The Complete Short Stories of Saki

by Saki

  Towards dawn the pigling fell into a happy slumber, and Latimer might have followed its example, but at about the same time Stupor Hartlepooli gave a rousing crow, clattered down to the floor and forthwith commenced a spirited combat with his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Remembering that the bird was more or less under his care Latimer performed Hague Tribunal offices by draping a bath-towel over the provocative mirror, but the ensuing peace was local and short-lived. The deflected energies of the gamecock found new outlet in a sudden and sustained attack on the sleeping and temporarily inoffensive pigling, and the duel which followed was desperate and embittered beyond any possibility of effective intervention. The feathered combatant had the advantage of being able, when hard pressed, to take refuge on the bed, and freely availed himself of this circumstance; the pigling never quite succeeded in hurling himself on to the same eminence, but it was not from want of trying.

  Neither side could claim any decisive success, and the struggle had been practically fought to a standstill by the time that the maid appeared with the early morning tea.

  ‘Lor, sir,’ she exclaimed in undisguised astonishment, ‘do you want those animals in your room?’

  Want!

  The pigling, as though aware that it might have outstayed its welcome, dashed out at the door, and the gamecock followed it at a more dignified pace.

  ‘If Miss Vera’s dog sees that pig –!’ exclaimed the maid, and hurried off to avert such a catastrophe.

  A cold suspicion was stealing over Latimer’s mind; he went to the window and drew up the blind. A light, drizzling rain was falling, but there was not the faintest trace of any inundation.

  Some half-hour later he met Vera on the way to the breakfast room.

  ‘I should not like to think of you as a deliberate liar,’ he observed coldly, ‘but one occasionally has to do things one does not like.’

  ‘At any rate I kept your mind from dwelling on politics all the night,’ said Vera.

  Which was, of course, perfectly true.

  The Unkindest Blow

  The season of strikes seemed to have run itself to a standstill. Almost every trade and industry and calling in which a dislocation could possibly be engineered had indulged in that luxury. The last and least successful convulsion had been the strike of the World’s Union of Zoological Garden attendants, who, pending the settlement of certain demands, refused to minister further to the wants of the animals committed to their charge or to allow any other keepers to take their place. In this case the threat of the Zoological Gardens authorities that if the men ‘came out’ the animals should come out also had intensified and precipitated the crisis. This imminent prospect of the larger carnivores, to say nothing of rhinoceroses and bull bison, roaming at large and unfed in the heart of London, was not one which permitted of prolonged conferences. The Government of the day, which from its tendency to be a few hours behind the course of events had been nicknamed the Government of the afternoon, was obliged to intervene with promptitude and decision. A strong force of Blue-jackets was despatched to Regent’s Park to take over the temporarily abandoned duties of the strikers. Blue-jackets were chosen in preference to land forces, partly on account of the traditional readiness of the British Navy to go anywhere and do anything, partly by reason of the familiarity of the average sailor with monkeys, parrots, and other tropical fauna, but chiefly at the urgent request of the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was keenly desirous of an opportunity for performing some personal act of unobtrusive public service within the province of his department.

  ‘If he insists on feeding the infant jaguar himself, in defiance of its mother’s wishes, there may be another by-election in the north,’ said one of his colleagues, with a hopeful inflection in his voice. ‘By-elections are not very desirable at present, but we must not be selfish.’

  As a matter of fact the strike collapsed peacefully without any outside intervention. The majority of the keepers had become so attached to their charges that they returned to work of their own accord.

  And then the nation and the newspapers turned with a sense of relief to happier things. It seemed as if a new era of contentment was about to dawn. Everybody had struck who could possibly want to strike or who could possibly be cajoled or bullied into striking, whether they wanted to or not. The lighter and brighter side of life might now claim some attention. And conspicuous among the other topics that sprang into sudden prominence was the pending Falvertoon divorce suit.

  The Duke of Falvertoon was one of those human hors d’œuvres that stimulate the public appetite for sensation without giving it much to feed on. As a mere child he had been precociously brilliant; he had declined the editorship of the Anglian Review at an age when most boys are content to have declined mensa, a table, and though he could not claim to have originated the Futurist movement in literature, his ‘Letters to a Possible Grandson,’ written at the age of fourteen, had attracted considerable notice. In later days his brilliancy had been less conspicuously displayed. During a debate in the House of Lords on affairs in Morocco, at a moment when that country, for the fifth time in seven years, had brought half Europe to the verge of war, he had interpolated the remark ‘a little Moor and how much it is,’ but in spite of the encouraging reception accorded to this one political utterance he was never tempted to a further display in that direction. It began to be generally understood that he did not intend to supplement his numerous town and country residences by living overmuch in the public eye.

  And then had come the unlooked-for tidings of the imminent proceedings for divorce. And such a divorce! There were cross-suits and allegations and counter-allegations, charges of cruelty and desertion, everything in fact that was necessary to make the case one of the most complicated and sensational of its kind. And the number of distinguished people involved or cited as witnesses not only embraced both political parties in the realm and several Colonial governors, but included an exotic contingent from France, Hungary, the United States of North America and the Grand Duchy of Baden. Hotel accommodation of the more expensive sort began to experience a strain on its resources. ‘It will be quite like the Durbar without the elephants,’ exclaimed an enthusiastic lady who, to do her justice, had never seen a Durbar. The general feeling was one of thankfulness that the last of the strikes had been got over before the date fixed for the hearing of the great suit.

  As a reaction from the season of gloom and industrial strife that had just passed away the agencies that purvey and stage-manage sensations laid themselves out to do their level best on this momentous occasion. Men who had made their reputations as special descriptive writers were mobilised from distant corners of Europe and the further side of the Atlantic in order to enrich with their pens the daily printed records of the case; one word-painter, who specialised in descriptions of how witnesses turn pale under cross-examination, was summoned hurriedly back from a famous and prolonged murder trial in Sicily, where indeed his talents were being decidedly wasted. Thumb-nail artists and expert kodak manipulators were retained at extravagant salaries, and special dress reporters were in high demand. An enterprising Paris firm of costume builders presented the defendant Duchess with three special creations, to be worn, marked, learned, and extensively reported at various critical stages of the trial; and as for the cinematograph agents, their industry and persistence was untiring. Films representing the Duke saying good-bye to his favourite canary on the eve of the trial were in readiness weeks before the event was due to take place; other films depicted the Duchess holding imaginary consultations with fictitious lawyers or making a light repast off specially advertised vegetarian sandwiches during a supposed luncheon interval. As far as human foresight and human enterprise could go nothing was lacking to make the trial a success.

  Two days before the case was down for hearing the advance reporter of an important syndicate obtained an interview with the Duke for the purpose of gleaning some final grains of information concerning his Grace’s personal arrangements during
the trial.

  ‘I suppose I may say this will be one of the biggest affairs of its kind during the lifetime of a generation,’ began the reporter as an excuse for the unsparing minuteness of detail that he was about to make quest for.

  ‘I suppose so – if it comes off,’ said the Duke lazily.

  ‘If?’ queried the reporter, in a voice that was something between a gasp and a scream.

  ‘The Duchess and I are both thinking of going on strike,’ said the Duke.

  ‘Strike!’

  The baleful word flashed out in all its old hideous familiarity. Was there to be no end to its recurrence?

  ‘Do you mean,’ faltered the reporter, ‘that you are contemplating a mutual withdrawal of the charges?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Duke.

  ‘But think of the arrangements that have been made, the special reporting, the cinematographs, the catering for the distinguished foreign witnesses, the prepared music-hall allusions; think of all the money that has been sunk –’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the Duke coldly, ‘the Duchess and I have realised that it is we who provide the material out of which this great far reaching industry has been built up. Widespread employment will be given and enormous profits made during the duration of the case, and we, on whom all the stress and racket falls, will get – what? An unenviable notoriety and the privilege of paying heavy legal expenses whichever way the verdict goes. Hence our decision to strike. We don’t wish to be reconciled; we fully realise that it is a grave step to take, but unless we get some reasonable consideration out of this vast stream of wealth and industry that we have called into being we intend coming out of court and staying out. Good afternoon.’

  The news of this latest strike spread universal dismay. Its inaccessibility to the ordinary methods of persuasion made it peculiarly formidable. If the Duke and Duchess persisted in being reconciled the Government could hardly be called on to interfere. Public opinion in the shape of social ostracism might be brought to bear on them, but that was as far as coercive measures could go. There was nothing for it but a conference, with powers to propose liberal terms. As it was, several of the foreign witnesses had already departed and others had telegraphed cancelling their hotel arrangements.

  The conference, protracted, uncomfortable, and occasionally acrimonious, succeeded at last in arranging for a resumption of litigation, but it was a fruitless victory. The Duke, with a touch of his earlier precocity, died of premature decay a fortnight before the date fixed for the new trial.

  The Romancers

  It was autumn in London, that blessed season between the harshness of winter and the insincerities of summer; a trustful season when one buys bulbs and sees to the registration of one’s vote, believing perpetually in spring and a change of Government. Morton Crosby sat on a bench in a secluded corner of Hyde Park, lazily enjoying a cigarette and watching the slow grazing promenade of a pair of snow-geese, the male looking rather like an albino edition of the russet-hued female. Out of the corner of his eye Crosby also noted with some interest the hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had passed and repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals, like a wary crow about to alight near some possibly edible morsel. Inevitably the figure came to an anchorage on the bench, within easy talking distance of its original occupant. The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled beard, and the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the professional cadger, the mall who would undergo hours of humiliating tale-spinning and rebuff rather than adventure on half a day’s decent work.

  For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating inflection of one who has a story to retail well worth any loiterer’s while to listen to.

  ‘It’s a strange world,’ he said.

  As the statement met with no response he altered it to the form of a question.

  ‘I dare say you’ve found it to be a strange world, mister?’

  ‘As far as I am concerned,’ said Crosby, ‘the strangeness has worn off in the course of thirty-six years.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the greybeard, ‘I could tell you things that you’d hardly believe. Marvellous things that have really happened to me.’

  ‘Nowadays there is not demand for marvellous things that have really happened,’ said Crosby discouragingly; ‘the professional writers of fiction turn these things out so much better. For instance, my neighbours tell me wonderful, incredible things that their Aberdeens and chows and borzois have done; I never listen to them. On the other hand, I have read The Hound of the Baskervilles three times.’

  The greybeard moved uneasily in his seat; then he opened up new country.

  ‘I take it that you are a professing Christian,’ he observed.

  ‘I am a prominent and I think I may say an influential member of the Mussulman community of Eastern Persian,’ said Crosby, making an excursion himself into the realms of fiction.

  The greybeard was obviously disconcerted at this new check of introductory conversation, but the defeat was only momentary.

  ‘Persia. I should never have taken you for a Persian,’ he remarked, with a somewhat aggrieved air.

  ‘I am not,’ said Crosby; ‘my father was an Afghan.’

  ‘An Afghan!’ said the other, smitten into bewildered silence for a moment. Then he recovered himself and renewed his attack.

  ‘Afghanistan. Ah! We’ve had some wars with that country, now, I dare say, instead of fighting it we might have learned something from it. A very wealthy country, I believe. No real poverty there.’

  He raised his voice on the word ‘poverty’ with a suggestion of intense feeling. Crosby saw the opening and avoided it.

  ‘It possesses, nevertheless, a number of highly talented and ingenious beggars,’ he said; ‘if I had not spoken so disparagingly of marvellous things that have really happened I would tell you the story of Ibrahim and the eleven camel-loads of blotting-paper. Also I have forgotten exactly how it ended.’

  ‘My own life-story is a curious one,’ said the stranger, apparently stifling all desire to hear the history of Ibrahim; ‘I was not always as you see me now.’

  ‘We are supposed to undergo complete change in the course of every seven years,’ said Crosby, as an explanation of the foregoing announcement.

  ‘I mean I was not always in such distressing circumstances as I am at present,’ pursued the stranger doggedly.

  ‘That sounds rather rude,’ said Crosby stiffly, ‘considering that you are at present talking to a man reputed to be one of the most gifted conversationalists of the Afghan border.’

  ‘I don’t mean in that way,’ said the greybeard hastily; ‘I’ve been very much interested in your conversation. I was alluding to my unfortunate financial situation. You mayn’t hardly believe it, but at the present moment I am absolutely without a farthing. Don’t see any prospect of getting any money, either, for the next few days. I don’t suppose you’ve ever found yourself in such a position,’ he added.

  ‘In the town of Yom,’ said Crosby, ‘which is in Southern Afghanistan, and which also happens to be my birthplace, there was a Chinese philosopher who used to say that one of the three chiefest human blessings was to be absolutely without money. I forget what the other two were.’

  ‘Ah, I dare say,’ said the stranger, in a tone that betrayed no enthusiasm for the philosopher’s memory; ‘and did he practise what he preached? That’s the test.’

  ‘He lived happily with very little money or resources,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Then I expect he had friends who would help him liberally whenever he was in difficulties, such as I am in at present.’

  ‘In Yom,’ said Crosby, ‘it is not necessary to have friends in order to obtain help. Any citizen of Yom would help a stranger as a matter of course.’

  The greybeard was now genuinely interested. The conversation had at last taken a favourable turn.

  ‘If some one, like me, fo
r instance, who was in undeserved difficulties, asked a citizen of that town you speak of for a small loan to tide over a few days’ impecuniosity – five shillings, or perhaps a rather larger sun – would it be given to him as a matter of course?’

  ‘There would be a certain preliminary,’ said Crosby; ‘one would take him to a wine-shop and treat him to a measure of wine, and then, after a little high-flown conversation, one would put the desired sum in his hand and wish him good-day. It is a roundabout way of performing a simple transaction, but in the East all ways are roundabout.’

  The listener’s eyes were glittering.

  ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, with a thin sneer ringing meaningly through his words, ‘I suppose you’ve given up all those generous customs since you left your town. Don’t practise them now, I expect.’

  ‘No one who has lived in Yom,’ said Crosby fervently, ‘and remembers its green hills covered with apricot and almond trees, and the cold water that rushes down like a caress from the upland snows and dashes under the little wooden bridges, no one who remembers these things and treasures the memory of them would ever give up a single one of its unwritten laws and customs. To me they are as binding as though I still lived in that hallowed home of my youth.’