dish of smoked goosebreast, a Pomeranian delicacy that was luckily procurable at a firm of delicatessen merchants in Coventry Street, while a long-necked bottle of Rhine wine gave a finishing touch of festivity and good cheer to the crowded table.
“He has evidently sold his masterpiece,” whispered Sylvia Strubble to Mrs. Nougat-Jones, who had come in late.
“Who has bought it?” she whispered back.
“Don’t know; he hasn’t said anything yet, but it must be some American. Do you see, he has got a little American flag on the dessert dish, and he has put pennies in the music box three times, once to play the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ then a Sousa march, and then the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ again. It must be an American millionaire, and he’s evidently got a very big price for it; he’s just beaming and chuckling with satisfaction.”
“We must ask him who has bought it,” said Mrs. Nougat-Jones.
“Hush! no, don’t. Let’s buy some of his sketches, quick, before we are supposed to know that he’s famous; otherwise he’ll be doubling the prices. I am so glad he’s had a success at last. I always believed in him, you know.”
For the sum of ten shillings each Miss Strubble acquired the drawings of the camel dying in Upper Berkeley Street and of the giraffes quenching their thirst in Trafalgar Square; at the same price Mrs. Nougat-Jones secured the study of roosting sand-grouse. A more ambitious picture, Wolves and Wapiti Fighting on the Steps of the Athenaeum Club, found a purchaser at fifteen shillings.
“And now what are your plans?” asked a young man who contributed occasional paragraphs to an artistic weekly.
“I go back to Stolpmünde as soon as the ship sails,” said the artist, “and I do not return. Never.”
“But your work? Your career as painter?”
“Ah, there is nossing in it. One starves. Till today I have sold not one of my sketches. Tonight you have bought a few, because I am going away from you, but at other times, not one.”
“But has not some American—?”
“Ah, the rich American,” chuckled the artist. “God be thanked. He dash his car right into our herd of schwines as they were being driven out to the fields. Many of our best schwines he killed, but he paid all damages. He paid perhaps more than they were worth, many times more than they would have fetched in the market after a month of fattening, but he was in a hurry to get on to Dantzig. When one is in a hurry one must pay what one is asked. God be thanked for rich Americans, who are always in a hurry to get somewhere else. My father and mother, they have now so plenty of money; they send me some to pay my debts and come home. I start on Monday for Stolpmünde and I do not come back. Never.”
“But your picture, the hyenas?”
“No good. It is too big to carry to Stolpmünde. I burn it.”
In time he will be forgotten, but at present Knopfschrank is almost as sore a subject as Sledonti with some of the frequenters of the Nuremberg Restaurant, Owl Street, Soho.
Hyacinth
“The new fashion of introducing the candidate’s children into an election contest is a pretty one,” said Mrs. Panstreppon; “it takes away something from the acerbity of party warfare, and it makes an interesting experience for children to look back on in after years. Still, if you will listen to my advice, Matilda, you will not take Hyacinth with you down to Luffbridge on election day.”
“Not take Hyacinth!” exclaimed his mother; “but why not? Jutterly is bringing his three children, and they are going to drive a pair of Nubian donkeys about the town, to emphasise the fact that their father has been appointed Colonial Secretary. We are making the demand for a strong Navy a special feature in our campaign, and it will be particularly appropriate to have Hyacinth dressed in his sailor suit. He’ll look heavenly.”
“The question is, not how he’ll look, but how he’ll behave. He’s a delightful child, of course, but there is a strain of unbridled pugnacity in him that breaks out at times in a really alarming fashion. You may have forgotten the affair of the little Gaffin children; I haven’t.”
“I was in India at the time, and I’ve only a vague recollection of what happened; he was very naughty, I know.”
“He was in his goat-carriage, and met the Gaffins in their perambulator, and he drove the goat full tilt at them and sent the perambulator spinning. Little Jacky Gaffin was pinned down under the wreckage, and while the nurse had her hands full with the goat Hyacinth was laying into Jacky’s legs with his belt like a small fury.”
“I’m not defending him,” said Matilda, “but they must have done something to annoy him.”
“Nothing intentionally, but someone had unfortunately told him that they were half French—their mother was a Duboc, you know—and he had been having a history lesson that morning, and had just heard of the final loss of Calais by the English, and was furious about it. He said he’d teach the little toads to go snatching towns from us, but we didn’t know at the time that he was referring to the Gaffins. I told him afterwards that all bad feeling between the two nations had died out long ago, and that anyhow the Gaffins were only half French, and he said that it was only the French half of Jacky that he had been hitting; the rest had been buried under the perambulator. If the loss of Calais unloosed such fury in him, I tremble to think what the possible loss of the election might entail.”
“All that happened when he was eight; he’s older now and knows better.”
“Children with Hyacinth’s temperament don’t know better as they grow older; they merely know more.”
“Nonsense. He will enjoy the fun of the election, and in any case he’ll be tired out by the time the poll is declared, and
