 The Name-Day from Beasts and Superbeasts by Saki. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Miriam Esther Goldman. The Name-Day by Saki. The Name-Day. According to the proverb, are to the adventurous. Quite as often, they are to the non-adventurous, to the retiring, to the constitutionally timid. John James Albuway had been endowed by nature with a sort of disposition that instinctively avoids carless intrigues, slum crusades, the tracking of wounded wild beasts, and the moving of hostile amendments at political meetings. If a mad dog or a mad muller had come his way, he would have surrendered the way without hesitation. At school, he had unwillingly acquired a thorough knowledge of the German tongue out of deference to the plainly expressed wishes of a foreign languages master who, though he taught modern subjects, employed old-fashioned methods in driving his lessons home. It was this enforced familiarity with an important commercial language which thrust Albuway in later years into strange lands where adventures were less easy to guard against than in the ordered atmosphere of an English country town. The firm that he worked for saw fit to send him one day on a prosaic business errand to the far city of Vienna, and, having sent him there, continued to keep him there, still engaged in hum-drum affairs of commerce, but with the possibilities of romance and adventure, or even misadventure jostling at his elbow. After two and a half years of exile, however, John James Albuway had embarked on only one hazardous undertaking, and that was of a nature which would assuredly have overtaken him sooner or later if he had been leading a sheltered stay-at-home existence at Dorking or Huntington. He fell placidly in love with a placidly lovable English girl, the sister of one of his commercial colleagues, who was improving her mind by a short trip to foreign parts, and in due course he was formally accepted as the young man she was engaged to. The further step by which she was to become Mrs. John Albuway was to take place a twelve-month hence in a town in the English Midlands, by which time the firm that employed John James would have no further need for his presence in the Austrian capital. It was early in April, two months after the installation of Albuway as the young man Miss Penning was engaged to, when he received a letter from her, written from Venice. She was still paragonating under the wing of her brother, and as the latter's business arrangements would take him across to Fiume for a day or two, she had conceived the idea that it would be rather jolly if John could obtain leave of absence and run down to the Adriatic coast to meet them. She had looked up the route on the map, and the journey did not appear likely to be expensive. Between the lines of her communication there lay a hint that if he really cared for her, Albuway obtained leave of absence and added a journey to Fiume to his life's adventures. He left Vienna on a cold, cheerless day. The flower shops were full of spring blooms, and the weakly organs of illustrated humor were full of spring topics, but the skies were heavy with clouds that looked like cotton wool that has been kept over long in a sharp window. Snow comes, said the train official to the station officials, and they agreed that snow was about to come. And it came rapidly, plentiously. The train had not been more than an hour on its journey when the cotton wool clouds commenced to dissolve in a binding downpour of snowflakes. The forest trees on either side of the line were speedily coated with a heavy white mantle. The telegraph wires became thick glistening ropes. The line itself was buried more and more completely under a carpeting of snow, through which the not very powerful engine plowed its way with increasing difficulty. The Vienna Fiume line is scarcely the best equipped of the Austrian state railways, and Abilway began to have serious fears for a breakdown. The train had slowed down to a painful and precarious crawl, and presently came to a halt at a spot where the drifting snow had accumulated in a formidable barrier. The engine made a special effort and broke through the obstruction, but in the course of another twenty minutes it was again held up. The process of breaking through was renewed, and the train doggedly resumed its way, encountering and surmounting fresh hindrances at frequent intervals. After a standstill of unusually long duration and a particularly deep drift, the compartment in which Abilway was sitting gave a huge jerk and a lurch, and then seemed to remain stationary. It undoubtedly was not moving, and yet he could hear the puffing of the engine and the slow rumbling and jolting of wheels. The puffing and rumbling grew fainter, as though it were dying away through the agency of intervening distance. Abilway suddenly gave vent to an exclamation of scandalized alarm, opened the window, and peered out into the snowstorm. The flakes perched on his eyelashes and blurred his vision, but he saw enough to help him realize what had happened. The engine had made a mighty plunge through the drift and had gone merrily forward, lightened of the load of its rear carriage, whose coupling had snapped under the strain. Abilway was alone, or almost alone, with a derelict railway wagon in the heart of some sterian or Croatian forest. In the third-class compartment next to his own he remembered to have seen a peasant woman who had entered the train at a small wayside station. With the exception of that woman, he exclaimed dramatically to himself, the nearest living beings are probably a pack of wolves. Before making his way to the third-class compartment to acquaint his fellow traveller with the extent of the disaster, Abilway hurriedly pondered the question of the woman's nationality. He had acquired a smattering of Slavonic tongues during his residence in Vienna and felt competent to grapple with several racial possibilities. If she is Croat or Serb, a Bosniaka shall be able to make her understand, he promised himself. If she is Madja, heaven help me. We shall have to converse entirely by signs. He entered the carriage and made his momentous announcement in the best approach to Croat's speech that he could achieve. The train is broken away and left us. The woman shook her head with a movement that might be intended to convey resignation to the will of heaven, but probably meant non-comprehension. Abilway repeated his information with variations of Slavonic tongues and generous displays of pantomime. Ah! said the woman at last in German dialect. The train has gone. We are left. Ah so. She seemed about as much interested as though Abilway had told her the result of the municipal elections in Amsterdam. They will find out at some station, and when the line is clear of snow they will send an engine. It happens that way sometimes. We may be here all night! exclaimed Abilway. The woman nodded as though she thought it possible. Are there wolves in these parts? said Abilway hurriedly. Many! said the woman. Just outside this forest my aunt was devoured three years ago as she was coming home from market. The horse and a young pig that was in the car were eaten too. The horse was a very old one, but it was a beautiful young pig. Oh so fat! I cried when I heard that it was taken. They spare nothing! They may attack us here! said Abilway tremulously. They could easily break in. These carriages are like match wood. We may both be devoured. You perhaps! said the woman calmly. Not me! Why not you? demanded Abilway. It is the day of Saint Maria Cleopa. My name day. She would not allow me to be eaten by wolves on her day. Such a thing could not be thought of. You, yes, but not me. Abilway changed the subject. It is only afternoon now. If we are to be left here till morning we shall be starving. I have here some good eatables, said the woman tranquilly. On my festival day it is natural that I should have provision with me. I have five good blood sausages. In the town shops they cost twenty-five heller each. Things are dear in the town shops. I will give you fifty heller apiece for a couple of them, said Abilway with some enthusiasm. In a railway accident things become very clear, said the woman. These blood sausages are for cronin apiece. For cronin, exclaimed Abilway, for cronin for a blood sausage. You cannot get them any cheaper on this train, said the woman with relentless logic. Because there aren't any others to get. In agrum you can get them cheaper, and in paradise no doubt they will be given us for nothing, but here they cost four cronin each. I have a small piece of emmentaler cheese, and a honey cake, and a piece of bread, said I can let you have. That will be another three cronin, eleven cronin in all. There is a piece of ham, but I cannot let you have on my name-day. Abilway wondered to himself what price she would have put on the ham, and hurried to pay her the eleven cronin before her emergency tariff expanded into a famine tariff. As he was taking possession of his modest store of eatables, he suddenly heard a noise which set his heart thumping in a miserable fever of fear. There was a scraping and shuffling, as if some animal or animals trying to climb up to the footboard. In another moment, through the snow-encrusted glass of the carriage window, he saw a gaunt, prick-eared head, with gaping jaw and lolling tongue and gleaming teeth. A second later another head shot up. There are hundreds of them, whispered Abilway. They have sent to us. They will tear the carriage to pieces we shall be devoured. Not me on my name-day. The Holy Maria Cleopa would not permit it, said the woman with provoking calm. The heads dropped down from the window, and an uncanny silence fell on the beleaguered carriage. Abilway neither moved nor spoke. Perhaps the brutes had not clearly seen or winded the human occupants of the carriage, and had prowled away on some other errand of rapine. The long, torture-laden minutes passed slowly away. It grows cold, said the woman suddenly, crossing over to the far end of the carriage, where the heads had appeared. The heathen apparatus does not work any longer. See, over there beyond the trees there is a chimney with smoke coming from it. It is not far, and the snow has nearly stopped. I shall find a pass through the forest to that house with the chimney. But the wolves, exclaimed Abilway. They may not on my name-day, said the woman obstinately, and before he could stop her she had opened the door and climbed down into the snow. A moment later he hid his face in his hands. Two gaunt-lean figures rushed upon her from the forest. No doubt she had courted her fate, but Abilway had no wish to see a human being torn to pieces and devoured before his eyes. When he looked at last, a new sensation of scandalized astonishment took possession of him. He had been straightly brought up in a small English town, and he was not prepared to be the witness of a miracle. The wolves were not doing anything worse to the woman than drench her with snow as they gambled round her. A short, joyous bark revealed the clue to the situation. Are those... dogs? he called weakly. My cousin Carl's dogs, yes, she answered. That is easy and over beyond the trees. I knew it was there, but I did not want to take you there. He is always grasping with strangeness. However, it grows too cold to remain in the train. See what comes? A whistle sounded, and a relief engine made its appearance, snorting its way socally through the snow. Abilway did not have the opportunity for finding out whether Carl was really avaricious. End of the Nameday. Recording by Miriam Esther Goldman. The Lumber Room by Saki The children were to be driven as a special treat to the sands at Jackborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party. He was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread and milk on the seemingly frivolous grounds that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread and milk, and that he was not to talk nonsense. He continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the various nonsense, and described with much detail the coloration and markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas's vase and bread and milk. He put it there himself, so he felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread and milk was enlarged on at great lengths, but the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was that the older, wiser and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error, in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance. You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread and milk. There was a frog in my bread and milk, he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable ground. So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninteresting younger brother were to be taken to Jackborough Sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. His cousin's aunt, who insisted by an unwarranted stretch of imagination in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jackborough expedition in order to impress upon Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred. If all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivaled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, they would have been taken that very day. A few decent tears were looked for on the part of Nicholas when the moment for the departure of the expedition arrived. As a matter of fact, however, all the crying was done by his girl cousin, who scraped her knee rather painfully against the step of the carriage as she was scrambling in. How she did howl, said Nicholas, cheerfully, as the party drove off without any of the elation of high spirits that should have characterised it. She'll soon get over that, said the Swaidison aunt. It will be a glorious afternoon for racing about over those beautiful sands how they will enjoy themselves. Bobby won't enjoy himself much, and he won't race much either, said Nicholas with a grim chuckle. His boots are hurting him. They're too tight. Why didn't he tell me they were hurting? asked the aunt with some asperity. He told you twice, but you weren't listening. You often don't listen when we tell you important things. You are not to go into the gooseberry garden, said the aunt, changing the subject. Why not? demanded Nicholas. Because you are in disgrace, said the aunt, loftily. Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning. He felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at the same moment. His face took on an expression of considerable obstinacy. It was clear to his aunt that he was determined to get into the gooseberry garden, only, as she remarked to herself, because I have told him he's not too. Now the gooseberry garden had two doors by which it might be entered, and once a small person like Nicholas could slip in there, he could effectively disappear from view amid the masking growth of artichokes, raspberry canes, and fruit baskets. The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flowerbeds and shrubberies, whence she could keep a watchful eye on the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration. Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden, wriggling his way with obvious stealth of purpose towards one or other of the doors, but never able for a moment to evade the aunt's watchful eye. As a matter of fact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had. It was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry duty for the greater part of the afternoon. Having thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions, Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain. By standing on a chair in the library, one could reach a shelf on which reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was, as important as it looked, it was the instrument which kept the mysteries of the lumber-room secure from unauthorized intrusion, which opened away only for aunt's and such like privileged persons. Nicholas had not much experience of the art of fitting keys into key-holes and turning locks, but for some days past he had practiced with the key of the school-room door. He did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure. Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening onto the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasures. The aunt, by assertion, was one of those people who think that things spoiled by use, and consigned them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, but here there were wonderful things for the eye to feast on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestry that was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was a living, breathing story. He sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all the details of the tapestry picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow. He couldn't have been a difficult shot, because the stag was only one or two paces away from him, in the thickly growing vegetation that the picture suggested it wouldn't have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his directions for the wood? There might be more than four of them hidden behind the trees, and in any case would the man and his dogs be able to cope with the four wolves if they made an attack? The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both of them. All one knew about his skill in shooting, but that he could hit a large stag at a ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden minutes, revolving the possibilities of the scene. He was inclined to think that there were more than four wolves, and that the man and his dogs were in a tight corner. But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instant attention. Here were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot, fashioned like a china duck out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in comparison! And there was a carved sandalwood box packed tight with aromatic cotton wool, and between the layers of cotton wool were little brass figures, hump-necked bulls, peacocks, and goblins delightful to see and to handle. Less promising in appearance was a large square book with plain black covers. Nicholas peeped into it, and behold, it was full of coloured pictures of birds, and such birds. In the garden and in the lanes, when he went for a walk, Nicholas came across a few birds of which the largest were an occasional magpie or wood pigeon. Here were herons and bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitons, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamt of creatures. And as he was admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck and designing a life history to it, the voice of his aunt in shrill vociferation of his name came from the Guzbury garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of the lilac bushes. She was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes and raspberry canes. Nicholas! Nicholas! she screamed. You ought to come out of this at once. It's no use trying to hide there. I can see you all the time. It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled in that lumber-room. Presently the angry repetitions of Nicholas's name gave way to a shriek and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas shut the book, restored it carefully to its place in a corner, and shook some dust from a neighbouring pile of newspapers over it. Then he crept from the room, locked the door, and replaced the key exactly where he'd found it. His aunt was still calling his name when he sauntered into the front garden. Who's calling? he asked. Me! came the answer from the other side of the wall. Didn't you hear me? I've been looking for you in the gooseberry garden, and I slipped into the rainwater tank. Luckily there's no water in it, but the sides are slippery and I can't get out. Fetch the little ladder from under the cherry tree. I was told I wasn't to go into the gooseberry garden, said Nicholas promptly. I told you not to. Now I tell you that you may. Came the voice from the rainwater tank, rather impatiently. Your voice doesn't sound like aunt's, objected Nicholas. You may be the evil one tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that the evil one tempts me and that I always yield. This time I'm not going to yield. Don't talk nonsense, said the prisoner in the tank. Go and fetch the ladder. Will there be strawberry jam for tea? asked Nicholas innocently. Certainly there will be, said the aunt, privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it. Now I know that you are the evil one and not aunt, shouted Nicholas gleefully. When we asked for strawberry jam yesterday, she said there wasn't any. I know there are four jars of it in the store cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it's there, but she doesn't, because she said there wasn't any. Oh devil, you have sold yourself. There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to an aunt as though one were talking to the evil one. But Nicholas knew with childish discernment that such luxuries were not to be overindulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was a kitchen made in search of parsley, who eventually rescued the aunt from the rainwater tank. Tea that evening was partaken of in a fearsome silence. The tide had been at its highest when the children had arrived at Jagara Cove, so there had been no sands to play on, a circumstance that the aunt had overlooked in the haste of organising her punitive expedition. The tightness of Bobby's boots had had disastrous effect on his temper the whole of the afternoon, and altogether the children could not have been said to have enjoyed themselves. The aunt maintained the frozen muteness of one who had suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rainwater tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he too was silent in the absorption of one who has much to think about. It was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hands. While the wolves feasted on the stricken stag. End of the Lumber Room You see, my birthday happens next week. You lucky person! interrupted Eleanor. My birthday doesn't come till the end of March. Well, Old Bertram Knight is over in England just now from the Argentine. He's a kind of distant cousin of my mother's, and so enormously rich that we've never let the relationship drop out of sight. Even if we don't see him, or hear from him for years, he is always cousin Bertram when he does turn up. I can't say he's ever been of much solid use to us, but yesterday the subject of my birthday cropped up, and he asked me to let him know what I wanted for a present. Now I understand the anxiety, observed Eleanor. As of all when one is confronted with a problem like that, said Suzanne, all once ideas vanish, one doesn't seem to have a desire in the world. Now it so happens that I have been very keen on a little Dresden figure that I saw somewhere in Kensington, about thirty-six shillings, quite beyond my means. I was very nearly describing the figure, and giving Bertram the address of the shop. And then it suddenly struck me that thirty-six shillings was such a ridiculously inadequate sum for a man of his immense wealth to spend on a birthday present. He could give thirty-six pounds as easily as you or I could buy a bunch of violets. I don't want to be greedy, of course, but I don't like being wasteful. The question is, said Eleanor, what are his ideas as to present giving? Some of the wealthiest people have curiously cramped views on that subject. When people grow gradually rich their requirements and standard of living expand in proportion, while their present giving instincts often remain in the undeveloped condition of their earlier days. Something showy and not too expensive in a shop is their only conception of the ideal gift. That is why even quite good shops have their counters and windows crowded with things that are worth about four shillings that look as if they might be worth seven and six and are priced at ten shillings and labelled seasonable gifts. I know, said Suzanne, that is why it is so risky to be vague when one is giving indications of one's wants. Now, if I say to him, I'm going to devos this winter so anything in the travelling line would be acceptable. He might give me a dressing bag with gold mountain fittings, but on the other hand he might give me Baydeck as Switzerland, or skiing without tears, or something of that sort. He would be more likely to say, she'll be going to lots of dances, a fan will be sure to be useful. Yes, and I've got tons of fans, so you see where the danger and anxiety lies. Now, if there is one thing more than another that I really urgently wanted is furs, I simply haven't any. I'm told that devos is full of Russians, and they are sure to wear the most lovely sables and things. To be among people who are smothered in furs when one hasn't any oneself makes one want to break most of the commandments. If it's furs that you're out for, said Eleanor, you will have to superintend the choice of them in person. You can't be sure that your cousin knows the difference between Silver Fox and Ordinary Squirrel. There are some heavenly Silver Fox dolls at Goliath and Mastadons, said Suzanne, with a sigh. If I could only inveigle Bertram into their building and take him for a stroll through the fur department. He'd live somewhere near there, doesn't he? said Eleanor. Do you know what his habits are? Does he take a walk at any particular time of day? He usually walks down to his club at about three o'clock if it's a fine day. That takes him right past Goliath and Mastadons. Let us two meet him accidentally at the street corner tomorrow, said Eleanor. We can walk a little away with him, and with luck we ought to be able to sidetrack him into the shop. You can say you want a hair net or something. When we're safely there, I can say, I wish you'd tell me what you want for your birthday. Then you'll have everything ready to hand, the rich cousin, the fur department, and the topic of birthday presents. It's a great idea, said Suzanne. You really are a brick. Come round tomorrow at twenty to three. Don't be late. We must carry out our ambush to the minute. At a few minutes to three the next afternoon, the fur trappers walked wearily towards the selected corner. In the near distance rose the colossal pile of messes Goliath and Mastadons' famed establishment. The afternoon was brilliantly fine. Exactly the sort of weather to tempt a gentleman of advancing years into the discreet exercise of a leisurely walk. I say, dear, I wish you'd do something for me this evening, said Eleanor to her companion. Just drop in after dinner on some pretext or other, and stay on to make a forth at bridge with Eleanor and the aunts. Otherwise I shall have to play, and Harry Scarressbrook is going to come in unexpectedly about nine fifteen, and I particularly want to be free to talk to him while the others are playing. Sorry, my dear, no can do, said Suzanne. Ordinary bridge at three pence a hundred, with such dreadfully slow players as your aunts, bored me to tears. I nearly go to sleep over it. But I most particularly want an opportunity to talk with Harry, urged Eleanor, an angry glint coming into her eyes. Sorry, anything to oblige, but not that, said Suzanne cheerfully. The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes, as long as she was not asked to make them. Eleanor said nothing further on the subject, but the corners of her mouth rearranged themselves. There's our man, exclaimed Suzanne suddenly. Hurry! Mr. Bertram Knight greeted his cousin and her friend with genuine heartiness, and readily accepted their invitation to explore the crowded mart that stood temptingly at their elbow. The plate-glass doors swung open, and the trio plunged bravely into the jostling throng of buyers and loiterers. Is it always as full as this? asked Bertram of Eleanor. More or less, and the autumn sails are on just now, she replied. Suzanne, in her anxiety to pilot her cousin to the desired haven of the third department, was usually a few paces ahead of the others, coming back to them now and then if they lingered for a moment at some attractive counter, with the nervous solicitude of a pair of rook encouraging its young ones on their first flying expedition. It's Suzanne's birthday on Wednesday next, confided Eleanor to Bertram Knight, at a moment when Suzanne had left them unusually far behind. My birthday comes the day before, so we are both on the lookout for something to give each other. Ah! said Bertram. Now perhaps you can advise me on that very point. I want to give Suzanne something, and I haven't the least idea of what she wants. She's rather a problem, said Eleanor. She seems to have everything one can think of, lucky girl. A fan is always useful. She'll be going to a lot of dances at DeVos this winter. Yes, I should think a fan would please her more than anything. After our birthdays are over, we inspect each other's muster of presence, and I always feel dreadfully humble. She gets such nice things, and I never have anything worth showing. You see, none of my relations or any of the people who give me presents are at all well off, so I can't expect them to do anything more than just remember the day with some little trifle. Two years ago, an uncle on my mother's side of the family who had come into a small legacy promised me a silver fox stole for my birthday. I can't tell you how excited I was about it, how I pictured myself showing it off to all my friends and enemies. Then just at that moment, his wife died, and of course poor man, he could not be expected to think of birthday presents at such a time. He's lived abroad ever since, and I never got my fur. Do you know to this day I can scarcely look at a silver fox pelt in a shop window, or round anyone's neck without feeling ready to burst into tears? I suppose if I hadn't had the prospect of getting one, I shouldn't feel that way. Look, there is the fan counter on your left. You can easily slip away in the crowd. Get her as nice a one as you can see. She's such a dear, dear girl. Hello, I thought I'd lost you, said Suzanne, making her way through an obstructive knot of shoppers. Where is Bertram? I got separated from him long ago. I thought he was on ahead with you, said Eleanor. We shall never find him in this crush, which turned out to be a true prediction. All had trouble and forethought thrown away, said Suzanne sulkily, when they had pushed their way fruitlessly through half a dozen departments. I can't think why he didn't just grab him by the arm, said Eleanor. I would have if I'd known him longer, but I'd only just been introduced. It's nearly four now, we'd better have tea. Some days later, Suzanne rang Eleanor up on the telephone. Thank you very much for the photograph frame. It was just what I wanted. Very good of you. I say, do you know what that night person has given me? Just what you said he would, a wretched fan. What? Oh, yes, quite a good enough fan in its way, but still. You must come and see what he's given me, came in Eleanor's voice over the phone. You? Why should he give you anything? Your cousin appears to be one of those rare people of wealth who takes pleasure in giving good presents, came the reply. I wondered why he was so anxious to know where she lived, snapped Suzanne to herself as she rang off. A cloud has arisen between the friendships of the two young women, as far as Eleanor is concerned. The cloud has a silver fox lining. End of fur, recording by Lucy Perry in Bath on April 16th 2009. The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat, from Beasts and Superbeasts by Sarky. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Andrew Coleman. The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat, by Sarky. Jacantha Besbury was in the mood to be serenely and graciously happy. Her world was a pleasant place, and it was wearing one of its pleasantest aspects. Gregory had managed to get home for a hurried lunch and a smoke afterwards in the little snugory. The lunch had been a good one, and there was just time to do justice to the coffee and cigarettes. Both were excellent in their way, and Gregory was, in his way, an excellent husband. Jacantha rather suspected herself of making him a very charming wife, and more than suspected herself of having a first-rate dressmaker. I don't suppose a more thoroughly contented personality is to be found in all Chelsea. Observe, Jacantha, in allusion to herself. Except perhaps at ab. She continued, glancing towards the large, tabby-marked cat, that lay in considerable ease in a corner of the devan. He lies there, purring and dreaming, shifting his limbs now and then in an ecstasy of cushioned comfort. He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let's sleep. And then, as evening draws on, he goes out into the garden with a red glint in his eyes and slays a drowsy sparrow. As every pair of sparrows hatches out ten or more young ones in the year, while their food supply remains stationary, it is just as well that the at-abs of the community should have that idea of how to pass an amusing afternoon, said Gregory. Having delivered himself of this sage-comment, he lit another cigarette, bade Jacantha a playfully affectionate goodbye, and depart it into the outer world. Remember, dinner's a wee bit earlier tonight as we're going to the hay market, she called after him. Left to herself, Jacantha continued the process of looking at her life with placid, introspective eyes. If she had not everything she wanted in this world, at least she was very well pleased with what she had got. She was very well pleased, for instance, with a snuggery, which contrived somehow to be cosy and dainty and expensive all at once. The porcelain was rare and beautiful. The Chinese enamels took on wonderful tints in the firelight. The rugs and hangings led the eye through sumptuous harmonies of colouring. It was a room in which one might have suitably entertained an ambassador or an archbishop. But it was also a room in which one could cut out pictures for a scrapbook, without feeling that one was scandalising the deities of the place with one's litter. And as with the snuggery, so with the rest of the house, and as with the house, so with the other departments of Jacantha's life, she really had good reason for being one of the most contented women in Chelsea. From being in a mood of simmering satisfaction with her lot, she passed to the phase of being generously commiserating for those thousands around her whose lives and circumstances were dull, cheap, pleasureless, and empty. Work-girls, shop assistants, and so forth, the class that have neither the happy-go-lucky freedom of the poor, nor the leisure freedom of the rich, came specially within the range of her sympathy. It was sad to think that there were young people who, after a long day's work, had to sit alone in chill, dreary bedrooms, because they could not afford the price of a cup of coffee and a sandwich in a restaurant, still less a shilling for a theatre gallery. Jacantha's mind was still dwelling on this theme, when she started forth on an afternoon campaign of desultory shopping. It would be rather a comforting thing, she told herself, if she could do something, on the spur of the moment, to bring a gleam of pleasure and interest into the life of even one or two wistful-hearted, empty-pocketed workers. It would add a good deal to her sense of enjoyment at the theatre that night. She would get two upper-circle tickets for a popular play, make her way into some cheap tea-shop, and present the tickets to the first couple of interesting work-girls, with whom she could casually drop into conversation. She could explain matters by saying that she was unable to use the tickets herself, and did not want them to be wasted, and, on the other hand, did not want the trouble of sending them back. On further reflection, she decided that it might be better to get only one ticket, and give it to some lonely-looking girl, sitting, eating her frugal meal by herself. The girl might scrape a quintance with her next-seat neighbour at the theatre, and lay the foundations of a lasting friendship. With the fairy godmother impulse strong upon her, Jacantha marched into a ticket agency, and selected with immense care an upper-circle seat for the Yellow Peacock, a play that was attracting a considerable amount of discussion and criticism. Then she went forth in search of a tea-shop, and philanthropic adventure, at about the same time that Atab sauntered into the garden, with a mind attuned to sparrow stalking. In a corner of an ABC-shop, she found an unoccupied table, whereas she promptly installed herself, impelled by the fact that at the next table was sitting a young girl, while the plain of feature was tired, listless eyes, and a general air of uncomplaining forlornness. Her dress was of poor material, but aimed at being in the fashion. Her hair was pretty, and her complexion bad. She was finishing a modest meal of tea and scone, and she was not very different in her way from thousands of other girls who were finishing, or beginning, or continuing their teas in London tea-shops, at that exact moment. The odds were enormously in favour of the supposition that she had never seen the Yellow Peacock. Obviously she supplied excellent material for Jacantha's first experiment in haphazard benefaction. Jacantha ordered some tea and a muffin, and then turned a friendly scrutiny on her neighbour, with a view to catching her eye. At that precise moment, the girls' face lit up with sudden pleasure. Her eyes sparkled, a flush came into her cheeks, and she looked almost pretty. A young man, whom she greeted with an affectionate, �Hello, Bertie!� came up to her table, and took his seat in her chair facing her. Jacantha looked hard at the newcomer. He was an appearance a few years younger than herself. Very much better looking than Gregory. Rather better looking, in fact, than any of the young men of her set. She guessed him to be a well-managed young clerk in some wholesale warehouse, existing yet amusing himself as best he might on a tiny salary, and commanding a holiday of about two weeks in the year. He was aware, of course, of his good looks, but with the shy self-consciousness of the Anglo-Saxon, not the blatant complacency of the Latin or Semite. He was obviously on terms of friendly intimacy with the girl he was talking to. Probably they were drifting towards a formal engagement. Jacantha pictured the boy's home in a rather narrow circle, with a tarsome mother who always wanted to know how and where he spent his evenings. He would exchange that humdrum thralldom in due course for a home of his own, dominated by a chronic scarcity of pounds, shillings, and pence, and a dearth of most of the things that made life attractive or comfortable. Jacantha felt extremely sorry for him. She wondered if he had seen the yellow peacock. The odds were enormously in favour of the supposition that he had not. The girl had finished her tea, and would shortly be going back to her work. When the boy was alone it would be quite easy for Jacantha to say, My husband has made other arrangements for me this evening. Would you care to make use of this ticket, which would otherwise be wasted? Then she could come there again one afternoon for tea, and, if she saw him, ask him how he liked the play. If he was a nice boy, and improved on acquaintance, he could be given more theatre tickets, and perhaps ask to come one Sunday to tea at Chelsea. Jacantha made up her mind that he would improve on acquaintance, and that Gregory would like him, and that the fairy godmother business would prove far more entertaining than she had originally anticipated. The boy was distinctly presentable. He knew how to brush his hair, which was possibly an imitative faculty. He knew what colour of ties suited him, which might be intuition. He was exactly the type that Jacantha admired, which, of course, was accident. All together she was rather pleased when the girl looked at the clock, and bade a friendly but hurried farewell to her companion. But he nodded, good-bye, gulped down a mouthful of tea, and then produced from his overcoat pocket a paper-covered book bearing the title Sepoy and Saheb, a tale of the great mutiny. The laws of tea-shop etiquette forbid that you should offer theatre tickets to a stranger without having first caught the stranger's eye. It is even better if you can ask to have a sugar basin past you, having previously concealed the fact that you have a large and well-filled sugar basin on your own table. This is not difficult to manage, as the printed menu is generally nearly as large as the table, and can be made to stand on end. Jacantha set to work hopefully. She had a long and rather high-pitched discussion with the waitress concerning alleged defects in an altogether blameless muffin. She made loud and plaintive inquiries about the tube service to some impossibly remote suburb. She talked with brilliant insincerity to the tea-shop kitten, and, as a last resort, she upset a milk jug and swore at it daintily. Altogether she attracted a good deal of attention, but never for a moment did she attract the attention of the boy with the beautifully brushed hair, who was some thousands of miles away in the baking plains of Hindustan, amid deserted bungalows, seething bazaars, and riotous barrack-squares, listening to the throbbing of tom-toms and the distant rattle of musketry. Jacantha went back to her house in Chelsea, which struck her for the first time as looking dull and over-furnished. She had resentful conviction that Gregory would be uninteresting at dinner, and that the play would be stupid after dinner. On the whole her frame of mind showed a marked divergence from the purring complacency of Attab, who was again curled up in his corner of the devan, with a great peace radiating from every curve of his body. But then he had killed his sparrow, end of the philanthropist and the happy cat. On Approval by Sarky Of all the genuine Bohemians who strayed from time to time into the would-be Bohemian circle of the restaurant Nuremberg, Owl Street Soho, none was more interesting and more elusive than Gerhard Knopfschrank. He had no friends, and though he treated all the restaurant frequenters as acquaintances, he never seemed to wish to carry the acquaintanceship beyond the door that led into Owl Street and the outer world. He dealt with them all rather as a market woman might deal with chance passes by, exhibiting her wares and chattering about the weather and the slackness of business, occasionally about rheumatism, but never showing a desire to penetrate into their daily lives or to dissect their ambitions. He was understood to belong to a family of peasant farmers, somewhere in Pomerania. Some two years ago, according to all that was known of him, he had abandoned the labours and responsibilities of swine-tending and goose-rearing to try his fortune as an artist in London. Why London, and not Paris or Munich, he had been asked by the Curious. Well, there was a ship that left Stolp Mundi for London twice a month that carried few passengers, but carried them cheaply. The railway fares to Munich or Paris were not cheap. Thus it was that he came to select London as the scene of his great adventure. The question that had long and seriously agitated the frequenters of the Nuremberg was whether this goose-boy migrant was really a soul-driven genius, spreading his wings to the light, or merely an enterprising young man who fancied he could paint, and was pardonably anxious to escape from the monotony of rye-bread diet and the sandy, swine-bestrune planes of Pomerania. There was reasonable ground for doubt and caution. The artistic groups that foregathered at the little restaurant contained so many young women with short hair, and so many young men with long hair, who supposed themselves to be abnormally gifted in the domain of music, poetry, painting, or stage-craft, with little or nothing to support the supposition that a self-announced genius of any sort in their midst was inevitably suspect. On the other hand, there was the ever imminent danger of entertaining or snubbing an angel unawares. There had been the lamentable case of Sledanti, the dramatic poet who had been belittled and cold-shouldered in the Owl Street Hall of Judgment, and had afterwards been hailed as a master singer by the grand duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, the most educated of the Romanovs, according to Sylvia Strubble, who spoke rather as one who knew every individual member of the Russian imperial family. As a matter of fact she knew a newspaper correspondent, a young man who ate borsh with the air of having invented it. Sledanti's poems of death and passion were now being sold by the thousand in seven European languages, and were about to be translated into Syrian, a circumstance which made the discerning critics of the Nuremberg rather shy of maturing their future judgments too rapidly and too irrevocably. As regards not Frank's work, they did not lack opportunity for inspecting and appraising it. However resolutely he might hold himself aloof from the social life of his restaurant acquaintances. He was not minded to hide his artistic performances from their inquiring gaze. Every evening, or nearly every evening, at about seven o'clock, he would make his appearance, sit himself down at his accustomed table, throw a bulky black portfolio onto the chair opposite him, nod round indiscriminately at his fellow-guests, and commence the serious business of eating and drinking. When the coffee stage was reached he would light a cigarette, draw the portfolio over to him, and begin to rummage among its contents. With slow deliberation he would select a few of his more recent studies and sketches, and silently pass them round from table to table, paying his special attention to any new diners who might be present. On the back of each sketch was marked in plain figures the announcement price ten shillings. If his work was not obviously stamped with the hallmark of genius, at any rate it was remarkable for its choice of an unusual and unvarying theme. His pictures always represented some well-known street, or public place, in London fallen into decay and denuded of its human population, in the place of which there roamed a wild fauna, which, from its wealth of exotic species, must have originally escaped from the zoological gardens and travelling-beaster-shows. Giraffes drinking at the fountain-pool's Trafalgar Square was one of the most notable and characteristic of his studies, while even more sensational was the gruesome picture of Vulture's attacking, dying camel in Upper Barkley Street. There were also photographs of the large canvas on which he had been engaged for some months, and which he was now endeavouring to sell to some enterprising dealer or adventurer's amateur. The subject was Hyena's asleep in Euston Station, a composition that left nothing to be desired in the way of suggesting unfathomed depths of desolation. Of course, it may be immensely clever. It may be something epoch-making in the realm of art, said Sylvia's struggle to her own particular circle of listeners. But, on the other hand, it may be merely mad. One mustn't pay too much attention to the commercial aspect of the case, of course, but still, if some dealer would make a bid for that Hyena picture, or even for some of the sketches, we should know better how to place the man and his work. We may all be cursing ourselves one of these days, said Mrs. Nugar Jones, for not having bought up his entire portfolio of sketches, at the same time, when there is so much real talent going about, one does not feel like planking down ten chillings for what looks like a bit of whimsical oddity. Now, that picture he showed us last week, Sandgrouse Roosting on the Albert Memorial, was very impressive, and of course I could see that there was good workmanship in it and breadth of treatment, but it didn't, in the least, convey the Albert Memorial to me, and so James Beanequest tells me that Sandgrouse don't roost, they sleep on the ground. Whatever talent or genius the Pomeranian artist might possess, it certainly failed to receive commercial sanction. The portfolio remained bulky with unsold sketches, and the Euston Siesta, as the wits of the Nuremberg, nicknamed the large canvas, was still in the market. The outward and visible signs of financial embarrassment began to be noticeable. The half-bottle of cheap claret at dinner-time gave way to a small glass of lager, and this in turn was displaced by water. The one and sixpony set dinner receded from an everyday event to a Sunday extravagance. On ordinary days the artist contented himself with a sevenpony omelette and some bread and cheese, and there were evenings when he did not put in an appearance at all. On the rare occasions when he spoke of his own affairs, it was observed that he began to talk more about Pomerania and less about the great world of art. It is a busy time there now with us, he said wistfully. The shfines are driven out into the fields after harvest, and must be looked after. I would 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? Someone asked tactfully. Ah, it cost money. There is the ship passage to Stolpmundi, and there is money that I owe at my lodgings. Even here I owe a few shillings. If I could sell some of my sketches. Perhaps—suggested Mrs. Nugar-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 shilling—nine pence each, he snapped, and seemed disappointed that Mrs. Nugar-Jones did not pursue the subject further. He had evidently expected her to offer seven informants. The weeks spared by, and Knopf's Shrank came more rarely to the restaurant in Owl Street, while his meals on those occasions became more and more meagre. And then came a triumphful 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 goose breast, a Pomeranian delicacy that was luckily procurable at a firm delicatessen merchants in Coventry Street, while a long-necked bottle of rind wine gave a finishing touch of festivity and good cheer to the crowded table. He has evidently sold his masterpiece, whispered Sylvia's trouble to Mrs. Nugar-Jones, who had come in late. Who's bought it? she whispered back. Don't know. He hasn't said anything yet, but it must be some American. Do you see? He's got a little American flag on the dessert-dish, and he's put pennies in the music-box three times, once to play the Star-Spangled Banner. 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's 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's bought it, said Mrs. Nugar-Jones. Hush! No, don't. Let's buy some of his sketches quick, before we're 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 Ms. Strubble acquired, the drawings of the camel dying in Upper Barkley Street, and of the giraffes quenching their thirst in Trafalgar Square, and at the same price Mrs. Nugar-Jones secured the study of roosting sand-grouse. A more ambitious picture—wolves and Wapiti fighting on the steps of the Athenean 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 Stolt Mundi as soon as ship sails, said the artist. And I do not return. Never. But your work? Your career as a painter? Ha! There is nothing in it. One starves. Till to-day 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—ha! the rich American—juckled the artist. God be thanked. He dashed his car right into our herd of swines, as they were being driven out into the fields. Many of our best swines 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 Stolpmunde, and I do not come back. Never. But your picture? The hyenas? No good. It is too big to carry to Stolpmunde. I burn it. In a time, he will be forgotten, but at present Knopfschrank is almost as sore a subject as Sledonte with some of the frequenters of the Nuremberg Restaurant, Owl Street, Soho. End of On Approval And the End of Beasts and Superbeasts by Sarki