<h2><SPAN name="page245"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>THE SHEEP</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I had four more clubs to play; we only wanted the odd
trick to win the rubber,” said Rupert.</p>
<p>“But I hadn’t another club to lead you,”
exclaimed the Sheep, with his ready, defensive smile.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“I suppose I ought to have—I wasn’t certain
what to do. I’m awfully sorry,” said the
Sheep.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Horray! I’ve shot a thundering big
hawk!”</p>
<p>“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
<i>Country Life</i>, and now you’ve reduced the hen bird to
a lump of broken feathers.”</p>
<p>Rupert spoke quietly and evenly, but for a moment or two a
gleam of positive hatred shone in his eyes.</p>
<p>“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—”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Rupert; “that was the
trouble.”</p>
<p>Kathleen found him in the gun-room smoothing out the feathers
of the dead bird. She had already been told of the
catastrophe.</p>
<p>“What a horrid misfortune,” she said
sympathetically.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I’m so hoarse,” he protested, when the
moment arrived; “I don’t believe I can make my voice
heard beyond the platform.”</p>
<p>“Let me do it,” said the Sheep; “I’m
rather good at that sort of thing.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I lost touch with the audience rather
over that remark,” said the Sheep afterwards, with his
apologetic smile abnormally developed.</p>
<p>“You lost us the election,” said the chairman, and
he proved a true prophet.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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