Beasts and Super-Beasts
“As long as you don’t drag me into it—” stipulated his mother.
* * * * *
“Servants are a bit of a nuisance,” muttered Clovis, as he sat in the
smoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martlet in the
intervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he had
irreverently patented under the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was
partly compounded of old brandy and partly of curaçoa; there were other
ingredients, but they were never indiscriminately revealed.
“Servants a nuisance!” exclaimed Jane, bounding into the topic with the
exuberant plunge of a hunter when it leaves the high road and feels turf
under its hoofs; “I should think they were! The trouble I’ve had in
getting suited this year you would hardly believe. But I don’t see what
you have to complain of—your mother is so wonderfully lucky in her
servants. Sturridge, for instance—he’s been with you for years, and I’m
sure he’s a paragon as butlers go.”
“That’s just the trouble,” said Clovis. “It’s when servants have been
with you for years that they become a really serious nuisance. The ‘here
to-day and gone to-morrow’ sort don’t matter—you’ve simply got to replace
them; it’s the stayers and the paragons that are the real worry.”
“But if they give satisfaction—”
“That doesn’t prevent them from giving trouble. Now, you’ve mentioned
Sturridge—it was Sturridge I was particularly thinking of when I made the
observation about servants being a nuisance.”
“The excellent Sturridge a nuisance! I can’t believe it.”
“I know he’s excellent, and we just couldn’t get along without him; he’s
the one reliable element in this rather haphazard household. But his
very orderliness has had an effect on him. Have you ever considered what
it must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in the
correct manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of a
lifetime? To know and ordain and superintend exactly what silver and
glass and table linen shall be used and set out on what occasions, to
have cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard under a minutely devised and
undeviating administration, to be noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent,
and, as far as your own department is concerned, omniscient?”
“I should go mad,” said Jane with conviction.
“Exactly,” said Clovis thoughtfully, swallowing his completed Ella
Wheeler Wilcox.
“But Sturridge hasn’t gone mad,” said Jane with a flutter of inquiry in
her voice.
“On most points he’s thoroughly sane and reliable,” said Clovis, “but at
times he is subject to the most obstinate delusions, and on those
occasions he becomes not merely a nuisance but a decided embarrassment.”
“What sort of delusions?”
“Unfortunately they usually centre round one of the guests of the house
party, and that is where the awkwardness comes in. For instance, he took
it into his head that Matilda Sheringham was the Prophet Elijah, and as
all that he remembered about Elijah’s history was the episode of the
ravens in the wilderness he absolutely declined to interfere with what he
imagined to be Matilda’s private catering arrangements, wouldn’t allow
any tea to be sent up to her in the morning, and if he was waiting at
table he passed her over altogether in handing round the dishes.”
“How very unpleasant. Whatever did you do about it?”
“Oh, Matilda got fed, after a fashion, but it was judged to be best for
her to cut her visit short. It was really the only thing to be done,”
said Clovis with some emphasis.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” said Jane, “I should have humoured him in
some way. I certainly shouldn’t have gone away.”
Clovis frowned.
“It is not always wise to humour people when they get these ideas into
their heads. There’s no knowing to what lengths they may go if you
encourage them.”
“You don’t mean to say he might be dangerous, do you?” asked Jane with
some anxiety.
“One can never be certain,” said Clovis; “now and then he gets some idea
about a guest which might take an unfortunate turn. That is precisely
what is worrying me at the present moment.”
“What, has he taken a fancy about some one here now?” asked Jane
excitedly; “how thrilling! Do tell me who it is.”
“You,” said Clovis briefly.
“Me?”
Clovis nodded.
“Who on earth does he think I am?”
“Queen Anne,” was the unexpected answer.
“Queen Anne! What an idea. But, anyhow, there’s nothing dangerous about
her; she’s such a colourless personality.”
“What does posterity chiefly say about Queen Anne?” asked Clovis rather
sternly.
“The only thing that I can remember about her,” said Jane, “is the saying
‘Queen Anne’s dead.’”
“Exactly,” said Clovis, staring at the glass that had held the Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, “dead.”
“Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen Anne?” asked Jane.
“Ghost? Dear no. No one ever heard of a ghost that came down to
breakfast and ate kidneys and toast and honey with a healthy appetite.
No, it’s the fact of you being so very much alive and flourishing that
perplexes and annoys him. All his life he has been accustomed to look on
Queen Anne as the personification of everything that is dead and done
with, ‘as dead as Queen Anne,’ you know; and now he has to fill your
glass at lunch and dinner and listen to your accounts of the gay time you
had at the Dublin Horse Show, and naturally he feels that something’s
very wrong with you.”
“But he wouldn’t be downright hostile to me on that account, would he?”
Jane asked anxiously.
“I didn’t get really alarmed about it till lunch to-day,” said Clovis; “I
caught him glowering at you with a very sinister look and muttering:
‘Ought to be dead long ago, she ought, and some one should see to it.’
That’s why I mentioned the matter to you.”
“This is awful,” said Jane; “your mother must be told about it at once.”
“My mother mustn’t hear a word about it,” said Clovis earnestly; “it
would upset her dreadfully. She relies on Sturridge for everything.”
“But he might kill me at any moment,” protested Jane.
“Not at any moment; he’s busy with the silver all the afternoon.”
“You’ll have to keep a sharp look-out all the time and be on your guard
to frustrate any murderous attack,” said Jane, adding in a tone of weak
obstinacy: “It’s a dreadful situation to be in, with a mad butler
dangling over you like the sword of What’s-his-name, but I’m certainly
not going to cut my visit short.”
Clovis swore horribly under his breath; the miracle was an obvious
misfire.
It was in the hall the next morning after a late breakfast that Clovis
had his final inspiration as he stood engaged in coaxing rust spots from
an old putter.
“Where is Miss Martlet?” he asked the butler, who was at that moment
crossing the hall.
“Writing letters in the morning-room, sir,” said Sturridge, announcing a
fact of which his questioner was already aware.
“She wants to copy the inscription on that old basket-hilted sabre,” said
Clovis, pointing to a venerable weapon hanging on the wall. “I wish
you’d take it to her; my hands are all over oil. Take it without the
sheath, it will be less trouble.”
The butler drew the blade, still keen and bright in its well-cared for
old age, and carried it into the morning-room. There was a door near the
writing-table leading to a back stairway; Jane vanished through it with
such lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen him
come in. Half an hour later Clovis was driving her and her
hastily-packed luggage to the station.
“Mother will be awfully vexed when she comes back from her ride and finds
you have gone,” he observed to the departing guest, “but I’ll make up
some story about an urgent wire having called you away. It wouldn’t do
to alarm her unnecessarily about Sturridge.”
Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis’ ideas of unnecessary alarm, and was
almost rude to the young man who came round with thoughtful inquiries as
to luncheon-baskets.
The miracle lost some of its usefulness from the fact that Dora wrote the
same day postponing the date of her visit, but, at any rate, Clovis holds
the record as the only human being who ever hustled Jane Martlet out of
the time-table of her migrations.
THE OPEN WINDOW
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed
young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.”
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly
flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that
was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal
visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping
the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
“I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to
migrate to this rural retreat; “you will bury yourself down there and not
speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from
moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people
I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was
presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice
division.
“Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she
judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.
“Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the
rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of
introduction to some of the people here.”
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
“Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the
self-possessed young lady.
“Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering
whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An
undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine
habitation.
“Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child; “that
would be since your sister’s time.”
“Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot
tragedies seemed out of place.
“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October
afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened
on to a lawn.
“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that
window got anything to do with the tragedy?”
“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her
two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came
back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they
were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that
dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years
gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered.
That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice lost its
self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always
thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown
spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they
used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is
quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her
husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her
youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to
tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes
on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that
they will all walk in through that window—”
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the
aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in
making her appearance.
“I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.