The enemy had declared “no trumps.” Rupert played out his ace and king
of clubs and cleared the adversary of that suit; then the Sheep, whom the
Fates had inflicted on him for a partner, took the third round with the
queen of clubs, and, having no other club to lead back, opened another
suit. The enemy won the remainder of the tricks—and the rubber.
“I had four more clubs to play; we only wanted the odd trick to win the
rubber,” said Rupert.
“But I hadn’t another club to lead you,” exclaimed the Sheep, with his
ready, defensive smile.
“It didn’t occur to you to throw your queen away on my king and leave me
with the command of the suit,” said Rupert, with polite bitterness.
“I suppose I ought to have—I wasn’t certain what to do. I’m awfully
sorry,” said the Sheep.
Being awfully and uselessly sorry formed a large part of his occupation
in life. If a similar situation had arisen in a subsequent hand he would
have blundered just as certainly, and he would have been just as
irritatingly apologetic.
Rupert stared gloomily across at him as he sat smiling and fumbling with
his cards. Many men who have good brains for business do not possess the
rudiments of a card-brain, and Rupert would not have judged and condemned
his prospective brother-in-law on the evidence of his bridge play alone.
The tragic part of it was that he smiled and fumbled through life just as
fatuously and apologetically as he did at the card-table. And behind the
defensive smile and the well-worn expressions of regret there shone a
scarcely believable but quite obvious self-satisfaction. Every sheep of
the pasture probably imagines that in an emergency it could become
terrible as an army with banners—one has only to watch how they stamp
their feet and stiffen their necks when a minor object of suspicion comes
into view and behaves meekly. And probably the majority of human sheep
see themselves in imagination taking great parts in the world’s more
impressive dramas, forming swift, unerring decisions in moments of
crisis, cowing mutinies, allaying panics, brave, strong, simple, but, in
spite of their natural modesty, always slightly spectacular.
“Why in the name of all that is unnecessary and perverse should Kathleen
choose this man for her future husband?” was the question that Rupert
asked himself ruefully. There was young Malcolm Athling, as
nice-looking, decent, level-headed a fellow as any one could wish to
meet, obviously her very devoted admirer, and yet she must throw herself
away on this pale-eyed, weak-mouthed embodiment of self-approving
ineptitude. If it had been merely Kathleen’s own affair Rupert would
have shrugged his shoulders and philosophically hoped that she might make
the best of an undeniably bad bargain. But Rupert had no heir; his own
boy lay underground somewhere on the Indian frontier, in goodly company.
And the property would pass in due course to Kathleen and Kathleen’s
husband. The Sheep would live there in the beloved old home, rearing up
other little Sheep, fatuous and rabbit-faced and self-satisfied like
himself, to dwell in the land and possess it. It was not a soothing
prospect.
Towards dusk on the afternoon following the bridge experience Rupert and
the Sheep made their way homeward after a day’s mixed shooting. The
Sheep’s cartridge bag was nearly empty, but his game bag showed no signs
of over-crowding. The birds he had shot at had seemed for the most part
as impervious to death or damage as the hero of a melodrama. And for
each failure to drop his bird he had some explanation or apology ready on
his lips. Now he was striding along in front of his host, chattering
happily over his shoulder, but obviously on the look-out for some belated
rabbit or woodpigeon that might haply be secured as an eleventh-hour
addition to his bag. As they passed the edge of a small copse a large
bird rose from the ground and flew slowly towards the trees, offering an
easy shot to the oncoming sportsmen. The Sheep banged forth with both
barrels, and gave an exultant cry.
“Horray! I’ve shot a thundering big hawk!”
“To be exact, you’ve shot a honey-buzzard. That is the hen bird of one
of the few pairs of honey-buzzards breeding in the United Kingdom. We’ve
kept them under the strictest preservation for the last four years; every
game-keeper and village gun loafer for twenty miles round has been warned
and bribed and threatened to respect their sanctity, and egg-snatching
agents have been carefully guarded against during the breeding season.
Hundreds of lovers of rare birds have delighted in seeing their
snap-shotted portraits in _Country Life_, and now you’ve reduced the hen
bird to a lump of broken feathers.”
Rupert spoke quietly and evenly, but for a moment or two a gleam of
positive hatred shone in his eyes.
“I say, I’m so sorry,” said the Sheep, with his apologetic smile. “Of
course I remember hearing about the buzzards, but somehow I didn’t
connect this bird with them. And it was such an east shot—”
“Yes,” said Rupert; “that was the trouble.”
Kathleen found him in the gun-room smoothing out the feathers of the dead
bird. She had already been told of the catastrophe.
“What a horrid misfortune,” she said sympathetically.
“It was my dear Robbie who first discovered them, the last time he was
home on leave. Don’t you remember how excited he was about them? Let’s
go and have some tea.”
Both bridge and shooting were given a rest for the next two or three
weeks. Death, who enters into no compacts with party whips, had forced a
Parliamentary vacancy on the neighbourhood at the least convenient
season, and the local partisans on either side found themselves immersed
in the discomforts of a mid-winter election. Rupert took his politics
seriously and keenly. He belonged to that type of strangely but rather
happily constituted individuals which these islands seem to produce in a
fair plenty; men and women who for no personal profit or gain go forth
from their comfortable firesides or club card-rooms to hunt to and fro in
the mud and rain and wind for the capture or tracking of a stray vote
here and there on their party’s behalf—not because they think they ought
to, but because they want to. And his energies were welcome enough on
this occasion, for the seat was a closely disputed possession, and its
loss or retention would count for much in the present position of the
Parliamentary game. With Kathleen to help him, he had worked his corner
of the constituency with tireless, well-directed zeal, taking his share
of the dull routine work as well as of the livelier episodes. The
talking part of the campaign wound up on the eve of the poll with a
meeting in a centre where more undecided votes were supposed to be
concentrated than anywhere else in the division. A good final meeting
here would mean everything. And the speakers, local and imported, left
nothing undone to improve the occasion. Rupert was down for the
unimportant task of moving the complimentary vote to the chairman which
should close the proceedings.
“I’m so hoarse,” he protested, when the moment arrived; “I don’t believe
I can make my voice heard beyond the platform.”
“Let me do it,” said the Sheep; “I’m rather good at that sort of thing.”
The chairman was popular with all parties, and the Sheep’s opening words
of complimentary recognition received a round of applause. The orator
smiled expansively on his listeners and seized the opportunity to add a
few words of political wisdom on his own account. People looked at the
clock or began to grope for umbrellas and discarded neckwraps. Then, in
the midst of a string of meaningless platitudes, the Sheep delivered
himself of one of those blundering remarks which travel from one end of a
constituency to the other in half an hour, and are seized on by the other
side as being more potent on their behalf than a ton of election
literature. There was a general shuffling and muttering across the
length and breadth of the hall, and a few hisses made themselves heard.
The Sheep tried to whittle down his remark, and the chairman
unhesitatingly threw him over in his speech of thanks, but the damage was
done.
“I’m afraid I lost touch with the audience rather over that remark,” said
the Sheep afterwards, with his apologetic smile abnormally developed.
“You lost us the election,” said the chairman, and he proved a true
prophet.
A month or so of winter sport seemed a desirable pick-me-up after the
strenuous work and crowning discomfiture of the election. Rupert and
Kathleen hied them away to a small Alpine resort that was just coming
into prominence, and thither the Sheep followed them in due course, in
his role of husband-elect. The wedding had been fixed for the end of
March.
It was a winter of early and unseasonable thaws, and the far end of the
local lake, at a spot where swift currents flowed into it, was decorated
with notices, written in three languages, warning skaters not to venture
over certain unsafe patches. The folly of approaching too near these
danger spots seemed to have a natural fascination for the Sheep.
“I don’t see what possible danger there can be,” he protested, with his
inevitable smile, when Rupert beckoned him away from the proscribed area;
“the milk that I put out on my window-sill last night was frozen an inch
deep.”
“It hadn’t got a strong current flowing through it,” said Rupert; “in any
case, there is not much sense in hovering round a doubtful piece of ice
when there are acres of good ice to skate over. The secretary of the
ice-committee has warned you once already.”
A few minutes later Rupert heard a loud squeal of fear, and saw a dark
spot blotting the smoothness of the lake’s frozen surface. The Sheep was
struggling helplessly in an ice-hole of his own making. Rupert gave one
loud curse, and then dashed full tilt for the shore; outside a low stable
building on the lake’s edge he remembered having seen a ladder. If he
could slide it across the ice-hole before the Sheep went under the rescue
would be comparatively simple work. Other skaters were dashing up from a
distance, and, with the ladder’s help, they could get him out of his
death-trap without having to trust themselves on the margin of rotten
ice. Rupert sprang on to the surface of lumpy, frozen snow, and
staggered to where the ladder lay. He had already lifted it when the
rattle of a chain and a furious outburst of growls burst on his hearing,
and he was dashed to the ground by a mass of white and tawny fur. A
sturdy young yard-dog, frantic with the pleasure of performing his first
piece of active guardian service, was ramping and snarling over him,
rendering the task of regaining his feet or securing the ladder a matter
of considerable difficulty. When he had at last succeeded in both
efforts he was just by a hair’s-breadth too late to be of any use. The
Sheep had definitely disappeared under the ice-rift.
Kathleen Athling and her husband stay the greater part of the year with
Rupert, and a small Robbie stands in some danger of being idolised by a
devoted uncle. But for twelve months of the year Rupert’s most
inseparable and valued companion is a sturdy tawny and white yard-dog.