Part 11

In his youth, before his Army period, he had been a valet in London, in Half-Moon Street, and though it was only for a few weeks and he speaks no English, it brings him into touch with English people a little quicker; and after a glass or two, if he likes you and Madame is absent, he will tell you of how the only woman he ever really loved was the English girl that he met in London. But this vein is not to be encouraged, since it ends in tears. For the most part he is a mocker--laughing and cynical--appraising everything and everybody in modern life with a French shrug or a French gesture, never wholly serious and never wholly thoughtless, living in that busy, materialistic French way that makes such contented citizens and such an efficient nation and is yet the despair of every moralist in Tunbridge Wells.

After a while the door opened, letting in an icy blast and a little woman in a plaid shawl. Her head was bare, her light brown hair being pulled back from the forehead in the French way. She had large diamond earrings, a pair of cold blue eyes capable of much surface mirth, and a shrewd calculating face. It was Madame. She sat down at once and began to talk, and talked on, cleverly, commandingly, till we left--cynical as her husband, but more alert. Her readiness was amazing. She took every point and added to it points of her own; while with every new customer that entered for a glass of coffee or cognac or an _apéritif_ she had a sentence or two of greeting and jest, flung across to their tables--for in this land of France, where people talk little of the conduct of life, but live it industriously, every man who wants refreshment may have a seat for his comfort and a table on which to stand his glass, and may sit there as long as he wishes.

How far (I thought as I sat there, while the landlord and the landlady and my friend exchanged their badinage) is this removed from the “Red Lions” and “King’s Heads” and “White Horses” of my native land, where landlords are plethoric and vinous, and landladies testy and not too clean, and barmaids vacuous and pert, and bars are crowded by horse-laughing loafers who know not when to stop! How different! And to what class of society in England would one have to go (I asked myself) for a similarly vivid banter and shrewd criticism of life? Certainly not to licensed victuallers, was the nearest reply I could frame.

Her Royal ’Tumnal Tintiness

She is absurdly small--a homœopathic dose of a dog. Nothing but the folly of Western fashions prevents her being carried in the sleeve, as Nature and Art intended her to be. But she is small only in figure: in all else she is as large as a Newfoundland--in fidelity and courage and spirit and protectiveness and appetite (proportionately), and love of ease--while in brain power she is larger. Although not six months old, she has the gravity of age, she suggests complete mental maturity. If she were ten she could not open an eye upon a superfluous caress with more languor or disdain. Her regality is such that one resorts to all kinds of expedients to win her favour. She has the more radiant merits of the cat--she eats like a cat, with all its meticulous cleanliness and precision, she plays with a cotton-reel like a cat, she has a cat’s flexibility in her toilet. On your knee she sinks into complacency like a cat. None the less she is a true dog too, with nearly all the stigmata of her kind--the black muzzle, the deep stoop, the flat forehead, the plumed tail carried high, the bowed legs, the minuteness, the nervous fluid. Her hue is that of a beech leaf in autumn.

When she runs from room to room she beats the floor with her fore-paws with a gallant little rocking-horse action. When she runs over grass she makes a russet streak like a hare, with the undulating ripple of a sea-serpent, and her soft pads reverberate like muffled hoofs. When she is not running she is asleep. When she sleeps the most comfortable place in the room is hopelessly engaged until she wakes. However fast she may be sleeping, she wakes directly her particular friend leaves the room, her religion being sociability. Left alone she screams. Put out of the house alone, she circumnavigates it with the speed of thought, seeking an open door or window. The sunlight through her tongue is more than rubies.

One difficulty that seems to confront many owners of Pekingese spaniels is the finding of a suitable name; for it should of course be Chinese and also easily pronounceable. But to those who have the honour to possess Professor Giles’s “Chinese Biographical Dictionary” the situation is without such complications. Turning over its pages I quickly alighted upon a choice of engaging females whose names might fitly be conferred upon Her Autumn Leafiness. To mention a few, there is A-chiao, who, when a child, was shown to the Emperor Wu Ti, also a child, and he was asked what he thought of her as a possible wife. “Oh,” said the boy, “if I could get A-chiao I would have a golden house to keep her in.” There is Chao Fei-yen, who was so graceful and light that she was called “Flying Swallow.” There is Chao Yün, who died with these words from the “Diamond Sûtra” on her lips: “Like a dream, like a vision, like a bubble, like a shadow, like dew, like lightning.” There is Ch’i Nu, who had two lovers, one of which lived on the right of the house and the other on the left. Her father bade her tuck up the sleeve which corresponded to the man whom she preferred, and she tucked up both, saying that she would like to live with the handsome one and eat with the rich. (This dog is very like that.) There is Féng Hou, one of the favourites of the Emperor Yüan Ti, who, when a bear escaped, did not flee with all the other ladies, but remained to face the bear, saying: “I was afraid lest some harm should come to Your Majesty’s person.” There is Hsi Chih, who was never so lovely as when she knitted her brows; and P’an Fei, the favourite of Hsiao Pao-chüan, who said of her, “Every step makes a lily grow!” and Pei Ch’i Kung Chu, who awakened in the breast of her lover such a flame that it set fire to a temple; and Tao Yün, who when her brother likened a snow-storm to salt sprinkled in the air, corrected the feebleness of his simile by comparing it to willow-catkins whirled by the wind; and Ts’ai Luan, who compiled a rhyming dictionary and ascended to heaven with her husband, each on a white tiger.--Here, you observe, is a considerable range--although by no means all--for the selecting mind to consider.

The choice fell upon Féng Hou. That is the name to which, since it is hers and she is all caprice and individuality, she refuses to answer.

The dog will come when he is called, The cat will turn away,

--so wrote an old observer. It is true of dogs and cats, but it is hopelessly amiss of Pekingese. I would amend it thus:--

The dog will come when he is called, The cat will turn away; The Pekingese will please itself, Whatever you may say.

For, to adapt an old proverb, where there’s a Pekingese there’s a will.

I do not think that she is ever likely to be a wonder from the point of view of the bench. At least one of the dreaded penalizations is hers already, and she may acquire others; nothing can make her fit to sit beside her illustrious grandfather, Ch. Chu’erh of Alderbourne, that Napoleon of Pekingese, that Meredith, that Brummell, all combined; nor has she the ingratiating pictorial charm of Ch. Broadoak Beetle; but no one knows what her own children may be like, and meanwhile she is enough for her owner. She has brought into a house hitherto unconscious of it the adorable piquancy of Peking.

Having done all that was possible to make Féng Hou our own, no one in the house having any independent will left, and butcher’s-bills rising like Grahame White: having done all this, it was something more than a shock to be favoured with a translation of the rhapsodical pearls of wisdom dropped from the lips of her Imperial Majesty Tzŭ Hsi, the late Dowager Empress of Western China, for the guidance of the master of her kennel. One saw at once how much was still to do if Féng Hou was to be worthy of her race. I quote this most delightful document, the very flower of Chinese solicitude and fancy.

PEARLS DROPPED FROM THE LIPS OF HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY, TZŬ HSI, DOWAGER EMPRESS OF THE FLOWERY LAND

Let the Lion Dog be small: let it wear the swelling cape of dignity around its neck: let it display the billowing standard of pomp above its back.

Let its face be black: let its fore legs be shaggy: let its forehead be straight and low, like unto the brow of an Imperial righteous harmony boxer.

Let its eyes be large and luminous: let its ears be set like the sails of a war-junk: let its nose be like that of the monkey god of the Hindus.

Let its fore legs be bent, so that it shall not desire to wander far, or leave the Imperial precincts.

Let its body be shaped like that of a hunting lion spying for its prey.

Let its feet be tufted with plentiful hair that its footfall may be soundless: and for its standard of pomp let it rival the whisk of the Tibetan’s yak, which is flourished to protect the Imperial litter from the attacks of flying insects.

Let it be lively that it may afford entertainment by its gambols; let it be timid that it may not involve itself in danger: let it be domestic in its habits that it may live in amity with the other beasts, fishes, or birds that find protection in the Imperial Palace. And for its colour, let it be that of the lion--a golden sable, to be carried in the sleeve of a yellow robe, or the colour of a red bear, or a black or a white bear, or striped like a dragon, so that there may be dogs appropriate to every costume in the Imperial wardrobe.

Let it venerate its ancestors and deposit offerings in the canine cemetery of the Forbidden City on each new moon.

Let it comport itself with dignity; let it learn to bite the foreign devils instantly.

Let it be dainty in its food that it shall be known for an Imperial dog by its fastidiousness.

Sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers and the breasts of quails, on these it may be fed; and for drink give it the tea that is brewed from the spring buds of the shrub that groweth in the province of the Hankow, or the milk of the antelopes that pasture in the Imperial parks. Thus shall it preserve its integrity and self-respect; and for the day of sickness let it be anointed with the clarified fat of the leg of a sacred leopard, and give it to drink a throstle’s egg-shell full of the juice of the custard-apple in which have been dissolved three pinches of shredded rhinoceros horn, and apply to it piebald leeches.

So shall it remain; but if it die, remember thou, too, art mortal.

That is a very charming poem, is it not? Queen Victoria drew up no such rules for Dandie Dinmonts, nor did Charles I, so far as I know, thus establish the standard of the little creatures with whose ears he played instead of studying the signs of the times. But it must necessarily strike some apprehension into the breast of the owner of a Pekingese. Is one doing rightly by the dog? is a question that it forces upon one. In the matter of diet alone I find that we have been all to seek. No house could have been so free from sharks’ fins and curlews’ livers as this, and if a quail’s breast has chanced to enter, it was certainly not Féng Hou who ate it. As for drink--but I wonder if any one can recommend me a good, trustworthy antelope-milker: one who would not object to help in the garden when it is not milking-time? Things would be simple then--until Féng Hou was ill. But that does not bear thinking about.

Apropos of medicine, however, an odd thing happened. Féng Hou at first was not always good; indeed she was sometimes extremely naughty; and a little castigating seemed needful. A letter therefore was dispatched to London, to a provider of quaint necessaries, asking that some attractive little switch, worthy of such a creature, might be supplied. It came at once--the most delicate and radiant of rods, with a note saying that it was something of a curiosity, being pure rhinoceros horn. So we have one of the ingredients of one of the prescriptions after all! Physic indeed.

Five Characters

I.--THE KIND RED LIONESS

I will admit that my head ached and I looked tired; but I was not so depressed as all that. None the less she thought I was, and being a good soul she did what she could to help me, and since I knew her to be a good soul doing all that she could to help me, I had to acquiesce.

“Let me bring you something to cheer you up,” she said. “Of course it’s lonely staying in a country inn all by yourself. I know it must be. But I’ve got something that’ll make you laugh. I’ll fetch it in.”

I feared the worst as Mrs. Tally hastened away; and I knew the worst when she returned bearing the Visitors’ Book.

“There,” she said, “I often have a good laugh over that of an evening. Such funny bits there are in it. Some of the gentlemen we get here are such wags. Look at this”--and she placed her fat finger on a drawing of a young man in a straw hat, leaning against the bar while he blew kisses to an enormous figure behind it.

“That’s me,” she said, pointing to the enormous figure. “I remember that young gentleman so well. He came with two others, on bicycles, and they stayed from Saturday to Monday. So bright they were, and so full of jokes. See what he wrote underneath.”

I read: “Dook Snook, Lord Bob, and the Hon. Billy came and saw and were conquered--to Tally!”

“Do you see the take off in that last word?” she inquired. “Rather smart, wasn’t it? But they’re full of fun, all of them. Here’s another amusing one. I remember that gentleman too. He was always full of his jokes.”

I looked and read: “I was sent to the Red Lion by my doctor for change and rest. The waitress got the change, and the hostess the rest.”

“Isn’t that neat?” the Red Lioness inquired.

I said it was. How could I dash this enthusiast’s spirit by telling her its age?

“This is a bit of poetry,” said my hostess, proceeding to read it:--

“Of all the girls that are so smart, There’s none like Mrs. Tally, She is the darling of my heart, And lives in our alley. Signed × (BILL BAILEY, his mark).

“He was a jolly young fellow,” she added. “Fancy calling himself Bill Bailey!” and she pealed merrily. “I wonder what’s become of him; he hasn’t been here for months,” she added. “Here’s some more poetry:--

“There’s nothing like a Lion that’s Red For pleasant food and comfy bed. I mean to come and stay again, But now must run and catch my train.

ALGERNON MULL, 296, Broad Walk, Ealing.

“Don’t you think it’s wonderful to be able to make up poytry like that?” Mrs. Tally continued. “I do. I’ve tried, but I never could do anything worth repeating, and as for writing in a Visitors’ Book!... Don’t you agree with me?” she asked.

“Certainly,” I said. “It’s a real gift, there’s no doubt about it. A gift.”

“Yes,” she said, “a gift. That’s what it is. Here’s another funny one.”

I read: “The Ten Thirsty Tiddlers visited the old Red Lion for the fifteenth time. Everything A1 as usual.”

“But of course,” said Mrs. Tally, “although these are amusing and make the book such good reading, it’s the serious compliments we like the best. All comic wouldn’t do at all. Some people, indeed, actually dislike it. There were two lady artists here not long ago who asked me to remove the book from the room, as it was so vulgar. Fancy that--‘remove the book!’ No, it’s the serious things that do us the most good, of course. Like this, for instance”--and Mrs. Tally pointed to the following, one after the other:--

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Flower, of Dunedin, N.Z., spent a week here very pleasantly in July. The cooking was excellent and everything was most comfortable. They hope to return on their next visit to the dear old country.

Comfortable rooms, good attendance, perfect cooking and the best of landladies. In short, a home from home.

H. A. MARTIN, St. Swithin’s, Sydenham, S.E.

My daughter, Mrs. Crawley, and myself have spent a very agreeable week-end here and hope to come again.

J. MURRAY PHIPPS, Member of the Committee of the Royal Musical Society.

We have received every kindness from Mrs. Tally and her very efficient staff.

MR. AND MRS. J. ARBUTHNOT GILL, Wood Dene, Pinner.

“Well,” said Mrs. Tally, “I must go now; but I’ll leave the book with you. And there’s an earlier volume if you like to see it. It’ll cheer you wonderfully, and you’ll just die of laughing.”

The honest kindly soul! There are moments when one is more ashamed of what is called culture than any one can ever be of ignorance.

II.--A DARLING OF THE GODS

I see by the papers, with deep concern, that my friend X has been run over by a motor-bus and killed, at the age of only thirty-eight. I wish I could find some one who helped to pick him up, just to see if he said anything about his end: because----

But I will tell you. His foible was to believe that everything that happened was for the best--for himself. Not for mankind; he had none of the great Dr. Pangloss’s satisfaction that everything that is is right, that this is the best of all possible worlds. None at all. But he was persuaded that his own fortunes were being vigilantly and tirelessly watched by tutelary powers--that he was, in short, a pet of Fate.

And in this creed he had grown very ingenious. I remember once hurrying with him to catch a train, which, he said, he must not lose at any cost. Well, after seriously injuring ourselves--or at least myself--by running with our heavy bags, we lost it.

“Never mind,” he said calmly, “I was evidently intended not to catch it.”

“Then why on earth did you drag me along at that infernal pace?” I asked.

“Oh, well,” he said, “one has to try; one does not know what the stars’ game is.”

“What do you think it is?” I inquired coldly.

“I expect the train will meet with an accident; if so, we are well out of it.”

I took the trouble to find out, when we did at last reach the London station, if that train had come safely in.

“To the minute,” said the porter.

“There,” I said to my friend, “what do you make of that?”

“Oh,” he replied, “I daresay some one with an infectious disease had been sitting in our compartment and we should have caught it.”

What are you to do with a man who talks like that?

Your ordinary fatalist who thinks that, everything being ordained and fixed, no effort of his own can matter, is bad enough; but the fatalist who is also an optimist and secure in the knowledge of his own prosperity is worse. And yet it was rather fine too. The hardest rebuffs (as I should call them) left him smiling.

One day he lost a lot of money in an investment.

“That’s very serious,” I said.

“Not so bad as it might have been,” he replied. “It was done to teach me not to speculate. I am not naturally speculative; I was going against my genius when I did it. Now I have lost £500. But if I hadn’t I might have lost £5000 later on.”

I looked at him in amazement. A kind of inverted Christianity was at work had he only known it. But he prided himself on his paganism.

Well, now he is dead and can find no extenuating circumstances; but I have no doubt he would have explained the catastrophe perfectly, had it been anything short of fatal.

“I was getting very cheap,” he would probably have said, “and needed rest. I could not have got it naturally, being far too busy; so this accident was sent to keep me in bed for a couple of months and pull me clean round.”

But it is hard when the protective stars suffer from _trop de zèle_.

III.--THE NUT

He seemed to be an old habitué of the music-hall, for without a programme he had known all that was coming. And then suddenly he came to his own; for, “Watch this,” he said to those of us who were near him, strangers though we were, as a new number went up; “this is good. I know a chap in this. I’ll tell you when he comes on.” We watched and waited. It was a furious knock-about sketch, the scene of which was a grocer’s shop, staffed by comic grocers. Humorist after humorist came upon the stage, fell over each other, and went through the usual antics; but there was no news of our friend’s friend, nor was the play good.

And then at last a young man representing an aristocratic customer rushed on. “That’s him,” said the man, “that’s old Charley. He’s a nut, I can tell you.” (A nut is what we used to call a “dog,” with a touch more of irresponsibility and high-spirited idiocy.)

“Isn’t he a nut?” he asked us all with a radiant sweeping glance of inquiry. How could we disappoint him? I caught myself nodding in agreement. A nut, surely. “Oh, he’s a boy, I promise you. I’ve had some rare times with old Charley,” his friend went on. “You should see him at Forest Gate on Sundays! I tell you he’s a nut.”

The nut continued to do his best to prove his character. He screwed an eyeglass in his eye, he dashed the girls under the chin, he fell over his walking-stick, he flung his tall hat on the ground. His friend was in ecstasies. “Good old Charley!” he cried again; “isn’t he a nut? By Jingo, but he’s a nut!”

I left him exulting in his intimacy with Charley, while the youths round him glowed in the glory of even the temporary acquaintance of a man who knew intimately a nut on the music-hall stage.

And, after all, that is no small thing.

IV.--THE MASTER OF THE NEW SUBURB

“_The Nook._” Is Mr. Jupp in?

_Mrs. Jupp._ No, lady, I can’t say as he’s in just at the moment, but I daresay I could find him. He’s very likely at “The Limes,” or “Bellaggio,” or up at our other garden.

“_The Nook._” I want to see him very particularly. It’s about my garden. I live at “The Nook,” you know, and I want Mr. Jupp to come to me regularly.

_Mrs. Jupp._ Yes, lady; but I think you’d better see Jupp yourself. I’ll go and find him if you’ll take a chair.

“_The Nook._” But I could go perfectly well. Both those houses are on my way back.

_Mrs. Jupp._ Oh no, lady; you sit down; I’ll fetch him.

[MRS. JUPP _fetches_ JUPP _from “The Green Man.”_]

“_The Nook._” Oh! Mr. Jupp, I want you to come to my garden every Friday. What do you charge for that?

_Mr. Jupp._ Fridays, mum, I’m engaged at “Bellyvista.”

“_The Nook._” Then Wednesdays.

_Mr. Jupp._ Wednesdays, mum, I go to “The Red Bungalow.”

“_The Nook._” All day?

_Mr. Jupp._ Yes, mum, all day. By rights I ought to be there all the week, there’s that work to be done.

“_The Nook._” Mondays, then? Are you engaged on Mondays?

_Mr. Jupp._ Yes, mum; on Mondays I belongs to “Sans Souci.”

“_The Nook._” But this is Monday. Why aren’t you there now?

_Mr. Jupp._ I am, mum. This is my tea-time.

“_The Nook._” Couldn’t you give me your tea-times? You shall have tea--anything you like--in the garden, and if you gave me that hour every evening all through the week I daresay it would do.

_Mr. Jupp._ What, mum, work all through my tea-time!

“_The Nook._” I should pay you for it, of course. And really you’re much better without tea. You’ll enjoy your supper all the more, you know. Wouldn’t he, Mrs. Jupp?

_Mrs. Jupp._ Oh! I never interfere with Jupp’s affairs. Jupp must answer for himself.

“_The Nook._” Well, then, Mr. Jupp, couldn’t you give me an hour in the early morning before you start at the other houses?

_Mr. Jupp._ What about my own garden, mum? When am I going to do that?

“_The Nook._” Of course I should pay you well for coming then.

_Mr. Jupp._ What were you thinking of giving, mum?