Beasts and Super Beasts

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Suzanne, in her anxiety to pilot her cousin to the desired haven of the
fur department, was usually a few paces ahead of the others, coming back
to them now and then if they lingered for a moment at some attractive
counter, with the nervous solicitude of a parent rook encouraging its
young ones on their first flying expedition.

"It's Suzanne's birthday on Wednesday next," confided Eleanor to Bertram
Kneyght at a moment when Suzanne had left them unusually far behind; "my
birthday comes the day before, so we are both on the look-out for
something to give each other."

"Ah," said Bertram. "Now, perhaps you can advise me on that very point.
I want to give Suzanne something, and I haven't the least idea what she
wants."

"She's rather a problem," said Eleanor. "She seems to have everything
one can think of, lucky girl. A fan is always useful; she'll be going to
a lot of dances at Davos this winter. Yes, I should think a fan would
please her more than anything. After our birthdays are over we inspect
each other's muster of presents, and I always feel dreadfully humble. She
gets such nice things, and I never have anything worth showing. You see,
none of my relations or any of the people who give me presents are at all
well off, so I can't expect them to do anything more than just remember
the day with some little trifle. Two years ago an uncle on my mother's
side of the family, who had come into a small legacy, promised me a
silver-fox stole for my birthday. I can't tell you how excited I was
about it, how I pictured myself showing it off to all my friends and
enemies. Then just at that moment his wife died, and, of course, poor
man, he could not be expected to think of birthday presents at such a
time. He has lived abroad ever since, and I never got my fur. Do you
know, to this day I can scarcely look at a silver-fox pelt in a shop
window or round anyone's neck without feeling ready to burst into tears.
I suppose if I hadn't had the prospect of getting one I shouldn't feel
that way. Look, there is the fan counter, on your left; you can easily
slip away in the crowd. Get her as nice a one as you can see--she is
such a dear, dear girl."

"Hullo, I thought I had lost you," said Suzanne, making her way through
an obstructive knot of shoppers. "Where is Bertram?"

"I got separated from him long ago. I thought he was on ahead with you,"
said Eleanor. "We shall never find him in this crush."

Which turned out to be a true prediction.

"All our trouble and forethought thrown away," said Suzanne sulkily, when
they had pushed their way fruitlessly through half a dozen departments.

"I can't think why you didn't grab him by the arm," said Eleanor; "I
would have if I'd known him longer, but I'd only just been introduced.
It's nearly four now, we'd better have tea."

Some days later Suzanne rang Eleanor up on the telephone.

"Thank you very much for the photograph frame. It was just what I
wanted. Very good of you. I say, do you know what that Kneyght person
has given me? Just what you said he would--a wretched fan. What? Oh
yes, quite a good enough fan in its way, but still . . ."

"You must come and see what he's given me," came in Eleanor's voice over
the 'phone.

"You! Why should he give you anything?"

"Your cousin appears to be one of those rare people of wealth who take a
pleasure in giving good presents," came the reply.

"I wondered why he was so anxious to know where she lived," snapped
Suzanne to herself as she rang off.

A cloud has arisen between the friendships of the two young women; as far
as Eleanor is concerned the cloud has a silver-fox lining.




THE PHILANTHROPIST AND THE HAPPY CAT


Jocantha Bessbury was in the mood to be serenely and graciously happy.
Her world was a pleasant place, and it was wearing one of its pleasantest
aspects. Gregory had managed to get home for a hurried lunch and a smoke
afterwards in the little snuggery; the lunch had been a good one, and
there was just time to do justice to the coffee and cigarettes. Both
were excellent in their way, and Gregory was, in his way, an excellent
husband. Jocantha rather suspected herself of making him a very charming
wife, and more than suspected herself of having a first-rate dressmaker.

"I don't suppose a more thoroughly contented personality is to be found
in all Chelsea," observed Jocantha in allusion to herself; "except
perhaps Attab," she continued, glancing towards the large tabby-marked
cat that lay in considerable ease in a corner of the divan. "He lies
there, purring and dreaming, shifting his limbs now and then in an
ecstasy of cushioned comfort. He seems the incarnation of everything
soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a
dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep; and then, as evening
draws on, he goes out into the garden with a red glint in his eyes and
slays a drowsy sparrow."

"As every pair of sparrows hatches out ten or more young ones in the
year, while their food supply remains stationary, it is just as well that
the Attabs of the community should have that idea of how to pass an
amusing afternoon," said Gregory. Having delivered himself of this sage
comment he lit another cigarette, bade Jocantha a playfully affectionate
good-bye, and departed into the outer world.

"Remember, dinner's a wee bit earlier to-night, as we're going to the
Haymarket," she called after him.

Left to herself, Jocantha continued the process of looking at her life
with placid, introspective eyes. If she had not everything she wanted in
this world, at least she was very well pleased with what she had got. She
was very well pleased, for instance, with the snuggery, which contrived
somehow to be cosy and dainty and expensive all at once. The porcelain
was rare and beautiful, the Chinese enamels took on wonderful tints in
the firelight, the rugs and hangings led the eye through sumptuous
harmonies of colouring. It was a room in which one might have suitably
entertained an ambassador or an archbishop, but it was also a room in
which one could cut out pictures for a scrap-book without feeling that
one was scandalising the deities of the place with one's litter. And as
with the snuggery, so with the rest of the house, and as with the house,
so with the other departments of Jocantha's life; she really had good
reason for being one of the most contented women in Chelsea.

From being in a mood of simmering satisfaction with her lot she passed to
the phase of being generously commiserating for those thousands around
her whose lives and circumstances were dull, cheap, pleasureless, and
empty. Work girls, shop assistants and so forth, the class that have
neither the happy-go-lucky freedom of the poor nor the leisured freedom
of the rich, came specially within the range of her sympathy. It was sad
to think that there were young people who, after a long day's work, had
to sit alone in chill, dreary bedrooms because they could not afford the
price of a cup of coffee and a sandwich in a restaurant, still less a
shilling for a theatre gallery.

Jocantha's mind was still dwelling on this theme when she started forth
on an afternoon campaign of desultory shopping; it would be rather a
comforting thing, she told herself, if she could do something, on the
spur of the moment, to bring a gleam of pleasure and interest into the
life of even one or two wistful-hearted, empty-pocketed workers; it would
add a good deal to her sense of enjoyment at the theatre that night. She
would get two upper circle tickets for a popular play, make her way into
some cheap tea-shop, and present the tickets to the first couple of
interesting work girls with whom she could casually drop into
conversation. She could explain matters by saying that she was unable to
use the tickets herself and did not want them to be wasted, and, on the
other hand, did not want the trouble of sending them back. On further
reflection she decided that it might be better to get only one ticket and
give it to some lonely-looking girl sitting eating her frugal meal by
herself; the girl might scrape acquaintance with her next-seat neighbour
at the theatre and lay the foundations of a lasting friendship.

With the Fairy Godmother impulse strong upon her, Jocantha marched into a
ticket agency and selected with immense care an upper circle seat for the
"Yellow Peacock," a play that was attracting a considerable amount of
discussion and criticism. Then she went forth in search of a tea-shop
and philanthropic adventure, at about the same time that Attab sauntered
into the garden with a mind attuned to sparrow stalking. In a corner of
an A.B.C. shop she found an unoccupied table, whereat she promptly
installed herself, impelled by the fact that at the next table was
sitting a young girl, rather plain of feature, with tired, listless eyes,
and a general air of uncomplaining forlornness. Her dress was of poor
material, but aimed at being in the fashion, her hair was pretty, and her
complexion bad; she was finishing a modest meal of tea and scone, and she
was not very different in her way from thousands of other girls who were
finishing, or beginning, or continuing their teas in London tea-shops at
that exact moment. The odds were enormously in favour of the supposition
that she had never seen the "Yellow Peacock"; obviously she supplied
excellent material for Jocantha's first experiment in haphazard
benefaction.

Jocantha ordered some tea and a muffin, and then turned a friendly
scrutiny on her neighbour with a view to catching her eye. At that
precise moment the girl's face lit up with sudden pleasure, her eyes
sparkled, a flush came into her cheeks, and she looked almost pretty. A
young man, whom she greeted with an affectionate "Hullo, Bertie," came up
to her table and took his seat in a chair facing her. Jocantha looked
hard at the new-comer; he was in appearance a few years younger than
herself, very much better looking than Gregory, rather better looking, in
fact, than any of the young men of her set. She guessed him to be a well-
mannered young clerk in some wholesale warehouse, existing and amusing
himself as best he might on a tiny salary, and commanding a holiday of
about two weeks in the year. He was aware, of course, of his good looks,
but with the shy self-consciousness of the Anglo-Saxon, not the blatant
complacency of the Latin or Semite. He was obviously on terms of
friendly intimacy with the girl he was talking to, probably they were
drifting towards a formal engagement. Jocantha pictured the boy's home,
in a rather narrow circle, with a tiresome mother who always wanted to
know how and where he spent his evenings. He would exchange that humdrum
thraldom in due course for a home of his own, dominated by a chronic
scarcity of pounds, shillings, and pence, and a dearth of most of the
things that made life attractive or comfortable. Jocantha felt extremely
sorry for him. She wondered if he had seen the "Yellow Peacock"; the
odds were enormously in favour of the supposition that he had not. The
girl had finished her tea and would shortly be going back to her work;
when the boy was alone it would be quite easy for Jocantha to say: "My
husband has made other arrangements for me this evening; would you care
to make use of this ticket, which would otherwise be wasted?" Then she
could come there again one afternoon for tea, and, if she saw him, ask
him how he liked the play. If he was a nice boy and improved on
acquaintance he could be given more theatre tickets, and perhaps asked to
come one Sunday to tea at Chelsea. Jocantha made up her mind that he
would improve on acquaintance, and that Gregory would like him, and that
the Fairy Godmother business would prove far more entertaining than she
had originally anticipated. The boy was distinctly presentable; he knew
how to brush his hair, which was possibly an imitative faculty; he knew
what colour of tie suited him, which might be intuition; he was exactly
the type that Jocantha admired, which of course was accident. Altogether
she was rather pleased when the girl looked at the clock and bade a
friendly but hurried farewell to her companion. Bertie nodded
"good-bye," gulped down a mouthful of tea, and then produced from his
overcoat pocket a paper-covered book, bearing the title "Sepoy and Sahib,
a tale of the great Mutiny."

The laws of tea-shop etiquette forbid that you should offer theatre
tickets to a stranger without having first caught the stranger's eye. It
is even better if you can ask to have a sugar basin passed to you, having
previously concealed the fact that you have a large and well-filled sugar
basin on your own table; this is not difficult to manage, as the printed
menu is generally nearly as large as the table, and can be made to stand
on end. Jocantha set to work hopefully; she had a long and rather high-
pitched discussion with the waitress concerning alleged defects in an
altogether blameless muffin, she made loud and plaintive inquiries about
the tube service to some impossibly remote suburb, she talked with
brilliant insincerity to the tea-shop kitten, and as a last resort she
upset a milk-jug and swore at it daintily. Altogether she attracted a
good deal of attention, but never for a moment did she attract the
attention of the boy with the beautifully-brushed hair, who was some
thousands of miles away in the baking plains of Hindostan, amid deserted
bungalows, seething bazaars, and riotous barrack squares, listening to
the throbbing of tom-toms and the distant rattle of musketry.

Jocantha went back to her house in Chelsea, which struck her for the
first time as looking dull and over-furnished. She had a resentful
conviction that Gregory would be uninteresting at dinner, and that the
play would be stupid after dinner. On the whole her frame of mind showed
a marked divergence from the purring complacency of Attab, who was again
curled up in his corner of the divan with a great peace radiating from
every curve of his body.

But then he had killed his sparrow.




ON APPROVAL


Of all the genuine Bohemians who strayed from time to time into the would-
be Bohemian circle of the Restaurant Nuremberg, Owl Street, Soho, none
was more interesting and more elusive than Gebhard Knopfschrank. He had
no friends, and though he treated all the restaurant frequenters as
acquaintances he never seemed to wish to carry the acquaintanceship
beyond the door that led into Owl Street and the outer world. He dealt
with them all rather as a market woman might deal with chance passers-by,
exhibiting her wares and chattering about the weather and the slackness
of business, occasionally about rheumatism, but never showing a desire to
penetrate into their daily lives or to dissect their ambitions.

He was understood to belong to a family of peasant farmers, somewhere in
Pomerania; some two years ago, according to all that was known of him, he
had abandoned the labours and responsibilities of swine tending and goose
rearing to try his fortune as an artist in London.

"Why London and not Paris or Munich?" he had been asked by the curious.

Well, there was a ship that left Stolpmunde for London twice a month,
that carried few passengers, but carried them cheaply; the railway fares
to Munich or Paris were not cheap. Thus it was that he came to select
London as the scene of his great adventure.

The question that had long and seriously agitated the frequenters of the
Nuremberg was whether this goose-boy migrant was really a soul-driven
genius, spreading his wings to the light, or merely an enterprising young
man who fancied he could paint and was pardonably anxious to escape from
the monotony of rye bread diet and the sandy, swine-bestrewn plains of
Pomerania. There was reasonable ground for doubt and caution; the
artistic groups that foregathered at the little restaurant contained so
many young women with short hair and so many young men with long hair,
who supposed themselves to be abnormally gifted in the domain of music,
poetry, painting, or stagecraft, with little or nothing to support the
supposition, that a self-announced genius of any sort in their midst was
inevitably suspect. On the other hand, there was the ever-imminent
danger of entertaining, and snubbing, an angel unawares. There had been
the lamentable case of Sledonti, the dramatic poet, who had been
belittled and cold-shouldered in the Owl Street hall of judgment, and had
been afterwards hailed as a master singer by the Grand Duke Constantine
Constantinovitch--"the most educated of the Romanoffs," according to
Sylvia Strubble, who spoke rather as one who knew every individual member
of the Russian imperial family; as a matter of fact, she knew a newspaper
correspondent, a young man who ate _bortsch_ with the air of having
invented it. Sledonti's "Poems of Death and Passion" were now being sold
by the thousand in seven European languages, and were about to be
translated into Syrian, a circumstance which made the discerning critics
of the Nuremberg rather shy of maturing their future judgments too
rapidly and too irrevocably.

As regards Knopfschrank's work, they did not lack opportunity for
inspecting and appraising it. However resolutely he might hold himself
aloof from the social life of his restaurant acquaintances, he was not
minded to hide his artistic performances from their inquiring gaze. Every
evening, or nearly every evening, at about seven o'clock, he would make
his appearance, sit himself down at his accustomed table, throw a bulky
black portfolio on to the chair opposite him, nod round indiscriminately
at his fellow-guests, and commence the serious business of eating and
drinking. When the coffee stage was reached he would light a cigarette,
draw the portfolio over to him, and begin to rummage among its contents.
With slow deliberation he would select a few of his more recent studies
and sketches, and silently pass them round from table to table, paying
especial attention to any new diners who might be present. On the back
of each sketch was marked in plain figures the announcement "Price ten
shillings."

If his work was not obviously stamped with the hall-mark of genius, at
any rate it was remarkable for its choice of an unusual and unvarying
theme. His pictures always represented some well-known street or public
place in London, fallen into decay and denuded of its human population,
in the place of which there roamed a wild fauna, which, from its wealth
of exotic species, must have originally escaped from Zoological Gardens
and travelling beast shows. "Giraffes drinking at the fountain pools,
Trafalgar Square," was one of the most notable and characteristic of his
studies, while even more sensational was the gruesome picture of
"Vultures attacking dying camel in Upper Berkeley Street." There were
also photographs of the large canvas on which he had been engaged for
some months, and which he was now endeavouring to sell to some
enterprising dealer or adventurous amateur. The subject was "Hyaenas
asleep in Euston Station," a composition that left nothing to be desired
in the way of suggesting unfathomed depths of desolation.

"Of course it may be immensely clever, it may be something epoch-making
in the realm of art," said Sylvia Strubble to her own particular circle
of listeners, "but, on the other hand, it may be merely mad. One mustn't
pay too much attention to the commercial aspect of the case, of course,
but still, if some dealer would make a bid for that hyaena picture, or
even for some of the sketches, we should know better how to place the man
and his work."

"We may all be cursing ourselves one of these days," said Mrs. Nougat-
Jones, "for not having bought up his entire portfolio of sketches. At
the same time, when there is so much real talent going about, one does
not feel like planking down ten shillings for what looks like a bit of
whimsical oddity. Now that picture that he showed us last week, 'Sand-
grouse roosting on the Albert Memorial,' was very impressive, and of
course I could see there was good workmanship in it and breadth of
treatment; but it didn't in the least convey the Albert Memorial to me,
and Sir James Beanquest tells me that sand-grouse don't roost, they sleep
on the ground."

Whatever talent or genius the Pomeranian artist might possess, it
certainly failed to receive commercial sanction. The portfolio remained
bulky with unsold sketches, and the "Euston Siesta," as the wits of the
Nuremberg nicknamed the large canvas, was still in the market. The
outward and visible signs of financial embarrassment began to be
noticeable; the half-bottle of cheap claret at dinner-time gave way to a
small glass of lager, and this in turn was displaced by water. The one-
and-sixpenny set dinner receded from an everyday event to a Sunday
extravagance; on ordinary days the artist contented himself with a
sevenpenny omelette and some bread and cheese, and there were evenings
when he did not put in an appearance at all. On the rare occasions when
he spoke of his own affairs it was observed that he began to talk more
about Pomerania and less about the great world of art.

"It is a busy time there now with us," he said wistfully; "the schwines
are driven out into the fields after harvest, and must be looked after. I
could be helping to look after if I was there. Here it is difficult to
live; art is not appreciate."

"Why don't you go home on a visit?" some one asked tactfully.

"Ah, it cost money! There is the ship passage to Stolpmunde, and there
is money that I owe at my lodgings. Even here I owe a few schillings. If
I could sell some of my sketches--"

"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Nougat-Jones, "if you were to offer them for a
little less, some of us would be glad to buy a few. Ten shillings is
always a consideration, you know, to people who are not over well off.
Perhaps if you were to ask six or seven shillings--"

Once a peasant, always a peasant. The mere suggestion of a bargain to be
struck brought a twinkle of awakened alertness into the artist's eyes,
and hardened the lines of his mouth.

"Nine schilling nine pence each," he snapped, and seemed disappointed
that Mrs. Nougat-Jones did not pursue the subject further. He had
evidently expected her to offer seven and fourpence.

The weeks sped by, and Knopfschrank came more rarely to the restaurant in
Owl Street, while his meals on those occasions became more and more
meagre. And then came a triumphal day, when he appeared early in the
evening in a high state of elation, and ordered an elaborate meal that
scarcely stopped short of being a banquet. The ordinary resources of the
kitchen were supplemented by an imported dish of smoked goosebreast, a
Pomeranian delicacy that was luckily procurable at a firm of
_delikatessen_ merchants in Coventry Street, while a long-necked bottle
of Rhine wine gave a finishing touch of festivity and good cheer to the
crowded table.

"He has evidently sold his masterpiece," whispered Sylvia Strubble to
Mrs. Nougat-Jones, who had come in late.

"Who has bought it?" she whispered back.

"Don't know; he hasn't said anything yet, but it must be some American.
Do you see, he has got a little American flag on the dessert dish, and he
has put pennies in the music box three times, once to play the
'Star-spangled Banner,' then a Sousa march, and then the 'Star-spangled
Banner' again. It must be an American millionaire, and he's evidently
got a very big price for it; he's just beaming and chuckling with
satisfaction."

"We must ask him who has bought it," said Mrs. Nougat-Jones.

"Hush! no, don't. Let's buy some of his sketches, quick, before we are
supposed to know that he's famous; otherwise he'll be doubling the
prices. I am so glad he's had a success at last. I always believed in
him, you know."

For the sum of ten shillings each Miss Strubble acquired the drawings of
the camel dying in Upper Berkeley Street and of the giraffes quenching
their thirst in Trafalgar Square; at the same price Mrs. Nougat-Jones
secured the study of roosting sand-grouse. A more ambitious picture,
"Wolves and wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenaeum Club," found a
purchaser at fifteen shillings.

"And now what are your plans?" asked a young man who contributed
occasional paragraphs to an artistic weekly.

"I go back to Stolpmunde as soon as the ship sails," said the artist,
"and I do not return. Never."

"But your work? Your career as painter?"

"Ah, there is nossing in it. One starves. Till to-day I have sold not
one of my sketches. To-night you have bought a few, because I am going
away from you, but at other times, not one."

"But has not some American--?"

"Ah, the rich American," chuckled the artist. "God be thanked. He dash
his car right into our herd of schwines as they were being driven out to
the fields. Many of our best schwines he killed, but he paid all
damages. He paid perhaps more than they were worth, many times more than
they would have fetched in the market after a month of fattening, but he
was in a hurry to get on to Dantzig. When one is in a hurry one must pay
what one is asked. God be thanked for rich Americans, who are always in
a hurry to get somewhere else. My father and mother, they have now so
plenty of money; they send me some to pay my debts and come home. I
start on Monday for Stolpmunde and I do not come back. Never."