The Arm Chair at the Inn Part 2

III

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS

Lemois, as was his custom, came in with the coffee. He serves it himself, and always with the same little ceremony, which, while apparently unimportant, marks that indefinable, mysterious line which he and his ancestry--innkeepers before him--have invariably maintained between those who wait and those who are waited upon. First, a small spider-legged mahogany table is wheeled up between the circle and the fire, on which Lea places a silver coffee-pot of Mignon's best; then some tiny cups and saucers, and a sugar-dish of odd design--they said it belonged to Marie Antoinette--is laid beside them. Thereupon Lemois gravely seats himself and the rite begins, he talking all the time--one of us and yet aloof--much as would a neighbor across a fence who makes himself agreeable but who has not been given the run of your house.

To the group's delight, however, he was as much a part of the coterie as if he had taken the fifth chair, left vacant for the always late Marc, who had not yet put in an appearance, and a place we would have insisted upon his occupying, despite his intended isolation, but for a certain look in the calm eyes and a certain dignity of manner which forbade any such encroachments on his reserve.

To-night he was especially welcome. Thanks to his watchful care we had dined well--Pierre having outdone himself in a pigeon pie--and that quiet, restful contentment which follows a good dinner, beside a warm fire and under the glow of slow-burning candles, had taken possession of us.

"A wonderful pie, Lemois--a sublime, never-to-be-forgotten pie!"

exclaimed Louis, voicing our sentiments. "Every one of those pigeons went straight to heaven when they died."

"Ah!--it pleased you then, Monsieur Louis? I will tell Pierre--he will be so happy."

"Pleased!" persisted the enthusiastic painter. "Why, I can think of no better end--no higher ambition--for a well-brought-up pigeon than being served hot in one of Pierre's pies. Tell him so for me--I am speaking as a pigeon, of course."

"What do you think the pigeon himself would have said to Pierre before his neck was wrung?" asked Herbert, leaning back in his big chair.

"Thank you--only one lump, Lemois."

"By Jove!--why didn't I ask the bird?--it might have been illuminating--and I speak a little pigeon-English, you know. Doubtless he would have told me he preferred being riddled with shot at a match and crawling away under a hedge to die, to being treated as a common criminal--the neck-twisting part, I mean. Why do you want to know, Herbert?"

"Oh, nothing; only I sometimes think--if you will forgive me for being serious--that there is another side to the whole question; though I must also send my thanks to Pierre for the pie."

That one of their old good-natured pa.s.sages at arms was coming became instantly apparent--tilts that every one enjoyed, for Herbert talked as he modelled--never any fumbling about for a word; never any uncertainty nor vagueness--always a direct and convincing sureness of either opinion or facts, and always the exact and precise truth. He would no sooner have exaggerated a statement than he would have added a hair's-breadth of clay to a muscle. Louis, on the other hand, talked as he painted--with the same breeze and verve and the same wholesome cheer and sanity which have made both himself and his brush so beloved. When Herbert, therefore, took up the cudgels for the cooked pigeon, none of us were surprised to hear the hilarious painter break out with:

"Stop talking such infernal rot, Herbert, and move the matches this way.

How could there be another side? What do you suppose beef and mutton were put into the world for except to feed the higher animal, man?"

"But _is_ man higher?" returned Herbert quietly, in his low, incisive voice, pa.s.sing Louis the box. "I know I'm the last fellow in the world, with my record as a hunter--and I'm sometimes ashamed of it--to advance any such theory, but as I grow older I see things in a different light, and the animal's point of view is one of them."

"Pity you didn't come to that conclusion before you plastered your studio with the skins of the poor devils you murdered," he chuckled, winking at Lemois.

"That was because I didn't know any better--or, rather, because I didn't _think_ any better," retorted Herbert. "When we are young, we delude ourselves with all sorts of fallacies, saying that things have always been as they are since the day of Nimrod; but isn't it about time to let our sympathies have wider play, and to look at the brute's side of the question? Take a captive polar bear, for instance. It must seem to him to be the height of injustice to be hunted down like a man-eating tiger, sold into slavery, and condemned to live in a steel cage and in a climate that murders by slow suffocation. The poor fellow never injured anybody; has always lived out of everybody's way; preyed on nothing that robbed any man of a meal, and was as nearly harmless, unless attacked, as any beast of his size the world over. I know a case in point, and often go to see him. He didn't tell me his story--his keeper did--though he might have done so had I understood bear-talk as well as Louis understands pigeon-English," and a challenging smile played over the speaker's face.

"You ought to have stepped inside and pa.s.sed the time of day with him.

They wouldn't have fed him on anything but raw sculptor for a month."

Herbert fanned his fingers toward Louis in good-humored protest, and kept on, his voice becoming unusually grave.

"They wanted, it seems, a polar bear at the Zoo, because all zoos have them, and this one must keep up with the procession. It would be inspiring and educating for the little children on Sunday afternoons--and so the thirty pieces of silver were raised. The chase began among the icebergs in a steam-launch. The father and mother in their soft white overcoats--the two baby bears in powder-puff furs--were having a frolic on a cake of floating ice when the strange craft surprised them. The mother bear tucked the babies behind her and pulled herself together to defend them with her life--and did--until she was bowled over by a rifle ball which went cras.h.i.+ng through her skull. The father bear fought on as long as he could, dodging the la.s.so, encouraging the babies to hurry--sweeping them ahead of him into the water, swimming behind, urging them on, until the three reached the next cake. But the churning devil of a steam launch kept after them--two armed men in the bow, one behind with the lariat. Another plunge--only one baby now--a staggering lope along the edge of the floe, the little tot tumbling, scuffling to its feet; crying in terror at being left behind--doing the best it could to keep up. Then only the gaunt, panic-stricken, shambling father bear--slower and slower--the breath almost out of him. Another plunge--a shriek of the siren--a twist of the rudder--the la.s.so curls in the air, the launch backs water, the line tautens, there is a great swirl of foam broken by lumps of rocking ice, and the dull, heavy crawl back to the s.h.i.+p begins, the bear in tow, his head just above the water. Then the tackle is strapped about his girth, the 'Lively now, my lads!' rings out in the Arctic air, and he is hauled up the side and dumped half dead on deck, his tongue out, his eyes shot with blood.

"You can see him any day at the Zoo--the little children's noses pressed against the iron bars of his cage. They call him 'dear old Teddy bear,'

and throw him cakes and candies, which he sniffs at and turns over with his great paw. As for me, I confess that whenever I stand before his cage I always wonder what he thinks of the two-legged beasts who are responsible for it all--his conscience being clear and neither crime, injustice, nor treachery being charged against him. Yes, there are two sides to this question, although, as Louis has said, it might have been just as well to have thought about it before. Speak up, Lemois, am I right or wrong? You have something on your mind; I see it in your eyes."

"It's more likely on his stomach," interrupted Louis; "the pigeon may have set too heavy."

"You are more than right, Monsieur Herbert," Lemois answered in measured tones, ignoring the painter's aside. He was stirring his cup as he spoke, the light of the fire making a silhouette of his body from where I sat. "For your father bear, as you call him, I have every sympathy; but I do not have to go to the North Pole to express what we owe to animals. I bring the matter to my very door, and I tell you from my heart that if I had my way there would never be anything served in my house which suffered in the killing--not even a pigeon."

Everybody looked up in astonishment, wondering where the joke came in, but our landlord was gravity itself. "In fact," he went on, "I believe the day will come when nothing will be killed for food--not even your dear demoiselle de Cherbourg, Monsieur Louis. Adam and Eve got on very well without cutlets or broiled squab, and yet we must admit they raised a goodly race. I, myself, look forward to the time when nothing but vegetables and fruit, with cheese, milk, and eggs, will be eaten by men and women of refinement. When that time comes the butcher will go as entirely out of fas.h.i.+on as has the witch-burner and, in many parts of the world, the hangman."

"But what are you going to do with Brierley, who can't enjoy his morning coffee until he has bagged half a dozen ducks on his beloved marsh?"

cried Louis, tossing the stump of his cigar into the fire.

"But Monsieur Brierley is half converted already, my dear Monsieur Louis; he told me the last time I was at his bungalow that he would never kill another deer. He was before his fireplace under the head of a doe at the time--one he had shot and had stuffed. Am I not right, Monsieur Brierley?" and Lemois inclined his head toward the hunter.

Brierley nodded in a.s.sent.

"Same old game," muttered Louis. "Had his fun first."

"I have been a cook all my life," continued the undaunted Lemois, "and half the time train my own chefs in my kitchen, and yet I say to you that I could feed my whole clientele sumptuously without ever spilling a drop of blood. I live in that way myself as far as I can, and so would you if you had thought about it."

"Skimmed milk and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, I suppose!" roared Louis in derision, "with a lettuce sandwich and a cold turnip for luncheon."

"No, you upsidedown man! Cheese souffles, omelets in a dozen different ways, stuffed peppers, tomatoes fried, stewed, and frica.s.seed, oysters, clams----"

"And crabs and lobsters?" added Louis.

"Ah! but crabs and lobsters suffer like any other thing which has the power to move; what I am trying to do is to live so that nothing will suffer because of my appet.i.te."

"And go round looking like a skeleton in a doctor's office! How could you get these up on boiled cabbage?" and he patted Herbert's biceps.

"No, my dear Monsieur Louis," persisted Lemois gravely, still refusing to be side-tracked by the young painter's onslaughts. "If we loved the things we kill for food as Monsieur Brierley loves his dog Peter, there would never be another Chateaubriand cooked in the world. What would you say if I offered you one of that dear fellow's ribs for breakfast? It would be quite easy--the butcher is only around the corner and Pierre would broil it to a turn. But that would not do for you gourmets. You must have liver or sweetbreads cut from an animal you never saw and of which, of course, you know nothing. If the poor animal had been a playmate of Mignon's--and she once had a pet lamb--you could no sooner cut its throat than you could Peter's."

Before Louis could again explode, Brierley, who, at mention of Peter's name had leaned over to stroke the dog's ears, now broke in, a dry smile on his face.

"There's another side of this question which you fellows don't seem to see, and which interests me a lot. You talk about cruelty to animals, but I tell you that most of the cruelty to-day is served out to the man with the gun. The odds are really against him. The birds down my way have got so almighty cunning that they club together and laugh at us. I hear them many a time when Peter and I are dragging ourselves home empty-handed. They know too when I start out and when I give up and make for cover."

"Go slow, Brierley; go slow!"

"Of course they know, Louis!" retorted Brierley in mock dejection.

"Doesn't a crow keep a watch out for the flock? Can you get near one of them with a gun unless you are lucky enough to shoot the sentry first?

You can call it instinct if you choose--I call it reason--the same kind of mental process that compels you to look out for an automobile before you cross the street, with your eyes both ways at once. When you talk of their helplessness and want of common sense, and inability to look out for themselves, you had better lie under a hedge as I have done, the briars sc.r.a.ping your neck, or scrunched down in a duckblind, with your feet in ice water, and study these simple-minded creatures. Explain this if you can. Some years ago, in America, I spent the autumn on the Housatonic River. The ducks come in from Long Island Sound to feed on the sh.o.r.e stuff, and I could sometimes get five--once I got eleven--between dawn and sunrise. The constant banging away soon made them so shy that if I got five in a week I was lucky. On the first of the month and for the first time in the State a new law came into force making it cost a month's wages for any pot-hunter to kill a duck or even have one in his possession. The law, as is customary, was duly advertised. Not only was it published in the papers but stuck up in bar-rooms and county post-offices, and at last became common gossip around the feeding-ground of the ducks. At first they didn't believe it, for they still kept out of sight, flying high--and few at that. But when they found the law was obeyed and that all firing had ceased, not a gun being heard on the river, they tumbled to the game as quick as did the pot-hunters. When the shooting season opened the following year, hardly a duck showed up. Those that came were evidently stragglers who rested for a day on their long flight south; but the Long Island Sound ducks--the well-posted ducks--stayed away altogether until, with the first of the month, the law for their protection came into force again.

Then, so the old farmer, a very truthful man with whom I used to put up, wrote me, they came back by thousands; the sh.o.r.e was black with them."

"And you really believe it, Brierley?" Louis' head was shaking in a commiserating way.

"Of course I believe it, and I can show the farmer's letter to back it," he answered, with a wink at me behind his hand; "and so would you if you had been humbugged by them as many times as I have. Ask Peter--he'll tell you the same thing. And I'll tell you something else.

On the edge of that same village was a jumble of shanties inhabited by a lot of Italians who had come up from New York to work a quarry near by.

On Sundays and holidays these fellows went gunning for the small birds, especially cedar birds and flickers, hiding in the big woods a mile away. After these birds had stood it for a while they put their dear little innocent heads together and thought it all out. Women and children did not shoot, therefore the safest place for nesting and skylarking was among these very women and children. After that the woods were empty; the birds just made fools of the pot-hunters and swarmed to the gardens and yards and village trees. No one had ever seen them before in such quant.i.ties, and--would you believe it?--they never went back to the woods again until the Italians had left for New York."

Lemois, having also missed the humor in Brierley's tone, rose from his place beside the coffee-table, leaned over the young writer, and, with a characteristic gesture, patted him on the arm, exclaiming:

"How admirably you have put it, my dear Monsieur Brierley; I have to thank you most sincerely. Ah! you Americans are always clear and to the point. May I add one more word? That which made these birds so cunning was the fact that you were out to _kill_ them." Here he straightened up, his back to the fire, and stood with the light of its blaze tingeing his gray beard. "It's a foolish fancy, I know, but I would have liked to have lived, if only for one day, with the man Adam, just to see how he and Madame Eve and the Noah's ark family got on before they began quarrelling and Cain made a hole in the head of the other monsieur. I have an idea that the lion and the lamb ate out of the same trough, with the birds on their backs for company--all the world at peace. My Coco rubs his beak against my cheek, not because I feed him, but because he trusts me; he would, I am sure, bite a piece out of Monsieur Louis'

because he does not trust him--and with reason," and the old man smiled good-naturedly. "But why don't they all trust us?"