The Complete Short Stories (54 page)

T
HEOPHIL
E
SHLEY
was an artist by profession, a cattle painter by force of environment. It is not to be supposed that he lived on a ranch or a dairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with horn and hoof, milking-stool, and branding-iron. His home was in a park-like, villa-dotted district that only just escaped the reproach of being suburban. On one side of his garden there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which an enterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of the Channel Island persuasion. At noonday in summertime the cows stood knee-deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a group of walnut trees, with the sunlight falling in dappled patches on their mouse-sleek coats. Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of two reposeful milchcows
in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and filtered sunbeam, and the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on the walls of its Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly, methodical habits in its children. Eshley had painted a successful and acceptable picture of cattle drowsing picturesquely under walnut trees, and as he had begun, so, of necessity, he went on. His “Noontide Peace,” a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by “A Mid-day Sanctuary,” a study of a walnut tree, with two dun cows under it. In due succession there came “Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling,” “The Haven of the Herd,” and “A Dream in Dairyland,” studies of walnut trees and dun cows. His two attempts to break away from his own tradition were signal failures: “Turtle Doves Alarmed by Sparrow-hawk” and “Wolves on the Roman Campagna” came back to his studio in the guise of abominable heresies, and Eshley climbed back into grace and the public gaze with “A Shaded Nook Where Drowsy Milkers Dream.”

On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some finishing touches to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour, Adela Pingsford, assailed the outer door of his studio with loud peremptory knockings.

“There is an ox in my garden,” she announced, in explanation of the tempestuous intrusion.

“An ox,” said Eshley blankly, and rather fatuously; “what kind of ox?”

“Oh, I don't know what kind,” snapped the lady. “A common or garden ox, to use the slang expression. It is the garden part of it that I object to. My garden has just been put straight for the winter, and an ox roaming about in it won't improve matters. Besides, there are the chrysanthemums just coming into flower.”

“How did it get into the garden?” asked Eshley.

“I imagine it came in by the gate,” said the lady impatiently; “it couldn't have climbed the walls, and I don't suppose any one dropped it from an aeroplane as a Bovril advertisement. The immediately important question is not how it got in, but how to get it out.”

“Won't it go?” said Eshley.

“If it was anxious to go,” said Adela Pingsford rather angrily, “I should not have come here to chat with you about it. I'm practically all alone; the housemaid is having her afternoon out and
the cook is lying down with an attack of neuralgia. Anything that I may have learned at school or in after life about how to remove a large ox from a small garden seems to have escaped from my memory now. All I could think of was that you were a near neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiar with the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some slight assistance. Possibly I was mistaken.”

“I paint dairy cows, certainly,” admitted Eshley, “but I cannot claim to have had any experience in rounding up stray oxen. I've seen it done on a cinema film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of other accessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures are faked.”

Adela Pingsford said nothing, but led the way to her garden. It was normally a fair-sized garden, but it looked small in comparison with the ox, a huge mottled brute, dull red about the head and shoulders, passing to dirty white on the flanks and hind-quarters, with shaggy ears and large blood-shot eyes. It bore about as much resemblance to the dainty paddock heifers that Eshley was accustomed to paint as the chief of a Kurdish nomad clan would to a Japanese tea-shop girl. Eshley stood very near the gate while he studied the animal's appearance and demeanour. Adela Pingsford continued to say nothing.

“It's eating a chrysanthemum,” said Eshley at last, when the silence had become unbearable.

“How observant you are,” said Adela bitterly. “You seem to notice everything. As a matter of fact, it has got six chrysanthemums in its mouth at the present moment”

The necessity for doing something was becoming imperative. Eshley took a step or two in the direction of the animal, clapped his hands, and made noises of the “Hish” and “Shoo” variety. If the ox heard them it gave no outward indication of the fact.

“If any hens should ever stray into my garden,” said Adela, “I should certainly send for you to frighten them out. You ‘shoo' beautifully. Meanwhile, do you mind trying to drive that ox away? That is a
Mademoiselle Louise Bichot
that he's begun on now,” she added in icy calm, as a glowing orange head was crushed into the huge munching mouth.

“Since you have been so frank about the variety of the chrysanthemum,” said Eshley, “I don't mind telling you that this is an Ayrshire ox.”

The icy calm broke down; Adela Pingsford used language that sent the artist instinctively a few feet nearer to the ox. He picked up a pea-stick and flung it with some determination against the animal's mottled flanks. The operation of mashing
Mademoiselle Louise Bichot
into a petal salad was suspended for a long moment, while the ox gazed with concentrated inquiry at the stick-thrower. Adela gazed with equal concentration and more obvious hostility at the same focus. As the beast neither lowered its head nor stamped its feet Eshley ventured on another javelin exercise with another pea-stick. The ox seemed to realize at once that it was to go; it gave a hurried final pluck at the bed where the chrysanthemums had been, and strode swiftly up the garden. Eshley ran to head it towards the gate, but only succeeded in quickening its pace from a walk to a lumbering trot. With an air of inquiry, but with no real hesitation, it crossed the tiny strip of turf that the charitable called the croquet lawn, and pushed its way through the open French window into the morning-room. Some chrysanthemums and other autumn herbage stood about the room in vases, and the animal resumed its browsing operations; all the same, Eshley fancied that the beginnings of a hunted look had come into its eyes, a look that counselled respect. He discontinued his attempt to interfere with its choice of surroundings.

“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 if 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.

I
T
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 comer 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.