Beasts and super-beasts

^^^^>

University of CaKfomia • Berkeley

From the Collection of

Edward Hellman Heller

and

Elinor Raas Heller

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2008 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/beastssuperbeastOOsal<irich

BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

WHEN WILLIAM CAME

THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON

THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS

BEASTS AND
SUPER-BEASTS

By H. H. MUNRO (" SAKI ")

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO : BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV

THE ANCHOR PRB88, LTD., TipiaKE, E8SBX,

CONTENTS

»AOB

THE SHE-WOLF ..

1

LAURA . .

. 13

THE BOAR-PIG

22

THE BROGUE

. 31

THE HEN

. 40

THE OPEN WINDOW

. 50

THE TREASURE-SHIP

. 56

THE COBWEB

. 63

THE LULL

• 73

THE UNKINDEST BLOW

. 82

THE ROMANCERS

. 90

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD

. 97

THE SEVENTH PULLET

. 106

THE BLIND SPOT

. 117

DUSK . .

. 125

A TOUCH OF REALISM

. 133

COUSIN TERESA , .

. 143

THE YARKAND MANNER . .

. 151

THE BYZANTINE OMELETTE

. 160

THE FEAST OF NEMESIS . .

. 168

THE DREAMER ..

. 175

THE QUINCE TREE

. 183

vi CONTENTS

PAGB

THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS

. 190

THE STAKE

. 198

CLOVIS ON PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES

. 205

A HOLIDAY TASK

. 211

THE STALLED OX

. . 220

THE STORY-TELLER

. 229

A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND . .

. 239

THE ELK

. 247

" DOWN PENS " . .

. 256

THE NAME-DAY . .

. 264

THE LUMBER ROOM

. 274

FUR

. 285

THE PHILANTHROPIST AND THE HAPPY CAT 294

ON APPROVAL

. 303

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T

" r I AHE Open Window," " The Schartz-
Metterklume Method," and " Clovis on
Parental Responsibilities," originally
appeared in the Westminster Gazette, " The Elk " in
the Bystander, and the remaining stories in the
Morning Post. To the Editors of these papers I am
indebted for their courtesy in allowing me to reprint
them.

H. H. M.

BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

Beasts and Super-Beasts

THE SHE-WOLF

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 beUefs were for
" the few," that is to say, anyone who would Hsten
to him.

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

B

2 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 EngHsh 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 adver-
tisement 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

THE SHE- WOLF

by the respect accorded to Mrs. Hoops' powers of
imagination.

However divided opinion might be on the ques-
tion 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 pubUcity 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.

" I wish you would turn me into a wolf, Mr.
Bilsiter," said his hostess at luncheon the day after
his arrival.

" My dear Mary," said Colonel Hampton,
" I never knew you had a craving in that
direction."

" 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."

" I don't think one should jest on these subjects,"
said Leonard.

" I'm not jesting, I'm quite serious, I assure you.
Only don't do it to-day ; we have only eight avail-
able bridge players, and it would break up one of

4 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

our tables. To-morrow we shall be a larger party.
To-morrow night, after dinner "

" In otir present imperfect imderstanding 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.

Clovis Sangrail had sat unusually silent during
the discussion on the possibiUties of Siberian Magic ;
after lunch he side-tracked Lord Pabham into the
comparative seclusion of the billiard-room and dehv-
ered himself of a searching question.

*' Have you such a thing as a she- wolf in your
collection of wild animals ? A she-wolf of moder-
ately good temper ? "

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 angehc temper, as she-wolves
go. Why do you ask ? "

" I was wondering whether you would lend her
to me for to-morrow night," said Clovis, with the
careless soHcitude of one who borrows a collar stud
or a tennis racquet.

" To-morrow night ? "

THE SHE-WOLF

" 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 unob-
trusive exit."

Lord Pabham stared at Clovis for a moment in
pardonable bewilderment ; then his face broke into
a wrinkled network of laughter.

" 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-con-
spirator ? "

" Mary is pledged to see me through with it, if
you will guarantee Louisa's temper."

*' I'll answer for Louisa," said Lord Pabham.

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 pre-
paratory to a general migration to the card-room.

6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

His aunt ensured a respectful hearing for his utter-
ances, but her sensation-loving soul hankered after
something more dramatic than mere vocal demon-
stration.

" Won't you do something to convince 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.

" 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 wiUing to be entertained by an exhibition
of amateur conjuring.

Leonard felt that something tangible was expected
of him.

" Has anyone present," he asked, "got a three-
penny bit or some small object of no particular
value ? "

" You're surely not going to make coins disappear,
or something primitive of that sort ? " said Clovis
contemptuously.

" 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.

" I have already warned you of the danger of

THE SHE- WOLF

treating these powers in a mocking spirit," said
Leonard solemnly.

" 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."

As she said this she was lost to view behind a
clump of azaleas.

" Mrs. Hampton " began Leonard with in-
creased 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.

" What on earth is the matter with those con-
founded birds, Mary ? " exclaimed Colonel Hampton ;
at the same moment an even more piercing scream
from Mavis Pellington stampeded the entire com-
pany 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.

Mrs. Hoops was the first to recover from the
general chaos of fright and bewilderment.

" 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 ! "

" I — I don't know how to," faltered Leonard,

8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

who looked more scared and horrified than
anyone.

" 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 ! "

To do strict justice to Leonard, calmness was
not a distinguishing feature of his attitude at the
moment.

" I assure you I didn't turn Mrs. Hampton into
a wolf ; nothing was farther from my intentions,"
he protested.

" Then where is she, and how came that animal
into the conservatory ? " demanded the Colonel.

" 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 appear-
ances are against you."

" Are we to have all these recriminations with
that beast standing there ready to tear us to pieces ? "
wailed Mavis indignantly.

" Lord Pabham, you know a good deal about
wild beasts " suggested Colonel Hampton.

" 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

THE SHE-WOLF

confronted with an animal that walks unconcernedly
out of an azalea bush, leaving a charming and
popular hostess unaccoimted for. As far as one
can judge from outward characteristics," he con-
tinued, " it has the appearance of a well-grown
female of the North American timber-wolf, a
variety of the common species canis lupus."

*' 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 ? "

" 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.

" 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 ? "

" 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.

" I absolutely forbid it," thundered the Colonel.

" Most wolves that I've had anything to do with
have been inordinately fond of sugar," said Lord
Pabham ; " if you Hke I'll try the effect on this one."

10 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

" The door is locked on the inside ! " exclaimed
Clovis, who had deftly turned the key as he affected
to test it.

Everyone turned towards Bilsiter.

" 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."

Bilsiter's reiterated disclaimer was met with a
general murmur of impatient disbelief.

THE SHE-WOLF ii

'' I refuse to stay another hour under this roof,"
declared Mavis Pellington.

" 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 ! "

" It's a she-wolf," said Clovis soothingly.

The correct etiquette to be observed under the
unusual circumstances received no further elucida-
tion. The sudden entry of Mary Hampton deprived
the discussion of its immediate interest.

" 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 for-
bidden me to touch sugar."

The situation was explained to her, as far as
it permitted of anything that could be called
explanation.

" Then you really did turn me into a wolf, Mr.
Bilsiter ? " she exclaimed excitedly.

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.

" 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

12 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

If Leonard Bilsiter could at that moment have
transformed Clovis into a cockroach and then
have stepped on him he would gladly have per-
formed both operations.

LAURA 13

Y

LAURA

^^ ^ JTOX] are not really dying, are you ? " asked
Amanda.

" I have the doctor's permission to
live till Tuesday," said Laura.

*' But to-day is Saturday ; this is serious ! "
gasped Amanda.

" I don't know about it being serious ; it is
certainly Saturday," said Laura.

" Death is always serious," said Amanda.

" I never said I was going to die. I am presum-
ably 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 Hfe 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."

" Circumstances never warrant that sort of
thing," said Amanda hastily.

14 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" 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."

** I don't see what's wrong with Egbert," pro-
tested Amanda.

" 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."

" They chased his young broods of speckled Sussex
and drove two sitting hens off their nests, besides
rimning all over the flower beds. You know how
devoted he is to his poultry and garden."

" 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."

'* How could you ? " exclaimed Amanda.

*' It came quite easy," said Laura ; " two of the

LAURA 15

hens pretended to be laying at the time, but I was
firm."

" And we thought it was an accident ! "

" You see," resumed Laura, " I really have 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."

" I can't imagine you as an otter," said Amanda.

*' Well, I don't suppose you can imagine me as an
angel, if it comes to that," said Laura.

Amanda was silent. She couldn't.

" Personally I think an otter Ufe 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 danghng before them ; and an elegant
svelte figure "

" Think of the otter hounds," interposed Amanda ;
*' how dreadful to be hunted and harried and finally
worried to death ! "

" 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

i6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

should go on into something else. If I had been
a moderately good otter I suppose I should get back
into hmnan shape of some sort ; probably something
rather primitive — a little brown, unclothed Nubian
boy, I should think."

" I wish you would be serious," sighed Amanda ;
" you really ought to be if you're only going to live
tiU Tuesday."

As a matter of fact Laura died on Monday.

" 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."

" Laura always was inconsiderate," said Sir
Lulworth ; " she was born diuring Goodwood week,
with an Ambassador staying in the house who hated
babies."

" She had the maddest kind of ideas," said
Amanda ; "do you know if there was any insanity
in her family ? "

" Insanity ? No, I never heard of any. Her
father lives in West Kensington, but I believe he's
sane on all other subjects."

" She had an idea that she was going to be rein-
carnated as an otter," said Amanda.

" One meets with those ideas of reincarnation so
frequently, even in the West," said Sir Lulworth,

LAURA 17

*' 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."

" 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.

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.

" 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 know-
ledge how to be as devastating as possible in a short
space of time."

" Was it a fox, do you think ? " asked Amanda.

" Sounds more Hke a polecat," said Sir Lul worth.

" 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."

i8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

Amanda looked quickly and furtively across at
Sir Lulworth.

Egbert was too agitated to eat any breakfast, and
went out to superintend the strengthening of the
poultry yard defences.

" I think she might at least have waited till the
funeral was over," said Amanda in a scandaUsed
voice.

" It's her own funeral, you know," said Sir Lul-
worth ; '* it's a nice point in etiquette how far one
ought to show respect to one's own mortal
remains."

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.

" I shall get the otter hounds to come here at the
earliest possible moment," said Egbert savagely.

"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."

" It's a case of necessity," said Egbert ; " once
an otter takes to that sort of thing it won't stop."

LAURA 19

" Perhaps it will go elsewhere now there are no
more fowls left," suggested Amanda.

" One would think you wanted to shield the beast,"
said Egbert.

" There's been so little water in the stream lately/*
objected Amanda ; "it seems hardly sporting to
hunt an animal when it has so httle chance of taking
refuge anywhere."

" Good gracious ! " fumed Egbert, " I'm not
thinking about sport. I want to have the animal
killed as soon as possible."

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.

" 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.

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.

20 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

It was her friend and neighbour, Aurora Burret,
who brought her news of the day's sport.

" Pity you weren't out ; we had quite a good day.
We found at once, in the pool just below your
garden."

" Did you — kill ? " asked Amanda.

" 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 ? "

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.

" What is the matter ? What has happened ? '*
she asked in amused curiosity.

LAURA 21

" The little beast has thrown all my clean shirts
into the bath ! Wait till I catch you, you little '*

" What Httle beast ? " asked Amanda, suppressing
a desire to laugh ; Egbert's language was so hope-
lessly inadequate to express his outraged feelings.

'' A Httle beast of a naked brown Nubian boy/'
spluttered Egbert.

And now Amanda is seriously ill.

22 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

T

THE BOAR.PIG

^' A I A HERE is a back way on to the lawn,"
said Mrs. Philidore Stossen to her
daughter, " through a small grass pad-
dock 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 shrub-
bery, 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."

" Isn't it a lot of trouble to take for getting
admittance to a garden party ? "

" To a garden party, yes ; to the garden party
of the season, certainly not. Every one of any con-
sequence in the county, with the exception of our-
selves, has been asked to meet the Princess, and it
would be far more troublesome to invent explana-

THE BOAR-PIG 23

tions 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 Httle gate into the garden."

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
statehness 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.

" 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

24 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 after-
noon out."

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 expedi-
tion, 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.

** What a villainous-looking animal," exclaimed
Mrs. Stossen ; "it wasn't there when we came in."

" It's there now, anyhow," said her daughter.
" What on earth are we to do ? I wish we had
never come."

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.

" Shoo ! Hish ! Hish ! Shoo ! " cried the ladies
in chorus.

THE BOAR-PIG 25

" If they think they're going to drive him away
by reciting Hsts 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 any-
thing 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.

" Little girl, can you find some one to drive away
" she began hopefully.

" Comment ? Comprends pas/' was the response.

" Oh, are you French ? Etes vous frangaise ? "

" Pas de tous. 'Suis anglaise."

" Then why not talk English ? I want to know
if "

" Permettez-moi expliquer. 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

26 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Hke ' forcible feeding ' that I
didn't know the French for ; of course I could have
invented them, but if I had said nourriture obliga-
toire you wouldn't have had the least idea what I
was talking about. Mais maintenant, nous parlons
frangaisJ*

" Oh, very well, Ms hien," said Mrs. Stossen
reluctantly ; in moments of flurry such French as
she knew was not under very good control. " La,
d V autre c6t6 de la porte, est un cochon "

** Un cochon ? Ah, le petit charmant ! " exclaimed
Matilda with enthusiasm.

" Mais non, pas du tout petit, et pas du tout char-
mant ; un bete feroce "

THE BOAR-PIG 27

'' Une bSte," corrected Matilda ; '* a pig is mascu-
line 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."

" For goodness' sake let us talk EngUsh then,"
said Mrs. Stossen. " Is there any way out of this
garden except through the paddock where the pig
is ? "

" I always go over the wall, by way of the plum
tree," said Matilda.

'* Dressed as we are we could hardly do that,"
said Mrs. Stossen ; it was difficult to imagine her
doing it in any costume.

" Do you think you could go and get some one
who would drive the pig away ? " asked Miss
Stossen.

" I promised my aunt I would stay here till five
o'clock ; it's not four yet."

" I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt
would permit "

" My conscience would not permit," said Matilda
with cold dignity.

" We can't stay here till five o'clock," exclaimed
Mrs. Stossen with growing exasperation.

" Shall I recite to you to make the time pass
quicker ? " asked Matilda obligingly. " ' Belinda,

28 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" If you will go and fetch some one to drive that
animal away I will give you something to buy your-
self a nice present," said Mrs. Stossen.

Matilda came several inches lower down the
medlar tree.

" 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."

" 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.

" 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

THE BOAR-PIG 29

be able to do the pale, fragile, not-long-for-this-
world business to perfection after his raspberry
trifle experience. Yes, he'll be quite two pounds
ahead of me by now."

With much probing and plucking and many
regretful murmurs the beleaguered ladies managed
to produce seven-and-sixpence between them.

" I am afraid this is all we've got," said Mrs.
Stossen.

Matilda showed no sign of coming down either
to the earth or to their figure.

" I could not do violence to my conscience for
anything less than ten shiUings," she announced
stiffly.

Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks
under their breath, in which the word " beast "
was prominent, and probably had no reference to
Tarquin.

" I find I have got another half-crown," said
Mrs. Stossen in a shaking voice ; " here you are.
Now please fetch some one quickly."

Matilda slipped down from the tree, took posses-
sion 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.

" Come, Tarquin, dear old boy ; you know you

30 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

can't resist medlars when they're rotten and
squashy."

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 deUvered
captives hurried across the paddock.

" 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 beheve the Fresh Air Fund
will see a penny of it ! "

There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judg-
ment. If you examine the books of the fund you
will find the acknowledgment : " Collected by Miss
Matilda Cuvering, 2s. 6d."

THE BROGUE 31

THE BROGUE

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 des-
cribed 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

32 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 disHke 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 Ughtning. 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.

It was about the third week in May that Mrs.
Mullet, rehct of the late Sylvester Mullet, and
mother of Toby and a bunch of daughters, assailed

THE BROGUE 33

Clovis Sangrail on the outskirts of the village with
a breathless catalogue of local happenings.

" 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 ! "

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.

" 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. ' '

" Don't congratulate me. It's the most unfor-
tunate thing that could have happened ! " said Mrs.
Mullet dramatically.

Clovis stared at her in amazement.

" 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

D

34 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 ! "

" But you've been trying to get the horse off
your hands for years," said Clovis.

"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."

" 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."

" 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

THE BROGUE 35

ask to have the horse back ; you see, we praised it
up Uke anything when we thought there was a chance
of his buying it, and said it was just the animal to
suit him."

" 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."

" 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."

" 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."

" 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

36 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

kicking and twisting about as if they were demented,
don't they ? "

" The lamb has an entirely unmerited character
for sedateness," agreed Clovis.

Jessie came back from the golf links next day in
a state of mingled elation and concern.

" 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."

" 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."

*' 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

THE BROGUE 37

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 octo-
genarians 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."

Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developments
of the situation put before him.

" 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."

" I did hint to Mr. Penricarde — to Vincent, I
should say — that the Brogue didn't Hke white gates,"
said Jessie.

" 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

38 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

road, and there's sure to be a pig or two grunting
about in the lane."

" He's taken rather a disHke to turkeys lately,"
said Toby.

" 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 build-
ing 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."

Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and
she kissed Clovis.

It was nobody's fault that the rain came down in
torrents the next morning, making a picnic a fan-
tastic impossibility. It was also nobody's fault,
but sheer ill-luck, that the weather cleared up suffi-
ciently 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

THE BROGUE 39

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. Subse-
quently, 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.

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 coimtry roads,
and allowed Jessie to nurse him back into complete
recovery and golf-fitness within something less than
a week.

In the list of wedding presents which the local
newspaper pubUshed a fortnight or so later appeared
the following item :

" Brown saddle-horse, ' The Brogue,' bridegroom's
gift to bride."

''Which shows," said Toby Mullet, "that he
knew nothing."

" Or else," said Clovis, " that he has a very
pleasing wit."

40 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

D

THE HEN

" T"^ ORA BITTHOLZ is coming on Thurs
day/' said Mrs. Sangrail.

" This next Thursday ? " asked Clovis

His mother nodded.

*' 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."

" Why should I ? " asked Mrs. Sangrail ; " she
and Dora are good friends, aren't they? They
used to be, as far as I remember."

" 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 utiUsed as a snake
sanatorium."

" But what has happened ? Has some one been
making mischief ? "

THE HEN 41

" Not exactly," said Clovis ; "a hen came
between them."

" A hen ? What hen ? "

" 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 note-
paper."

*' How ridiculous ! " said Mrs. Sangrail. " Couldn't
some of their friends compose the quarrel ? "

" People tried," said Clovis, " but it must have
been rather like composing the storm music of the
' Fhegende Hollander.' Jane was wilHng 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 White-
chapel as do that."

" It's a most awkward situation," said Mrs.
Sangrail. " Do you suppose they won't speak to
one another ? "

" On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get

42 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" 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."

" 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."

" As long as you don't drag me into it "

stipulated his mother.

" 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 cura9oa ; there were
other ingredients, but they were never indiscrimi-
nately revealed.

" Servants a nuisance ! " exclaimed Jane, bound-
ing 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

THE HEN 43

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."

" 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."

" But if they give satisfaction "

" 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."

" The excellent Sturridge a nuisance ! I can't
believe it."

" I know he's excellent, and we just couldn't
get along without him ; he's the one reliable ele-
ment 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

44 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

and superintend exactly what silver and glass and
table linen shall be used and set out on what occa-
sions, to have cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard
under a minutely devised and undeviating adminis-
tration, to be noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent,
and, as far as your own department is concerned,
omniscient ? "

" I should go mad," said Jane with conviction.

" Exactly," said Clovis thoughtfully, swallowing
his completed Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

" But Sturridge hasn't gone mad," said Jane
with a flutter of inquiry in her voice.

" On most points he's thoroughly sane and
rehable," said Clovis, " but at times he is subject
to the most obstinate delusions, and on those occa-
sions he becomes not merely a nuisance but a decided
embarrassment."

" What sort of delusions ? "

" 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 decHned to interfere
with what he imagined to be Matilda's private
catering arrangements, wouldn't allow any tea

THE HEN 45

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."

" How very unpleasant. Whatever did you do
about it ? "

" 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.

*' I shouldn't have done that," said Jane, " I
should have humoured him in some way. I cer-
tainly shouldn't have gone away."

Clovis frowned.

"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 en-
courage them."

" You don't mean to say he might be dangerous,
do you ? " asked Jane with some anxiety.

" 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."

" What, has he taken a fancy about some one here
now ? " asked Jane excitedly ; " how thrilhng !
Do tell me who it is."

" You," said Clovis briefly.

46 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

"Me?"

Clovis nodded.

" Who on earth does he think I am ? "

" Queen Anne," was the unexpected answer.

" Queen Anne ! What an idea. But, anyhow,
there's nothing dangerous about her ; she's such
a colourless personahty."

" What does posterity chiefly say about Queen
Anne ? " asked Clovis rather sternly.

" The only thing that I can remember about her,"
said Jane, " is the saying ' Queen Anne's dead.' "

" Exactly," said Clovis, staring at the glass that
had held the Ella Wheeler Wilcox, " dead."

" Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen
Anne ? " asked Jane.

" 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 Dubhn Horse Show, and naturally he feels
that something's very wrong with you."

THE HEN 47

'* But he wouldn't be downright hostile to me on
that account, would he ? " Jane asked anxiously.

" 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."

" This is awful," said Jane ; " your mother must
be told about it at once."

" My mother mustn't hear a word about it," said
Clovis earnestly ; "it would upset her dreadfully.
She relies on Sturridge for everything."

" But he might kill me at any moment," protested
Jane.

" Not at any moment ; he's busy with the silver
all the afternoon."

" You'll have to keep a sharp look-out all the
time and be on your guard to frustrate any murder-
ous attack," said Jane, adding in a tone of weak
obstinacy : " It's a dreadful situation to be in,
with a mad butler danghng over you hke the sword
of What's-his-name, but I'm certainly not going to
cut my visit short."

Clovis swore horribly under his breath ; the
miracle was an obvious misfire.

It was in the hall the next morning after a late

48 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

breakfast that Clovis had his final inspiration as he
stood engaged in coaxing rust spots from an old
putter.

'' Where is Miss Martlet ? " he asked the butler,
who was at that moment crossing the hall.

" Writing letters in the morning-room, sir," said
Sturridge, announcing a fact of which his questioner
was already aware.

" 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."

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 hghtning 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.

** 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."

THE HEN 49

Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis' ideas of unneces-
sary alarm, and was almost rude to the young man
who came round with thoughtful inquiries as to
luncheon-baskets.

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.

50 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE OPEN WINDOW

M

'^ '^ ^"Y aunt will be down presently, Mr.
Nuttel," said a very self-possessed
young lady of fifteen ; " in the mean-
time you must try and put up with me."

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.

" 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."

Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the

THE OPEN WINDOW 51

lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters
of introduction, came into the nice division.

" Do you know many of the people round here ? "
asked the niece, when she judged that they had had
sufficient silent communion.

" 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 introduc-
tion to some of the people here."

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct
regret.

" Then you know practically nothing about my
aunt ? " pursued the self-possessed young lady.

" Only her name and address," admitted the caller.
He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the
married or widowed state. An undefinable some-
thing about the room seemed to suggest masculine
habitation.

" Her great tragedy happened just three years
ago," said the child ; " that would be since your
sister's time."

" Her tragedy ? " asked Framton ; somehow in
this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

" 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.

52 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

*' It is quite warm for the time of the year/' said
Framton ; " but has that window got anything to
do with the tragedy ? "

" 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 falter-
ingly human. " Poor aimt 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 aimt, 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 even-
ings Hke this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they
will all walk in through that window "

THE OPEN WINDOW 53

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.

" I hope Vera has been amusing you ? '* she said.

" She has been very interesting," said Framton.

" 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 ? "

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 unfor-
tunate coincidence that he should have paid his
visit on this tragic anniversary.

" The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest,
an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of
anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,"
annoimced Framton, who laboured under the

54 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

tolerably wide-spread 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.

" 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 sa5Hing.

*' 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 ! "

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.

In the deepening twiUght three figures were walk-
ing 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 ? "

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat ;

THE OPEN WINDOW 55

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.

*' 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 ? "

" 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."

" 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 snarHng and grinning and foam-
ing just above him. Enough to make anyone lose
their nerve."

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

56 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE TREASURE-SHIP

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 squad-
ron the learned were not agreed. The galleon had
brought nothing into the world, but it had, accord-
ing 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 gobUn gold. Of the former school was
Lulu, Duchess of Dulverton.

The Duchess was not only a believer in the exist-
ence of a sunken treasure of alluring proportions ;
5he alsp believed that she knew of a method by

THE TREASURE-SHIP 57

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 briUiancy.
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

58 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

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 suit-
ability for the direction of a treasure-seeking experi-
ment ; if anyone could extract gold from an unpro-
mising 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,

THE TREASURE-SHIP 59

Somewhere on the west coast of Ireland the Dul-
verton 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.

" It will be the very place to practise and experi-
ment 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."

In less than three weeks Vasco turned up in town
to report progress.

" The apparatus works beautifully," he informed
his aunt ; " the deeper one got the clearer every-
thing grew. We found something in the way of
a simken wreck to operate on, too ! "

" A wreck in Innisgluther Bay ! " exclaimed
Lulu.

6o BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

*' A submerged motor-boat, the Sub-Rosa,'* said
Vasco.

" 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."

" In this case they were right," said Vasco.

" What do you mean ? " asked the Duchess
hurriedly. " What makes you think so ? "

" I know," said Vasco simply.

" Know ? How can you know ? How can any-
one know ? The thing happened three years ago."

" In a locker of the Sub-Rosa 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.

" Was this in the Sub-Rosa's strong-box ? " she
asked.

" 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 Sub-Rosa's

THE TREASURE-SHIP 6i

papers were made public. I've put you at the head
of it, otherwise it follows alphabetical order."

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.

" 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.

Vasco shook his head.

" But you should have," said Lulu angrily ; "if,
as you say, they are highly compromising "

" Oh, they are, I assure you of that," interposed
the young man.

" 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.

" 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."

Lulu glared at her nephew for some moments in

62 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

silence. Then she asked hoarsely : " What are you
going to do ? "

'* 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."

Lulu's relative, who lived at the Court of Monaco,
got quite a snappish answer when she wrote recom-
mending some further invention in the realm of
marine research.

THE COBWEB 63

THE COBWEB

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 farm-
house 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 Httle
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

64 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

" 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.

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 Hke 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

THE COBWEB 65

remember she had pattered to and fro between
oven and wash-house and dairy, and out to
chicken-rim and garden, grumbUng and muttering
and scolding, but working imceasingly. 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 any-
one, let alone a stranger like Emma, to get her to

66 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Palme rst on, 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 poHtics 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.

When the half-frightened curiosity had somewhat

THE COBWEB 67

faded away, Emma Ladbruk was uncomfortably
conscious of another feeling towards the old woman.
She was a quaint old tradition, Ungering 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 four-score 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

68 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

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 imaccustomed
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.

" Is anything the matter, Martha ? " asked the
young woman.

" 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

THE COBWEB 69

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."

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

70 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

" I*m afraid old Martha is dying," said Emma.
Jim was not the sort of person to whom one had to
break news gently.

" Nonsense/' he said ; " Martha means to live to a
hundred. She told me so, and she'll do it."

" She may be actually dying at this moment,
or it may just be the beginning of the break-up,"
persisted Emma, with a feehng of contempt for the
slowness and dulness of the young man.

A grin spread over his good-natured features.

" It don't look Hke 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 metaUic 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

THE COBWEB 71

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 harp-
ing on the theme of death coming to the farm.

" I knew 'twere a-coming. There's been signs
an' warnings."

" Who's dead, then, old Mother ? " called out
the yoimg man.

" '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."

And she turned to fling a handful of barley at a
belated group of guinea-fowl that came racing
toward her.

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

72 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

stood she cotQd 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, unheed-
ing 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.

THE LULL 73

I

THE LULL

^^ Y'VE asked Latimer Springfield to spend Sun-
day with us and stop the night," announced
Mrs. Durmot at the breakfast-table.

" I thought he was in the throes of an election,"
remarked her husband.

" 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 hke 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 Parlia-
ment taken down from the staircase, and even the
portrait of Lord Rosebery's * Ladas ' removed from
the smoking-room. And Vera," added Mrs. Durmot,

74 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" On state occasions I always wear a black ribbon
in my hair," said Vera with crushing dignity.

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.

" 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."

" That remains to be seen," said Vera, but she
said it to herself.

Latimer had scarcely shut his bedroom door before

THE LULL 75

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 Ufe, when a stifled squeaUng 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 ? "

" These " were a small black pig and a lusty
specimen of black-red gamecock.

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.

" Wouldn't they be happier somewhere outside ? "
he asked, tactfully expressing his own preference
in the matter in an apparent solicitude for theirs.

'' There is no outside," said Vera impressively.

76 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" nothing but a waste of dark, swirling waters.
The reservoir at Brinkley has burst."

" I didn't know there was a reservoir at Brinkley,"
said Latimer.

" 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."

" Good gracious ! Have any lives been lost ? "

" Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid
has already identified three bodies that have floated
past the biUiard-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."

" 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 Hmelight.

'* 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 LULL yy

the gamecock, you know, for the night. You see,
there are eight other gamecocks, and they fight
Uke 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 Uke 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 where-
ever he finds them."

" 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.

" The bathroom ? " Vera laughed shrilly. " It'll
be full of Boy Scouts till morning if the hot water
holds out."

" Boy Scouts ? "

" 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.

y% BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" It's a new overcoat," said Latimer, with every
indication of minding dreadfully.

" 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 prob-
ably 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."

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 pighng. 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 sud-
denly discovered an appliance in which the most

THE LULL 79

liixuriously 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 pigHng 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 irri-
tant 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 fight in the room to enable the
pig to detect this manoeuvre, 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 dweUing with
decent sympathy on the second housemaid's bereave-
ment, but he found himself more often wondering

8o BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

how many Boy Scouts were sharing his Melton
overcoat. The role of Saint Martin malgre lui was
not one which appealed to him.

Towards dawn the pigling fell into a happy
slumber, and Latimer might have followed its
example, but at about the same time Stupor Hartle-
pooli gave a rousing crow, clattered down to the
floor and forthwith commenced a spirited combat
with his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Remem-
bering that the bird was more or less imder 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 sleep-
ing 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.

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.

THE LULL 8i

" Lor, sir," she exclaimed in undisguised astonish-
ment, " do you want those animals in your room ? "

Want !

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.

" If Miss Vera's dog sees that pig ! " exclaimed

the maid, and hurried off to avert such a catastrophe.

A cold suspicion was stealing over Latimer's mind ;
he went to the window and drew up the bhnd. A
light, drizzling rain was falling, but there was not
the faintest trace of any inundation.

Some half-hour later he met Vera on the way to
the breakfast-room.

" I should not like to think of you as a dehberate
liar," he observed coldly, " but one occasionally
has to do things one does not Hke."

" At any rate I kept your mind from dwelling
on politics all the night," said Vera.

Which was, of course, perfectly true.

82 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE UNKINDEST BLOW

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 con-
vulsion 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 UNKINDEST BLOW 83

the Government of the afternoon, was obUged 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 any-
where 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 per-
forming some personal act of unobtrusive public
service within the province of his department.

"If he insists on feeding the infant jaguar him-
self, 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."

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.

And then the nation and the newspapers turned
with a sense of relief to happier things. It seemed

84 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 pend-
ing Falvertoon divorce suit.

The Duke of Falvertoon was one of those human
hors d'ceuvres that stimulate the public appetite
for sensation without giving it much to feed on.
As a mere child he had been precociously briUiant ;
he had declined the editorship of the Anglian Review
at an age when most boys are content to have
declined mensa, 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 con-
siderable 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 en-
couraging reception accorded to this one political
utterance he was never tempted to a further display

THE UNKINDEST BLOW 85

in that direction. It began to be generally under-
stood that he did not intend to supplement his
numerous town and coimtry residences by living
overmuch in the public eye.

And then had come the imlooked-for tidings of
the imminent proceedings for divorce. And such
a divorce ! There were cross-suits and allegations
and coimter-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 dis-
tinguished 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.

As a reaction from the season of gloom and
industrial strife that had just passed away the
agencies that purvey and stage-manage sensations

86 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 speciaHsed in descriptions
of how witnesses turn pale under cross-examina-
tion, 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 defen-
dant 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 persist-
ence 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 ficti-
tious lawyers or making a light repast off specially
advertised vegetarian sandwiches during a supposed
luncheon interval. As far as human foresight and

THE UNKINDEST BLOW 87

human enterprise could go nothing was lacking to
make the trial a success.

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 con-
cerning his Grace's personal airrangements during
the trial.

" I suppose I may say this will be one of the
biggest affairs of its kind during the Hfetime of a
generation," began the reporter as an excuse for
the imsparing minuteness of detail that he was
about to make quest for.

" I suppose so — if it comes off," said the Duke
lazily.

" If ? " queried the reporter, in a voice that was
something between a gasp and a scream.

" The Duchess and I are both thinking of going
on strike," said the Duke.

" Strike ! "

The baleful word flashed out in all its old hideous
familiarity. Was there to be no end to its recur-
rence ?

" Do you mean," faltered the reporter, " that you
are contemplating a mutual withdrawal of the
charges ? "

" Precisely," said the Duke.

S8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" 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 "

" 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 recon-
ciled ; we fully reaUse 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."

The news of this latest strike spread universal
dismay. Its inaccessibiUty to the ordinary methods
of persuasion made it pecuUarly formidable. If the
Duke and Duchess persisted in being reconciled the
Government could hardly be called on to interfere.
PubUc opinion in the shape of social ostracism might
be brought to bear on them, but that was as far as

THE UNKINDEST BLOW 89

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
canceUing their hotel arrangements.

The conference, protracted, imcomfortable, 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 fort-
night before the date fixed for the new trial.

go BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE ROMANCERS

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, beUeving perpetually in spring and a
change of Government.

Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner
of Hyde Park, lazily enjoying a cigarette and watch-
ing 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 hesita-
ting hoverings of a human figure, which had passed
and repassed his seat two or three times at shorten-
ing intervals, like a wary crow about to aUght 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 ROMANCERS 91

the professional cadger, the man who would undergo
hours of humihating tale-spinning and rebuff rather
than adventure on half a day's decent work.

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 Hsten to.

" It's a strange world," he said.

As the statement met with no response he altered
it to the form of a question.

" I daresay you've found it to be a strange world,
mister ? "

" As far as I am concerned," said Crosby, " the
strangeness has worn off in the course of thirty-six
years."

" Ah," said the greybeard, '' I could tell you
things that you'd hardly beUeve. Marvellous things
that have really happened to me."

" 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."

92 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

The greybeard moved uneasily in his seat ; then
he opened up new country.

" I take it that you are a professing Christian," he
observed.

" 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.

The greybeard was obviously disconcerted at this
new check to introductory conversation, but the
defeat was only momentary.

" Persia. I should never have taken you for a Per-
sian," he remarked, with a somewhat aggrieved air.

" I am not," said Crosby ; "my father was an
Afghan."

" An Afghan ! " said the other, smitten into
bewildered silence for a moment . Then he recovered
himself and renewed his attack.

" 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 beheve. No real poverty there."

He raised his voice on the word " poverty " with
a suggestion of intense feeling. Crosby saw the
opening and avoided it.

" It possesses, nevertheless, a number of highly
talented and ingenious beggars," he said ; " if I

THE ROMANCERS 93

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."

"My own Hfe-story is a curious one/' said the stran-
ger, apparently stifling all desire to hear the history of
Ibrahim ; "I was not always as you see me now."

" We are supposed to imdergo complete change in
the course of every seven years," said Crosby, as
an explanation of the foregoing announcement.

" I mean I was not always in such distressing
circumstances as I am at present," pursued the
stranger doggedly.

" 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 conversa-
tionaUsts of the Afghan border."

" 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 imfortunate
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 posi-
tion," he added.

94 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" 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.'*

" 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."

" He lived happily with very little money or
resources," said Crosby.

" Then I expect he had friends who would help
him liberally whenever he was in difficulties, such
as I am in at present."

" 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."

The greybeard was now genuinely interested.
The conversation had at last taken a favourable
turn.

" If someone, like me, for instance, who was in
imdeserved 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)? '*

THE ROMANCERS 95

" 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 roimdabout."

The listener's eyes were gUttering.

" 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."

" 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 Uttle wooden bridges,
no one who remembers these things and treasures
the memory of them would ever give up a single
one of its im written laws and customs. To me they
are as binding as though I still lived in that hallowed
home of my youth."

" 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 "

96 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" At any other time, certainly," said Crosby ;
" in the months of November and December, how-
ever, 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."

" But it is still October ! " exclaimed the adven-
turer with an eager, angry whine, as Crosby rose
from his seat ; " wants eight days to the end of the
month ! "

" 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.

*' I don't beheve 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. CalHng
himself an Afghan ! "

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.

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD 97

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME
METHOD

LADY CARLOTTA stepped out on to the
platform of the small wayside station and
took a turn or two up and down its unin-
teresting length, to kill time till the train should be
pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the road-
way 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 acquaint-
ances 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 uncom-
fortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while

H

98 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 philo-
sophical 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.

" You must be Miss Hope, the governess IVe
come to meet," said the apparition, in a tone that
admitted of very little argument.

" Very well, if I must I must," said Lady Carlotta
to herself with dangerous meekness.

" I am Mrs. Quabarl," continued the lady ; " and
where, pray, is your luggage ? "

"It's gone astray," said the alleged governess,
falling in with the excellent rule of life that the

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD 99

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.

" 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.

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 deUcate,
sensitive young people, that Irene had the artistic
temperament highly developed, and that Viola was
something or other else of a mould equally common-
place among children of that class and type in the
twentieth century.

*' I wish them not only to be taught," said Mrs.
Quabarl, *' but interested 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 Uved,
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."

" I shall talk French four days of the week and
Russian in the remaining three."

100 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" Russian ? My dear Miss Hope, no one in the
house speaks or understands Russian."

" That will not embarrass me in the least," said
Lady Carlotta coldly.

Mrs. Quabarl, to use a colloquial expression, was
knocked off her perch. She was one of those
imperfectly self-assured individuals who are magnifi-
cent 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.

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 know-
ledge on various vintage matters, concerning which

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD loi

the Quabarls were in no wise able to pose as author-
ities. Previous governesses had limited their con-
versation on the wine topic to a respectful and doubt-
less sincere expression of a preference for water.
When this one went as far as to recommend a wine
finn in whose hands you could not go very far wrong
Mrs. Quabarl thought it time to turn the conversa-
tion into more usual channels.

" We got very satisfactory references about you
from Canon Teep," she observed ; " a very estimable
man, I should think."

" Drinks like a fish and beats his wife, otherwise
a very lovable character," said the governess
imperturbably.

" My dear Miss Hope ! I trust you are exaggera-
ting," exclaimed the Quabarls in unison.

'* 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 declara-
tions 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

102 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

practically on account of the syphon incident
that I left."

" We will talk of this some other time," said Mrs.
Quabarl hastily.

*' I shall never allude to it again," said the
governess with decision.

Mr. Quabarl made a welcome diversion by asking
what studies the new instructress proposed to
inaugurate on the morrow.

" History to begin with," she informed him.

" 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 "

"I've told her all that," interposed Mrs. Quabarl.

" I teach history on the Schartz-Metterklume
method," said the governess loftily.

" Ah, yes," said her listeners, thinking it expedient
to assume an acquaintance at least with the name.

" 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.

" We are having a history lesson," came the

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD 103

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. '*

" The shabby women ? "

" 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 spank-
ing if they didn't, so they've gone to do it."

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 neghgently
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.

104 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

After an apprehensive glance in the direction of the
lodge (the good woman was gifted with the highly
mihtant temper which is sometimes the privilege
of deafness) Mrs. Quabarl flew indignantly to the
rescue of the struggling captives.

" Wilfrid ! Claude ! Let those children go at
once. Miss Hope, what on earth is the meaning of
this scene ? "

" 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 Ufe thinking that the Sabine women
ultimately escaped, I really cannot be held respon-
sible."

" 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."

" 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."

" A leopard cub ! " gasped Mrs. Quabarl. Even
in her departure this extraordinary person seemed

THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD 105

destined to leave a trail of embarrassment behind
her.

" 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."

And Lady Carlotta strode out of the Quabarl
horizon.

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.

" 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."

" Oh dear, no," said Lady Carlotta ; " not at all
tiresome — for me."

io6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE SEVENTH PULLET

it

I

T'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."

*' The potato that weighed just over two pounds,"
said his friend Gorworth.

" Did I tell you about that ? " said Blenkin-
thrope ; ** I was telUng the others in the train this
morning. I forgot if I'd told you."

"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."

*' You're just like the others," said Blenkin-
thrope sadly, " you only make fun of it."

** The fault is with the potato, not with us," said

THE SEVENTH PULLET 107

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 common-
place 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 starthng, 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.' "

" But hang it all, my dear fellow," said Blenkin-
thrope impatiently, " haven't I just told you that
nothing of a remarkable nature ever happens to
me?"

" Invent something," said Gorworth. Since win-
ning a prize for excellence in Scriptural knowledge at
a preparatory school he had felt Hcensed to be a Httle

io8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

*' What sort of thing ? " asked Blenkinthrope,
somewhat snappishly.

" A snake got into your hen-run yesterday morn-
ing and killed six out of seven pullets, first mesmeris-
ing 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."

" 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.

Wistfulness was still his dominant mood when he
took his seat in the railway carriage the next morn-
ing. Opposite him sat Stevenham, who had

THE SEVENTH PULLET 109

attained to a recognised brevet of importance through
the fact of an uncle having dropped dead in the act
of voting at a ParUamentary election. That had
happened three years ago, but Stevenham was still
deferred to on all questions of home and foreign
pontics.

" Hullo, how's the giant mushroom, or whatever
it was ? " was all the notice Blenkinthrope got from
his fellow travellers.

Young Duckby, whom he mildly disUked, speedily
monopoHsed the general attention by an account of
a domestic bereavement.

'* 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."

No moderate-sized rat ever seemed to carry out
any predatory operations in these regions ; they
were all enormous in their enormity.

" 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."

" 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.

no BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

*' By a snake ? " came in excited chorus.

" 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."

" Well, I never ! " broke in the chorus, with
variations.

" The interesting part of it is about the seventh
pullet, the one that didn't get killed," resumed
Blenkinthrope, slowly Hghting 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
Hke the others. It just could see something wrig-
gling on the groimd, and went for it and pecked it
to death."

" Well, I'm blessed ! " exclaimed the chorus.

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
poultryjpapers, and was copied thence into a daily
news-sheet as a matter of general interest. A lady

THE SEVENTH PULLET iii

wrote from the North of Scotland recounting a
similar episode which she had witnessed as occurring
between a stoat and a bUnd grouse. Somehow a
he seems so much less reprehensible when one can
call it a lee.

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 back-
ground 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.

Gorworth, to whom he unburdened himself in
private, gave him the same counsel as heretofore.

" Invent something."

" Yes, but what ? "

112 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

The ready affirmative coupled with the question
betrayed a significant shifting of the ethical stand-
point.

It was a few days later that Blenkinthrope revealed
a chapter of family history to the customary gathering
in the railway carriage.

" 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.

*'She was sitting on a seat in the Bois the other after-
noon, after lunching at the Roumanian Legation."

Whatever the story gained in picturesqueness
from the dragging-in of diplomatic " atmosphere,"
it ceased from that moment to command any accept-
ance 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.

" She was feeling rather drowsy, the effect prob-
ably of the champagne, which she's not in the habit
of taking in the middle of the day."

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.

THE SEVENTH PULLET 113

" 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. * Scoun-
drel/ 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 con-
sidered an introduction ? ' Then he finished light-
ing his cigar and walked away. My aunt had
intended screaming for the poUce, 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 sword-
stick 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."

From that moment Blenkinthrope was tacitly

I

114 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

Returning to his villa one evening Blenkinthrope
found his wife sitting in front of a pack of cards,
which she was scrutinising with unusual concentra-
tion.

" The same old patience-game ? " he asked
carelessly.

" 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 fright-
ened if I did. Mother only got it out once in her
life ; she was afraid of it, too. Her great-aimt 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."

THE SEVENTH PULLET 115

" Don't do it if it frightens you," was Blenkin-
thrope's practical comment as he left the room.
A few minutes later his wife called to him.

*' 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."

" 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."

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.

Blenkinthrope had been genuinely fond of his
wife, but in the midst of his bereavement one
dominant thought obtruded itself. Something sen-
sational and real had at last come into his life ; no
longer was it a grey, colourless record. The head-
Hnes 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 Essex
Vedette, the editor of which was a friend of his, and
to another friend he gave a condensed account, to

ii6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

be taken up to the office of one of the halfpenny
daiUes. But m 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 wide-
spread pubUcity.

Blenkinthrope shrank from the society of his
erstwhile travelhng companions and took to travel-
ling townwards by an ear Her 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.

THE BLIND SPOT 117

Y

THE BLIND SPOT

*< ^ ^OU'VE just come back from Adelaide's
funeral, haven't you ? " said Sir Lul-
worth to his nephew ; " I suppose it
was very Hke most other funerals ? "

" I'll tell you all about it at lunch," said Egbert.

" 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 expen-
sive as wines go in this country, but still quite laud-
able in its way. Now there's absolutely nothing in
that menu that harmonises in the least with the sub-
ject 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."

" She used to say you were frivolous," said
Egbert. Something in his tone suggested that he
rather endorsed the verdict.

ii8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" 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 ? "

*' Yes," said Egbert, " and executor as well.
It's in that connection that I particularly want to
speak to you."

" Business is not my strong point at any time,"
said Sir Lulworth, " and certainly not when we're
on the immediate threshold of lunch."

" It isn't exactly business," explained Egbert,
as he followed his uncle into the dining-room.
" It's something rather serious. Very serious."

" 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 any-
thing approaching business till we have finished
with the bird."

For the greater part of the meal Egbert sat in an

THE BLIND SPOT 119

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.

** 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."

" That would be a fairly heavy task in itself.
I should imagine there were reams of family letters."

" Stacks of them, and most of them highly unin-
teresting. There was one packet, however, which
I thought might repay a careful perusal. It was a
bundle of correspondence from her brother Peter."

" The Canon of tragic memory," said Lulworth.

" Exactly, of tragic memory, as you say ; a
tragedy that has never been fathomed."

" Probably the simplest explanation was the
correct one," said Sir Lulworth ; "he sHpped on
the stone staircase and fractured his skull in falling."

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."

120 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" 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
Estabhshed Church for the mere fun of killing must
be extremely Umited. Of course there are indivi-
duals of weak mental balance who do that sort of
thing, but they seldom conceal their handiwork ;
they are more generally incHned to parade it."

*' His cook was under suspicion," said Egbert
shortly.

" 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 hfe and unim-
paired digestion of the Canon it would certainly be
Sebastien."

THE BLIND SPOT 121

" 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."

"He is a southerner," admitted Sir Lul worth ;
"to be geographically exact I beheve 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 environ-
ment ; ' Tell me your longitude and I'll know what
latitude to allow you,' is my motto."

" There, you see," said Egbert, " he nearly killed
the gardener's boy."

" My dear Egbert, between nearly kiUing 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."

" Ah ! " said Egbert, with the air of a man coming

122 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

at last into a deferred inheritance of conversa-
tional importance, " that is precisely what I want
to speak to you about/'

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.

" One of the Canon's numerous letters to Aunt
Adelaide," he explained, " written a few days before
his death. Her memory was already faihng when
she received it, and I daresay she forgot the contents
as soon as she had read it ; otherwise, in the Hght
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."

" Oh, read the letter," said Sir Lulworth im-
patiently.

" 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.

THE BLIND SPOT 123

" * 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, par-
ticularly when I walk of an evening in the Itahan
Garden.'

" It was on the steps in the Italian Garden that
the body was found," commented Egbert, and
resumed reading.

" ' I daresay the danger is imaginary ; but I
shall feel more at ease when he has quitted my
service.' "

Egbert paused for a moment at the conclusion of
the extract ; then, as his uncle made no remark,

124 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" Have you shown it to anyone else ? " asked Sir
Lulworth, reaching out his hand for the incriminat-
ing piece of paper.

" No," said Egbert, handing it across the table,
" I thought I would tell you about it first. Heavens,
what are you doing ? "

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 hand-
writing shrivelled into black flaky nothingness.

" What on earth did you do that f or ? " gasped
Egbert. " That letter was our one piece of evidence
to connect Sebastien with the crime."

" That is why I destroyed it," said Sir Lulworth.

" But why should you want to shield him ? "
cried Egbert ; " the man is a common murderer."

" A common murderer, possibly, but a very
imcommon cook."

DUSK 125

DUSK

NORMAN GORTSBY sat on a bench in the
Park, with his back to a strip of bush-
planted sward, fenced by the park raihngs,
and the Row fronting him across a wide stretch of
carriage drive. Hyde Park Comer, 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 uncon-
sidered 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.

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

126 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming, when
their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and
imhappy eyes might pass imnoticed, or, at any rate,
unrecognised.

A king that is conquered must see strange looks,
So bitter a thing is the heart of man.

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 dis-
persed 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 imagina-
tion 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

DUSK 127

in observing and labelling his fellow wanderers as
they went their ways in the dark stretches between
the lamp-lights.

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-
comer unburdened himself of an angry and very

128 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

audible expletive as he flung himself into the
seat,

" You don't seem in a very good temper," said
Gortsby, judging that he was expected to take due
notice of the demonstration.

The young man turned to him with a look of
disarming frankness which put him instantly on his
guard.

" You wouldn't be in a good temper if you were
in the fix I'm in," he said ; " I've done the siUiest
thing I've ever done in my Hfe."

" Yes ? " said Gortsby dispassionately.

" 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 recom-
mended 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 reaUsed that I didn't remember its name
or even what street it was in. There's a nice pre-
dicament for a fellow who hasn't any friends or

DUSK 129

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."

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.

" 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."

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 derehct if one gets into a fix. Unless I can
find some decent chap to swallow my story and lend
me some money I seem hkely to spend the night on
the Embankment. I'm glad, anyhow, that you
don't think the story outrageously improbable."

130 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

*' Of course," said Gortsby slowly, " the weak point
of your story is that you can't produce the soap."

The young man sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly
in the pockets of his overcoat, and then jumped to
his feet.

" I must have lost it," he muttered angrily.

" To lose an hotel and a cake of soap on one after-
noon 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.

" 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
Httle detail that brought him to grief. If he had had
the briUiant forethought to provide himself with a
cake of soap, wrapped and sealed with all the sohci-
tude 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."

With that reflection Gortsby rose to go ; as he

DUSK 131

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 hostihty when he foimd Gortsby
hailing him.

" 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 '*

132 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

The young man hastily removed all doubt on the
subject by pocketing the coin.

" 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."

" 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 Knight sbridge.

" 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."

As Gortsby retraced his steps past the seat where
the Uttle drama had taken place he saw an elderly
gentleman poking and peering beneath it and on all
sides of it, and recognised his earUer fellow occupant.

" Have you lost anything, sir ? " he asked.

** Yes, sir, a cake of soap."

A TOUCH OF REALISM 133

1

A TOUCH OF REALISM

^^ ']f HOPE you've come full of suggestions for
Christmas," said Lady Blonze to her latest
arrived guest ; " the old-fashioned Christ-
mas and the up-to-date Christmas are both so played
out. I want to have something really original this
year."

" 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."

" It sounds amusing," said Lady Blonze.

" 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,

134 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

*' How on earth did he do that ? " asked Bertie
van Tahn.

" ' He laughed and sang from morn till night/ "
explained Blanche.

" How dreadful for the rest of you," said Bertie ;
*' and anyway he wasn't on the banks of Dee."

" One had to imagine that," said Blanche.

'* 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."

" 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, MiUie 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."

" It's quite an idea for a Christmas party," said
Lady Blonze ; "we must certainly do it here."

Sir Nicholas ^,was not so enthusiastic. " Are

A TOUCH OF REALISM 135

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."

" I don't see what they could do that would
matter," said Lady Blonze.

" It's the unknown that is to be dreaded," said Sir
Nicholas. " If Skatterly took it into his head to re-
present a Bull of Bashan, well, I'd rather not be here."

" 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."

" 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.' "

" 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,"

136 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" That is quite possible," said Sir Nicholas.

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 in-
discriminate, and concentrated itself chiefly on selec-
tions rendered byher idolised offspring, Moritz and Aug-
usta, who, to do them justice, played remarkably well.

The Klammersteins were deservedly popular as
Christmas guests ; they gave expensive gifts lavishly
on Christmas Day and New Year, and Mrs. Klam-
merstein 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,

A TOUCH OF REALISM 137

The close time for impersonation efforts came to
an end with the final withdrawal of Moritz and
Augusta from the piano. Blanche Bo veal 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 Hfe
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 men-
tally 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 decoc-
tion of his early tea was always solemnly handed
over to the bedroom staff of any house in which he

138 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

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.

" What is the matter ? What are you looking
f or ? " asked the awakened and astonished Waldo,
slowly recognising Van Tahn, who appeared to be
searching hastily for something he had lost.

" Looking for sheep," was the reply.

" Sheep ? " exclaimed Waldo.

" Yes, sheep. You don't suppose I'm looking
for giraffes, do you ? "

" I don't see why you should expect to find either
in my room," retorted Waldo furiously.

" 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.

" There are no sheep here, I tell you," screamed
Waldo.

" I've only got your word for it," said Bertie,

A TOUCH OF REALISM 139

whisking most of the bedclothes on to the floor ;
" if you weren't conceaUng something you wouldn't
be so agitated."

Waldo was by this time convinced that Van
Tahn was raving mad, and made an anxious effort
to humour him.

" Go back to bed Uke a dear fellow," he pleaded,
" and your sheep will turn up all right in the
morning."

" I daresay," said Bertie gloomily, " without
their tails. Nice fool I shall look with a lot of
Manx sheep."

And by way of emphasising his annoyance at
the prospect he sent Waldo's pillows flying to the
top of the wardrobe.

" But why no tails ? " asked Waldo, whose teeth
were chattering with fear and rage and lowered
temperature.

" 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."

" I leave you to imagine," wrote Waldo in the
course of a long letter to his mother, " how much

140 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

sleep I was able to recover that night, and you know
how essential nine uninterrupted hours of slumber
are to my health."

On the other hand he was able to devote some
wakeful hours to exercises in breathing wrath and
fury against Bertie van Tahn.

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 re-
ported 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.

" I expect he's playing up to some character,"
said Vera Durmot ; " isn't there a thing of MoHere's,
* Le Malade Imaginaire ' ? I expect he's that."

Eight or nine Usts came out, and were duly pen-
cilled with the suggestion.

" And where are the Klammersteins ? " asked
Lady Blonze ; " they're usually so punctual."

" Another character pose, perhaps," said Bertie
van Tahn ; " ' the Lost Ten Tribes.' "

'' But there are only three of them. Besides,
they'll want their lunch. Hasn't anyone seen any-
thing of them ? "

A TOUCH OF REALISM 141

" Didn't you take them out in your car ? " asked
Blanche Boveal, addressing herself to Cyril Skatterly.

" Yes, took them out to Slogberry Moor imme-
diately after breakfast. Miss Durmot came too."

" 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 ? "

" No," said Skatterly shortly.

" But where are they ? Where did you leave
them ? "

" We left them on Slogberry Moor," said Vera
calmly.

" On Slogberry Moor ? Why, it's more than thirty
miles away ! How are they going to get back ? "

" We didn't stop to consider that," said Skat-
terly ; ** 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."

" But how dare you do such a thing ? It's most
inhuman ! Why, it's been snowing for the last hour. ' '

*' I expect there'll be a cottage or farmhouse
somewhere if they walk a mile or two."

*' But why on earth have you done it ? "

The question came in a chorus of indignant
bewilderment.

*' That would be telling what our characters are
meant to be," said Vera.

142 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" Didn't I warn you ? " said Sir Nicholas tragically
to his wife.

" 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.

"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."

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.

COUSIN TERESA 143

COUSIN TERESA

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.

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

144 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 fore-
head furnished a recessional note in a personality
that was in all other respects obtrusive and asser-
tive. 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.

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 dis-
charged in spluttering competition with mouthfuls
of vermicelli.

" I've got hold of an idea for something immense,"
he babbled, " something that is simply It."

Basset gave a short laugh that would have done
equally well as a snort, if one had wanted to make

COUSIN TERESA 145

the exchange. His half-brother was in the habit
of discovering futilities that were " simply It " at
frequently recurring intervals. The discovery gener-
ally meant that he flew up to town, preceded by
glowingly-worded telegrams, to see some one con-
nected with the stage or the pubUshing 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 sHghtly intensified.
The great idea was generally forgotten a few weeks
later in the excitement of some new discovery.

" The inspiration came to me whilst I was dress-
ing," announced Lucas ; '* it will be the thing in the
next music-hall revue. 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 :

Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fide, Jock, and the big borzoi.

A lilting, 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 ;
Caesar will be an Irish terrier, Fido a black poodle,
Jock a fox-terrier, and the borzoi, of course, will be

146 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 :

Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.

Tum-Tum I 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."

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.

" Poor Lucas does take his silly Httle ideas seri-
ously," said Colonel Harrowcluff afterwards in the
smoking-room.

COUSIN TERESA 147

" 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 pubhc, 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."

And then an extraordinary thing befell. In
defiance of all precedent Lucas's glowing anticipa-
tions were justified and endorsed by the course of
events. If Cousin Teresa was above the heads of
the public, the pubhc heroically adapted itself to
her altitude. Introduced as an experiment at a
dull moment in a new revue, 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 encore 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 revue dwindled to
secondary importance, and vast letters of electric

148 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Metropohs. Restaurant proprietors were obHged
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 Harrow-
cluff 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 wiUing-to-learn bodies. In Society it
seemed to be the one thing people really cared to

COUSIN TERESA 149

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
motiv.

" Pontics and patriotism are so boring and so out
of date," said a revered lady who had some preten-
sions to oracular utterance ; "we are too cosmopol-
itan 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."

" It would be rather a popular move if we gave
this Harrowcluff person a knighthood or something
of the sort," said the Minister reflectively.

" Which Harrowcluff ? " asked his secretary.

" 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

150 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

knighted him. Yes, you can put him down on the
Hst of certainties — under the letter L."

" The letter L," said the secretary, who was new
to his job ; " does that stand for Liberahsm or
hberality ? "

Most of the recipients of Ministerial favour were
expected to quaUfy in both of those subjects.

" Literature," explained the Minister.

And thus, after a fashion. Colonel Harrowcluff' s
expectation of seeing his son's name in the list of
Honours was gratified.

THE YARKAND MANNER 151

THE YARKAND MANNER

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 faima.

" One of the most remarkable things in the wan-
derings 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."

" In human affairs the same phenomenon is
occasionally noticeable," said Sir Lul worth ; " per-
haps 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

152 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 ;
Niirnberg, 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 Scrutator, Sporting
Bluffy and The Damsels' Own Paper 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 Daily Intelligencer,
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 YARKAND MANNER 153

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 Drang
nach Osten ; an intelligent and efficient ofhce-boy
was all that was left in the deserted hive of editorial
industry."

" That was doing things rather thoroughly, wasn't
it ? " said the nephew.

" Well, you see," said Sir Lulworth, " the migra-
tion idea was falling somewhat into disrepute from
the half-hearted manner in which it was occasionally
carried out . You were not impressed by the informa-
tion 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 res-
taurants. The Daily Intelligencer 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 trans-
mitting copy and carrying on the usual features of
the paper during the long outward journey worked
smoothly and well. The series of articles which

154 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

commenced at Baku on ' What Cobdenism might
do for the camel industry ' ranks among the best
of the recent contributions to Free Trade Hterature,
while the views on foreign poHcy 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 tradi-
tions of British journalism was the manner of the
home-coming; no bombast, no personal advertise-
ment, no flamboyant interviews , Even a compUmen-
tary 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 ofhce-boy, who was the one
connecting hnk 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

THE YARKAND MANNER 155

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 type-written
notes. Something mystic and Tibetan and for
bidden had replaced the human bustle and demo
cratic simpHcity of pre-migration days, and the
same experience was encountered by those who
made social overtures to the retvirned 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 revenants 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."

" And the contents of the paper," said the nephew,
" did they show the influence of the new style ? "
' Ah ! " said Sir Lulworth, " that was the exciting
hing. 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

156 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 manoeuvres of
six important Powers into mobiHsations. Whatever
else the Daily Intelligencer 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 Daily Intelligencer's leaders ; and
then one day the Government came to the con-
clusion that something definite and drastic must be
done. A deputation, consisting of the Prime
Minister, the Foreign Secretary, four leading finan-
ciers, 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.

" ' You can't see the editor nor any of the staff/
he announced.

THE YARKAND MANNER 157

" ' We insist on seeing the editor or some respon-
sible 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 Hfe.

" * Where is the editor ? ' 'Or the foreign
editor ? ' * Or the chief leader-writer ? ' 'Or
anybody ? '

" 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 con-
tained a scrap of paper on which was written the
following message :

** ' Entire party captured by brigand tribe on home-
ward journey. Quarter of miUion demanded as
ransom, but would probably take less. Inform
Government, relations, and friends.'

" There followed the signatures of the principal
members of the party and instructions as to how
and where the money was to be paid.

*' 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

158 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

" 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 gradu-
ally things were put back on their old footing. The
articles on foreign affairs reverted to the wonted
traditions of the paper."

" But," interposed the nephew, " how on earth
did the boy account to the relatives all those months
for the non-appearance "

" 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, var5dng only the locality, to the effect that
the writer, alone of the whole party, was unable to

THE YARKAND MANNER 159

tear himself away from the wild liberty and allure-
ments 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."

" And the boy ? "

" Is still in journalism."

i6o BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE BYZANTINE OMELETTE

SOPHIE CHATTEL-MONKHEIM was a
Socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monk-
heim 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 for-
tunate 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.

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 BYZANTINE OMELETTE i6i

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 Hkely to ask
her for an explanation, and most hostesses envied
her.

" You must surpass yourself to-night, Richard-
son," she said complacently to her maid ; " I must
be looking my very best. We must all surpass our-
selves."

The maid said nothing, but from the concentrated

M

i62 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

look in her eyes and the deft play of her fingers it
was evident that she was beset with the ambition
to surpass herself.

A knock came at the door, a quiet but peremptory
knock, as of some one who would not be denied.

" Go and see who it is," said Sophie ; *' it may be
something about the wine."

Richardson held a hurried conference with an
invisible messenger at the door ; when she returned
there was noticeable a curious hstlessness in place
of her hitherto alert manner.

" What is it ? " asked Sophie.

" The househ Id servants have ' downed tools,'
madame," said Richardson.

" Downed tools ! " exclaimed Sophie ; ''do you
mean to say they've gone on strike ? "

" Yes, madame," said Richardson, adding the
information : " It's Gaspare that the trouble is
about."

" Gaspare ? " said Sophie wonderingly ; " the
emergency chef ! The omelette specialist ! "

" 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

THE BYZANTINE OMELETTE 163

grievance against you personally, but they demand
that Gaspare should be immediately dismissed."

" 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."

" He was one of the strike-breakers at Lord
Grimford's," reiterated Richardson.

" 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 Fll
go and see what I can do to bring them round."

" I can't finish your hair, madame," said Richard-
son 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 dis-
obUging."

" 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 !"

i64 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" Wicked is the word," said Richardson ; " I'm
a good Conservative and I've no patience with this
SociaHst 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."

The door burst open and Catherine Malsom raged
into the room.

" 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."

After a very hasty scrutiny Sophie assured her
that she could not.

" Have they all struck ? " she asked her maid.

" Not the kitchen staff," said Richardson, " they
belong to a different union."

" Dinner at least will be assured," said Sophie,
*' that is something to be thankful for."

" 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."

" I know it's difi&cult to manage without a maid ;
can't your husband be any help to you ? " asked
Sophie despairingly.

THE BYZANTINE OMELETTE 165

" 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.'*

" 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."

" 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."

" Can't he get out ? "

" 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."

*' I simply can't send away Gaspare," wailed
Sophie; " I should never be able to secure another
omelette specialist."

"Any difficulty that I may experience in securing
another husband is of course a trifle beneath any-
one's consideration," said Catherine bitterly.

Sophie capitulated. " Go," she said to Richard-
son, " and tell the Strike Committee, or whoever
are directing this affair, that Gaspare is herewith
dismissed. And ask Gaspare to see me presently

i66 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

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.

THE BYZANTINE OMETETTE 167

"There is no dinner, madame," he said gravely;
" the kitchen staff have ' downed tools/ Gaspare
belongs to the Union of Cooks and Kitchen Em-
ployees, 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."

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.

i68 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE FEAST OF NEMESIS

I

^^ "^T'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

THE FEAST OF NEMESIS 169

list of ' people who must not be left out.' If I
trusted to remembering them there would be some
awful sins of omission."

" The trouble is/' said Clovis to his aunt, " all
these days of intrusive remembrance harp so per-
sistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely
ignore the other ; that is why they become so per-
fimctory 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."

" Opposite direction ; what opposite direction ? "
queried Mrs. Thackenbury.

" 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

170 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" 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 civihsed adult life. We
haven't outgrown our passions, but we are supposed
to have learned how to keep them within strictly
decorous limits."

" 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 atten-
tion 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

THE FEAST OF NEMESIS 171

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."

** 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."

" 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 strenu-
ous 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."

" They might guess I had done it," said Mrs.
Thackenbury.

" Of course they would," said Clovis ; " that

172 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" 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."

" Then have all the other guests, people whom
you disHke, and lose the luncheon. It could have
been sent by accident in the wrong direction."

" It would be a ghastly picnic," said Mrs. Thacken-
bury.

" 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 mayon-
naise, 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

THE FEAST OF NEMESIS 173

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."

Mrs. Thackenbury was silent for a moment ; she
was probably making a mental list of the people
she would Uke 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.

" If there was anything Uke 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 comfort-
able hammock on a warm afternoon would appeal
to his indolent tastes, and then, when he was getting

174 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.'*

" They might sting him to death," protested
Mrs. Thackenbury.

" 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 w£Lsps
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."

" His mother would be my enemy for life," said
Mrs. Thackenbury.

" That would be one greeting less to exchange at
Christmas," said Clovis.

THE DREAMER 175

THE DREAMER

IT was the season of sales. The august estab-
lishment of Walpurgis and Nettlepink had
lowered its prices for an entire week as a con-
cession 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 con-
sidered 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.

*' Fm not a bargain hunter," she said, " but I
like to go where bargains are."

Which showed that beneath her surface strength
of character there flowed a gracious undercurrent
of human weakness.

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

176 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

" Meet me just outside the floral department,"
she wrote to him, " and don't be a moment later
than eleven."

Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through
early hfe 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 quaUties unsuspected by plainer
folk — the eyes of a poet or a house agent. He was
quietly dressed — that sartorial quietude which fre-
quently 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 rendez-
vous, because he was standing waiting for her bare-
headed.

" Where is your hat ? " she asked.

" I didn't bring one with me," he replied.

Adela Chemping was slightly scandalised.

THE DREAMER 177

" 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.

Cyprian looked at her with his wondering, dreamy
eyes.

" 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."

Mrs. Chemping sighed with great relief; her
worst fear had been laid at rest.

" It is more orthodox to wear a hat," she observed,
and then turned her attention briskly to the business
in hand.

" 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."

The wondering look deepened in Cyprian's eyes
as he followed his aunt ; he belonged to a genera-
tion that is supposed to be over-fond of the role
of mere spectator, but looking at napkins that one

178 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

did not mean to buy was a pleasure beyond his com-
prehension. 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 glass-
ware department.

" Millicent asked me to get her a couple of decan-
ters 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."

She handled and scrutinised a large number of
decanters and a long series of salad bowls, and
finally bought seven chrysanthemum vases.

" No one uses that kind of vase nowadays," she
informed Cyprian, " but they will do for presents
next Christmas."

Two sunshades that were marked down to a price
that Mrs. Chemping considered absurdly cheap were
added to her purchases.

" 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."

Mrs. Chemping bought stacks of writing paper ;
it was so cheap, and it went so flat in a trunk or

THE DREAMER 179

portmanteau. She also bought a few envelopes —
envelopes somehow seemed rather an extragavance
compared with notepaper.

" Do you think Ruth will like blue or grey paper ? "
she asked Cyprian.

" Grey," said Cyprian, who had never met the
lady in question.

" Have you any mauve notepaper of this quality?"
Adela asked the assistant.

" We haven't any mauve," said the assistant,
" but we've two shades of green and a darker shade
of grey."

Mrs. Chemping inspected the greens and the darker
grey, and chose the blue.

" Now we can have some lunch," she said.

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 concen-
trated 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 head-
wear was being disposed of at temptingly reduced
prices.

" I've got as many hats as I want at home," he
said, '* and besides, it rumples one's hair so, trying
them on."

i8o BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

" We shall be getting more parcels presently/*
he said, "so we need not collect these till we have
finished our shopping."

His aunt was doubtfully appeased ; some of
the pleasure and excitement of a shopping expedi-
tion seemed to evaporate when one was deprived
of immediate personal contact with one's purchases.

" 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."

Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery de-
partment 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

THE DREAMER i8i

that now invaded every corner of the great shopping
emporium. She was just in time to witness a par-
donable 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.

"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."

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, dispas-
sionate voice :

" Black seal, thirty-four shilHngs, 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."

" I'll take it," said the lady, eagerly digging some
coins out of her purse.

" 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."

" Never mind, I'll take it as it is," said the pur-
chaser, clutching her treasure and counting the money
into Cyprian's palm.

i82 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

Several kind strangers helped Adela into the open
air.

" It's the crush and the heat," said one sym-
pathiser to another ; " it's enough to turn anyone
giddy."

When she next came across C5^rian he was stand-
ing in the crowd that pushed and jostled aroimd 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.

THE QUINCE TREE 183

THE QUINCE TREE

^^V'VE just been to see old Betsy Mullen/*
I 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."

" 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 sup-
posed to be paying, now. I told her a year ago that
she ought to move."

" But she wouldn't get such a nice garden any-
where 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

i84 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" When one is sixteen," said Mrs. Bebberly
Cumble severely, " one talks of things being impos-
sible 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."

" 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."

" Nonsense," said the aunt ; *' she parted with
whatever old china ware she had long ago."

" 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."

" 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.

" 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."

" I should be the last person to suggest that you

THE QUINCE TREE 185

should do anything that you ought not to do "

began Mrs. Bebberly Cumble impressively.

*' And I am always swayed by the last person who
speaks to me," admitted Vera, " so 111 do what I
ought not to do and tell you."

Mrs. Beberley Cumble thrust a very pardonable
sense of exasperation into the background of her
mind and demanded impatiently :

*' What is there in Betsy Mullen's cottage that
you are making such a fuss about ? "

'' It's hardly fair to say that / 've 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 ever5rwhere at home and abroad, and all the
while that innocent-looking httle cottage has held
the secret."

" 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.

" Oh no, not that," said Vera, " but something
quite as important and just as mysterious — if
anything, rather more scandalous."

''Not the Dublin ?"

i86 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

Vera nodded.

' ' The whole j oily lot of them. ' *
" In Betsy's cottage ? Incredible ! "
" 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. Tamper arranged the matter with Betsy and
smuggled the things in."
" Mrs. Tamper ? "

"Yes ; she does a lot of district visiting, you know."
" 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. Tamper has always had the reputa-
tion of being a very conscientious woman."

THE QUINCE TREE 187

" 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."

*' 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 "

" 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."

" Cuthbert involved ! How can you say such
things when you know how much we all think of
him?"

" Of course I know you think a lot of him, and
that he's engaged to marry Beatrice, and that it

i88 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 unfor-
tunate. Her mother Hved 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."

*' I shall speak to Cuthbert about it — after the
wedding," said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble.

" The wedding isn't till next year," said Vera,
in recounting the story to her best girl friend,
" and meanwhile old Betsy is Uving rent free, with

THE QUINCE TREE 189

soup twice a week and my aunt's doctor to see her
whenever she has a finger ache."

" But how on earth did you get to know about
it all ? " asked her friend, in admiring wonder.

" It was a mystery " said Vera.

" Of course it was a mystery, a mystery that
baffled everybody. What beats me is how you
found out "

" 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."

igo BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS

I

*^ '*' S matchmaking at all in your line ?

Hugo Peterby asked the question with a
certain amount of personal interest.
" I don't speciahse in it," said Clovis ; " it's all
right while you're doing it, but the after-effects
are sometimes so disconcerting — the mute reproach-
ful 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

THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS 191

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."

" 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 Hkely to get anything Hke
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 Coultemeb 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 "

" If you want me to trot Lanner roimd 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 hke an aversion
to me since the other night in the smoking-room."

" What happened in the smoking-room ? "

" He trotted out some well-worn chestnut as the
latest thing in good stories, and I remarked, quite

192 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 disHke. I'll do my best for you,
if the opportunity arises, but it will have to be in a
roundabout, impersonal manner."

" It's so nice having Mr. Lanner here," confided
Mrs. Olston to Clovis the next afternoon ; " he's
always been engaged when Fve 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."

" I've had much the same idea," said Clovis,
lowering his voice ; "in fact, I'm almost certain
of it."

" You mean he's attracted by " began Mrs.

Olston eagerly.

" I mean he's here for what he can get," said Clovis.

*' For what he can get ? " 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 ? "

" 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."

THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS 193

" But what ? Whatever do you mean ? What
is his ruHng passion ? "

" 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.'*

" Good heavens ! The buzzards, the rough-
legged buzzards ! " exclaimed Mrs. Olston ; " you
don't think he's going to raid their nest ? "

" 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 informa-
tion 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."

Clovis beheved that if a lie was worth teUing it
was worth telling well.

" This is appalling," said Mrs. Olston ; "my
husband would never forgive me if anything hap-
pened to those birds. They've been seen about the
woods for the last year or two, but this is the first

194 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 "

Clovis laughed.

" There is a story going about, which I fancy is
true in most of its details, of something that hap-
pened 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."

" I must do something," said Mrs. Olston tear-
fully ; " 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."

THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS 195

" I was going to suggest picketing," said Clevis.

" Picketing ! You mean setting guards round
the birds ? "

" 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."

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.

196 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 reUef when
she was displaced by Jack, who was nine years old,
and talked exclusively about the Balkan War with-
out throwing any fresh light on its poHtical or
miUtary history. The German governess told Lanner
more about Schiller than he had ever heard in his
Ufe 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.

THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS 197

Hugo did not bring ofE his affair with Betty
Coulterneb. Whether she refused him or whether,
as was more generally supposed, he did not get a
chance of sa3dng three consecutive words, has never
been exactly ascertained. Anyhow, she is still the
jolly Coulterneb girl.

The buzzards successfully reared two young ones,
which were shot by a local hairdresser.

198 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

R

THE STAKE

^^ X^ ONNIE 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 Httle 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 posi-
tively 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."

THE STAKE 199

" Why do you let him go there ? " asked Eleanor
Saxelby.

" 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."

" 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."

" 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."

Eleanor Saxelby shuddered. She liked her meals
to be of regular occurrence and assured proportions.

" Still," pursued Mrs. Attray, "whatever their
own home life may be, as landlords and neighbours

200 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" Not if you were firm with him," said Eleanor ;
" I believe in being firm."

" 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.' "

" What did happen to it ? " asked Eleanor.

" Well, Ronnie did some preliminary endeavour-
ing with it, on his own account, in connection with
the Grand National. If it had come off, as he ex-
pressed 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

THE STAKE 201

I've been careful not to let him have a penny piece
in his hands."

"He'll get round that in some way," said Eleanor
with quiet conviction ; " he'll sell things."

" 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 imita-
tion-gold sleeve hnks 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 far-
seeing."

" Has he been at the Norridrums lately ? " asked
Eleanor.

" 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."

" Then depend on it he was gambhng," 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."

" He can't gamble if he has no money and no
chance of getting any," argued Mrs. Attray ; " even

202 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

if one plays for small stakes one must have a decent
prospect of pajdng one's losses."

" He may have sold some of the Amherst pheasant
chicks," suggested Eleanor ; " they would fetch
about ten or twelve shillings each, I daresay."

" 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 role
of onlooker last night, as far as the card-table was
concerned."

" Is that clock right ? " asked Eleanor, whose
eyes had been strajdng restlessly towards the mantel-
piece for some httle time ; " lunch is usually so
punctual in your estabhshment."

" 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."

Eleanor smiled forgivingly. A special effort by
Mrs. Attray's cook was worth waiting a few minutes
for.

As a matter of fact, the luncheon fare, when it
made its tardy appearance, was distinctly unworthy

THE STAKE 203

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 Httle, 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.

" 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.

" 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,
PelHn ? " she asked of the attendant maid.

" 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.

" The new cook ! " screamed Mrs. Attray.

" Colonel Norridrum's cook, ma'am," said PelHn.

" What on earth do you mean ? What is Colonel
Norridrum's cook doing in my kitchen — and where
is my cook ? "

" Perhaps I can explain better than Pellin can,"

204 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

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 scandaHsed upbraiding.

" If I had sold the woman into slavery there
couldn't have been a bigger fuss about it," he con-
fided 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 shilUngs that she refuses to have
me as a partner at the croquet tournament. We're
drawn together, you know."

This time he won his bet.

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES 205

CLOVIS ON PARENTAL
RESPONSIBILITIES

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 impres-
sionism, aroused in him no enthusiasm. Mrs.
Eggelby, on the other hand, was furnished with
enthusiasm enough for two.

" You would like Eric," she said, argumentatively
rather than hopefully. Clovis had intimated very
unmistakably that he was unlikely to care extrava-
gantly for either Amy or Willie. " Yes, I feel sure
you would Hke 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."

" That would be sufficient to set me against him,

2o6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" Eric doesn't play bridge," said Mrs. Eggelby
with dignity.

" Doesn't he ? " asked Clovis ; " why not ? "

" 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."

** 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."

" I really don't see what my boys have got to do
with the criminal classes," said Mrs. Eggelby

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES 207

resentfully. " They have been most carefully
brought up, I can assure you that."

" 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 Fve
forgotten what it is."

" Forgotten the difference between right and
wrong ! " exclaimed Mrs. Eggelby.

" 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 dor-
mouse 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 for-
gotten them."

" Those things are not important," said Mrs.
Eggelby, " but "

" 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

2o8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 unnec-
essary— I've heaps of other cousins to go on with.
On the other hand, when I'm staying with Hilde-
garde 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."

" Mrs. Shrubley and I move in very different
circles," said Mrs. Eggelby stiffly.

" 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 inex-
haustible 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."

" What kind of knowledge ? " demanded Mrs.
Eggelby, with the air a jury might collectively wear
when finding a verdict without leaving the box.

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES 209

" 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 ^ei atrophied
from disuse."

" An aunt of mine was very ill after eating a
lobster," said Mrs. Eggelby.

" 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 head-
ache 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."

" I must be going," said Mrs. Eggelby, in a tone
which had been thoroughly sterilised of even per-
functory regret.

Clovis rose with an air of graceful reluctance.

" I have so enjoyed our little talk about Eric,"

p

210 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

he said ; " I quite look forward to meeting him some
day/'

" Good-bye," said Mrs. Eggelby frostily ; the
supplementary remark which she made at the back
of her throat was —

" I'll take care that you never shall ! "

A HOLIDAY TASK 211

A HOLIDAY TASK

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 late-comers, 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 fiower-vase on his table and to be stared at
(in imagination) by several flappers, some maturer

212 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

beings of the same sex, and a satirical-looking Jew.
In order to carry off the situation with some appear-
ance of unconcern he became spuriously interested
in the contents of the flower-vase.

" 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.

"Amy Sylvester Partington," said a voice at
Jerton's elbow.

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.

"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."

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.

"Yes," answered the lady, "I suppose it is a

A HOLIDAY TASK 213

case of partial loss of memory. I was in theltrain
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 identifica-
tion, 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."

'' Hadn't you any luggage with you ? " asked
Jerton.

" 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."

Jerton said nothing, but he rather wondered what
the lawful owner of the baggage would do.

'* 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."

Jerton had visions of harassed railway officials

214 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

and distraught Kestrel-Smiths, but he made no
attempt to clothe his mental picture in words. The
lady continued her story.

" 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 twinkUng.
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,"

" If you feel sure that you have a title," said
Jerton, " why not get hold of a peerage and go right
through it ? "

" 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 not — that will narrow
the range of uncertainty down a bit. You may have
noticed, for instance, that I'm lunching principally
off lobster Newburg."

Jerton had not ventured to notice anything of
the sort.

" It's an extravagance, because it's one of the

A HOLIDAY TASK 215

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 her 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 ? "

Jerton hastily gave the required assurance.

" Well, you see," continued the lady, " that
knocks four off the Ust at once."

" It'll be rather a lengthy process bringing the list
down to one," said Jerton.

" Oh, but, of course, there are heaps of them that
I couldn't possibly be — women who've got grand-
children 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 Country Life and those
sort of papers that you can find in the smoking-room,
and see if you come across my portrait with infant
«^on or anything of that sort. It won't take you

2i6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

ten minutes. I'll meet you in the lounge about
tea-time. Thanks awfully."

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 :

" Did you notice that I tipped the waiter a shil-
ling ? We can cross Lady Ulwight off the Hst ;
she would have died rather than do that."

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.

'' China tea or Indian ? " she asked as Jerton
came up.

" China, please, and nothing to eat. Have you
discovered anything ? "

" 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 sup-
pose the fact of the animal being nameless was what
attracted me/'

A HOLIDAY TASK 217

" Did it win ? " asked Jerton.

" 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."

" It seems to me that the knowledge was rather
dearly bought," commented Jerton.

" Well, yes, it has rather cleared me out," ad-
mitted 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 mes-
sages waiting for me of course that will solve the pro-
blem. If he says there aren't any I shall say : ' You
know who I am, don't you ? ' so I'll find out anyway."

The plan seemed a sound one ; a difficulty in its
execution suggested itself to Jerton.

" 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

2i8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Hke with
the things. They'll advertise them after a bit and
the owner can claim them."

Jerton acquiesced in the manoeuvre, 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 :

*' Did you see that tall young woman in grey
who went out just now ? She is the Lady "

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.

" I think I heard you say you knew the lady who

A HOLIDAY TASK 219

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 ? "

" Certainly. She's a Mrs. Stroope."

" Mrs. ? " queried Jerton.

" 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."

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.

" 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 ! "

Jerton heard no more. He fled down to the
Turkish bath, and stayed there for hours.

220 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE STALLED OX

THEOPHIL ESHLEY was an artist by pro-
fession, a cattle painter by force of environ-
ment. It is not to be supposed that he
lived on a ranche or a dairy farm, in an atmo-
sphere 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 pictur'-
esque 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 sunhght 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

THE STALLED OX 221

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-FUes Cease from Troubling,"
" The Haven of the Herd," and " A-dream in Dairy-
land," 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 Cam-
pagna " came back to his studio in the guise of
abominable heresies, and Eshley climbed back into
grace and the pubhc gaze with " A Shaded Nook
where Drowsy Milkers Dream."

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.

" There is an ox in my garden," she announced, in
explanation of the tempestuous intrusion.

"An ox," said Eshley blankly, and rather fatu-
ously ; " what kind of ox ? "

222 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" Oh, I don't know what kind," snapped the lady.
" A common or garden ox, to use the slang expres-
sion. 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."

" How did it get into the garden ? " asked
Eshley.

" 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 imme-
diately important question is not how it got in, but
how to get it out."

" Won't it go ? " said Eshley.

" 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. Any-
thing 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

THE STALLED OX 223

that you might be of some sHght assistance. Pes*
sibly I was mistaken."

" 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."

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 accus-
tomed 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 con-
tinued to say nothing.

" It's eating a chrysanthemum," said Eshley
at last, when the silence had become unbearable.

" 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."

224 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

The necessity for doing something was becoming
imperative. Eshley took a step or two in the direc-
tion 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.

" If any hens should ever stray into my garden,'*
said Adela, " I should certainly send for you to
frighten them out. You ' shoo ' beautifully. Mean-
while, do you mind trying to drive that ox away ?
That is a Mademoiselle Louise Bichot that he's begun
on now," she added in icy calm, as a glowing orange
head was crushed into the huge munching mouth.

" Since you have been so frank about the variety
of the chrysanthemum," said Eshley, " I don't mind
teUing you that this is an Ayrshire ox."

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 Made-
moiselle Louise Bichot into a petal salad was suspended
for a long moment, while the ox gazed with concen-
trated 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

THE STALLED OX 225

another javelin exercise with another pea-stick.
The ox seemed to reahse 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 opera-
tions ; all the same, Eshley fancied that the begin-
nings of a himted look had come into its eyes, a look
that counselled respect. He discontinued his attempt
to interfere with its choice of surroundings.

" 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."

" 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 Uke to do a nice sketch

Q

226 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

of that ox making itself at home in my morning-
room ? "

This time it seemed as if the worm had turned ;
Eshley began striding away.

" Where are you going ? " screamed Adela.

"To fetch implements," was the answer.

" Implements ? I won't have you use a lasso.
The room will be wrecked if there's a struggle."

But the artist marched out of the garden. In a
couple of minutes he returned, laden with easel,
sketching-stool, and painting materials.

*' Do you mean to say that you're going to sit
quietly down and paint that brute while it's destroy-
ing my morning-room ? " gasped Adela.

" It was your suggestion," said Eshley, setting
his canvas in position.

"I forbid it ; I absolutely forbid it ! " stormed Adela.

" 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."

" You seem to forget that it's in my morning-room,
eating my flowers," came the raging retort.

" 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."

THE STALLED OX 227

" 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.

" I forget how the proverb runs," he observed ;
" 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."

" I shall go to the PubUc Library and get them to
telephone for the pohce/' announced Adela, and,
raging audibly, she departed.

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.

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

228 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

Eshley presented Adela Pingsf ord with a new copy
of " Israel Kalisch," and a couple of finely flowering
plants of Madame Andre Blusset, but nothing in the
nature of a real reconciliation has taken place
between them.

THE STORY-TELLER 229

THE STORY-TELLER

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 emphati-
cally 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.

" Come and look out of the window," she added.

230 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

The child moved reluctantly to the window.
" Why are those sheep being driven out of that
field ? " he asked.

" I expect they are being driven to another field
where there is more grass," said the aunt weakly.

" But there is lots of grass in that field," pro-
tested the boy ; " there's nothing else but grass
there. Aunt, there's lots of grass in that field."

" Perhaps the grass in the other field is better/'
suggested the aunt fatuously.

" Why is it better ? " came the swift, inevitable
question.

" 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.

" Why is the grass in the other field better ? "
persisted Cyril.

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.

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

THE STORY-TELLER 231

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.

" 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.

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.

In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at fre-
quent 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.

" 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.

" 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."

232 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" It's the stupidest story Tve ever heard/* said
the bigger of the small girls, with immense con-
viction.

" I didn't listen after the first bit, it was so stupid,'*
said C5nil.

The smaller girl made no actual comment on the
story, but she had long ago recommenced a mur-
mured repetition of her favourite line.

" You don't seem to be a success as a story-
teller," said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.

The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unex-
pected attack.

" It's a very difficult thing to tell stories that chil-
dren can both imderstand and appreciate," she said
stiffly.

" I don't agree with you," said the bachelor.

" Perhaps you would Hke to tell them a story,"
was the aunt's retort.

" Tell us a story," demanded the bigger of the
small girls.

" Once upon a time," began the bachelor, " there
was a little girl called Bertha, who was extra-
ordinarily good."

The children's momentarily-aroused interest began
at once to flicker ; all stories seemed dreadfully
alike, no matter who told them.

" She did all that she was told, she was always

THE STORY-TELLER 233

truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk pud-
dings as though they were jam tarts, learned her
lessons perfectly, and was poHte in her manners."

" Was she pretty ? " asked the bigger of the small
girls.

" Not as pretty as any of you," said the bachelor,
" but she was horribly good."

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 Ufe.

" 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 cHcked 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."

" Horribly good," quoted Cyril.

" 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,

234 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

and no children were ever allowed in it, so it was a
great honour for Bertha to be allowed to go there."

" Were there any sheep in the park ? " demanded
Cyril.

" No;" said the bachelor, " there were no sheep."

" Why weren't there any sheep ? " came the
inevitable question arising out of that answer.

The aunt permitted herself a smile, which might
almost have been described as a grin.

" 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 faUing on him. For that
reason the Prince never kept a sheep in his park or
a clock in his palace."

The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.

" Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock ? "
asked Cyril.

"He is still alive, so we can't tell whether the
dream will come true," said the bachelor unconcern-
edly ; " anyway, there were no sheep in the park,
but there were lots of Httle pigs running all over the
place."

" What colour were they ? "

" Black with white faces, white with black spots,
black all over, grey with white patches, and some
were white all over."

THE STORY-TELLER 235

The story-teller paused to let a full idea of the
park's treasures sink into the children's imaginations ;
then he resumed :

*' 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."

" Why weren't there any flowers ? "

" 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."

There was a murmur of approval at the excellence
of the Prince's decision ; so many people would have
decided the other way.

" There were lots of other deUghtful 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

236 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" What colour was it ? " asked the children, amid
an immediate quickening of interest.

" 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 loHing out of its mouth and its pale grey
eyes glaring with rage. Bertha was terribly fright-
ened, 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

THE STORY-TELLER 237

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
Uttle pig instead. Bertha was trembling very
much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so
near her, and as she trembled the medal for obe-
dience 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."

" Were any of the Httle pigs killed ? "

" No, they all escaped."

" The story began badly," said the smaller of the
small girls, " but it had a beautiful ending."

" It is the most beautiful story that I ever heard,"
said the bigger of the small girls, with immense decision.

" It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard,"
said Cyril.

A dissentient opinion came from the aunt.

" A most improper story to tell to young children !
You have undermined the effect of years of careful
teaching."

238 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" 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/'

" 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 ! "

A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND 239

A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND

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. Amble-
cope, the man with the restless, prominent eyes
and the mouth ready mobilised for conversational
openings, had planted himself in a neighbouring

240 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 relent-
less 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.

The intruder was armed with a copy of Country
Life, not for purposes of reading, but as an aid to
conversational ice-breaking.

" 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 "

" Be kind enough never to mention the Grand
Prix in my hearing," said Treddleford desper-
ately ; "it awakens acutely distressing memories.
I can't explain why without going into a long and
complicated story."

" Oh, certainly, certainly," said Amblecope

A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND 241

hastily ; long and complicated stories that were not
told by himself were abominable in his eyes. He
turned the pages of Country Life and became
spuriously interested in the picture of a Mongolian
pheasant.

" Not a bad representation of the MongoHan
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 "

*' My aunt, who owns the greater part of Lincoln-
shire," broke in Treddleford, with dramatic abrupt-
ness, " 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

242 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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."

" Rather a long run for a wounded pheasant,"
snapped Amblecope.

" 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."

" Some bkds, 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 "

" One of them did," announced Treddleford, with
emphasis. " My uncle, the Bishop of South-
molton, came across a giant trout in a pool just off

A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND 243

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 water-
less pool, and my uncle was able to walk down to
him and fold him to his breast. The van-load con-
sisted of blotting-paper, and every drop of water
in that pool had been sucked up into the mass of
spilt cargo."

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 :

" 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 "

244 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

— -^'

" 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 hved 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 comer 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

A DEFENSIVE DIAMOND 245

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 sUp 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, accus-
tomed 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

246 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

well enough to go about her duties again, but the
doctor says she will always suffer from Hagenbeck
heart. "

Amblecope got up from his chair and moved to
another part of the room. Treddleford reopened
his book and betook himself once more across

The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted
sea.

For a blessed half-hour he disported himself in
imagination by the " gay Aleppo-Gate," and lis-
tened 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.

As Treddleford was about to pass out of the room
he encountered Amblecope, also passing out, on his
way to the biUiard-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 Treddle-
ford's breast and he waved him back.

'* I believe I take precedence," he said coldly ;
" you are merely the club Bore ; I am the club
Liar."

THE ELK 247

THE ELK

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 sug-
gested 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
poHtical Boss in the bosom of his caucus. The late
Theodore Thropplestance had left her, some thirty-
five years ago, in absolute possession of a consider-
able fortune, a large landed property, and a gallery
full of valuable pictures. In those intervening
years she had outUved 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

248 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

with daughters of marriageable age. Bertie was
an amiable, easy-going young man, who was quite
ready to marry anyone who was favourably recom-
mended 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 favour-
able recommendation would have to come from
Mrs. Thropplestance.

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 rejec-
tion 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 he was
not likely to fret and fume over anything that might
befall him in the way of a helpmate.

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

THE ELK 249

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 accus-
tomed to seeing them about a lot together she might
adopt the view that they would make a suitable
married couple.

" 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 com-
pany, the more she will get to take a kindly interest
in Dora as a possible and desirable wife for Bertie."

" 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."

" 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."

The vicar's wife reflected that Teresa seemed to be
the one person who showed no immediate anxiety

250 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

to supply Bertie with a wife, but she kept the thought
to herself.

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 segre-
gated them from Bertie and Dora, who were left
to their own devisings — that is to say, to Dora's
devisings and Bertie's accommodating acquies-
cence. 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.

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.

" Those two inseparables have just come in from
a bicycle ride," she would announce ; " quite a pic-
ture they make, so fresh and glowing after their spin."

THE ELK 251

" 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.

On the afternoon after Christmas Day Mrs.
Yonelet dashed into the drawing-room, where her
hostess was sitting amid a circle of guests and tea-
cups and mufhn-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 announce-
ment.

" Bertie has saved Dora from the elk ! "

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.

" 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.

" 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

252 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 com-
pany generally.

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.

" 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."

" 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 predicament
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."

" It seems to be a very dangerous animal," said
one of the guests.

THE ELK 253

" 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."

Teresa closed the discussion, having deftly con-
veyed the impression that she considered the mother
of the gardener's boy had shown a far more reason-
able spirit than the parents of other elk-assaulted
victims.

" 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 "

" 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."

" A German governess ! What an idea ! " gasped
Mrs. Yonelet.

" She's of (juite good family, I believe," said the
vicar's wife, ** and not at all the mouse-in-the-back-

254 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Hke 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 instaUing as
her successor ? Imagine the discomfort and awk-
wardness 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."

" But," objected Mrs. Yonelet, " surely Bertie
hasn't shown the least sign of being attracted in that
quarter ? "

" 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

THE ELK 255

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 con-
secrations of Fate, but he would not dream of
opposing his grandmother."

The vicar's wife spoke with the quiet authority
of one who has intuitive knowledge, and in her heart
of hearts Mrs. Yonelet beheved her.

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 Hving thing that had
permanently thwarted Teresa Thropplestance's plans.

Dora Yonelet broke off her engagement with an
Indian civiUan, 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. Thropple-
stance hangs an extra large festoon of evergreens
on the elk horns that decorate the hall.

" It was a fearsome beast," she observes to
Bertie, " but I always feel that it was instrumental
in bringing us together."

Which, of course, was true.

256 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

H

DOWN PENS"

*' Y ^ AVE you written to thank the Frop-
Imsons for what they sent us? " asked
Egbert.

" No," said Janetta, with a note of tired defiance
in her voice ; " I've wTitten eleven letters to-day
expressing surprise and gratitude for sundry un-
merited gifts, but I haven't written to the Froplin-
sons."

" Some one will have towriteto them," said Egbert.

" 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 recrimina-
tion 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."

" I've written nearly as many," said Egbert,

DOW'X PENS 257

" and I've had my usual bosmess cotrR^wndcnce
to get throng too. Besides, I don't know fdiat it
was that the Frof^insons sent ns."

" A WUhsm the Conqueror calendar/' said Jan-
etta, " with a qnotaticHi of one of his great thonghts
for every day in the year."

"Impossible," said Egbert; "he didn't have
three hmidred and sixty-hve thoo^ts in the whole
of his hf e, or, if he did, he kept them to himseif.
He was a man of action, not of intio^)ection."

" Wen, it was WUham Wcx^sworth, then," said
Janetta ; " I know Wiltiam came into it some-

"That sonnds mOTe iHX)baWe," said Egbert;
"well, let's collaborate on this letter of thanks
and get it done. Ill dictate, and you can scdbUe
it down. ' Dear Mis. Fio|dinsoo-4hank yoa and
your husband so much for the veiy pretty rakaidar
you sent us. It was veiy good of yoa to think of
us.

"You can't possiUy say that," said Janetta,
laying down her pen.

" It's ¥diat I always do say, and what eveiy <me
says to me," protested Egbert.

" VVe sent them something cm the twenty-seccnd,"
said Janetta, " so they smpfy had to think of us.
There was no getting away from it."

258 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" What did we send them ? " asked Egbert
gloomily

" Bridge-markers," said Janetta, "in a card-
board 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."

" The Froplinsons don't play bridge," said Egbert.

" One is not supposed to notice social deformities
of that sort," said Janetta ; "it wouldn't be poUte.
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 behef that all poetry begins and
ends with John Masefield, and it might infuriate
or depress us to have a daily sample of Words-
worthian products flimg at us."

" Well, let's get on with the letter of thanks,"
said Egbert.

" Proceed," said Janetta.

" * How clever of you to guess that Wordsworth
is our favourite poet,' " dictated Egbert.

DOWN PENS 259

Again Janetta laid down her pen.

" 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."

" But what other topic? "

" Oh, something Uke 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."

" 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."

" 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."

" What did she send ? "

" I forget ; I think it was a calendar."

26o BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

There was a long silence, the forlorn silence of
those who are bereft of hope and have almost ceased
to care.

Presently Egbert started from his seat with an
air of resolution. The light of battle was in his
eyes.

" Let me come to the writing-table," he exclaimed.

" Gladly," said Janetta. " Are you going to
write to Mrs. Ludberry or the FropHnsons ? "

" 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 Hfe. But
all the devastating accretions of correspondence.

DOWN PENS 261

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."

" But you would have to make some acknowledg-
ment of presents received," objected Janetta ;
" otherwise people would never know whether they
had arrived safely."

" Of course, I have thought of that," said Egbert ;
" every present that was sent off would be accom-
panied by a ticket bearing the date of dispatch
and the signature of the sender, and some conven-
tional 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."

" It sounds delightfully simple," said Janetta
wistfully, " but people would consider it too cut-
and-dried, too perfunctory."

" It is not a bit more perfunctory than the present
system," said Egbert ; " I have only the same con-
ventional language of gratitude at my disposal with
which to thank dear old Colonel Chuttle for his

262 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Frophnsons
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 acknow-
ledgment is just as perfunctory and conventional
as the counterfoil business would be, only ten times
more tiresome and brain-racking."

" Your plan would certainly bring the ideal of a
Happy Christmas a step nearer realisation," said
Janetta.

" 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 par-
ticularly good one. Hams are not what they used

DOWN PENS 263

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/'

" Meanwhile," said Janetta, " what am I to
say to the Froplinsons ? "

264 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE NAME-DAY

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 famiUarity 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 atmo-

THE NAME-DAY 265

sphere 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.

It was early in April, two months after the instal-
lation 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

266 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Hues of her communication
there lay a hint that if he really cared for her

Abbleway obtained leave of absence and added
a journey to Fiume to his hfe's adventures. He
left Vienna on a cold, cheerless day. The flower
shops were full of spring blooms, and the weekly
organsof illustrated humour were full of spring topics,
but the skies were heavy with clouds that looked
Hke cotton-wool that has been kept over long in a
shop window.

" 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 gUstening ropes, the Hne itself was
buried more and more completely under a carpeting

THE NAME-DAY 267

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 sur-
mounting 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

268 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

what had happened. The engine had made a mighty
plunge through the drift and had gone merrily
forward, Hghtened of the load of its rear carriage,
whose coupling had snapped under the strain. Abble-
way 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."

Before making his way to the third-class compart-
ment 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.

" 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."

He entered the carriage and made his momentous
announcement in the best approach to Croat speech
that he could achieve.

THE NAME-DAY 269

" The train has broken away and left us ! "

The woman shook her head with a movement
that might be intended to convey resignation to the
will of heaven, but probably meant noncompre-
hension. Abbleway repeated his information with
variations of Slavonic tongues and generous displays
of pantomime.

" Ah," said the woman at last in German dialect,
" the train has gone ? We are left. Ah, so."

She seemed about as much interested as though
Abbleway had told her the result of the municipal
elections in Amsterdam.

" 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."

" We may be here all night ! " exclaimed Abbleway.

The woman nodded as though she thought it
possible.

" Are there wolves in these parts ? " asked Abble-
way hurriedly.

" 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 . ' '

270 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" They may attack us here," said Abbleway
tremulously ; " they could easily break in, these
carriages are like matchwood. We may both be
devoured."

** You, perhaps," said the woman calmly ; " not
me."

" Why not you ? " demanded Abbleway.

" It is the day of Saint Maria Kleopha, 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."

Abbleway changed the subject.

" It is only afternoon now ; if we are to be left here
till morning we shall be starving."

" 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."

" I will give you fifty heller apiece for a couple
of them," said Abbleway with some enthusiasm.

" In a railway accident things become very dear,"
said the woman ; " these blood-sausages axe four
kronen apiece."

" Four kronen ! " exclaimed Abbleway ; " four
kronen for a blood-sausage ! "

THE NAME-DAY 271

" 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 Emmen thaler
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."

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 ex-
panded into a famine tariff. As he was taking posses-
sion 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.

" There are hundreds of them," whispered Abble-
way ; " they have scented us. They will tear the
carriage to pieces. We shall be devoured."

" Not me, on my name-day. The holy Maria

272 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

Kleopha would not permit it," said the woman with
provoking calm.

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.
The long torture-laden minutes passed slowly away.

" 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."

" But the wolves ! " exclaimed Abbleway ; " they
may "

" Not on my name-day," said the woman obstin-
ately, 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.

THE NAME-DAY 273

When he looked at last a new sensation of scan-
dalised 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.

A short, joyous bark revealed the clue to the
situation.

" Are those — dogs ? " he called weakly.

" 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 ! "

A whistle sounded, and a reUef 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.

274 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE LUMBER ROOM

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 seem-
ingly 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

THE LUMBER ROOM 275

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.

" You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in
my bread- and-milk ; there was 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.

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.

A few decent tears were looked for on the part of

276 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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

"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.

*' She'll soon get over that," said the soi-disant
aunt ; ''it will be a glorious afternoon for racing
about over those beautiful sands. How they will
enjoy themselves ! "

" 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."

" Why didn't he tell me they were hurting ? "
asked the aunt with some asperity.

" He told you twice, but you weren't listening.
You often don't listen when we tell you important
things."

" You are not to go into the gooseberry garden,"
said the aunt, changing the subject.

" Why not ? " demanded Nicholas.

" Because you are in disgrace," said the aunt
loftily.

Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the
reasoning ; he felt perfectly capable of being in

THE LUMBER ROOM 277

disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at the same
moment. His face took on an expression of con-
siderable 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."

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 con-
centration.

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 watch-
ful 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

278 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 goose-
berry garden was a stale delight, a mere material
pleasure.

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

THE LUMBER ROOM 279

illumination. In the second place it was a store-
house of unimagined treasures. The aunt-by-asser-
tion 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

28o BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 re-
volving 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.
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 Uke a china duck, out of whose
open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull
and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in com-
parison ! And there was a carved sandal-wood box
packed tight with aromatic cottonwool, and between
the layers of cottonwool were little brass figures,
hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and gobhns,
dehghtful 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

THE LUMBER ROOM 281

or wood-pigeon ; here were herons and bustards,
kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises,
golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of un-
dreamed-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. vShe had grown suspicious at his
long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion
that he had climbed over the wall behind the shelter-
ing screen of the lilac bushes ; she was now engaged
in energetic and rather hopeless search for him
among the artichokes and raspberry canes.

" 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."

It was probably the first time for twenty years
that anyone had smiled in that lumber-room.

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.

282 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" Who's calling ? " he asked.

" 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 shppery and I can't get out.
Fetch the Httle ladder from under the cherry
tree "

" I was told I wasn't to go into the gooseberry
garden," said Nicholas promptly.

" I told you not to, and now I tell you that you
may," came the voice from the rain-water tank,
rather impatiently.

*' 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."

" Don't talk nonsense," said the prisoner in the
tank ; " go and fetch the ladder. "

" Will there be strawberry jam for tea ? " asked
Nicholas innocently.

" Certainly there will be," said the aunt, privately
resolving that Nicholas should have none of
it.

" Now I know that you are the Evil One and not
aunt," shouted Nicholas gleefully ; " when we

THE LUMBER ROOM 283

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 have
sold yourself ! "

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 dis-
cernment, that such luxuries were not to be over-
indulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was
a kitchenmaid, in search of parsley, who event-
ually rescued the aunt from the rain-water
tank.

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 deten-
tion in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes.
As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the

284 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

FUR 285

Y

FUR

^^ ^ /'OU look worried, dear/' said Eleanor.

" I am worried," admitted Suzanne ;
not worried exactly, but anxious.
You see, my birthday happens next week *'

" Ycu lucky person," interrupted Eleanor ; " my
birthday doesn't come till the end of March."

" 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."

" Now I understand the anxiety," observed
Eleanor.

'* As a rule when one is confronted with a problem
like that," said Suzanne, *' all one's ideas vanish ;

286 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

one doesn't seem to have a desire in the world. Now
it so happens that I have been very keen on a Httle
Dresden figure that I saw somewhere in Kensington ;
about thirty-six shilHngs, 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."

" The question is," said Eleanor, " what are his
ideas as to present-giving ? Some of the wealthiest
people have curiously cramped views on that sub-
ject. When people grow gradually rich their
requirements and standard of living expand in pro-
portion, 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.' "

" I know," said Suzanne ; " that is why it is so

FUR 287

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 traveUing
hne 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
' Ski-ing without Tears,' or something of that
sort."

" He would be more likely to say : * She'll be going
to lots of dances, a fan will be sure to be useful.' "

" 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."

" 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."

" 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

288 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

building and take him for a stroll through the fur
department ! "

" 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 ? "

" 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."

" 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."

" 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."

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 estab-
lishment. The afternoon was brilliantly fine, exactly

FUR 289

the sort of weather to tempt a gentleman of advanc-
ing years into the discreet exercise of a leisurely
walk.

" 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."

" Sorry, my dear, no can do," said Suzanne ;
" ordinary bridge at threepence a hundred, with such
dreadfully slow players as your aunts, bores me to
tears. I nearly go to sleep over it."

" But I most particularly want an opportunity
to talk with Harry," urged Eleanor, an angry
glint coming into her eyes.

" 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.

Eleanor said nothing further on the subject, but
the corners of her mouth rearranged themselves.

" There's our man ! " exclaimed Suzanne sud-
denly ; " hurry ! "

Mr. Bertram Kneyght greeted his cousin and her

u

290 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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.

"Is it always as full as this ? '' asked Bertram
of Eleanor.

" More or less, and autumn sales are on just now,"
she replied.

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.

" 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."

*' 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."

" She's rather a problem," said Eleanor. " She
seems to have everything one can think of, lucky

FUR 291

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 any-
thing 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."

292 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

** Hullo, I thought I had lost you," said Suzanne,
making her way through an obstructive knot of
shoppers. " Where is Bertram ? "

" 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."

Which turned out to be a true prediction.

" All our trouble and forethought thrown away,"
said Suzanne sulkily, when they had pushed their
way fruitlessly through half a dozen depart-
ments.

" 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."

Some days later Suzanne rang Eleanor up on
the telephone.

" 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 ..."

*' You must come and see what he's given me,"
came in Eleanor's voice over the 'phone.

** You ! Why should he give you anything ? "

" Your cousin appears to be one of those rare

FUR 293

people of wealth who take a pleasure in giving good
presents," came the reply.

'* I wondered why he was so anxious to know
where she lived," snapped Suzanne to herself as
she rang off.

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.

294 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

THE PHILANTHROPIST AND
THE HAPPY CAT

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.
" 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 Hes there, purring and
dreaming, shifting his limbs now and then in an

THE PHILANTHROPIST 295

ecstasy of cushioned comfort. He seems the incar-
nation 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."

" 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.

" Remember, dinner's a wee bit earlier to-night,
as we're going to the Haymarket," she called after
him.

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

296 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Hfe ;
she really had good reason for being one of the most
contented women in Chelsea.

From being in a mood of simmering satisfaction
with her lot she passed to the phase of being gener-
ously 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.

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 comfort-

THE PHILANTHROPIST 297

ing 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 friend-
ship.

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

298 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 begin-
ning, 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.

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

THE PHILANTHROPIST 299

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

300 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 ac-
quaintance, and that Gregory would Uke him, and
that the Fairy Godmother business would prove far
more entertaining than she had originally antici-
pated. 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."

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

THE PHILANTHROPIST 301

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 Hindo-
stan, amid deserted bungalows, seething bazaars,
and riotous barrack squares, listening to the
throbbing of tom-toms and the distant rattle of
musketry.

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

302 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

whole her frame of mind showed a marked diverg-
ence 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.
But then he had killed his sparrow.

ON APPROVAL 303

ON APPROVAL

OF all the genuine Bohemians who strayed
from time to time into the would-be
Bohemian circle of the Restaurant Nurem-
berg, 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.

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 responsibiUties of
swine tending and goose rearing to try his fortune
as an artist in London.

304 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

" Why London and not Paris or Munich ? " he
had been asked by the curious.

Well, there was a ship that left Stolpmiinde 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.

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 enter-
prising young man who fancied he could paint and
was pardonably anxious to escape from the mono-
tony 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

ON APPROVAL 305

case of Sledonti, the dramatic poet, who had been
behttled 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 bortsch 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.

As regards Knopf schrank's work, they did not
lack opportunity for inspecting and appraising it.
However resolutely he might hold himself aloof
from the social Ufe 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

3o6 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

fellow-guests, and commence the serious business
of eating and drinking. When the coffee stage was
reached he would light a cigarette, draw the port-
folio 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."

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 traveUing beast shows.
" Giraffes drinking at the fountain pools, Trafalgar
Square," was one of the most notable and character-
istic 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

ON APPROVAL 307

now endeavouring to sell to some enterprising dealer
or adventurous amateur. The subject was " Hyaenas
asleep in Euston Station," a composition that left
nothing to be desired in the way of suggesting un-
fathomed depths of desolation.

" 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 hyaena
picture, or even for some of the sketches, we should
know better how to place the man and his
work."

" 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
shiUings 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 treat-
ment ; but it didn't in the least convey the Albert
Memorial to me, and Sir James Beanquest tells me

3o8 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

that sand-grouse don't roost, they sleep on the
ground."

Whatever talent or genius the Pomeranian artist
might possess, it certainly failed to receive com-
mercial sanction. The portfolio remained bulky
with imsold 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 appear-
ance 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.

"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."

ON APPROVAL 309

" Why don't you go home on a visit ? " some one
asked tactfully.

" Ah, it cost money ! There is the ship passage to
Stolpmiinde, 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 "

" 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 "

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.

" Nine schilling nine pence each," he snapped,
and seemed disappointed that Mrs. Nougat- Jones
did not pursue the subject further. He had evi-
dently expected her to offer seven and fourpence.

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

310 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

ordinary resources of the kitchen were supplemented
by an imported dish of smoked goosebreast, a
Pomeranian deUcacy that was luckily procurable at
a firm of delikatessen 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.

" He has evidently sold his masterpiece," whis-
pered Sylvia Strubble to Mrs. Nougat-Jones, who
had come in late.

" Who has bought it ? " she whispered back.

" 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 evi-
dently got a very big price for it ; he's just beaming
and chuckling with satisfaction."

" We must ask him who has bought it," said Mrs.
Nougat-Jones.

*' 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."

ON APPROVAL 311

For the sum of ten shillings each Miss Stnibble
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 Athenaeum Club,"
found a purchaser at fifteen shillings.

" And now what are your plans ? '* asked a young
man who contributed occasional paragraphs to an
artistic weekly.

*' I go back to Stolpmiinde as soon as the ship
sails," said the artist, " and I do not return. Never."
" But your work ? Your career as painter ? "
" 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."

" But has not some American ? "

" 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 fatten-
ing, but he was in a hurry to get on to Dantzig.

312 BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

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 Stolpmiinde
and I do not come back. Never."

" But your picture, the hyaenas ? "

" No good. It is too big to carry to Stolpmiinde.
I bum it."

In time he will be forgotten, but at present Knopf-
schrank is almost as sore a subject as Sledonti
with some of the frequenters of the Nuremberg
Restaurant, Owl Street, Soho.

BOOKS BY H. H. MUNRO ("Saki")

WHEN WILLIAM CAME

A Story of London under the Hohenzollerns,

Grown 8vo, 6s.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS.

Times. — " A bitter and remarkably clever satire. . . .
It is a remarkable tour de force, worked out with great
cleverness."

Morning Post. — " Mr. Munro's first novel with a purpose
is above all things notable because it succeeds in its purpose.
In his newest guise he still wears his cap and bells, and
carries them as well as ever. But the jester's bauble has
become a whip, and every stroke tells."

Daily Telegraph. — "A novel that is likely to take its
place as the very first of its kind, far above tales of mere
military sensationalism. A remarkably clever book for its
unsensational presentation of a sensational theme."

Manchester Guardian. — " Handled with all the force of a
keen intelligence, a wit polished to dazzling, and acute
understanding of the diplomatic world. The Author's
capacity to write is such that on almost every page there
are sentences one longs to remember."

Scotsman. — " It is rather like a bad dream."

Spectator. — " Our only doubt is whether the scathing satire
which Mr. Munro directs against our self-protective
sybarites may not be neutralized by the fact that, while
they are represented in a contemptible light, they are also
extremely amusing. . . . We might easily fill a page
of the Spectator with the good sayings and epigrams which
enliven the pages of ' When William Came,' but we have
purposely refrained from discounting the intellectual ex-
hilaration to be derived from the study of this brilliant if
disquieting romance. ' '

LONDON : JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN

BOOKS BY H. H. MUNRO (" Saki ")

WHEN WILLIAM CAME

SOME PRESS OPINIONS {Continued)

Sketch. — " Every man and every woman in the country
should read this vivid writing on the wall. Bright with
unconquerable humour though it be, few will escape a sick
feeling about that region where loss and grief and shame do
most impress themselves."

Pall Mall Gazette. — " Mr. Munro is a master of social
satire, but he goes further than that in • When William
Came." He wields a biting lash, and it draws blood —
every stroke."

Punch. — " Mr. Munro is to be heartily congratulated."

Cork Constitution. — " Almost incredibly clever

Will probably be the most notable book of the year in the
department of fiction."

Daily Graphic — " Mr. Munro has so often been called
brilliant that we hesitate to use the adjective again, though
we might do so, and we will therefore only say that for wit,
and for ideas, and for hitting power, ' When William Came '
is a thing by itself. ' '

Daily Chronicle. — "His satire is rapier-like in its vivid,
biting intensity."

Daily Express. — " ' Saki ' writes with an irony that is more
effective, more stinging, than any bluster or melodrama."

Glasgow Herald.—" We congratulate • Saki ' on a brilliant
study."

Daily News. — "A thoroughly illegitimate work of art,
competent and unscrupulous in its competence."

Academy. — •' Grim and relentless irony."

Evening News. — " A gruesome tale, because of the sunny
atmosphere that envelops it, with flashes of the most
poignant and insulting pain, and pain deserved too, thrust at
us here and there. But abounding in wit, bristling with it."

Sunday Chronicle. — " He has brought something more
than artistry to his task. He has really fought the thing
out from every possible point of view — historical, social,
economic, political, geographical ; above all, psychological."

LONDON : JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN

BOOKS BY H. H. MUNRO ("Saki")

THE
UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON

Crown 8vo, 6s.

SOME PRESS OPINIONS.

Observer. — •• One of the wittiest books, not only of the
year, but of this decade. . . . It is not even only witty :
it has a deepening humanity towards the end that comes to
a climax of really disturbing pathos."

Daily Chronicle. — •• 'The Unbearable Bassington' is simply
delightful."

Academy. — "The book is clever right through. . . .
Comus, the wayward son of Francesca Bassington, is one of
the most delightful and original characters in recent fiction."

Dundee Advertiser. — " A pain and a pleasure to read. . . .
One of the cleverest things in current fiction."

Times, — " Not only alive but sparkling with really enjoy-
able wit."

Spectator. — " Almost bearable."

Truth. — " A brilliantly ironic book."

Punch. — "The most brilliant exhibition of conversational
fireworks since • The Importance of Being Earnest.' "

Evening Standard. — " ' The Unbearable Bassington ' would
be unbearably witty if it were not also so human and so
charming. . . . The story, a study of a young scape-
grace, something of a ' waster,' something of a • rotter,' but
a good deal of a wistful, lovable, perverse young human
soul, is extraordinarily pathetic."

LONDON : JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO : BELL AND COCKBURN

BOOKS BY H. H. MUNRO ("Saki")-

THE CHRONICLES OF
CLOVIS

Crown 8vo, 6s.
SOME PRESS OPINIONS.

English Review. — "A collection of short stories printed
from various newspapers and magazines. Every one was
worth reprinting and some, notably ' The Great Weep ' and
• Sredni Vashtar,' are very good indeed. Mr. Munro con-
ceals pills of cleverness in a sugar-coating of wit — real wit — :
and the result is a chuckle-provoking book, except on the
occasions when its author was touched to grim realism and
wrote his mood."

Morning Post. — "They offer unrivalled entertainment for
the classes. In ' Sredni Vashtar ' we have a short story
marked by great restraint, by economy of words, and by a
gruesome power of suggestion almost unequalled."

Westminster Gazette. — " These sketches, which at a first
reading are so delightful, stand the test of republication
extraordinarily well. Always a student of psychic as well
as of psychological phenomena, Mr. Munro has, as this book
shows, of late occupied himself more and more with mani-
festations of the mental relationships of men and animals."

Daily Telegraph. — "Every story has its point, sharp and
polished, and the art of the telling is as much to be enjoyed
as the interest of the thing told. ' The Chronicles of Clovls '
is that rare bird among British books — a collection of short
stories in which the elusive art of the conte is thoroughly
understood and mastered."

Saturday Review. — "Mr. Jacobs, in his 'Monkey's Paw'
vein, never yet wrote so gruesome a tale — nor one near so
good — as ' Sredni Vashtar' ; while ' Tobermory,' the story
of the cat that talked, is worthy of F. Anstey at his best."

Spectator. — "Mr. Munro has an extraordinarily freakish
fancy, a witty pen, and great skill in depicting certain types
of fashionable pleasure-hunters of the day. He is a first-
rate phrasemaker in the extravagant vein,"

LONDON : JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN

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