Beasts and Super Beasts

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"What did happen to it?" asked Eleanor.

"Well, Ronnie did some preliminary endeavouring with it, on his own
account, in connection with the Grand National. If it had come off, as
he expressed it, he would have given the League twenty-five shillings and
netted a comfortable commission for himself; as it was, that ten
shillings was one of the things the League had to deny itself. Since
then I've been careful not to let him have a penny piece in his hands."

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

"My dear, he's done all that is to be done in that direction already.
He's got rid of his wrist-watch and his hunting flask and both his
cigarette cases, and I shouldn't be surprised if he's wearing imitation-
gold sleeve links instead of those his Aunt Rhoda gave him on his
seventeenth birthday. He can't sell his clothes, of course, except his
winter overcoat, and I've locked that up in the camphor cupboard on the
pretext of preserving it from moth. I really don't see what else he can
raise money on. I consider that I've been both firm and farseeing."

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

"He was there yesterday afternoon and stayed to dinner," said Mrs.
Attray. "I don't quite know when he came home, but I fancy it was late."

"Then depend on it he was gambling," said Eleanor, with the assured air
of one who has few ideas and makes the most of them. "Late hours in the
country always mean gambling."

"He can't gamble if he has no money and no chance of getting any," argued
Mrs. Attray; "even if one plays for small stakes one must have a decent
prospect of paying one's losses."

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

"Ronnie wouldn't do such a thing," said Mrs. Attray; "and anyhow I went
and counted them this morning and they're all there. No," she continued,
with the quiet satisfaction that comes from a sense of painstaking and
merited achievement, "I fancy that Ronnie had to content himself with the
role of onlooker last night, as far as the card-table was concerned."

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

"Three minutes past the half-hour," exclaimed Mrs. Attray; "cook must be
preparing something unusually sumptuous in your honour. I am not in the
secret; I've been out all the morning, you know."

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

As a matter of fact, the luncheon fare, when it made its tardy
appearance, was distinctly unworthy of the reputation which the justly-
treasured cook had built up for herself. The soup alone would have
sufficed to cast a gloom over any meal that it had inaugurated, and it
was not redeemed by anything that followed. Eleanor said little, but
when she spoke there was a hint of tears in her voice that was far more
eloquent than outspoken denunciation would have been, and even the
insouciant Ronald showed traces of depression when he tasted the rognons
Saltikoff.

"Not quite the best luncheon I've enjoyed in your house," said Eleanor at
last, when her final hope had flickered out with the savoury.

"My dear, it's the worst meal I've sat down to for years," said her
hostess; "that last dish tasted principally of red pepper and wet toast.
I'm awfully sorry. Is anything the matter in the kitchen, Pellin?" she
asked of the attendant maid.

"Well, ma'am, the new cook hadn't hardly time to see to things properly,
coming in so sudden--" commenced Pellin by way of explanation.

"The new cook!" screamed Mrs. Attray.

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

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

"Perhaps I can explain better than Pellin can," said Ronald hurriedly;
"the fact is, I was dining at the Norridrums' yesterday, and they were
wishing they had a swell cook like yours, just for to-day and to-morrow,
while they've got some gourmet staying with them: their own cook is no
earthly good--well, you've seen what she turns out when she's at all
flurried. So I thought it would be rather sporting to play them at
baccarat for the loan of our cook against a money stake, and I lost,
that's all. I have had rotten luck at baccarat all this year."

The remainder of his explanation, of how he had assured the cooks that
the temporary transfer had his mother's sanction, and had smuggled the
one out and the other in during the maternal absence, was drowned in the
outcry of scandalised upbraiding.

"If I had sold the woman into slavery there couldn't have been a bigger
fuss about it," he confided afterwards to Bertie Norridrum, "and Eleanor
Saxelby raged and ramped the louder of the two. I tell you what, I'll
bet you two of the Amherst pheasants to five shillings that she refuses
to have me as a partner at the croquet tournament. We're drawn together,
you know."

This time he won his bet.




CLOVIS ON PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES


Marion Eggelby sat talking to Clovis on the only subject that she ever
willingly talked about--her offspring and their varied perfections and
accomplishments. Clovis was not in what could be called a receptive
mood; the younger generation of Eggelby, depicted in the glowing
improbable colours of parent impressionism, aroused in him no enthusiasm.
Mrs. Eggelby, on the other hand, was furnished with enthusiasm enough for
two.

"You would like Eric," she said, argumentatively rather than hopefully.
Clovis had intimated very unmistakably that he was unlikely to care
extravagantly for either Amy or Willie. "Yes, I feel sure you would like
Eric. Every one takes to him at once. You know, he always reminds me of
that famous picture of the youthful David--I forget who it's by, but it's
very well known."

"That would be sufficient to set me against him, if I saw much of him,"
said Clovis. "Just imagine at auction bridge, for instance, when one was
trying to concentrate one's mind on what one's partner's original
declaration had been, and to remember what suits one's opponents had
originally discarded, what it would be like to have some one persistently
reminding one of a picture of the youthful David. It would be simply
maddening. If Eric did that I should detest him."

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

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

"None of my children have been brought up to play card games," said Mrs.
Eggelby; "draughts and halma and those sorts of games I encourage. Eric
is considered quite a wonderful draughts-player."

"You are strewing dreadful risks in the path of your family," said
Clovis; "a friend of mine who is a prison chaplain told me that among the
worst criminal cases that have come under his notice, men condemned to
death or to long periods of penal servitude, there was not a single
bridge-player. On the other hand, he knew at least two expert draughts-
players among them."

"I really don't see what my boys have got to do with the criminal
classes," said Mrs. Eggelby resentfully. "They have been most carefully
brought up, I can assure you that."

"That shows that you were nervous as to how they would turn out," said
Clovis. "Now, my mother never bothered about bringing me up. She just
saw to it that I got whacked at decent intervals and was taught the
difference between right and wrong; there is some difference, you know,
but I've forgotten what it is."

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

"Well, you see, I took up natural history and a whole lot of other
subjects at the same time, and one can't remember everything, can one? I
used to know the difference between the Sardinian dormouse and the
ordinary kind, and whether the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier
than the cuckoo, or the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in
growing to maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once,
but I bet you've forgotten them."

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

"The fact that we've both forgotten them proves that they are important,"
said Clovis; "you must have noticed that it's always the important things
that one forgets, while the trivial, unnecessary facts of life stick in
one's memory. There's my cousin, Editha Clubberley, for instance; I can
never forget that her birthday is on the 12th of October. It's a matter
of utter indifference to me on what date her birthday falls, or whether
she was born at all; either fact seems to me absolutely trivial, or
unnecessary--I've heaps of other cousins to go on with. On the other
hand, when I'm staying with Hildegarde Shrubley I can never remember the
important circumstance whether her first husband got his unenviable
reputation on the Turf or the Stock Exchange, and that uncertainty rules
Sport and Finance out of the conversation at once. One can never mention
travel, either, because her second husband had to live permanently
abroad."

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

"No one who knows Hildegarde could possibly accuse her of moving in a
circle," said Clovis; "her view of life seems to be a non-stop run with
an inexhaustible supply of petrol. If she can get some one else to pay
for the petrol so much the better. I don't mind confessing to you that
she has taught me more than any other woman I can think of."

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

"Well, among other things, she's introduced me to at least four different
ways of cooking lobster," said Clovis gratefully. "That, of course,
wouldn't appeal to you; people who abstain from the pleasures of the card-
table never really appreciate the finer possibilities of the
dining-table. I suppose their powers of enlightened enjoyment get
atrophied from disuse."

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

"I daresay, if we knew more of her history, we should find out that she'd
often been ill before eating the lobster. Aren't you concealing the fact
that she'd had measles and influenza and nervous headache and hysteria,
and other things that aunts do have, long before she ate the lobster?
Aunts that have never known a day's illness are very rare; in fact, I
don't personally know of any. Of course if she ate it as a child of two
weeks old it might have been her first illness--and her last. But if
that was the case I think you should have said so."

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

Clovis rose with an air of graceful reluctance.

"I have so enjoyed our little talk about Eric," he said; "I quite look
forward to meeting him some day."

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

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




A HOLIDAY TASK


Kenelm Jerton entered the dining-hall of the Golden Galleon Hotel in the
full crush of the luncheon hour. Nearly every seat was occupied, and
small additional tables had been brought in, where floor space permitted,
to accommodate latecomers, with the result that many of the tables were
almost touching each other. Jerton was beckoned by a waiter to the only
vacant table that was discernible, and took his seat with the
uncomfortable and wholly groundless idea that nearly every one in the
room was staring at him. He was a youngish man of ordinary appearance,
quiet of dress and unobtrusive of manner, and he could never wholly rid
himself of the idea that a fierce light of public scrutiny beat on him as
though he had been a notability or a super-nut. After he had ordered his
lunch there came the unavoidable interval of waiting, with nothing to do
but to stare at the flower-vase on his table and to be stared at (in
imagination) by several flappers, some maturer beings of the same sex,
and a satirical-looking Jew. In order to carry off the situation with
some appearance of unconcern he became spuriously interested in the
contents of the flower-vase.

"What is the name of these roses, d'you know?" he asked the waiter. The
waiter was ready at all times to conceal his ignorance concerning items
of the wine-list or menu; he was frankly ignorant as to the specific name
of the roses.

"_Amy Sylvester Partinglon_," said a voice at Jerton's elbow.

The voice came from a pleasant-faced, well-dressed young woman who was
sitting at a table that almost touched Jerton's. He thanked her
hurriedly and nervously for the information, and made some inconsequent
remark about the flowers.

"It is a curious thing," said the young woman, that, "I should be able to
tell you the name of those roses without an effort of memory, because if
you were to ask me my name I should be utterly unable to give it to you."

Jerton had not harboured the least intention of extending his thirst for
name-labels to his neighbour. After her rather remarkable announcement,
however, he was obliged to say something in the way of polite inquiry.

"Yes," answered the lady, "I suppose it is a case of partial loss of
memory. I was in the train coming down here; my ticket told me that I
had come from Victoria and was bound for this place. I had a couple of
five-pound notes and a sovereign on me, no visiting cards or any other
means of identification, and no idea as to who I am. I can only hazily
recollect that I have a title; I am Lady Somebody--beyond that my mind is
a blank."

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

"That is what I didn't know. I knew the name of this hotel and made up
my mind to come here, and when the hotel porter who meets the trains
asked if I had any luggage I had to invent a dressing-bag and
dress-basket; I could always pretend that they had gone astray. I gave
him the name of Smith, and presently he emerged from a confused pile of
luggage and passengers with a dressing-bag and dress-basket labelled
Kestrel-Smith. I had to take them; I don't see what else I could have
done."

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

"Of course it was dreadful arriving at a strange hotel with the name of
Kestrel-Smith, but it would have been worse to have arrived without
luggage. Anyhow, I hate causing trouble."

Jerton had visions of harassed railway officials and distraught Kestrel-
Smiths, but he made no attempt to clothe his mental picture in words. The
lady continued her story.

"Naturally, none of my keys would fit the things, but I told an
intelligent page boy that I had lost my key-ring, and he had the locks
forced in a twinkling. Rather too intelligent, that boy; he will
probably end in Dartmoor. The Kestrel-Smith toilet tools aren't up to
much, but they are better than nothing."

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

"I tried that. I skimmed through the list of the House of Lords in
'Whitaker,' but a mere printed string of names conveys awfully little to
one, you know. If you were an army officer and had lost your identity
you might pore over the Army List for months without finding out who your
were. I'm going on another tack; I'm trying to find out by various
little tests who I am _not_--that will narrow the range of uncertainty
down a bit. You may have noticed, for instance, that I'm lunching
principally off lobster Newburg."

Jerton had not ventured to notice anything of the sort.

"It's an extravagance, because it's one of the most expensive dishes on
the menu, but at any rate it proves that I'm not Lady Starping; she never
touches shell-fish, and poor Lady Braddleshrub has no digestion at all;
if I am _her_ I shall certainly die in agony in the course of the
afternoon, and the duty of finding out who I am will devolve on the press
and the police and those sort of people; I shall be past caring. Lady
Knewford doesn't know one rose from another and she hates men, so she
wouldn't have spoken to you in any case; and Lady Mousehilton flirts with
every man she meets--I haven't flirted with you, have I?"

Jerton hastily gave the required assurance.

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

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

"Oh, but, of course, there are heaps of them that I couldn't possibly
be--women who've got grandchildren or sons old enough to have celebrated
their coming of age. I've only got to consider the ones about my own
age. I tell you how you might help me this afternoon, if you don't mind;
go through any of the back numbers of _Country Life_ and those sort of
papers that you can find in the smoking-room, and see if you come across
my portrait with infant son or anything of that sort. It won't take you
ten minutes. I'll meet you in the lounge about tea-time. Thanks
awfully."

And the Fair Unknown, having graciously pressed Jerton into the search
for her lost identity, rose and left the room. As she passed the young
man's table she halted for a moment and whispered:

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

At five o'clock Jerton made his way to the hotel lounge; he had spent a
diligent but fruitless quarter of an hour among the illustrated weeklies
in the smoking-room. His new acquaintance was seated at a small
tea-table, with a waiter hovering in attendance.

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

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

"Only negative information. I'm not Lady Befnal. She disapproves
dreadfully of any form of gambling, so when I recognised a well-known
book maker in the hotel lobby I went and put a tenner on an unnamed filly
by William the Third out of Mitrovitza for the three-fifteen race. I
suppose the fact of the animal being nameless was what attracted me."

"Did it win?" asked Jerton.

"No, came in fourth, the most irritating thing a horse can do when you've
backed it win or place. Anyhow, I know now that I'm not Lady Befnal."

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

"Well, yes, it has rather cleared me out," admitted the identity-seeker;
"a florin is about all I've got left on me. The lobster Newburg made my
lunch rather an expensive one, and, of course, I had to tip that boy for
what he did to the Kestrel-Smith locks. I've got rather a useful idea,
though. I feel certain that I belong to the Pivot Club; I'll go back to
town and ask the hall porter there if there are any letters for me. He
knows all the members by sight, and if there are any letters or telephone
messages waiting for me of course that will solve the problem. If he
says there aren't any I shall say: 'You know who I am, don't you?' so
I'll find out anyway."

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

"Of course," said the lady, when he hinted at the obstacle, "there's my
fare back to town, and my bill here and cabs and things. If you'll lend
me three pounds that ought to see me through comfortably. Thanks ever
so. Then there is the question of that luggage: I don't want to be
saddled with that for the rest of my life. I'll have it brought down to
the hall and you can pretend to mount guard over it while I'm writing a
letter. Then I shall just slip away to the station, and you can wander
off to the smoking-room, and they can do what they like with the things.
They'll advertise them after a bit and the owner can claim them."

Jerton acquiesced in the manoeuvre, and duly mounted guard over the
luggage while its temporary owner slipped unobtrusively out of the hotel.
Her departure was not, however, altogether unnoticed. Two gentlemen were
strolling past Jerton, and one of them remarked to the other:

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

His promenade carried him out of earshot at the critical moment when he
was about to disclose the elusive identity. The Lady Who? Jerton could
scarcely run after a total stranger, break into his conversation, and ask
him for information concerning a chance passer-by. Besides, it was
desirable that he should keep up the appearance of looking after the
luggage. In a minute or two, however, the important personage, the man
who knew, came strolling back alone. Jerton summoned up all his courage
and waylaid him.

"I think I heard you say you knew the lady who went out of the hotel a
few minutes ago, a tall lady, dressed in grey. Excuse me for asking if
you could tell me her name; I've been talking to her for half an hour;
she--er--she knows all my people and seems to know me, so I suppose I've
met her somewhere before, but I'm blest if I can put a name to her. Could
you--?"

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

"_Mrs_.?" queried Jerton.

"Yes, she's the Lady Champion at golf in my part of the world. An awful
good sort, and goes about a good deal in Society, but she has an awkward
habit of losing her memory every now and then, and gets into all sorts of
fixes. She's furious, too, if you make any allusion to it afterwards.
Good day, sir."

The stranger passed on his way, and before Jerton had had time to
assimilate his information he found his whole attention centred on an
angry-looking lady who was making loud and fretful-seeming inquiries of
the hotel clerks.

"Has any luggage been brought here from the station by mistake, a dress-
basket and dressing-case, with the name Kestrel-Smith? It can't be
traced anywhere. I saw it put in at Victoria, that I'll swear. Why--there
is my luggage! and the locks have been tampered with!"

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




THE STALLED OX


Theophil Eshley was an artist by profession, a cattle painter by force of
environment. It is not to be supposed that he lived on a ranche or a
dairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with horn and hoof, milking-stool,
and branding-iron. His home was in a park-like, villa-dotted district
that only just escaped the reproach of being suburban. On one side of
his garden there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which an
enterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of the
Channel Island persuasion. At noonday in summertime the cows stood knee-
deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a group of walnut trees,
with the sunlight falling in dappled patches on their mouse-sleek coats.
Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of two reposeful milch-
cows in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and filtered sunbeam,
and the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on the walls of its
Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly, methodical
habits in its children. Eshley had painted a successful and acceptable
picture of cattle drowsing picturesquely under walnut trees, and as he
had begun, so, of necessity, he went on. His "Noontide Peace," a study
of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by "A Mid-day
Sanctuary," a study of a walnut tree, with two dun cows under it. In due
succession there came "Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling," "The
Haven of the Herd," and "A-dream in Dairyland," studies of walnut trees
and dun cows. His two attempts to break away from his own tradition were
signal failures: "Turtle Doves alarmed by Sparrow-hawk" and "Wolves on
the Roman Campagna" came back to his studio in the guise of abominable
heresies, and Eshley climbed back into grace and the public gaze with "A
Shaded Nook where Drowsy Milkers Dream."

On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some finishing touches
to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour, Adela Pingsford, assailed
the outer door of his studio with loud peremptory knockings.

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

"An ox," said Eshley blankly, and rather fatuously; "what kind of ox?"

"Oh, I don't know what kind," snapped the lady. "A common or garden ox,
to use the slang expression. It is the garden part of it that I object
to. My garden has just been put straight for the winter, and an ox
roaming about in it won't improve matters. Besides, there are the
chrysanthemums just coming into flower."

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

"I imagine it came in by the gate," said the lady impatiently; "it
couldn't have climbed the walls, and I don't suppose anyone dropped it
from an aeroplane as a Bovril advertisement. The immediately important
question is not how it got in, but how to get it out."

"Won't it go?" said Eshley.