Beasts and Super-Beasts
“No, came in fourth, the most irritating thing a horse can do when you’ve
backed it win or place. Anyhow, I know now that I’m not Lady Befnal.”
“It seems to me that the knowledge was rather dearly bought,” commented
Jerton.
“Well, yes, it has rather cleared me out,” admitted the identity-seeker;
“a florin is about all I’ve got left on me. The lobster Newburg made my
lunch rather an expensive one, and, of course, I had to tip that boy for
what he did to the Kestrel-Smith locks. I’ve got rather a useful idea,
though. I feel certain that I belong to the Pivot Club; I’ll go back to
town and ask the hall porter there if there are any letters for me. He
knows all the members by sight, and if there are any letters or telephone
messages waiting for me of course that will solve the problem. If he
says there aren’t any I shall say: ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ so
I’ll find out anyway.”
The plan seemed a sound one; a difficulty in its execution suggested
itself to Jerton.
“Of course,” said the lady, when he hinted at the obstacle, “there’s my
fare back to town, and my bill here and cabs and things. If you’ll lend
me three pounds that ought to see me through comfortably. Thanks ever
so. Then there is the question of that luggage: I don’t want to be
saddled with that for the rest of my life. I’ll have it brought down to
the hall and you can pretend to mount guard over it while I’m writing a
letter. Then I shall just slip away to the station, and you can wander
off to the smoking-room, and they can do what they like with the things.
They’ll advertise them after a bit and the owner can claim them.”
Jerton acquiesced in the manœuvre, and duly mounted guard over the
luggage while its temporary owner slipped unobtrusively out of the hotel.
Her departure was not, however, altogether unnoticed. Two gentlemen were
strolling past Jerton, and one of them remarked to the other:
“Did you see that tall young woman in grey who went out just now? She is
the Lady—”
His promenade carried him out of earshot at the critical moment when he
was about to disclose the elusive identity. The Lady Who? Jerton could
scarcely run after a total stranger, break into his conversation, and ask
him for information concerning a chance passer-by. Besides, it was
desirable that he should keep up the appearance of looking after the
luggage. In a minute or two, however, the important personage, the man
who knew, came strolling back alone. Jerton summoned up all his courage
and waylaid him.
“I think I heard you say you knew the lady who went out of the hotel a
few minutes ago, a tall lady, dressed in grey. Excuse me for asking if
you could tell me her name; I’ve been talking to her for half an hour;
she—er—she knows all my people and seems to know me, so I suppose I’ve
met her somewhere before, but I’m blest if I can put a name to her.
Could you—?”
“Certainly. She’s a Mrs. Stroope.”
“_Mrs._?” queried Jerton.
“Yes, she’s the Lady Champion at golf in my part of the world. An awful
good sort, and goes about a good deal in Society, but she has an awkward
habit of losing her memory every now and then, and gets into all sorts of
fixes. She’s furious, too, if you make any allusion to it afterwards.
Good day, sir.”
The stranger passed on his way, and before Jerton had had time to
assimilate his information he found his whole attention centred on an
angry-looking lady who was making loud and fretful-seeming inquiries of
the hotel clerks.
“Has any luggage been brought here from the station by mistake, a
dress-basket and dressing-case, with the name Kestrel-Smith? It can’t be
traced anywhere. I saw it put in at Victoria, that I’ll swear.
Why—there is my luggage! and the locks have been tampered with!”
Jerton heard no more. He fled down to the Turkish bath, and stayed there
for hours.
THE STALLED OX
Theophil Eshley was an artist by profession, a cattle painter by force of
environment. It is not to be supposed that he lived on a ranche or a
dairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with horn and hoof, milking-stool,
and branding-iron. His home was in a park-like, villa-dotted district
that only just escaped the reproach of being suburban. On one side of
his garden there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which an
enterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of the
Channel Island persuasion. At noonday in summertime the cows stood
knee-deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a group of walnut
trees, with the sunlight falling in dappled patches on their mouse-sleek
coats. Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of two
reposeful milch-cows in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and
filtered sunbeam, and the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on the
walls of its Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly,
methodical habits in its children. Eshley had painted a successful and
acceptable picture of cattle drowsing picturesquely under walnut trees,
and as he had begun, so, of necessity, he went on. His “Noontide Peace,”
a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by “A Mid-day
Sanctuary,” a study of a walnut tree, with two dun cows under it. In due
succession there came “Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling,” “The
Haven of the Herd,” and “A-dream in Dairyland,” studies of walnut trees
and dun cows. His two attempts to break away from his own tradition were
signal failures: “Turtle Doves alarmed by Sparrow-hawk” and “Wolves on
the Roman Campagna” came back to his studio in the guise of abominable
heresies, and Eshley climbed back into grace and the public gaze with “A
Shaded Nook where Drowsy Milkers Dream.”
On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some finishing touches
to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour, Adela Pingsford, assailed
the outer door of his studio with loud peremptory knockings.
“There is an ox in my garden,” she announced, in explanation of the
tempestuous intrusion.
“An ox,” said Eshley blankly, and rather fatuously; “what kind of ox?”
“Oh, I don’t know what kind,” snapped the lady. “A common or garden ox,
to use the slang expression. It is the garden part of it that I object
to. My garden has just been put straight for the winter, and an ox
roaming about in it won’t improve matters. Besides, there are the
chrysanthemums just coming into flower.”
“How did it get into the garden?” asked Eshley.
“I imagine it came in by the gate,” said the lady impatiently; “it
couldn’t have climbed the walls, and I don’t suppose anyone dropped it
from an aeroplane as a Bovril advertisement. The immediately important
question is not how it got in, but how to get it out.”
“Won’t it go?” said Eshley.
“If it was anxious to go,” said Adela Pingsford rather angrily, “I should
not have come here to chat with you about it. I’m practically all alone;
the housemaid is having her afternoon out and the cook is lying down with
an attack of neuralgia. Anything that I may have learned at school or in
after life about how to remove a large ox from a small garden seems to
have escaped from my memory now. All I could think of was that you were
a near neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiar
with the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some slight
assistance. Possibly I was mistaken.”
“I paint dairy cows, certainly,” admitted Eshley, “but I cannot claim to
have had any experience in rounding-up stray oxen. I’ve seen it done on
a cinema film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of other
accessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures are
faked.”
Adela Pingsford said nothing, but led the way to her garden. It was
normally a fair-sized garden, but it looked small in comparison with the
ox, a huge mottled brute, dull red about the head and shoulders, passing
to dirty white on the flanks and hind-quarters, with shaggy ears and
large blood-shot eyes. It bore about as much resemblance to the dainty
paddock heifers that Eshley was accustomed to paint as the chief of a
Kurdish nomad clan would to a Japanese tea-shop girl. Eshley stood very
near the gate while he studied the animal’s appearance and demeanour.
Adela Pingsford continued to say nothing.
“It’s eating a chrysanthemum,” said Eshley at last, when the silence had
become unbearable.
“How observant you are,” said Adela bitterly. “You seem to notice
everything. As a matter of fact, it has got six chrysanthemums in its
mouth at the present moment.”
The necessity for doing something was becoming imperative. Eshley took a
step or two in the direction of the animal, clapped his hands, and made
noises of the “Hish” and “Shoo” variety. If the ox heard them it gave no
outward indication of the fact.
“If any hens should ever stray into my garden,” said Adela, “I should
certainly send for you to frighten them out. You ‘shoo’ beautifully.
Meanwhile, do you mind trying to drive that ox away? That is a
_Mademoiselle Louise Bichot_ that he’s begun on now,” she added in icy
calm, as a glowing orange head was crushed into the huge munching mouth.
“Since you have been so frank about the variety of the chrysanthemum,”
said Eshley, “I don’t mind telling you that this is an Ayrshire ox.”
The icy calm broke down; Adela Pingsford used language that sent the
artist instinctively a few feet nearer to the ox. He picked up a
pea-stick and flung it with some determination against the animal’s
mottled flanks. The operation of mashing _Mademoiselle Louise Bichot_
into a petal salad was suspended for a long moment, while the ox gazed
with concentrated inquiry at the stick-thrower. Adela gazed with equal
concentration and more obvious hostility at the same focus. As the beast
neither lowered its head nor stamped its feet Eshley ventured on another
javelin exercise with another pea-stick. The ox seemed to realise at
once that it was to go; it gave a hurried final pluck at the bed where
the chrysanthemums had been, and strode swiftly up the garden. Eshley
ran to head it towards the gate, but only succeeded in quickening its
pace from a walk to a lumbering trot. With an air of inquiry, but with
no real hesitation, it crossed the tiny strip of turf that the charitable
called the croquet lawn, and pushed its way through the open French
window into the morning-room. Some chrysanthemums and other autumn
herbage stood about the room in vases, and the animal resumed its
browsing operations; all the same, Eshley fancied that the beginnings of
a hunted look had come into its eyes, a look that counselled respect. He
discontinued his attempt to interfere with its choice of surroundings.
“Mr. Eshley,” said Adela in a shaking voice, “I asked you to drive that
beast out of my garden, but I did not ask you to drive it into my house.
If I must have it anywhere on the premises I prefer the garden to the
morning-room.”
“Cattle drives are not in my line,” said Eshley; “if I remember I told
you so at the outset.” “I quite agree,” retorted the lady, “painting
pretty pictures of pretty little cows is what you’re suited for. Perhaps
you’d like to do a nice sketch of that ox making itself at home in my
morning-room?”
This time it seemed as if the worm had turned; Eshley began striding
away.
“Where are you going?” screamed Adela.
“To fetch implements,” was the answer.
“Implements? I won’t have you use a lasso. The room will be wrecked if
there’s a struggle.”
But the artist marched out of the garden. In a couple of minutes he
returned, laden with easel, sketching-stool, and painting materials.
“Do you mean to say that you’re going to sit quietly down and paint that
brute while it’s destroying my morning-room?” gasped Adela.