by H. H. Munro
“Yes,” answered the lady, “I suppose it is a case of partial loss of memory. I was in the train coming down here; my ticket told me that I had come from Victoria and was bound for this place. I had a couple of five-pound notes and a sovereign on me, no visiting cards or any other means of identification, and no idea as to who I am. I can only hazily recollect that I have a title; I am Lady Somebody—beyond that my mind is a blank.”
“Hadn’t you any luggage with you?” asked Jerton.
“That is what I didn’t know. I knew the name of this hotel and made up my mind to come here, and when the hotel porter who meets the trains asked if I had any luggage I had to invent a dressing-bag and dress-basket; I could always pretend that they had gone astray. I gave him the name of Smith, and presently he emerged from a confused pile of luggage and passengers with a dressing-bag and dress-basket labelled Kestrel-Smith. I had to take them; I don’t see what else I could have done.”
Jerton said nothing, but he rather wondered what the lawful owner of the baggage would do.
“Of course it was dreadful arriving at a strange hotel with the name of Kestrel-Smith, but it would have been worse to have arrived without luggage. Anyhow, I hate causing trouble.”
Jerton had visions of harassed railway officials and distraught Kestrel-Smiths, but he made no attempt to clothe his mental picture in words. The lady continued her story.
“Naturally, none of my keys would fit the things, but I told an intelligent page boy that I had lost my key-ring, and he had the locks forced in a twinkling. Rather too intelligent, that boy; he will probably end in Dartmoor. The Kestrel-Smith toilet tools aren’t up to much, but they are better than nothing.”
“If you feel sure that you have a title,” said Jerton, “why not get hold of a peerage and go right through it?”
“I tried that. I skimmed through the list of the House of Lords in ‘Whitaker,’ but a mere printed string of names conveys awfully little to one, you know. If you were an army officer and had lost your identity you might pore over the Army List for months without finding out who your were. I’m going on another tack; I’m trying to find out by various little tests who I am not—that will narrow the range of uncertainty down a bit. You may have noticed, for instance, that I’m lunching principally off lobster Newburg.”
Jerton had not ventured to notice anything of the sort.
“It’s an extravagance, because it’s one of the most expensive dishes on the menu, but at any rate it proves that I’m not Lady Starping; she never touches shell-fish, and poor Lady Braddleshrub has no digestion at all; if I am her I shall certainly die in agony in the course of the afternoon, and the duty of finding out who I am will devolve on the press and the police and those sort of people; I shall be past caring. Lady Knewford doesn’t know one rose from another and she hates men, so she wouldn’t have spoken to you in any case; and Lady Mousehilton flirts with every man she meets—I haven’t flirted with you, have I?”
Jerton hastily gave the required assurance.
“Well, you see,” continued the lady, “that knocks four off the list at once.”
“It’ll be rather a lengthy process bringing the list down to one,” said Jerton.
“Oh, but, of course, there are heaps of them that I couldn’t possibly be—women who’ve got grandchildren or sons old enough to have celebrated their coming of age. I’ve only got to consider the ones about my own age. I tell you how you might help me this afternoon, if you don’t mind; go through any of the back numbers of Country Life and those sort of papers that you can find in the smoking-room, and see if you come across my portrait with infant son or anything of that sort. It won’t take you ten minutes. I’ll meet you in the lounge about tea-time. Thanks awfully.”
And the Fair Unknown, having graciously pressed Jerton into the search for her lost identity, rose and left the room. As she passed the young man’s table she halted for a moment and whispered:
“Did you notice that I tipped the waiter a shilling? We can cross Lady Ulwight off the list; she would have died rather than do that.”
At five o’clock Jerton made his way to the hotel lounge; he had spent a diligent but fruitless quarter of an hour among the illustrated weeklies in the smoking-room. His new acquaintance was seated at a small tea-table, with a waiter hovering in attendance.
“China tea or Indian?” she asked as Jerton came up.
“China, please, and nothing to eat. Have you discovered anything?”
“Only negative information. I’m not Lady Befnal. She disapproves dreadfully of any form of gambling, so when I recognised a well-known book maker in the hotel lobby I went and put a tenner on an unnamed filly by William the Third out of Mitrovitza for the three-fifteen race. I suppose the fact of the animal being nameless was what attracted me.”
“Did it win?” asked Jerton.
“No, came in fourth, the most irritating thing a horse can do when you’ve backed it win or place. Anyhow, I know now that I’m not Lady Befnal.”
“It seems to me that the knowledge was rather dearly bought,” commented Jerton.
“Well, yes, it has rather cleared me out,” admitted the identity-seeker; “a florin is about all I’ve got left on me. The lobster Newburg made my lunch rather an expensive one, and, of course, I had to tip that boy for what he did to the Kestrel-Smith locks. I’ve got rather a useful idea, though. I feel certain that I belong to the Pivot Club; I’ll go back to town and ask the hall porter there if there are any letters for me. He knows all the members by sight, and if there are any letters or telephone messages waiting for me of course that will solve the problem. If he says there aren’t any I shall say: ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’ so I’ll find out anyway.”
The plan seemed a sound one; a difficulty in its execution suggested itself to Jerton.
“Of course,” said the lady, when he hinted at the obstacle, “there’s my fare back to town, and my bill here and cabs and things. If you’ll lend me three pounds that ought to see me through comfortably. Thanks ever so. Then there is the question of that luggage: I don’t want to be saddled with that for the rest of my life. I’ll have it brought down to the hall and you can pretend to mount guard over it while I’m writing a letter. Then I shall just slip away to the station, and you can wander off to the smoking-room, and they can do what they like with the things. They’ll advertise them after a bit and the owner can claim them.”
Jerton acquiesced in the manœuvre, and duly mounted guard over the luggage while its temporary owner slipped unobtrusively out of the hotel. Her departure was not, however, altogether unnoticed. Two gentlemen were strolling past Jerton, and one of them remarked to the other:
“Did you see that tall young woman in grey who went out just now? She is the Lady—”
His promenade carried him out of earshot at the critical moment when he was about to disclose the elusive identity. The Lady Who? Jerton could scarcely run after a total stranger, break into his conversation, and ask him for information concerning a chance passer-by. Besides, it was desirable that he should keep up the appearance of looking after the luggage. In a minute or two, however, the important personage, the man who knew, came strolling back alone. Jerton summoned up all his courage and waylaid him.
“I think I heard you say you knew the lady who went out of the hotel a few minutes ago, a tall lady, dressed in grey. Excuse me for asking if you could tell me her name; I’ve been talking to her for half an hour; she—er—she knows all my people and seems to know me, so I suppose I’ve met her somewhere before, but I’m blest if I can put a name to her. Could you—?”
“Certainly. She’s a Mrs. Stroope.”
“Mrs.?” queried Jerton.
“Yes, she’s the Lady Champion at golf in my part of the world. An awful good sort, and goes about a good deal in Society, but she has an awkward habit of losing her memory every now and then, and gets into all sorts of fixes. She’s furious, too, if you make any allusion to it afterwards. Good day, sir.”
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br /> The stranger passed on his way, and before Jerton had had time to assimilate his information he found his whole attention centred on an angry-looking lady who was making loud and fretful-seeming inquiries of the hotel clerks.
“Has any luggage been brought here from the station by mistake, a dress-basket and dressing-case, with the name Kestrel-Smith? It can’t be traced anywhere. I saw it put in at Victoria, that I’ll swear. Why—there is my luggage! and the locks have been tampered with!”
Jerton heard no more. He fled down to the Turkish bath, and stayed there for hours.
THE STALLED OX
Theophil Eshley was an artist by profession, a cattle painter by force of environment. It is not to be supposed that he lived on a ranche or a dairy farm, in an atmosphere pervaded with horn and hoof, milking-stool, and branding-iron. His home was in a park-like, villa-dotted district that only just escaped the reproach of being suburban. On one side of his garden there abutted a small, picturesque meadow, in which an enterprising neighbour pastured some small picturesque cows of the Channel Island persuasion. At noonday in summertime the cows stood knee-deep in tall meadow-grass under the shade of a group of walnut trees, with the sunlight falling in dappled patches on their mouse-sleek coats. Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of two reposeful milch-cows in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and filtered sunbeam, and the Royal Academy had duly exposed the same on the walls of its Summer Exhibition. The Royal Academy encourages orderly, methodical habits in its children. Eshley had painted a successful and acceptable 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-day Sanctuary,” a study of a walnut tree, with two dun cows under it. In due succession there came “Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling,” “The Haven of the Herd,” and “A-dream in Dairyland,” studies of walnut trees and dun cows. His two attempts to break away from his own tradition were signal failures: “Turtle Doves alarmed by Sparrow-hawk” and “Wolves on the Roman Campagna” came back to his studio in the guise of abominable heresies, and Eshley climbed back into grace and the public gaze with “A Shaded Nook where Drowsy Milkers Dream.”
On a fine afternoon in late autumn he was putting some finishing touches to a study of meadow weeds when his neighbour, Adela Pingsford, assailed the outer door of his studio with loud peremptory knockings.
“There is an ox in my garden,” she announced, in explanation of the tempestuous 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 object to. My garden has just been put straight for the winter, and an ox roaming about in it won’t improve matters. Besides, there are the chrysanthemums 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; “it couldn’t have climbed the walls, and I don’t suppose anyone dropped it from an aeroplane as a Bovril advertisement. The immediately important question 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 should not 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 with an attack of neuralgia. Anything that I may have learned at school or in after life about how to remove a large ox from a small garden seems to have escaped from my memory now. All I could think of was that you were a near neighbour and a cattle painter, presumably more or less familiar with the subjects that you painted, and that you might be of some slight assistance. Possibly I was mistaken.”
“I paint dairy cows, certainly,” admitted Eshley, “but I cannot claim to have had any experience in rounding-up stray oxen. I’ve seen it done on a cinema film, of course, but there were always horses and lots of other accessories; besides, one never knows how much of those pictures are faked.”
Adela Pingsford said nothing, but led the way to her garden. It was normally a fair-sized garden, but it looked small in comparison with the ox, a huge mottled brute, dull red about the head and shoulders, passing to dirty white on the flanks and hind-quarters, with shaggy ears and large blood-shot eyes. It bore about as much resemblance to the dainty paddock heifers that Eshley was accustomed to paint as the chief of a Kurdish nomad clan would to a Japanese tea-shop girl. Eshley stood very near 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 had become unbearable.
“How observant you are,” said Adela bitterly. “You seem to notice everything. As a matter of fact, it has got six chrysanthemums in its mouth at the present moment.”
The necessity for doing something was becoming imperative. Eshley took a step or two in the direction of the animal, clapped his hands, and made noises of the “Hish” and “Shoo” variety. If the ox heard them it gave no outward indication of the fact.
“If any hens should ever stray into my garden,” said Adela, “I should certainly 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 icy calm, 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 the artist instinctively a few feet nearer to the ox. He picked up a pea-stick and flung it with some determination against the animal’s mottled flanks. The operation of mashing Mademoiselle Louise Bichot into a petal salad was suspended for a long moment, while the ox gazed with concentrated inquiry at the stick-thrower. Adela gazed with equal concentration and more obvious hostility at the same focus. As the beast neither lowered its head nor stamped its feet Eshley ventured on another javelin exercise with another pea-stick. The ox seemed to realise at once that it was to go; it gave a hurried final pluck at the bed where the chrysanthemums had been, and strode swiftly up the garden. Eshley ran to head it towards the gate, but only succeeded in quickening its pace from a walk to a lumbering trot. With an air of inquiry, but with no real hesitation, it crossed the tiny strip of turf that the charitable called the croquet lawn, and pushed its way through the open French window into the morning-room. Some chrysanthemums and other autumn herbage stood about the room in vases, and the animal resumed its browsing operations; all the same, Eshley fancied that the beginnings of a hunted look had come into its eyes, a look that counselled respect. He discontinued his attempt to interfere with its choice of surroundings.
“Mr. Eshley,” said Adela in a shaking voice, “I asked you to drive that beast 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 the morning-room.”
“Cattle drives are not in my line,” said Eshley; “if I remember I told you so at the outset.” “I quite agree,” retorted the lady, “painting pretty pictures of pretty little cows is what you’re suited for. Perhaps you’d like to do a nice sketch of that ox making itself at home in my morning-room?”
This time it seemed as if the worm had turned; Eshley began striding away.
“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 if there’s a struggle.”
But the artist marched out of the garden. In a couple of minutes he returned, laden with easel, sketching-stool, and painting materials.
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��Do you mean to say that you’re going to sit quietly down and paint that brute 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; “you can 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 our station of life.”
“The man is mad!” exclaimed Adela tragically. A moment later it was Adela herself who appeared to go mad. The ox had finished the vase-flowers and the cover of “Israel Kalisch,” and appeared to be thinking of leaving its rather restricted quarters. Eshley noticed its restlessness and promptly flung it some bunches of Virginia creeper leaves as an inducement to continue the sitting.
“I forget how the proverb runs,” he observed; “of something about ‘better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where hate is.’ We seem to have all the ingredients for the proverb ready to hand.”
“I shall go to the Public Library and get them to telephone for the police,” announced Adela, and, raging audibly, she departed.
Some minutes later the ox, awakening probably to the suspicion that oil cake and chopped mangold was waiting for it in some appointed byre, stepped with much precaution out of the morning-room, stared with grave inquiry at the no longer obtrusive and pea-stick-throwing human, and then lumbered heavily but swiftly out of the garden. Eshley packed up his tools and followed the animal’s example and “Larkdene” was left to neuralgia and the cook.