‘It is a busy time there now with us,’ he said wistfully; ‘the schwines are driven out into the fields after harvest, and must be looked after. I could be helping to look after if I was there. Here it is difficult to live; art is not appreciate.’
‘Why don’t you go home on a visit?’ some one asked tactfully.
‘Ah, it cost money! There is the ship passage to Stolpmünde, and there is money that I owe at my lodgings. Even here I owe a few schillings. If I could sell some of my sketches–’
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Mrs Nougat-Jones, ‘if you were to offer them for a little less, some of us would be glad to buy a few. Ten shillings is always a consideration, you know, to people who are not over well off. Perhaps if you were to ask six or seven shillings–’
Once a peasant, always a peasant. The mere suggestion of a bargain to be struck brought a twinkle of awakened alertness into the artist’s eyes, and hardened the lines of his mouth.
‘Nine schilling, nine pence each,’ he snapped, and seemed disappointed that Mrs Nougat-Jones did not pursue the subject further. He had evidently expected her to offer seven-and-fourpence.
The weeks sped by, and Knopfschrank came more rarely to the restaurant in Owl Street, while his meals on those occasions became more and more meagre. And then came a triumphal day, when he appeared early in the evening in a high state of elation, and ordered an elaborate meal that scarcely stopped short of being a banquet. The ordinary resources of the kitchen were supplemented by an imported dish of smoked goosebreast, a Pomeranian delicacy that was luckily procurable at a firm of delikatessen merchants in Coventry Street, while a long-necked bottle of Rhine wine gave a finishing touch of festivity and good cheer to the crowded table.
‘He has evidently sold his masterpiece,’ whispered Sylvia Strubble to Mrs Nougat-Jones, who had come in late.
‘Who has bought it?’ she whispered back.
‘Don’t know; he hasn’t said anything yet, but it must be some American. Do you see, he has got a little American flag on the dessert dish, and he has put pennies in the music box three times, once to play the “Star-spangled Banner”, then a Sousa march, and then the “Star-spangled Banner” again. It must be an American millionaire, and he’s evidently got a big price for it; he’s just beaming and chuckling with satisfaction.’
‘We must ask him who has bought it,’ said Mrs Nougat-Jones.
‘Hush! no, don’t. Let’s buy some of his sketches, quick, before we are supposed to know that he’s famous; otherwise he’ll be doubling the prices. I am so glad he’s had a success at last. I always believed in him, you know.’
For the sum of ten shillings each Miss Strubble acquired the drawings of the camel dying in Upper Berkeley Street and of the giraffes quenching their thirst in Trafalgar Square; at the same price Mrs Nougat-Jones secured the study of roosting sand-grouse. A more ambitious picture, ‘Wolves and wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenæum Club’, found a purchaser at fifteen shillings.
‘And now what are your plans?’ asked a young man who contributed occasional paragraphs to an artistic weekly.
‘I go back to Stolpmünde as soon as the ship sails,’ said the artist, ‘and I do not return. Never.’
‘But your work? Your career as painter?’
‘Ah, there is nossing in it. One starves. Till today I have sold not one of my sketches. Tonight you have bought a few, because I am going away from you, but at other times, not one.’
‘But has not some American –?’
‘Ah, the rich American,’ chuckled the artist. ‘God be thanked. He dash his car right into our herd of schwines as they were being driven out to the fields. Many of our best schwines he killed, but he paid all damages. He paid perhaps more than they were worth, many times more than they would have fetched in the market after a month of fattening, but he was in a hurry to get on to Danzig. When one is in a hurry one must pay what one is asked. God be thanked for rich Americans, who are always in a hurry to get somewhere else. My father and mother, they have now so plenty of money; they send me some to pay my debts and come home. I start on Monday for Stolpmünde and I do not come back. Never.’
‘But your picture, the hyænas?’
‘No good. It is too big to carry to Stolpmünde. I burn it.’
In time he will be forgotten, but at present Knopfschrank is almost as sore a subject as Sledonti with some of the frequenters of the Nuremberg Restaurant, Owl Street, Soho.
THE TOYS OF PEACE
First collected in 1923
TO
THE 22ND ROYAL FUSILIERS
Thanks are due to the Editors of the Morning Post, the Westminster Gazette and the Bystander for their amiability in allowing tales that appeared in these journals to be reproduced in the present volume.
The Toys of Peace
‘Harvey,’ said Eleanor Bope, handing her brother a cutting from a London morning paper of the 19th of March, ‘just read this about children’s toys, please; it exactly carries out some of our ideas about influence and upbringing.’
‘In the view of the National Peace Council,’ ran the extract, ‘there are grave objections to presenting our boys with regiments of fighting men, batteries of guns, and squadrons of “Dreadnoughts”. Boys, the Council admits, naturally love fighting and all the panoply of war…but that is no reason for encouraging, and perhaps giving permanent form to, their primitive instincts. At the Children’s Welfare Exhibition, which opens at Olympia in three weeks’ time, the Peace Council will make an alternative suggestion to parents in the shape of an exhibition of “peace toys”. In front of a specially painted representation of the Peace Palace at The Hague will be grouped, not miniature soldiers but miniature civilians, not guns but ploughs and the tools of industry…It is hoped that manufacturers may take a hint from the exhibit which will bear fruit in the toy shops.’
‘The idea is certainly an interesting and very well-meaning one,’ said Harvey; ‘whether it would succeed well in practice–’
‘We must try,’ interrupted his sister; ‘you are coming down to us at Easter, and you always bring the boys some toys, so that will be an excellent opportunity for you to inaugurate the new experiment. Go about in the shops and buy any little toys and models that have special bearing on civilian life in its more peaceful aspects. Of course you must explain the toys to the children and interest them in the new idea. I regret to say that the “Siege of Adrianople” toy, that their Aunt Susan sent them, didn’t need any explanation; they knew all the uniforms and flags, and even the names of the respective commanders, and when I heard them one day using what seemed to be the most objectionable language they said it was Bulgarian words of command; of course it may have been, but at any rate I took the toy away from them. Now I shall expect your Easter gifts to give quite a new impulse and direction to the children’s minds; Eric is not eleven yet, and Bertie is only nine-and-a-half, so they are really at a most impressionable age.’
‘There is primitive instinct to be taken into consideration, you know,’ said Harvey doubtfully, ‘and hereditary tendencies as well. One of their great-uncles fought in the most intolerant fashion at Inkerman◦– he was specially mentioned in dispatches, I believe◦– and their great-grandfather smashed all his Whig neighbours’ hothouses when the great Reform Bill was passed. Still, as you say, they are at an impressionable age. I will do my best.’