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diff --git a/1870-h/1870-h.htm b/1870-h/1870-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8504c73 --- /dev/null +++ b/1870-h/1870-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3224 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Reginald in Russia, by Saki</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; } + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +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*** +</pre> +<p>This etext was prepared from the 1910 Methuen and Co. edition +by Jane Duff; proofed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf</p> +<h2><!-- page ii--><a name="pageii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +ii</span><span class="smcap">by the same author</span><br /> +REGINALD</h2> +<blockquote><p>“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.”—<i>Morning +Post</i>.</p> +<p>“The book, by reason of its sustained brilliance, may be +likened to a Brock’s Benefit at the Crystal +Palace.”—<i>Athenæum</i>.</p> +<p>“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.”—<i>Queen</i>.</p> +<p>“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.”—<i>Westminster Gazette</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<h1><!-- page iii--><a name="pageiii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iii</span>REGINALD IN<br /> +RUSSIA</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">AND OTHER SKETCHES</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br /> +SAKI<br /> +(<span class="smcap">h. h. munro</span>)</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">METHUEN & CO.<br /> +36 ESSEX STREET W.C.<br /> +LONDON</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page iv--><a +name="pageiv"></a><span class="pagenum">p. iv</span><i>First +Published in 1910</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page v--><a +name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. v</span>TO<br /> +M. V. P.</p> +<h2><!-- page vii--><a name="pagevii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. vii</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">page</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Reginald in Russia</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Reticence of Lady Anne</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page7">7</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Lost Sanjak</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page13">13</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Sex that Doesn’t +Shop</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page25">25</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Blood-Feud of +Toad-Water</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page31">31</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Young Turkish Catastrophe</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page38">38</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Judkin of the Parcels</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page42">42</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Gabriel-Ernest</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page47">47</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Saint and the Goblin</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page60">60</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Soul of Laploshka</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Bag</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page75">75</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Strategist</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page85">85</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Cross Currents</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page94">94</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Baker’s Dozen (A +Playlet)</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page106">106</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Mouse</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page116">116</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page viii--><a +name="pageviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +viii</span>“<i>The Baker’s Dozen</i>” +<i>originally appeared in</i> “<i>The Journal of the +Leinster Regiment</i>.” <i>The other sketches have +appeared from time to time in the</i> “<i>Westminster +Gazette</i>.” <i>To the Editors of these publications +I am indebted for courteous permission to reproduce the stories +in their present form</i>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>REGINALD IN RUSSIA</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>He classified the Princess with that distinct type of woman +that looks as if it habitually went out to feed hens in the +rain.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p><!-- page 2--><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +2</span>Reginald threw his mind back over the canine fashions of +the last ten years and gave an evasive answer.</p> +<p>“Do you think her handsome, the Countess Lomshen?” +asked the Princess.</p> +<p>Reginald thought the Countess’s complexion suggested an +exclusive diet of macaroons and pale sherry. He said +so.</p> +<p>“But that cannot be possible,” said the Princess +triumphantly; “I’ve seen her eating fish-soup at +Donon’s.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Reginald withdrew his macaroon and sherry theory, and became +interested in a case of miniatures.</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 3--><a +name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>St. Peter in +her formal staccato French: ‘Je suis la Princesse +Lor-i-koff. Il me donne grand plaisir à faire votre +connaissance. Je vous en prie me présenter 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 à faire votre +connaissance. On a souvent parlé de vous à +l’église de la rue Million.’”</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 4--><a +name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>at the +preacher, half expecting him to redouble, but he contented +himself with scoring what points he could under the +circumstances.”</p> +<p>“You English are always so frivolous,” said the +Princess. “In Russia we have too many troubles to +permit of our being light-hearted.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Nothing that you hear about us in England is +true,” was the Princess’s hopeful beginning.</p> +<p>“I always refused to learn Russian geography at +school,” observed Reginald; “I was certain some of +the names must be wrong.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“With us,” said Reginald, “a Cabinet usually +gets the credit of being depraved and worthless beyond the bounds +of human <!-- page 5--><a name="page5"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 5</span>conception by the time it has been in +office about four years.”</p> +<p>“But if it is a bad Government you can turn it out at +the elections,” argued the Princess.</p> +<p>“As far as I remember, we generally do,” said +Reginald.</p> +<p>“But here it is dreadful, every one goes to such +extremes. In England you never go to extremes.”</p> +<p>“We go to the Albert Hall,” explained +Reginald.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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, <!-- page +6--><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>but he +declared on nothing but black suits for the next three +months. That, I think, was really beautiful.”</p> +<p>The Princess was not impressed.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Oh, I know it turns out that way sometimes,” +assented Reginald. “Forbidden fizz is often the +sweetest.”</p> +<p>But the remark was wasted on the Princess, who preferred +champagne that had at least a suggestion of dissolved +barley-sugar.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +7</span>THE RETICENCE OF LADY ANNE</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 8</span>autumn evenings; it was a part of +their married life. There was no recognised rejoinder to +it, and Lady Anne made none.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“My remark at lunch had a purely academic +application,” he announced; “you seem to put an +unnecessarily personal significance into it.”</p> +<p>Lady Anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. +The bullfinch lazily filled in the interval with an air from +<i>Iphigénie en Tauride</i>. Egbert recognised it +immediately, because it was the only air the bullfinch whistled, +and he had come to them <!-- page 9--><a name="page9"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 9</span>with the reputation for whistling +it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred +something from <i>The Yeomen of the Guard</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 10--><a name="page10"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 10</span>to play many rôles in life, but +a vacuum carpet-cleaner was not one of them.</p> +<p>“Don’t you think we’re being rather +foolish?” said Egbert cheerfully.</p> +<p>If Lady Anne thought so she didn’t say so.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The bullfinch recommenced its air from <i>Iphigénie en +Tauride</i>. 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.</p> +<p>Evidently Lady Anne was not feeling unwell.</p> +<p><!-- page 11--><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>Egbert began to think he was being unreasonably dealt +with; naturally he began to make concessions.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Lady Anne showed no sign of being impressed.</p> +<p>Egbert looked at her nervously through his glasses. To +get the worst of an argument with her was no new +experience. To get the <!-- page 12--><a +name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>worst of a +monologue was a humiliating novelty.</p> +<p>“I shall go and dress for diner,” he announced in +a voice into which he intended some shade of sternness to +creep.</p> +<p>At the door a final access of weakness impelled him to make a +further appeal.</p> +<p>“Aren’t we being very silly?”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +13</span>THE LOST SANJAK</h2> +<p>The prison Chaplain entered the condemned’s cell for the +last time, to give such consolation as he might.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“We must not be too long over it,” said the +Chaplain, looking at his watch.</p> +<p>The condemned repressed a shiver and commenced.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Lack of specialisation!” said the Chaplain.</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 14--><a name="page14"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 14</span>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.”</p> +<p>The Chaplain shifted uneasily in his seat. Now that the +alternatives had been suggested they all seemed dreadfully +possible.</p> +<p>“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, <!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 15</span>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Times</i> Atlas before +going to bed. Then, on the dark and lonely highway, I came +suddenly on a dead body.”</p> +<p>The Chaplain’s interest in the story visibly +quickened.</p> +<p>“Judging by the clothes it wore, the corpse <!-- page +16--><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>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 rôle for a considerable +period. I tramped to a <!-- page 17--><a +name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>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 <!-- page 18--><a +name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>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.”</p> +<p>“Yes, yes,” said the Chaplain hurriedly. +“Go on with your story.”</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 19--><a name="page19"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 19</span>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 <!-- page 20--><a +name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>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 <!-- page 21--><a +name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>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.”</p> +<p>“But,” said the Chaplain, “surely your +educational attainments—”</p> +<p>“That was just the crucial point,” said the <!-- +page 22--><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 23--><a +name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>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 <!-- +page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>took place, and of which, in any case, I am +innocent.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>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 +<i>Times</i> 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.”</p> +<h2><!-- page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>THE SEX THAT DOESN’T SHOP</h2> +<p>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 <!-- page 26--><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>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 <!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 27</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +28</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +29</span>lady of my acquaintance whom, swerving aside from the +lead given us by her godparents thirty years ago, we will call +Agatha.</p> +<p>“You’re surely not buying blotting-paper +<i>here</i>?” she exclaimed in an agitated whisper, and she +seemed so genuinely concerned that I stayed my hand.</p> +<p>“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 <i>momie</i> and crushed—”</p> +<p>“But I want ordinary white blotting-paper,” I +said.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“What do you want blotting-paper for?” she asked +suddenly. I explained patiently.</p> +<p>“I use it to dry up the ink of wet manuscript without +smudging the writing. <!-- page 30--><a +name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>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.”</p> +<p>“But you haven’t got a kitten,” said Agatha, +with a feminine desire for stating the entire truth on most +occasions.</p> +<p>“A stray one might come in at any moment,” I +replied.</p> +<p>Anyway, I didn’t get the blotting-paper.</p> +<h2><!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +31</span>THE BLOOD-FEUD OF TOAD-WATER<br /> +A WEST-COUNTRY EPIC</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- page 32--><a +name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>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 <!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 33</span>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 <!-- page 34--><a +name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>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—<!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 35</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 36--><a +name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>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.</p> +<p>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, <!-- page 37--><a name="page37"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 37</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>But the Blood-feud of Toad-Water survives to this day.</p> +<h2><!-- page 38--><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>A YOUNG TURKISH CATASTROPHE<br /> +IN TWO SCENES</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Under the new Constitution are women to have +votes?” he asked suddenly.</p> +<p>“To have votes? Women?” exclaimed the Vizier +in some astonishment. “My dear <!-- page 39--><a +name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>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?”</p> +<p>“I know it sounds absurd,” said the Minister, +“but they are seriously considering the idea in the +West.”</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>“They could be shown the names of the candidates and +where to make their cross.”</p> +<p>“I beg your pardon?” interrupted the Vizier.</p> +<p>“Their crescent, I mean,” corrected the +Minister. “It would be to the liking of the Young +Turkish Party,” he added.</p> +<p>“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 <!-- +page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>instructions that womenfolk are to have +votes.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +41</span>helplessly while his adversary’s poll swelled to a +triumphant majority.</p> +<p>“Cristabel Columbus!” he exclaimed, invoking in +some confusion the name of a distinguished pioneer; “who +would have thought it?”</p> +<p>“Strange,” mused Ali, “that one who +harangued so clamorously about the Secret Ballot should have +overlooked the Veiled Vote.”</p> +<p>And, walking homeward with his constituents, he murmured in +his beard an improvisation on the heretic poet of Persia:</p> +<blockquote><p>“One, rich in metaphors, his Cause +contrives<br /> +To urge with edged words, like Kabul knives;<br /> +And I, who worst him in this sorry game,<br /> +Was never rich in anything but—wives.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><!-- page 42--><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>JUDKIN OF THE PARCELS</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 43--><a +name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>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 <!-- page 44--><a +name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>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 <!-- page 45--><a +name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>he</i> +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 <!-- page 46--><a +name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>thanksgiving +service; the harvest having been so generally unsatisfactory, it +would be unfair to let the farmers supply all the material for +rejoicing.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 47--><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +47</span>GABRIEL-ERNEST</h2> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“A stray fox or two and some resident weasels. +Nothing more formidable,” said Van Cheele. The artist +said nothing.</p> +<p>“What did you mean about a wild beast?” said Van +Cheele later, when they were on the platform.</p> +<p>“Nothing. My imagination. Here is the +train,” said Cunningham.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 48--><a name="page48"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 48</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 49--><a +name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>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.</p> +<p>“What are you doing there?” he demanded.</p> +<p>“Obviously, sunning myself,” replied the boy.</p> +<p>“Where do you live?”</p> +<p>“Here, in these woods.”</p> +<p>“You can’t live in the woods,” said Van +Cheele.</p> +<p>“They are very nice woods,” said the boy, with a +touch of patronage in his voice.</p> +<p>“But where do you sleep at night?”</p> +<p>“I don’t sleep at night; that’s my busiest +time.”</p> +<p>Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was +grappling with a problem that was eluding him.</p> +<p>“What do you feed on?” he asked.</p> +<p>“Flesh,” said the boy, and he pronounced the word +with slow relish, as though he were tasting it.</p> +<p>“Flesh! What Flesh?”</p> +<p>“Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, +poultry, lambs in their season, children <!-- page 50--><a +name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>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.”</p> +<p>Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele +tried to draw the boy on the subject of possible poaching +operations.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“At night I hunt on four feet,” was the somewhat +cryptic response.</p> +<p>“I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?” +hazarded Van Cheele.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I don’t fancy any dog would be very anxious for +my company, especially at night.”</p> +<p>Van Cheele began to feel that there was something positively +uncanny about the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster.</p> +<p>“I can’t have you staying in these woods,” +he declared authoritatively.</p> +<p><!-- page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>“I fancy you’d rather have me here than in +your house,” said the boy.</p> +<p>The prospect of this wild, nude animal in Van Cheele’s +primly ordered house was certainly an alarming one.</p> +<p>“If you don’t go. I shall have to make +you,” said Van Cheele.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p><!-- page 52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +52</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 53--><a +name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>had not made +that uncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago. +Such dreadful things should not be said even in fun.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Where’s your voice gone to?” said his +aunt. “One would think you had seen a +wolf.”</p> +<p>Van Cheele, who was not familiar with the old saying, thought +the remark rather foolish; if he <i>had</i> seen a wolf on his +property his tongue would have been extraordinarily busy with the +subject.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 54--><a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>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.</p> +<p>“How dare you come here?” asked Van Cheele +furiously.</p> +<p>“You told me I was not to stay in the woods,” said +the boy calmly.</p> +<p>“But not to come here. Supposing my aunt should +see you!”</p> +<p>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 <i>Morning Post</i>. At that moment his aunt +entered the room.</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 55--><a +name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>Cheele +desperately, glancing apprehensively at the waif’s face to +see whether he was going to add inconvenient candour to his other +savage propensities.</p> +<p>Miss Van Cheele was enormously interested.</p> +<p>“Perhaps his underlinen is marked,” she +suggested.</p> +<p>“He seems to have lost most of that, too,” said +Van Cheele, making frantic little grabs at the <i>Morning +Post</i> to keep it in its place.</p> +<p>A naked homeless child appealed to Miss Van Cheele as warmly +as a stray kitten or derelict puppy would have done.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“We must call him something till we know who he really +is,” she said. “Gabriel-Ernest, I think; those +are nice suitable names.”</p> +<p>Van Cheele agreed, but he privately doubted whether they were +being grafted on to a nice suitable child. His misgivings +were <!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Cunningham was not at first disposed to be communicative.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“But what <i>did</i> you see?” persisted Van +Cheele.</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 57--><a +name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>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!”</p> +<p>“What! vanished away into nothing?” asked Van +Cheele excitedly.</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +58</span>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.</p> +<p>“Where is Gabriel-Ernest?” he almost screamed.</p> +<p>“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?”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 59--><a name="page59"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 59</span>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>Van Cheele gave way to his aunt in most things, but he flatly +refused to subscribe to the Gabriel-Ernest memorial.</p> +<h2><!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>THE SAINT AND THE GOBLIN</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The little stone Saint and the Goblin got <!-- page 61--><a +name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>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.</p> +<p>“All the same,” said the Saint, “I feel very +sorry for them.”</p> +<p>“Of course you do,” said the Goblin; +“it’s <i>your</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Whilst he was thinking the matter over he was startled by +something falling between his feet with a hard metallic +clatter. It was a <!-- page 62--><a name="page62"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 62</span>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.</p> +<p>“What have you got there?” asked the Goblin.</p> +<p>“A silver thaler,” said the Saint. +“Really,” he continued, “it is most fortunate; +now I can do something for the church mice.”</p> +<p>“How will you manage it?” asked the Goblin.</p> +<p>The Saint considered.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Of course <i>you</i> can do that,” observed the +Goblin. “Now, <i>I</i> can only appear to people +after they have had a heavy supper of indigestible things. +My opportunities with the <!-- page 63--><a +name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>vergeress +would be limited. There is some advantage in being a saint +after all.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Candles would be more orthodox,” said the +Goblin.</p> +<p>“More orthodox, certainly,” agreed the Saint, +“and the mice could have the ends to eat; candle-ends are +most fattening.”</p> +<p>The Goblin was too well bred to wink; <!-- page 64--><a +name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>besides, +being a stone goblin, it was out of the question.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“She can’t be going to eat it,” thought the +Saint, and fixed her with his stoniest stare.</p> +<p>“Well,” said the woman, in a somewhat shriller +key, “who’d have thought it! A saint, +too!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Then she went away.</p> +<p>“The only possible explanation,” said the Goblin, +“is that it’s a bad one.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>“What is that decoration your neighbour is +wearing?” asked a wyvern that was wrought into the capital +of an adjacent pillar.</p> +<p><!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>The Saint was ready to cry with mortification, only, +being of stone, he couldn’t.</p> +<p>“It’s a coin of—ahem!—fabulous +value,” replied the Goblin tactfully.</p> +<p>And the news went round the Cathedral that the shrine of the +little stone Saint had been enriched by a priceless offering.</p> +<p>“After all, it’s something to have the conscience +of a goblin,” said the Saint to himself.</p> +<p>The church mice were as poor as ever. But that was their +function.</p> +<h2><!-- page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>THE SOUL OF LAPLOSHKA</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 67--><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +67</span>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.</p> +<p>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 +<!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>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.</p> +<p>“You owe me two francs from last night,” was his +breathless greeting.</p> +<p>I spoke evasively of the situation in Portugal, where more +trouble seemed brewing. But <!-- page 69--><a +name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>Laploshka +listened with the abstraction of the deaf adder, and quickly +returned to the subject of the two francs.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 70--><a +name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>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 +Curé,” 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.</p> +<p>“They do not want money,” he said; “they +have too much money. They have no poor. They are all +pampered.”</p> +<p>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 Curé.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>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 Curé 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 <i>that</i> 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.</p> +<p>After that, in Paris or London or wherever <!-- page 72--><a +name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 73</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>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 +Curé.”</p> +<p>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 <i>given</i> to the deserving rich, +and the soul of Laploshka was at peace.</p> +<h2><!-- page 75--><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>THE BAG</h2> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 76--><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +76</span>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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—”</p> +<p>“Anyhow, my dear Norah, he can’t ride.”</p> +<p>“Russians never can; but he shoots.”</p> +<p>“Yes; and what does he shoot? Yesterday he brought +home a woodpecker in his game-bag.”</p> +<p><!-- page 77--><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>“But he’d shot three pheasants and some +rabbits as well.”</p> +<p>“That’s no excuse for including a woodpecker in +his game-bag.”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 78--><a name="page78"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 78</span>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.</p> +<p>“Guess what I have shot,” he demanded.</p> +<p>“Pheasants, woodpigeons, rabbits,” hazarded +Norah.</p> +<p>“No; a large beast; I don’t know what you call it +in English. Brown, with a darkish tail.” Norah +changed colour.</p> +<p>“Does it live in a tree and eat nuts?” she asked, +hoping that the use of the adjective “large” might be +an exaggeration.</p> +<p>Vladimir laughed.</p> +<p>“Oh no; not a <i>biyelka</i>.”</p> +<p>“Does it swim and eat fish?” asked Norah, with a +fervent prayer in her heart that it might turn out to be an +otter.</p> +<p>“No,” said Vladimir, busy with the straps of his +game-bag; “it lives in the woods, and eats rabbits and +chickens.”</p> +<p>Norah sat down suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.</p> +<p>“Merciful Heaven!” she wailed; “he’s +shot a fox!”</p> +<p><!-- page 79--><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“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 <!-- page 80--><a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>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.”</p> +<p>“Major, if any one tried that game on in my woods +they’d get short shrift,” said Mrs. Hoopington.</p> +<p>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 +<i>that</i>. 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.</p> +<p>“What did you shoot to-day?” asked Mrs. Hoopington +suddenly of the unusually silent Vladimir.</p> +<p>“Nothing—nothing worth speaking of,” said +the boy.</p> +<p>Norah’s heart, which had stood still for a <!-- page +81--><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>space, made up for lost time with a most disturbing +bound.</p> +<p>“I wish you’d find something that was worth +speaking about,” said the hostess; “every one seems +to have lost their tongues.”</p> +<p>“When did Smithers last see that fox?” said the +Major.</p> +<p>“Yesterday morning; a fine dog-fox, with a dark +brush,” confided Mrs. Hoopington.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“What is exciting him?” asked his mistress, as the +dog suddenly broke into short angry barks, with a running +accompaniment of tremulous whines.</p> +<p>“Why,” she continued, “it’s your +game-bag, Vladimir! What <i>have</i> you got in +it?”</p> +<p><!-- page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>“By Gad,” said the Major, who was now +standing up; “there’s a pretty warm scent!”</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 83--><a name="page83"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 83</span>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.</p> +<p>“What shall I do with—<i>that</i>?” asked +Vladimir at last.</p> +<p>“Bury it,” said Norah.</p> +<p>“Just plain burial?” said Vladimir, rather <!-- +page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 85--><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>THE STRATEGIST</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 86--><a +name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>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 <i>had</i> brought their cousin.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“So glad you were able to come,” said the elder +Wrotsley heartily.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>Rollo knew the game. He would have <!-- page 87--><a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>suggested it +himself if his faction had been in the majority.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“The word’s ‘camel,’” announced +the Wrotsley cousin blunderingly.</p> +<p>“You stupid!” screamed the girls, +“we’ve got to <i>guess</i> the word. Now +you’ll have to go back and think of another.”</p> +<p>“Not for worlds,” said Rollo; “I mean, the +word isn’t really camel; we were rotting. <!-- page +88--><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>Pretend it’s dromedary!” he whispered to the +others.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“We shall have to go back, I suppose,” said the +elder Wrotsley resignedly.</p> +<p>The conclave locked itself once more into the library. +“Look here, I’m not going through that dog-whip +business again,” protested Rollo.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“You must come and sit down over here,” chorused +the investigating committee on <!-- page 89--><a +name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“I suppose we had better halve it,” said Dolores +sourly.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Now what would you all like to do?” <!-- page +90--><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“Not mice!”</p> +<p>A shrill protest rose, as he had foreseen, from the majority +of his audience.</p> +<p>“Well, fruit, them.”</p> +<p>The amended proposal was received with approval. Agnes +positively beamed.</p> +<p>Without more ado Rollo made straight <!-- page 91--><a +name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>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.</p> +<p>“Of course, we were in the know,” said the +Wrotsley cousin lamely.</p> +<p>“That’s done it,” chuckled Rollo to +himself.</p> +<p>“If they <i>had</i> been confederates they would have +sworn they knew nothing about it,” said Dolores, with +piercing conviction.</p> +<p>“Do you know any more tricks?” asked Mrs. Jallatt +hurriedly.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid I must be going,” said Rollo to +his hostess.</p> +<p><!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>“Your carriage won’t be here for another +twenty minutes,” said Mrs. Jallatt.</p> +<p>“It’s such a fine evening I think I’ll walk +and meet it.”</p> +<p>“It’s raining rather steadily at present. +You’ve just time to play that historical game.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>Rollo played his last card. In an undertone meant +apparently for the Wrotsley boy, but carefully pitched to reach +Agnes, he observed—</p> +<p>“All right, old man; we’ll go and finish those +chocolates we left in the library.”</p> +<p>“I think it’s only fair that the girls should take +their turn in going out,” exclaimed Agnes briskly. +She was great on fairness.</p> +<p>“Nonsense,” said the others; “there are too +many of us.”</p> +<p>“Well, four of us can go. I’ll be one of +them.”</p> +<p>And Agnes darted off towards the library, followed by three +less eager damsels.</p> +<p><!-- page 93--><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +93</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“It has been a most enjoyable evening,” said Rollo +to his hostess.</p> +<h2><!-- page 94--><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +94</span>CROSS CURRENTS</h2> +<p>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 <!-- page 95--><a +name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- page 96--><a name="page96"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 96</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 97--><a +name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page 99--><a name="page99"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 99</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +100</span>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 <!-- page +101--><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>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.</p> +<p>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 <!-- +page 102--><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>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 +<!-- page 103--><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <!-- page 104--><a name="page104"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 104</span>The little Limberg +<i>négociant</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The long arm, or perhaps one might better <!-- page 105--><a +name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>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.</p> +<h2><!-- page 106--><a name="page106"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 106</span>THE BAKER’S DOZEN</h2> +<p><i>Characters</i>—</p> +<p class="gutindent">Major Richard Dumbarton.</p> +<p class="gutindent">Mrs. Carewe.</p> +<p class="gutindent">Mrs. Paly-Paget.</p> +<p><i>Scene</i>—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.</p> +<p>(Enter R. Mrs. Carewe, seats herself leisurely in her +deck-chair, the Major affecting to ignore her presence.)</p> +<p><i>Major</i> (turning suddenly): Emily! After all these +years! This is fate!</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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 <!-- page 107--><a +name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +107</span>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?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: More than ever. Time has only added a +ripeness to your charms.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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 <i>are</i> making love to me, +aren’t you?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: How like a man to have his breakfast first. +I attended to the seat business as soon as I left my cabin.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><!-- page 108--><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span><i>Em.</i>: You needn’t have taken all that +trouble to make me jealous, Dickie. You did that years ago, +when you married another woman.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Well, you had gone and married another +man—a widower, too, at that.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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.”</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Well, I’ve practically said it already, so +we needn’t dawdle over that part.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Oh, well—</p> +<p>(They look at each other, then suddenly embrace with +considerable energy.)</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: We dead-heated it that time. (Suddenly +jumping to his feet) Oh, d--- I’d forgotten!</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Forgotten what?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: The children. I ought to have told +you. Do you mind children?</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Not in moderate quantities. How many have +you got?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i> (counting hurriedly on his fingers): Five.</p> +<p><!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +109</span><i>Em.</i>: Five!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i> (anxiously): Is that too many?</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: It’s rather a number. The worst of it +is, I’ve some myself.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Many?</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Eight.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Eight in six years! Oh, Emily!</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Only four were my own. The other four were +by my husband’s first marriage. Still, that +practically makes eight.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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 <i>Figaro</i>.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: I fancy they want French children. Mine +don’t even speak French.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: But, good gracious, you’ve got to <!-- page +110--><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span>educate him first. You can’t expect a boy +to be vicious till he’s been to a good school.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Why couldn’t he be naturally depraved? +Lots of boys are.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Only when they inherit it from depraved +parents. You don’t suppose there’s any +depravity in me, do you?</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: It sometimes skips a generation, you know. +Weren’t any of your family bad?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: There was an aunt who was never spoken of.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: There you are!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Don’t people ever adopt children from other +families?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: I’ve heard of it being done by childless +couples, and those sort of people—</p> +<p><!-- page 111--><a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span><i>Em.</i>: Hush! Some one’s coming. +Who is it?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Mrs. Paly-Paget.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: The very person!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: What, to adopt a child? Hasn’t she +got any?</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Only one miserable hen-baby.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Let’s sound her on the subject.</p> +<p>(Enter Mrs. Paly-Paget, R.)</p> +<p>Ah, good morning. Mrs. Paly-Paget. I was just +wondering at breakfast where did we meet last?</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: At the Criterion, wasn’t it?</p> +<p>(Drops into vacant chair.)</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: At the Criterion, of course.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Then it was not like a Turkish bath.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: Major!</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: We were just talking of you when you joined +us.</p> +<p><!-- page 112--><a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +112</span><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: Really! Nothing very dreadful, +I hope.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Oh dear, no! It’s too early on the +voyage for that sort of thing. We were feeling rather sorry +for you.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: Sorry for me? Whatever for?</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Your childless hearth and all that, you +know. No little pattering feet.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: Major! How dare you? I’ve +got my little girl, I suppose you know. Her feet can patter +as well as other children’s.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Only one pair of feet.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: Mrs. Carewe, this conversation strikes me +as being indelicate, to say the least of it. I’ve +only been married two and a <!-- page 113--><a +name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>half years, +and my family is naturally a small one.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Isn’t it rather an exaggeration to talk of +one little female child as a family? A family suggests +numbers.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i>: Really, Major, you language is +extraordinary. I dare say I’ve only got a little +female child, as you call it, at present—</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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.</p> +<p><i>Mrs. P.-P.</i> (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.</p> +<p>(Exit Mrs. Paly-Paget, L.)</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: What an unnatural mother! (Sinks into +chair.)</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: 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? <!-- page 114--><a +name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>You always +said you wanted me to be the mother of your children.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: 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!</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Well, you’re asking me to marry one with +five.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Five! (Springing to his feet) Did I +say five?</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: You certainly said five.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Oh, Emily, supposing I’ve miscounted +them! Listen now, keep count with me. +Richard—that’s after me, of course.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: One.</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Albert-Victor—that must have been in +Coronation year.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Two!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Maud. She’s called after—</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Never mind who’s she’s called +after. Three!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: And Gerald.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Four!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: That’s the lot.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Are you sure?</p> +<p><!-- page 115--><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +115</span><i>Maj.</i>: I swear that’s the lot. I must +have counted Albert-Victor as two.</p> +<p><i>Em.</i>: Richard!</p> +<p><i>Maj.</i>: Emily!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">(They embrace.)</p> +<h2><!-- page 116--><a name="page116"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 116</span>THE MOUSE</h2> +<p>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 <!-- page 117--><a name="page117"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 117</span>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 <!-- +page 118--><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +118</span>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 <!-- page +119--><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>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 <!-- +page 120--><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +120</span>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?</p> +<p>“I think I have caught a chill,” he ventured +desperately.</p> +<p>“Really, I’m sorry,” she replied. +“I was just going to ask you if you would open this +window.”</p> +<p><!-- page 121--><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>“I fancy it’s malaria,” he added, his +teeth chattering slightly, as much from fright as from a desire +to support his theory.</p> +<p>“I’ve got some brandy in my hold-all, if +you’ll kindly reach it down for me,” said his +companion.</p> +<p>“Not for worlds—I mean, I never take anything for +it,” he assured her earnestly.</p> +<p>“I suppose you caught it in the Tropics?”</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>“Are you afraid of mice?” he ventured, growing, if +possible, more scarlet in the face.</p> +<p>“Not unless they came in quantities, like those that ate +up Bishop Hatto. Why do you ask?”</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>“It must have been, if you wear your clothes at all +tight,” she observed; “but mice have strange ideas of +comfort.”</p> +<p><!-- page 122--><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>“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.”</p> +<p>“Surely leaving off one small mouse wouldn’t bring +on a chill,” she exclaimed, with a levity that Theodoric +accounted abominable.</p> +<p>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 <!-- page +123--><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>to +time disclosed only an unwinking wakefulness.</p> +<p>“I think we must be getting near now,” she +presently observed.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page 124--><a +name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span><i>Printed +by</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">Morrison & Gibb Limited</span><br /> +<i>Edinburgh</i></p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REGINALD IN RUSSIA***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1870-h.htm or 1870-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/1870 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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