Beasts and Super Beasts
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"I was staying with the Mathesons last month," said Blanche Boveal
eagerly, "and we had such a good idea. Every one in the house-party had
to be a character and behave consistently all the time, and at the end of
the visit one had to guess what every one's character was. The one who
was voted to have acted his or her character best got a prize."
"It sounds amusing," said Lady Blonze.
"I was St. Francis of Assisi," continued Blanche; "we hadn't got to keep
to our right sexes. I kept getting up in the middle of a meal, and
throwing out food to the birds; you see, the chief thing that one
remembers of St. Francis is that he was fond of the birds. Every one was
so stupid about it, and thought that I was the old man who feeds the
sparrows in the Tuileries Gardens. Then Colonel Pentley was the Jolly
Miller on the banks of Dee."
"How on earth did he do that?" asked Bertie van Tahn.
"'He laughed and sang from morn till night,'" explained Blanche.
"How dreadful for the rest of you," said Bertie; "and anyway he wasn't on
the banks of Dee."
"One had to imagine that," said Blanche.
"If you could imagine all that you might as well imagine cattle on the
further bank and keep on calling them home, Mary-fashion, across the
sands of Dee. Or you might change the river to the Yarrow and imagine it
was on the top of you, and say you were Willie, or whoever it was,
drowned in Yarrow."
"Of course it's easy to make fun of it," said Blanche sharply, "but it
was extremely interesting and amusing. The prize was rather a fiasco,
though. You see, Millie Matheson said her character was Lady Bountiful,
and as she was our hostess of course we all had to vote that she had
carried out her character better than anyone. Otherwise I ought to have
got the prize."
"It's quite an idea for a Christmas party," said Lady Blonze; "we must
certainly do it here."
Sir Nicholas was not so enthusiastic. "Are you quite sure, my dear, that
you're wise in doing this thing?" he said to his wife when they were
alone together. "It might do very well at the Mathesons, where they had
rather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it will be a different
matter. There is the Durmot flapper, for instance, who simply stops at
nothing, and you know what Van Tahn is like. Then there is Cyril
Skatterly; he has madness on one side of his family and a Hungarian
grandmother on the other."
"I don't see what they could do that would matter," said Lady Blonze.
"It's the unknown that is to be dreaded," said Sir Nicholas. "If
Skatterly took it into his head to represent a Bull of Bashan, well, I'd
rather not be here."
"Of course we shan't allow any Bible characters. Besides, I don't know
what the Bulls of Bashan really did that was so very dreadful; they just
came round and gaped, as far as I remember."
"My dear, you don't know what Skatterly's Hungarian imagination mightn't
read into the part; it would be small satisfaction to say to him
afterwards: 'You've behaved as no Bull of Bashan would have behaved.'"
"Oh, you're an alarmist," said Lady Blonze; "I particularly want to have
this idea carried out. It will be sure to be talked about a lot."
"That is quite possible," said Sir Nicholas.
* * * * *
Dinner that evening was not a particularly lively affair; the strain of
trying to impersonate a self-imposed character or to glean hints of
identity from other people's conduct acted as a check on the natural
festivity of such a gathering. There was a general feeling of gratitude
and acquiescence when good-natured Rachel Klammerstein suggested that
there should be an hour or two's respite from "the game" while they all
listened to a little piano-playing after dinner. Rachel's love of piano
music was not indiscriminate, and concentrated itself chiefly on
selections rendered by her idolised offspring, Moritz and Augusta, who,
to do them justice, played remarkably well.
The Klammersteins were deservedly popular as Christmas guests; they gave
expensive gifts lavishly on Christmas Day and New Year, and Mrs.
Klammerstein had already dropped hints of her intention to present the
prize for the best enacted character in the game competition. Every one
had brightened at this prospect; if it had fallen to Lady Blonze, as
hostess, to provide the prize, she would have considered that a little
souvenir of some twenty or twenty-five shillings' value would meet the
case, whereas coming from a Klammerstein source it would certainly run to
several guineas.
The close time for impersonation efforts came to an end with the final
withdrawal of Moritz and Augusta from the piano. Blanche Boveal retired
early, leaving the room in a series of laboured leaps that she hoped
might be recognised as a tolerable imitation of Pavlova. Vera Durmot,
the sixteen-year-old flapper, expressed her confident opinion that the
performance was intended to typify Mark Twain's famous jumping frog, and
her diagnosis of the case found general acceptance. Another guest to set
an example of early bed-going was Waldo Plubley, who conducted his life
on a minutely regulated system of time-tables and hygienic routine. Waldo
was a plump, indolent young man of seven-and-twenty, whose mother had
early in his life decided for him that he was unusually delicate, and by
dint of much coddling and home-keeping had succeeded in making him
physically soft and mentally peevish. Nine hours' unbroken sleep,
preceded by elaborate breathing exercises and other hygienic ritual, was
among the indispensable regulations which Waldo imposed on himself, and
there were innumerable small observances which he exacted from those who
were in any way obliged to minister to his requirements; a special teapot
for the decoction of his early tea was always solemnly handed over to the
bedroom staff of any house in which he happened to be staying. No one
had ever quite mastered the mechanism of this precious vessel, but Bertie
van Tahn was responsible for the legend that its spout had to be kept
facing north during the process of infusion.
On this particular night the irreducible nine hours were severely
mutilated by the sudden and by no means noiseless incursion of a pyjama-
clad figure into Waldo's room at an hour midway between midnight and
dawn.
"What is the matter? What are you looking for?" asked the awakened and
astonished Waldo, slowly recognising Van Tahn, who appeared to be
searching hastily for something he had lost.
"Looking for sheep," was the reply.
"Sheep?" exclaimed Waldo.
"Yes, sheep. You don't suppose I'm looking for giraffes, do you?"
"I don't see why you should expect to find either in my room," retorted
Waldo furiously.
"I can't argue the matter at this hour of the night," said Bertie, and
began hastily rummaging in the chest of drawers. Shirts and underwear
went flying on to the floor.
"There are no sheep here, I tell you," screamed Waldo.
"I've only got your word for it," said Bertie, whisking most of the
bedclothes on to the floor; "if you weren't concealing something you
wouldn't be so agitated."
Waldo was by this time convinced that Van Tahn was raving mad, and made
an anxious, effort to humour him.
"Go back to bed like a dear fellow," he pleaded, "and your sheep will
turn up all right in the morning."
"I daresay," said Bertie gloomily, "without their tails. Nice fool I
shall look with a lot of Manx sheep."
And by way of emphasising his annoyance at the prospect he sent Waldo's
pillows flying to the top of the wardrobe.
"But _why_ no tails?" asked Waldo, whose teeth were chattering with fear
and rage and lowered temperature.
"My dear boy, have you never heard the ballad of Little Bo-Peep?" said
Bertie with a chuckle. "It's my character in the Game, you know. If I
didn't go hunting about for my lost sheep no one would be able to guess
who I was; and now go to sleepy weeps like a good child or I shall be
cross with you."
"I leave you to imagine," wrote Waldo in the course of a long letter to
his mother, "how much sleep I was able to recover that night, and you
know how essential nine uninterrupted hours of slumber are to my health."
On the other hand he was able to devote some wakeful hours to exercises
in breathing wrath and fury against Bertie van Tahn.
Breakfast at Blonzecourt was a scattered meal, on the "come when you
please" principle, but the house-party was supposed to gather in full
strength at lunch. On the day after the "Game" had been started there
were, however, some notable absentees. Waldo Plubley, for instance, was
reported to be nursing a headache. A large breakfast and an "A.B.C." had
been taken up to his room, but he had made no appearance in the flesh.
"I expect he's playing up to some character," said Vera Durmot; "isn't
there a thing of Moliere's, '_Le Malade Imaginaire_'? I expect he's
that."
Eight or nine lists came out, and were duly pencilled with the
suggestion.
"And where are the Klammersteins?" asked Lady Blonze; "they're usually so
punctual."
"Another character pose, perhaps," said Bertie van Tahn; "'the Lost Ten
Tribes.'"
"But there are only three of them. Besides, they'll want their lunch.
Hasn't anyone seen anything of them?"
"Didn't you take them out in your car?" asked Blanche Boveal, addressing
herself to Cyril Skatterly.
"Yes, took them out to Slogberry Moor immediately after breakfast. Miss
Durmot came too."
"I saw you and Vera come back," said Lady Blonze, "but I didn't see the
Klammersteins. Did you put them down in the village?"
"No," said Skatterly shortly.
"But where are they? Where did you leave them?"
"We left them on Slogberry Moor," said Vera calmly.
"On Slogberry Moor? Why, it's more than thirty miles away! How are they
going to get back?"
"We didn't stop to consider that," said Skatterly; "we asked them to get
out for a moment, on the pretence that the car had stuck, and then we
dashed off full speed and left them there."
"But how dare you do such a thing? It's most inhuman! Why, it's been
snowing for the last hour."
"I expect there'll be a cottage or farmhouse somewhere if they walk a
mile or two."
"But why on earth have you done it?"
The question came in a chorus of indignant bewilderment.
"_That_ would be telling what our characters are meant to be," said Vera.
"Didn't I warn you?" said Sir Nicholas tragically to his wife.
"It's something to do with Spanish history; we don't mind giving you that
clue," said Skatterly, helping himself cheerfully to salad, and then
Bertie van Tahn broke forth into peals of joyous laughter.
"I've got it! Ferdinand and Isabella deporting the Jews! Oh, lovely!
Those two have certainly won the prize; we shan't get anything to beat
that for thoroughness."
Lady Blonze's Christmas party was talked about and written about to an
extent that she had not anticipated in her most ambitious moments. The
letters from Waldo's mother would alone have made it memorable.
COUSIN TERESA
Basset Harrowcluff returned to the home of his fathers, after an absence
of four years, distinctly well pleased with himself. He was only thirty-
one, but he had put in some useful service in an out-of-the-way, though
not unimportant, corner of the world. He had quieted a province, kept
open a trade route, enforced the tradition of respect which is worth the
ransom of many kings in out-of-the-way regions, and done the whole
business on rather less expenditure than would be requisite for
organising a charity in the home country. In Whitehall and places where
they think, they doubtless thought well of him. It was not
inconceivable, his father allowed himself to imagine, that Basset's name
might figure in the next list of Honours.
Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his half-brother, Lucas,
whom he found feverishly engrossed in the same medley of elaborate
futilities that had claimed his whole time and energies, such as they
were, four years ago, and almost as far back before that as he could
remember. It was the contempt of the man of action for the man of
activities, and it was probably reciprocated. Lucas was an over-well
nourished individual, some nine years Basset's senior, with a colouring
that would have been accepted as a sign of intensive culture in an
asparagus, but probably meant in this case mere abstention from exercise.
His hair and forehead furnished a recessional note in a personality that
was in all other respects obtrusive and assertive. There was certainly
no Semitic blood in Lucas's parentage, but his appearance contrived to
convey at least a suggestion of Jewish extraction. Clovis Sangrail, who
knew most of his associates by sight, said it was undoubtedly a case of
protective mimicry.
Two days after Basset's return, Lucas frisked in to lunch in a state of
twittering excitement that could not be restrained even for the immediate
consideration of soup, but had to be verbally discharged in spluttering
competition with mouthfuls of vermicelli.
"I've got hold of an idea for something immense," he babbled, "something
that is simply It."
Basset gave a short laugh that would have done equally well as a snort,
if one had wanted to make the exchange. His half-brother was in the
habit of discovering futilities that were "simply It" at frequently
recurring intervals. The discovery generally meant that he flew up to
town, preceded by glowingly-worded telegrams, to see some one connected
with the stage or the publishing world, got together one or two momentous
luncheon parties, flitted in and out of "Gambrinus" for one or two
evenings, and returned home with an air of subdued importance and the
asparagus tint slightly intensified. The great idea was generally
forgotten a few weeks later in the excitement of some new discovery.
"The inspiration came to me whilst I was dressing," announced Lucas; "it
will be _the_ thing in the next music-hall _revue_. All London will go
mad over it. It's just a couplet; of course there will be other words,
but they won't matter. Listen:
Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.
A lifting, catchy sort of refrain, you see, and big-drum business on the
two syllables of bor-zoi. It's immense. And I've thought out all the
business of it; the singer will sing the first verse alone, then during
the second verse Cousin Teresa will walk through, followed by four wooden
dogs on wheels; Caesar will be an Irish terrier, Fido a black poodle,
Jock a fox-terrier, and the borzoi, of course, will be a borzoi. During
the third verse Cousin Teresa will come on alone, and the dogs will be
drawn across by themselves from the opposite wing; then Cousin Teresa
will catch on to the singer and go off-stage in one direction, while the
dogs' procession goes off in the other, crossing en route, which is
always very effective. There'll be a lot of applause there, and for the
fourth verse Cousin Teresa will come on in sables and the dogs will all
have coats on. Then I've got a great idea for the fifth verse; each of
the dogs will be led on by a Nut, and Cousin Teresa will come on from the
opposite side, crossing en route, always effective, and then she turns
round and leads the whole lot of them off on a string, and all the time
every one singing like mad:
Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.
Tum-Tum! Drum business on the two last syllables. I'm so excited, I
shan't sleep a wink to-night. I'm off to-morrow by the ten-fifteen. I've
wired to Hermanova to lunch with me."
If any of the rest of the family felt any excitement over the creation of
Cousin Teresa, they were signally successful in concealing the fact.
"Poor Lucas does take his silly little ideas seriously," said Colonel
Harrowcluff afterwards in the smoking-room.
"Yes," said his younger son, in a slightly less tolerant tone, "in a day
or two he'll come back and tell us that his sensational masterpiece is
above the heads of the public, and in about three weeks' time he'll be
wild with enthusiasm over a scheme to dramatise the poems of Herrick or
something equally promising."
And then an extraordinary thing befell. In defiance of all precedent
Lucas's glowing anticipations were justified and endorsed by the course
of events. If Cousin Teresa was above the heads of the public, the
public heroically adapted itself to her altitude. Introduced as an
experiment at a dull moment in a new _revue_, the success of the item was
unmistakable; the calls were so insistent and uproarious that even Lucas'
ample devisings of additional "business" scarcely sufficed to keep pace
with the demand. Packed houses on successive evenings confirmed the
verdict of the first night audience, stalls and boxes filled
significantly just before the turn came on, and emptied significantly
after the last _encore_ had been given. The manager tearfully
acknowledged that Cousin Teresa was It. Stage hands and supers and
programme sellers acknowledged it to one another without the least
reservation. The name of the _revue_ dwindled to secondary importance,
and vast letters of electric blue blazoned the words "Cousin Teresa" from
the front of the great palace of pleasure. And, of course, the magic of
the famous refrain laid its spell all over the Metropolis. Restaurant
proprietors were obliged to provide the members of their orchestras with
painted wooden dogs on wheels, in order that the much-demanded and always
conceded melody should be rendered with the necessary spectacular
effects, and the crash of bottles and forks on the tables at the mention
of the big borzoi usually drowned the sincerest efforts of drum or
cymbals. Nowhere and at no time could one get away from the double thump
that brought up the rear of the refrain; revellers reeling home at night
banged it on doors and hoardings, milkmen clashed their cans to its
cadence, messenger boys hit smaller messenger boys resounding double
smacks on the same principle. And the more thoughtful circles of the
great city were not deaf to the claims and significance of the popular
melody. An enterprising and emancipated preacher discoursed from his
pulpit on the inner meaning of "Cousin Teresa," and Lucas Harrowcluff was
invited to lecture on the subject of his great achievement to members of
the Young Mens' Endeavour League, the Nine Arts Club, and other learned
and willing-to-learn bodies. In Society it seemed to be the one thing
people really cared to talk about; men and women of middle age and
average education might be seen together in corners earnestly discussing,
not the question whether Servia should have an outlet on the Adriatic, or
the possibilities of a British success in international polo contests,
but the more absorbing topic of the problematic Aztec or Nilotic origin
of the Teresa _motiv_.
"Politics and patriotism are so boring and so out of date," said a
revered lady who had some pretensions to oracular utterance; "we are too
cosmopolitan nowadays to be really moved by them. That is why one
welcomes an intelligible production like 'Cousin Teresa,' that has a
genuine message for one. One can't understand the message all at once,
of course, but one felt from the very first that it was there. I've been
to see it eighteen times and I'm going again to-morrow and on Thursday.
One can't see it often enough."
* * * * *
"It would be rather a popular move if we gave this Harrowcluff person a
knighthood or something of the sort," said the Minister reflectively.
"Which Harrowcluff?" asked his secretary.
"Which? There is only one, isn't there?" said the Minister; "the 'Cousin
Teresa' man, of course. I think every one would be pleased if we
knighted him. Yes, you can put him down on the list of certainties--under
the letter L."
"The letter L," said the secretary, who was new to his job; "does that
stand for Liberalism or liberality?"
Most of the recipients of Ministerial favour were expected to qualify in
both of those subjects.
"Literature," explained the Minister.
And thus, after a fashion, Colonel Harrowcluff's expectation of seeing
his son's name in the list of Honours was gratified.
THE YARKAND MANNER
Sir Lulworth Quayne was making a leisurely progress through the
Zoological Society's Gardens in company with his nephew, recently
returned from Mexico. The latter was interested in comparing and
contrasting allied types of animals occurring in the North American and
Old World fauna.
"One of the most remarkable things in the wanderings of species," he
observed, "is the sudden impulse to trek and migrate that breaks out now
and again, for no apparent reason, in communities of hitherto stay-at-
home animals."
"In human affairs the same phenomenon is occasionally noticeable," said
Sir Lulworth; "perhaps the most striking instance of it occurred in this
country while you were away in the wilds of Mexico. I mean the wander
fever which suddenly displayed itself in the managing and editorial
staffs of certain London newspapers. It began with the stampede of the
entire staff of one of our most brilliant and enterprising weeklies to
the banks of the Seine and the heights of Montmartre. The migration was
a brief one, but it heralded an era of restlessness in the Press world
which lent quite a new meaning to the phrase 'newspaper circulation.'
Other editorial staffs were not slow to imitate the example that had been
set them. Paris soon dropped out of fashion as being too near home;
Nurnberg, Seville, and Salonica became more favoured as planting-out
grounds for the personnel of not only weekly but daily papers as well.
The localities were perhaps not always well chosen; the fact of a leading
organ of Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights
from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have been a
mistake. And even when enterprising and adventurous editors took
themselves and their staffs further afield there were some unavoidable
clashings. For instance, the _Scrutator_, _Sporting Bluff_, and _The
Damsels' Own Paper_ all pitched on Khartoum for the same week. It was,
perhaps, a desire to out-distance all possible competition that
influenced the management of the _Daily Intelligencer_, one of the most
solid and respected organs of Liberal opinion, in its decision to
transfer its offices for three or four weeks from Fleet Street to Eastern
Turkestan, allowing, of course, a necessary margin of time for the
journey there and back. This was, in many respects, the most remarkable
of all the Press stampedes that were experienced at this time. There was
no make-believe about the undertaking; proprietor, manager, editor, sub-
editors, leader-writers, principal reporters, and so forth, all took part
in what was popularly alluded to as the _Drang nach Osten_; an
intelligent and efficient office-boy was all that was left in the
deserted hive of editorial industry."
"That was doing things rather thoroughly, wasn't it?" said the nephew.
"Well, you see," said Sir Lulworth, "the migration idea was falling
somewhat into disrepute from the half-hearted manner in which it was
occasionally carried out. You were not impressed by the information that
such and such a paper was being edited and brought out at Lisbon or
Innsbruck if you chanced to see the principal leader-writer or the art
editor lunching as usual at their accustomed restaurants. The _Daily
Intelligencer_ was determined to give no loophole for cavil at the
genuineness of its pilgrimage, and it must be admitted that to a certain
extent the arrangements made for transmitting copy and carrying on the
usual features of the paper during the long outward journey worked
smoothly and well. The series of articles which commenced at Baku on
'What Cobdenism might do for the camel industry' ranks among the best of
the recent contributions to Free Trade literature, while the views on
foreign policy enunciated 'from a roof in Yarkand' showed at least as
much grasp of the international situation as those that had germinated
within half a mile of Downing Street. Quite in keeping, too, with the
older and better traditions of British journalism was the manner of the
home-coming; no bombast, no personal advertisement, no flamboyant
interviews. Even a complimentary luncheon at the Voyagers' Club was
courteously declined. Indeed, it began to be felt that the
self-effacement of the returned pressmen was being carried to a pedantic
length. Foreman compositors, advertisement clerks, and other members of
the non-editorial staff, who had, of course, taken no part in the great
trek, found it as impossible to get into direct communication with the
editor and his satellites now that they had returned as when they had
been excusably inaccessible in Central Asia. The sulky, overworked
office-boy, who was the one connecting link between the editorial brain
and the business departments of the paper, sardonically explained the new
aloofness as the 'Yarkand manner.' Most of the reporters and sub-editors
seemed to have been dismissed in autocratic fashion since their return
and new ones engaged by letter; to these the editor and his immediate
associates remained an unseen presence, issuing its instructions solely
through the medium of curt typewritten notes. Something mystic and
Tibetan and forbidden had replaced the human bustle and democratic
simplicity of pre-migration days, and the same experience was encountered
by those who made social overtures to the returned wanderers. The most
brilliant hostess of Twentieth Century London flung the pearl of her
hospitality into the unresponsive trough of the editorial letter-box; it
seemed as if nothing short of a Royal command would drag the
hermit-souled _revenants_ from their self-imposed seclusion. People
began to talk unkindly of the effect of high altitudes and Eastern
atmosphere on minds and temperaments unused to such luxuries. The
Yarkand manner was not popular."