by Saki
‘We’ve lost Baby,’ she screamed.
‘Do you mean that it’s dead, or stampeded, or that you staked it at cards and lost it that way?’ asked Clovis lazily.
‘He was toddling about quite happily on the lawn,’ said Mrs Momeby tearfully, ‘and Arnold had just come in, and I was asking him what sort of sauce he would like with the asparagus –’
‘I hope he said hollandaise,’ interrupted Clovis, with a show of quickened interest, ‘because if there’s anything I hate –’
‘And all of a sudden I missed Baby,’ continued Mrs Momeby in a shriller tone. ‘We’ve hunted high and low, in house and garden and outside the gates, and he’s nowhere to be seen.’
‘Is he anywhere to be heard?’ asked Clovis; ‘if not, he must be at least two miles away.’
‘But where? And how?’ asked the distracted mother.
‘Perhaps an eagle or a wild beast has carried him off,’ suggested Clovis.
‘There aren’t eagles and wild beasts in Surrey,’ said Mrs Momeby, but a note of horror had crept into her voice.
‘They escape now and then from travelling shows. Sometimes I think they let them get loose for the sake of the advertisement. Think what a sensational headline it would make in the local papers: “Infant son of prominent Nonconformist devoured by spotted hyæna.” Your husband isn’t a prominent Nonconformist, but his mother came of Wesleyan stock, and you must allow the newspapers some latitude.’
‘But we should have found his remains,’ sobbed Mrs Momeby.
‘If the hyæna was really hungry and not merely toying with his food there wouldn’t be much in the way of remains. It would be like the small-boy-and-apple story – there ain’t going to be no core.’
Mrs Momeby turned away hastily to seek comfort and counsel in some other direction. With the selfish absorption of young motherhood she entirely disregarded Clovis’s obvious anxiety about the asparagus sauce. Before she had gone a yard, however, the click of the side gate caused her to pull up sharp. Miss Gilpet, from the Villa Peterhof, had come over to hear details of the bereavement. Clovis was already rather bored with the story, but Mrs Momeby was equipped with that merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the ninetieth time of telling as in the first.
‘Arnold had just come in; he was complaining of rheumatism –’
‘There are so many things to complain of in this household that it would never have occurred to me to complain of rheumatism,’ murmured Clovis.
‘He was complaining of rheumatism,’ continued Mrs Momeby, trying to throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure as well.
She was again interrupted.
‘There is no such thing as rheumatism,’ said Miss Gilpet. She said it with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing that the cheapest-priced claret in the wine-list is no more. She did not proceed, however, to offer the alternative of some more expensive malady, but denied the existence of them all.
Mrs Momeby’s temper began to shine out through her grief.
‘I suppose you’ll say next that Baby hasn’t really disappeared.’
‘He has disappeared,’ conceded Miss Gilpet, ‘but only because you haven’t sufficient faith to find him. It’s only lack of faith on your part that prevents him from being restored to you safe and well.’
‘But if he’s been eaten in the meantime by a hyæna and partly digested,’ said Clovis, who clung affectionately to his wild beast theory, ‘surely some ill-effects would be noticeable?’
Miss Gilpet was rather staggered by this complication of the question.
‘I feel sure that a hyæna has not eaten him,’ she said lamely.
‘The hyæna may be equally certain that it has. You see, it may have just as much faith as you have, and more special knowledge as to the present whereabouts of the baby.’
Mrs Momeby was in tears again. ‘If you have faith,’ she sobbed, struck by a happy inspiration, ‘won’t you find our little Erik for us? I am sure you have powers that are denied to us.’
Rose-Marie Gilpet was thoroughly sincere in her adherence to Christian Science principles; whether she understood or correctly expounded them the learned in such manners may best decide. In the present case she was undoubtedly confronted with a great opportunity, and as she started forth on her vague search she strenuously summoned to her aid every scrap of faith that she possessed. She passed out into the bare and open high road, followed by Mrs Momeby’s warning, ‘It’s no use going there, we’ve searched there a dozen times.’ But Rose-Marie’s ears were already deaf to all things save self-congratulation; for sitting in the middle of the highway, playing contentedly with the dust and some faded buttercups, was a white-pinafored baby with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied over one temple with a pale-blue ribbon. Taking first the usual feminine precaution of looking to see that no motor-car was on the distant horizon, Rose-Marie dashed at the child and bore it, despite its vigorous opposition, in through the portals of Elsinore. The child’s furious screams had already announced the fact of its discovery, and the almost hysterical parents raced down the lawn to meet their restored offspring. The æsthetic value of the scene was marred in some degree by Rose-Marie’s difficulty in holding the struggling infant, which was borne wrong-end foremost towards the agitated bosom of its family. ‘Our own little Erik come back to us,’ cried the Momebys in unison; as the child had rammed its fists tightly into its eye-sockets and nothing could be seen of its face but a widely gaping mouth, the recognition was in itself almost an act of faith.
‘Is he glad to get back to Daddy and Mummy again?’ crooned Mrs Momeby; the preference which the child was showing for its dust and buttercup distractions was so marked that the question struck Clovis as being unnecessarily tactless.
‘Give him a ride on the roly-poly,’ suggested the father brilliantly, as the howls continued with no sign of early abatement. In a moment the child had been placed astride the big garden roller and a preliminary tug was given to set it in motion. From the hollow depths of the cylinder came an earsplitting roar, drowning even the vocal efforts of the squalling baby, and immediately afterwards there crept forth a white-pinafored infant with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied over one temple with a pale blue ribbon. There was no mistaking either the features or the lung-power of the new arrival.
‘Our own little Erik,’ screamed Mrs Momeby, pouncing on him and nearly smothering him with kisses; ‘did he hide in the roly-poly to give us all a big fright?’
This was the obvious explanation of the child’s sudden disappearance and equally abrupt discovery. There remained, however, the problem of the interloping baby, which now sat whimpering on the lawn in a disfavour as chilling as its previous popularity had been unwelcome. The Momebys glared at it as though it had wormed its way into their short-lived affections by heartless and unworthy pretences. Miss Gilpet’s face took on an ashen tinge as she stared helplessly at the bunched-up figure that had been such a gladsome sight to her eyes a few moments ago.
‘When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands,’ quoted Clovis to himself.
Rose-Marie was the first to break the silence.
‘If that is Erik you have in your arms, who is – that?’
‘That, I think, is for you to explain,’ said Mrs Momeby stiffly.
‘Obviously,’ said Clovis, ‘it’s a duplicate Erik that your powers of faith called into being. The question is: What are you going to do with him?’
The ashen pallor deepened in Rose-Marie’s cheeks. Mrs Momeby clutched the genuine Erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into a bowl of gold-fish.
‘I found him sitting in the middle of the road,’ said Rose-Marie weakly.
‘You can’t take him back and leave him there,’ said Clovis; ‘the highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for disused miracles.’
Rose-Mar
ie wept. The proverb ‘Weep and you weep alone’ broke down as badly on application as most of its kind. Both babies were wailing lugubriously, and the parent Momebys had scarcely recovered from their earlier lachrymose condition. Clovis alone maintained an unruffled cheerfulness.
‘Must I keep him always?’ asked Rose-Marie dolefully.
‘Not always,’ said Clovis consolingly; ‘he can go into the Navy when he’s thirteen.’ Rose-Marie wept afresh.
‘Of course,’ added Clovis, ‘there may be no end of a bother about his birth certificate. You’ll have to explain matters to the Admiralty, and they’re dreadfully hidebound.’
It was rather a relief when a breathless nursemaid from the Villa Charlottenburg over the way came running across the lawn to claim little Percy, who had slipped out of the front gate and disappeared like a twinkling from the high road.
And even then Clovis found it necessary to go in person to the kitchen to make sure about the asparagus sauce.
Wratislav
The Gräfin’s two elder sons had made deplorable marriages. It was, observed Clovis, a family habit. The youngest boy, Wratislav, who was the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage at all.
‘There is certainly this much to be said for viciousness,’ said the Gräfin, ‘it keeps boys out of mischief.’
‘Does it?’ asked the Baroness Sophie, not by way of questioning the statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of Providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk otherwise than inanely.
‘I don’t know why I shouldn’t talk cleverly,’ she would complain; ‘my mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist.’
‘These things have a way of skipping one generation,’ said the Gräfin.
‘That seems so unjust,’ said Sophie; ‘one doesn’t object to one’s mother having outshone one as a clever talker, but I must admit that I should be rather annoyed if my daughters talked brilliantly.’
‘Well, none of them do,’ said the Gräfin consolingly.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said the Baroness, promptly veering round in defence of her offspring. ‘Elsa said something quite clever on Thursday about the Triple Alliance. Something about it being like a paper umbrella, that was all right as long as you didn’t take it out in the rain. It’s not every one who could say that.’
‘Every one has said it; at least every one that I know. But then I know very few people.’
‘I don’t think you’re particularly agreeable today.’
‘I never am. Haven’t you noticed that women with a really perfect profile like mine are seldom even moderately agreeable?’
‘I don’t think your profile is so perfect as all that,’ said the Baroness.
‘It would be surprising if it wasn’t. My mother was one of the most noted classical beauties of her day.’
‘These things sometimes skip a generation, you know,’ put in the Baroness, with the breathless haste of one to whom repartee comes as rarely as the finding of a gold-handled umbrella.
‘My dear Sophie,’ said the Gräfin sweetly, ‘that isn’t in the least bit clever; but you do try so hard that I suppose I oughtn’t to discourage you. Tell me something: has it ever occurred to you that Elsa would do very well for Wratislav? It’s time he married somebody, and why not Elsa?’
‘Elsa marry that dreadful boy!’ gasped the Baroness.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ observed the Gräfin.
‘Elsa isn’t a beggar!’
‘Not financially, or I shouldn’t have suggested the match. But she’s getting on, you know, and has no pretensions to brains or looks or anything of that sort.’
‘You seem to forget that she’s my daughter.’
‘That shows my generosity. But, seriously, I don’t see what there is against Wratislav. He has no debts – at least, nothing worth speaking about.’
‘But think of his reputation! If half the things they say about him are true –’
‘Probably three-quarters of them are. But what of it? You don’t want an archangel for a son-in-law.’
‘I don’t want Wratislav. My poor Elsa would be miserable with him.’
‘A little misery wouldn’t matter very much with her; it would go so well with the way she does her hair, and if she couldn’t get on with Wratislav she could always go and do good among the poor.’
The Baroness picked up a framed photograph from the table.
‘He certainly is very handsome,’ she said doubtfully; adding even more doubtfully, ‘I dare say dear Elsa might reform him.’
The Gräfin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key.
Three weeks later the Gräfin bore down upon the Baroness Sophie in a foreign bookseller’s shop in the Graben, where she was, possibly, buying books of devotion, though it was the wrong counter for them.
‘I’ve just left the dear children at the Rodenstahls’,’ was the Gräfin’s greeting.
‘Were they looking very happy?’ asked the Baroness. ‘Wratislav was wearing some new English clothes, so, of course he was quite happy. I overheard him telling Toni a rather amusing story about a nun and a mousetrap, which won’t bear repetition. Elsa was telling every one else a witticism about the Triple Alliance being like a paper umbrella – which seems to bear repetition with Christian fortitude.’
‘Did they seem much wrapped up in each other?’
‘To be candid, Elsa looked as if she were wrapped up in a horse-rug. And why let her wear saffron colour?’
‘I always think it goes with her complexion.’
‘Unfortunately it doesn’t. It stays with it. Ugh. Don’t forget, you’re lunching with me on Thursday.’
The Baroness was late for her luncheon engagement the following Thursday.
‘Imagine what has happened!’ she screamed as she burst into the room.
‘Something remarkable, to make you late for a meal,’ said the Gräfin.
‘Elsa has run away with the Rodenstahls’ chauffeur!’
‘Kolossal!’
‘Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done,’ gasped the Baroness.
‘Perhaps he didn’t appeal to them in the same way,’ suggested the Gräfin judicially.
The Baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy to which her catastrophe entitled her.
‘At any rate,’ she snapped, ‘now she can’t marry Wratislav.’
‘She couldn’t in any case,’ said the Gräfin; ‘he left suddenly for abroad last night.’
‘For abroad! Where?’
‘For Mexico, I believe.’
‘Mexico! But what for? Why Mexico?’
‘The English have a proverb, “Conscience makes cowboys of us all.”’
‘I didn’t know Wratislav had a conscience.’
‘My dear Sophie, he hasn’t. It’s other people’s consciences that send one abroad in a hurry. Let’s go and eat.’
The Easter Egg
It was distinctly hard lines for Lady Barbara, who came of good fighting stock, and was one of the bravest women of her generation, that her son should be so undisguisedly a coward. Whatever good qualities Lester Slaggby may have possessed, and he was in some respects charming, courage could certainly never be imputed to him. As a child he had suffered from childish timidity, as a boy from unboyish funk, and as a youth he had exchanged unreasoning fears for others which were more formidable from the fact of having a carefully-thought-out basis. He was frankly afraid of animals, nervous with firearms, and never crossed the Channel without mentally comparing the numerical proportion of life belts to passengers. On horseback he seemed to require as many hands as a Hindu god, at least four for clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on the neck. Lady Barbara no longer pretended not to see her son’s prevailing weakness; with her usual courage she faced the knowledge of it squarely, and, mother-like, lov
ed him none the less.
Continental travel, anywhere away from the great tourist tracks, was a favoured hobby with Lady Barbara, and Lester joined her as often as possible. Eastertide usually found her at Knobaltheim, an upland township in one of those small princedoms that make inconspicuous freckles on the map of Central Europe.
A long-standing acquaintanceship with the reigning family made her a personage of due importance in the eyes of her old friend the Burgomaster, and she was anxiously consulted by that worthy on the momentous occasion when the Prince made known his intention of coming in person to open a sanatorium outside the town. All the usual items in a programme of welcome, some of them fatuous and commonplace, others quaint and charming, had been arranged for, but the Burgomaster hoped that the resourceful English lady might have something new and tasteful to suggest in the way of loyal greeting. The Prince was known to the outside world, if at all, as all old-fashioned reactionary, combating modern progress, as it were, with a wooden sword; to his own people he was known as a kindly old gentleman with a certain endearing stateliness which had nothing of standoffishness about it. Knobaltheim was anxious to do its best. Lady Barbara discussed the matter with Lester and one or two acquaintances in her little hotel, but ideas were difficult to come by.
‘Might I suggest something to the Gnädige Frau?’ asked a sallow high-cheek-boned lady to whom the Englishwoman had spoken once or twice and whom she had set down in her mind as probably a Southern Slav.
‘Might I suggest something for the Reception Fest?’ she went on, with a certain shy eagerness. ‘Our little child here, our baby, we will dress him in little white coat, with small wings, as an Easter angel, and he will carry a large white Easter egg, and inside shall be a basket of plover eggs, of which the Prince is so fond, and he shall give it to his Highness as Easter offering. It is so pretty an idea; we have seen it done once in Styria.’
Lady Barbara looked dubiously at the proposed Easter angel, a fair, wooden-faced child of about four years old. She had noticed it the day before in the hotel, and wondered rather how such a tow-headed child could belong to such a dark-visaged couple as the woman and her husband; probably, she thought, an adopted baby, especially as the couple were not young.