‘Mr Eshley,’ said Adela in a shaking voice, ‘I asked you to drive that beast out of my garden, but I did not ask you to drive it into my house. If I must have it anywhere on the premises I prefer the garden to the morning-room.’
‘Cattle drives are not in my line,’ said Eshley; ‘if I remember I told you so at the outset.’
‘I quite agree,’ retorted the lady, ‘painting pretty pictures of pretty little cows is what you’re suited for. Perhaps you’d like to do a nice sketch of that ox making itself at home in my morning-room?’
This time it seemed as if the worm had turned; Eshley began striding away.
‘Where are you going?’ screamed Adela.
‘To fetch implements,’ was the answer.
‘Implements? I won’t have you use a lasso. The room will be wrecked if there’s a struggle.’
But the artist marched out of the garden. In a couple of minutes he returned, laden with easel, sketching-stool, and painting materials.
‘Do you mean to say that you’re going to sit quietly down and paint that brute while it’s destroying my morning-room?’ gasped Adela.
‘It was your suggestion,’ said Eshley, setting his canvas in position.
‘I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it!’ stormed Adela.
‘I don’t see what standing you have in the matter,’ said the artist; ‘you can hardly pretend that it’s your ox, even by adoption.’
‘You seem to forget that it’s in my morning-room, eating my flowers,’ came the raging retort.
‘You seem to forget that the cook has neuralgia,’ said Eshley; ‘she may be just dozing off into a merciful sleep and your outcry will waken her. Consideration for others should be the guiding principle of people in our station of life.’
‘The man is mad!’ exclaimed Adela tragically. A moment later it was Adela herself who appeared to go mad. The ox had finished the vase-flowers and the cover of Israel Kalisch, and appeared to be thinking of leaving its rather restricted quarters. Eshley noticed its restlessness and promptly flung it some bunches of Virginia creeper leaves as an inducement to continue the sitting.
‘I forget how the proverb runs,’ he observed; ‘something about “better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where hate is.” We seem to have all the ingredients for the proverb ready to hand.’
‘I shall go to the Public Library and get them to telephone for the police,’ announced Adela, and, raging audibly, she departed.
Some minutes later the ox, awakening probably to the suspicion that oil cake and chopped mangold was waiting for it in some appointed byre, stepped with much precaution out of the morning-room, stared with grave inquiry at the no longer obtrusive and pea-stick-throwing human, and then lumbered heavily but swiftly out of the garden. Eshley packed up his tools and followed the animal’s example and ‘Larkdene’ was left to neuralgia and the cook.
The episode was the turning-point in Eshley’s artistic career. His remarkable picture, ‘Ox in a Morning-room, Late Autumn,’ was one of the sensations and successes of the next Paris Salon, and when it was subsequently exhibited at Munich it was bought by the Bavarian Government, in the teeth of the spirited bidding of three meat-extract firms. From that moment his success was continuous and assured, and the Royal Academy was thankful, two years later, to give a conspicuous position on its walls to his large canvas ‘Barbary Apes Wrecking a Boudoir.’
Eshley presented Adela Pingsford with a new copy of Israel Kalisch, and a couple of finely flowering plants of Madame André Blusset, but nothing in the nature of a real reconciliation has taken place between them.
The Story-Teller
It was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment. Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited, persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a housefly that refused to be discouraged. Most of the aunt’s remarks seemed to begin with ‘Don’t,’ and nearly all of the children’s remarks began with ‘Why?’ The bachelor said nothing out loud.
‘Don’t, Cyril, don’t,’ exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.
‘Come and look out of the window,’ she added.
The child moved reluctantly to the window. ‘Why are those sheep being driven out of that field?’ he asked.
‘I expect they are being driven to another field where there is more grass,’ said the aunt weakly.
‘But there is lots of grass in that field,’ protested the boy; ‘there’s nothing else but grass there. Aunt, there’s lots of grass in that field.’
‘Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,’ suggested the aunt fatuously.
‘Why is it better?’ came the swift, inevitable question.
‘Oh, look at those cows!’ exclaimed the aunt. Nearly every field along the line had contained cows or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention to a rarity.
‘Why is the grass in the other field better?’ persisted Cyril.
The frown on the bachelor’s face was deepening to a scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.
The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite ‘On the Road to Mandalay.’ She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.
‘Come over here and listen to a story,’ said the aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the communication cord.
The children moved listlessly towards the aunt’s end of the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story-teller did not rank high in their estimation.
In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent intervals by loud, petulant questions from her listeners, she began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with every one on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.
‘Wouldn’t they have saved her if she hadn’t been good?’ demanded the bigger of the small girls. It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to ask.
‘Well, yes,’ admitted the aunt lamely, ‘but I don’t think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much.’
‘It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard,’ said the bigger of the small girls, with immense conviction.
‘I didn’t listen after the first bit, it was so stupid,’ said Cyril.
The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line.
‘You don’t seem to be a success as a story-teller,’ said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.
The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected attack.
‘It’s a very difficult thing to tell stories that children can both understand and appreciate,’ she said stiffly.