A British writer known by the pen name Saki 6 страница
“She is only a child yet,” Mrs. Pevenly would say to herself, forgetting that seventeen and seventy are about the two most despotic ages of human life.
“Ah, finished breakfast at last!” she called out in mock reproof as her daughter came out to join her in the rose-walk; “if you had gone to bed in good time these last two evenings, as I did, you would not be so tired in the mornings. It has been so fresh and charming out here, while all you silly people have been lying in bed. I hope you weren’t playing bridge for high stakes, my dear!”
There was a tired defiant look in Beryl’s eyes that drew forth the anxious remark.
“Bridge? No, we started with a rubber or two the night before last,” said Beryl, “but we switched off to baccarat. Rather a mistake for some of us.”
“Beryl, you haven’t been losing?” asked Mrs. Pevenly with increased anxiety in her voice.
“I lost quite a lot the first evening,” said Beryl, “and as I couldn’t possibly pay back my losses I simply punted the next evening to try and get them back; I’ve come to the conclusion that baccarat is not my game. I came a bigger cropper on the second evening than on the first.”
“Beryl, this is awful! I’ve very angry with you. Tell me quickly, how much have you lost?”
Beryl looked at a slip of paper that she was twisting and untwisting in her hands.
“Three hundred and ten the first night, seven hundred and sixteen the second,” she announced.
“Three hundred what?”
“Pounds.”
“Pounds?” screamed the mother; “Beryl, I don’t believe you. Why, that is a thousand pounds!”
“A thousand and twenty-six, to be exact,” said Beryl.
Mrs. Pevenly was too frightened to cry.
“Where do you suppose,” she asked, “that we could raise a thousand pounds, or anything like a thousand pounds? We are living at the top of our income, we are practising all sorts of economies, we simply couldn’t subtract a thousand pounds from our little capital. It would ruin us.”
“We should be socially ruined if it got about that we played for stakes that we couldn’t or wouldn’t pay; no one would ask us anywhere.”
“How came you to do such a dreadful thing?” wailed the mother.
“Oh, it’s no use asking those sort of questions,” said Beryl; “the thing is done. I suppose I inherit a gambling instinct from some of you.”
“You certainly don’t,” exclaimed Mrs. Pevenly hotly; “your father never touched cards or cared anything about horse-racing, and I don’t know one game of cards from another.”
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“These things skip a generation sometimes, and come out all the stronger in the next batch,” said Beryl; “how about that uncle of yours who used to get up a sweepstake every Sunday at school as to which of the Books of the Bible the text of the sermon would be taken from? If he wasn’t a keen gambler I’ve never heard of one.”
“Don’t let’s argue,” faltered the elder woman, “let’s think of what is to be done. How many people do you owe the money to?”
“Luckily it’s all due to one person, Ashcombe Gwent,” said Beryl; “he was doing nearly all the winning on both nights. He’s rather a good sort in his way, but unluckily he isn’t a bit well off, and one couldn’t expect him to overlook the fact that money was owing to him. I fancy he’s just as much of an adventurer as we are.”
“We are not adventurers,” protested Mrs. Pevenly.
“People who come to stay at country houses and play for stakes that they’ve no prospect of paying if they lose, are adventurers,” said Beryl, who seemed determined to include her mother in any moral censure that might be applied to her own conduct.
“Have you said anything to him about the difficulty you are in?”
“I have. That’s what I’ve come to tell you about. We had a talk this morning in the billiard-room after breakfast. It seems there is just one way out of the tangle. He’s inclined to be amorous.”
“Amorous!” exclaimed the mother.
“Matrimonially amorous,” said the daughter; “in fact, without either of us having guessed it, it appears that he’s the victim of an infatuation.”
“He has certainly been polite and attentive,” said Mrs. Pevenly; “he is not a man who says much, but he listens to what one has to say. And do you mean he really wants to marry –?”
“That is exactly what he does want,” said Beryl. “I don’t know that he is the sort of husband that one would rave about, but I gather that he has enough to live on – as much as we’re accustomed to, anyhow, and he’s quite presentable to look at. The alternative is selling out a big chunk of our little capital; I should have to go and be a governess or typewriter or something, and you would have to do needlework. From just making things do, and paying rounds of visits and having a fairly good time, we should sink suddenly to the position of distressed gentlefolk. I don’t know what you think, but I’m inclined to consider that the marriage proposition is the least objectionable.”
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Mrs. Pevenly took out her handkerchief.
“How old is he?” she asked.
“Oh, thirty-seven or thirty-eight; a year or two older perhaps.”
“Do you like him?”
Beryl laughed.
“He’s not in the least my style,” she said.
Mrs. Pevenly began to weep.
“What a deplorable situation,” she sobbed; “what a sacrifice for the sake of a miserable sum of money and social considerations! To think that such a tragedy should happen in our family. I’ve often read about such things in books, a girl being forced to marry a man she didn’t care about because of some financial disaster–”
“You shouldn’t read such trashy books,” pronounced Beryl.
“But now it’s really happening!” exclaimed the mother; “my own child’s life to be sacrificed by marriage to a man years older than herself, whom she doesn’t care the least bit about, and because –”
“Look here,” interrupted Beryl. “I don’t seem to have made this clear. It isn’t me that he wants to marry. ‘Flappers’ don’t appeal to him, he told me. Mature womanhood is his particular line, and it’s you that he’s infatuated about.”
“Me!”
For the second time that morning Mrs. Pevenly’s voice rose to a scream.
“Yes, he said you were his ideal, a ripe, sun-warmed peach, delicious and desirable, and a lot of other metaphors that he probably borrowed from Swinburne or Edmund Jones. I told him that under other circumstances I shouldn’t have held out much hope of his getting a favourable response from you, but that as we owed him a thousand and twenty-six pounds you would probably consider a matrimonial alliance the most convenient way of discharging the obligation. He’s coming out to speak to you himself in a few minutes, but I thought I’d better come and prepare you first.”
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“But, my dear –”
“Of course, you hardly know the man, but I don’t think that matters. You see, you’ve been married before and a second husband is always something of an anti-climax. Here is Ashcombe. I think I’d better leave you two together. You must have a lot you want to say to each other.”
The wedding took place quietly some eight weeks later. The presents were costly, if not numerous, and consisted chiefly of a cancelled I.O.U., the gift of the bridegroom to the bride’s daughter.
COUSIN TERESA
Basset Harrowcluff returned to the home of his fathers, after an absence of four years, distinctly well pleased with himself. He was only thirty-one, but he had put in some useful service in an out-of-the-way, though not unimportant, corner of the world. He had quieted a province, kept open a trade route, enforced the tradition of respect which is worth the ransom of many kings in out-of-the-way regions, and done the whole business on rather less expenditure than would be requisite for organising a charity in the home country. In Whitehall and places where they think, they doubtless thought well of him. It was not inconceivable, his father allowed himself to imagine, that Basset’s name might figure in the next list of Honours.
Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his half-brother, Lucas, whom he found feverishly engrossed in the same medley of elaborate futilities that had claimed his whole time and energies, such as they were, four years ago, and almost as far back before that as he could remember. It was the contempt of the man of action for the man of activities, and it was probably reciprocated. Lucas was an over-well-nourished individual, some nine years Basset’s senior, with a colouring that would have been accepted as a sign of intensive culture in an asparagus, but probably meant in this case mere abstention from exercise. His hair and forehead furnished a recessional note in a personality that was in all other respects obtrusive and assertive. There was certainly no Semitic blood in Lucas’s parentage, but his appearance contrived to convey at least a suggestion of Jewish extraction. Clovis Sangrail, who knew most of his associates by sight, said it was undoubtedly a case of protective mimicry.
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Two days after Basset’s return, Lucas frisked in to lunch in a state of twittering excitement that could not be restrained even for the immediate consideration of soup, but had to be verbally discharged in spluttering competition with mouthfuls of vermicelli.
“I’ve got hold of an idea for something immense,” he babbled, “something that is simply It.”
Basset gave a short laugh that would have done equally well as a snort, if one had wanted to make the exchange. His half-brother was in the habit of discovering futilities that were “simply It” at frequently recurring intervals. The discovery generally meant that he flew up to town, preceded by glowingly- worded telegrams, to see some one connected with the stage or the publishing world, got together one or two momentous luncheon parties, flitted in and out of “Gambrinus” for one or two evenings, and returned home with an air of subdued importance and the asparagus tint slightly intensified. The great idea was generally forgotten a few weeks later in the excitement of some new discovery.
“The inspiration came to me whilst I was dressing,” announced Lucas; “it will be THE thing in the next music-hall REVUE. All London will go mad over it. It’s just a couplet; of course there will be other words, but they won’t matter. Listen:
Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.
A lifting, catchy sort of refrain, you see, and big-drum business on the two syllables of bor-zoi. It’s immense. And I’ve thought out all the business of it; the singer will sing the first verse alone, then during the second verse Cousin Teresa will walk through, followed by four wooden dogs on wheels; Caesar will be an Irish terrier, Fido a black poodle, Jock a fox-terrier, and the borzoi, of course, will be a borzoi. During the third verse Cousin Teresa will come on alone, and the dogs will be drawn across by themselves from the opposite wing; then Cousin Teresa will catch on to the singer and go off-stage in one direction, while the dogs’ procession goes off in the other, crossing en route, which is always very effective. There’ll be a lot of applause there, and for the fourth verse Cousin Teresa will come on in sables and the dogs will all have coats on. Then I’ve got a great idea for the fifth verse; each of the dogs will be led on by a Nut, and Cousin Teresa will come on from the opposite side, crossing en route, always effective, and then she turns round and leads the whole lot of them off on a string, and all the time every one singing like mad:
Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.
Tum-Tum! Drum business on the two last syllables. I’m so excited, I shan’t sleep a wink to-night. I’m off to-morrow by the ten-fifteen. I’ve wired to Hermanova to lunch with me.”
If any of the rest of the family felt any excitement over the creation of Cousin Teresa, they were signally successful in concealing the fact.
“Poor Lucas does take his silly little ideas seriously,” said Colonel Harrowcluff afterwards in the smoking-room.
“Yes,” said his younger son, in a slightly less tolerant tone, “in a day or two he’ll come back and tell us that his sensational masterpiece is above the heads of the public, and in about three weeks’ time he’ll be wild with enthusiasm over a scheme to dramatise the poems of Herrick or something equally promising.”
And then an extraordinary thing befell. In defiance of all precedent Lucas’s glowing anticipations were justified and endorsed by the course of events. If Cousin Teresa was above the heads of the public, the public heroically adapted itself to her altitude. Introduced as an experiment at a dull moment in a new REVUE, the success of the item was unmistakable; the calls were so insistent and uproarious that even Lucas’ ample devisings of additional “business” scarcely sufficed to keep pace with the demand. Packed houses on successive evenings confirmed the verdict of the first night audience, stalls and boxes filled significantly just before the turn came on, and emptied significantly after the last ENCORE had been given. The manager tearfully acknowledged that Cousin Teresa was It. Stage hands and supers and programme sellers acknowledged it to one another without the least reservation. The name of the REVUE dwindled to secondary importance, and vast letters of electric blue blazoned the words “Cousin Teresa” from the front of the great palace of pleasure. And, of course, the magic of the famous refrain laid its spell all over the Metropolis. Restaurant proprietors were obliged to provide the members of their orchestras with painted wooden dogs on wheels, in order that the much-demanded and always conceded melody should be rendered with the necessary spectacular effects, and the crash of bottles and forks on the tables at the mention of the big borzoi usually drowned the sincerest efforts of drum or cymbals. Nowhere and at no time could one get away from the double thump that brought up the rear of the refrain; revellers reeling home at night banged it on doors and hoardings, milkmen clashed their cans to its cadence, messenger boys hit smaller messenger boys resounding double smacks on the same principle. And the more thoughtful circles of the great city were not deaf to the claims and significance of the popular melody. An enterprising and emancipated preacher discoursed from his pulpit on the inner meaning of “Cousin Teresa,” and Lucas Harrowcluff was invited to lecture on the subject of his great achievement to members of the Young Mens’ Endeavour League, the Nine Arts Club, and other learned and willing-to-learn bodies. In Society it seemed to be the one thing people really cared to talk about; men and women of middle age and average education might be seen together in corners earnestly discussing, not the question whether Servia should have an outlet on the Adriatic, or the possibilities of a British success in international polo contests, but the more absorbing topic of the problematic Aztec or Nilotic origin of the Teresa motiv.
“Politics and patriotism are so boring and so out of date,” said a revered lady who had some pretensions to oracular utterance; “we are too cosmopolitan nowadays to be really moved by them. That is why one welcomes an intelligible production like ‘Cousin Teresa,’ that has a genuine message for one. One can’t understand the message all at once, of course, but one felt from the very first that it was there. I’ve been to see it eighteen times and I’m going again to-morrow and on Thursday. One can’t see it often enough.”
“It would be rather a popular move if we gave this Harrowcluff person a knighthood or something of the sort,” said the Minister reflectively.
“Which Harrowcluff?” asked his secretary.
“Which? There is only one, isn’t there?” said the Minister; “the ‘Cousin Teresa’ man, of course. I think every one would be pleased if we knighted him. Yes, you can put him down on the list of certainties – under the letter L.”
“The letter L,” said the secretary, who was new to his job; “does that stand for Liberalism or liberality?”
Most of the recipients of Ministerial favour were expected to qualify in both of those subjects.
“Literature,” explained the Minister.
And thus, after a fashion, Colonel Harrowcluff’s expectation of seeing his son’s name in the list of Honours was gratified.
MRS. PACKLETIDE’S TIGER
It was Mrs. Packletide’s pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of inhabitants. The compelling motive for her sudden deviation towards the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of Press photographs could successfully counter that sort of thing. Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give at her house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in Loona Bimberton’s honour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the foreground and all of the conversation. She had also already designed in her mind the tiger-claw brooch that she was going to give Loona Bimberton on her next birthday. In a world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception; her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona Bimberton.
Circumstances proved propitious. Mrs. Packletide had offered a thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without overmuch risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to the smaller domestic animals. The prospect of earning the thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers; children were posted night and day on the outskirts of the local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his present quarters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date appointed for the memsahib’s shoot. Mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the day’s work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail the restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.
The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry.
“I suppose we are in some danger?” said Miss Mebbin.
She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Packletide; “it’s a very old tiger. It couldn’t spring up here even if it wanted to.”
“If it’s an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper. A thousand rupees is a lot of money.”
Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination. Her energetic intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself in tips in some Moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. Her speculations as to the market depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the animal itself. As soon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on the earth, seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of all available cover than for the purpose of snatching a short rest before commencing the grand attack.
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