The Toys of Peace

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THE TOYS OF PEACE


Contents:

The Toys of Peace
Louise
Tea
The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh
The Wolves of Cernogratz
Louis
The Guests
The Penance
The Phantom Luncheon
A Bread and Butter Miss
Bertie's Christmas Eve
Forewarned
The Interlopers
Quail Seed
Canossa
The Threat
Excepting Mrs. Pentherby
Mark
The Hedgehog
The Mappined Life
Fate
The Bull
Morlvera
Shock Tactics
The Seven Cream Jugs
The Occasional Garden
The Sheep
The Oversight
Hyacinth
The Image of the Lost Soul
The Purple of the Balkan Kings
The Cupboard of the Yesterdays
For the Duration of the War




THE TOYS OF PEACE


"Harvey," said Eleanor Bope, handing her brother a cutting from a London
morning paper of the 19th of March, "just read this about children's
toys, please; it exactly carries out some of our ideas about influence
and upbringing."

"In the view of the National Peace Council," ran the extract, "there are
grave objections to presenting our boys with regiments of fighting men,
batteries of guns, and squadrons of 'Dreadnoughts.' Boys, the Council
admits, naturally love fighting and all the panoply of war . . . but that
is no reason for encouraging, and perhaps giving permanent form to, their
primitive instincts. At the Children's Welfare Exhibition, which opens
at Olympia in three weeks' time, the Peace Council will make an
alternative suggestion to parents in the shape of an exhibition of 'peace
toys.' In front of a specially-painted representation of the Peace
Palace at The Hague will be grouped, not miniature soldiers but miniature
civilians, not guns but ploughs and the tools of industry . . . It is
hoped that manufacturers may take a hint from the exhibit, which will
bear fruit in the toy shops."

"The idea is certainly an interesting and very well-meaning one," said
Harvey; "whether it would succeed well in practice--"

"We must try," interrupted his sister; "you are coming down to us at
Easter, and you always bring the boys some toys, so that will be an
excellent opportunity for you to inaugurate the new experiment. Go about
in the shops and buy any little toys and models that have special bearing
on civilian life in its more peaceful aspects. Of course you must
explain the toys to the children and interest them in the new idea. I
regret to say that the 'Siege of Adrianople' toy, that their Aunt Susan
sent them, didn't need any explanation; they knew all the uniforms and
flags, and even the names of the respective commanders, and when I heard
them one day using what seemed to be the most objectionable language they
said it was Bulgarian words of command; of course it _may_ have been, but
at any rate I took the toy away from them. Now I shall expect your
Easter gifts to give quite a new impulse and direction to the children's
minds; Eric is not eleven yet, and Bertie is only nine-and-a-half, so
they are really at a most impressionable age."

"There is primitive instinct to be taken into consideration, you know,"
said Harvey doubtfully, "and hereditary tendencies as well. One of their
great-uncles fought in the most intolerant fashion at Inkerman--he was
specially mentioned in dispatches, I believe--and their great-grandfather
smashed all his Whig neighbours' hot houses when the great Reform Bill
was passed. Still, as you say, they are at an impressionable age. I
will do my best."

On Easter Saturday Harvey Bope unpacked a large, promising-looking red
cardboard box under the expectant eyes of his nephews. "Your uncle has
brought you the newest thing in toys," Eleanor had said impressively, and
youthful anticipation had been anxiously divided between Albanian
soldiery and a Somali camel-corps. Eric was hotly in favour of the
latter contingency. "There would be Arabs on horseback," he whispered;
"the Albanians have got jolly uniforms, and they fight all day long, and
all night, too, when there's a moon, but the country's rocky, so they've
got no cavalry."

A quantity of crinkly paper shavings was the first thing that met the
view when the lid was removed; the most exiting toys always began like
that. Harvey pushed back the top layer and drew forth a square, rather
featureless building.

"It's a fort!" exclaimed Bertie.

"It isn't, it's the palace of the Mpret of Albania," said Eric, immensely
proud of his knowledge of the exotic title; "it's got no windows, you
see, so that passers-by can't fire in at the Royal Family."

"It's a municipal dust-bin," said Harvey hurriedly; "you see all the
refuse and litter of a town is collected there, instead of lying about
and injuring the health of the citizens."

In an awful silence he disinterred a little lead figure of a man in black
clothes.

"That," he said, "is a distinguished civilian, John Stuart Mill. He was
an authority on political economy."

"Why?" asked Bertie.

"Well, he wanted to be; he thought it was a useful thing to be."

Bertie gave an expressive grunt, which conveyed his opinion that there
was no accounting for tastes.

Another square building came out, this time with windows and chimneys.

"A model of the Manchester branch of the Young Women's Christian
Association," said Harvey.

"Are there any lions?" asked Eric hopefully. He had been reading Roman
history and thought that where you found Christians you might reasonably
expect to find a few lions.

"There are no lions," said Harvey. "Here is another civilian, Robert
Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools, and here is a model of a municipal
wash-house. These little round things are loaves baked in a sanitary
bakehouse. That lead figure is a sanitary inspector, this one is a
district councillor, and this one is an official of the Local Government
Board."

"What does he do?" asked Eric wearily.

"He sees to things connected with his Department," said Harvey. "This
box with a slit in it is a ballot-box. Votes are put into it at election
times."

"What is put into it at other times?" asked Bertie.

"Nothing. And here are some tools of industry, a wheelbarrow and a hoe,
and I think these are meant for hop-poles. This is a model beehive, and
that is a ventilator, for ventilating sewers. This seems to be another
municipal dust-bin--no, it is a model of a school of art and public
library. This little lead figure is Mrs. Hemans, a poetess, and this is
Rowland Hill, who introduced the system of penny postage. This is Sir
John Herschel, the eminent astrologer."

"Are we to play with these civilian figures?" asked Eric.

"Of course," said Harvey, "these are toys; they are meant to be played
with."

"But how?"

It was rather a poser. "You might make two of them contest a seat in
Parliament," said Harvey, "an have an election--"

"With rotten eggs, and free fights, and ever so many broken heads!"
exclaimed Eric.

"And noses all bleeding and everybody drunk as can be," echoed Bertie,
who had carefully studied one of Hogarth's pictures.

"Nothing of the kind," said Harvey, "nothing in the least like that.
Votes will be put in the ballot-box, and the Mayor will count them--and
he will say which has received the most votes, and then the two
candidates will thank him for presiding, and each will say that the
contest has been conducted throughout in the pleasantest and most
straightforward fashion, and they part with expressions of mutual esteem.
There's a jolly game for you boys to play. I never had such toys when I
was young."

"I don't think we'll play with them just now," said Eric, with an entire
absence of the enthusiasm that his uncle had shown; "I think perhaps we
ought to do a little of our holiday task. It's history this time; we've
got to learn up something about the Bourbon period in France."

"The Bourbon period," said Harvey, with some disapproval in his voice.

"We've got to know something about Louis the Fourteenth," continued Eric;
"I've learnt the names of all the principal battles already."

This would never do. "There were, of course, some battles fought during
his reign," said Harvey, "but I fancy the accounts of them were much
exaggerated; news was very unreliable in those days, and there were
practically no war correspondents, so generals and commanders could
magnify every little skirmish they engaged in till they reached the
proportions of decisive battles. Louis was really famous, now, as a
landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired
that it was copied all over Europe."

"Do you know anything about Madame Du Barry?" asked Eric; "didn't she
have her head chopped off?"

"She was another great lover of gardening," said Harvey, evasively; "in
fact, I believe the well known rose Du Barry was named after her, and now
I think you had better play for a little and leave your lessons till
later."

Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in
wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in
elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of
battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York
and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to
himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years' War
would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it
would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children
could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing
instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.

It was time, he thought, to go back to the boys' room, and see how they
were getting on with their peace toys. As he stood outside the door he
could hear Eric's voice raised in command; Bertie chimed in now and again
with a helpful suggestion.

"That is Louis the Fourteenth," Eric was saying, "that one in
knee-breeches, that Uncle said invented Sunday schools. It isn't a bit
like him, but it'll have to do."

"We'll give him a purple coat from my paintbox by and by," said Bertie.

"Yes, an' red heels. That is Madame de Maintenon, that one he called
Mrs. Hemans. She begs Louis not to go on this expedition, but he turns a
deaf ear. He takes Marshal Saxe with him, and we must pretend that they
have thousands of men with them. The watchword is _Qui vive_? and the
answer is _L'etat c'est moi_--that was one of his favourite remarks, you
know. They land at Manchester in the dead of the night, and a Jacobite
conspirator gives them the keys of the fortress."

Peeping in through the doorway Harvey observed that the municipal dust-
bin had been pierced with holes to accommodate the muzzles of imaginary
cannon, and now represented the principal fortified position in
Manchester; John Stuart Mill had been dipped in red ink, and apparently
stood for Marshal Saxe.

"Louis orders his troops to surround the Young Women's Christian
Association and seize the lot of them. 'Once back at the Louvre and the
girls are mine,' he exclaims. We must use Mrs. Hemans again for one of
the girls; she says 'Never,' and stabs Marshal Saxe to the heart."

"He bleeds dreadfully," exclaimed Bertie, splashing red ink liberally
over the facade of the Association building.

"The soldiers rush in and avenge his death with the utmost savagery. A
hundred girls are killed"--here Bertie emptied the remainder of the red
ink over the devoted building--"and the surviving five hundred are
dragged off to the French ships. 'I have lost a Marshal,' says Louis,
'but I do not go back empty-handed.'"

Harvey stole away from the room, and sought out his sister.

"Eleanor," he said, "the experiment--"

"Yes?"

"Has failed. We have begun too late."




LOUISE


"The tea will be quite cold, you'd better ring for some more," said the
Dowager Lady Beanford.

Susan Lady Beanford was a vigorous old woman who had coquetted with
imaginary ill-health for the greater part of a lifetime; Clovis Sangrail
irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the Coronation of
Queen Victoria and had never let it go again. Her sister, Jane
Thropplestance, who was some years her junior, was chiefly remarkable for
being the most absent-minded woman in Middlesex.

"I've really been unusually clever this afternoon," she remarked gaily,
as she rang for the tea. "I've called on all the people I meant to call
on; and I've done all the shopping that I set out to do. I even
remembered to try and match that silk for you at Harrod's, but I'd
forgotten to bring the pattern with me, so it was no use. I really think
that was the only important thing I forgot during the whole afternoon.
Quite wonderful for me, isn't it?"

"What have you done with Louise?" asked her sister. "Didn't you take her
out with you? You said you were going to."

"Good gracious," exclaimed Jane, "what have I done with Louise? I must
have left her somewhere."

"But where?"

"That's just it. Where have I left her? I can't remember if the
Carrywoods were at home or if I just left cards. If there were at home I
may have left Louise there to play bridge. I'll go and telephone to Lord
Carrywood and find out."

"Is that you, Lord Carrywood?" she queried over the telephone; "it's me,
Jane Thropplestance. I want to know, have you seen Louise?"

"'Louise,'" came the answer, "it's been my fate to see it three times. At
first, I must admit, I wasn't impressed by it, but the music grows on one
after a bit. Still, I don't think I want to see it again just at
present. Were you going to offer me a seat in your box?"

"Not the opera 'Louise'--my niece, Louise Thropplestance. I thought I
might have left her at your house."

"You left cards on us this afternoon, I understand, but I don't think you
left a niece. The footman would have been sure to have mentioned it if
you had. Is it going to be a fashion to leave nieces on people as well
as cards? I hope not; some of these houses in Berkeley-square have
practically no accommodation for that sort of thing."

"She's not at the Carrywoods'," announced Jane, returning to her tea;
"now I come to think of it, perhaps I left her at the silk counter at
Selfridge's. I may have told her to wait there a moment while I went to
look at the silks in a better light, and I may easily have forgotten
about her when Ifound I hadn't your pattern with me. In that case she's
still sitting there. She wouldn't move unless she was told to; Louise
has no initiative."

"You said you tried to match the silk at Harrod's," interjected the
dowager.

"Did I? Perhaps it was Harrod's. I really don't remember. It was one
of those places where every one is so kind and sympathetic and devoted
that one almost hates to take even a reel of cotton away from such
pleasant surroundings."

"I think you might have taken Louise away. I don't like the idea of her
being there among a lot of strangers. Supposing some unprincipled person
was to get into conversation with her."

"Impossible. Louise has no conversation. I've never discovered a single
topic on which she'd anything to say beyond 'Do you think so? I dare say
you're right.' I really thought her reticence about the fall of the
Ribot Ministry was ridiculous, considering how much her dear mother used
to visit Paris. This bread and butter is cut far too thin; it crumbles
away long before you can get it to your mouth. One feels so absurd,
snapping at one's food in mid-air, like a trout leaping at may-fly."

"I am rather surprised," said the dowager, "that you can sit there making
a hearty tea when you've just lost a favourite niece."

"You talk as if I'd lost her in a churchyard sense, instead of having
temporarily mislaid her. I'm sure to remember presently where I left
her."

"You didn't visit any place of devotion, did you? If you've left her
mooning about Westminster Abbey or St. Peter's, Eaton Square, without
being able to give any satisfactory reason why she's there, she'll be
seized under the Cat and Mouse Act and sent to Reginald McKenna."

"That would be extremely awkward," said Jane, meeting an irresolute piece
of bread and butter halfway; "we hardly know the McKennas, and it would
be very tiresome having to telephone to some unsympathetic private
secretary, describing Louise to him and asking to have her sent back in
time for dinner. Fortunately, I didn't go to any place of devotion,
though I did get mixed up with a Salvation Army procession. It was quite
interesting to be at close quarters with them, they're so absolutely
different to what they used to be when I first remember them in the
'eighties. They used to go about then unkempt and dishevelled, in a sort
of smiling rage with the world, and now they're spruce and jaunty and
flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions.
Laura Kettleway was going on about them in the lift of the Dover Street
Tube the other day, saying what a lot of good work they did, and what a
loss it would have been if they'd never existed. 'If they had never
existed,' I said, 'Granville Barker would have been certain to have
invented something that looked exactly like them.' If you say things
like that, quite loud, in a Tube lift, they always sound like epigrams."

"I think you ought to do something about Louise," said the dowager.

"I'm trying to think whether she was with me when I called on Ada
Spelvexit. I rather enjoyed myself there. Ada was trying, as usual, to
ram that odious Koriatoffski woman down my throat, knowing perfectly well
that I detest her, and in an unguarded moment she said: 'She's leaving
her present house and going to Lower Seymour Street.' 'I dare say she
will, if she stays there long enough,' I said. Ada didn't see it for
about three minutes, and then she was positively uncivil. No, I am
certain I didn't leave Louise there."

"If you could manage to remember where you _did_ leave her, it would be
more to the point than these negative assurances," said Lady Beanford;
"so far, all we know is that she is not at the Carrywoods', or Ada
Spelvexit's, or Westminster Abbey."

"That narrows the search down a bit," said Jane hopefully; "I rather
fancy she must have been with me when I went to Mornay's. I know I went
to Mornay's, because I remember meeting that delightful Malcolm What's-
his-name there--you know whom I mean. That's the great advantage of
people having unusual first names, you needn't try and remember what
their other name is. Of course I know one or two other Malcolms, but
none that could possibly be described as delightful. He gave me two
tickets for the Happy Sunday Evenings in Sloane Square. I've probably
left them at Mornay's, but still it was awfully kind of him to give them
to me."

"Do you think you left Louise there?"

"I might telephone and ask. Oh, Robert, before you clear the tea-things
away I wish you'd ring up Mornay's, in Regent Street, and ask if I left
two theatre tickets and one niece in their shop this afternoon."

"A niece, ma'am?" asked the footman.

"Yes, Miss Louise didn't come home with me, and I'm not sure where I left
her."

"Miss Louise has been upstairs all the afternoon, ma'am, reading to the
second kitchenmaid, who has the neuralgia. I took up tea to Miss Louise
at a quarter to five o'clock, ma'am."

"Of course, how silly of me. I remember now, I asked her to read the
_Faerie Queene_ to poor Emma, to try to send her to sleep. I always get
some one to read the _Faerie Queene_ to me when I have neuralgia, and it
usually sends me to sleep. Louise doesn't seem to have been successful,
but one can't say she hasn't tried. I expect after the first hour or so
the kitchenmaid would rather have been left alone with her neuralgia, but
of course Louise wouldn't leave off till some one told her to. Anyhow,
you can ring up Mornay's, Robert, and ask whether I left two theatre
tickets there. Except for your silk, Susan, those seem to be the only
things I've forgotten this afternoon. Quite wonderful for me."




TEA


James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled
conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-
four he had done nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and
admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without
singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one
might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak
as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter
aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded
women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an
aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded
his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was
far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched
with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers
concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be
reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-souled
mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching
dog-eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or
indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish
of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable
girl, and when his Uncle Jules departed this life and bequeathed him a
comfortable little legacy it really seemed the correct thing to do to set
about discovering some one to share it with him. The process of
discovery was carried on more by the force of suggestion and the weight
of public opinion than by any initiative of his own; a clear working
majority of his female relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had
pitched on Joan Sebastable as the most suitable young woman in his range
of acquaintance to whom he might propose marriage, and James became
gradually accustomed to the idea that he and Joan would go together
through the prescribed stages of congratulations, present-receiving,
Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and eventual domesticity. It was
necessary, however to ask the lady what she thought about the matter; the
family had so far conducted and directed the flirtation with ability and
discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an individual
effort.

Cushat-Prinkly walked across the Park towards the Sebastable residence in
a frame of mind that was moderately complacent. As the thing was going
to be done he was glad to feel that he was going to get it settled and
off his mind that afternoon. Proposing marriage, even to a nice girl
like Joan, was a rather irksome business, but one could not have a
honeymoon in Minorca and a subsequent life of married happiness without
such preliminary. He wondered what Minorca was really like as a place to
stop in; in his mind's eye it was an island in perpetual half-mourning,
with black or white Minorca hens running all over it. Probably it would
not be a bit like that when one came to examine it. People who had been
in Russia had told him that they did not remember having seen any Muscovy
ducks there, so it was possible that there would be no Minorca fowls on
the island.

His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a clock
striking the half-hour. Half-past four. A frown of dissatisfaction
settled on his face. He would arrive at the Sebastable mansion just at
the hour of afternoon tea. Joan would be seated at a low table, spread
with an array of silver kettles and cream-jugs and delicate porcelain tea-
cups, behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a series of
little friendly questions about weak or strong tea, how much, if any,
sugar, milk, cream, and so forth. "Is it one lump? I forgot. You do
take milk, don't you? Would you like some more hot water, if it's too
strong?"

Cushat-Prinkly had read of such things in scores of novels, and hundreds
of actual experiences had told him that they were true to life. Thousands
of women, at this solemn afternoon hour, were sitting behind dainty
porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a
cascade of solicitous little questions. Cushat-Prinkly detested the
whole system of afternoon tea. According to his theory of life a woman
should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm or
looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be looked
on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page should silently
bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to be accepted silently, as a
matter of course, without drawn-out chatter about cream and sugar and hot
water. If one's soul was really enslaved at one's mistress's feet how
could one talk coherently about weakened tea? Cushat-Prinkly had never
expounded his views on the subject to his mother; all her life she had
been accustomed to tinkle pleasantly at tea-time behind dainty porcelain
and silver, and if he had spoken to her about divans and Nubian pages she
would have urged him to take a week's holiday at the seaside. Now, as he
passed through a tangle of small streets that led indirectly to the
elegant Mayfair terrace for which he was bound, a horror at the idea of
confronting Joan Sebastable at her tea-table seized on him. A momentary
deliverance presented itself; on one floor of a narrow little house at
the noisier end of Esquimault Street lived Rhoda Ellam, a sort of remote
cousin, who made a living by creating hats out of costly materials. The
hats really looked as if they had come from Paris; the cheques she got
for them unfortunately never looked as if they were going to Paris.
However, Rhoda appeared to find life amusing and to have a fairly good
time in spite of her straitened circumstances. Cushat-Prinkly decided to
climb up to her floor and defer by half-an-hour or so the important
business which lay before him; by spinning out his visit he could
contrive to reach the Sebastable mansion after the last vestiges of
dainty porcelain had been cleared away.