Mr Mulliner Speaking (6 page)

A twilight sadness had him in its grip. He took up his ukulele, an instrument to which, as I have said, he was greatly addicted, and played 'Ol' Man River' for awhile. But the melancholy still lingered. And now, it seemed to him, he had discovered its cause. What was wrong was the fact that he was not doing enough good in the world.

Look at it this way, he felt. The world is a sad, grey place, and we are put into it to promote as far as we can the happiness of others. If we concentrate on our own selfish pleasures, what do we find? We find that they speedily pall. We weary of gnawing knuckles of ham. The ukulele loses its fascination. Of course, if we could sit down and put our feet up and set a match to the good old pipe, that would be a different matter. But we no longer smoke, and so all that is left to us is the doing of good to others. By three o'clock, in short, Ignatius Mulliner had reached the third stage, the glutinously sentimental. It caused him to grab his hat, and sent him trotting round to Scantlebury Square.

But his object was not, as it usually was when he went to Scantlebury Square, to propose to Hermione Rossiter. He had a more unselfish motive. For some time past, by hints dropped and tentative remarks thrown out, he had been made aware that Mrs Rossiter greatly desired him to paint her daughter's portrait: and until now he had always turned to these remarks and hints a deaf ear. Mrs Rossiter's mother's heart wanted, he knew, to get the portrait for nothing: and, while love is love and all that, he had the artist's dislike for not collecting all that was coming to him. Ignatius Mulliner, the man, might entertain the idea of pleasing the girl he worshipped by painting her on the nod, but Ignatius Mulliner, the artist, had his schedule of prices. And until to-day it was the second Ignatius Mulliner who had said the deciding word.

This afternoon, however, everything was changed. In a short but moving speech he informed Hermione's mother that the one wish of his life was to paint her daughter's portrait; that for so great a privilege he would not dream of charging a fee; and that if she would call at the studio on the morrow, bringing Hermione with her, he would put the job in hand right away.

In fact, he very nearly offered to paint another portrait of Mrs Rossiter herself, in evening dress with her Belgian griffon. He contrived, however, to hold the fatal words back: and it was perhaps the recollection of this belated prudence which gave him, as he stood on the pavement outside the house after the interview, a sense of having failed to be as altruistic as he might have been.

Stricken with remorse, he decided to look up good old Cyprian and ask him to come to the studio to-morrow and criticize his Academy picture. After that, he would find dear old George and press a little money on him. Ten minutes later, he was in Cyprian's sitting-room.

'One wishes what?' asked Cyprian incredulously.

'One wishes,' repeated Ignatius, 'that you would come round to-morrow morning and have a look at one's Academy picture and give one a hint or two about it.'

'Is one really serious?' cried Cyprian, his eyes beginning to gleam. It was seldom that he received invitations of this kind. He had, indeed, been thrown out of more studios for butting in and giving artists a hint or two about their pictures than any other art-critic in Chelsea.

'One is perfectly serious,' Ignatius assured him. 'One feels that an opinion from an expert will be invaluable.'

'Then one will be there at eleven sharp,' said Cyprian, 'without fail.'

Ignatius wrung his hand warmly, and hurried off to the Goat and Bottle to find George.

'George,' he said, 'George, my dear old chap; I passed a sleepless night last night, wondering if you had all the money you require. The fear that you might have run short seemed to go through me like a knife. Call on me for as much as you need.'

George's face was partially obscured by a tankard. At these words, his eyes, bulging above the pewter, took on a sudden expression of acute horror. He lowered the tankard, ashen to the lips, and raised his right hand.

'This,' he said in a shaking voice, 'is the end. From this moment I go off the stuff. Yes, you have seen George Plimsoll Rossiter drink his last mild-and-bitter. I am not a nervous man, but I know when I'm licked. And when it comes to a fellow's ears going . . .'

Ignatius patted his arm affectionately.

'Your ears have not gone, George,' he said. 'They are still there.'

And so, indeed, they were, as large and red as ever. But George was not to be comforted.

'I mean when a fellow thinks he hears things . . . I give you my honest word, old man – I solemnly assure you that I could have sworn I heard you voluntarily offer me money.'

'But I did.'

'You did?'

'Certainly.'

'You mean you definitely – literally – without any sort of prompting on my part – without my so much as saying a word to indicate that I could do with a small loan till Friday week – absolutely, positively offered to lend me money?'

'I did.'

George drew a deep breath and took up his tankard again.

'All this modern, advanced stuff you read about miracles not happening,' he said severely, 'is dashed poppycock. I disapprove of it. I resent it keenly. About how much?' he went on, pawing adoringly at Ignatius' sleeve. 'To about what, as it were, extent would you be prepared to go? A quid?'

Ignatius raised his eyebrows.

'A quid is not much, George,' he said with quiet reproach.

George made little gurgling noises.

'A fiver?'

Ignatius shook his head. The movement was a silent rebuke.

'Correct this petty, cheese-paring spirit, George,' he urged. 'Be big and broad. Think spaciously.'

'Not – a tenner?'

'I was about to suggest fifteen pounds,' said Ignatius. 'If you are sure that will be enough.'

'What ho!'

'You're positive you can manage with that? I know how many expenses you have.'

'What ho!'

'Very well, then. If you can get along with fifteen pounds, come round to my studio to-morrow morning and we'll fix it up.'

And, glowing with fervour, Ignatius slapped George's back in a hearty sort of way and withdrew.

'Something attempted, something done,' he said to himself, as he climbed into bed some hours later, 'has earned a night's repose.'

Like so many men who live intensely and work with their brains, my nephew Ignatius was a heavy sleeper. Generally, after waking to a new day, he spent a considerable time lying on his back in a sort of coma, not stirring till lured from his couch by the soft, appealing smell of frying bacon. On the following morning, however, he was conscious, directly he opened his eyes, of a strange alertness. He was keyed up to quite an extraordinary extent. He had, in short, reached the stage when the patient becomes a little nervous.

Yes, he felt, analysing his emotions, he was distinctly nervous. The noise of the cat stamping about in the passage outside caused him exquisite discomfort. He was just about to shout to Mrs Perkins, his charwoman, to stop the creature, when she rapped suddenly on the panel to inform him that his shaving-water lay without: and at the sound he immediately shot straight up to the ceiling in a cocoon of sheets and blankets, turned three complete somersaults in mid-air, and came down, quivering like a frightened mustang, in the middle of the floor. His heart was entangled with his tonsils, his eyes had worked round to the back of their sockets, and he wondered dazedly how many human souls besides himself had survived the bomb-explosion.

Reason returning to her throne, his next impulse was to cry quietly. Remembering after a while that he was a Mulliner, he checked the unmanly tears and, creeping to the bathroom, took a cold shower and felt a little better. A hearty breakfast assisted the cure, and he was almost himself again, when the discovery that there was not a pipe or a shred of tobacco in the place plunged him once more into an inky gloom.

For a long time Ignatius Mulliner sat with his face in his hands, while all the sorrows of the world seemed to rise before him. And then, abruptly, his mood changed again. A moment before, he had been pitying the human race with an intensity that racked him almost unendurably. Now, the realization surged over him that he didn't care a hoot about the human race. The only emotion the human race evoked in him was an intense dislike. He burned with an irritable loathing for all created things. If the cat had been present, he would have kicked it. If Mrs Perkins had entered, he would have struck her with a mahl-stick. But the cat had gone off to restore its tissues in the dust-bin, and Mrs Perkins was in the kitchen, singing hymns. Ignatius Mulliner boiled with baffled fury. Here he was, with all this concentrated hatred stored up within him, and not a living thing in sight on which to expend it. That, he told himself with a mirthless laugh, was the way things happened.

And just then the door opened, and there, looking like a camel arriving at an oasis, was Cyprian.

'Ah, my dear fellow,' said Cyprian. 'May one enter?'

'Come right in,' said Ignatius.

At the sight of this art-critic, who not only wore short sidewhiskers but also one of those black stocks which go twice round the neck and add from forty to fifty per cent to the loathsomeness of the wearer's appearance, a strange, febrile excitement had gripped Ignatius Mulliner. He felt like a tiger at the Zoo who sees the keeper approaching with the luncheon tray. He licked his lips slowly and gazed earnestly at the visitor. From a hook on the wall beside him there hung a richly inlaid Damascus dagger. He took it down and tested its point with the ball of his thumb.

Cyprian had turned his back, and was examining the Academy picture through a black-rimmed monocle. He moved his head about and peered between his fingers and made funny, art-critic noises.

'Ye-e-s,' said Cyprian. ' 'Myes. Ha! H'm. Hrrmph! The thing has rhythm, undoubted rhythm, and, to an extent, certain inevitable curves. And yet can one conscientiously say that one altogether likes it? One fears one cannot.'

'No?' said Ignatius.

'No,' said Cyprian. He toyed with his left whisker. He seemed to be massaging it for purposes of his own. 'One quite inevitably senses at a glance that the patine lacks vitality.'

'Yes?' said Ignatius.

'Yes,' said Cyprian. He toyed with the whisker again. It was too early to judge whether he was improving it at all. He shut his eyes, opened them, half closed them once more, drew back his head, fiddled with his fingers, and expelled his breath with a hissing sound, as if he were grooming a horse. 'Beyond a question one senses in the patine a lack of vitality. And vitality must never be sacrificed. The artist should use his palette as an orchestra. He should put on his colours as a great conductor uses his instruments. There must be significant form. The colour must have a flatness, a gravity, shall I say an aroma? The figure must be placed on the canvas in a manner not only harmonious but awake. Only so can a picture quite too exquisitely live. And, as regards the patine . . .'

He broke off. He had had more to say about the patine, but he had heard immediately behind him an odd, stealthy, shuffling sound not unlike that made by a leopard of the jungle when stalking its prey. Spinning round, he saw Ignatius Mulliner advancing upon him. The artist's lips were curled back over his teeth in a hideous set smile. His eyes glittered. And poised in his right hand he held a Damascus dagger, which, Cyprian noticed, was richly inlaid.

An art-critic who makes a habit of going round the studios of Chelsea and speaking his mind to men who are finishing their Academy pictures gets into the way of thinking swiftly. Otherwise, he would not quite too exquisitely live through a single visit. To cast a glance at the door and note that it was closed and that his host was between him and it was with Cyprian Rossiter the work of a moment; to dart behind the easel the work of another. And with the easel as a basis the two men for some tense minutes played a silent game of round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush. It was in the middle of the twelfth lap that Cyprian received a flesh wound in the upper arm.