by Saki
‘Meet me just outside the floral department,’ she wrote to him, ‘and don’t be a moment later than eleven.’
Cyprian was a boy who carried with him through early life the wondering look of a dreamer, the eyes of one who sees things that are not visible to ordinary mortals, and invests the commonplace things of this world with qualities unsuspected by plainer folk – the eyes of a poet or a house agent. He was quietly dressed – that sartorial quietude which frequently accompanies early adolescence, and is usually attributed by novel-writers to the influence of a widowed mother. His hair was brushed back in a smoothness as of ribbon seaweed and seamed with a narrow furrow that scarcely aimed at being a parting. His aunt particularly noted this item of his toilet when they met at the appointed rendezvous, because he was standing waiting for her bareheaded.
‘Where is your hat?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t bring one with me,’ he replied.
Adela Chemping was slightly scandalised.
‘You are not going to be what they call a Nut, are you?’ she inquired with some anxiety, partly with the idea that a Nut would be an extravagance which her sister’s small household would scarcely be justified in incurring, partly, perhaps, with the instinctive apprehension that a Nut, even in its embryo stage, would refuse to carry parcels.
Cyprian looked at her with his wondering, dreamy eyes.
‘I didn’t bring a hat,’ he said, ‘because it is such a nuisance when one is shopping; I mean it is so awkward if one meets any one one knows and has to take one’s hat off when one’s hands are full of parcels. If one hasn’t got a hat on one can’t take it off.’
Mrs Chemping sighed with great relief; her worst fear had been laid at rest.
‘It is more orthodox to wear a hat,’ she observed, and then turned her attention briskly to the business in hand.
‘We will go first to the table-linen counter,’ she said, leading the way in that direction; ‘I should like to look at some napkins.’
The wondering look deepened in Cyprian’s eyes as he followed his aunt; he belonged to a generation that is supposed to be overfond of the rôle of mere spectator, but looking at napkins that one did not mean to buy was a pleasure beyond his comprehension. Mrs Chemping held one or two napkins up to the light and stared fixedly at them, as though she half expected to find some revolutionary cypher written on them in scarcely visible ink; then she suddenly broke away in the direction of the glassware department.
‘Millicent asked me to get her a couple of decanters if there were any going really cheap,’ she explained on the way, ‘and I really do want a salad bowl. I can come back to the napkins later on.’
She handled and scrutinised a large number of decanters and a long series of salad bowls, and finally bought seven chrysanthemum vases.
‘No one uses that kind of vase nowadays,’ she informed Cyprian, ‘but they will do for presents next Christmas.’
Two sunshades that were marked down to a price that Mrs Chemping considered absurdly cheap were added to her purchases.
‘One of them will do for Ruth Colson; she is going out to the Malay States, and a sunshade will always be useful there. And I must get her some thin writing paper. It takes up no room in one’s baggage.’
Mrs Chemping bought stacks of writing paper; it was so cheap, and it went so flat in a trunk or portmanteau. She also bought a few envelopes – envelopes somehow seemed rather an extravagance compared with notepaper.
‘Do you think Ruth will like blue or grey paper?’ she asked Cyprian.
‘Grey,’ said Cyprian, who had never met the lady in question.
‘Have you any mauve notepaper of this quality?’ Adela asked the assistant.
‘We haven’t any mauve,’ said the assistant, ‘but we’ve two shades of green and a darker shade of grey.’
Mrs Chemping inspected the greens and the darker grey, and chose the blue.
‘Now we can have some lunch,’ she said.
Cyprian behaved in an exemplary fashion in the refreshment department, and cheerfully accepted a fish cake and a mince pie and a small cup of coffee as adequate restoratives after two hours of concentrated shopping. He was adamant, however, in resisting his aunt’s suggestion that a hat should be bought for him at the counter where men’s head-wear was being disposed of at temptingly reduced prices.
‘I’ve got as many hats as I want at home,’ he said, ‘and besides, it rumples one’s hair so, trying them on.’
Perhaps he was going to develop into a Nut after all. It was a disquieting symptom that he left all the parcels in charge of the cloakroom attendant.
‘We shall be getting more parcels presently,’ he said, ‘so we need not collect these till we have finished our shopping.’
His aunt was doubtfully appeased; some of the pleasure and excitement of a shopping expedition seemed to evaporate when one was deprived of immediate personal contact with one’s purchases.
‘I’m going to look at those napkins again,’ she said, as they descended the stairs to the ground floor. ‘You need not come,’ she added, as the dreaming look in the boy’s eyes changed for a moment into one of mute protest, ‘you can meet me afterwards in the cutlery department; I’ve just remembered that I haven’t a corkscrew in the house that can be depended on.’
Cyprian was not to be found in the cutlery department when his aunt in due course arrived there, but in the crush and bustle of anxious shoppers and busy attendants it was an easy matter to miss any one. It was in the leather goods department some quarter of an hour later that Adela Chemping caught sight of her nephew, separated from her by a rampart of suitcases and portmanteaux and hemmed in by the jostling crush of human beings that now invaded every corner of the great shopping emporium. She was just in time to witness a pardonable but rather embarrassing mistake on the part of a lady who had wriggled her way with unstayable determination towards the bareheaded Cyprian, and was now breathlessly demanding the sale price of a handbag which had taken her fancy.
‘There now,’ exclaimed Adela to herself, ‘she takes him for one of the shop assistants because he hasn’t got a hat on. I wonder it hasn’t happened before.’
Perhaps it had. Cyprian, at any rate, seemed neither startled nor embarrassed by the error into which the good lady had fallen. Examining the ticket on the bag, he announced in a clear, dispassionate voice:
‘Black seal, thirty-four shillings marked down to twenty-eight. As a matter of fact, we are clearing them out at a special reduction price of twenty-six shillings. They are going off rather fast.’
‘I’ll take it,’ said the lady, eagerly digging some coins out of her purse.
‘Will you take it as it is?’ asked Cyprian; ‘it will be a matter of a few minutes to get it wrapped up, there is such a crush.’
‘Never mind, I’ll take it as it is,’ said the purchaser, clutching her treasure and counting the money into Cyprian’s palm.
Several kind strangers helped Adela into the open air.
‘It’s the crush and the heat,’ said one sympathiser to another; ‘it’s enough to turn any one giddy.’
When she next came across Cyprian he was standing in the crowd that pushed and jostled around the counters of the book department. The dream look was deeper than ever in his eyes. He had just sold two books of devotion to an elderly Canon.
The Quince Tree
‘I’ve just been to see old Betsy Mullen,’ announced Vera to her aunt, Mrs Bebberly Cumble; ‘she seems in rather a bad way about her rent. She owes about fifteen weeks of it, and says she doesn’t know where any of it is to come from.’
‘Betsy Mullen always is in difficulties with her rent, and the more people help her with it the less she troubles about it,’ said the aunt. ‘I certainly am not going to assist her any more. The fact is, she will have to go into a smaller and cheaper cottage; there are several to be had at the other end of the village for half the rent that she is paying, or supposed to be paying, now. I told her a year ago that she ought to m
ove.’
‘But she wouldn’t get such a nice garden anywhere else,’ protested Vera, ‘and there’s such a jolly quince tree in the corner. I don’t suppose there’s another quince tree in the whole parish. And she never makes any quince jam; I think to have a quince tree and not to make quince jam shows such strength of character. Oh, she can’t possibly move away from that garden.’
‘When one is sixteen,’ said Mrs Bebberly Cumble severely, ‘one talks of things being impossible which are merely uncongenial. It is not only possible but it is desirable that Betsy Mullen should move into smaller quarters; she has scarcely enough furniture to fill that big cottage.’
‘As far as value goes,’ said Vera after a short pause, ‘there is more in Betsy’s cottage than in any other house for miles round.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the aunt; ‘she parted with whatever old chinaware she had long ago.’
‘I’m not talking about anything that belongs to Betsy herself,’ said Vera darkly; ‘but of course, you don’t know what I know, and I don’t suppose I ought to tell you.’
‘You must tell me at once,’ exclaimed the aunt, her senses leaping into alertness like those of a terrier suddenly exchanging a bored drowsiness for the lively anticipation of an immediate rat hunt.
‘I’m perfectly certain that I oughtn’t to tell you anything about it,’ said Vera, ‘but, then, I often do things that I oughn’t to do.’
‘I should be the last person to suggest that you should do any thing that you ought not to do –’ began Mrs Bebberly Cumble impressively.
‘And I am always swayed by the last person who speaks to me,’ admitted Vera, ‘so I’ll do what I ought not to do and tell you.’
Mrs Bebberly Cumble thrust a very pardonable sense of exasperation into the background of her mind and demanded impatiently:
‘What is there in Betsy Mullen’s cottage that you are making such a fuss about?’
‘It’s hardly fair to say that I’ve made a fuss about it,’ said Vera; ‘this is the first I’ve mentioned the matter, but there’s been no end of trouble and mystery and newspaper speculation about it. It’s rather amusing to think of the columns of conjecture in the Press and the police and detectives hunting about everywhere at home and abroad, and all the while that innocent-looking little cottage has held the secret.’
‘You don’t mean to say it’s the Louvre picture, La Something or other, the woman with the smile, that disappeared about two years ago?’ exclaimed the aunt with rising excitement.
‘Oh, no, not that,’ said Vera, ‘but something quite as important and just as mysterious – if anything, rather more scandalous.’
‘Not the Dublin –?’
Vera nodded.
‘The whole jolly lot of them?’
‘In Betsy’s cottage? Incredible!’
‘Of course Betsy hasn’t an idea as to what they are,’ said Vera; ‘she just knows that they are something valuable and that she must keep quiet about them. I found out quite by accident what they were and how they came to be there. You see, the people who had them were at their wits’ end to know where to stow them away for safe keeping, and some one who was motoring through the village was struck by the snug loneliness of the cottage and thought it would be just the thing. Mrs Lamper arranged the matter with Betsy and smuggled the things in.’
‘Mrs Lamper?’
‘Yes; she does a lot of district visiting, you know.’
‘I am quite aware that she takes soup and flannel and improving literature to the poorer cottages,’ said Mrs Bebberly Cumble, ‘but that is hardly the same sort of thing as disposing of stolen goods, and she must have known something about their history; any one who reads the papers, even casually, must have been aware of the theft, and I should think the things were not hard to recognise. Mrs Lamper has always had the reputation of being a very conscientious woman.’
‘Of course she was screening some one else,’ said Vera. ‘A remarkable feature of the affair is the extraordinary number of quite respectable people who have involved themselves in its meshes by trying to shield others. You would be really astonished if you knew some of the names of the individuals mixed up in it, and I don’t suppose a tithe of them knew who the original culprits were; and now I’ve got you entangled in the mess by letting you into the secret of the cottage.’
‘You most certainly have not entangled me,’ said Mrs Bebberly Cumble indignantly. ‘I have no intention of shielding anybody. The police must know about it at once; a theft is a theft, whoever is involved. If respectable people choose to turn themselves into receivers and disposers of stolen goods, well, they’ve ceased to be respectable, that’s all. I shall telephone immediately –’
‘Oh, aunt,’ said Vera reproachfully, ‘it would break the poor Canon’s heart if Cuthbert were to be involved in a scandal of this sort. You know it would.’
‘Cuthbert involved! How can you say such things when you know how much we all think of him?’
‘Of course I know you think a lot of him, and that he’s engaged to marry Beatrice, and that it will be a frightfully good match, and that he’s your ideal of what a son-in-law ought to be. All the same, it was Cuthbert’s idea to stow the things away in the cottage, and it was his motor that brought them. He was only doing it to help his friend Pegginson, you know – the Quaker man, who is always agitating for a smaller Navy. I forget how he got involved in it. I warned you that there were lots of quite respectable people mixed up in it, didn’t I? That’s what I meant when I said it would be impossible for old Betsy to leave the cottage; the things take up a good bit of room, and she couldn’t go carrying them about with her other goods and chattels without attracting notice. Of course if she were to fall ill and die it would be equally unfortunate. Her mother lived to be over ninety, she tells me, so with due care and an absence of worry she ought to last for another dozen years at least. By that time perhaps some other arrangements will have been made for disposing of the wretched things.’
‘I shall speak to Cuthbert about it – after the wedding,’ said Mrs Bebberly Cumble.
‘The wedding isn’t till next year,’ said Vera, in recounting the story to her best girl friend, ‘and meanwhile old Betsy is living rent free, with soup twice a week and my aunt’s doctor to see her whenever she has a finger ache.’
‘But how on earth did you get to know about it all?’ asked her friend, in admiring wonder.
‘It was a mystery –’ said Vera.
‘Of course it was a mystery, a mystery that baffled everybody. What beats me is how you found out –’
‘Oh, about the jewels? I invented that part,’ explained Vera; ‘I mean the mystery was where old Betsy’s arrears of rent were to come from; and she would have hated leaving that jolly quince tree.’
The Forbidden Buzzards
‘Is matchmaking at all in your line?’
Hugo Peterby asked the question with a certain amount of personal interest.
‘I don’t specialise in it,’ said Clovis; ‘it’s all right while you’re doing it, but the after-effects are sometimes so disconcerting – the mute reproachful looks of the people you’ve aided and abetted in matrimonial experiments. It’s as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course of the hunting season. I suppose you’re thinking of the Coulterneb girl. She’s certainly jolly, and quite all right as far as looks go, and I believe a certain amount of money adheres to her. What I don’t see is how you will ever manage to propose to her. In all the time I’ve known her I don’t remember her to have stopped talking for three consecutive minutes. You’ll have to race her six times round the grass paddock for a bet, and then blurt your proposal out before she’s got her wind back. The paddock is laid up for hay, but if you’re really in love with her you won’t let a consideration of that sort stop you, especially as it’s not your hay.’
‘I think I could manage the proposing part right enough,’ said Hugo, ‘if I could count on b
eing left alone with her for four or five hours. The trouble is that I’m not likely to get anything like that amount of grace. That fellow Lanner is showing signs of interesting himself in the same quarter. He’s quite heartbreakingly rich and is rather a swell in his way; in fact, our hostess is obviously a bit flattered at having him here. If she gets wind of the fact that he’s inclined to be attracted by Betty Coulterneb she’ll think it a splendid match and throw them into each other’s arms all day long, and then where will my opportunities come in? My one anxiety is to keep him out of the girl’s way as much as possible, and if you could help me –’
‘If you want me to trot Lanner round the countryside, inspecting alleged Roman remains and studying local methods of bee culture and crop raising, I’m afraid I can’t oblige you,’ said Clovis. ‘You see, he’s taken something like an aversion to me since the other night in the smoking-room.’
‘What happened in the smoking-room?’
‘He trotted out some well-worn chestnut as the latest thing in good stories, and I remarked, quite innocently, that I never could remember whether it was George II. or James II. who was so fond of that particular story, and now he regards me with politely draped dislike. I’ll do my best for you, if the opportunity arises, but it will have to be in a roundabout, impersonal manner.’
‘It’s so nice having Mr Lanner here,’ confided Mrs Olston to Clovis the next afternoon; ‘he’s always been engaged when I’ve asked him before. Such a nice man; he really ought to be married to some nice girl. Between you and me, I have an idea that he came down here for a certain reason.’
‘I’ve had much the same idea,’ said Clovis, lowering his voice; ‘in fact, I’m almost certain of it.’
‘You mean he’s attracted by –’ began Mrs Olston eagerly.