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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beasts and Super-Beasts, by Saki
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Beasts and Super-Beasts
Author: Saki
Release Date: December 26, 2011 [eBook #269]
This file was first posted in April 1995
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS***
</pre>
<p>Transcribed from the 1914 John Lane, The Bodley Head edition
by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<h1>BEASTS AND<br />
SUPER-BEASTS</h1>
<p style="text-align: center">By H. H. MUNRO
(“SAKI”)</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">LONDON: JOHN
LANE THE BODLEY HEAD</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN
MCMXIV</span></p>
<h2>AUTHOR’S NOTE</h2>
<p>“The Open Window,” “The Schartz-Metterklume
Method,” and “Clovis on Parental
Responsibilities,” originally appeared in the
<i>Westminster Gazette</i>, “The Elk” in the
<i>Bystander</i>, and the remaining stories in the <i>Morning
Post</i>. To the Editors of these papers I am indebted for
their courtesy in allowing me to reprint them.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">H. H. M.</p>
<h2>THE SHE-WOLF</h2>
<p>Leonard Bilsiter was one of those people who have failed to
find this world attractive or interesting, and who have sought
compensation in an “unseen world” of their own
experience or imagination—or invention. Children do
that sort of thing successfully, but children are content to
convince themselves, and do not vulgarise their beliefs by trying
to convince other people. Leonard Bilsiter’s beliefs
were for “the few,” that is to say, anyone who would
listen to him.</p>
<p>His dabblings in the unseen might not have carried him beyond
the customary platitudes of the drawing-room visionary if
accident had not reinforced his stock-in-trade of mystical
lore. In company with a friend, who was interested in a
Ural mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe at
a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing
from a threat to a reality; its outbreak caught him on the return
journey, somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while
waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of
suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in
harness and metalware, who profitably whiled away the tedium of
the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a
fragmentary system of folk-lore that he had picked up from
Trans-Baikal traders and natives. Leonard returned to his
home circle garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but
oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he
alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic.
The reticence wore off in a week or two under the influence of an
entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more
detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric
force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the
initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia
Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved
the truth, gave him as clamorous an advertisement as anyone could
wish for by retailing an account of how he had turned a vegetable
marrow into a wood pigeon before her very eyes. As a
manifestation of the possession of supernatural powers, the story
was discounted in some quarters by the respect accorded to Mrs.
Hoops’ powers of imagination.</p>
<p>However divided opinion might be on the question of
Leonard’s status as a wonderworker or a charlatan, he
certainly arrived at Mary Hampton’s house-party with a
reputation for pre-eminence in one or other of those professions,
and he was not disposed to shun such publicity as might fall to
his share. Esoteric forces and unusual powers figured
largely in whatever conversation he or his aunt had a share in,
and his own performances, past and potential, were the subject of
mysterious hints and dark avowals.</p>
<p>“I wish you would turn me into a wolf, Mr.
Bilsiter,” said his hostess at luncheon the day after his
arrival.</p>
<p>“My dear Mary,” said Colonel Hampton, “I
never knew you had a craving in that direction.”</p>
<p>“A she-wolf, of course,” continued Mrs. Hampton;
“it would be too confusing to change one’s sex as
well as one’s species at a moment’s
notice.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think one should jest on these
subjects,” said Leonard.</p>
<p>“I’m not jesting, I’m quite serious, I
assure you. Only don’t do it to-day; we have only
eight available bridge players, and it would break up one of our
tables. To-morrow we shall be a larger party.
To-morrow night, after dinner—”</p>
<p>“In our present imperfect understanding of these hidden
forces I think one should approach them with humbleness rather
than mockery,” observed Leonard, with such severity that
the subject was forthwith dropped.</p>
<p>Clovis Sangrail had sat unusually silent during the discussion
on the possibilities of Siberian Magic; after lunch he
side-tracked Lord Pabham into the comparative seclusion of the
billiard-room and delivered himself of a searching question.</p>
<p>“Have you such a thing as a she-wolf in your collection
of wild animals? A she-wolf of moderately good
temper?”</p>
<p>Lord Pabham considered. “There is Louisa,”
he said, “a rather fine specimen of the timber-wolf.
I got her two years ago in exchange for some Arctic foxes.
Most of my animals get to be fairly tame before they’ve
been with me very long; I think I can say Louisa has an angelic
temper, as she-wolves go. Why do you ask?”</p>
<p>“I was wondering whether you would lend her to me for
to-morrow night,” said Clovis, with the careless solicitude
of one who borrows a collar stud or a tennis racquet.</p>
<p>“To-morrow night?”</p>
<p>“Yes, wolves are nocturnal animals, so the late hours
won’t hurt her,” said Clovis, with the air of one who
has taken everything into consideration; “one of your men
could bring her over from Pabham Park after dusk, and with a
little help he ought to be able to smuggle her into the
conservatory at the same moment that Mary Hampton makes an
unobtrusive exit.”</p>
<p>Lord Pabham stared at Clovis for a moment in pardonable
bewilderment; then his face broke into a wrinkled network of
laughter.</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s your game, is it? You are going
to do a little Siberian Magic on your own account. And is
Mrs. Hampton willing to be a fellow-conspirator?”</p>
<p>“Mary is pledged to see me through with it, if you will
guarantee Louisa’s temper.”</p>
<p>“I’ll answer for Louisa,” said Lord
Pabham.</p>
<p>By the following day the house-party had swollen to larger
proportions, and Bilsiter’s instinct for self-advertisement
expanded duly under the stimulant of an increased audience.
At dinner that evening he held forth at length on the subject of
unseen forces and untested powers, and his flow of impressive
eloquence continued unabated while coffee was being served in the
drawing-room preparatory to a general migration to the
card-room.</p>
<p>His aunt ensured a respectful hearing for his utterances, but
her sensation-loving soul hankered after something more dramatic
than mere vocal demonstration.</p>
<p>“Won’t you do something to <i>convince</i> them of
your powers, Leonard?” she pleaded; “change something
into another shape. He can, you know, if he only chooses
to,” she informed the company.</p>
<p>“Oh, do,” said Mavis Pellington earnestly, and her
request was echoed by nearly everyone present. Even those
who were not open to conviction were perfectly willing to be
entertained by an exhibition of amateur conjuring.</p>
<p>Leonard felt that something tangible was expected of him.</p>
<p>“Has anyone present,” he asked, “got a
three-penny bit or some small object of no particular
value—?”</p>
<p>“You’re surely not going to make coins disappear,
or something primitive of that sort?” said Clovis
contemptuously.</p>
<p>“I think it very unkind of you not to carry out my
suggestion of turning me into a wolf,” said Mary Hampton,
as she crossed over to the conservatory to give her macaws their
usual tribute from the dessert dishes.</p>
<p>“I have already warned you of the danger of treating
these powers in a mocking spirit,” said Leonard
solemnly.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe you can do it,” laughed
Mary provocatively from the conservatory; “I dare you to do
it if you can. I defy you to turn me into a
wolf.”</p>
<p>As she said this she was lost to view behind a clump of
azaleas.</p>
<p>“Mrs. Hampton—” began Leonard with increased
solemnity, but he got no further. A breath of chill air
seemed to rush across the room, and at the same time the macaws
broke forth into ear-splitting screams.</p>
<p>“What on earth is the matter with those confounded
birds, Mary?” exclaimed Colonel Hampton; at the same moment
an even more piercing scream from Mavis Pellington stampeded the
entire company from their seats. In various attitudes of
helpless horror or instinctive defence they confronted the
evil-looking grey beast that was peering at them from amid a
setting of fern and azalea.</p>
<p>Mrs. Hoops was the first to recover from the general chaos of
fright and bewilderment.</p>
<p>“Leonard!” she screamed shrilly to her nephew,
“turn it back into Mrs. Hampton at once! It may fly
at us at any moment. Turn it back!”</p>
<p>“I—I don’t know how to,” faltered
Leonard, who looked more scared and horrified than anyone.</p>
<p>“What!” shouted Colonel Hampton,
“you’ve taken the abominable liberty of turning my
wife into a wolf, and now you stand there calmly and say you
can’t turn her back again!”</p>
<p>To do strict justice to Leonard, calmness was not a
distinguishing feature of his attitude at the moment.</p>
<p>“I assure you I didn’t turn Mrs. Hampton into a
wolf; nothing was farther from my intentions,” he
protested.</p>
<p>“Then where is she, and how came that animal into the
conservatory?” demanded the Colonel.</p>
<p>“Of course we must accept your assurance that you
didn’t turn Mrs. Hampton into a wolf,” said Clovis
politely, “but you will agree that appearances are against
you.”</p>
<p>“Are we to have all these recriminations with that beast
standing there ready to tear us to pieces?” wailed Mavis
indignantly.</p>
<p>“Lord Pabham, you know a good deal about wild
beasts—” suggested Colonel Hampton.</p>
<p>“The wild beasts that I have been accustomed to,”
said Lord Pabham, “have come with proper credentials from
well-known dealers, or have been bred in my own menagerie.
I’ve never before been confronted with an animal that walks
unconcernedly out of an azalea bush, leaving a charming and
popular hostess unaccounted for. As far as one can judge
from <i>outward</i> characteristics,” he continued,
“it has the appearance of a well-grown female of the North
American timber-wolf, a variety of the common species <i>canis
lupus</i>.”</p>
<p>“Oh, never mind its Latin name,” screamed Mavis,
as the beast came a step or two further into the room;
“can’t you entice it away with food, and shut it up
where it can’t do any harm?”</p>
<p>“If it is really Mrs. Hampton, who has just had a very
good dinner, I don’t suppose food will appeal to it very
strongly,” said Clovis.</p>
<p>“Leonard,” beseeched Mrs. Hoops tearfully,
“even if this is none of your doing can’t you use
your great powers to turn this dreadful beast into something
harmless before it bites us all—a rabbit or
something?”</p>
<p>“I don’t suppose Colonel Hampton would care to
have his wife turned into a succession of fancy animals as though
we were playing a round game with her,” interposed
Clovis.</p>
<p>“I absolutely forbid it,” thundered the
Colonel.</p>
<p>“Most wolves that I’ve had anything to do with
have been inordinately fond of sugar,” said Lord Pabham;
“if you like I’ll try the effect on this
one.”</p>
<p>He took a piece of sugar from the saucer of his coffee cup and
flung it to the expectant Louisa, who snapped it in
mid-air. There was a sigh of relief from the company; a
wolf that ate sugar when it might at the least have been employed
in tearing macaws to pieces had already shed some of its
terrors. The sigh deepened to a gasp of thanks-giving when
Lord Pabham decoyed the animal out of the room by a pretended
largesse of further sugar. There was an instant rush to the
vacated conservatory. There was no trace of Mrs. Hampton
except the plate containing the macaws’ supper.</p>
<p>“The door is locked on the inside!” exclaimed
Clovis, who had deftly turned the key as he affected to test
it.</p>
<p>Everyone turned towards Bilsiter.</p>
<p>“If you haven’t turned my wife into a wolf,”
said Colonel Hampton, “will you kindly explain where she
has disappeared to, since she obviously could not have gone
through a locked door? I will not press you for an
explanation of how a North American timber-wolf suddenly appeared
in the conservatory, but I think I have some right to inquire
what has become of Mrs. Hampton.”</p>
<p>Bilsiter’s reiterated disclaimer was met with a general
murmur of impatient disbelief.</p>
<p>“I refuse to stay another hour under this roof,”
declared Mavis Pellington.</p>
<p>“If our hostess has really vanished out of human
form,” said Mrs. Hoops, “none of the ladies of the
party can very well remain. I absolutely decline to be
chaperoned by a wolf!”</p>
<p>“It’s a she-wolf,” said Clovis
soothingly.</p>
<p>The correct etiquette to be observed under the unusual
circumstances received no further elucidation. The sudden
entry of Mary Hampton deprived the discussion of its immediate
interest.</p>
<p>“Some one has mesmerised me,” she exclaimed
crossly; “I found myself in the game larder, of all places,
being fed with sugar by Lord Pabham. I hate being
mesmerised, and the doctor has forbidden me to touch
sugar.”</p>
<p>The situation was explained to her, as far as it permitted of
anything that could be called explanation.</p>
<p>“Then you <i>really</i> did turn me into a wolf, Mr.
Bilsiter?” she exclaimed excitedly.</p>
<p>But Leonard had burned the boat in which he might now have
embarked on a sea of glory. He could only shake his head
feebly.</p>
<p>“It was I who took that liberty,” said Clovis;
“you see, I happen to have lived for a couple of years in
North-Eastern Russia, and I have more than a tourist’s
acquaintance with the magic craft of that region. One does
not care to speak about these strange powers, but once in a way,
when one hears a lot of nonsense being talked about them, one is
tempted to show what Siberian magic can accomplish in the hands
of someone who really understands it. I yielded to that
temptation. May I have some brandy? the effort has left me
rather faint.”</p>
<p>If Leonard Bilsiter could at that moment have transformed
Clovis into a cockroach and then have stepped on him he would
gladly have performed both operations.</p>
<h2>LAURA</h2>
<p>“You are not really dying, are you?” asked
Amanda.</p>
<p>“I have the doctor’s permission to live till
Tuesday,” said Laura.</p>
<p>“But to-day is Saturday; this is serious!” gasped
Amanda.</p>
<p>“I don’t know about it being serious; it is
certainly Saturday,” said Laura.</p>
<p>“Death is always serious,” said Amanda.</p>
<p>“I never said I was going to die. I am presumably
going to leave off being Laura, but I shall go on being
something. An animal of some kind, I suppose. You
see, when one hasn’t been very good in the life one has
just lived, one reincarnates in some lower organism. And I
haven’t been very good, when one comes to think of
it. I’ve been petty and mean and vindictive and all
that sort of thing when circumstances have seemed to warrant
it.”</p>
<p>“Circumstances never warrant that sort of thing,”
said Amanda hastily.</p>
<p>“If you don’t mind my saying so,” observed
Laura, “Egbert is a circumstance that would warrant any
amount of that sort of thing. You’re married to
him—that’s different; you’ve sworn to love,
honour, and endure him: I haven’t.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see what’s wrong with
Egbert,” protested Amanda.</p>
<p>“Oh, I daresay the wrongness has been on my part,”
admitted Laura dispassionately; “he has merely been the
extenuating circumstance. He made a thin, peevish kind of
fuss, for instance, when I took the collie puppies from the farm
out for a run the other day.”</p>
<p>“They chased his young broods of speckled Sussex and
drove two sitting hens off their nests, besides running all over
the flower beds. You know how devoted he is to his poultry
and garden.”</p>
<p>“Anyhow, he needn’t have gone on about it for the
entire evening and then have said, ‘Let’s say no more
about it’ just when I was beginning to enjoy the
discussion. That’s where one of my petty vindictive
revenges came in,” added Laura with an unrepentant chuckle;
“I turned the entire family of speckled Sussex into his
seedling shed the day after the puppy episode.”</p>
<p>“How could you?” exclaimed Amanda.</p>
<p>“It came quite easy,” said Laura; “two of
the hens pretended to be laying at the time, but I was
firm.”</p>
<p>“And we thought it was an accident!”</p>
<p>“You see,” resumed Laura, “I really
<i>have</i> some grounds for supposing that my next incarnation
will be in a lower organism. I shall be an animal of some
kind. On the other hand, I haven’t been a bad sort in
my way, so I think I may count on being a nice animal, something
elegant and lively, with a love of fun. An otter,
perhaps.”</p>
<p>“I can’t imagine you as an otter,” said
Amanda.</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t suppose you can imagine me as an
angel, if it comes to that,” said Laura.</p>
<p>Amanda was silent. She couldn’t.</p>
<p>“Personally I think an otter life would be rather
enjoyable,” continued Laura; “salmon to eat all the
year round, and the satisfaction of being able to fetch the trout
in their own homes without having to wait for hours till they
condescend to rise to the fly you’ve been dangling before
them; and an elegant svelte figure—”</p>
<p>“Think of the otter hounds,” interposed Amanda;
“how dreadful to be hunted and harried and finally worried
to death!”</p>
<p>“Rather fun with half the neighbourhood looking on, and
anyhow not worse than this Saturday-to-Tuesday business of dying
by inches; and then I should go on into something else. If
I had been a moderately good otter I suppose I should get back
into human shape of some sort; probably something rather
primitive—a little brown, unclothed Nubian boy, I should
think.”</p>
<p>“I wish you would be serious,” sighed Amanda;
“you really ought to be if you’re only going to live
till Tuesday.”</p>
<p>As a matter of fact Laura died on Monday.</p>
<p>“So dreadfully upsetting,” Amanda complained to
her uncle-in-law, Sir Lulworth Quayne. “I’ve
asked quite a lot of people down for golf and fishing, and the
rhododendrons are just looking their best.”</p>
<p>“Laura always was inconsiderate,” said Sir
Lulworth; “she was born during Goodwood week, with an
Ambassador staying in the house who hated babies.”</p>
<p>“She had the maddest kind of ideas,” said Amanda;
“do you know if there was any insanity in her
family?”</p>
<p>“Insanity? No, I never heard of any. Her
father lives in West Kensington, but I believe he’s sane on
all other subjects.”</p>
<p>“She had an idea that she was going to be reincarnated
as an otter,” said Amanda.</p>
<p>“One meets with those ideas of reincarnation so
frequently, even in the West,” said Sir Lulworth,
“that one can hardly set them down as being mad. And
Laura was such an unaccountable person in this life that I should
not like to lay down definite rules as to what she might be doing
in an after state.”</p>
<p>“You think she really might have passed into some animal
form?” asked Amanda. She was one of those who shape
their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around
them.</p>
<p>Just then Egbert entered the breakfast-room, wearing an air of
bereavement that Laura’s demise would have been
insufficient, in itself, to account for.</p>
<p>“Four of my speckled Sussex have been killed,” he
exclaimed; “the very four that were to go to the show on
Friday. One of them was dragged away and eaten right in the
middle of that new carnation bed that I’ve been to such
trouble and expense over. My best flower bed and my best
fowls singled out for destruction; it almost seems as if the
brute that did the deed had special knowledge how to be as
devastating as possible in a short space of time.”</p>
<p>“Was it a fox, do you think?” asked Amanda.</p>
<p>“Sounds more like a polecat,” said Sir
Lulworth.</p>
<p>“No,” said Egbert, “there were marks of
webbed feet all over the place, and we followed the tracks down
to the stream at the bottom of the garden; evidently an
otter.”</p>
<p>Amanda looked quickly and furtively across at Sir
Lulworth.</p>
<p>Egbert was too agitated to eat any breakfast, and went out to
superintend the strengthening of the poultry yard defences.</p>
<p>“I think she might at least have waited till the funeral
was over,” said Amanda in a scandalised voice.</p>
<p>“It’s her own funeral, you know,” said Sir
Lulworth; “it’s a nice point in etiquette how far one
ought to show respect to one’s own mortal
remains.”</p>
<p>Disregard for mortuary convention was carried to further
lengths next day; during the absence of the family at the funeral
ceremony the remaining survivors of the speckled Sussex were
massacred. The marauder’s line of retreat seemed to
have embraced most of the flower beds on the lawn, but the
strawberry beds in the lower garden had also suffered.</p>
<p>“I shall get the otter hounds to come here at the
earliest possible moment,” said Egbert savagely.</p>
<p>“On no account! You can’t dream of such a
thing!” exclaimed Amanda. “I mean, it
wouldn’t do, so soon after a funeral in the
house.”</p>
<p>“It’s a case of necessity,” said Egbert;
“once an otter takes to that sort of thing it won’t
stop.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps it will go elsewhere now there are no more
fowls left,” suggested Amanda.</p>
<p>“One would think you wanted to shield the beast,”
said Egbert.</p>
<p>“There’s been so little water in the stream
lately,” objected Amanda; “it seems hardly sporting
to hunt an animal when it has so little chance of taking refuge
anywhere.”</p>
<p>“Good gracious!” fumed Egbert, “I’m
not thinking about sport. I want to have the animal killed
as soon as possible.”</p>
<p>Even Amanda’s opposition weakened when, during church
time on the following Sunday, the otter made its way into the
house, raided half a salmon from the larder and worried it into
scaly fragments on the Persian rug in Egbert’s studio.</p>
<p>“We shall have it hiding under our beds and biting
pieces out of our feet before long,” said Egbert, and from
what Amanda knew of this particular otter she felt that the
possibility was not a remote one.</p>
<p>On the evening preceding the day fixed for the hunt Amanda
spent a solitary hour walking by the banks of the stream, making
what she imagined to be hound noises. It was charitably
supposed by those who overheard her performance, that she was
practising for farmyard imitations at the forth-coming village
entertainment.</p>
<p>It was her friend and neighbour, Aurora Burret, who brought
her news of the day’s sport.</p>
<p>“Pity you weren’t out; we had quite a good
day. We found at once, in the pool just below your
garden.”</p>
<p>“Did you—kill?” asked Amanda.</p>
<p>“Rather. A fine she-otter. Your husband got
rather badly bitten in trying to ‘tail it.’
Poor beast, I felt quite sorry for it, it had such a human look
in its eyes when it was killed. You’ll call me silly,
but do you know who the look reminded me of? My dear woman,
what is the matter?”</p>
<p>When Amanda had recovered to a certain extent from her attack
of nervous prostration Egbert took her to the Nile Valley to
recuperate. Change of scene speedily brought about the
desired recovery of health and mental balance. The
escapades of an adventurous otter in search of a variation of
diet were viewed in their proper light. Amanda’s
normally placid temperament reasserted itself. Even a
hurricane of shouted curses, coming from her husband’s
dressing-room, in her husband’s voice, but hardly in his
usual vocabulary, failed to disturb her serenity as she made a
leisurely toilet one evening in a Cairo hotel.</p>
<p>“What is the matter? What has happened?” she
asked in amused curiosity.</p>
<p>“The little beast has thrown all my clean shirts into
the bath! Wait till I catch you, you
little—”</p>
<p>“What little beast?” asked Amanda, suppressing a
desire to laugh; Egbert’s language was so hopelessly
inadequate to express his outraged feelings.</p>
<p>“A little beast of a naked brown Nubian boy,”
spluttered Egbert.</p>
<p>And now Amanda is seriously ill.</p>
<h2>THE BOAR-PIG</h2>
<p>“There is a back way on to the lawn,” said Mrs.
Philidore Stossen to her daughter, “through a small grass
paddock and then through a walled fruit garden full of gooseberry
bushes. I went all over the place last year when the family
were away. There is a door that opens from the fruit garden
into a shrubbery, and once we emerge from there we can mingle
with the guests as if we had come in by the ordinary way.
It’s much safer than going in by the front entrance and
running the risk of coming bang up against the hostess; that
would be so awkward when she doesn’t happen to have invited
us.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t it a lot of trouble to take for getting
admittance to a garden party?”</p>
<p>“To a garden party, yes; to <i>the</i> garden party of
the season, certainly not. Every one of any consequence in
the county, with the exception of ourselves, has been asked to
meet the Princess, and it would be far more troublesome to invent
explanations as to why we weren’t there than to get in by a
roundabout way. I stopped Mrs. Cuvering in the road
yesterday and talked very pointedly about the Princess. If
she didn’t choose to take the hint and send me an
invitation it’s not my fault, is it? Here we are: we
just cut across the grass and through that little gate into the
garden.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Stossen and her daughter, suitably arrayed for a county
garden party function with an infusion of Almanack de Gotha,
sailed through the narrow grass paddock and the ensuing
gooseberry garden with the air of state barges making an
unofficial progress along a rural trout stream. There was a
certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the stateliness of
their advance, as though hostile search-lights might be turned on
them at any moment; and, as a matter of fact, they were not
unobserved. Matilda Cuvering, with the alert eyes of
thirteen years old and the added advantage of an exalted position
in the branches of a medlar tree, had enjoyed a good view of the
Stossen flanking movement and had foreseen exactly where it would
break down in execution.</p>
<p>“They’ll find the door locked, and they’ll
jolly well have to go back the way they came,” she remarked
to herself. “Serves them right for not coming in by
the proper entrance. What a pity Tarquin Superbus
isn’t loose in the paddock. After all, as every one
else is enjoying themselves, I don’t see why Tarquin
shouldn’t have an afternoon out.”</p>
<p>Matilda was of an age when thought is action; she slid down
from the branches of the medlar tree, and when she clambered back
again Tarquin, the huge white Yorkshire boar-pig, had exchanged
the narrow limits of his stye for the wider range of the grass
paddock. The discomfited Stossen expedition, returning in
recriminatory but otherwise orderly retreat from the unyielding
obstacle of the locked door, came to a sudden halt at the gate
dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden.</p>
<p>“What a villainous-looking animal,” exclaimed Mrs.
Stossen; “it wasn’t there when we came in.”</p>
<p>“It’s there now, anyhow,” said her
daughter. “What on earth are we to do? I wish
we had never come.”</p>
<p>The boar-pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer
inspection of the human intruders, and stood champing his jaws
and blinking his small red eyes in a manner that was doubtless
intended to be disconcerting, and, as far as the Stossens were
concerned, thoroughly achieved that result.</p>
<p>“Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo!” cried
the ladies in chorus.</p>
<p>“If they think they’re going to drive him away by
reciting lists of the kings of Israel and Judah they’re
laying themselves out for disappointment,” observed Matilda
from her seat in the medlar tree. As she made the
observation aloud Mrs. Stossen became for the first time aware of
her presence. A moment or two earlier she would have been
anything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as
deserted as it looked, but now she hailed the fact of the
child’s presence on the scene with absolute relief.</p>
<p>“Little girl, can you find some one to drive
away—” she began hopefully.</p>
<p>“<i>Comment</i>? <i>Comprends pas</i>,” was
the response.</p>
<p>“Oh, are you French? <i>Êtes vous
française</i>?”</p>
<p>“<i>Pas de tous</i>. <i>’Suis
anglaise</i>.”</p>
<p>“Then why not talk English? I want to know
if—”</p>
<p>“<i>Permettez-moi expliquer</i>. You see,
I’m rather under a cloud,” said Matilda.
“I’m staying with my aunt, and I was told I must
behave particularly well to-day, as lots of people were coming
for a garden party, and I was told to imitate Claude,
that’s my young cousin, who never does anything wrong
except by accident, and then is always apologetic about it.
It seems they thought I ate too much raspberry trifle at lunch,
and they said Claude never eats too much raspberry trifle.
Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch,
because he’s told to, and I waited till he was asleep, and
tied his hands and started forcible feeding with a whole
bucketful of raspberry trifle that they were keeping for the
garden-party. Lots of it went on to his sailor-suit and
some of it on to the bed, but a good deal went down
Claude’s throat, and they can’t say again that he has
never been known to eat too much raspberry trifle. That is
why I am not allowed to go to the party, and as an additional
punishment I must speak French all the afternoon.
I’ve had to tell you all this in English, as there were
words like ‘forcible feeding’ that I didn’t
know the French for; of course I could have invented them, but if
I had said <i>nourriture obligatoire</i> you wouldn’t have
had the least idea what I was talking about. <i>Mais
maintenant</i>, <i>nous parlons français</i>.”</p>
<p>“Oh, very well, <i>trés bien</i>,” said
Mrs. Stossen reluctantly; in moments of flurry such French as she
knew was not under very good control.
“<i>Là</i>, <i>à l’autre
côté de la porte</i>, <i>est un
cochon</i>—”</p>
<p>“<i>Un cochon</i>? <i>Ah</i>, <i>le petit
charmant</i>!” exclaimed Matilda with enthusiasm.</p>
<p>“<i>Mais non</i>, <i>pas du tout petit</i>, <i>et pas du
tout charmant</i>; <i>un bête
féroce</i>—”</p>
<p>“<i>Une bête</i>,” corrected Matilda;
“a pig is masculine as long as you call it a pig, but if
you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious beast it
becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing
language.”</p>
<p>“For goodness’ sake let us talk English
then,” said Mrs. Stossen. “Is there any way out
of this garden except through the paddock where the pig
is?”</p>
<p>“I always go over the wall, by way of the plum
tree,” said Matilda.</p>
<p>“Dressed as we are we could hardly do that,” said
Mrs. Stossen; it was difficult to imagine her doing it in any
costume.</p>
<p>“Do you think you could go and get some one who would
drive the pig away?” asked Miss Stossen.</p>
<p>“I promised my aunt I would stay here till five
o’clock; it’s not four yet.”</p>
<p>“I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt would
permit—”</p>
<p>“My conscience would not permit,” said Matilda
with cold dignity.</p>
<p>“We can’t stay here till five
o’clock,” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen with growing
exasperation.</p>
<p>“Shall I recite to you to make the time pass
quicker?” asked Matilda obligingly.
“‘Belinda, the little Breadwinner,’ is
considered my best piece, or, perhaps, it ought to be something
in French. Henri Quatre’s address to his soldiers is
the only thing I really know in that language.”</p>
<p>“If you will go and fetch some one to drive that animal
away I will give you something to buy yourself a nice
present,” said Mrs. Stossen.</p>
<p>Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar tree.</p>
<p>“That is the most practical suggestion you have made yet
for getting out of the garden,” she remarked cheerfully;
“Claude and I are collecting money for the Children’s
Fresh Air Fund, and we are seeing which of us can collect the
biggest sum.”</p>
<p>“I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown, very
glad indeed,” said Mrs. Stossen, digging that coin out of
the depths of a receptacle which formed a detached outwork of her
toilet.</p>
<p>“Claude is a long way ahead of me at present,”
continued Matilda, taking no notice of the suggested offering;
“you see, he’s only eleven, and has golden hair, and
those are enormous advantages when you’re on the collecting
job. Only the other day a Russian lady gave him ten
shillings. Russians understand the art of giving far better
than we do. I expect Claude will net quite twenty-five
shillings this afternoon; he’ll have the field to himself,
and he’ll be able to do the pale, fragile,
not-long-for-this-world business to perfection after his
raspberry trifle experience. Yes, he’ll be
<i>quite</i> two pounds ahead of me by now.”</p>
<p>With much probing and plucking and many regretful murmurs the
beleaguered ladies managed to produce seven-and-sixpence between
them.</p>
<p>“I am afraid this is all we’ve got,” said
Mrs. Stossen.</p>
<p>Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or
to their figure.</p>
<p>“I could not do violence to my conscience for anything
less than ten shillings,” she announced stiffly.</p>
<p>Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their
breath, in which the word “beast” was prominent, and
probably had no reference to Tarquin.</p>
<p>“I find I <i>have</i> got another half-crown,”
said Mrs. Stossen in a shaking voice; “here you are.
Now please fetch some one quickly.”</p>
<p>Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the
donation, and proceeded to pick up a handful of over-ripe medlars
from the grass at her feet. Then she climbed over the gate
and addressed herself affectionately to the boar-pig.</p>
<p>“Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can’t
resist medlars when they’re rotten and squashy.”</p>
<p>Tarquin couldn’t. By dint of throwing the fruit in
front of him at judicious intervals Matilda decoyed him back to
his stye, while the delivered captives hurried across the
paddock.</p>
<p>“Well, I never! The little minx!” exclaimed
Mrs. Stossen when she was safely on the high road.
“The animal wasn’t savage at all, and as for the ten
shillings, I don’t believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a
penny of it!”</p>
<p>There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment. If
you examine the books of the fund you will find the
acknowledgment: “Collected by Miss Matilda Cuvering, 2s.
6d.”</p>
<h2>THE BROGUE</h2>
<p>The hunting season had come to an end, and the Mullets had not
succeeded in selling the Brogue. There had been a kind of
tradition in the family for the past three or four years, a sort
of fatalistic hope, that the Brogue would find a purchaser before
the hunting was over; but seasons came and went without anything
happening to justify such ill-founded optimism. The animal
had been named Berserker in the earlier stages of its career; it
had been rechristened the Brogue later on, in recognition of the
fact that, once acquired, it was extremely difficult to get rid
of. The unkinder wits of the neighbourhood had been known
to suggest that the first letter of its name was
superfluous. The Brogue had been variously described in
sale catalogues as a light-weight hunter, a lady’s hack,
and, more simply, but still with a touch of imagination, as a
useful brown gelding, standing 15.1. Toby Mullet had ridden
him for four seasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost
any sort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it is an animal
that knows the country. The Brogue knew the country
intimately, having personally created most of the gaps that were
to be met with in banks and hedges for many miles round.
His manners and characteristics were not ideal in the hunting
field, but he was probably rather safer to ride to hounds than he
was as a hack on country roads. According to the Mullet
family, he was not really road-shy, but there were one or two
objects of dislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Toby
called the swerving sickness. Motors and cycles he treated
with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows, piles of stones
by the roadside, perambulators in a village street, gates painted
too aggressively white, and sometimes, but not always, the newer
kind of beehives, turned him aside from his tracks in vivid
imitation of the zigzag course of forked lightning. If a
pheasant rose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the
Brogue would spring into the air at the same moment, but this may
have been due to a desire to be companionable. The Mullet
family contradicted the widely prevalent report that the horse
was a confirmed crib-biter.</p>
<p>It was about the third week in May that Mrs. Mullet, relict of
the late Sylvester Mullet, and mother of Toby and a bunch of
daughters, assailed Clovis Sangrail on the outskirts of the
village with a breathless catalogue of local happenings.</p>
<p>“You know our new neighbour, Mr. Penricarde?” she
vociferated; “awfully rich, owns tin mines in Cornwall,
middle-aged and rather quiet. He’s taken the Red
House on a long lease and spent a lot of money on alterations and
improvements. Well, Toby’s sold him the
Brogue!”</p>
<p>Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating the astonishing
news; then he broke out into unstinted congratulation. If
he had belonged to a more emotional race he would probably have
kissed Mrs. Mullet.</p>
<p>“How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off at
last! Now you can buy a decent animal. I’ve
always said that Toby was clever. Ever so many
congratulations.”</p>
<p>“Don’t congratulate me. It’s the most
unfortunate thing that could have happened!” said Mrs.
Mullet dramatically.</p>
<p>Clovis stared at her in amazement.</p>
<p>“Mr. Penricarde,” said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her
voice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper, though it
rather resembled a hoarse, excited squeak, “Mr. Penricarde
has just begun to pay attentions to Jessie. Slight at
first, but now unmistakable. I was a fool not to have seen
it sooner. Yesterday, at the Rectory garden party, he asked
her what her favourite flowers were, and she told him carnations,
and to-day a whole stack of carnations has arrived, clove and
malmaison and lovely dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms,
and a box of chocolates that he must have got on purpose from
London. And he’s asked her to go round the links with
him to-morrow. And now, just at this critical moment, Toby
has sold him that animal. It’s a calamity!”</p>
<p>“But you’ve been trying to get the horse off your
hands for years,” said Clovis.</p>
<p>“I’ve got a houseful of daughters,” said
Mrs. Mullet, “and I’ve been trying—well, not to
get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or two
wouldn’t be amiss among the lot of them; there are six of
them, you know.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” said Clovis,
“I’ve never counted, but I expect you’re right
as to the number; mothers generally know these things.”</p>
<p>“And now,” continued Mrs. Mullet, in her tragic
whisper, “when there’s a rich husband-in-prospect
imminent on the horizon Toby goes and sells him that miserable
animal. It will probably kill him if he tries to ride it;
anyway it will kill any affection he might have felt towards any
member of our family. What is to be done? We
can’t very well ask to have the horse back; you see, we
praised it up like anything when we thought there was a chance of
his buying it, and said it was just the animal to suit
him.”</p>
<p>“Couldn’t you steal it out of his stable and send
it to grass at some farm miles away?” suggested Clovis;
“write ‘Votes for Women’ on the stable door,
and the thing would pass for a Suffragette outrage. No one
who knew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting to get
it back again.”</p>
<p>“Every newspaper in the country would ring with the
affair,” said Mrs. Mullet; “can’t you imagine
the headline, ‘Valuable Hunter Stolen by
Suffragettes’? The police would scour the countryside
till they found the animal.”</p>
<p>“Well, Jessie must try and get it back from Penricarde
on the plea that it’s an old favourite. She can say
it was only sold because the stable had to be pulled down under
the terms of an old repairing lease, and that now it has been
arranged that the stable is to stand for a couple of years
longer.”</p>
<p>“It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horse back
when you’ve just sold him,” said Mrs. Mullet,
“but something must be done, and done at once. The
man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as
quiet as a lamb. After all, lambs go kicking and twisting
about as if they were demented, don’t they?”</p>
<p>“The lamb has an entirely unmerited character for
sedateness,” agreed Clovis.</p>
<p>Jessie came back from the golf links next day in a state of
mingled elation and concern.</p>
<p>“It’s all right about the proposal,” she
announced; “he came out with it at the sixth hole. I
said I must have time to think it over. I accepted him at
the seventh.”</p>
<p>“My dear,” said her mother, “I think a
little more maidenly reserve and hesitation would have been
advisable, as you’ve known him so short a time. You
might have waited till the ninth hole.”</p>
<p>“The seventh is a very long hole,” said Jessie;
“besides, the tension was putting us both off our
game. By the time we’d got to the ninth hole
we’d settled lots of things. The honeymoon is to be
spent in Corsica, with perhaps a flying visit to Naples if we
feel like it, and a week in London to wind up with. Two of
his nieces are to be asked to be bridesmaids, so with our lot
there will be seven, which is rather a lucky number. You
are to wear your pearl grey, with any amount of Honiton lace
jabbed into it. By the way, he’s coming over this
evening to ask your consent to the whole affair. So far
all’s well, but about the Brogue it’s a different
matter. I told him the legend about the stable, and how
keen we were about buying the horse back, but he seems equally
keen on keeping it. He said he must have horse exercise now
that he’s living in the country, and he’s going to
start riding to-morrow. He’s ridden a few times in
the Row, on an animal that was accustomed to carry octogenarians
and people undergoing rest cures, and that’s about all his
experience in the saddle—oh, and he rode a pony once in
Norfolk, when he was fifteen and the pony twenty-four; and
to-morrow he’s going to ride the Brogue! I shall be a
widow before I’m married, and I do so want to see what
Corsica’s like; it looks so silly on the map.”</p>
<p>Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developments of the
situation put before him.</p>
<p>“Nobody can ride that animal with any safety,”
said Mrs. Mullet, “except Toby, and he knows by long
experience what it is going to shy at, and manages to swerve at
the same time.”</p>
<p>“I did hint to Mr. Penricarde—to Vincent, I should
say—that the Brogue didn’t like white gates,”
said Jessie.</p>
<p>“White gates!” exclaimed Mrs. Mullet; “did
you mention what effect a pig has on him? He’ll have
to go past Lockyer’s farm to get to the high road, and
there’s sure to be a pig or two grunting about in the
lane.”</p>
<p>“He’s taken rather a dislike to turkeys
lately,” said Toby.</p>
<p>“It’s obvious that Penricarde mustn’t be
allowed to go out on that animal,” said Clovis, “at
least not till Jessie has married him, and tired of him. I
tell you what: ask him to a picnic to-morrow, starting at an
early hour; he’s not the sort to go out for a ride before
breakfast. The day after I’ll get the rector to drive
him over to Crowleigh before lunch, to see the new cottage
hospital they’re building there. The Brogue will be
standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer to exercise it;
then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and go
conveniently lame. If you hurry on the wedding a bit the
lameness fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is safely
over.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and she kissed
Clovis.</p>
<p>It was nobody’s fault that the rain came down in
torrents the next morning, making a picnic a fantastic
impossibility. It was also nobody’s fault, but sheer
ill-luck, that the weather cleared up sufficiently in the
afternoon to tempt Mr. Penricarde to make his first essay with
the Brogue. They did not get as far as the pigs at
Lockyer’s farm; the rectory gate was painted a dull
unobtrusive green, but it had been white a year or two ago, and
the Brogue never forgot that he had been in the habit of making a
violent curtsey, a back-pedal and a swerve at this particular
point of the road. Subsequently, there being apparently no
further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory
orchard, where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors to
the orchard found the coop almost intact, but very little left of
the turkey.</p>
<p>Mr. Penricarde, a little stunned and shaken, and suffering
from a bruised knee and some minor damages, good-naturedly
ascribed the accident to his own inexperience with horses and
country roads, and allowed Jessie to nurse him back into complete
recovery and golf-fitness within something less than a week.</p>
<p>In the list of wedding presents which the local newspaper
published a fortnight or so later appeared the following
item:</p>
<p>“Brown saddle-horse, ‘The Brogue,’
bridegroom’s gift to bride.”</p>
<p>“Which shows,” said Toby Mullet, “that he
knew nothing.”</p>
<p>“Or else,” said Clovis, “that he has a very
pleasing wit.”</p>
<h2>THE HEN</h2>
<p>“Dora Bittholz is coming on Thursday,” said Mrs.
Sangrail.</p>
<p>“This next Thursday?” asked Clovis</p>
<p>His mother nodded.</p>
<p>“You’ve rather done it, haven’t you?”
he chuckled; “Jane Martlet has only been here five days,
and she never stays less than a fortnight, even when she’s
asked definitely for a week. You’ll never get her out
of the house by Thursday.”</p>
<p>“Why should I?” asked Mrs. Sangrail; “she
and Dora are good friends, aren’t they? They used to
be, as far as I remember.”</p>
<p>“They used to be; that’s what makes them all the
more bitter now. Each feels that she has nursed a viper in
her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so
much as the discovery that one’s bosom has been utilised as
a snake sanatorium.”</p>
<p>“But what has happened? Has some one been making
mischief?”</p>
<p>“Not exactly,” said Clovis; “a hen came
between them.”</p>
<p>“A hen? What hen?”</p>
<p>“It was a bronze Leghorn or some such exotic breed, and
Dora sold it to Jane at a rather exotic price. They both go
in for prize poultry, you know, and Jane thought she was going to
get her money back in a large family of pedigree chickens.
The bird turned out to be an abstainer from the egg habit, and
I’m told that the letters which passed between the two
women were a revelation as to how much invective could be got on
to a sheet of notepaper.”</p>
<p>“How ridiculous!” said Mrs. Sangrail.
“Couldn’t some of their friends compose the
quarrel?”</p>
<p>“People tried,” said Clovis, “but it must
have been rather like composing the storm music of the
‘Fliegende Holländer.’ Jane was willing to
take back some of her most libellous remarks if Dora would take
back the hen, but Dora said that would be owning herself in the
wrong, and you know she’d as soon think of owning slum
property in Whitechapel as do that.”</p>
<p>“It’s a most awkward situation,” said Mrs.
Sangrail. “Do you suppose they won’t speak to
one another?”</p>
<p>“On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get them to
leave off. Their remarks on each other’s conduct and
character have hitherto been governed by the fact that only four
ounces of plain speaking can be sent through the post for a
penny.”</p>
<p>“I can’t put Dora off,” said Mrs.
Sangrail. “I’ve already postponed her visit
once, and nothing short of a miracle would make Jane leave before
her self-allotted fortnight is over.”</p>
<p>“Miracles are rather in my line,” said
Clovis. “I don’t pretend to be very hopeful in
this case but I’ll do my best.”</p>
<p>“As long as you don’t drag me into
it—” stipulated his mother.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>“Servants are a bit of a nuisance,” muttered
Clovis, as he sat in the smoking-room after lunch, talking
fitfully to Jane Martlet in the intervals of putting together the
materials of a cocktail, which he had irreverently patented under
the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was partly
compounded of old brandy and partly of curaçoa; there were
other ingredients, but they were never indiscriminately
revealed.</p>
<p>“Servants a nuisance!” exclaimed Jane, bounding
into the topic with the exuberant plunge of a hunter when it
leaves the high road and feels turf under its hoofs; “I
should think they were! The trouble I’ve had in
getting suited this year you would hardly believe. But I
don’t see what you have to complain of—your mother is
so wonderfully lucky in her servants. Sturridge, for
instance—he’s been with you for years, and I’m
sure he’s a paragon as butlers go.”</p>
<p>“That’s just the trouble,” said
Clovis. “It’s when servants have been with you
for years that they become a really serious nuisance. The
‘here to-day and gone to-morrow’ sort don’t
matter—you’ve simply got to replace them; it’s
the stayers and the paragons that are the real worry.”</p>
<p>“But if they give satisfaction—”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t prevent them from giving
trouble. Now, you’ve mentioned Sturridge—it was
Sturridge I was particularly thinking of when I made the
observation about servants being a nuisance.”</p>
<p>“The excellent Sturridge a nuisance! I can’t
believe it.”</p>
<p>“I know he’s excellent, and we just couldn’t
get along without him; he’s the one reliable element in
this rather haphazard household. But his very orderliness
has had an effect on him. Have you ever considered what it
must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in the
correct manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of a
lifetime? To know and ordain and superintend exactly what
silver and glass and table linen shall be used and set out on
what occasions, to have cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard
under a minutely devised and undeviating administration, to be
noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent, and, as far as your own
department is concerned, omniscient?”</p>
<p>“I should go mad,” said Jane with conviction.</p>
<p>“Exactly,” said Clovis thoughtfully, swallowing
his completed Ella Wheeler Wilcox.</p>
<p>“But Sturridge hasn’t gone mad,” said Jane
with a flutter of inquiry in her voice.</p>
<p>“On most points he’s thoroughly sane and
reliable,” said Clovis, “but at times he is subject
to the most obstinate delusions, and on those occasions he
becomes not merely a nuisance but a decided
embarrassment.”</p>
<p>“What sort of delusions?”</p>
<p>“Unfortunately they usually centre round one of the
guests of the house party, and that is where the awkwardness
comes in. For instance, he took it into his head that
Matilda Sheringham was the Prophet Elijah, and as all that he
remembered about Elijah’s history was the episode of the
ravens in the wilderness he absolutely declined to interfere with
what he imagined to be Matilda’s private catering
arrangements, wouldn’t allow any tea to be sent up to her
in the morning, and if he was waiting at table he passed her over
altogether in handing round the dishes.”</p>
<p>“How very unpleasant. Whatever did you do about
it?”</p>
<p>“Oh, Matilda got fed, after a fashion, but it was judged
to be best for her to cut her visit short. It was really
the only thing to be done,” said Clovis with some
emphasis.</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t have done that,” said Jane,
“I should have humoured him in some way. I certainly
shouldn’t have gone away.”</p>
<p>Clovis frowned.</p>
<p>“It is not always wise to humour people when they get
these ideas into their heads. There’s no knowing to
what lengths they may go if you encourage them.”</p>
<p>“You don’t mean to say he might be dangerous, do
you?” asked Jane with some anxiety.</p>
<p>“One can never be certain,” said Clovis;
“now and then he gets some idea about a guest which might
take an unfortunate turn. That is precisely what is
worrying me at the present moment.”</p>
<p>“What, has he taken a fancy about some one here
now?” asked Jane excitedly; “how thrilling! Do
tell me who it is.”</p>
<p>“You,” said Clovis briefly.</p>
<p>“Me?”</p>
<p>Clovis nodded.</p>
<p>“Who on earth does he think I am?”</p>
<p>“Queen Anne,” was the unexpected answer.</p>
<p>“Queen Anne! What an idea. But, anyhow,
there’s nothing dangerous about her; she’s such a
colourless personality.”</p>
<p>“What does posterity chiefly say about Queen
Anne?” asked Clovis rather sternly.</p>
<p>“The only thing that I can remember about her,”
said Jane, “is the saying ‘Queen Anne’s
dead.’”</p>
<p>“Exactly,” said Clovis, staring at the glass that
had held the Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “dead.”</p>
<p>“Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen
Anne?” asked Jane.</p>
<p>“Ghost? Dear no. No one ever heard of a
ghost that came down to breakfast and ate kidneys and toast and
honey with a healthy appetite. No, it’s the fact of
you being so very much alive and flourishing that perplexes and
annoys him. All his life he has been accustomed to look on
Queen Anne as the personification of everything that is dead and
done with, ‘as dead as Queen Anne,’ you know; and now
he has to fill your glass at lunch and dinner and listen to your
accounts of the gay time you had at the Dublin Horse Show, and
naturally he feels that something’s very wrong with
you.”</p>
<p>“But he wouldn’t be downright hostile to me on
that account, would he?” Jane asked anxiously.</p>
<p>“I didn’t get really alarmed about it till lunch
to-day,” said Clovis; “I caught him glowering at you
with a very sinister look and muttering: ‘Ought to be dead
long ago, she ought, and some one should see to it.’
That’s why I mentioned the matter to you.”</p>
<p>“This is awful,” said Jane; “your mother
must be told about it at once.”</p>
<p>“My mother mustn’t hear a word about it,”
said Clovis earnestly; “it would upset her
dreadfully. She relies on Sturridge for
everything.”</p>
<p>“But he might kill me at any moment,” protested
Jane.</p>
<p>“Not at any moment; he’s busy with the silver all
the afternoon.”</p>
<p>“You’ll have to keep a sharp look-out all the time
and be on your guard to frustrate any murderous attack,”
said Jane, adding in a tone of weak obstinacy: “It’s
a dreadful situation to be in, with a mad butler dangling over
you like the sword of What’s-his-name, but I’m
certainly not going to cut my visit short.”</p>
<p>Clovis swore horribly under his breath; the miracle was an
obvious misfire.</p>
<p>It was in the hall the next morning after a late breakfast
that Clovis had his final inspiration as he stood engaged in
coaxing rust spots from an old putter.</p>
<p>“Where is Miss Martlet?” he asked the butler, who
was at that moment crossing the hall.</p>
<p>“Writing letters in the morning-room, sir,” said
Sturridge, announcing a fact of which his questioner was already
aware.</p>
<p>“She wants to copy the inscription on that old
basket-hilted sabre,” said Clovis, pointing to a venerable
weapon hanging on the wall. “I wish you’d take
it to her; my hands are all over oil. Take it without the
sheath, it will be less trouble.”</p>
<p>The butler drew the blade, still keen and bright in its
well-cared for old age, and carried it into the
morning-room. There was a door near the writing-table
leading to a back stairway; Jane vanished through it with such
lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen
him come in. Half an hour later Clovis was driving her and
her hastily-packed luggage to the station.</p>
<p>“Mother will be awfully vexed when she comes back from
her ride and finds you have gone,” he observed to the
departing guest, “but I’ll make up some story about
an urgent wire having called you away. It wouldn’t do
to alarm her unnecessarily about Sturridge.”</p>
<p>Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis’ ideas of unnecessary
alarm, and was almost rude to the young man who came round with
thoughtful inquiries as to luncheon-baskets.</p>
<p>The miracle lost some of its usefulness from the fact that
Dora wrote the same day postponing the date of her visit, but, at
any rate, Clovis holds the record as the only human being who
ever hustled Jane Martlet out of the time-table of her
migrations.</p>
<h2>THE OPEN WINDOW</h2>
<p>“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said
a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the
meantime you must try and put up with me.”</p>
<p>Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which
should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly
discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted
more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of
total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure
which he was supposed to be undergoing.</p>
<p>“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when
he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; “you
will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and
your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall
just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know
there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite
nice.”</p>
<p>Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he
was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the
nice division.</p>
<p>“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked
the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent
communion.</p>
<p>“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My
sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four
years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the
people here.”</p>
<p>He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.</p>
<p>“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?”
pursued the self-possessed young lady.</p>
<p>“Only her name and address,” admitted the
caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the
married or widowed state. An undefinable something about
the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.</p>
<p>“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,”
said the child; “that would be since your sister’s
time.”</p>
<p>“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this
restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.</p>
<p>“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an
October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large
French window that opened on to a lawn.</p>
<p>“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said
Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the
tragedy?”</p>
<p>“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her
husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s
shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor
to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three
engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that
dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other
years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were
never recovered. That was the dreadful part of
it.” Here the child’s voice lost its
self-possessed note and became falteringly human.
“Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day,
they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and
walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why
the window is kept open every evening till it is quite
dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went
out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and
Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you
bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it
got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet
evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will
all walk in through that window—”</p>
<p>She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to
Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of
apologies for being late in making her appearance.</p>
<p>“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.</p>
<p>“She has been very interesting,” said Framton.</p>
<p>“I hope you don’t mind the open window,”
said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; “my husband and brothers will
be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this
way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes
to-day, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor
carpets. So like you men-folk, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity
of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To
Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but
only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less
ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him
only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly
straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond.
It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have
paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.</p>
<p>“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an
absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the
nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton,
who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total
strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least
detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and
cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in
agreement,” he continued.</p>
<p>“No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only
replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly
brightened into alert attention—but not to what Framton was
saying.</p>
<p>“Here they are at last!” she cried.
“Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they
were muddy up to the eyes!”</p>
<p>Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a
look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The
child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror
in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton
swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.</p>
<p>In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across
the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their
arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat
hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close
at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then
a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said,
Bertie, why do you bound?”</p>
<p>Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door,
the gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly-noted stages in
his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had
to run into the hedge to avoid an imminent collision.</p>
<p>“Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the
white mackintosh, coming in through the window; “fairly
muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted
out as we came up?”</p>
<p>“A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said
Mrs. Sappleton; “could only talk about his illnesses, and
dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you
arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.”</p>
<p>“I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece
calmly; “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was
once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges
by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly
dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming
just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their
nerve.”</p>
<p>Romance at short notice was her speciality.</p>
<h2>THE TREASURE SHIP</h2>
<p>The great galleon lay in semi-retirement under the sand and
weed and water of the northern bay where the fortune of war and
weather had long ago ensconced it. Three and a quarter
centuries had passed since the day when it had taken the high
seas as an important unit of a fighting squadron—precisely
which squadron the learned were not agreed. The galleon had
brought nothing into the world, but it had, according to
tradition and report, taken much out of it. But how
much? There again the learned were in disagreement.
Some were as generous in their estimate as an income-tax
assessor, others applied a species of higher criticism to the
submerged treasure chests, and debased their contents to the
currency of goblin gold. Of the former school was Lulu,
Duchess of Dulverton.</p>
<p>The Duchess was not only a believer in the existence of a
sunken treasure of alluring proportions; she also believed that
she knew of a method by which the said treasure might be
precisely located and cheaply disembedded. An aunt on her
mother’s side of the family had been Maid of Honour at the
Court of Monaco, and had taken a respectful interest in the
deep-sea researches in which the Throne of that country,
impatient perhaps of its terrestrial restrictions, was wont to
immerse itself. It was through the instrumentality of this
relative that the Duchess learned of an invention, perfected and
very nearly patented by a Monegaskan savant, by means of which
the home-life of the Mediterranean sardine might be studied at a
depth of many fathoms in a cold white light of more than
ball-room brilliancy. Implicated in this invention (and, in
the Duchess’s eyes, the most attractive part of it) was an
electric suction dredge, specially designed for dragging to the
surface such objects of interest and value as might be found in
the more accessible levels of the ocean-bed. The rights of
the invention were to be acquired for a matter of eighteen
hundred francs, and the apparatus for a few thousand more.
The Duchess of Dulverton was rich, as the world counted wealth;
she nursed the hope, of being one day rich at her own
computation. Companies had been formed and efforts had been
made again and again during the course of three centuries to
probe for the alleged treasures of the interesting galleon; with
the aid of this invention she considered that she might go to
work on the wreck privately and independently. After all,
one of her ancestors on her mother’s side was descended
from Medina Sidonia, so she was of opinion that she had as much
right to the treasure as anyone. She acquired the invention
and bought the apparatus.</p>
<p>Among other family ties and encumbrances, Lulu possessed a
nephew, Vasco Honiton, a young gentleman who was blessed with a
small income and a large circle of relatives, and lived
impartially and precariously on both. The name Vasco had
been given him possibly in the hope that he might live up to its
adventurous tradition, but he limited himself strictly to the
home industry of adventurer, preferring to exploit the assured
rather than to explore the unknown. Lulu’s
intercourse with him had been restricted of recent years to the
negative processes of being out of town when he called on her,
and short of money when he wrote to her. Now, however, she
bethought herself of his eminent suitability for the direction of
a treasure-seeking experiment; if anyone could extract gold from
an unpromising situation it would certainly be Vasco—of
course, under the necessary safeguards in the way of
supervision. Where money was in question Vasco’s
conscience was liable to fits of obstinate silence.</p>
<p>Somewhere on the west coast of Ireland the Dulverton property
included a few acres of shingle, rock, and heather, too barren to
support even an agrarian outrage, but embracing a small and
fairly deep bay where the lobster yield was good in most
seasons. There was a bleak little house on the property,
and for those who liked lobsters and solitude, and were able to
accept an Irish cook’s ideas as to what might be
perpetrated in the name of mayonnaise, Innisgluther was a
tolerable exile during the summer months. Lulu seldom went
there herself, but she lent the house lavishly to friends and
relations. She put it now at Vasco’s disposal.</p>
<p>“It will be the very place to practise and experiment
with the salvage apparatus,” she said; “the bay is
quite deep in places, and you will be able to test everything
thoroughly before starting on the treasure hunt.”</p>
<p>In less than three weeks Vasco turned up in town to report
progress.</p>
<p>“The apparatus works beautifully,” he informed his
aunt; “the deeper one got the clearer everything
grew. We found something in the way of a sunken wreck to
operate on, too!”</p>
<p>“A wreck in Innisgluther Bay!” exclaimed Lulu.</p>
<p>“A submerged motor-boat, the <i>Sub-Rosa</i>,”
said Vasco.</p>
<p>“No! really?” said Lulu; “poor Billy
Yuttley’s boat. I remember it went down somewhere off
that coast some three years ago. His body was washed ashore
at the Point. People said at the time that the boat was
capsized intentionally—a case of suicide, you know.
People always say that sort of thing when anything tragic
happens.”</p>
<p>“In this case they were right,” said Vasco.</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” asked the Duchess
hurriedly. “What makes you think so?”</p>
<p>“I know,” said Vasco simply.</p>
<p>“Know? How can you know? How can anyone
know? The thing happened three years ago.”</p>
<p>“In a locker of the <i>Sub-Rosa</i> I found a
water-tight strong-box. It contained papers.”
Vasco paused with dramatic effect and searched for a moment in
the inner breast-pocket of his coat. He drew out a folded
slip of paper. The Duchess snatched at it in almost
indecent haste and moved appreciably nearer the fireplace.</p>
<p>“Was this in the <i>Sub-Rosa’s</i>
strong-box?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Oh no,” said Vasco carelessly, “that is a
list of the well-known people who would be involved in a very
disagreeable scandal if the <i>Sub-Rosa’s</i> papers were
made public. I’ve put you at the head of it,
otherwise it follows alphabetical order.”</p>
<p>The Duchess gazed helplessly at the string of names, which
seemed for the moment to include nearly every one she knew.
As a matter of fact, her own name at the head of the list
exercised an almost paralysing effect on her thinking
faculties.</p>
<p>“Of course you have destroyed the papers?” she
asked, when she had somewhat recovered herself. She was
conscious that she made the remark with an entire lack of
conviction.</p>
<p>Vasco shook his head.</p>
<p>“But you should have,” said Lulu angrily;
“if, as you say, they are highly
compromising—”</p>
<p>“Oh, they are, I assure you of that,” interposed
the young man.</p>
<p>“Then you should put them out of harm’s way at
once. Supposing anything should leak out, think of all
these poor, unfortunate people who would be involved in the
disclosures,” and Lulu tapped the list with an agitated
gesture.</p>
<p>“Unfortunate, perhaps, but not poor,” corrected
Vasco; “if you read the list carefully you’ll notice
that I haven’t troubled to include anyone whose financial
standing isn’t above question.”</p>
<p>Lulu glared at her nephew for some moments in silence.
Then she asked hoarsely: “What are you going to
do?”</p>
<p>“Nothing—for the remainder of my life,” he
answered meaningly. “A little hunting,
perhaps,” he continued, “and I shall have a villa at
Florence. The Villa Sub-Rosa would sound rather quaint and
picturesque, don’t you think, and quite a lot of people
would be able to attach a meaning to the name. And I
suppose I must have a hobby; I shall probably collect
Raeburns.”</p>
<p>Lulu’s relative, who lived at the Court of Monaco, got
quite a snappish answer when she wrote recommending some further
invention in the realm of marine research.</p>
<h2>THE COBWEB</h2>
<p>The farmhouse kitchen probably stood where it did as a matter
of accident or haphazard choice; yet its situation might have
been planned by a master-strategist in farmhouse
architecture. Dairy and poultry-yard, and herb garden, and
all the busy places of the farm seemed to lead by easy access
into its wide flagged haven, where there was room for everything
and where muddy boots left traces that were easily swept
away. And yet, for all that it stood so well in the centre
of human bustle, its long, latticed window, with the wide
window-seat, built into an embrasure beyond the huge fireplace,
looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and
wooded combe. The window nook made almost a little room in
itself, quite the pleasantest room in the farm as far as
situation and capabilities went. Young Mrs. Ladbruk, whose
husband had just come into the farm by way of inheritance, cast
covetous eyes on this snug corner, and her fingers itched to make
it bright and cosy with chintz curtains and bowls of flowers, and
a shelf or two of old china. The musty farm parlour,
looking out on to a prim, cheerless garden imprisoned within
high, blank walls, was not a room that lent itself readily either
to comfort or decoration.</p>
<p>“When we are more settled I shall work wonders in the
way of making the kitchen habitable,” said the young woman
to her occasional visitors. There was an unspoken wish in
those words, a wish which was unconfessed as well as
unspoken. Emma Ladbruk was the mistress of the farm;
jointly with her husband she might have her say, and to a certain
extent her way, in ordering its affairs. But she was not
mistress of the kitchen.</p>
<p>On one of the shelves of an old dresser, in company with
chipped sauce-boats, pewter jugs, cheese-graters, and paid bills,
rested a worn and ragged Bible, on whose front page was the
record, in faded ink, of a baptism dated ninety-four years
ago. “Martha Crale” was the name written on
that yellow page. The yellow, wrinkled old dame who hobbled
and muttered about the kitchen, looking like a dead autumn leaf
which the winter winds still pushed hither and thither, had once
been Martha Crale; for seventy odd years she had been Martha
Mountjoy. For longer than anyone could remember she had
pattered to and fro between oven and wash-house and dairy, and
out to chicken-run and garden, grumbling and muttering and
scolding, but working unceasingly. Emma Ladbruk, of whose
coming she took as little notice as she would of a bee wandering
in at a window on a summer’s day, used at first to watch
her with a kind of frightened curiosity. She was so old and
so much a part of the place, it was difficult to think of her
exactly as a living thing. Old Shep, the white-nozzled,
stiff-limbed collie, waiting for his time to die, seemed almost
more human than the withered, dried-up old woman. He had
been a riotous, roystering puppy, mad with the joy of life, when
she was already a tottering, hobbling dame; now he was just a
blind, breathing carcase, nothing more, and she still worked with
frail energy, still swept and baked and washed, fetched and
carried. If there were something in these wise old dogs
that did not perish utterly with death, Emma used to think to
herself, what generations of ghost-dogs there must be out on
those hills, that Martha had reared and fed and tended and spoken
a last good-bye word to in that old kitchen. And what
memories she must have of human generations that had passed away
in her time. It was difficult for anyone, let alone a
stranger like Emma, to get her to talk of the days that had been;
her shrill, quavering speech was of doors that had been left
unfastened, pails that had got mislaid, calves whose feeding-time
was overdue, and the various little faults and lapses that
chequer a farmhouse routine. Now and again, when election
time came round, she would unstore her recollections of the old
names round which the fight had waged in the days gone by.
There had been a Palmerston, that had been a name down Tiverton
way; Tiverton was not a far journey as the crow flies, but to
Martha it was almost a foreign country. Later there had
been Northcotes and Aclands, and many other newer names that she
had forgotten; the names changed, but it was always Libruls and
Toories, Yellows and Blues. And they always quarrelled and
shouted as to who was right and who was wrong. The one they
quarrelled about most was a fine old gentleman with an angry
face—she had seen his picture on the walls. She had
seen it on the floor too, with a rotten apple squashed over it,
for the farm had changed its politics from time to time.
Martha had never been on one side or the other; none of
“they” had ever done the farm a stroke of good.
Such was her sweeping verdict, given with all a peasant’s
distrust of the outside world.</p>
<p>When the half-frightened curiosity had somewhat faded away,
Emma Ladbruk was uncomfortably conscious of another feeling
towards the old woman. She was a quaint old tradition,
lingering about the place, she was part and parcel of the farm
itself, she was something at once pathetic and
picturesque—but she was dreadfully in the way. Emma
had come to the farm full of plans for little reforms and
improvements, in part the result of training in the newest ways
and methods, in part the outcome of her own ideas and
fancies. Reforms in the kitchen region, if those deaf old
ears could have been induced to give them even a hearing, would
have met with short shrift and scornful rejection, and the
kitchen region spread over the zone of dairy and market business
and half the work of the household. Emma, with the latest
science of dead-poultry dressing at her finger-tips, sat by, an
unheeded watcher, while old Martha trussed the chickens for the
market-stall as she had trussed them for nearly fourscore
years—all leg and no breast. And the hundred hints
anent effective cleaning and labour-lightening and the things
that make for wholesomeness which the young woman was ready to
impart or to put into action dropped away into nothingness before
that wan, muttering, unheeding presence. Above all, the
coveted window corner, that was to be a dainty, cheerful oasis in
the gaunt old kitchen, stood now choked and lumbered with a
litter of odds and ends that Emma, for all her nominal authority,
would not have dared or cared to displace; over them seemed to be
spun the protection of something that was like a human
cobweb. Decidedly Martha was in the way. It would
have been an unworthy meanness to have wished to see the span of
that brave old life shortened by a few paltry months, but as the
days sped by Emma was conscious that the wish was there, disowned
though it might be, lurking at the back of her mind.</p>
<p>She felt the meanness of the wish come over her with a qualm
of self-reproach one day when she came into the kitchen and found
an unaccustomed state of things in that usually busy
quarter. Old Martha was not working. A basket of corn
was on the floor by her side, and out in the yard the poultry
were beginning to clamour a protest of overdue
feeding-time. But Martha sat huddled in a shrunken bunch on
the window seat, looking out with her dim old eyes as though she
saw something stranger than the autumn landscape.</p>
<p>“Is anything the matter, Martha?” asked the young
woman.</p>
<p>“’Tis death, ’tis death a-coming,”
answered the quavering voice; “I knew ’twere
coming. I knew it. ’Tweren’t for nothing
that old Shep’s been howling all morning. An’
last night I heard the screech-owl give the death-cry, and there
were something white as run across the yard yesterday;
’tweren’t a cat nor a stoat, ’twere
something. The fowls knew ’twere something; they all
drew off to one side. Ay, there’s been
warnings. I knew it were a-coming.”</p>
<p>The young woman’s eyes clouded with pity. The old
thing sitting there so white and shrunken had once been a merry,
noisy child, playing about in lanes and hay-lofts and farmhouse
garrets; that had been eighty odd years ago, and now she was just
a frail old body cowering under the approaching chill of the
death that was coming at last to take her. It was not
probable that much could be done for her, but Emma hastened away
to get assistance and counsel. Her husband, she knew, was
down at a tree-felling some little distance off, but she might
find some other intelligent soul who knew the old woman better
than she did. The farm, she soon found out, had that
faculty common to farmyards of swallowing up and losing its human
population. The poultry followed her in interested fashion,
and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of
their styes, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and
dairy, gave no reward to her search. Then, as she retraced
her steps towards the kitchen, she came suddenly on her cousin,
young Mr. Jim, as every one called him, who divided his time
between amateur horse-dealing, rabbit-shooting, and flirting with
the farm maids.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid old Martha is dying,” said
Emma. Jim was not the sort of person to whom one had to
break news gently.</p>
<p>“Nonsense,” he said; “Martha means to live
to a hundred. She told me so, and she’ll do
it.”</p>
<p>“She may be actually dying at this moment, or it may
just be the beginning of the break-up,” persisted Emma,
with a feeling of contempt for the slowness and dulness of the
young man.</p>
<p>A grin spread over his good-natured features.</p>
<p>“It don’t look like it,” he said, nodding
towards the yard. Emma turned to catch the meaning of his
remark. Old Martha stood in the middle of a mob of poultry
scattering handfuls of grain around her. The turkey-cock,
with the bronzed sheen of his feathers and the purple-red of his
wattles, the gamecock, with the glowing metallic lustre of his
Eastern plumage, the hens, with their ochres and buffs and umbers
and their scarlet combs, and the drakes, with their bottle-green
heads, made a medley of rich colour, in the centre of which the
old woman looked like a withered stalk standing amid a riotous
growth of gaily-hued flowers. But she threw the grain
deftly amid the wilderness of beaks, and her quavering voice
carried as far as the two people who were watching her. She
was still harping on the theme of death coming to the farm.</p>
<p>“I knew ’twere a-coming. There’s been
signs an’ warnings.”</p>
<p>“Who’s dead, then, old Mother?” called out
the young man.</p>
<p>“’Tis young Mister Ladbruk,” she shrilled
back; “they’ve just a-carried his body in. Run
out of the way of a tree that was coming down an’ ran
hisself on to an iron post. Dead when they picked un
up. Aye, I knew ’twere coming.”</p>
<p>And she turned to fling a handful of barley at a belated group
of guinea-fowl that came racing toward her.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>The farm was a family property, and passed to the
rabbit-shooting cousin as the next-of-kin. Emma Ladbruk
drifted out of its history as a bee that had wandered in at an
open window might flit its way out again. On a cold grey
morning she stood waiting, with her boxes already stowed in the
farm cart, till the last of the market produce should be ready,
for the train she was to catch was of less importance than the
chickens and butter and eggs that were to be offered for
sale. From where she stood she could see an angle of the
long latticed window that was to have been cosy with curtains and
gay with bowls of flowers. Into her mind came the thought
that for months, perhaps for years, long after she had been
utterly forgotten, a white, unheeding face would be seen peering
out through those latticed panes, and a weak muttering voice
would be heard quavering up and down those flagged
passages. She made her way to a narrow barred casement that
opened into the farm larder. Old Martha was standing at a
table trussing a pair of chickens for the market stall as she had
trussed them for nearly fourscore years.</p>
<h2>THE LULL</h2>
<p>“I’ve asked Latimer Springfield to spend Sunday
with us and stop the night,” announced Mrs. Durmot at the
breakfast-table.</p>
<p>“I thought he was in the throes of an election,”
remarked her husband.</p>
<p>“Exactly; the poll is on Wednesday, and the poor man
will have worked himself to a shadow by that time. Imagine
what electioneering must be like in this awful soaking rain,
going along slushy country roads and speaking to damp audiences
in draughty schoolrooms, day after day for a fortnight.
He’ll have to put in an appearance at some place of worship
on Sunday morning, and he can come to us immediately afterwards
and have a thorough respite from everything connected with
politics. I won’t let him even think of them.
I’ve had the picture of Cromwell dissolving the Long
Parliament taken down from the staircase, and even the portrait
of Lord Rosebery’s ‘Ladas’ removed from the
smoking-room. And Vera,” added Mrs. Durmot, turning
to her sixteen-year-old niece, “be careful what colour
ribbon you wear in your hair; not blue or yellow on any account;
those are the rival party colours, and emerald green or orange
would be almost as bad, with this Home Rule business to the
fore.”</p>
<p>“On state occasions I always wear a black ribbon in my
hair,” said Vera with crushing dignity.</p>
<p>Latimer Springfield was a rather cheerless, oldish young man,
who went into politics somewhat in the spirit in which other
people might go into half-mourning. Without being an
enthusiast, however, he was a fairly strenuous plodder, and Mrs.
Durmot had been reasonably near the mark in asserting that he was
working at high pressure over this election. The restful
lull which his hostess enforced on him was decidedly welcome, and
yet the nervous excitement of the contest had too great a hold on
him to be totally banished.</p>
<p>“I know he’s going to sit up half the night
working up points for his final speeches,” said Mrs. Durmot
regretfully; “however, we’ve kept politics at
arm’s length all the afternoon and evening. More than
that we cannot do.”</p>
<p>“That remains to be seen,” said Vera, but she said
it to herself.</p>
<p>Latimer had scarcely shut his bedroom door before he was
immersed in a sheaf of notes and pamphlets, while a fountain-pen
and pocket-book were brought into play for the due marshalling of
useful facts and discreet fictions. He had been at work for
perhaps thirty-five minutes, and the house was seemingly
consecrated to the healthy slumber of country life, when a
stifled squealing and scuffling in the passage was followed by a
loud tap at his door. Before he had time to answer, a
much-encumbered Vera burst into the room with the question;
“I say, can I leave these here?”</p>
<p>“These” were a small black pig and a lusty
specimen of black-red gamecock.</p>
<p>Latimer was moderately fond of animals, and particularly
interested in small livestock rearing from the economic point of
view; in fact, one of the pamphlets on which he was at that
moment engaged warmly advocated the further development of the
pig and poultry industry in our rural districts; but he was
pardonably unwilling to share even a commodious bedroom with
samples of henroost and stye products.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t they be happier somewhere
outside?” he asked, tactfully expressing his own preference
in the matter in an apparent solicitude for theirs.</p>
<p>“There is no outside,” said Vera impressively,
“nothing but a waste of dark, swirling waters. The
reservoir at Brinkley has burst.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t know there was a reservoir at
Brinkley,” said Latimer.</p>
<p>“Well, there isn’t now, it’s jolly well all
over the place, and as we stand particularly low we’re the
centre of an inland sea just at present. You see the river
has overflowed its banks as well.”</p>
<p>“Good gracious! Have any lives been
lost?”</p>
<p>“Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid has
already identified three bodies that have floated past the
billiard-room window as being the young man she’s engaged
to. Either she’s engaged to a large assortment of the
population round here or else she’s very careless at
identification. Of course it may be the same body coming
round again and again in a swirl; I hadn’t thought of
that.”</p>
<p>“But we ought to go out and do rescue work,
oughtn’t we?” said Latimer, with the instinct of a
Parliamentary candidate for getting into the local limelight.</p>
<p>“We can’t,” said Vera decidedly, “we
haven’t any boats and we’re cut off by a raging
torrent from any human habitation. My aunt particularly
hoped you would keep to your room and not add to the confusion,
but she thought it would be so kind of you if you would take in
Hartlepool’s Wonder, the gamecock, you know, for the
night. You see, there are eight other gamecocks, and they
fight like furies if they get together, so we’re putting
one in each bedroom. The fowl-houses are all flooded out,
you know. And then I thought perhaps you wouldn’t
mind taking in this wee piggie; he’s rather a little love,
but he has a vile temper. He gets that from his
mother—not that I like to say things against her when
she’s lying dead and drowned in her stye, poor thing.
What he really wants is a man’s firm hand to keep him in
order. I’d try and grapple with him myself, only
I’ve got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs
wherever he finds them.”</p>
<p>“Couldn’t the pig go in the bathroom?” asked
Latimer faintly, wishing that he had taken up as determined a
stand on the subject of bedroom swine as the chow had.</p>
<p>“The bathroom?” Vera laughed shrilly.
“It’ll be full of Boy Scouts till morning if the hot
water holds out.”</p>
<p>“Boy Scouts?”</p>
<p>“Yes, thirty of them came to rescue us while the water
was only waist-high; then it rose another three feet or so and we
had to rescue them. We’re giving them hot baths in
batches and drying their clothes in the hot-air cupboard, but, of
course, drenched clothes don’t dry in a minute, and the
corridor and staircase are beginning to look like a bit of coast
scenery by Tuke. Two of the boys are wearing your Melton
overcoat; I hope you don’t mind.”</p>
<p>“It’s a new overcoat,” said Latimer, with
every indication of minding dreadfully.</p>
<p>“You’ll take every care of Hartlepool’s
Wonder, won’t you?” said Vera. “His
mother took three firsts at Birmingham, and he was second in the
cockerel class last year at Gloucester. He’ll
probably roost on the rail at the bottom of your bed. I
wonder if he’d feel more at home if some of his wives were
up here with him? The hens are all in the pantry, and I
think I could pick out Hartlepool Helen; she’s his
favourite.”</p>
<p>Latimer showed a belated firmness on the subject of Hartlepool
Helen, and Vera withdrew without pressing the point, having first
settled the gamecock on his extemporised perch and taken an
affectionate farewell of the pigling. Latimer undressed and
got into bed with all due speed, judging that the pig would abate
its inquisitorial restlessness once the light was turned
out. As a substitute for a cosy, straw-bedded sty the room
offered, at first inspection, few attractions, but the
disconsolate animal suddenly discovered an appliance in which the
most luxuriously contrived piggeries were notably
deficient. The sharp edge of the underneath part of the bed
was pitched at exactly the right elevation to permit the pigling
to scrape himself ecstatically backwards and forwards, with an
artistic humping of the back at the crucial moment and an
accompanying gurgle of long-drawn delight. The gamecock,
who may have fancied that he was being rocked in the branches of
a pine-tree, bore the motion with greater fortitude than Latimer
was able to command. A series of slaps directed at the
pig’s body were accepted more as an additional and pleasing
irritant than as a criticism of conduct or a hint to desist;
evidently something more than a man’s firm hand was needed
to deal with the case. Latimer slipped out of bed in search
of a weapon of dissuasion. There was sufficient light in
the room to enable the pig to detect this manœuvre, and the
vile temper, inherited from the drowned mother, found full
play. Latimer bounded back into bed, and his conqueror,
after a few threatening snorts and champings of its jaws, resumed
its massage operations with renewed zeal. During the long
wakeful hours which ensued Latimer tried to distract his mind
from his own immediate troubles by dwelling with decent sympathy
on the second housemaid’s bereavement, but he found himself
more often wondering how many Boy Scouts were sharing his Melton
overcoat. The rôle of Saint Martin malgré lui
was not one which appealed to him.</p>
<p>Towards dawn the pigling fell into a happy slumber, and
Latimer might have followed its example, but at about the same
time Stupor Hartlepooli gave a rousing crow, clattered down to
the floor and forthwith commenced a spirited combat with his
reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Remembering that the
bird was more or less under his care Latimer performed Hague
Tribunal offices by draping a bath-towel over the provocative
mirror, but the ensuing peace was local and short-lived.
The deflected energies of the gamecock found new outlet in a
sudden and sustained attack on the sleeping and temporarily
inoffensive pigling, and the duel which followed was desperate
and embittered beyond any possibility of effective
intervention. The feathered combatant had the advantage of
being able, when hard pressed, to take refuge on the bed, and
freely availed himself of this circumstance; the pigling never
quite succeeded in hurling himself on to the same eminence, but
it was not from want of trying.</p>
<p>Neither side could claim any decisive success, and the
struggle had been practically fought to a standstill by the time
that the maid appeared with the early morning tea.</p>
<p>“Lor, sir,” she exclaimed in undisguised
astonishment, “do you want those animals in your
room?”</p>
<p><i>Want</i>!</p>
<p>The pigling, as though aware that it might have outstayed its
welcome, dashed out at the door, and the gamecock followed it at
a more dignified pace.</p>
<p>“If Miss Vera’s dog sees that pig—!”
exclaimed the maid, and hurried off to avert such a
catastrophe.</p>
<p>A cold suspicion was stealing over Latimer’s mind; he
went to the window and drew up the blind. A light,
drizzling rain was falling, but there was not the faintest trace
of any inundation.</p>
<p>Some half-hour later he met Vera on the way to the
breakfast-room.</p>
<p>“I should not like to think of you as a deliberate
liar,” he observed coldly, “but one occasionally has
to do things one does not like.”</p>
<p>“At any rate I kept your mind from dwelling on politics
all the night,” said Vera.</p>
<p>Which was, of course, perfectly true.</p>
<h2>THE UNKINDEST BLOW</h2>
<p>The season of strikes seemed to have run itself to a
standstill. Almost every trade and industry and calling in
which a dislocation could possibly be engineered had indulged in
that luxury. The last and least successful convulsion had
been the strike of the World’s Union of Zoological Garden
attendants, who, pending the settlement of certain demands,
refused to minister further to the wants of the animals committed
to their charge or to allow any other keepers to take their
place. In this case the threat of the Zoological Gardens
authorities that if the men “came out” the animals
should come out also had intensified and precipitated the
crisis. The imminent prospect of the larger carnivores, to
say nothing of rhinoceroses and bull bison, roaming at large and
unfed in the heart of London, was not one which permitted of
prolonged conferences. The Government of the day, which
from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events
had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged
to intervene with promptitude and decision. A strong force
of Bluejackets was despatched to Regent’s Park to take over
the temporarily abandoned duties of the strikers.
Bluejackets were chosen in preference to land forces, partly on
account of the traditional readiness of the British Navy to go
anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of
the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical
fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the
Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for
performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within
the province of his department.</p>
<p>“If he insists on feeding the infant jaguar himself, in
defiance of its mother’s wishes, there may be another
by-election in the north,” said one of his colleagues, with
a hopeful inflection in his voice. “By-elections are
not very desirable at present, but we must not be
selfish.”</p>
<p>As a matter of fact the strike collapsed peacefully without
any outside intervention. The majority of the keepers had
become so attached to their charges that they returned to work of
their own accord.</p>
<p>And then the nation and the newspapers turned with a sense of
relief to happier things. It seemed as if a new era of
contentment was about to dawn. Everybody had struck who
could possibly want to strike or who could possibly be cajoled or
bullied into striking, whether they wanted to or not. The
lighter and brighter side of life might now claim some
attention. And conspicuous among the other topics that
sprang into sudden prominence was the pending Falvertoon divorce
suit.</p>
<p>The Duke of Falvertoon was one of those human <i>hors
d’œuvres</i> that stimulate the public appetite for
sensation without giving it much to feed on. As a mere
child he had been precociously brilliant; he had declined the
editorship of the <i>Anglian Review</i> at an age when most boys
are content to have declined <i>mensa</i>, a table, and though he
could not claim to have originated the Futurist movement in
literature, his “Letters to a possible Grandson,”
written at the age of fourteen, had attracted considerable
notice. In later days his brilliancy had been less
conspicuously displayed. During a debate in the House of
Lords on affairs in Morocco, at a moment when that country, for
the fifth time in seven years, had brought half Europe to the
verge of war, he had interpolated the remark “a little Moor
and how much it is,” but in spite of the encouraging
reception accorded to this one political utterance he was never
tempted to a further display in that direction. It began to
be generally understood that he did not intend to supplement his
numerous town and country residences by living overmuch in the
public eye.</p>
<p>And then had come the unlooked-for tidings of the imminent
proceedings for divorce. And such a divorce! There
were cross-suits and allegations and counter-allegations, charges
of cruelty and desertion, everything in fact that was necessary
to make the case one of the most complicated and sensational of
its kind. And the number of distinguished people involved
or cited as witnesses not only embraced both political parties in
the realm and several Colonial governors, but included an exotic
contingent from France, Hungary, the United States of North
America, and the Grand Duchy of Baden. Hotel accommodation
of the more expensive sort began to experience a strain on its
resources. “It will be quite like the Durbar without
the elephants,” exclaimed an enthusiastic lady who, to do
her justice, had never seen a Durbar. The general feeling
was one of thankfulness that the last of the strikes had been got
over before the date fixed for the hearing of the great suit.</p>
<p>As a reaction from the season of gloom and industrial strife
that had just passed away the agencies that purvey and
stage-manage sensations laid themselves out to do their level
best on this momentous occasion. Men who had made their
reputations as special descriptive writers were mobilised from
distant corners of Europe and the further side of the Atlantic in
order to enrich with their pens the daily printed records of the
case; one word-painter, who specialised in descriptions of how
witnesses turn pale under cross-examination, was summoned
hurriedly back from a famous and prolonged murder trial in
Sicily, where indeed his talents were being decidedly
wasted. Thumb-nail artists and expert kodak manipulators
were retained at extravagant salaries, and special dress
reporters were in high demand. An enterprising Paris firm
of costume builders presented the defendant Duchess with three
special creations, to be worn, marked, learned, and extensively
reported at various critical stages of the trial; and as for the
cinematograph agents, their industry and persistence was
untiring. Films representing the Duke saying good-bye to
his favourite canary on the eve of the trial were in readiness
weeks before the event was due to take place; other films
depicted the Duchess holding imaginary consultations with
fictitious lawyers or making a light repast off specially
advertised vegetarian sandwiches during a supposed luncheon
interval. As far as human foresight and human enterprise
could go nothing was lacking to make the trial a success.</p>
<p>Two days before the case was down for hearing the advance
reporter of an important syndicate obtained an interview with the
Duke for the purpose of gleaning some final grains of information
concerning his Grace’s personal arrangements during the
trial.</p>
<p>“I suppose I may say this will be one of the biggest
affairs of its kind during the lifetime of a generation,”
began the reporter as an excuse for the unsparing minuteness of
detail that he was about to make quest for.</p>
<p>“I suppose so—if it comes off,” said the
Duke lazily.</p>
<p>“If?” queried the reporter, in a voice that was
something between a gasp and a scream.</p>
<p>“The Duchess and I are both thinking of going on
strike,” said the Duke.</p>
<p>“Strike!”</p>
<p>The baleful word flashed out in all its old hideous
familiarity. Was there to be no end to its recurrence?</p>
<p>“Do you mean,” faltered the reporter, “that
you are contemplating a mutual withdrawal of the
charges?”</p>
<p>“Precisely,” said the Duke.</p>
<p>“But think of the arrangements that have been made, the
special reporting, the cinematographs, the catering for the
distinguished foreign witnesses, the prepared music-hall
allusions; think of all the money that has been
sunk—”</p>
<p>“Exactly,” said the Duke coldly, “the
Duchess and I have realised that it is we who provide the
material out of which this great far-reaching industry has been
built up. Widespread employment will be given and enormous
profits made during the duration of the case, and we, on whom all
the stress and racket falls, will get—what? An
unenviable notoriety and the privilege of paying heavy legal
expenses whichever way the verdict goes. Hence our decision
to strike. We don’t wish to be reconciled; we fully
realise that it is a grave step to take, but unless we get some
reasonable consideration out of this vast stream of wealth and
industry that we have called into being we intend coming out of
court and staying out. Good afternoon.”</p>
<p>The news of this latest strike spread universal dismay.
Its inaccessibility to the ordinary methods of persuasion made it
peculiarly formidable. If the Duke and Duchess persisted in
being reconciled the Government could hardly be called on to
interfere. Public opinion in the shape of social ostracism
might be brought to bear on them, but that was as far as coercive
measures could go. There was nothing for it but a
conference, with powers to propose liberal terms. As it
was, several of the foreign witnesses had already departed and
others had telegraphed cancelling their hotel arrangements.</p>
<p>The conference, protracted, uncomfortable, and occasionally
acrimonious, succeeded at last in arranging for a resumption of
litigation, but it was a fruitless victory. The Duke, with
a touch of his earlier precocity, died of premature decay a
fortnight before the date fixed for the new trial.</p>
<h2>THE ROMANCERS</h2>
<p>It was autumn in London, that blessed season between the
harshness of winter and the insincerities of summer; a trustful
season when one buys bulbs and sees to the registration of
one’s vote, believing perpetually in spring and a change of
Government.</p>
<p>Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner of Hyde
Park, lazily enjoying a cigarette and watching the slow grazing
promenade of a pair of snow-geese, the male looking rather like
an albino edition of the russet-hued female. Out of the
corner of his eye Crosby also noted with some interest the
hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had passed and
repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals,
like a wary crow about to alight near some possibly edible
morsel. Inevitably the figure came to an anchorage on the
bench, within easy talking distance of its original
occupant. The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled
beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the
professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of
humiliating tale-spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on
half a day’s decent work.</p>
<p>For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of
him in a strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with
the insinuating inflection of one who has a story to retail well
worth any loiterer’s while to listen to.</p>
<p>“It’s a strange world,” he said.</p>
<p>As the statement met with no response he altered it to the
form of a question.</p>
<p>“I daresay you’ve found it to be a strange world,
mister?”</p>
<p>“As far as I am concerned,” said Crosby,
“the strangeness has worn off in the course of thirty-six
years.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” said the greybeard, “I could tell you
things that you’d hardly believe. Marvellous things
that have really happened to me.”</p>
<p>“Nowadays there is no demand for marvellous things that
have really happened,” said Crosby discouragingly;
“the professional writers of fiction turn these things out
so much better. For instance, my neighbours tell me
wonderful, incredible things that their Aberdeens and chows and
borzois have done; I never listen to them. On the other
hand, I have read ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’
three times.”</p>
<p>The greybeard moved uneasily in his seat; then he opened up
new country.</p>
<p>“I take it that you are a professing Christian,”
he observed.</p>
<p>“I am a prominent and I think I may say an influential
member of the Mussulman community of Eastern Persia,” said
Crosby, making an excursion himself into the realms of
fiction.</p>
<p>The greybeard was obviously disconcerted at this new check to
introductory conversation, but the defeat was only momentary.</p>
<p>“Persia. I should never have taken you for a
Persian,” he remarked, with a somewhat aggrieved air.</p>
<p>“I am not,” said Crosby; “my father was an
Afghan.”</p>
<p>“An Afghan!” said the other, smitten into
bewildered silence for a moment. Then he recovered himself
and renewed his attack.</p>
<p>“Afghanistan. Ah! We’ve had some wars
with that country; now, I daresay, instead of fighting it we
might have learned something from it. A very wealthy
country, I believe. No real poverty there.”</p>
<p>He raised his voice on the word “poverty” with a
suggestion of intense feeling. Crosby saw the opening and
avoided it.</p>
<p>“It possesses, nevertheless, a number of highly talented
and ingenious beggars,” he said; “if I had not spoken
so disparagingly of marvellous things that have really happened I
would tell you the story of Ibrahim and the eleven camel-loads of
blotting-paper. Also I have forgotten exactly how it
ended.”</p>
<p>“My own life-story is a curious one,” said the
stranger, apparently stifling all desire to hear the history of
Ibrahim; “I was not always as you see me now.”</p>
<p>“We are supposed to undergo complete change in the
course of every seven years,” said Crosby, as an
explanation of the foregoing announcement.</p>
<p>“I mean I was not always in such distressing
circumstances as I am at present,” pursued the stranger
doggedly.</p>
<p>“That sounds rather rude,” said Crosby stiffly,
“considering that you are at present talking to a man
reputed to be one of the most gifted conversationalists of the
Afghan border.”</p>
<p>“I don’t mean in that way,” said the
greybeard hastily; “I’ve been very much interested in
your conversation. I was alluding to my unfortunate
financial situation. You mayn’t hardly believe it,
but at the present moment I am absolutely without a
farthing. Don’t see any prospect of getting any
money, either, for the next few days. I don’t suppose
you’ve ever found yourself in such a position,” he
added.</p>
<p>“In the town of Yom,” said Crosby, “which is
in Southern Afghanistan, and which also happens to be my
birthplace, there was a Chinese philosopher who used to say that
one of the three chiefest human blessings was to be absolutely
without money. I forget what the other two were.”</p>
<p>“Ah, I daresay,” said the stranger, in a tone that
betrayed no enthusiasm for the philosopher’s memory;
“and did he practise what he preached? That’s
the test.”</p>
<p>“He lived happily with very little money or
resources,” said Crosby.</p>
<p>“Then I expect he had friends who would help him
liberally whenever he was in difficulties, such as I am in at
present.”</p>
<p>“In Yom,” said Crosby, “it is not necessary
to have friends in order to obtain help. Any citizen of Yom
would help a stranger as a matter of course.”</p>
<p>The greybeard was now genuinely interested.</p>
<p>The conversation had at last taken a favourable turn.</p>
<p>“If someone, like me, for instance, who was in
undeserved difficulties, asked a citizen of that town you speak
of for a small loan to tide over a few days’
impecuniosity—five shillings, or perhaps a rather larger
sum—would it be given to him as a matter of
course?”</p>
<p>“There would be a certain preliminary,” said
Crosby; “one would take him to a wine-shop and treat him to
a measure of wine, and then, after a little high-flown
conversation, one would put the desired sum in his hand and wish
him good-day. It is a roundabout way of performing a simple
transaction, but in the East all ways are roundabout.”</p>
<p>The listener’s eyes were glittering.</p>
<p>“Ah,” he exclaimed, with a thin sneer ringing
meaningly through his words, “I suppose you’ve given
up all those generous customs since you left your town.
Don’t practise them now, I expect.”</p>
<p>“No one who has lived in Yom,” said Crosby
fervently, “and remembers its green hills covered with
apricot and almond trees, and the cold water that rushes down
like a caress from the upland snows and dashes under the little
wooden bridges, no one who remembers these things and treasures
the memory of them would ever give up a single one of its
unwritten laws and customs. To me they are as binding as
though I still lived in that hallowed home of my
youth.”</p>
<p>“Then if I was to ask you for a small loan—”
began the greybeard fawningly, edging nearer on the seat and
hurriedly wondering how large he might safely make his request,
“if I was to ask you for, say—”</p>
<p>“At any other time, certainly,” said Crosby;
“in the months of November and December, however, it is
absolutely forbidden for anyone of our race to give or receive
loans or gifts; in fact, one does not willingly speak of
them. It is considered unlucky. We will therefore
close this discussion.”</p>
<p>“But it is still October!” exclaimed the
adventurer with an eager, angry whine, as Crosby rose from his
seat; “wants eight days to the end of the month!”</p>
<p>“The Afghan November began yesterday,” said Crosby
severely, and in another moment he was striding across the Park,
leaving his recent companion scowling and muttering furiously on
the seat.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe a word of his story,” he
chattered to himself; “pack of nasty lies from beginning to
end. Wish I’d told him so to his face. Calling
himself an Afghan!”</p>
<p>The snorts and snarls that escaped from him for the next
quarter of an hour went far to support the truth of the old
saying that two of a trade never agree.</p>
<h2>THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD</h2>
<p>Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small
wayside station and took a turn or two up and down its
uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be
pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the roadway beyond,
she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a
carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the
animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta
promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a different
complexion on the struggle. Certain of her acquaintances
were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the
undesirability of interfering on behalf of a distressed animal,
such interference being “none of her business.”
Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into
practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been
besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely
uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta,
on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the
water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere
between the boar and his prisoner. It is to be feared that
she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady. On
this occasion she merely lost the train, which gave way to the
first sign of impatience it had shown throughout the journey, and
steamed off without her. She bore the desertion with
philosophical indifference; her friends and relations were
thoroughly well used to the fact of her luggage arriving without
her. She wired a vague non-committal message to her
destination to say that she was coming on “by another
train.” Before she had time to think what her next
move might be she was confronted by an imposingly attired lady,
who seemed to be taking a prolonged mental inventory of her
clothes and looks.</p>
<p>“You must be Miss Hope, the governess I’ve come to
meet,” said the apparition, in a tone that admitted of very
little argument.</p>
<p>“Very well, if I must I must,” said Lady Carlotta
to herself with dangerous meekness.</p>
<p>“I am Mrs. Quabarl,” continued the lady;
“and where, pray, is your luggage?”</p>
<p>“It’s gone astray,” said the alleged
governess, falling in with the excellent rule of life that the
absent are always to blame; the luggage had, in point of fact,
behaved with perfect correctitude. “I’ve just
telegraphed about it,” she added, with a nearer approach to
truth.</p>
<p>“How provoking,” said Mrs. Quabarl; “these
railway companies are so careless. However, my maid can
lend you things for the night,” and she led the way to her
car.</p>
<p>During the drive to the Quabarl mansion Lady Carlotta was
impressively introduced to the nature of the charge that had been
thrust upon her; she learned that Claude and Wilfrid were
delicate, sensitive young people, that Irene had the artistic
temperament highly developed, and that Viola was something or
other else of a mould equally commonplace among children of that
class and type in the twentieth century.</p>
<p>“I wish them not only to be <i>taught</i>,” said
Mrs. Quabarl, “but <i>interested</i> in what they
learn. In their history lessons, for instance, you must try
to make them feel that they are being introduced to the
life-stories of men and women who really lived, not merely
committing a mass of names and dates to memory. French, of
course, I shall expect you to talk at meal-times several days in
the week.”</p>
<p>“I shall talk French four days of the week and Russian
in the remaining three.”</p>
<p>“Russian? My dear Miss Hope, no one in the house
speaks or understands Russian.”</p>
<p>“That will not embarrass me in the least,” said
Lady Carlotta coldly.</p>
<p>Mrs. Quabarl, to use a colloquial expression, was knocked off
her perch. She was one of those imperfectly self-assured
individuals who are magnificent and autocratic as long as they
are not seriously opposed. The least show of unexpected
resistance goes a long way towards rendering them cowed and
apologetic. When the new governess failed to express
wondering admiration of the large newly-purchased and expensive
car, and lightly alluded to the superior advantages of one or two
makes which had just been put on the market, the discomfiture of
her patroness became almost abject. Her feelings were those
which might have animated a general of ancient warfaring days, on
beholding his heaviest battle-elephant ignominiously driven off
the field by slingers and javelin throwers.</p>
<p>At dinner that evening, although reinforced by her husband,
who usually duplicated her opinions and lent her moral support
generally, Mrs. Quabarl regained none of her lost ground.
The governess not only helped herself well and truly to wine, but
held forth with considerable show of critical knowledge on
various vintage matters, concerning which the Quabarls were in no
wise able to pose as authorities. Previous governesses had
limited their conversation on the wine topic to a respectful and
doubtless sincere expression of a preference for water.
When this one went as far as to recommend a wine firm in whose
hands you could not go very far wrong Mrs. Quabarl thought it
time to turn the conversation into more usual channels.</p>
<p>“We got very satisfactory references about you from
Canon Teep,” she observed; “a very estimable man, I
should think.”</p>
<p>“Drinks like a fish and beats his wife, otherwise a very
lovable character,” said the governess imperturbably.</p>
<p>“<i>My dear</i> Miss Hope! I trust you are
exaggerating,” exclaimed the Quabarls in unison.</p>
<p>“One must in justice admit that there is some
provocation,” continued the romancer. “Mrs.
Teep is quite the most irritating bridge-player that I have ever
sat down with; her leads and declarations would condone a certain
amount of brutality in her partner, but to souse her with the
contents of the only soda-water syphon in the house on a Sunday
afternoon, when one couldn’t get another, argues an
indifference to the comfort of others which I cannot altogether
overlook. You may think me hasty in my judgments, but it
was practically on account of the syphon incident that I
left.”</p>
<p>“We will talk of this some other time,” said Mrs.
Quabarl hastily.</p>
<p>“I shall never allude to it again,” said the
governess with decision.</p>
<p>Mr. Quabarl made a welcome diversion by asking what studies
the new instructress proposed to inaugurate on the morrow.</p>
<p>“History to begin with,” she informed him.</p>
<p>“Ah, history,” he observed sagely; “now in
teaching them history you must take care to interest them in what
they learn. You must make them feel that they are being
introduced to the life-stories of men and women who really
lived—”</p>
<p>“I’ve told her all that,” interposed Mrs.
Quabarl.</p>
<p>“I teach history on the Schartz-Metterklume
method,” said the governess loftily.</p>
<p>“Ah, yes,” said her listeners, thinking it
expedient to assume an acquaintance at least with the name.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>“What are you children doing out here?” demanded
Mrs. Quabarl the next morning, on finding Irene sitting rather
glumly at the head of the stairs, while her sister was perched in
an attitude of depressed discomfort on the window-seat behind
her, with a wolf-skin rug almost covering her.</p>
<p>“We are having a history lesson,” came the
unexpected reply. “I am supposed to be Rome, and
Viola up there is the she-wolf; not a real wolf, but the figure
of one that the Romans used to set store by—I forget
why. Claude and Wilfrid have gone to fetch the shabby
women.”</p>
<p>“The shabby women?”</p>
<p>“Yes, they’ve got to carry them off. They
didn’t want to, but Miss Hope got one of father’s
fives-bats and said she’d give them a number nine spanking
if they didn’t, so they’ve gone to do it.”</p>
<p>A loud, angry screaming from the direction of the lawn drew
Mrs. Quabarl thither in hot haste, fearful lest the threatened
castigation might even now be in process of infliction. The
outcry, however, came principally from the two small daughters of
the lodge-keeper, who were being hauled and pushed towards the
house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and Wilfrid, whose
task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if not very
effectual, attacks of the captured maidens’ small
brother. The governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently
on the stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold
impartiality of a Goddess of Battles. A furious and
repeated chorus of “I’ll tell muvver” rose from
the lodge-children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of
hearing, was for the moment immersed in the preoccupation of her
washtub.</p>
<p>After an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lodge
(the good woman was gifted with the highly militant temper which
is sometimes the privilege of deafness) Mrs. Quabarl flew
indignantly to the rescue of the struggling captives.</p>
<p>“Wilfrid! Claude! Let those children go at
once. Miss Hope, what on earth is the meaning of this
scene?”</p>
<p>“Early Roman history; the Sabine Women, don’t you
know? It’s the Schartz-Metterklume method to make
children understand history by acting it themselves; fixes it in
their memory, you know. Of course, if, thanks to your
interference, your boys go through life thinking that the Sabine
women ultimately escaped, I really cannot be held
responsible.”</p>
<p>“You may be very clever and modern, Miss Hope,”
said Mrs. Quabarl firmly, “but I should like you to leave
here by the next train. Your luggage will be sent after you
as soon as it arrives.”</p>
<p>“I’m not certain exactly where I shall be for the
next few days,” said the dismissed instructress of youth;
“you might keep my luggage till I wire my address.
There are only a couple of trunks and some golf-clubs and a
leopard cub.”</p>
<p>“A leopard cub!” gasped Mrs. Quabarl. Even
in her departure this extraordinary person seemed destined to
leave a trail of embarrassment behind her.</p>
<p>“Well, it’s rather left off being a cub;
it’s more than half-grown, you know. A fowl every day
and a rabbit on Sundays is what it usually gets. Raw beef
makes it too excitable. Don’t trouble about getting
the car for me, I’m rather inclined for a walk.”</p>
<p>And Lady Carlotta strode out of the Quabarl horizon.</p>
<p>The advent of the genuine Miss Hope, who had made a mistake as
to the day on which she was due to arrive, caused a turmoil which
that good lady was quite unused to inspiring. Obviously the
Quabarl family had been woefully befooled, but a certain amount
of relief came with the knowledge.</p>
<p>“How tiresome for you, dear Carlotta,” said her
hostess, when the overdue guest ultimately arrived; “how
very tiresome losing your train and having to stop overnight in a
strange place.”</p>
<p>“Oh dear, no,” said Lady Carlotta; “not at
all tiresome—for me.”</p>
<h2>THE SEVENTH PULLET</h2>
<p>“It’s not the daily grind that I complain
of,” said Blenkinthrope resentfully; “it’s the
dull grey sameness of my life outside of office hours.
Nothing of interest comes my way, nothing remarkable or out of
the common. Even the little things that I do try to find
some interest in don’t seem to interest other people.
Things in my garden, for instance.”</p>
<p>“The potato that weighed just over two pounds,”
said his friend Gorworth.</p>
<p>“Did I tell you about that?” said Blenkinthrope;
“I was telling the others in the train this morning.
I forgot if I’d told you.”</p>
<p>“To be exact you told me that it weighed just under two
pounds, but I took into account the fact that abnormal vegetables
and freshwater fish have an after-life, in which growth is not
arrested.”</p>
<p>“You’re just like the others,” said
Blenkinthrope sadly, “you only make fun of it.”</p>
<p>“The fault is with the potato, not with us,” said
Gorworth; “we are not in the least interested in it because
it is not in the least interesting. The men you go up in
the train with every day are just in the same case as yourself;
their lives are commonplace and not very interesting to
themselves, and they certainly are not going to wax enthusiastic
over the commonplace events in other men’s lives.
Tell them something startling, dramatic, piquant that has
happened to yourself or to someone in your family, and you will
capture their interest at once. They will talk about you
with a certain personal pride to all their acquaintances.
‘Man I know intimately, fellow called Blenkinthrope, lives
down my way, had two of his fingers clawed clean off by a lobster
he was carrying home to supper. Doctor says entire hand may
have to come off.’ Now that is conversation of a very
high order. But imagine walking into a tennis club with the
remark: ‘I know a man who has grown a potato weighing two
and a quarter pounds.’”</p>
<p>“But hang it all, my dear fellow,” said
Blenkinthrope impatiently, “haven’t I just told you
that nothing of a remarkable nature ever happens to
me?”</p>
<p>“Invent something,” said Gorworth. Since
winning a prize for excellence in Scriptural knowledge at a
preparatory school he had felt licensed to be a little more
unscrupulous than the circle he moved in. Much might surely
be excused to one who in early life could give a list of
seventeen trees mentioned in the Old Testament.</p>
<p>“What sort of thing?” asked Blenkinthrope,
somewhat snappishly.</p>
<p>“A snake got into your hen-run yesterday morning and
killed six out of seven pullets, first mesmerising them with its
eyes and then biting them as they stood helpless. The
seventh pullet was one of that French sort, with feathers all
over its eyes, so it escaped the mesmeric snare, and just flew at
what it could see of the snake and pecked it to
pieces.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” said Blenkinthrope stiffly;
“it’s a very clever invention. If such a thing
had really happened in my poultry-run I admit I should have been
proud and interested to tell people about it. But I’d
rather stick to fact, even if it is plain fact.” All
the same his mind dwelt wistfully on the story of the Seventh
Pullet. He could picture himself telling it in the train
amid the absorbed interest of his fellow-passengers.
Unconsciously all sorts of little details and improvements began
to suggest themselves.</p>
<p>Wistfulness was still his dominant mood when he took his seat
in the railway carriage the next morning. Opposite him sat
Stevenham, who had attained to a recognised brevet of importance
through the fact of an uncle having dropped dead in the act of
voting at a Parliamentary election. That had happened three
years ago, but Stevenham was still deferred to on all questions
of home and foreign politics.</p>
<p>“Hullo, how’s the giant mushroom, or whatever it
was?” was all the notice Blenkinthrope got from his fellow
travellers.</p>
<p>Young Duckby, whom he mildly disliked, speedily monopolised
the general attention by an account of a domestic
bereavement.</p>
<p>“Had four young pigeons carried off last night by a
whacking big rat. Oh, a monster he must have been; you
could tell by the size of the hole he made breaking into the
loft.”</p>
<p>No moderate-sized rat ever seemed to carry out any predatory
operations in these regions; they were all enormous in their
enormity.</p>
<p>“Pretty hard lines that,” continued Duckby, seeing
that he had secured the attention and respect of the company;
“four squeakers carried off at one swoop. You’d
find it rather hard to match that in the way of unlooked-for bad
luck.”</p>
<p>“I had six pullets out of a pen of seven killed by a
snake yesterday afternoon,” said Blenkinthrope, in a voice
which he hardly recognised as his own.</p>
<p>“By a snake?” came in excited chorus.</p>
<p>“It fascinated them with its deadly, glittering eyes,
one after the other, and struck them down while they stood
helpless. A bedridden neighbour, who wasn’t able to
call for assistance, witnessed it all from her bedroom
window.”</p>
<p>“Well, I never!” broke in the chorus, with
variations.</p>
<p>“The interesting part of it is about the seventh pullet,
the one that didn’t get killed,” resumed
Blenkinthrope, slowly lighting a cigarette. His diffidence
had left him, and he was beginning to realise how safe and easy
depravity can seem once one has the courage to begin.
“The six dead birds were Minorcas; the seventh was a Houdan
with a mop of feathers all over its eyes. It could hardly
see the snake at all, so of course it wasn’t mesmerised
like the others. It just could see something wriggling on
the ground, and went for it and pecked it to death.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’m blessed!” exclaimed the
chorus.</p>
<p>In the course of the next few days Blenkinthrope discovered
how little the loss of one’s self-respect affects one when
one has gained the esteem of the world. His story found its
way into one of the poultry papers, and was copied thence into a
daily news-sheet as a matter of general interest. A lady
wrote from the North of Scotland recounting a similar episode
which she had witnessed as occurring between a stoat and a blind
grouse. Somehow a lie seems so much less reprehensible when
one can call it a lee.</p>
<p>For awhile the adapter of the Seventh Pullet story enjoyed to
the full his altered standing as a person of consequence, one who
had had some share in the strange events of his times. Then
he was thrust once again into the cold grey background by the
sudden blossoming into importance of Smith-Paddon, a daily
fellow-traveller, whose little girl had been knocked down and
nearly hurt by a car belonging to a musical-comedy actress.
The actress was not in the car at the time, but she was in
numerous photographs which appeared in the illustrated papers of
Zoto Dobreen inquiring after the well-being of Maisie, daughter
of Edmund Smith-Paddon, Esq. With this new human interest
to absorb them the travelling companions were almost rude when
Blenkinthrope tried to explain his contrivance for keeping vipers
and peregrine falcons out of his chicken-run.</p>
<p>Gorworth, to whom he unburdened himself in private, gave him
the same counsel as heretofore.</p>
<p>“Invent something.”</p>
<p>“Yes, but what?”</p>
<p>The ready affirmative coupled with the question betrayed a
significant shifting of the ethical standpoint.</p>
<p>It was a few days later that Blenkinthrope revealed a chapter
of family history to the customary gathering in the railway
carriage.</p>
<p>“Curious thing happened to my aunt, the one who lives in
Paris,” he began. He had several aunts, but they were
all geographically distributed over Greater London.</p>
<p>“She was sitting on a seat in the Bois the other
afternoon, after lunching at the Roumanian Legation.”</p>
<p>Whatever the story gained in picturesqueness from the
dragging-in of diplomatic “atmosphere,” it ceased
from that moment to command any acceptance as a record of current
events. Gorworth had warned his neophyte that this would be
the case, but the traditional enthusiasm of the neophyte had
triumphed over discretion.</p>
<p>“She was feeling rather drowsy, the effect probably of
the champagne, which she’s not in the habit of taking in
the middle of the day.”</p>
<p>A subdued murmur of admiration went round the company.
Blenkinthrope’s aunts were not used to taking champagne in
the middle of the year, regarding it exclusively as a Christmas
and New Year accessory.</p>
<p>“Presently a rather portly gentleman passed by her seat
and paused an instant to light a cigar. At that moment a
youngish man came up behind him, drew the blade from a
swordstick, and stabbed him half a dozen times through and
through. ‘Scoundrel,’ he cried to his victim,
‘you do not know me. My name is Henri
Leturc.’ The elder man wiped away some of the blood
that was spattering his clothes, turned to his assailant, and
said: ‘And since when has an attempted assassination been
considered an introduction?’ Then he finished
lighting his cigar and walked away. My aunt had intended
screaming for the police, but seeing the indifference with which
the principal in the affair treated the matter she felt that it
would be an impertinence on her part to interfere. Of
course I need hardly say she put the whole thing down to the
effects of a warm, drowsy afternoon and the Legation
champagne. Now comes the astonishing part of my
story. A fortnight later a bank manager was stabbed to
death with a swordstick in that very part of the Bois. His
assassin was the son of a charwoman formerly working at the bank,
who had been dismissed from her job by the manager on account of
chronic intemperance. His name was Henri Leturc.”</p>
<p>From that moment Blenkinthrope was tacitly accepted as the
Munchausen of the party. No effort was spared to draw him
out from day to day in the exercise of testing their powers of
credulity, and Blenkinthrope, in the false security of an assured
and receptive audience, waxed industrious and ingenious in
supplying the demand for marvels. Duckby’s satirical
story of a tame otter that had a tank in the garden to swim in,
and whined restlessly whenever the water-rate was overdue, was
scarcely an unfair parody of some of Blenkinthrope’s wilder
efforts. And then one day came Nemesis.</p>
<p>Returning to his villa one evening Blenkinthrope found his
wife sitting in front of a pack of cards, which she was
scrutinising with unusual concentration.</p>
<p>“The same old patience-game?” he asked
carelessly.</p>
<p>“No, dear; this is the Death’s Head patience, the
most difficult of them all. I’ve never got it to work
out, and somehow I should be rather frightened if I did.
Mother only got it out once in her life; she was afraid of it,
too. Her great-aunt had done it once and fallen dead from
excitement the next moment, and mother always had a feeling that
she would die if she ever got it out. She died the same
night that she did it. She was in bad health at the time,
certainly, but it was a strange coincidence.”</p>
<p>“Don’t do it if it frightens you,” was
Blenkinthrope’s practical comment as he left the
room. A few minutes later his wife called to him.</p>
<p>“John, it gave me such a turn, I nearly got it
out. Only the five of diamonds held me up at the end.
I really thought I’d done it.”</p>
<p>“Why, you can do it,” said Blenkinthrope, who had
come back to the room; “if you shift the eight of clubs on
to that open nine the five can be moved on to the six.”</p>
<p>His wife made the suggested move with hasty, trembling
fingers, and piled the outstanding cards on to their respective
packs. Then she followed the example of her mother and
great-grand-aunt.</p>
<p>Blenkinthrope had been genuinely fond of his wife, but in the
midst of his bereavement one dominant thought obtruded
itself. Something sensational and real had at last come
into his life; no longer was it a grey, colourless record.
The headlines which might appropriately describe his domestic
tragedy kept shaping themselves in his brain.
“Inherited presentiment comes true.” “The
Death’s Head patience: Card-game that justified its
sinister name in three generations.” He wrote out a
full story of the fatal occurrence for the <i>Essex Vedette</i>,
the editor of which was a friend of his, and to another friend he
gave a condensed account, to be taken up to the office of one of
the halfpenny dailies. But in both cases his reputation as
a romancer stood fatally in the way of the fulfilment of his
ambitions. “Not the right thing to be Munchausening
in a time of sorrow” agreed his friends among themselves,
and a brief note of regret at the “sudden death of the wife
of our respected neighbour, Mr. John Blenkinthrope, from heart
failure,” appearing in the news column of the local paper
was the forlorn outcome of his visions of widespread
publicity.</p>
<p>Blenkinthrope shrank from the society of his erstwhile
travelling companions and took to travelling townwards by an
earlier train. He sometimes tries to enlist the sympathy
and attention of a chance acquaintance in details of the
whistling prowess of his best canary or the dimensions of his
largest beetroot; he scarcely recognises himself as the man who
was once spoken about and pointed out as the owner of the Seventh
Pullet.</p>
<h2>THE BLIND SPOT</h2>
<p>“You’ve just come back from Adelaide’s
funeral, haven’t you?” said Sir Lulworth to his
nephew; “I suppose it was very like most other
funerals?”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you all about it at lunch,” said
Egbert.</p>
<p>“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It
wouldn’t be respectful either to your great-aunt’s
memory or to the lunch. We begin with Spanish olives, then
a borshch, then more olives and a bird of some kind, and a rather
enticing Rhenish wine, not at all expensive as wines go in this
country, but still quite laudable in its way. Now
there’s absolutely nothing in that menu that harmonises in
the least with the subject of your great-aunt Adelaide or her
funeral. She was a charming woman, and quite as intelligent
as she had any need to be, but somehow she always reminded me of
an English cook’s idea of a Madras curry.”</p>
<p>“She used to say you were frivolous,” said
Egbert. Something in his tone suggested that he rather
endorsed the verdict.</p>
<p>“I believe I once considerably scandalised her by
declaring that clear soup was a more important factor in life
than a clear conscience. She had very little sense of
proportion. By the way, she made you her principal heir,
didn’t she?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Egbert, “and executor as
well. It’s in that connection that I particularly
want to speak to you.”</p>
<p>“Business is not my strong point at any time,”
said Sir Lulworth, “and certainly not when we’re on
the immediate threshold of lunch.”</p>
<p>“It isn’t exactly business,” explained
Egbert, as he followed his uncle into the dining-room.</p>
<p>“It’s something rather serious. Very
serious.”</p>
<p>“Then we can’t possibly speak about it now,”
said Sir Lulworth; “no one could talk seriously during a
borshch. A beautifully constructed borshch, such as you are
going to experience presently, ought not only to banish
conversation but almost to annihilate thought. Later on,
when we arrive at the second stage of olives, I shall be quite
ready to discuss that new book on Borrow, or, if you prefer it,
the present situation in the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. But
I absolutely decline to talk anything approaching business till
we have finished with the bird.”</p>
<p>For the greater part of the meal Egbert sat in an abstracted
silence, the silence of a man whose mind is focussed on one
topic. When the coffee stage had been reached he launched
himself suddenly athwart his uncle’s reminiscences of the
Court of Luxemburg.</p>
<p>“I think I told you that great-aunt Adelaide had made me
her executor. There wasn’t very much to be done in
the way of legal matters, but I had to go through her
papers.”</p>
<p>“That would be a fairly heavy task in itself. I
should imagine there were reams of family letters.”</p>
<p>“Stacks of them, and most of them highly
uninteresting. There was one packet, however, which I
thought might repay a careful perusal. It was a bundle of
correspondence from her brother Peter.”</p>
<p>“The Canon of tragic memory,” said Lulworth.</p>
<p>“Exactly, of tragic memory, as you say; a tragedy that
has never been fathomed.”</p>
<p>“Probably the simplest explanation was the correct
one,” said Sir Lulworth; “he slipped on the stone
staircase and fractured his skull in falling.”</p>
<p>Egbert shook his head. “The medical evidence all
went to prove that the blow on the head was struck by some one
coming up behind him. A wound caused by violent contact
with the steps could not possibly have been inflicted at that
angle of the skull. They experimented with a dummy figure
falling in every conceivable position.”</p>
<p>“But the motive?” exclaimed Sir Lulworth;
“no one had any interest in doing away with him, and the
number of people who destroy Canons of the Established Church for
the mere fun of killing must be extremely limited. Of
course there are individuals of weak mental balance who do that
sort of thing, but they seldom conceal their handiwork; they are
more generally inclined to parade it.”</p>
<p>“His cook was under suspicion,” said Egbert
shortly.</p>
<p>“I know he was,” said Sir Lulworth, “simply
because he was about the only person on the premises at the time
of the tragedy. But could anything be sillier than trying
to fasten a charge of murder on to Sebastien? He had
nothing to gain, in fact, a good deal to lose, from the death of
his employer. The Canon was paying him quite as good wages
as I was able to offer him when I took him over into my
service. I have since raised them to something a little
more in accordance with his real worth, but at the time he was
glad to find a new place without troubling about an increase of
wages. People were fighting rather shy of him, and he had
no friends in this country. No; if anyone in the world was
interested in the prolonged life and unimpaired digestion of the
Canon it would certainly be Sebastien.”</p>
<p>“People don’t always weigh the consequences of
their rash acts,” said Egbert, “otherwise there would
be very few murders committed. Sebastien is a man of hot
temper.”</p>
<p>“He is a southerner,” admitted Sir Lulworth;
“to be geographically exact I believe he hails from the
French slopes of the Pyrenees. I took that into
consideration when he nearly killed the gardener’s boy the
other day for bringing him a spurious substitute for
sorrel. One must always make allowances for origin and
locality and early environment; ‘Tell me your longitude and
I’ll know what latitude to allow you,’ is my
motto.”</p>
<p>“There, you see,” said Egbert, “he nearly
killed the gardener’s boy.”</p>
<p>“My dear Egbert, between nearly killing a
gardener’s boy and altogether killing a Canon there is a
wide difference. No doubt you have often felt a temporary
desire to kill a gardener’s boy; you have never given way
to it, and I respect you for your self-control. But I
don’t suppose you have ever wanted to kill an octogenarian
Canon. Besides, as far as we know, there had never been any
quarrel or disagreement between the two men. The evidence
at the inquest brought that out very clearly.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” said Egbert, with the air of a man coming at
last into a deferred inheritance of conversational importance,
“that is precisely what I want to speak to you
about.”</p>
<p>He pushed away his coffee cup and drew a pocket-book from his
inner breast-pocket. From the depths of the pocket-book he
produced an envelope, and from the envelope he extracted a
letter, closely written in a small, neat handwriting.</p>
<p>“One of the Canon’s numerous letters to Aunt
Adelaide,” he explained, “written a few days before
his death. Her memory was already failing when she received
it, and I daresay she forgot the contents as soon as she had read
it; otherwise, in the light of what subsequently happened, we
should have heard something of this letter before now. If
it had been produced at the inquest I fancy it would have made
some difference in the course of affairs. The evidence, as
you remarked just now, choked off suspicion against Sebastien by
disclosing an utter absence of anything that could be considered
a motive or provocation for the crime, if crime there
was.”</p>
<p>“Oh, read the letter,” said Sir Lulworth
impatiently.</p>
<p>“It’s a long rambling affair, like most of his
letters in his later years,” said Egbert.
“I’ll read the part that bears immediately on the
mystery.</p>
<p>“‘I very much fear I shall have to get rid of
Sebastien. He cooks divinely, but he has the temper of a
fiend or an anthropoid ape, and I am really in bodily fear of
him. We had a dispute the other day as to the correct sort
of lunch to be served on Ash Wednesday, and I got so irritated
and annoyed at his conceit and obstinacy that at last I threw a
cupful of coffee in his face and called him at the same time an
impudent jackanapes. Very little of the coffee went
actually in his face, but I have never seen a human being show
such deplorable lack of self-control. I laughed at the
threat of killing me that he spluttered out in his rage, and
thought the whole thing would blow over, but I have several times
since caught him scowling and muttering in a highly unpleasant
fashion, and lately I have fancied that he was dogging my
footsteps about the grounds, particularly when I walk of an
evening in the Italian Garden.’</p>
<p>“It was on the steps in the Italian Garden that the body
was found,” commented Egbert, and resumed reading.</p>
<p>“‘I daresay the danger is imaginary; but I shall
feel more at ease when he has quitted my
service.’”</p>
<p>Egbert paused for a moment at the conclusion of the extract;
then, as his uncle made no remark, he added: “If lack of
motive was the only factor that saved Sebastien from prosecution
I fancy this letter will put a different complexion on
matters.”</p>
<p>“Have you shown it to anyone else?” asked Sir
Lulworth, reaching out his hand for the incriminating piece of
paper.</p>
<p>“No,” said Egbert, handing it across the table,
“I thought I would tell you about it first. Heavens,
what are you doing?”</p>
<p>Egbert’s voice rose almost to a scream. Sir
Lulworth had flung the paper well and truly into the glowing
centre of the grate. The small, neat handwriting shrivelled
into black flaky nothingness.</p>
<p>“What on earth did you do that for?” gasped
Egbert. “That letter was our one piece of evidence to
connect Sebastien with the crime.”</p>
<p>“That is why I destroyed it,” said Sir
Lulworth.</p>
<p>“But why should you want to shield him?” cried
Egbert; “the man is a common murderer.”</p>
<p>“A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon
cook.”</p>
<h2>DUSK</h2>
<p>Norman Gortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to a
strip of bush-planted sward, fenced by the park railings, and the
Row fronting him across a wide stretch of carriage drive.
Hyde Park Corner, with its rattle and hoot of traffic, lay
immediately to his right. It was some thirty minutes past
six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen heavily over
the scene, dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many street
lamps. There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk,
and yet there were many unconsidered figures moving silently
through the half-light, or dotted unobtrusively on bench and
chair, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadowed gloom in
which they sat.</p>
<p>The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonised with his present
mood. Dusk, to his mind, was the hour of the
defeated. Men and women, who had fought and lost, who hid
their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible from the
scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming,
when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes
might pass unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognised.</p>
<blockquote><p>A king that is conquered must see strange
looks,<br />
So bitter a thing is the heart of man.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks
fasten on them, therefore they came out in this bat-fashion,
taking their pleasure sadly in a pleasure-ground that had emptied
of its rightful occupants. Beyond the sheltering screen of
bushes and palings came a realm of brilliant lights and noisy,
rushing traffic. A blazing, many-tiered stretch of windows
shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it, marking the
haunts of those other people, who held their own in life’s
struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure. So
Gortsby’s imagination pictured things as he sat on his
bench in the almost deserted walk. He was in the mood to
count himself among the defeated. Money troubles did not
press on him; had he so wished he could have strolled into the
thoroughfares of light and noise, and taken his place among the
jostling ranks of those who enjoyed prosperity or struggled for
it. He had failed in a more subtle ambition, and for the
moment he was heartsore and disillusionised, and not disinclined
to take a certain cynical pleasure in observing and labelling his
fellow wanderers as they went their ways in the dark stretches
between the lamp-lights.</p>
<p>On the bench by his side sat an elderly gentleman with a
drooping air of defiance that was probably the remaining vestige
of self-respect in an individual who had ceased to defy
successfully anybody or anything. His clothes could
scarcely be called shabby, at least they passed muster in the
half-light, but one’s imagination could not have pictured
the wearer embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of
chocolates or laying out ninepence on a carnation
buttonhole. He belonged unmistakably to that forlorn
orchestra to whose piping no one dances; he was one of the
world’s lamenters who induce no responsive weeping.
As he rose to go Gortsby imagined him returning to a home circle
where he was snubbed and of no account, or to some bleak lodging
where his ability to pay a weekly bill was the beginning and end
of the interest he inspired. His retreating figure vanished
slowly into the shadows, and his place on the bench was taken
almost immediately by a young man, fairly well dressed but
scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor. As if
to emphasise the fact that the world went badly with him the
new-corner unburdened himself of an angry and very audible
expletive as he flung himself into the seat.</p>
<p>“You don’t seem in a very good temper,” said
Gortsby, judging that he was expected to take due notice of the
demonstration.</p>
<p>The young man turned to him with a look of disarming frankness
which put him instantly on his guard.</p>
<p>“You wouldn’t be in a good temper if you were in
the fix I’m in,” he said; “I’ve done the
silliest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”</p>
<p>“Yes?” said Gortsby dispassionately.</p>
<p>“Came up this afternoon, meaning to stay at the
Patagonian Hotel in Berkshire Square,” continued the young
man; “when I got there I found it had been pulled down some
weeks ago and a cinema theatre run up on the site. The taxi
driver recommended me to another hotel some way off and I went
there. I just sent a letter to my people, giving them the
address, and then I went out to buy some soap—I’d
forgotten to pack any and I hate using hotel soap. Then I
strolled about a bit, had a drink at a bar and looked at the
shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the hotel I
suddenly realised that I didn’t remember its name or even
what street it was in. There’s a nice predicament for
a fellow who hasn’t any friends or connections in
London! Of course I can wire to my people for the address,
but they won’t have got my letter till to-morrow; meantime
I’m without any money, came out with about a shilling on
me, which went in buying the soap and getting the drink, and here
I am, wandering about with twopence in my pocket and nowhere to
go for the night.”</p>
<p>There was an eloquent pause after the story had been
told. “I suppose you think I’ve spun you rather
an impossible yarn,” said the young man presently, with a
suggestion of resentment in his voice.</p>
<p>“Not at all impossible,” said Gortsby judicially;
“I remember doing exactly the same thing once in a foreign
capital, and on that occasion there were two of us, which made it
more remarkable. Luckily we remembered that the hotel was
on a sort of canal, and when we struck the canal we were able to
find our way back to the hotel.”</p>
<p>The youth brightened at the reminiscence. “In a
foreign city I wouldn’t mind so much,” he said;
“one could go to one’s Consul and get the requisite
help from him. Here in one’s own land one is far more
derelict if one gets into a fix. Unless I can find some
decent chap to swallow my story and lend me some money I seem
likely to spend the night on the Embankment. I’m
glad, anyhow, that you don’t think the story outrageously
improbable.”</p>
<p>He threw a good deal of warmth into the last remark, as though
perhaps to indicate his hope that Gortsby did not fall far short
of the requisite decency.</p>
<p>“Of course,” said Gortsby slowly, “the weak
point of your story is that you can’t produce the
soap.”</p>
<p>The young man sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly in the
pockets of his overcoat, and then jumped to his feet.</p>
<p>“I must have lost it,” he muttered angrily.</p>
<p>“To lose an hotel and a cake of soap on one afternoon
suggests wilful carelessness,” said Gortsby, but the young
man scarcely waited to hear the end of the remark. He
flitted away down the path, his head held high, with an air of
somewhat jaded jauntiness.</p>
<p>“It was a pity,” mused Gortsby; “the going
out to get one’s own soap was the one convincing touch in
the whole story, and yet it was just that little detail that
brought him to grief. If he had had the brilliant
forethought to provide himself with a cake of soap, wrapped and
sealed with all the solicitude of the chemist’s counter, he
would have been a genius in his particular line. In his
particular line genius certainly consists of an infinite capacity
for taking precautions.”</p>
<p>With that reflection Gortsby rose to go; as he did so an
exclamation of concern escaped him. Lying on the ground by
the side of the bench was a small oval packet, wrapped and sealed
with the solicitude of a chemist’s counter. It could
be nothing else but a cake of soap, and it had evidently fallen
out of the youth’s overcoat pocket when he flung himself
down on the seat. In another moment Gortsby was scudding
along the dusk-shrouded path in anxious quest for a youthful
figure in a light overcoat. He had nearly given up the
search when he caught sight of the object of his pursuit standing
irresolutely on the border of the carriage drive, evidently
uncertain whether to strike across the Park or make for the
bustling pavements of Knightsbridge. He turned round
sharply with an air of defensive hostility when he found Gortsby
hailing him.</p>
<p>“The important witness to the genuineness of your story
has turned up,” said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap;
“it must have slid out of your overcoat pocket when you sat
down on the seat. I saw it on the ground after you
left. You must excuse my disbelief, but appearances were
really rather against you, and now, as I appealed to the
testimony of the soap I think I ought to abide by its
verdict. If the loan of a sovereign is any good to
you—”</p>
<p>The young man hastily removed all doubt on the subject by
pocketing the coin.</p>
<p>“Here is my card with my address,” continued
Gortsby; “any day this week will do for returning the
money, and here is the soap—don’t lose it again
it’s been a good friend to you.”</p>
<p>“Lucky thing your finding it,” said the youth, and
then, with a catch in his voice, he blurted out a word or two of
thanks and fled headlong in the direction of Knightsbridge.</p>
<p>“Poor boy, he as nearly as possible broke down,”
said Gortsby to himself. “I don’t wonder
either; the relief from his quandary must have been acute.
It’s a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by
circumstances.”</p>
<p>As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where the little
drama had taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and
peering beneath it and on all sides of it, and recognised his
earlier fellow occupant.</p>
<p>“Have you lost anything, sir?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, sir, a cake of soap.”</p>
<h2>A TOUCH OF REALISM</h2>
<p>“I hope you’ve come full of suggestions for
Christmas,” said Lady Blonze to her latest arrived guest;
“the old-fashioned Christmas and the up-to-date Christmas
are both so played out. I want to have something really
original this year.”</p>
<p>“I was staying with the Mathesons last month,”
said Blanche Boveal eagerly, “and we had such a good
idea. Every one in the house-party had to be a character
and behave consistently all the time, and at the end of the visit
one had to guess what every one’s character was. The
one who was voted to have acted his or her character best got a
prize.”</p>
<p>“It sounds amusing,” said Lady Blonze.</p>
<p>“I was St. Francis of Assisi,” continued Blanche;
“we hadn’t got to keep to our right sexes. I
kept getting up in the middle of a meal, and throwing out food to
the birds; you see, the chief thing that one remembers of St.
Francis is that he was fond of the birds. Every one was so
stupid about it, and thought that I was the old man who feeds the
sparrows in the Tuileries Gardens. Then Colonel Pentley was
the Jolly Miller on the banks of Dee.”</p>
<p>“How on earth did he do that?” asked Bertie van
Tahn.</p>
<p>“‘He laughed and sang from morn till
night,’” explained Blanche.</p>
<p>“How dreadful for the rest of you,” said Bertie;
“and anyway he wasn’t on the banks of Dee.”</p>
<p>“One had to imagine that,” said Blanche.</p>
<p>“If you could imagine all that you might as well imagine
cattle on the further bank and keep on calling them home,
Mary-fashion, across the sands of Dee. Or you might change
the river to the Yarrow and imagine it was on the top of you, and
say you were Willie, or whoever it was, drowned in
Yarrow.”</p>
<p>“Of course it’s easy to make fun of it,”
said Blanche sharply, “but it was extremely interesting and
amusing. The prize was rather a fiasco, though. You
see, Millie Matheson said her character was Lady Bountiful, and
as she was our hostess of course we all had to vote that she had
carried out her character better than anyone. Otherwise I
ought to have got the prize.”</p>
<p>“It’s quite an idea for a Christmas party,”
said Lady Blonze; “we must certainly do it here.”</p>
<p>Sir Nicholas was not so enthusiastic. “Are you
quite sure, my dear, that you’re wise in doing this
thing?” he said to his wife when they were alone
together. “It might do very well at the Mathesons,
where they had rather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it
will be a different matter. There is the Durmot flapper,
for instance, who simply stops at nothing, and you know what Van
Tahn is like. Then there is Cyril Skatterly; he has madness
on one side of his family and a Hungarian grandmother on the
other.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see what they could do that would
matter,” said Lady Blonze.</p>
<p>“It’s the unknown that is to be dreaded,”
said Sir Nicholas. “If Skatterly took it into his
head to represent a Bull of Bashan, well, I’d rather not be
here.”</p>
<p>“Of course we shan’t allow any Bible
characters. Besides, I don’t know what the Bulls of
Bashan really did that was so very dreadful; they just came round
and gaped, as far as I remember.”</p>
<p>“My dear, you don’t know what Skatterly’s
Hungarian imagination mightn’t read into the part; it would
be small satisfaction to say to him afterwards:
‘You’ve behaved as no Bull of Bashan would have
behaved.’”</p>
<p>“Oh, you’re an alarmist,” said Lady Blonze;
“I particularly want to have this idea carried out.
It will be sure to be talked about a lot.”</p>
<p>“That is quite possible,” said Sir Nicholas.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>Dinner that evening was not a particularly lively affair; the
strain of trying to impersonate a self-imposed character or to
glean hints of identity from other people’s conduct acted
as a check on the natural festivity of such a gathering.
There was a general feeling of gratitude and acquiescence when
good-natured Rachel Klammerstein suggested that there should be
an hour or two’s respite from “the game” while
they all listened to a little piano-playing after dinner.
Rachel’s love of piano music was not indiscriminate, and
concentrated itself chiefly on selections rendered by her
idolised offspring, Moritz and Augusta, who, to do them justice,
played remarkably well.</p>
<p>The Klammersteins were deservedly popular as Christmas guests;
they gave expensive gifts lavishly on Christmas Day and New Year,
and Mrs. Klammerstein had already dropped hints of her intention
to present the prize for the best enacted character in the game
competition. Every one had brightened at this prospect; if
it had fallen to Lady Blonze, as hostess, to provide the prize,
she would have considered that a little souvenir of some twenty
or twenty-five shillings’ value would meet the case,
whereas coming from a Klammerstein source it would certainly run
to several guineas.</p>
<p>The close time for impersonation efforts came to an end with
the final withdrawal of Moritz and Augusta from the piano.
Blanche Boveal retired early, leaving the room in a series of
laboured leaps that she hoped might be recognised as a tolerable
imitation of Pavlova. Vera Durmot, the sixteen-year-old
flapper, expressed her confident opinion that the performance was
intended to typify Mark Twain’s famous jumping frog, and
her diagnosis of the case found general acceptance. Another
guest to set an example of early bed-going was Waldo Plubley, who
conducted his life on a minutely regulated system of time-tables
and hygienic routine. Waldo was a plump, indolent young man
of seven-and-twenty, whose mother had early in his life decided
for him that he was unusually delicate, and by dint of much
coddling and home-keeping had succeeded in making him physically
soft and mentally peevish. Nine hours’ unbroken
sleep, preceded by elaborate breathing exercises and other
hygienic ritual, was among the indispensable regulations which
Waldo imposed on himself, and there were innumerable small
observances which he exacted from those who were in any way
obliged to minister to his requirements; a special teapot for the
decoction of his early tea was always solemnly handed over to the
bedroom staff of any house in which he happened to be
staying. No one had ever quite mastered the mechanism of
this precious vessel, but Bertie van Tahn was responsible for the
legend that its spout had to be kept facing north during the
process of infusion.</p>
<p>On this particular night the irreducible nine hours were
severely mutilated by the sudden and by no means noiseless
incursion of a pyjama-clad figure into Waldo’s room at an
hour midway between midnight and dawn.</p>
<p>“What is the matter? What are you looking
for?” asked the awakened and astonished Waldo, slowly
recognising Van Tahn, who appeared to be searching hastily for
something he had lost.</p>
<p>“Looking for sheep,” was the reply.</p>
<p>“Sheep?” exclaimed Waldo.</p>
<p>“Yes, sheep. You don’t suppose I’m
looking for giraffes, do you?”</p>
<p>“I don’t see why you should expect to find either
in my room,” retorted Waldo furiously.</p>
<p>“I can’t argue the matter at this hour of the
night,” said Bertie, and began hastily rummaging in the
chest of drawers. Shirts and underwear went flying on to
the floor.</p>
<p>“There are no sheep here, I tell you,” screamed
Waldo.</p>
<p>“I’ve only got your word for it,” said
Bertie, whisking most of the bedclothes on to the floor;
“if you weren’t concealing something you
wouldn’t be so agitated.”</p>
<p>Waldo was by this time convinced that Van Tahn was raving mad,
and made an anxious effort to humour him.</p>
<p>“Go back to bed like a dear fellow,” he pleaded,
“and your sheep will turn up all right in the
morning.”</p>
<p>“I daresay,” said Bertie gloomily, “without
their tails. Nice fool I shall look with a lot of Manx
sheep.”</p>
<p>And by way of emphasising his annoyance at the prospect he
sent Waldo’s pillows flying to the top of the wardrobe.</p>
<p>“But <i>why</i> no tails?” asked Waldo, whose
teeth were chattering with fear and rage and lowered
temperature.</p>
<p>“My dear boy, have you never heard the ballad of Little
Bo-Peep?” said Bertie with a chuckle.
“It’s my character in the Game, you know. If I
didn’t go hunting about for my lost sheep no one would be
able to guess who I was; and now go to sleepy weeps like a good
child or I shall be cross with you.”</p>
<p>“I leave you to imagine,” wrote Waldo in the
course of a long letter to his mother, “how much sleep I
was able to recover that night, and you know how essential nine
uninterrupted hours of slumber are to my health.”</p>
<p>On the other hand he was able to devote some wakeful hours to
exercises in breathing wrath and fury against Bertie van
Tahn.</p>
<p>Breakfast at Blonzecourt was a scattered meal, on the
“come when you please” principle, but the house-party
was supposed to gather in full strength at lunch. On the
day after the “Game” had been started there were,
however, some notable absentees. Waldo Plubley, for
instance, was reported to be nursing a headache. A large
breakfast and an “A.B.C.” had been taken up to his
room, but he had made no appearance in the flesh.</p>
<p>“I expect he’s playing up to some
character,” said Vera Durmot; “isn’t there a
thing of Molière’s, ‘<i>Le Malade
Imaginaire</i>’? I expect he’s that.”</p>
<p>Eight or nine lists came out, and were duly pencilled with the
suggestion.</p>
<p>“And where are the Klammersteins?” asked Lady
Blonze; “they’re usually so punctual.”</p>
<p>“Another character pose, perhaps,” said Bertie van
Tahn; “‘the Lost Ten Tribes.’”</p>
<p>“But there are only three of them. Besides,
they’ll want their lunch. Hasn’t anyone seen
anything of them?”</p>
<p>“Didn’t you take them out in your car?”
asked Blanche Boveal, addressing herself to Cyril Skatterly.</p>
<p>“Yes, took them out to Slogberry Moor immediately after
breakfast. Miss Durmot came too.”</p>
<p>“I saw you and Vera come back,” said Lady Blonze,
“but I didn’t see the Klammersteins. Did you
put them down in the village?”</p>
<p>“No,” said Skatterly shortly.</p>
<p>“But where are they? Where did you leave
them?”</p>
<p>“We left them on Slogberry Moor,” said Vera
calmly.</p>
<p>“On Slogberry Moor? Why, it’s more than
thirty miles away! How are they going to get
back?”</p>
<p>“We didn’t stop to consider that,” said
Skatterly; “we asked them to get out for a moment, on the
pretence that the car had stuck, and then we dashed off full
speed and left them there.”</p>
<p>“But how dare you do such a thing? It’s most
inhuman! Why, it’s been snowing for the last
hour.”</p>
<p>“I expect there’ll be a cottage or farmhouse
somewhere if they walk a mile or two.”</p>
<p>“But why on earth have you done it?”</p>
<p>The question came in a chorus of indignant bewilderment.</p>
<p>“<i>That</i> would be telling what our characters are
meant to be,” said Vera.</p>
<p>“Didn’t I warn you?” said Sir Nicholas
tragically to his wife.</p>
<p>“It’s something to do with Spanish history; we
don’t mind giving you that clue,” said Skatterly,
helping himself cheerfully to salad, and then Bertie van Tahn
broke forth into peals of joyous laughter.</p>
<p>“I’ve got it! Ferdinand and Isabella
deporting the Jews! Oh, lovely! Those two have
certainly won the prize; we shan’t get anything to beat
that for thoroughness.”</p>
<p>Lady Blonze’s Christmas party was talked about and
written about to an extent that she had not anticipated in her
most ambitious moments. The letters from Waldo’s
mother would alone have made it memorable.</p>
<h2>COUSIN TERESA</h2>
<p>Basset Harrowcluff returned to the home of his fathers, after
an absence of four years, distinctly well pleased with
himself. He was only thirty-one, but he had put in some
useful service in an out-of-the-way, though not unimportant,
corner of the world. He had quieted a province, kept open a
trade route, enforced the tradition of respect which is worth the
ransom of many kings in out-of-the-way regions, and done the
whole business on rather less expenditure than would be requisite
for organising a charity in the home country. In Whitehall
and places where they think, they doubtless thought well of
him. It was not inconceivable, his father allowed himself
to imagine, that Basset’s name might figure in the next
list of Honours.</p>
<p>Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his
half-brother, Lucas, whom he found feverishly engrossed in the
same medley of elaborate futilities that had claimed his whole
time and energies, such as they were, four years ago, and almost
as far back before that as he could remember. It was the
contempt of the man of action for the man of activities, and it
was probably reciprocated. Lucas was an over-well nourished
individual, some nine years Basset’s senior, with a
colouring that would have been accepted as a sign of intensive
culture in an asparagus, but probably meant in this case mere
abstention from exercise. His hair and forehead furnished a
recessional note in a personality that was in all other respects
obtrusive and assertive. There was certainly no Semitic
blood in Lucas’s parentage, but his appearance contrived to
convey at least a suggestion of Jewish extraction. Clovis
Sangrail, who knew most of his associates by sight, said it was
undoubtedly a case of protective mimicry.</p>
<p>Two days after Basset’s return, Lucas frisked in to
lunch in a state of twittering excitement that could not be
restrained even for the immediate consideration of soup, but had
to be verbally discharged in spluttering competition with
mouthfuls of vermicelli.</p>
<p>“I’ve got hold of an idea for something
immense,” he babbled, “something that is simply
It.”</p>
<p>Basset gave a short laugh that would have done equally well as
a snort, if one had wanted to make the exchange. His
half-brother was in the habit of discovering futilities that were
“simply It” at frequently recurring intervals.
The discovery generally meant that he flew up to town, preceded
by glowingly-worded telegrams, to see some one connected with the
stage or the publishing world, got together one or two momentous
luncheon parties, flitted in and out of “Gambrinus”
for one or two evenings, and returned home with an air of subdued
importance and the asparagus tint slightly intensified. The
great idea was generally forgotten a few weeks later in the
excitement of some new discovery.</p>
<p>“The inspiration came to me whilst I was
dressing,” announced Lucas; “it will be <i>the</i>
thing in the next music-hall <i>revue</i>. All London will
go mad over it. It’s just a couplet; of course there
will be other words, but they won’t matter.
Listen:</p>
<blockquote><p>Cousin Teresa takes out Cæsar,<br />
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A lifting, catchy sort of refrain, you see, and big-drum
business on the two syllables of bor-zoi. It’s
immense. And I’ve thought out all the business of it;
the singer will sing the first verse alone, then during the
second verse Cousin Teresa will walk through, followed by four
wooden dogs on wheels; Cæsar will be an Irish terrier, Fido
a black poodle, Jock a fox-terrier, and the borzoi, of course,
will be a borzoi. During the third verse Cousin Teresa will
come on alone, and the dogs will be drawn across by themselves
from the opposite wing; then Cousin Teresa will catch on to the
singer and go off-stage in one direction, while the dogs’
procession goes off in the other, crossing en route, which is
always very effective. There’ll be a lot of applause
there, and for the fourth verse Cousin Teresa will come on in
sables and the dogs will all have coats on. Then I’ve
got a great idea for the fifth verse; each of the dogs will be
led on by a Nut, and Cousin Teresa will come on from the opposite
side, crossing en route, always effective, and then she turns
round and leads the whole lot of them off on a string, and all
the time every one singing like mad:</p>
<blockquote><p>Cousin Teresa takes out Cæsar<br />
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tum-Tum! Drum business on the two last syllables.
I’m so excited, I shan’t sleep a wink to-night.
I’m off to-morrow by the ten-fifteen. I’ve
wired to Hermanova to lunch with me.”</p>
<p>If any of the rest of the family felt any excitement over the
creation of Cousin Teresa, they were signally successful in
concealing the fact.</p>
<p>“Poor Lucas does take his silly little ideas
seriously,” said Colonel Harrowcluff afterwards in the
smoking-room.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said his younger son, in a slightly less
tolerant tone, “in a day or two he’ll come back and
tell us that his sensational masterpiece is above the heads of
the public, and in about three weeks’ time he’ll be
wild with enthusiasm over a scheme to dramatise the poems of
Herrick or something equally promising.”</p>
<p>And then an extraordinary thing befell. In defiance of
all precedent Lucas’s glowing anticipations were justified
and endorsed by the course of events. If Cousin Teresa was
above the heads of the public, the public heroically adapted
itself to her altitude. Introduced as an experiment at a
dull moment in a new <i>revue</i>, the success of the item was
unmistakable; the calls were so insistent and uproarious that
even Lucas’ ample devisings of additional
“business” scarcely sufficed to keep pace with the
demand. Packed houses on successive evenings confirmed the
verdict of the first night audience, stalls and boxes filled
significantly just before the turn came on, and emptied
significantly after the last <i>encore</i> had been given.
The manager tearfully acknowledged that Cousin Teresa was
It. Stage hands and supers and programme sellers
acknowledged it to one another without the least
reservation. The name of the <i>revue</i> dwindled to
secondary importance, and vast letters of electric blue blazoned
the words “Cousin Teresa” from the front of the great
palace of pleasure. And, of course, the magic of the famous
refrain laid its spell all over the Metropolis. Restaurant
proprietors were obliged to provide the members of their
orchestras with painted wooden dogs on wheels, in order that the
much-demanded and always conceded melody should be rendered with
the necessary spectacular effects, and the crash of bottles and
forks on the tables at the mention of the big borzoi usually
drowned the sincerest efforts of drum or cymbals. Nowhere
and at no time could one get away from the double thump that
brought up the rear of the refrain; revellers reeling home at
night banged it on doors and hoardings, milkmen clashed their
cans to its cadence, messenger boys hit smaller messenger boys
resounding double smacks on the same principle. And the
more thoughtful circles of the great city were not deaf to the
claims and significance of the popular melody. An
enterprising and emancipated preacher discoursed from his pulpit
on the inner meaning of “Cousin Teresa,” and Lucas
Harrowcluff was invited to lecture on the subject of his great
achievement to members of the Young Mens’ Endeavour League,
the Nine Arts Club, and other learned and willing-to-learn
bodies. In Society it seemed to be the one thing people
really cared to talk about; men and women of middle age and
average education might be seen together in corners earnestly
discussing, not the question whether Servia should have an outlet
on the Adriatic, or the possibilities of a British success in
international polo contests, but the more absorbing topic of the
problematic Aztec or Nilotic origin of the Teresa
<i>motiv</i>.</p>
<p>“Politics and patriotism are so boring and so out of
date,” said a revered lady who had some pretensions to
oracular utterance; “we are too cosmopolitan nowadays to be
really moved by them. That is why one welcomes an
intelligible production like ‘Cousin Teresa,’ that
has a genuine message for one. One can’t understand
the message all at once, of course, but one felt from the very
first that it was there. I’ve been to see it eighteen
times and I’m going again to-morrow and on Thursday.
One can’t see it often enough.”</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>“It would be rather a popular move if we gave this
Harrowcluff person a knighthood or something of the sort,”
said the Minister reflectively.</p>
<p>“Which Harrowcluff?” asked his secretary.</p>
<p>“Which? There is only one, isn’t
there?” said the Minister; “the ‘Cousin
Teresa’ man, of course. I think every one would be
pleased if we knighted him. Yes, you can put him down on
the list of certainties—under the letter L.”</p>
<p>“The letter L,” said the secretary, who was new to
his job; “does that stand for Liberalism or
liberality?”</p>
<p>Most of the recipients of Ministerial favour were expected to
qualify in both of those subjects.</p>
<p>“Literature,” explained the Minister.</p>
<p>And thus, after a fashion, Colonel Harrowcluff’s
expectation of seeing his son’s name in the list of Honours
was gratified.</p>
<h2>THE YARKAND MANNER</h2>
<p>Sir Lulworth Quayne was making a leisurely progress through
the Zoological Society’s Gardens in company with his
nephew, recently returned from Mexico. The latter was
interested in comparing and contrasting allied types of animals
occurring in the North American and Old World fauna.</p>
<p>“One of the most remarkable things in the wanderings of
species,” he observed, “is the sudden impulse to trek
and migrate that breaks out now and again, for no apparent
reason, in communities of hitherto stay-at-home
animals.”</p>
<p>“In human affairs the same phenomenon is occasionally
noticeable,” said Sir Lulworth; “perhaps the most
striking instance of it occurred in this country while you were
away in the wilds of Mexico. I mean the wander fever which
suddenly displayed itself in the managing and editorial staffs of
certain London newspapers. It began with the stampede of
the entire staff of one of our most brilliant and enterprising
weeklies to the banks of the Seine and the heights of
Montmartre. The migration was a brief one, but it heralded
an era of restlessness in the Press world which lent quite a new
meaning to the phrase ‘newspaper circulation.’
Other editorial staffs were not slow to imitate the example that
had been set them. Paris soon dropped out of fashion as
being too near home; Nürnberg, Seville, and Salonica became
more favoured as planting-out grounds for the personnel of not
only weekly but daily papers as well. The localities were
perhaps not always well chosen; the fact of a leading organ of
Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights
from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have
been a mistake. And even when enterprising and adventurous
editors took themselves and their staffs further afield there
were some unavoidable clashings. For instance, the
<i>Scrutator</i>, <i>Sporting Bluff</i>, and <i>The
Damsels’ Own Paper</i> all pitched on Khartoum for the same
week. It was, perhaps, a desire to out-distance all
possible competition that influenced the management of the
<i>Daily Intelligencer</i>, one of the most solid and respected
organs of Liberal opinion, in its decision to transfer its
offices for three or four weeks from Fleet Street to Eastern
Turkestan, allowing, of course, a necessary margin of time for
the journey there and back. This was, in many respects, the
most remarkable of all the Press stampedes that were experienced
at this time. There was no make-believe about the
undertaking; proprietor, manager, editor, sub-editors,
leader-writers, principal reporters, and so forth, all took part
in what was popularly alluded to as the <i>Drang nach Osten</i>;
an intelligent and efficient office-boy was all that was left in
the deserted hive of editorial industry.”</p>
<p>“That was doing things rather thoroughly, wasn’t
it?” said the nephew.</p>
<p>“Well, you see,” said Sir Lulworth, “the
migration idea was falling somewhat into disrepute from the
half-hearted manner in which it was occasionally carried
out. You were not impressed by the information that such
and such a paper was being edited and brought out at Lisbon or
Innsbruck if you chanced to see the principal leader-writer or
the art editor lunching as usual at their accustomed
restaurants. The <i>Daily Intelligencer</i> was determined
to give no loophole for cavil at the genuineness of its
pilgrimage, and it must be admitted that to a certain extent the
arrangements made for transmitting copy and carrying on the usual
features of the paper during the long outward journey worked
smoothly and well. The series of articles which commenced
at Baku on ‘What Cobdenism might do for the camel
industry’ ranks among the best of the recent contributions
to Free Trade literature, while the views on foreign policy
enunciated ‘from a roof in Yarkand’ showed at least
as much grasp of the international situation as those that had
germinated within half a mile of Downing Street. Quite in
keeping, too, with the older and better traditions of British
journalism was the manner of the home-coming; no bombast, no
personal advertisement, no flamboyant interviews. Even a
complimentary luncheon at the Voyagers’ Club was
courteously declined. Indeed, it began to be felt that the
self-effacement of the returned pressmen was being carried to a
pedantic length. Foreman compositors, advertisement clerks,
and other members of the non-editorial staff, who had, of course,
taken no part in the great trek, found it as impossible to get
into direct communication with the editor and his satellites now
that they had returned as when they had been excusably
inaccessible in Central Asia. The sulky, overworked
office-boy, who was the one connecting link between the editorial
brain and the business departments of the paper, sardonically
explained the new aloofness as the ‘Yarkand
manner.’ Most of the reporters and sub-editors seemed
to have been dismissed in autocratic fashion since their return
and new ones engaged by letter; to these the editor and his
immediate associates remained an unseen presence, issuing its
instructions solely through the medium of curt typewritten
notes. Something mystic and Tibetan and forbidden had
replaced the human bustle and democratic simplicity of
pre-migration days, and the same experience was encountered by
those who made social overtures to the returned wanderers.
The most brilliant hostess of Twentieth Century London flung the
pearl of her hospitality into the unresponsive trough of the
editorial letter-box; it seemed as if nothing short of a Royal
command would drag the hermit-souled <i>revenants</i> from their
self-imposed seclusion. People began to talk unkindly of
the effect of high altitudes and Eastern atmosphere on minds and
temperaments unused to such luxuries. The Yarkand manner
was not popular.”</p>
<p>“And the contents of the paper,” said the nephew,
“did they show the influence of the new style?”</p>
<p>“Ah!” said Sir Lulworth, “that was the
exciting thing. In home affairs, social questions, and the
ordinary events of the day not much change was noticeable.
A certain Oriental carelessness seemed to have crept into the
editorial department, and perhaps a note of lassitude not
unnatural in the work of men who had returned from what had been
a fairly arduous journey. The aforetime standard of
excellence was scarcely maintained, but at any rate the general
lines of policy and outlook were not departed from. It was
in the realm of foreign affairs that a startling change took
place. Blunt, forcible, outspoken articles appeared,
couched in language which nearly turned the autumn
manœuvres of six important Powers into mobilisations.
Whatever else the <i>Daily Intelligencer</i> had learned in the
East, it had not acquired the art of diplomatic ambiguity.
The man in the street enjoyed the articles and bought the paper
as he had never bought it before; the men in Downing Street took
a different view. The Foreign Secretary, hitherto accounted
a rather reticent man, became positively garrulous in the course
of perpetually disavowing the sentiments expressed in the
<i>Daily Intelligencer’s</i> leaders; and then one day the
Government came to the conclusion that something definite and
drastic must be done. A deputation, consisting of the Prime
Minister, the Foreign Secretary, four leading financiers, and a
well-known Nonconformist divine, made its way to the offices of
the paper. At the door leading to the editorial department
the way was barred by a nervous but defiant office-boy.</p>
<p>“‘You can’t see the editor nor any of the
staff,’ he announced.</p>
<p>“‘We insist on seeing the editor or some
responsible person,’ said the Prime Minister, and the
deputation forced its way in. The boy had spoken truly;
there was no one to be seen. In the whole suite of rooms
there was no sign of human life.</p>
<p>“‘Where is the editor?’ ‘Or the
foreign editor?’ ‘Or the chief
leader-writer? Or anybody?’</p>
<p>“In answer to the shower of questions the boy unlocked a
drawer and produced a strange-looking envelope, which bore a
Khokand postmark, and a date of some seven or eight months
back. It contained a scrap of paper on which was written
the following message:</p>
<blockquote><p>“‘Entire party captured by brigand
tribe on homeward journey. Quarter of million demanded as
ransom, but would probably take less. Inform Government,
relations, and friends.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“There followed the signatures of the principal members
of the party and instructions as to how and where the money was
to be paid.</p>
<p>“The letter had been directed to the
office-boy-in-charge, who had quietly suppressed it. No one
is a hero to one’s own office-boy, and he evidently
considered that a quarter of a million was an unwarrantable
outlay for such a doubtfully advantageous object as the
repatriation of an errant newspaper staff. So he drew the
editorial and other salaries, forged what signatures were
necessary, engaged new reporters, did what sub-editing he could,
and made as much use as possible of the large accumulation of
special articles that was held in reserve for emergencies.
The articles on foreign affairs were entirely his own
composition.</p>
<p>“Of course the whole thing had to be kept as quiet as
possible; an interim staff, pledged to secrecy, was appointed to
keep the paper going till the pining captives could be sought
out, ransomed, and brought home, in twos and threes to escape
notice, and gradually things were put back on their old
footing. The articles on foreign affairs reverted to the
wonted traditions of the paper.”</p>
<p>“But,” interposed the nephew, “how on earth
did the boy account to the relatives all those months for the
non-appearance—”</p>
<p>“That,” said Sir Lulworth, “was the most
brilliant stroke of all. To the wife or nearest relative of
each of the missing men he forwarded a letter, copying the
handwriting of the supposed writer as well as he could, and
making excuses about vile pens and ink; in each letter he told
the same story, varying only the locality, to the effect that the
writer, alone of the whole party, was unable to tear himself away
from the wild liberty and allurements of Eastern life, and was
going to spend several months roaming in some selected
region. Many of the wives started off immediately in
pursuit of their errant husbands, and it took the Government a
considerable time and much trouble to reclaim them from their
fruitless quests along the banks of the Oxus, the Gobi Desert,
the Orenburg steppe, and other outlandish places. One of
them, I believe, is still lost somewhere in the Tigris
Valley.”</p>
<p>“And the boy?”</p>
<p>“Is still in journalism.”</p>
<h2>THE BYZANTINE OMELETTE</h2>
<p>Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a Socialist by conviction and a
Chattel-Monkheim by marriage. The particular member of that
wealthy family whom she had married was rich, even as his
relatives counted riches. Sophie had very advanced and
decided views as to the distribution of money: it was a pleasing
and fortunate circumstance that she also had the money.
When she inveighed eloquently against the evils of capitalism at
drawing-room meetings and Fabian conferences she was conscious of
a comfortable feeling that the system, with all its inequalities
and iniquities, would probably last her time. It is one of
the consolations of middle-aged reformers that the good they
inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all.</p>
<p>On a certain spring evening, somewhere towards the
dinner-hour, Sophie sat tranquilly between her mirror and her
maid, undergoing the process of having her hair built into an
elaborate reflection of the prevailing fashion. She was
hedged round with a great peace, the peace of one who has
attained a desired end with much effort and perseverance, and who
has found it still eminently desirable in its attainment.
The Duke of Syria had consented to come beneath her roof as a
guest, was even now installed beneath her roof, and would shortly
be sitting at her dining-table. As a good Socialist, Sophie
disapproved of social distinctions, and derided the idea of a
princely caste, but if there were to be these artificial
gradations of rank and dignity she was pleased and anxious to
have an exalted specimen of an exalted order included in her
house-party. She was broad-minded enough to love the sinner
while hating the sin—not that she entertained any warm
feeling of personal affection for the Duke of Syria, who was a
comparative stranger, but still, as Duke of Syria, he was very,
very welcome beneath her roof. She could not have explained
why, but no one was likely to ask her for an explanation, and
most hostesses envied her.</p>
<p>“You must surpass yourself to-night, Richardson,”
she said complacently to her maid; “I must be looking my
very best. We must all surpass ourselves.”</p>
<p>The maid said nothing, but from the concentrated look in her
eyes and the deft play of her fingers it was evident that she was
beset with the ambition to surpass herself.</p>
<p>A knock came at the door, a quiet but peremptory knock, as of
some one who would not be denied.</p>
<p>“Go and see who it is,” said Sophie; “it may
be something about the wine.”</p>
<p>Richardson held a hurried conference with an invisible
messenger at the door; when she returned there was noticeable a
curious listlessness in place of her hitherto alert manner.</p>
<p>“What is it?” asked Sophie.</p>
<p>“The household servants have ‘downed tools,’
madame,” said Richardson.</p>
<p>“Downed tools!” exclaimed Sophie; “do you
mean to say they’ve gone on strike?”</p>
<p>“Yes, madame,” said Richardson, adding the
information: “It’s Gaspare that the trouble is
about.”</p>
<p>“Gaspare?” said Sophie wanderingly; “the
emergency chef! The omelette specialist!”</p>
<p>“Yes, madame. Before he became an omelette
specialist he was a valet, and he was one of the strike-breakers
in the great strike at Lord Grimford’s two years ago.
As soon as the household staff here learned that you had engaged
him they resolved to ‘down tools’ as a protest.
They haven’t got any grievance against you personally, but
they demand that Gaspare should be immediately
dismissed.”</p>
<p>“But,” protested Sophie, “he is the only man
in England who understands how to make a Byzantine
omelette. I engaged him specially for the Duke of
Syria’s visit, and it would be impossible to replace him at
short notice. I should have to send to Paris, and the Duke
loves Byzantine omelettes. It was the one thing we talked
about coming from the station.”</p>
<p>“He was one of the strike-breakers at Lord
Grimford’s,” reiterated Richardson.</p>
<p>“This is too awful,” said Sophie; “a strike
of servants at a moment like this, with the Duke of Syria staying
in the house. Something must be done immediately.
Quick, finish my hair and I’ll go and see what I can do to
bring them round.”</p>
<p>“I can’t finish your hair, madame,” said
Richardson quietly, but with immense decision. “I
belong to the union and I can’t do another
half-minute’s work till the strike is settled.
I’m sorry to be disobliging.”</p>
<p>“But this is inhuman!” exclaimed Sophie
tragically; “I’ve always been a model mistress and
I’ve refused to employ any but union servants, and this is
the result. I can’t finish my hair myself; I
don’t know how to. What am I to do? It’s
wicked!”</p>
<p>“Wicked is the word,” said Richardson;
“I’m a good Conservative and I’ve no patience
with this Socialist foolery, asking your pardon. It’s
tyranny, that’s what it is, all along the line, but
I’ve my living to make, same as other people, and
I’ve got to belong to the union. I couldn’t
touch another hair-pin without a strike permit, not if you was to
double my wages.”</p>
<p>The door burst open and Catherine Malsom raged into the
room.</p>
<p>“Here’s a nice affair,” she screamed,
“a strike of household servants without a moment’s
warning, and I’m left like this! I can’t appear
in public in this condition.”</p>
<p>After a very hasty scrutiny Sophie assured her that she could
not.</p>
<p>“Have they all struck?” she asked her maid.</p>
<p>“Not the kitchen staff,” said Richardson,
“they belong to a different union.”</p>
<p>“Dinner at least will be assured,” said Sophie,
“that is something to be thankful for.”</p>
<p>“Dinner!” snorted Catherine, “what on earth
is the good of dinner when none of us will be able to appear at
it? Look at your hair—and look at me! or rather,
don’t.”</p>
<p>“I know it’s difficult to manage without a maid;
can’t your husband be any help to you?” asked Sophie
despairingly.</p>
<p>“Henry? He’s in worse case than any of
us. His man is the only person who really understands that
ridiculous new-fangled Turkish bath that he insists on taking
with him everywhere.”</p>
<p>“Surely he could do without a Turkish bath for one
evening,” said Sophie; “I can’t appear without
hair, but a Turkish bath is a luxury.”</p>
<p>“My good woman,” said Catherine, speaking with a
fearful intensity, “Henry was in the bath when the strike
started. In it, do you understand? He’s there
now.”</p>
<p>“Can’t he get out?”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t know how to. Every time he pulls
the lever marked ‘release’ he only releases hot
steam. There are two kinds of steam in the bath,
‘bearable’ and ‘scarcely bearable’; he
has released them both. By this time I’m probably a
widow.”</p>
<p>“I simply can’t send away Gaspare,” wailed
Sophie; “I should never be able to secure another omelette
specialist.”</p>
<p>“Any difficulty that I may experience in securing
another husband is of course a trifle beneath anyone’s
consideration,” said Catherine bitterly.</p>
<p>Sophie capitulated. “Go,” she said to
Richardson, “and tell the Strike Committee, or whoever are
directing this affair, that Gaspare is herewith dismissed.
And ask Gaspare to see me presently in the library, when I will
pay him what is due to him and make what excuses I can; and then
fly back and finish my hair.”</p>
<p>Some half an hour later Sophie marshalled her guests in the
Grand Salon preparatory to the formal march to the
dining-room. Except that Henry Malsom was of the ripe
raspberry tint that one sometimes sees at private theatricals
representing the human complexion, there was little outward sign
among those assembled of the crisis that had just been
encountered and surmounted. But the tension had been too
stupefying while it lasted not to leave some mental effects
behind it. Sophie talked at random to her illustrious
guest, and found her eyes straying with increasing frequency
towards the great doors through which would presently come the
blessed announcement that dinner was served. Now and again
she glanced mirror-ward at the reflection of her wonderfully
coiffed hair, as an insurance underwriter might gaze thankfully
at an overdue vessel that had ridden safely into harbour in the
wake of a devastating hurricane. Then the doors opened and
the welcome figure of the butler entered the room. But he
made no general announcement of a banquet in readiness, and the
doors closed behind him; his message was for Sophie alone.</p>
<p>“There is no dinner, madame,” he said gravely;
“the kitchen staff have ‘downed tools.’
Gaspare belongs to the Union of Cooks and Kitchen Employees, and
as soon as they heard of his summary dismissal at a
moment’s notice they struck work. They demand his
instant reinstatement and an apology to the union. I may
add, madame, that they are very firm; I’ve been obliged
even to hand back the dinner rolls that were already on the
table.”</p>
<p>After the lapse of eighteen months Sophie Chattel-Monkheim is
beginning to go about again among her old haunts and associates,
but she still has to be very careful. The doctors will not
let her attend anything at all exciting, such as a drawing-room
meeting or a Fabian conference; it is doubtful, indeed, whether
she wants to.</p>
<h2>THE FEAST OF NEMESIS</h2>
<p>“It’s a good thing that Saint Valentine’s
Day has dropped out of vogue,” said Mrs. Thackenbury;
“what with Christmas and New Year and Easter, not to speak
of birthdays, there are quite enough remembrance days as it
is. I tried to save myself trouble at Christmas by just
sending flowers to all my friends, but it wouldn’t work;
Gertrude has eleven hot-houses and about thirty gardeners, so it
would have been ridiculous to send flowers to her, and Milly has
just started a florist’s shop, so it was equally out of the
question there. The stress of having to decide in a hurry
what to give to Gertrude and Milly just when I thought I’d
got the whole question nicely off my mind completely ruined my
Christmas, and then the awful monotony of the letters of thanks:
‘Thank you so much for your lovely flowers. It was so
good of you to think of me.’ Of course in the
majority of cases I hadn’t thought about the recipients at
all; their names were down in my list of ‘people who must
not be left out.’ If I trusted to remembering them
there would be some awful sins of omission.”</p>
<p>“The trouble is,” said Clovis to his aunt,
“all these days of intrusive remembrance harp so
persistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore
the other; that is why they become so perfunctory and
artificial. At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened
and encouraged by convention to send gushing messages of
optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom you
would scarcely ask to lunch unless some one else had failed you
at the last moment; if you are supping at a restaurant on New
Year’s Eve you are permitted and expected to join hands and
sing ‘For Auld Lang Syne’ with strangers whom you
have never seen before and never want to see again. But no
licence is allowed in the opposite direction.”</p>
<p>“Opposite direction; what opposite direction?”
queried Mrs. Thackenbury.</p>
<p>“There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings
towards people whom you simply loathe. That is really the
crying need of our modern civilisation. Just think how
jolly it would be if a recognised day were set apart for the
paying off of old scores and grudges, a day when one could lay
oneself out to be gracefully vindictive to a carefully treasured
list of ‘people who must not be let off.’ I
remember when I was at a private school we had one day, the last
Monday of the term I think it was, consecrated to the settlement
of feuds and grudges; of course we did not appreciate it as much
as it deserved, because, after all, any day of the term could be
used for that purpose. Still, if one had chastised a
smaller boy for being cheeky weeks before, one was always
permitted on that day to recall the episode to his memory by
chastising him again. That is what the French call
reconstructing the crime.”</p>
<p>“I should call it reconstructing the punishment,”
said Mrs. Thackenbury; “and, anyhow, I don’t see how
you could introduce a system of primitive schoolboy vengeance
into civilised adult life. We haven’t outgrown our
passions, but we are supposed to have learned how to keep them
within strictly decorous limits.”</p>
<p>“Of course the thing would have to be done furtively and
politely,” said Clovis; “the charm of it would be
that it would never be perfunctory like the other thing.
Now, for instance, you say to yourself: ‘I must show the
Webleys some attention at Christmas, they were kind to dear
Bertie at Bournemouth,’ and you send them a calendar, and
daily for six days after Christmas the male Webley asks the
female Webley if she has remembered to thank you for the calendar
you sent them. Well, transplant that idea to the other and
more human side of your nature, and say to yourself: ‘Next
Thursday is Nemesis Day; what on earth can I do to those odious
people next door who made such an absurd fuss when Ping Yang bit
their youngest child?’ Then you’d get up
awfully early on the allotted day and climb over into their
garden and dig for truffles on their tennis court with a good
gardening fork, choosing, of course, that part of the court that
was screened from observation by the laurel bushes. You
wouldn’t find any truffles but you would find a great
peace, such as no amount of present-giving could ever
bestow.”</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Thackenbury, though
her air of protest sounded a bit forced; “I should feel
rather a worm for doing such a thing.”</p>
<p>“You exaggerate the power of upheaval which a worm would
be able to bring into play in the limited time available,”
said Clovis; “if you put in a strenuous ten minutes with a
really useful fork, the result ought to suggest the operations of
an unusually masterful mole or a badger in a hurry.”</p>
<p>“They might guess I had done it,” said Mrs.
Thackenbury.</p>
<p>“Of course they would,” said Clovis; “that
would be half the satisfaction of the thing, just as you like
people at Christmas to know what presents or cards you’ve
sent them. The thing would be much easier to manage, of
course, when you were on outwardly friendly terms with the object
of your dislike. That greedy little Agnes Blaik, for
instance, who thinks of nothing but her food, it would be quite
simple to ask her to a picnic in some wild woodland spot and lose
her just before lunch was served; when you found her again every
morsel of food could have been eaten up.”</p>
<p>“It would require no ordinary human strategy to lose
Agnes Blaik when luncheon was imminent: in fact, I don’t
believe it could be done.”</p>
<p>“Then have all the other guests, people whom you
dislike, and lose the luncheon. It could have been sent by
accident in the wrong direction.”</p>
<p>“It would be a ghastly picnic,” said Mrs.
Thackenbury.</p>
<p>“For them, but not for you,” said Clovis;
“you would have had an early and comforting lunch before
you started, and you could improve the occasion by mentioning in
detail the items of the missing banquet—the lobster Newburg
and the egg mayonnaise, and the curry that was to have been
heated in a chafing-dish. Agnes Blaik would be delirious
long before you got to the list of wines, and in the long
interval of waiting, before they had quite abandoned hope of the
lunch turning up, you could induce them to play silly games, such
as that idiotic one of ‘the Lord Mayor’s
dinner-party,’ in which every one has to choose the name of
a dish and do something futile when it is called out. In
this case they would probably burst into tears when their dish is
mentioned. It would be a heavenly picnic.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Thackenbury was silent for a moment; she was probably
making a mental list of the people she would like to invite to
the Duke Humphrey picnic. Presently she asked: “And
that odious young man, Waldo Plubley, who is always coddling
himself—have you thought of anything that one could do to
him?” Evidently she was beginning to see the
possibilities of Nemesis Day.</p>
<p>“If there was anything like a general observance of the
festival,” said Clovis, “Waldo would be in such
demand that you would have to bespeak him weeks beforehand, and
even then, if there were an east wind blowing or a cloud or two
in the sky he might be too careful of his precious self to come
out. It would be rather jolly if you could lure him into a
hammock in the orchard, just near the spot where there is a
wasps’ nest every summer. A comfortable hammock on a
warm afternoon would appeal to his indolent tastes, and then,
when he was getting drowsy, a lighted fusee thrown into the nest
would bring the wasps out in an indignant mass, and they would
soon find a ‘home away from home’ on Waldo’s
fat body. It takes some doing to get out of a hammock in a
hurry.”</p>
<p>“They might sting him to death,” protested Mrs.
Thackenbury.</p>
<p>“Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously
improved by death,” said Clovis; “but if you
didn’t want to go as far as that, you could have some wet
straw ready to hand, and set it alight under the hammock at the
same time that the fusee was thrown into the nest; the smoke
would keep all but the most militant of the wasps just outside
the stinging line, and as long as Waldo remained within its
protection he would escape serious damage, and could be
eventually restored to his mother, kippered all over and swollen
in places, but still perfectly recognisable.”</p>
<p>“His mother would be my enemy for life,” said Mrs.
Thackenbury.</p>
<p>“That would be one greeting less to exchange at
Christmas,” said Clovis.</p>
<h2>THE DREAMER</h2>
<p>It was the season of sales. The august establishment of
Walpurgis and Nettlepink had lowered its prices for an entire
week as a concession to trade observances, much as an
Arch-duchess might protestingly contract an attack of influenza
for the unsatisfactory reason that influenza was locally
prevalent. Adela Chemping, who considered herself in some
measure superior to the allurements of an ordinary bargain sale,
made a point of attending the reduction week at Walpurgis and
Nettlepink’s.</p>
<p>“I’m not a bargain hunter,” she said,
“but I like to go where bargains are.”</p>
<p>Which showed that beneath her surface strength of character
there flowed a gracious undercurrent of human weakness.</p>
<p>With a view to providing herself with a male escort Mrs.
Chemping had invited her youngest nephew to accompany her on the
first day of the shopping expedition, throwing in the additional
allurement of a cinematograph theatre and the prospect of light
refreshment. As Cyprian was not yet eighteen she hoped he
might not have reached that stage in masculine development when
parcel-carrying is looked on as a thing abhorrent.</p>
<p>“Meet me just outside the floral department,” she
wrote to him, “and don’t be a moment later than
eleven.”</p>
<p>Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the
wondering look of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that
are not visible to ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace
things of this world with qualities unsuspected by plainer
folk—the eyes of a poet or a house agent. He was
quietly dressed—that sartorial quietude which frequently
accompanies early adolescence, and is usually attributed by
novel-writers to the influence of a widowed mother. His
hair was brushed back in a smoothness as of ribbon seaweed and
seamed with a narrow furrow that scarcely aimed at being a
parting. His aunt particularly noted this item of his
toilet when they met at the appointed rendezvous, because he was
standing waiting for her bareheaded.</p>
<p>“Where is your hat?” she asked.</p>
<p>“I didn’t bring one with me,” he
replied.</p>
<p>Adela Chemping was slightly scandalised.</p>
<p>“You are not going to be what they call a Nut, are
you?” she inquired with some anxiety, partly with the idea
that a Nut would be an extravagance which her sister’s
small household would scarcely be justified in incurring, partly,
perhaps, with the instinctive apprehension that a Nut, even in
its embryo stage, would refuse to carry parcels.</p>
<p>Cyprian looked at her with his wondering, dreamy eyes.</p>
<p>“I didn’t bring a hat,” he said,
“because it is such a nuisance when one is shopping; I mean
it is so awkward if one meets anyone one knows and has to take
one’s hat off when one’s hands are full of
parcels. If one hasn’t got a hat on one can’t
take it off.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Chemping sighed with great relief; her worst fear had
been laid at rest.</p>
<p>“It is more orthodox to wear a hat,” she observed,
and then turned her attention briskly to the business in
hand.</p>
<p>“We will go first to the table-linen counter,” she
said, leading the way in that direction; “I should like to
look at some napkins.”</p>
<p>The wondering look deepened in Cyprian’s eyes as he
followed his aunt; he belonged to a generation that is supposed
to be over-fond of the rôle of mere spectator, but looking
at napkins that one did not mean to buy was a pleasure beyond his
comprehension. Mrs. Chemping held one or two napkins up to
the light and stared fixedly at them, as though she half expected
to find some revolutionary cypher written on them in scarcely
visible ink; then she suddenly broke away in the direction of the
glassware department.</p>
<p>“Millicent asked me to get her a couple of decanters if
there were any going really cheap,” she explained on the
way, “and I really do want a salad bowl. I can come
back to the napkins later on.”</p>
<p>She handled and scrutinised a large number of decanters and a
long series of salad bowls, and finally bought seven
chrysanthemum vases.</p>
<p>“No one uses that kind of vase nowadays,” she
informed Cyprian, “but they will do for presents next
Christmas.”</p>
<p>Two sunshades that were marked down to a price that Mrs.
Chemping considered absurdly cheap were added to her
purchases.</p>
<p>“One of them will do for Ruth Colson; she is going out
to the Malay States, and a sunshade will always be useful
there. And I must get her some thin writing paper. It
takes up no room in one’s baggage.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Chemping bought stacks of writing paper; it was so cheap,
and it went so flat in a trunk or portmanteau. She also
bought a few envelopes—envelopes somehow seemed rather an
extragavance compared with notepaper.</p>
<p>“Do you think Ruth will like blue or grey paper?”
she asked Cyprian.</p>
<p>“Grey,” said Cyprian, who had never met the lady
in question.</p>
<p>“Have you any mauve notepaper of this quality?”
Adela asked the assistant.</p>
<p>“We haven’t any mauve,” said the assistant,
“but we’ve two shades of green and a darker shade of
grey.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Chemping inspected the greens and the darker grey, and
chose the blue.</p>
<p>“Now we can have some lunch,” she said.</p>
<p>Cyprian behaved in an exemplary fashion in the refreshment
department, and cheerfully accepted a fish cake and a mince pie
and a small cup of coffee as adequate restoratives after two
hours of concentrated shopping. He was adamant, however, in
resisting his aunt’s suggestion that a hat should be bought
for him at the counter where men’s headwear was being
disposed of at temptingly reduced prices.</p>
<p>“I’ve got as many hats as I want at home,”
he said, “and besides, it rumples one’s hair so,
trying them on.”</p>
<p>Perhaps he was going to develop into a Nut after all. It
was a disquieting symptom that he left all the parcels in charge
of the cloak-room attendant.</p>
<p>“We shall be getting more parcels presently,” he
said, “so we need not collect these till we have finished
our shopping.”</p>
<p>His aunt was doubtfully appeased; some of the pleasure and
excitement of a shopping expedition seemed to evaporate when one
was deprived of immediate personal contact with one’s
purchases.</p>
<p>“I’m going to look at those napkins again,”
she said, as they descended the stairs to the ground floor.
“You need not come,” she added, as the dreaming look
in the boy’s eyes changed for a moment into one of mute
protest, “you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery
department; I’ve just remembered that I haven’t a
corkscrew in the house that can be depended on.”</p>
<p>Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery department when his
aunt in due course arrived there, but in the crush and bustle of
anxious shoppers and busy attendants it was an easy matter to
miss anyone. It was in the leather goods department some
quarter of an hour later that Adela Chemping caught sight of her
nephew, separated from her by a rampart of suit-cases and
portmanteaux and hemmed in by the jostling crush of human beings
that now invaded every corner of the great shopping
emporium. She was just in time to witness a pardonable but
rather embarrassing mistake on the part of a lady who had
wriggled her way with unstayable determination towards the
bareheaded Cyprian, and was now breathlessly demanding the sale
price of a handbag which had taken her fancy.</p>
<p>“There now,” exclaimed Adela to herself,
“she takes him for one of the shop assistants because he
hasn’t got a hat on. I wonder it hasn’t
happened before.”</p>
<p>Perhaps it had. Cyprian, at any rate, seemed neither
startled nor embarrassed by the error into which the good lady
had fallen. Examining the ticket on the bag, he announced
in a clear, dispassionate voice:</p>
<p>“Black seal, thirty-four shillings, marked down to
twenty-eight. As a matter of fact, we are clearing them out
at a special reduction price of twenty-six shillings. They
are going off rather fast.”</p>
<p>“I’ll take it,” said the lady, eagerly
digging some coins out of her purse.</p>
<p>“Will you take it as it is?” asked Cyprian;
“it will be a matter of a few minutes to get it wrapped up,
there is such a crush.”</p>
<p>“Never mind, I’ll take it as it is,” said
the purchaser, clutching her treasure and counting the money into
Cyprian’s palm.</p>
<p>Several kind strangers helped Adela into the open air.</p>
<p>“It’s the crush and the heat,” said one
sympathiser to another; “it’s enough to turn anyone
giddy.”</p>
<p>When she next came across Cyprian he was standing in the crowd
that pushed and jostled around the counters of the book
department. The dream look was deeper than ever in his
eyes. He had just sold two books of devotion to an elderly
Canon.</p>
<h2>THE QUINCE TREE</h2>
<p>“I’ve just been to see old Betsy Mullen,”
announced Vera to her aunt, Mrs. Bebberly Cumble; “she
seems in rather a bad way about her rent. She owes about
fifteen weeks of it, and says she doesn’t know where any of
it is to come from.”</p>
<p>“Betsy Mullen always is in difficulties with her rent,
and the more people help her with it the less she troubles about
it,” said the aunt. “I certainly am not going
to assist her any more. The fact is, she will have to go
into a smaller and cheaper cottage; there are several to be had
at the other end of the village for half the rent that she is
paying, or supposed to be paying, now. I told her a year
ago that she ought to move.”</p>
<p>“But she wouldn’t get such a nice garden anywhere
else,” protested Vera, “and there’s such a
jolly quince tree in the corner. I don’t suppose
there’s another quince tree in the whole parish. And
she never makes any quince jam; I think to have a quince tree and
not to make quince jam shows such strength of character.
Oh, she can’t possibly move away from that
garden.”</p>
<p>“When one is sixteen,” said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble
severely, “one talks of things being impossible which are
merely uncongenial. It is not only possible but it is
desirable that Betsy Mullen should move into smaller quarters;
she has scarcely enough furniture to fill that big
cottage.”</p>
<p>“As far as value goes,” said Vera after a short
pause, “there is more in Betsy’s cottage than in any
other house for miles round.”</p>
<p>“Nonsense,” said the aunt; “she parted with
whatever old china ware she had long ago.”</p>
<p>“I’m not talking about anything that belongs to
Betsy herself,” said Vera darkly; “but, of course,
you don’t know what I know, and I don’t suppose I
ought to tell you.”</p>
<p>“You must tell me at once,” exclaimed the aunt,
her senses leaping into alertness like those of a terrier
suddenly exchanging a bored drowsiness for the lively
anticipation of an immediate rat hunt.</p>
<p>“I’m perfectly certain that I oughtn’t to
tell you anything about it,” said Vera, “but, then, I
often do things that I oughtn’t to do.”</p>
<p>“I should be the last person to suggest that you should
do anything that you ought not to do to—” began Mrs.
Bebberly Cumble impressively.</p>
<p>“And I am always swayed by the last person who speaks to
me,” admitted Vera, “so I’ll do what I ought
not to do and tell you.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Bebberley Cumble thrust a very pardonable sense of
exasperation into the background of her mind and demanded
impatiently:</p>
<p>“What is there in Betsy Mullen’s cottage that you
are making such a fuss about?”</p>
<p>“It’s hardly fair to say that <i>I’ve</i>
made a fuss about it,” said Vera; “this is the first
time I’ve mentioned the matter, but there’s been no
end of trouble and mystery and newspaper speculation about
it. It’s rather amusing to think of the columns of
conjecture in the Press and the police and detectives hunting
about everywhere at home and abroad, and all the while that
innocent-looking little cottage has held the secret.”</p>
<p>“You don’t mean to say it’s the Louvre
picture, La Something or other, the woman with the smile, that
disappeared about two years ago?” exclaimed the aunt with
rising excitement.</p>
<p>“Oh no, not that,” said Vera, “but something
quite as important and just as mysterious—if anything,
rather more scandalous.”</p>
<p>“Not the Dublin—?”</p>
<p>Vera nodded.</p>
<p>“The whole jolly lot of them.”</p>
<p>“In Betsy’s cottage? Incredible!”</p>
<p>“Of course Betsy hasn’t an idea as to what they
are,” said Vera; “she just knows that they are
something valuable and that she must keep quiet about them.
I found out quite by accident what they were and how they came to
be there. You see, the people who had them were at their
wits’ end to know where to stow them away for safe keeping,
and some one who was motoring through the village was struck by
the snug loneliness of the cottage and thought it would be just
the thing. Mrs. Lamper arranged the matter with Betsy and
smuggled the things in.”</p>
<p>“Mrs. Lamper?”</p>
<p>“Yes; she does a lot of district visiting, you
know.”</p>
<p>“I am quite aware that she takes soup and flannel and
improving literature to the poorer cottagers,” said Mrs.
Bebberly Cumble, “but that is hardly the same sort of thing
as disposing of stolen goods, and she must have known something
about their history; anyone who reads the papers, even casually,
must have been aware of the theft, and I should think the things
were not hard to recognise. Mrs. Lamper has always had the
reputation of being a very conscientious woman.”</p>
<p>“Of course she was screening some one else,” said
Vera. “A remarkable feature of the affair is the
extraordinary number of quite respectable people who have
involved themselves in its meshes by trying to shield
others. You would be really astonished if you knew some of
the names of the individuals mixed up in it, and I don’t
suppose a tithe of them know who the original culprits were; and
now I’ve got you entangled in the mess by letting you into
the secret of the cottage.”</p>
<p>“You most certainly have not entangled me,” said
Mrs. Bebberly Cumble indignantly. “I have no
intention of shielding anybody. The police must know about
it at once; a theft is a theft, whoever is involved. If
respectable people choose to turn themselves into receivers and
disposers of stolen goods, well, they’ve ceased to be
respectable, that’s all. I shall telephone
immediately—”</p>
<p>“Oh, aunt,” said Vera reproachfully, “it
would break the poor Canon’s heart if Cuthbert were to be
involved in a scandal of this sort. You know it
would.”</p>
<p>“Cuthbert involved! How can you say such things
when you know how much we all think of him?”</p>
<p>“Of course I know you think a lot of him, and that
he’s engaged to marry Beatrice, and that it will be a
frightfully good match, and that he’s your ideal of what a
son-in-law ought to be. All the same, it was
Cuthbert’s idea to stow the things away in the cottage, and
it was his motor that brought them. He was only doing it to
help his friend Pegginson, you know—the Quaker man, who is
always agitating for a smaller Navy. I forget how he got
involved in it. I warned you that there were lots of quite
respectable people mixed up in it, didn’t I?
That’s what I meant when I said it would be impossible for
old Betsy to leave the cottage; the things take up a good bit of
room, and she couldn’t go carrying them about with her
other goods and chattels without attracting notice. Of
course if she were to fall ill and die it would be equally
unfortunate. Her mother lived to be over ninety, she tells
me, so with due care and an absence of worry she ought to last
for another dozen years at least. By that time perhaps some
other arrangements will have been made for disposing of the
wretched things.”</p>
<p>“I shall speak to Cuthbert about it—after the
wedding,” said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble.</p>
<p>“The wedding isn’t till next year,” said
Vera, in recounting the story to her best girl friend, “and
meanwhile old Betsy is living rent free, with soup twice a week
and my aunt’s doctor to see her whenever she has a finger
ache.”</p>
<p>“But how on earth did you get to know about it
all?” asked her friend, in admiring wonder.</p>
<p>“It was a mystery—” said Vera.</p>
<p>“Of course it was a mystery, a mystery that baffled
everybody. What beats me is how you found
out—”</p>
<p>“Oh, about the jewels? I invented that
part,” explained Vera; “I mean the mystery was where
old Betsy’s arrears of rent were to come from; and she
would have hated leaving that jolly quince tree.”</p>
<h2>THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS</h2>
<p>“Is matchmaking at all in your line?”</p>
<p>Hugo Peterby asked the question with a certain amount of
personal interest.</p>
<p>“I don’t specialise in it,” said Clovis;
“it’s all right while you’re doing it, but the
after-effects are sometimes so disconcerting—the mute
reproachful looks of the people you’ve aided and abetted in
matrimonial experiments. It’s as bad as selling a man
a horse with half a dozen latent vices and watching him discover
them piecemeal in the course of the hunting season. I
suppose you’re thinking of the Coulterneb girl.
She’s certainly jolly, and quite all right as far as looks
go, and I believe a certain amount of money adheres to her.
What I don’t see is how you will ever manage to propose to
her. In all the time I’ve known her I don’t
remember her to have stopped talking for three consecutive
minutes. You’ll have to race her six times round the
grass paddock for a bet, and then blurt your proposal out before
she’s got her wind back. The paddock is laid up for
hay, but if you’re really in love with her you won’t
let a consideration of that sort stop you, especially as
it’s not your hay.”</p>
<p>“I think I could manage the proposing part right
enough,” said Hugo, “if I could count on being left
alone with her for four or five hours. The trouble is that
I’m not likely to get anything like that amount of
grace. That fellow Lanner is showing signs of interesting
himself in the same quarter. He’s quite
heartbreakingly rich and is rather a swell in his way; in fact,
our hostess is obviously a bit flattered at having him
here. If she gets wind of the fact that he’s inclined
to be attracted by Betty Coulterneb she’ll think it a
splendid match and throw them into each other’s arms all
day long, and then where will my opportunities come in? My
one anxiety is to keep him out of the girl’s way as much as
possible, and if you could help me—”</p>
<p>“If you want me to trot Lanner round the countryside,
inspecting alleged Roman remains and studying local methods of
bee culture and crop raising, I’m afraid I can’t
oblige you,” said Clovis. “You see, he’s
taken something like an aversion to me since the other night in
the smoking-room.”</p>
<p>“What happened in the smoking-room?”</p>
<p>“He trotted out some well-worn chestnut as the latest
thing in good stories, and I remarked, quite innocently, that I
never could remember whether it was George II. or James II. who
was so fond of that particular story, and now he regards me with
politely-draped dislike. I’ll do my best for you, if
the opportunity arises, but it will have to be in a roundabout,
impersonal manner.”</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>“It’s so nice having Mr. Lanner here,”
confided Mrs. Olston to Clovis the next afternoon;
“he’s always been engaged when I’ve asked him
before. Such a nice man; he really ought to be married to
some nice girl. Between you and me, I have an idea that he
came down here for a certain reason.”</p>
<p>“I’ve had much the same idea,” said Clovis,
lowering his voice; “in fact, I’m almost certain of
it.”</p>
<p>“You mean he’s attracted by—” began
Mrs. Olston eagerly.</p>
<p>“I mean he’s here for what he can get,” said
Clovis.</p>
<p>“For what he can <i>get</i>?” said the hostess
with a touch of indignation in her voice; “what do you
mean? He’s a very rich man. What should he want
to get here?”</p>
<p>“He has one ruling passion,” said Clovis,
“and there’s something he can get here that is not to
be had for love nor for money anywhere else in the country, as
far as I know.”</p>
<p>“But what? Whatever do you mean? What is his
ruling passion?”</p>
<p>“Egg-collecting,” said Clovis. “He has
agents all over the world getting rare eggs for him, and his
collection is one of the finest in Europe; but his great ambition
is to collect his treasures personally. He stops at no
expense nor trouble to achieve that end.”</p>
<p>“Good heavens! The buzzards, the rough-legged
buzzards!” exclaimed Mrs. Olston; “you don’t
think he’s going to raid their nest?”</p>
<p>“What do you think yourself?” asked Clovis;
“the only pair of rough-legged buzzards known to breed in
this country are nesting in your woods. Very few people
know about them, but as a member of the league for protecting
rare birds that information would be at his disposal. I
came down in the train with him, and I noticed that a bulky
volume of Dresser’s ‘Birds of Europe’ was one
of the requisites that he had packed in his travelling-kit.
It was the volume dealing with short-winged hawks and
buzzards.”</p>
<p>Clovis believed that if a lie was worth telling it was worth
telling well.</p>
<p>“This is appalling,” said Mrs. Olston; “my
husband would never forgive me if anything happened to those
birds. They’ve been seen about the woods for the last
year or two, but this is the first time they’ve
nested. As you say, they are almost the only pair known to
be breeding in the whole of Great Britain; and now their nest is
going to be harried by a guest staying under my roof. I
must do something to stop it. Do you think if I appealed to
him—”</p>
<p>Clovis laughed.</p>
<p>“There is a story going about, which I fancy is true in
most of its details, of something that happened not long ago
somewhere on the coast of the Sea of Marmora, in which our friend
had a hand. A Syrian nightjar, or some such bird, was known
to be breeding in the olive gardens of a rich Armenian, who for
some reason or other wouldn’t allow Lanner to go in and
take the eggs, though he offered cash down for the
permission. The Armenian was found beaten nearly to death a
day or two later, and his fences levelled. It was assumed
to be a case of Mussulman aggression, and noted as such in all
the Consular reports, but the eggs are in the Lanner
collection. No, I don’t think I should appeal to his
better feelings if I were you.”</p>
<p>“I must do something,” said Mrs. Olston tearfully;
“my husband’s parting words when he went off to
Norway were an injunction to see that those birds were not
disturbed, and he’s asked about them every time he’s
written. Do suggest something.”</p>
<p>“I was going to suggest picketing,” said
Clovis.</p>
<p>“Picketing! You mean setting guards round the
birds?”</p>
<p>“No; round Lanner. He can’t find his way
through those woods by night, and you could arrange that you or
Evelyn or Jack or the German governess should be by his side in
relays all day long. A fellow guest he could get rid of,
but he couldn’t very well shake off members of the
household, and even the most determined collector would hardly go
climbing after forbidden buzzards’ eggs with a German
governess hanging round his neck, so to speak.”</p>
<p>Lanner, who had been lazily watching for an opportunity for
prosecuting his courtship of the Coulterneb girl, found presently
that his chances of getting her to himself for ten minutes even
were non-existent. If the girl was ever alone he never
was. His hostess had changed suddenly, as far as he was
concerned, from the desirable type that lets her guests do
nothing in the way that best pleases them, to the sort that drags
them over the ground like so many harrows. She showed him
the herb garden and the greenhouses, the village church, some
water-colour sketches that her sister had done in Corsica, and
the place where it was hoped that celery would grow later in the
year.</p>
<p>He was shown all the Aylesbury ducklings and the row of wooden
hives where there would have been bees if there had not been bee
disease. He was also taken to the end of a long lane and
shown a distant mound whereon local tradition reported that the
Danes had once pitched a camp. And when his hostess had to
desert him temporarily for other duties he would find Evelyn
walking solemnly by his side. Evelyn was fourteen and
talked chiefly about good and evil, and of how much one might
accomplish in the way of regenerating the world if one was
thoroughly determined to do one’s utmost. It was
generally rather a relief when she was displaced by Jack, who was
nine years old, and talked exclusively about the Balkan War
without throwing any fresh light on its political or military
history. The German governess told Lanner more about
Schiller than he had ever heard in his life about any one person;
it was perhaps his own fault for having told her that he was not
interested in Goethe. When the governess went off picket
duty the hostess was again on hand with a not-to-be-gainsaid
invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who remembered
Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three
years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called
back to town earlier than he had originally intended.</p>
<p>Hugo did not bring off his affair with Betty Coulterneb.
Whether she refused him or whether, as was more generally
supposed, he did not get a chance of saying three consecutive
words, has never been exactly ascertained. Anyhow, she is
still the jolly Coulterneb girl.</p>
<p>The buzzards successfully reared two young ones, which were
shot by a local hairdresser.</p>
<h2>THE STAKE</h2>
<p>“Ronnie is a great trial to me,” said Mrs. Attray
plaintively. “Only eighteen years old last February
and already a confirmed gambler. I am sure I don’t
know where he inherits it from; his father never touched cards,
and you know how little I play—a game of bridge on
Wednesday afternoons in the winter, for three-pence a hundred,
and even that I shouldn’t do if it wasn’t that Edith
always wants a fourth and would be certain to ask that detestable
Jenkinham woman if she couldn’t get me. I would much
rather sit and talk any day than play bridge; cards are such a
waste of time, I think. But as to Ronnie, bridge and
baccarat and poker-patience are positively all that he thinks
about. Of course I’ve done my best to stop it;
I’ve asked the Norridrums not to let him play cards when
he’s over there, but you might as well ask the Atlantic
Ocean to keep quiet for a crossing as expect them to bother about
a mother’s natural anxieties.”</p>
<p>“Why do you let him go there?” asked Eleanor
Saxelby.</p>
<p>“My dear,” said Mrs. Attray, “I don’t
want to offend them. After all, they are my landlords and I
have to look to them for anything I want done about the place;
they were very accommodating about the new roof for the orchid
house. And they lend me one of their cars when mine is out
of order; you know how often it gets out of order.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how often,” said Eleanor,
“but it must happen very frequently. Whenever I want
you to take me anywhere in your car I am always told that there
is something wrong with it, or else that the chauffeur has got
neuralgia and you don’t like to ask him to go
out.”</p>
<p>“He suffers quite a lot from neuralgia,” said Mrs.
Attray hastily. “Anyhow,” she continued,
“you can understand that I don’t want to offend the
Norridrums. Their household is the most rackety one in the
county, and I believe no one ever knows to an hour or two when
any particular meal will appear on the table or what it will
consist of when it does appear.”</p>
<p>Eleanor Saxelby shuddered. She liked her meals to be of
regular occurrence and assured proportions.</p>
<p>“Still,” pursued Mrs. Attray, “whatever
their own home life may be, as landlords and neighbours they are
considerate and obliging, so I don’t want to quarrel with
them. Besides, if Ronnie didn’t play cards there
he’d be playing somewhere else.”</p>
<p>“Not if you were firm with him,” said Eleanor
“I believe in being firm.”</p>
<p>“Firm? I am firm,” exclaimed Mrs. Attray;
“I am more than firm—I am farseeing. I’ve
done everything I can think of to prevent Ronnie from playing for
money. I’ve stopped his allowance for the rest of the
year, so he can’t even gamble on credit, and I’ve
subscribed a lump sum to the church offertory in his name instead
of giving him instalments of small silver to put in the bag on
Sundays. I wouldn’t even let him have the money to
tip the hunt servants with, but sent it by postal order. He
was furiously sulky about it, but I reminded him of what happened
to the ten shillings that I gave him for the Young Men’s
Endeavour League ‘Self-Denial Week.’”</p>
<p>“What did happen to it?” asked Eleanor.</p>
<p>“Well, Ronnie did some preliminary endeavouring with it,
on his own account, in connection with the Grand National.
If it had come off, as he expressed it, he would have given the
League twenty-five shillings and netted a comfortable commission
for himself; as it was, that ten shillings was one of the things
the League had to deny itself. Since then I’ve been
careful not to let him have a penny piece in his
hands.”</p>
<p>“He’ll get round that in some way,” said
Eleanor with quiet conviction; “he’ll sell
things.”</p>
<p>“My dear, he’s done all that is to be done in that
direction already. He’s got rid of his wrist-watch
and his hunting flask and both his cigarette cases, and I
shouldn’t be surprised if he’s wearing imitation-gold
sleeve links instead of those his Aunt Rhoda gave him on his
seventeenth birthday. He can’t sell his clothes, of
course, except his winter overcoat, and I’ve locked that up
in the camphor cupboard on the pretext of preserving it from
moth. I really don’t see what else he can raise money
on. I consider that I’ve been both firm and
farseeing.”</p>
<p>“Has he been at the Norridrums lately?” asked
Eleanor.</p>
<p>“He was there yesterday afternoon and stayed to
dinner,” said Mrs. Attray. “I don’t quite
know when he came home, but I fancy it was late.”</p>
<p>“Then depend on it he was gambling,” said Eleanor,
with the assured air of one who has few ideas and makes the most
of them. “Late hours in the country always mean
gambling.”</p>
<p>“He can’t gamble if he has no money and no chance
of getting any,” argued Mrs. Attray; “even if one
plays for small stakes one must have a decent prospect of paying
one’s losses.”</p>
<p>“He may have sold some of the Amherst pheasant
chicks,” suggested Eleanor; “they would fetch about
ten or twelve shillings each, I daresay.”</p>
<p>“Ronnie wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Mrs.
Attray; “and anyhow I went and counted them this morning
and they’re all there. No,” she continued, with
the quiet satisfaction that comes from a sense of painstaking and
merited achievement, “I fancy that Ronnie had to content
himself with the rôle of onlooker last night, as far as the
card-table was concerned.”</p>
<p>“Is that clock right?” asked Eleanor, whose eyes
had been straying restlessly towards the mantel-piece for some
little time; “lunch is usually so punctual in your
establishment.”</p>
<p>“Three minutes past the half-hour,” exclaimed Mrs.
Attray; “cook must be preparing something unusually
sumptuous in your honour. I am not in the secret;
I’ve been out all the morning, you know.”</p>
<p>Eleanor smiled forgivingly. A special effort by Mrs.
Attray’s cook was worth waiting a few minutes for.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, the luncheon fare, when it made its tardy
appearance, was distinctly unworthy of the reputation which the
justly-treasured cook had built up for herself. The soup
alone would have sufficed to cast a gloom over any meal that it
had inaugurated, and it was not redeemed by anything that
followed. Eleanor said little, but when she spoke there was
a hint of tears in her voice that was far more eloquent than
outspoken denunciation would have been, and even the insouciant
Ronald showed traces of depression when he tasted the rognons
Saltikoff.</p>
<p>“Not quite the best luncheon I’ve enjoyed in your
house,” said Eleanor at last, when her final hope had
flickered out with the savoury.</p>
<p>“My dear, it’s the worst meal I’ve sat down
to for years,” said her hostess; “that last dish
tasted principally of red pepper and wet toast. I’m
awfully sorry. Is anything the matter in the kitchen,
Pellin?” she asked of the attendant maid.</p>
<p>“Well, ma’am, the new cook hadn’t hardly
time to see to things properly, coming in so sudden—”
commenced Pellin by way of explanation.</p>
<p>“The new cook!” screamed Mrs. Attray.</p>
<p>“Colonel Norridrum’s cook, ma’am,”
said Pellin.</p>
<p>“What on earth do you mean? What is Colonel
Norridrum’s cook doing in my kitchen—and where is my
cook?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps I can explain better than Pellin can,”
said Ronald hurriedly; “the fact is, I was dining at the
Norridrums’ yesterday, and they were wishing they had a
swell cook like yours, just for to-day and to-morrow, while
they’ve got some gourmet staying with them: their own cook
is no earthly good—well, you’ve seen what she turns
out when she’s at all flurried. So I thought it would
be rather sporting to play them at baccarat for the loan of our
cook against a money stake, and I lost, that’s all. I
have had rotten luck at baccarat all this year.”</p>
<p>The remainder of his explanation, of how he had assured the
cooks that the temporary transfer had his mother’s
sanction, and had smuggled the one out and the other in during
the maternal absence, was drowned in the outcry of scandalised
upbraiding.</p>
<p>“If I had sold the woman into slavery there
couldn’t have been a bigger fuss about it,” he
confided afterwards to Bertie Norridrum, “and Eleanor
Saxelby raged and ramped the louder of the two. I tell you
what, I’ll bet you two of the Amherst pheasants to five
shillings that she refuses to have me as a partner at the croquet
tournament. We’re drawn together, you
know.”</p>
<p>This time he won his bet.</p>
<h2>CLOVIS ON PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES</h2>
<p>Marion Eggelby sat talking to Clovis on the only subject that
she ever willingly talked about—her offspring and their
varied perfections and accomplishments. Clovis was not in
what could be called a receptive mood; the younger generation of
Eggelby, depicted in the glowing improbable colours of parent
impressionism, aroused in him no enthusiasm. Mrs. Eggelby,
on the other hand, was furnished with enthusiasm enough for
two.</p>
<p>“You would like Eric,” she said, argumentatively
rather than hopefully. Clovis had intimated very
unmistakably that he was unlikely to care extravagantly for
either Amy or Willie. “Yes, I feel sure you would
like Eric. Every one takes to him at once. You know,
he always reminds me of that famous picture of the youthful
David—I forget who it’s by, but it’s very well
known.”</p>
<p>“That would be sufficient to set me against him, if I
saw much of him,” said Clovis. “Just imagine at
auction bridge, for instance, when one was trying to concentrate
one’s mind on what one’s partner’s original
declaration had been, and to remember what suits one’s
opponents had originally discarded, what it would be like to have
some one persistently reminding one of a picture of the youthful
David. It would be simply maddening. If Eric did that
I should detest him.”</p>
<p>“Eric doesn’t play bridge,” said Mrs.
Eggelby with dignity.</p>
<p>“Doesn’t he?” asked Clovis; “why
not?”</p>
<p>“None of my children have been brought up to play card
games,” said Mrs. Eggelby; “draughts and halma and
those sorts of games I encourage. Eric is considered quite
a wonderful draughts-player.”</p>
<p>“You are strewing dreadful risks in the path of your
family,” said Clovis; “a friend of mine who is a
prison chaplain told me that among the worst criminal cases that
have come under his notice, men condemned to death or to long
periods of penal servitude, there was not a single
bridge-player. On the other hand, he knew at least two
expert draughts-players among them.”</p>
<p>“I really don’t see what my boys have got to do
with the criminal classes,” said Mrs. Eggelby
resentfully. “They have been most carefully brought
up, I can assure you that.”</p>
<p>“That shows that you were nervous as to how they would
turn out,” said Clovis. “Now, my mother never
bothered about bringing me up. She just saw to it that I
got whacked at decent intervals and was taught the difference
between right and wrong; there is some difference, you know, but
I’ve forgotten what it is.”</p>
<p>“Forgotten the difference between right and
wrong!” exclaimed Mrs. Eggelby.</p>
<p>“Well, you see, I took up natural history and a whole
lot of other subjects at the same time, and one can’t
remember everything, can one? I used to know the difference
between the Sardinian dormouse and the ordinary kind, and whether
the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier than the cuckoo, or
the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in growing to
maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once, but
I bet you’ve forgotten them.”</p>
<p>“Those things are not important,” said Mrs.
Eggelby, “but—”</p>
<p>“The fact that we’ve both forgotten them proves
that they are important,” said Clovis; “you must have
noticed that it’s always the important things that one
forgets, while the trivial, unnecessary facts of life stick in
one’s memory. There’s my cousin, Editha
Clubberley, for instance; I can never forget that her birthday is
on the 12th of October. It’s a matter of utter
indifference to me on what date her birthday falls, or whether
she was born at all; either fact seems to me absolutely trivial,
or unnecessary—I’ve heaps of other cousins to go on
with. On the other hand, when I’m staying with
Hildegarde Shrubley I can never remember the important
circumstance whether her first husband got his unenviable
reputation on the Turf or the Stock Exchange, and that
uncertainty rules Sport and Finance out of the conversation at
once. One can never mention travel, either, because her
second husband had to live permanently abroad.”</p>
<p>“Mrs. Shrubley and I move in very different
circles,” said Mrs. Eggelby stiffly.</p>
<p>“No one who knows Hildegarde could possibly accuse her
of moving in a circle,” said Clovis; “her view of
life seems to be a non-stop run with an inexhaustible supply of
petrol. If she can get some one else to pay for the petrol
so much the better. I don’t mind confessing to you
that she has taught me more than any other woman I can think
of.”</p>
<p>“What kind of knowledge?” demanded Mrs. Eggelby,
with the air a jury might collectively wear when finding a
verdict without leaving the box.</p>
<p>“Well, among other things, she’s introduced me to
at least four different ways of cooking lobster,” said
Clovis gratefully. “That, of course, wouldn’t
appeal to you; people who abstain from the pleasures of the
card-table never really appreciate the finer possibilities of the
dining-table. I suppose their powers of enlightened
enjoyment get atrophied from disuse.”</p>
<p>“An aunt of mine was very ill after eating a
lobster,” said Mrs. Eggelby.</p>
<p>“I daresay, if we knew more of her history, we should
find out that she’d often been ill before eating the
lobster. Aren’t you concealing the fact that
she’d had measles and influenza and nervous headache and
hysteria, and other things that aunts do have, long before she
ate the lobster? Aunts that have never known a day’s
illness are very rare; in fact, I don’t personally know of
any. Of course if she ate it as a child of two weeks old it
might have been her first illness—and her last. But
if that was the case I think you should have said so.”</p>
<p>“I must be going,” said Mrs. Eggelby, in a tone
which had been thoroughly sterilised of even perfunctory
regret.</p>
<p>Clovis rose with an air of graceful reluctance.</p>
<p>“I have so enjoyed our little talk about Eric,” he
said; “I quite look forward to meeting him some
day.”</p>
<p>“Good-bye,” said Mrs. Eggelby frostily; the
supplementary remark which she made at the back of her throat
was—</p>
<p>“I’ll take care that you never shall!”</p>
<h2>A HOLIDAY TASK</h2>
<p>Kenelm Jerton entered the dining-hall of the Golden Galleon
Hotel in the full crush of the luncheon hour. Nearly every
seat was occupied, and small additional tables had been brought
in, where floor space permitted, to accommodate latecomers, with
the result that many of the tables were almost touching each
other. Jerton was beckoned by a waiter to the only vacant
table that was discernible, and took his seat with the
uncomfortable and wholly groundless idea that nearly every one in
the room was staring at him. He was a youngish man of
ordinary appearance, quiet of dress and unobtrusive of manner,
and he could never wholly rid himself of the idea that a fierce
light of public scrutiny beat on him as though he had been a
notability or a super-nut. After he had ordered his lunch
there came the unavoidable interval of waiting, with nothing to
do but to stare at the flower-vase on his table and to be stared
at (in imagination) by several flappers, some maturer beings of
the same sex, and a satirical-looking Jew. In order to
carry off the situation with some appearance of unconcern he
became spuriously interested in the contents of the
flower-vase.</p>
<p>“What is the name of these roses, d’you
know?” he asked the waiter. The waiter was ready at
all times to conceal his ignorance concerning items of the
wine-list or menu; he was frankly ignorant as to the specific
name of the roses.</p>
<p>“<i>Amy Sylvester Partington</i>,” said a voice at
Jerton’s elbow.</p>
<p>The voice came from a pleasant-faced, well-dressed young woman
who was sitting at a table that almost touched
Jerton’s. He thanked her hurriedly and nervously for
the information, and made some inconsequent remark about the
flowers.</p>
<p>“It is a curious thing,” said the young woman,
that, “I should be able to tell you the name of those roses
without an effort of memory, because if you were to ask me my
name I should be utterly unable to give it to you.”</p>
<p>Jerton had not harboured the least intention of extending his
thirst for name-labels to his neighbour. After her rather
remarkable announcement, however, he was obliged to say something
in the way of polite inquiry.</p>
<p>“Yes,” answered the lady, “I suppose it is a
case of partial loss of memory. I was in the train coming
down here; my ticket told me that I had come from Victoria and
was bound for this place. I had a couple of five-pound
notes and a sovereign on me, no visiting cards or any other means
of identification, and no idea as to who I am. I can only
hazily recollect that I have a title; I am Lady
Somebody—beyond that my mind is a blank.”</p>
<p>“Hadn’t you any luggage with you?” asked
Jerton.</p>
<p>“That is what I didn’t know. I knew the name
of this hotel and made up my mind to come here, and when the
hotel porter who meets the trains asked if I had any luggage I
had to invent a dressing-bag and dress-basket; I could always
pretend that they had gone astray. I gave him the name of
Smith, and presently he emerged from a confused pile of luggage
and passengers with a dressing-bag and dress-basket labelled
Kestrel-Smith. I had to take them; I don’t see what
else I could have done.”</p>
<p>Jerton said nothing, but he rather wondered what the lawful
owner of the baggage would do.</p>
<p>“Of course it was dreadful arriving at a strange hotel
with the name of Kestrel-Smith, but it would have been worse to
have arrived without luggage. Anyhow, I hate causing
trouble.”</p>
<p>Jerton had visions of harassed railway officials and
distraught Kestrel-Smiths, but he made no attempt to clothe his
mental picture in words. The lady continued her story.</p>
<p>“Naturally, none of my keys would fit the things, but I
told an intelligent page boy that I had lost my key-ring, and he
had the locks forced in a twinkling. Rather too
intelligent, that boy; he will probably end in Dartmoor.
The Kestrel-Smith toilet tools aren’t up to much, but they
are better than nothing.”</p>
<p>“If you feel sure that you have a title,” said
Jerton, “why not get hold of a peerage and go right through
it?”</p>
<p>“I tried that. I skimmed through the list of the
House of Lords in ‘Whitaker,’ but a mere printed
string of names conveys awfully little to one, you know. If
you were an army officer and had lost your identity you might
pore over the Army List for months without finding out who your
were. I’m going on another tack; I’m trying to
find out by various little tests who I am <i>not</i>—that
will narrow the range of uncertainty down a bit. You may
have noticed, for instance, that I’m lunching principally
off lobster Newburg.”</p>
<p>Jerton had not ventured to notice anything of the sort.</p>
<p>“It’s an extravagance, because it’s one of
the most expensive dishes on the menu, but at any rate it proves
that I’m not Lady Starping; she never touches shell-fish,
and poor Lady Braddleshrub has no digestion at all; if I am
<i>her</i> I shall certainly die in agony in the course of the
afternoon, and the duty of finding out who I am will devolve on
the press and the police and those sort of people; I shall be
past caring. Lady Knewford doesn’t know one rose from
another and she hates men, so she wouldn’t have spoken to
you in any case; and Lady Mousehilton flirts with every man she
meets—I haven’t flirted with you, have I?”</p>
<p>Jerton hastily gave the required assurance.</p>
<p>“Well, you see,” continued the lady, “that
knocks four off the list at once.”</p>
<p>“It’ll be rather a lengthy process bringing the
list down to one,” said Jerton.</p>
<p>“Oh, but, of course, there are heaps of them that I
couldn’t possibly be—women who’ve got
grandchildren or sons old enough to have celebrated their coming
of age. I’ve only got to consider the ones about my
own age. I tell you how you might help me this afternoon,
if you don’t mind; go through any of the back numbers of
<i>Country Life</i> and those sort of papers that you can find in
the smoking-room, and see if you come across my portrait with
infant son or anything of that sort. It won’t take
you ten minutes. I’ll meet you in the lounge about
tea-time. Thanks awfully.”</p>
<p>And the Fair Unknown, having graciously pressed Jerton into
the search for her lost identity, rose and left the room.
As she passed the young man’s table she halted for a moment
and whispered:</p>
<p>“Did you notice that I tipped the waiter a
shilling? We can cross Lady Ulwight off the list; she would
have died rather than do that.”</p>
<p>At five o’clock Jerton made his way to the hotel lounge;
he had spent a diligent but fruitless quarter of an hour among
the illustrated weeklies in the smoking-room. His new
acquaintance was seated at a small tea-table, with a waiter
hovering in attendance.</p>
<p>“China tea or Indian?” she asked as Jerton came
up.</p>
<p>“China, please, and nothing to eat. Have you
discovered anything?”</p>
<p>“Only negative information. I’m not Lady
Befnal. She disapproves dreadfully of any form of gambling,
so when I recognised a well-known book maker in the hotel lobby I
went and put a tenner on an unnamed filly by William the Third
out of Mitrovitza for the three-fifteen race. I suppose the
fact of the animal being nameless was what attracted
me.”</p>
<p>“Did it win?” asked Jerton.</p>
<p>“No, came in fourth, the most irritating thing a horse
can do when you’ve backed it win or place. Anyhow, I
know now that I’m not Lady Befnal.”</p>
<p>“It seems to me that the knowledge was rather dearly
bought,” commented Jerton.</p>
<p>“Well, yes, it has rather cleared me out,”
admitted the identity-seeker; “a florin is about all
I’ve got left on me. The lobster Newburg made my
lunch rather an expensive one, and, of course, I had to tip that
boy for what he did to the Kestrel-Smith locks. I’ve
got rather a useful idea, though. I feel certain that I
belong to the Pivot Club; I’ll go back to town and ask the
hall porter there if there are any letters for me. He knows
all the members by sight, and if there are any letters or
telephone messages waiting for me of course that will solve the
problem. If he says there aren’t any I shall say:
‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ so I’ll
find out anyway.”</p>
<p>The plan seemed a sound one; a difficulty in its execution
suggested itself to Jerton.</p>
<p>“Of course,” said the lady, when he hinted at the
obstacle, “there’s my fare back to town, and my bill
here and cabs and things. If you’ll lend me three
pounds that ought to see me through comfortably. Thanks
ever so. Then there is the question of that luggage: I
don’t want to be saddled with that for the rest of my
life. I’ll have it brought down to the hall and you
can pretend to mount guard over it while I’m writing a
letter. Then I shall just slip away to the station, and you
can wander off to the smoking-room, and they can do what they
like with the things. They’ll advertise them after a
bit and the owner can claim them.”</p>
<p>Jerton acquiesced in the manœuvre, and duly mounted
guard over the luggage while its temporary owner slipped
unobtrusively out of the hotel. Her departure was not,
however, altogether unnoticed. Two gentlemen were strolling
past Jerton, and one of them remarked to the other:</p>
<p>“Did you see that tall young woman in grey who went out
just now? She is the Lady—”</p>
<p>His promenade carried him out of earshot at the critical
moment when he was about to disclose the elusive identity.
The Lady Who? Jerton could scarcely run after a total
stranger, break into his conversation, and ask him for
information concerning a chance passer-by. Besides, it was
desirable that he should keep up the appearance of looking after
the luggage. In a minute or two, however, the important
personage, the man who knew, came strolling back alone.
Jerton summoned up all his courage and waylaid him.</p>
<p>“I think I heard you say you knew the lady who went out
of the hotel a few minutes ago, a tall lady, dressed in
grey. Excuse me for asking if you could tell me her name;
I’ve been talking to her for half an hour;
she—er—she knows all my people and seems to know me,
so I suppose I’ve met her somewhere before, but I’m
blest if I can put a name to her. Could
you—?”</p>
<p>“Certainly. She’s a Mrs. Stroope.”</p>
<p>“<i>Mrs.</i>?” queried Jerton.</p>
<p>“Yes, she’s the Lady Champion at golf in my part
of the world. An awful good sort, and goes about a good
deal in Society, but she has an awkward habit of losing her
memory every now and then, and gets into all sorts of
fixes. She’s furious, too, if you make any allusion
to it afterwards. Good day, sir.”</p>
<p>The stranger passed on his way, and before Jerton had had time
to assimilate his information he found his whole attention
centred on an angry-looking lady who was making loud and
fretful-seeming inquiries of the hotel clerks.</p>
<p>“Has any luggage been brought here from the station by
mistake, a dress-basket and dressing-case, with the name
Kestrel-Smith? It can’t be traced anywhere. I
saw it put in at Victoria, that I’ll swear.
Why—there is my luggage! and the locks have been tampered
with!”</p>
<p>Jerton heard no more. He fled down to the Turkish bath,
and stayed there for hours.</p>
<h2>THE STALLED OX</h2>
<p>Theophil Eshley was an artist by profession, a cattle painter
by force of environment. It is not to be supposed that he
lived on a ranche or a dairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with
horn and hoof, milking-stool, and branding-iron. His home
was in a park-like, villa-dotted district that only just escaped
the reproach of being suburban. On one side of his garden
there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which an
enterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of
the Channel Island persuasion. At noonday in summertime the
cows stood knee-deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a
group of walnut trees, with the sunlight falling in dappled
patches on their mouse-sleek coats. Eshley had conceived
and executed a dainty picture of two reposeful milch-cows in a
setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and filtered sunbeam, and
the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on the walls of its
Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly,
methodical habits in its children. Eshley had painted a
successful and acceptable picture of cattle drowsing
picturesquely under walnut trees, and as he had begun, so, of
necessity, he went on. His “Noontide Peace,” a
study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by
“A Mid-day Sanctuary,” a study of a walnut tree, with
two dun cows under it. In due succession there came
“Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling,”
“The Haven of the Herd,” and “A-dream in
Dairyland,” studies of walnut trees and dun cows. His
two attempts to break away from his own tradition were signal
failures: “Turtle Doves alarmed by Sparrow-hawk” and
“Wolves on the Roman Campagna” came back to his
studio in the guise of abominable heresies, and Eshley climbed
back into grace and the public gaze with “A Shaded Nook
where Drowsy Milkers Dream.”</p>
<p>On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some
finishing touches to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour,
Adela Pingsford, assailed the outer door of his studio with loud
peremptory knockings.</p>
<p>“There is an ox in my garden,” she announced, in
explanation of the tempestuous intrusion.</p>
<p>“An ox,” said Eshley blankly, and rather
fatuously; “what kind of ox?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t know what kind,” snapped the
lady. “A common or garden ox, to use the slang
expression. It is the garden part of it that I object
to. My garden has just been put straight for the winter,
and an ox roaming about in it won’t improve matters.
Besides, there are the chrysanthemums just coming into
flower.”</p>
<p>“How did it get into the garden?” asked
Eshley.</p>
<p>“I imagine it came in by the gate,” said the lady
impatiently; “it couldn’t have climbed the walls, and
I don’t suppose anyone dropped it from an aeroplane as a
Bovril advertisement. The immediately important question is
not how it got in, but how to get it out.”</p>
<p>“Won’t it go?” said Eshley.</p>
<p>“If it was anxious to go,” said Adela Pingsford
rather angrily, “I should not have come here to chat with
you about it. I’m practically all alone; the
housemaid is having her afternoon out and the cook is lying down
with an attack of neuralgia. Anything that I may have
learned at school or in after life about how to remove a large ox
from a small garden seems to have escaped from my memory
now. All I could think of was that you were a near
neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiar
with the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some
slight assistance. Possibly I was mistaken.”</p>
<p>“I paint dairy cows, certainly,” admitted Eshley,
“but I cannot claim to have had any experience in
rounding-up stray oxen. I’ve seen it done on a cinema
film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of other
accessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures
are faked.”</p>
<p>Adela Pingsford said nothing, but led the way to her
garden. It was normally a fair-sized garden, but it looked
small in comparison with the ox, a huge mottled brute, dull red
about the head and shoulders, passing to dirty white on the
flanks and hind-quarters, with shaggy ears and large blood-shot
eyes. It bore about as much resemblance to the dainty
paddock heifers that Eshley was accustomed to paint as the chief
of a Kurdish nomad clan would to a Japanese tea-shop girl.
Eshley stood very near the gate while he studied the
animal’s appearance and demeanour. Adela Pingsford
continued to say nothing.</p>
<p>“It’s eating a chrysanthemum,” said Eshley
at last, when the silence had become unbearable.</p>
<p>“How observant you are,” said Adela
bitterly. “You seem to notice everything. As a
matter of fact, it has got six chrysanthemums in its mouth at the
present moment.”</p>
<p>The necessity for doing something was becoming
imperative. Eshley took a step or two in the direction of
the animal, clapped his hands, and made noises of the
“Hish” and “Shoo” variety. If the
ox heard them it gave no outward indication of the fact.</p>
<p>“If any hens should ever stray into my garden,”
said Adela, “I should certainly send for you to frighten
them out. You ‘shoo’ beautifully.
Meanwhile, do you mind trying to drive that ox away? That
is a <i>Mademoiselle Louise Bichot</i> that he’s begun on
now,” she added in icy calm, as a glowing orange head was
crushed into the huge munching mouth.</p>
<p>“Since you have been so frank about the variety of the
chrysanthemum,” said Eshley, “I don’t mind
telling you that this is an Ayrshire ox.”</p>
<p>The icy calm broke down; Adela Pingsford used language that
sent the artist instinctively a few feet nearer to the ox.
He picked up a pea-stick and flung it with some determination
against the animal’s mottled flanks. The operation of
mashing <i>Mademoiselle Louise Bichot</i> into a petal salad was
suspended for a long moment, while the ox gazed with concentrated
inquiry at the stick-thrower. Adela gazed with equal
concentration and more obvious hostility at the same focus.
As the beast neither lowered its head nor stamped its feet Eshley
ventured on another javelin exercise with another
pea-stick. The ox seemed to realise at once that it was to
go; it gave a hurried final pluck at the bed where the
chrysanthemums had been, and strode swiftly up the garden.
Eshley ran to head it towards the gate, but only succeeded in
quickening its pace from a walk to a lumbering trot. With
an air of inquiry, but with no real hesitation, it crossed the
tiny strip of turf that the charitable called the croquet lawn,
and pushed its way through the open French window into the
morning-room. Some chrysanthemums and other autumn herbage
stood about the room in vases, and the animal resumed its
browsing operations; all the same, Eshley fancied that the
beginnings of a hunted look had come into its eyes, a look that
counselled respect. He discontinued his attempt to
interfere with its choice of surroundings.</p>
<p>“Mr. Eshley,” said Adela in a shaking voice,
“I asked you to drive that beast out of my garden, but I
did not ask you to drive it into my house. If I must have
it anywhere on the premises I prefer the garden to the
morning-room.”</p>
<p>“Cattle drives are not in my line,” said Eshley;
“if I remember I told you so at the outset.”
“I quite agree,” retorted the lady, “painting
pretty pictures of pretty little cows is what you’re suited
for. Perhaps you’d like to do a nice sketch of that
ox making itself at home in my morning-room?”</p>
<p>This time it seemed as if the worm had turned; Eshley began
striding away.</p>
<p>“Where are you going?” screamed Adela.</p>
<p>“To fetch implements,” was the answer.</p>
<p>“Implements? I won’t have you use a
lasso. The room will be wrecked if there’s a
struggle.”</p>
<p>But the artist marched out of the garden. In a couple of
minutes he returned, laden with easel, sketching-stool, and
painting materials.</p>
<p>“Do you mean to say that you’re going to sit
quietly down and paint that brute while it’s destroying my
morning-room?” gasped Adela.</p>
<p>“It was your suggestion,” said Eshley, setting his
canvas in position.</p>
<p>“I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it!” stormed
Adela.</p>
<p>“I don’t see what standing you have in the
matter,” said the artist; “you can hardly pretend
that it’s your ox, even by adoption.”</p>
<p>“You seem to forget that it’s in my morning-room,
eating my flowers,” came the raging retort.</p>
<p>“You seem to forget that the cook has neuralgia,”
said Eshley; “she may be just dozing off into a merciful
sleep and your outcry will waken her. Consideration for
others should be the guiding principle of people in our station
of life.”</p>
<p>“The man is mad!” exclaimed Adela
tragically. A moment later it was Adela herself who
appeared to go mad. The ox had finished the vase-flowers
and the cover of “Israel Kalisch,” and appeared to be
thinking of leaving its rather restricted quarters. Eshley
noticed its restlessness and promptly flung it some bunches of
Virginia creeper leaves as an inducement to continue the
sitting.</p>
<p>“I forget how the proverb runs,” he observed;
“of something about ‘better a dinner of herbs than a
stalled ox where hate is.’ We seem to have all the
ingredients for the proverb ready to hand.”</p>
<p>“I shall go to the Public Library and get them to
telephone for the police,” announced Adela, and, raging
audibly, she departed.</p>
<p>Some minutes later the ox, awakening probably to the suspicion
that oil cake and chopped mangold was waiting for it in some
appointed byre, stepped with much precaution out of the
morning-room, stared with grave inquiry at the no longer
obtrusive and pea-stick-throwing human, and then lumbered heavily
but swiftly out of the garden. Eshley packed up his tools
and followed the animal’s example and
“Larkdene” was left to neuralgia and the cook.</p>
<p>The episode was the turning-point in Eshley’s artistic
career. His remarkable picture, “Ox in a
morning-room, late autumn,” was one of the sensations and
successes of the next Paris Salon, and when it was subsequently
exhibited at Munich it was bought by the Bavarian Government, in
the teeth of the spirited bidding of three meat-extract
firms. From that moment his success was continuous and
assured, and the Royal Academy was thankful, two years later, to
give a conspicuous position on its walls to his large canvas
“Barbary Apes Wrecking a Boudoir.”</p>
<p>Eshley presented Adela Pingsford with a new copy of
“Israel Kalisch,” and a couple of finely flowering
plants of <i>Madame Adnré Blusset</i>, but nothing in the
nature of a real reconciliation has taken place between them.</p>
<h2>THE STORY-TELLER</h2>
<p>It was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was
correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe,
nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a
small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt
belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the
further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a
bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls
and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment.
Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited,
persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a housefly
that refuses to be discouraged. Most of the aunt’s
remarks seemed to begin with “Don’t,” and
nearly all of the children’s remarks began with
“Why?” The bachelor said nothing out
loud. “Don’t, Cyril, don’t,”
exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions
of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.</p>
<p>“Come and look out of the window,” she added.</p>
<p>The child moved reluctantly to the window. “Why
are those sheep being driven out of that field?” he
asked.</p>
<p>“I expect they are being driven to another field where
there is more grass,” said the aunt weakly.</p>
<p>“But there is lots of grass in that field,”
protested the boy; “there’s nothing else but grass
there. Aunt, there’s lots of grass in that
field.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,”
suggested the aunt fatuously.</p>
<p>“Why is it better?” came the swift, inevitable
question.</p>
<p>“Oh, look at those cows!” exclaimed the
aunt. Nearly every field along the line had contained cows
or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention
to a rarity.</p>
<p>“Why is the grass in the other field better?”
persisted Cyril.</p>
<p>The frown on the bachelor’s face was deepening to a
scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided
in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any
satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.</p>
<p>The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite
“On the Road to Mandalay.” She only knew the
first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest
possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in
a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the
bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could
not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without
stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely
to lose his bet.</p>
<p>“Come over here and listen to a story,” said the
aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the
communication cord.</p>
<p>The children moved listlessly towards the aunt’s end of
the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story-teller
did not rank high in their estimation.</p>
<p>In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent
intervals by loud, petulant questionings from her listeners, she
began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about
a little girl who was good, and made friends with every one on
account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by
a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t they have saved her if she hadn’t
been good?” demanded the bigger of the small girls.
It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to
ask.</p>
<p>“Well, yes,” admitted the aunt lamely, “but
I don’t think they would have run quite so fast to her help
if they had not liked her so much.”</p>
<p>“It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever
heard,” said the bigger of the small girls, with immense
conviction.</p>
<p>“I didn’t listen after the first bit, it was so
stupid,” said Cyril.</p>
<p>The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she
had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite
line.</p>
<p>“You don’t seem to be a success as a
story-teller,” said the bachelor suddenly from his
corner.</p>
<p>The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected
attack.</p>
<p>“It’s a very difficult thing to tell stories that
children can both understand and appreciate,” she said
stiffly.</p>
<p>“I don’t agree with you,” said the
bachelor.</p>
<p>“Perhaps you would like to tell them a story,” was
the aunt’s retort.</p>
<p>“Tell us a story,” demanded the bigger of the
small girls.</p>
<p>“Once upon a time,” began the bachelor,
“there was a little girl called Bertha, who was
extraordinarily good.”</p>
<p>The children’s momentarily-aroused interest began at
once to flicker; all stories seemed dreadfully alike, no matter
who told them.</p>
<p>“She did all that she was told, she was always truthful,
she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were
jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her
manners.”</p>
<p>“Was she pretty?” asked the bigger of the small
girls.</p>
<p>“Not as pretty as any of you,” said the bachelor,
“but she was horribly good.”</p>
<p>There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story; the word
horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended
itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was
absent from the aunt’s tales of infant life.</p>
<p>“She was so good,” continued the bachelor,
“that she won several medals for goodness, which she always
wore, pinned on to her dress. There was a medal for
obedience, another medal for punctuality, and a third for good
behaviour. They were large metal medals and they clicked
against one another as she walked. No other child in the
town where she lived had as many as three medals, so everybody
knew that she must be an extra good child.”</p>
<p>“Horribly good,” quoted Cyril.</p>
<p>“Everybody talked about her goodness, and the Prince of
the country got to hear about it, and he said that as she was so
very good she might be allowed once a week to walk in his park,
which was just outside the town. It was a beautiful park,
and no children were ever allowed in it, so it was a great honour
for Bertha to be allowed to go there.”</p>
<p>“Were there any sheep in the park?” demanded
Cyril.</p>
<p>“No;” said the bachelor, “there were no
sheep.”</p>
<p>“Why weren’t there any sheep?” came the
inevitable question arising out of that answer.</p>
<p>The aunt permitted herself a smile, which might almost have
been described as a grin.</p>
<p>“There were no sheep in the park,” said the
bachelor, “because the Prince’s mother had once had a
dream that her son would either be killed by a sheep or else by a
clock falling on him. For that reason the Prince never kept
a sheep in his park or a clock in his palace.”</p>
<p>The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.</p>
<p>“Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock?”
asked Cyril.</p>
<p>“He is still alive, so we can’t tell whether the
dream will come true,” said the bachelor unconcernedly;
“anyway, there were no sheep in the park, but there were
lots of little pigs running all over the place.”</p>
<p>“What colour were they?”</p>
<p>“Black with white faces, white with black spots, black
all over, grey with white patches, and some were white all
over.”</p>
<p>The story-teller paused to let a full idea of the park’s
treasures sink into the children’s imaginations; then he
resumed:</p>
<p>“Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no
flowers in the park. She had promised her aunts, with tears
in her eyes, that she would not pick any of the kind
Prince’s flowers, and she had meant to keep her promise, so
of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no
flowers to pick.”</p>
<p>“Why weren’t there any flowers?”</p>
<p>“Because the pigs had eaten them all,” said the
bachelor promptly. “The gardeners had told the Prince
that you couldn’t have pigs and flowers, so he decided to
have pigs and no flowers.”</p>
<p>There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the
Prince’s decision; so many people would have decided the
other way.</p>
<p>“There were lots of other delightful things in the
park. There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in
them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at
a moment’s notice, and humming birds that hummed all the
popular tunes of the day. Bertha walked up and down and
enjoyed herself immensely, and thought to herself: ‘If I
were not so extraordinarily good I should not have been allowed
to come into this beautiful park and enjoy all that there is to
be seen in it,’ and her three medals clinked against one
another as she walked and helped to remind her how very good she
really was. Just then an enormous wolf came prowling into
the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its
supper.”</p>
<p>“What colour was it?” asked the children, amid an
immediate quickening of interest.</p>
<p>“Mud-colour all over, with a black tongue and pale grey
eyes that gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. The first
thing that it saw in the park was Bertha; her pinafore was so
spotlessly white and clean that it could be seen from a great
distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was stealing
towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been
allowed to come into the park. She ran as hard as she
could, and the wolf came after her with huge leaps and
bounds. She managed to reach a shrubbery of myrtle bushes
and she hid herself in one of the thickest of the bushes.
The wolf came sniffing among the branches, its black tongue
lolling out of its mouth and its pale grey eyes glaring with
rage. Bertha was terribly frightened, and thought to
herself: ‘If I had not been so extraordinarily good I
should have been safe in the town at this moment.’
However, the scent of the myrtle was so strong that the wolf
could not sniff out where Bertha was hiding, and the bushes were
so thick that he might have hunted about in them for a long time
without catching sight of her, so he thought he might as well go
off and catch a little pig instead. Bertha was trembling
very much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so near her,
and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked against the
medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just
moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and
stopped to listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near
him. He dashed into the bush, his pale grey eyes gleaming
with ferocity and triumph, and dragged Bertha out and devoured
her to the last morsel. All that was left of her were her
shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for
goodness.”</p>
<p>“Were any of the little pigs killed?”</p>
<p>“No, they all escaped.”</p>
<p>“The story began badly,” said the smaller of the
small girls, “but it had a beautiful ending.”</p>
<p>“It is the most beautiful story that I ever
heard,” said the bigger of the small girls, with immense
decision.</p>
<p>“It is the <i>only</i> beautiful story I have ever
heard,” said Cyril.</p>
<p>A dissentient opinion came from the aunt.</p>
<p>“A most improper story to tell to young children!
You have undermined the effect of years of careful
teaching.”</p>
<p>“At any rate,” said the bachelor, collecting his
belongings preparatory to leaving the carriage, “I kept
them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to
do.”</p>
<p>“Unhappy woman!” he observed to himself as he
walked down the platform of Templecombe station; “for the
next six months or so those children will assail her in public
with demands for an improper story!”</p>
<h2>A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND</h2>
<p>Treddleford sat in an easeful arm-chair in front of a
slumberous fire, with a volume of verse in his hand and the
comfortable consciousness that outside the club windows the rain
was dripping and pattering with persistent purpose. A
chill, wet October afternoon was merging into a bleak, wet
October evening, and the club smoking-room seemed warmer and
cosier by contrast. It was an afternoon on which to be
wafted away from one’s climatic surroundings, and
“The Golden Journey to Samarkand” promised to bear
Treddleford well and bravely into other lands and under other
skies. He had already migrated from London the rain-swept
to Bagdad the Beautiful, and stood by the Sun Gate “in the
olden time” when an icy breath of imminent annoyance seemed
to creep between the book and himself. Amblecope, the man
with the restless, prominent eyes and the mouth ready mobilised
for conversational openings, had planted himself in a
neighbouring arm-chair. For a twelvemonth and some odd
weeks Treddleford had skilfully avoided making the acquaintance
of his voluble fellow-clubman; he had marvellously escaped from
the infliction of his relentless record of tedious personal
achievements, or alleged achievements, on golf links, turf, and
gaming table, by flood and field and covert-side. Now his
season of immunity was coming to an end. There was no
escape; in another moment he would be numbered among those who
knew Amblecope to speak to—or rather, to suffer being
spoken to.</p>
<p>The intruder was armed with a copy of <i>Country Life</i>, not
for purposes of reading, but as an aid to conversational
ice-breaking.</p>
<p>“Rather a good portrait of Throstlewing,” he
remarked explosively, turning his large challenging eyes on
Treddleford; “somehow it reminds me very much of
Yellowstep, who was supposed to be such a good thing for the
Grand Prix in 1903. Curious race that was; I suppose
I’ve seen every race for the Grand Prix for the
last—”</p>
<p>“Be kind enough never to mention the Grand Prix in my
hearing,” said Treddleford desperately; “it awakens
acutely distressing memories. I can’t explain why
without going into a long and complicated story.”</p>
<p>“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Amblecope
hastily; long and complicated stories that were not told by
himself were abominable in his eyes. He turned the pages of
<i>Country Life</i> and became spuriously interested in the
picture of a Mongolian pheasant.</p>
<p>“Not a bad representation of the Mongolian
variety,” he exclaimed, holding it up for his
neighbour’s inspection. “They do very well in
some covers. Take some stopping too, once they’re
fairly on the wing. I suppose the biggest bag I ever made
in two successive days—”</p>
<p>“My aunt, who owns the greater part of
Lincolnshire,” broke in Treddleford, with dramatic
abruptness, “possesses perhaps the most remarkable record
in the way of a pheasant bag that has ever been achieved.
She is seventy-five and can’t hit a thing, but she always
goes out with the guns. When I say she can’t hit a
thing, I don’t mean to say that she doesn’t
occasionally endanger the lives of her fellow-guns, because that
wouldn’t be true. In fact, the chief Government Whip
won’t allow Ministerial M.P.’s to go out with her;
‘We don’t want to incur by-elections
needlessly,’ he quite reasonably observed. Well, the
other day she winged a pheasant, and brought it to earth with a
feather or two knocked out of it; it was a runner, and my aunt
saw herself in danger of being done out of about the only bird
she’d hit during the present reign. Of course she
wasn’t going to stand that; she followed it through bracken
and brushwood, and when it took to the open country and started
across a ploughed field she jumped on to the shooting pony and
went after it. The chase was a long one, and when my aunt
at last ran the bird to a standstill she was nearer home than she
was to the shooting party; she had left that some five miles
behind her.”</p>
<p>“Rather a long run for a wounded pheasant,”
snapped Amblecope.</p>
<p>“The story rests on my aunt’s authority,”
said Treddleford coldly, “and she is local vice-president
of the Young Women’s Christian Association. She
trotted three miles or so to her home, and it was not till the
middle of the afternoon that it was discovered that the lunch for
the entire shooting party was in a pannier attached to the
pony’s saddle. Anyway, she got her bird.”</p>
<p>“Some birds, of course, take a lot of killing,”
said Amblecope; “so do some fish. I remember once I
was fishing in the Exe, lovely trout stream, lots of fish, though
they don’t run to any great size—”</p>
<p>“One of them did,” announced Treddleford, with
emphasis. “My uncle, the Bishop of Southmolton, came
across a giant trout in a pool just off the main stream of the
Exe near Ugworthy; he tried it with every kind of fly and worm
every day for three weeks without an atom of success, and then
Fate intervened on his behalf. There was a low stone bridge
just over this pool, and on the last day of his fishing holiday a
motor van ran violently into the parapet and turned completely
over; no one was hurt, but part of the parapet was knocked away,
and the entire load that the van was carrying was pitched over
and fell a little way into the pool. In a couple of minutes
the giant trout was flapping and twisting on bare mud at the
bottom of a waterless pool, and my uncle was able to walk down to
him and fold him to his breast. The van-load consisted of
blotting-paper, and every drop of water in that pool had been
sucked up into the mass of spilt cargo.”</p>
<p>There was silence for nearly half a minute in the
smoking-room, and Treddleford began to let his mind steal back
towards the golden road that led to Samarkand. Amblecope,
however, rallied, and remarked in a rather tired and dispirited
voice:</p>
<p>“Talking of motor accidents, the narrowest squeak I ever
had was the other day, motoring with old Tommy Yarby in North
Wales. Awfully good sort, old Yarby, thorough good
sportsman, and the best—”</p>
<p>“It was in North Wales,” said Treddleford,
“that my sister met with her sensational carriage accident
last year. She was on her way to a garden-party at Lady
Nineveh’s, about the only garden-party that ever comes to
pass in those parts in the course of the year, and therefore a
thing that she would have been very sorry to miss. She was
driving a young horse that she’d only bought a week or two
previously, warranted to be perfectly steady with motor traffic,
bicycles, and other common objects of the roadside. The
animal lived up to its reputation, and passed the most explosive
of motor-bikes with an indifference that almost amounted to
apathy. However, I suppose we all draw the line somewhere,
and this particular cob drew it at travelling wild beast
shows. Of course my sister didn’t know that, but she
knew it very distinctly when she turned a sharp corner and found
herself in a mixed company of camels, piebald horses, and
canary-coloured vans. The dogcart was overturned in a ditch
and kicked to splinters, and the cob went home across
country. Neither my sister nor the groom was hurt, but the
problem of how to get to the Nineveh garden-party, some three
miles distant, seemed rather difficult to solve; once there, of
course, my sister would easily find some one to drive her
home. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t care for the loan
of a couple of my camels?’ the showman suggested, in
humorous sympathy. ‘I would,’ said my sister,
who had ridden camel-back in Egypt, and she overruled the
objections of the groom, who hadn’t. She picked out
two of the most presentable-looking of the beasts and had them
dusted and made as tidy as was possible at short notice, and set
out for the Nineveh mansion. You may imagine the sensation
that her small but imposing caravan created when she arrived at
the hall door. The entire garden-party flocked up to
gape. My sister was rather glad to slip down from her
camel, and the groom was thankful to scramble down from
his. Then young Billy Doulton, of the Dragoon Guards, who
has been a lot at Aden and thinks he knows camel-language
backwards, thought he would show off by making the beasts kneel
down in orthodox fashion. Unfortunately camel
words-of-command are not the same all the world over; these were
magnificent Turkestan camels, accustomed to stride up the stony
terraces of mountain passes, and when Doulton shouted at them
they went side by side up the front steps, into the entrance
hall, and up the grand staircase. The German governess met
them just at the turn of the corridor. The Ninevehs nursed
her with devoted attention for weeks, and when I last heard from
them she was well enough to go about her duties again, but the
doctor says she will always suffer from Hagenbeck
heart.”</p>
<p>Amblecope got up from his chair and moved to another part of
the room. Treddleford reopened his book and betook himself
once more across</p>
<blockquote><p>The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the
serpent-haunted sea.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a blessed half-hour he disported himself in imagination by
the “gay Aleppo-Gate,” and listened to the
bird-voiced singing-man. Then the world of to-day called
him back; a page summoned him to speak with a friend on the
telephone.</p>
<p>As Treddleford was about to pass out of the room he
encountered Amblecope, also passing out, on his way to the
billiard-room, where, perchance, some luckless wight might be
secured and held fast to listen to the number of his attendances
at the Grand Prix, with subsequent remarks on Newmarket and the
Cambridgeshire. Amblecope made as if to pass out first, but
a new-born pride was surging in Treddleford’s breast and he
waved him back.</p>
<p>“I believe I take precedence,” he said coldly;
“you are merely the club Bore; I am the club
Liar.”</p>
<h2>THE ELK</h2>
<p>Teresa, Mrs. Thropplestance, was the richest and most
intractable old woman in the county of Woldshire. In her
dealings with the world in general her manner suggested a blend
between a Mistress of the Robes and a Master of Foxhounds, with
the vocabulary of both. In her domestic circle she
comported herself in the arbitrary style that one attributes,
probably without the least justification, to an American
political Boss in the bosom of his caucus. The late
Theodore Thropplestance had left her, some thirty-five years ago,
in absolute possession of a considerable fortune, a large landed
property, and a gallery full of valuable pictures. In those
intervening years she had outlived her son and quarrelled with
her elder grandson, who had married without her consent or
approval. Bertie Thropplestance, her younger grandson, was
the heir-designate to her property, and as such he was a centre
of interest and concern to some half-hundred ambitious mothers
with daughters of marriageable age. Bertie was an amiable,
easy-going young man, who was quite ready to marry anyone who was
favourably recommended to his notice, but he was not going to
waste his time in falling in love with anyone who would come
under his grandmother’s veto. The favourable
recommendation would have to come from Mrs. Thropplestance.</p>
<p>Teresa’s house-parties were always rounded off with a
plentiful garnishing of presentable young women and alert,
attendant mothers, but the old lady was emphatically discouraging
whenever any one of her girl guests became at all likely to
outbid the others as a possible granddaughter-in-law. It
was the inheritance of her fortune and estate that was in
question, and she was evidently disposed to exercise and enjoy
her powers of selection and rejection to the utmost.
Bertie’s preferences did not greatly matter; he was of the
sort who can be stolidly happy with any kind of wife; he had
cheerfully put up with his grandmother all his life, so was not
likely to fret and fume over anything that might befall him in
the way of a helpmate.</p>
<p>The party that gathered under Teresa’s roof in Christmas
week of the year nineteen-hundred-and-something was of smaller
proportions than usual, and Mrs. Yonelet, who formed one of the
party, was inclined to deduce hopeful augury from this
circumstance. Dora Yonelet and Bertie were so obviously
made for one another, she confided to the vicar’s wife, and
if the old lady were accustomed to seeing them about a lot
together she might adopt the view that they would make a suitable
married couple.</p>
<p>“People soon get used to an idea if it is dangled
constantly before their eyes,” said Mrs. Yonelet hopefully,
“and the more often Teresa sees those young people
together, happy in each other’s company, the more she will
get to take a kindly interest in Dora as a possible and desirable
wife for Bertie.”</p>
<p>“My dear,” said the vicar’s wife resignedly,
“my own Sybil was thrown together with Bertie under the
most romantic circumstances—I’ll tell you about it
some day—but it made no impression whatever on Teresa; she
put her foot down in the most uncompromising fashion, and Sybil
married an Indian civilian.”</p>
<p>“Quite right of her,” said Mrs. Yonelet with vague
approval; “it’s what any girl of spirit would have
done. Still, that was a year or two ago, I believe; Bertie
is older now, and so is Teresa. Naturally she must be
anxious to see him settled.”</p>
<p>The vicar’s wife reflected that Teresa seemed to be the
one person who showed no immediate anxiety to supply Bertie with
a wife, but she kept the thought to herself.</p>
<p>Mrs. Yonelet was a woman of resourceful energy and
generalship; she involved the other members of the house-party,
the deadweight, so to speak, in all manner of exercises and
occupations that segregated them from Bertie and Dora, who were
left to their own devisings—that is to say, to Dora’s
devisings and Bertie’s accommodating acquiescence.
Dora helped in the Christmas decorations of the parish church,
and Bertie helped her to help. Together they fed the swans,
till the birds went on a dyspepsia-strike, together they played
billiards, together they photographed the village almshouses,
and, at a respectful distance, the tame elk that browsed in
solitary aloofness in the park. It was “tame”
in the sense that it had long ago discarded the least vestige of
fear of the human race; nothing in its record encouraged its
human neighbours to feel a reciprocal confidence.</p>
<p>Whatever sport or exercise or occupation Bertie and Dora
indulged in together was unfailingly chronicled and advertised by
Mrs. Yonelet for the due enlightenment of Bertie’s
grandmother.</p>
<p>“Those two inseparables have just come in from a bicycle
ride,” she would announce; “quite a picture they
make, so fresh and glowing after their spin.”</p>
<p>“A picture needing words,” would be Teresa’s
private comment, and as far as Bertie was concerned she was
determined that the words should remain unspoken.</p>
<p>On the afternoon after Christmas Day Mrs. Yonelet dashed into
the drawing-room, where her hostess was sitting amid a circle of
guests and teacups and muffin-dishes. Fate had placed what
seemed like a trump-card in the hands of the
patiently-manoeuvring mother. With eyes blazing with
excitement and a voice heavily escorted with exclamation marks
she made a dramatic announcement.</p>
<p>“Bertie has saved Dora from the elk!”</p>
<p>In swift, excited sentences, broken with maternal emotion, she
gave supplementary information as to how the treacherous animal
had ambushed Dora as she was hunting for a strayed golf ball, and
how Bertie had dashed to her rescue with a stable fork and driven
the beast off in the nick of time.</p>
<p>“It was touch and go! She threw her niblick at it,
but that didn’t stop it. In another moment she would
have been crushed beneath its hoofs,” panted Mrs.
Yonelet.</p>
<p>“The animal is not safe,” said Teresa, handing her
agitated guest a cup of tea. “I forget if you take
sugar. I suppose the solitary life it leads has soured its
temper. There are muffins in the grate. It’s
not my fault; I’ve tried to get it a mate for ever so
long. You don’t know of anyone with a lady elk for
sale or exchange, do you?” she asked the company
generally.</p>
<p>But Mrs. Yonelet was in no humour to listen to talk of elk
marriages. The mating of two human beings was the subject
uppermost in her mind, and the opportunity for advancing her pet
project was too valuable to be neglected.</p>
<p>“Teresa,” she exclaimed impressively, “after
those two young people have been thrown together so dramatically,
nothing can be quite the same again between them. Bertie
has done more than save Dora’s life; he has earned her
affection. One cannot help feeling that Fate has
consecrated them for one another.”</p>
<p>“Exactly what the vicar’s wife said when Bertie
saved Sybil from the elk a year or two ago,” observed
Teresa placidly; “I pointed out to her that he had rescued
Mirabel Hicks from the same predicement a few months previously,
and that priority really belonged to the gardener’s boy,
who had been rescued in the January of that year. There is
a good deal of sameness in country life, you know.”</p>
<p>“It seems to be a very dangerous animal,” said one
of the guests.</p>
<p>“That’s what the mother of the gardener’s
boy said,” remarked Teresa; “she wanted me to have it
destroyed, but I pointed out to her that she had eleven children
and I had only one elk. I also gave her a black silk skirt;
she said that though there hadn’t been a funeral in her
family she felt as if there had been. Anyhow, we parted
friends. I can’t offer you a silk skirt, Emily, but
you may have another cup of tea. As I have already
remarked, there are muffins in the grate.”</p>
<p>Teresa closed the discussion, having deftly conveyed the
impression that she considered the mother of the gardener’s
boy had shown a far more reasonable spirit than the parents of
other elk-assaulted victims.</p>
<p>“Teresa is devoid of feeling,” said Mrs. Yonelet
afterwards to the vicar’s wife; “to sit there,
talking of muffins, with an appalling tragedy only narrowly
averted—”</p>
<p>“Of course you know whom she really intends Bertie to
marry?” asked the vicar’s wife; “I’ve
noticed it for some time. The Bickelbys’ German
governess.”</p>
<p>“A German governess! What an idea!” gasped
Mrs. Yonelet.</p>
<p>“She’s of quite good family, I believe,”
said the vicar’s wife, “and not at all the
mouse-in-the-back-ground sort of person that governesses are
usually supposed to be. In fact, next to Teresa,
she’s about the most assertive and combative personality in
the neighbourhood. She’s pointed out to my husband
all sorts of errors in his sermons, and she gave Sir Laurence a
public lecture on how he ought to handle the hounds. You
know how sensitive Sir Laurence is about any criticism of his
Mastership, and to have a governess laying down the law to him
nearly drove him into a fit. She’s behaved like that
to every one, except, of course, Teresa, and every one has been
defensively rude to her in return. The Bickelbys are simply
too afraid of her to get rid of her. Now isn’t that
exactly the sort of woman whom Teresa would take a delight in
installing as her successor? Imagine the discomfort and
awkwardness in the county if we suddenly found that she was to be
the future hostess at the Hall. Teresa’s only regret
will be that she won’t be alive to see it.”</p>
<p>“But,” objected Mrs. Yonelet, “surely Bertie
hasn’t shown the least sign of being attracted in that
quarter?”</p>
<p>“Oh, she’s quite nice-looking in a way, and
dresses well, and plays a good game of tennis. She often
comes across the park with messages from the Bickelby mansion,
and one of these days Bertie will rescue her from the elk, which
has become almost a habit with him, and Teresa will say that Fate
has consecrated them to one another. Bertie might not be
disposed to pay much attention to the consecrations of Fate, but
he would not dream of opposing his grandmother.”</p>
<p>The vicar’s wife spoke with the quiet authority of one
who has intuitive knowledge, and in her heart of hearts Mrs.
Yonelet believed her.</p>
<p>Six months later the elk had to be destroyed. In a fit
of exceptional moroseness it had killed the Bickelbys’
German governess. It was an irony of its fate that it
should achieve popularity in the last moments of its career; at
any rate, it established the record of being the only living
thing that had permanently thwarted Teresa Thropplestance’s
plans.</p>
<p>Dora Yonelet broke off her engagement with an Indian civilian,
and married Bertie three months after his grandmother’s
death—Teresa did not long survive the German governess
fiasco. At Christmas time every year young Mrs.
Thropplestance hangs an extra large festoon of evergreens on the
elk horns that decorate the hall.</p>
<p>“It was a fearsome beast,” she observes to Bertie,
“but I always feel that it was instrumental in bringing us
together.”</p>
<p>Which, of course, was true.</p>
<h2>“DOWN PENS”</h2>
<p>“Have you written to thank the Froplinsons for what they
sent us?” asked Egbert.</p>
<p>“No,” said Janetta, with a note of tired defiance
in her voice; “I’ve written eleven letters to-day
expressing surprise and gratitude for sundry unmerited gifts, but
I haven’t written to the Froplinsons.”</p>
<p>“Some one will have to write to them,” said
Egbert.</p>
<p>“I don’t dispute the necessity, but I don’t
think the some one should be me,” said Janetta.
“I wouldn’t mind writing a letter of angry
recrimination or heartless satire to some suitable recipient; in
fact, I should rather enjoy it, but I’ve come to the end of
my capacity for expressing servile amiability. Eleven
letters to-day and nine yesterday, all couched in the same strain
of ecstatic thankfulness: really, you can’t expect me to
sit down to another. There is such a thing as writing
oneself out.”</p>
<p>“I’ve written nearly as many,” said Egbert,
“and I’ve had my usual business correspondence to get
through, too. Besides, I don’t know what it was that
the Froplinsons sent us.”</p>
<p>“A William the Conqueror calendar,” said Janetta,
“with a quotation of one of his great thoughts for every
day in the year.”</p>
<p>“Impossible,” said Egbert; “he didn’t
have three hundred and sixty-five thoughts in the whole of his
life, or, if he did, he kept them to himself. He was a man
of action, not of introspection.”</p>
<p>“Well, it was William Wordsworth, then,” said
Janetta; “I know William came into it somewhere.”</p>
<p>“That sounds more probable,” said Egbert;
“well, let’s collaborate on this letter of thanks and
get it done. I’ll dictate, and you can scribble it
down. ‘Dear Mrs. Froplinson—thank you and your
husband so much for the very pretty calendar you sent us.
It was very good of you to think of us.’”</p>
<p>“You can’t possibly say that,” said Janetta,
laying down her pen.</p>
<p>“It’s what I always do say, and what every one
says to me,” protested Egbert.</p>
<p>“We sent them something on the twenty-second,”
said Janetta, “so they simply <i>had</i> to think of
us. There was no getting away from it.”</p>
<p>“What did we send them?” asked Egbert
gloomily.</p>
<p>“Bridge-markers,” said Janetta, “in a
cardboard case, with some inanity about ‘digging for
fortune with a royal spade’ emblazoned on the cover.
The moment I saw it in the shop I said to myself
‘Froplinsons’ and to the attendant ‘How
much?’ When he said ‘Ninepence,’ I gave
him their address, jabbed our card in, paid tenpence or
elevenpence to cover the postage, and thanked heaven. With
less sincerity and infinitely more trouble they eventually
thanked me.”</p>
<p>“The Froplinsons don’t play bridge,” said
Egbert.</p>
<p>“One is not supposed to notice social deformities of
that sort,” said Janetta; “it wouldn’t be
polite. Besides, what trouble did they take to find out
whether we read Wordsworth with gladness? For all
they knew or cared we might be frantically embedded in the belief
that all poetry begins and ends with John Masefield, and it might
infuriate or depress us to have a daily sample of Wordsworthian
products flung at us.”</p>
<p>“Well, let’s get on with the letter of
thanks,” said Egbert.</p>
<p>“Proceed,” said Janetta.</p>
<p>“‘How clever of you to guess that Wordsworth is
our favourite poet,’” dictated Egbert.</p>
<p>Again Janetta laid down her pen.</p>
<p>“Do you realise what that means?” she asked;
“a Wordsworth booklet next Christmas, and another calendar
the Christmas after, with the same problem of having to write
suitable letters of thankfulness. No, the best thing to do
is to drop all further allusion to the calendar and switch off on
to some other topic.”</p>
<p>“But what other topic?”</p>
<p>“Oh, something like this: ‘What do you think of
the New Year Honours List? A friend of ours made such a
clever remark when he read it.’ Then you can stick in
any remark that comes into your head; it needn’t be
clever. The Froplinsons won’t know whether it is or
isn’t.”</p>
<p>“We don’t even know on which side they are in
politics,” objected Egbert; “and anyhow you
can’t suddenly dismiss the subject of the calendar.
Surely there must be some intelligent remark that can be made
about it.”</p>
<p>“Well, we can’t think of one,” said Janetta
wearily; “the fact is, we’ve both written ourselves
out. Heavens! I’ve just remembered Mrs. Stephen
Ludberry. I haven’t thanked her for what she
sent.”</p>
<p>“What did she send?”</p>
<p>“I forget; I think it was a calendar.”</p>
<p>There was a long silence, the forlorn silence of those who are
bereft of hope and have almost ceased to care.</p>
<p>Presently Egbert started from his seat with an air of
resolution. The light of battle was in his eyes.</p>
<p>“Let me come to the writing-table,” he
exclaimed.</p>
<p>“Gladly,” said Janetta. “Are you going
to write to Mrs. Ludberry or the Froplinsons?”</p>
<p>“To neither,” said Egbert, drawing a stack of
notepaper towards him; “I’m going to write to the
editor of every enlightened and influential newspaper in the
Kingdom, I’m going to suggest that there should be a sort
of epistolary Truce of God during the festivities of Christmas
and New Year. From the twenty-fourth of December to the
third or fourth of January it shall be considered an offence
against good sense and good feeling to write or expect any letter
or communication that does not deal with the necessary events of
the moment. Answers to invitations, arrangements about
trains, renewal of club subscriptions, and, of course, all the
ordinary everyday affairs of business, sickness, engaging new
cooks, and so forth, these will be dealt with in the usual manner
as something inevitable, a legitimate part of our daily
life. But all the devastating accretions of correspondence,
incident to the festive season, these should be swept away to
give the season a chance of being really festive, a time of
untroubled, unpunctuated peace and good will.”</p>
<p>“But you would have to make some acknowledgment of
presents received,” objected Janetta; “otherwise
people would never know whether they had arrived
safely.”</p>
<p>“Of course, I have thought of that,” said Egbert;
“every present that was sent off would be accompanied by a
ticket bearing the date of dispatch and the signature of the
sender, and some conventional hieroglyphic to show that it was
intended to be a Christmas or New Year gift; there would be a
counterfoil with space for the recipient’s name and the
date of arrival, and all you would have to do would be to sign
and date the counterfoil, add a conventional hieroglyphic
indicating heartfelt thanks and gratified surprise, put the thing
into an envelope and post it.”</p>
<p>“It sounds delightfully simple,” said Janetta
wistfully, “but people would consider it too cut-and-dried,
too perfunctory.”</p>
<p>“It is not a bit more perfunctory than the present
system,” said Egbert; “I have only the same
conventional language of gratitude at my disposal with which to
thank dear old Colonel Chuttle for his perfectly delicious
Stilton, which we shall devour to the last morsel, and the
Froplinsons for their calendar, which we shall never look
at. Colonel Chuttle knows that we are grateful for the
Stilton, without having to be told so, and the Froplinsons know
that we are bored with their calendar, whatever we may say to the
contrary, just as we know that they are bored with the
bridge-markers in spite of their written assurance that they
thanked us for our charming little gift. What is more, the
Colonel knows that even if we had taken a sudden aversion to
Stilton or been forbidden it by the doctor, we should still have
written a letter of hearty thanks around it. So you see the
present system of acknowledgment is just as perfunctory and
conventional as the counterfoil business would be, only ten times
more tiresome and brain-racking.”</p>
<p>“Your plan would certainly bring the ideal of a Happy
Christmas a step nearer realisation,” said Janetta.</p>
<p>“There are exceptions, of course,” said Egbert,
“people who really try to infuse a breath of reality into
their letters of acknowledgment. Aunt Susan, for instance,
who writes: ‘Thank you very much for the ham; not such a
good flavour as the one you sent last year, which itself was not
a particularly good one. Hams are not what they used to
be.’ It would be a pity to be deprived of her
Christmas comments, but that loss would be swallowed up in the
general gain.”</p>
<p>“Meanwhile,” said Janetta, “what am I to say
to the Froplinsons?”</p>
<h2>THE NAME-DAY</h2>
<p>Adventures, according to the proverb, are to the
adventurous. Quite as often they are to the
non-adventurous, to the retiring, to the constitutionally
timid. John James Abbleway had been endowed by Nature with
the sort of disposition that instinctively avoids Carlist
intrigues, slum crusades, the tracking of wounded wild beasts,
and the moving of hostile amendments at political meetings.
If a mad dog or a Mad Mullah had come his way he would have
surrendered the way without hesitation. At school he had
unwillingly acquired a thorough knowledge of the German tongue
out of deference to the plainly-expressed wishes of a
foreign-languages master, who, though he taught modern subjects,
employed old-fashioned methods in driving his lessons home.
It was this enforced familiarity with an important commercial
language which thrust Abbleway in later years into strange lands
where adventures were less easy to guard against than in the
ordered atmosphere of an English country town. The firm
that he worked for saw fit to send him one day on a prosaic
business errand to the far city of Vienna, and, having sent him
there, continued to keep him there, still engaged in humdrum
affairs of commerce, but with the possibilities of romance and
adventure, or even misadventure, jostling at his elbow.
After two and a half years of exile, however, John James Abbleway
had embarked on only one hazardous undertaking, and that was of a
nature which would assuredly have overtaken him sooner or later
if he had been leading a sheltered, stay-at-home existence at
Dorking or Huntingdon. He fell placidly in love with a
placidly lovable English girl, the sister of one of his
commercial colleagues, who was improving her mind by a short trip
to foreign parts, and in due course he was formally accepted as
the young man she was engaged to. The further step by which
she was to become Mrs. John Abbleway was to take place a
twelvemonth hence in a town in the English midlands, by which
time the firm that employed John James would have no further need
for his presence in the Austrian capital.</p>
<p>It was early in April, two months after the installation of
Abbleway as the young man Miss Penning was engaged to, when he
received a letter from her, written from Venice. She was
still peregrinating under the wing of her brother, and as the
latter’s business arrangements would take him across to
Fiume for a day or two, she had conceived the idea that it would
be rather jolly if John could obtain leave of absence and run
down to the Adriatic coast to meet them. She had looked up
the route on the map, and the journey did not appear likely to be
expensive. Between the lines of her communication there lay
a hint that if he really cared for her—</p>
<p>Abbleway obtained leave of absence and added a journey to
Fiume to his life’s adventures. He left Vienna on a
cold, cheerless day. The flower shops were full of spring
blooms, and the weekly organs of illustrated humour were full of
spring topics, but the skies were heavy with clouds that looked
like cotton-wool that has been kept over long in a shop
window.</p>
<p>“Snow comes,” said the train official to the
station officials; and they agreed that snow was about to
come. And it came, rapidly, plenteously. The train
had not been more than an hour on its journey when the
cotton-wool clouds commenced to dissolve in a blinding downpour
of snowflakes. The forest trees on either side of the line
were speedily coated with a heavy white mantle, the telegraph
wires became thick glistening ropes, the line itself was buried
more and more completely under a carpeting of snow, through which
the not very powerful engine ploughed its way with increasing
difficulty. The Vienna-Fiume line is scarcely the best
equipped of the Austrian State railways, and Abbleway began to
have serious fears for a breakdown. The train had slowed
down to a painful and precarious crawl and presently came to a
halt at a spot where the drifting snow had accumulated in a
formidable barrier. The engine made a special effort and
broke through the obstruction, but in the course of another
twenty minutes it was again held up. The process of
breaking through was renewed, and the train doggedly resumed its
way, encountering and surmounting fresh hindrances at frequent
intervals. After a standstill of unusually long duration in
a particularly deep drift the compartment in which Abbleway was
sitting gave a huge jerk and a lurch, and then seemed to remain
stationary; it undoubtedly was not moving, and yet he could hear
the puffing of the engine and the slow rumbling and jolting of
wheels. The puffing and rumbling grew fainter, as though it
were dying away through the agency of intervening distance.
Abbleway suddenly gave vent to an exclamation of scandalised
alarm, opened the window, and peered out into the
snowstorm. The flakes perched on his eyelashes and blurred
his vision, but he saw enough to help him to realise what had
happened. The engine had made a mighty plunge through the
drift and had gone merrily forward, lightened of the load of its
rear carriage, whose coupling had snapped under the strain.
Abbleway was alone, or almost alone, with a derelict railway
waggon, in the heart of some Styrian or Croatian forest. In
the third-class compartment next to his own he remembered to have
seen a peasant woman, who had entered the train at a small
wayside station. “With the exception of that
woman,” he exclaimed dramatically to himself, “the
nearest living beings are probably a pack of wolves.”</p>
<p>Before making his way to the third-class compartment to
acquaint his fellow-traveller with the extent of the disaster
Abbleway hurriedly pondered the question of the woman’s
nationality. He had acquired a smattering of Slavonic
tongues during his residence in Vienna, and felt competent to
grapple with several racial possibilities.</p>
<p>“If she is Croat or Serb or Bosniak I shall be able to
make her understand,” he promised himself. “If
she is Magyar, heaven help me! We shall have to converse
entirely by signs.”</p>
<p>He entered the carriage and made his momentous announcement in
the best approach to Croat speech that he could achieve.</p>
<p>“The train has broken away and left us!”</p>
<p>The woman shook her head with a movement that might be
intended to convey resignation to the will of heaven, but
probably meant noncomprehension. Abbleway repeated his
information with variations of Slavonic tongues and generous
displays of pantomime.</p>
<p>“Ah,” said the woman at last in German dialect,
“the train has gone? We are left. Ah,
so.”</p>
<p>She seemed about as much interested as though Abbleway had
told her the result of the municipal elections in Amsterdam.</p>
<p>“They will find out at some station, and when the line
is clear of snow they will send an engine. It happens that
way sometimes.”</p>
<p>“We may be here all night!” exclaimed
Abbleway.</p>
<p>The woman nodded as though she thought it possible.</p>
<p>“Are there wolves in these parts?” asked Abbleway
hurriedly.</p>
<p>“Many,” said the woman; “just outside this
forest my aunt was devoured three years ago, as she was coming
home from market. The horse and a young pig that was in the
cart were eaten too. The horse was a very old one, but it
was a beautiful young pig, oh, so fat. I cried when I heard
that it was taken. They spare nothing.”</p>
<p>“They may attack us here,” said Abbleway
tremulously; “they could easily break in, these carriages
are like matchwood. We may both be devoured.”</p>
<p>“You, perhaps,” said the woman calmly; “not
me.”</p>
<p>“Why not you?” demanded Abbleway.</p>
<p>“It is the day of Saint Mariä Kleophä, my
name-day. She would not allow me to be eaten by wolves on
her day. Such a thing could not be thought of. You,
yes, but not me.”</p>
<p>Abbleway changed the subject.</p>
<p>“It is only afternoon now; if we are to be left here
till morning we shall be starving.”</p>
<p>“I have here some good eatables,” said the woman
tranquilly; “on my festival day it is natural that I should
have provision with me. I have five good blood-sausages; in
the town shops they cost twenty-five heller each. Things
are dear in the town shops.”</p>
<p>“I will give you fifty heller apiece for a couple of
them,” said Abbleway with some enthusiasm.</p>
<p>“In a railway accident things become very dear,”
said the woman; “these blood-sausages are four kronen
apiece.”</p>
<p>“Four kronen!” exclaimed Abbleway; “four
kronen for a blood-sausage!”</p>
<p>“You cannot get them any cheaper on this train,”
said the woman, with relentless logic, “because there
aren’t any others to get. In Agram you can buy them
cheaper, and in Paradise no doubt they will be given to us for
nothing, but here they cost four kronen each. I have a
small piece of Emmenthaler cheese and a honey-cake and a piece of
bread that I can let you have. That will be another three
kronen, eleven kronen in all. There is a piece of ham, but
that I cannot let you have on my name-day.”</p>
<p>Abbleway wondered to himself what price she would have put on
the ham, and hurried to pay her the eleven kronen before her
emergency tariff expanded into a famine tariff. As he was
taking possession of his modest store of eatables he suddenly
heard a noise which set his heart thumping in a miserable fever
of fear. ‘There was a scraping and shuffling as of
some animal or animals trying to climb up to the footboard.
In another moment, through the snow-encrusted glass of the
carriage window, he saw a gaunt prick-eared head, with gaping jaw
and lolling tongue and gleaming teeth; a second later another
head shot up.</p>
<p>“There are hundreds of them,” whispered Abbleway;
“they have scented us. They will tear the carriage to
pieces. We shall be devoured.”</p>
<p>“Not me, on my name-day. The holy Mariä
Kleophä would not permit it,” said the woman with
provoking calm.</p>
<p>The heads dropped down from the window and an uncanny silence
fell on the beleaguered carriage. Abbleway neither moved
nor spoke. Perhaps the brutes had not clearly seen or
winded the human occupants of the carriage, and had prowled away
on some other errand of rapine.</p>
<p>The long torture-laden minutes passed slowly away.</p>
<p>“It grows cold,” said the woman suddenly, crossing
over to the far end of the carriage, where the heads had
appeared. “The heating apparatus does not work any
longer. See, over there beyond the trees, there is a
chimney with smoke coming from it. It is not far, and the
snow has nearly stopped, I shall find a path through the forest
to that house with the chimney.”</p>
<p>“But the wolves!” exclaimed Abbleway; “they
may—”</p>
<p>“Not on my name-day,” said the woman obstinately,
and before he could stop her she had opened the door and climbed
down into the snow. A moment later he hid his face in his
hands; two gaunt lean figures rushed upon her from the
forest. No doubt she had courted her fate, but Abbleway had
no wish to see a human being torn to pieces and devoured before
his eyes.</p>
<p>When he looked at last a new sensation of scandalised
astonishment took possession of him. He had been straitly
brought up in a small English town, and he was not prepared to be
the witness of a miracle. The wolves were not doing
anything worse to the woman than drench her with snow as they
gambolled round her.</p>
<p>A short, joyous bark revealed the clue to the situation.</p>
<p>“Are those—dogs?” he called weakly.</p>
<p>“My cousin Karl’s dogs, yes,” she answered;
“that is his inn, over beyond the trees. I knew it
was there, but I did not want to take you there; he is always
grasping with strangers. However, it grows too cold to
remain in the train. Ah, ah, see what comes!”</p>
<p>A whistle sounded, and a relief engine made its appearance,
snorting its way sulkily through the snow. Abbleway did not
have the opportunity for finding out whether Karl was really
avaricious.</p>
<h2>THE LUMBER ROOM</h2>
<p>The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the
sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party;
he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat
his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground
that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better
people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in
his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he
continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest
nonsense, and described with much detail the colouration and
markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the
incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas’
basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he felt
entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a
frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome
bread-and-milk was enlarged on at great length, but the fact that
stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to
the mind of Nicholas, was that the older, wiser, and better
people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about
which they had expressed the utmost assurance.</p>
<p>“You said there couldn’t possibly be a frog in my
bread-and-milk; there <i>was</i> a frog in my
bread-and-milk,” he repeated, with the insistence of a
skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable
ground.</p>
<p>So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninteresting
younger brother were to be taken to Jagborough sands that
afternoon and he was to stay at home. His cousins’
aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in
styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the
Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the
delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct
at the breakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of
the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a
festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously
debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were
suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of
unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their
depravity, they would have been taken that very day.</p>
<p>A few decent tears were looked for on the part of Nicholas
when the moment for the departure of the expedition
arrived. As a matter of fact, however, all the crying was
done by his girl-cousin, who scraped her knee rather painfully
against the step of the carriage as she was scrambling in.</p>
<p>“How she did howl,” said Nicholas cheerfully, as
the party drove off without any of the elation of high spirits
that should have characterised it.</p>
<p>“She’ll soon get over that,” said the
<i>soi-disant</i> aunt; “it will be a glorious afternoon
for racing about over those beautiful sands. How they will
enjoy themselves!”</p>
<p>“Bobby won’t enjoy himself much, and he
won’t race much either,” said Nicholas with a grim
chuckle; “his boots are hurting him. They’re
too tight.”</p>
<p>“Why didn’t he tell me they were hurting?”
asked the aunt with some asperity.</p>
<p>“He told you twice, but you weren’t
listening. You often don’t listen when we tell you
important things.”</p>
<p>“You are not to go into the gooseberry garden,”
said the aunt, changing the subject.</p>
<p>“Why not?” demanded Nicholas.</p>
<p>“Because you are in disgrace,” said the aunt
loftily.</p>
<p>Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning; he
felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry
garden at the same moment. His face took on an expression
of considerable obstinacy. It was clear to his aunt that he
was determined to get into the gooseberry garden,
“only,” as she remarked to herself, “because I
have told him he is not to.”</p>
<p>Now the gooseberry garden had two doors by which it might be
entered, and once a small person like Nicholas could slip in
there he could effectually disappear from view amid the masking
growth of artichokes, raspberry canes, and fruit bushes.
The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she
spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flower
beds and shrubberies, whence she could keep a watchful eye on the
two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a
woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration.</p>
<p>Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden,
wriggling his way with obvious stealth of purpose towards one or
other of the doors, but never able for a moment to evade the
aunt’s watchful eye. As a matter of fact, he had no
intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was
extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he
had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed
sentry-duty for the greater part of the afternoon. Having
thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions Nicholas
slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan
of action that had long germinated in his brain. By
standing on a chair in the library one could reach a shelf on
which reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was as
important as it looked; it was the instrument which kept the
mysteries of the lumber-room secure from unauthorised intrusion,
which opened a way only for aunts and such-like privileged
persons. Nicholas had not had much experience of the art of
fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks, but for some days
past he had practised with the key of the schoolroom door; he did
not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The
key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door
opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which
the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere material
pleasure.</p>
<p>Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the
lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully
sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were
ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the
first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening
on to the forbidden garden being its only source of
illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of
unimagined treasures. The aunt-by-assertion was one of
those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them
to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of
the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless,
but here there were wonderful things for the eye to feast
on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestry
that was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas
it was a living, breathing story; he sat down on a roll of Indian
hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust,
and took in all the details of the tapestry picture. A man,
dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just
transfixed a stag with an arrow; it could not have been a
difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away
from him; in the thickly-growing vegetation that the picture
suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a
feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing
forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep
to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the
picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see,
what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his
direction through the wood? There might be more than four
of them hidden behind the trees, and in any case would the man
and his dogs be able to cope with the four wolves if they made an
attack? The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and
he might miss with one or both of them; all one knew about his
skill in shooting was that he could hit a large stag at a
ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden
minutes revolving the possibilities of the scene; he was inclined
to think that there were more than four wolves and that the man
and his dogs were in a tight corner.</p>
<p>But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming
his instant attention: there were quaint twisted candlesticks in
the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck,
out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How
dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in comparison!
And there was a carved sandal-wood box packed tight with aromatic
cotton-wool, and between the layers of cotton-wool were little
brass figures, hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and goblins,
delightful to see and to handle. Less promising in
appearance was a large square book with plain black covers;
Nicholas peeped into it, and, behold, it was full of coloured
pictures of birds. And such birds! In the garden, and
in the lanes when he went for a walk, Nicholas came across a few
birds, of which the largest were an occasional magpie or
wood-pigeon; here were herons and bustards, kites, toucans,
tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole
portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. And as he was
admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck and assigning a
life-history to it, the voice of his aunt in shrill vociferation
of his name came from the gooseberry garden without. She
had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to
the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the
sheltering screen of the lilac bushes; she was now engaged in
energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes
and raspberry canes.</p>
<p>“Nicholas, Nicholas!” she screamed, “you are
to come out of this at once. It’s no use trying to
hide there; I can see you all the time.”</p>
<p>It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone
had smiled in that lumber-room.</p>
<p>Presently the angry repetitions of Nicholas’ name gave
way to a shriek, and a cry for somebody to come quickly.
Nicholas shut the book, restored it carefully to its place in a
corner, and shook some dust from a neighbouring pile of
newspapers over it. Then he crept from the room, locked the
door, and replaced the key exactly where he had found it.
His aunt was still calling his name when he sauntered into the
front garden.</p>
<p>“Who’s calling?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Me,” came the answer from the other side of the
wall; “didn’t you hear me? I’ve been
looking for you in the gooseberry garden, and I’ve slipped
into the rain-water tank. Luckily there’s no water in
it, but the sides are slippery and I can’t get out.
Fetch the little ladder from under the cherry
tree—”</p>
<p>“I was told I wasn’t to go into the gooseberry
garden,” said Nicholas promptly.</p>
<p>“I told you not to, and now I tell you that you
may,” came the voice from the rain-water tank, rather
impatiently.</p>
<p>“Your voice doesn’t sound like
aunt’s,” objected Nicholas; “you may be the
Evil One tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me
that the Evil One tempts me and that I always yield. This
time I’m not going to yield.”</p>
<p>“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the prisoner in
the tank; “go and fetch the ladder.”</p>
<p>“Will there be strawberry jam for tea?” asked
Nicholas innocently.</p>
<p>“Certainly there will be,” said the aunt,
privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it.</p>
<p>“Now I know that you are the Evil One and not
aunt,” shouted Nicholas gleefully; “when we asked
aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn’t
any. I know there are four jars of it in the store
cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it’s
there, but she doesn’t, because she said there wasn’t
any. Oh, Devil, you <i>have</i> sold yourself!”</p>
<p>There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to
an aunt as though one was talking to the Evil One, but Nicholas
knew, with childish discernment, that such luxuries were not to
be over-indulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was a
kitchenmaid, in search of parsley, who eventually rescued the
aunt from the rain-water tank.</p>
<p>Tea that evening was partaken of in a fearsome silence.
The tide had been at its highest when the children had arrived at
Jagborough Cove, so there had been no sands to play on—a
circumstance that the aunt had overlooked in the haste of
organising her punitive expedition. The tightness of
Bobby’s boots had had disastrous effect on his temper the
whole of the afternoon, and altogether the children could not
have been said to have enjoyed themselves. The aunt
maintained the frozen muteness of one who has suffered
undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for
thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent,
in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just
possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his
hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.</p>
<h2>FUR</h2>
<p>“You look worried, dear,” said Eleanor.</p>
<p>“I am worried,” admitted Suzanne; “not
worried exactly, but anxious. You see, my birthday happens
next week—”</p>
<p>“You lucky person,” interrupted Eleanor; “my
birthday doesn’t come till the end of March.”</p>
<p>“Well, old Bertram Kneyght is over in England just now
from the Argentine. He’s a kind of distant cousin of
my mother’s, and so enormously rich that we’ve never
let the relationship drop out of sight. Even if we
don’t see him or hear from him for years he is always
Cousin Bertram when he does turn up. I can’t say
he’s ever been of much solid use to us, but yesterday the
subject of my birthday cropped up, and he asked me to let him
know what I wanted for a present.”</p>
<p>“Now I understand the anxiety,” observed
Eleanor.</p>
<p>“As a rule when one is confronted with a problem like
that,” said Suzanne, “all one’s ideas vanish;
one doesn’t seem to have a desire in the world. Now
it so happens that I have been very keen on a little Dresden
figure that I saw somewhere in Kensington; about thirty-six
shillings, quite beyond my means. I was very nearly
describing the figure, and giving Bertram the address of the
shop. And then it suddenly struck me that thirty-six
shillings was such a ridiculously inadequate sum for a man of his
immense wealth to spend on a birthday present. He could
give thirty-six pounds as easily as you or I could buy a bunch of
violets. I don’t want to be greedy, of course, but I
don’t like being wasteful.”</p>
<p>“The question is,” said Eleanor, “what are
his ideas as to present-giving? Some of the wealthiest
people have curiously cramped views on that subject. When
people grow gradually rich their requirements and standard of
living expand in proportion, while their present-giving instincts
often remain in the undeveloped condition of their earlier
days. Something showy and not-too-expensive in a shop is
their only conception of the ideal gift. That is why even
quite good shops have their counters and windows crowded with
things worth about four shillings that look as if they might be
worth seven-and-six, and are priced at ten shillings and labelled
seasonable gifts.’”</p>
<p>“I know,” said Suzanne; “that is why it is
so risky to be vague when one is giving indications of
one’s wants. Now if I say to him: ‘I am going
out to Davos this winter, so anything in the travelling line
would be acceptable,’ he might give me a dressing-bag with
gold-mounted fittings, but, on the other hand, he might give me
Baedeker’s Switzerland, or ‘Skiing without
Tears,’ or something of that sort.”</p>
<p>“He would be more likely to say: ‘She’ll be
going to lots of dances, a fan will be sure to be
useful.’”</p>
<p>“Yes, and I’ve got tons of fans, so you see where
the danger and anxiety lies. Now if there is one thing more
than another that I really urgently want it is furs. I
simply haven’t any. I’m told that Davos is full
of Russians, and they are sure to wear the most lovely sables and
things. To be among people who are smothered in furs when
one hasn’t any oneself makes one want to break most of the
Commandments.”</p>
<p>“If it’s furs that you’re out for,”
said Eleanor, “you will have to superintend the choice of
them in person. You can’t be sure that your cousin
knows the difference between silver-fox and ordinary
squirrel.”</p>
<p>“There are some heavenly silver-fox stoles at Goliath
and Mastodon’s,” said Suzanne, with a sigh; “if
I could only inveigle Bertram into their building and take him
for a stroll through the fur department!”</p>
<p>“He lives somewhere near there, doesn’t he?”
said Eleanor. “Do you know what his habits are?
Does he take a walk at any particular time of day?”</p>
<p>“He usually walks down to his club about three
o’clock, if it’s a fine day. That takes him
right past Goliath and Mastodon’s.”</p>
<p>“Let us two meet him accidentally at the street corner
to-morrow,” said Eleanor; “we can walk a little way
with him, and with luck we ought to be able to side-track him
into the shop. You can say you want to get a hair-net or
something. When we’re safely there I can say:
‘I wish you’d tell me what you want for your
birthday.’ Then you’ll have everything ready to
hand—the rich cousin, the fur department, and the topic of
birthday presents.”</p>
<p>“It’s a great idea,” said Suzanne;
“you really are a brick. Come round to-morrow at
twenty to three; don’t be late, we must carry out our
ambush to the minute.”</p>
<p>At a few minutes to three the next afternoon the fur-trappers
walked warily towards the selected corner. In the near
distance rose the colossal pile of Messrs. Goliath and
Mastodon’s famed establishment. The afternoon was
brilliantly fine, exactly the sort of weather to tempt a
gentleman of advancing years into the discreet exercise of a
leisurely walk.</p>
<p>“I say, dear, I wish you’d do something for me
this evening,” said Eleanor to her companion; “just
drop in after dinner on some pretext or other, and stay on to
make a fourth at bridge with Adela and the aunts. Otherwise
I shall have to play, and Harry Scarisbrooke is going to come in
unexpectedly about nine-fifteen, and I particularly want to be
free to talk to him while the others are playing.”</p>
<p>“Sorry, my dear, no can do,” said Suzanne;
“ordinary bridge at three-pence a hundred, with such
dreadfully slow players as your aunts, bores me to tears. I
nearly go to sleep over it.”</p>
<p>“But I most particularly want an opportunity to talk
with Harry,” urged Eleanor, an angry glint coming into her
eyes.</p>
<p>“Sorry, anything to oblige, but not that,” said
Suzanne cheerfully; the sacrifices of friendship were beautiful
in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them.</p>
<p>Eleanor said nothing further on the subject, but the corners
of her mouth rearranged themselves.</p>
<p>“There’s our man!” exclaimed Suzanne
suddenly; “hurry!”</p>
<p>Mr. Bertram Kneyght greeted his cousin and her friend with
genuine heartiness, and readily accepted their invitation to
explore the crowded mart that stood temptingly at their
elbow. The plate-glass doors swung open and the trio
plunged bravely into the jostling throng of buyers and
loiterers.</p>
<p>“Is it always as full as this?” asked Bertram of
Eleanor.</p>
<p>“More or less, and autumn sales are on just now,”
she replied.</p>
<p>Suzanne, in her anxiety to pilot her cousin to the desired
haven of the fur department, was usually a few paces ahead of the
others, coming back to them now and then if they lingered for a
moment at some attractive counter, with the nervous solicitude of
a parent rook encouraging its young ones on their first flying
expedition.</p>
<p>“It’s Suzanne’s birthday on Wednesday
next,” confided Eleanor to Bertram Kneyght at a moment when
Suzanne had left them unusually far behind; “my birthday
comes the day before, so we are both on the look-out for
something to give each other.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” said Bertram. “Now, perhaps you
can advise me on that very point. I want to give Suzanne
something, and I haven’t the least idea what she
wants.”</p>
<p>“She’s rather a problem,” said
Eleanor. “She seems to have everything one can think
of, lucky girl. A fan is always useful; she’ll be
going to a lot of dances at Davos this winter. Yes, I
should think a fan would please her more than anything.
After our birthdays are over we inspect each other’s muster
of presents, and I always feel dreadfully humble. She gets
such nice things, and I never have anything worth showing.
You see, none of my relations or any of the people who give me
presents are at all well off, so I can’t expect them to do
anything more than just remember the day with some little
trifle. Two years ago an uncle on my mother’s side of
the family, who had come into a small legacy, promised me a
silver-fox stole for my birthday. I can’t tell you
how excited I was about it, how I pictured myself showing it off
to all my friends and enemies. Then just at that moment his
wife died, and, of course, poor man, he could not be expected to
think of birthday presents at such a time. He has lived
abroad ever since, and I never got my fur. Do you know, to
this day I can scarcely look at a silver-fox pelt in a shop
window or round anyone’s neck without feeling ready to
burst into tears. I suppose if I hadn’t had the
prospect of getting one I shouldn’t feel that way.
Look, there is the fan counter, on your left; you can easily slip
away in the crowd. Get her as nice a one as you can
see—she is such a dear, dear girl.”</p>
<p>“Hullo, I thought I had lost you,” said Suzanne,
making her way through an obstructive knot of shoppers.
“Where is Bertram?”</p>
<p>“I got separated from him long ago. I thought he
was on ahead with you,” said Eleanor. “We shall
never find him in this crush.”</p>
<p>Which turned out to be a true prediction.</p>
<p>“All our trouble and forethought thrown away,”
said Suzanne sulkily, when they had pushed their way fruitlessly
through half a dozen departments.</p>
<p>“I can’t think why you didn’t grab him by
the arm,” said Eleanor; “I would have if I’d
known him longer, but I’d only just been introduced.
It’s nearly four now, we’d better have
tea.”</p>
<p>Some days later Suzanne rang Eleanor up on the telephone.</p>
<p>“Thank you very much for the photograph frame. It
was just what I wanted. Very good of you. I say, do
you know what that Kneyght person has given me? Just what
you said he would—a wretched fan. What? Oh yes,
quite a good enough fan in its way, but still . . .”</p>
<p>“You must come and see what he’s given me,”
came in Eleanor’s voice over the ’phone.</p>
<p>“You! Why should he give you anything?”</p>
<p>“Your cousin appears to be one of those rare people of
wealth who take a pleasure in giving good presents,” came
the reply.</p>
<p>“I wondered why he was so anxious to know where she
lived,” snapped Suzanne to herself as she rang off.</p>
<p>A cloud has arisen between the friendships of the two young
women; as far as Eleanor is concerned the cloud has a silver-fox
lining.</p>
<h2>THE PHILANTHROPIST AND THE HAPPY CAT</h2>
<p>Jocantha Bessbury was in the mood to be serenely and
graciously happy. Her world was a pleasant place, and it
was wearing one of its pleasantest aspects. Gregory had
managed to get home for a hurried lunch and a smoke afterwards in
the little snuggery; the lunch had been a good one, and there was
just time to do justice to the coffee and cigarettes. Both
were excellent in their way, and Gregory was, in his way, an
excellent husband. Jocantha rather suspected herself of
making him a very charming wife, and more than suspected herself
of having a first-rate dressmaker.</p>
<p>“I don’t suppose a more thoroughly contented
personality is to be found in all Chelsea,” observed
Jocantha in allusion to herself; “except perhaps
Attab,” she continued, glancing towards the large
tabby-marked cat that lay in considerable ease in a corner of the
divan. “He lies there, purring and dreaming, shifting
his limbs now and then in an ecstasy of cushioned comfort.
He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and
velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose
philosophy is sleep and let sleep; and then, as evening draws on,
he goes out into the garden with a red glint in his eyes and
slays a drowsy sparrow.”</p>
<p>“As every pair of sparrows hatches out ten or more young
ones in the year, while their food supply remains stationary, it
is just as well that the Attabs of the community should have that
idea of how to pass an amusing afternoon,” said
Gregory. Having delivered himself of this sage comment he
lit another cigarette, bade Jocantha a playfully affectionate
good-bye, and departed into the outer world.</p>
<p>“Remember, dinner’s a wee bit earlier to-night, as
we’re going to the Haymarket,” she called after
him.</p>
<p>Left to herself, Jocantha continued the process of looking at
her life with placid, introspective eyes. If she had not
everything she wanted in this world, at least she was very well
pleased with what she had got. She was very well pleased,
for instance, with the snuggery, which contrived somehow to be
cosy and dainty and expensive all at once. The porcelain
was rare and beautiful, the Chinese enamels took on wonderful
tints in the firelight, the rugs and hangings led the eye through
sumptuous harmonies of colouring. It was a room in which
one might have suitably entertained an ambassador or an
archbishop, but it was also a room in which one could cut out
pictures for a scrap-book without feeling that one was
scandalising the deities of the place with one’s
litter. And as with the snuggery, so with the rest of the
house, and as with the house, so with the other departments of
Jocantha’s life; she really had good reason for being one
of the most contented women in Chelsea.</p>
<p>From being in a mood of simmering satisfaction with her lot
she passed to the phase of being generously commiserating for
those thousands around her whose lives and circumstances were
dull, cheap, pleasureless, and empty. Work girls, shop
assistants and so forth, the class that have neither the
happy-go-lucky freedom of the poor nor the leisured freedom of
the rich, came specially within the range of her sympathy.
It was sad to think that there were young people who, after a
long day’s work, had to sit alone in chill, dreary bedrooms
because they could not afford the price of a cup of coffee and a
sandwich in a restaurant, still less a shilling for a theatre
gallery.</p>
<p>Jocantha’s mind was still dwelling on this theme when
she started forth on an afternoon campaign of desultory shopping;
it would be rather a comforting thing, she told herself, if she
could do something, on the spur of the moment, to bring a gleam
of pleasure and interest into the life of even one or two
wistful-hearted, empty-pocketed workers; it would add a good deal
to her sense of enjoyment at the theatre that night. She
would get two upper circle tickets for a popular play, make her
way into some cheap tea-shop, and present the tickets to the
first couple of interesting work girls with whom she could
casually drop into conversation. She could explain matters
by saying that she was unable to use the tickets herself and did
not want them to be wasted, and, on the other hand, did not want
the trouble of sending them back. On further reflection she
decided that it might be better to get only one ticket and give
it to some lonely-looking girl sitting eating her frugal meal by
herself; the girl might scrape acquaintance with her next-seat
neighbour at the theatre and lay the foundations of a lasting
friendship.</p>
<p>With the Fairy Godmother impulse strong upon her, Jocantha
marched into a ticket agency and selected with immense care an
upper circle seat for the “Yellow Peacock,” a play
that was attracting a considerable amount of discussion and
criticism. Then she went forth in search of a tea-shop and
philanthropic adventure, at about the same time that Attab
sauntered into the garden with a mind attuned to sparrow
stalking. In a corner of an A.B.C. shop she found an
unoccupied table, whereat she promptly installed herself,
impelled by the fact that at the next table was sitting a young
girl, rather plain of feature, with tired, listless eyes, and a
general air of uncomplaining forlornness. Her dress was of
poor material, but aimed at being in the fashion, her hair was
pretty, and her complexion bad; she was finishing a modest meal
of tea and scone, and she was not very different in her way from
thousands of other girls who were finishing, or beginning, or
continuing their teas in London tea-shops at that exact
moment. The odds were enormously in favour of the
supposition that she had never seen the “Yellow
Peacock”; obviously she supplied excellent material for
Jocantha’s first experiment in haphazard benefaction.</p>
<p>Jocantha ordered some tea and a muffin, and then turned a
friendly scrutiny on her neighbour with a view to catching her
eye. At that precise moment the girl’s face lit up
with sudden pleasure, her eyes sparkled, a flush came into her
cheeks, and she looked almost pretty. A young man, whom she
greeted with an affectionate “Hullo, Bertie,” came up
to her table and took his seat in a chair facing her.
Jocantha looked hard at the new-comer; he was in appearance a few
years younger than herself, very much better looking than
Gregory, rather better looking, in fact, than any of the young
men of her set. She guessed him to be a well-mannered young
clerk in some wholesale warehouse, existing and amusing himself
as best he might on a tiny salary, and commanding a holiday of
about two weeks in the year. He was aware, of course, of
his good looks, but with the shy self-consciousness of the
Anglo-Saxon, not the blatant complacency of the Latin or
Semite. He was obviously on terms of friendly intimacy with
the girl he was talking to, probably they were drifting towards a
formal engagement. Jocantha pictured the boy’s home,
in a rather narrow circle, with a tiresome mother who always
wanted to know how and where he spent his evenings. He
would exchange that humdrum thraldom in due course for a home of
his own, dominated by a chronic scarcity of pounds, shillings,
and pence, and a dearth of most of the things that made life
attractive or comfortable. Jocantha felt extremely sorry
for him. She wondered if he had seen the “Yellow
Peacock”; the odds were enormously in favour of the
supposition that he had not. The girl had finished her tea
and would shortly be going back to her work; when the boy was
alone it would be quite easy for Jocantha to say: “My
husband has made other arrangements for me this evening; would
you care to make use of this ticket, which would otherwise be
wasted?” Then she could come there again one
afternoon for tea, and, if she saw him, ask him how he liked the
play. If he was a nice boy and improved on acquaintance he
could be given more theatre tickets, and perhaps asked to come
one Sunday to tea at Chelsea. Jocantha made up her mind
that he would improve on acquaintance, and that Gregory would
like him, and that the Fairy Godmother business would prove far
more entertaining than she had originally anticipated. The
boy was distinctly presentable; he knew how to brush his hair,
which was possibly an imitative faculty; he knew what colour of
tie suited him, which might be intuition; he was exactly the type
that Jocantha admired, which of course was accident.
Altogether she was rather pleased when the girl looked at the
clock and bade a friendly but hurried farewell to her
companion. Bertie nodded “good-bye,” gulped
down a mouthful of tea, and then produced from his overcoat
pocket a paper-covered book, bearing the title “Sepoy and
Sahib, a tale of the great Mutiny.”</p>
<p>The laws of tea-shop etiquette forbid that you should offer
theatre tickets to a stranger without having first caught the
stranger’s eye. It is even better if you can ask to
have a sugar basin passed to you, having previously concealed the
fact that you have a large and well-filled sugar basin on your
own table; this is not difficult to manage, as the printed menu
is generally nearly as large as the table, and can be made to
stand on end. Jocantha set to work hopefully; she had a
long and rather high-pitched discussion with the waitress
concerning alleged defects in an altogether blameless muffin, she
made loud and plaintive inquiries about the tube service to some
impossibly remote suburb, she talked with brilliant insincerity
to the tea-shop kitten, and as a last resort she upset a milk-jug
and swore at it daintily. Altogether she attracted a good
deal of attention, but never for a moment did she attract the
attention of the boy with the beautifully-brushed hair, who was
some thousands of miles away in the baking plains of Hindostan,
amid deserted bungalows, seething bazaars, and riotous barrack
squares, listening to the throbbing of tom-toms and the distant
rattle of musketry.</p>
<p>Jocantha went back to her house in Chelsea, which struck her
for the first time as looking dull and over-furnished. She
had a resentful conviction that Gregory would be uninteresting at
dinner, and that the play would be stupid after dinner. On
the whole her frame of mind showed a marked divergence from the
purring complacency of Attab, who was again curled up in his
corner of the divan with a great peace radiating from every curve
of his body.</p>
<p>But then he had killed his sparrow.</p>
<h2>ON APPROVAL</h2>
<p>Of all the genuine Bohemians who strayed from time to time
into the would-be Bohemian circle of the Restaurant Nuremberg,
Owl Street, Soho, none was more interesting and more elusive than
Gebhard Knopfschrank. He had no friends, and though he
treated all the restaurant frequenters as acquaintances he never
seemed to wish to carry the acquaintanceship beyond the door that
led into Owl Street and the outer world. He dealt with them
all rather as a market woman might deal with chance passers-by,
exhibiting her wares and chattering about the weather and the
slackness of business, occasionally about rheumatism, but never
showing a desire to penetrate into their daily lives or to
dissect their ambitions.</p>
<p>He was understood to belong to a family of peasant farmers,
somewhere in Pomerania; some two years ago, according to all that
was known of him, he had abandoned the labours and
responsibilities of swine tending and goose rearing to try his
fortune as an artist in London.</p>
<p>“Why London and not Paris or Munich?” he had been
asked by the curious.</p>
<p>Well, there was a ship that left Stolpmünde for London
twice a month, that carried few passengers, but carried them
cheaply; the railway fares to Munich or Paris were not
cheap. Thus it was that he came to select London as the
scene of his great adventure.</p>
<p>The question that had long and seriously agitated the
frequenters of the Nuremberg was whether this goose-boy migrant
was really a soul-driven genius, spreading his wings to the
light, or merely an enterprising young man who fancied he could
paint and was pardonably anxious to escape from the monotony of
rye bread diet and the sandy, swine-bestrewn plains of
Pomerania. There was reasonable ground for doubt and
caution; the artistic groups that foregathered at the little
restaurant contained so many young women with short hair and so
many young men with long hair, who supposed themselves to be
abnormally gifted in the domain of music, poetry, painting, or
stagecraft, with little or nothing to support the supposition,
that a self-announced genius of any sort in their midst was
inevitably suspect. On the other hand, there was the
ever-imminent danger of entertaining, and snubbing, an angel
unawares. There had been the lamentable case of Sledonti,
the dramatic poet, who had been belittled and cold-shouldered in
the Owl Street hall of judgment, and had been afterwards hailed
as a master singer by the Grand Duke Constantine
Constantinovitch—“the most educated of the
Romanoffs,” according to Sylvia Strubble, who spoke rather
as one who knew every individual member of the Russian imperial
family; as a matter of fact, she knew a newspaper correspondent,
a young man who ate <i>bortsch</i> with the air of having
invented it. Sledonti’s “Poems of Death and
Passion” were now being sold by the thousand in seven
European languages, and were about to be translated into Syrian,
a circumstance which made the discerning critics of the Nuremberg
rather shy of maturing their future judgments too rapidly and too
irrevocably.</p>
<p>As regards Knopfschrank’s work, they did not lack
opportunity for inspecting and appraising it. However
resolutely he might hold himself aloof from the social life of
his restaurant acquaintances, he was not minded to hide his
artistic performances from their inquiring gaze. Every
evening, or nearly every evening, at about seven o’clock,
he would make his appearance, sit himself down at his accustomed
table, throw a bulky black portfolio on to the chair opposite
him, nod round indiscriminately at his fellow-guests, and
commence the serious business of eating and drinking. When
the coffee stage was reached he would light a cigarette, draw the
portfolio over to him, and begin to rummage among its
contents. With slow deliberation he would select a few of
his more recent studies and sketches, and silently pass them
round from table to table, paying especial attention to any new
diners who might be present. On the back of each sketch was
marked in plain figures the announcement “Price ten
shillings.”</p>
<p>If his work was not obviously stamped with the hall-mark of
genius, at any rate it was remarkable for its choice of an
unusual and unvarying theme. His pictures always
represented some well-known street or public place in London,
fallen into decay and denuded of its human population, in the
place of which there roamed a wild fauna, which, from its wealth
of exotic species, must have originally escaped from Zoological
Gardens and travelling beast shows. “Giraffes
drinking at the fountain pools, Trafalgar Square,” was one
of the most notable and characteristic of his studies, while even
more sensational was the gruesome picture of “Vultures
attacking dying camel in Upper Berkeley Street.”
There were also photographs of the large canvas on which he had
been engaged for some months, and which he was now endeavouring
to sell to some enterprising dealer or adventurous amateur.
The subject was “Hyænas asleep in Euston
Station,” a composition that left nothing to be desired in
the way of suggesting unfathomed depths of desolation.</p>
<p>“Of course it may be immensely clever, it may be
something epoch-making in the realm of art,” said Sylvia
Strubble to her own particular circle of listeners, “but,
on the other hand, it may be merely mad. One mustn’t
pay too much attention to the commercial aspect of the case, of
course, but still, if some dealer would make a bid for that
hyæna picture, or even for some of the sketches, we should
know better how to place the man and his work.”</p>
<p>“We may all be cursing ourselves one of these
days,” said Mrs. Nougat-Jones, “for not having bought
up his entire portfolio of sketches. At the same time, when
there is so much real talent going about, one does not feel like
planking down ten shillings for what looks like a bit of
whimsical oddity. Now that picture that he showed us last
week, ‘Sand-grouse roosting on the Albert Memorial,’
was very impressive, and of course I could see there was good
workmanship in it and breadth of treatment; but it didn’t
in the least convey the Albert Memorial to me, and Sir James
Beanquest tells me that sand-grouse don’t roost, they sleep
on the ground.”</p>
<p>Whatever talent or genius the Pomeranian artist might possess,
it certainly failed to receive commercial sanction. The
portfolio remained bulky with unsold sketches, and the
“Euston Siesta,” as the wits of the Nuremberg
nicknamed the large canvas, was still in the market. The
outward and visible signs of financial embarrassment began to be
noticeable; the half-bottle of cheap claret at dinner-time gave
way to a small glass of lager, and this in turn was displaced by
water. The one-and-sixpenny set dinner receded from an
everyday event to a Sunday extravagance; on ordinary days the
artist contented himself with a sevenpenny omelette and some
bread and cheese, and there were evenings when he did not put in
an appearance at all. On the rare occasions when he spoke
of his own affairs it was observed that he began to talk more
about Pomerania and less about the great world of art.</p>
<p>“It is a busy time there now with us,” he said
wistfully; “the schwines are driven out into the fields
after harvest, and must be looked after. I could be helping
to look after if I was there. Here it is difficult to live;
art is not appreciate.”</p>
<p>“Why don’t you go home on a visit?” some one
asked tactfully.</p>
<p>“Ah, it cost money! There is the ship passage to
Stolpmünde, and there is money that I owe at my
lodgings. Even here I owe a few schillings. If I
could sell some of my sketches—”</p>
<p>“Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Nougat-Jones, “if
you were to offer them for a little less, some of us would be
glad to buy a few. Ten shillings is always a consideration,
you know, to people who are not over well off. Perhaps if
you were to ask six or seven shillings—”</p>
<p>Once a peasant, always a peasant. The mere suggestion of
a bargain to be struck brought a twinkle of awakened alertness
into the artist’s eyes, and hardened the lines of his
mouth.</p>
<p>“Nine schilling nine pence each,” he snapped, and
seemed disappointed that Mrs. Nougat-Jones did not pursue the
subject further. He had evidently expected her to offer
seven and fourpence.</p>
<p>The weeks sped by, and Knopfschrank came more rarely to the
restaurant in Owl Street, while his meals on those occasions
became more and more meagre. And then came a triumphal day,
when he appeared early in the evening in a high state of elation,
and ordered an elaborate meal that scarcely stopped short of
being a banquet. The ordinary resources of the kitchen were
supplemented by an imported dish of smoked goosebreast, a
Pomeranian delicacy that was luckily procurable at a firm of
<i>delikatessen</i> merchants in Coventry Street, while a
long-necked bottle of Rhine wine gave a finishing touch of
festivity and good cheer to the crowded table.</p>
<p>“He has evidently sold his masterpiece,” whispered
Sylvia Strubble to Mrs. Nougat-Jones, who had come in late.</p>
<p>“Who has bought it?” she whispered back.</p>
<p>“Don’t know; he hasn’t said anything yet,
but it must be some American. Do you see, he has got a
little American flag on the dessert dish, and he has put pennies
in the music box three times, once to play the
‘Star-spangled Banner,’ then a Sousa march, and then
the ‘Star-spangled Banner’ again. It must be an
American millionaire, and he’s evidently got a very big
price for it; he’s just beaming and chuckling with
satisfaction.”</p>
<p>“We must ask him who has bought it,” said Mrs.
Nougat-Jones.</p>
<p>“Hush! no, don’t. Let’s buy some of
his sketches, quick, before we are supposed to know that
he’s famous; otherwise he’ll be doubling the
prices. I am so glad he’s had a success at
last. I always believed in him, you know.”</p>
<p>For the sum of ten shillings each Miss Strubble acquired the
drawings of the camel dying in Upper Berkeley Street and of the
giraffes quenching their thirst in Trafalgar Square; at the same
price Mrs. Nougat-Jones secured the study of roosting
sand-grouse. A more ambitious picture, “Wolves and
wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenæum Club,”
found a purchaser at fifteen shillings.</p>
<p>“And now what are your plans?” asked a young man
who contributed occasional paragraphs to an artistic weekly.</p>
<p>“I go back to Stolpmünde as soon as the ship
sails,” said the artist, “and I do not return.
Never.”</p>
<p>“But your work? Your career as painter?”</p>
<p>“Ah, there is nossing in it. One starves.
Till to-day I have sold not one of my sketches. To-night
you have bought a few, because I am going away from you, but at
other times, not one.”</p>
<p>“But has not some American—?”</p>
<p>“Ah, the rich American,” chuckled the
artist. “God be thanked. He dash his car right
into our herd of schwines as they were being driven out to the
fields. Many of our best schwines he killed, but he paid
all damages. He paid perhaps more than they were worth,
many times more than they would have fetched in the market after
a month of fattening, but he was in a hurry to get on to
Dantzig. When one is in a hurry one must pay what one is
asked. God be thanked for rich Americans, who are always in
a hurry to get somewhere else. My father and mother, they
have now so plenty of money; they send me some to pay my debts
and come home. I start on Monday for Stolpmünde and I
do not come back. Never.”</p>
<p>“But your picture, the hyænas?”</p>
<p>“No good. It is too big to carry to
Stolpmünde. I burn it.”</p>
<p>In time he will be forgotten, but at present Knopfschrank is
almost as sore a subject as Sledonti with some of the frequenters
of the Nuremberg Restaurant, Owl Street, Soho.</p>
<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS***</p>
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