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Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches
by Saki (H.H. Munro)
August, 1999 [Etext #1870]
Project Gutenberg Etext of Reginald in Russia etc by Saki(Munro)
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This etext was prepared by Jane Duff; proofed by David Price, email
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REGINALD IN RUSSIA AND OTHER SKETCHES
Contents:
REGINALD IN RUSSIA
THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE
THE LOST SANJAK
THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP
THE BLOOD-FEUD OF TOAD-WATER
A YOUNG TURKISH CATASTROPHE
JUDKIN OF THE PARCELS
GABRIEL-ERNEST
THE SAINT AND THE GOBLIN
THE SOUL OF LAPLOSHKA
THE BAG
THE STRATEGIST
CROSS CURRENTS
THE BAKER'S DOZEN
THE MOUSE
REGINALD IN RUSSIA
Reginald sat in a corner of the Princess's salon and tried to
forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention
of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into
Wilhelm II.
He classified the Princess with that distinct type of woman that
looks as if it habitually went out to feed hens in the rain.
Her name was Olga; she kept what she hoped and believed to be a fox-
terrier, and professed what she thought were Socialist opinions. It
is not necessary to be called Olga if you are a Russian Princess; in
fact, Reginald knew quite a number who were called Vera; but the
fox-terrier and the Socialism are essential.
"The Countess Lomshen keeps a bull-dog," said the Princess suddenly.
"In England is it more chic to have a bull-dog than a fox-terrier?"
Reginald threw his mind back over the canine fashions of the last
ten years and gave an evasive answer.
"Do you think her handsome, the Countess Lomshen?" asked the
Princess.
Reginald thought the Countess's complexion suggested an exclusive
diet of macaroons and pale sherry. He said so.
"But that cannot be possible," said the Princess triumphantly; "I've
seen her eating fish-soup at Donon's."
The Princess always defended a friend's complexion if it was really
bad. With her, as with a great many of her sex, charity began at
homeliness and did not generally progress much farther.
Reginald withdrew his macaroon and sherry theory, and became
interested in a case of miniatures.
"That?" said the Princess; "that is the old Princess Lorikoff. She
lived in Millionaya Street, near the Winter Palace, and was one of
the Court ladies of the old Russian school. Her knowledge of people
and events was extremely limited; but she used to patronise every
one who came in contact with her. There was a story that when she
died and left the Millionaya for Heaven she addressed St. Peter in
her formal staccato French: 'Je suis la Princesse Lor-i-koff. Il
me donne grand plaisir a faire votre connaissance. Je vous en prie
me presenter au Bon Dieu.' St. Peter made the desired introduction,
and the Princess addressed le Bon Dieu: 'Je suis la Princesse Lor-
i-koff. Il me donne grand plaisir a faire votre connaissance. On a
souvent parle de vous a l'eglise de la rue Million.'"
"Only the old and the clergy of Established churches know how to be
flippant gracefully," commented Reginald; "which reminds me that in
the Anglican Church in a certain foreign capital, which shall be
nameless, I was present the other day when one of the junior
chaplains was preaching in aid of distressed somethings or other,
and he brought a really eloquent passage to a close with the remark,
'The tears of the afflicted, to what shall I liken them--to
diamonds?' The other junior chaplain, who had been dozing out of
professional jealousy, awoke with a start and asked hurriedly,
'Shall I play to diamonds, partner?' It didn't improve matters when
the senior chaplain remarked dreamily but with painful distinctness,
'Double diamonds.' Every one looked at the preacher, half expecting
him to redouble, but he contented himself with scoring what points
he could under the circumstances."
"You English are always so frivolous," said the Princess. "In
Russia we have too many troubles to permit of our being
lighthearted."
Reginald gave a delicate shiver, such as an Italian greyhound might
give in contemplating the approach of an ice age of which he
personally disapproved, and resigned himself to the inevitable
political discussion.
"Nothing that you hear about us in England is true," was the
Princess's hopeful beginning.
"I always refused to learn Russian geography at school," observed
Reginald; "I was certain some of the names must be wrong."
"Everything is wrong with our system of government," continued the
Princess placidly. "The Bureaucrats think only of their pockets,
and the people are exploited and plundered in every direction, and
everything is mismanaged."
"With us," said Reginald, "a Cabinet usually gets the credit of
being depraved and worthless beyond the bounds of human conception
by the time it has been in office about four years."
"But if it is a bad Government you can turn it out at the
elections," argued the Princess.
"As far as I remember, we generally do," said Reginald.
"But here it is dreadful, every one goes to such extremes. In
England you never go to extremes."
"We go to the Albert Hall," explained Reginald.
"There is always a see-saw with us between repression and violence,"
continued the Princess; "and the pity of it is the people are really
not in the least inclined to be anything but peaceable. Nowhere
will you find people more good-natured, or family circles where
there is more affection."
"There I agree with you," said Reginald. "I know a boy who lives
somewhere on the French Quay who is a case in point. His hair curls
naturally, especially on Sundays, and he plays bridge well, even for
a Russian, which is saying much. I don't think he has any other
accomplishments, but his family affection is really of a very high
order. When his maternal grandmother died he didn't go as far as to
give up bridge altogether, but he declared on nothing but black
suits for the next three months. That, I think, was really
beautiful."
The Princess was not impressed.
"I think you must be very self-indulgent and live only for
amusement," she said, "a life of pleasure-seeking and card-playing
and dissipation brings only dissatisfaction. You will find that out
some day."
"Oh, I know it turns out that way sometimes," assented Reginald.
"Forbidden fizz is often the sweetest."
But the remark was wasted on the Princess, who preferred champagne
that had at least a suggestion of dissolved barley-sugar.
"I hope you will come and see me again," she said, in a tone that
prevented the hope from becoming too infectious; adding as a happy
afterthought, "you must come to stay with us in the country."
Her particular part of the country was a few hundred versts the
other side of Tamboff, with some fifteen miles of agrarian
disturbance between her and the nearest neighbour. Reginald felt
that there is some privacy which should be sacred from intrusion.
THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE
Egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a
man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb
factory, and is prepared for either eventuality. The little
domestic quarrel over the luncheon-table had not been fought to a
definite finish, and the question was how far Lady Anne was in a
mood to renew or forgo hostilities. Her pose in the arm-chair by
the tea-table was rather elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a
December afternoon Egbert's pince-nez did not materially help him to
discern the expression of her face.
By way of breaking whatever ice might be floating on the surface he
made a remark about a dim religious light. He or Lady Anne were
accustomed to make that remark between 4.30 and 6 on winter and late
autumn evenings; it was a part of their married life. There was no
recognised rejoinder to it, and Lady Anne made none.
Don Tarquinio lay astretch on the Persian rug, basking in the
firelight with superb indifference to the possible ill-humour of
Lady Anne. His pedigree was as flawlessly Persian as the rug, and
his ruff was coming into the glory of its second winter. The page-
boy, who had Renaissance tendencies, had christened him Don
Tarquinio. Left to themselves, Egbert and Lady Anne would
unfailingly have called him Fluff, but they were not obstinate.
Egbert poured himself out some tea. As the silence gave no sign of
breaking on Lady Anne's initiative, he braced himself for another
Yermak effort.
"My remark at lunch had a purely academic application," he
announced; "you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance
into it."
Lady Anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. The
bullfinch lazily filled in the interval with an air from Iphigenie
en Tauride. Egbert recognised it immediately, because it was the
only air the bullfinch whistled, and he had come to them with the
reputation for whistling it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have
preferred something from The Yeomen of the Guard, which was their
favourite opera. In matters artistic they had a similarity of
taste. They leaned towards the honest and explicit in art, a
picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous
assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse with harness in
obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard full of pale swooning
women, and marginally noted "Bad News", suggested to their minds a
distinct interpretation of some military catastrophe. They could
see what it was meant to convey, and explain it to friends of duller
intelligence.
The silence continued. As a rule Lady Anne's displeasure became
articulate and markedly voluble after four minutes of introductory
muteness. Egbert seized the milkjug and poured some of its contents
into Don Tarquinio's saucer; as the saucer was already full to the
brim an unsightly overflow was the result. Don Tarquinio looked on
with a surprised interest that evanesced into elaborate
unconsciousness when he was appealed to by Egbert to come and drink
up some of the spilt matter. Don Tarquinio was prepared to play
many roles in life, but a vacuum carpet-cleaner was not one of them.
"Don't you think we're being rather foolish?" said Egbert
cheerfully.
If Lady Anne thought so she didn't say so.
"I dare say the fault has been partly on my side," continued Egbert,
with evaporating cheerfulness. "After all, I'm only human, you
know. You seem to forget that I'm only human."
He insisted on the point, as if there had been unfounded suggestions
that he was built on Satyr lines, with goat continuations where the
human left off.
The bullfinch recommenced its air from Iphigenie en Tauride. Egbert
began to feel depressed. Lady Anne was not drinking her tea.
Perhaps she was feeling unwell. But when Lady Anne felt unwell she
was not wont to be reticent on the subject. "No one knows what I
suffer from indigestion" was one of her favourite statements; but
the lack of knowledge can only have been caused by defective
listening; the amount of information available on the subject would
have supplied material for a monograph.
Evidently Lady Anne was not feeling unwell.
Egbert began to think he was being unreasonably dealt with;
naturally he began to make concessions.
"I dare say," he observed, taking as central a position on the
hearth-rug as Don Tarquinio could be persuaded to concede him, "I
may have been to blame. I am willing, if I can thereby restore
things to a happier standpoint, to undertake to lead a better life."
He wondered vaguely how it would be possible. Temptations came to
him, in middle age, tentatively and without insistence, like a
neglected butcher-boy who asks for a Christmas box in February for
no more hopeful reason that than he didn't get one in December. He
had no more idea of succumbing to them than he had of purchasing the
fish-knives and fur boas that ladies are impelled to sacrifice
through the medium of advertisement columns during twelve months of
the year. Still, there was something impressive in this unasked-for
renunciation of possibly latent enormities.
Lady Anne showed no sign of being impressed.
Egbert looked at her nervously through his glasses. To get the
worst of an argument with her was no new experience. To get the
worst of a monologue was a humiliating novelty.
"I shall go and dress for diner," he announced in a voice into which
he intended some shade of sternness to creep.
At the door a final access of weakness impelled him to make a
further appeal.
"Aren't we being very silly?"
"A fool" was Don Tarquinio's mental comment as the door closed on
Egbert's retreat. Then he lifted his velvet forepaws in the air and
leapt lightly on to a bookshelf immediately under the bullfinch's
cage. It was the first time he had seemed to notice the bird's
existence, but he was carrying out a long-formed theory of action
with the precision of mature deliberation. The bullfinch, who had
fancied himself something of a despot, depressed himself of a sudden
into a third of his normal displacement; then he fell to a helpless
wing-beating and shrill cheeping. He had cost twenty-seven
shillings without the cage, but Lady Anne made no sign of
interfering. She had been dead for two hours.
THE LOST SANJAK
The prison Chaplain entered the condemned's cell for the last time,
to give such consolation as he might.
"The only consolation I crave for," said the condemned, "is to tell
my story in its entirety to some one who will at least give it a
respectful hearing."
"We must not be too long over it," said the Chaplain, looking at his
watch.
The condemned repressed a shiver and commenced.
"Most people will be of opinion that I am paying the penalty of my
own violent deeds. In reality I am a victim to a lack of
specialisation in my education and character."
"Lack of specialisation!" said the Chaplain.
"Yes. If I had been known as one of the few men in England familiar
with the fauna of the Outer Hebrides, or able to repeat stanzas of
Camoens' poetry in the original, I should have had no difficulty in
proving my identity in the crisis when my identity became a matter
of life and death for me. But my education was merely a moderately
good one, and my temperament was of the general order that avoids
specialisation. I know a little in a general way about gardening
and history and old masters, but I could never tell you off-hand
whether 'Stella van der Loopen' was a chrysanthemum or a heroine of
the American War of Independence, or something by Romney in the
Louvre."
The Chaplain shifted uneasily in his seat. Now that the
alternatives had been suggested they all seemed dreadfully possible.
"I fell in love, or thought I did, with the local doctor's wife,"
continued the condemned. "Why I should have done so, I cannot say,
for I do not remember that she possessed any particular attractions
of mind or body. On looking back at past events if seems to me that
she must have been distinctly ordinary, but I suppose the doctor had
fallen in love with her once, and what man had done man can do. She
appeared to be pleased with the attentions which I paid her, and to
that extent I suppose I might say she encouraged me, but I think she
was honestly unaware that I meant anything more than a little
neighbourly interest. When one is face to face with Death one
wishes to be just."
The Chaplain murmured approval. "At any rate, she was genuinely
horrified when I took advantage of the doctor's absence one evening
to declare what I believed to be my passion. She begged me to pass
out of her life, and I could scarcely do otherwise than agree,
though I hadn't the dimmest idea of how it was to be done. In
novels and plays I knew it was a regular occurrence, and if you
mistook a lady's sentiments or intentions you went off to India and
did things on the frontier as a matter of course. As I stumbled
along the doctor's carriagedrive I had no very clear idea as to what
my line of action was to be, but I had a vague feeling that I must
look at the Times Atlas before going to bed. Then, on the dark and
lonely highway, I came suddenly on a dead body."
The Chaplain's interest in the story visibly quickened.
"Judging by the clothes it wore, the corpse was that of a Salvation
Army captain. Some shocking accident seemed to have struck him
down, and the head was crushed and battered out of all human
semblance. Probably, I thought, a motor-car fatality; and then,
with a sudden overmastering insistence, came another thought, that
here was a remarkable opportunity for losing my identity and passing
out of the life of the doctor's wife for ever. No tiresome and
risky voyage to distant lands, but a mere exchange of clothes and
identity with the unknown victim of an unwitnessed accident. With
considerable difficulty I undressed the corpse, and clothed it anew
in my own garments. Any one who has valeted a dead Salvation Army
captain in an uncertain light will appreciate the difficulty. With
the idea, presumably, of inducing the doctor's wife to leave her
husband's roof-tree for some habitation which would be run at my
expense, I had crammed my pockets with a store of banknotes, which
represented a good deal of my immediate worldly wealth. When,
therefore, I stole away into the world in the guise of a nameless
Salvationist, I was not without resources which would easily support
so humble a role for a considerable period. I tramped to a
neighbouring market-town, and, late as the hour was, the production
of a few shillings procured me supper and a night's lodging in a
cheap coffee-house. The next day I started forth on an aimless
course of wandering from one small town to another. I was already
somewhat disgusted with the upshot of my sudden freak; in a few
hours' time I was considerably more so. In the contents-bill of a
local news sheet I read the announcement of my own murder at the
hands of some person unknown; on buying a copy of the paper for a
detailed account of the tragedy, which at first had aroused in me a
certain grim amusement, I found that the deed ascribed to a
wandering Salvationist of doubtful antecedents, who had been seen
lurking in the roadway near the scene of the crime. I was no longer
amused. The matter promised to be embarrassing. What I had
mistaken for a motor accident was evidently a case of savage assault
and murder, and, until the real culprit was found, I should have
much difficulty in explaining my intrusion into the affair. Of
course I could establish my own identity; but how, without
disagreeably involving the doctor's wife, could I give any adequate
reason for changing clothes with the murdered man? While my brain
worked feverishly at this problem, I subconsciously obeyed a
secondary instinct--to get as far away as possible from the scene of
the crime, and to get rid at all costs of my incriminating uniform.
There I found a difficulty. I tried two or three obscure clothes
shops, but my entrance invariably aroused an attitude of hostile
suspicion in the proprietors, and on one excuse or another they
avoided serving me with the now ardently desired change of clothing.
The uniform that I had so thoughtlessly donned seemed as difficult
to get out of as the fatal shirt of--You know, I forget the
creature's name."
"Yes, yes," said the Chaplain hurriedly. "Go on with your story."
"Somehow, until I could get out of those compromising garments, I
felt it would not be safe to surrender myself to the police. The
thing that puzzled me was why no attempt was made to arrest me,
since there was no question as to the suspicion which followed me,
like an inseparable shadow, wherever I went. Stares, nudgings,
whisperings, and even loud-spoken remarks of 'that's 'im' greeted my
every appearance, and the meanest and most deserted eating-house
that I patronised soon became filled with a crowd of furtively
watching customers. I began to sympathise with the feeling of Royal
personages trying to do a little private shopping under the
unsparing scrutiny of an irrepressible public. And still, with all
this inarticulate shadowing, which weighed on my nerves almost worse
than open hostility would have done, no attempt was made to
interfere with my liberty. Later on I discovered the reason. At
the time of the murder on the lonely highway a series of important
bloodhound trials had been taking place in the near neighbourhood,
and some dozen and a half couples of trained animals had been put on
the track of the supposed murderer--on my track. One of our most
public-spirited London dailies had offered a princely prize to the
owner of the pair that should first track me down, and betting on
the chances of the respective competitors became rife throughout the
land. The dogs ranged far and wide over about thirteen counties,
and though my own movements had become by this time perfectly well-
known to police and public alike, the sporting instincts of the
nation stepped in to prevent my premature arrest. "Give the dogs a
chance," was the prevailing sentiment, whenever some ambitious local
constable wished to put an end to my drawn-out evasion of justice.
My final capture by the winning pair was not a very dramatic
episode, in fact, I'm not sure that they would have taken any notice
of me if I hadn't spoken to them and patted them, but the event gave
rise to an extraordinary amount of partisan excitement. The owner
of the pair who were next nearest up at the finish was an American,
and he lodged a protest on the ground that an otterhound had married
into the family of the winning pair six generations ago, and that
the prize had been offered to the first pair of bloodhounds to
capture the murderer, and that a dog that had 1/64th part of
otterhound blood in it couldn't technically be considered a
bloodhound. I forget how the matter was ultimately settled, but it
aroused a tremendous amount of acrimonious discussion on both sides
of the Atlantic. My own contribution to the controversy consisted
in pointing out that the whole dispute was beside the mark, as the
actual murderer had not yet been captured; but I soon discovered
that on this point there was not the least divergence of public or
expert opinion. I had looked forward apprehensively to the proving
of my identity and the establishment of my motives as a disagreeable
necessity; I speedily found out that the most disagreeable part of
the business was that it couldn't be done. When I saw in the glass
the haggard and hunted expression which the experiences of the past
few weeks had stamped on my erstwhile placid countenance, I could
scarcely feel surprised that the few friends and relations I
possessed refused to recognise me in my altered guise, and persisted
in their obstinate but widely shared belief that it was I who had
been done to death on the highway. To make matters worse,
infinitely worse, an aunt of the really murdered man, an appalling
female of an obviously low order of intelligence, identified me as
her nephew, and gave the authorities a lurid account of my depraved
youth and of her laudable but unavailing efforts to spank me into a
better way. I believe it was even proposed to search me for
fingerprints."
"But," said the Chaplain, "surely your educational attainments--"
"That was just the crucial point," said the condemned; "that was
where my lack of specialisation told so fatally against me. The
dead Salvationist, whose identity I had so lightly and so
disastrously adopted, had possessed a veneer of cheap modern
education. It should have been easy to demonstrate that my learning
was on altogether another plane to his, but in my nervousness I
bungled miserably over test after test that was put to me. The
little French I had ever known deserted me; I could not render a
simple phrase about the gooseberry of the gardener into that
language, because I had forgotten the French for gooseberry."
The Chaplain again wriggled uneasily in his seat. "And then,"
resumed the condemned, "came the final discomfiture. In our village
we had a modest little debating club, and I remembered having
promised, chiefly, I suppose, to please and impress the doctor's
wife, to give a sketchy kind of lecture on the Balkan Crisis. I had
relied on being able to get up my facts from one or two standard
works, and the back-numbers of certain periodicals. The prosecution
had made a careful note of the circumstance that the man whom I
claimed to be--and actually was--had posed locally as some sort of
second-hand authority on Balkan affairs, and, in the midst of a
string of questions on indifferent topics, the examining counsel
asked me with a diabolical suddenness if I could tell the Court the
whereabouts of Novibazar. I felt the question to be a crucial one;
something told me that the answer was St. Petersburg or Baker
Street. I hesitated, looked helplessly round at the sea of tensely
expectant faces, pulled myself together, and chose Baker Street.
And then I knew that everything was lost. The prosecution had no
difficulty in demonstrating that an individual, even moderately
versed in the affairs of the Near East, could never have so
unceremoniously dislocated Novibazar from its accustomed corner of
the map. It was an answer which the Salvation Army captain might
conceivably have made--and I made it. The circumstantial evidence
connecting the Salvationist with the crime was overwhelmingly
convincing, and I had inextricably identified myself with the
Salvationist. And thus it comes to pass that in ten minutes' time I
shall be hanged by the neck until I am dead in expiation of the
murder of myself, which murder never took place, and of which, in
any case, I am innocent."
- * *
When the Chaplain returned to his quarters some fifteen minutes
later, the black flag was floating over the prison tower. Breakfast
was waiting for him in the dining-room, but he first passed into his
library, and, taking up the Times Atlas, consulted a map of the
Balkan Peninsula. "A thing like that," he observed, closing the
volume with a snap, "might happen to any one."
THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP
The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping,
particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women
ever really shop? Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they
go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but
do they shop in the practical sense of the word? Granted the money,
time, and energy, a resolute course of shopping transactions would
naturally result in having one's ordinary domestic needs unfailingly
supplied, whereas it is notorious that women servants (and
housewives of all classes) make it almost a point of honour not to
be supplied with everyday necessities. "We shall be out of starch
by Thursday," they say with fatalistic foreboding, and by Thursday
they are out of starch. They have predicted almost to a minute the
moment when their supply would give out and if Thursday happens to
be early closing day their triumph is complete. A shop where starch
is stored for retail purposes possibly stands at their very door,
but the feminine mind has rejected such an obvious source for
replenishing a dwindling stock. "We don't deal there" places it at
once beyond the pale of human resort. And it is noteworthy that,
just as a sheep-worrying dog seldom molests the flocks in his near
neighbourhood, so a woman rarely deals with shops in her immediate
vicinity. The more remote the source of supply the more fixed seems
to be the resolve to run short of the commodity. The Ark had
probably not quitted its last moorings five minutes before some
feminine voice gloatingly recorded a shortage of bird-seed. A few
days ago two lady acquaintances of mine were confessing to some
mental uneasiness because a friend had called just before lunch-
time, and they had been unable to ask her to stop and share their
meal, as (with a touch of legitimate pride) "there was nothing in
the house." I pointed out that they lived in a street that bristled
with provision shops and that it would have been easy to mobilise a
very passable luncheon in less than five minutes. "That," they said
with quiet dignity, "would not have occurred to us," and I felt that
I had suggested something bordering on the indecent.
But it is in catering for her literary wants that a woman's shopping
capacity breaks down most completely. If you have perchance
produced a book which has met with some little measure of success,
you are certain to get a letter from some lady whom you scarcely
known to bow to, asking you "how it can be got." She knows the name
of the book, its author, and who published it, but how to get into
actual contact with it is still an unsolved problem to her. You
write back pointing out that to have recourse to an ironmonger or a
corn-dealer will only entail delay and disappointment, and suggest
an application to a bookseller as the most hopeful thing you can
think of. In a day or two she writes again: "It is all right; I
have borrowed it from your aunt." Here, of course, we have an
example of the Beyond-Shopper, one who has learned the Better Way,
but the helplessness exists even when such bypaths of relief are
closed. A lady who lives in the West End was expressing to me the
other day her interest in West Highland terriers, and her desire to
know more about the breed, so when, a few days later, I came across
an exhaustive article on that subject in the current number of one
of our best known outdoor-life weeklies, I mentioned that
circumstance in a letter, giving the date of that number. "I cannot
get the paper," was her telephoned response. And she couldn't. She
lived in a city where newsagents are numbered, I suppose, by the
thousand, and she must have passed dozens of such shops in her daily
shopping excursions, but as far as she was concerned that article on
West Highland terriers might as well have been written in a missal
stored away in some Buddhist monastery in Eastern Thibet.
The brutal directness of the masculine shopper arouses a certain
combative derision in the feminine onlooker. A cat that spreads one
shrew-mouse over the greater part of a long summer afternoon, and
then possibly loses him, doubtless feels the same contempt for the
terrier who compresses his rat into ten seconds of the strenuous
life. I was finishing off a short list of purchases a few
afternoons ago when I was discovered by a lady of my acquaintance
whom, swerving aside from the lead given us by her godparents thirty
years ago, we will call Agatha.
"You're surely not buying blotting-paper HERE?" she exclaimed in an
agitated whisper, and she seemed so genuinely concerned that I
stayed my hand.
"Let me take you to Winks and Pinks," she said as soon as we were
out of the building: "they've got such lovely shades of blotting-
paper--pearl and heliotrope and momie and crushed--"
"But I want ordinary white blotting-paper," I said.
"Never mind. They know me at Winks and Pinks," she replied
inconsequently. Agatha apparently has an idea that blotting-paper
is only sold in small quantities to persons of known reputation, who
may be trusted not to put it to dangerous or improper uses. After
walking some two hundred yards she began to feel that her tea was of
more immediate importance than my blotting-paper.
"What do you want blotting-paper for?" she asked suddenly. I
explained patiently.
"I use it to dry up the ink of wet manuscript without smudging the
writing. Probably a Chinese invention of the second century before
Christ, but I'm not sure. The only other use for it that I can
think of is to roll it into a ball for a kitten to play with."
"But you haven't got a kitten," said Agatha, with a feminine desire
for stating the entire truth on most occasions.
"A stray one might come in at any moment," I replied.
Anyway, I didn't get the blotting-paper.
THE BLOOD-FEUD OF TOAD-WATER
A WEST-COUNTRY EPIC
The Cricks lived at Toad-Water; and in the same lonely upland spot
Fate had pitched the home of the Saunderses, and for miles around
these two dwellings there was never a neighbour or a chimney or even
a burying-ground to bring a sense of cheerful communion or social
intercourse. Nothing but fields and spinneys and barns, lanes and
waste-lands. Such was Toad-Water; and, even so, Toad-Water had its
history.
Thrust away in the benighted hinterland of a scattered market
district, it might have been supposed that these two detached items
of the Great Human Family would have leaned towards one another in a
fellowship begotten of kindred circumstances and a common isolation
from the outer world. And perhaps it had been so once, but the way
of things had brought it otherwise. Indeed, otherwise. Fate, which
had linked the two families in such unavoidable association of
habitat, had ordained that the Crick household should nourish and
maintain among its earthly possessions sundry head of domestic
fowls, while to the Saunderses was given a disposition towards the
cultivation of garden crops. Herein lay the material, ready to
hand, for the coming of feud and ill-blood. For the grudge between
the man of herbs and the man of live stock is no new thing; you will
find traces of it in the fourth chapter of Genesis. And one sunny
afternoon in late spring-time the feud came--came, as such things
mostly do come, with seeming aimlessness and triviality. One of the
Crick hens, in obedience to the nomadic instincts of her kind,
wearied of her legitimate scatching-ground, and flew over the low
wall that divided the holdings of the neighbours. And there, on the
yonder side, with a hurried consciousness that her time and
opportunities might be limited, the misguided bird scratched and
scraped and beaked and delved in the soft yielding bed that had been
prepared for the solace and well-being of a colony of seedling
onions. Little showers of earth-mould and root-fibres went spraying
before the hen and behind her, and every minute the area of her
operations widened. The onions suffered considerably. Mrs.
Saunders, sauntering at this luckless moment down the garden path,
in order to fill her soul with reproaches at the iniquity of the
weeds, which grew faster than she or her good man cared to remove
them, stopped in mute discomfiture before the presence of a more
magnificent grievance. And then, in the hour of her calamity, she
turned instinctively to the Great Mother, and gathered in her
capacious hands large clods of the hard brown soil that lay at her
feet. With a terrible sincerity of purpose, though with a
contemptible inadequacy of aim, she rained her earth bolts at the
marauder, and the bursting pellets called forth a flood of cackling
protest and panic from the hastily departing fowl. Calmness under
misfortune is not an attribute of either hen-folk or womenkind, and
while Mrs. Saunders declaimed over her onion bed such portions of
the slang dictionary as are permitted by the Nonconformist
conscience to be said or sung, the Vasco da Gama fowl was waking the
echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which
compelled attention to her griefs. Mrs. Crick had a long family,
and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a
short temper, and when some of her ubiquitous offspring had informed
her, with the authority of eye-witnesses, that her neighbour had so
far forgotten herself as to heave stones at her hen--her best hen,
the best layer in the countryside--her thoughts clothed themselves
in language "unbecoming to a Christian woman"--so at least said Mrs.
Saunders, to whom most of the language was applied. Nor was she, on
her part, surprised at Mrs. Crick's conduct in letting her hens
stray into other body's gardens, and then abusing of them, seeing as
how she remembered things against Mrs. Crick--and the latter
simultaneously had recollections of lurking episodes in the past of
Susan Saunders that were nothing to her credit. "Fond memory, when
all things fade we fly to thee," and in the paling light of an April
afternoon the two women confronted each other from their respective
sides of the party wall, recalling with shuddering breath the blots
and blemishes of their neighbour's family record. There was that
aunt of Mrs. Crick's who had died a pauper in Exeter workhouse--
every one knew that Mrs. Saunders' uncle on her mother's side drank
himself to death--then there was that Bristol cousin of Mrs.
Crick's! From the shrill triumph with which his name was dragged
in, his crime must have been pilfering from a cathedral at least,
but as both remembrancers were speaking at once it was difficult to
distinguish his infamy from the scandal which beclouded the memory
of Mrs. Saunders' brother's wife's mother--who may have been a
regicide, and was certainly not a nice person as Mrs. Crick painted
her. And then, with an air of accumulating and irresistible
conviction, each belligerent informed the other that she was no
lady--after which they withdrew in a great silence, feeling that
nothing further remained to be said. The chaffinches clinked in the
apple trees and the bees droned round the berberis bushes, and the
waning sunlight slanted pleasantly across the garden plots, but
between the neighbour households had sprung up a barrier of hate,
permeating and permanent.
The male heads of the families were necessarily drawn into the
quarrel, and the children on either side were forbidden to have
anything to do with the unhallowed offspring of the other party. As
they had to travel a good three miles along the same road to school
every day, this was awkward, but such things have to be. Thus all
communication between the households was sundered. Except the cats.
Much as Mrs. Saunders might deplore it, rumour persistently pointed
to the Crick he-cat as the presumable father of sundry kittens of
which the Saunders she-cat was indisputably the mother. Mrs.
Saunders drowned the kittens, but the disgrace remained.
Summer succeeded spring, and winter summer, but the feud outlasted
the waning seasons. Once, indeed, it seemed as though the healing
influences of religion might restore to Toad-Water its erstwhile
peace; the hostile families found themselves side by side in the
soul-kindling atmosphere of a Revival Tea, where hymns were blended
with a beverage that came of tea-leaves and hot water and took after
the latter parent, and where ghostly counsel was tempered by
garnishings of solidly fashioned buns--and here, wrought up by the
environment of festive piety, Mrs. Saunders so far unbent as to
remark guardedly to Mrs. Crick that the evening had been a fine one.
Mrs. Crick, under the influence of her ninth cup of tea and her
fourth hymn, ventured on the hope that it might continue fine, but a
maladroit allusion on the part of the Saunders good man to the
backwardness of garden crops brought the Feud stalking forth from
its corner with all its old bitterness. Mrs. Saunders joined
heartily in the singing of the final hymn, which told of peace and
joy and archangels and golden glories; but her thoughts were
dwelling on the pauper aunt of Exeter.
Years have rolled away, and some of the actors in this wayside drama
have passed into the Unknown; other onions have arisen, have
flourished, have gone their way, and the offending hen has long
since expiated her misdeeds and lain with trussed feet and a look of
ineffable peace under the arched roof of Barnstaple market.
But the Blood-feud of Toad-Water survives to this day.
A YOUNG TURKISH CATASTROPHE
IN TWO SCENES
The Minister for Fine Arts (to whose Department had been lately
added the new sub-section of Electoral Engineering) paid a business
visit to the Grand Vizier. According to Eastern etiquette they
discoursed for a while on indifferent subjects. The minister only
checked himself in time from making a passing reference to the
Marathon Race, remembering that the Vizier had a Persian grandmother
and might consider any allusion to Marathon as somewhat tactless.
Presently the Minister broached the subject of his interview.
"Under the new Constitution are women to have votes?" he asked
suddenly.
"To have votes? Women?" exclaimed the Vizier in some astonishment.
"My dear Pasha, the New Departure has a flavour of the absurd as it
is; don't let's try and make it altogether ridiculous. Women have
no souls and no intelligence; why on earth should they have votes?"
"I know it sounds absurd," said the Minister, "but they are
seriously considering the idea in the West."
"Then they must have a larger equipment of seriousness than I gave
them credit for. After a lifetime of specialised effort in
maintaining my gravity I can scarcely restrain an inclination to
smile at the suggestion. Why, out womenfolk in most cases don't
know how to read or write. How could they perform the operation of
voting?"
"They could be shown the names of the candidates and where to make
their cross."
"I beg your pardon?" interrupted the Vizier.
"Their crescent, I mean," corrected the Minister. "It would be to
the liking of the Young Turkish Party," he added.
"Oh, well," said the Vizier, "if we are to do the thing at all we
may as well go the whole h- " he pulled up just as he was uttering
the name of an unclean animal, and continued, "the complete camel.
I will issue instructions that womenfolk are to have votes."
- * *
The poll was drawing to a close in the Lakoumistan division. The
candidate of the Young Turkish Party was known to be three or four
hundred votes ahead, and he was already drafting his address,
returning thanks to the electors. His victory had been almost a
foregone conclusion, for he had set in motion all the approved
electioneering machinery of the West. He had even employed
motorcars. Few of his supporters had gone to the poll in these
vehicles, but, thanks to the intelligent driving of his chauffeurs,
many of his opponents had gone to their graves or to the local
hospitals, or otherwise abstained from voting. And then something
unlooked-for happened. The rival candidate, Ali the Blest, arrived
on the scene with his wives and womenfolk, who numbered, roughly,
six hundred. Ali had wasted little effort on election literature,
but had been heard to remark that every vote given to his opponent
meant another sack thrown into the Bosphorus. The Young Turkish
candidate, who had conformed to the Western custom of one wife and
hardly any mistresses, stood by helplessly while his adversary's
poll swelled to a triumphant majority.
"Cristabel Columbus!" he exclaimed, invoking in some confusion the
name of a distinguished pioneer; "who would have thought it?"
"Strange," mused Ali, "that one who harangued so clamorously about
the Secret Ballot should have overlooked the Veiled Vote."
And, walking homeward with his constituents, he murmured in his
beard an improvisation on the heretic poet of Persia:
"One, rich in metaphors, his Cause contrives
To urge with edged words, like Kabul knives;
And I, who worst him in this sorry game,
Was never rich in anything but--wives."
JUDKIN OF THE PARCELS
A figure in an indefinite tweed suit, carrying brown-paper parcels.
That is what we met suddenly, at the bend of a muddy Dorsetshire
lane, and the roan mare stared and obviously thought of a curtsey.
The mare is road-shy, with intervals of stolidity, and there is no
telling what she will pass and what she won't. We call her Redford.
That was my first meeting with Judkin, and the next time the
circumstances were the same; the same muddy lane, the same rather
apologetic figure in the tweed suit, the same--or very similar--
parcels. Only this time the roan looked straight in front of her.
Whether I asked the groom or whether he advanced the information, I
forget; but someway I gradually reconstructed the life-history of
this trudger of the lanes. It was much the same, no doubt, as that
of many others who are from time to time pointed out to one as
having been aforetime in crack cavalry regiments and noted
performers in the saddle; men who have breathed into their lungs the
wonder of the East, have romped through life as through a cotillon,
have had a thrust perhaps at the Viceroy's Cup, and done fantastic
horsefleshy things around the Gulf of Aden. And then a golden
stream has dried up, the sunlight has faded suddenly out of things,
and the gods have nodded "Go." And they have not gone. They have
turned instead to the muddy lanes and cheap villas and the marked-
down ills of life, to watch pear trees growing and to encourage hens
for their eggs. And Judkin was even as these others; the wine had
been suddenly spilt from his cup of life, and he had stayed to suck
at the dregs which the wise throw away. In the days of his scorn
for most things he would have stared the roan mare and her turn-out
out of all pretension to smartness, as he would have frozen a cheap
claret behind its cork, or a plain woman behind her veil; and now he
was walking stoically through the mud, in a tweed suit that would
eventually go on to the gardener's boy, and would perhaps fit him.
The dear gods, who know the end before the beginning, were perhaps
growing a gardener's boy somewhere to fit the garments, and Judkin
was only a caretaker, inhabiting a portion of them. That is what I
like to think, and I am probably wrong. And Judkin, whose clothes
had been to him once more than a religion, scarcely less sacred than
a family quarrel, would carry those parcels back to his villa and to
the wife who awaited him and them--a wife who may, for all we know
to the contrary, have had a figure once, and perhaps has yet a heart
of gold--of nine-carat gold, let us say at the least--but assuredly
a soul of tape. And he that has fetched and carried will explain
how it has fared with him in his dealings, and if he has brought the
wrong sort of sugar or thread he will wheedle away the displeasure
from that leaden face as a pastrycook girl will drive bluebottles
off a stale bun. And that man has known what it was to coax the
fret of a thoroughbred, to soothe its toss and sweat as it danced
beneath him in the glee and chafe of its pulses and the glory of its
thews. He has been in the raw places of the earth, where the desert
beasts have whimpered their unthinkable psalmody, and their eyes
have shone back the reflex of the midnight stars--and he can immerse
himself in the tending of an incubator. It is horrible and wrong,
and yet when I have met him in the lanes his face has worn a look of
tedious cheerfulness that might pass for happiness. Has Judkin of
the Parcels found something in the lees of life that I have missed
in going to and fro over many waters? Is there more wisdom in his
perverseness than in the madness of the wise? The dear gods know.
I don't think I saw Judkin more than three times all told, and
always the lane was our point of contact; but as the roan mare was
taking me to the station one heavy, cloud-smeared day, I passed a
dull-looking villa that the groom, or instinct, told me was Judkin's
home. From beyond a hedge of ragged elder-bushes could be heard the
thud, thud of a spade, with an occasional clink and pause, as if
some one had picked out a stone and thrown it to a distance, and I
knew that HE was doing nameless things to the roots of a pear tree.
Near by him, I felt sure, would be lying a large and late vegetable
marrow, and its largeness and lateness would be a theme of
conversation at luncheon. It would be suggested that it should
grace the harvest thanksgiving service; the harvest having been so
generally unsatisfactory, it would be unfair to let the farmers
supply all the material for rejoicing.
And while I was speeding townwards along the rails Judkin would be
plodding his way to the vicarage bearing a vegetable marrow and a
basketful of dahlias. The basket to be returned.
GABRIEL-ERNEST
"There is a wild beast in your woods," said the artist Cunningham,
as he was being driven to the station. It was the only remark he
had made during the drive, but as Van Cheele had talked incessantly
his companion's silence had not been noticeable.
"A stray fox or two and some resident weasels. Nothing more
formidable," said Van Cheele. The artist said nothing.
"What did you mean about a wild beast?" said Van Cheele later, when
they were on the platform.
"Nothing. My imagination. Here is the train," said Cunningham.
That afternoon Van Cheele went for one of his frequent rambles
through his woodland property. He had a stuffed bittern in his
study, and knew the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so his
aunt had possibly some justification in describing him as a great
naturalist. At any rate, he was a great walker. It was his custom
to take mental notes of everything he saw during his walks, not so
much for the purpose of assisting contemporary science as to provide
topics for conversation afterwards. When the bluebells began to
show themselves in flower he made a point of informing every one of
the fact; the season of the year might have warned his hearers of
the likelihood of such an occurrence, but at least they felt that he
was being absolutely frank with them.
What Van Cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however,
something far removed from his ordinary range of experience. On a
shelf of smooth stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of an
oak coppice a boy of about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brown
limbs luxuriously in the sun. His wet hair, parted by a recent
dive, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light that
there was an almost tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards Van
Cheele with a certain lazy watchfulness. It was an unexpected
apparition, and Van Cheele found himself engaged in the novel
process of thinking before he spoke. Where on earth could this
wild-looking boy hail from? The miller's wife had lost a child some
two months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race,
but that had been a mere baby, not a half-grown lad.
"What are you doing there?" he demanded.
"Obviously, sunning myself," replied the boy.
"Where do you live?"
"Here, in these woods."
"You can't live in the woods," said Van Cheele.
"They are very nice woods," said the boy, with a touch of patronage
in his voice.
"But where do you sleep at night?"
"I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time."
Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling
with a problem that was eluding him.
"What do you feed on?" he asked.
"Flesh," said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish,
as though he were tasting it.
"Flesh! What Flesh?"
"Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry, lambs
in their season, children when I can get any; they're usually too
well locked in at night, when I do most of my hunting. It's quite
two months since I tasted child-flesh."
Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele tried to
draw the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations.
"You're talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding on
hares." (Considering the nature of the boy's toilet the simile was
hardly an apt one.) "Our hillside hares aren't easily caught."
"At night I hunt on four feet," was the somewhat cryptic response.
"I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?" hazarded Van Cheele.
The boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird low
laugh, that was pleasantly like a chuckle and disagreeably like a
snarl.
"I don't fancy any dog would be very anxious for my company,
especially at night."
Van Cheele began to feel that there was something positively uncanny
about the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster.
"I can't have you staying in these woods," he declared
authoritatively.
"I fancy you'd rather have me here than in your house," said the
boy.
The prospect of this wild, nude animal in Van Cheele's primly
ordered house was certainly an alarming one.
"If you don't go. I shall have to make you," said Van Cheele.
The boy turned like a flash, plunged into the pool, and in a moment
had flung his wet and glistening body half-way up the bank where Van
Cheele was standing. In an otter the movement would not have been
remarkable; in a boy Van Cheele found it sufficiently startling.
His foot slipped as he made an involuntarily backward movement, and
he found himself almost prostrate on the slippery weed-grown bank,
with those tigerish yellow eyes not very far from his own. Almost
instinctively he half raised his hand to his throat. They boy
laughed again, a laugh in which the snarl had nearly driven out the
chuckle, and then, with another of his astonishing lightning
movements, plunged out of view into a yielding tangle of weed and
fern.
"What an extraordinary wild animal!" said Van Cheele as he picked
himself up. And then he recalled Cunningham's remark "There is a
wild beast in your woods."
Walking slowly homeward, Van Cheele began to turn over in his mind
various local occurrences which might be traceable to the existence
of this astonishing young savage.
Something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultry
had been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountably
scarcer, and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried off
bodily from the hills. Was it possible that this wild boy was
really hunting the countryside in company with some clever poacher
dogs? He had spoken of hunting "four-footed" by night, but then,
again, he had hinted strangely at no dog caring to come near him,
"especially at night." It was certainly puzzling. And then, as Van
Cheele ran his mind over the various depredations that had been
committed during the last month or two, he came suddenly to a dead
stop, alike in his walk and his speculations. The child missing
from the mill two months ago--the accepted theory was that it had
tumbled into the mill-race and been swept away; but the mother had
always declared she had heard a shriek on the hill side of the
house, in the opposite direction from the water. It was
unthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made that
uncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago. Such
dreadful things should not be said even in fun.
Van Cheele, contrary to his usual wont, did not feel disposed to be
communicative about his discovery in the wood. His position as a
parish councillor and justice of the peace seemed somehow
compromised by the fact that he was harbouring a personality of such
doubtful repute on his property; there was even a possibility that a
heavy bill of damages for raided lambs and poultry might be laid at
his door. At dinner that night he was quite unusually silent.
"Where's your voice gone to?" said his aunt. "One would think you
had seen a wolf."
Van Cheele, who was not familiar with the old saying, thought the
remark rather foolish; if he HAD seen a wolf on his property his
tongue would have been extraordinarily busy with the subject.
At breakfast next morning Van Cheele was conscious that his feeling
of uneasiness regarding yesterday's episode had not wholly
disappeared, and he resolved to go by train to the neighbouring
cathedral town, hunt up Cunningham, and learn from him what he had
really seen that had prompted the remark about a wild beast in the
woods. With this resolution taken, his usual cheerfulness partially
returned, and he hummed a bright little melody as he sauntered to
the morning-room for his customary cigarette. As he entered the
room the melody made way abruptly for a pious invocation.
Gracefully asprawl on the ottoman, in an attitude of almost
exaggerated repose, was the boy of the woods. He was drier than
when Van Cheele had last seen him, but no other alteration was
noticeable in his toilet.
"How dare you come here?" asked Van Cheele furiously.
"You told me I was not to stay in the woods," said the boy calmly.
"But not to come here. Supposing my aunt should see you!"
And with a view to minimising that catastrophe, Van Cheele hastily
obscured as much of his unwelcome guest as possible under the folds
of a Morning Post. At that moment his aunt entered the room.
"This is a poor boy who has lost his way--and lost his memory. He
doesn't know who he is or where he comes from," explained Van Cheele
desperately, glancing apprehensively at the waif's face to see
whether he was going to add inconvenient candour to his other savage
propensities.
Miss Van Cheele was enormously interested.
"Perhaps his underlinen is marked," she suggested.
"He seems to have lost most of that, too," said Van Cheele, making
frantic little grabs at the Morning Post to keep it in its place.
A naked homeless child appealed to Miss Van Cheele as warmly as a
stray kitten or derelict puppy would have done.
"We must do all we can for him," she decided, and in a very short
time a messenger, dispatched to the rectory, where a page-boy was
kept, had returned with a suit of pantry clothes, and the necessary
accessories of shirt, shoes, collar, etc. Clothed, clean, and
groomed, the boy lost none of his uncanniness in Van Cheele's eyes,
but his aunt found him sweet.
"We must call him something till we know who he really is," she
said. "Gabriel-Ernest, I think; those are nice suitable names."
Van Cheele agreed, but he privately doubted whether they were being
grafted on to a nice suitable child. His misgivings were not
diminished by the fact that his staid and elderly spaniel had bolted
out of the house at the first incoming of the boy, and now
obstinately remained shivering and yapping at the farther end of the
orchard, while the canary, usually as vocally industrious as Van
Cheele himself, had put itself on an allowance of frightened cheeps.
More than ever he was resolved to consult Cunningham without loss of
time.
As he drove off to the station his aunt was arranging that Gabriel-
Ernest should help her to entertain the infant members of her
Sunday-school class at tea that afternoon.
Cunningham was not at first disposed to be communicative.
"My mother died of some brain trouble," he explained, "so you will
understand why I am averse to dwelling on anything of an impossibly
fantastic nature that I may see or think that I have seen."
"But what DID you see?" persisted Van Cheele.
"What I thought I saw was something so extraordinary that no really
sane man could dignify it with the credit of having actually
happened. I was standing, the last evening I was with you, half-
hidden in the hedgegrowth by the orchard gate, watching the dying
glow of the sunset. Suddenly I became aware of a naked boy, a
bather from some neighbouring pool, I took him to be, who was
standing out on the bare hillside also watching the sunset. His
pose was so suggestive of some wild faun of Pagan myth that I
instantly wanted to engage him as a model, and in another moment I
think I should have hailed him. But just then the sun dipped out of
view, and all the orange and pink slid out of the landscape, leaving
it cold and grey. And at the same moment an astounding thing
happened--the boy vanished too!"
"What! vanished away into nothing?" asked Van Cheele excitedly.
"No; that is the dreadful part of it," answered the artist; "on the
open hillside where the boy had been standing a second ago, stood a
large wolf, blackish in colour, with gleaming fangs and cruel,
yellow eyes. You may think--"
But Van Cheele did not stop for anything as futile as thought.
Already he was tearing at top speed towards the station. He
dismissed the idea of a telegram. "Gabriel-Ernest is a werewolf"
was a hopelessly inadequate effort at conveying the situation, and
his aunt would think it was a code message to which he had omitted
to give her the key. His one hope was that he might reach home
before sundown. The cab which he chartered at the other end of the
railway journey bore him with what seemed exasperating slowness
along the country roads, which were pink and mauve with the flush of
the sinking sun. His aunt was putting away some unfinished jams and
cake when he arrived.
"Where is Gabriel-Ernest?" he almost screamed.
"He is taking the little Toop child home," said his aunt. "It was
getting so late, I thought it wasn't safe to let it go back alone.
What a lovely sunset, isn't it?"
But Van Cheele, although not oblivious of the glow in the western
sky, did not stay to discuss its beauties. At a speed for which he
was scarcely geared he raced along the narrow lane that led to the
home of the Toops. On one side ran the swift current of the mill-
stream, on the other rose the stretch of bare hillside. A dwindling
rim of red sun showed still on the skyline, and the next turning
must bring him in view of the ill-assorted couple he was pursuing.
Then the colour went suddenly out of things, and a grey light
settled itself with a quick shiver over the landscape. Van Cheele
heard a shrill wail of fear, and stopped running.
Nothing was ever seen again of the Toop child or Gabriel-Ernest, but
the latter's discarded garments were found lying in the road so it
was assumed that the child had fallen into the water, and that the
boy had stripped and jumped in, in a vain endeavour to save it. Van
Cheele and some workmen who were near by at the time testified to
having heard a child scream loudly just near the spot where the
clothes were found. Mrs. Toop, who had eleven other children, was
decently resigned to her bereavement, but Miss Van Cheele sincerely
mourned her lost foundling. It was on her initiative that a
memorial brass was put up in the parish church to "Gabriel-Ernest,
an unknown boy, who bravely sacrificed his life for another."
Van Cheele gave way to his aunt in most things, but he flatly
refused to subscribe to the Gabriel-Ernest memorial.
THE SAINT AND THE GOBLIN
The little stone Saint occupied a retired niche in a side aisle of
the old cathedral. No one quite remembered who he had been, but
that in a way was a guarantee of respectability. At least so the
Goblin said. The Goblin was a very fine specimen of quaint stone
carving, and lived up in the corbel on the wall opposite the niche
of the little Saint. He was connected with some of the best
cathedral folk, such as the queer carvings in the choir stalls and
chancel screen, and even the gargoyles high up on the roof. All the
fantastic beasts and manikins that sprawled and twisted in wood or
stone or lead overhead in the arches or away down in the crypt were
in some way akin to him; consequently he was a person of recognised
importance in the cathedral world.
The little stone Saint and the Goblin got on very well together,
though they looked at most things from different points of view.
The Saint was a philanthropist in an old fashioned way; he thought
the world, as he saw it, was good, but might be improved. In
particular he pitied the church mice, who were miserably poor. The
Goblin, on the other hand, was of opinion that the world, as he knew
it, was bad, but had better be let alone. It was the function of
the church mice to be poor.
"All the same," said the Saint, "I feel very sorry for them."
"Of course you do," said the Goblin; "it's YOUR function to feel
sorry for them. If they were to leave off being poor you couldn't
fulfil your functions. You'd be a sinecure."
He rather hoped that the Saint would ask him what a sinecure meant,
but the latter took refuge in a stony silence. The Goblin might be
right, but still, he thought, he would like to do something for the
church mice before winter came on; they were so very poor.
Whilst he was thinking the matter over he was startled by something
falling between his feet with a hard metallic clatter. It was a
bright new thaler; one of the cathedral jackdaws, who collected such
things, had flown in with it to a stone cornice just above his
niche, and the banging of the sacristy door had startled him into
dropping it. Since the invention of gunpowder the family nerves
were not what they had been.
"What have you got there?" asked the Goblin.
"A silver thaler," said the Saint. "Really," he continued, "it is
most fortunate; now I can do something for the church mice."
"How will you manage it?" asked the Goblin.
The Saint considered.
"I will appear in a vision to the vergeress who sweeps the floors.
I will tell her that she will find a silver thaler between my feet,
and that she must take it and buy a measure of corn and put it on my
shrine. When she finds the money she will know that it was a true
dream, and she will take care to follow my directions. Then the
mice will have food all the winter."
"Of course YOU can do that," observed the Goblin. "Now, I can only
appear to people after they have had a heavy supper of indigestible
things. My opportunities with the vergeress would be limited.
There is some advantage in being a saint after all."
All this while the coin was lying at the Saint's feet. It was clean
and glittering and had the Elector's arms beautifully stamped upon
it. The Saint began to reflect that such an opportunity was too
rare to be hastily disposed of. Perhaps indiscriminate charity
might be harmful to the church mice. After all, it was their
function to be poor; the Goblin had said so, and the Goblin was
generally right.
"I've been thinking," he said to that personage, "that perhaps it
would be really better if I ordered a thaler's worth of candles to
be placed on my shrine instead of the corn."
He often wished, for the look of the thing, that people would
sometimes burn candles at his shrine; but as they had forgotten who
he was it was not considered a profitable speculation to pay him
that attention.
"Candles would be more orthodox," said the Goblin.
"More orthodox, certainly," agreed the Saint, "and the mice could
have the ends to eat; candle-ends are most fattening."
The Goblin was too well bred to wink; besides, being a stone goblin,
it was out of the question.
- * *
"Well, if it ain't there, sure enough!" said the vergeress next
morning. She took the shining coin down from the dusty niche and
turned it over and over in her grimy hands. Then she put it to her
mouth and bit it.
"She can't be going to eat it," thought the Saint, and fixed her
with his stoniest stare.
"Well," said the woman, in a somewhat shriller key, "who'd have
thought it! A saint, too!"
Then she did an unaccountable thing. She hunted an old piece of
tape out of her pocket, and tied to crosswise, with a big loop,
round the thaler, and hung it round the neck of the little Saint.
Then she went away.
"The only possible explanation," said the Goblin, "is that it's a
bad one."
- * *
"What is that decoration your neighbour is wearing?" asked a wyvern
that was wrought into the capital of an adjacent pillar.
The Saint was ready to cry with mortification, only, being of stone,
he couldn't.
"It's a coin of--ahem!--fabulous value," replied the Goblin
tactfully.
And the news went round the Cathedral that the shrine of the little
stone Saint had been enriched by a priceless offering.
"After all, it's something to have the conscience of a goblin," said
the Saint to himself.
The church mice were as poor as ever. But that was their function.
THE SOUL OF LAPLOSHKA
Laploshka was one of the meanest men I have ever met, and quite one
of the most entertaining. He said horrid things about other people
in such a charming way that one forgave him for the equally horrid
things he said about oneself behind one's back. Hating anything in
the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to
those who do it for us and do it well. And Laploshka did it really
well.
Naturally Laploshka had a large circle of acquaintances, and as he
exercised some care in their selection it followed that an
appreciable proportion were men whose bank balances enabled them to
acquiesce indulgently in his rather one-sided views on hospitality.
Thus, although possessed of only moderate means, he was able to live
comfortably within his income, and still more comfortably within
those of various tolerantly disposed associates.
But towards the poor or to those of the same limited resources as
himself his attitude was one of watchful anxiety; he seemed to be
haunted by a besetting fear lest some fraction of a shilling or
franc, or whatever the prevailing coinage might be, should be
diverted from his pocket or service into that of a hard-up
companion. A two-franc cigar would be cheerfully offered to a
wealthy patron, on the principle of doing evil that good may come,
but I have known him indulge in agonies of perjury rather than admit
the incriminating possession of a copper coin when change was needed
to tip a waiter. The coin would have been duly returned at the
earliest opportunity--he would have taken means to insure against
forgetfulness on the part of the borrower--but accidents might
happen, and even the temporary estrangement from his penny or sou
was a calamity to be avoided.
The knowledge of this amiable weakness offered a perpetual
temptation to play upon Laploshka's fears of involuntary generosity.
To offer him a lift in a cab and pretend not to have enough money to
pay the fair, to fluster him with a request for a sixpence when his
hand was full of silver just received in change, these were a few of
the petty torments that ingenuity prompted as occasion afforded. To
do justice to Laploshka's resourcefulness it must be admitted that
he always emerged somehow or other from the most embarrassing
dilemma without in any way compromising his reputation for saying
"No." But the gods send opportunities at some time to most men, and
mine came one evening when Laploshka and I were supping together in
a cheap boulevard restaurant. (Except when he was the bidden guest
of some one with an irreproachable income, Laploshka was wont to
curb his appetite for high living; on such fortunate occasions he
let it go on an easy snaffle.) At the conclusion of the meal a
somewhat urgent message called me away, and without heeding my
companion's agitated protest, I called back cruelly, "Pay my share;
I'll settle with you to-morrow." Early on the morrow Laploshka
hunted me down by instinct as I walked along a side street that I
hardly ever frequented. He had the air of a man who had not slept.
"You owe me two francs from last night," was his breathless
greeting.
I spoke evasively of the situation in Portugal, where more trouble
seemed brewing. But Laploshka listened with the abstraction of the
deaf adder, and quickly returned to the subject of the two francs.
"I'm afraid I must owe it to you," I said lightly and brutally. "I
haven't a sou in the world," and I added mendaciously, "I'm going
away for six months or perhaps longer."
Laploshka said nothing, but his eyes bulged a little and his cheeks
took on the mottled hues of an ethnographical map of the Balkan
Peninsula. That same day, at sundown, he died. "Failure of the
heart's action," was the doctor's verdict; but I, who knew better,
knew that he died of grief.
There arose the problem of what to do with his two francs. To have
killed Laploshka was one thing; to have kept his beloved money would
have argued a callousness of feeling of which I am not capable. The
ordinary solution, of giving it to the poor, would by no means fit
the present situation, for nothing would have distressed the dead
man more than such a misuse of his property. On the other hand, the
bestowal of two francs on the rich was an operation which called for
some tact. An easy way out of the difficulty seemed, however, to
present itself the following Sunday, as I was wedged into the
cosmopolitan crowd which filled the side-aisle of one of the most
popular Paris churches. A collecting-bag, for "the poor of Monsieur
le Cure," was buffeting its tortuous way across the seemingly
impenetrable human sea, and a German in front of me, who evidently
did not wish his appreciation of the magnificent music to be marred
by a suggestion of payment, made audible criticisms to his companion
on the claims of the said charity.
"They do not want money," he said; "they have too much money. They
have no poor. They are all pampered."
If that were really the case my way seemed clear. I dropped
Laploshka's two francs into the bag with a murmured blessing on the
rich of Monsieur le Cure.
Some three weeks later chance had taken me to Vienna, and I sat one
evening regaling myself in a humble but excellent little Gasthaus up
in the Wahringer quarter. The appointments were primitive, but the
Schnitzel, the beer, and the cheese could not have been improved on.
Good cheer brought good custom, and with the exception of one small
table near the door every place was occupied. Half-way through my
meal I happened to glance in the direction of that empty seat, and
saw that it was no longer empty. Poring over the bill of fare with
the absorbed scrutiny of one who seeks the cheapest among the cheap
was Laploshka. Once he looked across at me, with a comprehensive
glance at my repast, as though to say, "It is my two francs you are
eating," and then looked swiftly away. Evidently the poor of
Monsieur le Cure had been genuine poor. The Schnitzel turned to
leather in my mouth, the beer seemed tepid; I left the Emmenthaler
untasted. My one idea was to get away from the room, away from the
table where THAT was seated; and as I fled I felt Laploshka's
reproachful eyes watching the amount that I gave to the piccolo--out
of his two francs. I lunched next day at an expensive restaurant
which I felt sure that the living Laploshka would never have entered
on his own account, and I hoped that the dead Laploshka would
observe the same barriers. I was not mistaken, but as I came out I
found him miserably studying the bill of fare stuck up on the
portals. Then he slowly made his way over to a milk-hall. For the
first time in my experience I missed the charm and gaiety of Vienna
life.
After that, in Paris or London or wherever I happened to be, I
continued to see a good deal of Laploshka. If I had a seat in a box
at a theatre I was always conscious of his eyes furtively watching
me from the dim recesses of the gallery. As I turned into my club
on a rainy afternoon I would see him taking inadequate shelter in a
doorway opposite. Even if I indulged in the modest luxury of a
penny chair in the Park he generally confronted me from one of the
free benches, never staring at me, but always elaborately conscious
of my presence. My friends began to comment on my changed looks,
and advised me to leave off heaps of things. I should have liked to
have left off Laploshka.
On a certain Sunday--it was probably Easter, for the crush was worse
than ever--I was again wedged into the crowd listening to the music
in the fashionable Paris church, and again the collection-bag was
buffeting its way across the human sea. An English lady behind me
was making ineffectual efforts to convey a coin into the still
distant bag, so I took the money at her request and helped it
forward to its destination. It was a two-franc piece. A swift
inspiration came to me, and I merely dropped my own sou into the bag
and slid the silver coin into my pocket. I had withdrawn
Laploshka's two francs from the poor, who should never have had the
legacy. As I backed away from the crowd I heard a woman's voice
say, "I don't believe he put my money in the bag. There are swarms
of people in Paris like that!" But my mind was lighter that it had
been for a long time.
The delicate mission of bestowing the retrieved sum on the deserving
rich still confronted me. Again I trusted to the inspiration of
accident, and again fortune favoured me. A shower drove me, two
days later, into one of the historic churches on the left bank of
the Seine, and there I found, peering at the old wood-carvings, the
Baron R., one of the wealthiest and most shabbily dressed men in
Paris. It was now or never. Putting a strong American inflection
into the French which I usually talked with an unmistakable British
accent, I catechised the Baron as to the date of the church's
building, its dimensions, and other details which an American
tourist would be certain to want to know. Having acquired such
information as the Baron was able to impart on short notice, I
solemnly placed the two-franc piece in his hand, with the hearty
assurance that it was "pour vous," and turned to go. The Baron was
slightly taken aback, but accepted the situation with a good grace.
Walking over to a small box fixed in the wall, he dropped
Laploshka's two francs into the slot. Over the box was the
inscription, "Pour les pauvres de M. le Cure."
That evening, at the crowded corner by the Cafe de la Paix, I caught
a fleeting glimpse of Laploshka. He smiled, slightly raised his
hat, and vanished. I never saw him again. After all, the money had
been GIVEN to the deserving rich, and the soul of Laploshka was at
peace.
THE BAG
"The Major is coming in to tea," said Mrs. Hoopington to her niece.
"He's just gone round to the stables with his horse. Be as bright
and lively as you can; the poor man's got a fit of the glooms."
Major Pallaby was a victim of circumstances, over which he had no
control, and of his temper, over which he had very little. He had
taken on the Mastership of the Pexdale Hounds in succession to a
highly popular man who had fallen foul of his committee, and the
Major found himself confronted with the overt hostility of at least
half the hunt, while his lack of tact and amiability had done much
to alienate the remainder. Hence subscriptions were beginning to
fall off, foxes grew provokingly scarcer, and wire obtruded itself
with increasing frequency. The Major could plead reasonable excuse
for his fit of the glooms.
In ranging herself as a partisan on the side of Major Pallaby Mrs.
Hoopington had been largely influenced by the fact that she had made
up her mind to marry him at an early date. Against his notorious
bad temper she set his three thousand a year, and his prospective
succession to a baronetcy gave a casting vote in his favour. The
Major's plans on the subject of matrimony were not at present in
such an advanced stage as Mrs. Hoopington's, but he was beginning to
find his way over to Hoopington Hall with a frequency that was
already being commented on.
"He had a wretchedly thin field out again yesterday," said Mrs.
Hoopington. "Why you didn't bring one or two hunting men down with
you, instead of that stupid Russian boy, I can't think."
"Vladimir isn't stupid," protested her niece; "he's one of the most
amusing boys I ever met. Just compare him for a moment with some of
your heavy hunting men--"
"Anyhow, my dear Norah, he can't ride."
"Russians never can; but he shoots."
"Yes; and what does he shoot? Yesterday he brought home a
woodpecker in his game-bag."
"But he'd shot three pheasants and some rabbits as well."
"That's no excuse for including a woodpecker in his game-bag."
"Foreigners go in for mixed bags more than we do. A Grand Duke pots
a vulture just as seriously as we should stalk a bustard. Anyhow,
I've explained to Vladimir that certain birds are beneath his
dignity as a sportsman. And as he's only nineteen, of course, his
dignity is a sure thing to appeal to."
Mrs. Hoopington sniffed. Most people with whom Vladimir came in
contact found his high spirits infectious, but his present hostess
was guaranteed immune against infection of that sort.
"I hear him coming in now," she observed. "I shall go and get ready
for tea. We're going to have it here in the hall. Entertain the
Major if he comes in before I'm down, and, above all, be bright."
Norah was dependent on her aunt's good graces for many little things
that made life worth living, and she was conscious of a feeling of
discomfiture because the Russian youth whom she had brought down as
a welcome element of change in the country-house routine was not
making a good impression. That young gentleman, however, was
supremely unconscious of any shortcomings, and burst into the hall,
tired, and less sprucely groomed than usual, but distinctly radiant.
His game-bag looked comfortably full.
"Guess what I have shot," he demanded.
"Pheasants, woodpigeons, rabbits," hazarded Norah.
"No; a large beast; I don't know what you call it in English.
Brown, with a darkish tail." Norah changed colour.
"Does it live in a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the
use of the adjective "large" might be an exaggeration.
Vladimir laughed.
"Oh no; not a biyelka."
"Does it swim and eat fish?" asked Norah, with a fervent prayer in
her heart that it might turn out to be an otter.
"No," said Vladimir, busy with the straps of his game-bag; "it lives
in the woods, and eats rabbits and chickens."
Norah sat down suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.
"Merciful Heaven!" she wailed; "he's shot a fox!"
Vladimir looked up at her in consternation. In a torrent of
agitated words she tried to explain the horror of the situation.
The boy understood nothing, but was thoroughly alarmed.
"Hide it, hide it!" said Norah frantically, pointing to the still
unopened bag. "My aunt and the Major will be here in a moment.
Throw it on the top of that chest; they won't see it there."
Vladimir swung the bag with fair aim; but the strap caught in its
flight on the outstanding point of an antler fixed in the wall, and
the bag, with its terrible burden, remained suspended just above the
alcove where tea would presently be laid. At that moment Mrs.
Hoopington and the Major entered the hall.
"The Major is going to draw our covers to-morrow," announced the
lady, with a certain heavy satisfaction. "Smithers is confident
that we'll be able to show him some sport; he swears he's seen a fox
in the nut copse three times this week."
"I'm sure I hope so; I hope so," said the Major moodily. "I must
break this sequence of blank days. One hears so often that a fox
has settled down as a tenant for life in certain covers, and then
when you go to turn him out there isn't a trace of him. I'm certain
a fox was shot or trapped in Lady Widden's woods the very day before
we drew them."
"Major, if any one tried that game on in my woods they'd get short
shrift," said Mrs. Hoopington.
Norah found her way mechanically to the tea-table and made her
fingers frantically busy in rearranging the parsley round the
sandwich dish. On one side of her loomed the morose countenance of
the Major, on the other she was conscious of the scared, miserable
eyes of Vladimir. And above it all hung THAT. She dared not raise
her eyes above the level of the tea-table, and she almost expected
to see a spot of accusing vulpine blood drip down and stain the
whiteness of the cloth. Her aunt's manner signalled to her the
repeated message to "be bright"; for the present she was fully
occupied in keeping her teeth from chattering.
"What did you shoot to-day?" asked Mrs. Hoopington suddenly of the
unusually silent Vladimir.
"Nothing--nothing worth speaking of," said the boy.
Norah's heart, which had stood still for a space, made up for lost
time with a most disturbing bound.
"I wish you'd find something that was worth speaking about," said
the hostess; "every one seems to have lost their tongues."
"When did Smithers last see that fox?" said the Major.
"Yesterday morning; a fine dog-fox, with a dark brush," confided
Mrs. Hoopington.
"Aha, we'll have a good gallop after that brush to-morrow," said the
Major, with a transient gleam of good humour. And then gloomy
silence settled again round the teatable, a silence broken only by
despondent munchings and the occasional feverish rattle of a
teaspoon in its saucer. A diversion was at last afforded by Mrs.
Hoopington's fox-terrier, which had jumped on to a vacant chair, the
better to survey the delicacies of the table, and was now sniffing
in an upward direction at something apparently more interesting than
cold tea-cake.
"What is exciting him?" asked his mistress, as the dog suddenly
broke into short angry barks, with a running accompaniment of
tremulous whines.
"Why," she continued, "it's your gamebag, Vladimir! What HAVE you
got in it?"
"By Gad," said the Major, who was now standing up; "there's a pretty
warm scent!"
And then a simultaneous idea flashed on himself and Mrs. Hoopington.
Their faces flushed to distinct but harmonious tones of purple, and
with one accusing voice they screamed, "You've shot the fox!"
Norah tried hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes,
but it is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed
and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town
for one day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. He
reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he
pitied himself with a strong, deep pity too poignent for tears, he
condemned every one with whom he had ever come in contact to endless
and abnormal punishments. In fact, he conveyed the impression that
if a destroying angel had been lent to him for a week it would have
had very little time for private study. In the lulls of his outcry
could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs. Hoopington and the
sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. Vladimir, who did not
understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette
and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous English
adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his
vocabulary. His mind strayed back to the youth in the old Russian
folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results.
Meanwhile, the Major, roaming round the hall like an imprisoned
cyclone, had caught sight of and joyfully pounced on the telephone
apparatus, and lost no time in ringing up the hunt secretary and
announcing his resignation of the Mastership. A servant had by this
time brought his horse round to the door, and in a few seconds Mrs.
Hoopington's shrill monotone had the field to itself. But after the
Major's display her best efforts at vocal violence missed their full
effect; it was as though one had come straight out from a Wagner
opera into a rather tame thunderstorm. Realising, perhaps, that her
tirades were something of an anticlimax, Mrs. Hoopington broke
suddenly into some rather necessary tears and marched out of the
room, leaving behind her a silence almost as terrible as the turmoil
which had preceded it.
"What shall I do with--THAT?" asked Vladimir at last.
"Bury it," said Norah.
"Just plain burial?" said Vladimir, rather relieved. He had almost
expected that some of the local clergy would have insisted on being
present, or that a salute might have to be fired over the grave.
And thus it came to pass that in the dusk of a November evening the
Russian boy, murmuring a few of the prayers of his Church for luck,
gave hasty but decent burial to a large polecat under the lilac
trees at Hoopington.
THE STRATEGIST
Mrs. Jallatt's young people's parties were severely exclusive; it
came cheaper that way, because you could ask fewer to them. Mrs.
Jallatt didn't study cheapness, but somehow she generally attained
it.
"There'll be about ten girls," speculated Rollo, as he drove to the
function, "and I suppose four fellows, unless the Wrotsleys bring
their cousin, which Heaven forbid. That would mean Jack and me
against three of them."
Rollo and the Wrotsley brethren had maintained an undying feud
almost from nursery days. They only met now and then in the
holidays, and the meeting was usually tragic for whichever happened
to have the fewest backers on hand. Rollo was counting to-night on
the presence of a devoted and muscular partisan to hold an even
balance. As he arrived he heard his prospective champion's sister
apologising to the hostess for the unavoidable absence of her
brother; a moment later he noted that the Wrotsleys HAD brought
their cousin.
Two against three would have been exciting and possibly unpleasant;
one against three promised to be about as amusing as a visit to the
dentist. Rollo ordered his carriage for as early as was decently
possible, and faced the company with a smile that he imagined the
better sort of aristocrat would have worn when mounting to the
guillotine.
"So glad you were able to come," said the elder Wrotsley heartily.
"Now, you children will like to play games, I suppose," said Mrs.
Jallatt, by way of giving things a start, and as they were too well-
bred to contradict her there only remained the question of what they
were to play at.
"I know of a good game," said the elder Wrotsley innocently. "The
fellows leave the room and think of a word; then they come back
again, and the girls have to find out what the word is."
Rollo knew the game. He would have suggested it himself if his
faction had been in the majority.
"It doesn't promise to be very exciting," sniffed the superior
Dolores Sneep as the boys filed out of the room. Rollo thought
differently. He trusted to Providence that Wrotsley had nothing
worse than knotted handkerchiefs at his disposal.
The word-choosers locked themselves in the library to ensure that
their deliberations should not be interrupted. Providence turned
out to be not even decently neutral; on a rack on the library wall
were a dog-whip and a whalebone riding-switch. Rollo thought it
criminal negligence to leave such weapons of precision lying about.
He was given a choice of evils, and chose the dog-whip; the next
minute or so he spent in wondering how he could have made such a
stupid selection. Then they went back to the languidly expectant
females.
"The word's 'camel,'" announced the Wrotsley cousin blunderingly.
"You stupid!" screamed the girls, "we've got to GUESS the word. Now
you'll have to go back and think of another."
"Not for worlds," said Rollo; "I mean, the word isn't really camel;
we were rotting. Pretend it's dromedary!" he whispered to the
others.
"I heard them say 'dromedary'! I heard them. I don't care what you
say; I heard them," squealed the odious Dolores. "With ears as long
as hers one would hear anything," thought Rollo savagely.
"We shall have to go back, I suppose," said the elder Wrotsley
resignedly.
The conclave locked itself once more into the library. "Look here,
I'm not going through that dog-whip business again," protested
Rollo.
"Certainly not, dear," said the elder Wrotsley; "we'll try the
whalebone switch this time, and you'll know which hurts most. It's
only by personal experience that one finds out these things."
It was swiftly borne in upon Rollo that his earlier selection of the
dog-whip had been a really sound one. The conclave gave his under-
lip time to steady itself while it debated the choice of the
necessary word. "Mustang" was no good, as half the girls wouldn't
know what it meant; finally "quagga" was pitched on.
"You must come and sit down over here," chorused the investigating
committee on their return; but Rollo was obdurate in insisting that
the questioned person always stood up. On the whole, it was a
relief when the game was ended and supper was announced.
Mrs. Jallatt did not stint her young guests, but the more expensive
delicacies of her supper-table were never unnecessarily duplicated,
and it was usually good policy to take what you wanted while it was
still there. On this occasion she had provided sixteen peaches to
"go round" among fourteen children; it was really not her fault that
the two Wrotsleys and their cousin, foreseeing the long foodless
drive home, had each quietly pocketed an extra peach, but it was
distinctly trying for Dolores and the fat and good-natured Agnes
Blaik to be left with one peach between them.
"I suppose we had better halve it," said Dolores sourly.
But Agnes was fat first and good-natured afterwards; those were her
guiding principles in life. She was profuse in her sympathy for
Dolores, but she hastily devoured the peach, explaining that it
would spoil it to divide it; the juice ran out so.
"Now what would you all like to do?" demanded Mrs. Jallatt by way of
diversion. "The professional conjurer whom I had engaged has failed
me at the last moment. Can any of you recite?"
There were symptoms of a general panic. Dolores was known to recite
"Locksley Hall" on the least provocation. There had been occasions
when her opening line, "Comrades, leave me here a little," had been
taken as a literal injunction by a large section of her hearers.
There was a murmur of relief when Rollo hastily declared that he
could do a few conjuring tricks. He had never done one in his life,
but those two visits to the library had goaded him to unusual
recklessness.
"You've seen conjuring chaps take coins and cards out of people," he
announced; "well, I'm going to take more interesting things out of
some of you. Mice, for instance."
"Not mice!"
A shrill protest rose, as he had foreseen, from the majority of his
audience.
"Well, fruit, them."
The amended proposal was received with approval. Agnes positively
beamed.
Without more ado Rollo made straight for his trio of enemies,
plunged his hand successively into their breast-pockets, and
produced three peaches. There was no applause, but no amount of
hand-clapping would have given the performer as much pleasure as the
silence which greeted his coup.
"Of course, we were in the know," said the Wrotsley cousin lamely.
"That's done it," chuckled Rollo to himself.
"If they HAD been confederates they would have sworn they knew
nothing about it," said Dolores, with piercing conviction.
"Do you know any more tricks?" asked Mrs. Jallatt hurriedly.
Rollo did not. He hinted that he might have changed the three
peaches into something else, but Agnes had already converted one
into girl-food, so nothing more could be done in that direction.
"I know a game," said the elder Wrotsley heavily, "where the fellows
go out of the room, and think of some character in history; then
they come back and act him, and the girls have to guess who it's
meant for."
"I'm afraid I must be going," said Rollo to his hostess.
"Your carriage won't be here for another twenty minutes," said Mrs.
Jallatt.
"It's such a fine evening I think I'll walk and meet it."
"It's raining rather steadily at present. You've just time to play
that historical game."
"We haven't heard Dolores recite," said Rollo desperately; as soon
as he had said it he realised his mistake. Confronted with the
alternative of "Locksley Hall," public opinion declared unanimously
for the history game.
Rollo played his last card. In an undertone meant apparently for
the Wrotsley boy, but carefully pitched to reach Agnes, he observed
-
"All right, old man; we'll go and finish those chocolates we left in
the library."
"I think it's only fair that the girls should take their turn in
going out," exclaimed Agnes briskly. She was great on fairness.
"Nonsense," said the others; "there are too many of us."
"Well, four of us can go. I'll be one of them."
And Agnes darted off towards the library, followed by three less
eager damsels.
Rollo sank into a chair and smiled ever so faintly at the Wrotsleys,
just a momentary baring of the teeth; an otter, escaping from the
fangs of the hounds into the safety of a deep pool, might have given
a similar demonstration of feelings.
From the library came the sound of moving furniture. Agnes was
leaving nothing unturned in her quest for the mythical chocolates.
And then came a more blessed sound, wheels crunching wet gravel.
"It has been a most enjoyable evening," said Rollo to his hostess.
CROSS CURRENTS
Vanessa Pennington had a husband who was poor, with few extenuating
circumstances, and an admirer who, though comfortably rich, was
cumbered with a sense of honour. His wealth made him welcome in
Vanessa's eyes, but his code of what was right impelled him to go
away and forget her, or at the most to think of her in the intervals
of doing a great many other things. And although Alaric Clyde loved
Vanessa, and thought he should always go on loving her, he gradually
and unconsciously allowed himself to be wooed and won by a more
alluring mistress; he fancied that his continued shunning of the
haunts of men was a self-imposed exile, but his heart was caught in
the spell of the Wilderness, and the Wilderness was kind and
beautiful to him. When one is young and strong and unfettered the
wild earth can be very kind and very beautiful. Witness the legion
of men who were once young and unfettered and now eat out their
souls in dustbins, because, having erstwhile known and loved the
Wilderness, they broke from her thrall and turned aside into beaten
paths.
In the high waste places of the world Clyde roamed and hunted and
dreamed, death-dealing and gracious as some god of Hellas, moving
with his horses and servants and four-footed camp followers from one
dwelling ground to another, a welcome guest among wild primitive
village folk and nomads, a friend and slayer of the fleet, shy
beasts around him. By the shores of misty upland lakes he shot the
wild fowl that had winged their way to him across half the old
world; beyond Bokhara he watched the wild Aryan horsemen at their
gambols; watched, too, in some dim-lit tea-house one of those
beautiful uncouth dances that one can never wholly forget; or,
making a wide cast down to the valley of the Tigris, swam and rolled
in its snow-cooled racing waters. Vanessa, meanwhile, in a
Bayswater back street, was making out the weekly laundry list,
attending bargain sales, and, in her more adventurous moments,
trying new ways of cooking whiting. Occasionally she went to bridge
parties, where, if the play was not illuminating, at least one
learned a great deal about the private life of some of the Royal and
Imperial Houses. Vanessa, in a way, was glad that Clyde had done
the proper thing. She had a strong natural bias towards
respectability, though she would have preferred to have been
respectable in smarter surroundings, where her example would have
done more good. To be beyond reproach was one thing, but it would
have been nicer to have been nearer to the Park.
And then of a sudden her regard for respectability and Clyde's sense
of what was right were thrown on the scrap-heap of unnecessary
things. They had been useful and highly important in their time,
but the death of Vanessa's husband made them of no immediate moment.
The news of the altered condition of things followed Clyde with
leisurely persistence from one place of call to another, and at last
ran him to a standstill somewhere in the Orenburg Steppe. He would
have found it exceedingly difficult to analyse his feelings on
receipt of the tidings. The Fates had unexpectedly (and perhaps
just a little officiously) removed an obstacle from his path. He
supposed he was overjoyed, but he missed the feeling of elation
which he had experienced some four months ago when he had bagged a
snow-leopard with a lucky shot after a day's fruitless stalking. Of
course he would go back and ask Vanessa to marry him, but he was
determined on enforcing a condition; on no account would he desert
his newer love. Vanessa would have to agree to come out into the
Wilderness with him.
The lady hailed the return of her lover with even more relief than
had been occasioned by his departure. The death of John Pennington
had left his widow in circumstances which were more straitened than
ever, and the Park had receded even from her notepaper, where it had
long been retained as a courtesy title on the principle that
addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts. Certainly she
was more independent now than heretofore, but independence, which
means so much to many women, was of little account to Vanessa, who
came under the heading of the mere female. She made little ado
about accepting Clyde's condition, and announced herself ready to
follow him to the end of the world; as the world was round she
nourished a complacent idea that in the ordinary course of things
one would find oneself in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner
sooner or later no matter how far afield one wandered.
East of Budapest her complacency began to filter away, and when she
saw her husband treating the Black Sea with a familiarity which she
had never been able to assume towards the English Channel,
misgivings began to crowd in upon her. Adventures which would have
presented an amusing and enticing aspect to a better-bred woman
aroused in Vanessa only the twin sensations of fright and
discomfort. Flies bit her, and she was persuaded that it was only
sheer boredom that prevented camels from doing the same. Clyde did
his best, and a very good best it was, to infuse something of the
banquet into their prolonged desert picnics, but even snow-cooled
Heidsieck lost its flavour when you were convinced that the dusky
cupbearer who served it with such reverent elegance was only waiting
a convenient opportunity to cut your throat. It was useless for
Clyde to give Yussuf a character for devotion such as is rarely
found in any Western servant. Vanessa was well enough educated to
know that all dusky-skinned people take human life as unconcernedly
as Bayswater folk take singing lessons.
And with a growing irritation and querulousness on her part came a
further disenchantment, born of the inability of husband and wife to
find a common ground of interest. The habits and migrations of the
sand grouse, the folklore and customs of Tartars and Turkomans, the
points of a Cossack pony--these were matter which evoked only a
bored indifference in Vanessa. On the other hand, Clyde was not
thrilled on being informed that the Queen of Spain detested mauve,
or that a certain Royal duchess, for whose tastes he was never
likely to be called on to cater, nursed a violent but perfectly
respectable passion for beef olives.
Vanessa began to arrive at the conclusion that a husband who added a
roving disposition to a settled income was a mixed blessing. It was
one thing to go to the end of the world; it was quite another thing
to make oneself at home there. Even respectability seemed to lose
some of its virtue when one practised it in a tent.
Bored and disillusioned with the drift of her new life, Vanessa was
undisguisedly glad when distraction offered itself in the person of
Mr. Dobrinton, a chance acquaintance whom they had first run against
in the primitive hostelry of a benighted Caucasian town. Dobrinton
was elaborately British, in deference perhaps to the memory of his
mother, who was said to have derived part of her origin from an
English governess who had come to Lemberg a long way back in the
last century. If you had called him Dobrinski when off his guard he
would probably have responded readily enough; holding, no doubt,
that the end crowns all, he had taken a slight liberty with the
family patronymic. To look at, Mr. Dobrinton was not a very
attractive specimen of masculine humanity, but in Vanessa's eyes he
was a link with that civilisation which Clyde seemed so ready to
ignore and forgo. He could sing "Yip-I-Addy" and spoke of several
duchesses as if he knew them--in his more inspired moments almost as
if they knew him. He even pointed out blemishes in the cuisine or
cellar departments of some of the more august London restaurants, a
species of Higher Criticism which was listened to by Vanessa in awe-
stricken admiration. And, above all, he sympathised, at first
discreetly, afterwards with more latitude, with her fretful
discontent at Clyde's nomadic instincts. Business connected with
oil-wells had brought Dobrinton to the neighbourhood of Baku; the
pleasure of appealing to an appreciative female audience induced him
to deflect his return journey so as to coincide a good deal with his
new aquaintances' line of march. And while Clyde trafficked with
Persian horse-dealers or hunted the wild grey pigs in their lairs
and added to his notes on Central Asian game-fowl, Dobrinton and the
lady discussed the ethics of desert respectability from points of
view that showed a daily tendency to converge. And one evening
Clyde dined alone, reading between the courses a long letter from
Vanessa, justifying her action in flitting to more civilised lands
with a more congenial companion.
It was distinctly evil luck for Vanessa, who really was thoroughly
respectable at heart, that she and her lover should run into the
hands of Kurdish brigands on the first day of their flight. To be
mewed up in a squalid Kurdish village in close companionship with a
man who was only your husband by adoption, and to have the attention
of all Europe drawn to your plight, was about the least respectable
thing that could happen. And there were international
complications, which made things worse. "English lady and her
husband, of foreign nationality, held by Kurdish brigands who demand
ransom" had been the report of the nearest Consul. Although
Dobrinton was British at heart, the other portions of him belonged
to the Habsburgs, and though the Habsburgs took no great pride or
pleasure in this particular unit of their wide and varied
possessions, and would gladly have exchanged him for some