Beasts and Super-Beasts

by Saki

  THE DREAMER

  It was the season of sales. The august establishment of Walpurgis andNettlepink had lowered its prices for an entire week as a concession totrade observances, much as an Arch-duchess might protestingly contract anattack of influenza for the unsatisfactory reason that influenza waslocally prevalent. Adela Chemping, who considered herself in somemeasure superior to the allurements of an ordinary bargain sale, made apoint of attending the reduction week at Walpurgis and Nettlepink’s.

  “I’m not a bargain hunter,” she said, “but I like to go where bargainsare.”

  Which showed that beneath her surface strength of character there floweda gracious undercurrent of human weakness.

  With a view to providing herself with a male escort Mrs. Chemping hadinvited her youngest nephew to accompany her on the first day of theshopping expedition, throwing in the additional allurement of acinematograph theatre and the prospect of light refreshment. As Cyprianwas not yet eighteen she hoped he might not have reached that stage inmasculine development when parcel-carrying is looked on as a thingabhorrent.

  “Meet me just outside the floral department,” she wrote to him, “anddon’t be a moment later than eleven.”

  Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the wonderinglook of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that are not visibleto ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace things of this worldwith qualities unsuspected by plainer folk—the eyes of a poet or a houseagent. He was quietly dressed—that sartorial quietude which frequentlyaccompanies early adolescence, and is usually attributed by novel-writersto the influence of a widowed mother. His hair was brushed back in asmoothness as of ribbon seaweed and seamed with a narrow furrow thatscarcely aimed at being a parting. His aunt particularly noted this itemof his toilet when they met at the appointed rendezvous, because he wasstanding waiting for her bareheaded.

  “Where is your hat?” she asked.

  “I didn’t bring one with me,” he replied.

  Adela Chemping was slightly scandalised.

  “You are not going to be what they call a Nut, are you?” she inquiredwith some anxiety, partly with the idea that a Nut would be anextravagance which her sister’s small household would scarcely bejustified in incurring, partly, perhaps, with the instinctiveapprehension that a Nut, even in its embryo stage, would refuse to carryparcels.

  Cyprian looked at her with his wondering, dreamy eyes.

  “I didn’t bring a hat,” he said, “because it is such a nuisance when oneis shopping; I mean it is so awkward if one meets anyone one knows andhas to take one’s hat off when one’s hands are full of parcels. If onehasn’t got a hat on one can’t take it off.”

  Mrs. Chemping sighed with great relief; her worst fear had been laid atrest.

  “It is more orthodox to wear a hat,” she observed, and then turned herattention briskly to the business in hand.

  “We will go first to the table-linen counter,” she said, leading the wayin that direction; “I should like to look at some napkins.”

  The wondering look deepened in Cyprian’s eyes as he followed his aunt; hebelonged to a generation that is supposed to be over-fond of the rôle ofmere spectator, but looking at napkins that one did not mean to buy was apleasure beyond his comprehension. Mrs. Chemping held one or two napkinsup to the light and stared fixedly at them, as though she half expectedto find some revolutionary cypher written on them in scarcely visibleink; then she suddenly broke away in the direction of the glasswaredepartment.

  “Millicent asked me to get her a couple of decanters if there were anygoing really cheap,” she explained on the way, “and I really do want asalad bowl. I can come back to the napkins later on.”

  She handled and scrutinised a large number of decanters and a long seriesof salad bowls, and finally bought seven chrysanthemum vases.

  “No one uses that kind of vase nowadays,” she informed Cyprian, “but theywill do for presents next Christmas.”

  Two sunshades that were marked down to a price that Mrs. Chempingconsidered absurdly cheap were added to her purchases.

  “One of them will do for Ruth Colson; she is going out to the MalayStates, and a sunshade will always be useful there. And I must get hersome thin writing paper. It takes up no room in one’s baggage.”

  Mrs. Chemping bought stacks of writing paper; it was so cheap, and itwent so flat in a trunk or portmanteau. She also bought a fewenvelopes—envelopes somehow seemed rather an extragavance compared withnotepaper.

  “Do you think Ruth will like blue or grey paper?” she asked Cyprian.

  “Grey,” said Cyprian, who had never met the lady in question.

  “Have you any mauve notepaper of this quality?” Adela asked theassistant.

  “We haven’t any mauve,” said the assistant, “but we’ve two shades ofgreen and a darker shade of grey.”

  Mrs. Chemping inspected the greens and the darker grey, and chose theblue.

  “Now we can have some lunch,” she said.

  Cyprian behaved in an exemplary fashion in the refreshment department,and cheerfully accepted a fish cake and a mince pie and a small cup ofcoffee as adequate restoratives after two hours of concentrated shopping.He was adamant, however, in resisting his aunt’s suggestion that a hatshould be bought for him at the counter where men’s headwear was beingdisposed of at temptingly reduced prices.

  “I’ve got as many hats as I want at home,” he said, “and besides, itrumples one’s hair so, trying them on.”

  Perhaps he was going to develop into a Nut after all. It was adisquieting symptom that he left all the parcels in charge of thecloak-room attendant.

  “We shall be getting more parcels presently,” he said, “so we need notcollect these till we have finished our shopping.”

  His aunt was doubtfully appeased; some of the pleasure and excitement ofa shopping expedition seemed to evaporate when one was deprived ofimmediate personal contact with one’s purchases.

  “I’m going to look at those napkins again,” she said, as they descendedthe stairs to the ground floor. “You need not come,” she added, as thedreaming look in the boy’s eyes changed for a moment into one of muteprotest, “you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery department; I’ve justremembered that I haven’t a corkscrew in the house that can be dependedon.”

  Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery department when his aunt indue course arrived there, but in the crush and bustle of anxious shoppersand busy attendants it was an easy matter to miss anyone. It was in theleather goods department some quarter of an hour later that AdelaChemping caught sight of her nephew, separated from her by a rampart ofsuit-cases and portmanteaux and hemmed in by the jostling crush of humanbeings that now invaded every corner of the great shopping emporium. Shewas just in time to witness a pardonable but rather embarrassing mistakeon the part of a lady who had wriggled her way with unstayabledetermination towards the bareheaded Cyprian, and was now breathlesslydemanding the sale price of a handbag which had taken her fancy.

  “There now,” exclaimed Adela to herself, “she takes him for one of theshop assistants because he hasn’t got a hat on. I wonder it hasn’thappened before.”

  Perhaps it had. Cyprian, at any rate, seemed neither startled norembarrassed by the error into which the good lady had fallen. Examiningthe ticket on the bag, he announced in a clear, dispassionate voice:

  “Black seal, thirty-four shillings, marked down to twenty-eight. As amatter of fact, we are clearing them out at a special reduction price oftwenty-six shillings. They are going off rather fast.”

  “I’ll take it,” said the lady, eagerly digging some coins out of herpurse.

  “Will you take it as it is?” asked Cyprian; “it will be a matter of a fewminutes to get it wrapped up, there is such a crush.”

  “Never mind, I’ll take it as it is,” said the purchaser, clutching hertreasure and counting the money into Cyprian’s palm.

  Several kind strangers helped Adela into t
he open air.

  “It’s the crush and the heat,” said one sympathiser to another; “it’senough to turn anyone giddy.”

  When she next came across Cyprian he was standing in the crowd thatpushed and jostled around the counters of the book department. The dreamlook was deeper than ever in his eyes. He had just sold two books ofdevotion to an elderly Canon.