 Story No. 1 of The Toys of Peace. Recording by Graham Redman. The Toys of Peace. Short Stories by Sarkie. The Toys of Peace. The quotation near the beginning of the story is an actual extract from a London paper of March 1914. Harvey, said Eleanor Boop, handing her brother a cutting from a London morning paper 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 plows and 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 Incomon. He was specially mentioned in dispatches, I believe, and their great grandfather smashed all his wig-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-core. 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 is 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 Empress of Albania, said Eric, immensely proud of his knowledge of the exotic title. It's got no windows, you see, so that passes by can't fire in that the royal family. It's a municipal dustbin, said Harvey hurriedly. You see, all the refuse and litter of the 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 Rakes, 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 wearyly. He seized 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 hot poles. This is a model beehive, and that is a ventilator for ventilating sewers. This seems to be another municipal dustbin. No, it is a model of a school of art and a public library. This little lead figure is Mrs. Heemans, a poetess, and this is Roland 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 had 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 councillor 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 XIV, 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 correspondence, 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 Dubary? 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 Dubary 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 30 or 40 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. It was time, he thought, to go back to the boy's room and see how they were getting on with their piece toys. As he stood outside the door, he could hear Eric's voice raised in command. Bertie chimed in now and again with a helpful suggestion. That is Louis XIV. Eric was saying, that one in knee-bridges that Uncle said invented Sunday schools. It isn't a bit like him, but it'll have to do. We'll give him a purple coat from my paint-box, by and by, said Bertie. Yes, and red heels. That is Madame de Mantinot, that one he called Mrs. Hemans. She begs Louis not to go on this expedition, but he turns a deaf ear. He takes martial sacks with him, and we must pretend that they have thousands of men with them. The watchword is Kyiviv, and the answer is Leta Semois. That was one of his favourite remarks, you know. They land at Manchester in the dead of night, and a Jacobite conspirator gives them the keys of the fortress. Peeping in through the doorway, Harvey observed that the municipal dustbin had been pierced with holes to accommodate the muzzles of imaginary canon, and now represented the principal fortified position in Manchester. John Stuart Mill had been dipped in red ink, and apparently stood for martial sacks. Louis orders his troops to surround the Young Women's Christian Association, and seize the lot of them. Once back at the Louvre, and the girls are mine, he exclaims. We must use Mrs. Hemans again for one of the girls. She says, never, and stabs martial sacks to the heart. He bleeds dreadfully, exclaimed Bertie, splashing red ink liberally over the facade of the Association building. The soldiers rush in and avenge his death with the utmost savagery. A hundred girls are killed. Here Bertie emptied the remainder of the red ink over the devoted building, and the surviving five hundred are dragged off to the French ships. I have lost a Marshal, says Louis, but I do not go back empty-handed. Harvey stole away from the room and sought out his sister. Eleanor, he said, the experiment, yes, has failed. We have begun too late. End of The Toys of Peace Recording by Graham Redman Story number two of The Toys of Peace 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 Graham Redman The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Sarkie Louise The tea will be quite cold. You're better ring for some more, said the Dowager Lady Beinfeld. Susan Lady Beinfeld was a vigorous old woman who had coquettied with imaginary ill health for the greater part of a lifetime. Clovis Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again. Her sister, Jane Thropelstance, who was some years her junior, was chiefly remarkable for being the most absent-minded woman in middle-sex. I've rarely been unusually clever this afternoon, she remarked gaily as she rang for the tea. I've called on all the people I meant to call on, and I've done all the shopping that I set out to do. I even remembered to try and match that silk for you at Harrod's. But I'd forgotten to bring the pattern with me, so it was no use. I really think that was the only important thing I forgot during the whole afternoon. Quite wonderful for me, isn't it? What have you done with Louise? asked her sister. Didn't you take her out with you? You said you were going to. Good gracious! explained Jane. What have I done with Louise? I must have left her somewhere. But where? That's just it. Where have I left her? I can't remember if the Careywoods were at home or if I just left cards. If they were at home, I may have left Louise there to play bridge. I'll go and telephone to Lord Careywood and find out. Is that you, Lord Careywood? she queried over the telephone. It's me, Jane Thropelstance. I want to know, have you seen Louise? Louise, came the answer. It's been my fate to see it three times. At first, I must admit, I wasn't impressed by it, but the music grows on one after a bit. Still, I don't think I want to see it again just at present. Were you going to offer me a seat in your box? Not the opera, Louise. My niece, Louise Thropelstance. I thought I might have left her at your house. You left cards on us this afternoon, I understand, but I don't think you left a niece. The footman would have been sure to have mentioned it, if you had. Is it going to be a fashion to leave nieces on people as well as cards? I hope not. Some of these houses in Barclays Square have practically no accommodation for that sort of thing. She's not at the Careywoods, announced Jane, returning to her tea. Now I come to think of it. Perhaps I left her at the silk counter at Selfridges. I may have told her to wait there a moment while I went to look at the silks in a better light, and I may easily have forgotten about her when I found I hadn't your pattern with me. In that case, she's still sitting there. She wouldn't move unless she was told to. Louise has no initiative. You said you tried to match the silk at Harrods, interjected the dowager. Did I? Perhaps it was Harrods. I really don't remember. It was one of those places where everyone is so kind and sympathetic and devoted that one almost hates to take even a reel of cotton away from such pleasant surroundings. I think you might have taken Louise away. I don't like the idea of her being there among a lot of strangers. Supposing some unprincipled person was to get into conversation with her. Impossible. Louise has no conversation. I've never discovered a single topic on which she had anything to say beyond, do you think so? I daresay you're right. I really thought her reticence about the fall of the Rebo Ministry was ridiculous, considering how much her dear mother used to visit Paris. This bread-and-butter is cut far too thin. It crumbles away long before you can get it to your mouth. One feels so absurd snapping at one's food in mid-air like a trout leaping at Mayfly. I am rather surprised, said the dowager, that you can sit there making a hearty tea when you've just lost a favourite niece. You talk as if I'd lost her in a churchyard sense, instead of having temporarily mislaid her. I'm sure to remember presently where I left her. You didn't visit any place of devotion, did you? If you've left her moaning about Westminster Abbey or St Peter's Eaton Square without being able to give any satisfactory reason why she's there, she'll be seized under the Cat and Mouse Act and sent to Reginald McKenna. That would be extremely awkward, said Jane, meeting an irresolute piece of bread and butter halfway. We hardly know the McKenna's, and it would be very tiresome having to telephone to some unsympathetic private secretary, describing Louise to him and asking to have her sent back in time for dinner. Fortunately, I didn't go to any place of devotion, though I did get mixed up with the Salvation Army procession. It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with them. They're so absolutely different to what they used to be when I first remember them in the 80s. They used to go about then unkempt and dishevelled in a sort of smiling rage with the world, and now they're spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions. Laura Kettleway was going on about them in the lift of the Dover Street Tube the other day, saying what a lot of good work they did, and what a loss it would have been if they'd never existed. If they had never existed, I said, Granville Barker would have been certain to have invented something that looked exactly like them. If you say things like that quite loud in a tube lift, they always sound like epigrams. I think you ought to do something about Louise, said the Dowager. I'm trying to think whether she was with me when I called on Ada Spellvexit. I rather enjoyed myself there. Ada was trying, as usual, to ram that odious Koriotovsky woman down my throat, knowing perfectly well that I detest her, and in an unguarded moment she said, she's leaving her present house and going to lower Seymour Street. I daresay she will if she stays there long enough, I said. Ada didn't see it for about three minutes, and then she was positively uncivil. No, I am certain I didn't leave Louise there. If you could manage to remember where you did leave her, it would be more to the point than these negative assurances, said Lady Beinfurt. So far all that we know is that she is not at the Carey Woods, or Ada Spellvexit, or Westminster Abbey. That narrows the search down a bit, said Jane, hopefully. I rather fancy she must have been with me when I went to Mornay's. I know I went to Mornay's because I remember meeting that delightful Malcolm, what's his name there? You know whom I mean. That's the great advantage of people having unusual first names. You needn't try and remember what their other name is. Of course I know one or two other Malcons, but none that could possibly be described as delightful. He gave me two tickets for the happy Sunday evenings in Sloan Square. I've probably left them at Mornay's, but still it was awfully kind of him to give them to me. Do you think you left Louise there? I might telephone and ask. Oh, Robert, before you clear the tea-things away, I wish you'd ring up Mornay's in Regent Street, and ask if I left two theatre tickets and one niece in their shop this afternoon. A niece, ma'am? asked the footman. Yes, Miss Louise didn't come home with me, and I'm not sure where I left her. Miss Louise has been upstairs all the afternoon, ma'am, reading to the second kitchenmaid who has the neuralgia. I took up tea to Miss Louise at a quarter to five o'clock, ma'am. Of course, how silly of me! I remember now. I asked her to read the fairy queen to poor Emma to try to send her to sleep. I always get someone to read the fairy queen to me when I have neuralgia, and it usually sends me to sleep. Louise doesn't seem to have been successful, but one can't say she hasn't tried. I expect after the first hour or so the kitchenmaid would rather have been left alone with her neuralgia, but of course Louise wouldn't leave off till someone told her to. Anyhow, you can ring up Mornay's, Robert, and ask whether I left two theatre tickets there. Except for your silk, Susan, those seem to be the only things I've forgotten this afternoon. Quite wonderful for me. End of Louise. Recording by Graham Redman. Story number three of The Toys of Peace. 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 Graham Redman. The Toys of Peace. Short stories by Sarkie. T. James Cushet Prinkley was a young man who had always had a settled conviction that one of these days he would marry. Up to the age of thirty-four, he had done nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately, without singling out one for a special matrimonial consideration, just as one might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded womenfolk of his home circle. His mother, his sisters, and aunt in residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends, regarded his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-sold mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseaching dog-eyes. James Cush at Prinkley was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously-expressed wish of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable girl. And when his uncle Jules departed this life and bequeathed him a comfortable little legacy, it really seemed the correct thing to do to set about discovering someone to share it with him. The process of discovery was carried on more by the force of suggestion and the weight of public opinion than by any initiative of his own. A clear working majority of his female relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had pitched on Joan's abastable as the most suitable young woman in his range of acquaintance to whom he might propose marriage. And James became gradually accustomed to the idea that he and Joan would go together through the prescribed stages of congratulations, present receiving, Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and eventual domesticity. It was necessary, however, to ask the lady what she thought about the matter. The family had so far conducted and directed the flirtation with ability and discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an individual effort. Cush at Prinkley walked across the park towards the sabastable residence in a frame of mind that was moderately complacent. As the thing was going to be done he was glad to feel that he was going to get it settled and off his mind that afternoon. Proposing marriage, even to a nice girl like Joan, was a rather irksome business, but one could not have a honeymoon in Menorca and a subsequent life of married happiness without such preliminary. He wondered what Menorca was really like as a place to stop in. In his mind's eye it was an island in perpetual half-morning with black or white Menorca hens running all over it. Probably it would not be a bit like that when one came to examine it. People who had been in Russia had told him that they did not remember having seen any Muscovy ducks there, so it was possible that there would be no Menorca fowls on the island. His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a clock striking the half-hour. Half past four, a frown of dissatisfaction settled on his face. He would arrive at the sabastable mansion just at the hour of afternoon tea. Joan would be seated at a low table, spread with an array of silver kettles and cream jugs and delicate porcelain tea cups, behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a series of little friendly questions about weak or strong tea—how much, if any, sugar, milk, cream, and so forth. Is it one lump? I forgot. You do take milk, don't you? Would you like some more hot water, if it's too strong? Cushet Prinkley had read of such things in scores of novels, and hundreds of actual experiences had told him that they were true to life. Thousands of women at this solemn afternoon hour were sitting behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions. Cushet Prinkley detested the whole system of afternoon tea. According to his theory of life, a woman should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm, or looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be looked on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page should silently bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to be accepted silently as a matter of course, without drawn out chatter about cream and sugar and hot water. If one's soul was really enslaved at one's mistresses' feet, how could one talk coherently about weakened tea? Cushet Prinkley had never expounded his views on the subject to his mother. All her life she had been accustomed to tinkle pleasantly at tea-time behind dainty porcelain and silver, and if he had spoken to her about divans and Nubian pages, she would have urged him to take a week's holiday of the seaside. Now, as he passed through a tangle of small streets that led indirectly to the elegant Mayfair terrace for which he was bound, a horror at the idea of confronting Joan Sebastable at her tea-table seized on him. A momentary deliverance presented itself. On one floor of a narrow little house at the noisier end of Eskimo Street lived Rhoda Ellum, a sort of remote cousin, who made a living by creating hats out of costly materials. The hats really looked as if they had come from Paris. The checks she got for them, unfortunately, never looked as if they were going to Paris. However, Rhoda appeared to find life amusing and to have a fairly good time in spite of her straightened circumstances. Cushet Prinkley decided to climb up to her floor and defy by half an hour or so the important business which lay before him. By spinning out his visit he could contrive to reach the Sebastable mansion after the last vestiges of Dainty Porcelain had been cleared away. Rhoda welcomed him into a room that seemed to do duty as workshop, sitting room, and kitchen combined, and to be wonderfully clean and comfortable at the same time. I'm having a picnic meal, she announced. There's caviar in that jar at your elbow. Begin on that brown bread and butter while I cut some more. Find yourself a cup. The teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. She made no other allusion to food, but talked amusingly and made her visitor talk amusingly too. At the same time she cut the bread and butter with a masterly skill and produced red pepper and sliced lemon, where so many women would merely have produced reasons and regrets for not having any. Cushet Prinkley found that he was enjoying an excellent tea without having to answer as many questions about it as a minister for agriculture might be called on to reply to during an outbreak of cattle-playing. At now tell me why you have come to see me," said Rhoda suddenly. You arouse not merely my curiosity, but my business instincts. I hope you've come about hats. I heard that you had come into a legacy the other day, and, of course, it struck me that it would be a beautiful and desirable thing for you to celebrate the event by buying brilliantly expensive hats for all your sisters. They may not have said anything about it, but I feel sure the same idea has occurred to them. Of course, with good wood on us, I am rather rushed just now, but in my business we're accustomed to that. We live in a series of rushes, like the infant Moses. I didn't come about hats, said her visitor. In fact, I don't think I really came about anything. I was passing, and I just thought I'd look in and see you. Since I've been sitting talking to you, however, a rather important idea has occurred to me. If you'll forget good wood for a moment and listen to me, I'll tell you what it is. Some forty minutes later James Cushart Prinkley returned to the bosom of his family, bearing an important piece of news. I'm engaged to be married, he announced. A rapturous outbreak of congratulation and self-applause broke out. Ah, we knew! We saw it coming. We foretold it weeks ago. I'll bet you didn't, said Cushart Prinkley. If anyone had told me at lunchtime today that I was going to ask Rhoda Ellum to marry me, and that she was going to accept me, I would have laughed at the idea. The romantic suddenness of the affair in some measure compensated James's womenfolk for the ruthless negation of all their patient effort and skill diplomacy. It was rather trying to have to deflect their enthusiasm at a moment's notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellum, but after all it was James's wife who was in question, and his tastes had some claim to be considered. On a September afternoon of the same year, after the honeymoon in Menorca had ended, Cushart Prinkley came into the drawing-room of his new house in Grantchester Square. Rhoda was seated at a low table behind a service of dainty porcelain and gleaming silver. There was a pleasant tinkling note in her voice as she handed him a cup. You like it weaker than that, don't you? Shall I put some more hot water to it? No. End of T. The Disappearance of Crispina Umberley In a first-class carriage of a train-speeding Balkan wood across the flat green Hungarian plain, two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse. They had first foregathered in the cold-grey dawn at the frontier line, where the presiding eagle takes on an extra head, and Teuton lands pass from Hohenzollern to Habsburg-Keeping, and where a probing official beak requires to delve in polite, and perhaps perfunctory, but always tiresome manner into the baggage of sleep-hungry passengers. After a day's break of their journey at Vienna, the travellers had again foregathered at the train-side, and paid one another the compliment of settling instinctively into the same carriage. The elder of the two had the appearance and manner of a diplomat, in point of fact he was the well-connected foster-brother of a wine-business. The other was certainly a journalist. Neither man was talkative, and each was grateful to the other for not being talkative. That is why, from time to time, they talked. One topic of conversation naturally thrust itself forward in front of all others. In Vienna, the previous day, they had learned of the mysterious vanishing of a world-famous picture from the walls of the Louvre. A dramatic disappearance of that sort is sure to produce a crop of imitations, said the journalist. It has had a lot of anticipations for the matter of that, said the wine-brother. Oh, of course, there have been thefts from the Louvre before. I was thinking of the spiriting away of human beings rather than pictures. In particular, I was thinking of the case of my aunt, Crispina Umberley. I remember hearing something of the affair, said the journalist, but I was away from England at the time. I never quite knew what was supposed to have happened. You may hear of what really happened, if you will respect it as a confidence, said the wine-merchant. In the first place, I may say that the disappearance of Mrs. Umberley was not regarded by the family entirely as a bereavement. My uncle, Edward Umberley, was not by any means a weak-need individual. In fact, in the world of politics, he had to be reckoned with more or less as a strong man, but he was unmistakably dominated by Crispina. Indeed, I never met any human being who was not frozen into subjection when brought into prolonged contact with her. Some people are born to command. Crispina Mrs. Umberley was born to legislate, codify, administrate, censor, license, ban, execute, and sit in judgment generally. If she was not born with that destiny, she adopted it at an early age. From the kitchen regions upwards, everyone in the household came under her despotic sway, and stayed there with the submissiveness of mollusks involved in the glacial epoch. As a nephew on a footing of only occasional visits, she affected me merely as an epidemic, disagreeable while it lasted, but without any permanent effect. But her own sons and daughters stood in mortal awe of her. Their studies, friendships, diet, amusements, religious observances, and way of doing their hair were all regulated and ordained according to the august lady's will and pleasure. This will help you to understand the sensation of stupefaction which was caused in the family when she unobtrusively and inexplicably vanished. It was as though St Paul's Cathedral or the Piccadilly Hotel had disappeared in the night, leaving nothing but an open space to mark where it had stood. As far as was known, nothing was troubling her. In fact, there was much before her to make life particularly well worth living. The youngest boy had come back from school with an unsatisfactory report, and she was to have sat in judgment on him the very afternoon of the day she disappeared. If it had been he who had vanished in a hurry, one could have supplied the motive. Then she was in the middle of a newspaper correspondence with the rural dean, in which she had already proved him guilty of heresy, inconsistency, and unworthy quibbling, and no ordinary consideration would have induced her to discontinue the controversy. Of course the matter was put in the hands of the police, but as far as possible it was kept out of the papers, and the generally accepted explanation of her withdrawal from her social circle was that she had gone into a nursing home. And what was the immediate effect on the home circle? asked the journalist. All the girls bought themselves bicycles. The feminine cycling craze was still in existence, and Crispina had rigidly vetoed any participation in it among the members of her household. The youngest boy let himself go to such an extent during his next term, that it had to be his last as far as that particular establishment was concerned. The elder boys propounded a theory that their mother might be wandering somewhere abroad, and searched for her assiduously, chiefly it must be admitted, in a class of Montmartre resort, where it was extremely improbable that she would be found. And all this while couldn't your uncle get hold of the least clue? As a matter of fact he had received some information, though of course I did not know of it at the time. He got a message one day telling him that his wife had been kidnapped and smuggled out of the country. She was said to be hidden away in one of the islands off the coast of Norway, I think it was, in comfortable surroundings, and well cared for. And with the information came a demand for money. A lump sum was to be handed over to her kidnappers, and a further sum of £2,000 was to be paid yearly. Failing this she would be immediately restored to her family. The journalist was silent for a moment, and then began to laugh quietly. It was certainly an inverted form of holding to ransom, he said. If you had known my aunt, said the wine merchant, you would have wondered that they didn't put the figure higher. I realised the temptation. Did your uncle succumb to it? Well, you see, he had to think of others as well as himself. For the family to have gone back into the crispina thralldom after having tasted the delights of liberty would have been a tragedy, and there were even wider considerations to be taken into account. Since his bereavement he had unconsciously taken up a far bolder and more initiatory line in public affairs, and his popularity and influence had increased correspondingly. From being merely a strong man in the political world he began to be spoken of as the strong man. All this he knew would be jeopardised if he once more dropped into the social position of the husband of Mrs. Umberley. He was a rich man, and the two thousand pounds a year, though not exactly a fleabight, did not seem an extravagant price to pay for the boarding out of crispina. Of course he had severe qualms of conscience about the arrangement. Later on when he took me into his confidence he told me that in paying the ransom, or hush money as I should have called it, he was partly influenced by the fear that if he refused it the kidnappers might have vented their rage and disappointment on their captive. It was better, he said, to think of her being well cared for as a highly valued paying guest in one of the Lofeden Islands than to have her struggling miserably home in a maimed and mutilated condition. Anyway he paid the yearly instalment as punctually as one pays a fire insurance, and with equal promptitude there would come an acknowledgement of the money and a brief statement to the effect that crispina was in good health and fairly cheerful spirits. One report even mentioned that she was busying herself with a scheme for proposed reforms in church management to be pressed on the local pastorate. Another spoke of a rheumatic attack and a journey to a cure on the mainland, and on that occasion an additional £80 was demanded and conceded. Of course it was to the interest of the kidnappers to keep their charge in good health, but the secrecy with which they managed to shroud their arrangements argued a really wonderful organisation. If my uncle was paying a rather high price, at least he could console himself with the reflection that he was paying specialists' fees. Meanwhile had the police given up all attempts to track the missing lady? asked the journalist. Not entirely. They came to my uncle from time to time to report on clues which they thought might yield some elucidation as to her fate or whereabouts, but I think they had had their suspicions that he was possessed of more information than he had put at their disposal. And then, after a disappearance of more than eight years, Crispina returned with dramatic suddenness to the home she had left so mysteriously. She had given her captors the slip. She had never been captured. Her wandering away had been caused by a sudden and complete loss of memory. She usually dressed rather in the style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very surprising that she should have imagined that she was one, and still less that people should accept her statement and help her to get work. She had wandered as far afield as Birmingham, and found fairly steady employment there, her energy and enthusiasm in putting people's rooms in order, counterbalancing her obstinate and domineering characteristics. It was the shock of being patronizingly addressed as My Good Woman by a curate who was disputing with her where the stove should be placed in a parish concert hall that led to the sudden restoration of her memory. I think you forget who you are speaking to, she observed crushingly, which was rather unduly severe, considering she had only just remembered it herself. But, exclaimed the journalist, the Lofedon Island people, who had they got hold of? A purely mythical prisoner. It was an attempt in the first place by someone who knew something of the domestic situation, probably a discharged valet, to bluff a lump sum out of Edward Umberley before the missing woman turned up. The subsequent yearly installments were an unlooked for increment to the original hall. Crispina found that the eight years into Regnum had materially weakened her ascendancy over her now grown-up offspring. Her husband, however, never accomplished anything great in the political world after her return. The strain of trying to account satisfactorily for an unspecified expenditure of sixteen thousand pounds spread over eight years sufficiently occupied his mental energies. Here is Belgrade and another custom house. End of The Disappearance of Crispina Umberley. Recording by Graham Redmond. Story number five of The Toys of Peace. 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 Graham Redmond. The Toys of Peace. Short Stories by Sarky. The Wolves of Cernagrads. Are there any old legends attached to the castle? asked Conrad of his sister. Conrad was a prosperous Hamburg merchant, but he was the one poetically dispositioned member of an eminently practical family. The Baroness Gribble shrugged her plump shoulders. There are always legends hanging about these old places. They are not difficult to invent, and they cost nothing. In this case, there is a story that when one dies in the castle, all the dogs in the village and the wild beasts in the forest howl the night long. It would not be pleasant to listen to, would it? It would be weird and romantic, said the Hamburg merchant. Anyhow, it isn't true, said the Baroness complacently. Since we bought the place, we have had proof that nothing of the sort happens. When the old mother-in-law died last springtime, we all listened, but there was no howling. It is just a story that lends dignity to the place without costing anything. The story is not as you have told it, said Emily, the grey old governess. Everyone turned and looked at her in astonishment. She was wont to sit silent and prim and faded in her place at table, never speaking unless someone spoke to her, and there were few who troubled themselves to make conversation with her. Today a sudden volubility had descended on her. She continued to talk rapidly and nervously, looking straight in front of her, and seeming to address no one in particular. It is not when any one dies in the castle that the howling is heard. It was when one of the Cernagrats family died here that the wolves came from far and near and howled at the edge of the forest just before the death-hour. There were only a few couple of wolves that had their lairs in this part of the forest, but at such a time the keepers say there would be scores of them, gliding about in the shadows and howling in chorus, and the dogs of the castle and the village and all the farms round would bay and howl in fear and anger at the wolf chorus, and as the soul of the dying one left its body a tree would crash down in the park. That is what happened when a Cernagrats died in his family castle. But for a stranger dying here, of course no wolf would howl and no tree would fall. Oh, no! There was a note of defiance almost of contempt in her voice, as she said the last words. The well-fed, much-too-well-dressed baroness stared angrily at the dowdy old woman who had come forth from her usual and seemly position of effacement to speak so disrespectfully. You seem to know quite a lot about the Fonsernagrats' legends, Frowline Schmidt, she said sharply. I did not know that family histories were among the subjects you were supposed to be proficient in. The answer to her taunt was even more unexpected and astonishing than the conversational outbreak which had provoked it. I am a Fonsernagrats myself, said the old woman. That is why I know the family history. You, a Fonsernagrats, you, came in an incredulous chorus. When we became very poor, she explained, and I had to go out and give teaching lessons. I took another name. I thought it would be more in keeping. But my grandfather spent much of his time as a boy in this castle, and my father used to tell me many stories about it, and of course I knew all the family legends and stories. When one has nothing left to one but memories, one guards and dusts them with this special care. I little thought when I took service with you that I should one day come with you to the old home of my family. I could wish it had been anywhere else. There was silence when she finished speaking, and then the Baroness turned the conversation to a less embarrassing topic than family histories. But afterwards, when the old governess had slipped away quietly to her duties, there arose a clamour of derision and disbelief. It was an impertinence, snapped out the Baron, his protruding eyes taking on a scandalised expression. Fancy the woman talking like that at our table. She almost told us we were nobodies, and I don't believe a word of it. She is just Schmidt and nothing more. She has been talking to some of the peasants about the old Cernagrats family and raked up their history and their stories. She wants to make herself out of some consequence, said the Baroness. She knows she will soon be past work, and she wants to appeal to our sympathies. Her grandfather indeed. The Baroness had the usual number of grandfathers, but she never, never boasted about them. I daresay her grandfather was a pantry boy or something of the sort in the castle. Sniggered the Baron, that part of the story may be true. The merchant from Hamburg said nothing. He had seen tears in the old woman's eyes when she spoke of guarding her memories, or being of an imaginative disposition he thought he had. I shall give her notice to go as soon as the New Year festivities are over, said the Baroness. Till then I shall be too busy to manage without her. But she had to manage without her all the same. For in the cold biting weather after Christmas the old governess fell ill and kept to her room. It is most provoking, said the Baroness, as her guests sat round the fire on one of the last evenings of the dying year. All the time that she has been with us I cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill, too ill to go about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the house full and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and breaks down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so withered and shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the same. Most annoying, agreed the banker's wife sympathetically. It is the intense cold I expect. It breaks the old people up. It has been unusually cold this year. The frost is the sharpest that has been known in December for many years, said the Baron. And, of course, she is quite old, said the Baroness. I wish I had given her notice some weeks ago, then she would have left before this happened to her. Why, Vappy, what is the matter with you? The small woolly lap-dog had leapt suddenly down from its cushion and crept shivering under the sofa. At the same moment an outburst of angry barking came from the dogs in the castle yard, and other dogs could be heard yapping and barking in the distance. What is disturbing the animals? asked the Baron. And then the humans, listening intently, heard the sound that had roused the dogs to their demonstrations of fear and rage. Heard a long drawn, whining howl, rising and falling, seeming at one moment leagues away, at others sweeping across the snow until it appeared to come from the foot of the castle walls. All the starved cold misery of a frozen world, all the relentless hunger fury of the wild, blended with other forlorn and haunting melodies to which one could give no name, seemed concentrated in that wailing cry. Wolves, cried the Baron. Their music broke forth in one raging burst, seeming to come from everywhere. Hundreds of wolves, said the Hamburg merchant, who was a man of strong imagination. Moved by some impulse which she could not have explained, the Baroness left her guests and made her way to the narrow, cheerless room where the old governess lay, watching the hours of the dying year slip by. In spite of the biting cold of the winter night, the window stood open. With a scandalised exclamation on her lips, the Baroness rushed forward to close it. Leave it open, said the old woman, in a voice that for all its weakness carried an air of command such as the Baroness had never heard before from her lips. But you will die of cold! she expostulated. I am dying in any case, said the voice, and I want to hear their music. They have come from far and wide to sing the death music of my family. It is beautiful that they have come. I am the last von Cernogratz that will die in our old castle, and they have come to sing to me. Hark! how loud they are calling! The cry of the wolves rose on the still winter air, and floated round the castle walls in long-drawn piercing wails. The old woman lay back on her couch with a look of long-delayed happiness on her face. Go away, she said to the Baroness. I am not lonely any more. I am one of a great old family. I think she is dying, said the Baroness, when she had rejoined her guests. I suppose we must send for a doctor, and that terrible howling, not for much money would I have such death music. That music is not to be bought for any amount of money. Said Conrad. Hark! what is that other sound? asked the Baron, as a noise of splitting and crashing was heard. It was a tree falling in the park. There was a moment of constrained silence, and then the banker's wife spoke. It is the intense cold that is splitting the trees. It is also the cold that has brought the wolves out in such numbers. It is many years since we have had such a cold winter. The Baroness eagerly agreed that the cold was responsible for these things. It was the cold of the open window, too, which caused the heart failure that made the doctor's ministrations unnecessary for the old row-line. But the notice and the newspapers looked very well. On December the 29th, at Schloss Cernogratz, Amelie von Cernogratz for many years the valued friend of Baron and Baroness Griebel, End of The Wolves of Cernogratz, Recording by Graham Redman Story number six of The Toys of Peace 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 Graham Redman The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Sarkie Louis It would be jolly to spend Easter in Vienna this year, said Strudvaden, and look up some of my old friends there. It's about the jolliest place I know of to be at for Easter. I thought we had made up our minds to spend Easter at Brighton, interrupted Lina Strudvaden with an air of aggrieved surprise. You mean that you had made up your mind that we should spend Easter there, said her husband. We spent last Easter there, and Whitsentide as well, and the year before that we were at Worthing, and Brighton again before that. I think it would be just as well to have a real change of scene while we are about it. The journey to Vienna would be very expensive, said Lina. You are not often concerned about economy, said Strudvaden, and in any case the trip to Vienna won't cost a bit more than the rather meaningless luncheon parties we usually give to quite meaningless acquaintances at Brighton. To escape from all that set would be a holiday in itself. Strudvaden spoke feelingly. Lina Strudvaden maintained an equally feeling silence on that particular subject. The set that she gathered round her at Brighton and other south-coast resorts was composed of individuals who might be dull and meaningless in themselves, but who understood the art of flattering Mrs. Strudvaden. She had no intention of forgoing their society and their homage, and flinging herself among unappreciative strangers in a foreign capital. You must go to Vienna alone if you are bent on going, she said. I couldn't leave Louis behind, and a dog is always a fearful nuisance in a foreign hotel, besides all the fuss and separation of the quarantine restrictions when one comes back. Louis would die if he was parted from me for even a week. You don't know what that would mean to me. Lina stooped down and kissed the nose of the diminutive brown Pomeranian that lay snug and irresponsive, beneath a shawl on her lap. Look here, said Strudvaden, this eternal Louis business is getting to be a ridiculous nuisance. Nothing can be done, no plans can be made, without some veto connected with that animal swims or convenience being imposed. If you were a priest in attendance on some African fetish, you couldn't set up a more elaborate code of restrictions. I believe you'd ask the government to put off a general election, if you thought it would interfere with Louis' comfort in any way. By way of answer to this tirade, Mrs. Strudvaden stooped down again and kissed the irresponsive brown nose. It was the action of a woman with a beautifully meek nature who would, however, send the whole world to the stake sooner than yield an inch where she knew herself to be in the right. It isn't as if you were in the least bit fond of animals, went on Strudvaden with growing irritation. When we are down at Kerryfield you won't stir a step to take the house-dogs out, even if they're dying for a run, and I don't think you've been in the stables twice in your life. You laugh at what you call the fuss that's being made over the extermination of plumage birds, and you are quite indignant with me if I interfere on behalf of an ill-treated, over-driven animal on the road, and yet you insist on everyone's plans being made subservient to the convenience of that stupid little morsel of fur and selfishness. You are prejudiced against my little Louie," said Lena, with a world of tender regret in her voice. I've never had the chance of being anything else but prejudiced against him, said Strudvaden. I know what a jolly responsive companion a doggie can be, but I've never been allowed to put a finger near Louie. You say he snaps at anyone except you and your maid, and you snatched him away from old Lady Peterby the other day when she wanted to pet him for fear he would bury his teeth in her. All that I ever see of him is the tip of his unhealthy looking little nose peeping out from his basket or from your muff, and I occasionally hear his weasy little bark when you take him for a walk up and down the corridor. You can't expect one to get extravagantly fond of a dog of that sort. One might as well work up an affection for the cuckoo in a cuckoo-clock. He loves me, said Lena, rising from the table, and bearing the shawl swathed Louie in her arms. He loves only me, and perhaps that is why I love him so much in return. I don't care what you say against him. I am not going to be separated from him. If you insist on going to Vienna, you must go alone, as far as I am concerned. I think it would be much more sensible if you were to come to Brighton with Louie and me, but, of course, you must please yourself. You must get rid of that dog, said Strudman and sister, when Lena had left the room. It must be helped to some sudden and merciful end. Lena is merely making use of it as an instrument for getting her own way on dozens of occasions when she would otherwise be obliged to yield gracefully to your wishes or to the general convenience. I am convinced that she doesn't care a brass button about the animal itself. When her friends are buzzing round her at Brighton or anywhere else, and the dog would be in the way, it has to spend whole days alone with the maid. But if you want Lena to go with you anywhere where she doesn't want to go, instantly she trots out the excuse that she couldn't be separated from her dog. Have you ever come into a room unobserved and heard Lena talking to her beloved pet? I never have. I believe she only fusses over it when there's someone present to notice her. I don't mind admitting, said Strudman, that I've dwelt more than once lately on the possibility of some fatal accident putting an end to Louis's existence. It's not very easy, though, to arrange a fatality for a creature that spends most of its time in a muff or asleep in a toy kennel. I don't think poison would be any good. It's obviously horribly overfed, for I've seen Lena offer it dainties at table sometimes, but it never seems to eat them. Lena will be away at church on Wednesday morning, said Elsie Strudman reflectively. She can't take Louis with her there, and she is going on to the Dillings for lunch. That will give you several hours in which to carry out your purpose. The maid will be flirting with the chauffeur most of the time, and anyhow I can manage to keep her out of the way on some pretext or other. That leaves the field clear, said Strudman, but unfortunately my brain is equally a blank, as far as any lethal project is concerned. The little beast is so monstrously inactive. I can't pretend that it leapt into the bath and drowned itself, or that it took on the butcher's mastiff in unequal combat and got chewed up. In what possible guise could death come to a confirmed basket-dweller? It would be too suspicious if we invented a suffragette raid, and pretended that they invaded Lena's boudoir and threw a brick at him. We should have to do a lot of other damage as well, which would be rather a nuisance, and the servants would think it odd that they had seen nothing of the invaders. I have an idea, said Elsie, get a box with an airtight lid and bore a small hole in it, just big enough to let in an India rubber tube. Pop Louis, Kennell, and all into the box, shut it down, and put the other end of the tube over the gas bracket. There you have a perfect lethal chamber. You can stand the Kennell at the open window afterwards to get rid of the smell of the gas, and all that Lena will find when she comes home late in the afternoon will be a placidly defunct, Louis. Novels have been written about women like you, said Strudveden, you have a perfectly criminal mind. Let's come and look for a box. Two minutes later the conspirators stood gazing guiltily at a stout square box connected with the gas bracket by a length of India rubber tubing. Not a sound, said Elsie. He never stirred. It must have been quite painless. All the same I feel rather horrid now it's done. The ghastly part has to come, said Strudveden, turning off the gas. We'll lift the lid slowly and let the gas out by degrees. Swing the door to and fro to send a draft through the room. Some minutes later, when the fumes had rushed off, he stooped down and lifted out the little Kennell with its grim burden. Elsie gave an exclamation of terror. Louis sat at the door of his dwelling, head erect and ears pricked, as coldly and defiantly inert as when they had put him into his execution chamber. Strudveden dropped the Kennell with a jerk and stared for a long moment at the miracle dog. Then he went into a peel of chattering laughter. It was certainly a wonderful imitation of a truculent-looking toy pomeranian, and the apparatus that gave forth a wheezy bark when you pressed it had materially helped the imposition that Lena, and Lena's made, had foisted on the household. For a woman who disliked animals, but liked getting her own way under a halo of unselfishness, Mrs. Strudveden had managed rather well. Louis is dead, was the curt information that greeted Lena on her return from her lunch and party. Louis dead, she exclaimed. Yes, he flew at the butcher-boy and bit him, and he bit me, too, when I tried to get him off, so I had to have him destroyed. You warned me that he's snapped, but you didn't tell me that he was downright dangerous. I shall have to pay the boy something heavy by way of compensation, so you will have to go without those buckles that you wanted to have for Easter. Also, I shall have to go to Vienna to consult Dr. Schröder, who is a specialist on dog bites, and you will have to come, too. I have sent what remains of Louis to Roland Ward to be stuffed. That will be my Easter gift to you instead of the buckles. For heaven's sake, Lena, weep if you really feel it so much. Anything would be better than standing there staring as if you thought I had lost my reason. Lena Strudveden did not weep. But her attempt at laughing was an unmistakable failure. End of Louis. Recording by Graham Redmond. Story number seven of The Toys of Peace. 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 Graham Redmond. The Toys of Peace. Short Stories by Sarkie. The Guests. The landscape seen from our windows is certainly charming, said Annabelle. Those cherry orchards and green meadows and the river winding along the valley and the church tower peeping out among the elms, they all make a most effective picture. There's something dreadfully sleepy and languorous about it, though. Stagnation seems to be the dominant note. Nothing ever happens here. Seed-time and harvest, an occasional outbreak of measles or a mildly destructive thunderstorm, and a little election excitement about once in five years, that is all that we have to modify the monotony of our existence. Rather dreadful, isn't it? On the contrary, said Matilda, I find it soothing and restful. But then you see I've lived in countries where things do happen, ever so many at a time, when you're not ready for them happening all at once. That, of course, makes a difference, said Annabelle. I have never forgotten, said Matilda, the occasion when the Bishop of Becar paid us an unexpected visit. He was on his way to lay the foundation stone of a mission house or something of the sort. I thought that out there you were always prepared for emergency guests turning up, said Annabelle. I was quite prepared for half a dozen bishops, said Matilda. But it was rather disconcerting to find out after a little conversation that this particular one was a distant cousin of mine, belonging to a branch of the family that had quarrelled bitterly and offensively with our branch about a crowned Derby dessert service. They got it, and we ought to have got it in some legacy, or else we got it, and they thought they ought to have it. I forget which. Anyhow I know they behaved disgracefully. Now here was one of them turning up in the odour of sanctity, so to speak, and claiming the traditional hospitality of the East. It was rather trying, but you could have left your husband to do most of the entertaining. My husband was fifty miles up-country, talking sense, or what he imagined to be sense, to a village community that fancied one of their leading men was a were-tiger. A what-tiger? A were-tiger. You've heard of were-wolves, haven't you, a mixture of wolf and human being and demon? Well, in those parts they have were-tigers, or think they have. And I must say that in this case, so far as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three hundred years ago, we don't like to have other people keeping on our discarded practices. It doesn't seem respectful to our mental and moral position. I hope you weren't unkind to the bishop, said Annabelle. Well, of course he was my guest, so I had to be outwardly polite to him. But he was tactless enough to rake up the incidents of the old quarrel, and to try to make out that there was something to be said for the way his side of the family had behaved, even if there was, which I don't for a moment admit, my house was not the place in which to say it. I didn't argue the matter, but I gave my cook a holiday to go and visit his aged parent some ninety miles away. The emergency cook was not a specialist in curries. In fact, I don't think cooking in any shape or form could have been one of his strong points. I believe he originally came to us in the guise of a gardener, but as we never pretended to have anything that could be considered a garden, he was utilised as assistant goat herd, in which capacity, I understand, he gave every satisfaction. When the bishop heard that I had sent away the cook on a special and unnecessary holiday, he saw the inwardness of the manoeuvre, and from that moment we were scarcely on speaking terms. If you have ever had a bishop with whom you were not on speaking terms staying in your house, you will appreciate the situation. Annabelle confessed that her life story had never included such a disturbing experience. Then, continued Matilda, to make matters more complicated, the guardly pitchy overflowed its banks, a thing it did every now and then, when the rains were unduly prolonged, and the lower part of the house, and all the outbuildings, were submerged. We managed to get the ponies loose in time, and the sice swam the whole lot of them off to the nearest rising ground. A goat or two, the chief goat herd, the chief goat herd's wife, and several of their babies, came to anchorage in the veranda. All the rest of the available space was filled up with wet, bedraggled looking hens and chickens. One never really knows how many fowls one possesses till the servants' quarters are flooded out. Of course, I had been through something of the sort in previous floods, but never before had I had a house full of goats and babies and half-drowned hens supplemented by a bishop with whom I was hardly on speaking terms. It must have been a trying experience, commented Annabelle. More embarrassments but a follow. I wasn't going to let a mere ordinary flood wash out the memory of that crowned derby dessert service, and I intimated to the bishop that his large bedroom, with a writing table in it, and his small bathroom, with the sufficiency of cold water jars in it, was his share of the premises, and that space was rather congested under the existing circumstances. However, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he had awakened from his midday sleep, he made a sudden incursion into the room that was normally the drawing-room, but was now dining-room, store-house, saddle-room, and half a dozen other temporary premises as well. From the condition of my guest's costume he seemed to think it might also serve as his dressing-room. I'm afraid there is nowhere for you to sit, I said coldly. The veranda is full of goats. There is a goat in my bedroom. He observed with equal coldness and more than a suspicion of sardonic reproach. Really, I said, another survivor. I thought all the other goats were done for. This particular goat is quite done for, he said. It is being devoured by a leopard at the present moment. That is why I left the room. Some animals resent being watched while they are eating. The leopard, of course, was easily explained. It had been hanging round the goat-sheds when the flood came, and had clambered up by the outside staircase leading to the bishop's bathroom, thoughtfully bringing a goat with it. Probably it found the bathroom too damp and shut in for its taste, and transferred its banqueting operations to the bedroom while the bishop was having his nab. What a frightful situation, exclaimed Annabelle, fancy having a ravening leopard in the house with the flood all round you. Not in the least, ravening, said Matilda. It was full of goat, had any amount of water at its disposal if it felt thirsty, and probably had no more immediate wish than a desire for uninterrupted sleep. Still, I think anyone will admit that it was an embarrassing predicament to have your only available guest-room occupied by a leopard, the veranda choked up with goats and babies and wet hens, and a bishop with whom you were scarcely on speaking terms planted down in your only sitting-room. I really don't know how I got through those crawling hours, and, of course, mealtimes only made matters worse. The emergency cook had every excuse for sending in water his soup and sloppy rice, and as neither the chief goat heard nor his wife were expert divers, the seller could not be reached. Fortunately the guardly pitches subsides as rapidly as it rises, and just before dawn the scythe came splashing back with the ponies only felt locked deep in water. Then there arose some awkwardness from the fact that the bishop wished to leave sooner than the leopard did, and as the latter was ensconced in the midst of the former's personal possessions, there was an obvious difficulty in altering the order of departure. I pointed out to the bishop that a leopard's habits and tastes are not those of an otter, and that it naturally preferred walking to wading, and that in any case a meal of an entire goat washed down with tub water justified a certain amount of repose. If I had had guns fired to frighten the animal away as the bishop suggested, it would probably merely have let the bedroom to come into the already overcrowded drawing-room. Altogether it was rather a relief when they both left. Now perhaps you can understand my appreciation of a sleepy countryside where things don't happen. End of The Guests. Recording by Graham Redmond Story number eight of The Toys of Peace 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 Graham Redmond The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Sarkie The Penance Octavian Ruttle was one of those lively, cheerful individuals on whom amiability had set its unmistakable stamp, and like most of its kind, his soul's peace depended in large measure on the unstinted approval of his fellows. In hunting to death a small tabby cat, he had done a thing of which he scarcely approved himself, and he was glad when the gardener had hidden the body in its hastily dug grave under a lonely oak tree in the meadow, the same tree that the hunted quarry had climbed as a last effort towards safety. It had been a distasteful and seemingly ruthless deed, but circumstances had demanded the doing of it. Octavian kept chickens, at least he kept some of them. Others vanished from his keeping, leaving only a few bloodstained feathers to mark the manner of their going. The tabby cat from the large grey house that stood with its back to the meadow had been detected in many furtive visits to the Hencoops, and after due negotiation with those in authority at the grey house, a sentence of death had been agreed on. The children will mind, but they need not know, had been the last word on the matter. The children in question were a standing puzzle to Octavian. In the course of a few months he considered that he should have known their names, ages, the dates of their birthdays, and have been introduced to their favourite toys. They remained, however, as non-committal as the long blank wall that shut them off from the meadow, a wall over which their three heads sometimes appeared at odd moments. They had parents in India, that much Octavian had learned in the neighbourhood. The children, beyond grouping themselves garment-wise into sexes, a girl and two boys, carried their life's story no further on his behoof. And now it seemed he was engaged in something which touched them closely, but must be hidden from their knowledge. The poor helpless chickens had gone one by one to their doom, so it was meat that their destroyer should come to a violent end, yet Octavian felt some qualms when his share of the violence was ended. The little cat, headed off from its wounded tracks of safety, had raced unfriended from shelter to shelter, and its end had been rather piteous. Octavian walked through the long grass of the meadow with a step less jaunty than usual, and as he passed beneath the shadow of the high blank wall, he glanced up and became aware that his hunting had had undesired witnesses. Three white faces were looking down at him, and if ever an artist wanted a threefold study of cold human hate, impotent yet unyielding, raging yet marked in stillness, he would have found it in the triple gaze that met Octavian's eye. I'm sorry, but it had to be done, said Octavian, with genuine apology in his voice. Beast! The answer came from three throats with startling intensity. Octavian felt that the blank wall would not be more impervious to his explanations than the bunch of human hostility that peered over its coping. He wisely decided to withhold his peace over to us till a more hopeful occasion. Two days later he ransacked the best sweet-shop in the neighbouring market-town for a box of chocolates that, by its size and contents, should fitly atone for the dismal deed done under the oak-tree in the meadow. The first two specimens that were shown to him he hastily rejected. One had a group of chickens pictured on its lid, the other bore the portrait of a tabby kitten. A third sample was more simply bedecked with a spray of painted poppies, and Octavian hailed the flowers of forgetfulness as a happy omen. He felt distinctly more at ease with his surroundings when the imposing package had been sent across to the grey house, and a message returned to say that it had been duly given to the children. The next morning he sauntered with purposeful steps past the long-blank wall on his way to the chicken-run and pigory that stood at the bottom of the meadow. The three children were perched at their accustomed lookout, and their range of sight did not seem to concern itself with Octavian's presence. As he became depressingly aware of the aloofness of their gaze, he also noted a strange variegation in the herbage at his feet. The green sward for a considerable space around was strewn and speckled with a chocolate-coloured hail, enlivened here and there with gay, tinsel-like wrappings, or the glistening mauve of crystallized violets. It was as though the fairy paradise of a greedy-minded child had taken shape and substance in the vegetation of the meadow. Octavian's blood-money had been flung back at him in space, to increase his discomforture, the march of events tended to shift the blame of ravaged chicken-coops from the supposed culprit who had already paid full forfeit. The young chicks were still carried off, and it seemed highly probable that the cat had only haunted the chicken-run to prey on the rats which harboured there. Through the flowing channels of servants' talk, the children learned of this belated revision of verdict, and Octavian one day picked up a sheet of copy-book paper on which was painstakingly written beast, rats, eatage, or chickens. More ardently than ever did he wish for an opportunity for sloughing off the disgrace that enrapt him, and earning some happier nickname from his three unsparing judges. And one day a chance inspiration came to him. Olivia, his two-year-old daughter, was accustomed to spend the hour from high noon till one o'clock with her father, while the nursemaid gobbled and digested her dinner and novelette. About the same time the blank wall was usually enlivened by the presence of its three small wardens. Octavian, with seeming carelessness of purpose, brought Olivia well within hail of the watchers, and noted with hidden delight the growing interest that dawned in that hitherto sternly hostile quarter. His little Olivia, with her sleepy placid ways, was going to succeed where he, with his anxious well-mend overtures, had so signally failed. He brought her a large yellow dailier, which she grasped tightly in one hand, and regarded with a stare of benevolent boredom, such as one might bestow on amateur classical dancing performed in aid of a deserving charity. Then he turned shyly to the group perched on the wall, and asked with affected carelessness, Do you like flowers? Three solemn nods rewarded his venture. Which salts do you like best? he asked, this time with a distinct betrayal of eagerness in his voice. Those with all the colours over there, three chubby arms pointed to a distant tangle of sweet pea, childlike they had asked for what lay farthest from hand, but Octavian trotted off gleefully to obey their welcome behest. He pulled and plucked with unsparing hand, and brought every variety of tint that he could see into his bunch that was rapidly becoming a bundle. Then he turned to retrace his steps, and found the blank wall blanker and more deserted than ever, while the foreground was void of all trace of Olivia. Far down the meadow, three children were pushing a go-kart at the utmost speed they could muster in the direction of the piggeries. It was Olivia's go-kart, and Olivia sat in it, somewhat bumped and shaken by the pace at which she was being driven, but apparently retaining her won'ted composure of mind. Octavian stared for a moment at the rapidly moving group, and then started in hot pursuit, shedding as he ran sprays of blossom from the mass of sweet pea that he still clutched in his hands. Fast as he ran, the children had reached the piggery before he could overtake them, and he arrived just in time to see Olivia, wondering but untrotesting, hauled and pushed up to the roof of the nearest stye. They were old buildings in some need of repair, and the rickety roof would certainly not have borne Octavian's weight if he had attempted to follow his daughter and her captors to their new vantage-ground. What are you going to do with her? he panted. There was no mistaking the grim trend of mischief in those flushed but sternly composed young faces. Hang her in chains over a slow fire, said one of the boys. Evidently they had been reading English history. Throw her down and the pigs will devour her every bit set the palms of her hands, said the other boy. It was also evident that they had studied biblical history. The last proposal was the one which most alarmed Octavian, since it might be carried into effect at a moment's notice. There had been cases, he remembered, of pigs eating babies. You surely wouldn't treat my poor little Olivia in that way, he pleaded. You killed our little cat, came in stern reminder from three throats. I'm very sorry I did, said Octavian, and if there is a standard of measurement in truths Octavian's statement was assuredly a large nine. We shall be very sorry if when we've killed Olivia, said the girl, but we can't be sorry till we've done it. The inexorable child logic rose like an unyielding rampart before Octavian scared pleading. Before he could think of any fresh line of appeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia had slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morass of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigsty wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop through the air, had been mildly pleased at finding herself in close and unstinted contact with the sticky element that oozed around her. But as she began to sink gently into the bed of slime, a feeling dawned on her that she was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in the tentative fashion of the normally good child. Octavian battling with the quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the contortions of whimpering wonder. While from their perch on the pigsty roof the three children looked down with the cold, unpitying detachment of the Parsi sisters. I can't reach her in time, gasped Octavian. She'll be choked in the muck. Won't you help her? No one helped our cat, came the inevitable reminder. I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that, cried Octavian with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inches forward. Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave? Yes, screamed Octavian, holding a candle and saying I'm a miserable beast. Octavian agreed to both suggestions. For a long, long time. For half an hour, said Octavian, there was an anxious ring in his voice as he named the time limit. Was there not the precedent of a German king who did open air penance for several days and nights at Christmas time, clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear to have read German history, and half an hour seemed long and goodly in their eyes. All right, came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a moment later a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to Octavian, who lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Strambling gingerly along its rungs, he was able to lean across the morass that separated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her like an unwilling cork from its slushy embrace. A few minutes later he was listening to the shrill and repeated assurances of the nursemaid that her previous experience of filthy spectacles had been on a notably smaller scale. That same evening, when twilight was deepening into darkness, Octavian took up his position as penitent under the lone oak tree, having first carefully undressed the part. Clad in a Zephyr shirt, which on this occasion thoroughly merited its name, he held in one hand a lighted candle, and the other a watch into which the soul of a dead plumber seemed to have passed. A box of matches lay at his feet, and was resorted to on the fairly frequent occasions when the candle succumbed to the night breezes. The house loomed inscrutable in the middle distance, but as Octavian conscientiously repeated the formula of his penance, he felt certain that three pairs of solemn eyes were watching his moth-shared vigil. And the next morning his eyes were gladdened by a sheet of copy-book paper lying beside the blank wall, on which was written the message, un-beast, end of the penance. Recording by Graham Redman Story number nine of The Toys of Peace 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 Graham Redman The Toys of Peace Short Stories by Sarkie The Phantom Luncheon The Smythly Dubs are in town, said Sir James. I wish you would show them some attention. Ask them to lunch with you at the Ritz or somewhere. From the little I've seen of the Smythly Dubs, I don't think I want to cultivate their acquaintance, said Lady Dracmonton. They always work for us at election times, said her husband. I don't suppose they influence very many votes, but they have an uncle who is on one of my ward committees, and another uncle speaks sometimes at some of our less important meetings. These sort of people expect some return in the shape of hospitality. Expect it, exclaimed Lady Dracmonton. The Mrs. Smythly Dubs do more than that. They almost demand it. They belong to my club, and hang about the lobby just about lunchtime, all three of them, with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, and the six-course look in their eyes. If I were to breathe the word lunch, they would hustle me into a taxi and scream Ritz or Diodones to the driver before I knew what was happening. All the same I think you ought to ask them to a meal of some sort. Persisted, Sir James. I consider that showing hospitality to the Smythly Dubs is carrying free food principles to a regrettable extreme, said Lady Dracmonton. I've entertained the Joneses and the Browns and the Snapheimers and the Lubrikovs, and heaps of others whose names I forget, but I don't see why I should inflict the society of the Mrs. Smythly Dubs on myself for a solid hour. Imagine it, sixty minutes more or less of unrelenting gobble and gabble. Why can't you take them on, Millie? she asked, turning hopefully to her sister. I don't know them, said Millie hastily. All the better! You can pass yourself off as me. People say that we are so alike that they can hardly tell us apart, and I've only spoken to these tiresome young women about twice in my life, at committee rooms, and bowed to them in the club. Any of the club page boys will point them out to you. They're always to be found lolling about the hall just before lunchtime. My dear Betty, don't be absurd, protested Millie. I've got some people lunching with me at the Colton to-morrow, and I'm leaving town the day afterwards. What time is your lunch to-morrow? asked Lady Drachmont, and reflectively. Two o'clock, said Millie. Good! said her sister. The Smythly Dubs shall lunch with me to-morrow. It shall be rather an amusing lunch-party. At least I shall be amused. The last two remarks she made to herself. Other people did not always appreciate her ideas of humour. Sir James never did. The next day Lady Drachmonton made some marked variations in her usual toilet-effects. She dressed her hair in an unaccustomed manner, and put on a hat that added to the transformation of her appearance. When she had made one or two minor alterations, she was sufficiently unlike her usual smart self, to produce some hesitation in the greeting which the Mrs. Smythly Dub bestowed on her in the club lobby. She responded, however, with a readiness which set their doubts at rest. What is the Colton like for lunching in? she asked breezily. The restaurant received an enthusiastic recommendation from the three sisters. Let's go and lunch there, shall we? she suggested, and in a few minutes time the Smythly Dub mind was contemplating at close quarters a happy vista of baked meats and approved vintage. Are you going to start with caviar? I am, confided Lady Drachmonton, and the Smythly Dub's started with caviar. The subsequent dishes were chosen in the same ambitious spirit, and by the time they had arrived at the Wild Duck course, it was beginning to be a rather expensive lunch. The conversation hardly kept pace with the brilliancy of the menu. Repeated references on the part of the guests to the local political conditions and prospects in Sir James's constituency were met with vague ours and indeeds from Lady Drachmonton, who might have been expected to be specially interested. I think when the Insurance Act is a little better understood, it will lose some of its present unpopularity, has it in Cecilia Smythly Dub. Will it? I daresay. I'm afraid politics don't interest me very much, said Lady Drachmonton. The three Miss Smythly Dub's put down their cups of Turkish coffee and stared. Then they broke into protesting giggles. Of course you're joking, they said. Not me, was the disconcerting answer. I can't make head or tail of these bothering old politics. Never could and never want to. I've quite enough to do to manage my own affairs, and that's a fact. But, exclaimed Amanda Smythly Dub with a squeal of bewilderment breaking into her voice, I was told you spoke so informingly about the Insurance Act at one of our social evenings. It was Lady Drachmonton who stared now. Do you know, she said with a scared look around her, rather a dreadful thing is happening. I'm suffering from a complete loss of memory. I can't even think who I am. I remember meeting you somewhere, and I remember you asking me to come and lunch with you here, and that I accepted your kind invitation. Beyond that my mind is a positive blank. The scared look was transferred with intensified poignancy to the faces of her companions. You asked us to lunch, they exclaimed hurriedly. That seemed a more immediately important point to clear up than the question of identity. Oh, no! said the vanishing hostess. That I do remember about. You insisted on my coming here, because the feeding was so good, and I must say it comes up to all you said about it. A very nice lunch it's been. What I'm worrying about is who on earth am I? I haven't the faintest notion. You are Lady Drachmonton, exclaimed the three sisters in chorus. Now don't make fun of me, she replied crossily. I happen to know her quite well by sight, and she isn't a bit like me. And it's an odd thing you should have mentioned her, for it so happens she's just come into the room. That lady in black, with the yellow plume in her hat, there over by the door. The smithly dubs looked in the indicated direction, and the uneasiness in their eyes deepened into horror. In outward appearance, the lady who had just entered the room certainly came rather nearer to their recollection of their member's wife than the individual who was sitting at table with them. Who are you, then, if that is Lady Drachmonton? They asked in panic-stricken bewilderment. That is just what I don't know, was the answer, and you don't seem to know much better than I do. You came up to us in the club. In what club? The new didactic in Calais Street. The new didactic, exclaimed Lady Drachmonton with an air of returning illumination. Thank you so much. Of course I remember now who I am. I'm Ellen Niggle of the Lady's Brass Polishing Guild. The club employs me to come now and then, and see to the polishing of the brass fittings. That's how I came to know Lady Drachmonton by sight. She's very often in the club. And you are the ladies who so kindly asked me out to lunch. Funny how it should all have slipped my memory all of a sudden. The unaccustomed good food and wine must have been too much for me. For the moment I really couldn't call to mind who I was. Good gracious! she broke off suddenly. It's ten past two. I should be at a polishing job in Whitehall. I must scuttle off like a giddy rabbit, thanking you ever so. She left the room with a scuttle sufficiently suggestive of the animal she had mentioned. But the giddiness was all on the side of her involuntary hostesses. The restaurant seemed to be spinning round them, and the bill when it appeared did nothing to restore their composure. They were as nearly in tears as it is permissible to be during the lunch and hour in a really good restaurant. Financially speaking they were well able to afford the luxury of an elaborate lunch. But their ideas on the subject of entertaining differed very sharply according to the circumstances of whether they were dispensing or receiving hospitality. To have fed themselves liberally at their own expense was perhaps an extravagance to be deplored, but at any rate they had had something for their money. To have drawn an unknown and socially unremunerative Ellen Niggle into the net of their hospitality was a catastrophe that they could not contemplate with any degree of calmness. The Smithly Dubs never quite recovered from their unnerving experience. They have given up politics and taken to doing good. End of The Phantom Lungeon Recording by Graeme Redmond