The Complete Short Stories Read Free Page A

young ravens cry for food.”
    â€œAnd are fed.”
    â€œExactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed upon.”
    â€œOh, you’re simply exasperating. You’ve been reading Nietzsche till you haven’t got any sense of moral proportion left. May I ask if you are governed by
any
laws of conduct whatever?”
    â€œThere are certain fixed rules that one observes for one’s own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive, grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden.”
    â€œThe restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and innocent.”
    â€œNow we are only nice. One must specialize in these days. Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn’t ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also.”
    â€œI am sure you didn’t read about him in any sacred book.”
    â€œYes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”

REGINALD’S PEACE POEM
    â€œI’ M writing a poem on Peace,” said Reginald, emerging from a sweeping operation through a tin of mixed biscuits, in whose depths a macaroon or two might yet be lurking.
    â€œSomething of the kind seems to have been attempted already,” said the Other.
    â€œOh, I know; but I may never have the chance again. Besides, I’ve got a new fountain pen. I don’t pretend to have gone on anyvery original lines; in writing about Peace the thing is to say what everybody else is saying, only to say it better. It begins with the usual ornithological emotion:
    â€˜When the widgeon westward winging
    Heard the folk Vereeniginging,
    Heard the shouting and the singing—’”
    â€œVereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?”
    â€œWhy not? Anything that winged westward would naturally begin with a
w.
”
    â€œNeed it wing westward?”
    â€œThe bird must go somewhere. You wouldn’t have it hang around and look foolish. Then I’ve brought in something about the heedless hartebeest galloping over the deserted veldt.”
    â€œOf course you know it’s practically extinct in those regions?”
    â€œI can’t help
that,
it gallops so nicely. I make it have all sorts of unexpected yearnings:
    â€˜Mother, may I go and maffick,
    Tear around and hinder traffic?’
    Of course you’ll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about on the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but there’s no other word that rhymes with maffick.”
    â€œSeraphic?”
    Reginald considered. “It might do, but I’ve got a lot about angels later on. You must have angels in a Peace poem; I know dreadfully little about their habits.”
    â€œThey can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest.”
    â€œOf course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful Nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving:
    â€˜And the sleeper, eye unlidding,
    Heard a voice for ever bidding
    Much farewell to Dolly Gray;
    Turning weary on his truckle-
    Bed he heard the honey-suckle
    Lauded in apiarian lay.’
    Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that.”
    â€œI agree with you.”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t. I’ve a sweet temper, but I can’t stand being agreed with. And I’m so worried about the aasvogel.”
    Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels.
    â€œI believe,” he murmured, “if I could find a woman with an unsatisfied craving for cracknels, I should marry her.”
    â€œWhat is the tragedy of the aasvogel?” asked the Other sympathetically.
    â€œOh, simply that there’s no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I was