'Surely,' said Mr Potter, 'no man who—'
It seemed that Fate was inflexibly bent on preventing him from finishing that particular sentence this morning. For he had got thus far when Clifford Gandle, seizing the mustard-pot, rose with a maniac screech and bounded, wild-eyed, round the table at him.
Lady Wickham came downstairs and made her way like a stately galleon under sail towards the dining-room. Unlike others of the household, she was feeling particularly cheerful this morning. She liked fine weather, and the day was unusually fine. Also, she had resolved that after breakfast she would take Mr Potter aside and use the full force of her commanding personality to extract from him something in the nature of an informal contract.
She would not, she decided, demand too much at first. If he would consent to undertake the American publication of 'Agatha's Vow,' 'A Strong Man's Love,' and – possibly – A Man For A That,' she would be willing to postpone discussion of 'Meadow-sweet,' 'Fetters of Fate,' and the rest of her works. But if he thought he could eat her bread and salt and sidestep 'Agatha's Vow,' he had grievously under-estimated the power of her cold grey eye when it came to subduing such members of the animal kingdom as publishers.
There was a happy smile, therefore, on Lady Wickham's face as she entered the room. She was not actually singing, but she stopped only just short of it.
She was surprised to find that, except for her daughter Roberta, the dining-room was empty.
'Good morning, mother,' said Bobbie.
'Good morning. Has Mr Potter finished his breakfast?'
Bobbie considered the question.
'I don't know if he had actually finished,' she said. 'But he didn't seem to want any more.'
'Where is he?'
'I don't know, mother.'
'When did he go?'
'He's only just left.'
'I didn't meet him.'
'He went out of the window.'
The sunshine faded from Lady Wickham's face.
'Out of the window? Why?'
'I think it was because Clifford Gandle was between him and the door.'
'What do you mean? Where is Clifford Gandle?'
'I don't know, mother. He went out of the window, too. They were both running down the drive when I last saw them.' Bobbie's face grew pensive. 'Mother, I've been thinking,' she said. 'Are you really sure that Clifford Gandle would be such a steadying influence for me? He seems to me rather eccentric.'
'I cannot understand a word of what you are saying.'
'Well, he is eccentric. At two o'clock this morning, Mr Potter told me, he climbed in through Mr Potter's window, made faces at him, and climbed out again. And just now—'
'Made faces at Mr Potter?'
'Yes, mother. And just now Mr Potter was peacefully eating his breakfast, when Clifford Gandle suddenly uttered a loud cry and sprang at him. Mr Potter jumped out of the window and Clifford Gandle jumped out after him and chased him down the drive. I thought Mr Potter ran awfully well for an elderly man, but that sort of thing can't be good for him in the middle of breakfast.'
Lady Wickham subsided into a chair.
'Is everybody mad?'
'I think Clifford Gandle must be. You know, these men who do wonderful things at the University often do crack up suddenly. I was reading a case only yesterday about a man in America. He took every possible prize at Harvard or wherever it was, and then, just as everybody was predicting the most splendid future for him, he bit his aunt. He—'
'Go and find Mr Potter,' cried Lady Wickham. 'I must speak to him.'
'I'll try. But I don't believe it will be easy. I think he's gone for good.'
Lady Wickham uttered a bereaved cry, such as a tigress might who sees its prey snatched from it.
'Gone!'
'He told me he was thinking of going. He said he couldn't stand Clifford Gandle's persecution any longer. And that was before breakfast, so I don't suppose he has changed his mind. I think he means to go on running.'
A sigh like the whistling of the wind through the cracks in a broken heart escaped Lady Wickham.
'Mother,' said Bobbie, 'I've something to tell you. Last night Clifford Gandle asked me to marry him. I hadn't time to answer one way or the other, because just after he had proposed he jumped into the moat and tried to drown Mr Potter; but if you really think he would be a steadying influence for me—'
Lady Wickham uttered a snort of agony.
'I forbid you to dream of marrying this man!'
'Very well, mother,' said Bobbie dutifully. She rose and moved to the sideboard. 'Would you like an egg, mother?'
'No!'
'Some ham?'
'No!'
'Very well.' Bobbie paused at the door. 'Don't you think it would be a good idea,' she said, 'if I were to go and find Clifford Gandle and tell him to pack up and go away? I'm sure you won't like having him about after this.'
Lady Wickham's eyes flashed fire.
'If that man dares to come back, I'll – I'll— Yes. Tell him to go. Tell him to go away and never let me set eyes on him again.'
'Very well, mother,' said Bobbie.
Elsewhere –
2. The Mulliners of Hollywood
8 MONKEY BUSINESS
A tankard of Stout had just squashed a wasp as it crawled on the arm of Miss Postlethwaite, our popular barmaid, and the conversation in the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest had turned to the subject of physical courage.
The Tankard himself was inclined to make light of the whole affair, urging modestly that his profession, that of a fruit-farmer, gave him perhaps a certain advantage over his fellow-men when it came to dealing with wasps.
'Why, sometimes in the picking season,' said the Tankard, 'I've had as many as six standing on each individual plum, rolling their eyes at me and daring me to come on.'
Mr Mulliner looked up from his hot Scotch and lemon.
'Suppose they had been gorillas?' he said.
The Tankard considered this.
'There wouldn't be room,' he argued, 'not on an ordinary-sized plum.'
'Gorillas?' said a Small Bass, puzzled.
'And I'm sure if it had been a gorilla Mr Bunyan would have squashed it just the same,' said Miss Postlethwaite, and she gazed at the Tankard with wholehearted admiration in her eyes.
Mr Mulliner smiled gently.
'Strange,' he said, 'how even in these orderly civilized days women still worship heroism in the male. Offer them wealth, brains, looks, amiability, skill at card-tricks or at playing the ukelele ... unless these are accompanied by physical courage they will turn away in scorn.'
'Why gorillas?' asked the Small Bass, who liked to get these things settled.
'I was thinking of a distant cousin of mine whose life became for a time considerably complicated owing to one of these animals. Indeed, it was the fact that this gorilla's path crossed his that nearly lost Montrose Mulliner the hand of Rosalie Beamish.'
The Small Bass still appeared mystified.
'I shouldn't have thought anybody's path would have crossed a gorilla's. I'm forty-five next birthday, and I've never so much as seen a gorilla.'
'Possibly Mr Mulliner's cousin was a big-game hunter,' said a Gin Fizz.
'No,' said Mr Mulliner. 'He was an assistant-director in the employment of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation of Hollywood: and the gorilla of which I speak was one of the cast of the super-film, "Black Africa," a celluloid epic of the clashing of elemental passions in a land where might is right and the strong man comes into his own. Its capture in its native jungle was said to have cost the lives of seven half-dozen members of the expedition, and at the time when this story begins it was lodged in a stout cage on the Perfecto-Zizzbaum lot at a salary of seven hundred and fifty dollars a week, with billing guaranteed in letters not smaller than those of Edmund Wigham and Luella Benstead, the stars.
In ordinary circumstances (said Mr Mulliner) this gorilla would have been to my distant cousin Montrose merely one of a thousand fe
llow-workers on the lot. If you had asked him, he would have said that he wished the animal every kind of success in its chosen profession but that, for all the chance there was of them ever, as it were, getting together, they were just ships that pass in the night. It is doubtful, indeed, if he would even have bothered to go down to its cage and look at it, had not Rosalie Beamish asked him to do so. As he put it to himself, if a man's duties brought him into constant personal contact with Mr Schnellenhamer, the President of the Corporation, where was the sense of wasting time looking at gorillas? Blasé about sums up his attitude.
But Rosalie was one of the extra girls in 'Black Africa' and so had a natural interest in a brother-artist. And as she and Montrose were engaged to be married her word, of course, was law. Montrose had been planning to play draughts that afternoon with his friend, George Pybus, of the Press department, but he good-naturedly cancelled the fixture and accompanied Rosalie to the animal's head-quarters.
He was more than ordinarily anxious to oblige her to-day, because they had recently been having a little tiff. Rosalie had been urging him to go to Mr Schnellenhamer and ask for a rise of salary: and this Montrose, who was excessively timid by nature, was reluctant to do. There was something about being asked to pay out money that always aroused the head of the firm's worst passions.
When he met his betrothed outside the commissary, he was relieved to find her in a more amiable mood than she had been of late. She prattled merrily of this and that as they walked along, and Montrose was congratulating himself that there was not a cloud on the sky when, arriving at the cage, he found Captain Jack Fosdyke there, prodding at the gorilla with a natty cane.
This Captain Jack Fosdyke was a famous explorer who had been engaged to superintend the production of 'Black Africa.' And the fact that Rosalie's professional duties necessitated a rather close association with him had caused Montrose a good deal of uneasiness. It was not that he did not trust her, but love makes a man jealous and he knew the fascination of these lean, brown, hard-bitten adventurers of the wilds.
As they came up, the explorer turned, and Montrose did not like the chummy look in the eye which he cocked at the girl. Nor, for the matter of that, did he like the other's bold smile. And he wished that in addressing Rosalie Captain Fosdyke would not preface his remarks with the words Ah, there, girlie.'
'Ah, there, girlie,' said the Captain. 'Come to see the monk.?'
Rosalie was staring open-mouthed through the bars.
'Doesn't he look fierce!' she cried.
Captain Jack Fosdyke laughed carelessly.
'Tchah!' he said, once more directing the ferrule of his cane at the animal's ribs. 'If you had led the rough, tough, slam-bang, every-man-for-himself life I have, you wouldn't be frightened of gorillas. Bless my soul, I remember once in Equatorial Africa I was strolling along with my elephant gun and my trusty native bearer, 'Mlongi, and a couple of the brutes dropped out of a tree and started throwing their weight about and behaving as if the place belonged to them. I soon put a stop to that, I can tell you. Bang, bang, left and right, and two more skins for my collection. You have to be firm with gorillas. Dining anywhere to-night, girlie?'
'I am dining with Mr Mulliner at the Brown Derby.'
'Mr who?'
'This is Mr Mulliner.'
'Oh, that?' said Captain Fosdyke, scrutinizing Montrose in a supercilious sort of way as if he had just dropped out of a tree before him. 'Well, some other time, eh?'
And, giving the gorilla a final prod, he sauntered away.
Rosalie was silent for a considerable part of the return journey. When at length she spoke it was in a vein that occasioned Montrose the gravest concern.
'Isn't he wonderful!' she breathed. 'Captain Fosdyke, I mean.'
'Yes?' said Montrose coldly.
'I think he's splendid. So strong, so intrepid. Have you asked Mr Schnellenhamer for that raise yet?'
'Er – no,' said Montrose. 'I am – how shall I put it? – biding my time.'
There was another silence.
'Captain Fosdyke isn't afraid of Mr Schnellenhamer,' said Rosalie pensively. 'He slaps him on the back.'
'Nor am I afraid of Mr Schnellenhamer,' replied Montrose, stung. 'I would slap him on the back myself if I considered that it would serve any useful end. My delay in asking for that raise is simply due to the fact that in these matters of finance a certain tact and delicacy have to be observed. Mr Schnellenhamer is a busy man, and I have enough consideration not to intrude my personal affairs on him at a time when he is occupied with other matters.'
'I see,' said Rosalie, and there the matter rested. But Montrose remained uneasy. There had been a gleam in her eyes and a rapt expression on her face as she spoke of Captain Fosdyke which he had viewed with concern. Could it be, he asked himself, that she was falling a victim to the man's undeniable magnetism? He decided to consult his friend, George Pybus, of the Press department, on the matter. George was a knowledgeable young fellow and would doubtless have something constructive to suggest.
George Pybus listened to his tale with interest and said it reminded him of a girl he had loved and lost in Des Moines, Iowa.
'She ditched me for a prizefighter,' said George. 'There's no getting away from it, girls do get fascinated by the strong, tough male.'
Montrose's heart sank.
'You don't really think—?'
'It is difficult to say. One does not know how far this thing has gone. But I certainly feel that we must lose no time in drafting out some scheme whereby you shall acquire a glamour which will counteract the spell of this Fosdyke. I will devote a good deal of thought to the matter.'
And it was on the very next afternoon, as he sat with Rosalie in the commissary sharing with her a Steak Pudding Marlene Dietrich, that Montrose noticed that the girl was in the grip of some strong excitement.
'Monty,' she exclaimed, almost before she had dug out the first kidney, 'do you know what Captain Fosdyke said this morning?'
Montrose choked.
'If that fellow has been insulting you,' he cried, 'I'll ... Well, I shall be extremely annoyed,' he concluded with a good deal of heat.
'Don't be silly. He wasn't talking to me. He was speaking to Luella Benstead. You know she's getting married again soon ...'
'Odd how these habits persist.'
'... and Captain Fosdyke said why didn't she get married in the gorilla's cage. For the publicity.'
'He did?'
Montrose laughed heartily. A quaint idea, he felt. Bizarre, even.
'She said she wouldn't dream of it. And then Mr Pybus, who happened to be standing by, suddenly got the most wonderful idea. He came up to me and said why shouldn't you and I get married in the gorilla's cage.'
Montrose's laughter died away.
'You and I?'
'Yes.'
'George Pybus suggested that?'
'Yes.'
Montrose groaned in spirit. He was telling himself that he might have known that something like this would have been the result of urging a member of the Press department to exercise his intellect. The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
'Think what a sensation it would make! No more extra work for me after that. I'd get parts, and good ones. A girl can't get anywhere in this business without publicity.'
Montrose licked his lips. They had become very dry. He was thinking harshly of George Pybus. It was just loose talking like George Pybus's, he felt, that made half the trouble in this world.
'But don't you feel,' he said, 'that there is something a little undignified about publicity? In my opinion, a true artist ought to be above it. And I think you should not overlook another, extremely vital aspect of the matter. I refer to the deleterious effect which such an exhibition as Pybus suggests would have upon those who read about it in the papers. Speaking for myself,' said Montrose, 'there is nothing I should enjoy more than a quiet wedding in a gorilla's
cage. But has one the right to pander to the morbid tastes of a sensation-avid public? I am not a man who often speaks of these deeper things – on the surface, no doubt, I seem careless and happy-go-lucky – but I do hold very serious views on a citizen's duties in this fevered modern age. I consider that each one of us should do all that lies in his power to fight the ever-growing trend of the public mind towards the morbid and the hectic. I have a very real feeling that the body politic can never become healthy while this appetite for sensation persists. If America is not to go the way of Babylon and Rome, we must come back to normalcy and the sane outlook. It is not much that a man in my humble position can do to stem the tide, but at least I can refrain from adding fuel to its flames by getting married in gorillas' cages.'
Rosalie was gazing at him incredulously.
'You don't mean you won't do it?'
'It would not be right.'
'I believe you're scared.'
'Nothing of the kind. It is purely a question of civic conscience.'
'You are scared. To think,' said Rosalie vehemently, 'that I should have linked my lot with a man who's afraid of a teentsy-weentsy gorilla.'
Montrose could not let this pass.
'It is not a teentsy-weentsy gorilla. I should describe the animal's muscular development as well above the average.'
'And the keeper would be outside the cage with a spiked stick.'
'Outside the cage!' said Montrose thoughtfully.
Rosalie sprang to her feet in sudden passion.
'Good-bye!'
'But you haven't finished your steak-pudding.'
'Good-bye,' she repeated. 'I see now what your so-called love is worth. If you are going to start denying me every little thing before we're married, what would you be like after? I'm glad I have discovered your true character in time. Our engagement is at an end.'
Montrose was pale to the lips, but he tried to reason with her.
'But, Rosalie,' he urged, 'surely a girl's wedding-day ought to be something for her to think of all her life – to recall with dreamily smiling lips as she knits the tiny garments or cooks the evening meal for the husband she adores. She ought to be able to look back and live again through the solemn hush in the church, savour once more the sweet scent of the lilies-of-the-valley, hear the rolling swell of the organ and the grave voice of the clergyman reading the service. What memories would you have if you carried out this plan that you suggest? One only – that of a smelly monkey. Have you reflected upon this, Rosalie?'