by Saki
“It is most provoking,” said the Baroness, as her guests sat round the fire on one of the last evenings of the dying year; “all the time that she has been with us I cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill, too ill to go about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the house full, and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and breaks down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so withered and shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the same.”
“Most annoying,” agreed the banker’s wife sympathetically; “it is the intense cold, I expect, it breaks the old people up. It has been unusually cold this year.”
“The frost is the sharpest that has been known in December for many years,” said the Baron.
“And, of course, she is quite old,” said the Baroness; “I wish I had given her notice some weeks ago, then she would have left before this happened to her. Why, Wappi, what is the matter with you?”
The small, woolly lapdog had leapt suddenly down from its cushion and crept shivering under the sofa. At the same moment an outburst of angry barking came from the dogs in the castleyard, and other dogs could be heard yapping and barking in the distance.
“What is disturbing the animals?” asked the Baron.
And then the humans, listening intently, heard the sound that had roused the dogs to their demonstrations of fear and rage; heard a long-drawn whining howl, rising and falling, seeming at one moment leagues away, at others sweeping across the snow until it appeared to come from the foot of the castle walls. All the starved, cold misery of a frozen world, all the relentless hunger-fury of the wild, blended with other forlorn and haunting melodies to which one could give no name, seemed concentrated in that wailing cry.
“Wolves!” cried the Baron.
Their music broke forth in one raging burst, seeming to come from everywhere.
“Hundreds of wolves,” said the Hamburg merchant, who was a man of strong imagination.
Moved by some impulse which she could not have explained, the Baroness left her guests and made her way to the narrow, cheerless room where the old governess lay watching the hours of the dying year slip by. In spite of the biting cold of the winter night, the window stood open. With a scandalized exclamation on her lips, the Baroness rushed forward to close it.
“Leave it open,” said the old woman in a voice that for all its weakness carried an air of command such as the Baroness had never heard before from her lips.
“But you will die of cold!” she expostulated.
“I am dying in any case,” said the voice, “and I want to hear their music. They have come from far and wide to sing the death-music of my family. It is beautiful that they have come; I am the last von Cernogratz that will die in our old castle, and they have come to sing to me. Hark, how loud they are calling!”
The cry of the wolves rose on the still winter air and floated round the castle walls in long-drawn piercing wails; the old woman lay back on her couch with a look of long-delayed happiness on her face.
“Go away,” she said to the Baroness; “I am not lonely any more. I am one of a great old family.…”
“I think she is dying,” said the Baroness when she had rejoined her guests; “I suppose we must send for a doctor. And that terrible howling! Not for much money would I have such death-music.”
“That music is not to be bought for any amount of money,” said Conrad.
“Hark! What is that other sound?” asked the Baron, as a noise of splitting and crashing was heard.
It was a tree falling in the park.
There was a moment of constrained silence, and then the banker’s wife spoke.
“It is the intense cold that is splitting the trees. It is also the cold that has brought the wolves out in such numbers. It is many years since we have had such a cold winter.”
The Baroness eagerly agreed that the cold was responsible for these things. It was the cold of the open window, too, which caused the heart failure that made the doctor’s ministrations unnecessary for the old Fràulein. But the notice in the newspapers looked very well—
“On December 29th, at Schloss Cernogratz, Amalie von Cernogratz, for many years the valued friend of Baron and Baroness Gruebel.”
LOUIS
“IT would be jolly to spend Easter in Vienna this year,” said Strudwarden, “and look up some of my old friends there. It’s about the jolliest place I know of to be at for Easter—”
“I thought we had made up our minds to spend Easter at Brighton,” interrupted Lena Strudwarden, with an air of aggrieved surprise.
“You mean that you had made up your mind that we should spend Easter there,” said her husband; “we spent last Easter there, and Whitsuntide as well, and the year before that we were at Worthing, and Brighton again before that. I think it would be just as well to have a real change of scene while we are about it.”
“The journey to Vienna would be very expensive,” said Lena.
“You are not often concerned about economy,” said Strudwarden, “and in any case the trip to Vienna won’t cost a bit more than the rather meaningless luncheon parties we usually give to quite meaningless acquaintances at Brighton. To escape from all that set would be a holiday in itself.”
Strudwarden spoke feelingly; Lena Strudwarden maintained an equally feeling silence on that particular subject. The set that she gathered round her at Brighton and other South Coast resorts was composed of individuals who might be dull and meaningless in themselves, but who understood the art of flattering Mrs. Strudwarden. She had no intention of foregoing their society and their homage and flinging herself among unappreciative strangers in a foreign capital.
“You must go to Vienna alone if you are bent on going,” she said; “I couldn’t leave Louis behind, and a dog is always a fearful nuisance in a foreign hotel, besides all the fuss and separation of the quarantine restrictions when one comes back. Louis would die if he was parted from me for even a week. You don’t know what that would mean to me.”
Lena stooped down and kissed the nose of the diminutive brown Pomeranian that lay, snug and irresponsive, beneath a shawl on her lap.
“Look here,” said Strudwarden, “this eternal Louis business is getting to be a ridiculous nuisance. Nothing can be done, no plans can be made, without some veto connected with that animal’s whims or convenience being imposed. If you were a priest in attendance on some African fetish you couldn’t set up a more elaborate code of restrictions. I believe you’d ask the Government to put off a General Election if you thought it would interfere with Louis’s comfort in any way.”
By way of answer to this tirade Mrs. Strudwarden stooped down again and kissed the irresponsive brown nose. It was the action of a woman with a beautifully meek nature, who would, however, send the whole world to the stake sooner than yield an inch where she knew herself to be in the right.
“It isn’t as if you were in the least bit fond of animals,” went on Strudwarden, with growing irritation; “when we are down at Kerryfield you won’t stir a step to take the house dogs out, even if they’re dying for a run, and I don’t think you’ve been in the stables twice in your life. You laugh at what you call the fuss that’s being made over the extermination of plumage birds, and you are quite indignant with me if I interfere on behalf of an ill-treated, over-driven animal on the road. And yet you insist on every one’s plans being made subservient to the convenience of that stupid little morsel of fur and selfishness.”
“You are prejudiced against my little Louis,” said Lena, with a world of tender regret in her voice.
“I’ve never had the chance of being anything else but prejudiced against him,” said Strudwarden; “I know what a jolly responsive companion a doggie can be, but I’ve never been allowed to put a finger near Louis. You say he snaps at any one except you and your maid, and you snatched him away from old Lady Peter by the other day, when she wanted to pet him, for fear he would bury his teeth in her. All that I ever see of him is the tip of his unhealthy-looking littl
e nose, peeping out from his basket or from your muff, and I occasionally hear his wheezy little bark when you take him for a walk up and down the corridor. You can’t expect one to get extravagantly fond of a dog of that sort. One might as well work up an affection for the cuckoo in a cuckoo-clock.”
“He loves me,” said Lena, rising from the table, and bearing the shawl-swathed Louis in her arms. “He loves only me, and perhaps that is why I love him so much in return. I don’t care what you say against him, I am not going to be separated from him. If you insist on going to Vienna you must go alone, as far as I am concerned. I think it would be much more sensible if you were to come to Brighton with Louis and me, but of course you must please yourself.”
“You must get rid of that dog,” said Strudwarden’s sister when Lena had left the room; “it must be helped to some sudden and merciful end. Lena is merely making use of it as an instrument for getting her own way on dozens of occasions when she would otherwise be obliged to yield gracefully to your wishes or to the general convenience. I am convinced that she doesn’t care a brass button about the animal itself. When her friends are buzzing round her at Brighton or anywhere else and the dog would be in the way, it has to spend whole days alone with the maid, but if you want Lena to go with you anywhere where she doesn’t want to go instantly she trots out the excuse that she couldn’t be separated from her dog. Have you ever come into a room unobserved and heard Lena talking to her beloved pet? I never have. I believe she only fusses over it when there’s some one present to notice her.”
“I don’t mind admitting,” said Strudwarden, “that I’ve dwelt more than once lately on the possibility of some fatal accident putting an end to Louis’s existence. It’s not very easy, though, to arrange a fatality for a creature that spends most of its time in a muff or asleep in a toy kennel. I don’t think poison would be any good; it’s obviously horribly over-fed, for I’ve seen Lena offer it dainties at table sometimes, but it never seems to eat them.”
“Lena will be away at church on Wednesday morning,” said Elsie Strudwarden reflectively; “she can’t take Louis with her there, and she is going on to the Dellings for lunch. That will give you several hours in which to carry out your purpose. The maid will be flirting with the chauffeur most of the time, and, anyhow, I can manage to keep her out of the way on some pretext or other.”
“That leaves the field clear,” said Strudwarden, “but unfortunately my brain is equally a blank as far as any lethal project is concerned. The little beast is so monstrously inactive; I can’t pretend that it leapt into the bath and drowned itself, or that it took on the butcher’s mastiff in unequal combat and got chewed up. In what possible guise could death come to a confirmed basket-dweller? It would be too suspicious if we invented a Suffragette raid and pretended that they invaded Lena’s boudoir and threw a brick at him. We should have to do a lot of other damage as well, which would be rather a nuisance, and the servants would think it odd that they had seen nothing of the invaders.”
“I have an idea,” said Elsie; “get a box with an air-tight lid, and bore a small hole in it, just big enough to let in an india-rubber tube. Pop Louis, kennel and all, into the box, shut it down, and put the other end of the tube over the gas-bracket. There you have a perfect lethal chamber. You can stand the kennel at the open window afterwards, to get rid of the smell of the gas, and all that Lena will find when she comes home late in the afternoon will be a placidly defunct Louis.”
“Novels have been written about women like you,” said Strudwarden; “you have a perfectly criminal mind. Let’s come and look for a box.”
Two mornings later the conspirators stood gazing guiltily at a stout square box, connected with the gas-bracket by a length of india-rubber tubing.
“Not a sound,” said Elsie; “he never stirred; it must have been quite painless. All the same I feel rather horrid now it’s done.”
“The ghastly part has to come,” said Strudwarden, turning off the gas. “We’ll lift the lid slowly, and let the gas out by degrees. Swing the door to and fro to send a draught through the room.”
Some minutes later, when the fumes had rushed off, he stooped down and lifted out the little kennel with its grim burden. Elsie gave an exclamation of terror. Louis sat at the door of his dwelling, head erect and ears pricked, as coldly and defiantly inert as when they had put him into his execution chamber. Strudwarden dropped the kennel with a jerk, and stared for a long moment at the miracle-dog; then he went into a peal of chattering laughter.
It was certainly a wonderful imitation of a truculent-looking toy Pomeranian, and the apparatus that gave forth a wheezy bark when you pressed it had materially helped the imposition ‘that Lena, and Lena’s maid, had foisted on the household. For a woman who disliked animals, but liked getting her own way under a halo of unselfishness, Mrs. Strudwarden had managed rather well.
“Louis is dead,” was the curt information that greeted Lena on her return from her luncheon party.
“Louis dead!,” she exclaimed.
“Yes, he flew at the butcher-boy and bit him, and he bit me too, when I tried to get him off, so I had to have him destroyed. You warned me that he snapped, but you didn’t tell me that he was down-right dangerous. I shall have to pay the boy something heavy by way of compensation, so you will have to go without those buckles that you wanted to have for Easter; also I shall have to go to Vienna to consult Dr. Schroeder, who is a specialist on dogbites, and you will have to come too. I have sent what remains of Louis to Rowland Ward to be stuffed; that will be my Easter gift to you instead of the buckles. For Heaven’s sake, Lena, weep, if you really feel it so much; anything would be better than standing there staring as if you thought I had lost my reason.”
Lena Strudwarden did not weep, but her attempt at laughing was an unmistakable failure.
THE GUESTS
“THE landscape seen from our windows is certainly charming,” said Annabel; “those cherry orchards and green meadows, and the river winding along the valley, and the church tower peeping out among the elms, they all make a most effective picture. There’s something dreadfully sleepy and languorous about it, though; stagnation seems to be the dominant note. Nothing ever happens here; seedtime and harvest, an occasional outbreak of measles or a mildly destructive thunderstorm, and a little election excitement about once in five years, that is all that we have to modify the monotony of our existence. Rather dreadful, isn’t it?”
“On the contrary,” said Matilda, “I find it soothing and restful; but then, you see, I’ve lived in countries where things do happen, ever so many at a time, when you’re not ready for them happening all at once.”
“That, of course, makes a difference,” said Annabel.
“I have never forgotten,” said Matilda, “the occasion when the Bishop of Bequar paid us an unexpected visit; he was on his way to lay the foundation-stone of a mission-house or something of the sort.”
“I thought that out there you were always prepared for emergency guests turning up,” said Annabel.
“I was quite prepared for half a dozen bishops,” said Matilda, “but it was rather disconcerting to find out after a little conversation that this particular one was a distant cousin of mine, belonging to a branch of the family that had quarrelled bitterly and offensively with our branch about a Crown Derby dessert service; they got it, and we ought to have got it, in some legacy, or else we got it and they thought they ought to have it, I forget which; anyhow, I know they behaved disgracefully. Now here was one of them turning up in the odour of sanctity, so to speak, and claiming the traditional hospitality of the East.”
“It was rather trying, but you could have left your husband to do most of the entertaining.”
“My husband was fifty miles up-country, talking sense, or what he imagined to be sense, to a village community that fancied one of their leading men was a were-tiger.”
“A what tiger?”
“A were-tiger; you’ve heard of were-wolves, haven’t you, a m
ixture of wolf and human being and demon? Well, in those parts they have were-tigers, or think they have, and I must say that in this case, so far as sworn and uncontested evidence went, they had every ground for thinking so. However, as we gave up witchcraft prosecutions about three hundred years ago, we don’t like to have other people keeping on our discarded practices; it doesn’t seem respectful to our mental and moral position.”
“I hope you weren’t unkind to the Bishop,” said Annabel.
“Well, of course he was my guest, so I had to be outwardly polite to him, but he was tactless enough to rake up the incidents of the old quarrel, and to try to make out that there was something to be said for the way his side of the family had behaved; even if there was, which I don’t for a moment admit, my house was not the place in which to say it. I didn’t argue the matter, but I gave my cook a holiday to go and visit his aged parents some ninety miles away. The emergency cook was not a specialist in curries; in fact, I don’t think cooking in any shape or form could have been one of his strong points. I believe he originally came to us in the guise of a gardener, but as we never pretended to have anything that could be considered a garden he was utilized as assistant goatherd, in which capacity, I understand, he gave every satisfaction. When the Bishop heard that I had sent away the cook on a special and unnecessary holiday, he saw the inwardness of the manœeuvre, and from that moment we were scarcely on speaking terms. If you have ever had a Bishop with whom you were not on speaking terms staying in your house, you will appreciate the situation.”
Annabel confessed that her life-story had never included such a disturbing experience.
“Then,” continued Matilda, “to make matters more complicated, the Gwadlipichee overflowed its banks, a thing it did every now and then when the rains were unduly prolonged, and the lower part of the house and all the out-buildings were submerged. We managed to get the ponies loose in time, and the syce swam the whole lot of them off to the nearest rising ground. A goat or two, the chief goatherd, the chief goatherd’s wife, and several of their babies came to anchorage in the verandah. All the rest of the available space was filled up with wet, bedraggled-looking hens and chickens; one never really knows how many fowls one possesses till the servants’ quarters are flooded out. Of course, I had been through something of the sort in previous floods, but never before had I had a houseful of goats and babies and half-drowned hens, supplemented by a Bishop with whom I was hardly on speaking terms.”