The Complete Short Stories of Saki

by Saki

  ‘You are a literary man, the author of several well-known books –’

  ‘I am engaged on a book at the present moment – rather busily engaged,’ said Mellowkent pointedly.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the intruder; ‘time with you is a commodity of considerable importance. Minutes, even, have their value.’

  ‘They have,’ agreed Mellowkent, looking at his watch.

  ‘That,’ said Caiaphas, ‘is why this book that I am introducing to your notice is not a book that you can afford to be without. Right Here is indispensable for the writing man; it is no ordinary encyclopædia, or I should not trouble to show it to you. It is an inexhaustible mine of concise information –’

  ‘On a shelf at my elbow,’ said the author, ‘I have a row of reference books that supply me with all the information I am likely to require.’

  ‘Here,’ persisted the would-be salesman, ‘you have it all in one compact volume. No matter what the subject may be which you wish to look up, or the fact you desire to verify, Right Here gives you all that you want to know in the briefest and most enlightening form. Historical reference, for instance; career of John Huss, let us say. Here we are: “Huss, John, celebrated religious reformer. Born 1369, burned at Constance 1415. The Emperor Sigismund universally blamed.”

  ‘If he had been burnt in these days every one would have suspected the Suffragettes,’ observed Mellowkent.

  ‘Poultry-keeping, now,’ resumed Caiaphas, ‘that’s a subject that might crop up in a novel dealing with English country life. Here we have all about it: “The Leghorn as egg-producer. Lack of maternal instinct in the Minorca. Gapes in chickens, its cause and cure. Ducklings for the early market, how fattened.” There, you see, there it all is, nothing lacking.’

  ‘Except the maternal instinct in the Minorca, and that you could hardly be expected to supply.’

  ‘Sporting records, that’s important too; now how many men, sporting men even, are there who can say off-hand what horse won the Derby in any particular year? Now it’s just a little thing of that sort –’

  ‘My dear sir,’ interrupted Mellowkent, ‘there are at least four men in my club who can not only tell me what horse won in any given year, but what horse ought to have won and why it didn’t. If your book could supply a method for protecting one from information of that sort, it would do more than anything you have yet claimed for it.’

  ‘Geography,’ said Caiaphas imperturbably; ‘that’s a thing that a busy man, writing at high pressure, may easily make a slip over. Only the other day a well-known author made the Volga flow into the Black Sea instead of the Caspian; now, with this book –’

  ‘On a polished rose-wood stand behind you there reposes a reliable and up-to-date atlas,’ said Mellowkent; ‘and now I must really ask you to be going.’

  ‘An atlas,’ said Caiaphas, ‘gives merely the chart of the river’s course, and indicates the principal towns that it passes. Now Right Here gives you the scenery, traffic, ferry-boat charges, the prevalent types of fish, boatmen’s slang terms, and hours of sailing of the principal river steamers. It gives you –’

  Mellowkent sat and watched the hard-featured, resolute, pitiless salesman, as he sat doggedly in the chair wherein he had installed himself, unflinchingly extolling the merits of his undesired wares. A spirit of wistful emulation took possession of the author. Why could he not live up to the cold stern name he had adopted? Why must he sit here weakly and listen to this weary, unconvincing tirade? Why could he not be Mark Mellowkent for a few brief moments, and meet this man on level terms?

  A sudden inspiration flashed across him.

  ‘Have you read my last book, The Cageless Linnet?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t read novels,’ said Caiaphas tersely.

  ‘Oh, but you ought to read this one, every one ought to,’ exclaimed Mellowkent, fishing the book down from a shelf; ‘published at six shillings, you can have it at four-and-six. There is a bit in chapter five that I feel sure you would like, where Emma is alone in the birch copse waiting for Harold Huntingdon – that is the man her family want her to marry. She really wants to marry him too, but she does not discover that till chapter fifteen. Listen: “Far as the eye could stretch rolled the mauve and purple billows of heather, lit up here and there with the glowing yellow of gorse and broom, and edged round with the delicate greys and silver and green of the young birch trees. Tiny blue and brown butterflies fluttered above the fronds of heather, revelling in the sunlight, and overhead the larks were singing as only larks can sing. It was a day when all Nature –”’

  ‘In Right Here you have full information on all branches of Nature study,’ broke in the book-agent, with a tired note sounding in his voice for the first time; ‘forestry, insect life, bird migration, reclamation of waste lands. As I was saying no man who has to deal with the varied interests of life –’

  ‘I wonder if you would care for one of my earlier books, The Reluctance of Lady Cullumpton,’ said Mellowkent, hunting again through the bookshelf; ‘some people consider it my best novel. Ah, here it is. I see there are one or two spots on the cover, so I won’t ask more than three-and-ninepence for it. Do let me read you how it opens:

  ‘“Beatrice Lady Cullumpton entered the long, dimly lit drawing-room, her eyes blazing with a hope that she guessed to be groundless, her lips trembling with a fear that she could not disguise. In her hand she carried a small fan, a fragile toy of lace and satinwood. Something snapped as she entered the room; she had crushed the fan into a dozen pieces.”

  ‘There, what do you think of that for an opening? It tells you at once that there’s something afoot.’

  ‘I don’t read novels,’ said Caiaphas sullenly.

  ‘But just think what a resource they are,’ exclaimed the author, ‘on long winter evenings, or perhaps when you are laid up with a strained ankle – a thing that might happen to any one; or if you were staying in a house-party with persistent wet weather and a stupid hostess and insufferably dull fellow-guests, you would just make an excuse that you had letters to write, go to your room, light a cigarette, and for three-and-ninepence you could plunge into the society of Beatrice Lady Cullumpton and her set. No one ought to travel without one or two of my novels in their luggage as a stand-by. A friend of mine said only the other day that he would as soon think of going into the tropics without quinine as of going on a visit without a couple of Mark Mellowkents in his kit-bag. Perhaps sensation is more in your line. I wonder if I’ve got a copy of The Python’s Kiss.’

  Caiaphas did not wait to be tempted with selections from that thrilling work of fiction. With a muttered remark about having no time to waste on monkey-talk, he gathered up his slighted volume and departed. He made no audible reply to Mellowkent’s cheerful ‘Good morning,’ but the latter fancied that a look of respectful hatred flickered in the cold, grey eyes.

  The Hedgehog

  A ‘mixed double’ of young people were contesting a game of lawn tennis at the Rectory garden party; for the past five-and-twenty years at least mixed doubles of young people had done exactly the same thing on exactly the same spot at about the same time of year. The young people changed and made way for others in the course of time, but very little else seemed to alter.

  The present players were sufficiently conscious of the social nature of the occasion to be concerned about their clothes and appearance, and sufficiently sport-loving to be keen on the game. Both their efforts and their appearance came under the four-fold scrutiny of a quartet of ladies sitting as official spectators on a bench immediately commanding the court. It was one of the accepted conditions of the Rectory garden party that four ladies, who usually knew very little about tennis and a great deal about the players, should sit at that particular spot and watch the game. It had also come to be almost a tradition that two ladies should be amiable, and that the other two should be Mrs Dole and Mrs Hatch-Mallard.

  ‘What a singularly unbecoming way Eva Jonelet has taken to doing her hair in,’ said Mrs Hatch-
Mallard; ‘it’s ugly hair at the best of times, but she needn’t make it look ridiculous as well. Some one ought to tell her.’

  Eva Jonelet’s hair might have escaped Mrs Hatch-Mallard’s condemnation if she could have forgotten the more glaring fact that Eva was Mrs Dole’s favourite niece. It would, perhaps, have been a more comfortable arrangement if Mrs Hatch-Mallard and Mrs Dole could have been asked to the Rectory on separate occasions, but there was only one garden party in the course of the year, and neither lady could have been omitted from the list of invitations without hopelessly wrecking the social peace of the parish.

  ‘How pretty the yew trees look at this time of year,’ interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler.

  ‘What do you mean by this time of year?’ demanded Mrs Hatch-Mallard. ‘Yew trees look beautiful at all times of the year. That is their great charm.’

  ‘Yew trees never look anything but hideous under any circumstances or at any time of year,’ said Mrs Dole, with the slow, emphatic relish of one who contradicts for the pleasure of the thing. ‘They are only fit for graveyards and cemeteries.’

  Mrs Hatch-Mallard gave a sardonic snort, which, being translated, meant that there were some people who were better fitted for cemeteries than for garden parties.

  ‘What is the score, please?’ asked the lady with the chinchilla voice.

  The desired information was given her by a young gentleman in spotless white flannels, whose general toilet effect suggested solicitude rather than anxiety.

  ‘What an odious young cub Bertie Dykson has become!’ pronounced Mrs Dole, remembering suddenly that Bertie was rather a favourite with Mrs Hatch-Mallard. ‘The young men of today are not what they used to be twenty years ago.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard; ‘twenty years ago Bertie Dykson was just two years old, and you must expect some difference in appearance and manner and conversation between those two periods.’

  ‘Do you know, said Mrs Dole confidentially, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if that was intended to be clever.’

  ‘Have you any one interesting coming to stay with you, Mrs Norbury?’ asked the chinchilla voice hastily; ‘you generally have a house-party at this time of year.’

  ‘I’ve got a most interesting woman coming,’ said Mrs Norbury, who had been mutely struggling for some chance to turn the conversation into a safe channel; ‘an old acquaintance of mine, Ada Bleek –’

  ‘What an ugly name,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard.

  ‘She’s descended from the de la Bliques, an old Huguenot family of Touraine, you know.’

  ‘There weren’t any Huguenots in Touraine,’ said Mrs Hatch-Mallard, who thought she might safely dispute any fact that was three hundred years old.

  ‘Well anyhow, she’s coming to stay with me,’ continued Mrs Norbury, bringing her story quickly down to the present day; ‘she arrives this evening and she’s highly clairvoyante, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, you know, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘How very interesting,’ said the chinchilla voice; ‘Exwood is just the right place for her to come to, isn’t it? There are supposed to be several ghosts there.’

  ‘That is why she was so anxious to come,’ said Mrs Norbury; ‘she put off another engagement in order to accept my invitation. She’s had visions and dreams, and all those sort of things, that have come true in a most marvellous manner, but she’s never actually seen a ghost, and she’s longing to have that experience. She belongs to that Research Society, you know.’

  ‘I expect she’ll see the unhappy Lady Cullumpton, the most famous of all the Exwood ghosts,’ said Mrs Dole; ‘my ancestor, you know, Sir Gervase Cullumpton, murdered his young bride in a fit of jealousy while they were on a visit to Exwood. He strangled her in the stables with a stirrup leather, just after they had come in from riding, and she is seen sometimes at dusk going about the lawns and the stable yard, in a long green habit, moaning and trying to get the thong from round her throat. I shall be most interested to hear if your friend sees –’

  ‘I don’t know why she should be expected to see a trashy, traditional apparition like the so-called Cullumpton ghost, that is only vouched for by house-maids and tipsy stable-boys, when my uncle, who was the owner of Exwood, committed suicide there under the most tragical circumstances, and most certainly haunts the place.’

  ‘Mrs Hatch-Mallard has evidently never read Popple’s County History,’ said Mrs Dole icily, ‘or she would know that the Cullumpton ghost has a wealth of evidence behind it –’

  ‘Oh, Popple!’ exclaimed Mrs Hatch-Mallard scornfully; ‘any rubbishy old story is good enough for him. Popple, indeed! Now my uncle’s ghost was seen by a Rural Dean, who was also a Justice of the Peace. I should think that would be good enough testimony for any one. Mrs Norbury, I shall take it as a deliberate personal affront if your clairvoyante friend sees any other ghost except that of my uncle.’

  ‘I dare say she won’t see anything at all; she never has yet, you know,’ said Mrs Norbury hopefully.

  ‘It was a most unfortunate topic for me to have broached,’ she lamented afterwards to the owner of the chinchilla voice; ‘Exwood belongs to Mrs Hatch-Mallard, and we’ve only got it on a short lease. A nephew of hers has been wanting to live there for some time, and if we offend her in any way she’ll refuse to renew the lease. I sometimes think these garden parties are a mistake.’

  The Norburys played bridge for the next three nights till nearly one o’clock; they did not care for the game, but it reduced the time at their guest’s disposal for undesirable ghostly visitations.

  ‘Miss Bleek is not likely to be in a frame of mind to see ghosts,’ said Hugo Norbury, ‘if she goes to bed with her brain awhirl with royal spades and no trumps and grand slams.’

  ‘I’ve talked to her for hours about Mrs Hatch-Mallard’s uncle,’ said his wife, ‘and pointed out the exact spot where he killed himself, and invented all sorts of impressive details, and I’ve found an old portrait of Lord John Russell and put it in her room, and told her that it’s supposed to be a picture of the uncle in middle age. If Ada does see a ghost at all it certainly ought to be old Hatch-Mallard’s. At any rate, we’ve done our best.’

  The precautions were in vain. On the third morning of her stay Ada Bleek came down late to breakfast, her eyes looking very tired, but ablaze with excitement, her hair done anyhow, and a large brown volume hugged under her arm.

  ‘At last I’ve seen something supernatural!’ she exclaimed, and gave Mrs Norbury a fervent kiss, as though in gratitude for the opportunity afforded her.

  ‘A ghost!’ cried Mrs Norbury, ‘not really!’

  ‘Really and unmistakably!’

  ‘Was it an oldish man in the dress of about fifty years ago?’ asked Mrs Norbury hopefully.

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Ada; ‘it was a white hedgehog.’

  ‘A white hedgehog!’ exclaimed both the Norburys, in tones of disconcerted astonishment.

  ‘A huge white hedgehog with baleful yellow eyes,’ said Ada; ‘I was lying half asleep in bed when suddenly I felt a sensation as of something sinister and unaccountable passing through the room. I sat up and looked round, and there, under the window, I saw an evil, creeping thing, a sort of monstrous hedgehog, of a dirty white colour, with black, loathsome claws that clicked and scraped along the floor, and narrow, yellow eyes of indescribable evil. It slithered along for a yard or two, always looking at me with its cruel, hideous eyes, then, when it reached the second window, which was open, it clambered up the sill and vanished. I got up at once and went to the window; there wasn’t a sign of it anywhere. Of course, I knew it must be something from another world, but it was not till I turned up Popple’s chapter on local traditions that I realised what I had seen.’

  She turned eagerly to the large brown volume and read: ‘“Nicholas Herison, an old miser, was hung at Batchford in 1763 for the murder of a farm lad who had accidentally discovered hi
s secret hoard. His ghost is supposed to traverse the countryside, appearing sometimes as a white owl, sometimes as a huge white hedgehog.”’

  ‘I expect you read the Popple story overnight, and that made you think you saw a hedgehog when you were only half awake,’ said Mrs Norbury, hazarding a conjecture that probably came very near the truth.

  Ada scouted the possibility of such a solution of her apparition.

  ‘This must be hushed up,’ said Mrs Norbury quickly; ‘the servants –’

  ‘Hushed up!’ exclaimed Ada, indignantly; ‘I’m writing a long report on it for the Research Society.’

  It was then that Hugo Norbury, who is not naturally a man of brilliant resource, had one of the really useful inspirations of his life.

  ‘It was very wicked of us, Miss Bleek,’ he said, ‘but it would be a shame to let it go further. That white hedgehog is an old joke of ours; stuffed albino hedgehog, you know, that my father brought home from Jamaica, where they grow to enormous size. We hide it in the room with a string on it, run one end of the string through the window; then we pull it from below and it comes scraping along the floor, just as you’ve described, and finally jerks out of the window. Taken in heaps of people; they all read up Popple and think it’s old Harry Nicholson’s ghost; we always stop them from writing to the papers about it, though. That would be carrying matters too far.’

  Mrs Hatch-Mallard renewed the lease in due course, but Ada Bleek has never renewed her friendship.

  The Mappined Life

  ‘These Mappin Terraces at the Zoological Gardens are a great improvement on the old style of wild-beast age,’ said Mrs James Gurtleberry, putting down an illustrated paper; ‘they give one the illusion of seeing the animals in their natural surroundings. I wonder how much of the illusion is passed on to the animals?’