Beasts and Super Beasts

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"It is more orthodox to wear a hat," she observed, and then turned her
attention briskly to the business in hand.

"We will go first to the table-linen counter," she said, leading the way
in that direction; "I should like to look at some napkins."

The wondering look deepened in Cyprian's eyes as he followed his aunt; he
belonged to a generation that is supposed to be over-fond of the role of
mere spectator, but looking at napkins that one did not mean to buy was a
pleasure beyond his comprehension. Mrs. Chemping held one or two napkins
up to the light and stared fixedly at them, as though she half expected
to find some revolutionary cypher written on them in scarcely visible
ink; then she suddenly broke away in the direction of the glassware
department.

"Millicent asked me to get her a couple of decanters if there were any
going really cheap," she explained on the way, "and I really do want a
salad bowl. I can come back to the napkins later on."

She handled and scrutinised a large number of decanters and a long series
of salad bowls, and finally bought seven chrysanthemum vases.

"No one uses that kind of vase nowadays," she informed Cyprian, "but they
will do for presents next Christmas."

Two sunshades that were marked down to a price that Mrs. Chemping
considered absurdly cheap were added to her purchases.

"One of them will do for Ruth Colson; she is going out to the Malay
States, and a sunshade will always be useful there. And I must get her
some thin writing paper. It takes up no room in one's baggage."

Mrs. Chemping bought stacks of writing paper; it was so cheap, and it
went so flat in a trunk or portmanteau. She also bought a few
envelopes--envelopes somehow seemed rather an extragavance compared with
notepaper.

"Do you think Ruth will like blue or grey paper?" she asked Cyprian.

"Grey," said Cyprian, who had never met the lady in question.

"Have you any mauve notepaper of this quality?" Adela asked the
assistant.

"We haven't any mauve," said the assistant, "but we've two shades of
green and a darker shade of grey."

Mrs. Chemping inspected the greens and the darker grey, and chose the
blue.

"Now we can have some lunch," she said.

Cyprian behaved in an exemplary fashion in the refreshment department,
and cheerfully accepted a fish cake and a mince pie and a small cup of
coffee as adequate restoratives after two hours of concentrated shopping.
He was adamant, however, in resisting his aunt's suggestion that a hat
should be bought for him at the counter where men's headwear was being
disposed of at temptingly reduced prices.

"I've got as many hats as I want at home," he said, "and besides, it
rumples one's hair so, trying them on."

Perhaps he was going to develop into a Nut after all. It was a
disquieting symptom that he left all the parcels in charge of the cloak-
room attendant.

"We shall be getting more parcels presently," he said, "so we need not
collect these till we have finished our shopping."

His aunt was doubtfully appeased; some of the pleasure and excitement of
a shopping expedition seemed to evaporate when one was deprived of
immediate personal contact with one's purchases.

"I'm going to look at those napkins again," she said, as they descended
the stairs to the ground floor. "You need not come," she added, as the
dreaming look in the boy's eyes changed for a moment into one of mute
protest, "you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery department; I've just
remembered that I haven't a corkscrew in the house that can be depended
on."

Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery department when his aunt in
due course arrived there, but in the crush and bustle of anxious shoppers
and busy attendants it was an easy matter to miss anyone. It was in the
leather goods department some quarter of an hour later that Adela
Chemping caught sight of her nephew, separated from her by a rampart of
suit-cases and portmanteaux and hemmed in by the jostling crush of human
beings that now invaded every corner of the great shopping emporium. She
was just in time to witness a pardonable but rather embarrassing mistake
on the part of a lady who had wriggled her way with unstayable
determination towards the bareheaded Cyprian, and was now breathlessly
demanding the sale price of a handbag which had taken her fancy.

"There now," exclaimed Adela to herself, "she takes him for one of the
shop assistants because he hasn't got a hat on. I wonder it hasn't
happened before."

Perhaps it had. Cyprian, at any rate, seemed neither startled nor
embarrassed by the error into which the good lady had fallen. Examining
the ticket on the bag, he announced in a clear, dispassionate voice:

"Black seal, thirty-four shillings, marked down to twenty-eight. As a
matter of fact, we are clearing them out at a special reduction price of
twenty-six shillings. They are going off rather fast."

"I'll take it," said the lady, eagerly digging some coins out of her
purse.

"Will you take it as it is?" asked Cyprian; "it will be a matter of a few
minutes to get it wrapped up, there is such a crush."

"Never mind, I'll take it as it is," said the purchaser, clutching her
treasure and counting the money into Cyprian's palm.

Several kind strangers helped Adela into the open air.

"It's the crush and the heat," said one sympathiser to another; "it's
enough to turn anyone giddy."

When she next came across Cyprian he was standing in the crowd that
pushed and jostled around the counters of the book department. The dream
look was deeper than ever in his eyes. He had just sold two books of
devotion to an elderly Canon.




THE QUINCE TREE


"I've just been to see old Betsy Mullen," announced Vera to her aunt,
Mrs. Bebberly Cumble; "she seems in rather a bad way about her rent. She
owes about fifteen weeks of it, and says she doesn't know where any of it
is to come from."

"Betsy Mullen always is in difficulties with her rent, and the more
people help her with it the less she troubles about it," said the aunt.
"I certainly am not going to assist her any more. The fact is, she will
have to go into a smaller and cheaper cottage; there are several to be
had at the other end of the village for half the rent that she is paying,
or supposed to be paying, now. I told her a year ago that she ought to
move."

"But she wouldn't get such a nice garden anywhere else," protested Vera,
"and there's such a jolly quince tree in the corner. I don't suppose
there's another quince tree in the whole parish. And she never makes any
quince jam; I think to have a quince tree and not to make quince jam
shows such strength of character. Oh, she can't possibly move away from
that garden."

"When one is sixteen," said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble severely, "one talks of
things being impossible which are merely uncongenial. It is not only
possible but it is desirable that Betsy Mullen should move into smaller
quarters; she has scarcely enough furniture to fill that big cottage."

"As far as value goes," said Vera after a short pause, "there is more in
Betsy's cottage than in any other house for miles round."

"Nonsense," said the aunt; "she parted with whatever old china ware she
had long ago."

"I'm not talking about anything that belongs to Betsy herself," said Vera
darkly; "but, of course, you don't know what I know, and I don't suppose
I ought to tell you."

"You must tell me at once," exclaimed the aunt, her senses leaping into
alertness like those of a terrier suddenly exchanging a bored drowsiness
for the lively anticipation of an immediate rat hunt.

"I'm perfectly certain that I oughtn't to tell you anything about it,"
said Vera, "but, then, I often do things that I oughtn't to do."

"I should be the last person to suggest that you should do anything that
you ought not to do to--" began Mrs. Bebberly Cumble impressively.

"And I am always swayed by the last person who speaks to me," admitted
Vera, "so I'll do what I ought not to do and tell you."

Mrs. Bebberley Cumble thrust a very pardonable sense of exasperation into
the background of her mind and demanded impatiently:

"What is there in Betsy Mullen's cottage that you are making such a fuss
about?"

"It's hardly fair to say that _I've_ made a fuss about it," said Vera;
"this is the first time I've mentioned the matter, but there's been no
end of trouble and mystery and newspaper speculation about it. It's
rather amusing to think of the columns of conjecture in the Press and the
police and detectives hunting about everywhere at home and abroad, and
all the while that innocent-looking little cottage has held the secret."

"You don't mean to say it's the Louvre picture, La Something or other,
the woman with the smile, that disappeared about two years ago?"
exclaimed the aunt with rising excitement.

"Oh no, not that," said Vera, "but something quite as important and just
as mysterious--if anything, rather more scandalous."

"Not the Dublin--?"

Vera nodded.

"The whole jolly lot of them."

"In Betsy's cottage? Incredible!"

"Of course Betsy hasn't an idea as to what they are," said Vera; "she
just knows that they are something valuable and that she must keep quiet
about them. I found out quite by accident what they were and how they
came to be there. You see, the people who had them were at their wits'
end to know where to stow them away for safe keeping, and some one who
was motoring through the village was struck by the snug loneliness of the
cottage and thought it would be just the thing. Mrs. Lamper arranged the
matter with Betsy and smuggled the things in."

"Mrs. Lamper?"

"Yes; she does a lot of district visiting, you know."

"I am quite aware that she takes soup and flannel and improving
literature to the poorer cottagers," said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble, "but that
is hardly the same sort of thing as disposing of stolen goods, and she
must have known something about their history; anyone who reads the
papers, even casually, must have been aware of the theft, and I should
think the things were not hard to recognise. Mrs. Lamper has always had
the reputation of being a very conscientious woman."

"Of course she was screening some one else," said Vera. "A remarkable
feature of the affair is the extraordinary number of quite respectable
people who have involved themselves in its meshes by trying to shield
others. You would be really astonished if you knew some of the names of
the individuals mixed up in it, and I don't suppose a tithe of them know
who the original culprits were; and now I've got you entangled in the
mess by letting you into the secret of the cottage."

"You most certainly have not entangled me," said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble
indignantly. "I have no intention of shielding anybody. The police must
know about it at once; a theft is a theft, whoever is involved. If
respectable people choose to turn themselves into receivers and disposers
of stolen goods, well, they've ceased to be respectable, that's all. I
shall telephone immediately--"

"Oh, aunt," said Vera reproachfully, "it would break the poor Canon's
heart if Cuthbert were to be involved in a scandal of this sort. You
know it would."

"Cuthbert involved! How can you say such things when you know how much
we all think of him?"

"Of course I know you think a lot of him, and that he's engaged to marry
Beatrice, and that it will be a frightfully good match, and that he's
your ideal of what a son-in-law ought to be. All the same, it was
Cuthbert's idea to stow the things away in the cottage, and it was his
motor that brought them. He was only doing it to help his friend
Pegginson, you know--the Quaker man, who is always agitating for a
smaller Navy. I forget how he got involved in it. I warned you that
there were lots of quite respectable people mixed up in it, didn't I?
That's what I meant when I said it would be impossible for old Betsy to
leave the cottage; the things take up a good bit of room, and she
couldn't go carrying them about with her other goods and chattels without
attracting notice. Of course if she were to fall ill and die it would be
equally unfortunate. Her mother lived to be over ninety, she tells me,
so with due care and an absence of worry she ought to last for another
dozen years at least. By that time perhaps some other arrangements will
have been made for disposing of the wretched things."

"I shall speak to Cuthbert about it--after the wedding," said Mrs.
Bebberly Cumble.

"The wedding isn't till next year," said Vera, in recounting the story to
her best girl friend, "and meanwhile old Betsy is living rent free, with
soup twice a week and my aunt's doctor to see her whenever she has a
finger ache."

"But how on earth did you get to know about it all?" asked her friend, in
admiring wonder.

"It was a mystery--" said Vera.

"Of course it was a mystery, a mystery that baffled everybody. What
beats me is how you found out--"

"Oh, about the jewels? I invented that part," explained Vera; "I mean
the mystery was where old Betsy's arrears of rent were to come from; and
she would have hated leaving that jolly quince tree."




THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS


"Is matchmaking at all in your line?"

Hugo Peterby asked the question with a certain amount of personal
interest.

"I don't specialise in it," said Clovis; "it's all right while you're
doing it, but the after-effects are sometimes so disconcerting--the mute
reproachful looks of the people you've aided and abetted in matrimonial
experiments. It's as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen
latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course of
the hunting season. I suppose you're thinking of the Coulterneb girl.
She's certainly jolly, and quite all right as far as looks go, and I
believe a certain amount of money adheres to her. What I don't see is
how you will ever manage to propose to her. In all the time I've known
her I don't remember her to have stopped talking for three consecutive
minutes. You'll have to race her six times round the grass paddock for a
bet, and then blurt your proposal out before she's got her wind back. The
paddock is laid up for hay, but if you're really in love with her you
won't let a consideration of that sort stop you, especially as it's not
your hay."

"I think I could manage the proposing part right enough," said Hugo, "if
I could count on being left alone with her for four or five hours. The
trouble is that I'm not likely to get anything like that amount of grace.
That fellow Lanner is showing signs of interesting himself in the same
quarter. He's quite heartbreakingly rich and is rather a swell in his
way; in fact, our hostess is obviously a bit flattered at having him
here. If she gets wind of the fact that he's inclined to be attracted by
Betty Coulterneb she'll think it a splendid match and throw them into
each other's arms all day long, and then where will my opportunities come
in? My one anxiety is to keep him out of the girl's way as much as
possible, and if you could help me--"

"If you want me to trot Lanner round the countryside, inspecting alleged
Roman remains and studying local methods of bee culture and crop raising,
I'm afraid I can't oblige you," said Clovis. "You see, he's taken
something like an aversion to me since the other night in the smoking-
room."

"What happened in the smoking-room?"

"He trotted out some well-worn chestnut as the latest thing in good
stories, and I remarked, quite innocently, that I never could remember
whether it was George II. or James II. who was so fond of that particular
story, and now he regards me with politely-draped dislike. I'll do my
best for you, if the opportunity arises, but it will have to be in a
roundabout, impersonal manner."

* * * * *

"It's so nice having Mr. Lanner here," confided Mrs. Olston to Clovis the
next afternoon; "he's always been engaged when I've asked him before.
Such a nice man; he really ought to be married to some nice girl. Between
you and me, I have an idea that he came down here for a certain reason."

"I've had much the same idea," said Clovis, lowering his voice; "in fact,
I'm almost certain of it."

"You mean he's attracted by--" began Mrs. Olston eagerly.

"I mean he's here for what he can get," said Clovis.

"For what he can _get_?" said the hostess with a touch of indignation in
her voice; "what do you mean? He's a very rich man. What should he want
to get here?"

"He has one ruling passion," said Clovis, "and there's something he can
get here that is not to be had for love nor for money anywhere else in
the country, as far as I know."

"But what? Whatever do you mean? What is his ruling passion?"

"Egg-collecting," said Clovis. "He has agents all over the world getting
rare eggs for him, and his collection is one of the finest in Europe; but
his great ambition is to collect his treasures personally. He stops at
no expense nor trouble to achieve that end."

"Good heavens! The buzzards, the rough-legged buzzards!" exclaimed Mrs.
Olston; "you don't think he's going to raid their nest?"

"What do you think yourself?" asked Clovis; "the only pair of
rough-legged buzzards known to breed in this country are nesting in your
woods. Very few people know about them, but as a member of the league
for protecting rare birds that information would be at his disposal. I
came down in the train with him, and I noticed that a bulky volume of
Dresser's 'Birds of Europe' was one of the requisites that he had packed
in his travelling-kit. It was the volume dealing with short-winged hawks
and buzzards."

Clovis believed that if a lie was worth telling it was worth telling
well.

"This is appalling," said Mrs. Olston; "my husband would never forgive me
if anything happened to those birds. They've been seen about the woods
for the last year or two, but this is the first time they've nested. As
you say, they are almost the only pair known to be breeding in the whole
of Great Britain; and now their nest is going to be harried by a guest
staying under my roof. I must do something to stop it. Do you think if
I appealed to him--"

Clovis laughed.

"There is a story going about, which I fancy is true in most of its
details, of something that happened not long ago somewhere on the coast
of the Sea of Marmora, in which our friend had a hand. A Syrian
nightjar, or some such bird, was known to be breeding in the olive
gardens of a rich Armenian, who for some reason or other wouldn't allow
Lanner to go in and take the eggs, though he offered cash down for the
permission. The Armenian was found beaten nearly to death a day or two
later, and his fences levelled. It was assumed to be a case of Mussulman
aggression, and noted as such in all the Consular reports, but the eggs
are in the Lanner collection. No, I don't think I should appeal to his
better feelings if I were you."

"I must do something," said Mrs. Olston tearfully; "my husband's parting
words when he went off to Norway were an injunction to see that those
birds were not disturbed, and he's asked about them every time he's
written. Do suggest something."

"I was going to suggest picketing," said Clovis.

"Picketing! You mean setting guards round the birds?"

"No; round Lanner. He can't find his way through those woods by night,
and you could arrange that you or Evelyn or Jack or the German governess
should be by his side in relays all day long. A fellow guest he could
get rid of, but he couldn't very well shake off members of the household,
and even the most determined collector would hardly go climbing after
forbidden buzzards' eggs with a German governess hanging round his neck,
so to speak."

Lanner, who had been lazily watching for an opportunity for prosecuting
his courtship of the Coulterneb girl, found presently that his chances of
getting her to himself for ten minutes even were non-existent. If the
girl was ever alone he never was. His hostess had changed suddenly, as
far as he was concerned, from the desirable type that lets her guests do
nothing in the way that best pleases them, to the sort that drags them
over the ground like so many harrows. She showed him the herb garden and
the greenhouses, the village church, some water-colour sketches that her
sister had done in Corsica, and the place where it was hoped that celery
would grow later in the year.

He was shown all the Aylesbury ducklings and the row of wooden hives
where there would have been bees if there had not been bee disease. He
was also taken to the end of a long lane and shown a distant mound
whereon local tradition reported that the Danes had once pitched a camp.
And when his hostess had to desert him temporarily for other duties he
would find Evelyn walking solemnly by his side. Evelyn was fourteen and
talked chiefly about good and evil, and of how much one might accomplish
in the way of regenerating the world if one was thoroughly determined to
do one's utmost. It was generally rather a relief when she was displaced
by Jack, who was nine years old, and talked exclusively about the Balkan
War without throwing any fresh light on its political or military
history. The German governess told Lanner more about Schiller than he
had ever heard in his life about any one person; it was perhaps his own
fault for having told her that he was not interested in Goethe. When the
governess went off picket duty the hostess was again on hand with a not-
to-be-gainsaid invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who
remembered Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three
years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called back to town
earlier than he had originally intended.

Hugo did not bring off his affair with Betty Coulterneb. Whether she
refused him or whether, as was more generally supposed, he did not get a
chance of saying three consecutive words, has never been exactly
ascertained. Anyhow, she is still the jolly Coulterneb girl.

The buzzards successfully reared two young ones, which were shot by a
local hairdresser.




THE STAKE


"Ronnie is a great trial to me," said Mrs. Attray plaintively. "Only
eighteen years old last February and already a confirmed gambler. I am
sure I don't know where he inherits it from; his father never touched
cards, and you know how little I play--a game of bridge on Wednesday
afternoons in the winter, for three-pence a hundred, and even that I
shouldn't do if it wasn't that Edith always wants a fourth and would be
certain to ask that detestable Jenkinham woman if she couldn't get me. I
would much rather sit and talk any day than play bridge; cards are such a
waste of time, I think. But as to Ronnie, bridge and baccarat and poker-
patience are positively all that he thinks about. Of course I've done my
best to stop it; I've asked the Norridrums not to let him play cards when
he's over there, but you might as well ask the Atlantic Ocean to keep
quiet for a crossing as expect them to bother about a mother's natural
anxieties."

"Why do you let him go there?" asked Eleanor Saxelby.

"My dear," said Mrs. Attray, "I don't want to offend them. After all,
they are my landlords and I have to look to them for anything I want done
about the place; they were very accommodating about the new roof for the
orchid house. And they lend me one of their cars when mine is out of
order; you know how often it gets out of order."

"I don't know how often," said Eleanor, "but it must happen very
frequently. Whenever I want you to take me anywhere in your car I am
always told that there is something wrong with it, or else that the
chauffeur has got neuralgia and you don't like to ask him to go out."

"He suffers quite a lot from neuralgia," said Mrs. Attray hastily.
"Anyhow," she continued, "you can understand that I don't want to offend
the Norridrums. Their household is the most rackety one in the county,
and I believe no one ever knows to an hour or two when any particular
meal will appear on the table or what it will consist of when it does
appear."

Eleanor Saxelby shuddered. She liked her meals to be of regular
occurrence and assured proportions.

"Still," pursued Mrs. Attray, "whatever their own home life may be, as
landlords and neighbours they are considerate and obliging, so I don't
want to quarrel with them. Besides, if Ronnie didn't play cards there
he'd be playing somewhere else."

"Not if you were firm with him," said Eleanor "I believe in being firm."

"Firm? I am firm," exclaimed Mrs. Attray; "I am more than firm--I am
farseeing. I've done everything I can think of to prevent Ronnie from
playing for money. I've stopped his allowance for the rest of the year,
so he can't even gamble on credit, and I've subscribed a lump sum to the
church offertory in his name instead of giving him instalments of small
silver to put in the bag on Sundays. I wouldn't even let him have the
money to tip the hunt servants with, but sent it by postal order. He was
furiously sulky about it, but I reminded him of what happened to the ten
shillings that I gave him for the Young Men's Endeavour League
'Self-Denial Week.'"