by Saki
“I’m so sorry I can’t join this winter,” said Reggie’s sister-in-law, “but we must go to our cousins in Ireland; we’ve put them off so often. What a shame! You’ll have none of the same women this time.”
“Excepting Mrs. Pentherby,” said Reggie demurely.
“Mrs. Pentherby! Surely, Reggie, you’re not going to be so idiotic as to have that woman again! She’ll set all the women’s backs up just as she did this time. What is this mysterious hold she’s got over you?”
“She’s invaluable,” said Reggie; “she’s my official quarreller.”
“Your—what did you say?” gasped his sister-in-law.
“I introduced her into the house-party for the express purpose of concentrating the feuds and quarrelling that would otherwise have broken out in all directions among the womenkind. I didn’t need the advice and warning of sundry friends to foresee that we shouldn’t get through six months of close companionship without a certain amount of pecking and sparring, so I thought the best thing was to localize and sterilize it in one process. Of course, I made it well worth the lady’s while, and as she didn’t know any of you from Adam, and you don’t even know her real name, she didn’t mind getting herself disliked in a useful cause.”
“You mean to say she was in the know all the time?”
“Of course she was, and so were one or two of the men, so she was able to have a good laugh with us behind the scenes when she’d done anything particularly outrageous. And she really enjoyed herself. You see, she’s in the position of poor relation in a rather pugnacious family, and her life has been largely spent in smoothing over other people’s quarrels. You can imagine the welcome relief of being able to go about saying and doing perfectly exasperating things to a whole houseful of women—and all in the cause of peace.”
“I think you are the most odious person in the whole world,” said Reggie’s sister-in-law. Which was not strictly true; more than anybody, more than ever she disliked Mrs. Pentherby. It was impossible to calculate how many quarrels that woman had done her out of.
MARK
AUGUSTUS MELLOWKENT was a novelist with a future; that is to say, a limited but increasing number of people read his books, and there seemed good reason to suppose that if he steadily continued to turn out novels year by year a progressively increasing circle of readers would acquire the Mellowkent habit, and demand his works from the libraries and bookstalls. At the instigation of his publisher he had discarded the baptismal Augustus and taken the front name of Mark.
“Women like a name that suggests some one strong and silent, able but unwilling to answer questions. Augustus merely suggests idle splendour, but such a name as Mark Mellowkent, besides being alliterative, conjures up a vision of some one strong and beautiful and good, a sort of blend of Georges Carpentier and the Reverend What’s-his-name.”
One morning in December Augustus sat in his writing-room, at work on the third chapter of his eighth novel. He had described at some length, for the benefit of those who could not imagine it, what a rectory garden looks like in July; he was now engaged in describing at greater length the feelings of a young girl, daughter of a long line of rectors and archdeacons, when she discovers for the first time that the postman is attractive.
“Their eyes met, for a brief moment, as he handed her two circulars and the fat wrapper-bound bulk of the East Essex News. Their eyes met, for the merest fraction of a second, yet nothing could ever be quite the same again. Cost what it might she felt that she must speak, must break the intolerable, unreal silence that had fallen on them. ‘How is your mother’s rheumatism?’ she said.”
The author’s labours were cut short by the sudden intrusion of a maidservant.
“A gentleman to see you, sir,” said the maid, handing a card with the name Caiaphas Dwelf inscribed on it; “says it’s important.”
Mellowkent hesitated and yielded; the importance of the visitor’s mission was probably illusory, but he had never met any one with the name Caiaphas before. It would be at least a new experience.
Mr. Dwelf was a man of indefinite age; his high, narrow forehead, cold grey eyes, and determined manner bespoke an unflinching purpose. He had a large book under his arm, and there seemed every probability that he had left a package of similar volumes in the hall. He took a seat before it had been offered him, placed the book on the table, and began to address Mellowkent in the manner of an “open letter.”
“You are a literary man, the author of several well-known books—”
“I am engaged on a book at the present moment—rather busily engaged,” said Mellowkent pointedly.
“Exactly,” said the intruder; “time with you is a commodity of considerable importance. Minutes, even, have their value.”
“They have,” agreed Mellowkent, looking at his watch.
“That,” said Caiaphas, “is why this book that I am introducing to your notice is not a book that you can afford to be without. Right Here is indispensable for the writing man; it is no ordinary encyclopædia, or I should not trouble to show it to you. It is an inexhaustible mine of concise information—”
“On a shelf at my elbow,” said the author, “I have a row of reference books that supply me with all the information I am likely to require.”
“Here,” persisted the would-be salesman, “you have it all in one compact volume. No matter what the subject may be which you wish to look up, or the fact you desire to verify, Right Here gives you all that you want to know in the briefest and most enlightening form. Historical reference, for instance; career of John Huss, let us say. Here we are: ‘Huss, John, celebrated religious reformer. Born 1369, burned at Constance 1415. The Emperor Sigismund universally blamed.’”
“If he had been burnt in these days every one would have suspected the Suffragettes,” observed Mellowkent.
“Poultry-keeping, now,” resumed Caiaphas, “that’s a subject that might crop up in a novel dealing with English country life. Here we have all about it: ‘The Leghorn as egg-producer. Lack of maternal instinct in the Minorca. Gapes in chickens, its cause and cure. Ducklings for the early market, how fattened.’ There, you see, there it all is, nothing lacking.”
“Except the maternal instinct in the Minorca, and that you could hardly be expected to supply.”
“Sporting records, that’s important too; now how many men, sporting men even, are there who can say off-hand what horse won the Derby in any particular year? Now it’s just a little thing of that sort–”
“My dear sir,” interrupted Mellowkent, “there are at least four men in my club who can not only tell me what horse won in any given year, but what horse ought to have won and why it didn’t. If your book could supply a method for protecting one from information of that sort, it would do more than anything you have yet claimed for it.”
“Geography,” said Caiaphas imperturbably; “that’s a thing that a busy man, writing at high pressure, may easily make a slip over. Only the other day a well-known author made the Volga flow into the Black Sea instead of the Caspian; now, with this book—”
“On a polished rose-wood stand behind you there reposes a reliable and up-to-date atlas,” said Mellowkent; “and now I must really ask you to be going.”
“An atlas,” said Caiaphas, “gives merely the chart of the river’s course, and indicates the principal towns that it passes. Now Right Here gives you the scenery, traffic, ferry-boat charges, the prevalent types of fish, boatmen’s slang terms, and hours of sailing of the principal river steamers. It gives you—”
Mellowkent sat and watched the hard-featured, resolute, pitiless sales man, as he sat doggedly in the chair wherein he had installed himself, unflinchingly extolling the merits of his undesired wares. A spirit of wistful emulation took possession of the author. Why could he not live up to the cold stern name he had adopted?
Why must he sit here weakly and listen to this weary, unconvincing tirade? Why could he not be Mark Mellowkent for a few brief moments, and meet this man on level
terms?
A sudden inspiration flashed across him.
“Have you read my last book, The Cageless Linnet?” he asked.
“I don’t read novels,” said Caiaphas tersely.
“Oh, but you ought to read this one, every one ought to,” exclaimed Mellowkent, fishing the book down from a shelf; “published at six shillings, you can have it at four-and-six. There is a bit in chapter five that I feel sure you would like, where Emma is alone in the birch copse waiting for Harold Huntingdon—that is the man her family want her to marry. She really wants to marry him too, but she does not discover that till chapter fifteen. Listen: ‘Far as the eye could stretch rolled the mauve and purple billows of heather, lit up here and there with the glowing yellow of gorse and broom, and edged round with the delicate greys and silver and green of the young birch trees. Tiny blue and brown butterflies fluttered above the fronds of heather, revelling in the sunlight, and overhead the larks were singing as only larks can sing. It was a day when all Nature—’”
“In Right Here you have full information on all branches of Nature study,” broke in the book-agent, with a tired note sounding in his voice for the first time; “forestry, insect life, bird migration, reclamation of waste lands. As I was saying, no man who has to deal with the varied interests of life—”
“I wonder if you would care for one of my earlier books, The Reluctance of Lady Cullumpton,” said Mellowkent, hunting again through the bookshelf; “some people consider it my best novel. Ah, here it is. I see there are one or two spots on the cover, so I won’t ask more than three-and-ninepence for it. Do let me read you how it opens:
“‘Beatrice Lady Cullumpton entered the long, dimly lit drawing-room, her eyes blazing with a hope that she guessed to be groundless, her lips trembling with a fear that she could not disguise. In her hand she carried a small fan, a fragile toy of lace and satinwood. Something snapped as she entered the room; she had crushed the fan into a dozen pieces.’
“There, what do you think of that for an opening? It tells you at once that there’s something afoot.”
“I don’t read novels,” said Caiaphas sullenly.
“But just think what a resource they are,” exclaimed the author, “on long winter evenings, or perhaps when you are laid up with a strained ankle—a thing that might happen to any one; or if you were staying in a house-party with persistent wet weather and a stupid hostess and insufferably dull fellow-guests, you would just make an excuse that you had letters to write, go to your room, light a cigarette, and for three-and-ninepence you could plunge into the society of Beatrice Lady Cullumpton and her set. No one ought to travel without one or two of my novels in their luggage as a stand-by. A friend of mine said only the other day that he would as soon think of going into the tropics without quinine as of going on a visit without a couple of Mark Mellowkents in his kit-bag. Perhaps sensation is more in your line. I wonder if I’ve got a copy of The Python’s Kiss.”
Caiaphas did not wait to be tempted with selections from that thrilling work of fiction. With a muttered remark about having no time to waste on monkey-talk, he gathered up his slighted volume and departed. He made no audible reply to Mellowkent’s cheerful “Good morning,” but the latter fancied that a look of respectful hatred flickered in the cold, grey eyes.
THE HEDGEHOG
A “MIXED DOUBLE” of young people were contesting a game of lawn tennis at the Rectory garden party; for the past five-and-twenty years at least mixed doubles of young people had done exactly the same thing on exactly the same spot at about the same time of year. The young people changed and made way for others in the course of time, but very little else seemed to alter.
The present players were sufficiently conscious of the social nature of the occasion to be concerned about their clothes and appearance, and sufficiently sport-loving to be keen on the game. Both their efforts and their appearance came under the four-fold scrutiny of a quartet of ladies sitting as official spectators on a bench immediately commanding the court. It was one of the accepted conditions of the Rectory garden party that four ladies, who usually knew very little about tennis and a great deal about the players, should sit at that particular spot and watch the game. It had also come to be almost a tradition that two ladies should be amiable, and that the other two should be Mrs. Dole and Mrs. Hatch-Mallard.
“What a singularly unbecoming way Eva Jonelet has taken to doing her hair in,” said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard; “it’s ugly hair at the best of times, but she needn’t make it look ridiculous as well. Some one ought to tell her.”
Eva Jonelet’s hair might have escaped Mrs. Hatch-Mallard’s condemnation if she could have forgotten the more glaring fact that Eva was Mrs. Dole’s favourite niece. It would, perhaps, have been a more comfortable arrangement if Mrs. Hatch-Mallard and Mrs. Dole could have been asked to the Rectory on separate occasions, but there was only one garden party in the course of the year, and neither lady could have been omitted from the list of invitations without hopelessly wrecking the social peace of the parish.
“How pretty the yew trees look at this time of year,” interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler.
“What do you mean by this time of year?” demanded Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. “Yew trees look beautiful at all times of the year. That is their great charm.”
“Yew trees never look anything but hideous under any circumstances or at any time of year,” said Mrs. Dole, with the slow, emphatic relish of one who contradicts for the pleasure of the thing. “They are only fit for graveyards and cemeteries.”
Mrs. Hatch-Mallard gave a sardonic snort, which, being translated, meant that there were some people who were better fitted for cemeteries than for garden parties.
“What is the score, please?” asked the lady with the chinchilla voice.
The desired information was given her by a young gentleman in spotless white flannels, whose general toilet effect suggested solicitude rather than anxiety.
“What an odious young cub Bertie Dykson has become!” pronounced Mrs. Dole. remembering suddenly that Bertie was rather a favourite with Mrs. Hatch-Mallard. “The young men of today are not what they used to be twenty years ago.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard; “twenty years ago Bertie Dykson was just two years old, and you must expect some difference in appearance and manner and conversation between those two periods.”
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Dole confidentially, “I shouldn’t be surprised if that was intended to be clever.”
“Have you any one interesting coming to stay with you, Mrs. Norbury?” asked the chinchilla voice hastily; “you generally have a house-party at this time of year.”
“I’ve got a most interesting woman coming,” said Mrs. Norbury, who had been mutely struggling for some chance to turn the conversation into a safe channel; “an old acquaintance of mine, Ada Bleek — ”
“What an ugly name,” said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard.
“She’s descended from the de la Bliques, an old Huguenot family of Touraine, you know.”
“There weren’t any Huguenots in Touraine,” said Mrs. Hatch-Mallard, who thought she might safely dispute any fact that was three hundred years old.
“Well, anyhow, she’s coming to stay with me,” continued Mrs. Norbury, bringing her story quickly down to the present day; “she arrives this evening and she’s highly clairvoyante, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, you know, and all that sort of thing.”
“How very interesting,” said the chinchilla voice; “Exwood is just the right place for her to come to, isn’t it? There are supposed to be several ghosts there.”
“That is why she was so anxious to come,” said Mrs. Norbury; “she put off another engagement in order to accept my invitation. She’s had visions and dreams, and all those sort of things, that have come true in a most marvellous manner, but she’s never actually seen a ghost, and she’s longing to have that experience. She belongs to that Research So
ciety, you know.”
“I expect she’ll see the unhappy Lady Cullumpton, the most famous of all the Exwood ghosts,” said Mrs. Dole; “my ancestor, you know, Sir Gervase Cullumpton, murdered his young bride in a fit of jealousy while they were on a visit to Exwood. He strangled her in the stables with a stirrup leather, just after they had come in from riding, and she is seen sometimes at dusk going about the lawns and the stable yard, in a long green habit, moaning and trying to get the thong from round her throat. I shall be most interested to hear if your friend sees—”
“I don’t know why she should be expected to see a trashy, traditional apparition like the so-called Cullumpton ghost, that is only vouched for by house-maids and tipsy stable-boys, when my uncle, who was the owner of Exwood, committed suicide there under the most tragical circumstances, and most certainly haunts the place.”
“Mrs. Hatch-Mallard has evidently never read Popple’s County History,” said Mrs. Dole icily, “or she would know that the Cullumpton ghost has a wealth of evidence behind it—”
“Oh, Popple!” exclaimed Mrs. Hatch-Mallard scornfully; “any rubbishy old story is good enough for him. Popple, indeed! Now my uncle’s ghost was seen by a Rural Dean, who was also a Justice of the Peace. I should think that would be good enough testimony for any one. Mrs. Norbury, I shall take it as a deliberate personal affront if your clairvoyante friend sees any other ghost except that of my uncle.”
“I dare say she won’t see anything at all; she never has yet, you know,” said Mrs. Norbury hopefully.
“It was a most unfortunate topic for me to have broached,” she lamented afterwards to the owner of the chinchilla voice; “Exwood belongs to Mrs. Hatch-Mallard, and we’ve only got it on a short lease. A nephew of hers has been wanting to live there for some time, and if we offend her in any way she’ll refuse to renew the lease. I sometimes think these garden parties are a mistake.”