Traffics and Discoveries Part 26

"Yes. I'm seeing beaver," I replied.

"It is here!" said Kysh, with the air and gesture of Captain Nemo, and half turned.

"No--no--no! For 'Eaven's sake--not 'ere!" Our guest gasped like a sea- bathed child, as four efficient hands swung him far out-board on to the turf. The car ran back noiselessly down the slope.

"Look! Look! It's sorcery!" cried Hinchcliffe.

There was a report like a pistol shot as the beaver dived from the roof of his lodge, but we watched our guest. He was on his knees, praying to kangaroos. Yea, in his bowler hat he kneeled before kangaroos--gigantic, erect, silhouetted against the light--four buck-kangaroos in the heart of Suss.e.x!

And we retrogressed over the velvet gra.s.s till our hind-wheels struck well-rolled gravel, leading us to sanity, main roads, and, half an hour later, the "Grapnel Inn" at Horsham.

After a great meal we poured libations and made burnt-offerings in honour of Kysh, who received our homage graciously, and, by the way, explained a few things in the natural history line that had puzzled us. England is a most marvellous country, but one is not, till one knows the eccentricities of large land-owners, trained to accept kangaroos, zebras, or beavers as part of its landscape.

When we went to bed Pyecroft pressed my hand, his voice thick with emotion.

"We owe it to you," he said. "We owe it all to you. Didn't I say we never met in _pup-pup-puris naturalibus_, if I may so put it, without a remarkably hectic day ahead of us?"

"That's all right," I said. "Mind the candle." He was tracing smoke- patterns on the wall.

"But what I want to know is whether we'll succeed in acclimatisin' the blighter, or whether Sir William Gardner's keepers 'll kill 'im before 'e gets accustomed to 'is surroundin's?"

Some day, I think, we must go up the Linghurst Road and find out.

"WIRELESS"

KASPAR'S SONG IN VARDA

(_From the Swedish of Stagnelius_.)

Eyes aloft, over dangerous places, The children follow where Psyche flies, And, in the sweat of their upturned faces, Slash with a net at the empty skies.

So it goes they fall amid brambles, And sting their toes on the nettle-tops, Till after a thousand scratches and scrambles They wipe their brows, and the hunting stops.

Then to quiet them comes their father And stills the riot of pain and grief, Saying, "Little ones, go and gather Out of my garden a cabbage leaf.

"You will find on it whorls and clots of Dull grey eggs that, properly fed, Turn, by way of the worm, to lots of Radiant Psyches raised from the dead."

"Heaven is beautiful, Earth is ugly,"

The three-dimensioned preacher saith, So we must not look where the snail and the slug lie For Psyche's birth ... And that is our death!

"WIRELESS"

"It's a funny thing, this Marconi business, isn't it?" said Mr. Shaynor, coughing heavily. "Nothing seems to make any difference, by what they tell me--storms, hills, or anything; but if that's true we shall know before morning."

"Of course it's true," I answered, stepping behind the counter. "Where's old Mr. Cash.e.l.l?"

"He's had to go to bed on account of his influenza. He said you'd very likely drop in."

"Where's his nephew?"

"Inside, getting the things ready. He told me that the last time they experimented they put the pole on the roof of one of the big hotels here, and the batteries electrified all the water-supply, and"--he giggled--"the ladies got shocks when they took their baths."

"I never heard of that."

"The hotel wouldn't exactly advertise it, would it? Just now, by what Mr.

Cash.e.l.l tells me, they're trying to signal from here to Poole, and they're using stronger batteries than ever. But, you see, he being the guvnor's nephew and all that (and it will be in the papers too), it doesn't matter how they electrify things in this house. Are you going to watch?"

"Very much. I've never seen this game. Aren't you going to bed?"

"We don't close till ten on Sat.u.r.days. There's a good deal of influenza in town, too, and there'll be a dozen prescriptions coming in before morning.

I generally sleep in the chair here. It's warmer than jumping out of bed every time. Bitter cold, isn't it?"

"Freezing hard. I'm sorry your cough's worse."

"Thank you. I don't mind cold so much. It's this wind that fair cuts me to pieces." He coughed again hard and hackingly, as an old lady came in for ammoniated quinine. "We've just run out of it in bottles, madam," said Mr.

Shaynor, returning to the professional tone, "but if you will wait two minutes, I'll make it up for you, madam."

I had used the shop for some time, and my acquaintance with the proprietor had ripened into friends.h.i.+p. It was Mr. Cash.e.l.l who revealed to me the purpose and power of Apothecaries' Hall what time a fellow-chemist had made an error in a prescription of mine, had lied to cover his sloth, and when error and lie were brought home to him had written vain letters.

"A disgrace to our profession," said the thin, mild-eyed man, hotly, after studying the evidence. "You couldn't do a better service to the profession than report him to Apothecaries' Hall."

I did so, not knowing what djinns I should evoke; and the result was such an apology as one might make who had spent a night on the rack. I conceived great respect for Apothecaries' Hall, and esteem for Mr.

Cash.e.l.l, a zealous craftsman who magnified his calling. Until Mr. Shaynor came down from the North his a.s.sistants had by no means agreed with Mr.

Cash.e.l.l. "They forget," said he, "that, first and foremost, the compounder is a medicine-man. On him depends the physician's reputation. He holds it literally in the hollow of his hand, Sir."

Mr. Shaynor's manners had not, perhaps, the polish of the grocery and Italian warehouse next door, but he knew and loved his dispensary work in every detail. For relaxation he seemed to go no farther afield than the romance of drugs--their discovery, preparation packing, and export--but it led him to the ends of the earth, and on this subject, and the Pharmaceutical Formulary, and Nicholas Culpepper, most confident of physicians, we met.

Little by little I grew to know something of his beginnings and his hopes --of his mother, who had been a school-teacher in one of the northern counties, and of his red-headed father, a small job-master at Kirby Moors, who died when he was a child; of the examinations he had pa.s.sed and of their exceeding and increasing difficulty; of his dreams of a shop in London; of his hate for the price-cutting Co-operative stores; and, most interesting, of his mental att.i.tude towards customers.

"There's a way you get into," he told me, "of serving them carefully, and I hope, politely, without stopping your own thinking. I've been reading Christie's _New Commercial Plants_ all this autumn, and that needs keeping your mind on it, I can tell you. So long as it isn't a prescription, of course, I can carry as much as half a page of Christie in my head, and at the same time I could sell out all that window twice over, and not a penny wrong at the end. As to prescriptions, I think I could make up the general run of 'em in my sleep, almost."

For reasons of my own, I was deeply interested in Marconi experiments at their outset in England; and it was of a piece with Mr. Cash.e.l.l's unvarying thoughtfulness that, when his nephew the electrician appropriated the house for a long-range installation, he should, as I have said, invite me to see the result.

The old lady went away with her medicine, and Mr. Shaynor and I stamped on the tiled floor behind the counter to keep ourselves warm. The shop, by the light of the many electrics, looked like a Paris-diamond mine, for Mr.

Cash.e.l.l believed in all the ritual of his craft. Three superb gla.s.s jars-- red, green, and blue--of the sort that led Rosamund to parting with her shoes--blazed in the broad plate-gla.s.s windows, and there was a confused smell of orris, Kodak films, vulcanite, tooth-powder, sachets, and almond- cream in the air. Mr. Shaynor fed the dispensary stove, and we sucked cayenne-pepper jujubes and menthol lozenges. The brutal east wind had cleared the streets, and the few pa.s.sers-by were m.u.f.fled to their puckered eyes. In the Italian warehouse next door some gay feathered birds and game, hung upon hooks, sagged to the wind across the left edge of our window-frame.

"They ought to take these poultry in--all knocked about like that," said Mr. Shaynor. "Doesn't it make you feel fair peris.h.i.+ng? See that old hare!

The wind's nearly blowing the fur off him."

I saw the belly-fur of the dead beast blown apart in ridges and streaks as the wind caught it, showing bluish skin underneath. "Bitter cold," said Mr. Shaynor, shuddering. "Fancy going out on a night like this! Oh, here's young Mr. Cash.e.l.l."