Beasts and Super Beasts

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Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner of Hyde Park, lazily
enjoying a cigarette and watching the slow grazing promenade of a pair of
snow-geese, the male looking rather like an albino edition of the russet-
hued female. Out of the corner of his eye Crosby also noted with some
interest the hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had passed and
repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals, like a wary
crow about to alight near some possibly edible morsel. Inevitably the
figure came to an anchorage on the bench, within easy talking distance of
its original occupant. The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled
beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the
professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of humiliating tale-
spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on half a day's decent work.

For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a
strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating
inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer's
while to listen to.

"It's a strange world," he said.

As the statement met with no response he altered it to the form of a
question.

"I daresay you've found it to be a strange world, mister?"

"As far as I am concerned," said Crosby, "the strangeness has worn off in
the course of thirty-six years."

"Ah," said the greybeard, "I could tell you things that you'd hardly
believe. Marvellous things that have really happened to me."

"Nowadays there is no demand for marvellous things that have really
happened," said Crosby discouragingly; "the professional writers of
fiction turn these things out so much better. For instance, my
neighbours tell me wonderful, incredible things that their Aberdeens and
chows and borzois have done; I never listen to them. On the other hand,
I have read 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' three times."

The greybeard moved uneasily in his seat; then he opened up new country.

"I take it that you are a professing Christian," he observed.

"I am a prominent and I think I may say an influential member of the
Mussulman community of Eastern Persia," said Crosby, making an excursion
himself into the realms of fiction.

The greybeard was obviously disconcerted at this new check to
introductory conversation, but the defeat was only momentary.

"Persia. I should never have taken you for a Persian," he remarked, with
a somewhat aggrieved air.

"I am not," said Crosby; "my father was an Afghan."

"An Afghan!" said the other, smitten into bewildered silence for a
moment. Then he recovered himself and renewed his attack.

"Afghanistan. Ah! We've had some wars with that country; now, I
daresay, instead of fighting it we might have learned something from it.
A very wealthy country, I believe. No real poverty there."

He raised his voice on the word "poverty" with a suggestion of intense
feeling. Crosby saw the opening and avoided it.

"It possesses, nevertheless, a number of highly talented and ingenious
beggars," he said; "if I had not spoken so disparagingly of marvellous
things that have really happened I would tell you the story of Ibrahim
and the eleven camel-loads of blotting-paper. Also I have forgotten
exactly how it ended."

"My own life-story is a curious one," said the stranger, apparently
stifling all desire to hear the history of Ibrahim; "I was not always as
you see me now."

"We are supposed to undergo complete change in the course of every seven
years," said Crosby, as an explanation of the foregoing announcement.

"I mean I was not always in such distressing circumstances as I am at
present," pursued the stranger doggedly.

"That sounds rather rude," said Crosby stiffly, "considering that you are
at present talking to a man reputed to be one of the most gifted
conversationalists of the Afghan border."

"I don't mean in that way," said the greybeard hastily; "I've been very
much interested in your conversation. I was alluding to my unfortunate
financial situation. You mayn't hardly believe it, but at the present
moment I am absolutely without a farthing. Don't see any prospect of
getting any money, either, for the next few days. I don't suppose you've
ever found yourself in such a position," he added.

"In the town of Yom," said Crosby, "which is in Southern Afghanistan, and
which also happens to be my birthplace, there was a Chinese philosopher
who used to say that one of the three chiefest human blessings was to be
absolutely without money. I forget what the other two were."

"Ah, I daresay," said the stranger, in a tone that betrayed no enthusiasm
for the philosopher's memory; "and did he practise what he preached?
That's the test."

"He lived happily with very little money or resources," said Crosby.

"Then I expect he had friends who would help him liberally whenever he
was in difficulties, such as I am in at present."

"In Yom," said Crosby, "it is not necessary to have friends in order to
obtain help. Any citizen of Yom would help a stranger as a matter of
course."

The greybeard was now genuinely interested.

The conversation had at last taken a favourable turn.

"If someone, like me, for instance, who was in undeserved difficulties,
asked a citizen of that town you speak of for a small loan to tide over a
few days' impecuniosity--five shillings, or perhaps a rather larger
sum--would it be given to him as a matter of course?"

"There would be a certain preliminary," said Crosby; "one would take him
to a wine-shop and treat him to a measure of wine, and then, after a
little high-flown conversation, one would put the desired sum in his hand
and wish him good-day. It is a roundabout way of performing a simple
transaction, but in the East all ways are roundabout."

The listener's eyes were glittering.

"Ah," he exclaimed, with a thin sneer ringing meaningly through his
words, "I suppose you've given up all those generous customs since you
left your town. Don't practise them now, I expect."

"No one who has lived in Yom," said Crosby fervently, "and remembers its
green hills covered with apricot and almond trees, and the cold water
that rushes down like a caress from the upland snows and dashes under the
little wooden bridges, no one who remembers these things and treasures
the memory of them would ever give up a single one of its unwritten laws
and customs. To me they are as binding as though I still lived in that
hallowed home of my youth."

"Then if I was to ask you for a small loan--" began the greybeard
fawningly, edging nearer on the seat and hurriedly wondering how large he
might safely make his request, "if I was to ask you for, say--"

"At any other time, certainly," said Crosby; "in the months of November
and December, however, it is absolutely forbidden for anyone of our race
to give or receive loans or gifts; in fact, one does not willingly speak
of them. It is considered unlucky. We will therefore close this
discussion."

"But it is still October!" exclaimed the adventurer with an eager, angry
whine, as Crosby rose from his seat; "wants eight days to the end of the
month!"

"The Afghan November began yesterday," said Crosby severely, and in
another moment he was striding across the Park, leaving his recent
companion scowling and muttering furiously on the seat.

"I don't believe a word of his story," he chattered to himself; "pack of
nasty lies from beginning to end. Wish I'd told him so to his face.
Calling himself an Afghan!"

The snorts and snarls that escaped from him for the next quarter of an
hour went far to support the truth of the old saying that two of a trade
never agree.




THE SCHARTZ-METTERKLUME METHOD


Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station
and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time
till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the
roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load,
and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the
animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta promptly betook
her to the roadway, and put rather a different complexion on the
struggle. Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful
admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on behalf of a
distressed animal, such interference being "none of her business." Only
once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one
of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours
in a small and extremely uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig,
while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with
the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere
between the boar and his prisoner. It is to be feared that she lost the
friendship of the ultimately rescued lady. On this occasion she merely
lost the train, which gave way to the first sign of impatience it had
shown throughout the journey, and steamed off without her. She bore the
desertion with philosophical indifference; her friends and relations were
thoroughly well used to the fact of her luggage arriving without her. She
wired a vague non-committal message to her destination to say that she
was coming on "by another train." Before she had time to think what her
next move might be she was confronted by an imposingly attired lady, who
seemed to be taking a prolonged mental inventory of her clothes and
looks.

"You must be Miss Hope, the governess I've come to meet," said the
apparition, in a tone that admitted of very little argument.

"Very well, if I must I must," said Lady Carlotta to herself with
dangerous meekness.

"I am Mrs. Quabarl," continued the lady; "and where, pray, is your
luggage?"

"It's gone astray," said the alleged governess, falling in with the
excellent rule of life that the absent are always to blame; the luggage
had, in point of fact, behaved with perfect correctitude. "I've just
telegraphed about it," she added, with a nearer approach to truth.

"How provoking," said Mrs. Quabarl; "these railway companies are so
careless. However, my maid can lend you things for the night," and she
led the way to her car.

During the drive to the Quabarl mansion Lady Carlotta was impressively
introduced to the nature of the charge that had been thrust upon her; she
learned that Claude and Wilfrid were delicate, sensitive young people,
that Irene had the artistic temperament highly developed, and that Viola
was something or other else of a mould equally commonplace among children
of that class and type in the twentieth century.

"I wish them not only to be _taught_," said Mrs. Quabarl, "but
_interested_ in what they learn. In their history lessons, for instance,
you must try to make them feel that they are being introduced to the life-
stories of men and women who really lived, not merely committing a mass
of names and dates to memory. French, of course, I shall expect you to
talk at meal-times several days in the week."

"I shall talk French four days of the week and Russian in the remaining
three."

"Russian? My dear Miss Hope, no one in the house speaks or understands
Russian."

"That will not embarrass me in the least," said Lady Carlotta coldly.

Mrs. Quabarl, to use a colloquial expression, was knocked off her perch.
She was one of those imperfectly self-assured individuals who are
magnificent and autocratic as long as they are not seriously opposed. The
least show of unexpected resistance goes a long way towards rendering
them cowed and apologetic. When the new governess failed to express
wondering admiration of the large newly-purchased and expensive car, and
lightly alluded to the superior advantages of one or two makes which had
just been put on the market, the discomfiture of her patroness became
almost abject. Her feelings were those which might have animated a
general of ancient warfaring days, on beholding his heaviest
battle-elephant ignominiously driven off the field by slingers and
javelin throwers.

At dinner that evening, although reinforced by her husband, who usually
duplicated her opinions and lent her moral support generally, Mrs.
Quabarl regained none of her lost ground. The governess not only helped
herself well and truly to wine, but held forth with considerable show of
critical knowledge on various vintage matters, concerning which the
Quabarls were in no wise able to pose as authorities. Previous
governesses had limited their conversation on the wine topic to a
respectful and doubtless sincere expression of a preference for water.
When this one went as far as to recommend a wine firm in whose hands you
could not go very far wrong Mrs. Quabarl thought it time to turn the
conversation into more usual channels.

"We got very satisfactory references about you from Canon Teep," she
observed; "a very estimable man, I should think."

"Drinks like a fish and beats his wife, otherwise a very lovable
character," said the governess imperturbably.

"_My dear_ Miss Hope! I trust you are exaggerating," exclaimed the
Quabarls in unison.

"One must in justice admit that there is some provocation," continued the
romancer. "Mrs. Teep is quite the most irritating bridge-player that I
have ever sat down with; her leads and declarations would condone a
certain amount of brutality in her partner, but to souse her with the
contents of the only soda-water syphon in the house on a Sunday
afternoon, when one couldn't get another, argues an indifference to the
comfort of others which I cannot altogether overlook. You may think me
hasty in my judgments, but it was practically on account of the syphon
incident that I left."

"We will talk of this some other time," said Mrs. Quabarl hastily.

"I shall never allude to it again," said the governess with decision.

Mr. Quabarl made a welcome diversion by asking what studies the new
instructress proposed to inaugurate on the morrow.

"History to begin with," she informed him.

"Ah, history," he observed sagely; "now in teaching them history you must
take care to interest them in what they learn. You must make them feel
that they are being introduced to the life-stories of men and women who
really lived--"

"I've told her all that," interposed Mrs. Quabarl.

"I teach history on the Schartz-Metterklume method," said the governess
loftily.

"Ah, yes," said her listeners, thinking it expedient to assume an
acquaintance at least with the name.

* * * * *

"What are you children doing out here?" demanded Mrs. Quabarl the next
morning, on finding Irene sitting rather glumly at the head of the
stairs, while her sister was perched in an attitude of depressed
discomfort on the window-seat behind her, with a wolf-skin rug almost
covering her.

"We are having a history lesson," came the unexpected reply. "I am
supposed to be Rome, and Viola up there is the she-wolf; not a real wolf,
but the figure of one that the Romans used to set store by--I forget why.
Claude and Wilfrid have gone to fetch the shabby women."

"The shabby women?"

"Yes, they've got to carry them off. They didn't want to, but Miss Hope
got one of father's fives-bats and said she'd give them a number nine
spanking if they didn't, so they've gone to do it."

A loud, angry screaming from the direction of the lawn drew Mrs. Quabarl
thither in hot haste, fearful lest the threatened castigation might even
now be in process of infliction. The outcry, however, came principally
from the two small daughters of the lodge-keeper, who were being hauled
and pushed towards the house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and
Wilfrid, whose task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if
not very effectual, attacks of the captured maidens' small brother. The
governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently on the stone balustrade,
presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of
Battles. A furious and repeated chorus of "I'll tell muvver" rose from
the lodge-children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of hearing, was
for the moment immersed in the preoccupation of her washtub.

After an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lodge (the good
woman was gifted with the highly militant temper which is sometimes the
privilege of deafness) Mrs. Quabarl flew indignantly to the rescue of the
struggling captives.

"Wilfrid! Claude! Let those children go at once. Miss Hope, what on
earth is the meaning of this scene?"

"Early Roman history; the Sabine Women, don't you know? It's the Schartz-
Metterklume method to make children understand history by acting it
themselves; fixes it in their memory, you know. Of course, if, thanks to
your interference, your boys go through life thinking that the Sabine
women ultimately escaped, I really cannot be held responsible."

"You may be very clever and modern, Miss Hope," said Mrs. Quabarl firmly,
"but I should like you to leave here by the next train. Your luggage
will be sent after you as soon as it arrives."

"I'm not certain exactly where I shall be for the next few days," said
the dismissed instructress of youth; "you might keep my luggage till I
wire my address. There are only a couple of trunks and some golf-clubs
and a leopard cub."

"A leopard cub!" gasped Mrs. Quabarl. Even in her departure this
extraordinary person seemed destined to leave a trail of embarrassment
behind her.

"Well, it's rather left off being a cub; it's more than half-grown, you
know. A fowl every day and a rabbit on Sundays is what it usually gets.
Raw beef makes it too excitable. Don't trouble about getting the car for
me, I'm rather inclined for a walk."

And Lady Carlotta strode out of the Quabarl horizon.

The advent of the genuine Miss Hope, who had made a mistake as to the day
on which she was due to arrive, caused a turmoil which that good lady was
quite unused to inspiring. Obviously the Quabarl family had been
woefully befooled, but a certain amount of relief came with the
knowledge.

"How tiresome for you, dear Carlotta," said her hostess, when the overdue
guest ultimately arrived; "how very tiresome losing your train and having
to stop overnight in a strange place."

"Oh dear, no," said Lady Carlotta; "not at all tiresome--for me."




THE SEVENTH PULLET


"It's not the daily grind that I complain of," said Blenkinthrope
resentfully; "it's the dull grey sameness of my life outside of office
hours. Nothing of interest comes my way, nothing remarkable or out of
the common. Even the little things that I do try to find some interest
in don't seem to interest other people. Things in my garden, for
instance."

"The potato that weighed just over two pounds," said his friend Gorworth.

"Did I tell you about that?" said Blenkinthrope; "I was telling the
others in the train this morning. I forgot if I'd told you."

"To be exact you told me that it weighed just under two pounds, but I
took into account the fact that abnormal vegetables and freshwater fish
have an after-life, in which growth is not arrested."

"You're just like the others," said Blenkinthrope sadly, "you only make
fun of it."

"The fault is with the potato, not with us," said Gorworth; "we are not
in the least interested in it because it is not in the least interesting.
The men you go up in the train with every day are just in the same case
as yourself; their lives are commonplace and not very interesting to
themselves, and they certainly are not going to wax enthusiastic over the
commonplace events in other men's lives. Tell them something startling,
dramatic, piquant that has happened to yourself or to someone in your
family, and you will capture their interest at once. They will talk
about you with a certain personal pride to all their acquaintances. 'Man
I know intimately, fellow called Blenkinthrope, lives down my way, had
two of his fingers clawed clean off by a lobster he was carrying home to
supper. Doctor says entire hand may have to come off.' Now that is
conversation of a very high order. But imagine walking into a tennis
club with the remark: 'I know a man who has grown a potato weighing two
and a quarter pounds.'"

"But hang it all, my dear fellow," said Blenkinthrope impatiently,
"haven't I just told you that nothing of a remarkable nature ever happens
to me?"

"Invent something," said Gorworth. Since winning a prize for excellence
in Scriptural knowledge at a preparatory school he had felt licensed to
be a little more unscrupulous than the circle he moved in. Much might
surely be excused to one who in early life could give a list of seventeen
trees mentioned in the Old Testament.

"What sort of thing?" asked Blenkinthrope, somewhat snappishly.

"A snake got into your hen-run yesterday morning and killed six out of
seven pullets, first mesmerising them with its eyes and then biting them
as they stood helpless. The seventh pullet was one of that French sort,
with feathers all over its eyes, so it escaped the mesmeric snare, and
just flew at what it could see of the snake and pecked it to pieces."

"Thank you," said Blenkinthrope stiffly; "it's a very clever invention.
If such a thing had really happened in my poultry-run I admit I should
have been proud and interested to tell people about it. But I'd rather
stick to fact, even if it is plain fact." All the same his mind dwelt
wistfully on the story of the Seventh Pullet. He could picture himself
telling it in the train amid the absorbed interest of his
fellow-passengers. Unconsciously all sorts of little details and
improvements began to suggest themselves.

Wistfulness was still his dominant mood when he took his seat in the
railway carriage the next morning. Opposite him sat Stevenham, who had
attained to a recognised brevet of importance through the fact of an
uncle having dropped dead in the act of voting at a Parliamentary
election. That had happened three years ago, but Stevenham was still
deferred to on all questions of home and foreign politics.

"Hullo, how's the giant mushroom, or whatever it was?" was all the notice
Blenkinthrope got from his fellow travellers.

Young Duckby, whom he mildly disliked, speedily monopolised the general
attention by an account of a domestic bereavement.

"Had four young pigeons carried off last night by a whacking big rat. Oh,
a monster he must have been; you could tell by the size of the hole he
made breaking into the loft."

No moderate-sized rat ever seemed to carry out any predatory operations
in these regions; they were all enormous in their enormity.

"Pretty hard lines that," continued Duckby, seeing that he had secured
the attention and respect of the company; "four squeakers carried off at
one swoop. You'd find it rather hard to match that in the way of
unlooked-for bad luck."

"I had six pullets out of a pen of seven killed by a snake yesterday
afternoon," said Blenkinthrope, in a voice which he hardly recognised as
his own.

"By a snake?" came in excited chorus.

"It fascinated them with its deadly, glittering eyes, one after the
other, and struck them down while they stood helpless. A bedridden
neighbour, who wasn't able to call for assistance, witnessed it all from
her bedroom window."

"Well, I never!" broke in the chorus, with variations.

"The interesting part of it is about the seventh pullet, the one that
didn't get killed," resumed Blenkinthrope, slowly lighting a cigarette.
His diffidence had left him, and he was beginning to realise how safe and
easy depravity can seem once one has the courage to begin. "The six dead
birds were Minorcas; the seventh was a Houdan with a mop of feathers all
over its eyes. It could hardly see the snake at all, so of course it
wasn't mesmerised like the others. It just could see something wriggling
on the ground, and went for it and pecked it to death."

"Well, I'm blessed!" exclaimed the chorus.

In the course of the next few days Blenkinthrope discovered how little
the loss of one's self-respect affects one when one has gained the esteem
of the world. His story found its way into one of the poultry papers,
and was copied thence into a daily news-sheet as a matter of general
interest. A lady wrote from the North of Scotland recounting a similar
episode which she had witnessed as occurring between a stoat and a blind
grouse. Somehow a lie seems so much less reprehensible when one can call
it a lee.

For awhile the adapter of the Seventh Pullet story enjoyed to the full
his altered standing as a person of consequence, one who had had some
share in the strange events of his times. Then he was thrust once again
into the cold grey background by the sudden blossoming into importance of
Smith-Paddon, a daily fellow-traveller, whose little girl had been
knocked down and nearly hurt by a car belonging to a musical-comedy
actress. The actress was not in the car at the time, but she was in
numerous photographs which appeared in the illustrated papers of Zoto
Dobreen inquiring after the well-being of Maisie, daughter of Edmund
Smith-Paddon, Esq. With this new human interest to absorb them the
travelling companions were almost rude when Blenkinthrope tried to
explain his contrivance for keeping vipers and peregrine falcons out of
his chicken-run.