity of catching up with my
reading."
"Well,
if you really wouldn't mind--"
Considering
that Mordred by this time was in the market to tackle dragons on her behalf or
to climb the loftiest peak of the Alps to supply her with edelweiss, he was
able to assure her that he did not mind. So in she went, flashing at him a shy
glance of gratitude which nearly doubled him up, and he lit a cigarette and
fell into a reverie. And presently she came out and he sprang to his feet,
courteously throwing his cigarette into the waste-paper basket.
She
uttered a cry. Mordred recovered the cigarette.
"Silly
of me," he said, with a deprecating laugh. "I'm always doing that.
Absent-minded. I've burned two flats already this year."
She
caught her breath.
"Burned
them to the ground?"
"Well,
not to the ground. They were on the top floor."
"But
you burned them?"
"Oh,
yes. I burned them."
"Well,
well!" She seemed to muse. "Well, good-bye, Mr. --"
"Mulliner.
Mordred Mulliner."
"Good-bye,
Mr. Mulliner, and thank you so much."
"Not
at all, Miss-------"
"Sprockett-
Sprockett."
"Not
at all, Miss Sprockett-Sprockett. A pleasure."
She
passed from the room, and a few minutes later he was lying back in the
dentist's chair, filled with an infinite sadness. This was not due to any
activity on the part of the dentist, who had just said with a rueful sigh that
there didn't seem to be anything to do this time, but to the fact that his life
was now a blank. He loved this beautiful girl, and he would never see her more.
It was just another case of ships that pass in the waiting-room.
Conceive
his astonishment, therefore, when by the afternoon post next day he received a
letter which ran as follows:
Smattering
Hall,
Lower
Smattering-on-the-Wissel,
Worcestershire.
Dear Mr. Mulliner,
My
little girl has told me how very kind you were to her at the dentist's today. I
cannot tell you how grateful she was. She does so love to walk down Bond Street
and breathe on the jewelers' windows, and but for you she would have had to go
another six months without her little treat.
I
suppose you are a very busy man, like everybody in London, but if you can spare
the time it would give my husband and myself so much pleasure if you could run
down and stay with us for a few days----a long week-end, or even longer if you
can manage it.
With
best wishes,
Yours
sincerely,
Aurelia
Sprockett-Sprockett.
Mordred
read this communication six times in a minute and a quarter and then seventeen
times rather more slowly in order to savour any nuance of it that he might have
overlooked. He took it that the girl must have got his address' from the
dentist's secretary on her way out, and he was doubly thrilled-first, by this
evidence that one so lovely was as intelligent as she was beautiful, and
secondly because the whole thing seemed to him so frightfully significant. A
girl, he meant to say, does not get her mother to invite fellows to her country
home for long week-ends (or even longer if they can manage it unless such
fellows have made a pretty substantial hit with her. This, he contended, stood
to reason.
He
hastened to the nearest post-office, despatched a telegram to Lady
Sprockett-Sprockett assuring her that he would be with her on the morrow, and
returned to his flat to pack his effects. His heart was singing within him.
Apart from anything else, the invitation could not have come at a more
fortunate moment, for what <with musing on his great love while smoking
cigarettes he had practically gutted his little nest on the previous evening,
and while it was still habitable in a sense there was no gainsaying the fact
that all those charred sofas and things struck a rather melancholy note and he
would be glad to be away from it all for a few days.
It
seemed to Mordred, as he traveled. down on the following afternoon, that the
wheels of the train, clattering over the metals, were singing
"Sprockett-Sprockett-not "Annabelle", of course, for he did not
yet know her name-and it was with a whispered "Sprockett-Sprockett"
on his lips that he alighted at the little station of
Smattering-cum-Blimpstead-in-the-Vale, which, as his hostess's notepaper had
informed him, was where you got off for the Hall. And when he perceived that
the girl herself had come to meet him in a two-seater car the whisper nearly
became a shout.
For
perhaps three minutes, as he sat beside her, Mordred remained in this condition
of ecstatic bliss. Here he was, he reflected, and here she was-here, in fact,
they both were-together, and he was just about to point out how jolly this was
and-if he could work it without seeming to rush things too much-to drop a hint to
the effect that he could wish this state of affairs to continue through all
eternity, when the girl drew up outside a tobacconist's.
"I
won't be a minute," she said. "I promised Biffy I would bring him
back some cigarettes."
A
cold hand seemed to lay itself on Mordred's heart.
"Biffy?
"
"Captain
Biffing, one of the men at the Hall. And Guffy wants some pipe-cleaners."
"Guffy?"
"Jack
Guffington. I expect you know his name, if you are interested in racing. He was
third in last year's Grand National."
"Is
he staying at the Hall, too?"
"Yes."
"You
have a large house-party?"
"Oh,
not so very. Let me see. There's Billy Biffing, Jack Guffington, Ted Prosser,
Freddie Boot-he's the tennis champion of the county, Tommy Main-price, and-oh,
yes, Algy Fripp-the big-game hunter, you know."
The
hand on Mordred's heart, now definitely iced, tightened its grip. With a
lover's sanguine optimism, he had supposed that this visit of his was going to
be just three days of jolly sylvan solitude with Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett.
And now it appeared that the place was unwholesomely crowded with his fellow
men. And what fellow men! Big-game hunters . . . Tennis champions . . . Chaps
who rode in Grand Nationals . . . He could see them in his mind's eye-lean,
wiry, riding-breeched and flannel-trousered young Apollos, any one of them
capable of cutting out his weight in Clark Gables.
A
faint hope stirred within him.
"You
have also, of course, with you Mrs. Biffing, Mrs. Guffington, Mrs. Prosser,
Mrs. Boot, Mrs. Mainprice and Mrs. Algernon Fripp?"
"Oh,
no, they aren't married."
"None
of them?"
"No."
The
faint hope coughed quietly and died.
"Ah,"
said Mordred.
While
the girl was in the shop, he remained brooding. The fact that none of these
blisters should be married filled him with an austere disapproval. If they had
had the least spark of civic sense, he felt, they would have taken on the
duties and responsibilities of matrimony years ago. But no. Intent upon their
selfish pleasures, they had callously remained bachelors. It was this spirit of
laissez-faire Mordred considered, that was eating like a canker into the soul
of England.
He
was aware of Annabelle standing beside him.
"Eh?"
he said, starting.
"I
was saying: 'Have you plenty of cigarettes?'"
"Plenty,
thank you."
"Good.
And of course there will be a box in your room. Men always like to smoke in
their bedrooms, don't they? As a matter of fact, two boxes-Turkish and
Virginian. Father put them there specially."
"Very
kind of him," said Mordred mechanically.
He
relapsed into, a moody silence and they drove off.
It
would be agreeable (said Mr. Mulliner) if, having shown you my nephew so
gloomy, so apprehensive, so tortured with dark forebodings at this juncture, I
were able now to state that the hearty English welcome of Sir Murgatroyd and
Lady Sprockett-Sprockett on his arrival at the Hall cheered him up and put new
life into him. Nothing, too, would give me greater pleasure than to say that he
found, on encountering the dreaded Biffies and Guffies, that they were
negligible little runts with faces incapable of inspiring affection in any good
woman.
But
I must adhere rigidly to the facts. Genial, even effusive, though his host and
hostess showed themselves, their cordiality left him cold. And, so far from his
rivals being weeds, they were one and all models of manly beauty, and the
spectacle of their obvious worship of Annabelle cut my nephew like a knife.
And
on top of all this there was Smattering Hall itself.
Smattering
Hall destroyed Mordred's last hope. It was one of those vast edifices, so
common throughout the countryside of England, whose original founders seem to
have budgeted for families of twenty-five or so and a domestic staff of not
less than a hundred. "Home isn't home," one can picture them saying
to themselves, "unless you have plenty of elbow room." And so this
huge, majestic pile had come into being. Romantic persons, confronted with it,
thought of knights in armour riding forth to the Crusades. More earthy
individuals felt that it must cost a packet to keep up. Mordred's reaction on
passing through the front door was a sort of sick sensation, a kind of settled
despair.
How,
he asked himself, even assuming that by some miracle he succeeded in fighting
his way to her heart through all these Biffies and Guffies, could he ever dare
to take Annabelle from a home like this? He had quite satisfactory private
means, of course, and would be able, when married, to give up the bachelor flat
and spread himself to something on a bigger scale-possibly, if sufficiently
bijou, even a desirable residence in the Mayfair district. But after Smattering
Hall would not Annabelle feel like a sardine in the largest of London houses?
Such
were the dark thoughts that raced through Mordred's brain before, during and
after dinner. At eleven o'clock he pleaded fatigue after his journey, and Sir
Murgatroyd accompanied him to his room, anxious, like a good host, to see that
everything was comfortable.
"Very
sensible of you to turn in early," he said, in his bluff, genial way.
"So many young men ruin their health with late hours. Now you, I imagine,
will just get into a dressing-gown and smoke a cigarette or two and have the
light out by twelve. You have plenty of cigarettes? I told them to see that you
were well supplied. I always think the bedroom smoke is the best one of the
day. Nobody to disturb you, and all that. If you want to wri?e letters or
anything, there is lots of paper, and here is the waste-paper basket, which is
always so necessary. Well, good night, my boy, good night."
The
door closed, and Mordred, as foreshadowed, got into a dressing-gown and lit a
cigarette. But though, having done this, he made his way to the writing-table,
it was not with any idea of getting abreast of his correspondence. It was his
purpose to compose a poem to Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett. He had felt it
seething within him all the evening, and sleep would be impossible until it was
out of his system.
Hitherto,
I should mention, my nephew's poetry, for he belonged to the modern fearless
school, had always been stark and rhymeless and had dealt principally with
corpses and the smell of cooking cabbage. But now, with the moonlight silvering
the balcony outside, he found that his mind had become full of words like
"love" and "dove" and "eyes" and "summer
skies".
Blue eyes, wrote Mordred . . .
Sweet lips, wrote Mordred . . .
Oh, eyes like skies of summer blue . .
.
Oh, love . . .
Oh, dove . . .
Oh, lips . . .
With
a muttered ejaculation of chagrin he tore the sheet across and threw it into
the wastepaper basket.
Blue eyes that burn into my soul,
Sweet lips that smile my heart
away,
Pom-pom, pom-pom, pom something
whole (Goal?)
And tiddly-iddly-umpty-ay (Gay?
Say: Happy-day?)
Blue eyes into my soul that burn,
Sweet lips that smile away my heart,
Oh, something something turn or
yearn
And something something something
part.
You burn into my soul, blue eyes,
You smile my heart away, sweet
lips,
Short long short long of summer
skies
And something something something
trips. (Hips? Ships? Pips?)
He
threw the sheet into the waste-paper basket and rose with a stifled oath. The
wastepaper basket was nearly full now, and still his poet's sense told him that
he had not achieved perfection. He thought he saw the reason for this. You
can't just sit in a chair and expect inspiration to flow-you want to walk about
and clutch your hair and snap your fingers. It had been his intention to pace
the room, but the moonlight pouring in through the open window called to him.
He went out on to the balcony. It was but a short distance to the dim,
mysterious. lawn. Impulsively he dropped from the stone balustrade.
The
effect was magical. Stimulated by the improved conditions, his Muse gave quick
service, and this time he saw at once that she had rung the bell and delivered
the goods. One turn up and down the lawn, and he was reciting as follows:
TO ANNABELLE
Oh, lips that smile! Oh, eyes that
shine
Like summer skies, or stars above!
Your beauty maddens me like wine,
Oh, umpty-pumpty-turtity love!
And
he was just wondering, for he was a severe critic of his own work, whether that
last line couldn't be polished up a bit, when his eye was attracted by
something that shone like summer skies or stars above and, looking more
closely, he perceived that his bedroom curtains were on fire.
Now,
I will not pretend that my nephew Mordred was in every respect that cool-headed
man of action, but this happened to be a situation with which use had
familiarized him. He knew the procedure.
"Fire!"
he shouted.
A
head appeared in an upstairs window. He recognized it as that of Captain
Biffing.
"Eh?"
said Captain Biffing.
"Fire!"
"What?"
"Fire!"
vociferated Mordred. "F for Francis, I for Isabel
"Oh,
fire?" said Captain Biffing. "Right ho."
And
presently the house began to discharge its occupants.
In
the proceedings which followed, Mordred, I fear, did not appear to the greatest
advantage. This is an age of specialization, and if you take the specialist off
his own particular ground he is at a loss. Mordred's genius, as we have seen,
lay in the direction of starting fires. Putting them out called for quite
different qualities, and these he did not possess. On the various occasions of
holocausts at his series of flats, he had never attempted to play an active
part, contenting him-self with going downstairs and asking the janitor to step
up and see what he could do about it. So now, though under the bright eyes of
Annabelle Sprockett- Sprockett he would have given much to be able to dominate
the scene, the truth is that the Biffies and Guffies simply played him off the
stage.
His
heart sank as he noted the hideous efficiency of these young men. They called
for buckets. They formed a line. Freddie Boot leaped lissomely on to the
balcony, and Algy Fripp, mounted on a wheel-barrow, handed up to him the
necessary supplies. And after Mordred, trying to do his bit, had tripped up
Jack Guffington and upset two buckets over Ted Prosser, he was advised in set
terms to withdraw into the background and stay there.
It
was a black ten minutes for the unfortunate young man. One glance at Sir
Murgatroyd's twisted face as he watched the operations was enough to tell him
how desperately anxious the fine old man was for the safety of his ancestral
home and how bitter would be his resentment against the person who had
endangered it. And the same applied to Lady Sprockett-Sprockett and Annabelle.
Mordred could see the anxiety in their eyes, and the thought that ere long
those eyes must be turned accusingly on him chilled him to the marrow.
Presently
Freddie Boot emerged from the bedroom to announce that all was well.
"It's
out," he said, jumping lightly down. "Anybody know whose room it
was?"
Mordred
felt a sickening qualm, but the splendid Mulliner courage sustained him. He
stepped forward, white and tense.
"Mine,"
he said.
He
became the instant centre of attention. The six young men looked at him.
Yours?"
"Oh,
yours, was it?"
"What
happened?"
"How
did it start?"
"Yes,
how did it start?"
"Must
have started somehow, I mean," said Captain Biffing, who was a clear
thinker. "I mean to say, must have, don't you know, what?"
Mordred
mastered his voice.
"I
was smoking, and I suppose I threw my cigarette into the wastepaper basket, and
as it was full of paper . . ."
"Full
of paper? Why was it full of paper?"
"I
had been writing a poem."
There
was a stir of bewilderment.
"A
what?" said Ted Prosser.
"Writing
a what?" said Jack Guffington.
"Writing
a poem?" asked Captain Biffing of Tommy Mainprice.
"That's
how I got the story," said Tommy Mainprice, plainly shaken.
"Chap
was writing a poem," Freddie Boot informed Algy Fripp.
"You
mean the chap writes poems?"
"That's
right. Poems."
"Well,
I'm dashed!"
"Well,
I'm blowed!"
Their
now unconcealed scorn was hard to bear. Mordred chaffed beneath it. The word
"poem" was flitting from lip to lip, and it was only too evident
that, had there been an "5" in the word, those present would have
hissed it. Reason told him that these men were mere clods, Philistines,
fatheads who would not recognize the rare and the beautiful if you handed it to
them on a skewer, but that did not seem to make it any better. He knew that he
should be scorning them, but it is not easy to go about scorning people in a
dressing-gown, especially if. you have no socks on and the night breeze is cool
around the ankles. So, as I say, he chaffed And finally, when he saw the butler
bend down with pursed lips to the ear of the cook, who was a little hard of
hearing, and after a contemptuous glance in his direction speak into it, spacing
his syllables carefully, something within him seemed to snap.
"I
regret, Sir Murgatroyd," he said, "that urgent family business
compels me to return to London immediately. I shall be obliged to take the
first train in the morning."
Without
another word he went into the house.
In
the matter of camping out in devastated areas my nephew had, of course, become
by this time an old hand. It was rarely nowadays that a few ashes and cinders
about the place disturbed him. But when he had returned to his bedroom one look
was enough to assure him that nothing practical in the way of sleep was to be
achieved here. Apart from the unpleasant, acrid smell of burned poetry, the
apartment, thanks to the efforts of Freddie Boot, had been converted into a
kind of inland sea. The carpet was awash, and on the bed only a duck could have
made itself at home.
And
so it came about that some ten minutes later Mordred Mulliner lay stretched
upon a high-backed couch in the library, endeavouring by means of counting
sheep jumping through a gap in a hedge to lull himself into unconsciousness.
But
sleep refused to come. Nor in his heart had he really thought that it would.
When the human soul is on the rack, it cannot just curl up and close its eyes
and expect to get its eight hours as if nothing had happened. It was all very
well for Mordred to count sheep, but what did this profit him when each sheep
in turn assumed the features and lineaments of Annabelle Sprockett-Sprockett
and, what was more, gave him a reproachful glance as it drew itself together
for the spring?
Remorse
gnawed him. 'He was tortured by a wild regret for what might have ~ been. He
was not saying that with all these Biffies and Guffies in the field he had ever
had more than a hundred to eight chance of winning that lovely girl, but at
least his hat had been in the ring. Now it was definitely out. Dreamy Mordred
may have been-romantic-impractical----but he had enough sense to see that the
very worst thing you can do when you are trying to make a favourable impression
on the adored object is to set fire to her childhood home, every stick and
stone of which she has no doubt worshipped since they put her into rompers.
He
had reached this point in his meditations, and was about to send his two
hundred and thirty-second sheep at the gap, when with a suddenness which
affected him much as an explosion of gelignite would have done, the lights
flashed on. For an instant, he lay quivering, then, cautiously poking his head
round the corner of the couch, he looked to see who his visitors were.
It
was a little party of three that had entered the room. First came Sir
Murgatroyd, carrying a tray of sandwiches. He was followed by Lady
Sprockett-Sprockett with a syphon and glasses. The rear was brought up by
Annabelle, who was bearing a bottle of whisky and two dry ginger ales.
So
evident was it that they were assembling here for purposes of a family council
that, but for one circumstance, Mordred, to whom anything in the nature of
eavesdropping was as repugnant as it has always been to all the Mulliners,
would have sprung up with a polite "Excuse me" and taken his blanket
elsewhere. This circumstance was the fact that on lying down he had kicked his
slippers under the couch, well out of reach. The soul of modesty, he could not
affront Annabelle with the spectacle of his bare toes.
So
he lay there in silence, and silence, broken only by the swishing of soda-water
and the whoosh of opened ginger-ale bottles, reigned in the room beyond.
Then
Sir Murgatroyd spoke.
"Well,
that's that," he said, bleakly.
There
was a gurgle as Lady Sprockett-Sprockett drank ginger ale. Then her quiet
well-bred voice broke the pause.
"Yes,"
she said, "it is the end."
"The
end," agreed Sir Murgatroyd heavily. "No good trying to struggle on
against luck like ours. Here we are and here we have got to stay, mouldering on
in this blasted barrack of a place which eats up every penny of my income when,
but for the fussy interference of that gang of officious, ugly nitwits, there
would have been nothing left of it but a pile of ashes, with a man from the
Insurance Company standing on it with his fountain-pen, writing cheques. Curse
those imbeciles! Did you see that young Fripp with those buckets?"
"I
did, indeed," sighed Lady Sprockett-Sprockett.
"Annabelle,"
said Sir Murgatroyd sharply.
"Yes,
Father?"
"It
has seemed to me lately, watching you with a father's eye, that you have shown
signs of being attracted by young Algernon Fripp. Let me tell you that if ever
you allow yourself to be ensared by his insidious wiles, or by those of William
Biffing, John Guffington, Edward Prosser, Thomas Mainprice or Frederick Boot,
you wilt do so over my dead body. After what occurred tonight, those young men
shall never darken my door again. They and their buckets! To think that we
could have gone and lived in London. .
"In
a nice little flat . . ." said Lady Sprockett-Sprockett.
"Handy
for my club . . ."
"Convenient
for the shops . . ".
"Within
a stone's throw of the theatres . . ."
"Seeing
all our friends . . ."
"Had
it not been," said Sir Murgatroyd, summing up, "for the pestilential
activities of these Guffingtons, these Biffings, these insufferable Fripps, men
who ought never to be trusted near a bucket of water when a mortgaged
country-house has got nicely alight. I did think," proceeded the stricken
man, helping himself to a sandwich, "that when Annabelle, with a ready
intelligence which I cannot overpraise, realized this young Mulliner's splendid
gifts and made us ask him down here, the happy ending was in sight. What
Smattering Hall has needed for generations has been a man who throws his
cigarette-ends into wastepaper baskets.
I was convinced that here at last was the angel of mercy we
required."
"He
did his best, Father."
"No
man could have done more," agreed Sir Murgatroyd cordially. "The way
he upset those buckets and kept getting entangled in people's legs. Very
shrewd. It thrilled me to see him. I don't know when I've met a young fellow I
liked and respected more. And what if he is a poet? Poets are all right. Why,
dash it, 11m a poet myself. At the last dinner of the Loyal Sons of
Worcestershire I composed a poem which, let me tell you, was pretty generally
admired. I read it out to the boys over the port, and they cheered me to the
echo. It was about a young lady of Bewdley, who sometimes behaved rather rudely
. . ."
"Not
before Mother, Father."
"Perhaps
you're right. Well, I'm off to bed. Come along, Aurelia. You coming,
Annabelle?"
"Not
yet, Father. I want to stay and think."
"Do
what?"
"Think."
"Oh,
think? Well, all right."
"But,
Murgatroyd," said Lady Sprockett-Sprockctt, "is there no hope? After
all, there are plenty of cigarettes in the house, and we could always give Mr.
Mulliner another wastepaper basket . . ."
"No
good. You heard him say he was leaving by the first train tomorrow. When I
think that we shall never see that splendid young man again . . . Why, hullo, hullo, hullo, what's
this? Crying, Annabelle?"
"Oh,
Mother!"
"My
darling, what is it?"
A
choking sob escaped the girl.
"Mother,
I love him! Directly I saw him in the dentist's waiting-room, some-thing seemed
to go all over me, and I knew that there could be no other man for me. And
now..."
"Hi!"
cried Mordred, popping up over the side of the couch like a jack-in-the-box.
He
had listened with growing understanding to the conversation which I have
related, but had shrunk from revealing his presence' because, as I say, his
toes were bare. But this was too much. Toes or no toes, he felt that he must be
in this.
"You
love me Annabelle?" he cried.
reaction
in those present. Sir Murgatroyd had leaped like a jumping bean. Lady
Sprockett-Sprockett had quivered like a jelly. As for Annabelle, her lovely
mouth was open to the extent of perhaps three inches, and she was staring like
one who sees a vision.
"You
really love me, Annabelle?"
"Yes,
Mordred."
"Sir
Murgatroyd," said Mordred formally, "I have the honour to ask you for
your daughter's hand. I am only a poor poet
"How
poor?" asked the other, keenly.
"I
was referring to my Art," explained Mordred. fixed. I could support
Annabelle in modest comfort."
"Then
take her, my boy, take her. You will live," --the old man winced--
"in London?"
"Yes.
And so shall you."
Sir
Murgatroyd shook his head.
"No,
no, that dream is ended. It is true that in certain circumstances I had hoped
to do so, for the insurance, I may mention, amounts to as much as a hundred
thousand pounds, but I am resigned now to spending the rest of my life in this
infernal family vault. I see no reprieve."
"I
understand," said Mordred, nodding. "You mean you have the
house?"
Sir
Murgatroyd started.
"Paraffin?"
"If,"
said Mordred, and his voice was very gentle and winning, "there had been
paraffin on the premises, I think it possible that tonight's conflagration, doubtless
imperfectly quenched, might have broken out again, this time with more serious
results, It is often this way with fires. You pour buckets of water on them and
think they are extinguished, but all the time they have been smoldering
unnoticed, to break out once more in-well, in here, for example."
"Or
the billiard-room," said Lady Sprockett-Sprockett.
"And
the billiard-room," corrected Sir Murgatroyd.
"And
the billiard-room," said Mordred. "And possibly--who knows?--in the
drawing-room, dining-room, kitchen, servants' hall, butler's pantry, and the
usual domestic offices as well. Still, as you say you have no paraffin . .
."
"My
boy," said Sir Murgatroyd, in a
shaking voice, "what gave you the idea that we have no paraffin? How did you fall into this odd error? We have gallons of paraffin. The cellar is full of it."
"And
Annabelle will show you the way to the cellar -- in case you thought of going
there," said Lady Sprockett-Sprockett.
"Won't you, dear?"
"Of
course, Mother. You will like the cellar,
Mordred, darling. Most picturesque. Possibly, if you are interested in paraffin,
you might also care to take a look at our little store of paper and shavings,
too."
"My
angel," said Mordred, tenderly, "you think of everything."
He
found his slippers, and hand in hand they passed down the stairs. Above them, they could see the head of Sir
Murgatroyd, as he leaned over the banisters.
A box of matches fell at their feet like a father's benediction.
