‘We are having a history lesson,’ came the unexpected reply. ‘I am supposed to be Rome, and Viola up there is the she-wolf; not a real wolf, but the figure of one that the Romans used to set store by◦– I forget why. Claude and Wilfrid have gone to fetch the shabby women.’
‘The shabby women?’
‘Yes, they’ve got to carry them off. They didn’t want to, but Miss Hope got one of father’s fives-bats and said she’d give them a number nine spanking if they didn’t, so they’ve gone to do it.’
A loud, angry screaming from the direction of the lawn drew Mrs Quabarl thither in hot haste, fearful lest the threatened castigation might even now be in process of infliction. The outcry, however, came principally from the two small daughters of the lodgekeeper, who were being hauled and pushed towards the house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and Wilfrid, whose task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if not very effectual, attacks of the captured maidens’ small brother. The governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently on the stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of Battles. A furious and repeated chorus of ‘I’ll tell muvver’ rose from the lodge children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of hearing, was for the moment immersed in the preoccupation of her washtub. After an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lodge (the good woman was gifted with the highly militant temper which is sometimes the privilege of deafness) Mrs Quabarl flew indignantly to the rescue of the struggling captives.
‘Wilfrid! Claude! Let those children go at once. Miss Hope, what on earth is the meaning of this scene?’
‘Early Roman history; the Sabine women, don’t you know? It’s the Schartz-Metterklume method to make children understand history by acting it themselves; fixes it in their memory, you know. Of course, if, thanks to your interference, your boys go through life thinking that the Sabine women ultimately escaped, I really cannot be held responsible.’
‘You may be very clever and modern, Miss Hope,’ said Mrs Quabarl firmly, ‘but I should like you to leave here by the next train. Your luggage will be sent after you as soon as it arrives.’
‘I’m not certain exactly where I shall be for the next few days,’ said the dismissed instructress of youth; ‘you might keep my luggage till I wire my address. There are only a couple of trunks and some golf-clubs and a leopard cub.’
‘A leopard cub!’ gasped Mrs Quabarl. Even in her departure this extraordinary person seemed destined to leave a trail of embarrassment behind her.
‘Well, it’s rather left off being a cub; it’s more than half-grown, you know. A fowl every day and a rabbit on Sundays is what it usually gets. Raw beef makes it too excitable. Don’t trouble about getting the car for me, I’m rather inclined for a walk.’
And Lady Carlotta strode out of the Quabarl horizon.
The advent of the genuine Miss Hope, who had made a mistake as to the day on which she was due to arrive, caused a turmoil which that good lady was quite unused to inspiring. Obviously the Quabarl family had been woefully befooled, but a certain amount of relief came with the knowledge.
‘How tiresome for you, dear Carlotta,’ said her hostess, when the overdue guest ultimately arrived; ‘how very tiresome losing your train and having to stop overnight in a strange place.’
‘Oh, dear, no,’ said Lady Carlotta; ‘not at all tiresome◦– for me.’
The Seventh Pullet
‘It’s not the daily grind that I complain of,’ said Blenkinthrope resentfully; ‘it’s the dull grey sameness of my life outside of office hours. Nothing of interest comes my way, nothing remarkable or out of the common. Even the little things that I do try to find some interest in don’t seem to interest other people. Things in my garden, for instance.’
‘The potato that weighed just over two pounds,’ said his friend Gorworth.
‘Did I tell you about that?’ said Blenkinthrope; ‘I was telling the others in the train this morning. I forgot if I’d told you.’
‘To be exact you told me that it weighed just under two pounds, but I took into account the fact that abnormal vegetables and freshwater fish have an after-life, in which growth is not arrested.’
‘You’re just like the others,’ said Blenkinthrope sadly, ‘you only make fun of it.’
‘The fault is with the potato, not with us,’ said Gorworth; ‘we are not in the least interested in it because it is not in the least interesting. The men you go up in the train with every day are just in the same case as yourself; their fives are commonplace and not very interesting to themselves, and they certainly are not going to wax enthusiastic over the commonplace events in other men’s fives. Tell them something startling, dramatic, piquant, that has happened to yourself or to some one in your family, and you will capture their interest at once. They will talk about you with a certain personal pride to all their acquaintances. “Man I know intimately, fellow called Blenkinthrope, fives down my way, had two of his fingers clawed clean off by a lobster he was carrying home to supper. Doctor says entire hand may have to come off.” Now that is conversation of a very high order. But imagine walking into a tennis club with the remark: “I know a man who has grown a potato weighing two and a quarter pounds.”’
‘But hang it all, my dear fellow,’ said Blenkinthrope impatiently ‘haven’t I just told you that nothing of a remarkable nature ever happens to me?’
‘Invent something,’ said Gorworth. Since winning a prize for excellence in Scriptural knowledge at a preparatory school he had felt licensed to be a little more unscrupulous than the circle he moved in. Much might surely be excused to one who in early life could give a list of seventeen trees mentioned in the Old Testament.
‘What sort of thing?’ asked Blenkinthrope, somewhat snappishly.
‘A snake got into your hen-run yesterday morning and killed six out of seven pullets, first mesmerising them with its eyes and then biting them as they stood helpless. The seventh pullet was one of that French sort, with feathers all over its eyes, so it escaped the mesmeric snare, and just flew at what it could see of the snake and pecked it to pieces.’
‘Thank you,’ said Blenkinthrope stiffly; ‘it’s a very clever invention. If such a thing had really happened in my poultry-run I admit I should have been proud and interested to tell people about it. But I’d rather stick to fact, even if it is plain fact.’ All the same his mind dwelt wistfully on the story of the Seventh Pullet. He could picture himself telling it in the train amid the absorbed interest of his fellow-passengers. Unconsciously all sorts of little details and improvements began to suggest themselves.
Wistfulness was still his dominant mood when he took his seat in the railway carriage the next morning. Opposite him sat Stevenham, who had attained to a recognised brevet of importance through the fact of an uncle having dropped dead in the act of voting at a Parliamentary election. That had happened three years ago, but Stevenham was still deferred to on all questions of home and foreign politics.
‘Hullo, how’s the giant mushroom, or whatever it was?’ was all the notice Blenkinthrope got from his fellow travellers.
Young Duckby, whom he mildly disliked, speedily monopolised the general attention by an account of a domestic bereavement.
‘Had four young pigeons carried off last night by a whacking big rat. Oh, a monster he must have been; you could tell by the size of the hole he made breaking into the loft.’