Beasts and Super-Beasts Read online

  THE HEN

  “Dora Bittholz is coming on Thursday,” said Mrs. Sangrail.

  “This next Thursday?” asked Clovis

  His mother nodded.

  “You’ve rather done it, haven’t you?” he chuckled; “Jane Martlet has onlybeen here five days, and she never stays less than a fortnight, even whenshe’s asked definitely for a week. You’ll never get her out of the houseby Thursday.”

  “Why should I?” asked Mrs. Sangrail; “she and Dora are good friends,aren’t they? They used to be, as far as I remember.”

  “They used to be; that’s what makes them all the more bitter now. Eachfeels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flameof human resentment so much as the discovery that one’s bosom has beenutilised as a snake sanatorium.”

  “But what has happened? Has some one been making mischief?”

  “Not exactly,” said Clovis; “a hen came between them.”

  “A hen? What hen?”

  “It was a bronze Leghorn or some such exotic breed, and Dora sold it toJane at a rather exotic price. They both go in for prize poultry, youknow, and Jane thought she was going to get her money back in a largefamily of pedigree chickens. The bird turned out to be an abstainer fromthe egg habit, and I’m told that the letters which passed between the twowomen were a revelation as to how much invective could be got on to asheet of notepaper.”

  “How ridiculous!” said Mrs. Sangrail. “Couldn’t some of their friendscompose the quarrel?”

  “People tried,” said Clovis, “but it must have been rather like composingthe storm music of the ‘Fliegende Holländer.’ Jane was willing to takeback some of her most libellous remarks if Dora would take back the hen,but Dora said that would be owning herself in the wrong, and you knowshe’d as soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel as do that.”

  “It’s a most awkward situation,” said Mrs. Sangrail. “Do you supposethey won’t speak to one another?”

  “On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get them to leave off. Theirremarks on each other’s conduct and character have hitherto been governedby the fact that only four ounces of plain speaking can be sent throughthe post for a penny.”

  “I can’t put Dora off,” said Mrs. Sangrail. “I’ve already postponed hervisit once, and nothing short of a miracle would make Jane leave beforeher self-allotted fortnight is over.”

  “Miracles are rather in my line,” said Clovis. “I don’t pretend to bevery hopeful in this case but I’ll do my best.”

  “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 thesmoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martlet in theintervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he hadirreverently patented under the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It waspartly compounded of old brandy and partly of curaçoa; there were otheringredients, but they were never indiscriminately revealed.

  “Servants a nuisance!” exclaimed Jane, bounding into the topic with theexuberant plunge of a hunter when it leaves the high road and feels turfunder its hoofs; “I should think they were! The trouble I’ve had ingetting suited this year you would hardly believe. But I don’t see whatyou have to complain of—your mother is so wonderfully lucky in herservants. Sturridge, for instance—he’s been with you for years, and I’msure he’s a paragon as butlers go.”

  “That’s just the trouble,” said Clovis. “It’s when servants have beenwith you for years that they become a really serious nuisance. The ‘hereto-day and gone to-morrow’ sort don’t matter—you’ve simply got to replacethem; 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 mentionedSturridge—it was Sturridge I was particularly thinking of when I made theobservation 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’sthe one reliable element in this rather haphazard household. But hisvery orderliness has had an effect on him. Have you ever considered whatit must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in thecorrect manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of alifetime? To know and ordain and superintend exactly what silver andglass and table linen shall be used and set out on what occasions, tohave cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard under a minutely devised andundeviating 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 EllaWheeler Wilcox.

  “But Sturridge hasn’t gone mad,” said Jane with a flutter of inquiry inher voice.

  “On most points he’s thoroughly sane and reliable,” said Clovis, “but attimes he is subject to the most obstinate delusions, and on thoseoccasions 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 houseparty, and that is where the awkwardness comes in. For instance, he tookit into his head that Matilda Sheringham was the Prophet Elijah, and asall that he remembered about Elijah’s history was the episode of theravens in the wilderness he absolutely declined to interfere with what heimagined to be Matilda’s private catering arrangements, wouldn’t allowany tea to be sent up to her in the morning, and if he was waiting attable 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 forher 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 insome way. I certainly shouldn’t have gone away.”

  Clovis frowned.

  “It is not always wise to humour people when they get these ideas intotheir heads. There’s no knowing to what lengths they may go if youencourage them.”

  “You don’t mean to say he might be dangerous, do you?” asked Jane withsome anxiety.

  “One can never be certain,” said Clovis; “now and then he gets some ideaabout a guest which might take an unfortunate turn. That is preciselywhat is worrying me at the present moment.”

  “What, has he taken a fancy about some one here now?” asked Janeexcitedly; “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 abouther; she’s such a colourless personality.”

  “What does posterity chiefly say about Queen Anne?” asked Clovis rathersternly.

  “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 EllaWheeler 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 tobreakfast 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 thatperplexes and annoys him. All his life he has been accustomed to look onQueen Anne as the personification of everything that is dead and donewith, ‘as dead as Queen Anne,’ you know; and now he has to fill yourglass at lunch and dinner and listen to your accounts of the gay time youhad at the Dublin Horse Show, and naturally he feels that something’svery w
rong 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; “Icaught 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; “itwould 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 guardto frustrate any murderous attack,” said Jane, adding in a tone of weakobstinacy: “It’s a dreadful situation to be in, with a mad butlerdangling over you like the sword of What’s-his-name, but I’m certainlynot going to cut my visit short.”

  Clovis swore horribly under his breath; the miracle was an obviousmisfire.

  It was in the hall the next morning after a late breakfast that Clovishad his final inspiration as he stood engaged in coaxing rust spots froman old putter.

  “Where is Miss Martlet?” he asked the butler, who was at that momentcrossing the hall.

  “Writing letters in the morning-room, sir,” said Sturridge, announcing afact of which his questioner was already aware.

  “She wants to copy the inscription on that old basket-hilted sabre,” saidClovis, pointing to a venerable weapon hanging on the wall. “I wishyou’d take it to her; my hands are all over oil. Take it without thesheath, it will be less trouble.”

  The butler drew the blade, still keen and bright in its well-cared forold age, and carried it into the morning-room. There was a door near thewriting-table leading to a back stairway; Jane vanished through it withsuch lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen himcome in. Half an hour later Clovis was driving her and herhastily-packed luggage to the station.

  “Mother will be awfully vexed when she comes back from her ride and findsyou have gone,” he observed to the departing guest, “but I’ll make upsome story about an urgent wire having called you away. It wouldn’t doto alarm her unnecessarily about Sturridge.”

  Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis’ ideas of unnecessary alarm, and wasalmost rude to the young man who came round with thoughtful inquiries asto luncheon-baskets.

  The miracle lost some of its usefulness from the fact that Dora wrote thesame day postponing the date of her visit, but, at any rate, Clovis holdsthe record as the only human being who ever hustled Jane Martlet out ofthe time-table of her migrations.