The Saki Megapack

by H. H. Munro

  He was shown all the Aylesbury ducklings and the row of wooden hives where there would have been bees if there had not been bee disease. He was also taken to the end of a long lane and shown a distant mound whereon local tradition reported that the Danes had once pitched a camp. And when his hostess had to desert him temporarily for other duties he would find Evelyn walking solemnly by his side. Evelyn was fourteen and talked chiefly about good and evil, and of how much one might accomplish in the way of regenerating the world if one was thoroughly determined to do one’s utmost. It was generally rather a relief when she was displaced by Jack, who was nine years old, and talked exclusively about the Balkan War without throwing any fresh light on its political or military history. The German governess told Lanner more about Schiller than he had ever heard in his life about any one person; it was perhaps his own fault for having told her that he was not interested in Goethe. When the governess went off picket duty the hostess was again on hand with a not-to-be-gainsaid invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who remembered Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called back to town earlier than he had originally intended.

  Hugo did not bring off his affair with Betty Coulterneb. Whether she refused him or whether, as was more generally supposed, he did not get a chance of saying three consecutive words, has never been exactly ascertained. Anyhow, she is still the jolly Coulterneb girl.

  The buzzards successfully reared two young ones, which were shot by a local hairdresser.

  THE STAKE

  “Ronnie is a great trial to me,” said Mrs. Attray plaintively. “Only eighteen years old last February and already a confirmed gambler. I am sure I don’t know where he inherits it from; his father never touched cards, and you know how little I play—a game of bridge on Wednesday afternoons in the winter, for three-pence a hundred, and even that I shouldn’t do if it wasn’t that Edith always wants a fourth and would be certain to ask that detestable Jenkinham woman if she couldn’t get me. I would much rather sit and talk any day than play bridge; cards are such a waste of time, I think. But as to Ronnie, bridge and baccarat and poker-patience are positively all that he thinks about. Of course I’ve done my best to stop it; I’ve asked the Norridrums not to let him play cards when he’s over there, but you might as well ask the Atlantic Ocean to keep quiet for a crossing as expect them to bother about a mother’s natural anxieties.”

  “Why do you let him go there?” asked Eleanor Saxelby.

  “My dear,” said Mrs. Attray, “I don’t want to offend them. After all, they are my landlords and I have to look to them for anything I want done about the place; they were very accommodating about the new roof for the orchid house. And they lend me one of their cars when mine is out of order; you know how often it gets out of order.”

  “I don’t know how often,” said Eleanor, “but it must happen very frequently. Whenever I want you to take me anywhere in your car I am always told that there is something wrong with it, or else that the chauffeur has got neuralgia and you don’t like to ask him to go out.”

  “He suffers quite a lot from neuralgia,” said Mrs. Attray hastily. “Anyhow,” she continued, “you can understand that I don’t want to offend the Norridrums. Their household is the most rackety one in the county, and I believe no one ever knows to an hour or two when any particular meal will appear on the table or what it will consist of when it does appear.”

  Eleanor Saxelby shuddered. She liked her meals to be of regular occurrence and assured proportions.

  “Still,” pursued Mrs. Attray, “whatever their own home life may be, as landlords and neighbours they are considerate and obliging, so I don’t want to quarrel with them. Besides, if Ronnie didn’t play cards there he’d be playing somewhere else.”

  “Not if you were firm with him,” said Eleanor “I believe in being firm.”

  “Firm? I am firm,” exclaimed Mrs. Attray; “I am more than firm—I am farseeing. I’ve done everything I can think of to prevent Ronnie from playing for money. I’ve stopped his allowance for the rest of the year, so he can’t even gamble on credit, and I’ve subscribed a lump sum to the church offertory in his name instead of giving him instalments of small silver to put in the bag on Sundays. I wouldn’t even let him have the money to tip the hunt servants with, but sent it by postal order. He was furiously sulky about it, but I reminded him of what happened to the ten shillings that I gave him for the Young Men’s Endeavour League ‘Self-Denial Week.’”

  “What did happen to it?” asked Eleanor.

  “Well, Ronnie did some preliminary endeavouring with it, on his own account, in connection with the Grand National. If it had come off, as he expressed it, he would have given the League twenty-five shillings and netted a comfortable commission for himself; as it was, that ten shillings was one of the things the League had to deny itself. Since then I’ve been careful not to let him have a penny piece in his hands.”

  “He’ll get round that in some way,” said Eleanor with quiet conviction; “he’ll sell things.”

  “My dear, he’s done all that is to be done in that direction already. He’s got rid of his wrist-watch and his hunting flask and both his cigarette cases, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s wearing imitation-gold sleeve links instead of those his Aunt Rhoda gave him on his seventeenth birthday. He can’t sell his clothes, of course, except his winter overcoat, and I’ve locked that up in the camphor cupboard on the pretext of preserving it from moth. I really don’t see what else he can raise money on. I consider that I’ve been both firm and farseeing.”

  “Has he been at the Norridrums lately?” asked Eleanor.

  “He was there yesterday afternoon and stayed to dinner,” said Mrs. Attray. “I don’t quite know when he came home, but I fancy it was late.”

  “Then depend on it he was gambling,” said Eleanor, with the assured air of one who has few ideas and makes the most of them. “Late hours in the country always mean gambling.”

  “He can’t gamble if he has no money and no chance of getting any,” argued Mrs. Attray; “even if one plays for small stakes one must have a decent prospect of paying one’s losses.”

  “He may have sold some of the Amherst pheasant chicks,” suggested Eleanor; “they would fetch about ten or twelve shillings each, I daresay.”

  “Ronnie wouldn’t do such a thing,” said Mrs. Attray; “and anyhow I went and counted them this morning and they’re all there. No,” she continued, with the quiet satisfaction that comes from a sense of painstaking and merited achievement, “I fancy that Ronnie had to content himself with the rôle of onlooker last night, as far as the card-table was concerned.”

  “Is that clock right?” asked Eleanor, whose eyes had been straying restlessly towards the mantel-piece for some little time; “lunch is usually so punctual in your establishment.”

  “Three minutes past the half-hour,” exclaimed Mrs. Attray; “cook must be preparing something unusually sumptuous in your honour. I am not in the secret; I’ve been out all the morning, you know.”

  Eleanor smiled forgivingly. A special effort by Mrs. Attray’s cook was worth waiting a few minutes for.

  As a matter of fact, the luncheon fare, when it made its tardy appearance, was distinctly unworthy of the reputation which the justly-treasured cook had built up for herself. The soup alone would have sufficed to cast a gloom over any meal that it had inaugurated, and it was not redeemed by anything that followed. Eleanor said little, but when she spoke there was a hint of tears in her voice that was far more eloquent than outspoken denunciation would have been, and even the insouciant Ronald showed traces of depression when he tasted the rognons Saltikoff.

  “Not quite the best luncheon I’ve enjoyed in your house,” said Eleanor at last, when her final hope had flickered out with the savoury.

  “My dear, it’s the worst meal I’ve sat down to for years,” said her hostess; “that last dish tasted principally of red pepper and wet toast
. I’m awfully sorry. Is anything the matter in the kitchen, Pellin?” she asked of the attendant maid.

  “Well, ma’am, the new cook hadn’t hardly time to see to things properly, coming in so sudden—” commenced Pellin by way of explanation.

  “The new cook!” screamed Mrs. Attray.

  “Colonel Norridrum’s cook, ma’am,” said Pellin.

  “What on earth do you mean? What is Colonel Norridrum’s cook doing in my kitchen—and where is my cook?”

  “Perhaps I can explain better than Pellin can,” said Ronald hurriedly; “the fact is, I was dining at the Norridrums’ yesterday, and they were wishing they had a swell cook like yours, just for to-day and to-morrow, while they’ve got some gourmet staying with them: their own cook is no earthly good—well, you’ve seen what she turns out when she’s at all flurried. So I thought it would be rather sporting to play them at baccarat for the loan of our cook against a money stake, and I lost, that’s all. I have had rotten luck at baccarat all this year.”

  The remainder of his explanation, of how he had assured the cooks that the temporary transfer had his mother’s sanction, and had smuggled the one out and the other in during the maternal absence, was drowned in the outcry of scandalised upbraiding.

  “If I had sold the woman into slavery there couldn’t have been a bigger fuss about it,” he confided afterwards to Bertie Norridrum, “and Eleanor Saxelby raged and ramped the louder of the two. I tell you what, I’ll bet you two of the Amherst pheasants to five shillings that she refuses to have me as a partner at the croquet tournament. We’re drawn together, you know.”

  This time he won his bet.

  CLOVIS ON PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES

  Marion Eggelby sat talking to Clovis on the only subject that she ever willingly talked about—her offspring and their varied perfections and accomplishments. Clovis was not in what could be called a receptive mood; the younger generation of Eggelby, depicted in the glowing improbable colours of parent impressionism, aroused in him no enthusiasm. Mrs. Eggelby, on the other hand, was furnished with enthusiasm enough for two.

  “You would like Eric,” she said, argumentatively rather than hopefully. Clovis had intimated very unmistakably that he was unlikely to care extravagantly for either Amy or Willie. “Yes, I feel sure you would like Eric. Every one takes to him at once. You know, he always reminds me of that famous picture of the youthful David—I forget who it’s by, but it’s very well known.”

  “That would be sufficient to set me against him, if I saw much of him,” said Clovis. “Just imagine at auction bridge, for instance, when one was trying to concentrate one’s mind on what one’s partner’s original declaration had been, and to remember what suits one’s opponents had originally discarded, what it would be like to have some one persistently reminding one of a picture of the youthful David. It would be simply maddening. If Eric did that I should detest him.”

  “Eric doesn’t play bridge,” said Mrs. Eggelby with dignity.

  “Doesn’t he?” asked Clovis; “why not?”

  “None of my children have been brought up to play card games,” said Mrs. Eggelby; “draughts and halma and those sorts of games I encourage. Eric is considered quite a wonderful draughts-player.”

  “You are strewing dreadful risks in the path of your family,” said Clovis; “a friend of mine who is a prison chaplain told me that among the worst criminal cases that have come under his notice, men condemned to death or to long periods of penal servitude, there was not a single bridge-player. On the other hand, he knew at least two expert draughts-players among them.”

  “I really don’t see what my boys have got to do with the criminal classes,” said Mrs. Eggelby resentfully. “They have been most carefully brought up, I can assure you that.”

  “That shows that you were nervous as to how they would turn out,” said Clovis. “Now, my mother never bothered about bringing me up. She just saw to it that I got whacked at decent intervals and was taught the difference between right and wrong; there is some difference, you know, but I’ve forgotten what it is.”

  “Forgotten the difference between right and wrong!” exclaimed Mrs. Eggelby.

  “Well, you see, I took up natural history and a whole lot of other subjects at the same time, and one can’t remember everything, can one? I used to know the difference between the Sardinian dormouse and the ordinary kind, and whether the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier than the cuckoo, or the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in growing to maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once, but I bet you’ve forgotten them.”

  “Those things are not important,” said Mrs. Eggelby, “but—”

  “The fact that we’ve both forgotten them proves that they are important,” said Clovis; “you must have noticed that it’s always the important things that one forgets, while the trivial, unnecessary facts of life stick in one’s memory. There’s my cousin, Editha Clubberley, for instance; I can never forget that her birthday is on the 12th of October. It’s a matter of utter indifference to me on what date her birthday falls, or whether she was born at all; either fact seems to me absolutely trivial, or unnecessary—I’ve heaps of other cousins to go on with. On the other hand, when I’m staying with Hildegarde Shrubley I can never remember the important circumstance whether her first husband got his unenviable reputation on the Turf or the Stock Exchange, and that uncertainty rules Sport and Finance out of the conversation at once. One can never mention travel, either, because her second husband had to live permanently abroad.”

  “Mrs. Shrubley and I move in very different circles,” said Mrs. Eggelby stiffly.

  “No one who knows Hildegarde could possibly accuse her of moving in a circle,” said Clovis; “her view of life seems to be a non-stop run with an inexhaustible supply of petrol. If she can get some one else to pay for the petrol so much the better. I don’t mind confessing to you that she has taught me more than any other woman I can think of.”

  “What kind of knowledge?” demanded Mrs. Eggelby, with the air a jury might collectively wear when finding a verdict without leaving the box.

  “Well, among other things, she’s introduced me to at least four different ways of cooking lobster,” said Clovis gratefully. “That, of course, wouldn’t appeal to you; people who abstain from the pleasures of the card-table never really appreciate the finer possibilities of the dining-table. I suppose their powers of enlightened enjoyment get atrophied from disuse.”

  “An aunt of mine was very ill after eating a lobster,” said Mrs. Eggelby.

  “I daresay, if we knew more of her history, we should find out that she’d often been ill before eating the lobster. Aren’t you concealing the fact that she’d had measles and influenza and nervous headache and hysteria, and other things that aunts do have, long before she ate the lobster? Aunts that have never known a day’s illness are very rare; in fact, I don’t personally know of any. Of course if she ate it as a child of two weeks old it might have been her first illness—and her last. But if that was the case I think you should have said so.”

  “I must be going,” said Mrs. Eggelby, in a tone which had been thoroughly sterilised of even perfunctory regret.

  Clovis rose with an air of graceful reluctance.

  “I have so enjoyed our little talk about Eric,” he said; “I quite look forward to meeting him some day.”

  “Good-bye,” said Mrs. Eggelby frostily; the supplementary remark which she made at the back of her throat was—

  “I’ll take care that you never shall!”

  A HOLIDAY TASK

  Kenelm Jerton entered the dining-hall of the Golden Galleon Hotel in the full crush of the luncheon hour. Nearly every seat was occupied, and small additional tables had been brought in, where floor space permitted, to accommodate latecomers, with the result that many of the tables were almost touching each other. Jerton was beckoned by a waiter to the only vacant table that was discernible, and took his seat with the uncomfortable and wholly groun
dless idea that nearly every one in the room was staring at him. He was a youngish man of ordinary appearance, quiet of dress and unobtrusive of manner, and he could never wholly rid himself of the idea that a fierce light of public scrutiny beat on him as though he had been a notability or a super-nut. After he had ordered his lunch there came the unavoidable interval of waiting, with nothing to do but to stare at the flower-vase on his table and to be stared at (in imagination) by several flappers, some maturer beings of the same sex, and a satirical-looking Jew. In order to carry off the situation with some appearance of unconcern he became spuriously interested in the contents of the flower-vase.

  “What is the name of these roses, d’you know?” he asked the waiter. The waiter was ready at all times to conceal his ignorance concerning items of the wine-list or menu; he was frankly ignorant as to the specific name of the roses.

  “Amy Sylvester Partington,” said a voice at Jerton’s elbow.

  The voice came from a pleasant-faced, well-dressed young woman who was sitting at a table that almost touched Jerton’s. He thanked her hurriedly and nervously for the information, and made some inconsequent remark about the flowers.

  “It is a curious thing,” said the young woman, that, “I should be able to tell you the name of those roses without an effort of memory, because if you were to ask me my name I should be utterly unable to give it to you.”

  Jerton had not harboured the least intention of extending his thirst for name-labels to his neighbour. After her rather remarkable announcement, however, he was obliged to say something in the way of polite inquiry.