by Saki
‘I think I have caught a chill,’ he ventured desperately.
‘Really, I’m sorry,’ she replied. ‘I was just going to ask you if you would open this window.’
‘I fancy it’s malaria,’ he added, his teeth chattering slightly, as much from fright as from a desire to support his theory.
‘I’ve got some brandy in my hold-all, if you’ll kindly reach it down for me,’ said his companion.
‘Not for worlds – I mean, I never take anything for it,’ he assured her earnestly.
‘I suppose you caught it in the Tropics?’
Theodoric, whose acquaintance with the Tropics was limited to an annual present of a chest of tea from an uncle in Ceylon, felt that even the malaria was slipping from him. Would it be possible, he wondered, to disclose the real state of affairs to her in small instalments?
‘Are you afraid of mice?’ he ventured, growing if possible, more scarlet in the face.
‘Not unless they came in quantities, like those that ate up Bishop Hatto. Why do you ask?’
‘I had one crawling inside my clothes just now,’ said Theodoric in a voice that hardly seemed his own. ‘It was a most awkward situation.’
‘It must have been, if you wear your clothes at all tight,’ she observed; ‘but mice have strange ideas of comfort.’
‘I had to get rid of it while you were asleep,’ he continued; then, with a gulp, he added, ‘it was getting rid of it that brought me to – to this.’
‘Surely leaving off one small mouse wouldn’t bring on a chill,’ she exclaimed, with a levity that Theodoric accounted abominable.
Evidently she had detected something of his predicament, and was enjoying his confusion. All the blood in his body seemed to have mobilised in one concentrated blush, and an agony of abasement, worse than a myriad mice, crept up and down over his soul. And then, as reflection began to assert itself, sheer terror took the place of humiliation. With every minute that passed the train was rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralysing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage. There was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must decide. His fellow-traveller might relapse into a blessed slumber. But as the minutes throbbed by that chance ebbed away. The furtive glance which Theodoric stole at her from time to time disclosed only an unwinking wakefulness.
‘I think we must be getting near now,’ she presently observed.
Theodoric had already noted with growing terror the recurring stacks of small, ugly dwellings that heralded the journey’s end. The words acted as a signal. Like a hunted beast breaking cover and dashing madly towards some other haven of momentary safety he threw aside his rug, and struggled frantically into his dishevelled garments. He was conscious of dull suburban stations racing past the window, of a choking, hammering sensation in his throat and heart, and of an icy silence in that corner towards which he dared not look. Then as he sank back in his seat, clothed and almost delirious, the train slowed down to a final crawl, and the woman spoke.
‘Would you be so kind,’ she asked, ‘as to get me a porter to put me into a cab? It’s a shame to trouble you when you’re feeling unwell, but being blind makes one so helpless at a railway station.’
THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS
First collected in 1911
To the Lynx Kitten,
With His Reluctantly Given Consent,
This Book is Affectionately
Dedicated
H. H. M.
August, 1911
Esmé
‘All hunting stories are the same,’ said Clovis; ‘just as all Turf stories are the same, and all –’
‘My hunting story isn’t a bit like any you’ve ever heard,’ said the Baroness. ‘It happened quite a while ago, when I was about twenty-three. I wasn’t living apart from my husband then; you see, neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance. In spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up. But we always hunted with different packs. All this has nothing to do with the story.’
‘We haven’t arrived at the meet yet. I suppose there was a meet,’ said Clovis.
‘Of course there was a meet,’ said the Baroness; ‘all the usual crowd were there, especially Constance Broddle. Constance is one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas decorations in church. “I feel a presentiment that something dreadful is going to happen,” she said to me; “am I looking pale?”
‘She was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard bad news.
‘“You’re looking nicer than usual,” I said, “but that’s so easy for you.” Before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some gorse-bushes.’
‘I knew it,’ said Clovis; ‘in every fox-hunting story that I’ve ever heard there’s been a fox and some gorse-bushes.’
‘Constance and I were well mounted,’ continued the Baroness serenely, ‘and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight, though it was a fairly stiff run. Towards the finish, however we must have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. It was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just beneath us.
‘“There they go,” cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, “In Heaven’s name, what are they hunting?”
‘It was certainly no mortal fox. It stood more than twice as high, had a short, ugly head and an enormous thick neck.
‘“It’s a hyæna,” I cried; “it must have escaped from Lord Pabham’s Park.”
‘At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers and the hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a half-circle and looked foolish. Evidently they had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.
‘The hyæna hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized upon as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyæna were left alone in the gathering twilight.
‘“What are we to do?” asked Constance.
‘“What a person you are for questions,” I said.
‘“Well, we can’t stay here all night with a hyæna,” she retorted.
‘“I don’t know what your ideas of comfort are,” I said; “but I shouldn’t think of staying here all night even without a hyæna. My home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn’t find here. We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.”
‘We trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the beast following cheerfully at our heels.
‘“What on earth are we to do with the hyæna?” came the inevitable question.
‘“What does one generally do with hyænas?” I asked crossly.
‘“I’ve never had anything to do with one before,” said Constance.
‘“Well, neither have I. If we even knew its sex we might give it a name. Perhaps we might call it Esmé. That would do in either case.”
‘There was still sufficient daylight for us to distinguish wayside objects, and our listless spirits gave an upward perk as we came upon a small half-naked gipsy brat picking blackberries from a low-growing bush. The sudden apparition of two horsewomen and a hyæna set it off
crying, and in any case we should scarcely have gleaned any useful geographical information from that source; but there was a probability that we might strike a gipsy encampment somewhere along our route. We rode on hopefully but uneventfully for another mile or so.
‘“I wonder what the child was doing there,” said Constance presently.
‘“Picking blackberries. Obviously.”
‘“I don’t like the way it cried,” pursued Constance; “somehow its wail keeps ringing in my ears.”
‘I did not chide Constance for her morbid fancies; as a matter of fact the same sensation, of being pursued by a persistent fretful wail, had been forcing itself on my rather over-tired nerves. For company’s sake I hulloed to Esmé, who had lagged somewhat behind. With a few springy bounds he drew up level, and then shot past us.
‘The wailing accompaniment was explained. The gipsy child was firmly, and I expect painfully, held in his jaws.
‘“Merciful Heaven!” screamed Constance, “what on earth shall we do? What are we to do?”
‘I am perfectly certain that at the Last Judgment Constance will ask more questions than any of the examining Seraphs.
‘“Can’t we do something?” she persisted tearfully, as Esmé cantered easily along in front of our tired horses.
‘Personally I was doing everything that occurred to me at the moment. I stormed and scolded and coaxed in English and French and gamekeeper language; I made absurd, ineffectual cuts in the air with my thongless hunting-crop; I hurled my sandwich case at the brute; in fact, I really don’t know what more I could have done. And still we lumbered on through the deepening dusk, with that dark uncouth shape lumbering ahead of us, and a drone of lugubrious music floating in our ears. Suddenly Esmé bounded aside into some thick bushes, where we could not follow; the wail rose to a shriek and then stopped altogether. This part of the story I always hurry over, because it is really rather horrible. When the beast joined us again, after an absence of a few minutes, there was an air of patient understanding about him, as though he knew that he had done something of which we disapproved, but which he felt to be thoroughly justifiable.
‘“How can you let that ravening beast trot by your side?” asked Constance. She was looking more than ever like an albino beetroot.
‘“In the first place, I can’t prevent it,” I said; “and in the second place, whatever else he may be, I doubt if he’s ravening at the present moment.”
‘Constance shuddered. “Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?” came another of her futile questions.
‘“The indications were all that way,” I said; “on the other hand of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do.”
‘It was nearly pitch-dark when we emerged suddenly into the high road. A flash of lights and the whir of a motor went past us at the same moment at uncomfortably close quarters. A thud and a sharp screeching yell followed a second later. The car drew up, and when I had ridden back to the spot I found a young man bending over a dark motionless mass lying by the roadside.
‘“You have killed my Esmé,” I exclaimed bitterly.
‘“I’m so awfully sorry,” said the young man; “I keep dogs myself so I know what you must feel about it. I’ll do anything I can in reparation.’
‘“Please bury him at once,” I said; “that much I think I may ask of you.”
‘“Bring the spade, William,” he called to the chauffeur. Evidently hasty roadside interments were contingencies that had been provided against.
‘The digging of a sufficiently large grave took some little time. “I say, what a magnificent fellow,” said the motorist as the corpse was rolled over into the trench. “I’m afraid he must have been rather a valuable animal.”
‘“He took second in the puppy class at Birmingham last year,” I said resolutely.
‘Constance snorted loudly.
‘“Don’t cry, dear,” I said brokenly; “it was all over in a moment. He couldn’t have suffered much.”
‘“Look here,” said the young fellow desperately, “you simply must let me do something by way of reparation.”
‘I refused sweetly, but as he persisted I let him have my address.
‘Of course, we kept our own counsel as to the earlier episodes of the evening. Lord Pabham never advertised the loss of his hyæna; when a strictly fruit-eating animal strayed from his park a year or two previously he was called upon to give compensation in eleven cases of sheep-worrying and practically to re-stock his neighbours’ poultry-yards, and an escaped hyæna would have mounted up to something on the scale of a Government grant. The gipsies were equally unobtrusive over their missing offspring; I don’t suppose in large encampments they really know to a child or two how many they’ve got.’
The Baroness paused reflectively, and then continued:
‘There was a sequel to the adventure, though. I got through the post a charming little diamond brooch, with the name Esmé set in a sprig of rosemary. Incidentally, too, I lost the friendship of Constance Broddle. You see, when I sold the brooch I quite properly refused to give her any share of the proceeds. I pointed out that the Esmé part of the affair was my own invention, and the hyæna part of it belonged to Lord Pabham, if it really was his hyæna, of which, of course, I’ve no proof.’
The Match-Maker
The grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored. When the flight of time should really have rendered abstinence and migration imperative the lighting apparatus would signal the fact in the usual way.
Six minutes later Clovis approached the supper-table, in the blessed expectancy of one who has dined sketchily and long ago.
‘I’m starving,’ he announced, making an effort to sit down gracefully and read the menu at the same time.
‘So I gathered,’ said his host, ‘from the fact that you were nearly punctual. I ought to have told you that I’m a Food Reformer. I’ve ordered two bowls of bread-and-milk and some health biscuits. I hope you don’t mind.’
Clovis pretended afterwards that he didn’t go white above the collarline for the fraction of a second.
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘you ought not to joke about such things. There really are such people. I’ve known people who’ve met them. To think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and then to go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it.’
‘They’re like the Flagellants of the Middle Ages, who went about mortifying themselves.’
‘They had some excuse,’ said Clovis. ‘They did it to save their immortal souls, didn’t they? You needn’t tell me that a man who doesn’t love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.’
Clovis relapsed for a few golden moments into tender intimacies with a succession of rapidly disappearing oysters.
‘I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,’ he resumed presently. ‘They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There’s nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. Do you like my new waistcoat? I’m wearing it for the first time tonight.’
‘It looks like a great many others you’ve had lately, only worse. New dinner waistcoats are becoming a habit with you.’
‘They say one always pays for the excesses of one’s youth; mercifully that isn’t true about one’s clothes My mother is thinking of getting married.’
‘Again!’
‘It’s the first time.’
‘Of course, you ought to know. I was under the impression that she’d been married once or twice at least.’
‘Three times, to be mathematically exact. I meant that it was the first time she’d thought about getting married; the other times she did i
t without thinking. As a matter of fact, it’s really I who am doing the thinking for her in this case. You see, it’s quite two years since her first husband died.’
‘You evidently think that brevity is the soul of widowhood.’
‘Well, it struck me that she was getting moped, and beginning to settle down, which wouldn’t suit her a bit. The first symptom that I noticed was when she began to complain that we were living beyond our income. All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren’t respectable live beyond other people’s. A few gifted individuals manage to do both.’