Courage! There is still time, my friend,
To eat a Briggs’s Breakfast Pickle.”
“If you could give us something like that—”
Lancelot raised his eyebrows. His lip curled.
“The little thing I have dashed off is not quite like that.”
“Oh, you’ve written something, eh?”
“A mere morceau. You would care to hear it?”
“Fire away, my boy.”
Lancelot produced his manuscript and cleared his throat. He began to read in a low, musical voice.
Darkling (A Threnody)
By L. Bassington Mulliner
(Copyright in all languages, including the Scandinavian)
(The dramatic, musical-comedy, and motion-picture rights of this Threnody are strictly reserved. Applications for these should be made to the author)
“What is a Threnody?” asked Mr. Briggs.
“This is,” said Lancelot.
He cleared his throat again and resumed.
“Black branches,
Like a corpse’s withered hands,
Waving against the blacker sky:
Chill winds,
Bitter like the tang of half-remembered sins;
Bats wheeling mournfully through the air,
And on the ground
Worms,
Toads,
Frogs,
And nameless creeping things;
And all around
Desolation,
Doom,
Dyspepsia,
And Despair.
I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate;
I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment;
I am a despairing toad;
I have got dyspepsia.”
He paused. His uncle’s eyes were protruding rather like those of a nameless creeping frog.
“What’s all this?” said Mr. Briggs.
It seemed almost incredible to Lancelot that his poem should present any aspect of obscurity to even the meanest intellect; but he explained.
“The thing,” he said, “is symbolic. It essays to depict the state of mind of the man who has not yet tried Briggs’s Breakfast Pickles. I shall require it to be printed in handset type on deep cream-coloured paper.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Briggs, touching the bell.
“With bevelled edges. It must be published, of course, bound in limp leather, preferably of a violet shade, in a limited edition, confined to one hundred and five copies. Each of these copies I will sign—”
“You rang, sir?” said the butler, appearing in the doorway.
Mr. Briggs nodded curtly.
“Bewstridge,” said he, “throw Mr. Lancelot out.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And see,” added Mr. Briggs, superintending the subsequent proceedings from his library window, “that he never darkens my doors again. When you have finished, Bewstridge, ring up my lawyers on the telephone. I wish to alter my will.”
Youth is a resilient period. With all his worldly prospects swept away and a large bruise on his person which made it uncomfortable for him to assume a sitting posture, you might have supposed that the return of Lancelot Mulliner from Putney would have resembled that of the late Napoleon from Moscow. Such, however, was not the case. What, Lancelot asked himself as he rode back to civilization on top of an omnibus, did money matter? Love, true love, was all. He would go to Lord Biddlecombe and tell him so in a few neatly-chosen words. And his lordship, moved by his eloquence, would doubtless drop a well-bred tear and at once see that the arrangements for his wedding to Angela—for such, he had learned, was her name—were hastened along with all possible speed. So uplifted was he by this picture that he began to sing, and would have continued for the remainder of the journey had not the conductor in a rather brusque manner ordered him to desist. He was obliged to content himself until the bus reached Hyde Park Corner by singing in dumb show.
The Earl of Biddlecombe’s town residence was in Berkeley Square. Lancelot rang the bell and a massive butler appeared.
“No hawkers, street criers, or circulars,” said the butler.
“I wish to see Lord Biddlecombe.”
“Is his lordship expecting you?”
“Yes,” said Lancelot, feeling sure that the girl would have spoken to her father over the morning toast and marmalade of a possible visit from him.
A voice made itself heard through an open door on the left of the long hall.
“Fotheringay.”
“Your lordship?”
“Is that the feller?”
“Yes, your lordship.”
“Then bring him in, Fotheringay.”
“Very good, your lordship.”
Lancelot found himself in a small, comfortably-furnished room, confronting a dignified-looking old man with a patrician nose and small side-whiskers, who looked like something that long ago had come out of an egg.
“Afternoon,” said this individual.
“Good afternoon, Lord Biddlecombe,” said Lancelot.
“Now, about these trousers.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“These trousers,” said the other, extending a shapely leg. “Do they fit? Aren’t they a bit baggy round the ankles? Won’t they jeopardize my social prestige if I am seen in them in the Park?”
Lancelot was charmed with his affability. It gave him the feeling of having been made one of the family straight away.
“You really want my opinion?”
“I do. I want your candid opinion as a God-fearing man and a member of a West-End tailoring firm.”
“But I’m not.”
“Not a God-fearing man?”
“Not a member of a West-End tailoring firm.”
“Come, come,” said his lordship, testily. “You represent Gusset and Mainprice, of Cork Street.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then who the devil are you?”
“My name is Mulliner.”
Lord Biddlecombe rang the bell furiously.
“Fotheringay!”
“Your lordship?”
“You told me this man was the feller I was expecting from Gusset and Mainprice.”
“He certainly led me to suppose so, your lordship.”
“Well, he isn’t. His name is Mulliner. And—this is the point, Fotheringay. This is the core and centre of the thing—what the blazes does he want?”
“I could not say, your lordship.”
“I came here, Lord Biddlecombe,” said Lancelot, “to ask your consent to my immediate marriage with your daughter.”
“My daughter?”
“Your daughter.”
“Which daughter?”
“Angela.”
“My daughter Angela?”
“Yes.”
“You want to marry my daughter Angela?”
“I do.”
“Oh? Well, be that as it may,” said Lord Biddlecombe, “can I interest you in an ingenious little combination mousetrap and pencil-sharpener?”
Lancelot was for a moment a little taken aback by the question. Then, remembering what Angela had said of the state of the family finances, he recovered his poise. He thought no worse of this Grecian-beaked old man for ekeing out a slender income by acting as agent for the curious little object which he was now holding out to him. Many of the aristocracy, he was aware, had been forced into similar commercial enterprises by recent legislation of a harsh and Socialistic trend.
“I should like it above all things,” he said, courteously. “I was thinking only this morning that it was just what I needed.”
“Highly educational. Not a
