The Complete Short Stories of Saki

by Saki

It was a week or two later that the parlour-maid gave notice, having been terrified almost to tears by an outbreak of sudden temper on the part of the master anent some under done cutlets. ‘ ’E gnashed ’is teeth at me, ’e did reely,’ she informed a sympathetic kitchen audience.

  ‘I’d like to see ’im talk like that to me, I would,’ said the cook defiantly, but her cooking from that moment showed a marked improvement.

  It was seldom that Groby Lington so far detached himself from his accustomed habits as to go and form one of a house-party, and he was not a little piqued that Mrs Glenduff should have stowed him away in the musty old Georgian wing of the house, in the next room, moreover, to Leonard Spabbink, the eminent pianist.

  ‘He plays Liszt like an angel,’ had been the hostess’s enthusiastic testimonial.

  ‘He may play him like a trout for all I care,’ had been Groby’s mental comment, ‘but I wouldn’t mind betting that he snores. He’s just the sort and shape that would. And if I hear him snoring through those ridiculous thin-panelled walls, there’ll be trouble.’

  He did, and there was.

  Groby stood it for about two and a quarter minutes, and then made his way through the corridor into Spabbink’s room. Under Groby’s vigorous measures the musician’s flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama’d limbs were hauled out of bed and smacked, pinched, kicked, and bumped in a catch-as-catch-can progress across the floor, towards the flat shallow bath in whose utterly inadequate depths Groby perseveringly strove to drown him. For a few moments the room was almost in darkness: Groby’s candle had overturned in an early stage of the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely reached to the spot where splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and splutterings, and a chatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that was being waged round the shores of the bath. A few instants later the one-sided combat was brightly lit up by the flare of blazing curtains and rapidly kindling panelling.

  When the hastily aroused members of the house-party stampeded out on to the lawn, the Georgian wing was well alight and belching forth masses of smoke, but some moments elapsed before Groby appeared with the half-drowned pianist in his arms, having just bethought him of the superior drowning facilities offered by the pond at the bottom of the lawn. The cool night air sobered his rage, and when he found that he was innocently acclaimed as the heroic rescuer of poor Leonard Spabbink, and loudly commended for his presence of mind in tying a wet cloth round his head to protect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted the situation, and subsequently gave a graphic account of his finding the musician asleep with an overturned candle by his side and the conflagration well started. Spabbink gave his version some days later, when he had partially recovered from the shock of his midnight castigation and immersion, but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive comments with which his story was greeted warned him that the public ear was not at his disposal. He refused, however, to attend the ceremonial presentation of the Royal Humane Society’s life-saving medal.

  It was about this time that Groby’s pet monkey fell a victim to the disease which attacks so many of its kind when brought under the influence of a northern climate. Its master appeared to be profoundly affected by its loss, and never quite recovered the level of spirits that he had recently attained. In company with the tortoise, which Colonel John presented to him on his last visit, he potters about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are fairly well justified in alluding to him as ‘Old Uncle Groby’.

  BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS

  First collected in 1914

  The She-Wolf

  Leonard Bilsiter was one of those people who have failed to find this world attractive or interesting, and who have sought compensation in an ‘unseen world’ of their own experience or imagination – or invention. Children do that sort of thing successfully, but children are content to convince themselves, and do not vulgarise their beliefs by trying to convince other people. Leonard Bilsiter’s beliefs were for ‘the few’, that is to say, any one who would listen to him.

  His dabblings in the unseen might not have carried him beyond the customary platitudes of the drawing-room visionary if accident had not reinforced his stock-in-trade of mystical lore. In company with a friend, who was interested in a Ural mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe at a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing from a threat to a reality; its outbreak caught him on the return journey, somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in harness and metalware, who profitably whiled away the tedium of the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a fragmentary system of folklore that he had picked up from Trans-Baikal traders and natives. Leonard returned to his home circle garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic. The reticence wore off in a week or two under the influence of an entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved the truth, gave him as clamorous an advertisement as any one could wish for by retailing an account of how he had turned a vegetable marrow into a wood-pigeon before her very eyes. As a manifestation of the possession of supernatural powers, the story was discounted in some quarters by the respect accorded to Mrs Hoops’ powers of imagination.

  However divided opinion might be on the question of Leonard’s status as a wonder-worker or a charlatan, he certainly arrived at Mary Hampton’s house-party with a reputation for pre-eminence in one or other of those professions, and he was not disposed to shun such publicity as might fall to his share. Esoteric forces and unusual powers figured largely in whatever conversation he or his aunt had a share in, and his own performances, past and potential, were the subject of mysterious hints and dark avowals.

  ‘I wish you would turn me into a wolf, Mr Bilsiter,’ said his hostess at luncheon the day after his arrival.

  ‘My dear Mary,’ said Colonel Hampton, ‘I never knew you had a craving in that direction.’

  ‘A she-wolf, of course,’ continued Mrs Hampton; ‘it would be too confusing to change one’s sex as well as one’s species at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘I don’t think one should jest on these subjects,’ said Leonard.

  ‘I’m not jesting, I’m quite serious, I assure you. Only don’t do it today; we have only eight available bridge players, and it would break up one of our tables. Tomorrow we shall be a larger party. Tomorrow night, after dinner –’

  ‘In our present imperfect understanding of these hidden forces I think one should approach them with humbleness rather than mockery,’ observed Leonard, with such severity that the subject was forthwith dropped.

  Clovis Sangrail had sat unusually silent during the discussion on the possibilities of Siberian magic; after lunch he side-tracked Lord Pabham into the comparative seclusion of the billiard-room and delivered himself of a searching question.

  ‘Have you such a thing as a she-wolf in your collection of wild animals? A she-wolf of moderately good temper?’

  Lord Pabham considered. ‘There is Louisa,’ he said, ‘a rather fine specimen of the timber-wolf. I got her two years ago in exchange for some Arctic foxes. Most of my animals get to be fairly tame before they’ve been with me very long; I think I can say Louisa has an angelic temper, as she-wolves go. Why do
you ask?’

  ‘I was wondering whether you would lend her to me for tomorrow night,’ said Clovis, with the careless solicitude of one who borrows a collar stud or a tennis racquet.

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Yes, wolves are nocturnal animals, so the late hours won’t hurt her,’ said Clovis, with the air of one who has taken everything into consideration; ‘one of your men could bring her over from Pabham Park after dusk, and with a little help he ought to be able to smuggle her into the conservatory at the same moment that Mary Hampton makes an unobtrusive exit.’

  Lord Pabham stared at Clovis for a moment in pardonable bewilderment; then his face broke into a wrinkled network of laughter.

  ‘Oh, that’s your game, is it? You are going to do a little Siberian magic on your own account. And is Mrs Hampton willing to be a fellow-conspirator?’

  ‘Mary is pledged to see me through with it, if you will guarantee Louisa’s temper.’

  ‘I’ll answer for Louisa,’ said Lord Pabham.

  By the following day the house-party had swollen to larger proportions, and Bilsiter’s instinct for self-advertisement expanded duly under the stimulant of an increased audience. At dinner that evening he held forth at length on the subject of unseen forces and untested powers, and his flow of impressive eloquence continued unabated while coffee was being served in the drawing-room preparatory to a general migration to the card-room. His aunt ensured a respectful hearing for his utterances, but her sensation-loving soul hankered after something more dramatic than mere vocal demonstration.

  ‘Won’t you do something to convince them of your powers, Leonard?’ she pleaded. ‘Change something into another shape. He can, you know, if he only chooses to,’ she informed the company.

  ‘Oh, do,’ said Mavis Pellington earnestly, and her request was echoed by nearly every one present. Even those who were not open to conviction were perfectly willing to be entertained by an exhibition of amateur conjuring.

  Leonard felt that something tangible was expected of him.

  ‘Has any one present,’ he asked, ‘got a three-penny bit or some small object of no particular value –?’

  ‘You’re surely not going to make coins disappear, or something primitive of that sort?’ said Clovis contemptuously.

  ‘I think it very unkind of you not to carry out my suggestion of turning me into a wolf,’ said Mary Hampton, as she crossed over to the conservatory to give her macaws their usual tribute from the dessert dishes.

  ‘I have already warned you of the danger of treating these powers in a mocking spirit,’ said Leonard solemnly.

  ‘I don’t believe you can do it,’ laughed Mary provocatively from the conservatory; ‘I dare you to do it if you can. I defy you to turn me into a wolf.’

  As she said this she was lost to view behind a clump of azaleas.

  ‘Mrs Hampton –’ began Leonard with increased solemnity, but he got no further. A breath of chill air seemed to rush across the room, and at the same time the macaws broke forth into ear-splitting screams.

  ‘What on earth is the matter with those confounded birds, Mary?’ exclaimed Colonel Hampton; at the same moment an even more piercing scream from Mavis Pellington stampeded the entire company from their seats. In various attitudes of helpless horror or instinctive defence they confronted the evil-looking grey beast that was peering at them from amid a setting of fern and azalea.

  Mrs Hoops was the first to recover from the general chaos of fright and bewilderment.

  ‘Leonard!’ she screamed shrilly to her nephew, ‘turn it back into Mrs Hampton at once! It may fly at us at any moment. Turn it back!’

  ‘I – I don’t know how to,’ faltered Leonard, who looked more scared and horrified than any one.

  ‘What!’ shouted Colonel Hampton, ‘you’ve taken the abominable liberty of turning my wife into a wolf, and now you stand there calmly and say you can’t turn her back again!’

  To do strict justice to Leonard, calmness was not a distinguishing feature of his attitude at the moment.

  ‘I assure you I didn’t turn Mrs Hampton into a wolf; nothing was farther from my intentions,’ he protested.

  ‘Then where is she, and how came that animal into the conservatory?’ demanded the Colonel.

  ‘Of course we must accept your assurance that you didn’t turn Mrs Hampton into a wolf,’ said Clovis politely, ‘but you will agree that appearances are against you.’

  ‘Are we to have all these recriminations with that beast standing there ready to tear us to pieces,’ wailed Mavis indignantly.

  ‘Lord Pabham, you know a good deal about wild beasts –’ suggested Colonel Hampton.

  ‘The wild beasts that I have been accustomed to,’ said Lord Pabham, ‘have come with proper credentials from well-known dealers, or have been bred in my own menagerie. I’ve never before been confronted with an animal that walks unconcernedly out of an azalea bush, leaving a charming and popular hostess unaccounted for. As far as one can judge from outward characteristics,’ he continued, ‘it has the appearance of a well-grown female of the North American timber-wolf, a variety of the common species canis lupus.’

  ‘Oh, never mind its Latin name,’ screamed Mavis, as the beast came a step or two further into the room; ‘can’t you entice it away with food, and shut it up where it can’t do any harm?’

  ‘If it is really Mrs Hampton, who has just had a very good dinner, I don’t suppose food will appeal to it very strongly,’ said Clovis.

  ‘Leonard,’ beseeched Mrs Hoops tearfully, ‘even if this is none of your doing can’t you use your great powers to turn this dreadful beast into something harmless before it bites us all – a rabbit or something?’

  ‘I don’t suppose Colonel Hampton would care to have his wife turned into a succession of fancy animals as though we were playing a round game with her,’ interposed Clovis.

  ‘I absolutely forbid it,’ thundered the Colonel.

  ‘Most wolves that I’ve had anything to do with have been inordinately fond of sugar,’ said Lord Pabham; ‘if you like I’ll try the effect on this one.’

  He took a piece of sugar from the saucer of his coffee cup and flung it to the expectant Louisa, who snapped it in mid-air. There was a sigh of relief from the company; a wolf that ate sugar when it might at the least have been employed in tearing macaws to pieces had already shed some of its terrors. The sigh deepened to a gasp of thanksgiving when Lord Pabham decoyed the animal out of the room by a pretended largesse of further sugar. There was an instant rush to the vacated conservatory. There was no trace of Mrs Hampton except the plate containing the macaws’ supper.

  ‘The door is locked on the inside!’ exclaimed Clovis, who had deftly turned the key as he affected to test it.

  Every one turned towards Bilsiter.

  ‘If you haven’t turned my wife into a wolf,’ said Colonel Hampton, ‘will you kindly explain where she has disappeared to, since she obviously could not have gone through a locked door? I will not press you for an explanation of how a North American timber-wolf suddenly appeared in the conservatory, but I think I have some right to inquire what has become of Mrs Hampton.’

  Bilsiter’s reiterated disclaimer was met with a general murmur of impatient disbelief.

  ‘I refuse to stay another hour under this roof,’ declared Miss Pellington.

  ‘If our hostess has really vanished out of human form,’ said Mrs Hoops, ‘none of the ladies of the party can very well remain. I absolutely decline to be chaperoned by a wolf!’

  ‘It’s a she-wolf,’ said Clovis soothingly.

  The correct etiquette to be observed under the unusual circumstances received no further elucidation. The sudden entry of Mary Hampton deprived the discussion of its immediate interest.

  ‘Some one has mesmerised me,’ she exclaimed crossly; ‘I found myself in the game larder, of all places, being fed with sugar by Lord Pabham. I hate being mesmerised, and the doctor has forbidden me to touch sugar.’

 
The situation was explained to her, as far as it permitted of anything that could be called explanation.

  ‘Then you really did turn me into a wolf, Mr Bilsiter?’ she exclaimed excitedly.

  But Leonard had burned the boat in which he might now have embarked on a sea of glory. He could only shake his head feebly.

  ‘It was I who took that liberty,’ said Clovis; ‘you see, I happen to have lived for a couple of years in North-eastern Russia, and I have more than a tourist’s acquaintance with the magic craft of that region. One does not care to speak about these strange powers, but once in a way, when one hears a lot of nonsense being talked about them, one is tempted to show what Siberian magic can accomplish in the hands of some one who really understands it. I yielded to that temptation. May I have some brandy? The effort has left me rather faint.’

  If Leonard Bilsiter could at that moment have transformed Clovis into a cockroach and then have stepped on him he would gladly have performed both operations.

  Laura

  ‘You are not really dying, are you?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘I have the doctor’s permission to live till Tuesday,’ said Laura.

  ‘But today is Saturday; this is serious!’ gasped Amanda.

  ‘I don’t know about it being serious; it is certainly Saturday,’ said Laura.

  ‘Death is always serious,’ said Amanda.

  ‘I never said I was going to die. I am presumably going to leave off being Laura, but I shall go on being something. An animal of some kind, I suppose. You see, when one hasn’t been very good in the life one has just lived, one reincarnates in some lower organism. And I haven’t been very good, when one comes to think of it. I’ve been petty and mean and vindictive and all that sort of thing when circumstances have seemed to warrant it.’

  ‘Circumstances never warrant that sort of thing,’ said Amanda hastily.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ observed Laura, ‘Egbert is a circumstance that would warrant any amount of that sort of thing. You’re married to him – that’s different; you’ve sworn to love, honour, and endure him: I haven’t.’