The Complete Short Stories of Saki

by Saki

  ‘Rather a long run for a wounded pheasant,’ snapped Amblecope.

  ‘The story rests on my aunt’s authority,’ said Treddleford coldly, ‘and she is local vice-president of the Young Women’s Christian Association. She trotted three miles or so to her home, and it was not till the middle of the afternoon that it was discovered that the lunch for the entire shooting party was in a pannier attached to the pony’s saddle. Anyway, she got her bird.’

  ‘Some birds, of course, take a lot of killing,’ said Amblecope; ‘so do some fish. I remember once I was fishing in the Exe, lovely trout stream, lots of fish, though they don’t run to any great size –’

  ‘One of them did,’ announced Treddleford, with emphasis. ‘My uncle, the Bishop of Southmolton, came across a giant trout in a pool just off the main stream of the Exe near Ugworthy; he tried it with every kind of fly and worm every day for three weeks without an atom of success, and then Fate intervened on his behalf. There was a low stone bridge just over this pool, and on the last day of his fishing holiday a motor van ran violently into the parapet and turned completely over; no one was hurt, but part of the parapet was knocked away, and the entire load that the van was carrying was pitched over and fell a little way into the pool. In a couple of minutes the giant trout was flapping and twisting on bare mud at the bottom of a waterless pool, and my uncle was able to walk down to him and fold him to his breast. The van-load consisted of blotting-paper, and every drop of water in that pool had been sucked up into the mass of spilt cargo.’

  There was silence for nearly half a minute in the smoking-room, and Treddleford began to let his mind steal back towards the golden road that led to Samarkand. Amblecope, however, rallied, and remarked in a rather tired and dispirited voice:

  ‘Talking of motor accidents, the narrowest squeak I ever had was the other day, motoring with old Tommy Yarby in North Wales. Awfully good sort, old Yarby, thorough good sportsman, and the best –’

  ‘It was in North Wales,’ said Treddleford, ‘that my sister met with her sensational carriage accident last year. She was on her way to a garden-party at Lady Nineveh’s, about the only garden-party that ever comes to pass in those parts in the course of the year, and therefore a thing that she would have been very sorry to miss. She was driving a young horse that she’d only bought a week or two previously, warranted to be perfectly steady with motor traffic, bicycles, and other common objects of the roadside. The animal lived up to its reputation, and passed the most explosive of motor-bikes with an indifference that almost amounted to apathy. However, I suppose we all draw the line somewhere, and this particular cob drew it at travelling wild beast shows. Of course my sister didn’t know that, but she knew it very distinctly when she turned a sharp corner and found herself in a mixed company of camels, piebald horses, and canary-coloured vans. The dog-cart was overturned in a ditch and kicked to splinters, and the cob went home across country. Neither my sister nor the groom was hurt, but the problem of how to get to the Nineveh garden-party, some three miles distant, seemed rather difficult to solve; once there, of course, my sister would easily find some one to drive her home. “I suppose you wouldn’t care for the loan of a couple of my camels,” the showman suggested, in humorous sympathy. “I would,” said my sister, who had ridden camel-back in Egypt, and she overruled the objections of the groom, who hadn’t. She picked out two of the most presentable-looking of the beasts and had them dusted and made as tidy as was possible at short notice, and set out for the Nineveh mansion. You may imagine the sensation that her small but imposing caravan created when she arrived at the hall door. The entire garden-party flocked up to gape. My sister was rather glad to slip down from her camel, and the groom was thankful to scramble down from his. Then young Billy Doulton, of the Dragoon Guards, who has been a lot at Aden and thinks he knows camel-language backwards, thought he would show off by making the beasts kneel down in orthodox fashion. Unfortunately camel words-of-command are not the same all the world over; these were magnificent Turkestan camels, accustomed to stride up the stony terraces of mountain passes, and when Doulton shouted at them they went side by side up the front steps, into the entrance hall, and up the grand staircase. The German governess met them just at the turn of the corridor. The Ninevehs nursed her with devoted attention for weeks, and when I last heard from them she was well enough to go about her duties again, but the doctor says she will always suffer from Hagenbeck heart.’

  Amblecope got up from his chair and moved to another part of the room. Treddleford reopened his book and betook himself once more across

  The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea.

  For a blessed half-hour he disported himself in imagination by the ‘gay Aleppo-Gate’, and listened to the bird-voiced singing-man. Then the world of today called him back; a page summoned him to speak with a friend on the telephone.

  As Treddleford was about to pass out of the room he encountered Amblecope, also passing out, on his way to the billiard-room, where, perchance, some luckless wight might be secured and held fast to listen to the number of his attendances at the Grand Prix, with subsequent remarks on Newmarket and the Cambridgeshire. Amblecope made as if to pass out first, but a new-born pride was surging in Treddleford’s breast and he waved him back.

  ‘I believe I take precedence,’ he said coldly; ‘you are merely the club Bore; I am the club Liar.’

  The Elk

  Teresa, Mrs Thropplestance, was the richest and most intractable old woman in the county of Woldshire. In her dealings with the world in general her manner suggested a blend between a Mistress of the Robes and a Master of Fox-hounds, with the vocabulary of both. In her domestic circle she comported herself in the arbitrary style that one attributes, probably without the least justification, to an American political Boss in the bosom of his caucus. The late Theodore Thropplestance had left her, some thirty-five years ago, in absolute possession of a considerable fortune, a large landed property, and a gallery full of valuable pictures. In those intervening years she had outlived her son and quarrelled with her elder grandson, who had married without her consent or approval. Bertie Thropplestance, her younger grandson, was the heir-designate to her property, and as such he was a centre of interest and concern to some half-hundred ambitious mothers with daughters of marriageable age. Bertie was an amiable, easy-going young man, who was quite ready to marry any one who was favourably recommended to his notice, but he was not going to waste his time in falling in love with any one who would come under his grandmother’s veto. The favourable recommendation would have to come from Mrs Thropplestance.

  Teresa’s house-parties were always rounded off with a plentiful garnishing of presentable young women and alert, attendant mothers, but the old lady was emphatically discouraging whenever any one of her girl guests became at all likely to outbid the others as a possible granddaughter-in-law. It was the inheritance of her fortune and estate that was in question, and she was evidently disposed to exercise and enjoy her powers of selection and rejection to the utmost. Bertie’s preferences did not greatly matter; he was of the sort who can be stolidly happy with any kind of wife; he had cheerfully put up with his grandmother all his life, so he was not likely to fret and fume over anything that might befall him in the way of a helpmate.

  The party that gathered under Teresa’s roof in Christmas week of the year nineteen-hundred-and-something was of smaller proportions than usual, and Mrs Yonelet, who formed one of the party, was inclined to deduce hopeful augury from this circumstance. Dora Yonelet and Bertie were so obviously made for one another, she confided to the vicar’s wife, and if the old lady were accustomed to seeing them about a lot together she might adopt the view that they would make a suitable married couple.

  ‘People soon get used to an idea if it is dangled constantly before their eyes,’ said Mrs Yonelet hopefully, ‘and the more often Teresa sees those young people together, happy in each other’s company, the more she will get to take a kindly interest in Dora a
s a possible and desirable wife for Bertie.’

  ‘My dear,’ said the vicar’s wife resignedly, ‘my own Sybil was thrown together with Bertie under the most romantic circumstances – I’ll tell you about it some day – but it made no impression whatever on Teresa; she put her foot down in the most uncompromising fashion, and Sybil married an Indian civilian.’

  ‘Quite right of her,’ said Mrs Yonelet with vague approval; ‘it’s what any girl of spirit would have done. Still, that was a year or two ago, I believe; Bertie is older now, and so is Teresa. Naturally she must be anxious to see him settled.’

  The vicar’s wife reflected that Teresa seemed to be the one person who showed no immediate anxiety to supply Bertie with a wife, but she kept the thought to herself.

  Mrs Yonelet was a woman of resourceful energy and generalship; she involved the other members of the house-party, the deadweight, so to speak, in all manner of exercises and occupations that segregated them from Bertie and Dora, who were left to their own devisings – that is to say, to Dora’s devisings and Bertie’s accommodating acquiescence. Dora helped in the Christmas decorations of the parish church, and Bertie helped her to help. Together they fed the swans, till the birds went on a dyspepsia-strike, together they played billiards, together they photographed the village almshouses, and, at a respectful distance, the tame elk that browsed in solitary aloofness in the park. It was ‘tame’ in the sense that it had long ago discarded the least vestige of fear of the human race; nothing in its record encouraged its human neighbours to feel a reciprocal confidence.

  Whatever sport or exercise or occupation Bertie and Dora indulged in together was unfailingly chronicled and advertised by Mrs Yonelet for the due enlightenment of Bertie’s grandmother.

  ‘Those two inseparables have just come in from a bicycle ride,’ she would announce; ‘quite a picture they make, so fresh and glowing after their spin.’

  ‘A picture needing words,’ would be Teresa’s private comment, and as far as Bertie was concerned she was determined that the words should remain unspoken.

  On the afternoon after Christmas Day Mrs Yonelet dashed into the drawing-room, where her hostess was sitting amid a circle of guests and tea-cups and muffin-dishes. Fate had placed what seemed like a trump-card in the hands of the patiently manœuvring mother. With eyes blazing with excitement and a voice heavily escorted with exclamation marks she made a dramatic announcement.

  ‘Bertie has saved Dora from the elk!’

  In swift, excited sentences, broken with maternal emotion, she gave supplementary information as to how the treacherous animal had ambushed Dora as she was hunting for a strayed golf ball, and how Bertie had dashed to her rescue with a stable fork and driven the beast off in the nick of time.

  ‘It was touch and go! She threw her niblick at it, but that didn’t stop it. In another moment she would have been crushed beneath its hoofs,’ panted Mrs Yonelet.

  ‘The animal is not safe,’ said Teresa, handing her agitated guest a cup of tea. ‘I forget if you take sugar. I suppose the solitary life it leads has soured its temper. There are muffins in the grate. It’s not my fault; I’ve tried to get it a mate for ever so long. You don’t know of any one with a lady elk for sale or exchange, do you?’ she asked the company generally.

  But Mrs Yonelet was in no humour to listen to talk of elk marriages. The mating of two human beings was the subject uppermost in her mind, and the opportunity for advancing her pet project was too valuable to be neglected.

  ‘Teresa,’ she exclaimed impressively, ‘after those two young people have been thrown together so dramatically, nothing can be quite the same again between them. Bertie has done more than save Dora’s life; he has earned her affection. One cannot help feeling that Fate has consecrated them for one another.’

  ‘Exactly what the vicar’s wife said when Bertie saved Sybil from the elk a year or two ago,’ observed Teresa placidly; ‘I pointed out to her that he had rescued Mirabel Hicks from the same predicament a few months previously, and that priority really belonged to the gardener’s boy, who had been rescued in the January of that year. There is a good deal of sameness in country life, you know.’

  ‘It seems to be a very dangerous animal,’ said one of the guests.

  ‘That’s what the mother of the gardener’s boy said,’ remarked Teresa; ‘she wanted me to have it destroyed, but I pointed out to her that she had eleven children and I had only one elk. I also gave her a black silk skirt; she said that though there hadn’t been a funeral in her family, she felt as if there had been. Anyhow, we parted friends. I can’t offer you a silk skirt, Emily, but you may have another cup of tea. As I have already remarked, there are muffins in the grate.’

  Teresa closed the discussion, having deftly conveyed the impression that she considered the mother of the gardener’s boy had shown a far more reasonable spirit than the parents of other elk-assaulted victims.

  ‘Teresa is devoid of feeling,’ said Mrs Yonelet afterwards to the vicar’s wife; ‘to sit there, talking of muffins, with an appalling tragedy only narrowly averted –’

  ‘Of course you know whom she really intends Bertie to marry?’ asked the vicar’s wife; ‘I’ve noticed it for some time. The Bickelbys’ German governess.’

  ‘A German governess! What an idea!’ gasped Mrs Yonelet.

  ‘She’s of quite good family, I believe,’ said the vicar’s wife, ‘and not at all the mouse-in-the-background sort of person that governesses are usually supposed to be. In fact, next to Teresa, she’s about the most assertive and combative personality in the neighbourhood. She’s pointed out to my husband all sorts of errors in his sermons, and she gave Sir Laurence a public lecture on how he ought to handle the hounds. You know how sensitive Sir Laurence is about any criticism of his Mastership, and to have a governess laying down the law to him nearly drove him into a fit. She’s behaved like that to every one, except, of course, Teresa, and every one has been defensively rude to her in return. The Bickelbys are simply too afraid of her to get rid of her. Now isn’t that exactly the sort of woman whom Teresa would take a delight in installing as her successor? Imagine the discomfort and awkwardness in the county if we suddenly found that she was to be the future hostess at the Hall. Teresa’s only regret will be that she won’t be alive to see it.’

  ‘But,’ objected Mrs Yonelet, ‘surely Bertie hasn’t shown the least sign of being attracted in that quarter?’

  ‘Oh, she’s quite nice-looking in a way, and dresses well, and plays a good game of tennis. She often comes across the park with messages from the Bickelby mansion, and one of these days Bertie will rescue her from the elk, which has become almost a habit with him, and Teresa will say that Fate has consecrated them to one another. Bertie might not be disposed to pay much attention to the consecrations of Fate, but he would not dream of opposing his grandmother.’

  The vicar’s wife spoke with the quiet authority of one who has intuitive knowledge, and in her heart of hearts Mrs Yonelet believed her.

  Six months later the elk had to be destroyed. In a fit of exceptional moroseness it had killed the Bickelbys’ German governess. It was an irony of its fate that it should achieve popularity in the last moments of its career; at any rate, it established the record of being the only living thing that had permanently thwarted Teresa Thropplestance’s plans.

  Dora Yonelet broke off her engagement with an Indian civilian, and married Bertie three months after his grandmother’s death – Teresa did not long survive the German governess fiasco. At Christmas time every year young Mrs Thropplestance hangs an extra large festoon of evergreens on the elk horns that decorate the hall.

  ‘It was a fearsome beast,’ she observes to Bertie, ‘but I always feel that it was instrumental in bringing us together.’

  Which, of course, was true.

  ‘Down Pens’

  ‘Have you written to thank the Froplinsons for what they sent us?’ asked Egbert.

  ‘No,’ said Janetta, with a note of tired defi
ance in her voice; ‘I’ve written eleven letters today expressing surprise and gratitude for sundry unmerited gifts, but I haven’t written to the Froplinsons.’

  ‘Some one will have to write to them,’ said Egbert.

  ‘I don’t dispute the necessity, but I don’t think the some one should be me,’ said Janetta. ‘I wouldn’t mind writing a letter of angry recrimination or heartless satire to some suitable recipient; in fact, I should rather enjoy it, but I’ve come to the end of my capacity for expressing servile amiability. Eleven letters today and nine yesterday, all couched in the same strain of ecstatic thankfulness: really, you can’t expect me to sit down to another. There is such a thing as writing oneself out.’

  ‘I’ve written nearly as many,’ said Egbert, ‘and I’ve had my usual business correspondence to get through too. Besides, I don’t know what it was that the Froplinsons sent us.’

  ‘A William the Conqueror calendar,’ said Janetta, ‘with a quotation of one of his great thoughts for every day in the year.’