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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Reginald in Russia, by Saki
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Reginald in Russia
+       and Other Sketches
+
+
+Author: Saki
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2010  [eBook #1870]
+First Posted: January, 8, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGINALD IN RUSSIA***
+
+
+This etext was prepared from the 1910 Methuen and Co. edition by Jane
+Duff; proofed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf
+
+
+
+
+BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+REGINALD
+
+
+    "He is a delightful person.  One would not like a rich and
+    octogenarian uncle to suppose that Reginald was one's ideal of
+    conduct and conversion.  Yet there is sometimes reason in his
+    paradoxical frivolities, and justice in his practical
+    performances."--_Morning Post_.
+
+    "The book, by reason of its sustained brilliance, may be likened to a
+    Brock's Benefit at the Crystal Palace."--_Athenaeum_.
+
+    "Mr. H. H. Munro ('Saki') has one of the lightest and most
+    entertaining touches of the humorists of the day . . .  The book is
+    admirable comedy and free from malice and bad taste."--_Queen_.
+
+    "We feel sure that those who have already made Reginald's
+    acquaintance will be glad to renew it, and that those who know him
+    not will not regret it if they add him to the list of their
+    fictitious (albeit very real) acquaintances, not to say
+    friends."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               REGINALD IN
+                                  RUSSIA
+
+
+                            AND OTHER SKETCHES
+
+                                    BY
+                                   SAKI
+                              (H. H. MUNRO)
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              METHUEN & CO.
+                           36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+                                  LONDON
+
+                        _First Published in 1910_.
+
+                                    TO
+                                 M. V. P.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                         PAGE
+REGINALD IN RUSSIA                          1
+THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE                  7
+THE LOST SANJAK                            13
+THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP                  25
+THE BLOOD-FEUD OF TOAD-WATER               31
+A YOUNG TURKISH CATASTROPHE                38
+JUDKIN OF THE PARCELS                      42
+GABRIEL-ERNEST                             47
+THE SAINT AND THE GOBLIN                   60
+THE SOUL OF LAPLOSHKA                      66
+THE BAG                                    75
+THE STRATEGIST                             85
+CROSS CURRENTS                             94
+THE BAKER'S DOZEN (A PLAYLET)             106
+THE MOUSE                                 116
+
+   "_The Baker's Dozen_" _originally appeared in_ "_The Journal of the
+Leinster Regiment_."  _The other sketches have appeared from time to time
+in the_ "_Westminster Gazette_."  _To the Editors of these publications I
+  am indebted for courteous permission to reproduce the stories in their
+                              present form_.
+
+
+
+
+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 light-hearted."
+
+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 milk-jug 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 carriage-drive 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 scratching-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
+hedge-growth 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 tea-table, 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 game-bag, 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 interesting bird or mammal
+for the Schoenbrunn Park, the code of international dignity demanded that
+they should display a decent solicitude for his restoration.  And while
+the Foreign Offices of the two countries were taking the usual steps to
+secure the release of their respective subjects a further horrible
+complication ensued.  Clyde, following on the track of the fugitives, not
+with any special desire to overtake them, but with a dim feeling that it
+was expected of him, fell into the hands of the same community of
+brigands.  Diplomacy, while anxious to do its best for a lady in
+misfortune, showed signs of becoming restive at this expansion of its
+task; as a frivolous young gentleman in Downing Street remarked, "Any
+husband of Mrs. Dobrinton's we shall be glad to extricate, but let us
+know how many there are of them."  For a woman who valued respectability
+Vanessa really had no luck.
+
+Meanwhile the situation of the captives was not free from embarrassment.
+When Clyde explained to the Kurdish headmen the nature of his
+relationship with the runaway couple they were gravely sympathetic, but
+vetoed any idea of summary vengeance, since the Habsburgs would be sure
+to insist on the delivery of Dobrinton alive, and in a reasonably
+undamaged condition.  They did not object to Clyde administering a
+beating to his rival for half an hour every Monday and Thursday, but
+Dobrinton turned such a sickly green when he heard of this arrangement
+that the chief was obliged to withdraw the concession.
+
+And so, in the cramped quarters of a mountain hut, the ill-assorted trio
+watched the insufferable hours crawl slowly by.  Dobrinton was too
+frightened to be conversational, Vanessa was too mortified to open her
+lips, and Clyde was moodily silent.  The little Limberg _negociant_
+plucked up heart once to give a quavering rendering of "Yip-I-Addy," but
+when he reached the statement "home was never like this" Vanessa
+tearfully begged him to stop.  And silence fastened itself with growing
+insistence on the three captives who were so tragically herded together;
+thrice a day they drew near to one another to swallow the meal that had
+been prepared for them, like desert beasts meeting in mute suspended
+hostility at the drinking pool, and then drew back to resume the vigil of
+waiting.
+
+Clyde was less carefully watched than the others.  "Jealousy will keep
+him to the woman's side," thought his Kurdish captors.  They did not know
+that his wilder, truer love was calling to him with a hundred voices from
+beyond the village bounds.  And one evening, finding that he was not
+getting the attention to which he was entitled, Clyde slipped away down
+the mountain side and resumed his study of Central Asian game-fowl.  The
+remaining captives were guarded henceforth with greater rigour, but
+Dobrinton at any rate scarcely regretted Clyde's departure.
+
+The long arm, or perhaps one might better say the long purse, of
+diplomacy at last effected the release of the prisoners, but the
+Habsburgs were never to enjoy the guerdon of their outlay.  On the quay
+of the little Black Sea port, where the rescued pair came once more into
+contact with civilisation, Dobrinton was bitten by a dog which was
+assumed to be mad, though it may only have been indiscriminating.  The
+victim did not wait for symptoms of rabies to declare themselves, but
+died forthwith of fright, and Vanessa made the homeward journey alone,
+conscious somehow of a sense of slightly restored respectability.  Clyde,
+in the intervals of correcting the proofs of his book on the game-fowl of
+Central Asia, found time to press a divorce suit through the Courts, and
+as soon as possible hied him away to the congenial solitudes of the Gobi
+Desert to collect material for a work on the fauna of that region.
+Vanessa, by virtue perhaps of her earlier intimacy with the cooking rites
+of the whiting, obtained a place on the kitchen staff of a West End club.
+It was not brilliant, but at least it was within two minutes of the Park.
+
+
+
+
+THE BAKER'S DOZEN
+
+
+_Characters_--
+
+  Major Richard Dumbarton.
+
+  Mrs. Carewe.
+
+  Mrs. Paly-Paget.
+
+_Scene_--Deck of eastward-bound steamer.  Major Dumbarton seated on
+deck-chair, another chair by his side, with the name "Mrs. Carewe"
+painted on it, a third near by.
+
+(Enter R. Mrs. Carewe, seats herself leisurely in her deck-chair, the
+Major affecting to ignore her presence.)
+
+_Major_ (turning suddenly): Emily!  After all these years!  This is fate!
+
+_Em._: Fate!  Nothing of the sort; it's only me.  You men are always such
+fatalists.  I deferred my departure three whole weeks, in order to come
+out in the same boat that I saw you were travelling by.  I bribed the
+steward to put out chairs side by side in an unfrequented corner, and I
+took enormous pains to be looking particularly attractive this morning,
+and then you say "This is fate."  I am looking particularly attractive,
+am I not?
+
+_Maj._: More than ever.  Time has only added a ripeness to your charms.
+
+_Em._: I knew you'd put it exactly in those words.  The phraseology of
+love-making is awfully limited, isn't it?  After all, the chief charm is
+in the fact of being made love to.  You _are_ making love to me, aren't
+you?
+
+_Maj._: Emily dearest, I had already begun making advances, even before
+you sat down here.  I also bribed the steward to put our seats together
+in a secluded corner.  "You may consider it done, sir," was his reply.
+That was immediately after breakfast.
+
+_Em._: How like a man to have his breakfast first.  I attended to the
+seat business as soon as I left my cabin.
+
+_Maj._: Don't be unreasonable.  It was only at breakfast that I
+discovered your blessed presence on the boat.  I paid violent and unusual
+attention to a flapper all through the meal in order to make you jealous.
+She's probably in her cabin writing reams about me to a fellow-flapper at
+this very moment.
+
+_Em._: You needn't have taken all that trouble to make me jealous,
+Dickie.  You did that years ago, when you married another woman.
+
+_Maj._: Well, you had gone and married another man--a widower, too, at
+that.
+
+_Em._: Well, there's no particular harm in marrying a widower, I suppose.
+I'm ready to do it again, if I meet a really nice one.
+
+_Maj._: Look here, Emily, it's not fair to go at that rate.  You're a lap
+ahead of me the whole time.  It's my place to propose to you; all you've
+got to do is to say "Yes."
+
+_Em._: Well, I've practically said it already, so we needn't dawdle over
+that part.
+
+_Maj._: Oh, well--
+
+(They look at each other, then suddenly embrace with considerable
+energy.)
+
+_Maj._: We dead-heated it that time.  (Suddenly jumping to his feet) Oh,
+d--- I'd forgotten!
+
+_Em._: Forgotten what?
+
+_Maj._: The children.  I ought to have told you.  Do you mind children?
+
+_Em._: Not in moderate quantities.  How many have you got?
+
+_Maj._ (counting hurriedly on his fingers): Five.
+
+_Em._: Five!
+
+_Maj._ (anxiously): Is that too many?
+
+_Em._: It's rather a number.  The worst of it is, I've some myself.
+
+_Maj._: Many?
+
+_Em._: Eight.
+
+_Maj._: Eight in six years!  Oh, Emily!
+
+_Em._: Only four were my own.  The other four were by my husband's first
+marriage.  Still, that practically makes eight.
+
+_Maj._: And eight and five make thirteen.  We can't start our married
+life with thirteen children; it would be most unlucky.  (Walks up and
+down in agitation.)  Some way must be found out of this.  If we could
+only bring them down to twelve.  Thirteen is so horribly unlucky.
+
+_Em._: Isn't there some way by which we could part with one or two? Don't
+the French want more children?  I've often seen articles about it in the
+_Figaro_.
+
+_Maj._: I fancy they want French children.  Mine don't even speak French.
+
+_Em._: There's always a chance that one of them might turn out depraved
+and vicious, and then you could disown him.  I've heard of that being
+done.
+
+_Maj._: But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first.  You can't
+expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.
+
+_Em._: Why couldn't he be naturally depraved?  Lots of boys are.
+
+_Maj._: Only when they inherit it from depraved parents.  You don't
+suppose there's any depravity in me, do you?
+
+_Em._: It sometimes skips a generation, you know.  Weren't any of your
+family bad?
+
+_Maj._: There was an aunt who was never spoken of.
+
+_Em._: There you are!
+
+_Maj._: But one can't build too much on that.  In mid-Victorian days they
+labelled all sorts of things as unspeakable that we should speak about
+quite tolerantly.  I dare say this particular aunt had only married a
+Unitarian, or rode to hounds on both sides of her horse, or something of
+that sort.  Anyhow, we can't wait indefinitely for one of the children to
+take after a doubtfully depraved great-aunt.  Something else must be
+thought of.
+
+_Em._: Don't people ever adopt children from other families?
+
+_Maj._: I've heard of it being done by childless couples, and those sort
+of people--
+
+_Em._: Hush!  Some one's coming.  Who is it?
+
+_Maj._: Mrs. Paly-Paget.
+
+_Em._: The very person!
+
+_Maj._: What, to adopt a child?  Hasn't she got any?
+
+_Em._: Only one miserable hen-baby.
+
+_Maj._: Let's sound her on the subject.
+
+(Enter Mrs. Paly-Paget, R.)
+
+Ah, good morning.  Mrs. Paly-Paget.  I was just wondering at breakfast
+where did we meet last?
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: At the Criterion, wasn't it?
+
+(Drops into vacant chair.)
+
+_Maj._: At the Criterion, of course.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: I was dining with Lord and Lady Slugford.  Charming people,
+but so mean.  They took us afterwards to the Velodrome, to see some
+dancer interpreting Mendelssohn's "song without clothes." We were all
+packed up in a little box near the roof, and you may imagine how hot it
+was.  It was like a Turkish bath.  And, of course, one couldn't see
+anything.
+
+_Maj._: Then it was not like a Turkish bath.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Major!
+
+_Em._: We were just talking of you when you joined us.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Really!  Nothing very dreadful, I hope.
+
+_Em._: Oh dear, no!  It's too early on the voyage for that sort of thing.
+We were feeling rather sorry for you.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Sorry for me?  Whatever for?
+
+_Maj._: Your childless hearth and all that, you know.  No little
+pattering feet.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Major!  How dare you?  I've got my little girl, I suppose
+you know.  Her feet can patter as well as other children's.
+
+_Maj._: Only one pair of feet.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Certainly.  My child isn't a centipede.  Considering the
+way they move us about in those horrid jungle stations, without a decent
+bungalow to set one's foot in, I consider I've got a hearthless child,
+rather than a childless hearth.  Thank you for your sympathy all the
+same.  I dare say it was well meant.  Impertinence often is.
+
+_Em._: Dear Mrs. Paly-Paget, we were only feeling sorry for your sweet
+little girl when she grows older, you know.  No little brothers and
+sisters to play with.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Mrs. Carewe, this conversation strikes me as being
+indelicate, to say the least of it.  I've only been married two and a
+half years, and my family is naturally a small one.
+
+_Maj._: Isn't it rather an exaggeration to talk of one little female
+child as a family?  A family suggests numbers.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._: Really, Major, you language is extraordinary.  I dare say
+I've only got a little female child, as you call it, at present--
+
+_Maj._: Oh, it won't change into a boy later on, if that's what you're
+counting on.  Take our word for it; we've had so much more experience in
+these affairs than you have.  Once a female, always a female.  Nature is
+not infallible, but she always abides by her mistakes.
+
+_Mrs. P.-P._ (rising): Major Dumbarton, these boats are uncomfortably
+small, but I trust we shall find ample accommodation for avoiding each
+other's society during the rest of the voyage.  The same wish applies to
+you, Mrs. Carewe.
+
+(Exit Mrs. Paly-Paget, L.)
+
+_Maj._: What an unnatural mother!  (Sinks into chair.)
+
+_Em._: I wouldn't trust a child with any one who had a temper like hers.
+Oh, Dickie, why did you go and have such a large family?  You always said
+you wanted me to be the mother of your children.
+
+_Maj._: I wasn't going to wait while you were founding and fostering
+dynasties in other directions.  Why you couldn't be content to have
+children of your own, without collecting them like batches of postage
+stamps I can't think.  The idea of marrying a man with four children!
+
+_Em._: Well, you're asking me to marry one with five.
+
+_Maj._: Five!  (Springing to his feet)  Did I say five?
+
+_Em._: You certainly said five.
+
+_Maj._: Oh, Emily, supposing I've miscounted them!  Listen now, keep
+count with me.  Richard--that's after me, of course.
+
+_Em._: One.
+
+_Maj._: Albert-Victor--that must have been in Coronation year.
+
+_Em._: Two!
+
+_Maj._: Maud.  She's called after--
+
+_Em._: Never mind who's she's called after.  Three!
+
+_Maj._: And Gerald.
+
+_Em._: Four!
+
+_Maj._: That's the lot.
+
+_Em._: Are you sure?
+
+_Maj._: I swear that's the lot.  I must have counted Albert-Victor as
+two.
+
+_Em._: Richard!
+
+_Maj._: Emily!
+
+                             (They embrace.)
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUSE
+
+
+Theodoric Voler had been brought up, from infancy to the confines of
+middle age, by a fond mother whose chief solicitude had been to keep him
+screened from what she called the coarser realities of life.  When she
+died she left Theodoric alone in a world that was as real as ever, and a
+good deal coarser than he considered it had any need to be.  To a man of
+his temperament and upbringing even a simple railway journey was crammed
+with petty annoyances and minor discords, and as he settled himself down
+in a second-class compartment one September morning he was conscious of
+ruffled feelings and general mental discomposure.  He had been staying at
+a country vicarage, the inmates of which had been certainly neither
+brutal nor bacchanalian, but their supervision of the domestic
+establishment had been of that lax order which invites disaster.  The
+pony carriage that was to take him to the station had never been properly
+ordered, and when the moment for his departure drew near the handy-man
+who should have produced the required article was nowhere to be found.
+In this emergency Theodoric, to his mute but very intense disgust, found
+himself obliged to collaborate with the vicar's daughter in the task of
+harnessing the pony, which necessitated groping about in an ill-lighted
+outhouse called a stable, and smelling very like one--except in patches
+where it smelt of mice.  Without being actually afraid of mice, Theodoric
+classed them among the coarser incidents of life, and considered that
+Providence, with a little exercise of moral courage, might long ago have
+recognised that they were not indispensable, and have withdrawn them from
+circulation.  As the train glided out of the station Theodoric's nervous
+imagination accused himself of exhaling a weak odour of stable-yard, and
+possibly of displaying a mouldy straw or two on his usually well-brushed
+garments.  Fortunately the only other occupant of the compartment, a lady
+of about the same age as himself, seemed inclined for slumber rather than
+scrutiny; the train was not due to stop till the terminus was reached, in
+about an hour's time, and the carriage was of the old-fashioned sort,
+that held no communication with a corridor, therefore no further
+travelling companions were likely to intrude on Theodoric's semi-privacy.
+And yet the train had scarcely attained its normal speed before he became
+reluctantly but vividly aware that he was not alone with the slumbering
+lady; he was not even alone in his own clothes.  A warm, creeping
+movement over his flesh betrayed the unwelcome and highly resented
+presence, unseen but poignant, of a strayed mouse, that had evidently
+dashed into its present retreat during the episode of the pony
+harnessing.  Furtive stamps and shakes and wildly directed pinches failed
+to dislodge the intruder, whose motto, indeed, seemed to be Excelsior;
+and the lawful occupant of the clothes lay back against the cushions and
+endeavoured rapidly to evolve some means for putting an end to the dual
+ownership.  It was unthinkable that he should continue for the space of a
+whole hour in the horrible position of a Rowton House for vagrant mice
+(already his imagination had at least doubled the numbers of the alien
+invasion).  On the other hand, nothing less drastic than partial
+disrobing would ease him of his tormentor, and to undress in the presence
+of a lady, even for so laudable a purpose, was an idea that made his
+eartips tingle in a blush of abject shame.  He had never been able to
+bring himself even to the mild exposure of open-work socks in the
+presence of the fair sex.  And yet--the lady in this case was to all
+appearances soundly and securely asleep; the mouse, on the other hand,
+seemed to be trying to crowd a Wanderjahr into a few strenuous minutes.
+If there is any truth in the theory of transmigration, this particular
+mouse must certainly have been in a former state a member of the Alpine
+Club.  Sometimes in its eagerness it lost its footing and slipped for
+half an inch or so; and then, in fright, or more probably temper, it bit.
+Theodoric was goaded into the most audacious undertaking of his life.
+Crimsoning to the hue of a beetroot and keeping an agonised watch on his
+slumbering fellow-traveller, he swiftly and noiselessly secured the ends
+of his railway-rug to the racks on either side of the carriage, so that a
+substantial curtain hung athwart the compartment.  In the narrow
+dressing-room that he had thus improvised he proceeded with violent haste
+to extricate himself partially and the mouse entirely from the
+surrounding casings of tweed and half-wool.  As the unravelled mouse gave
+a wild leap to the floor, the rug, slipping its fastening at either end,
+also came down with a heart-curdling flop, and almost simultaneously the
+awakened sleeper opened her eyes.  With a movement almost quicker than
+the mouse's, Theodoric pounced on the rug, and hauled its ample folds
+chin-high over his dismantled person as he collapsed into the further
+corner of the carriage.  The blood raced and beat in the veins of his
+neck and forehead, while he waited dumbly for the communication-cord to
+be pulled.  The lady, however, contented herself with a silent stare at
+her strangely muffled companion.  How much had she seen, Theodoric
+queried to himself, and in any case what on earth must she think of his
+present posture?
+
+"I think I have caught a chill," he ventured desperately.
+
+"Really, I'm sorry," she replied.  "I was just going to ask you if you
+would open this window."
+
+"I fancy it's malaria," he added, his teeth chattering slightly, as much
+from fright as from a desire to support his theory.
+
+"I've got some brandy in my hold-all, if you'll kindly reach it down for
+me," said his companion.
+
+"Not for worlds--I mean, I never take anything for it," he assured her
+earnestly.
+
+"I suppose you caught it in the Tropics?"
+
+Theodoric, whose acquaintance with the Tropics was limited to an annual
+present of a chest of tea from an uncle in Ceylon, felt that even the
+malaria was slipping from him.  Would it be possible, he wondered, to
+disclose the real state of affairs to her in small instalments?
+
+"Are you afraid of mice?" he ventured, growing, if possible, more scarlet
+in the face.
+
+"Not unless they came in quantities, like those that ate up Bishop Hatto.
+Why do you ask?"
+
+"I had one crawling inside my clothes just now," said Theodoric in a
+voice that hardly seemed his own.  "It was a most awkward situation."
+
+"It must have been, if you wear your clothes at all tight," she observed;
+"but mice have strange ideas of comfort."
+
+"I had to get rid of it while you were asleep," he continued; then, with
+a gulp, he added, "it was getting rid of it that brought me to--to this."
+
+"Surely leaving off one small mouse wouldn't bring on a chill," she
+exclaimed, with a levity that Theodoric accounted abominable.
+
+Evidently she had detected something of his predicament, and was enjoying
+his confusion.  All the blood in his body seemed to have mobilised in one
+concentrated blush, and an agony of abasement, worse than a myriad mice,
+crept up and down over his soul.  And then, as reflection began to assert
+itself, sheer terror took the place of humiliation.  With every minute
+that passed the train was rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling
+terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one
+paralysing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage.
+There was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must
+decide.  His fellow-traveller might relapse into a blessed slumber.  But
+as the minutes throbbed by that chance ebbed away.  The furtive glance
+which Theodoric stole at her from time to time disclosed only an
+unwinking wakefulness.
+
+"I think we must be getting near now," she presently observed.
+
+Theodoric had already noted with growing terror the recurring stacks of
+small, ugly dwellings that heralded the journey's end.  The words acted
+as a signal.  Like a hunted beast breaking cover and dashing madly
+towards some other haven of momentary safety he threw aside his rug, and
+struggled frantically into his dishevelled garments.  He was conscious of
+dull surburban stations racing past the window, of a choking, hammering
+sensation in his throat and heart, and of an icy silence in that corner
+towards which he dared not look.  Then as he sank back in his seat,
+clothed and almost delirious, the train slowed down to a final crawl, and
+the woman spoke.
+
+"Would you be so kind," she asked, "as to get me a porter to put me into
+a cab?  It's a shame to trouble you when you're feeling unwell, but being
+blind makes one so helpless at a railway station."
+
+                               _Printed by_
+                         MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
+                               _Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
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