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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chronicles of Clovis, 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: The Chronicles of Clovis
+
+Author: Saki
+
+Posting Date: April 30, 2009 [EBook #3688]
+Release Date: January, 2003
+First Posted: July 16, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Richard E. Henrich, Jr.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS
+
+
+by
+
+"SAKI" (H. H. MUNRO)
+
+
+
+with an Introduction by A. A. MILNE
+
+
+
+
+        TO THE LYNX KITTEN,
+  WITH HIS RELUCTANTLY GIVEN CONSENT,
+     THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
+            DEDICATED
+
+H. H. M.
+
+August, 1911
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+There are good things which we want to share with the world and good
+things which we want to keep to ourselves.  The secret of our favourite
+restaurant, to take a case, is guarded jealously from all but a few
+intimates; the secret, to take a contrary case, of our infallible
+remedy for seasickness is thrust upon every traveller we meet, even if
+he be no more than a casual acquaintance about to cross the Serpentine.
+So with our books. There are dearly loved books of which we babble to a
+neighbour at dinner, insisting that she shall share our delight in
+them; and there are books, equally dear to us, of which we say nothing,
+fearing lest the praise of others should cheapen the glory of our
+discovery.  The books of "Saki" were, for me at least, in the second
+class.
+
+It was in the WESTMINSTER GAZETTE that I discovered him (I like to
+remember now) almost as soon as he was discoverable.  Let us spare a
+moment, and a tear, for those golden days in the early nineteen
+hundreds, when there were five leisurely papers of an evening in which
+the free-lance might graduate, and he could speak of his Alma Mater,
+whether the GLOBE or the PALL MALL, with as much pride as, he never
+doubted, the GLOBE or the PALL MALL would speak one day of him.  Myself
+but lately down from ST. JAMES', I was not too proud to take some
+slight but pitying interest in men of other colleges.  The unusual name
+of a freshman up at WESTMINSTER attracted my attention; I read what he
+had to say; and it was only by reciting rapidly with closed eyes the
+names of our own famous alumni, beginning confidently with Barrie and
+ending, now very doubtfully, with myself, that I was able to preserve
+my equanimity.  Later one heard that this undergraduate from overseas
+had gone up at an age more advanced than customary; and just as
+Cambridge men have been known to complain of the maturity of Oxford
+Rhodes scholars, so one felt that this WESTMINSTER free-lance in the
+thirties was no fit competitor for the youth of other colleges.
+Indeed, it could not compete.
+
+Well, I discovered him, but only to the few, the favoured, did I speak
+of him.  It may have been my uncertainty (which still persists) whether
+he called himself Sayki, Sahki or Sakki which made me thus ungenerous
+of his name, or it may have been the feeling that the others were not
+worthy of him; but how refreshing it was when some intellectually
+blown-up stranger said "Do you ever read Saki?" to reply, with the same
+pronunciation and even greater condescension: "Saki!  He has been my
+favourite author for years!"
+
+A strange exotic creature, this Saki, to us many others who were trying
+to do it too.  For we were so domestic, he so terrifyingly
+cosmopolitan.  While we were being funny, as planned, with collar-studs
+and hot-water bottles, he was being much funnier with werwolves and
+tigers.  Our little dialogues were between John and Mary; his, and how
+much better, between Bertie van Tahn and the Baroness.  Even the most
+casual intruder into one of his sketches, as it might be our Tomkins,
+had to be called Belturbet or de Ropp, and for his hero, weary
+man-of-the-world at seventeen, nothing less thrilling than Clovis
+Sangrail would do.  In our envy we may have wondered sometimes if it
+were not much easier to be funny with tigers than with collar-studs; if
+Saki's careless cruelty, that strange boyish insensitiveness of his,
+did not give him an unfair start in the pursuit of laughter.  It may
+have been so; but, fortunately, our efforts to be funny in the Saki
+manner have not survived to prove it.
+
+What is Saki's manner, what his magic talisman?  Like every artist
+worth consideration, he had no recipe.  If his exotic choice of subject
+was often his strength, it was often his weakness; if his
+insensitiveness carried him through, at times, to victory, it brought
+him, at times, to defeat.  I do not think that he has that "mastery of
+the CONTE"--in this book at least--which some have claimed for him.
+Such mastery infers a passion for tidiness which was not in the boyish
+Saki's equipment.  He leaves loose ends everywhere.  Nor in his
+dialogue, delightful as it often is, funny as it nearly always is, is
+he the supreme master; too much does it become monologue judiciously
+fed, one character giving and the other taking.  But in comment, in
+reference, in description, in every development of his story, he has a
+choice of words, a "way of putting things" which is as inevitably his
+own vintage as, once tasted, it becomes the private vintage of the
+connoisseur.
+
+Let us take a sample or two of "Saki, 1911."
+
+"The earlier stages of the dinner had worn off.  The wine lists had
+been consulted, by some with the blank embarrassment of a schoolboy
+suddenly called upon to locate a Minor Prophet in the tangled
+hinterland of the Old Testament, by others with the severe scrutiny
+which suggests that they have visited most of the higher-priced wines
+in their own homes and probed their family weaknesses."
+
+"Locate" is the pleasant word here.  Still more satisfying, in the
+story of the man who was tattooed "from collar-bone to waist-line with
+a glowing representation of the Fall of Icarus," is the word
+"privilege":
+
+"The design when finally developed was a slight disappointment to
+Monsieur Deplis, who had suspected Icarus of being a fortress taken by
+Wallenstein in the Thirty Years' War, but he was more than satisfied
+with the execution of the work, which was acclaimed by all who had the
+privilege of seeing it as Pincini's masterpiece."
+
+This story, THE BACKGROUND, and MRS PACKLETIDE'S TIGER seem to me to be
+the masterpieces of this book.  In both of them Clovis exercises,
+needlessly, his titular right of entry, but he can be removed without
+damage, leaving Saki at his best and most characteristic, save that he
+shows here, in addition to his own shining qualities, a compactness and
+a finish which he did not always achieve.  With these I introduce you
+to him, confident that ten minutes of his conversation, more surely
+than any words of mine, will have given him the freedom of your house.
+
+A. A. MILNE.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  ESMÉ
+  THE MATCH-MAKER
+  TOBERMORY
+  MRS. PACKLETIDE'S TIGER
+  THE STAMPEDING OF LADY BASTABLE
+  THE BACKGROUND
+  HERMANN THE IRASCIBLE--A STORY OF THE GREAT WEEP
+  THE UNREST-CURE
+  THE JESTING OF ARLINGTON STRINGHAM
+  SREDNI VASHTAR
+  ADRIAN
+  THE CHAPLET
+  THE QUEST
+  WRATISLAV
+  THE EASTER EGG
+  FILBOID STUDGE, THE STORY OF A MOUSE THAT HELPED
+  THE MUSIC ON THE HILL
+  THE STORY OF ST. VESPALUUS
+  THE WAY TO THE DAIRY
+  THE PEACE OFFERING
+  THE PEACE OF MOWSLE BARTON
+  THE TALKING-OUT OF TARRINGTON
+  THE HOUNDS OF FATE
+  THE RECESSIONAL
+  A MATTER OF SENTIMENT
+  THE SECRET SIN OF SEPTIMUS BROPE
+  "MINISTERS OF GRACE"
+  THE REMOULDING OF GROBY LINGTON
+  ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+
+
+ESMÉ
+
+
+"All hunting stories are the same," said Clovis; "just as all Turf
+stories are the same, and all--"
+
+"My hunting story isn't a bit like any you've ever heard," said the
+Baroness.  "It happened quite a while ago, when I was about
+twenty-three.  I wasn't living apart from my husband then; you see,
+neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance.  In
+spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more
+homes than it breaks up.  But we always hunted with different packs.
+All this has nothing to do with the story."
+
+"We haven't arrived at the meet yet.  I suppose there was a meet," said
+Clovis.
+
+"Of course there was a meet," said the Baroness; all the usual crowd
+were there, especially Constance Broddle.  Constance is one of those
+strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas
+decorations in church.  'I feel a presentiment that something dreadful
+is going to happen,' she said to me; 'am I looking pale?'
+
+"She was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard
+bad news.
+
+"'You're looking nicer than usual,' I said, 'but that's so easy for
+you.'  Before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had
+settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some
+gorse-bushes."
+
+"I knew it," said Clovis, "in every fox-hunting story that I've ever
+heard there's been a fox and some gorse-bushes."
+
+"Constance and I were well mounted," continued the Baroness serenely,
+"and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight,
+though it was a fairly stiff run.  Towards the finish, however, we must
+have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and
+found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere.  It
+was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go
+by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we
+were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just
+beneath us.
+
+"'There they go,' cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, 'In
+Heaven's name, what are they hunting?'
+
+"It was certainly no mortal fox.  It stood more than twice as high, had
+a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck.
+
+"'It's a hyaena,' I cried; 'it must have escaped from Lord Pabham's
+Park.'
+
+"At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the
+hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a
+half-circle and looked foolish.  Evidently they had broken away from
+the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not
+quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.
+
+"The hyaena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and
+demonstrations of friendliness.  It had probably been accustomed to
+uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of
+hounds had left a bad impression.  The hounds looked more than ever
+embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and
+the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome
+signal for unobtrusive departure.  Constance and I and the hyaena were
+left alone in the gathering twilight.
+
+"'What are we to do?' asked Constance.
+
+"'What a person you are for questions,' I said.
+
+"'Well, we can't stay here all night with a hyaena,' she retorted.
+
+"'I don't know what your ideas of comfort are,' I said; 'but I
+shouldn't think of staying here all night even without a hyaena. My
+home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid
+on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn't
+find here.  We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I
+imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.'
+
+"We trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the
+beast following cheerfully at our heels.
+
+"'What on earth are we to do with the hyaena?' came the inevitable
+question.
+
+"'What does one generally do with hyaenas?'  I asked crossly.
+
+"'I've never had anything to do with one before,' said Constance.
+
+"'Well, neither have I.  If we even knew its sex we might give it a
+name.  Perhaps we might call it Esmé.  That would do in either case.'
+
+"There was still sufficient daylight for us to distinguish wayside
+objects, and our listless spirits gave an upward perk as we came upon a
+small half-naked gipsy brat picking blackberries from a low-growing
+bush.  The sudden apparition of two horsewomen and a hyaena set it off
+crying, and in any case we should scarcely have gleaned any useful
+geographical information from that source; but there was a probability
+that we might strike a gipsy encampment somewhere along our route.  We
+rode on hopefully but uneventfully for another mile or so.
+
+"'I wonder what that child was doing there,' said Constance presently.
+
+"'Picking blackberries.  Obviously.'
+
+"'I don't like the way it cried,' pursued Constance; 'somehow its wail
+keeps ringing in my ears.'
+
+"I did not chide Constance for her morbid fancies; as a matter of fact
+the same sensation, of being pursued by a persistent fretful wail, had
+been forcing itself on my rather over-tired nerves.  For company's sake
+I hulloed to Esmé, who had lagged somewhat behind. With a few springy
+bounds he drew up level, and then shot past us.
+
+"The wailing accompaniment was explained.  The gipsy child was firmly,
+and I expect painfully, held in his jaws.
+
+"'Merciful Heaven!' screamed Constance, 'what on earth shall we do?
+What are we to do?'
+
+"I am perfectly certain that at the Last Judgment Constance will ask
+more questions than any of the examining Seraphs.
+
+"'Can't we do something?' she persisted tearfully, as Esmé cantered
+easily along in front of our tired horses.
+
+"Personally I was doing everything that occurred to me at the moment.
+I stormed and scolded and coaxed in English and French and gamekeeper
+language; I made absurd, ineffectual cuts in the air with my thongless
+hunting-crop; I hurled my sandwich case at the brute; in fact, I really
+don't know what more I could have done.  And still we lumbered on
+through the deepening dusk, with that dark uncouth shape lumbering
+ahead of us, and a drone of lugubrious music floating in our ears.
+Suddenly Esmé bounded aside into some thick bushes, where we could not
+follow; the wail rose to a shriek and then stopped altogether.  This
+part of the story I always hurry over, because it is really rather
+horrible. When the beast joined us again, after an absence of a few
+minutes, there was an air of patient understanding about him, as though
+he knew that he had done something of which we disapproved, but which
+he felt to be thoroughly justifiable.
+
+"'How can you let that ravening beast trot by your side?' asked
+Constance.  She was looking more than ever like an albino beetroot.
+
+"'In the first place, I can't prevent it,' I said; 'and in the second
+place, whatever else he may be, I doubt if he's ravening at the present
+moment.'
+
+"Constance shuddered.  'Do you think the poor little thing suffered
+much?' came another of her futile questions.
+
+"'The indications were all that way,' I said; 'on the other hand, of
+course, it may have been crying from sheer temper.  Children sometimes
+do.'
+
+"It was nearly pitch-dark when we emerged suddenly into the highroad.
+A flash of lights and the whir of a motor went past us at the same
+moment at uncomfortably close quarters.  A thud and a sharp screeching
+yell followed a second later.  The car drew up, and when I had ridden
+back to the spot I found a young man bending over a dark motionless
+mass lying by the roadside.
+
+"'You have killed my Esmé,' I exclaimed bitterly.
+
+"'I'm so awfully sorry,' said the young man; I keep dogs myself, so I
+know what you must feel about it.  I'll do anything I can in
+reparation.'
+
+"'Please bury him at once,' I said; 'that much I think I may ask of
+you.'
+
+"'Bring the spade, William,' he called to the chauffeur. Evidently
+hasty roadside interments were contingencies that had been provided
+against.
+
+"The digging of a sufficiently large grave took some little time. 'I
+say, what a magnificent fellow,' said the motorist as the corpse was
+rolled over into the trench.  'I'm afraid he must have been rather a
+valuable animal.'
+
+"'He took second in the puppy class at Birmingham last year,' I said
+resolutely.
+
+"Constance snorted loudly.
+
+"'Don't cry, dear,' I said brokenly; 'it was all over in a moment.  He
+couldn't have suffered much.'
+
+"'Look here,' said the young fellow desperately, 'you simply must let
+me do something by way of reparation.'
+
+"I refused sweetly, but as he persisted I let him have my address.
+
+"Of course, we kept our own counsel as to the earlier episodes of the
+evening.  Lord Pabham never advertised the loss of his hyaena; when a
+strictly fruit-eating animal strayed from his park a year or two
+previously he was called upon to give compensation in eleven cases of
+sheep-worrying and practically to re-stock his neighbours'
+poultry-yards, and an escaped hyaena would have mounted up to something
+on the scale of a Government grant.  The gipsies were equally
+unobtrusive over their missing offspring; I don't suppose in large
+encampments they really know to a child or two how many they've got."
+
+The Baroness paused reflectively, and then continued:
+
+"There was a sequel to the adventure, though.  I got through the post a
+charming little diamond brooch, with the name Esmé set in a sprig of
+rosemary.  Incidentally, too, I lost the friendship of Constance
+Broddle.  You see, when I sold the brooch I quite properly refused to
+give her any share of the proceeds.  I pointed out that the Esmé part
+of the affair was my own invention, and the hyaena part of it belonged
+to Lord Pabham, if it really was his hyaena, of which, of course, I've
+no proof."
+
+
+
+
+THE MATCH-MAKER
+
+
+The grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness
+of one whose mission in life is to be ignored. When the flight of time
+should really have rendered abstinence and migration imperative the
+lighting apparatus would signal the fact in the usual way.
+
+Six minutes later Clovis approached the supper-table, in the blessed
+expectancy of one who has dined sketchily and long ago.
+
+"I'm starving," he announced, making an effort to sit down gracefully
+and read the menu at the same time.
+
+"So I gathered;" said his host, "from the fact that you were nearly
+punctual.  I ought to have told you that I'm a Food Reformer.  I've
+ordered two bowls of bread-and-milk and some health biscuits.  I hope
+you don't mind."
+
+Clovis pretended afterwards that he didn't go white above the
+collar-line for the fraction of a second.
+
+"All the same," he said, "you ought not to joke about such things.
+There really are such people.  I've known people who've met them. To
+think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and
+then to go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it."
+
+"They're like the Flagellants of the Middle Ages, who went about
+mortifying themselves."
+
+"They had some excuse," said Clovis.  "They did it to save their
+immortal souls, didn't they?  You needn't tell me that a man who
+doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a
+stomach either.  He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly
+developed."
+
+Clovis relapsed for a few golden moments into tender intimacies with a
+succession of rapidly disappearing oysters.
+
+"I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," he resumed
+presently.  "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify
+it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them.  Once they
+arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the
+spirit of the thing.  There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that
+quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.  Do you like
+my new waistcoat?  I'm wearing it for the first time to-night."
+
+"It looks like a great many others you've had lately, only worse. New
+dinner waistcoats are becoming a habit with you."
+
+"They say one always pays for the excesses of one's youth; mercifully
+that isn't true about one's clothes.  My mother is thinking of getting
+married."
+
+"Again!"
+
+"It's the first time."
+
+"Of course, you ought to know.  I was under the impression that she'd
+been married once or twice at least."
+
+"Three times, to be mathematically exact.  I meant that it was the
+first time she'd thought about getting married; the other times she did
+it without thinking.  As a matter of fact, it's really I who am doing
+the thinking for her in this case.  You see, it's quite two years since
+her last husband died."
+
+"You evidently think that brevity is the soul of widowhood."
+
+"Well, it struck me that she was getting moped, and beginning to settle
+down, which wouldn't suit her a bit.  The first symptom that I noticed
+was when she began to complain that we were living beyond our income.
+All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who
+aren't respectable live beyond other peoples.  A few gifted individuals
+manage to do both."
+
+"It's hardly so much a gift as an industry."
+
+"The crisis came," returned Clovis, "when she suddenly started the
+theory that late hours were bad for one, and wanted me to be in by one
+o'clock every night.  Imagine that sort of thing for me, who was
+eighteen on my last birthday."
+
+"On your last two birthdays, to be mathematically exact."
+
+"Oh, well, that's not my fault.  I'm not going to arrive at nineteen as
+long as my mother remains at thirty-seven.  One must have some regard
+for appearances."
+
+"Perhaps your mother would age a little in the process of settling
+down."
+
+"That's the last thing she'd think of.  Feminine reformations always
+start in on the failings of other people.  That's why I was so keen on
+the husband idea."
+
+"Did you go as far as to select the gentleman, or did you merely throw
+out a general idea, and trust to the force of suggestion?"
+
+"If one wants a thing done in a hurry one must see to it oneself. I
+found a military Johnny hanging round on a loose end at the club, and
+took him home to lunch once or twice.  He'd spent most of his life on
+the Indian frontier, building roads, and relieving famines and
+minimizing earthquakes, and all that sort of thing that one does do on
+frontiers.  He could talk sense to a peevish cobra in fifteen native
+languages, and probably knew what to do if you found a rogue elephant
+on your croquet-lawn; but he was shy and diffident with women.  I told
+my mother privately that he was an absolute woman-hater; so, of course,
+she laid herself out to flirt all she knew, which isn't a little."
+
+"And was the gentleman responsive?"
+
+"I hear he told some one at the club that he was looking out for a
+Colonial job, with plenty of hard work, for a young friend of his, so I
+gather that he has some idea of marrying into the family."
+
+"You seem destined to be the victim of the reformation, after all."
+
+Clovis wiped the trace of Turkish coffee and the beginnings of a smile
+from his lips, and slowly lowered his dexter eyelid.  Which, being
+interpreted, probably meant, "I DON'T think!"
+
+
+
+
+TOBERMORY
+
+
+It was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that
+indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold
+storage, and there is nothing to hunt--unless one is bounded on the
+north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop
+after fat red stags.  Lady Blemley's house-party was not bounded on the
+north by the Bristol Channel, hence there was a full gathering of her
+guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon.  And, in spite
+of the blankness of the season and the triteness of the occasion, there
+was no trace in the company of that fatigued restlessness which means a
+dread of the pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge.  The
+undisguised openmouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the
+homely negative personality of Mr. Cornelius Appin.  Of all her guests,
+he was the one who had come to Lady Blemley with the vaguest
+reputation.  Some one had said he was "clever," and he had got his
+invitation in the moderate expectation, on the part of his hostess,
+that some portion at least of his cleverness would be contributed to
+the general entertainment.  Until tea-time that day she had been unable
+to discover in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay.  He was
+neither a wit nor a croquet champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter
+of amateur theatricals.  Neither did his exterior suggest the sort of
+man in whom women are willing to pardon a generous measure of mental
+deficiency.  He had subsided into mere Mr. Appin, and the Cornelius
+seemed a piece of transparent baptismal bluff.  And now he was claiming
+to have launched on the world a discovery beside which the invention of
+gunpowder, of the printing-press, and of steam locomotion were
+inconsiderable trifles.  Science had made bewildering strides in many
+directions during recent decades, but this thing seemed to belong to
+the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement.
+
+"And do you really ask us to believe," Sir Wilfrid was saying, "that
+you have discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human
+speech, and that dear old Tobermory has proved your first successful
+pupil?"
+
+"It is a problem at which I have worked for the last seventeen years,"
+said Mr. Appin, "but only during the last eight or nine months have I
+been rewarded with glimmerings of success.  Of course I have
+experimented with thousands of animals, but latterly only with cats,
+those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so
+marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly
+developed feral instincts.  Here and there among cats one comes across
+an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of
+human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago
+I saw at once that I was in contact with a 'Beyond-cat' of
+extraordinary intelligence.  I had gone far along the road to success
+in recent experiments; with Tobermory, as you call him, I have reached
+the goal."
+
+Mr. Appin concluded his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove
+to divest of a triumphant inflection.  No one said "Rats," though
+Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked
+those rodents of disbelief.
+
+"And do you mean to say," asked Miss Resker, after a slight pause,
+"that you have taught Tobermory to say and understand easy sentences of
+one syllable?"
+
+"My dear Miss Resker," said the wonderworker patiently, "one teaches
+little children and savages and backward adults in that piecemeal
+fashion; when one has once solved the problem of making a beginning
+with an animal of highly developed intelligence one has no need for
+those halting methods.  Tobermory can speak our language with perfect
+correctness."
+
+This time Clovis very distinctly said, "Beyond-rats!"  Sir Wilfrid was
+more polite, but equally sceptical.
+
+"Hadn't we better have the cat in and judge for ourselves?" suggested
+Lady Blemley.
+
+Sir Wilfrid went in search of the animal, and the company settled
+themselves down to the languid expectation of witnessing some more or
+less adroit drawing-room ventriloquism.
+
+In a minute Sir Wilfrid was back in the room, his face white beneath
+its tan and his eyes dilated with excitement.
+
+"By Gad, it's true!"
+
+His agitation was unmistakably genuine, and his hearers started forward
+in a thrill of awakened interest.
+
+Collapsing into an armchair he continued breathlessly: "I found him
+dozing in the smoking-room, and called out to him to come for his tea.
+He blinked at me in his usual way, and I said, 'Come on, Toby; don't
+keep us waiting;' and, by Gad! he drawled out in a most horribly
+natural voice that he'd come when he dashed well pleased! I nearly
+jumped out of my skin!"
+
+Appin had preached to absolutely incredulous hearers; Sir Wilfrid's
+statement carried instant conviction.  A Babel-like chorus of startled
+exclamation arose, amid which the scientist sat mutely enjoying the
+first fruit of his stupendous discovery.
+
+In the midst of the clamour Tobermory entered the room and made his way
+with velvet tread and studied unconcern across to the group seated
+round the tea-table.
+
+A sudden hush of awkwardness and constraint fell on the company.
+Somehow there seemed an element of embarrassment in addressing on equal
+terms a domestic cat of acknowledged dental ability.
+
+"Will you have some milk, Tobermory?" asked Lady Blemley in a rather
+strained voice.
+
+"I don't mind if I do," was the response, couched in a tone of even
+indifference.  A shiver of suppressed excitement went through the
+listeners, and Lady Blemley might be excused for pouring out the
+saucerful of milk rather unsteadily.
+
+"I'm afraid I've spilt a good deal of it," she said apologetically.
+
+"After all, it's not my Axminster," was Tobermory's rejoinder.
+
+Another silence fell on the group, and then Miss Resker, in her best
+district-visitor manner, asked if the human language had been difficult
+to learn.  Tobermory looked squarely at her for a moment and then fixed
+his gaze serenely on the middle distance.  It was obvious that boring
+questions lay outside his scheme of life.
+
+"What do you think of human intelligence?" asked Mavis Pellington
+lamely.
+
+"Of whose intelligence in particular?" asked Tobermory coldly.
+
+"Oh, well, mine for instance," said Mavis, with a feeble laugh.
+
+"You put me in an embarrassing position," said Tobermory, whose tone
+and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment.  "When
+your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested
+that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that
+there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the
+feeble-minded.  Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was
+the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were
+the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy
+their old car.  You know, the one they call 'The Envy of Sisyphus,'
+because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it."
+
+Lady Blemley's protestations would have had greater effect if she had
+not casually suggested to Mavis only that morning that the car in
+question would be just the thing for her down at her Devonshire home.
+
+Major Barfield plunged in heavily to effect a diversion.
+
+"How about your carryings-on with the tortoiseshell puss up at the
+stables, eh?"
+
+The moment he had said it every one realized the blunder.
+
+"One does not usually discuss these matters in public," said Tobermory
+frigidly.  "From a slight observation of your ways since you've been in
+this house I should imagine you'd find it inconvenient if I were to
+shift the conversation on to your own little affairs."
+
+The panic which ensued was not confined to the Major.
+
+"Would you like to go and see if cook has got your dinner ready?"
+suggested Lady Blemley hurriedly, affecting to ignore the fact that it
+wanted at least two hours to Tobermory's dinner-time.
+
+"Thanks," said Tobermory, "not quite so soon after my tea.  I don't
+want to die of indigestion."
+
+"Cats have nine lives, you know," said Sir Wilfrid heartily.
+
+"Possibly," answered Tobermory; "but only one liver."
+
+"Adelaide!" said Mrs. Cornett, "do you mean to encourage that cat to go
+out and gossip about us in the servants' hall?"
+
+The panic had indeed become general.  A narrow ornamental balustrade
+ran in front of most of the bedroom windows at the Towers, and it was
+recalled with dismay that this had formed a favourite promenade for
+Tobermory at all hours, whence he could watch the pigeons--and heaven
+knew what else besides.  If he intended to become reminiscent in his
+present outspoken strain the effect would be something more than
+disconcerting.  Mrs. Cornett, who spent much time at her toilet table,
+and whose complexion was reputed to be of a nomadic though punctual
+disposition, looked as ill at ease as the Major.  Miss Scrawen, who
+wrote fiercely sensuous poetry and led a blameless life, merely
+displayed irritation; if you are methodical and virtuous in private you
+don't necessarily want every one to know it.  Bertie van Tahn, who was
+so depraved at seventeen that he had long ago given up trying to be any
+worse, turned a dull shade of gardenia white, but he did not commit the
+error of dashing out of the room like Odo Finsberry, a young gentleman
+who was understood to be reading for the Church and who was possibly
+disturbed at the thought of scandals he might hear concerning other
+people.  Clovis had the presence of mind to maintain a composed
+exterior; privately he was calculating how long it would take to
+procure a box of fancy mice through the agency of the EXCHANGE AND MART
+as a species of hush-money.
+
+Even in a delicate situation like the present, Agnes Resker could not
+endure to remain too long in the background.
+
+"Why did I ever come down here?" she asked dramatically.
+
+Tobermory immediately accepted the opening.
+
+"Judging by what you said to Mrs. Cornett on the croquet-lawn
+yesterday, you were out for food.  You described the Blemleys as the
+dullest people to stay with that you knew, but said they were clever
+enough to employ a first-rate cook; otherwise they'd find it difficult
+to get anyone to come down a second time."
+
+"There's not a word of truth in it!  I appeal to Mrs. Cornett--"
+exclaimed the discomfited Agnes.
+
+"Mrs. Cornett repeated your remark afterwards to Bertie van Tahn,"
+continued Tobermory, "and said, 'That woman is a regular Hunger
+Marcher; she'd go anywhere for four square meals a day,' and Bertie van
+Tahn said--"
+
+At this point the chronicle mercifully ceased.  Tobermory had caught a
+glimpse of the big yellow Tom from the Rectory working his way through
+the shrubbery towards the stable wing.  In a flash he had vanished
+through the open French window.
+
+With the disappearance of his too brilliant pupil Cornelius Appin found
+himself beset by a hurricane of bitter upbraiding, anxious inquiry, and
+frightened entreaty.  The responsibility for the situation lay with
+him, and he must prevent matters from becoming worse.  Could Tobermory
+impart his dangerous gift to other cats? was the first question he had
+to answer.  It was possible, he replied, that he might have initiated
+his intimate friend the stable puss into his new accomplishment, but it
+was unlikely that his teaching could have taken a wider range as yet.
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Cornett, "Tobermory may be a valuable cat and a great
+pet; but I'm sure you'll agree, Adelaide, that both he and the stable
+cat must be done away with without delay."
+
+"You don't suppose I've enjoyed the last quarter of an hour, do you?"
+said Lady Blemley bitterly.  "My husband and I are very fond of
+Tobermory--at least, we were before this horrible accomplishment was
+infused into him; but now, of course, the only thing is to have him
+destroyed as soon as possible."
+
+"We can put some strychnine in the scraps he always gets at
+dinner-time," said Sir Wilfrid, "and I will go and drown the stable cat
+myself.  The coachman will be very sore at losing his pet, but I'll say
+a very catching form of mange has broken out in both cats and we're
+afraid of it spreading to the kennels."
+
+"But my great discovery!" expostulated Mr. Appin; "after all my years
+of research and experiment--"
+
+"You can go and experiment on the shorthorns at the farm, who are under
+proper control," said Mrs. Cornett, "or the elephants at the Zoological
+Gardens.  They're said to be highly intelligent, and they have this
+recommendation, that they don't come creeping about our bedrooms and
+under chairs, and so forth."
+
+An archangel ecstatically proclaiming the Millennium, and then finding
+that it clashed unpardonably with Henley and would have to be
+indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than
+Cornelius Appin at the reception of his wonderful achievement.  Public
+opinion, however, was against him--in fact, had the general voice been
+consulted on the subject it is probable that a strong minority vote
+would have been in favour of including him in the strychnine diet.
+
+Defective train arrangements and a nervous desire to see matters
+brought to a finish prevented an immediate dispersal of the party, but
+dinner that evening was not a social success.  Sir Wilfrid had had
+rather a trying time with the stable cat and subsequently with the
+coachman.  Agnes Resker ostentatiously limited her repast to a morsel
+of dry toast, which she bit as though it were a personal enemy; while
+Mavis Pellington maintained a vindictive silence throughout the meal.
+Lady Blemley kept up a flow of what she hoped was conversation, but her
+attention was fixed on the doorway.  A plateful of carefully dosed fish
+scraps was in readiness on the sideboard, but sweets and savoury and
+dessert went their way, and no Tobermory appeared either in the
+dining-room or kitchen.
+
+The sepulchral dinner was cheerful compared with the subsequent vigil
+in the smoking-room.  Eating and drinking had at least supplied a
+distraction and cloak to the prevailing embarrassment. Bridge was out
+of the question in the general tension of nerves and tempers, and after
+Odo Finsberry had given a lugubrious rendering of "Melisande in the
+Wood" to a frigid audience, music was tacitly avoided.  At eleven the
+servants went to bed, announcing that the small window in the pantry
+had been left open as usual for Tobermory's private use.  The guests
+read steadily through the current batch of magazines, and fell back
+gradually, on the "Badminton Library" and bound volumes of PUNCH.  Lady
+Blemley made periodic visits to the pantry, returning each time with an
+expression of listless depression which forestalled questioning.
+
+At two o'clock Clovis broke the dominating silence.
+
+"He won't turn up to-night.  He's probably in the local newspaper
+office at the present moment, dictating the first instalment of his
+reminiscences.  Lady What's-her-name's book won't be in it. It will be
+the event of the day."
+
+Having made this contribution to the general cheerfulness, Clovis went
+to bed.  At long intervals the various members of the house-party
+followed his example.
+
+The servants taking round the early tea made a uniform announcement in
+reply to a uniform question.  Tobermory had not returned.
+
+Breakfast was, if anything, a more unpleasant function than dinner had
+been, but before its conclusion the situation was relieved. Tobermory's
+corpse was brought in from the shrubbery, where a gardener had just
+discovered it.  From the bites on his throat and the yellow fur which
+coated his claws it was evident that he had fallen in unequal combat
+with the big Tom from the Rectory.
+
+By midday most of the guests had quitted the Towers, and after lunch
+Lady Blemley had sufficiently recovered her spirits to write an
+extremely nasty letter to the Rectory about the loss of her valuable
+pet.
+
+Tobermory had been Appin's one successful pupil, and he was destined to
+have no successor.  A few weeks later an elephant in the Dresden
+Zoological Garden, which had shown no previous signs of irritability,
+broke loose and killed an Englishman who had apparently been teasing
+it.  The victim's name was variously reported in the papers as Oppin
+and Eppelin, but his front name was faithfully rendered Cornelius.
+
+"If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said
+Clovis, "he deserved all he got."
+
+
+
+
+MRS. PACKLETIDE'S TIGER
+
+
+It was Mrs. Packletide's pleasure and intention that she should shoot a
+tiger.  Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or
+that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than
+she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of
+inhabitants.  The compelling motive for her sudden deviation towards
+the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently
+been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and
+talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger-skin and a
+heavy harvest of Press photographs could successfully counter that sort
+of thing.  Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch
+she would give at her house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in Loona
+Bimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the
+foreground and all of the conversation.  She had also already designed
+in her mind the tiger-claw brooch that she was going to give Loona
+Bimberton on her next birthday.  In a world that is supposed to be
+chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception;
+her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona
+Bimberton.
+
+Circumstances proved propitious.  Mrs. Packletide had offered a
+thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without
+overmuch risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring
+village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of
+respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing
+infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to
+the smaller domestic animals.  The prospect of earning the thousand
+rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the
+villagers; children were posted night and day on the outskirts of the
+local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his
+attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds
+of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him
+satisfied with his present quarters.  The one great anxiety was lest he
+should die of old age before the date appointed for the memsahib's
+shoot.  Mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the
+day's work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail
+the restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.
+
+The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless.  A platform had
+been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and
+thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin.
+A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a
+partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still
+night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted
+rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited
+the coming of the quarry.
+
+"I suppose we are in some danger?" said Miss Mebbin.
+
+She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid
+dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for.
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Packletide; "it's a very old tiger.  It couldn't
+spring up here even if it wanted to."
+
+"If it's an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper.  A thousand
+rupees is a lot of money."
+
+Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money
+in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination. Her energetic
+intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself in tips in
+some Moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung to her instinctively
+under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less
+sympathetic hands.  Her speculations as to the market depreciation of
+tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the
+animal itself.  As soon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay
+flat on the earth, seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of
+all available cover than for the purpose of snatching a short rest
+before commencing the grand attack.
+
+"I believe it's ill," said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindustani, for the
+benefit of the village headman, who was in ambush in a neighbouring
+tree.
+
+"Hush!" said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger commenced
+ambling towards his victim.
+
+"Now, now!" urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement; "if he doesn't
+touch the goat we needn't pay for it."  (The bait was an extra.)
+
+The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawny beast
+sprang to one side and then rolled over in the stillness of death.  In
+a moment a crowd of excited natives had swarmed on to the scene, and
+their shouting speedily carried the glad news to the village, where a
+thumping of tom-toms took up the chorus of triumph.  And their triumph
+and rejoicing found a ready echo in the heart of Mrs. Packletide;
+already that luncheon-party in Curzon Street seemed immeasurably nearer.
+
+It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat was
+in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace of the
+rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger.  Evidently the wrong
+animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to
+heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by
+senile decay.  Mrs. Packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery;
+but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the
+villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the
+fiction that she had shot the beast.  And Miss Mebbin was a paid
+companion.  Therefore did Mrs. Packletide face the cameras with a light
+heart, and her pictured fame reached from the pages of the TEXAS WEEKLY
+SNAPSHOT to the illustrated Monday supplement of the NOVOE VREMYA.  As
+for Loona Bimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for
+weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was
+a model of repressed emotions.  The luncheon-party she declined; there
+are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.
+
+From Curzon Street the tiger-skin rug travelled down to the Manor
+House, and was duly inspected and admired by the county, and it seemed
+a fitting and appropriate thing when Mrs. Packletide went to the County
+Costume Ball in the character of Diana.  She refused to fall in,
+however, with Clovis's tempting suggestion of a primeval dance party,
+at which every one should wear the skins of beasts they had recently
+slain.  "I should be in rather a Baby Bunting condition," confessed
+Clovis, "with a miserable rabbit-skin or two to wrap up in, but then,"
+he added, with a rather malicious glance at Diana's proportions, "my
+figure is quite as good as that Russian dancing boy's."
+
+"How amused every one would be if they knew what really happened," said
+Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.
+
+"How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said Miss
+Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.
+
+"No one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changing
+colour as rapidly as though it were going through a book of patterns
+before post-time.
+
+"Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin.  Mrs. Packletide's face
+settled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white.
+
+"You surely wouldn't give me away?" she asked.
+
+"I've seen a week-end cottage near Dorking that I should rather like to
+buy," said Miss Mebbin with seeming irrelevance.  "Six hundred and
+eighty, freehold.  Quite a bargain, only I don't happen to have the
+money."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Louisa Mebbin's pretty week-end cottage, christened by her "Les
+Fauves," and gay in summertime with its garden borders of tiger-lilies,
+is the wonder and admiration of her friends.
+
+"It is a marvel how Louisa manages to do it," is the general verdict.
+
+Mrs. Packletide indulges in no more big-game shooting.
+
+"The incidental expenses are so heavy," she confides to inquiring
+friends.
+
+
+
+
+THE STAMPEDING OF LADY BASTABLE
+
+
+"It would be rather nice if you would put Clovis up for another six
+days while I go up north to the MacGregors'," said Mrs. Sangrail
+sleepily across the breakfast-table.  It was her invariable plan to
+speak in a sleepy, comfortable voice whenever she was unusually keen
+about anything; it put people off their guard, and they frequently fell
+in with her wishes before they had realized that she was really asking
+for anything.  Lady Bastable, however, was not so easily taken
+unawares; possibly she knew that voice and what it betokened--at any
+rate, she knew Clovis.
+
+She frowned at a piece of toast and ate it very slowly, as though she
+wished to convey the impression that the process hurt her more than it
+hurt the toast; but no extension of hospitality on Clovis's behalf rose
+to her lips.
+
+"It would be a great convenience to me," pursued Mrs. Sangrail,
+abandoning the careless tone.  "I particularly don't want to take him
+to the MacGregors', and it will only be for six days."
+
+"It will seem longer," said Lady Bastable dismally. "The last time he
+stayed here for a week--"
+
+"I know," interrupted the other hastily, "but that was nearly two years
+ago.  He was younger then."
+
+"But he hasn't improved," said her hostess; "it's no use growing older
+if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself."
+
+Mrs. Sangrail was unable to argue the point; since Clovis had reached
+the age of seventeen she had never ceased to bewail his irrepressible
+waywardness to all her circle of acquaintances, and a polite scepticism
+would have greeted the slightest hint at a prospective reformation.
+She discarded the fruitless effort at cajolery and resorted to
+undisguised bribery.
+
+"If you'll have him here for these six days I'll cancel that
+outstanding bridge account."
+
+It was only for forty-nine shillings, but Lady Bastable loved shillings
+with a great, strong love.  To lose money at bridge and not to have to
+pay it was one of those rare experiences which gave the card-table a
+glamour in her eyes which it could never otherwise have possessed.
+Mrs. Sangrail was almost equally devoted to her card winnings, but the
+prospect of conveniently warehousing her offspring for six days, and
+incidentally saving his railway fare to the north, reconciled her to
+the sacrifice; when Clovis made a belated appearance at the
+breakfast-table the bargain had been struck.
+
+"Just think," said Mrs. Sangrail sleepily; "Lady Bastable has very
+kindly asked you to stay on here while I go to the MacGregors'."
+
+Clovis said suitable things in a highly unsuitable manner, and
+proceeded to make punitive expeditions among the breakfast dishes with
+a scowl on his face that would have driven the purr out of a peace
+conference.  The arrangement that had been concluded behind his back
+was doubly distasteful to him.  In the first place, he particularly
+wanted to teach the MacGregor boys, who could well afford the
+knowledge, how to play poker-patience; secondly, the Bastable catering
+was of the kind that is classified as a rude plenty, which Clovis
+translated as a plenty that gives rise to rude remarks.  Watching him
+from behind ostentatiously sleepy lids, his mother realized, in the
+light of long experience, that any rejoicing over the success of her
+manoeuvre would be distinctly premature.  It was one thing to fit
+Clovis into a convenient niche of the domestic jig-saw puzzle; it was
+quite another matter to get him to stay there.
+
+Lady Bastable was wont to retire in state to the morning-room
+immediately after breakfast and spend a quiet hour in skimming through
+the papers; they were there, so she might as well get their money's
+worth out of them.  Politics did not greatly interest her, but she was
+obsessed with a favourite foreboding that one of these days there would
+be a great social upheaval, in which everybody would be killed by
+everybody else.  "It will come sooner than we think," she would observe
+darkly; a mathematical expert of exceptionally high powers would have
+been puzzled to work out the approximate date from the slender and
+confusing groundwork which this assertion afforded.
+
+On this particular morning the sight of Lady Bastable enthroned among
+her papers gave Clovis the hint towards which his mind had been groping
+all breakfast time.  His mother had gone upstairs to supervise packing
+operations, and he was alone on the ground-floor with his hostess--and
+the servants.  The latter were the key to the situation.  Bursting
+wildly into the kitchen quarters, Clovis screamed a frantic though
+strictly non-committal summons: "Poor Lady Bastable!  In the
+morning-room!  Oh, quick!"  The next moment the butler, cook, page-boy,
+two or three maids, and a gardener who had happened to be in one of the
+outer kitchens were following in a hot scurry after Clovis as he headed
+back for the morning-room. Lady Bastable was roused from the world of
+newspaper lore by hearing a Japanese screen in the hall go down with a
+crash.  Then the door leading from the hall flew open and her young
+guest tore madly through the room, shrieked at her in passing, "The
+jacquerie!  They're on us!" and dashed like an escaping hawk out
+through the French window.  The scared mob of servants burst in on his
+heels, the gardener still clutching the sickle with which he had been
+trimming hedges, and the impetus of their headlong haste carried them,
+slipping and sliding, over the smooth parquet flooring towards the
+chair where their mistress sat in panic-stricken amazement.  If she had
+had a moment granted her for reflection she would have behaved, as she
+afterwards explained, with considerable dignity.  It was probably the
+sickle which decided her, but anyway she followed the lead that Clovis
+had given her through the French window, and ran well and far across
+the lawn before the eyes of her astonished retainers.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Lost dignity is not a possession which can be restored at a moment's
+notice, and both Lady Bastable and the butler found the process of
+returning to normal conditions almost as painful as a slow recovery
+from drowning.  A jacquerie, even if carried out with the most
+respectful of intentions, cannot fail to leave some traces of
+embarrassment behind it.  By lunch-time, however, decorum had
+reasserted itself with enhanced rigour as a natural rebound from its
+recent overthrow, and the meal was served in a frigid stateliness that
+might have been framed on a Byzantine model.  Halfway through its
+duration Mrs. Sangrail was solemnly presented with an envelope lying on
+a silver salver.  It contained a cheque for forty-nine shillings.
+
+The MacGregor boys learned how to play poker-patience; after all, they
+could afford to.
+
+
+
+
+THE BACKGROUND
+
+
+"That woman's art-jargon tires me," said Clovis to his journalist
+friend.  "She's so fond of talking of certain pictures as 'growing on
+one,' as though they were a sort of fungus."
+
+"That reminds me," said the journalist, "of the story of Henri Deplis.
+Have I ever told it you?"
+
+Clovis shook his head.
+
+"Henri Deplis was by birth a native of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg.
+On maturer reflection he became a commercial traveller.  His business
+activities frequently took him beyond the limits of the Grand Duchy,
+and he was stopping in a small town of Northern Italy when news reached
+him from home that a legacy from a distant and deceased relative had
+fallen to his share.
+
+"It was not a large legacy, even from the modest standpoint of Henri
+Deplis, but it impelled him towards some seemingly harmless
+extravagances.  In particular it led him to patronize local art as
+represented by the tattoo-needles of Signor Andreas Pincini. Signor
+Pincini was, perhaps, the most brilliant master of tattoo craft that
+Italy had ever known, but his circumstances were decidedly
+impoverished, and for the sum of six hundred francs he gladly undertook
+to cover his client's back, from the collar-bone down to the waistline,
+with a glowing representation of the Fall of Icarus.  The design, when
+finally developed, was a slight disappointment to Monsieur Deplis, who
+had suspected Icarus of being a fortress taken by Wallenstein in the
+Thirty Years' War, but he was more than satisfied with the execution of
+the work, which was acclaimed by all who had the privilege of seeing it
+as Pincini's masterpiece.
+
+"It was his greatest effort, and his last.  Without even waiting to be
+paid, the illustrious craftsman departed this life, and was buried
+under an ornate tombstone, whose winged cherubs would have afforded
+singularly little scope for the exercise of his favourite art.  There
+remained, however, the widow Pincini, to whom the six hundred francs
+were due.  And thereupon arose the great crisis in the life of Henri
+Deplis, traveller of commerce.  The legacy, under the stress of
+numerous little calls on its substance, had dwindled to very
+insignificant proportions, and when a pressing wine bill and sundry
+other current accounts had been paid, there remained little more than
+430 francs to offer to the widow.  The lady was properly indignant, not
+wholly, as she volubly explained, on account of the suggested
+writing-off of 170 francs, but also at the attempt to depreciate the
+value of her late husband's acknowledged masterpiece.  In a week's time
+Deplis was obliged to reduce his offer to 405 francs, which
+circumstance fanned the widow's indignation into a fury.  She cancelled
+the sale of the work of art, and a few days later Deplis learned with a
+sense of consternation that she had presented it to the municipality of
+Bergamo, which had gratefully accepted it.  He left the neighbourhood
+as unobtrusively as possible, and was genuinely relieved when his
+business commands took him to Rome, where he hoped his identity and
+that of the famous picture might be lost sight of.
+
+"But he bore on his back the burden of the dead man's genius.  On
+presenting himself one day in the steaming corridor of a vapour bath,
+he was at once hustled back into his clothes by the proprietor, who was
+a North Italian, and who emphatically refused to allow the celebrated
+Fall of Icarus to be publicly on view without the permission of the
+municipality of Bergamo.  Public interest and official vigilance
+increased as the matter became more widely known, and Deplis was unable
+to take a simple dip in the sea or river on the hottest afternoon
+unless clothed up to the collarbone in a substantial bathing garment.
+Later on the authorities of Bergamo conceived the idea that salt water
+might be injurious to the masterpiece, and a perpetual injunction was
+obtained which debarred the muchly harassed commercial traveller from
+sea bathing under any circumstances.  Altogether, he was fervently
+thankful when his firm of employers found him a new range of activities
+in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.  His thankfulness, however, ceased
+abruptly at the Franco-Italian frontier.  An imposing array of official
+force barred his departure, and he was sternly reminded of the
+stringent law which forbids the exportation of Italian works of art.
+
+"A diplomatic parley ensued between the Luxemburgian and Italian
+Governments, and at one time the European situation became overcast
+with the possibilities of trouble.  But the Italian Government stood
+firm; it declined to concern itself in the least with the fortunes or
+even the existence of Henri Deplis, commercial traveller, but was
+immovable in its decision that the Fall of Icarus (by the late Pincini,
+Andreas) at present the property of the municipality of Bergamo, should
+not leave the country.
+
+"The excitement died down in time, but the unfortunate Deplis, who was
+of a constitutionally retiring disposition, found himself a few months
+later, once more the storm-centre of a furious controversy.  A certain
+German art expert, who had obtained from the municipality of Bergamo
+permission to inspect the famous masterpiece, declared it to be a
+spurious Pincini, probably the work of some pupil whom he had employed
+in his declining years. The evidence of Deplis on the subject was
+obviously worthless, as he had been under the influence of the
+customary narcotics during the long process of pricking in the design.
+The editor of an Italian art journal refuted the contentions of the
+German expert and undertook to prove that his private life did not
+conform to any modern standard of decency.  The whole of Italy and
+Germany were drawn into the dispute, and the rest of Europe was soon
+involved in the quarrel.  There were stormy scenes in the Spanish
+Parliament, and the University of Copenhagen bestowed a gold medal on
+the German expert (afterwards sending a commission to examine his
+proofs on the spot), while two Polish schoolboys in Paris committed
+suicide to show what THEY thought of the matter.
+
+"Meanwhile, the unhappy human background fared no better than before,
+and it was not surprising that he drifted into the ranks of Italian
+anarchists.  Four times at least he was escorted to the frontier as a
+dangerous and undesirable foreigner, but he was always brought back as
+the Fall of Icarus (attributed to Pincini, Andreas, early Twentieth
+Century).  And then one day, at an anarchist congress at Genoa, a
+fellow-worker, in the heat of debate, broke a phial full of corrosive
+liquid over his back.  The red shirt that he was wearing mitigated the
+effects, but the Icarus was ruined beyond recognition.  His assailant
+was severely reprimanded for assaulting a fellow-anarchist and received
+seven years' imprisonment for defacing a national art treasure.  As
+soon as he was able to leave the hospital Henri Deplis was put across
+the frontier as an undesirable alien.
+
+"In the quieter streets of Paris, especially in the neighbourhood of
+the Ministry of Fine Arts, you may sometimes meet a depressed,
+anxious-looking man, who, if you pass him the time of day, will answer
+you with a slight Luxemburgian accent.  He nurses the illusion that he
+is one of the lost arms of the Venus de Milo, and hopes that the French
+Government may be persuaded to buy him.  On all other subjects I
+believe he is tolerably sane."
+
+
+
+
+HERMANN THE IRASCIBLE--A STORY OF THE GREAT WEEP
+
+
+It was in the second decade of the twentieth century, after the Great
+Plague had devastated England, that Hermann the Irascible, nicknamed
+also the Wise, sat on the British throne.  The Mortal Sickness had
+swept away the entire Royal Family, unto the third and fourth
+generations, and thus it came to pass that Hermann the Fourteenth of
+Saxe-Drachsen-Wachtelstein, who had stood thirtieth in the order of
+succession, found himself one day ruler of the British dominions within
+and beyond the seas.  He was one of the unexpected things that happen
+in politics, and he happened with great thoroughness.  In many ways he
+was the most progressive monarch who had sat on an important throne;
+before people knew where they were, they were somewhere else.  Even his
+Ministers, progressive though they were by tradition, found it
+difficult to keep pace with his legislative suggestions.
+
+"As a matter of fact," admitted the Prime Minister, "we are hampered by
+these votes-for-women creatures; they disturb our meetings throughout
+the country, and they try to turn Downing Street into a sort of
+political picnic-ground."
+
+"They must be dealt with," said Hermann.
+
+"Dealt with," said the Prime Minister; "exactly, just so; but how?"
+
+"I will draft you a Bill," said the King, sitting down at his
+typewriting machine, "enacting that women shall vote at all future
+elections.  Shall vote, you observe; or, to put it plainer, must.
+Voting will remain optional, as before, for male electors; but every
+woman between the ages of twenty-one and seventy will be obliged to
+vote, not only at elections for Parliament, county councils, district
+boards, parish councils, and municipalities, but for coroners, school
+inspectors, churchwardens, curators of museums, sanitary authorities,
+police-court interpreters, swimming-bath instructors, contractors,
+choir-masters, market superintendents, art-school teachers, cathedral
+vergers, and other local functionaries whose names I will add as they
+occur to me. All these offices will become elective, and failure to
+vote at any election falling within her area of residence will involve
+the female elector in a penalty of £10.  Absence, unsupported by an
+adequate medical certificate, will not be accepted as an excuse. Pass
+this Bill through the two Houses of Parliament and bring it to me for
+signature the day after to-morrow."
+
+From the very outset the Compulsory Female Franchise produced little or
+no elation even in circles which had been loudest in demanding the
+vote.  The bulk of the women of the country had been indifferent or
+hostile to the franchise agitation, and the most fanatical Suffragettes
+began to wonder what they had found so attractive in the prospect of
+putting ballot-papers into a box. In the country districts the task of
+carrying out the provisions of the new Act was irksome enough; in the
+towns and cities it became an incubus.  There seemed no end to the
+elections. Laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their
+work to vote, often for a candidate whose name they hadn't heard
+before, and whom they selected at haphazard; female clerks and
+waitresses got up extra early to get their voting done before starting
+off to their places of business.  Society women found their
+arrangements impeded and upset by the continual necessity for attending
+the polling stations, and week-end parties and summer holidays became
+gradually a masculine luxury.  As for Cairo and the Riviera, they were
+possible only for genuine invalids or people of enormous wealth, for
+the accumulation of £10 fines during a prolonged absence was a
+contingency that even ordinarily wealthy folk could hardly afford to
+risk.
+
+It was not wonderful that the female disfranchisement agitation became
+a formidable movement.  The No-Votes-for-Women League numbered its
+feminine adherents by the million; its colours, citron and old
+Dutch-madder, were flaunted everywhere, and its battle hymn, "We don't
+want to Vote," became a popular refrain. As the Government showed no
+signs of being impressed by peaceful persuasion, more violent methods
+came into vogue.  Meetings were disturbed, Ministers were mobbed,
+policemen were bitten, and ordinary prison fare rejected, and on the
+eve of the anniversary of Trafalgar women bound themselves in tiers up
+the entire length of the Nelson column so that its customary floral
+decoration had to be abandoned.  Still the Government obstinately
+adhered to its conviction that women ought to have the vote.
+
+Then, as a last resort, some woman wit hit upon an expedient which it
+was strange that no one had thought of before.  The Great Weep was
+organized.  Relays of women, ten thousand at a time, wept continuously
+in the public places of the Metropolis.  They wept in railway stations,
+in tubes and omnibuses, in the National Gallery, at the Army and Navy
+Stores, in St. James's Park, at ballad concerts, at Prince's and in the
+Burlington Arcade.  The hitherto unbroken success of the brilliant
+farcical comedy "Henry's Rabbit" was imperilled by the presence of
+drearily weeping women in stalls and circle and gallery, and one of the
+brightest divorce cases that had been tried for many years was robbed
+of much of its sparkle by the lachrymose behaviour of a section of the
+audience.
+
+"What are we to do?" asked the Prime Minister, whose cook had wept into
+all the breakfast dishes and whose nursemaid had gone out, crying
+quietly and miserably, to take the children for a walk in the Park.
+
+"There is a time for everything," said the King; "there is a time to
+yield.  Pass a measure through the two Houses depriving women of the
+right to vote, and bring it to me for the Royal assent the day after
+to-morrow."
+
+As the Minister withdrew, Hermann the Irascible, who was also nicknamed
+the Wise, gave a profound chuckle.
+
+"There are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream,"
+he quoted, "but I'm not sure," he added, "that it's not the best way."
+
+
+
+
+THE UNREST-CURE
+
+
+On the rack in the railway carriage immediately opposite Clovis was a
+solidly wrought travelling-bag, with a carefully written label, on
+which was inscribed, "J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near
+Slowborough."  Immediately below the rack sat the human embodiment of
+the label, a solid, sedate individual, sedately dressed, sedately
+conversational.  Even without his conversation (which was addressed to
+a friend seated by his side, and touched chiefly on such topics as the
+backwardness of Roman hyacinths and the prevalence of measles at the
+Rectory), one could have gauged fairly accurately the temperament and
+mental outlook of the travelling bag's owner.  But he seemed unwilling
+to leave anything to the imagination of a casual observer, and his talk
+grew presently personal and introspective.
+
+"I don't know how it is," he told his friend, "I'm not much over forty,
+but I seem to have settled down into a deep groove of elderly
+middle-age.  My sister shows the same tendency.  We like everything to
+be exactly in its accustomed place; we like things to happen exactly at
+their appointed times; we like everything to be usual, orderly,
+punctual, methodical, to a hair's breadth, to a minute.  It distresses
+and upsets us if it is not so.  For instance, to take a very trifling
+matter, a thrush has built its nest year after year in the catkin-tree
+on the lawn; this year, for no obvious reason, it is building in the
+ivy on the garden wall.  We have said very little about it, but I think
+we both feel that the change is unnecessary, and just a little
+irritating."
+
+"Perhaps," said the friend, "it is a different thrush."
+
+"We have suspected that," said J. P. Huddle, "and I think it gives us
+even more cause for annoyance.  We don't feel that we want a change of
+thrush at our time of life; and yet, as I have said, we have scarcely
+reached an age when these things should make themselves seriously felt."
+
+"What you want," said the friend, "is an Unrest-cure."
+
+"An Unrest-cure?  I've never heard of such a thing."
+
+"You've heard of Rest-cures for people who've broken down under stress
+of too much worry and strenuous living; well, you're suffering from
+overmuch repose and placidity, and you need the opposite kind of
+treatment."
+
+"But where would one go for such a thing?"
+
+"Well, you might stand as an Orange candidate for Kilkenny, or do a
+course of district visiting in one of the Apache quarters of Paris, or
+give lectures in Berlin to prove that most of Wagner's music was
+written by Gambetta; and there's always the interior of Morocco to
+travel in.  But, to be really effective, the Unrest-cure ought to be
+tried in the home.  How you would do it I haven't the faintest idea."
+
+It was at this point in the conversation that Clovis became galvanized
+into alert attention.  After all, his two days' visit to an elderly
+relative at Slowborough did not promise much excitement.  Before the
+train had stopped he had decorated his sinister shirt-cuff with the
+inscription, "J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Two mornings later Mr. Huddle broke in on his sister's privacy as she
+sat reading Country Life in the morning room.  It was her day and hour
+and place for reading Country Life, and the intrusion was absolutely
+irregular; but he bore in his hand a telegram, and in that household
+telegrams were recognized as happening by the hand of God.  This
+particular telegram partook of the nature of a thunderbolt.  "Bishop
+examining confirmation class in neighbourhood unable stay rectory on
+account measles invokes your hospitality sending secretary arrange."
+
+"I scarcely know the Bishop; I've only spoken to him once," exclaimed
+J. P. Huddle, with the exculpating air of one who realizes too late the
+indiscretion of speaking to strange Bishops. Miss Huddle was the first
+to rally; she disliked thunderbolts as fervently as her brother did,
+but the womanly instinct in her told her that thunderbolts must be fed.
+
+"We can curry the cold duck," she said.  It was not the appointed day
+for curry, but the little orange envelope involved a certain departure
+from rule and custom.  Her brother said nothing, but his eyes thanked
+her for being brave.
+
+"A young gentleman to see you," announced the parlour-maid.
+
+"The secretary!" murmured the Huddles in unison; they instantly
+stiffened into a demeanour which proclaimed that, though they held all
+strangers to be guilty, they were willing to hear anything they might
+have to say in their defence.  The young gentleman, who came into the
+room with a certain elegant haughtiness, was not at all Huddle's idea
+of a bishop's secretary; he had not supposed that the episcopal
+establishment could have afforded such an expensively upholstered
+article when there were so many other claims on its resources.  The
+face was fleetingly familiar; if he had bestowed more attention on the
+fellow-traveller sitting opposite him in the railway carriage two days
+before he might have recognized Clovis in his present visitor.
+
+"You are the Bishop's secretary?" asked Huddle, becoming consciously
+deferential.
+
+"His confidential secretary," answered Clovis.  "You may call me
+Stanislaus; my other name doesn't matter.  The Bishop and Colonel
+Alberti may be here to lunch.  I shall be here in any case."
+
+It sounded rather like the programme of a Royal visit.
+
+"The Bishop is examining a confirmation class in the neighbourhood,
+isn't he?" asked Miss Huddle.
+
+"Ostensibly," was the dark reply, followed by a request for a
+large-scale map of the locality.
+
+Clovis was still immersed in a seemingly profound study of the map when
+another telegram arrived.  It was addressed to "Prince Stanislaus, care
+of Huddle, The Warren, etc."  Clovis glanced at the contents and
+announced: "The Bishop and Alberti won't be here till late in the
+afternoon."  Then he returned to his scrutiny of the map.
+
+The luncheon was not a very festive function.  The princely secretary
+ate and drank with fair appetite, but severely discouraged
+conversation.  At the finish of the meal he broke suddenly into a
+radiant smile, thanked his hostess for a charming repast, and kissed
+her hand with deferential rapture.
+
+Miss Huddle was unable to decide in her mind whether the action
+savoured of Louis Quatorzian courtliness or the reprehensible Roman
+attitude towards the Sabine women.  It was not her day for having a
+headache, but she felt that the circumstances excused her, and retired
+to her room to have as much headache as was possible before the
+Bishop's arrival.  Clovis, having asked the way to the nearest
+telegraph office, disappeared presently down the carriage drive.  Mr.
+Huddle met him in the hall some two hours later, and asked when the
+Bishop would arrive.
+
+"He is in the library with Alberti," was the reply.
+
+"But why wasn't I told?  I never knew he had come!" exclaimed Huddle.
+
+"No one knows he is here," said Clovis; "the quieter we can keep
+matters the better.  And on no account disturb him in the library.
+Those are his orders."
+
+"But what is all this mystery about?  And who is Alberti?  And isn't
+the Bishop going to have tea?"
+
+"The Bishop is out for blood, not tea."
+
+"Blood!" gasped Huddle, who did not find that the thunderbolt improved
+on acquaintance.
+
+"To-night is going to be a great night in the history of Christendom,"
+said Clovis.  "We are going to massacre every Jew in the neighbourhood."
+
+"To massacre the Jews!" said Huddle indignantly.  "Do you mean to tell
+me there's a general rising against them?"
+
+"No, it's the Bishop's own idea.  He's in there arranging all the
+details now."
+
+"But--the Bishop is such a tolerant, humane man."
+
+"That is precisely what will heighten the effect of his action. The
+sensation will be enormous."
+
+That at least Huddle could believe.
+
+"He will be hanged!" he exclaimed with conviction.
+
+"A motor is waiting to carry him to the coast, where a steam yacht is
+in readiness."
+
+"But there aren't thirty Jews in the whole neighbourhood," protested
+Huddle, whose brain, under the repeated shocks of the day, was
+operating with the uncertainty of a telegraph wire during earthquake
+disturbances.
+
+"We have twenty-six on our list," said Clovis, referring to a bundle of
+notes.  "We shall be able to deal with them all the more thoroughly."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that you are meditating violence against a man
+like Sir Leon Birberry," stammered Huddle; "he's one of the most
+respected men in the country."
+
+"He's down on our list," said Clovis carelessly; "after all, we've got
+men we can trust to do our job, so we shan't have to rely on local
+assistance.  And we've got some Boy-scouts helping us as auxiliaries."
+
+"Boy-scouts!"
+
+"Yes; when they understood there was real killing to be done they were
+even keener than the men."
+
+"This thing will be a blot on the Twentieth Century!"
+
+"And your house will be the blotting-pad.  Have you realized that half
+the papers of Europe and the United States will publish pictures of it?
+By the way, I've sent some photographs of you and your sister, that I
+found in the library, to the MATIN and DIE WOCHE; I hope you don't
+mind.  Also a sketch of the staircase; most of the killing will
+probably be done on the staircase."
+
+The emotions that were surging in J. P. Huddle's brain were almost too
+intense to be disclosed in speech, but he managed to gasp out: "There
+aren't any Jews in this house."
+
+"Not at present," said Clovis.
+
+"I shall go to the police," shouted Huddle with sudden energy.
+
+"In the shrubbery," said Clovis, "are posted ten men who have orders to
+fire on anyone who leaves the house without my signal of permission.
+Another armed picquet is in ambush near the front gate.  The Boy-scouts
+watch the back premises."
+
+At this moment the cheerful hoot of a motor-horn was heard from the
+drive.  Huddle rushed to the hall door with the feeling of a man half
+awakened from a nightmare, and beheld Sir Leon Birberry, who had driven
+himself over in his car.  "I got your telegram," he said, "what's up?"
+
+Telegram?  It seemed to be a day of telegrams.
+
+"Come here at once.  Urgent.  James Huddle," was the purport of the
+message displayed before Huddle's bewildered eyes.
+
+"I see it all!" he exclaimed suddenly in a voice shaken with agitation,
+and with a look of agony in the direction of the shrubbery he hauled
+the astonished Birberry into the house.  Tea had just been laid in the
+hall, but the now thoroughly panic-stricken Huddle dragged his
+protesting guest upstairs, and in a few minutes' time the entire
+household had been summoned to that region of momentary safety.  Clovis
+alone graced the tea-table with his presence; the fanatics in the
+library were evidently too immersed in their monstrous machinations to
+dally with the solace of teacup and hot toast.  Once the youth rose, in
+answer to the summons of the front-door bell, and admitted Mr. Paul
+Isaacs, shoemaker and parish councillor, who had also received a
+pressing invitation to The Warren.   With an atrocious assumption of
+courtesy, which a Borgia could hardly have outdone, the secretary
+escorted this new captive of his net to the head of the stairway, where
+his involuntary host awaited him.
+
+And then ensued a long ghastly vigil of watching and waiting. Once or
+twice Clovis left the house to stroll across to the shrubbery,
+returning always to the library, for the purpose evidently of making a
+brief report.  Once he took in the letters from the evening postman,
+and brought them to the top of the stairs with punctilious politeness.
+After his next absence he came half-way up the stairs to make an
+announcement.
+
+"The Boy-scouts mistook my signal, and have killed the postman. I've
+had very little practice in this sort of thing, you see. Another time I
+shall do better."
+
+The housemaid, who was engaged to be married to the evening postman,
+gave way to clamorous grief.
+
+"Remember that your mistress has a headache," said J. P. Huddle. (Miss
+Huddle's headache was worse.)
+
+Clovis hastened downstairs, and after a short visit to the library
+returned with another message:
+
+"The Bishop is sorry to hear that Miss Huddle has a headache.  He is
+issuing orders that as far as possible no firearms shall be used near
+the house; any killing that is necessary on the premises will be done
+with cold steel.  The Bishop does not see why a man should not be a
+gentleman as well as a Christian."
+
+That was the last they saw of Clovis; it was nearly seven o'clock, and
+his elderly relative liked him to dress for dinner.  But, though he had
+left them for ever, the lurking suggestion of his presence haunted the
+lower regions of the house during the long hours of the wakeful night,
+and every creak of the stairway, every rustle of wind through the
+shrubbery, was fraught with horrible meaning.  At about seven next
+morning the gardener's boy and the early postman finally convinced the
+watchers that the Twentieth Century was still unblotted.
+
+"I don't suppose," mused Clovis, as an early train bore him townwards,
+"that they will be in the least grateful for the Unrest-cure."
+
+
+
+
+THE JESTING OF ARLINGTON STRINGHAM
+
+
+Arlington Stringham made a joke in the House of Commons.  It was a thin
+House, and a very thin joke; something about the Anglo-Saxon race
+having a great many angles.  It is possible that it was unintentional,
+but a fellow-member, who did not wish it to be supposed that he was
+asleep because his eyes were shut, laughed. One or two of the papers
+noted "a laugh" in brackets, and another, which was notorious for the
+carelessness of its political news, mentioned "laughter."  Things often
+begin in that way.
+
+"Arlington made a joke in the House last night," said Eleanor Stringham
+to her mother; "in all the years we've been married neither of us has
+made jokes, and I don't like it now.  I'm afraid it's the beginning of
+the rift in the lute."
+
+"What lute?" said her mother.
+
+"It's a quotation," said Eleanor.
+
+To say that anything was a quotation was an excellent method, in
+Eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from discussion, just as you could
+always defend indifferent lamb late in the season by saying "It's
+mutton."
+
+And, of course, Arlington Stringham continued to tread the thorny path
+of conscious humour into which Fate had beckoned him.
+
+"The country's looking very green, but, after all, that's what it's
+there for," he remarked to his wife two days later.
+
+"That's very modern, and I dare say very clever, but I'm afraid it's
+wasted on me," she observed coldly.  If she had known how much effort
+it had cost him to make the remark she might have greeted it in a
+kinder spirit.  It is the tragedy of human endeavour that it works so
+often unseen and unguessed.
+
+Arlington said nothing, not from injured pride, but because he was
+thinking hard for something to say.  Eleanor mistook his silence for an
+assumption of tolerant superiority, and her anger prompted her to a
+further gibe.
+
+"You had better tell it to Lady Isobel.  I've no doubt she would
+appreciate it."
+
+Lady Isobel was seen everywhere with a fawn coloured collie at a time
+when every one else kept nothing but Pekinese, and she had once eaten
+four green apples at an afternoon tea in the Botanical Gardens, so she
+was widely credited with a rather unpleasant wit. The censorious said
+she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family
+denied both stories.
+
+"The rift is widening to an abyss," said Eleanor to her mother that
+afternoon.
+
+"I should not tell that to anyone," remarked her mother, after long
+reflection.
+
+"Naturally, I should not talk about it very much," said Eleanor, "but
+why shouldn't I mention it to anyone?"
+
+"Because you can't have an abyss in a lute.  There isn't room."
+
+Eleanor's outlook on life did not improve as the afternoon wore on.
+The page-boy had brought from the library BY MERE AND WOLD instead of
+BY MERE CHANCE, the book which every one denied having read.  The
+unwelcome substitute appeared to be a collection of nature notes
+contributed by the author to the pages of some Northern weekly, and
+when one had been prepared to plunge with disapproving mind into a
+regrettable chronicle of ill-spent lives it was intensely irritating to
+read "the dainty yellow-hammers are now with us and flaunt their
+jaundiced livery from every bush and hillock."  Besides, the thing was
+so obviously untrue; either there must be hardly any bushes or hillocks
+in those parts or the country must be fearfully overstocked with
+yellow-hammers.  The thing scarcely seemed worth telling such a lie
+about.  And the page-boy stood there, with his sleekly brushed and
+parted hair, and his air of chaste and callous indifference to the
+desires and passions of the world.  Eleanor hated boys, and she would
+have liked to have whipped this one long and often.  It was perhaps the
+yearning of a woman who had no children of her own.
+
+She turned at random to another paragraph.  "Lie quietly concealed in
+the fern and bramble in the gap by the old rowan tree, and you may see,
+almost every evening during early summer, a pair of lesser whitethroats
+creeping up and down the nettles and hedge-growth that mask their
+nesting-place."
+
+The insufferable monotony of the proposed recreation!  Eleanor would
+not have watched the most brilliant performance at His Majesty's
+Theatre for a single evening under such uncomfortable circumstances,
+and to be asked to watch lesser whitethroats creeping up and down a
+nettle "almost every evening" during the height of the season struck
+her as an imputation on her intelligence that was positively offensive.
+Impatiently she transferred her attention to the dinner menu, which the
+boy had thoughtfully brought in as an alternative to the more solid
+literary fare.  "Rabbit curry," met her eye, and the lines of
+disapproval deepened on her already puckered brow.  The cook was a
+great believer in the influence of environment, and nourished an
+obstinate conviction that if you brought rabbit and curry-powder
+together in one dish a rabbit curry would be the result.  And Clovis
+and the odious Bertie van Tahn were coming to dinner. Surely, thought
+Eleanor, if Arlington knew how much she had had that day to try her, he
+would refrain from joke-making.
+
+At dinner that night it was Eleanor herself who mentioned the name of a
+certain statesman, who may be decently covered under the disguise of X.
+
+"X," said Arlington Stringham, "has the soul of a meringue."
+
+It was a useful remark to have on hand, because it applied equally well
+to four prominent statesmen of the day, which quadrupled the
+opportunities for using it.
+
+"Meringues haven't got souls," said Eleanor's mother.
+
+"It's a mercy that they haven't," said Clovis; "they would be always
+losing them, and people like my aunt would get up missions to
+meringues, and say it was wonderful how much one could teach them and
+how much more one could learn from them."
+
+"What could you learn from a meringue?" asked Eleanor's mother.
+
+"My aunt has been known to learn humility from an ex-Viceroy," said
+Clovis.
+
+"I wish cook would learn to make curry, or have the sense to leave it
+alone," said Arlington, suddenly and savagely.
+
+Eleanor's face softened.  It was like one of his old remarks in the
+days when there was no abyss between them.
+
+It was during the debate on the Foreign Office vote that Stringham made
+his great remark that "the people of Crete unfortunately make more
+history than they can consume locally."  It was not brilliant, but it
+came in the middle of a dull speech, and the House was quite pleased
+with it.  Old gentlemen with bad memories said it reminded them of
+Disraeli.
+
+It was Eleanor's friend, Gertrude Ilpton, who drew her attention to
+Arlington's newest outbreak.  Eleanor in these days avoided the morning
+papers.
+
+"It's very modern, and I suppose very clever," she observed.
+
+"Of course it's clever," said Gertrude; "all Lady Isobel's sayings are
+clever, and luckily they bear repeating."
+
+"Are you sure it's one of her sayings?" asked Eleanor.
+
+"My dear, I've heard her say it dozens of times."
+
+"So that is where he gets his humour," said Eleanor slowly, and the
+hard lines deepened round her mouth.
+
+The death of Eleanor Stringham from an overdose of chloral, occurring
+at the end of a rather uneventful season, excited a certain amount of
+unobtrusive speculation.  Clovis, who perhaps exaggerated the
+importance of curry in the home, hinted at domestic sorrow.
+
+And of course Arlington never knew.  It was the tragedy of his life
+that he should miss the fullest effect of his jesting.
+
+
+
+
+SREDNI VASHTAR
+
+
+Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his
+professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.
+The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his
+opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly
+everything.  Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in
+his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are
+necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual
+antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his
+imagination.  One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to
+the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things--such as illnesses
+and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness.  Without his
+imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would
+have succumbed long ago.
+
+Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to
+herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly
+aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not
+find particularly irksome.  Conradin hated her with a desperate
+sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask.  Such few pleasures as
+he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the
+likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the
+realm of his imagination she was locked out--an unclean thing, which
+should find no entrance.
+
+In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were
+ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that
+medicines were due, he found little attraction.  The few fruit-trees
+that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though
+they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it
+would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would
+have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce.  In a
+forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was
+a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls
+Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a
+playroom and a cathedral.  He had peopled it with a legion of familiar
+phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his
+own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one
+corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an
+affection that had scarcely another outlet.  Further back in the gloom
+stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was
+fronted with close iron bars.  This was the abode of a large
+polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage
+and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted
+hoard of small silver.  Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe,
+sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession.  Its very
+presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept
+scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed
+his cousin.  And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun
+the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and
+a religion.  The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church
+near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was
+an alien rite in the House of Rimmon.  Every Thursday, in the dim and
+musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate
+ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the
+great ferret.  Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the
+winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some
+special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to
+the Woman's religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to
+great lengths in the contrary direction.  And on great festivals
+powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature
+of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen.  These
+festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to
+celebrate some passing event.  On one occasion, when Mrs. de Ropp
+suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the
+festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in
+persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for
+the toothache.  If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of
+nutmeg would have given out.
+
+The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar.
+Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist.  He did not
+pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was,
+but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable.
+Mrs. de Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all
+respectability.
+
+After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract
+the notice of his guardian.  "It is not good for him to be pottering
+down there in all weathers," she promptly decided, and at breakfast one
+morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away
+overnight.  With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting
+for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with
+a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning.  But Conradin said nothing:
+there was nothing to be said.  Something perhaps in his white set face
+gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast
+on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it
+was bad for him; also because the making of it "gave trouble," a deadly
+offence in the middle-class feminine eye.
+
+"I thought you liked toast," she exclaimed, with an injured air,
+observing that he did not touch it.
+
+"Sometimes," said Conradin.
+
+In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the
+hutch-god.  Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, to-night he
+asked a boon.
+
+"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
+
+The thing was not specified.  As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be
+supposed to know.  And choking back a sob as he looked at that other
+empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.
+
+And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every
+evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up:
+"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
+
+Mrs. de Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one
+day she made a further journey of inspection.
+
+"What are you keeping in that locked hutch?" she asked.  "I believe
+it's guinea-pigs.  I'll have them all cleared away."
+
+Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till
+she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the
+shed to complete her discovery.  It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin
+had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the
+dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner
+of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself.  He saw the
+Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of the sacred
+hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw
+bed where his god lay hidden.  Perhaps she would prod at the straw in
+her clumsy impatience.  And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for
+the last time.  But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe.  He
+knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he
+loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener
+would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown
+ferret in a hutch.  And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as
+she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her
+pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing
+would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right.
+And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and
+defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:
+
+  Sredni Vashtar went forth,
+  His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
+  His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
+  Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.
+
+And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the
+window-pane.  The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been
+left, and the minutes were slipping by.  They were long minutes, but
+they slipped by nevertheless.  He watched the starlings running and
+flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over
+again, with one eye always on that swinging door.  A sour-faced maid
+came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited
+and watched.  Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look
+of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful
+patience of defeat.  Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he
+began once again the paean of victory and devastation.  And presently
+his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low,
+yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and
+dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat.  Conradin dropped on
+his knees.  The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook
+at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little
+plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes.  Such was the passing
+of Sredni Vashtar.
+
+"Tea is ready," said the sour-faced maid; "where is the mistress?"
+
+"She went down to the shed some time ago," said Conradin.
+
+And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished
+a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast
+himself a piece of bread.  And during the toasting of it and the
+buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it,
+Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms
+beyond the dining-room door.  The loud foolish screaming of the maid,
+the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region,
+the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and
+then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of
+those who bore a heavy burden into the house.
+
+"Whoever will break it to the poor child?  I couldn't for the life of
+me!" exclaimed a shrill voice.  And while they debated the matter among
+themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.
+
+
+
+
+ADRIAN
+
+A CHAPTER IN ACCLIMATIZATION
+
+
+His baptismal register spoke of him pessimistically as John Henry, but
+he had left that behind with the other maladies of infancy, and his
+friends knew him under the front-name of Adrian.  His mother lived in
+Bethnal Green, which was not altogether his fault; one can discourage
+too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent
+geography.  And, after all, the Bethnal Green habit has this
+virtue--that it is seldom transmitted to the next generation.  Adrian
+lived in a roomlet which came under the auspicious constellation of W.
+
+How he lived was to a great extent a mystery even to himself; his
+struggle for existence probably coincided in many material details with
+the rather dramatic accounts he gave of it to sympathetic
+acquaintances.  All that is definitely known is that he now and then
+emerged from the struggle to dine at the Ritz or Carlton, correctly
+garbed and with a correctly critical appetite.  On these occasions he
+was usually the guest of Lucas Croyden, an amiable worldling, who had
+three thousand a year and a taste for introducing impossible people to
+irreproachable cookery.  Like most men who combine three thousand a
+year with an uncertain digestion, Lucas was a Socialist, and he argued
+that you cannot hope to elevate the masses until you have brought
+plovers' eggs into their lives and taught them to appreciate the
+difference between coupe Jacques and Macédoine de fruits.  His friends
+pointed out that it was a doubtful kindness to initiate a boy from
+behind a drapery counter into the blessedness of the higher catering,
+to which Lucas invariably replied that all kindnesses were doubtful.
+Which was perhaps true.
+
+It was after one of his Adrian evenings that Lucas met his aunt, Mrs.
+Mebberley, at a fashionable tea shop, where the lamp of family life is
+still kept burning and you meet relatives who might otherwise have
+slipped your memory.
+
+"Who was that good-looking boy who was dining with you last night?" she
+asked.  "He looked much too nice to be thrown away upon you."
+
+Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt.
+
+"Who are his people?" she continued, when the protégé's name (revised
+version) had been given her.
+
+"His mother lives at Beth--"
+
+Lucas checked himself on the threshold of what was perhaps a social
+indiscretion.
+
+"Beth?  Where is it?  It sounds like Asia Minor.  Is she mixed up with
+Consular people?"
+
+"Oh, no.  Her work lies among the poor."
+
+This was a side-slip into truth.  The mother of Adrian was employed in
+a laundry.
+
+"I see," said Mrs. Mebberley, "mission work of some sort.  And
+meanwhile the boy has no one to look after him.  It's obviously my duty
+to see that he doesn't come to harm.  Bring him to call on me."
+
+"My dear Aunt Susan," expostulated Lucas, "I really know very little
+about him.  He may not be at all nice, you know, on further
+acquaintance."
+
+"He has delightful hair and a weak mouth.  I shall take him with me to
+Homburg or Cairo."
+
+"It's the maddest thing I ever heard of," said Lucas angrily.
+
+"Well, there is a strong strain of madness in our family.  If you
+haven't noticed it yourself all your friends must have."
+
+"One is so dreadfully under everybody's eyes at Homburg.  At least you
+might give him a preliminary trial at Etretat."
+
+"And be surrounded by Americans trying to talk French?  No, thank you.
+I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing
+it is that they never try to talk English.  To-morrow at five you can
+bring your young friend to call on me."'
+
+And Lucas, realizing that Susan Mebberley was a woman as well as an
+aunt, saw that she would have to be allowed to have her own way.
+
+Adrian was duly carried abroad under the Mebberley wing; but as a
+reluctant concession to sanity Homburg and other inconveniently
+fashionable resorts were given a wide berth, and the Mebberley
+establishment planted itself down in the best hotel at Dohledorf, an
+Alpine townlet somewhere at the back of the Engadine.  It was the usual
+kind of resort, with the usual type of visitors, that one finds over
+the greater part of Switzerland during the summer season, but to Adrian
+it was all unusual.  The mountain air, the certainty of regular and
+abundant meals, and in particular the social atmosphere, affected him
+much as the indiscriminating fervour of a forcing-house might affect a
+weed that had strayed within its limits.  He had been brought up in a
+world where breakages were regarded as crimes and expiated as such; it
+was something new and altogether exhilarating to find that you were
+considered rather amusing if you smashed things in the right manner and
+at the recognized hours.  Susan Mebberley had expressed the intention
+of showing Adrian a bit of the world; the particular bit of the world
+represented by Dohledorf began to be shown a good deal of Adrian.
+
+Lucas got occasional glimpses of the Alpine sojourn, not from his aunt
+or Adrian, but from the industrious pen of Clovis, who was also moving
+as a satellite in the Mebberley constellation.
+
+"The entertainment which Susan got up last night ended in disaster.  I
+thought it would.  The Grobmayer child, a particularly loathsome
+five-year-old, had appeared as 'Bubbles' during the early part of the
+evening, and been put to bed during the interval.  Adrian watched his
+opportunity and kidnapped it when the nurse was downstairs, and
+introduced it during the second half of the entertainment, thinly
+disguised as a performing pig. It certainly LOOKED very like a pig, and
+grunted and slobbered just like the real article; no one knew exactly
+what it was, but every one said it was awfully clever, especially the
+Grobmayers. At the third curtain Adrian pinched it too hard, and it
+yelled 'Marmar'!  I am supposed to be good at descriptions, but don't
+ask me to describe the sayings and doings of the Grobmayers at that
+moment; it was like one of the angrier Psalms set to Strauss's music.
+We have moved to an hotel higher up the valley."
+
+Clovis's next letter arrived five days later, and was written from the
+Hotel Steinbock.
+
+"We left the Hotel Victoria this morning.  It was fairly comfortable
+and quiet--at least there was an air of repose about it when we
+arrived.  Before we had been in residence twenty-four hours most of the
+repose had vanished 'like a dutiful bream,' as Adrian expressed it.
+However, nothing unduly outrageous happened till last night, when
+Adrian had a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and
+transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor.  He transferred the
+bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom door, which happened to be that
+of Frau Hoftath Schilling, and this morning from seven o'clock onwards
+the old lady had a stream of involuntary visitors; she was too
+horrified and scandalized it seems to get up and lock her door.  The
+would-be bathers flew back in confusion to their rooms, and, of course,
+the change of numbers led them astray again, and the corridor gradually
+filled with panic-stricken, scantily robed humans, dashing wildly about
+like rabbits in a ferret-infested warren.  It took nearly an hour
+before the guests were all sorted into their respective rooms, and the
+Frau Hofrath's condition was still causing some anxiety when we left.
+Susan is beginning to look a little worried.  She can't very well turn
+the boy adrift, as he hasn't got any money, and she can't send him to
+his people as she doesn't know where they are.  Adrian says his mother
+moves about a good deal and he's lost her address.  Probably, if the
+truth were known, he's had a row at home.  So many boys nowadays seem
+to think that quarrelling with one's family is a recognized occupation."
+
+Lucas's next communication from the travellers took the form of a
+telegram from Mrs. Mebberley herself.  It was sent "reply prepaid," and
+consisted of a single sentence: "In Heaven's name, where is Beth?"
+
+
+
+
+THE CHAPLET
+
+
+A strange stillness hung over the restaurant; it was one of those rare
+moments when the orchestra was not discoursing the strains of the
+Ice-cream Sailor waltz.
+
+"Did I ever tell you," asked Clovis of his friend, "the tragedy of
+music at mealtimes?
+
+"It was a gala evening at the Grand Sybaris Hotel, and a special dinner
+was being served in the Amethyst dining-hall.  The Amethyst dining-hall
+had almost a European reputation, especially with that section of
+Europe which is historically identified with the Jordan Valley.  Its
+cooking was beyond reproach, and its orchestra was sufficiently highly
+salaried to be above criticism.  Thither came in shoals the intensely
+musical and the almost intensely musical, who are very many, and in
+still greater numbers the merely musical, who know how Tchaikowsky's
+name is pronounced and can recognize several of Chopin's nocturnes if
+you give them due warning; these eat in the nervous, detached manner of
+roebuck feeding in the open, and keep anxious ears cocked towards the
+orchestra for the first hint of a recognizable melody.
+
+"'Ah, yes, Pagliacci,' they murmur, as the opening strains follow hot
+upon the soup, and if no contradiction is forthcoming from any
+better-informed quarter they break forth into subdued humming by way of
+supplementing the efforts of the musicians.  Sometimes the melody
+starts on level terms with the soup, in which case the banqueters
+contrive somehow to hum between the spoonfuls; the facial expression of
+enthusiasts who are punctuating potage St. Germain with Pagliacci is
+not beautiful, but it should be seen by those who are bent on observing
+all sides of life.  One cannot discount the unpleasant things of this
+world merely by looking the other way.
+
+"In addition to the aforementioned types the restaurant was patronized
+by a fair sprinkling of the absolutely nonmusical; their presence in
+the dining-hall could only be explained on the supposition that they
+had come there to dine.
+
+"The earlier stages of the dinner had worn off.  The wine lists had
+been consulted, by some with the blank embarrassment of a schoolboy
+suddenly called on to locate a Minor Prophet in the tangled hinterland
+of the Old Testament, by others with the severe scrutiny which suggests
+that they have visited most of the higher-priced wines in their own
+homes and probed their family weaknesses.  The diners who chose their
+wine in the latter fashion always gave their orders in a penetrating
+voice, with a plentiful garnishing of stage directions.  By insisting
+on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being
+drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your
+guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve.
+For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as
+the wine.
+
+"Standing aside from the revellers in the shadow of a massive pillar
+was an interested spectator who was assuredly of the feast, and yet not
+in it.  Monsieur Aristide Saucourt was the CHEF of the Grand Sybaris
+Hotel, and if he had an equal in his profession he had never
+acknowledged the fact.  In his own domain he was a potentate, hedged
+around with the cold brutality that Genius expects rather than excuses
+in her children; he never forgave, and those who served him were
+careful that there should be little to forgive.  In the outer world,
+the world which devoured his creations, he was an influence; how
+profound or how shallow an influence he never attempted to guess.  It
+is the penalty and the safeguard of genius that it computes itself by
+troy weight in a world that measures by vulgar hundredweights.
+
+"Once in a way the great man would be seized with a desire to watch the
+effect of his master-efforts, just as the guiding brain of Krupp's
+might wish at a supreme moment to intrude into the firing line of an
+artillery duel.  And such an occasion was the present.  For the first
+time in the history of the Grand Sybaris Hotel, he was presenting to
+its guests the dish which he had brought to that pitch of perfection
+which almost amounts to scandal.  Canetons à la mode d'Amblève.  In
+thin gilt lettering on the creamy white of the menu how little those
+words conveyed to the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners.  And yet
+how much specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully
+treasured lore had been ungarnered, before those six words could be
+written. In the Department of Deux-Sèvres ducklings had lived peculiar
+and beautiful lives and died in the odour of satiety to furnish the
+main theme of the dish; champignons, which even a purist for Saxon
+English would have hesitated to address as mushrooms, had contributed
+their languorous atrophied bodies to the garnishing, and a sauce
+devised in the twilight reign of the Fifteenth Louis had been summoned
+back from the imperishable past to take its part in the wonderful
+confection.  Thus far had human effort laboured to achieve the desired
+result; the rest had been left to human genius--the genius of Aristide
+Saucourt.
+
+"And now the moment had arrived for the serving of the great dish, the
+dish which world-weary Grand Dukes and market-obsessed money magnates
+counted among their happiest memories.  And at the same moment
+something else happened.  The leader of the highly salaried orchestra
+placed his violin caressingly against his chin, lowered his eyelids,
+and floated into a sea of melody.
+
+"'Hark!' said most of the diners, 'he is playing "The Chaplet."'
+
+"They knew it was 'The Chaplet' because they had heard it played at
+luncheon and afternoon tea, and at supper the night before, and had not
+had time to forget.
+
+"'Yes, he is playing "The Chaplet,"' they reassured one another. The
+general voice was unanimous on the subject.  The orchestra had already
+played it eleven times that day, four times by desire and seven times
+from force of habit, but the familiar strains were greeted with the
+rapture due to a revelation.  A murmur of much humming rose from half
+the tables in the room, and some of the more overwrought listeners laid
+down knife and fork in order to be able to burst in with loud clappings
+at the earliest permissible moment.
+
+"And the Canetons à la mode d'Amblève?  In stupefied, sickened wonder
+Aristide watched them grow cold in total neglect, or suffer the almost
+worse indignity of perfunctory pecking and listless munching while the
+banqueters lavished their approval and applause on the music-makers.
+Calves' liver and bacon, with parsley sauce, could hardly have figured
+more ignominiously in the evening's entertainment.  And while the
+master of culinary art leaned back against the sheltering pillar,
+choking with a horrible brain-searing rage that could find no outlet
+for its agony, the orchestra leader was bowing his acknowledgments of
+the hand-clappings that rose in a storm around him.  Turning to his
+colleagues he nodded the signal for an encore.  But before the violin
+had been lifted anew into position there came from the shadow of the
+pillar an explosive negative.
+
+"'Noh!  Noh!  You do not play thot again!'
+
+"The musician turned in furious astonishment.  Had he taken warning
+from the look in the other man's eyes he might have acted differently.
+But the admiring plaudits were ringing in his ears, and he snarled out
+sharply, 'That is for me to decide.'
+
+"'Noh!  You play thot never again,' shouted the CHEF, and the next
+moment he had flung himself violently upon the loathed being who had
+supplanted him in the world's esteem.  A large metal tureen, filled to
+the brim with steaming soup, had just been placed on a side table in
+readiness for a late party of diners; before the waiting staff or the
+guests had time to realize what was happening, Aristide had dragged his
+struggling victim up to the table and plunged his head deep down into
+the almost boiling contents of the tureen.  At the further end of the
+room the diners were still spasmodically applauding in view of an
+encore.
+
+"Whether the leader of the orchestra died from drowning by soup, or
+from the shock to his professional vanity, or was scalded to death, the
+doctors were never wholly able to agree.  Monsieur Aristide Saucourt,
+who now lives in complete retirement, always inclined to the drowning
+theory."
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEST
+
+
+An unwonted peace hung over the Villa Elsinore, broken, however, at
+frequent intervals, by clamorous lamentations suggestive of bewildered
+bereavement.  The Momebys had lost their infant child; hence the peace
+which its absence entailed; they were looking for it in wild,
+undisciplined fashion, giving tongue the whole time, which accounted
+for the outcry which swept through house and garden whenever they
+returned to try the home coverts anew. Clovis, who was temporarily and
+unwillingly a paying guest at the villa, had been dozing in a hammock
+at the far end of the garden when Mrs. Momeby had broken the news to
+him.
+
+"We've lost Baby," she screamed.
+
+"Do you mean that it's dead, or stampeded, or that you staked it at
+cards and lost it that way?" asked Clovis lazily.
+
+"He was toddling about quite happily on the lawn," said Mrs. Momeby
+tearfully, "and Arnold had just come in, and I was asking him what sort
+of sauce he would like with the asparagus--"
+
+"I hope he said hollandaise," interrupted Clovis, with a show of
+quickened interest, "because if there's anything I hate--"
+
+"And all of a sudden I missed Baby," continued Mrs. Momeby in a
+shriller tone.  "We've hunted high and low, in house and garden and
+outside the gates, and he's nowhere to be seen."
+
+"Is he anywhere to be heard?" asked Clovis; "if not, he must be at
+least two miles away."
+
+"But where?  And how?" asked the distracted mother.
+
+"Perhaps an eagle or a wild beast has carried him off," suggested
+Clovis.
+
+"There aren't eagles and wild beasts in Surrey," said Mrs. Momeby, but
+a note of horror had crept into her voice.
+
+"They escape now and then from travelling shows.  Sometimes I think
+they let them get loose for the sake of the advertisement. Think what a
+sensational headline it would make in the local papers: 'Infant son of
+prominent Nonconformist devoured by spotted hyaena.'  Your husband
+isn't a prominent Nonconformist, but his mother came of Wesleyan stock,
+and you must allow the newspapers some latitude."
+
+"But we should have found his remains," sobbed Mrs. Momeby.
+
+"If the hyaena was really hungry and not merely toying with his food
+there wouldn't be much in the way of remains.  It would be like the
+small-boy-and-apple story--there ain't going to be no core."
+
+Mrs. Momeby turned away hastily to seek comfort and counsel in some
+other direction.  With the selfish absorption of young motherhood she
+entirely disregarded Clovis's obvious anxiety about the asparagus
+sauce.  Before she had gone a yard, however, the click of the side gate
+caused her to pull up sharp.  Miss Gilpet, from the Villa Peterhof, had
+come over to hear details of the bereavement.  Clovis was already
+rather bored with the story, but Mrs. Momeby was equipped with that
+merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the ninetieth time of
+telling as in the first.
+
+"Arnold had just come in; he was complaining of rheumatism--"
+
+"There are so many things to complain of in this household that it
+would never have occurred to me to complain of rheumatism," murmured
+Clovis.
+
+"He was complaining of rheumatism," continued Mrs. Momeby, trying to
+throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good
+deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure as well.
+
+She was again interrupted.
+
+"There is no such thing as rheumatism," said Miss Gilpet.  She said it
+with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing
+that the cheapest-priced claret in the wine-list is no more.  She did
+not proceed, however, to offer the alternative of some more expensive
+malady, but denied the existence of them all.
+
+Mrs. Momeby's temper began to shine out through her grief.
+
+"I suppose you'll say next that Baby hasn't really disappeared."
+
+"He has disappeared," conceded Miss Gilpet, "but only because you
+haven't sufficient faith to find him.  It's only lack of faith on your
+part that prevents him from being restored to you safe and well."
+
+"But if he's been eaten in the meantime by a hyaena and partly
+digested," said Clovis, who clung affectionately to his wild beast
+theory, "surely some ill-effects would be noticeable?"
+
+Miss Gilpet was rather staggered by this complication of the question.
+
+"I feel sure that a hyaena has not eaten him," she said lamely.
+
+"The hyaena may be equally certain that it has.  You see, it may have
+just as much faith as you have, and more special knowledge as to the
+present whereabouts of the baby."
+
+Mrs. Momeby was in tears again.  "If you have faith," she sobbed,
+struck by a happy inspiration, "won't you find our little Erik for us?
+I am sure you have powers that are denied to us."
+
+Rose-Marie Gilpet was thoroughly sincere in her adherence to Christian
+Science principles; whether she understood or correctly expounded them
+the learned in such matters may best decide.  In the present case she
+was undoubtedly confronted with a great opportunity, and as she started
+forth on her vague search she strenuously summoned to her aid every
+scrap of faith that she possessed.  She passed out into the bare and
+open high road, followed by Mrs. Momeby's warning, "It's no use going
+there, we've searched there a dozen times."  But Rose-Marie's ears were
+already deaf to all things save self-congratulation; for sitting in the
+middle of the highway, playing contentedly with the dust and some faded
+buttercups, was a white-pinafored baby with a mop of tow-coloured hair
+tied over one temple with a pale-blue ribbon. Taking first the usual
+feminine precaution of looking to see that no motor-car was on the
+distant horizon, Rose-Marie dashed at the child and bore it, despite
+its vigorous opposition, in through the portals of Elsinore.  The
+child's furious screams had already announced the fact of its
+discovery, and the almost hysterical parents raced down the lawn to
+meet their restored offspring.  The aesthetic value of the scene was
+marred in some degree by Rose-Marie's difficulty in holding the
+struggling infant, which was borne wrong-end foremost towards the
+agitated bosom of its family. "Our own little Erik come back to us,"
+cried the Momebys in unison; as the child had rammed its fists tightly
+into its eye-sockets and nothing could be seen of its face but a widely
+gaping mouth, the recognition was in itself almost an act of faith.
+
+"Is he glad to get back to Daddy and Mummy again?" crooned Mrs. Momeby;
+the preference which the child was showing for its dust and buttercup
+distractions was so marked that the question struck Clovis as being
+unnecessarily tactless.
+
+"Give him a ride on the roly-poly," suggested the father brilliantly,
+as the howls continued with no sign of early abatement.  In a moment
+the child had been placed astride the big garden roller and a
+preliminary tug was given to set it in motion. From the hollow depths
+of the cylinder came an earsplitting roar, drowning even the vocal
+efforts of the squalling baby, and immediately afterwards there crept
+forth a white-pinafored infant with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied
+over one temple with a pale blue ribbon.  There was no mistaking either
+the features or the lung-power of the new arrival.
+
+"Our own little Erik," screamed Mrs. Momeby, pouncing on him and nearly
+smothering him with kisses; "did he hide in the roly-poly to give us
+all a big fright?"
+
+This was the obvious explanation of the child's sudden disappearance
+and equally abrupt discovery.  There remained, however, the problem of
+the interloping baby, which now sat whimpering on the lawn in a
+disfavour as chilling as its previous popularity had been unwelcome.
+The Momebys glared at it as though it had wormed its way into their
+short-lived affections by heartless and unworthy pretences.  Miss
+Gilpet's face took on an ashen tinge as she stared helplessly at the
+bunched-up figure that had been such a gladsome sight to her eyes a few
+moments ago.
+
+"When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands,"
+quoted Clovis to himself.
+
+Rose-Marie was the first to break the silence.
+
+"If that is Erik you have in your arms, who is--that?"
+
+"That, I think, is for you to explain," said Mrs. Momeby stiffly.
+
+"Obviously," said Clovis, "it's a duplicate Erik that your powers of
+faith called into being.  The question is: What are you going to do
+with him?"
+
+The ashen pallor deepened in Rose-Marie's cheeks.  Mrs. Momeby clutched
+the genuine Erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her
+uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into a bowl of
+gold-fish.
+
+"I found him sitting in the middle of the road," said Rose-Marie weakly.
+
+"You can't take him back and leave him there," said Clovis; "the
+highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for
+disused miracles."
+
+Rose-Marie wept.  The proverb "Weep and you weep alone," broke down as
+badly on application as most of its kind.  Both babies were wailing
+lugubriously, and the parent Momebys had scarcely recovered from their
+earlier lachrymose condition.  Clovis alone maintained an unruffled
+cheerfulness.
+
+"Must I keep him always?" asked Rose-Marie dolefully.
+
+"Not always," said Clovis consolingly; "he can go into the Navy when
+he's thirteen."  Rose-Marie wept afresh.
+
+"Of course," added Clovis, "there may be no end of a bother about his
+birth certificate.  You'll have to explain matters to the Admiralty,
+and they're dreadfully hidebound."
+
+It was rather a relief when a breathless nursemaid from the Villa
+Charlottenburg over the way came running across the lawn to claim
+little Percy, who had slipped out of the front gate and disappeared
+like a twinkling from the high road.
+
+And even then Clovis found it necessary to go in person to the kitchen
+to make sure about the asparagus sauce.
+
+
+
+
+WRATISLAV
+
+
+The Gräfin's two elder sons had made deplorable marriages.  It was,
+observed Clovis, a family habit.  The youngest boy, Wratislav, who was
+the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage
+at all.
+
+"There is certainly this much to be said for viciousness," said the
+Gräfin, "it keeps boys out of mischief."
+
+"Does it?" asked the Baroness Sophie, not by way of questioning the
+statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently.  It was
+the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of
+Providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk
+otherwise than inanely.
+
+"I don't know why I shouldn't talk cleverly," she would complain; "my
+mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist."
+
+"These things have a way of skipping one generation," said the Gräfin.
+
+"That seems so unjust," said Sophie; "one doesn't object to one's
+mother having outshone one as a clever talker, but I must admit that I
+should be rather annoyed if my daughters talked brilliantly."
+
+"Well, none of them do," said the Gräfin consolingly.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the Baroness, promptly veering round in
+defence of her offspring.  "Elsa said something quite clever on
+Thursday about the Triple Alliance.  Something about it being like a
+paper umbrella, that was all right as long as you didn't take it out in
+the rain.  It's not every one who could say that."
+
+"Every one has said it; at least every one that I know.  But then I
+know very few people."
+
+"I don't think you're particularly agreeable to-day."
+
+"I never am.  Haven't you noticed that women with a really perfect
+profile like mine are seldom even moderately agreeable?"
+
+"I don't think your profile is so perfect as all that," said the
+Baroness.
+
+"It would be surprising if it wasn't.  My mother was one of the most
+noted classical beauties of her day."
+
+"These things sometimes skip a generation, you know," put in the
+Baroness, with the breathless haste of one to whom repartee comes as
+rarely as the finding of a gold-handled umbrella.
+
+"My dear Sophie," said the Gräfin sweetly, "that isn't in the least bit
+clever; but you do try so hard that I suppose I oughtn't to discourage
+you.  Tell me something: has it ever occurred to you that Elsa would do
+very well for Wratislav?  It's time he married somebody, and why not
+Elsa?"
+
+"Elsa marry that dreadful boy!" gasped the Baroness.
+
+"Beggars can't be choosers," observed the Gräfin.
+
+"Elsa isn't a beggar!"
+
+"Not financially, or I shouldn't have suggested the match.  But she's
+getting on, you know, and has no pretensions to brains or looks or
+anything of that sort."
+
+"You seem to forget that she's my daughter."
+
+"That shows my generosity.  But, seriously, I don't see what there is
+against Wratislav.  He has no debts--at least, nothing worth speaking
+about."
+
+"But think of his reputation!  If half the things they say about him
+are true--"
+
+"Probably three-quarters of them are.  But what of it?  You don't want
+an archangel for a son-in-law."
+
+"I don't want Wratislav.  My poor Elsa would be miserable with him."
+
+"A little misery wouldn't matter very much with her; it would go so
+well with the way she does her hair, and if she couldn't get on with
+Wratislav she could always go and do good among the poor."
+
+The Baroness picked up a framed photograph from the table.
+
+"He certainly is very handsome," she said doubtfully; adding even more
+doubtfully, "I dare say dear Elsa might reform him."
+
+The Gräfin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Three weeks later the Gräfin bore down upon the Baroness Sophie in a
+foreign bookseller's shop in the Graben, where she was, possibly,
+buying books of devotion, though it was the wrong counter for them.
+
+"I've just left the dear children at the Rodenstahls'," was the
+Gräfin's greeting.
+
+"Were they looking very happy?" asked the Baroness.
+
+"Wratislav was wearing some new English clothes, so, of course, he was
+quite happy.  I overheard him telling Toni a rather amusing story about
+a nun and a mousetrap, which won't bear repetition. Elsa was telling
+every one else a witticism about the Triple Alliance being like a paper
+umbrella--which seems to bear repetition with Christian fortitude."
+
+"Did they seem much wrapped up in each other?"
+
+"To be candid, Elsa looked as if she were wrapped up in a horse-rug.
+And why let her wear saffron colour?"
+
+"I always think it goes with her complexion."
+
+"Unfortunately it doesn't.  It stays with it.  Ugh.  Don't forget,
+you're lunching with me on Thursday."
+
+The Baroness was late for her luncheon engagement the following
+Thursday.
+
+"Imagine what has happened!" she screamed as she burst into the room.
+
+"Something remarkable, to make you late for a meal," said the Gräfin.
+
+"Elsa has run away with the Rodenstahls' chauffeur!"
+
+"Kolossal!"
+
+"Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done," gasped the
+Baroness.
+
+"Perhaps he didn't appeal to them in the same way," suggested the
+Gräfin judicially.
+
+The Baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment
+and sympathy to which her catastrophe entitled her.
+
+"At any rate," she snapped, "now she can't marry Wratislav."
+
+"She couldn't in any case," said the Gräfin; "he left suddenly for
+abroad last night."
+
+"For abroad!  Where?"
+
+"For Mexico, I believe."
+
+"Mexico!  But what for?  Why Mexico?"
+
+"The English have a proverb, 'Conscience makes cowboys of us all.'"
+
+"I didn't know Wratislav had a conscience."
+
+"My dear Sophie, he hasn't.  It's other people's consciences that send
+one abroad in a hurry.  Let's go and eat."
+
+
+
+
+THE EASTER EGG
+
+
+It was distinctly hard lines for Lady Barbara, who came of good
+fighting stock, and was one of the bravest women of her generation,
+that her son should be so undisguisedly a coward. Whatever good
+qualities Lester Slaggby may have possessed, and he was in some
+respects charming, courage could certainly never be imputed to him.  As
+a child he had suffered from childish timidity, as a boy from unboyish
+funk, and as a youth he had exchanged unreasoning fears for others
+which were more formidable from the fact of having a carefully
+thought-out basis.  He was frankly afraid of animals, nervous with
+firearms, and never crossed the Channel without mentally comparing the
+numerical proportion of lifebelts to passengers.  On horseback he
+seemed to require as many hands as a Hindu god, at least four for
+clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on
+the neck.  Lady Barbara no longer pretended not to see her son's
+prevailing weakness; with her usual courage she faced the knowledge of
+it squarely, and, mother-like, loved him none the less.
+
+Continental travel, anywhere away from the great tourist tracks, was a
+favoured hobby with Lady Barbara, and Lester joined her as often as
+possible.  Eastertide usually found her at Knobaltheim, an upland
+township in one of those small princedoms that make inconspicuous
+freckles on the map of Central Europe.
+
+A long-standing acquaintanceship with the reigning family made her a
+personage of due importance in the eyes of her old friend the
+Burgomaster, and she was anxiously consulted by that worthy on the
+momentous occasion when the Prince made known his intention of coming
+in person to open a sanatorium outside the town.  All the usual items
+in a programme of welcome, some of them fatuous and commonplace, others
+quaint and charming, had been arranged for, but the Burgomaster hoped
+that the resourceful English lady might have something new and tasteful
+to suggest in the way of loyal greeting.  The Prince was known to the
+outside world, if at all, as an old-fashioned reactionary, combating
+modern progress, as it were, with a wooden sword; to his own people he
+was known as a kindly old gentleman with a certain endearing
+stateliness which had nothing of standoffishness about it.  Knobaltheim
+was anxious to do its best.  Lady Barbara discussed the matter with
+Lester and one or two acquaintances in her little hotel, but ideas were
+difficult to come by.
+
+"Might I suggest something to the Gnädige Frau?" asked a sallow
+high-cheek-boned lady to whom the Englishwoman had spoken once or
+twice, and whom she had set down in her mind as probably a Southern
+Slav.
+
+"Might I suggest something for the Reception Fest?" she went on, with a
+certain shy eagerness.  "Our little child here, our baby, we will dress
+him in little white coat, with small wings, as an Easter angel, and he
+will carry a large white Easter egg, and inside shall be a basket of
+plover eggs, of which the Prince is so fond, and he shall give it to
+his Highness as Easter offering.  It is so pretty an idea we have seen
+it done once in Styria."
+
+Lady Barbara looked dubiously at the proposed Easter angel, a fair,
+wooden-faced child of about four years old.  She had noticed it the day
+before in the hotel, and wondered rather how such a towheaded child
+could belong to such a dark-visaged couple as the woman and her
+husband; probably, she thought, an adopted baby, especially as the
+couple were not young.
+
+"Of course Gnädige Frau will escort the little child up to the Prince,"
+pursued the woman; "but he will be quite good, and do as he is told."
+
+"We haf some pluffers' eggs shall come fresh from Wien," said the
+husband.
+
+The small child and Lady Barbara seemed equally unenthusiastic about
+the pretty idea; Lester was openly discouraging, but when the
+Burgomaster heard of it he was enchanted.  The combination of sentiment
+and plovers' eggs appealed strongly to his Teutonic mind.
+
+On the eventful day the Easter angel, really quite prettily and
+quaintly dressed, was a centre of kindly interest to the gala crowd
+marshalled to receive his Highness.  The mother was unobtrusive and
+less fussy than most parents would have been under the circumstances,
+merely stipulating that she should place the Easter egg herself in the
+arms that had been carefully schooled how to hold the precious burden.
+Then Lady Barbara moved forward, the child marching stolidly and with
+grim determination at her side.  It had been promised cakes and
+sweeties galore if it gave the egg well and truly to the kind old
+gentleman who was waiting to receive it.  Lester had tried to convey to
+it privately that horrible smackings would attend any failure in its
+share of the proceedings, but it is doubtful if his German caused more
+than an immediate distress.  Lady Barbara had thoughtfully provided
+herself with an emergency supply of chocolate sweetmeats; children may
+sometimes be time-servers, but they do not encourage long accounts.  As
+they approached nearer to the princely daïs Lady Barbara stood
+discreetly aside, and the stolid-faced infant walked forward alone,
+with staggering but steadfast gait, encouraged by a murmur of elderly
+approval.  Lester, standing in the front row of the onlookers, turned
+to scan the crowd for the beaming faces of the happy parents.  In a
+side-road which led to the railway station he saw a cab; entering the
+cab with every appearance of furtive haste were the dark-visaged couple
+who had been so plausibly eager for the "pretty idea."  The sharpened
+instinct of cowardice lit up the situation to him in one swift flash.
+The blood roared and surged to his head as though thousands of
+floodgates had been opened in his veins and arteries, and his brain was
+the common sluice in which all the torrents met.  He saw nothing but a
+blur around him.  Then the blood ebbed away in quick waves, till his
+very heart seemed drained and empty, and he stood nervelessly,
+helplessly, dumbly watching the child, bearing its accursed burden with
+slow, relentless steps nearer and nearer to the group that waited
+sheep-like to receive him.  A fascinated curiosity compelled Lester to
+turn his head towards the fugitives; the cab had started at hot pace in
+the direction of the station.
+
+The next moment Lester was running, running faster than any of those
+present had ever seen a man run, and--he was not running away.  For
+that stray fraction of his life some unwonted impulse beset him, some
+hint of the stock he came from, and he ran unflinchingly towards
+danger.  He stooped and clutched at the Easter egg as one tries to
+scoop up the ball in Rugby football. What he meant to do with it he had
+not considered, the thing was to get it.  But the child had been
+promised cakes and sweetmeats if it safely gave the egg into the hands
+of the kindly old gentleman; it uttered no scream, but it held to its
+charge with limpet grip.  Lester sank to his knees, tugging savagely at
+the tightly clasped burden, and angry cries rose from the scandalized
+onlookers.  A questioning, threatening ring formed round him, then
+shrank back in recoil as he shrieked out one hideous word.  Lady
+Barbara heard the word and saw the crowd race away like scattered
+sheep, saw the Prince forcibly hustled away by his attendants; also she
+saw her son lying prone in an agony of overmastering terror, his spasm
+of daring shattered by the child's unexpected resistance, still
+clutching frantically, as though for safety, at that white-satin
+gew-gaw, unable to crawl even from its deadly neighbourhood, able only
+to scream and scream and scream.  In her brain she was dimly conscious
+of balancing, or striving to balance, the abject shame which had him
+now in thrall against the one compelling act of courage which had flung
+him grandly and madly on to the point of danger.  It was only for the
+fraction of a minute that she stood watching the two entangled figures,
+the infant with its woodenly obstinate face and body tense with dogged
+resistance, and the boy limp and already nearly dead with a terror that
+almost stifled his screams; and over them the long gala streamers
+flapping gaily in the sunshine.  She never forgot the scene; but then,
+it was the last she ever saw.
+
+Lady Barbara carries her scarred face with its sightless eyes as
+bravely as ever in the world, but at Eastertide her friends are careful
+to keep from her ears any mention of the children's Easter symbol.
+
+
+
+
+FILBOID STUDGE, THE STORY OF A MOUSE THAT HELPED
+
+
+"I want to marry your daughter," said Mark Spayley with faltering
+eagerness.  "I am only an artist with an income of two hundred a year,
+and she is the daughter of an enormously wealthy man, so I suppose you
+will think my offer a piece of presumption."
+
+Duncan Dullamy, the great company inflator, showed no outward sign of
+displeasure.  As a matter of fact, he was secretly relieved at the
+prospect of finding even a two-hundred-a-year husband for his daughter
+Leonore.  A crisis was rapidly rushing upon him, from which he knew he
+would emerge with neither money nor credit; all his recent ventures had
+fallen flat, and flattest of all had gone the wonderful new breakfast
+food, Pipenta, on the advertisement of which he had sunk such huge
+sums.  It could scarcely be called a drug in the market; people bought
+drugs, but no one bought Pipenta.
+
+"Would you marry Leonore if she were a poor man's daughter?" asked the
+man of phantom wealth.
+
+"Yes," said Mark, wisely avoiding the error of over-protestation. And
+to his astonishment Leonore's father not only gave his consent, but
+suggested a fairly early date for the wedding.
+
+"I wish I could show my gratitude in some way," said Mark with genuine
+emotion.  "I'm afraid it's rather like the mouse proposing to help the
+lion."
+
+"Get people to buy that beastly muck," said Dullamy, nodding savagely
+at a poster of the despised Pipenta, "and you'll have done more than
+any of my agents have been able to accomplish."
+
+"It wants a better name," said Mark reflectively, "and something
+distinctive in the poster line.  Anyway, I'll have a shot at it."
+
+Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a new
+breakfast food, heralded under the resounding name of "Filboid Studge."
+Spayley put forth no pictures of massive babies springing up with
+fungus-like rapidity under its forcing influence, or of representatives
+of the leading nations of the world scrambling with fatuous eagerness
+for its possession.  One huge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell
+suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid
+Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond
+their reach.  The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle
+suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the
+portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political
+parties, Society hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists,
+and distinguished aeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed
+throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the
+shades of the Inferno, smiling still from force of habit, but with the
+fearsome smiling rage of baffled effort.  The poster bore no fulsome
+allusions to the merits of the new breakfast food, but a single grim
+statement ran in bold letters along its base: "They cannot buy it now."
+
+Spayley had grasped the fact that people will do things from a sense of
+duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure.  There are thousands
+of respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in
+a Turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had
+ordered them to take Turkish baths; if you told them in return that you
+went there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at
+the frivolity of your motive. In the same way, whenever a massacre of
+Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has
+been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another, no one seems
+to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their neighbours
+now and then.
+
+And so it was with the new breakfast food.  No one would have eaten
+Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of its
+advertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops to
+clamour for an immediate supply.  In small kitchens solemn pig-tailed
+daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitive ritual of
+its preparation.  On the breakfast-tables of cheerless parlours it was
+partaken of in silence.  Once the womenfolk discovered that it was
+thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal in forcing it on their households
+knew no bounds.  "You haven't eaten your Filboid Studge!" would be
+screamed at the appetiteless clerk as he hurried weariedly from the
+breakfast-table, and his evening meal would be prefaced by a warmed-up
+mess which would be explained as "your Filboid Studge that you didn't
+eat this morning."  Those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortify
+themselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits and health
+garments, battened aggressively on the new food.  Earnest, spectacled
+young men devoured it on the steps of the National Liberal Club.  A
+bishop who did not believe in a future state preached against the
+poster, and a peer's daughter died from eating too much of the
+compound.  A further advertisement was obtained when an infantry
+regiment mutinied and shot its officers rather than eat the nauseous
+mess; fortunately, Lord Birrell of Blatherstone, who was War Minister
+at the moment, saved the situation by his happy epigram, that
+"Discipline to be effective must be optional."
+
+Filboid Studge had become a household word, but Dullamy wisely realized
+that it was not necessarily the last word in breakfast dietary; its
+supremacy would be challenged as soon as some yet more unpalatable food
+should be put on the market.  There might even be a reaction in favour
+of something tasty and appetizing, and the Puritan austerity of the
+moment might be banished from domestic cookery.  At an opportune
+moment, therefore, he sold out his interests in the article which had
+brought him in colossal wealth at a critical juncture, and placed his
+financial reputation beyond the reach of cavil.  As for Leonore, who
+was now an heiress on a far greater scale than ever before, he
+naturally found her something a vast deal higher in the husband market
+than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer.  Mark Spayley, the
+brainmouse who had helped the financial lion with such untoward effect,
+was left to curse the day he produced the wonder-working poster.
+
+"After all," said Clovis, meeting him shortly afterwards at his club,
+"you have this doubtful consolation, that 'tis not in mortals to
+countermand success."
+
+
+
+
+THE MUSIC ON THE HILL
+
+
+Sylvia Seltoun ate her breakfast in the morning-room at Yessney with a
+pleasant sense of ultimate victory, such as a fervent Ironside might
+have permitted himself on the morrow of Worcester fight.  She was
+scarcely pugnacious by temperament, but belonged to that more
+successful class of fighters who are pugnacious by circumstance.  Fate
+had willed that her life should be occupied with a series of small
+struggles, usually with the odds slightly against her, and usually she
+had just managed to come through winning.  And now she felt that she
+had brought her hardest and certainly her most important struggle to a
+successful issue.  To have married Mortimer Seltoun, "Dead Mortimer" as
+his more intimate enemies called him, in the teeth of the cold
+hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected indifference to
+women, was indeed an achievement that had needed some determination and
+adroitness to carry through; yesterday she had brought her victory to
+its concluding stage by wrenching her husband away from Town and its
+group of satellite watering-places and "settling him down," in the
+vocabulary of her kind, in this remote wood-girt manor farm which was
+his country house.
+
+"You will never get Mortimer to go," his mother had said carpingly,
+"but if he once goes he'll stay; Yessney throws almost as much a spell
+over him as Town does.  One can understand what holds him to Town, but
+Yessney--" and the dowager had shrugged her shoulders.
+
+There was a sombre almost savage wildness about Yessney that was
+certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and Sylvia,
+notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan
+than "leafy Kensington."  She looked on the country as something
+excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome
+if you encouraged it overmuch.  Distrust of town-life had been a new
+thing with her, born of her marriage with Mortimer, and she had watched
+with satisfaction the gradual fading of what she called "the
+Jermyn-street-look" in his eyes as the woods and heather of Yessney had
+closed in on them yesternight. Her will-power and strategy had
+prevailed; Mortimer would stay.
+
+Outside the morning-room windows was a triangular slope of turf, which
+the indulgent might call a lawn, and beyond its low hedge of neglected
+fuchsia bushes a steeper slope of heather and bracken dropped down into
+cavernous combes overgrown with oak and yew.  In its wild open savagery
+there seemed a stealthy linking of the joy of life with the terror of
+unseen things.  Sylvia smiled complacently as she gazed with a
+School-of-Art appreciation at the landscape, and then of a sudden she
+almost shuddered.
+
+"It is very wild," she said to Mortimer, who had joined her; "one could
+almost think that in such a place the worship of Pan had never quite
+died out."
+
+"The worship of Pan never has died out," said Mortimer.  "Other newer
+gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the
+Nature-God to whom all must come back at last.  He has been called the
+Father of all the Gods, but most of his children have been stillborn."
+
+Sylvia was religious in an honest vaguely devotional kind of way, and
+did not like to hear her beliefs spoken of as mere aftergrowths, but it
+was at least something new and hopeful to hear Dead Mortimer speak with
+such energy and conviction on any subject.
+
+"You don't really believe in Pan?" she asked incredulously.
+
+"I've been a fool in most things," said Mortimer quietly, "but I'm not
+such a fool as not to believe in Pan when I'm down here.  And if you're
+wise you won't disbelieve in him too boastfully while you're in his
+country."
+
+It was not till a week later, when Sylvia had exhausted the attractions
+of the woodland walks round Yessney, that she ventured on a tour of
+inspection of the farm buildings.  A farmyard suggested in her mind a
+scene of cheerful bustle, with churns and flails and smiling
+dairymaids, and teams of horses drinking knee-deep in duck-crowded
+ponds.  As she wandered among the gaunt grey buildings of Yessney manor
+farm her first impression was one of crushing stillness and desolation,
+as though she had happened on some lone deserted homestead long given
+over to owls and cobwebs; then came a sense of furtive watchful
+hostility, the same shadow of unseen things that seemed to lurk in the
+wooded combes and coppices.  From behind heavy doors and shuttered
+windows came the restless stamp of hoof or rasp of chain halter, and at
+times a muffled bellow from some stalled beast.  From a distant corner
+a shaggy dog watched her with intent unfriendly eyes; as she drew near
+it slipped quietly into its kennel, and slipped out again as
+noiselessly when she had passed by.  A few hens, questing for food
+under a rick, stole away under a gate at her approach.  Sylvia felt
+that if she had come across any human beings in this wilderness of barn
+and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze.  At last,
+turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly
+from her.  Astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic
+beyond the town-woman's wildest computation of swine-flesh, and
+speedily alert to resent and if necessary repel the unwonted intrusion.
+It was Sylvia's turn to make an unobtrusive retreat.  As she threaded
+her way past rickyards and cowsheds and long blank walls, she started
+suddenly at a strange sound--the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and
+equivocal.  Jan, the only boy employed on the farm, a towheaded,
+wizen-faced yokel, was visibly at work on a potato clearing half-way up
+the nearest hill-side, and Mortimer, when questioned, knew of no other
+probable or possible begetter of the hidden mockery that had ambushed
+Sylvia's retreat.  The memory of that untraceable echo was added to her
+other impressions of a furtive sinister "something" that hung around
+Yessney.
+
+Of Mortimer she saw very little; farm and woods and trout-streams
+seemed to swallow him up from dawn till dusk.  Once, following the
+direction she had seen him take in the morning, she came to an open
+space in a nut copse, further shut in by huge yew trees, in the centre
+of which stood a stone pedestal surmounted by a small bronze figure of
+a youthful Pan.  It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, but her
+attention was chiefly held by the fact that a newly cut bunch of grapes
+had been placed as an offering at its feet.  Grapes were none too
+plentiful at the manor house, and Sylvia snatched the bunch angrily
+from the pedestal.  Contemptuous annoyance dominated her thoughts as
+she strolled slowly homeward, and then gave way to a sharp feeling of
+something that was very near fright; across a thick tangle of
+undergrowth a boy's face was scowling at her, brown and beautiful, with
+unutterably evil eyes. It was a lonely pathway, all pathways round
+Yessney were lonely for the matter of that, and she sped forward
+without waiting to give a closer scrutiny to this sudden apparition.
+It was not till she had reached the house that she discovered that she
+had dropped the bunch of grapes in her flight.
+
+"I saw a youth in the wood to-day," she told Mortimer that evening,
+"brown-faced and rather handsome, but a scoundrel to look at.  A gipsy
+lad, I suppose."
+
+"A reasonable theory," said Mortimer, "only there aren't any gipsies in
+these parts at present."
+
+"Then who was he?" asked Sylvia, and as Mortimer appeared to have no
+theory of his own, she passed on to recount her finding of the votive
+offering.
+
+"I suppose it was your doing," she observed; "it's a harmless piece of
+lunacy, but people would think you dreadfully silly if they knew of it."
+
+"Did you meddle with it in any way?" asked Mortimer.
+
+"I--I threw the grapes away.  It seemed so silly," said Sylvia,
+watching Mortimer's impassive face for a sign of annoyance.
+
+"I don't think you were wise to do that," he said reflectively. "I've
+heard it said that the Wood Gods are rather horrible to those who
+molest them."
+
+"Horrible perhaps to those that believe in them, but you see I don't,"
+retorted Sylvia.
+
+"All the same," said Mortimer in his even, dispassionate tone, "I
+should avoid the woods and orchards if I were you, and give a wide
+berth to the horned beasts on the farm."
+
+It was all nonsense, of course, but in that lonely wood-girt spot
+nonsense seemed able to rear a bastard brood of uneasiness.
+
+"Mortimer," said Sylvia suddenly, "I think we will go back to Town some
+time soon."
+
+Her victory had not been so complete as she had supposed; it had
+carried her on to ground that she was already anxious to quit.
+
+"I don't think you will ever go back to Town," said Mortimer.  He
+seemed to be paraphrasing his mother's prediction as to himself.
+
+Sylvia noted with dissatisfaction and some self-contempt that the
+course of her next afternoon's ramble took her instinctively clear of
+the network of woods.  As to the horned cattle, Mortimer's warning was
+scarcely needed, for she had always regarded them as of doubtful
+neutrality at the best: her imagination unsexed the most matronly dairy
+cows and turned them into bulls liable to "see red" at any moment.  The
+ram who fed in the narrow paddock below the orchards she had adjudged,
+after ample and cautious probation, to be of docile temper; to-day,
+however, she decided to leave his docility untested, for the usually
+tranquil beast was roaming with every sign of restlessness from corner
+to corner of his meadow.  A low, fitful piping, as of some reedy flute,
+was coming from the depth of a neighbouring copse, and there seemed to
+be some subtle connection between the animal's restless pacing and the
+wild music from the wood.  Sylvia turned her steps in an upward
+direction and climbed the heather-clad slopes that stretched in rolling
+shoulders high above Yessney.  She had left the piping notes behind
+her, but across the wooded combes at her feet the wind brought her
+another kind of music, the straining bay of hounds in full chase.
+Yessney was just on the outskirts of the Devon-and-Somerset country,
+and the hunted deer sometimes came that way. Sylvia could presently see
+a dark body, breasting hill after hill, and sinking again and again out
+of sight as he crossed the combes, while behind him steadily swelled
+that relentless chorus, and she grew tense with the excited sympathy
+that one feels for any hunted thing in whose capture one is not
+directly interested.  And at last he broke through the outermost line
+of oak scrub and fern and stood panting in the open, a fat September
+stag carrying a well-furnished head.  His obvious course was to drop
+down to the brown pools of Undercombe, and thence make his way towards
+the red deer's favoured sanctuary, the sea.  To Sylvia's surprise,
+however, he turned his head to the upland slope and came lumbering
+resolutely onward over the heather.  "It will be dreadful," she
+thought, "the hounds will pull him down under my very eyes."  But the
+music of the pack seemed to have died away for a moment, and in its
+place she heard again that wild piping, which rose now on this side,
+now on that, as though urging the failing stag to a final effort.
+Sylvia stood well aside from his path, half hidden in a thick growth of
+whortle bushes, and watched him swing stiffly upward, his flanks dark
+with sweat, the coarse hair on his neck showing light by contrast.  The
+pipe music shrilled suddenly around her, seeming to come from the
+bushes at her very feet, and at the same moment the great beast slewed
+round and bore directly down upon her.  In an instant her pity for the
+hunted animal was changed to wild terror at her own danger; the thick
+heather roots mocked her scrambling efforts at flight, and she looked
+frantically downward for a glimpse of oncoming hounds.  The huge antler
+spikes were within a few yards of her, and in a flash of numbing fear
+she remembered Mortimer's warning, to beware of horned beasts on the
+farm.  And then with a quick throb of joy she saw that she was not
+alone; a human figure stood a few paces aside, knee-deep in the whortle
+bushes.
+
+"Drive it off!" she shrieked.  But the figure made no answering
+movement.
+
+The antlers drove straight at her breast, the acrid smell of the hunted
+animal was in her nostrils, but her eyes were filled with the horror of
+something she saw other than her oncoming death. And in her ears rang
+the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and equivocal.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF ST. VESPALUUS
+
+
+"Tell me a story," said the Baroness, staring out despairingly at the
+rain; it was that light, apologetic sort of rain that looks as if it
+was going to leave off every minute and goes on for the greater part of
+the afternoon.
+
+"What sort of story?" asked Clovis, giving his croquet mallet a
+valedictory shove into retirement.
+
+"One just true enough to be interesting and not true enough to be
+tiresome," said the Baroness.
+
+Clovis rearranged several cushions to his personal solace and
+satisfaction; he knew that the Baroness liked her guests to be
+comfortable, and he thought it right to respect her wishes in that
+particular.
+
+"Have I ever told you the story of Saint Vespaluus?" he asked.
+
+"You've told me stories about grand-dukes and lion-tamers and
+financiers' widows and a postmaster in Herzegovina," said the Baroness,
+"and about an Italian jockey and an amateur governess who went to
+Warsaw, and several about your mother, but certainly never anything
+about a saint."
+
+"This story happened a long while ago," he said, "in those
+uncomfortable piebald times when a third of the people were Pagan, and
+a third Christian, and the biggest third of all just followed whichever
+religion the Court happened to profess.  There was a certain king
+called Hkrikros, who had a fearful temper and no immediate successor in
+his own family; his married sister, however, had provided him with a
+large stock of nephews from which to select his heir.  And the most
+eligible and royally-approved of all these nephews was the
+sixteen-year-old Vespaluus.  He was the best looking, and the best
+horseman and javelin-thrower, and had that priceless princely gift of
+being able to walk past a supplicant with an air of not having seen
+him, but would certainly have given something if he had.  My mother has
+that gift to a certain extent; she can go smilingly and financially
+unscathed through a charity bazaar, and meet the organizers next day
+with a solicitous 'had I but known you were in need of funds' air that
+is really rather a triumph in audacity.  Now Hkrikros was a Pagan of
+the first water, and kept the worship of the sacred serpents, who lived
+in a hallowed grove on a hill near the royal palace, up to a high pitch
+of enthusiasm.  The common people were allowed to please themselves,
+within certain discreet limits, in the matter of private religion, but
+any official in the service of the Court who went over to the new cult
+was looked down on, literally as well as metaphorically, the looking
+down being done from the gallery that ran round the royal bear-pit.
+Consequently there was considerable scandal and consternation when the
+youthful Vespaluus appeared one day at a Court function with a rosary
+tucked into his belt, and announced in reply to angry questionings that
+he had decided to adopt Christianity, or at any rate to give it a
+trial. If it had been any of the other nephews the king would possibly
+have ordered something drastic in the way of scourging and banishment,
+but in the case of the favoured Vespaluus he determined to look on the
+whole thing much as a modern father might regard the announced
+intention of his son to adopt the stage as a profession.  He sent
+accordingly for the Royal Librarian. The royal library in those days
+was not a very extensive affair, and the keeper of the king's books had
+a great deal of leisure on his hands.  Consequently he was in frequent
+demand for the settlement of other people's affairs when these strayed
+beyond normal limits and got temporarily unmanageable.
+
+"'You must reason with Prince Vespaluus,' said the king, 'and impress
+on him the error of his ways.  We cannot have the heir to the throne
+setting such a dangerous example.'
+
+"'But where shall I find the necessary arguments?' asked the Librarian.
+
+"'I give you free leave to pick and choose your arguments in the royal
+woods and coppices,' said the king; 'if you cannot get together some
+cutting observations and stinging retorts suitable to the occasion you
+are a person of very poor resource.'
+
+"So the Librarian went into the woods and gathered a goodly selection
+of highly argumentative rods and switches, and then proceeded to reason
+with Vespaluus on the folly and iniquity and above all the unseemliness
+of his conduct.  His reasoning left a deep impression on the young
+prince, an impression which lasted for many weeks, during which time
+nothing more was heard about the unfortunate lapse into Christianity.
+Then a further scandal of the same nature agitated the Court.  At a
+time when he should have been engaged in audibly invoking the gracious
+protection and patronage of the holy serpents, Vespaluus was heard
+singing a chant in honour of St. Odilo of Cluny.  The king was furious
+at this new outbreak, and began to take a gloomy view of the situation;
+Vespaluus was evidently going to show a dangerous obstinacy in
+persisting in his heresy.  And yet there was nothing in his appearance
+to justify such perverseness; he had not the pale eye of the fanatic or
+the mystic look of the dreamer.  On the contrary, he was quite the
+best-looking boy at Court; he had an elegant, well-knit figure, a
+healthy complexion, eyes the colour of very ripe mulberries, and dark
+hair, smooth and very well cared for."
+
+"It sounds like a description of what you imagine yourself to have been
+like at the age of sixteen," said the Baroness.
+
+"My mother has probably been showing you some of my early photographs,"
+said Clovis.  Having turned the sarcasm into a compliment, he resumed
+his story.
+
+"The king had Vespaluus shut up in a dark tower for three days, with
+nothing but bread and water to live on, the squealing and fluttering of
+bats to listen to, and drifting clouds to watch through one little
+window slit.  The anti-Pagan section of the community began to talk
+portentously of the boy-martyr.  The martyrdom was mitigated, as far as
+the food was concerned, by the carelessness of the tower warden, who
+once or twice left a portion of his own supper of broiled meat and
+fruit and wine by mistake in the prince's cell.  After the punishment
+was over, Vespaluus was closely watched for any further symptom of
+religious perversity, for the king was determined to stand no more
+opposition on so important a matter, even from a favourite nephew.  If
+there was any more of this nonsense, he said, the succession to the
+throne would have to be altered.
+
+"For a time all went well; the festival of summer sports was
+approaching, and the young Vespaluus was too engrossed in wrestling and
+foot-running and javelin-throwing competitions to bother himself with
+the strife of conflicting religious systems. Then, however, came the
+great culminating feature of the summer festival, the ceremonial dance
+round the grove of the sacred serpents, and Vespaluus, as we should
+say, 'sat it out.'  The affront to the State religion was too public
+and ostentatious to be overlooked, even if the king had been so minded,
+and he was not in the least so minded.  For a day and a half he sat
+apart and brooded, and every one thought he was debating within himself
+the question of the young prince's death or pardon; as a matter of fact
+he was merely thinking out the manner of the boy's death.  As the thing
+had to be done, and was bound to attract an enormous amount of public
+attention in any case, it was as well to make it as spectacular and
+impressive as possible.
+
+"'Apart from his unfortunate taste in religions;' said the king, 'and
+his obstinacy in adhering to it, he is a sweet and pleasant youth,
+therefore it is meet and fitting that he should be done to death by the
+winged envoys of sweetness.'
+
+"'Your Majesty means--?' said the Royal Librarian.
+
+"'I mean,' said the king, 'that he shall be stung to death by bees.  By
+the royal bees, of course.'
+
+"'A most elegant death,' said the Librarian.
+
+"'Elegant and spectacular, and decidedly painful,' said the king; 'it
+fulfils all the conditions that could be wished for.'
+
+"The king himself thought out all the details of the execution
+ceremony.  Vespaluus was to be stripped of his clothes, his hands were
+to be bound behind him, and he was then to be slung in a recumbent
+position immediately above three of the largest of the royal beehives,
+so that the least movement of his body would bring him in jarring
+contact with them.  The rest could be safely left to the bees.  The
+death throes, the king computed, might last anything from fifteen to
+forty minutes, though there was division of opinion and considerable
+wagering among the other nephews as to whether death might not be
+almost instantaneous, or, on the other hand, whether it might not be
+deferred for a couple of hours. Anyway, they all agreed, it was vastly
+preferable to being thrown down into an evil smelling bear-pit and
+being clawed and mauled to death by imperfectly carnivorous animals.
+
+"It so happened, however, that the keeper of the royal hives had
+leanings towards Christianity himself, and moreover, like most of the
+Court officials, he was very much attached to Vespaluus.  On the eve of
+the execution, therefore, he busied himself with removing the stings
+from all the royal bees; it was a long and delicate operation, but he
+was an expert bee-master, and by working hard nearly all night he
+succeeded in disarming all, or almost all, of the hive inmates."
+
+"I didn't know you could take the sting from a live bee," said the
+Baroness incredulously.
+
+"Every profession has its secrets," replied Clovis; "if it hadn't it
+wouldn't be a profession.  Well, the moment for the execution arrived;
+the king and Court took their places, and accommodation was found for
+as many of the populace as wished to witness the unusual spectacle.
+Fortunately the royal bee-yard was of considerable dimensions, and was
+commanded, moreover, by the terraces that ran round the royal gardens;
+with a little squeezing and the erection of a few platforms room was
+found for everybody. Vespaluus was carried into the open space in front
+of the hives, blushing and slightly embarrassed, but not at all
+displeased at the attention which was being centred on him."
+
+"He seems to have resembled you in more things than in appearance,"
+said the Baroness.
+
+"Don't interrupt at a critical point in the story," said Clovis. "As
+soon as he had been carefully adjusted in the prescribed position over
+the hives, and almost before the gaolers had time to retire to a safe
+distance, Vespaluus gave a lusty and well-aimed kick, which sent all
+three hives toppling one over another.  The next moment he was wrapped
+from head to foot in bees; each individual insect nursed the dreadful
+and humiliating knowledge that in this supreme hour of catastrophe it
+could not sting, but each felt that it ought to pretend to.  Vespaluus
+squealed and wriggled with laughter, for he was being tickled nearly to
+death, and now and again he gave a furious kick and used a bad word as
+one of the few bees that had escaped disarmament got its protest home.
+But the spectators saw with amazement that he showed no signs of
+approaching death agony, and as the bees dropped wearily away in
+clusters from his body his flesh was seen to be as white and smooth as
+before the ordeal, with a shiny glaze from the honey-smear of
+innumerable bee-feet, and here and there a small red spot where one of
+the rare stings had left its mark.  It was obvious that a miracle had
+been performed in his favour, and one loud murmur, of astonishment or
+exultation, rose from the onlooking crowd.  The king gave orders for
+Vespaluus to be taken down to await further orders, and stalked
+silently back to his midday meal, at which he was careful to eat
+heartily and drink copiously as though nothing unusual had happened.
+After dinner he sent for the Royal Librarian.
+
+"'What is the meaning of this fiasco?' he demanded.
+
+"'Your Majesty,' said that official, 'either there is something
+radically wrong with the bees--'
+
+"'There is nothing wrong with my bees,' said the king haughtily, 'they
+are the best bees.'
+
+"'Or else,' said the Librarian, 'there is something irremediably right
+about Prince Vespaluus.'
+
+"'If Vespaluus is right I must be wrong,' said the king.
+
+"The Librarian was silent for a moment.  Hasty speech has been the
+downfall of many; ill-considered silence was the undoing of the
+luckless Court functionary.
+
+"Forgetting the restraint due to his dignity, and the golden rule which
+imposes repose of mind and body after a heavy meal, the king rushed
+upon the keeper of the royal books and hit him repeatedly and
+promiscuously over the head with an ivory chessboard, a pewter
+wine-flagon, and a brass candlestick; he knocked him violently and
+often against an iron torch sconce, and kicked him thrice round the
+banqueting chamber with rapid, energetic kicks.  Finally, he dragged
+him down a long passage by the hair of his head and flung him out of a
+window into the courtyard below."
+
+"Was he much hurt?" asked the Baroness.
+
+"More hurt than surprised," said Clovis.  You see, the king was
+notorious for his violent temper.  However, this was the first time he
+had let himself go so unrestrainedly on the top of a heavy meal.  The
+Librarian lingered for many days--in fact, for all I know, he may have
+ultimately recovered, but Hkrikros died that same evening.  Vespaluus
+had hardly finished getting the honey stains off his body before a
+hurried deputation came to put the coronation oil on his head.  And
+what with the publicly-witnessed miracle and the accession of a
+Christian sovereign, it was not surprising that there was a general
+scramble of converts to the new religion.  A hastily consecrated bishop
+was overworked with a rush of baptisms in the hastily improvised
+Cathedral of St. Odilo. And the boy-martyr-that-might-have-been was
+transposed in the popular imagination into a royal boy-saint, whose
+fame attracted throngs of curious and devout sightseers to the capital.
+Vespaluus, who was busily engaged in organizing the games and athletic
+contests that were to mark the commencement of his reign, had no time
+to give heed to the religious fervour which was effervescing round his
+personality; the first indication he had of the existing state of
+affairs was when the Court Chamberlain (a recent and very ardent
+addition to the Christian community) brought for his approval the
+outlines of a projected ceremonial cutting-down of the idolatrous
+serpent-grove.
+
+"'Your Majesty will be graciously pleased to cut down the first tree
+with a specially consecrated axe,' said the obsequious official.
+
+"'I'll cut off your head first, with any axe that comes handy,' said
+Vespaluus indignantly; 'do you suppose that I'm going to begin my reign
+by mortally affronting the sacred serpents?  It would be most unlucky.'
+
+"'But your Majesty's Christian principles?' exclaimed the bewildered
+Chamberlain.
+
+"'I never had any,' said Vespaluus; 'I used to pretend to be a
+Christian convert just to annoy Hkrikros.  He used to fly into such
+delicious tempers.  And it was rather fun being whipped and scolded and
+shut up in a tower all for nothing.  But as to turning Christian in
+real earnest, like you people seem to do, I couldn't think of such a
+thing.  And the holy and esteemed serpents have always helped me when
+I've prayed to them for success in my running and wrestling and
+hunting, and it was through their distinguished intercession that the
+bees were not able to hurt me with their stings.  It would be black
+ingratitude, to turn against their worship at the very outset of my
+reign.  I hate you for suggesting it.'
+
+"The Chamberlain wrung his hands despairingly.
+
+"'But, your Majesty,' he wailed, 'the people are reverencing you as a
+saint, and the nobles are being Christianized in batches, and
+neighbouring potentates of that Faith are sending special envoys to
+welcome you as a brother.  There is some talk of making you the patron
+saint of beehives, and a certain shade of honey-yellow has been
+christened Vespaluusian gold at the Emperor's Court.  You can't surely
+go back on all this.'
+
+"'I don't mind being reverenced and greeted and honoured,' said
+Vespaluus; 'I don't even mind being sainted in moderation, as long as
+I'm not expected to be saintly as well.  But I wish you clearly and
+finally to understand that I will NOT give up the worship of the august
+and auspicious serpents.'
+
+"There was a world of unspoken bear-pit in the way he uttered those
+last words, and the mulberry-dark eyes flashed dangerously.
+
+"'A new reign,' said the Chamberlain to himself, 'but the same old
+temper.'
+
+"Finally, as a State necessity, the matter of the religions was
+compromised.  At stated intervals the king appeared before his subjects
+in the national cathedral in the character of St. Vespaluus, and the
+idolatrous grove was gradually pruned and lopped away till nothing
+remained of it.  But the sacred and esteemed serpents were removed to a
+private shrubbery in the royal gardens, where Vespaluus the Pagan and
+certain members of his household devoutly and decently worshipped them.
+That possibly is the reason why the boy-king's success in sports and
+hunting never deserted him to the end of his days, and that is also the
+reason why, in spite of the popular veneration for his sanctity, he
+never received official canonization."
+
+"It has stopped raining," said the Baroness.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAY TO THE DAIRY
+
+
+The Baroness and Clovis sat in a much-frequented corner of the Park
+exchanging biographical confidences about the long succession of
+passers-by.
+
+"Who are those depressed-looking young women who have just gone by?"
+asked the Baroness; "they have the air of people who have bowed to
+destiny and are not quite sure whether the salute will be returned."
+
+"Those," said Clovis, "are the Brimley Bomefields.  I dare say you
+would look depressed if you had been through their experiences."
+
+"I'm always having depressing experiences;" said the Baroness, "but I
+never give them outward expression.  It's as bad as looking one's age.
+Tell me about the Brimley Bomefields."
+
+"Well," said Clovis, "the beginning of their tragedy was that they
+found an aunt.  The aunt had been there all the time, but they had very
+nearly forgotten her existence until a distant relative refreshed their
+memory by remembering her very distinctly in his will; it is wonderful
+what the force of example will accomplish. The aunt, who had been
+unobtrusively poor, became quite pleasantly rich, and the Brimley
+Bomefields grew suddenly concerned at the loneliness of her life and
+took her under their collective wings. She had as many wings around her
+at this time as one of those beast-things in Revelation."
+
+"So far I don't see any tragedy from the Brimley Bomefields' point of
+view," said the Baroness.
+
+"We haven't got to it yet," said Clovis.  "The aunt had been used to
+living very simply, and had seen next to nothing of what we should
+consider life, and her nieces didn't encourage her to do much in the
+way of making a splash with her money.  Quite a good deal of it would
+come to them at her death, and she was a fairly old woman, but there
+was one circumstance which cast a shadow of gloom over the satisfaction
+they felt in the discovery and acquisition of this desirable aunt: she
+openly acknowledged that a comfortable slice of her little fortune
+would go to a nephew on the other side of her family.  He was rather a
+deplorable thing in rotters, and quite hopelessly top-hole in the way
+of getting through money, but he had been more or less decent to the
+old lady in her unremembered days, and she wouldn't hear anything
+against him.  At least, she wouldn't pay any attention to what she did
+hear, but her nieces took care that she should have to listen to a good
+deal in that line.  It seemed such a pity, they said among themselves,
+that good money should fall into such worthless hands. They habitually
+spoke of their aunt's money as 'good money,' as though other people's
+aunts dabbled for the most part in spurious currency.
+
+"Regularly after the Derby, St. Leger, and other notable racing events
+they indulged in audible speculations as to how much money Roger had
+squandered in unfortunate betting transactions.
+
+"'His travelling expenses must come to a big sum,' said the eldest
+Brimley Bomefield one day; 'they say he attends every race-meeting in
+England, besides others abroad.  I shouldn't wonder if he went all the
+way to India to see the race for the Calcutta Sweepstake that one hears
+so much about.'
+
+"'Travel enlarges the mind, my dear Christine,' said her aunt.
+
+"'Yes, dear aunt, travel undertaken in the right spirit,' agreed
+Christine; 'but travel pursued merely as a means towards gambling and
+extravagant living is more likely to contract the purse than to enlarge
+the mind.  However, as long as Roger enjoys himself, I suppose he
+doesn't care how fast or unprofitably the money goes, or where he is to
+find more.  It seems a pity, that's all.'
+
+"The aunt by that time had begun to talk of something else, and it was
+doubtful if Christine's moralizing had been even accorded a hearing.
+It was her remark, however--the aunt's remark, I mean--about travel
+enlarging the mind, that gave the youngest Brimley Bomefield her great
+idea for the showing-up of Roger.
+
+"'If aunt could only be taken somewhere to see him gambling and
+throwing away money,' she said, 'it would open her eyes to his
+character more effectually than anything we can say.'
+
+"'My dear Veronique,' said her sisters, 'we can't go following him to
+race-meetings.'
+
+"'Certainly not to race-meetings,' said Veronique, 'but we might go to
+some place where one can look on at gambling without taking part in it.'
+
+"'Do you mean Monte Carlo?' they asked her, beginning to jump rather at
+the idea.
+
+"'Monte Carlo is a long way off, and has a dreadful reputation,' said
+Veronique; 'I shouldn't like to tell our friends that we were going to
+Monte Carlo.  But I believe Roger usually goes to Dieppe about this
+time of year, and some quite respectable English people go there, and
+the journey wouldn't be expensive.  If aunt could stand the Channel
+crossing the change of scene might do her a lot of good.'
+
+"And that was how the fateful idea came to the Brimley Bomefields.
+
+"From the very first set-off disaster hung over the expedition, as they
+afterwards remembered.  To begin with, all the Brimley Bomefields were
+extremely unwell during the crossing, while the aunt enjoyed the sea
+air and made friends with all manner of strange travelling companions.
+Then, although it was many years since she had been on the Continent,
+she had served a very practical apprenticeship there as a paid
+companion, and her knowledge of colloquial French beat theirs to a
+standstill.  It became increasingly difficult to keep under their
+collective wings a person who knew what she wanted and was able to ask
+for it and to see that she got it.  Also, as far as Roger was
+concerned, they drew Dieppe blank; it turned out that he was staying at
+Pourville, a little watering-place a mile or two further west.  The
+Brimley Bomefields discovered that Dieppe was too crowded and
+frivolous, and persuaded the old lady to migrate to the comparative
+seclusion of Pourville.
+
+"'You won't find it dull, you know,' they assured her; 'there is a
+little casino attached to the hotel, and you can watch the people
+dancing and throwing away their money at PETITS CHEVAUX.'
+
+"It was just before PETITS CHEVAUX had been supplanted by BOULE.
+
+"Roger was not staying in the same hotel, but they knew that the casino
+would be certain of his patronage on most afternoons and evenings.
+
+"On the first evening of their visit they wandered into the casino
+after a fairly early dinner, and hovered near the tables.  Bertie van
+Tahn was staying there at the time, and he described the whole incident
+to me.  The Brimley Bomefields kept a furtive watch on the doors as
+though they were expecting some one to turn up, and the aunt got more
+and more amused and interested watching the little horses whirl round
+and round the board.
+
+"'Do you know, poor little number eight hasn't won for the last
+thirty-two times,' she said to Christine; 'I've been keeping count.  I
+shall really have to put five francs on him to encourage him.'
+
+"'Come and watch the dancing, dear,' said Christine nervously.  It was
+scarcely a part of their strategy that Roger should come in and find
+the old lady backing her fancy at the PETITS CHEVAUX table.
+
+"'Just wait while I put five francs on number eight,' said the aunt,
+and in another moment her money was lying on the table.  The horses
+commenced to move round, it was a slow race this time, and number eight
+crept up at the finish like some crafty demon and placed his nose just
+a fraction in front of number three, who had seemed to be winning
+easily.  Recourse had to be had to measurement, and the number eight
+was proclaimed the winner.  The aunt picked up thirty-five francs.
+After that the Brimley Bomefields would have had to have used concerted
+force to get her away from the tables.  When Roger appeared on the
+scene she was fifty-two francs to the good; her nieces were hovering
+forlornly in the background, like chickens that have been hatched out
+by a duck and are despairingly watching their parent disporting herself
+in a dangerous and uncongenial element.  The supper-party which Roger
+insisted on standing that night in honour of his aunt and the three
+Miss Brimley Bomefields was remarkable for the unrestrained gaiety of
+two of the participants and the funereal mirthlessness of the remaining
+guests.
+
+"'I do not think,' Christine confided afterwards to a friend, who
+re-confided it to Bertie van Tahn, 'that I shall ever be able to touch
+PATÉ DE FOIE GRAS again.  It would bring back memories of that awful
+evening.'
+
+"For the next two or three days the nieces made plans for returning to
+England or moving on to some other resort where there was no casino.
+The aunt was busy making a system for winning at PETITS CHEVAUX.
+Number eight, her first love, had been running rather unkindly for her,
+and a series of plunges on number five had turned out even worse.
+
+"'Do you know, I dropped over seven hundred francs at the tables this
+afternoon,' she announced cheerfully at dinner on the fourth evening of
+their visit.
+
+"'Aunt!  Twenty-eight pounds!  And you were losing last night too.'
+
+"'Oh, I shall get it all back,' she said optimistically; 'but not here.
+These silly little horses are no good.  I shall go somewhere where one
+can play comfortably at roulette.  You needn't look so shocked.  I've
+always felt that, given the opportunity, I should be an inveterate
+gambler, and now you darlings have put the opportunity in my way.  I
+must drink your very good healths. Waiter, a bottle of PONTET CANET.
+Ah, it's number seven on the wine list; I shall plunge on number seven
+to-night.  It won four times running this afternoon when I was backing
+that silly number five.'
+
+"Number seven was not in a winning mood that evening.  The Brimley
+Bomefields, tired of watching disaster from a distance, drew near to
+the table where their aunt was now an honoured habituée, and gazed
+mournfully at the successive victories of one and five and eight and
+four, which swept 'good money' out of the purse of seven's obstinate
+backer.  The day's losses totalled something very near two thousand
+francs.
+
+"'You incorrigible gamblers,' said Roger chaffingly to them, when he
+found them at the tables.
+
+"'We are not gambling,' said Christine freezingly; 'we are looking on.'
+
+"'I DON'T think,' said Roger knowingly; 'of course you're a syndicate
+and aunt is putting the stakes on for all of you. Anyone can tell by
+your looks when the wrong horse wins that you've got a stake on.'
+
+"Aunt and nephew had supper alone that night, or at least they would
+have if Bertie hadn't joined them; all the Brimley Bomefields had
+headaches.
+
+"The aunt carried them all off to Dieppe the next day and set cheerily
+about the task of winning back some of her losses.  Her luck was
+variable; in fact, she had some fair streaks of good fortune, just
+enough to keep her thoroughly amused with her new distraction; but on
+the whole she was a loser.  The Brimley Bomefields had a collective
+attack of nervous prostration on the day when she sold out a quantity
+of shares in Argentine rails. 'Nothing will ever bring that money
+back,' they remarked lugubriously to one another.
+
+"'Veronique at last could bear it no longer, and went home; you see, it
+had been her idea to bring the aunt on this disastrous expedition, and
+though the others did not cast the fact verbally in her face, there was
+a certain lurking reproach in their eyes which was harder to meet than
+actual upbraidings.  The other two remained behind, forlornly mounting
+guard over their aunt until such time as the waning of the Dieppe
+season should at last turn her in the direction of home and safety.
+They made anxious calculations as to how little 'good money' might,
+with reasonable luck, be squandered in the meantime.  Here, however,
+their reckoning went far astray; the close of the Dieppe season merely
+turned their aunt's thoughts in search of some other convenient
+gambling resort.  'Show a cat the way to the dairy--' I forget how the
+proverb goes on, but it summed up the situation as far as the Brimley
+Bomefields' aunt was concerned.  She had been introduced to unexplored
+pleasures, and found them greatly to her liking, and she was in no
+hurry to forgo the fruits of her newly acquired knowledge.  You see,
+for the first time in her life the old thing was thoroughly enjoying
+herself; she was losing money, but she had plenty of fun and excitement
+over the process, and she had enough left to do very comfortably on.
+Indeed, she was only just learning to understand the art of doing
+oneself well.  She was a popular hostess, and in return her
+fellow-gamblers were always ready to entertain her to dinners and
+suppers when their luck was in.  Her nieces, who still remained in
+attendance on her, with the pathetic unwillingness of a crew to leave a
+foundering treasure ship which might yet be steered into port, found
+little pleasure in these Bohemian festivities; to see 'good money'
+lavished on good living for the entertainment of a nondescript circle
+of acquaintances who were not likely to be in any way socially useful
+to them, did not attune them to a spirit of revelry.  They contrived,
+whenever possible, to excuse themselves from participation in their
+aunt's deplored gaieties; the Brimley Bomefield headaches became famous.
+
+"And one day the nieces came to the conclusion that, as they would have
+expressed it, 'no useful purpose would be served' by their continued
+attendance on a relative who had so thoroughly emancipated herself from
+the sheltering protection of their wings. The aunt bore the
+announcement of their departure with a cheerfulness that was almost
+disconcerting.
+
+"'It's time you went home and had those headaches seen to by a
+specialist,' was her comment on the situation.
+
+"The homeward journey of the Brimley Bomefields was a veritable retreat
+from Moscow, and what made it the more bitter was the fact that the
+Moscow, in this case, was not overwhelmed with fire and ashes, but
+merely extravagantly over-illuminated.
+
+"From mutual friends and acquaintances they sometimes get glimpses of
+their prodigal relative, who has settled down into a confirmed gambling
+maniac, living on such salvage of income as obliging moneylenders have
+left at her disposal.
+
+"So you need not be surprised," concluded Clovis, "if they do wear a
+depressed look in public."
+
+"Which is Veronique?" asked the Baroness.
+
+"The most depressed-looking of the three," said Clovis.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEACE OFFERING
+
+
+"I want you to help me in getting up a dramatic entertainment of some
+sort," said the Baroness to Clovis.  "You see, there's been an election
+petition down here, and a member unseated and no end of bitterness and
+ill-feeling, and the County is socially divided against itself.  I
+thought a play of some kind would be an excellent opportunity for
+bringing people together again, and giving them something to think of
+besides tiresome political squabbles."
+
+The Baroness was evidently ambitious of reproducing beneath her own
+roof the pacifying effects traditionally ascribed to the celebrated
+Reel of Tullochgorum.
+
+"We might do something on the lines of Greek tragedy," said Clovis,
+after due reflection; "the Return of Agamemnon, for instance."
+
+The Baroness frowned.
+
+"It sounds rather reminiscent of an election result, doesn't it?"
+
+"It wasn't that sort of return," explained Clovis; "it was a
+home-coming."
+
+"I thought you said it was a tragedy."
+
+"Well, it was.  He was killed in his bathroom, you know."
+
+"Oh, now I know the story, of course.  Do you want me to take the part
+of Charlotte Corday?"
+
+"That's a different story and a different century," said Clovis; "the
+dramatic unities forbid one to lay a scene in more than one century at
+a time.  The killing in this case has to be done by Clytemnestra."
+
+"Rather a pretty name.  I'll do that part.  I suppose you want to be
+Aga--whatever his name is?"
+
+"Dear no.  Agamemnon was the father of grown-up children, and probably
+wore a beard and looked prematurely aged.  I shall be his charioteer or
+bath-attendant, or something decorative of that kind.  We must do
+everything in the Sumurun manner, you know."
+
+"I don't know," said the Baroness; "at least, I should know better if
+you would explain exactly what you mean by the Sumurun manner."
+
+Clovis obliged: "Weird music, and exotic skippings and flying leaps,
+and lots of drapery and undrapery.  Particularly undrapery."
+
+"I think I told you the County are coming.  The County won't stand
+anything very Greek."
+
+"You can get over any objection by calling it Hygiene, or limb-culture,
+or something of that sort.  After all, every one exposes their insides
+to the public gaze and sympathy nowadays, so why not one's outside?"
+
+"My dear boy, I can ask the County to a Greek play, or to a costume
+play, but to a Greek-costume play, never.  It doesn't do to let the
+dramatic instinct carry one too far; one must consider one's
+environment.  When one lives among greyhounds one should avoid giving
+life-like imitations of a rabbit, unless one want's one's head snapped
+off.  Remember, I've got this place on a seven years' lease.  And
+then," continued the Baroness, "as to skippings and flying leaps; I
+must ask Emily Dushford to take a part.  She's a dear good thing, and
+will do anything she's told, or try to; but can you imagine her doing a
+flying leap under any circumstances?"
+
+"She can be Cassandra, and she need only take flying leaps into the
+future, in a metaphorical sense."
+
+"Cassandra; rather a pretty name.  What kind of character is she?"
+
+"She was a sort of advance-agent for calamities.  To know her was to
+know the worst.  Fortunately for the gaiety of the age she lived in, no
+one took her very seriously.  Still, it must have been fairly galling
+to have her turning up after every catastrophe with a conscious air of
+'perhaps another time you'll believe what I say.'"
+
+"I should have wanted to kill her."
+
+"As Clytemnestra I believe you gratify that very natural wish."
+
+"Then it has a happy ending, in spite of it being a tragedy?"
+
+"Well, hardly," said Clovis; "you see, the satisfaction of putting a
+violent end to Cassandra must have been considerably damped by the fact
+that she had foretold what was going to happen to her. She probably
+dies with an intensely irritating 'what-did-I-tell-you' smile on her
+lips.  By the way, of course all the killing will be done in the
+Sumurun manner."
+
+"Please explain again," said the Baroness, taking out a notebook and
+pencil.
+
+"Little and often, you know, instead of one sweeping blow.  You see,
+you are at your own home, so there's no need to hurry over the
+murdering as though it were some disagreeable but necessary duty."
+
+"And what sort of end do I have?  I mean, what curtain do I get?"
+
+"I suppose you rush into your lover's arms.  That is where one of the
+flying leaps will come in."
+
+The getting-up and rehearsing of the play seemed likely to cause, in a
+restricted area, nearly as much heart-burning and ill-feeling as the
+election petition.  Clovis, as adapter and stage-manager, insisted, as
+far as he was able, on the charioteer being quite the most prominent
+character in the play, and his panther-skin tunic caused almost as much
+trouble and discussion as Clytemnestra's spasmodic succession of
+lovers, who broke down on probation with alarming uniformity.  When the
+cast was at length fixed beyond hope of reprieve matters went scarcely
+more smoothly.  Clovis and the Baroness rather overdid the Sumurun
+manner, while the rest of the company could hardly be said to attempt
+it at all.  As for Cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own
+prophecies, she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into
+futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade walk across
+the stage.
+
+"Woe!  Trojans, woe to Troy!" was the most inspired remark she could
+produce after several hours of conscientious study of all the available
+authorities.
+
+"It's no earthly use foretelling the fall of Troy," expostulated
+Clovis, "because Troy has fallen before the action of the play begins.
+And you mustn't say too much about your own impending doom either,
+because that will give things away too much to the audience."
+
+After several minutes of painful brain-searching, Cassandra smiled
+reassuringly.
+
+"I know.  I'll predict a long and happy reign for George the Fifth."
+
+"My dear girl," protested Clovis, "have you reflected that Cassandra
+specialized in foretelling calamities?"
+
+There was another prolonged pause and another triumphant issue.
+
+"I know.  I'll foretell a most disastrous season for the foxhounds."
+
+"On no account," entreated Clovis; "do remember that all Cassandra's
+predictions came true.  The M.F.H. and the Hunt Secretary are both
+awfully superstitious, and they are both going to be present."
+
+Cassandra retreated hastily to her bedroom to bathe her eyes before
+appearing at tea.
+
+The Baroness and Clovis were by this time scarcely on speaking terms.
+Each sincerely wished their respective rôle to be the pivot round which
+the entire production should revolve, and each lost no opportunity for
+furthering the cause they had at heart. As fast as Clovis introduced
+some effective bit of business for the charioteer (and he introduced a
+great many), the Baroness would remorselessly cut it out, or more often
+dovetail it into her own part, while Clovis retaliated in a similar
+fashion whenever possible.  The climax came when Clytemnestra annexed
+some highly complimentary lines, which were to have been addressed to
+the charioteer by a bevy of admiring Greek damsels, and put them into
+the mouth of her lover.  Clovis stood by in apparent unconcern while
+the words:
+
+"Oh, lovely stripling, radiant as the dawn," were transposed into:
+
+"Oh, Clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn," but there was a dangerous
+glitter in his eye that might have given the Baroness warning.  He had
+composed the verse himself, inspired and thoroughly carried away by his
+subject; he suffered, therefore, a double pang in beholding his tribute
+deflected from its destined object, and his words mutilated and twisted
+into what became an extravagant panegyric on the Baroness's personal
+charms.  It was from this moment that he became gentle and assiduous in
+his private coaching of Cassandra.
+
+The County, forgetting its dissensions, mustered in full strength to
+witness the much-talked-of production.  The protective Providence that
+looks after little children and amateur theatricals made good its
+traditional promise that everything should be right on the night.  The
+Baroness and Clovis seemed to have sunk their mutual differences, and
+between them dominated the scene to the partial eclipse of all the
+other characters, who, for the most part, seemed well content to remain
+in the shadow.  Even Agamemnon, with ten years of strenuous life around
+Troy standing to his credit, appeared to be an unobtrusive personality
+compared with his flamboyant charioteer.  But the moment came for
+Cassandra (who had been excused from any very definite outpourings
+during rehearsals) to support her rôle by delivering herself of a few
+well-chosen anticipations of pending misfortune.  The musicians obliged
+with appropriately lugubrious wailings and thumpings, and the Baroness
+seized the opportunity to make a dash to the dressing-room to effect
+certain repairs in her make-up. Cassandra, nervous but resolute, came
+down to the footlights and, like one repeating a carefully learned
+lesson, flung her remarks straight at the audience:
+
+"I see woe for this fair country if the brood of corrupt, self-seeking,
+unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians" (here she named one of the two
+rival parties in the State) "continue to infest and poison our local
+councils and undermine our Parliamentary representation; if they
+continue to snatch votes by nefarious and discreditable means--"
+
+A humming as of a great hive of bewildered and affronted bees drowned
+her further remarks and wore down the droning of the musicians.  The
+Baroness, who should have been greeted on her return to the stage with
+the pleasing invocation, "Oh, Clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn," heard
+instead the imperious voice of Lady Thistledale ordering her carriage,
+and something like a storm of open discord going on at the back of the
+room.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+The social divisions in the County healed themselves after their own
+fashion; both parties found common ground in condemning the Baroness's
+outrageously bad taste and tactlessness.
+
+She has been fortunate in sub-letting for the greater part of her seven
+years' lease.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEACE OF MOWSLE BARTON
+
+
+Crefton Lockyer sat at his ease, an ease alike of body and soul, in the
+little patch of ground, half-orchard and half-garden, that abutted on
+the farmyard at Mowsle Barton.  After the stress and noise of long
+years of city life, the repose and peace of the hill-begirt homestead
+struck on his senses with an almost dramatic intensity.  Time and space
+seemed to lose their meaning and their abruptness; the minutes slid
+away into hours, and the meadows and fallows sloped away into middle
+distance, softly and imperceptibly.  Wild weeds of the hedgerow
+straggled into the flower-garden, and wallflowers and garden bushes
+made counter-raids into farmyard and lane.  Sleepy-looking hens and
+solemn preoccupied ducks were equally at home in yard, orchard, or
+roadway; nothing seemed to belong definitely to anywhere; even the
+gates were not necessarily to be found on their hinges.  And over the
+whole scene brooded the sense of a peace that had almost a quality of
+magic in it.  In the afternoon you felt that it had always been
+afternoon, and must always remain afternoon; in the twilight you knew
+that it could never have been anything else but twilight.  Crefton
+Lockyer sat at his ease in the rustic seat beneath an old medlar tree,
+and decided that here was the life-anchorage that his mind had so
+fondly pictured and that latterly his tired and jarred senses had so
+often pined for.  He would make a permanent lodging-place among these
+simple friendly people, gradually increasing the modest comforts with
+which he would like to surround himself, but falling in as much as
+possible with their manner of living.
+
+As he slowly matured this resolution in his mind an elderly woman came
+hobbling with uncertain gait through the orchard.  He recognized her as
+a member of the farm household, the mother or possibly the
+mother-in-law of Mrs. Spurfield, his present landlady, and hastily
+formulated some pleasant remark to make to her.  She forestalled him.
+
+"There's a bit of writing chalked up on the door over yonder. What is
+it?"
+
+She spoke in a dull impersonal manner, as though the question had been
+on her lips for years and had best be got rid of.  Her eyes, however,
+looked impatiently over Crefton's head at the door of a small barn
+which formed the outpost of a straggling line of farm buildings.
+
+"Martha Pillamon is an old witch" was the announcement that met
+Crefton's inquiring scrutiny, and he hesitated a moment before giving
+the statement wider publicity.  For all he knew to the contrary, it
+might be Martha herself to whom he was speaking.  It was possible that
+Mrs. Spurfield's maiden name had been Pillamon. And the gaunt, withered
+old dame at his side might certainly fulfil local conditions as to the
+outward aspect of a witch.
+
+"It's something about some one called Martha Pillamon," he explained
+cautiously.
+
+"What does it say?"
+
+"It's very disrespectful," said Crefton; "it says she's a witch. Such
+things ought not to be written up."
+
+"It's true, every word of it," said his listener with considerable
+satisfaction, adding as a special descriptive note of her own, "the old
+toad."
+
+And as she hobbled away through the farmyard she shrilled out in her
+cracked voice, "Martha Pillamon is an old witch!"
+
+"Did you hear what she said?" mumbled a weak, angry voice somewhere
+behind Crefton's shoulder.  Turning hastily, he beheld another old
+crone, thin and yellow and wrinkled, and evidently in a high state of
+displeasure.  Obviously this was Martha Pillamon in person.  The
+orchard seemed to be a favourite promenade for the aged women of the
+neighbourhood.
+
+"'Tis lies, 'tis sinful lies," the weak voice went on.  "'Tis Betsy
+Croot is the old witch.  She an' her daughter, the dirty rat.  I'll put
+a spell on 'em, the old nuisances."
+
+As she limped slowly away her eye caught the chalk inscription on the
+barn door.
+
+"What's written up there?" she demanded, wheeling round on Crefton.
+
+"Vote for Soarker," he responded, with the craven boldness of the
+practised peacemaker.
+
+The old woman grunted, and her mutterings and her faded red shawl lost
+themselves gradually among the tree-trunks.  Crefton rose presently and
+made his way towards the farm-house.  Somehow a good deal of the peace
+seemed to have slipped out of the atmosphere.
+
+The cheery bustle of tea-time in the old farm kitchen, which Crefton
+had found so agreeable on previous afternoons, seemed to have soured
+to-day into a certain uneasy melancholy.  There was a dull, dragging
+silence around the board, and the tea itself, when Crefton came to
+taste it, was a flat, lukewarm concoction that would have driven the
+spirit of revelry out of a carnival.
+
+"It's no use complaining of the tea," said Mrs. Spurfield hastily, as
+her guest stared with an air of polite inquiry at his cup. "The kettle
+won't boil, that's the truth of it."
+
+Crefton turned to the hearth, where an unusually fierce fire was banked
+up under a big black kettle, which sent a thin wreath of steam from its
+spout, but seemed otherwise to ignore the action of the roaring blaze
+beneath it.
+
+"It's been there more than an hour, an' boil it won't," said Mrs.
+Spurfield, adding, by way of complete explanation, "we're bewitched."
+
+"It's Martha Pillamon as has done it," chimed in the old mother; "I'll
+be even with the old toad.  I'll put a spell on her."
+
+"It must boil in time," protested Crefton, ignoring the suggestions of
+foul influences.  "Perhaps the coal is damp."
+
+"It won't boil in time for supper, nor for breakfast to-morrow morning,
+not if you was to keep the fire a-going all night for it," said Mrs.
+Spurfield.  And it didn't.  The household subsisted on fried and baked
+dishes, and a neighbour obligingly brewed tea and sent it across in a
+moderately warm condition.
+
+"I suppose you'll be leaving us, now that things has turned up
+uncomfortable," Mrs. Spurfield observed at breakfast; "there are folks
+as deserts one as soon as trouble comes."
+
+Crefton hurriedly disclaimed any immediate change of plans; he
+observed, however, to himself that the earlier heartiness of manner had
+in a large measure deserted the household.  Suspicious looks, sulky
+silences, or sharp speeches had become the order of the day.  As for
+the old mother, she sat about the kitchen or the garden all day,
+murmuring threats and spells against Martha Pillamon.  There was
+something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail
+old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to
+the task of making each other wretched.  Hatred seemed to be the one
+faculty which had survived in undiminished vigour and intensity where
+all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.  And the
+uncanny part of it was that some horrid unwholesome power seemed to be
+distilled from their spite and their cursings.  No amount of sceptical
+explanation could remove the undoubted fact that neither kettle nor
+saucepan would come to boiling-point over the hottest fire. Crefton
+clung as long as possible to the theory of some defect in the coals,
+but a wood fire gave the same result, and when a small spirit-lamp
+kettle, which he ordered out by carrier, showed the same obstinate
+refusal to allow its contents to boil he felt that he had come suddenly
+into contact with some unguessed-at and very evil aspect of hidden
+forces.  Miles away, down through an opening in the hills, he could
+catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet
+here, so little removed from the arteries of the latest civilization,
+was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like
+witchcraft seemed to hold a very practical sway.
+
+Passing out through the farm garden on his way to the lanes beyond,
+where he hoped to recapture the comfortable sense of peacefulness that
+was so lacking around house and hearth--especially hearth--Crefton came
+across the old mother, sitting mumbling to herself in the seat beneath
+the medlar tree.  "Let un sink as swims, let un sink as swims," she
+was, repeating over and over again, as a child repeats a half-learned
+lesson.  And now and then she would break off into a shrill laugh, with
+a note of malice in it that was not pleasant to hear.  Crefton was glad
+when he found himself out of earshot, in the quiet and seclusion of the
+deep overgrown lanes that seemed to lead away to nowhere; one, narrower
+and deeper than the rest, attracted his footsteps, and he was almost
+annoyed when he found that it really did act as a miniature roadway to
+a human dwelling.  A forlorn-looking cottage with a scrap of ill-tended
+cabbage garden and a few aged apple trees stood at an angle where a
+swift flowing stream widened out for a space into a decent sized pond
+before hurrying away again through the willows that had checked its
+course.  Crefton leaned against a tree-trunk and looked across the
+swirling eddies of the pond at the humble little homestead opposite
+him; the only sign of life came from a small procession of
+dingy-looking ducks that marched in single file down to the water's
+edge.  There is always something rather taking in the way a duck
+changes itself in an instant from a slow, clumsy waddler of the earth
+to a graceful, buoyant swimmer of the waters, and Crefton waited with a
+certain arrested attention to watch the leader of the file launch
+itself on to the surface of the pond.  He was aware at the same time of
+a curious warning instinct that something strange and unpleasant was
+about to happen.  The duck flung itself confidently forward into the
+water, and rolled immediately under the surface.  Its head appeared for
+a moment and went under again, leaving a train of bubbles in its wake,
+while wings and legs churned the water in a helpless swirl of flapping
+and kicking.  The bird was obviously drowning.  Crefton thought at
+first that it had caught itself in some weeds, or was being attacked
+from below by a pike or water-rat.  But no blood floated to the
+surface, and the wildly bobbing body made the circuit of the pond
+current without hindrance from any entanglement.  A second duck had by
+this time launched itself into the pond, and a second struggling body
+rolled and twisted under the surface.  There was something peculiarly
+piteous in the sight of the gasping beaks that showed now and again
+above the water, as though in terrified protest at this treachery of a
+trusted and familiar element.  Crefton gazed with something like horror
+as a third duck poised itself on the bank and splashed in, to share the
+fate of the other two.  He felt almost relieved when the remainder of
+the flock, taking tardy alarm from the commotion of the slowly drowning
+bodies, drew themselves up with tense outstretched necks, and sidled
+away from the scene of danger, quacking a deep note of disquietude as
+they went.  At the same moment Crefton became aware that he was not the
+only human witness of the scene; a bent and withered old woman, whom he
+recognized at once as Martha Pillamon, of sinister reputation, had
+limped down the cottage path to the water's edge, and was gazing
+fixedly at the gruesome whirligig of dying birds that went in horrible
+procession round the pool.  Presently her voice rang out in a shrill
+note of quavering rage:
+
+"'Tis Betsy Croot adone it, the old rat. I'll put a spell on her, see
+if I don't."
+
+Crefton slipped quietly away, uncertain whether or no the old woman had
+noticed his presence.  Even before she had proclaimed the guiltiness of
+Betsy Croot, the latter's muttered incantation "Let un sink as swims"
+had flashed uncomfortably across his mind. But it was the final threat
+of a retaliatory spell which crowded his mind with misgiving to the
+exclusion of all other thoughts or fancies.  His reasoning powers could
+no longer afford to dismiss these old-wives' threats as empty
+bickerings.  The household at Mowsle Barton lay under the displeasure
+of a vindictive old woman who seemed able to materialize her personal
+spites in a very practical fashion, and there was no saying what form
+her revenge for three drowned ducks might not take.  As a member of the
+household Crefton might find himself involved in some general and
+highly disagreeable visitation of Martha Pillamon's wrath.  Of course
+he knew that he was giving way to absurd fancies, but the behaviour of
+the spirit-lamp kettle and the subsequent scene at the pond had
+considerably unnerved him.  And the vagueness of his alarm added to its
+terrors; when once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations
+its possibilities become practically limitless.
+
+Crefton rose at his usual early hour the next morning, after one of the
+least restful nights he had spent at the farm.  His sharpened senses
+quickly detected that subtle atmosphere of
+things-being-not-altogether-well that hangs over a stricken household.
+The cows had been milked, but they stood huddled about in the yard,
+waiting impatiently to be driven out afield, and the poultry kept up an
+importunate querulous reminder of deferred feeding-time; the yard pump,
+which usually made discordant music at frequent intervals during the
+early morning, was to-day ominously silent.  In the house itself there
+was a coming and going of scuttering footsteps, a rushing and dying
+away of hurried voices, and long, uneasy stillnesses.  Crefton finished
+his dressing and made his way to the head of a narrow staircase.  He
+could hear a dull, complaining voice, a voice into which an awed hush
+had crept, and recognized the speaker as Mrs. Spurfield.
+
+"He'll go away, for sure," the voice was saying; "there are those as
+runs away from one as soon as real misfortune shows itself."
+
+Crefton felt that he probably was one of "those," and that there were
+moments when it was advisable to be true to type.
+
+He crept back to his room, collected and packed his few belongings,
+placed the money due for his lodgings on a table, and made his way out
+by a back door into the yard.  A mob of poultry surged expectantly
+towards him; shaking off their interested attentions he hurried along
+under cover of cowstall, piggery, and hayricks till he reached the lane
+at the back of the farm.  A few minutes' walk, which only the burden of
+his portmanteaux restrained from developing into an undisguised run,
+brought him to a main road, where the early carrier soon overtook him
+and sped him onward to the neighbouring town.  At a bend of the road he
+caught a last glimpse of the farm; the old gabled roofs and thatched
+barns, the straggling orchard, and the medlar tree, with its wooden
+seat, stood out with an almost spectral clearness in the early morning
+light, and over it all brooded that air of magic possession which
+Crefton had once mistaken for peace.
+
+The bustle and roar of Paddington Station smote on his ears with a
+welcome protective greeting.
+
+"Very bad for our nerves, all this rush and hurry," said a
+fellow-traveller; "give me the peace and quiet of the country."
+
+Crefton mentally surrendered his share of the desired commodity. A
+crowded, brilliantly over-lighted music-hall, where an exuberant
+rendering of "1812" was being given by a strenuous orchestra, came
+nearest to his ideal of a nerve sedative.
+
+
+
+
+THE TALKING-OUT OF TARRINGTON
+
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed the aunt of Clovis, "here's some one I know
+bearing down on us.  I can't remember his name, but he lunched with us
+once in Town.  Tarrington--yes, that's it.  He's heard of the picnic
+I'm giving for the Princess, and he'll cling to me like a lifebelt till
+I give him an invitation; then he'll ask if he may bring all his wives
+and mothers and sisters with him.  That's the worst of these small
+watering-places; one can't escape from anybody."
+
+"I'll fight a rearguard action for you if you like to do a bolt now,"
+volunteered Clovis; "you've a clear ten yards start if you don't lose
+time."
+
+The aunt of Clovis responded gamely to the suggestion, and churned away
+like a Nile steamer, with a long brown ripple of Pekingese spaniel
+trailing in her wake.
+
+"Pretend you don't know him," was her parting advice, tinged with the
+reckless courage of the non-combatant.
+
+The next moment the overtures of an affably disposed gentleman were
+being received by Clovis with a "silent-upon-a-peak-in-Darien" stare
+which denoted an absence of all previous acquaintance with the object
+scrutinized.
+
+"I expect you don't know me with my moustache," said the new-comer;
+"I've only grown it during the last two months."
+
+"On the contrary," said Clovis, "the moustache is the only thing about
+you that seemed familiar to me.  I felt certain that I had met it
+somewhere before."
+
+"My name is Tarrington," resumed the candidate for recognition.
+
+"A very useful kind of name," said Clovis; "with a name of that sort no
+one would blame you if you did nothing in particular heroic or
+remarkable, would they?  And yet if you were to raise a troop of light
+horse in a moment of national emergency, 'Tarrington's Light Horse'
+would sound quite appropriate and pulse-quickening; whereas if you were
+called Spoopin, for instance, the thing would be out of the question.
+No one, even in a moment of national emergency, could possibly belong
+to Spoopin's Horse."
+
+The new-comer smiled weakly, as one who is not to be put off by mere
+flippancy, and began again with patient persistence:
+
+"I think you ought to remember my name--"
+
+"I shall," said Clovis, with an air of immense sincerity.  "My aunt was
+asking me only this morning to suggest names for four young owls she's
+just had sent her as pets.  I shall call them all Tarrington; then if
+one or two of them die or fly away, or leave us in any of the ways that
+pet owls are prone to, there will be always one or two left to carry on
+your name.  And my aunt won't LET me forget it; she will always be
+asking 'Have the Tarringtons had their mice?' and questions of that
+sort.  She says if you keep wild creatures in captivity you ought to
+see after their wants, and of course she's quite right there."
+
+"I met you at luncheon at your aunt's house once--" broke in Mr.
+Tarrington, pale but still resolute.
+
+"My aunt never lunches," said Clovis; "she belongs to the National
+Anti-Luncheon League, which is doing quite a lot of good work in a
+quiet, unobtrusive way.  A subscription of half a crown per quarter
+entitles you to go without ninety-two luncheons."
+
+"This must be something new," exclaimed Tarrington.
+
+"It's the same aunt that I've always had," said Clovis coldly.
+
+"I perfectly well remember meeting you at a luncheon-party given by
+your aunt," persisted Tarrington, who was beginning to flush an
+unhealthy shade of mottled pink.
+
+"What was there for lunch?" asked Clovis.
+
+"Oh, well, I don't remember that--"
+
+"How nice of you to remember my aunt when you can no longer recall the
+names of the things you ate.  Now my memory works quite differently.  I
+can remember a menu long after I've forgotten the hostess that
+accompanied it.  When I was seven years old I recollect being given a
+peach at a garden-party by some Duchess or other; I can't remember a
+thing about her, except that I imagine our acquaintance must have been
+of the slightest, as she called me a 'nice little boy,' but I have
+unfading memories of that peach. It was one of those exuberant peaches
+that meet you halfway, so to speak, and are all over you in a moment.
+It was a beautiful unspoiled product of a hothouse, and yet it managed
+quite successfully to give itself the airs of a compote.  You had to
+bite it and imbibe it at the same time.  To me there has always been
+something charming and mystic in the thought of that delicate velvet
+globe of fruit, slowly ripening and warming to perfection through the
+long summer days and perfumed nights, and then coming suddenly athwart
+my life in the supreme moment of its existence. I can never forget it,
+even if I wished to.  And when I had devoured all that was edible of
+it, there still remained the stone, which a heedless, thoughtless child
+would doubtless have thrown away; I put it down the neck of a young
+friend who was wearing a very DÉCOLLETÉ sailor suit.  I told him it was
+a scorpion, and from the way he wriggled and screamed he evidently
+believed it, though where the silly kid imagined I could procure a live
+scorpion at a garden-party I don't know.  Altogether, that peach is for
+me an unfading and happy memory--"
+
+The defeated Tarrington had by this time retreated out of ear-shot,
+comforting himself as best he might with the reflection that a picnic
+which included the presence of Clovis might prove a doubtfully
+agreeable experience.
+
+"I shall certainly go in for a Parliamentary career," said Clovis to
+himself as he turned complacently to rejoin his aunt.  "As a talker-out
+of inconvenient bills I should be invaluable."
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUNDS OF FATE
+
+
+In the fading light of a close dull autumn afternoon Martin Stoner
+plodded his way along muddy lanes and rut-seamed cart tracks that led
+he knew not exactly whither.  Somewhere in front of him, he fancied,
+lay the sea, and towards the sea his footsteps seemed persistently
+turning; why he was struggling wearily forward to that goal he could
+scarcely have explained, unless he was possessed by the same instinct
+that turns a hard-pressed stag cliffward in its last extremity.  In his
+case the hounds of Fate were certainly pressing him with unrelenting
+insistence; hunger, fatigue, and despairing hopelessness had numbed his
+brain, and he could scarcely summon sufficient energy to wonder what
+underlying impulse was driving him onward.  Stoner was one of those
+unfortunate individuals who seem to have tried everything; a natural
+slothfulness and improvidence had always intervened to blight any
+chance of even moderate success, and now he was at the end of his
+tether, and there was nothing more to try.  Desperation had not
+awakened in him any dormant reserve of energy; on the contrary, a
+mental torpor grew up round the crisis of his fortunes.  With the
+clothes he stood up in, a halfpenny in his pocket, and no single friend
+or acquaintance to turn to, with no prospect either of a bed for the
+night or a meal for the morrow, Martin Stoner trudged stolidly forward,
+between moist hedgerows and beneath dripping trees, his mind almost a
+blank, except that he was subconsciously aware that somewhere in front
+of him lay the sea.  Another consciousness obtruded itself now and
+then--the knowledge that he was miserably hungry.  Presently he came to
+a halt by an open gateway that led into a spacious and rather neglected
+farm-garden; there was little sign of life about, and the farm-house at
+the further end of the garden looked chill and inhospitable.  A
+drizzling rain, however, was setting in, and Stoner thought that here
+perhaps he might obtain a few minutes' shelter and buy a glass of milk
+with his last remaining coin.  He turned slowly and wearily into the
+garden and followed a narrow, flagged path up to a side door.  Before
+he had time to knock the door opened and a bent, withered-looking old
+man stood aside in the doorway as though to let him pass in.
+
+"Could I come in out of the rain?" Stoner began, but the old man
+interrupted him.
+
+"Come in, Master Tom.  I knew you would come back one of these days."
+
+Stoner lurched across the threshold and stood staring uncomprehendingly
+at the other.
+
+"Sit down while I put you out a bit of supper," said the old man with
+quavering eagerness.  Stoner's legs gave way from very weariness, and
+he sank inertly into the arm-chair that had been pushed up to him.  In
+another minute he was devouring the cold meat, cheese, and bread, that
+had been placed on the table at his side.
+
+"You'm little changed these four years," went on the old man, in a
+voice that sounded to Stoner as something in a dream, far away and
+inconsequent; "but you'll find us a deal changed, you will. There's no
+one about the place same as when you left; nought but me and your old
+Aunt.  I'll go and tell her that you'm come; she won't be seeing you,
+but she'll let you stay right enough.  She always did say if you was to
+come back you should stay, but she'd never set eyes on you or speak to
+you again."
+
+The old man placed a mug of beer on the table in front of Stoner and
+then hobbled away down a long passage.  The drizzle of rain had changed
+to a furious lashing downpour, which beat violently against door and
+windows.  The wanderer thought with a shudder of what the sea-shore
+must look like under this drenching rainfall, with night beating down
+on all sides.  He finished the food and beer and sat numbly waiting for
+the return of his strange host. As the minutes ticked by on the
+grandfather clock in the corner a new hope began to flicker and grow in
+the young man's mind; it was merely the expansion of his former craving
+for food and a few minutes' rest into a longing to find a night's
+shelter under this seemingly hospitable roof.  A clattering of
+footsteps down the passage heralded the old farm servant's return.
+
+"The old missus won't see you, Master Tom, but she says you are to
+stay.  'Tis right enough, seeing the farm will be yours when she be put
+under earth.  I've had a fire lit in your room, Master Tom, and the
+maids has put fresh sheets on to the bed.  You'll find nought changed
+up there.  Maybe you'm tired and would like to go there now."
+
+Without a word Martin Stoner rose heavily to his feet and followed his
+ministering angel along a passage, up a short creaking stair, along
+another passage, and into a large room lit with a cheerfully blazing
+fire.  There was but little furniture, plain, old-fashioned, and good
+of its kind; a stuffed squirrel in a case and a wall-calendar of four
+years ago were about the only symptoms of decoration.  But Stoner had
+eyes for little else than the bed, and could scarce wait to tear his
+clothes off him before rolling in a luxury of weariness into its
+comfortable depths.  The hounds of Fate seemed to have checked for a
+brief moment.
+
+In the cold light of morning Stoner laughed mirthlessly as he slowly
+realized the position in which he found himself.  Perhaps he might
+snatch a bit of breakfast on the strength of his likeness to this other
+missing ne'er-do-well, and get safely away before anyone discovered the
+fraud that had been thrust on him.  In the room downstairs he found the
+bent old man ready with a dish of bacon and fried eggs for "Master
+Tom's" breakfast, while a hard-faced elderly maid brought in a teapot
+and poured him out a cup of tea.  As he sat at the table a small
+spaniel came up and made friendly advances.
+
+"'Tis old Bowker's pup," explained the old man, whom the hard-faced
+maid had addressed as George.  "She was main fond of you; never seemed
+the same after you went away to Australee.  She died 'bout a year
+agone.  'Tis her pup."
+
+Stoner found it difficult to regret her decease; as a witness for
+identification she would have left something to be desired.
+
+"You'll go for a ride, Master Tom?" was the next startling proposition
+that came from the old man.  "We've a nice little roan cob that goes
+well in saddle.  Old Biddy is getting a bit up in years, though 'er
+goes well still, but I'll have the little roan saddled and brought
+round to door."
+
+"I've got no riding things," stammered the castaway, almost laughing as
+he looked down at his one suit of well-worn clothes.
+
+"Master Tom," said the old man earnestly, almost with an offended air,
+"all your things is just as you left them.  A bit of airing before the
+fire an' they'll be all right.  'Twill be a bit of a distraction like,
+a little riding and wild-fowling now and agen. You'll find the folk
+around here has hard and bitter minds towards you.  They hasn't
+forgotten nor forgiven.  No one'll come nigh you, so you'd best get
+what distraction you can with horse and dog.  They'm good company, too."
+
+Old George hobbled away to give his orders, and Stoner, feeling more
+than ever like one in a dream, went upstairs to inspect "Master Tom's"
+wardrobe.  A ride was one of the pleasures dearest to his heart, and
+there was some protection against immediate discovery of his imposture
+in the thought that none of Tom's aforetime companions were likely to
+favour him with a close inspection.  As the interloper thrust himself
+into some tolerably well-fitting riding cords he wondered vaguely what
+manner of misdeed the genuine Tom had committed to set the whole
+countryside against him.  The thud of quick, eager hoofs on damp earth
+cut short his speculations.  The roan cob had been brought up to the
+side door.
+
+"Talk of beggars on horseback," thought Stoner to himself, as he
+trotted rapidly along the muddy lanes where he had tramped yesterday as
+a down-at-heel outcast; and then he flung reflection indolently aside
+and gave himself up to the pleasure of a smart canter along the
+turf-grown side of a level stretch of road.  At an open gateway he
+checked his pace to allow two carts to turn into a field.  The lads
+driving the carts found time to give him a prolonged stare, and as he
+passed on he heard an excited voice call out, "'Tis Tom Prike!  I
+knowed him at once; showing hisself here agen, is he?"
+
+Evidently the likeness which had imposed at close quarters on a
+doddering old man was good enough to mislead younger eyes at a short
+distance.
+
+In the course of his ride he met with ample evidence to confirm the
+statement that local folk had neither forgotten nor forgiven the bygone
+crime which had come to him as a legacy from the absent Tom.  Scowling
+looks, mutterings, and nudgings greeted him whenever he chanced upon
+human beings; "Bowker's pup," trotting placidly by his side, seemed the
+one element of friendliness in a hostile world.
+
+As he dismounted at the side door he caught a fleeting glimpse of a
+gaunt, elderly woman peering at him from behind the curtain of an upper
+window.  Evidently this was his aunt by adoption.
+
+Over the ample midday meal that stood in readiness for him Stoner was
+able to review the possibilities of his extraordinary situation.  The
+real Tom, after four years of absence, might suddenly turn up at the
+farm, or a letter might come from him at any moment.  Again, in the
+character of heir to the farm, the false Tom might be called on to sign
+documents, which would be an embarrassing predicament.  Or a relative
+might arrive who would not imitate the aunt's attitude of aloofness.
+All these things would mean ignominious exposure.  On the other hand,
+the alternative was the open sky and the muddy lanes that led down to
+the sea.  The farm offered him, at any rate, a temporary refuge from
+destitution; farming was one of the many things he had "tried," and he
+would be able to do a certain amount of work in return for the
+hospitality to which he was so little entitled.
+
+"Will you have cold pork for your supper," asked the hard-faced maid,
+as she cleared the table, "or will you have it hotted up?"
+
+"Hot, with onions," said Stoner.  It was the only time in his life that
+he had made a rapid decision.  And as he gave the order he knew that he
+meant to stay.
+
+Stoner kept rigidly to those portions of the house which seemed to have
+been allotted to him by a tacit treaty of delimitation.  When he took
+part in the farm-work it was as one who worked under orders and never
+initiated them.  Old George, the roan cob, and Bowker's pup were his
+sole companions in a world that was otherwise frostily silent and
+hostile.  Of the mistress of the farm he saw nothing.  Once, when he
+knew she had gone forth to church, he made a furtive visit to the farm
+parlour in an endeavour to glean some fragmentary knowledge of the
+young man whose place he had usurped, and whose ill-repute he had
+fastened on himself.  There were many photographs hung on the walls, or
+stuck in prim frames, but the likeness he sought for was not among
+them.  At last, in an album thrust out of sight, he came across what he
+wanted.  There was a whole series, labelled "Tom," a podgy child of
+three, in a fantastic frock, an awkward boy of about twelve, holding a
+cricket bat as though he loathed it, a rather good-looking youth of
+eighteen with very smooth, evenly parted hair, and, finally, a young
+man with a somewhat surly dare-devil expression.  At this last portrait
+Stoner looked with particular interest; the likeness to himself was
+unmistakable.
+
+From the lips of old George, who was garrulous enough on most subjects,
+he tried again and again to learn something of the nature of the
+offence which shut him off as a creature to be shunned and hated by his
+fellow-men.
+
+"What do the folk around here say about me?" he asked one day as they
+were walking home from an outlying field.
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"They be bitter agen you, mortal bitter.  Aye, 'tis a sad business, a
+sad business."
+
+And never could he be got to say anything more enlightening.
+
+On a clear frosty evening, a few days before the festival of Christmas,
+Stoner stood in a corner of the orchard which commanded a wide view of
+the countryside.  Here and there he could see the twinkling dots of
+lamp or candle glow which told of human homes where the goodwill and
+jollity of the season held their sway. Behind him lay the grim, silent
+farm-house, where no one ever laughed, where even a quarrel would have
+seemed cheerful.  As he turned to look at the long grey front of the
+gloom-shadowed building, a door opened and old George came hurriedly
+forth. Stoner heard his adopted name called in a tone of strained
+anxiety.  Instantly he knew that something untoward had happened, and
+with a quick revulsion of outlook his sanctuary became in his eyes a
+place of peace and contentment, from which he dreaded to be driven.
+
+"Master Tom," said the old man in a hoarse whisper, "you must slip away
+quiet from here for a few days.  Michael Ley is back in the village,
+an' he swears to shoot you if he can come across you. He'll do it, too,
+there's murder in the look of him.  Get away under cover of night, 'tis
+only for a week or so, he won't be here longer."
+
+"But where am I to go?" stammered Stoner, who had caught the infection
+of the old man's obvious terror.
+
+"Go right away along the coast to Punchford and keep hid there. When
+Michael's safe gone I'll ride the roan over to the Green Dragon at
+Punchford; when you see the cob stabled at the Green Dragon 'tis a sign
+you may come back agen."
+
+"But--" began Stoner hesitatingly.
+
+"'Tis all right for money," said the other; "the old Missus agrees
+you'd best do as I say, and she's given me this."
+
+The old man produced three sovereigns and some odd silver.
+
+Stoner felt more of a cheat than ever as he stole away that night from
+the back gate of the farm with the old woman's money in his pocket.
+Old George and Bowker's pup stood watching him a silent farewell from
+the yard.  He could scarcely fancy that he would ever come back, and he
+felt a throb of compunction for those two humble friends who would wait
+wistfully for his return.  Some day perhaps the real Tom would come
+back, and there would be wild wonderment among those simple farm folks
+as to the identity of the shadowy guest they had harboured under their
+roof.  For his own fate he felt no immediate anxiety; three pounds goes
+but little way in the world when there is nothing behind it, but to a
+man who has counted his exchequer in pennies it seems a good
+starting-point.  Fortune had done him a whimsically kind turn when last
+he trod these lanes as a hopeless adventurer, and there might yet be a
+chance of his finding some work and making a fresh start; as he got
+further from the farm his spirits rose higher.  There was a sense of
+relief in regaining once more his lost identity and ceasing to be the
+uneasy ghost of another.  He scarcely bothered to speculate about the
+implacable enemy who had dropped from nowhere into his life; since that
+life was now behind him one unreal item the more made little
+difference.  For the first time for many months he began to hum a
+careless lighthearted refrain. Then there stepped out from the shadow
+of an overhanging oak tree a man with a gun.  There was no need to
+wonder who he might be; the moonlight falling on his white set face
+revealed a glare of human hate such as Stoner in the ups and downs of
+his wanderings had never seen before.  He sprang aside in a wild effort
+to break through the hedge that bordered the lane, but the tough
+branches held him fast.  The hounds of Fate had waited for him in those
+narrow lanes, and this time they were not to be denied.
+
+
+
+
+THE RECESSIONAL
+
+
+Clovis sat in the hottest zone but two of a Turkish bath, alternately
+inert in statuesque contemplation and rapidly manoeuvring a
+fountain-pen over the pages of a note-book.
+
+"Don't interrupt me with your childish prattle," he observed to Bertie
+van Tahn, who had slung himself languidly into a neighbouring chair and
+looked conversationally inclined; "I'm writing deathless verse."
+
+Bertie looked interested.
+
+"I say, what a boon you would be to portrait painters if you really got
+to be notorious as a poetry writer.  If they couldn't get your likeness
+hung in the Academy as 'Clovis Sangrail, Esq., at work on his latest
+poem,' they could slip you in as a Study of the Nude or Orpheus
+descending into Jermyn Street.  They always complain that modern dress
+handicaps them, whereas a towel and a fountain-pen--"
+
+"It was Mrs. Packletide's suggestion that I should write this thing,"
+said Clovis, ignoring the bypaths to fame that Bertie van Tahn was
+pointing out to him.  "You see, Loona Bimberton had a Coronation Ode
+accepted by the NEW INFANCY, a paper that has been started with the
+idea of making the NEW AGE seem elderly and hidebound.  'So clever of
+you, dear Loona,' the Packletide remarked when she had read it; 'of
+course, anyone could write a Coronation Ode, but no one else would have
+thought of doing it.' Loona protested that these things were extremely
+difficult to do, and gave us to understand that they were more or less
+the province of a gifted few.  Now the Packletide has been rather
+decent to me in many ways, a sort of financial ambulance, you know,
+that carries you off the field when you're hard hit, which is a
+frequent occurrence with me, and I've no use whatever for Loona
+Bimberton, so I chipped in and said I could turn out that sort of stuff
+by the square yard if I gave my mind to it.  Loona said I couldn't, and
+we got bets on, and between you and me I think the money's fairly safe.
+Of course, one of the conditions of the wager is that the thing has to
+be published in something or other, local newspapers barred; but Mrs.
+Packletide has endeared herself by many little acts of thoughtfulness
+to the editor of the SMOKY CHIMNEY, so if I can hammer out anything at
+all approaching the level of the usual Ode output we ought to be all
+right.  So far I'm getting along so comfortably that I begin to be
+afraid that I must be one of the gifted few."
+
+"It's rather late in the day for a Coronation Ode, isn't it?" said
+Bertie.
+
+"Of course," said Clovis; "this is going to be a Durbar Recessional,
+the sort of thing that you can keep by you for all time if you want to."
+
+"Now I understand your choice of a place to write it in," said Bertie
+van Tahn, with the air of one who has suddenly unravelled a hitherto
+obscure problem; "you want to get the local temperature."
+
+"I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the
+mentally deficient," said Clovis, "but it seems I asked too much of
+fate."
+
+Bertie van Tahn prepared to use his towel as a weapon of precision, but
+reflecting that he had a good deal of unprotected coast-line himself,
+and that Clovis was equipped with a fountain-pen as well as a towel, he
+relapsed pacifically into the depths of his chair.
+
+"May one hear extracts from the immortal work?" he asked.  "I promise
+that nothing that I hear now shall prejudice me against borrowing a
+copy of the SMOKY CHIMNEY at the right moment."
+
+"It's rather like casting pearls into a trough," remarked Clovis
+pleasantly, "but I don't mind reading you bits of it.  It begins with a
+general dispersal of the Durbar participants:
+
+  'Back to their homes in Himalayan heights
+  The stale pale elephants of Cutch Behar
+  Roll like great galleons on a tideless sea--'"
+
+"I don't believe Cutch Behar is anywhere near the Himalayan region,"
+interrupted Bertie.  "You ought to have an atlas on hand when you do
+this sort of thing; and why stale and pale?"
+
+"After the late hours and the excitement, of course," said Clovis; "and
+I said their HOMES were in the Himalayas.  You can have Himalayan
+elephants in Cutch Behar, I suppose, just as you have Irish-bred horses
+running at Ascot."
+
+"You said they were going back to the Himalayas," objected Bertie.
+
+"Well, they would naturally be sent home to recuperate.  It's the usual
+thing out there to turn elephants loose in the hills, just as we put
+horses out to grass in this country."
+
+Clovis could at least flatter himself that he had infused some of the
+reckless splendour of the East into his mendacity.
+
+"Is it all going to be in blank verse?" asked the critic.
+
+"Of course not; 'Durbar' comes at the end of the fourth line."
+
+"That seems so cowardly; however, it explains why you pitched on Cutch
+Behar."
+
+"There is more connection between geographical place-names and poetical
+inspiration than is generally recognized; one of the chief reasons why
+there are so few really great poems about Russia in our language is
+that you can't possibly get a rhyme to names like Smolensk and Tobolsk
+and Minsk."
+
+Clovis spoke with the authority of one who has tried.
+
+"Of course, you could rhyme Omsk with Tomsk," he continued; "in fact,
+they seem to be there for that purpose, but the public wouldn't stand
+that sort of thing indefinitely."
+
+"The public will stand a good deal," said Bertie malevolently, "and so
+small a proportion of it knows Russian that you could always have an
+explanatory footnote asserting that the last three letters in Smolensk
+are not pronounced.  It's quite as believable as your statement about
+putting elephants out to grass in the Himalayan range."
+
+"I've got rather a nice bit," resumed Clovis with unruffled serenity,
+"giving an evening scene on the outskirts of a jungle village:
+
+  'Where the coiled cobra in the gloaming gloats,
+  And prowling panthers stalk the wary goats.'"
+
+"There is practically no gloaming in tropical countries," said Bertie
+indulgently; "but I like the masterly reticence with which you treat
+the cobra's motive for gloating.  The unknown is proverbially the
+uncanny.  I can picture nervous readers of the SMOKY CHIMNEY keeping
+the light turned on in their bedrooms all night out of sheer sickening
+uncertainty as to WHAT the cobra might have been gloating about."
+
+"Cobras gloat naturally," said Clovis, "just as wolves are always
+ravening from mere force of habit, even after they've hopelessly
+overeaten themselves.  I've got a fine bit of colour painting later
+on," he added, "where I describe the dawn coming up over the
+Brahma-putra river:
+
+  'The amber dawn-drenched East with sun-shafts kissed,
+  Stained sanguine apricot and amethyst,
+  O'er the washed emerald of the mango groves
+  Hangs in a mist of opalescent mauves,
+  While painted parrot-flights impinge the haze
+  With scarlet, chalcedon and chrysoprase.'"
+
+"I've never seen the dawn come up over the Brahma-putra river," said
+Bertie, "so I can't say if it's a good description of the event, but it
+sounds more like an account of an extensive jewel robbery.  Anyhow, the
+parrots give a good useful touch of local colour.  I suppose you've
+introduced some tigers into the scenery? An Indian landscape would have
+rather a bare, unfinished look without a tiger or two in the middle
+distance."
+
+"I've got a hen-tiger somewhere in the poem," said Clovis, hunting
+through his notes.  "Here she is:
+
+  'The tawny tigress 'mid the tangled teak
+  Drags to her purring cubs' enraptured ears
+  The harsh death-rattle in the pea-fowl's beak,
+  A jungle lullaby of blood and tears.'"
+
+Bertie van Tahn rose hurriedly from his recumbent position and made for
+the glass door leading into the next compartment.
+
+"I think your idea of home life in the jungle is perfectly horrid," he
+said.  "The cobra was sinister enough, but the improvised rattle in the
+tiger-nursery is the limit.  If you're going to make me turn hot and
+cold all over I may as well go into the steam room at once."
+
+"Just listen to this line," said Clovis; "it would make the reputation
+of any ordinary poet:
+
+             'and overhead
+  The pendulum-patient Punkah, parent of stillborn breeze.'"
+
+"Most of your readers will think 'punkah' is a kind of iced drink or
+half-time at polo," said Bertie, and disappeared into the steam.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+The SMOKY CHIMNEY duly published the "Recessional," but it proved to be
+its swan song, for the paper never attained to another issue.
+
+Loona Bimberton gave up her intention of attending the Durbar and went
+into a nursing-home on the Sussex Downs.  Nervous breakdown after a
+particularly strenuous season was the usually accepted explanation, but
+there are three or four people who know that she never really recovered
+from the dawn breaking over the Brahma-putra river.
+
+
+
+
+A MATTER OF SENTIMENT
+
+
+It was the eve of the great race, and scarcely a member of Lady Susan's
+house-party had as yet a single bet on.  It was one of those
+unsatisfactory years when one horse held a commanding market position,
+not by reason of any general belief in its crushing superiority, but
+because it was extremely difficult to pitch on any other candidate to
+whom to pin ones faith.  Peradventure II was the favourite, not in the
+sense of being a popular fancy, but by virtue of a lack of confidence
+in any one of his rather undistinguished rivals.  The brains of
+clubland were much exercised in seeking out possible merit where none
+was very obvious to the naked intelligence, and the house-party at Lady
+Susan's was possessed by the same uncertainty and irresolution that
+infected wider circles.
+
+"It is just the time for bringing off a good coup," said Bertie van
+Tahn.
+
+"Undoubtedly.  But with what?" demanded Clovis for the twentieth time.
+
+The women of the party were just as keenly interested in the matter,
+and just as helplessly perplexed; even the mother of Clovis, who
+usually got good racing information from her dressmaker, confessed
+herself fancy free on this occasion. Colonel Drake, who was professor
+of military history at a minor cramming establishment, was the only
+person who had a definite selection for the event, but as his choice
+varied every three hours he was worse than useless as an inspired
+guide.  The crowning difficulty of the problem was that it could only
+be fitfully and furtively discussed.  Lady Susan disapproved of racing.
+She disapproved of many things; some people went as far as to say that
+she disapproved of most things.  Disapproval was to her what neuralgia
+and fancy needlework are to many other women. She disapproved of early
+morning tea and auction bridge, of ski-ing and the two-step, of the
+Russian ballet and the Chelsea Arts Club ball, of the French policy in
+Morocco and the British policy everywhere.  It was not that she was
+particularly strict or narrow in her views of life, but she had been
+the eldest sister of a large family of self-indulgent children, and her
+particular form of indulgence had consisted in openly disapproving of
+the foibles of the others.  Unfortunately the hobby had grown up with
+her.  As she was rich, influential, and very, very kind, most people
+were content to count their early tea as well lost on her behalf.
+Still, the necessity for hurriedly dropping the discussion of an
+enthralling topic, and suppressing all mention of it during her
+presence on the scene, was an affliction at a moment like the present,
+when time was slipping away and indecision was the prevailing note.
+
+After a lunch-time of rather strangled and uneasy conversation, Clovis
+managed to get most of the party together at the further end of the
+kitchen gardens, on the pretext of admiring the Himalayan pheasants.
+He had made an important discovery.  Motkin, the butler, who (as Clovis
+expressed it) had grown prematurely grey in Lady Susan's service, added
+to his other excellent qualities an intelligent interest in matters
+connected with the Turf.  On the subject of the forthcoming race he was
+not illuminating, except in so far that he shared the prevailing
+unwillingness to see a winner in Peradventure II.  But where he
+outshone all the members of the house-party was in the fact that he had
+a second cousin who was head stable-lad at a neighbouring racing
+establishment, and usually gifted with much inside information as to
+private form and possibilities.  Only the fact of her ladyship having
+taken it into her head to invite a house-party for the last week of May
+had prevented Mr. Motkin from paying a visit of consultation to his
+relative with respect to the big race; there was still time to cycle
+over if he could get leave of absence for the afternoon on some
+specious excuse.
+
+"Let's jolly well hope he does," said Bertie van Tahn; "under the
+circumstances a second cousin is almost as useful as second sight."
+
+"That stable ought to know something, if knowledge is to be found
+anywhere," said Mrs. Packletide hopefully.
+
+"I expect you'll find he'll echo my fancy for Motorboat," said Colonel
+Drake.
+
+At this moment the subject had to be hastily dropped.  Lady Susan bore
+down upon them, leaning on the arm of Clovis's mother, to whom she was
+confiding the fact that she disapproved of the craze for Pekingese
+spaniels.  It was the third thing she had found time to disapprove of
+since lunch, without counting her silent and permanent disapproval of
+the way Clovis's mother did her hair.
+
+"We have been admiring the Himalayan pheasants," said Mrs. Packletide
+suavely.
+
+"They went off to a bird-show at Nottingham early this morning," said
+Lady Susan, with the air of one who disapproves of hasty and
+ill-considered lying.
+
+"Their house, I mean; such perfect roosting arrangements, and all so
+clean," resumed Mrs. Packletide, with an increased glow of enthusiasm.
+The odious Bertie van Tahn was murmuring audible prayers for Mrs.
+Packletide's ultimate estrangement from the paths of falsehood.
+
+"I hope you don't mind dinner being a quarter of an hour late
+to-night," said Lady Susan; "Motkin has had an urgent summons to go and
+see a sick relative this afternoon.  He wanted to bicycle there, but I
+am sending him in the motor."
+
+"How very kind of you!  Of course we don't mind dinner being put off."
+The assurances came with unanimous and hearty sincerity.
+
+At the dinner-table that night an undercurrent of furtive curiosity
+directed itself towards Motkin's impassive countenance. One or two of
+the guests almost expected to find a slip of paper concealed in their
+napkins, bearing the name of the second cousin's selection.  They had
+not long to wait.  As the butler went round with the murmured question,
+"Sherry?" he added in an even lower tone the cryptic words, "Better
+not."  Mrs. Packletide gave a start of alarm, and refused the sherry;
+there seemed some sinister suggestion in the butler's warning, as
+though her hostess had suddenly become addicted to the Borgia habit.  A
+moment later the explanation flashed on her that "Better Not" was the
+name of one of the runners in the big race.  Clovis was already
+pencilling it on his cuff, and Colonel Drake, in his turn, was
+signalling to every one in hoarse whispers and dumb-show the fact that
+he had all along fancied "B.N."
+
+Early next morning a sheaf of telegrams went Townward, representing the
+market commands of the house-party and servants' hall.
+
+It was a wet afternoon, and most of Lady Susan's guests hung about the
+hall, waiting apparently for the appearance of tea, though it was
+scarcely yet due.  The advent of a telegram quickened every one into a
+flutter of expectancy; the page who brought the telegram to Clovis
+waited with unusual alertness to know if there might be an answer.
+
+Clovis read the message and gave an exclamation of annoyance.
+
+"No bad news, I hope," said Lady Susan.  Every one else knew that the
+news was not good.
+
+"It's only the result of the Derby," he blurted out; "Sadowa won; an
+utter outsider."
+
+"Sadowa!" exclaimed Lady Susan; "you don't say so!  How remarkable!
+It's the first time I've ever backed a horse; in fact I disapprove of
+horse-racing, but just for once in a way I put money on this horse, and
+it's gone and won."
+
+"May I ask," said Mrs. Packletide, amid the general silence, "why you
+put your money on this particular horse.  None of the sporting prophets
+mentioned it as having an outside chance."
+
+"Well," said Lady Susan, "you may laugh at me, but it was the name that
+attracted me.  You see, I was always mixed up with the Franco-German
+war; I was married on the day that the war was declared, and my eldest
+child was born the day that peace was signed, so anything connected
+with the war has always interested me.  And when I saw there was a
+horse running in the Derby called after one of the battles in the
+Franco-German war, I said I MUST put some money on it, for once in a
+way, though I disapprove of racing.  And it's actually won."
+
+There was a general groan.  No one groaned more deeply than the
+professor of military history.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET SIN OF SEPTIMUS BROPE
+
+
+"Who and what is Mr. Brope?" demanded the aunt of Clovis suddenly.
+
+Mrs. Riversedge, who had been snipping off the heads of defunct roses,
+and thinking of nothing in particular, sprang hurriedly to mental
+attention.  She was one of those old-fashioned hostesses who consider
+that one ought to know something about one's guests, and that the
+something ought to be to their credit.
+
+"I believe he comes from Leighton Buzzard," she observed by way of
+preliminary explanation.
+
+"In these days of rapid and convenient travel," said Clovis, who was
+dispersing a colony of green-fly with visitations of cigarette smoke,
+"to come from Leighton Buzzard does not necessarily denote any great
+strength of character.  It might only mean mere restlessness.  Now if
+he had left it under a cloud, or as a protest against the incurable and
+heartless frivolity of its inhabitants, that would tell us something
+about the man and his mission in life."
+
+"What does he do?" pursued Mrs. Troyle magisterially.
+
+"He edits the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY," said her hostess, "and he's
+enormously learned about memorial brasses and transepts and the
+influence of Byzantine worship on modern liturgy, and all those sort of
+things.  Perhaps he is just a little bit heavy and immersed in one
+range of subjects, but it takes all sorts to make a good house-party,
+you know.  You don't find him TOO dull, do you?"
+
+"Dullness I could overlook," said the aunt of Clovis; "what I cannot
+forgive is his making love to my maid."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Troyle," gasped the hostess, "what an extraordinary idea!
+I assure you Mr. Brope would not dream of doing such a thing."
+
+"His dreams are a matter of indifference to me; for all I care his
+slumbers may be one long indiscretion of unsuitable erotic advances, in
+which the entire servants' hall may be involved.  But in his waking
+hours he shall not make love to my maid.  It's no use arguing about it,
+I'm firm on the point."
+
+"But you must be mistaken," persisted Mrs. Riversedge; "Mr. Brope would
+be the last person to do such a thing."
+
+"He is the first person to do such a thing, as far as my information
+goes, and if I have any voice in the matter he certainly shall be the
+last.  Of course, I am not referring to respectably-intentioned lovers."
+
+"I simply cannot think that a man who writes so charmingly and
+informingly about transepts and Byzantine influences would behave in
+such an unprincipled manner," said Mrs. Riversedge; "what evidence have
+you that he's doing anything of the sort?  I don't want to doubt your
+word, of course, but we mustn't be too ready to condemn him unheard,
+must we?"
+
+"Whether we condemn him or not, he has certainly not been unheard. He
+has the room next to my dressing-room, and on two occasions, when I
+dare say he thought I was absent, I have plainly heard him announcing
+through the wall, 'I love you, Florrie.'  Those partition walls
+upstairs are very thin; one can almost hear a watch ticking in the next
+room."
+
+"Is your maid called Florence?"
+
+"Her name is Florinda."
+
+"What an extraordinary name to give a maid!"
+
+"I did not give it to her; she arrived in my service already
+christened."
+
+"What I mean is," said Mrs. Riversedge, "that when I get maids with
+unsuitable names I call them Jane; they soon get used to it."
+
+"An excellent plan," said the aunt of Clovis coldly; "unfortunately I
+have got used to being called Jane myself.  It happens to be my name."
+
+She cut short Mrs. Riversedge's flood of apologies by abruptly
+remarking:
+
+"The question is not whether I'm to call my maid Florinda, but whether
+Mr. Brope is to be permitted to call her Florrie.  I am strongly of
+opinion than he shall not."
+
+"He may have been repeating the words of some song," said Mrs.
+Riversedge hopefully; "there are lots of those sorts of silly refrains
+with girls' names," she continued, turning to Clovis as a possible
+authority on the subject.  "'You mustn't call me Mary--'"
+
+"I shouldn't think of doing so," Clovis assured her; "in the first
+place, I've always understood that your name was Henrietta; and then I
+hardly know you well enough to take such a liberty."
+
+"I mean there's a SONG with that refrain," hurriedly explained Mrs.
+Riversedge, "and there's 'Rhoda, Rhoda kept a pagoda,' and 'Maisie is a
+daisy,' and heaps of others.  Certainly it doesn't sound like Mr. Brope
+to be singing such songs, but I think we ought to give him the benefit
+of the doubt."
+
+"I had already done so," said Mrs. Troyle, "until further evidence came
+my way."
+
+She shut her lips with the resolute finality of one who enjoys the
+blessed certainty of being implored to open them again.
+
+"Further evidence!" exclaimed her hostess; "do tell me!"
+
+"As I was coming upstairs after breakfast Mr. Brope was just passing my
+room.  In the most natural way in the world a piece of paper dropped
+out of a packet that he held in his hand and fluttered to the ground
+just at my door.  I was going to call out to him 'You've dropped
+something,' and then for some reason I held back and didn't show myself
+till he was safely in his room.  You see it occurred to me that I was
+very seldom in my room just at that hour, and that Florinda was almost
+always there tidying up things about that time.  So I picked up that
+innocent-looking piece of paper."
+
+Mrs. Troyle paused again, with the self-applauding air of one who has
+detected an asp lurking in an apple-charlotte.
+
+Mrs. Riversedge snipped vigorously at the nearest rose bush,
+incidentally decapitating a Viscountess Folkestone that was just coming
+into bloom.
+
+"What was on the paper?" she asked.
+
+"Just the words in pencil, 'I love you, Florrie,' and then underneath,
+crossed out with a faint line, but perfectly plain to read, 'Meet me in
+the garden by the yew.'"
+
+"There IS a yew tree at the bottom of the garden," admitted Mrs.
+Riversedge.
+
+"At any rate he appears to be truthful," commented Clovis.
+
+"To think that a scandal of this sort should be going on under my
+roof!" said Mrs. Riversedge indignantly.
+
+"I wonder why it is that scandal seems so much worse under a roof,"
+observed Clovis; "I've always regarded it as a proof of the superior
+delicacy of the cat tribe that it conducts most of its scandals above
+the slates."
+
+"Now I come to think of it," resumed Mrs. Riversedge, "there are things
+about Mr. Brope that I've never been able to account for. His income,
+for instance: he only gets two hundred a year as editor of the
+CATHEDRAL MONTHLY, and I know that his people are quite poor, and he
+hasn't any private means.  Yet he manages to afford a flat somewhere in
+Westminster, and he goes abroad to Bruges and those sorts of places
+every year, and always dresses well, and gives quite nice
+luncheon-parties in the season.  You can't do all that on two hundred a
+year, can you?"
+
+"Does he write for any other papers?" queried Mrs. Troyle.
+
+"No, you see he specializes so entirely on liturgy and ecclesiastical
+architecture that his field is rather restricted. He once tried the
+SPORTING AND DRAMATIC with an article on church edifices in famous
+fox-hunting centres, but it wasn't considered of sufficient general
+interest to be accepted.  No, I don't see how he can support himself in
+his present style merely by what he writes."
+
+"Perhaps he sells spurious transepts to American enthusiasts,"
+suggested Clovis.
+
+"How could you sell a transept?" said Mrs. Riversedge; "such a thing
+would be impossible."
+
+"Whatever he may do to eke out his income," interrupted Mrs. Troyle,
+"he is certainly not going to fill in his leisure moments by making
+love to my maid."
+
+"Of course not," agreed her hostess; "that must be put a stop to at
+once.  But I don't quite know what we ought to do."
+
+"You might put a barbed wire entanglement round the yew tree as a
+precautionary measure," said Clovis.
+
+"I don't think that the disagreeable situation that has arisen is
+improved by flippancy," said Mrs. Riversedge; "a good maid is a
+treasure--"
+
+"I am sure I don't know what I should do without Florinda," admitted
+Mrs. Troyle; "she understands my hair.  I've long ago given up trying
+to do anything with it myself.  I regard one's hair as I regard
+husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private
+divergences don't matter.  Surely that was the luncheon gong."
+
+Septimus Brope and Clovis had the smoking-room to themselves after
+lunch.  The former seemed restless and preoccupied, the latter quietly
+observant.
+
+"What is a lorry?" asked Septimus suddenly; "I don't mean the thing on
+wheels, of course I know what that is, but isn't there a bird with a
+name like that, the larger form of a lorikeet?"
+
+"I fancy it's a lory, with one 'r,'" said Clovis lazily, "in which case
+it's no good to you."
+
+Septimus Brope stared in some astonishment.
+
+"How do you mean, no good to me?" he asked, with more than a trace of
+uneasiness in his voice.
+
+"Won't rhyme with Florrie," explained Clovis briefly.
+
+Septimus sat upright in his chair, with unmistakable alarm on his face.
+
+"How did you find out?  I mean how did you know I was trying to get a
+rhyme to Florrie?" he asked sharply.
+
+"I didn't know," said Clovis, "I only guessed.  When you wanted to turn
+the prosaic lorry of commerce into a feathered poem flitting through
+the verdure of a tropical forest, I knew you must be working up a
+sonnet, and Florrie was the only female name that suggested itself as
+rhyming with lorry."
+
+Septimus still looked uneasy.
+
+"I believe you know more," he said.
+
+Clovis laughed quietly, but said nothing.
+
+"How much do you know?" Septimus asked desperately.
+
+"The yew tree in the garden," said Clovis.
+
+"There!  I felt certain I'd dropped it somewhere.  But you must have
+guessed something before.  Look here, you have surprised my secret.
+You won't give me away, will you?  It is nothing to be ashamed of, but
+it wouldn't do for the editor of the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY to go in openly
+for that sort of thing, would it?"
+
+"Well, I suppose not," admitted Clovis.
+
+"You see," continued Septimus, "I get quite a decent lot of money out
+of it.  I could never live in the style I do on what I get as editor of
+the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY."
+
+Clovis was even more startled than Septimus had been earlier in the
+conversation, but he was better skilled in repressing surprise.
+
+"Do you mean to say you get money out of--Florrie?" he asked.
+
+"Not out of Florrie, as yet," said Septimus; "in fact, I don't mind
+saying that I'm having a good deal of trouble over Florrie. But there
+are a lot of others."
+
+Clovis's cigarette went out.
+
+"This is VERY interesting," he said slowly.  And then, with Septimus
+Brope's next words, illumination dawned on him.
+
+"There are heaps of others; for instance:
+
+  'Cora with the lips of coral,
+   You and I will never quarrel.'
+
+That was one of my earliest successes, and it still brings me in
+royalties.  And then there is--'Esmeralda, when I first beheld her,'
+and 'Fair Teresa, how I love to please her,' both of those have been
+fairly popular.  And there is one rather dreadful one," continued
+Septimus, flushing deep carmine, "which has brought me in more money
+than any of the others:
+
+  'Lively little Lucie
+  With her naughty nez retroussé.'
+
+Of course, I loathe the whole lot of them; in fact, I'm rapidly
+becoming something of a woman-hater under their influence, but I can't
+afford to disregard the financial aspect of the matter.  And at the
+same time you can understand that my position as an authority on
+ecclesiastical architecture and liturgical subjects would be weakened,
+if not altogether ruined, if it once got about that I was the author of
+'Cora with the lips of coral' and all the rest of them."
+
+Clovis had recovered sufficiently to ask in a sympathetic, if rather
+unsteady, voice what was the special trouble with "Florrie."
+
+"I can't get her into lyric shape, try as I will," said Septimus
+mournfully.  "You see, one has to work in a lot of sentimental, sugary
+compliment with a catchy rhyme, and a certain amount of personal
+biography or prophecy.  They've all of them got to have a long string
+of past successes recorded about them, or else you've got to foretell
+blissful things about them and yourself in the future.  For instance,
+there is:
+
+  'Dainty little girlie Mavis,
+  She is such a rara avis,
+  All the money I can save is
+  All to be for Mavis mine.'
+
+It goes to a sickening namby-pamby waltz tune, and for months nothing
+else was sung and hummed in Blackpool and other popular centres."
+
+This time Clovis's self-control broke down badly.
+
+"Please excuse me," he gurgled, "but I can't help it when I remember
+the awful solemnity of that article of yours that you so kindly read us
+last night, on the Coptic Church in its relation to early Christian
+worship."
+
+Septimus groaned.
+
+"You see how it would be," he said; "as soon as people knew me to be
+the author of that miserable sentimental twaddle, all respect for the
+serious labours of my life would be gone.  I dare say I know more about
+memorial brasses than anyone living, in fact I hope one day to publish
+a monograph on the subject, but I should be pointed out everywhere as
+the man whose ditties were in the mouths of nigger minstrels along the
+entire coast-line of our Island home.  Can you wonder that I positively
+hate Florrie all the time that I'm trying to grind out sugar-coated
+rhapsodies about her."
+
+"Why not give free play to your emotions, and be brutally abusive? An
+uncomplimentary refrain would have an instant success as a novelty if
+you were sufficiently outspoken."
+
+"I've never thought of that," said Septimus, "and I'm afraid I couldn't
+break away from the habit of fulsome adulation and suddenly change my
+style."
+
+"You needn't change your style in the least," said Clovis; "merely
+reverse the sentiment and keep to the inane phraseology of the thing.
+If you'll do the body of the song I'll knock off the refrain, which is
+the thing that principally matters, I believe. I shall charge
+half-shares in the royalties, and throw in my silence as to your guilty
+secret.  In the eyes of the world you shall still be the man who has
+devoted his life to the study of transepts and Byzantine ritual; only
+sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when the wind howls drearily
+down the chimney and the rain beats against the windows, I shall think
+of you as the author of 'Cora with the lips of coral.'  Of course, if
+in sheer gratitude at my silence you like to take me for a much-needed
+holiday to the Adriatic or somewhere equally interesting, paying all
+expenses, I shouldn't dream of refusing."
+
+Later in the afternoon Clovis found his aunt and Mrs. Riversedge
+indulging in gentle exercise in the Jacobean garden.
+
+"I've spoken to Mr. Brope about F.," he announced.
+
+"How splendid of you!  What did he say?" came in a quick chorus from
+the two ladies.
+
+"He was quite frank and straightforward with me when he saw that I knew
+his secret," said Clovis, "and it seems that his intentions were quite
+serious, if slightly unsuitable.  I tried to show him the
+impracticability of the course that he was following.  He said he
+wanted to be understood, and he seemed to think that Florinda would
+excel in that requirement, but I pointed out that there were probably
+dozens of delicately nurtured, pure-hearted young English girls who
+would be capable of understanding him, while Florinda was the only
+person in the world who understood my aunt's hair. That rather weighed
+with him, for he's not really a selfish animal, if you take him in the
+right way, and when I appealed to the memory of his happy childish
+days, spent amid the daisied fields of Leighton Buzzard (I suppose
+daisies do grow there), he was obviously affected.  Anyhow, he gave me
+his word that he would put Florinda absolutely out of his mind, and he
+has agreed to go for a short trip abroad as the best distraction for
+his thoughts. I am going with him as far as Ragusa.  If my aunt should
+wish to give me a really nice scarf-pin (to be chosen by myself), as a
+small recognition of the very considerable service I have done her, I
+shouldn't dream of refusing.  I'm not one of those who think that
+because one is abroad one can go about dressed anyhow."
+
+A few weeks later in Blackpool and places where they sing, the
+following refrain held undisputed sway:
+
+  "How you bore me, Florrie,
+  With those eyes of vacant blue;
+  You'll be very sorry, Florrie,
+  If I marry you.
+  Though I'm easygoin', Florrie,
+  This I swear is true,
+  I'll throw you down a quarry, Florrie,
+  If I marry you."
+
+
+
+
+"MINISTERS OF GRACE"
+
+
+Although he was scarcely yet out of his teens, the Duke of Scaw was
+already marked out as a personality widely differing from others of his
+caste and period.  Not in externals; therein he conformed correctly to
+type.  His hair was faintly reminiscent of Houbigant, and at the other
+end of him his shoes exhaled the right SOUPÇON of harness-room; his
+socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect; and his
+attitude in repose had just that suggestion of Whistler's mother, so
+becoming in the really young.  It was within that the trouble lay, if
+trouble it could be accounted, which marked him apart from his fellows.
+The Duke was religious.  Not in any of the ordinary senses of the word;
+he took small heed of High Church or Evangelical standpoints, he stood
+outside of all the movements and missions and cults and crusades of the
+day, uncaring and uninterested.  Yet in a mystical-practical way of his
+own, which had served him unscathed and unshaken through the fickle
+years of boyhood, he was intensely and intensively religious.  His
+family were naturally, though unobtrusively, distressed about it.  "I
+am so afraid it may affect his bridge," said his mother.
+
+The Duke sat in a pennyworth of chair in St. James's Park, listening to
+the pessimisms of Belturbet, who reviewed the existing political
+situation from the gloomiest of standpoints.
+
+"Where I think you political spade-workers are so silly," said the
+Duke, "is in the misdirection of your efforts.  You spend thousands of
+pounds of money, and Heaven knows how much dynamic force of brain power
+and personal energy, in trying to elect or displace this or that man,
+whereas you could gain your ends so much more simply by making use of
+the men as you find them.  If they don't suit your purpose as they are,
+transform them into something more satisfactory."
+
+"Do you refer to hypnotic suggestion?" asked Belturbet, with the air of
+one who is being trifled with.
+
+"Nothing of the sort.  Do you understand what I mean by the verb to
+koepenick?  That is to say, to replace an authority by a spurious
+imitation that would carry just as much weight for the moment as the
+displaced original; the advantage, of course, being that the koepenick
+replica would do what you wanted, whereas the original does what seems
+best in its own eyes."
+
+"I suppose every public man has a double, if not two or three," said
+Belturbet; "but it would be a pretty hard task to koepenick a whole
+bunch of them and keep the originals out of the way."
+
+"There have been instances in European history of highly successful
+koepenickery," said the Duke dreamily.
+
+"Oh, of course, there have been False Dimitris and Perkin Warbecks, who
+imposed on the world for a time," assented Belturbet, "but they
+personated people who were dead or safely out of the way.  That was a
+comparatively simple matter.  It would be far easier to pass oneself of
+as dead Hannibal than as living Haldane, for instance."
+
+"I was thinking," said the Duke, "of the most famous case of all, the
+angel who koepenicked King Robert of Sicily with such brilliant
+results.  Just imagine what an advantage it would be to have angels
+deputizing, to use a horrible but convenient word, for Quinston and
+Lord Hugo Sizzle, for example.  How much smoother the Parliamentary
+machine would work than at present!"
+
+"Now you're talking nonsense," said Belturbet; "angels don't exist
+nowadays, at least, not in that way, so what is the use of dragging
+them into a serious discussion?  It's merely silly."
+
+"If you talk to me like that I shall just DO it," said the Duke.
+
+"Do what?" asked Belturbet.  There were times when his young friend's
+uncanny remarks rather frightened him.
+
+"I shall summon angelic forces to take over some of the more
+troublesome personalities of our public life, and I shall send the
+ousted originals into temporary retirement in suitable animal
+organisms.  It's not every one who would have the knowledge or the
+power necessary to bring such a thing off--"
+
+"Oh, stop that inane rubbish," said Belturbet angrily; "it's getting
+wearisome.  Here's Quinston coming," he added, as there approached
+along the almost deserted path the well-known figure of a young Cabinet
+Minister, whose personality evoked a curious mixture of public interest
+and unpopularity.
+
+"Hurry along, my dear man," said the young Duke to the Minister, who
+had given him a condescending nod; "your time is running short," he
+continued in a provocative strain; "the whole inept crowd of you will
+shortly be swept away into the world's waste-paper basket."
+
+"You poor little strawberry-leafed nonentity," said the Minister,
+checking himself for a moment in his stride and rolling out his words
+spasmodically; "who is going to sweep us away, I should like to know?
+The voting masses are on our side, and all the ability and
+administrative talent is on our side too.  No power of earth or Heaven
+is going to move us from our place till we choose to quit it.  No power
+of earth or--"
+
+Belturbet saw, with bulging eyes, a sudden void where a moment earlier
+had been a Cabinet Minister; a void emphasized rather than relieved by
+the presence of a puffed-out bewildered-looking sparrow, which hopped
+about for a moment in a dazed fashion and then fell to a violent
+cheeping and scolding.
+
+"If we could understand sparrow-language," said the Duke serenely, "I
+fancy we should hear something infinitely worse than 'strawberry-leafed
+nonentity.'"
+
+"But good Heavens, Eugène," said Belturbet hoarsely, "what has become
+of--  Why, there he is!  How on earth did he get there?" And he pointed
+with a shaking finger towards a semblance of the vanished Minister,
+which approached once more along the unfrequented path.
+
+The Duke laughed.
+
+"It is Quinston to all outward appearance," he said composedly, "but I
+fancy you will find, on closer investigation, that it is an angel
+understudy of the real article."
+
+The Angel-Quinston greeted them with a friendly smile.
+
+"How beastly happy you two look sitting there!" he said wistfully.
+
+"I don't suppose you'd care to change places with poor little us,"
+replied the Duke chaffingly.
+
+"How about poor little me?" said the Angel modestly.  "I've got to run
+about behind the wheels of popularity, like a spotted dog behind a
+carriage, getting all the dust and trying to look as if I was an
+important part of the machine.  I must seem a perfect fool to you
+onlookers sometimes."
+
+"I think you are a perfect angel," said the Duke.
+
+The Angel-that-had-been-Quinston smiled and passed on his way, pursued
+across the breadth of the Horse Guards Parade by a tiresome little
+sparrow that cheeped incessantly and furiously at him.
+
+"That's only the beginning," said the Duke complacently; "I've made it
+operative with all of them, irrespective of parties."
+
+Belturbet made no coherent reply; he was engaged in feeling his pulse.
+The Duke fixed his attention with some interest on a black swan that
+was swimming with haughty, stiff-necked aloofness amid the crowd of
+lesser water-fowl that dotted the ornamental water. For all its pride
+of bearing, something was evidently ruffling and enraging it; in its
+way it seemed as angry and amazed as the sparrow had been.
+
+At the same moment a human figure came along the pathway. Belturbet
+looked up apprehensively.
+
+"Kedzon," he whispered briefly.
+
+"An Angel-Kedzon, if I am not mistaken," said the Duke.  "Look, he is
+talking affably to a human being.  That settles it."
+
+A shabbily dressed lounger had accosted the man who had been Viceroy in
+the splendid East, and who still reflected in his mien some of the cold
+dignity of the Himalayan snow-peaks.
+
+"Could you tell me, sir, if them white birds is storks or halbatrosses?
+I had an argyment--"
+
+The cold dignity thawed at once into genial friendliness.
+
+"Those are pelicans, my dear sir.  Are you interested in birds? If you
+would join me in a bun and a glass of milk at the stall yonder, I could
+tell you some interesting things about Indian birds.  Right oh!  Now
+the hill-mynah, for instance--"
+
+The two men disappeared in the direction of the bun stall, chatting
+volubly as they went, and shadowed from the other side of the railed
+enclosure by a black swan, whose temper seemed to have reached the
+limit of inarticulate rage.
+
+Belturbet gazed in an open-mouthed wonder after the retreating couple,
+then transferred his attention to the infuriated swan, and finally
+turned with a look of scared comprehension at his young friend lolling
+unconcernedly in his chair.  There was no longer any room to doubt what
+was happening.  The "silly talk" had been translated into terrifying
+action.
+
+"I think a prairie oyster on the top of a stiffish brandy-and-soda
+might save my reason," said Belturbet weakly, as he limped towards his
+club.
+
+It was late in the day before he could steady his nerves sufficiently
+to glance at the evening papers.  The Parliamentary report proved
+significant reading, and confirmed the fears that he had been trying to
+shake off.  Mr. Ap Dave, the Chancellor, whose lively controversial
+style endeared him to his supporters and embittered him, politically
+speaking, to his opponents, had risen in his place to make an
+unprovoked apology for having alluded in a recent speech to certain
+protesting taxpayers as "skulkers."  He had realized on reflection that
+they were in all probability perfectly honest in their inability to
+understand certain legal technicalities of the new finance laws.  The
+House had scarcely recovered from this sensation when Lord Hugo Sizzle
+caused a further flutter of astonishment by going out of his way to
+indulge in an outspoken appreciation of the fairness, loyalty, and
+straightforwardness not only of the Chancellor, but of all the members
+of the Cabinet.  A wit had gravely suggested moving the adjournment of
+the House in view of the unexpected circumstances that had arisen.
+
+Belturbet anxiously skimmed over a further item of news printed
+immediately below the Parliamentary report: "Wild cat found in an
+exhausted condition in Palace Yard."
+
+"Now I wonder which of them--" he mused, and then an appalling idea
+came to him.  "Supposing he's put them both into the same beast!"  He
+hurriedly ordered another prairie oyster.
+
+Belturbet was known in his club as a strictly moderate drinker; his
+consumption of alcoholic stimulants that day gave rise to considerable
+comment.
+
+The events of the next few days were piquantly bewildering to the world
+at large; to Belturbet, who knew dimly what was happening, the
+situation was fraught with recurring alarms.  The old saying that in
+politics it's the unexpected that always happens received a
+justification that it had hitherto somewhat lacked, and the epidemic of
+startling personal changes of front was not wholly confined to the
+realm of actual politics.  The eminent chocolate magnate, Sadbury,
+whose antipathy to the Turf and everything connected with it was a
+matter of general knowledge, had evidently been replaced by an
+Angel-Sadbury, who proceeded to electrify the public by blossoming
+forth as an owner of race-horses, giving as a reason his matured
+conviction that the sport was, after all, one which gave healthy
+open-air recreation to large numbers of people drawn from all classes
+of the community, and incidentally stimulated the important industry of
+horse-breeding.  His colours, chocolate and cream hoops spangled with
+pink stars, promised to become as popular as any on the Turf.  At the
+same time, in order to give effect to his condemnation of the evils
+resulting from the spread of the gambling habit among wage-earning
+classes, who lived for the most part from hand to mouth, he suppressed
+all betting news and tipsters' forecasts in the popular evening paper
+that was under his control.  His action received instant recognition
+and support from the Angel-proprietor of the EVENING VIEWS, the
+principal rival evening halfpenny paper, who forthwith issued an ukase
+decreeing a similar ban on betting news, and in a short while the
+regular evening Press was purged of all mention of starting prices and
+probable winners.  A considerable drop in the circulation of all these
+papers was the immediate result, accompanied, of course, by a
+falling-off in advertisement value, while a crop of special betting
+broadsheets sprang up to supply the newly-created want.  Under their
+influence the betting habit became if anything rather more widely
+diffused than before.  The Duke had possibly overlooked the futility of
+koepenicking the leaders of the nation with excellently intentioned
+angel under-studies, while leaving the mass of the people in its
+original condition.
+
+Further sensation and dislocation was caused in the Press world by the
+sudden and dramatic RAPPROCHEMENT which took place between the
+Angel-Editor of the SCRUTATOR and the Angel-Editor of the ANGLIAN
+REVIEW, who not only ceased to criticize and disparage the tone and
+tendencies of each other's publication, but agreed to exchange
+editorships for alternating periods.  Here again public support was not
+on the side of the angels; constant readers of the SCRUTATOR complained
+bitterly of the strong meat which was thrust upon them at fitful
+intervals in place of the almost vegetarian diet to which they had
+become confidently accustomed; even those who were not mentally averse
+to strong meat as a separate course were pardonably annoyed at being
+supplied with it in the pages of the SCRUTATOR.  To be suddenly
+confronted with a pungent herring salad when one had attuned oneself to
+tea and toast, or to discover a richly truffled segment of PATÉ DE FOIE
+dissembled in a bowl of bread and milk, would be an experience that
+might upset the equanimity of the most placidly disposed mortal.  An
+equally vehement outcry arose from the regular subscribers of the
+ANGLIAN REVIEW who protested against being served from time to time
+with literary fare which no young person of sixteen could possibly want
+to devour in secret.  To take infinite precautions, they complained,
+against the juvenile perusal of such eminently innocuous literature was
+like reading the Riot Act on an uninhabited island.  Both reviews
+suffered a serious falling-off in circulation and influence.  Peace
+hath its devastations as well as war.
+
+The wives of noted public men formed another element of discomfiture
+which the young Duke had almost entirely left out of his calculations.
+It is sufficiently embarrassing to keep abreast of the possible
+wobblings and veerings-round of a human husband, who, from the strength
+or weakness of his personal character, may leap over or slip through
+the barriers which divide the parties; for this reason a merciful
+politician usually marries late in life, when he has definitely made up
+his mind on which side he wishes his wife to be socially valuable.  But
+these trials were as nothing compared to the bewilderment caused by the
+Angel-husbands who seemed in some cases to have revolutionized their
+outlook on life in the interval between breakfast and dinner, without
+premonition or preparation of any kind, and apparently without
+realizing the least need for subsequent explanation.  The temporary
+peace which brooded over the Parliamentary situation was by no means
+reproduced in the home circles of the leading statesmen and
+politicians.  It had been frequently and extensively remarked of Mrs.
+Exe that she would try the patience of an angel; now the tables were
+reversed, and she unwittingly had an opportunity for discovering that
+the capacity for exasperating behaviour was not all on one side.
+
+And then, with the introduction of the Navy Estimates, Parliamentary
+peace suddenly dissolved.  It was the old quarrel between Ministers and
+the Opposition as to the adequacy or the reverse of the Government's
+naval programme.  The Angel-Quinston and the Angel-Hugo-Sizzle
+contrived to keep the debates free from personalities and pinpricks,
+but an enormous sensation was created when the elegant lackadaisical
+Halfan Halfour threatened to bring up fifty thousand stalwarts to wreck
+the House if the Estimates were not forthwith revised on a Two-Power
+basis.  It was a memorable scene when he rose in his place, in response
+to the scandalized shouts of his opponents, and thundered forth,
+"Gentlemen, I glory in the name of Apache."
+
+Belturbet, who had made several fruitless attempts to ring up his young
+friend since the fateful morning in St. James's Park, ran him to earth
+one afternoon at his club, smooth and spruce and unruffled as ever.
+
+"Tell me, what on earth have you turned Cocksley Coxon into?" Belturbet
+asked anxiously, mentioning the name of one of the pillars of
+unorthodoxy in the Anglican Church.  "I don't fancy he BELIEVES in
+angels, and if he finds an angel preaching orthodox sermons from his
+pulpit while he's been turned into a fox-terrier, he'll develop rabies
+in less than no time."
+
+"I rather think it was a fox-terrier," said the Duke lazily.
+
+Belturbet groaned heavily, and sank into a chair.
+
+"Look here, Eugène," he whispered hoarsely, having first looked well
+round to see that no one was within hearing range, "you've got to stop
+it.  Consols are jumping up and down like bronchos, and that speech of
+Halfour's in the House last night has simply startled everybody out of
+their wits.  And then on the top of it, Thistlebery--"
+
+"What has he been saying?" asked the Duke quickly.
+
+"Nothing.  That's just what's so disturbing.  Every one thought it was
+simply inevitable that he should come out with a great epoch-making
+speech at this juncture, and I've just seen on the tape that he has
+refused to address any meetings at present, giving as a reason his
+opinion that something more than mere speech-making was wanted."
+
+The young Duke said nothing, but his eyes shone with quiet exultation.
+
+"It's so unlike Thistlebery," continued Belturbet; "at least," he said
+suspiciously, "it's unlike the REAL Thistlebery--"
+
+"The real Thistlebery is flying about somewhere as a
+vocally-industrious lapwing," said the Duke calmly; "I expect great
+things of the Angel-Thistlebery," he added.
+
+At this moment there was a magnetic stampede of members towards the
+lobby, where the tape-machines were ticking out some news of more than
+ordinary import.
+
+"COUP D'ÉTAT in the North.  Thistlebery seizes Edinburgh Castle.
+Threatens civil war unless Government expands naval programme."
+
+In the babel which ensued Belturbet lost sight of his young friend.
+For the best part of the afternoon he searched one likely haunt after
+another, spurred on by the sensational posters which the evening papers
+were displaying broadcast over the West End. "General Baden-Baden
+mobilizes Boy-Scouts.  Another COUP D'ÉTAT feared.  Is Windsor Castle
+safe?"  This was one of the earlier posters, and was followed by one of
+even more sinister purport: "Will the Test-match have to be postponed?"
+It was this disquietening question which brought home the real
+seriousness of the situation to the London public, and made people
+wonder whether one might not pay too high a price for the advantages of
+party government.  Belturbet, questing round in the hope of finding the
+originator of the trouble, with a vague idea of being able to induce
+him to restore matters to their normal human footing, came across an
+elderly club acquaintance who dabbled extensively in some of the more
+sensitive market securities.  He was pale with indignation, and his
+pallor deepened as a breathless newsboy dashed past with a poster
+inscribed: "Premier's constituency harried by moss-troopers.  Halfour
+sends encouraging telegram to rioters.  Letchworth Garden City
+threatens reprisals.  Foreigners taking refuge in Embassies and
+National Liberal Club."
+
+"This is devils' work!" he said angrily.
+
+Belturbet knew otherwise.
+
+At the bottom of St. James's Street a newspaper motor-cart, which had
+just come rapidly along Pall Mall, was surrounded by a knot of eagerly
+talking people, and for the first time that afternoon Belturbet heard
+expressions of relief and congratulation.
+
+It displayed a placard with the welcome announcement: "Crisis ended.
+Government gives way.  Important expansion of naval programme."
+
+There seemed to be no immediate necessity for pursuing the quest of the
+errant Duke, and Belturbet turned to make his way homeward through St.
+James's Park.  His mind, attuned to the alarums and excursions of the
+afternoon, became dimly aware that some excitement of a detached nature
+was going on around him.  In spite of the political ferment which
+reigned in the streets, quite a large crowd had gathered to watch the
+unfolding of a tragedy that had taken place on the shore of the
+ornamental water.  A large black swan, which had recently shown signs
+of a savage and dangerous disposition, had suddenly attacked a young
+gentleman who was walking by the water's edge, dragged him down under
+the surface, and drowned him before anyone could come to his
+assistance.  At the moment when Belturbet arrived on the spot several
+park-keepers were engaged in lifting the corpse into a punt.  Belturbet
+stooped to pick up a hat that lay near the scene of the struggle.  It
+was a smart soft felt hat, faintly reminiscent of Houbigant.
+
+More than a month elapsed before Belturbet had sufficiently recovered
+from his attack of nervous prostration to take an interest once more in
+what was going on in the world of politics. The Parliamentary Session
+was still in full swing, and a General Election was looming in the near
+future.  He called for a batch of morning papers and skimmed rapidly
+through the speeches of the Chancellor, Quinston, and other Ministerial
+leaders, as well as those of the principal Opposition champions, and
+then sank back in his chair with a sigh of relief.  Evidently the spell
+had ceased to act after the tragedy which had overtaken its invoker.
+There was no trace of angel anywhere.
+
+
+
+
+THE REMOULDING OF GROBY LINGTON
+
+"A man is known by the company he keeps."
+
+
+In the morning-room of his sister-in-law's house Groby Lington fidgeted
+away the passing minutes with the demure restlessness of advanced
+middle age.  About a quarter of an hour would have to elapse before it
+would be time to say his good-byes and make his way across the village
+green to the station, with a selected escort of nephews and nieces.  He
+was a good-natured, kindly dispositioned man, and in theory he was
+delighted to pay periodical visits to the wife and children of his dead
+brother William; in practice, he infinitely preferred the comfort and
+seclusion of his own house and garden, and the companionship of his
+books and his parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresome
+incursions into a family circle with which he had little in common.  It
+was not so much the spur of his own conscience that drove him to make
+the occasional short journey by rail to visit his relatives, as an
+obedient concession to the more insistent but vicarious conscience of
+his brother, Colonel John, who was apt to accuse him of neglecting poor
+old William's family.  Groby usually forgot or ignored the existence of
+his neighbour kinsfolk until such time as he was threatened with a
+visit from the Colonel, when he would put matters straight by a hurried
+pilgrimage across the few miles of intervening country to renew his
+acquaintance with the young people and assume a kindly if rather forced
+interest in the well-being of his sister-in-law.  On this occasion he
+had cut matters so fine between the timing of his exculpatory visit and
+the coming of Colonel John, that he would scarcely be home before the
+latter was due to arrive.  Anyhow, Groby had got it over, and six or
+seven months might decently elapse before he need again sacrifice his
+comforts and inclinations on the altar of family sociability.  He was
+inclined to be distinctly cheerful as he hopped about the room, picking
+up first one object, then another, and subjecting each to a brief
+bird-like scrutiny.
+
+Presently his cheerful listlessness changed sharply to an attitude of
+vexed attention.  In a scrap-book of drawings and caricatures belonging
+to one of his nephews he had come across an unkindly clever sketch of
+himself and his parrot, solemnly confronting each other in postures of
+ridiculous gravity and repose, and bearing a likeness to one another
+that the artist had done his utmost to accentuate.  After the first
+flush of annoyance had passed away, Groby laughed good-naturedly and
+admitted to himself the cleverness of the drawing.  Then the feeling of
+resentment repossessed him, resentment not against the caricaturist who
+had embodied the idea in pen and ink, but against the possible truth
+that the idea represented.  Was it really the case that people grew in
+time to resemble the animals they kept as pets, and had he
+unconsciously become more and more like the comically solemn bird that
+was his constant companion?  Groby was unusually silent as he walked to
+the train with his escort of chattering nephews and nieces, and during
+the short railway journey his mind was more and more possessed with an
+introspective conviction that he had gradually settled down into a sort
+of parrot-like existence. What, after all, did his daily routine amount
+to but a sedate meandering and pecking and perching, in his garden,
+among his fruit trees, in his wicker chair on the lawn, or by the
+fireside in his library?  And what was the sum total of his
+conversation with chance-encountered neighbours?  "Quite a spring day,
+isn't it?"  "It looks as though we should have some rain."  "Glad to
+see you about again; you must take care of yourself."  "How the young
+folk shoot up, don't they?"  Strings of stupid, inevitable perfunctory
+remarks came to his mind, remarks that were certainly not the mental
+exchange of human intelligences, but mere empty parrot-talk.  One might
+really just as well salute one's acquaintances with "Pretty polly.
+Puss, puss, miaow!"  Groby began to fume against the picture of himself
+as a foolish feathered fowl which his nephew's sketch had first
+suggested, and which his own accusing imagination was filling in with
+such unflattering detail.
+
+"I'll give the beastly bird away," he said resentfully; though he knew
+at the same time that he would do no such thing.  It would look so
+absurd after all the years that he had kept the parrot and made much of
+it suddenly to try and find it a new home.
+
+"Has my brother arrived?" he asked of the stable-boy, who had come with
+the pony-carriage to meet him.
+
+"Yessir, came down by the two-fifteen.  Your parrot's dead."  The boy
+made the latter announcement with the relish which his class finds in
+proclaiming a catastrophe.
+
+"My parrot dead?" said Groby.  "What caused its death?"
+
+"The ipe," said the boy briefly.
+
+"The ipe?" queried Groby.  "Whatever's that?"
+
+"The ipe what the Colonel brought down with him," came the rather
+alarming answer.
+
+"Do you mean to say my brother is ill?" asked Groby.  "Is it something
+infectious?"
+
+"Th' Colonel's so well as ever he was," said the boy; and as no further
+explanation was forthcoming Groby had to possess himself in mystified
+patience till he reached home.  His brother was waiting for him at the
+hall door.
+
+"Have you heard about the parrot?" he asked at once.  "'Pon my soul I'm
+awfully sorry.  The moment he saw the monkey I'd brought down as a
+surprise for you he squawked out 'Rats to you, sir!' and the blessed
+monkey made one spring at him, got him by the neck and whirled him
+round like a rattle.  He was as dead as mutton by the time I'd got him
+out of the little beggar's paws.  Always been such a friendly little
+beast, the monkey has, should never have thought he'd got it in him to
+see red like that.  Can't tell you how sorry I feel about it, and now
+of course you'll hate the sight of the monkey."
+
+"Not at all," said Groby sincerely.  A few hours earlier the tragic end
+which had befallen his parrot would have presented itself to him as a
+calamity; now it arrived almost as a polite attention on the part of
+the Fates.
+
+"The bird was getting old, you know," he went on, in explanation of his
+obvious lack of decent regret at the loss of his pet.  "I was really
+beginning to wonder if it was an unmixed kindness to let him go on
+living till he succumbed to old age.  What a charming little monkey!"
+he added, when he was introduced to the culprit.
+
+The new-comer was a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western
+Hemisphere, with a gentle, half-shy, half-trusting manner that
+instantly captured Groby's confidence; a student of simian character
+might have seen in the fitful red light in its eyes some indication of
+the underlying temper which the parrot had so rashly put to the test
+with such dramatic consequences for itself.  The servants, who had come
+to regard the defunct bird as a regular member of the household, and
+one who gave really very little trouble, were scandalized to find his
+bloodthirsty aggressor installed in his place as an honoured domestic
+pet.
+
+"A nasty heathen ipe what don't never say nothing sensible and
+cheerful, same as pore Polly did," was the unfavourable verdict of the
+kitchen quarters.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+One Sunday morning, some twelve or fourteen months after the visit of
+Colonel John and the parrot-tragedy, Miss Wepley sat decorously in her
+pew in the parish church, immediately in front of that occupied by
+Groby Lington.  She was, comparatively speaking a new-comer in the
+neighbourhood, and was not personally acquainted with her
+fellow-worshipper in the seat behind, but for the past two years the
+Sunday morning service had brought them regularly within each other's
+sphere of consciousness.  Without having paid particular attention to
+the subject, she could probably have given a correct rendering of the
+way in which he pronounced certain words occurring in the responses,
+while he was well aware of the trivial fact that, in addition to her
+prayer book and handkerchief, a small paper packet of throat lozenges
+always reposed on the seat beside her.  Miss Wepley rarely had recourse
+to her lozenges, but in case she should be taken with a fit of coughing
+she wished to have the emergency duly provided for.  On this particular
+Sunday the lozenges occasioned an unusual diversion in the even tenor
+of her devotions, far more disturbing to her personally than a
+prolonged attack of coughing would have been.  As she rose to take part
+in the singing of the first hymn, she fancied that she saw the hand of
+her neighbour, who was alone in the pew behind her, make a furtive
+downward grab at the packet lying on the seat; on turning sharply round
+she found that the packet had certainly disappeared, but Mr. Lington
+was to all outward seeming serenely intent on his hymnbook.  No amount
+of interrogatory glaring on the part of the despoiled lady could bring
+the least shade of conscious guilt to his face.
+
+"Worse was to follow," as she remarked afterwards to a scandalized
+audience of friends and acquaintances.  "I had scarcely knelt in prayer
+when a lozenge, one of my lozenges, came whizzing into the pew, just
+under my nose.  I turned round and stared, but Mr. Lington had his eyes
+closed and his lips moving as though engaged in prayer.  The moment I
+resumed my devotions another lozenge came rattling in, and then
+another.  I took no notice for awhile, and then turned round suddenly
+just as the dreadful man was about to flip another one at me.  He
+hastily pretended to be turning over the leaves of his book, but I was
+not to be taken in that time. He saw that he had been discovered and no
+more lozenges came.  Of course I have changed my pew."
+
+"No gentleman would have acted in such a disgraceful manner," said one
+of her listeners; "and yet Mr. Lington used to be so respected by
+everybody.  He seems to have behaved like a little ill-bred schoolboy."
+
+"He behaved like a monkey," said Miss Wepley.
+
+Her unfavourable verdict was echoed in other quarters about the same
+time.  Groby Lington had never been a hero in the eyes of his personal
+retainers, but he had shared the approval accorded to his defunct
+parrot as a cheerful, well-dispositioned body, who gave no particular
+trouble.  Of late months, however, this character would hardly have
+been endorsed by the members of his domestic establishment.  The stolid
+stable-boy, who had first announced to him the tragic end of his
+feathered pet, was one of the first to give voice to the murmurs of
+disapproval which became rampant and general in the servants' quarters,
+and he had fairly substantial grounds for his disaffection.  In a burst
+of hot summer weather he had obtained permission to bathe in a
+modest-sized pond in the orchard, and thither one afternoon Groby had
+bent his steps, attracted by loud imprecations of anger mingled with
+the shriller chattering of monkey-language.  He beheld his plump
+diminutive servitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks,
+storming ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch
+of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy's
+outfit, which he had removed just out of has reach.
+
+"The ipe's been an' took my clothes;" whined the boy, with the passion
+of his kind for explaining the obvious.  His incomplete toilet effect
+rather embarrassed him, but he hailed the arrival of Groby with relief,
+as promising moral and material support in his efforts to get back his
+raided garments.  The monkey had ceased its defiant jabbering, and
+doubtless with a little coaxing from its master it would hand back the
+plunder.
+
+"If I lift you up," suggested Groby, "you will just be able to reach
+the clothes."
+
+The boy agreed, and Groby clutched him firmly by the waistcoat, which
+was about all there was to catch hold of, and lifted, him clear of the
+ground.  Then, with a deft swing he sent him crashing into a clump of
+tall nettles, which closed receptively round him. The victim had not
+been brought up in a school which teaches one to repress one's
+emotions--if a fox had attempted to gnaw at his vitals he would have
+flown to complain to the nearest hunt committee rather than have
+affected an attitude of stoical indifference.  On this occasion the
+volume of sound which he produced under the stimulus of pain and rage
+and astonishment was generous and sustained, but above his bellowings
+he could distinctly hear the triumphant chattering of his enemy in the
+tree, and a peal of shrill laughter from Groby.
+
+When the boy had finished an improvised St. Vitus caracole, which would
+have brought him fame on the boards of the Coliseum, and which indeed
+met with ready appreciation and applause from the retreating figure of
+Groby Lington, he found that the monkey had also discreetly retired,
+while his clothes were scattered on the grass at the foot of the tree.
+
+"They'm two ipes, that's what they be," he muttered angrily, and if his
+judgment was severe, at least he spoke under the sting of considerable
+provocation.
+
+It was a week or two later that the parlour-maid gave notice, having
+been terrified almost to tears by an outbreak of sudden temper on the
+part of the master anent some underdone cutlets. "'E gnashed 'is teeth
+at me, 'e did reely," she informed a sympathetic kitchen audience.
+
+"I'd like to see 'im talk like that to me, I would," said the cook
+defiantly, but her cooking from that moment showed a marked improvement.
+
+It was seldom that Groby Lington so far detached himself from his
+accustomed habits as to go and form one of a house-party, and he was
+not a little piqued that Mrs. Glenduff should have stowed him away in
+the musty old Georgian wing of the house, in the next room, moreover,
+to Leonard Spabbink, the eminent pianist.
+
+"He plays Liszt like an angel," had been the hostess's enthusiastic
+testimonial.
+
+"He may play him like a trout for all I care," had been Groby's mental
+comment, "but I wouldn't mind betting that he snores.  He's just the
+sort and shape that would.  And if I hear him snoring through those
+ridiculous thin-panelled walls, there'll be trouble."
+
+He did, and there was.
+
+Groby stood it for about two and a quarter minutes, and then made his
+way through the corridor into Spabbink's room.  Under Groby's vigorous
+measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered
+semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg.
+Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish
+self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his
+domineering visitant on the hand.  In another moment Spabbink was being
+nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly
+bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of
+bed and smacked, pinched, kicked, and bumped in a catch-as-catch-can
+progress across the floor, towards the flat shallow bath in whose
+utterly inadequate depths Groby perseveringly strove to drown him.  For
+a few moments the room was almost in darkness: Groby's candle had
+overturned in an early stage of the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely
+reached to the spot where splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and
+splutterings, and a chatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that
+was being waged round the shores of the bath.  A few instants later the
+one-sided combat was brightly lit up by the flare of blazing curtains
+and rapidly kindling panelling.
+
+When the hastily aroused members of the house-party stampeded out on to
+the lawn, the Georgian wing was well alight and belching forth masses
+of smoke, but some moments elapsed before Groby appeared with the
+half-drowned pianist in his arms, having just bethought him of the
+superior drowning facilities offered by the pond at the bottom of the
+lawn.  The cool night air sobered his rage, and when he found that he
+was innocently acclaimed as the heroic rescuer of poor Leonard
+Spabbink, and loudly commended for his presence of mind in tying a wet
+cloth round his head to protect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted
+the situation, and subsequently gave a graphic account of his finding
+the musician asleep with an overturned candle by his side and the
+conflagration well started.  Spabbink gave HIS version some days later,
+when he had partially recovered from the shock of his midnight
+castigation and immersion, but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive
+comments with which his story was greeted warned him that the public
+ear was not at his disposal.  He refused, however, to attend the
+ceremonial presentation of the Royal Humane Society's life-saving medal.
+
+It was about this time that Groby's pet monkey fell a victim to the
+disease which attacks so many of its kind when brought under the
+influence of a northern climate.  Its master appeared to be profoundly
+affected by its loss, and never quite recovered the level of spirits
+that he had recently attained.  In company with the tortoise, which
+Colonel John presented to him on his last visit, he potters about his
+lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his erstwhile sprightliness; and
+his nephews and nieces are fairly well justified in alluding to him as
+"Old Uncle Groby."
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
+
+"The Background" originally appeared in the LEINSTERS' MAGAZINE; "The
+Stampeding of Lady Bastable" in the DAILY MAIL; "Mrs. Packletide's
+Tiger," "The Chaplet," "The Peace Offering," "Filboid Studge" and
+"Ministers of Grace" (in an abbreviated form) in the BYSTANDER; and the
+remainder of the stories (with the exception of "The Music on the
+Hill," "The Story of St. Vespaluus," "The Secret Sin of Septimus
+Brope," "The Remoulding of Groby Lington," and "The Way to the Dairy,"
+which have never previously been published) in the WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.
+To the Editors of these papers I am indebted for courteous permission
+to reprint them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Chronicles of Clovis, by Saki
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