Beasts and Super-Beasts Page 3

  THE BOAR-PIG

  “There is a back way on to the lawn,” said Mrs. Philidore Stossen to herdaughter, “through a small grass paddock and then through a walled fruitgarden full of gooseberry bushes. I went all over the place last yearwhen the family were away. There is a door that opens from the fruitgarden into a shrubbery, and once we emerge from there we can mingle withthe guests as if we had come in by the ordinary way. It’s much saferthan going in by the front entrance and running the risk of coming bangup against the hostess; that would be so awkward when she doesn’t happento have invited us.”

  “Isn’t it a lot of trouble to take for getting admittance to a gardenparty?”

  “To a garden party, yes; to _the_ garden party of the season, certainlynot. Every one of any consequence in the county, with the exception ofourselves, has been asked to meet the Princess, and it would be far moretroublesome to invent explanations as to why we weren’t there than to getin by a roundabout way. I stopped Mrs. Cuvering in the road yesterdayand talked very pointedly about the Princess. If she didn’t choose totake the hint and send me an invitation it’s not my fault, is it? Herewe are: we just cut across the grass and through that little gate intothe garden.”

  Mrs. Stossen and her daughter, suitably arrayed for a county garden partyfunction with an infusion of Almanack de Gotha, sailed through the narrowgrass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of statebarges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream. Therewas a certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the stateliness oftheir advance, as though hostile search-lights might be turned on them atany moment; and, as a matter of fact, they were not unobserved. MatildaCuvering, with the alert eyes of thirteen years old and the addedadvantage of an exalted position in the branches of a medlar tree, hadenjoyed a good view of the Stossen flanking movement and had foreseenexactly where it would break down in execution.

  “They’ll find the door locked, and they’ll jolly well have to go back theway they came,” she remarked to herself. “Serves them right for notcoming in by the proper entrance. What a pity Tarquin Superbus isn’tloose in the paddock. After all, as every one else is enjoyingthemselves, I don’t see why Tarquin shouldn’t have an afternoon out.”

  Matilda was of an age when thought is action; she slid down from thebranches of the medlar tree, and when she clambered back again Tarquin,the huge white Yorkshire boar-pig, had exchanged the narrow limits of hisstye for the wider range of the grass paddock. The discomfited Stossenexpedition, returning in recriminatory but otherwise orderly retreat fromthe unyielding obstacle of the locked door, came to a sudden halt at thegate dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden.

  “What a villainous-looking animal,” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen; “it wasn’tthere when we came in.”

  “It’s there now, anyhow,” said her daughter. “What on earth are we todo? I wish we had never come.”

  The boar-pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer inspection of thehuman intruders, and stood champing his jaws and blinking his small redeyes in a manner that was doubtless intended to be disconcerting, and, asfar as the Stossens were concerned, thoroughly achieved that result.

  “Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo!” cried the ladies in chorus.

  “If they think they’re going to drive him away by reciting lists of thekings of Israel and Judah they’re laying themselves out fordisappointment,” observed Matilda from her seat in the medlar tree. Asshe made the observation aloud Mrs. Stossen became for the first timeaware of her presence. A moment or two earlier she would have beenanything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as desertedas it looked, but now she hailed the fact of the child’s presence on thescene with absolute relief.

  “Little girl, can you find some one to drive away—” she began hopefully.

  “_Comment_? _Comprends pas_,” was the response.

  “Oh, are you French? _Êtes vous française_?”

  “_Pas de tous_. _’Suis anglaise_.”

  “Then why not talk English? I want to know if—”

  “_Permettez-moi expliquer_. You see, I’m rather under a cloud,” saidMatilda. “I’m staying with my aunt, and I was told I must behaveparticularly well to-day, as lots of people were coming for a gardenparty, and I was told to imitate Claude, that’s my young cousin, whonever does anything wrong except by accident, and then is alwaysapologetic about it. It seems they thought I ate too much raspberrytrifle at lunch, and they said Claude never eats too much raspberrytrifle. Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch,because he’s told to, and I waited till he was asleep, and tied his handsand started forcible feeding with a whole bucketful of raspberry triflethat they were keeping for the garden-party. Lots of it went on to hissailor-suit and some of it on to the bed, but a good deal went downClaude’s throat, and they can’t say again that he has never been known toeat too much raspberry trifle. That is why I am not allowed to go to theparty, and as an additional punishment I must speak French all theafternoon. I’ve had to tell you all this in English, as there were wordslike ‘forcible feeding’ that I didn’t know the French for; of course Icould have invented them, but if I had said _nourriture obligatoire_ youwouldn’t have had the least idea what I was talking about. _Maismaintenant_, _nous parlons français_.”

  “Oh, very well, _trés bien_,” said Mrs. Stossen reluctantly; in momentsof flurry such French as she knew was not under very good control.“_Là_, _à l’autre côté de la porte_, _est un cochon_—”

  “_Un cochon_? _Ah_, _le petit charmant_!” exclaimed Matilda withenthusiasm.

  “_Mais non_, _pas du tout petit_, _et pas du tout charmant_; _un bêteféroce_—”

  “_Une bête_,” corrected Matilda; “a pig is masculine as long as you callit a pig, but if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferociousbeast it becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexinglanguage.”

  “For goodness’ sake let us talk English then,” said Mrs. Stossen. “Isthere any way out of this garden except through the paddock where the pigis?”

  “I always go over the wall, by way of the plum tree,” said Matilda.

  “Dressed as we are we could hardly do that,” said Mrs. Stossen; it wasdifficult to imagine her doing it in any costume.

  “Do you think you could go and get some one who would drive the pigaway?” asked Miss Stossen.

  “I promised my aunt I would stay here till five o’clock; it’s not fouryet.”

  “I am sure, under the circumstances, your aunt would permit—”

  “My conscience would not permit,” said Matilda with cold dignity.

  “We can’t stay here till five o’clock,” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen withgrowing exasperation.

  “Shall I recite to you to make the time pass quicker?” asked Matildaobligingly. “‘Belinda, the little Breadwinner,’ is considered my bestpiece, or, perhaps, it ought to be something in French. Henri Quatre’saddress to his soldiers is the only thing I really know in thatlanguage.”

  “If you will go and fetch some one to drive that animal away I will giveyou something to buy yourself a nice present,” said Mrs. Stossen.

  Matilda came several inches lower down the medlar tree.

  “That is the most practical suggestion you have made yet for getting outof the garden,” she remarked cheerfully; “Claude and I are collectingmoney for the Children’s Fresh Air Fund, and we are seeing which of uscan collect the biggest sum.”

  “I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown, very glad indeed,” saidMrs. Stossen, digging that coin out of the depths of a receptacle whichformed a detached outwork of her toilet.

  “Claude is a long way ahead of me at present,” continued Matilda, takingno notice of the suggested offering; “you see, he’s only eleven, and hasgolden hair, and those are enormous advantages when you’re on thecollecting job. Only the other day a Russian lady gave him tenshillings. Russians understand the art of giving far better than we do.I expect Claude wil
l net quite twenty-five shillings this afternoon;he’ll have the field to himself, and he’ll be able to do the pale,fragile, not-long-for-this-world business to perfection after hisraspberry trifle experience. Yes, he’ll be _quite_ two pounds ahead ofme by now.”

  With much probing and plucking and many regretful murmurs the beleagueredladies managed to produce seven-and-sixpence between them.

  “I am afraid this is all we’ve got,” said Mrs. Stossen.

  Matilda showed no sign of coming down either to the earth or to theirfigure.

  “I could not do violence to my conscience for anything less than tenshillings,” she announced stiffly.

  Mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in whichthe word “beast” was prominent, and probably had no reference to Tarquin.

  “I find I _have_ got another half-crown,” said Mrs. Stossen in a shakingvoice; “here you are. Now please fetch some one quickly.”

  Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the donation, andproceeded to pick up a handful of over-ripe medlars from the grass at herfeet. Then she climbed over the gate and addressed herselfaffectionately to the boar-pig.

  “Come, Tarquin, dear old boy; you know you can’t resist medlars whenthey’re rotten and squashy.”

  Tarquin couldn’t. By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him atjudicious intervals Matilda decoyed him back to his stye, while thedelivered captives hurried across the paddock.

  “Well, I never! The little minx!” exclaimed Mrs. Stossen when she wassafely on the high road. “The animal wasn’t savage at all, and as forthe ten shillings, I don’t believe the Fresh Air Fund will see a penny ofit!”

  There she was unwarrantably harsh in her judgment. If you examine thebooks of the fund you will find the acknowledgment: “Collected by MissMatilda Cuvering, 2s. 6d.”