by Saki
A TOUCH OF REALISM
“I hope you’ve come full of suggestions for Christmas,” said Lady Blonzeto her latest arrived guest; “the old-fashioned Christmas and theup-to-date Christmas are both so played out. I want to have somethingreally original this year.”
“I was staying with the Mathesons last month,” said Blanche Bovealeagerly, “and we had such a good idea. Every one in the house-party hadto be a character and behave consistently all the time, and at the end ofthe visit one had to guess what every one’s character was. The one whowas voted to have acted his or her character best got a prize.”
“It sounds amusing,” said Lady Blonze.
“I was St. Francis of Assisi,” continued Blanche; “we hadn’t got to keepto our right sexes. I kept getting up in the middle of a meal, andthrowing out food to the birds; you see, the chief thing that oneremembers of St. Francis is that he was fond of the birds. Every one wasso stupid about it, and thought that I was the old man who feeds thesparrows in the Tuileries Gardens. Then Colonel Pentley was the JollyMiller on the banks of Dee.”
“How on earth did he do that?” asked Bertie van Tahn.
“‘He laughed and sang from morn till night,’” explained Blanche.
“How dreadful for the rest of you,” said Bertie; “and anyway he wasn’t onthe banks of Dee.”
“One had to imagine that,” said Blanche.
“If you could imagine all that you might as well imagine cattle on thefurther bank and keep on calling them home, Mary-fashion, across thesands of Dee. Or you might change the river to the Yarrow and imagine itwas on the top of you, and say you were Willie, or whoever it was,drowned in Yarrow.”
“Of course it’s easy to make fun of it,” said Blanche sharply, “but itwas extremely interesting and amusing. The prize was rather a fiasco,though. You see, Millie Matheson said her character was Lady Bountiful,and as she was our hostess of course we all had to vote that she hadcarried out her character better than anyone. Otherwise I ought to havegot the prize.”
“It’s quite an idea for a Christmas party,” said Lady Blonze; “we mustcertainly do it here.”
Sir Nicholas was not so enthusiastic. “Are you quite sure, my dear, thatyou’re wise in doing this thing?” he said to his wife when they werealone together. “It might do very well at the Mathesons, where they hadrather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it will be a differentmatter. There is the Durmot flapper, for instance, who simply stops atnothing, and you know what Van Tahn is like. Then there is CyrilSkatterly; he has madness on one side of his family and a Hungariangrandmother on the other.”
“I don’t see what they could do that would matter,” said Lady Blonze.
“It’s the unknown that is to be dreaded,” said Sir Nicholas. “IfSkatterly took it into his head to represent a Bull of Bashan, well, I’drather not be here.”
“Of course we shan’t allow any Bible characters. Besides, I don’t knowwhat the Bulls of Bashan really did that was so very dreadful; they justcame round and gaped, as far as I remember.”
“My dear, you don’t know what Skatterly’s Hungarian imagination mightn’tread into the part; it would be small satisfaction to say to himafterwards: ‘You’ve behaved as no Bull of Bashan would have behaved.’”
“Oh, you’re an alarmist,” said Lady Blonze; “I particularly want to havethis idea carried out. It will be sure to be talked about a lot.”
“That is quite possible,” said Sir Nicholas.
* * * * *
Dinner that evening was not a particularly lively affair; the strain oftrying to impersonate a self-imposed character or to glean hints ofidentity from other people’s conduct acted as a check on the naturalfestivity of such a gathering. There was a general feeling of gratitudeand acquiescence when good-natured Rachel Klammerstein suggested thatthere should be an hour or two’s respite from “the game” while they alllistened to a little piano-playing after dinner. Rachel’s love of pianomusic was not indiscriminate, and concentrated itself chiefly onselections rendered by her idolised offspring, Moritz and Augusta, who,to do them justice, played remarkably well.
The Klammersteins were deservedly popular as Christmas guests; they gaveexpensive gifts lavishly on Christmas Day and New Year, and Mrs.Klammerstein had already dropped hints of her intention to present theprize for the best enacted character in the game competition. Every onehad brightened at this prospect; if it had fallen to Lady Blonze, ashostess, to provide the prize, she would have considered that a littlesouvenir of some twenty or twenty-five shillings’ value would meet thecase, whereas coming from a Klammerstein source it would certainly run toseveral guineas.
The close time for impersonation efforts came to an end with the finalwithdrawal of Moritz and Augusta from the piano. Blanche Boveal retiredearly, leaving the room in a series of laboured leaps that she hopedmight be recognised as a tolerable imitation of Pavlova. Vera Durmot,the sixteen-year-old flapper, expressed her confident opinion that theperformance was intended to typify Mark Twain’s famous jumping frog, andher diagnosis of the case found general acceptance. Another guest to setan example of early bed-going was Waldo Plubley, who conducted his lifeon a minutely regulated system of time-tables and hygienic routine.Waldo was a plump, indolent young man of seven-and-twenty, whose motherhad early in his life decided for him that he was unusually delicate, andby dint of much coddling and home-keeping had succeeded in making himphysically soft and mentally peevish. Nine hours’ unbroken sleep,preceded by elaborate breathing exercises and other hygienic ritual, wasamong the indispensable regulations which Waldo imposed on himself, andthere were innumerable small observances which he exacted from those whowere in any way obliged to minister to his requirements; a special teapotfor the decoction of his early tea was always solemnly handed over to thebedroom staff of any house in which he happened to be staying. No onehad ever quite mastered the mechanism of this precious vessel, but Bertievan Tahn was responsible for the legend that its spout had to be keptfacing north during the process of infusion.
On this particular night the irreducible nine hours were severelymutilated by the sudden and by no means noiseless incursion of apyjama-clad figure into Waldo’s room at an hour midway between midnightand dawn.
“What is the matter? What are you looking for?” asked the awakened andastonished Waldo, slowly recognising Van Tahn, who appeared to besearching hastily for something he had lost.
“Looking for sheep,” was the reply.
“Sheep?” exclaimed Waldo.
“Yes, sheep. You don’t suppose I’m looking for giraffes, do you?”
“I don’t see why you should expect to find either in my room,” retortedWaldo furiously.
“I can’t argue the matter at this hour of the night,” said Bertie, andbegan hastily rummaging in the chest of drawers. Shirts and underwearwent flying on to the floor.
“There are no sheep here, I tell you,” screamed Waldo.
“I’ve only got your word for it,” said Bertie, whisking most of thebedclothes on to the floor; “if you weren’t concealing something youwouldn’t be so agitated.”
Waldo was by this time convinced that Van Tahn was raving mad, and madean anxious effort to humour him.
“Go back to bed like a dear fellow,” he pleaded, “and your sheep willturn up all right in the morning.”
“I daresay,” said Bertie gloomily, “without their tails. Nice fool Ishall look with a lot of Manx sheep.”
And by way of emphasising his annoyance at the prospect he sent Waldo’spillows flying to the top of the wardrobe.
“But _why_ no tails?” asked Waldo, whose teeth were chattering with fearand rage and lowered temperature.
“My dear boy, have you never heard the ballad of Little Bo-Peep?” saidBertie with a chuckle. “It’s my character in the Game, you know. If Ididn’t go hunting about for my lost sheep no one would be able to guesswho I was; and now go to sleepy weeps like a good child or
I shall becross with you.”
“I leave you to imagine,” wrote Waldo in the course of a long letter tohis mother, “how much sleep I was able to recover that night, and youknow how essential nine uninterrupted hours of slumber are to my health.”
On the other hand he was able to devote some wakeful hours to exercisesin breathing wrath and fury against Bertie van Tahn.
Breakfast at Blonzecourt was a scattered meal, on the “come when youplease” principle, but the house-party was supposed to gather in fullstrength at lunch. On the day after the “Game” had been started therewere, however, some notable absentees. Waldo Plubley, for instance, wasreported to be nursing a headache. A large breakfast and an “A.B.C.” hadbeen taken up to his room, but he had made no appearance in the flesh.
“I expect he’s playing up to some character,” said Vera Durmot; “isn’tthere a thing of Molière’s, ‘_Le Malade Imaginaire_’? I expect he’sthat.”
Eight or nine lists came out, and were duly pencilled with thesuggestion.
“And where are the Klammersteins?” asked Lady Blonze; “they’re usually sopunctual.”
“Another character pose, perhaps,” said Bertie van Tahn; “‘the Lost TenTribes.’”
“But there are only three of them. Besides, they’ll want their lunch.Hasn’t anyone seen anything of them?”
“Didn’t you take them out in your car?” asked Blanche Boveal, addressingherself to Cyril Skatterly.
“Yes, took them out to Slogberry Moor immediately after breakfast. MissDurmot came too.”
“I saw you and Vera come back,” said Lady Blonze, “but I didn’t see theKlammersteins. Did you put them down in the village?”
“No,” said Skatterly shortly.
“But where are they? Where did you leave them?”
“We left them on Slogberry Moor,” said Vera calmly.
“On Slogberry Moor? Why, it’s more than thirty miles away! How are theygoing to get back?”
“We didn’t stop to consider that,” said Skatterly; “we asked them to getout for a moment, on the pretence that the car had stuck, and then wedashed off full speed and left them there.”
“But how dare you do such a thing? It’s most inhuman! Why, it’s beensnowing for the last hour.”
“I expect there’ll be a cottage or farmhouse somewhere if they walk amile or two.”
“But why on earth have you done it?”
The question came in a chorus of indignant bewilderment.
“_That_ would be telling what our characters are meant to be,” said Vera.
“Didn’t I warn you?” said Sir Nicholas tragically to his wife.
“It’s something to do with Spanish history; we don’t mind giving you thatclue,” said Skatterly, helping himself cheerfully to salad, and thenBertie van Tahn broke forth into peals of joyous laughter.
“I’ve got it! Ferdinand and Isabella deporting the Jews! Oh, lovely!Those two have certainly won the prize; we shan’t get anything to beatthat for thoroughness.”
Lady Blonze’s Christmas party was talked about and written about to anextent that she had not anticipated in her most ambitious moments. Theletters from Waldo’s mother would alone have made it memorable.