The Complete Short Stories of Saki

by Saki

  ‘We might be living in the Arabian Nights,’ said Miss Fritten excitedly.

  ‘Hush! Listen,’ beseeched Mrs Greyes.

  ‘Has the dark-faced boy, of whom I spoke yesterday, been here today?’ asked the stranger.

  ‘We’ve had rather more people than usual in the shop today,’ said Mr Scarrick, ‘but I can’t recall a boy such as you describe.’

  Mrs Greyes and Miss Fritten looked round triumphantly at their friends. It was, of course, deplorable that any one should treat the truth as an article temporarily and excusably out of stock, but they felt gratified that the vivid accounts they had given of Mr Scarrick’s traffic in falsehoods should receive confirmation at first hand.

  ‘I shall never again be able to believe what he tells me about the absence of colouring matter in the jam,’ whispered an aunt of Mrs Greyes tragically.

  The mysterious stranger took his departure; Laura Lipping distinctly saw a snarl of baffled rage reveal itself behind his heavy moustache and upturned astrachan collar. After a cautious interval the seeker after oranges emerged from behind the biscuit tins, having apparently failed to find any individual orange that satisfied his requirements. He, too, took his departure, and the shop was slowly emptied of its parcel and gossip laden customers. It was Emily Yorling’s ‘day’, and most of the shoppers made their way to her drawing-room. To go direct from a shopping expedition to a teaparty was what was known locally as ‘living in a whirl.’

  Two extra assistants had been engaged for the following afternoon, and their services were in brisk demand; the shop was crowded. People bought and bought, and never seemed to get to the end of their lists. Mr Scarrick had never had so little difficulty in persuading customers to embark on new experiences in grocery wares. Even those women whose purchases were of modest proportions dawdled over them as though they had brutal, drunken husbands to go home to. The afternoon had dragged uneventfully on, and there was a distinct buzz of unpent excitement when a dark-eyed boy carrying a brass bowl entered the shop. The excitement seemed to have communicated itself to Mr Scarrick; abruptly deserting a lady who was making insincere inquiries about the home life of the Bombay duck, he intercepted the new-comer on his way to the accustomed counter and informed him, amid a deathlike hush, that he had run out of quail seed.

  The boy looked nervously round the shop, and turned hesitatingly to go. He was again intercepted, this time by the nephew, who darted out from behind his counter and said something about a better line of oranges. The boy’s hesitation vanished; he almost scuttled into the obscurity of the orange corner. There was an expectant turn of public attention towards the door, and the tall, bearded stranger made a really effective entrance. The aunt of Mrs Greyes declared afterwards that she found herself subconsciously repeating ‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold’ under her breath, and she was generally believed.

  The new-comer, too, was stopped before he reached the counter, but not by Mr Scarrick or his assistant. A heavily veiled lady, whom no one had hitherto noticed, rose languidly from a seat and greeted him in a clear, penetrating voice.

  ‘Your Excellency does his shopping himself?’ she said.

  ‘I order the things myself,’ he explained; ‘I find it difficult to make my servants understand.’

  In a lower, but still perfectly audible, voice the veiled lady gave him a piece of casual information.

  ‘They have some excellent Jaffa oranges here.’ Then with a tinkling laugh she passed out of the shop.

  The man glared all round the shop, and then, fixing his eyes instinctively on the barrier of biscuit tins, demanded loudly of the grocer: ‘You have, perhaps, some good Jaffa oranges?’

  Every one expected an instant denial on the part of Mr Scarrick of any such possession. Before he could answer, however, the boy had broken forth from his sanctuary. Holding his empty brass bowl before him he passed out into the street. His face was variously described afterwards as masked with studied indifference, overspread with ghastly pallor, and blazing with defiance. Some said that his teeth chattered, others that he went out whistling the Persian National Hymn. There was no mistaking, however, the effect produced by the encounter on the man who had seemed to force it. If a rabid dog or a rattlesnake had suddenly thrust its companionship on him he could scarcely have displayed a greater access of terror. His air of authority and assertiveness had gone, his masterful stride had given way to a furtive pacing to and fro, as of an animal seeking an outlet for escape. In a dazed perfunctory manner, always with his eyes turning to watch the shop entrance, he gave a few random orders, which the grocer made a show of entering in his book. Now and then he walked out into the street, looked anxiously in all directions, and hurried back to keep up his pretence of shopping. From one of these sorties he did not return; he had dashed away into the dusk, and neither he nor the dark-faced boy nor the veiled lady were seen again by the expectant crowds that continued to throng the Scarrick establishment for days to come.

  *

  ‘I can never thank you and your sister sufficiently,’ said the grocer.

  ‘We enjoyed the fun of it,’ said the artist modestly, ‘and as for the model, it was a welcome variation on posing for hours for “The Lost Hylas.”’

  ‘At any rate,’ said the grocer, ‘I insist on paying for the hire of the black beard.’

  Canossa

  Demosthenes Platterbaff, the eminent Unrest Inducer, stood on his trial for a serious offence, and the eyes of the political world were focused on the jury. The offence, it should be stated, was serious for the Government rather than for the prisoner. He had blown up the Albert Hall on the eve of the great Liberal Federation Tango Tea, the occasion on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer was expected to propound his new theory: ‘Do partridges spread infectious diseases?’ Platterbaff had chosen his time well; the Tango Tea had been hurriedly postponed, but there were other political fixtures which could not be put off under any circumstances. The day after the trial there was to be a by-election at Nemesis-on-Hand, and it had been openly announced in the division that if Platterbaff were languishing in gaol on polling day the Government candidate would be ‘outed’ to a certainty. Unfortunately, there could be no doubt or misconception as to Platterbaff’s guilt. He had not only pleaded guilty, but had expressed his intention of repeating his escapade in other directions as soon as circumstances permitted; throughout the trial he was busy examining a small model of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. The jury could not possibly find that the prisoner had not deliberately and intentionally blown up the Albert Hall; the question was: Could they find any extenuating circumstances which would permit of an acquittal? Of course any sentence which the law might feel compelled to inflict would be followed by an immediate pardon, but it was highly desirable, from the Government’s point of view, that the necessity for such an exercise of clemency should not arise. A headlong pardon, on the eve of a by-election, with threats of a heavy voting defection if it were withheld or even delayed, would not necessarily be a surrender, but it would look like one. Opponents would be only too ready to attribute ungenerous motives. Hence the anxiety in the crowded Court, and in the little groups gathered round the tape-machines in Whitehall and Downing Street and other affected centres.

  The jury returned from considering their verdict; there was a flutter, an excited murmur, a death-like hush. The foreman delivered his message:

  ‘The jury find the prisoner guilty of blowing up the Albert Hall. The jury wish to add a rider drawing attention to the fact that a by-election is pending in the Parliamentary division of Nemesis-on-Hand.’

  ‘That, of course,’ said the Government Prosecutor, springing to his feet, ‘is equivalent to an acquittal?’

  ‘I hardly think so,’ said the Judge coldly: ‘I feel obliged to sentence the prisoner to a week’s imprisonment.’

  ‘And may the Lord have mercy on the poll,’ a Junior Counsel exclaimed irreverently.

  It was a scandalous sentence, but then the Judge wa
s not on the Ministerial side in politics.

  The verdict and sentence were made known to the public at twenty minutes past five in the afternoon; at half-past five a dense crowd was massed outside the Prime Minister’s residence lustily singing, to the air of ‘Trelawney’:

  ‘And should our Hero rot in gaol,

  For e’en a single day,

  There’s Fifteen Hundred Voting Men

  Will vote the other way.’

  ‘Fifteen hundred,’ said the Prime Minister, with a shudder; ‘it’s too horrible to think of. Our majority last time was only a thousand and seven.’

  ‘The poll opens at eight tomorrow morning,’ said the Chief Organiser; ‘we must have him out by 7 A.M.’

  ‘Seven-thirty,’ amended the Prime Minister; ‘we must avoid any appearance of precipitancy.’

  ‘Not later than seven-thirty, then,’ said the Chief Organiser; ‘I have promised the agent down there that he shall be able to display posters announcing “Platterbaff is Out”, before the poll opens. He said it was our only chance of getting a telegram “Radprop is In” tonight.’

  At half-past seven the next morning the Prime Minister and the Chief Organiser sat at breakfast, making a perfunctory meal, and awaiting the return of the Home Secretary, who had gone in person to superintend the releasing of Platterbaff. Despite the earliness of the hour, a small crowd had gathered in the street outside, and the horrible menacing Trelawney refrain of the ‘Fifteen Hundred Voting Men’ came in a steady, monotonous chant.

  ‘They will cheer presently when they hear the news,’ said the Prime Minister hopefully. ‘Hark! They are booing some one now! That must be McKenna.’

  The Home Secretary entered the room a moment later, disaster written on his face.

  ‘He won’t go!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Won’t go? Won’t leave gaol?’

  ‘He won’t go unless he has a brass band. He says he never has left prison without a brass band to play him out, and he’s not going to go without one now.’

  ‘But surely that sort of thing is provided by his supporters and admirers?’ said the Prime Minister; ‘we can hardly be supposed to supply a released prisoner with a brass band. How on earth could we defend it on the Estimates?’

  ‘His supporters say it is up to us to provide the music,’ said the Home Secretary; ‘they say we put him in prison, and it’s our affair to see that he leaves it in a respectable manner. Anyway, he won’t go unless he has a band.’

  The telephone squealed shrilly; it was a trunk call from Nemesis.

  ‘Poll opens in five minutes. Is Platterbaff out yet? In Heaven’s name, why –’

  The Chief Organiser rang off.

  ‘This is not a moment for standing on dignity,’ he observed bluntly; ‘musicians must be supplied at once. Platterbaff must have his band.’

  ‘Where are you going to find the musicians?’ asked the Home Secretary wearily; ‘we can’t employ a military band; in fact, I don’t think he’d have one if we offered it, and there aren’t any others. There’s a musicians’ strike on, I suppose you know.’

  ‘Can’t you get a strike permit?’ asked the Organiser.

  ‘I’ll try,’ said the Home Secretary, and went to the telephone.

  Eight o’clock struck. The crowd outside chanted with an increasing volume of sound:

  ‘Will vote the other way.’

  A telegram was brought in. It was from the central committee rooms at Nemesis. ‘Losing twenty votes per minute,’ was its brief message.

  Ten o’clock struck. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Chief Organiser, and several earnest helpful friends were gathered in the inner gateway of the prison, talking volubly to Demosthenes Platterbaff, who stood with folded arms and squarely planted feet, silent in their midst. Golden-tongued legislators whose eloquence had swayed the Marconi Inquiry Committee, or at any rate the greater part of it, expended their arts of oratory in vain on this stubborn unyielding man. Without a band he would not go; and they had no band.

  A quarter-past ten, half-past. A constant stream of telegraph boys poured in through the prison gates.

  ‘Yamley’s factory hands just voted you can guess how,’ ran a despairing message, and the others were all of the same tenor. Nemesis was going the way of Reading.

  ‘Have you any band instruments of an easy nature to play?’ demanded the Chief Organiser of the Prison Governor; ‘drums, cymbals, those sort of things?’

  ‘The warders have a private band of their own,’ said the Governor, ‘but of course I couldn’t allow the men themselves –’

  ‘Lend us the instruments,’ said the Chief Organiser.

  One of the earnest helpful friends was a skilled performer on the cornet, the Cabinet Ministers were able to clash cymbals more or less in tune, and the Chief Organiser had some knowledge of the drum.

  ‘What tune would you prefer?’ he asked Platterbaff.

  ‘The popular song of the moment,’ replied the Agitator after a moment’s reflection.

  It was a tune they had all heard hundreds of times, so there was no difficulty in turning out a passable imitation of it. To the improvised strains of ‘I didn’t want to do it’ the prisoner strode forth to freedom. The words of the song had reference, it was understood, to the incarcerating Government and not to the destroyer of the Albert Hall.

  The seat was lost, after all, by a narrow majority. The local Trade Unionists took offence at the fact of Cabinet Ministers having personally acted as strike-breakers, and even the release of Platterbaff failed to pacify them.

  The seat was lost, but Ministers had scored a moral victory. They had shown that they knew when and how to yield.

  The Threat

  Sir Lulworth Quayne sat in the lounge of his favourite restaurant, the Gallus Bankiva, discussing the weaknesses of the world with his nephew, who had lately returned from a much-enlivened exile in the wilds of Mexico. It was that blessed season of the year when the asparagus and the plover’s egg are abroad in the land, and the oyster has not yet withdrawn into its summer entrenchments, and Sir Lulworth and his nephew were in that enlightened after-dinner mood when politics are seen in their right perspective, even the politics of Mexico.

  ‘Most of the revolutions that take place in this country nowadays,’ said Sir Lulworth, ‘are the product of moments of legislative panic. Take, for instance, one of the most dramatic reforms that has been carried through Parliament in the lifetime of this generation. It happened shortly after the coal strike, of unblessed memory. To you, who have been plunged up to the neck in events of a more tangled and tumbled description, the things I am going to tell you may seem of secondary interest, but after all we had to live in the midst of them.’

  Sir Lulworth interrupted himself for a moment to say a few kind words to the liqueur brandy he had just tasted, and then resumed his narrative.

  ‘Whether one sympathises with the agitation for female suffrage or not one has to admit that its promoters showed tireless energy and considerable enterprise in devising and putting into action new methods for accomplishing their ends. As a rule they were a nuisance and a weariness to the flesh, but there were times when they verged on the picturesque. There was the famous occasion when they enlivened and diversified the customary pageantry of the Royal progress to open Parliament by letting loose thousands of parrots, which had been carefully trained to scream “Votes for women”, and which circled round his Majesty’s coach in a clamorous cloud of green, and grey and scarlet. It was really rather a striking episode from the spectacular point of view; unfortunately, however, for its devisers, the secret of their intentions had not been well kept, and their opponents let loose at the same moment a rival swarm of parrots, which screeched “I don’t think” and other hostile cries, thereby robbing the demonstration of the unanimity which alone could have made it politically impressive. In the process of recapture the birds learned a quantity of additional language which unfitted them for further service in the Suffragette cause; some of
the green ones were secured by ardent Home Rule propagandists and trained to disturb the serenity of Orange meetings by pessimistic reflections on Sir Edward Carson’s destination in the life to come. In fact, the bird in politics is a factor that seems to have come to stay; quite recently, at a political gathering held in a dimly lighted place of worship, the congregation gave a respectful hearing for nearly ten minutes to a jackdaw from Wapping, under the impression that they were listening to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was late in arriving.’

  ‘But the Suffragettes,’ interrupted the nephew; ‘what did they do next?’

  ‘After the bird fiasco,’ said Sir Lulworth, ‘the militant section made a demonstration of a more aggressive nature; they assembled in force on the opening day of the Royal Academy Exhibition and destroyed some three or four hundred of the pictures. This proved an even worse failure than the parrot business; every one agreed that there were always far too many pictures in the Academy Exhibition, and the drastic weeding out of a few hundred canvases was regarded as a positive improvement. Moreover, from the artists’ point of view it was realised that the outrage constituted a sort of compensation for those whose works were persistently “skied”, since out of sight meant also out of reach. Altogether it was one of the most successful and popular exhibitions that the Academy had held for many years. Then the fair agitators fell back on some of their earlier methods; they wrote sweetly argumentative plays to prove that they ought to have the vote, they smashed windows to show that they must have the vote, and they kicked Cabinet Ministers to demonstrate that they’d better have the vote, and still the coldly reasoned or unreasoned reply was that they’d better not. Their plight might have been summed up in a perversion of Gilbert’s lines –