Beasts and Super-Beasts
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