Mr. Muffin—College Servant
By REGINALD GIBBON
WE never knew his true name. Undergraduate humour had played with Muffet, changed to Muffin Man or the Muffineer, and finally settled down to Mr. Muffin as a semi-respectful appellation. He was the sort of man from whose natural dignity a comic nickname glanced off abashed.
Mr. Muffin, a tall man, wore a long overcoat which amply protected his knees. His general appearance was cylindrical. He bore himself stiffly, as if he had recently swallowed a ram- rod, had adjusted it internally with some difficulty, and was now desirous not to imperil a situation of delicate poise. The immovability of his superstructure contrasted with the action of his trousered legs so far as the long overcoat permitted them to appear. Had they been visible up to the knee, their normality would not have been doubted. Cut off as they were too briefly, they seemed to move with a life of their own, under their own directive power, independent of any authority resident within the overcoat up aloft.
When Mr. Muffin walked, men watched- hopefully for a rare deflection in his course. Not that he was immune from creature hazards. Nevertheless his walk suggested a more than human indeviability. The Bible tells of mystical beings whose feet were straight feet and they walked every one straight before them. Was Mr. Muffin comparable with them ? When he was seen in a college quad, court, precinct or purlieu, the illusion of indeviable progress found little to destroy it. Had he been translated to a London street, would it have survived ? An unanswered question. Mr. Muffin never went to London.
Remark his daily arrival in college. It took place at a quarter of an hour before eight of a morning. Usually the porter would be standing in stately amplitude at the door of his lodge. He received from Mr. Muffin, and himself res- ponded with, a courteous inclination. No words passed. Both men were habitual economists of speech. The porter reserved himself for the too many questions of the day. Mr. Muffm rode serene above them. Having thus entered college, Mr. Muffin went to his place of office, which was the college chapel. This college—solitary perhaps even in those days—was one which retained attendance at morning chapel as a discipline. Mr. Muffin's duty was to mark the presence or absence of undergraduates. They were expected to give their attendance not less than four mornings in a week. He transacted this business at the rear of the chapel in a lofty eyrie from which he looked divinely down to behold a congregation spread forth as grasshoppers beneath him. Facially its members were undisclosed to him. He judged them by the tops of their heads, the colour of their hair, the set of their shoulders. The hair-test was less fallible in those days because men wore their hair au nature!. The macassar period had passed; the age of " fixatives " had yet to dawn. Fair hair was fair; the other sort was not. Ordinarily college servants looked upon the faces of undergraduates to identify them—a common method which Mr. Muffin disdained. An undergraduate's face interested him not at all. Rather did he ask himself what each of these young men would look like seen from behind, from a considerable elevation, at a varying angle, in a chapel which stained glass made dim. Nobody was ever admitted to Mr. Muffin's eyrie. None could inform as to the manner of his marking. It was sup- posed that at times he had recourse to opera-glasses. There was general agreement that he took a reverent part in the service, that he suspended marking during the prayers' and relied upon the singing of the psalms and canticles for time in which to perform with inexorable accuracy his work. The knowledge that they were under scrutiny from on high was not without a salutary influence upon the young, and turned their minds to the consideration of the shape of things to come.
Mr. Muffin's mistakes were rarer than snow in summer. He might possibly do other things ill, but in this thing he ranked as omniscient. His findings were never disputed. Excuses for absence from chapel could be contrived, and sometimes gained acceptance. But not an imputation of inaccuracy. The suggestion that Mr. Muffin had made a mis- take would arouse in authority nothing but a wintry smile of disbelief. A wealthy undergraduate, lover of his bed, flown with the insolence of youth, tried to square Mr. Muffin and to procure his connivance in a deceit. How was the suggestion received ? Did it arouse hidden fires ? Did that composed and glacial countenance which none had ever seen melt into a smile or gather to a frOwn, did it flash suddenly into awful expressive- ness ? One is tempted to think it did. But no. Mr. Muffin could be as calm as he was inflexible. He received the poisoned chalice only to return it with courtesy to the donor.
His work in chapel was a part-time occupation. After morning chapel was ended, he had only to deliver the results of his scrutiny to the proper authority. Men who had not kept chapel, and knew that they had kept too few, might look gloomily from their windows to see Mr. Muffin pro- ceeding sedately, stiffly, gravely towards a remote but august quarter of the college. They knew whither he was going; knew also that those papers which he bore in hand were for them books of fate.
For the rest of the day Mr. Muffin was extra-collegiate. He could undertake another employment. Only by chance was its nature discovered. We carried walking-sticks. They happened to be in fashion that term. Our surprise was great when at the entrance to the museum and art gallery an attendant, having requested our sticks, handed them to be impounded by a tall unsmiling figure in whom we recognised Mr. Muffin. There was no mutual recognition, for his acquaintance with us had gone no farther than the tops of our heads.
Mr. Muffin was concerned with the abstraction of men's walking-sticks and—much more—of their umbrellas. Those were the days when silk hats, toppers, were in high frequency. The umbrella accompanied the topper as standard equipment, and the sort of people who wore top hats were much the sort of people who visited the museum. No attempt was made to part them from their hats. A church was one of the few places where such a denudation was practised. But umbrellas were -regarded differently. Without meaning to do so, a gentleman who had judged his distance inaccurately might impale a picture with his ferule. Remove therefore umbrellas from their owners and leave them in charge of Mr. Muffin, who will docket them correctly, retain them unconfusedly and restore them appropriately to departing visitors.
An owner might forget to ask for his umbrella and depart without it. What would Mr. Muffin do then ? Engaged per- haps in the receipt of custom, he would be unable to intervene. Or with a multitude of umbrellas in charge he might feel that they had first claim upon a custodian's care. He would not leave all to save one. But if these objections did not hold, if time and opportunity served, he would step out from his lobby to emerge beneath the propylaeum, a beckoning figure, stem, but not uncompassionate of mortal weakness, and then —perhaps it would be given that fortunate forgetful one to hear what none of us had ever heard—Mr. Muffin's upraised voice.
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