Beasts and Super-Beasts

by Saki

  THE STALLED OX

  Theophil Eshley was an artist by profession, a cattle painter by force ofenvironment. It is not to be supposed that he lived on a ranche or adairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with horn and hoof, milking-stool,and branding-iron. His home was in a park-like, villa-dotted districtthat only just escaped the reproach of being suburban. On one side ofhis garden there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which anenterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of theChannel Island persuasion. At noonday in summertime the cows stoodknee-deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a group of walnuttrees, with the sunlight falling in dappled patches on their mouse-sleekcoats. Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of tworeposeful milch-cows in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass andfiltered sunbeam, and the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on thewalls of its Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly,methodical habits in its children. Eshley had painted a successful andacceptable picture of cattle drowsing picturesquely under walnut trees,and as he had begun, so, of necessity, he went on. His “Noontide Peace,”a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by “A Mid-daySanctuary,” a study of a walnut tree, with two dun cows under it. In duesuccession there came “Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling,” “TheHaven of the Herd,” and “A-dream in Dairyland,” studies of walnut treesand dun cows. His two attempts to break away from his own tradition weresignal failures: “Turtle Doves alarmed by Sparrow-hawk” and “Wolves onthe Roman Campagna” came back to his studio in the guise of abominableheresies, and Eshley climbed back into grace and the public gaze with “AShaded Nook where Drowsy Milkers Dream.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “I imagine it came in by the gate,” said the lady impatiently; “itcouldn’t have climbed the walls, and I don’t suppose anyone dropped itfrom an aeroplane as a Bovril advertisement. The immediately importantquestion is not how it got in, but how to get it out.”

  “Won’t it go?” said Eshley.

  “If it was anxious to go,” said Adela Pingsford rather angrily, “I shouldnot have come here to chat with you about it. I’m practically all alone;the housemaid is having her afternoon out and the cook is lying down withan attack of neuralgia. Anything that I may have learned at school or inafter life about how to remove a large ox from a small garden seems tohave escaped from my memory now. All I could think of was that you werea near neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiarwith the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some slightassistance. Possibly I was mistaken.”

  “I paint dairy cows, certainly,” admitted Eshley, “but I cannot claim tohave had any experience in rounding-up stray oxen. I’ve seen it done ona cinema film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of otheraccessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures arefaked.”

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

  “It’s eating a chrysanthemum,” said Eshley at last, when the silence hadbecome unbearable.

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

  The necessity for doing something was becoming imperative. Eshley took astep or two in the direction of the animal, clapped his hands, and madenoises of the “Hish” and “Shoo” variety. If the ox heard them it gave nooutward indication of the fact.

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

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

  The icy calm broke down; Adela Pingsford used language that sent theartist instinctively a few feet nearer to the ox. He picked up apea-stick and flung it with some determination against the animal’smottled flanks. The operation of mashing _Mademoiselle Louise Bichot_into a petal salad was suspended for a long moment, while the ox gazedwith concentrated inquiry at the stick-thrower. Adela gazed with equalconcentration and more obvious hostility at the same focus. As the beastneither lowered its head nor stamped its feet Eshley ventured on anotherjavelin exercise with another pea-stick. The ox seemed to realise atonce that it was to go; it gave a hurried final pluck at the bed wherethe chrysanthemums had been, and strode swiftly up the garden. Eshleyran to head it towards the gate, but only succeeded in quickening itspace from a walk to a lumbering trot. With an air of inquiry, but withno real hesitation, it crossed the tiny strip of turf that the charitablecalled the croquet lawn, and pushed its way through the open Frenchwindow into the morning-room. Some chrysanthemums and other autumnherbage stood about the room in vases, and the animal resumed itsbrowsing operations; all the same, Eshley fancied that the beginnings ofa hunted look had come into its eyes, a look that counselled respect. Hediscontinued his attempt to interfere with its choice of surroundings.

  “Mr. Eshley,” said Adela in a shaking voice, “I asked you to drive thatbeast out of my garden, but I did not ask you to drive it into my house.If I must have it anywhere on the premises I prefer the garden to themorning-room.”

  “Cattle drives are not in my line,” said Eshley; “if I remember I toldyou so at the outset.” “I quite agree,” retorted the lady, “paintingpretty pictures of pretty little cows is what you’re suited for. Perhapsyou’d like to do a nice sketch of that ox making itself at home in mymorning-room?”

  This time it seemed as if the worm had turned; Eshley began stridingaway.

  “Where are you going?” screamed Adela.

  “To fetch implements,” was the answer.

  “Implements? I won’t have you use a lasso. The room will be wrecked ifthere’s a struggle.”

  But the artist marched out of the garden. In a couple of minutes hereturned, laden with easel, sketching-stool, and painting materials.

  “Do you mean to say that you’re going to sit quietly down and paint thatbrute while it’s destroying my morning-room?” gasped Adela.

  “It was your suggestion,” said Eshley, setting his canvas in position.

  “I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it!” stormed Adela.

  “I don’t see what standing you have in the matter,” said the artist; “youcan hardly pretend that it’s your ox, even by adoption.”

  “You seem to forget that it’s in my morning-room, eating my flowers,”came the raging retort.

  “You seem to forget that the cook has neuralgia,” said Eshley; “she may
be just dozing off into a merciful sleep and your outcry will waken her.Consideration for others should be the guiding principle of people in ourstation of life.”

  “The man is mad!” exclaimed Adela tragically. A moment later it wasAdela herself who appeared to go mad. The ox had finished thevase-flowers and the cover of “Israel Kalisch,” and appeared to bethinking of leaving its rather restricted quarters. Eshley noticed itsrestlessness and promptly flung it some bunches of Virginia creeperleaves as an inducement to continue the sitting.

  “I forget how the proverb runs,” he observed; “of something about ‘bettera dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where hate is.’ We seem to have allthe ingredients for the proverb ready to hand.”

  “I shall go to the Public Library and get them to telephone for thepolice,” announced Adela, and, raging audibly, she departed.

  Some minutes later the ox, awakening probably to the suspicion that oilcake and chopped mangold was waiting for it in some appointed byre,stepped with much precaution out of the morning-room, stared with graveinquiry at the no longer obtrusive and pea-stick-throwing human, and thenlumbered heavily but swiftly out of the garden. Eshley packed up histools and followed the animal’s example and “Larkdene” was left toneuralgia and the cook.

  The episode was the turning-point in Eshley’s artistic career. Hisremarkable picture, “Ox in a morning-room, late autumn,” was one of thesensations and successes of the next Paris Salon, and when it wassubsequently exhibited at Munich it was bought by the BavarianGovernment, in the teeth of the spirited bidding of three meat-extractfirms. From that moment his success was continuous and assured, and theRoyal Academy was thankful, two years later, to give a conspicuousposition on its walls to his large canvas “Barbary Apes Wrecking aBoudoir.”

  Eshley presented Adela Pingsford with a new copy of “Israel Kalisch,” anda couple of finely flowering plants of _Madame Adnré Blusset_, butnothing in the nature of a real reconciliation has taken place betweenthem.