Beasts and Super-Beasts
The door burst open and Catherine Malsom raged into the room.
“Here’s a nice affair,” she screamed, “a strike of household servants
without a moment’s warning, and I’m left like this! I can’t appear in
public in this condition.”
After a very hasty scrutiny Sophie assured her that she could not.
“Have they all struck?” she asked her maid.
“Not the kitchen staff,” said Richardson, “they belong to a different
union.”
“Dinner at least will be assured,” said Sophie, “that is something to be
thankful for.”
“Dinner!” snorted Catherine, “what on earth is the good of dinner when
none of us will be able to appear at it? Look at your hair—and look at
me! or rather, don’t.”
“I know it’s difficult to manage without a maid; can’t your husband be
any help to you?” asked Sophie despairingly.
“Henry? He’s in worse case than any of us. His man is the only person
who really understands that ridiculous new-fangled Turkish bath that he
insists on taking with him everywhere.”
“Surely he could do without a Turkish bath for one evening,” said Sophie;
“I can’t appear without hair, but a Turkish bath is a luxury.”
“My good woman,” said Catherine, speaking with a fearful intensity,
“Henry was in the bath when the strike started. In it, do you
understand? He’s there now.”
“Can’t he get out?”
“He doesn’t know how to. Every time he pulls the lever marked ‘release’
he only releases hot steam. There are two kinds of steam in the bath,
‘bearable’ and ‘scarcely bearable’; he has released them both. By this
time I’m probably a widow.”
“I simply can’t send away Gaspare,” wailed Sophie; “I should never be
able to secure another omelette specialist.”
“Any difficulty that I may experience in securing another husband is of
course a trifle beneath anyone’s consideration,” said Catherine bitterly.
Sophie capitulated. “Go,” she said to Richardson, “and tell the Strike
Committee, or whoever are directing this affair, that Gaspare is herewith
dismissed. And ask Gaspare to see me presently in the library, when I
will pay him what is due to him and make what excuses I can; and then fly
back and finish my hair.”
Some half an hour later Sophie marshalled her guests in the Grand Salon
preparatory to the formal march to the dining-room. Except that Henry
Malsom was of the ripe raspberry tint that one sometimes sees at private
theatricals representing the human complexion, there was little outward
sign among those assembled of the crisis that had just been encountered
and surmounted. But the tension had been too stupefying while it lasted
not to leave some mental effects behind it. Sophie talked at random to
her illustrious guest, and found her eyes straying with increasing
frequency towards the great doors through which would presently come the
blessed announcement that dinner was served. Now and again she glanced
mirror-ward at the reflection of her wonderfully coiffed hair, as an
insurance underwriter might gaze thankfully at an overdue vessel that had
ridden safely into harbour in the wake of a devastating hurricane. Then
the doors opened and the welcome figure of the butler entered the room.
But he made no general announcement of a banquet in readiness, and the
doors closed behind him; his message was for Sophie alone.
“There is no dinner, madame,” he said gravely; “the kitchen staff have
‘downed tools.’ Gaspare belongs to the Union of Cooks and Kitchen
Employees, and as soon as they heard of his summary dismissal at a
moment’s notice they struck work. They demand his instant reinstatement
and an apology to the union. I may add, madame, that they are very firm;
I’ve been obliged even to hand back the dinner rolls that were already on
the table.”
After the lapse of eighteen months Sophie Chattel-Monkheim is beginning
to go about again among her old haunts and associates, but she still has
to be very careful. The doctors will not let her attend anything at all
exciting, such as a drawing-room meeting or a Fabian conference; it is
doubtful, indeed, whether she wants to.
THE FEAST OF NEMESIS
“It’s a good thing that Saint Valentine’s Day has dropped out of vogue,”
said Mrs. Thackenbury; “what with Christmas and New Year and Easter, not
to speak of birthdays, there are quite enough remembrance days as it is.
I tried to save myself trouble at Christmas by just sending flowers to
all my friends, but it wouldn’t work; Gertrude has eleven hot-houses and
about thirty gardeners, so it would have been ridiculous to send flowers
to her, and Milly has just started a florist’s shop, so it was equally
out of the question there. The stress of having to decide in a hurry
what to give to Gertrude and Milly just when I thought I’d got the whole
question nicely off my mind completely ruined my Christmas, and then the
awful monotony of the letters of thanks: ‘Thank you so much for your
lovely flowers. It was so good of you to think of me.’ Of course in the
majority of cases I hadn’t thought about the recipients at all; their
names were down in my list of ‘people who must not be left out.’ If I
trusted to remembering them there would be some awful sins of omission.”
“The trouble is,” said Clovis to his aunt, “all these days of intrusive
remembrance harp so persistently on one aspect of human nature and
entirely ignore the other; that is why they become so perfunctory and
artificial. At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened and encouraged
by convention to send gushing messages of optimistic goodwill and servile
affection to people whom you would scarcely ask to lunch unless some one
else had failed you at the last moment; if you are supping at a
restaurant on New Year’s Eve you are permitted and expected to join hands
and sing ‘For Auld Lang Syne’ with strangers whom you have never seen
before and never want to see again. But no licence is allowed in the
opposite direction.”
“Opposite direction; what opposite direction?” queried Mrs. Thackenbury.
“There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom
you simply loathe. That is really the crying need of our modern
civilisation. Just think how jolly it would be if a recognised day were
set apart for the paying off of old scores and grudges, a day when one
could lay oneself out to be gracefully vindictive to a carefully
treasured list of ‘people who must not be let off.’ I remember when I
was at a private school we had one day, the last Monday of the term I
think it was, consecrated to the settlement of feuds and grudges; of
course we did not appreciate it as much as it deserved, because, after
all, any day of the term could be used for that purpose. Still, if one
had chastised a smaller boy for being cheeky weeks before, one was always
permitted on that day to recall the episode to his memory by chastising
him again. That is what the French call reconstructing the crime.”
“I should call it reconstructing the punishment,” said Mrs. Thackenbury;
“and, anyhow, I don’t see how you could introduce a system of primitive
schoolboy vengeance into civilised adult life. We haven’t outgrown our
passions, but we are supposed to have learned how to keep them within
strictly decorous limits.”
“Of course the thing would have to be done furtively and politely,” said
Clovis; “the charm of it would be that it would never be perfunctory like
the other thing. Now, for instance, you say to yourself: ‘I must show
the Webleys some attention at Christmas, they were kind to dear Bertie at
Bournemouth,’ and you send them a calendar, and daily for six days after
Christmas the male Webley asks the female Webley if she has remembered to
thank you for the calendar you sent them. Well, transplant that idea to
the other and more human side of your nature, and say to yourself: ‘Next
Thursday is Nemesis Day; what on earth can I do to those odious people
next door who made such an absurd fuss when Ping Yang bit their youngest
child?’ Then you’d get up awfully early on the allotted day and climb
over into their garden and dig for truffles on their tennis court with a
good gardening fork, choosing, of course, that part of the court that was
screened from observation by the laurel bushes. You wouldn’t find any
truffles but you would find a great peace, such as no amount of
present-giving could ever bestow.”
“I shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Thackenbury, though her air of protest sounded a
bit forced; “I should feel rather a worm for doing such a thing.”
“You exaggerate the power of upheaval which a worm would be able to bring
into play in the limited time available,” said Clovis; “if you put in a
strenuous ten minutes with a really useful fork, the result ought to
suggest the operations of an unusually masterful mole or a badger in a
hurry.”
“They might guess I had done it,” said Mrs. Thackenbury.
“Of course they would,” said Clovis; “that would be half the satisfaction
of the thing, just as you like people at Christmas to know what presents
or cards you’ve sent them. The thing would be much easier to manage, of
course, when you were on outwardly friendly terms with the object of your
dislike. That greedy little Agnes Blaik, for instance, who thinks of
nothing but her food, it would be quite simple to ask her to a picnic in
some wild woodland spot and lose her just before lunch was served; when
you found her again every morsel of food could have been eaten up.”
“It would require no ordinary human strategy to lose Agnes Blaik when
luncheon was imminent: in fact, I don’t believe it could be done.”
“Then have all the other guests, people whom you dislike, and lose the
luncheon. It could have been sent by accident in the wrong direction.”
“It would be a ghastly picnic,” said Mrs. Thackenbury.
“For them, but not for you,” said Clovis; “you would have had an early
and comforting lunch before you started, and you could improve the
occasion by mentioning in detail the items of the missing banquet—the
lobster Newburg and the egg mayonnaise, and the curry that was to have
been heated in a chafing-dish. Agnes Blaik would be delirious long
before you got to the list of wines, and in the long interval of waiting,
before they had quite abandoned hope of the lunch turning up, you could
induce them to play silly games, such as that idiotic one of ‘the Lord
Mayor’s dinner-party,’ in which every one has to choose the name of a
dish and do something futile when it is called out. In this case they
would probably burst into tears when their dish is mentioned. It would
be a heavenly picnic.”
Mrs. Thackenbury was silent for a moment; she was probably making a
mental list of the people she would like to invite to the Duke Humphrey
picnic. Presently she asked: “And that odious young man, Waldo Plubley,
who is always coddling himself—have you thought of anything that one
could do to him?” Evidently she was beginning to see the possibilities
of Nemesis Day.
“If there was anything like a general observance of the festival,” said
Clovis, “Waldo would be in such demand that you would have to bespeak him
weeks beforehand, and even then, if there were an east wind blowing or a
cloud or two in the sky he might be too careful of his precious self to
come out. It would be rather jolly if you could lure him into a hammock
in the orchard, just near the spot where there is a wasps’ nest every
summer. A comfortable hammock on a warm afternoon would appeal to his
indolent tastes, and then, when he was getting drowsy, a lighted fusee
thrown into the nest would bring the wasps out in an indignant mass, and
they would soon find a ‘home away from home’ on Waldo’s fat body. It
takes some doing to get out of a hammock in a hurry.”
“They might sting him to death,” protested Mrs. Thackenbury.