The Complete Short Stories (61 page)

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-f ourpence.

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 Stolpm¨unde 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 hyÈ°nas?”

“No good. It is too big to carry to Stolpmiinde. 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.

First Collected
, 1923

TO
THE
22
ND BOYAL 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.

H
ARVEY
,” said Eleanor Bope, handing her brother a cutting from a London morning paper
¹
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.”

On Easter Saturday Harvey Bope unpacked a large, promising-looking red cardboard box under the expectant eyes of his nephews. “Your uncle has brought you the newest thing in toys,” Eleanor had said impressively, and youthful anticipation had been anxiously divided between Albanian soldiery and a Somali camel-corps. Eric was hotly in favour of the latter contingency. “There would be Arabs on horseback,” he whispered; “the Albanians have got jolly uniforms, and they fight all day long, and all night too, when there's a moon, but the country's rocky, so they've got no cavalry.”

A quantity of crinkly paper shavings was the first thing that met
the view when the lid was removed; the most exciting toys always began like that. Harvey pushed back the top layer and drew forth a square, rather featureless building.

“It's a fort!” exclaimed Bertie.

“It isn't, it's the palace of the Mpret of Albania,” said Eric, immensely proud of his knowledge of the exotic title; “it's get no windows, you see, so that passers-by can't fire in at the Royal Family.”

“It's a municipal dust-bin,” said Harvey hurriedly; “you see all the refuse and litter of a town is collected there, instead of lying about and injuring the health of the citizens.”

In an awful silence he disinterred a little lead figure of a man in black clothes.

“That,” he said, “is a distinguished civilian, John Stuart Mill. He was an authority on political economy.”

“Why?” asked Bertie.

“Well, he wanted to be; he thought it was a useful thing to be.”

Bertie gave an expressive grunt, which conveyed his opinion that there was no accounting for tastes.

Another square building came out, this time with windows and chimneys.

“A model of the Manchester branch of the Young Women's Christian Association,” said Harvey.

“Are there any lions?” asked Eric hopefully. He had been reading Roman history and thought that where you found Christians you might reasonably expect to find a few lions.

“There are no lions,” said Harvey. “Here is another civilian, Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools, and here is a model of a municipal wash-house. These little round things are loaves baked in a sanitary bakehouse. That lead figure is a sanitary inspector, this one is a district councillor, and this one is an official of the Local Government Board.”

“What does he do?” asked Eric wearily.

“He sees to things connected with his Department,” said Harvey. “This box with a slit in it is a ballot-box. Votes are put into it at election times.”

“What is put into it at other times?” asked Bertie.

“Nothing. And here are some tools of industry, a wheelbarrow and a hoe, and I think these are meant for hop-poles. This is a model beehive, and that is a ventilator, for ventilating sewers. This seems to be another municipal dust-bin—no, it is a model of a school
of art and a public library. This little lead figure is Mrs. Hemans, a poetess, and this is Rowland Hill, who introduced the system of penny postage. This is Sir John Herschel, the eminent astrologer.”

“Are we to play with these civilian figures?” asked Eric.

“Of course,” said Harvey, “these are toys; they are meant to be played with.”

“But how?”

It was rather a poser. “You might make two of them contest a seat in Parliament,” said Harvey, “and have an election—”

“With rotten eggs, and free fights, and ever so many broken heads!” exclaimed Eric.

“And noses all bleeding and everybody drunk as can be,” echoed Bertie, who had carefully studied one of Hogarth's pictures.

“Nothing of the kind,” said Harvey, “nothing in the least like that. Votes will be put in the ballot-box, and the Mayor will count them—the district councilor will do for the Mayor—and he will say which has received the most votes, and then the two candidates will thank him for presiding, and each will say that the contest has been conducted throughout in the pleasantest and most straightforward fashion, and they part with expressions of mutual esteem. There's a jolly game for you boys to play. I never had such toys when I was young.”

“I don't think we'll play with them just now,” said Eric, with an entire absence of the enthusiasm that his uncle had shown; “I think perhaps we ought to do a little of our holiday task. It's history this time; we've got to learn up something about the Bourbon period in France.”

“The Bourbon period,” said Harvey, with some disapproval in his voice.

“We've got to know something about Louis the Fourteenth,” continued Eric; “I've learnt the names of all the principal battles already.”

This would never do. “There were, of course, some battles fought during his reign,” said Harvey, “but I fancy the accounts of them were much exaggerated; news was very unreliable in those days, and there were practically no war correspondents, so generals and commanders could magnify every little skirmish they engaged in till they reached the proportions of decisive battles. Louis was really famous, now, as a landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired that it was copied all over Europe.”

“Do you know anything about Madame Du Barry?” asked Eric; “didn't she have her head chopped off?”

“She was another great lover of gardening,” said Harvey evasively; “in fact, I believe the well-known rose Du Barry was named after her, and now I think you had better play for a little and leave your lessons till later.”

Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years' War would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.