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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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MR. Cyril Rupert Fotheringay was in what may be termed a bit of a difficulty, and one, moreover, from which a way out was not readily apparent.
Absurd though it may seem, he had neglected, for reasons which it would be tedious, if not positively painful, to relate, to make adequate arrangements about his Christmas dinner—with the inevitable result that as the hour of that festive meal drew nigh, he was conscious of an increasing restlessness and annoyance—not to mention a large, hollow vacancy in that region of his anatomy most perfectly adapted for the reception of a Christmas dinner.
The fact was that he had overslept himself rather badly on the morning of Christmas Day—having found over-night a really comfortable barn—and the afternoon was already waning when he realised that the town which he had hoped to favour with his presence during the season of right goodwill was still a good many miles away from him. And in this town lived the only man who owed him money.
He had been looking forward to a moderately festive time, if he could find the man who owed him money, and if the said man was in a position to pay the said money; but now—
Mr. Fotheringay shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of angry disgust as he stared out across the snow-covered downs from the tumble-down cart-shed in which he had halted for a space in order to flap his arms about in the hope that, sheltered by the flint wall from the icy east wind, he might encourage any stray calories to heat that might be in the neighbourhood to take up their residence in his chilled system.
He was a youngish man, not bad-looking, though he was so seriously in need of a shave that he looked as if he were wearing a mask on his lower face. He was not well- dressed, though he wore his shabby clothes like a man who had once worn good and even costly raiment. But he hardly looked what he was—a tramp, and further, a tramp who was not making a name for himself in his profession. Indeed, he was, as will be seen, a novice in trampdom.
He lit his last pipeful of tobacco and stared out from his bleak shelter at a lonely crow that was flapping slowly across the snowy desolation of the downs.
'Merry Christmas!' shouted Mr. Fotheringay sarcastically to the sombre-looking fowl of the air, the only living thing in sight. The crow cocked a sulky eye at him, gave a husky caw of anger and contempt—for all he had achieved so far for his Christmas dinner had been the appendix and spare-rib of a rabbit, overlooked by the fox which had killed it—and flapped himself out of sight.
Mr. Fotheringay picked nip a brown-paper parcel at his feet, and sat upon a frozen iron harrow lying in a corner of the cart-shed.
'This Christmas,' he said, 'is going to be a frost for little Cyril Rupert. However, let's have a look at the larder!'
With blue hands he unwrapped the parcel and set out the contents on the ground.
'One half-tin salmon!' he said. A thought struck him, and he sniffed cautiously at the open tin. His face went all screwed-up and puckered, and, with an exclamation of horror, he threw the tin at a large rat which was watching him wistfully from a corner.
'Don't go about saying I never gave you anything, rat,' he said bitterly. Then he produced a crust so hard that it gave him gumboils to look at it—he said—a piece of cheese that looked as if the mice had been at it, and a small but powerful onion.
He stared thoughtfully at the meagre collection, and laughed sardonically.
'Your dinner's ready, Cyril Rupert,' he said ironically.
Then he burst out:—
'And in this country there are millions of people who have just faced, or are about to face, the Feed of the Year, and to wash it down with anything from high priced French sneeze water in golden-topped bottles, to British all-but water in screw-topped bottles. They are going to stuff themselves with turkey and goose. and beef and sausages and mince-pies and burnt brandy—while here's little Cyril taking the fasting cure on the downs in an east wind cold enough to freeze the ears off a china chimpanzee—oo-oo- ooh!'
He threw back his head and deliberately howled like a wolf. When he had howled enough he suddenly turned with a frozen grin, kicked the onion as far as he could, flung the bread at the crow which had returned, and ground the cheese under his heel.
'It can't be done!' he yelled, with the fey hilarity of a thoroughly roused man. 'To beg I am ashamed, and so. I'm thundering well going to demand. A man has a right to live, and. I'm going to demand my rights, and chance it!' he added, rather hysterically, and set off down the road.
'The first big house I come to,' he told himself, with desperate humour. 'The owner of the first big house is going to get the first offer. This is a season of peace and goodwill. All right! He'll provide the goodwill. All right to fight him to make him see it. It's not right for a handsome young man—bar his clothes and whisker—to go hungry in Merrie England, whether he's able to commit carols or not. Here goes!'
Half a mile further on he found the big house he was looking for. It was a big house. It blazed with light from every window, and, viewed across the park in which it stood, it looKed to Mr. Fotheringay to be about the size of a castle, or a big seaside hotel.
'There she is,' said the outcast cheerily, and clambered over the park fence.
'There's where little Cyril dines, or is stunned!'
He hurried across the park, making a bee-line for the lights, headed across a huge lawn, scrambled up a number of terraces, and went straight to the front entrance.
He knocked the knocker with his left hand, and rang the bell with his right.
'When a man gets a choice of two things, the best plan is to choose both,' he said, 'and I'm too hungry for etiquette!'
The door flew open, revealing a vast, brilliantly- lighted hall.
Instantly Mr. Fotheringay walked past the footman who had opened unto him His stick—one he had cut from a hedge he handed to another footman, and his hat—one he had stolen from a defence less scarecrow—to a third manservant. Ho had acted so quickly that the men had the goods before they quite realised that Mr. Fotheringay looked like an uninvited guest.
An egg-shaped, butler-like person hurried up.
'Ah, Williams, there you are!' said Mr. Fotheringay cheerily, as he walked across to the dumbfounded footmen. 'Shut the door, my man; there's a. dickens of a draught!'
He dropped into a big, shabby, leather-covered chair in front of the huge fire place.
'Everybody dressing?' he said to the completely 'buffaloed' butler. 'Ah well, I suppose I have time for sherry and bitters before dinner. Bring it, please—the peach bitters, I think.'
He took a cigar from a silver box on a carved antique table close by.
'Stay, though; let it be whisky-and-soda. Pass the matches!'
He broke the band from the cigar.
But the men had taken in every detail of his appearance by now, and it was evident that not one of them laboured to any extent under the delusion that he was a duke in disguise, or anything but a plain, everyday tramp. They became more like men and less like automatic machines.
The butler advanced on him.
'Now, look here, my man,' he said; 'you clear out of this before you're flung out. I don't know whether you're mad or just drunk, but you're going out, and going out quick!'
Mr. Fotheringay, who was finding himself much more comfortable and at ease than he had anticipated, waved an admonitory hand at the butler.
'Absurd fellow!' he said. 'You couldn't turn a dog out on a night like this, to say nothing of a man!'
'Dog or no dog, you are for the fresh air,' announced one of the footmen.
'Don!t harp on one thing so!' advised Mr. Fotheringay, brushing a speck of cigar-ash from his ragged coat. 'I have come here to dine, and, believe me, Baggy Breeches, I intend to dine. If I have any insolence I'll brain you. Go and tell your master that Mr. Cyril Rupert Fotheringay is here, and would he greatly obliged by the loan of his second-best dress suit. Say I'm willing to fight him for it. You, Golden-Tassel, go and get my bath ready. You, Hoary-Head, proceed to find some shaving-tackle and vest and things, silk ones, understand, none of your wool-next-to-skin tricks with me! And you, Wilkins, close that door, and see about my whisky-and-soda! Remember I've been out in the cold. Now, look alive, all of you —don't dawdle!'
It was desperate work, and Mr. Fotheringay was fully aware of the fact. He was quite clear in his own mind that, within the next four or five minutes, he would find himself flung out of the place like a sack of condemned vegetables; but even then he would not be worse off than before. He stuck to his guns as the servants advanced on him.
'Don't make me lose my temper—don't do that!' he said, almost imploringly. 'Don't start me fighting yet—for your own sakes—for the sakes of your wives and children!'
He broke off as a young gentleman, very faultlessly attired in evening dress, strolled in behind a cigar the size of a baby torpedo.
'What's this, Briggs?' he inquired languidly.
Mr. Briggs seemed flustered.
'Very sorry, my lord. This tramp came in to dine, your lordship. I mean —it was unexpected—unawares. We was about to put him out.
'His lordship,' a sporting-looking youngster of about twenty-two, ran an approving eye over Mr. Fotheringay, and nodded calmly.
'All right, go ahead! Let us see you put him out,' he said coolly. He poked his head out of the door. 'Quick, you people!' he shouted. 'Briggs is going to draw a badger!'
He turned to his servants.
'Now, then—time!' he said, as a crowd of people began to swarm into the great hall. They were mostly young and tolerably lively.
Mr. Fotheringay stiffened. He had not bargained for quite such an audience. But it couldn't be helped.
He girded up his loins.
'Very well,' he mid, 'anybody who would rob a man of his inner deserves all he gets!'
His quick eyes fell upon a big war-club from Fiji stuck amongst a set of trophies upon the wall near by, and he darted for it, grabbed it, and swung it in the air till it sang.
'This is for you, Briggs!' he cried, in a sort of exultation. 'You, and your hired! assassins! I don't leave this house without a feed—a good feed—if I can help it.'
The great club hummed as he whirled it round his head.
'Come on, you scrimshankers!'
'Yes, the man's right! Go on, Briggs!' supplemented his lordship.
Briggs looked miserable.
'Yes, m'lord!' he said.
'Well, go on, then, Briggs, charge!'
'Certainly, m'lord!' He led his troops forward some eight inches.
'Do be quick, Briggs!' said a girl, who seemed clothed largely in diamonds.
Mr. Briggs looked fiercely at Mr. Fotheringay.
'Be off!' he said threateningly.
'Forget it, Briggs!' suggested Mr. Fotheringay. 'Forget it, and come on!'
The club whirled round under Mr. Briggs' startled nose.
His lordship turned to his friend.
'I will take four ponies against the Badger!'
'Lay you three to one, Greatlands,' responded a fair youth of military appearance.
Lord Greatlands nodded.
'Oh, Johnnie, do put me five pounds on the Badger!' cried a lovely young thing in pink tulle and pearls.
'Oh, absurd!' said an older man impatiently. 'The betting never was more than six to four. Briggs and the men were afraid before he had the club. It's a hundred to eight on the Badger now!'
'But they are four to one, Tony!' protested another, and for a moment quite an excited little discussion took place among the guests.
It was this which induced the Badger, as Mr. Fotheringay appeared now to be generally known, to commit the almost fatal indiscretion of taking his eyes from Mr. Briggs and his satellites.
But he was sharply reminded of these, foes by a stuffed otter, which, hurled by one of the goaded footmen, took him on the side of the head and knocked him off his balance.
'Now—charge!' roared Briggs. And they charged. Briggs tripped over a skin rug, and fell upon Mr. Fotheringay like 'a thousand of bricks,' and the others fell over Briggs.
'Eugh!' went Briggs, half the breath knocked out of his body.
'Fight. Badger! Fight for your dinner!' shouted Lord Greatlands encouragingly.
'Now, Briggs—stick to him, Briggs!' cried those who had backed the butler and his cohort.
Mr. Fotheringay, buried somewhere under a mass of butler and footman, became dimly conscious that he was in imminent peril of losing his 'feed,' and began to squirm and struggle like a harassed python.
He suddenly saw red.
How he got out from under he never quite knew, but he struggled free at last, ready to fight regiments, divisions, armies.
He leaped with a howl at the trophies on the wall, and snatched therefrom a battle-axe that, for size, would have been an admirable tool for Samson or Hercules.
'Now, come on, and fight fair!' he yelled.
One of the footmen, by a lucky shot, caught the battle- axe with the captured war-club. The shock jarred Mr. Fotheringay's arm clean back to its roots, momentarily paralysing it.
He saw the men preparing to charge, and desperately upset an antique table between them and himself. Then suddenly he turned and bolted through a door just behind him. He was not running away—he merely wanted a minute's breathing space. It was strategy, not retreat—withdrawal to a prepared position, according to plan, so to speak.
Down a long corridor he raced, upsetting a splendid marble Venus, who seemed to be in the way, so that she crashed on to the floor and smashed into eight or ten pieces; he shot through a drawing room the size of a church, leaving behind him a trail of wrecked tables and so forth; went bounding up a flight of steps that appeared to him, found himself in a gallery that ran round the hall he had just quitted, and so careered down a smaller flight.
Behind him streamed a pack of guests shouting with laughter, one genius among them sounding a hunting-horn in queer, spasmodic blasts.
Then suddenly he found himself in another corridor with a pair of swing-doors at the end. Through these he darted, then through another wide door, and so, in rags and tatters, with shockingly tousled hair and starting eyes, gasping for breath, and still with that vast battle-axe in his hand, found himself in a huge kitchen, full of servants.
'Nom d'un chien!' ejaculated a startled French chef, or words to that effect, dropped a ladle, and broke for the outer regions, followed pell mell by a flock of squealing maidservants.
Like lightning Mr. Fotheringay banged the doors, had bolted two, and was on the point of bolting the third, when it swung open and the scarlet face of Mr. Briggs, for once to the fore, came in.
Mr. Fotheringay snatched up a mighty dish of floppy blanc-mange—the first thing that came to hand—and slammed it into, the face of the butler, half suffocating him, butted him clean out of the kitchen, bang and bolted that door also, collapsed into a chair, and for a moment rested from his labours.
'How's that?' he yelled defiantly,' breathing like a horse that has just climbed a bad hill.
'And wait there, you Briggs—I'll be out to you in a minute!' he added, sniffing the air like an old war- horse that smells burnt powder.
But as, he sniffed a sudden calm fell upon him. He sniffed again inquiringly.
What was that fragrant odour that hung upon the air? Surely—surely it was roasting game and poultry—pheasants and turkey and goose—unless his nose sadly deceived him.
He stared round, and then, for the first time, it dawned upon him that, of all places, he was in the kitchen. In the kitchen at the dinner hour to a second! If he had been invited he could not have timed his visit better.
And not only that, but the kitchen was barricaded—almost impregnable. Thanks to the monstrous mediaeval bolts—and thanks also to the moral effect of the monstrous mediaeval battle- axe— one man could hold that kitchen against an army. A glance showed him that the huge windows were shuttered.
And all about him, to the right of him, to the left of him—was food! Food enough for a hundred!
For a second he held his breath.
'It's a miracle!' he said softly, and peeped into the two steaming soup tureens that stood upon the table.
'Thick or clear, sir?' he said playfully and very loudly.
'Both, I think!' he answered himself.
Outside the door somebody groaned aloud. It sounded like Briggs.
He explored under a huge silver dish that stood on a hot-water apparatus.
'Turbot! By James, it's many a mazy moon since I fed upon turbot!' he cried.
Outside the door Briggs was shouting with horror. The other caught his words:
'Penal servitude—insolent—prison—'
'Ah, finish your dream!' he advised, and reached for a soup-plate and a spoon.
The ladle clinked musically against the tureen.
Above the burst of conversation that now broke out, Mr. Fotheringay heard a curt, though anxious, voice that rose above the others.
'Parley with him—parley, I say! Hwhat? Hwhat? The man will ruin the dinner in five minutes! Haw! Hwhat's that? Yes, parley with him!'
Mr. Fotheringay listened.
'But how, general? How can you parley with a starving man who is dining with a battle-axe?' inquired another voice.
'How, dammay? How? Why, through the—hwhat?—through the—haw—ventilator, dammay! Use a little strategy—hwhat?'
'Yes, dammay—but you'd better be quick about it!' muttered Mr. Fotheringay, finishing his soup by the simple method of putting the plate to his mouth and tilting it gently. Time was more valuable to him than etiquette just then.
But before he had time to wreck the beautifully decorated turbot, the face of Briggs appeared at the ventilator over one of the doors. It looked very blanc- mangey.
'His lordship wishes to speak with you!' said Mr. Briggs, very severely, but with a certain awe and respect in his voice. Evidently he had been instructed not to be offensive.
'Go 'way, Briggs, I'm busy!' replied Mr. Fotheringay, changing his plate. 'Oh, Briggs, wait a minute, though—' where's the wine?'
Briggs disappeared, and the face or Lord Greatlands appeared at the ventilator.'
'I say, Badger, old man,' expostulated! the nobleman, 'is it quite sporting? You can't possibly eat the whole dashed dinner, you know.'
'I can but try!' said Mr. Fotheringay.
'Well, but I assure you you can't! Hang it, Badger, be sporting! We've been out all day, and, dash it all, we're hungry!'
'Why don't you fight for it? I had to!' demanded the Badger.
'Only for your own dinner. You weren't fighting for ours, too!' argued his lordship, not unplaintively.
'Hey, hwhat? Parley with him, dammay!' barked the general outside, who seemed to be possessed of one idea only.
'Please tell that military man to shut up!' came another voice. 'You're only irritating him. Let Greatlands do it!'
'Hwhat?' bellowed the outraged soldier. 'If I had him in barracks—'
'But you haven't, dear General Corditer! He's in the kitchen!' interrupted a feminine voice pertly.
'Look here, Badger, be- reasonable' pleaded the younger man. 'Call it all off. We'll delay dinner while you change and shave and so on, and then dine with us in the ordinary way,' urged Lord Greatlands. 'What do you say?'
'Well'—Mr. Fotheringay hesitated—'it's an idea!' He pondered, then slowly replaced the cover on the turbot. 'I don't care to rob anyone of their dinner. You mean that—honest Injum—bygones to be bygones, and so on?'
'Oh. naturally. Absolutely honest Injum. of course!'
'It's a go!'
Mr. Fotheringay rose.
'Send those people back to the drawing room, or the hall, or anywhere!' he requested. 'The fact is. I'm not quite dressed for dining, and I don't want them to feel prejudiced against me.. I should hate them to think I'm a rough sort of person,'
Lord Greatlands did as he was asked, and then Mr. Fotheringay unbolted the doors.
His host was the first to enter.
'Congratulate you, Badger!' he said cordially.
Mr. Fotheringay smiled.
'Good work, wasn't it? Can you lend me some things?'
'Pleasure!'
They went upstairs together, and Mr. Fotheringay was consigned to the care of a staggered valet.
'This,' said the Badger, some twenty minutes later, when, having shaved, bathed, and carefully dressed, he surveyed his reflection in a mirror with great approval—'this is like old times!'
'Yes. sir!' said the valet.
Lord Greatlands entered.
'That's better, Badger, 'old man!' he said, as indeed it was, for Mr. Fotheringay would compare creditably with any man in the castle.
'By Jove, I know you!' said Greatlands suddenly. 'Aren't you Cyril Fotheringay, the man who owned Blue Peter that cracked up at Tattenham Corner in the last Derby?'
The Badger smiled.
'Guilty,' he said airily. 'I cracked up, too, that day!'
'Oh, sorry!' What rotten luck! Is it hopeless?'
'Unless I eat the humble pie a wealthy but straight- laced auntie has carefully cooked for me!'
Lord Greatlands grinned.
'Oh. well, no affair of mine, of course; but why not—er—parley with her, dammay'? It's much better fun being rich.
Mr. Fotheringay was beginning to realise that interesting fact. The friendly advice decided him.
'I will!' he said, not without a touch of fervour.
'Good man! Come along!' The sporting nobleman made for the stairs.
'We'll tell 'em it was done for a bet,' he said.
'If my appetite doesn't give me away,' concluded Mr. Fotheringay doubtfully; and so saying, followed his host triumphantly dinnerwards.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.